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You know the craziest thing about watching this as an outsider in Canada is that we as a nation are losing one reliable trading partner (and obviously losing an

You know the craziest thing about watching this as an outsider in Canada is that we as a nation are losing one reliable trading partner (and obviously losing an ally but that's another conversation). Germany - losing a trade partner. Japan? And so on. But the US has lost 180 reliable trading partners. You're already seeing in the first week burgeoning trade alliances between nations who wouldn't have cooperated before, and the amount of resentment against America from this is going to take a generation to heal. Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not but.. sometimes the person doing something crazy is just crazy at the end of the day.

outer_web 1y ago
I think less 4d chess and more Erlich Bachman school of negotiation. Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far.
- bdelmas 1y ago
  Totally agreed! But bulling 95% of the class room... That doesn't work. New alliances would emerge, like Canada and the EU. No more new pipelines for the US but more upgrades to Canadian ports to ship oil to the EU. New economic routes will be created, new partner deals, etc... Without the US. Trump just locked the US, kinda did the finger to the earth, and hopes people will come begging for trade.
- nwatson 1y ago
  When the bully gets too ambitious the large number of bullied gang together for revenge, or at least effective countermeasures. The world will route around USA, find they can manage ok without it. The USA will be iced out, lose its reserve currency status, nobody will buy its military technology, making the USA unable to recoup large outlays for ambitious military projects, and the USA will lose its military dominance. Also, the future of warfare and terrorism is autonomous networks of drones. Mexico and Canada won't be disposed to care what passes through their borders with the USA, and like Zelensky said ... we had the oceans and friendly neighbors, but that won't help us anymore. EDIT: minor corrections
  - bediger4000 1y ago
    The USA may get the metric system out of this. The only reason the USA can hang on to its ridiculous "imperial" units has been its economically dominant position.
    - WrongAssumption 1y ago
      Imperial units are British, and the United States doesn’t use the imperial system.
- yojo 1y ago
  When he started with a limited set of tariffs on Canada/Mexico/China it sort of made sense as a bullying move. The administration at least had the bandwidth to conduct three sets of negotiations. But it’s essentially impossible to negotiate 180 deals simultaneously. No way does Tunisia get even five minutes to pitch a deal - the simultaneous imposition of tariffs effectively DDOS’d the negotiation team.
  - peteforde 1y ago
    I'd love to hear more about what sort of sense these tariffs made at any stage since they were announced.
    - vkou 1y ago
      The sense is that it's just another day in the life of a cult of action for action's sake.
    - yojo 1y ago
      I’m not advocating for or defending them, but he bullied some immigration related concessions out of Mexico back in February in the first round of this stuff. You could plausibly call it a negotiation tactic. The latest is just pure madness any way you look at it.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  Also for many countries it can’t be remedied because the tariffs are based on trade imbalances (not reciprocal, that is a lie). What does the US make that Cambodia needs/wants? There’s no way for them to close the gap on trade other than to stop selling to the US.
- brookst 1y ago
  And yet even after stiffing the contractors, the casinos still went bankrupt. It’s a culture thing.
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  >Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far. Has it? To who? Canada hasn't, and won't, negotiate a single thing. We increased border patrols for a made up problem and thus far it has entirely served to catch guns and drugs and illegals coming from the United States. The United States has lost tens to hundreds of billions of sales to Canada. They are never, ever coming back. Trump sabotaged a critical trading relationship in a way that Americans just cannot comprehend, through his laughably stupid "bullying". Similarly, supposedly Vietnam has come "hat in hand". Vietnam has literally nothing to offer. It has negligible tariffs or blocks on US trade, it just happens to be a poor country. The bullying is utter stupidity. Mexico thus far has taken being pissed in the face because they're 100% of Trump's purported problem -- from drugs, to migrants to cartels to funnelling Chinese goods, and the likelihood is that Mexico ends up being the biggest beneficiary.
  - outer_web 1y ago
    I mean over the course of his career.
