by liam 107 Replies latest social current
Well, another day, another tweet. 4/8 4:00 pm EST. The market is UP. lol!
Scratching my thinning gray hair...Who IS Trump listening to? It appears that College Professor Peter Navarro is that person, so I plan on reading more about him and watching his documentary about China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro
"I almost laughed out loud, he paused most of the tariffs again....chaos
'I guess enough leaders were 'kissing my ass"'
I'm assuming that is the point of the whole exercise: to get everyone else to drop their tariffs to something resembling a sensible level.
That would make sense (up to a certain point, perhaps) except for the fact that there is a confusing factor here. There was talk about repealing the 16th amendment and going back to tariffs as the tax base while eliminating the income tax.
As far as I can see, the two approaches would be somewhat mutually exclusive. You can use tariffs as a weapon in a trade war and change them willy-nilly from day to day, or you can set them at a certain steady rate to underpin the tax-take. But I don't think you can do both simultaneously.
Personally, I think approach one was always the point, and approach two was somewhat a bit of idle speculation.
As for Smoot-Hawley, I always thought that it was a hard-learned lesson that would not be forgotten. Hopefully economic conditions are different enough from those of 1930 that history won't repeat itself.
It seems to be human nature to keep hankering after "the good old days"; while ignoring the fact that those "old days" were often not as good as people imagine them to have been.
I don't believe in hankering for the so-called "good old days" but I also don't believe that tech is the way to anything better.
Many people work in an office then go get exercise on a treadmill in a gym rather than just do physical work outside.
With tech, they can pay to buy a computer and pay for an office chair and then pay to run on a treadmill. Then they can pay to go on "vacation" outside somewhere.
It's stupid.
Why not just work outside and enjoy the fruit of their own labors?
If everybody just worked their own land without kings or rulers, there'd be no need for taxes or tariffs.
The first thing that popped into my head was manufacturing, but production can include a lot of things
It also includes primary industries - such as mining, farming and forestry. These, too, have in many ways been transformed by automation.
For example:
If everybody just worked their own land without kings or rulers, there'd be no need for taxes or tariffs.
The trouble with that idea is that it only takes one bad season, and you would have famine. This was very much the case during 16th Century Europe. On average in those times, one summer out of three was a poor one, the harvest failed, and people then starved.
The same thing still happens today, in those places where people still rely on subsistence farming. (Sorry - but I myself have observed this firsthand). Then, if famine relief measures do reach the people so affected, it is often provided by governments of developed countries.
Balaamsass2: Who IS Trump listening to?
I am curious about that, myself. The people advising him this time around are definitely not the same people who were with him his first term. The question is, did they convince him that tariffs are a way to make money directly, or that they are a way to force negotiations?
If it's the latter, we are in for a continuous rollercoaster of on-and-off-again threats for at least a few more months. If the former, then the constant hemming and hawing is only the beginning of a potentially huge disaster.
Trump and his elite friends will be getting grossly richer by playing the stock markets on his announcements. This is probably intentional, to make up for any hurt they face by other reforms that he makes.
Rivergang,
It also includes primary industries...
Okay...My observation, as an engineer here in the land of Orbital ATK, Dillon Aero, Raytheon, etc., is that automation has not eliminated the "good" jobs.
The days of standing at a machine all day are gone, but human beings are involved in every step of any manufacturing process and are still very much the brains of the operation.
Rivergang - “…It seems to be human nature to keep hankering after ‘the good old days’c while ignoring the fact that those old days’ were often not as good as people imagine them to have been…”
Oh, so this.
There’s no fucking way I’d even wanna go back and live in the 1980s or 90s.
@Rivergang -
You gave illustrations about milking cows being a mechanized operation, and also about the logging industry.
What I keep seeing in these illustrations is a lack of consideration for the lowly.
The animals, the small creatures, the mushrooms and insects and birds - how are they being affected by this so-called "progress"?
God made the animals so that they can also enjoy life. The milking industry is horrible. The animals are not permitted to enjoy natural relations - instead they're often "artificially inseminated" and then don't get to enjoy the relationship a cow and calf would have together. The cow's body is hooked up to a metal and plastic and rubber device and she gives this fluid intended for her offspring instead to a machine. She's injected will hormones and vaccines and all kinds of things to make her give more when she is given less. It's disgusting. It's not "progress". It's horrible and obscene.
Same with the logging industry. The earth is meant to be a garden, not a commercial zone.
@vidiot
No way I'd want to go back to the 80s or 90s either.
The future will have real progress, instead of all this "Tech-First" crap.
4/10/2025. Markets are swinging back and forth, hanging on Trump's every tweet and press release. Oh well, the WSJ has a story on Navarro that might give some insight into the decision-making process. : "
"WASHINGTON—Wall Street loathes him. His policy prescriptions give Republican lawmakers heartburn. Elon Musk thinks he’s a moron.
And after President Trump paused many new tariffs on Wednesday, the man he calls “my Peter” may be down. But he’s not out.
Apart from Trump, no one is more associated with the tariffs rocking the globe than Peter Navarro, the scrappy trade hawk who helped design the much-maligned formula for Trump’s reciprocal levies. He has Trump’s ear and his loyalty: As the president privately reminded a group in the Oval Office recently, Navarro went to jail for him.
Navarro, 75 years old, has been an unflagging influence as markets convulse and recession fears grow, helping craft Trump’s tariff policy and protect it against moderating voices in the administration. A former college professor and California Democrat plucked from obscurity to advise the 2016 campaign on China, Navarro’s view has held sway with the president for years.
“Peter has endured because he believes the same things the president does—that America is a country worth saving, that the American worker is the finest in the world and that the globalists are both wrong and evil,” said Steve Bannon, the Trump ally and economic populist. Bannon called criticism of Navarro “really veiled attacks on President Trump.”
Navarro’s influence—and the limits of it—were on display in recent days. He had a central role in designing Trump’s reciprocal trade action, which hiked U.S. tariffs to levels not seen since before World War II, before being paused by Trump on Wednesday afternoon. That abrupt shift, effectively repudiating Navarro’s hard-line stance, sent stocks soaring and calmed nerves on Wall Street and in Washington."
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/peter-navarro-trump-tariffs-48dc0b74?st=YnAGEz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
