Trump's vow to impose tariffs a "different way" already has the tech industry on edge.
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Trump’s 10% global tariff is illegal, court rules
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Infinite money glitch for big companies, Trump keeps instituting new illegal tariffs that get paid by the consumers and then they get to keep all the money each time a tariff refund is ordered.
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When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
When your President is Donald Trump....you have a really f#cking dumb bag of hammers.
When your President is Donald Trump....you have a really f#cking dumb bag of hammers.
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There's always the legal way, which is to have Congress pass legislation imposing these tariffs.
Reminds me of a classic Simpsons exchange.
"There's three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the [Donald Trump] way!"
"Isn't that the wrong way?"
"Yeah, but faster"
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But they also had to deal with falling sales and lost revenue due to tariffs increasing prices for consumers, so it's probably a wash overall to the companies.
No question consumers get screwed, though.
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I would really appreciate it if even once the courts levied some sort of enforceable consequence. How about you put some of these assholes in jail? Or hold even one in contempt? Or disbar some of the bought and paid for DOJ attorneys? How about refusing to consider any further cases brought by the DOJ until they comply with all court orders? Every time, it's just a "hey, hey now, stop that. C'mon, stop it, please?"
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What an idiot. In his party there are exactly 4 people that won't do exactly what he says. If he wants tariffs he could easily do it the legal way, via legislation.
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Except they're losing more profits from lost sales than they're gaining from the "increased revenue." If a $100 price increase on a $1000 tv didn't lose you a shit-ton of customers, you'd have priced that tv at $1100 already.
Welcome to bad taxes, where the seller, buyer, and the entire economy can simultaneously lose.
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It's a bit nuanced. I'm one hand, it was equivalent to them hiking prices, with the attendant market issues that that brings (reduction in demand). So on that much analysis it makes sense that they get the additional earnings that go with the price hike.
But it's also an across-the-board hike, which industries usually can't enforce without illegally colluding. So there is some capture of the oligopolist's surplus there, which consumers should be compensated for.
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A repeated point made on the Serious Trouble podcast (Ken White/Popehat & Josh Barro) is that many of the things Trump wants to do could be done perfectly legally, and probably without much public notice (either in the "we're letting you know" respect or the "OMG what did they do" respect). It's just that Trump and his clowns chose to do them in the stupidest, most obviously illegal way possible. Often that just means "don't ask Congress" even though this particular Congress would likely rubber-stamp most things not subject to filibuster.
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prediction: Trump relies on even more unreliable legal standards with the knowledge that it takes months to overturn anything he does.
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BBC article
The tired, pissed off part of me wishes the "Rest of World" would respond: "Fuck you, dickhead."
Alas.
We all know by now the US won't honour its side of the pact.
The tired, pissed off part of me wishes the "Rest of World" would respond: "Fuck you, dickhead."
Alas.
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There are a whole bunch of reasons why they don't "put some of these assholes in jail".
1. Not within the power of the US Court of International Trade.
2. Incorrectly interpreting a statute and imposing tariffs improperly is not a crime. Most things that are illegal are not crimes and do not result in jail sentences.
3. Government officials have immunity from prosecution for official acts.
4. There has been no contempt. If the Trump administration goes on trying to collect these tariffs in spite of this court order, there might be a contempt issue to deal with.
5. There should not be sanctions against the lawyers who argued the Trump admin's side of things on this. It's literally their job to make an argument for why these tariffs are legitimate, and it's the court's job to decide if that argument is a good one. Disbarring lawyers for making mediocre arguments in court because their clients did something stupid and now they need to be defended is a great way to dismantle the entire legal system.
The way to deal with corrupt scumbags who are trying to undermine the rule of law is not to just toss out the rule of law in response. That will only make things worse.
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It's all a flex to reinforce the false insistence that everything the unitary executive wants done could be done if it weren't for those meddling kids.
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When everyone has to raise prices then customers are left with two options: pay the extra money or don't buy the widget.
In your TV example...I couldn't find a single TV that is 100% made in America - not just assembled in America, but all sub-assembly components are made in America.
Last I checked, when I built my own desktop a few years ago, it is impossible to build a computer comprised entirely of made-in-America components.
If my research was thorough, there are also zero 100% made-in-America cars anymore once you include parts/components.
I'm sure the list goes on.
So people have a choice: pay the increased prices that include tariffs or don't get a new widget. My research says consumer debt such as credit cards and auto loans has increased over the last 5 years, including over the last year. So many people are paying the higher prices rather than forgoing new purchases.
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But which one of those are supposed to be good reasons instead of coincidentally-convenient-for-the-oligarchy reasons?
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And those of us who actually imported items as individuals and paid tarriffs have to sue , spending more money than the tarriffs just to get relief. And even then I assume they would argue that since the company we imported the products from paid the tarriffs on our behalf (and then sought 100% of those costs from us as additional surcharges) disqualify us from seeking a refund.
And until there are consequences for these continued crimes by the executive when they KNOW what they are doing is illegal, why would they listen or stop? They will just find another loophole to crime up and continue to break the law. To make it look like they can bully mfging back to the US.
We are all fucked and the 1% get to continue laughing to the bank regardless of compliance costs. Esp if they get refunds and they never return the prices back to what they were. It's bad for prices go down , we have to let them inflate and continually destroy the purchasing power of the working class. But it would be worse if we made or allowed them to return prices to even pre Covid levels! So bad! Line must go up! /S
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Attempting to run a trade surplus when you are the global reserve currency issuer is tilting at windmills. The US exports dollars which other countries sock away in reserves (both central bank reserves, and dollars held by private orgs for trading).
Those reserve holders get these dollars by selling something to the US. Which necessarily means the rest of the world is buying less from the US than they sell to it.