  - Whoppertime 1y ago
    Wasn't appointing a fentanyl czar and agreeing to spend more on border enforcement a form of concession? https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 This doesn't seem like Canada isn't negotiating a single thing. What am I not understanding here?
fracus 1y ago
Leopards eating a lot of American faces.
- steveBK123 1y ago
  But they were supposed to eat other people’s faces. You know THOSE people.
  - FiniteField 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - paxys 1y ago
    About a quarter of America (whose vote collectively counts for >50%) will happily suffer if it means that people they don't like suffer slightly more.
    - tstrimple 1y ago
      Reminds me of this: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying-whiteness/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying... > Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.” > At the most basic level, Trevor died of the toxic effects of liver damage caused by hepatitis C. Yet Trevor’s deteriorating condition resulted also from the toxic effects of dogma. Dogma that told him that governmental assistance in any form was evil and not to be trusted, even when the assistance came in the form of federal contracts with private health insurance or pharmaceutical companies, or from expanded communal safety nets. Dogma that, as he made abundantly clear, aligned with beliefs about a racial hierarchy that overtly and implicitly aimed to keep white Americans hovering above Mexicans, welfare queens, and nonwhite others. Dogma suggesting to Trevor that minority groups received lavish benefits from the state, even though he himself lived and died on a low-income budget with state assistance. Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities.
bdelmas 1y ago
I think that those in command are also waiting for the next President to undo all that but it is going to have a tremendous effect for a decade or more. Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through... Cutting off countries like Japan or Taiwan like that when we know their geopolitical situation with China and how critical their economy is to the US is quite crazy.
- OhioMan2943 1y ago
  On top of all of their other preexisting and pending crises..
- OJFord 1y ago
  > Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through... Err.. do tell about the UK's larger crisis than US'?
  - Gregaros 1y ago
    I’ve been seeing people call this GEXIT, or global exit.
    - OJFord 1y ago
      As a comparison to Brexit? At what point even momentarily was that in a worse situation, nevermind as an ongoing matter?
      - losvedir 1y ago
        Are you pretty young? The narrative when it was happening was pretty catastrophic. I remember reading about people not being able to get prescriptions, for example, because no one knew how imports worked. I don't know how things panned out, but the discussions in the early days around Brexit were absolutely on par or even worse than what we're seeing in these two days of discussions around tariffs.
colechristensen 1y ago
The "4D Chess" is that some powerful internal people doing a lot of manipulation want America to be an isolated very independent fascist state, and some powerful external people want to destabilize America and reduce its foreign influence. They're both making solid progress towards their goals. The majority of the American people who voted for the current regime are being taken advantage of but like many they'll progressively more and more identify with wanting whatever outcome "their" team achieves.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
antiquark 1y ago
This could lead to the largest "free trade zone" in the world... everyone but the USA.
monero-xmr 1y ago
[flagged]
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Are globalist multinational corporations the main ones that get hurt by tariffs?
  - monero-xmr 1y ago
    Yes, in the current American system!
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Do those giant corporations employ any Americans? Are they gonna struggle to feed their families?
      - monero-xmr 1y ago
        They do employ Americans! And now they will employ fewer Americans! This is bad!
    - californical 1y ago
      Very untrue. Major corporations can absorb the damage for a few months without raising their prices, since they have more inventory, bulk discounts, etc. Small companies are often running nearly paycheck-to-paycheck, which requires them to raise prices immediately, making them completely uncompetitive with the large corporations. The large corporations know this and are happy to keep their prices low and burn money until the small business competition dies, then they can raise their prices.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
  - Terr_ 1y ago
anon373839 1y ago
4D chess is an absurd notion when you consider the actors involved. Only malice and incompetence are credible theories.
- epgui 1y ago
  This is charitable.
- sethammons 1y ago
  When the markets are down, they are on sale for the rich. Eliminating competition via tariffs is good for those who want to compete where they couldn't before. They would let everything burn to further enrich themselves or push their ideology.
  - Whoppertime 1y ago
    Why are they only on sale for the rich? I thought everybody could buy it. When Wall Street Bets was buying GameStop was that an investment "for the rich"? And if not why can only rich people invest when markets are down, and only not rich people can invest in GameStop when they are being short squeezed?