In general, the reserves are held as US treasuries. Which means the reserve holders own US assets. So the US government gets very favorable terms on its bonds… which means lower interest rates.
Let’s say the US runs a current account surplus. More USD are flowing into the US than out of it. Which pushes the USD up, and also causes a global liquidity crunch (not enough dollars to meet global demand). This spikes the USD even more, which results in lowered demand for US goods and services. Demand collapses. This is essentially what caused the Great Depression.
While the US is the global reserve currency issuer, a current account surplus sows the seeds of its own demise.
Those reserve holders get these dollars by selling something to the US. Which necessarily means the rest of the world is buying less from the US than they sell to it.
In general, the reserves are held as US treasuries. Which means the reserve holders own US assets. So the US government gets very favorable terms on its bonds… which means lower interest rates.
Let’s say the US runs a current account surplus. More USD are flowing into the US than out of it. Which pushes the USD up, and also causes a global liquidity crunch (not enough dollars to meet global demand). This spikes the USD even more, which results in lowered demand for US goods and services. Demand collapses. This is essentially what caused the Great Depression.
While the US is the global reserve currency issuer, a current account surplus sows the seeds of its own demise.
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But that undermines the GOP policy is that GOP.president is big daddy who has unilateral authority to do whatever they want and separation of powers and the Constitution mean nothing!
Non GOP President though, zomg what a dictator for using executive orders at lowest rate in decades!!
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Being illegal is only a deterrent--if there are real and meaningful consequences. Trump has never seen a consequence in his life. Sir Allen Stanford and Sam Bank Fraud are both no longer running massive financial frauds...because they're spending large sections of their lives behind bars.
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Trump is one of those people who believes that law is just a bunch of magic words, and if you put them in the right order, you get to do whatever you want. At this point, I'm mildly surprised that he hasn't declared himself a sovereign citizen.
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He'd get bored and have a tantrum if he has to rely on the legal way instead of getting his way immediately.
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
But what Trump really wants isn't tariffs, but a political economy where every CEO has to use groveling and/or bribery to persuade him to grant their company an exemption from the tariffs. Presumably he's worried that if Congress were to set the tariff rates by statute, then the law might get written in such a way that he'd lose that leverage.
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This seems like a massive invitation for a shareholder lawsuit. They're public companies...the corporate officers are not allowed to just give millions or billions of dollars of unlawfully seized assets to the government. It's not either party's money. It's stolen investor's equity.
No, he actually wants the tariffs. One has to remember, that while he is indeed massively corrupt, he's also an idiot whose understanding of the world peaked in the 80's. He liked tariffs then. He liked them in his first term. He likes them now.
He also really sucks at managing leverage. He's used to being able to financially bully contractors and legal opponents. He can refuse to pay, prolong procedures, and appeal his case until his opponent is insolvent. Then he can do it again, because there's always someone else out there to sucker. None of that really applies to geopolitics. There are consequences for breaking your word on the global stage. All of the other states loose any incentive to deal with you, especially when you're domestically unpopular and term-limited.
Trump fucked over Canada, what hope does China really have at making some kind of deal? Why would they even want to? Trump is dismantling the American Empire willingly. That empire was built largely as a network of allied democracies who accepted military client status in exchange for a rules-based economic and legal order. With those allies peeling away, it's better to wait that out for a year or so and then face Trump as an economic equal (at best) rather than America as the main negotiator of a block of countries with 3x China's GDP. Then hope Trump's successor will revert to the means and honor a lopsided, but legally binding deal.
So...yeah...there is no leverage with China regardless of the court order. China isn't doing anything right now. They might seek a deal in a year or two, when they think they have the best hand they're gonna get in the near term.
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Actually what I think he wants is a War Economy. Because War Economies can just be run on IOUs so long as there is some war to justify it.
Him being able to blackmail companies into compliance on social issues is a bonus.
But tariffs cannot and never will pay enough to support the reckless spending he wants. And, just like COVID, institutions and governments involved in the sovereign bond market...are not fooled by mock bravado, chest thumping, name calling, and boasting. Bond people see right through it and look at the numbers.
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I have no idea what tariffs have done to me financially as I pretty much quit spending on everything outside of food, health, and repairs once the tariffs started in 2025. I have no doubt, even with that, it has easily added quite a bit to the little I spend.
If we ever get out of this mess, I may return to normal spending.
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This statement was demonstrably true even before these tariffs were ruled illegal.
Xi is smart. Trump is the textbook case of Dunning-Kruger and isn't.
It boils down to that.
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J.C. Helios
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I agree that Trump wants a war economy, since the war has helped his sons, Eric & Don Jr., sign a contract to sell drones to the Pentagon.
But I very much doubt Trump cares about the debt-to-GDP ratio, or social issues, or anything else except lining the Trump family's pockets. And certainly the bond markets have not hitherto cared about the US's ever-rising debt, whether in peacetime or wartime, so why would that concern be on his radar?
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Anything that further concentrates wealth moves their agenda forward.
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Populists get elected because they tell people what they want to hear, but outside of FDR there's almost no populist leader that could figure out how to work the existing system, so they largely fail to have lasting impacts... I'm afraid that's only partly true with this populist president. In all his flailing about, he's also intentionally destroying what remains of trust in this government at all levels and its institutions for a minimum of the next couple of generations. Cunning doesn't imply smart, but it does mean you watch that person's knife hand, not his eyes.
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Literally all of them. If you don't understand this then you're just a mirror of the "arrest all the dems drain the swamp" MAGA morons.
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You've got it backwards. The purpose has always been to seek bribes and leverage against US and foreign businesses. That Trump could sell it to MAGA as a means to balance the budget was the bonus.
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