- jredwards 1y ago
  I think the combination of malice and incompetence remains the most credible theory: Trump believes that the he/the US has the more powerful position in all of these relationships and wants to impose his will on the rest of the world and make them submit to his/US superiority. Which might actually work if he picked one target at a time. But you can't beat up the whole school at once. The fact that he can't do this to everyone at once, combined with his utter misunderstanding of what trade imbalance actually means, will lead to an outcome that is bad for everyone, but worse for the U.S. than most. There are two other theories that I think have some shred of credibility, and they're both worse: 1. Trump intends to use his apparent ability to unilaterally impose or negate these taxes at will on a granular level to force countries, companies, and individuals to come groveling to him for favors, allowing him to use the presidency to further enrich and entrench himself. 2. Trump is divesting of dependence on allies because he thinks they might soon be adversaries. That's the most harrowing potential interpretation, but it relies on the notion that he has any kind of foresight. This is really only credible if you genuinely believe that it's Putin pulling his strings. Which is a possibility that's hard to dismiss.
toddmorey 1y ago
Very well put. Alliances take years to build but can be broken in just days. I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back towards an interest in global stability, but I think anyone partnering with the US would do so VERY carefully and right now the entire world is plotting how to remove US dependencies.
- owebmaster 1y ago
  > I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back The pump'n'dump scheme against Ukraine will forever change how small countries see the US support for democracy, even if it changes back to the previous status-quo.
  - gonzo41 1y ago
    The US treatment of Ukraine is having a massive impact on how everyone thinks about security. All the US had to do was supply it's old weapons to Ukraine whilst replenishing it's stock (creating jobs in America) and things would have been fine. Now we're all in a world were Europeans are openly talking about developing nuclear weapons. Taiwan is totally on it's own, and Greenland is worried about being annexed. There's real trouble coming.
    - 8note 1y ago
      canada is also worried about being annexed, and that nato partners wont heed the call to article 5 against a US invasion and naval blockade
    - dboreham 1y ago
      Quick note that Europeans have had nuclear weapons since 1945.
      - ttyprintk 1y ago
        Europe is openly talking about its own cooperative nuclear umbrella. Trump is correct that he deserves 100% of credit/blame for that, taking the heat for Putin.
keyle 1y ago
It's not 4D chess. It's not even 1D chess. Sparking the local industries needs to happen with incentives, not a tsunami. You can't swap the supply chain to a local-first instantly. Many things aren't done locally. The factory buildings are gone. The labor isn't there or trained. The basic materials aren't local and need to be imported. The machines needed to produce the parts don't exist locally and need to be imported themselves; sending margins to unrealistic numbers and making it a non-starter environment. What it is, is another flip of the table, an upset, to cause chaos and feed a positive environment for more chaos, which only suits those who benefit from chaos.
- arwhatever 1y ago
  The episode of the Search Engine podcast “The puzzle of the all-American bbq scrubber” goes into detail on an example of this, is very interesting and makes the same points you’re making here.
popalchemist 1y ago
In the case of Trump, never attribute to ineptitude what can be explained by greed. He is tanking the US economy so he and his billionaire cohort can buy things (businesses, real estate, stocks, etc) at a low price. Thus amassing more control and capital. This is how the Russian oligarchy came into power.
- loudmax 1y ago
  Trump's businesses have repeatedly declared bankruptcy. Don't rule out ineptitude.
  - larrywright 1y ago
    He bankrupted a casino. I’m not sure how you even manage to do that.
    - heigh 1y ago
      He bankrupted casinos 6 times. Six. Managed to lose money on a money printing machine.
  - popalchemist 1y ago
    Yes, he is inept. But in this case, he is following a playbook that was deliberately written to achieve the ends that this series of actions is bringing about.
labster 1y ago
There’s still a way out, the US Congress could convene over the weekend and revoke the President’s ability to impose tariffs. Restore it to Congress as stated in the constitution. Of course they won’t do that. Sic transit gloria mundi.
- tayo42 1y ago
  I started wondering if there's a way for citizens to push the issue that these tarrifs are unconstitutional. Like a lawsuit that got escalated to the Supreme Court or some thing if congress isn't going to. Some of the senators are breaking away though. If the country survives this though the next thing through executive order could be just as bad or worse. There doesn't seem to be any realistic way out of this insanity.
  - throwawaymaths 1y ago
    are they unconstitutional? i imagine, like many things, congress has constitutionally saw fit to cede its authority to the executive many many moons ago
    - Jtsummers 1y ago
      They could be unconstitutional. The ability of Congress to delegate its authority to the President does have limits. If companies (the ones in a financial position to do this) sued, they'd have standing and could make their case. Whether it's successful or not would take a while to find out, and this is an instance where judges would likely leave the tariffs in place until the suit was settled in a court (before appeals) if the plaintiffs won.
      - 8note 1y ago
        they could be unconstitutional, but does that matter? the executive gets to enforce whatever it wants however it wants. nobody has to listen to congress or the courts when the executive is all aligned on what theyre gonna do
itake 1y ago
China is isolationist and they seem to be growing. The problem is the USA is a consumer economy which isn’t sustainable. We could get away with it as a tech leader, but with China stepping ahead (Deepseek) china will be a tech leader and manufacturing leader. What will the USA have?
- lunarboy 1y ago
  In what plane of reality is China isolationist
  - itake 1y ago
    China doesn't allow other tech companies to compete (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) .
  - donnachangstein 1y ago
    Do you think walling their population off from the Internet doesn't qualify?
    - drowsspa 1y ago
      Economically and diplomatically? No, it doesn't.
      - itake 1y ago
        Is any foreign Google or Facebook or any social media website allowed to operate in China?
  - gscott 1y ago
    They are the least isolationist they have to sell their goods, often by building the roads that carry them.
    - GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago
      I think term is protectionist? Not an economist.
gerdesj 1y ago
Sometimes your best mates go a bit mad. Cut them some slack. They will need a shoulder to cry on when they re-discover how well a trade war works out. The last ones seem to have happened at roughly 50 year intervals. The US seems to be incapable of learning from the past. The worrying thing is that Mr Trump is old enough to remember directly or what his parents told him about the last fucked up trade shit storm or trade war. You do not get to dictate how the world as a whole works ... ever. It has its own ideas about that. Even Britain at its most imperious could not do that and the US can't even stop itself from trying to impose tariffs on its own air base in .io! The best we can do from outside is to hope that the US does not collapse completely and that the downward trend stops at some point. If, somehow this all pans out that we will all benefit or even that just the US benefits then fine. Let's pick up the pieces and crack on. I do not hate Americans nor their rather odd President. We are seeing change happening. It might be for the good eventually but I doubt it but I'm not an expert. In the meantime I suggest we continue to act as friends towards an old friend. When you go barking mad, you might need your mates to stand beside you whilst you dribble and widdle.
deleted 1y ago
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trhway 1y ago
>Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not but.. sometimes the person doing something crazy is just crazy at the end of the day. It is crazy and it does have some crazy logic. The US trade deficit is well pronounced only on material goods. If you add services, the deficit is much less, if any. The services are produced by the people and states mostly voting Democratic. So, Trump with his tariffs may succeed in causing the EU and others to retaliate against US services, thus damaging blue states and helping (well in his mind) the red states. Trump already did similar hit against blue states with SALT deduction for example, yet it was just a small preview.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess There is some regular 2D chess going on here, but it's not being played by anyone in the US admin. Putin wants to weaken NATO so he can continue expanding. America is a linchpin holding together much of the European alliances and not coincidentally the candidate he helped get elected twice is destroying the US's global standing and weakening the US dollar. The rebuilding going on in Europe, the increase in European military spending, and the talk about nuclear weapons in Europe is a direct consequence. I don't know if Putin just expected Europe to run around incompetently like the Keystone Cops, but it kind of feels like they're acting quickly and competently without the US. At any rate, all of this is bringing us much closer to a WWI or WWII style global military conflict.
- Paradigma11 1y ago
  If that really was Putins intention and doing he makes Trump look like a stable genius. Crude is already down to 62USD/barrel. If this goes on for any amount of time Russia is dead.
deleted 1y ago
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lucasyvas 1y ago
> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess You mean idiots of course.
kentbrew 1y ago
"Mama always said ... stupid is as stupid does"
lunarlull 1y ago
> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not No one worth listening to.
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
budududuroiu 1y ago
Trump is the actual anti-imperialist, and as he said, unifier. He’s so selfless that he’s putting the US on the line to ensure world peace and unity /s
refurb 1y ago
The US represents a huge proportion of global demand. These countries can establish as many new trade agreements as they want, but they aren’t going to replace the US market. And to claim that the US has lost allies is ridiculous. Countries have done far worse and remained allies. Let’s not overplay the impact here. Free trade is a relatively new thing. We’re just going back to the world the way it was a few decades ago.
mcv 1y ago
There is most likely a deeper plan behind it. It's not 4D chess, or if it is, it's played by people who don't really understand it themselves, but there is a goal behind it: ending Reagan's neoliberal economic world order. That in itself is not a bad goal, and it's one I agree with; neoliberalism has increased inequality, put excessive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, and looted nations of their infrastructure and social structures. Neoliberalism should die. The problem is that Trump's economic advisors seem to want a new world order where the rest of the world is even more subservient to the US, and they think they can enforce that by cutting everybody off from the US economy, and they'll only be let back if they accept America's new terms. The problem is of course that the US actually cut itself off from the rest of the world, and as big and powerful as the US is, it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together. It's not the rest of the world that will come crawling back; it's the US. After having squandered its 80 year dominant position in the global economy.

outer_web 1y ago

I think less 4d chess and more Erlich Bachman school of negotiation. Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far.

bdelmas 1y ago
Totally agreed! But bulling 95% of the class room... That doesn't work. New alliances would emerge, like Canada and the EU. No more new pipelines for the US but more upgrades to Canadian ports to ship oil to the EU. New economic routes will be created, new partner deals, etc... Without the US. Trump just locked the US, kinda did the finger to the earth, and hopes people will come begging for trade.
nwatson 1y ago
When the bully gets too ambitious the large number of bullied gang together for revenge, or at least effective countermeasures. The world will route around USA, find they can manage ok without it. The USA will be iced out, lose its reserve currency status, nobody will buy its military technology, making the USA unable to recoup large outlays for ambitious military projects, and the USA will lose its military dominance. Also, the future of warfare and terrorism is autonomous networks of drones. Mexico and Canada won't be disposed to care what passes through their borders with the USA, and like Zelensky said ... we had the oceans and friendly neighbors, but that won't help us anymore. EDIT: minor corrections
- bediger4000 1y ago
  The USA may get the metric system out of this. The only reason the USA can hang on to its ridiculous "imperial" units has been its economically dominant position.
  - WrongAssumption 1y ago
    Imperial units are British, and the United States doesn’t use the imperial system.
yojo 1y ago
When he started with a limited set of tariffs on Canada/Mexico/China it sort of made sense as a bullying move. The administration at least had the bandwidth to conduct three sets of negotiations. But it’s essentially impossible to negotiate 180 deals simultaneously. No way does Tunisia get even five minutes to pitch a deal - the simultaneous imposition of tariffs effectively DDOS’d the negotiation team.
- peteforde 1y ago
  I'd love to hear more about what sort of sense these tariffs made at any stage since they were announced.
  - vkou 1y ago
    The sense is that it's just another day in the life of a cult of action for action's sake.
  - yojo 1y ago
    I’m not advocating for or defending them, but he bullied some immigration related concessions out of Mexico back in February in the first round of this stuff. You could plausibly call it a negotiation tactic. The latest is just pure madness any way you look at it.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Also for many countries it can’t be remedied because the tariffs are based on trade imbalances (not reciprocal, that is a lie). What does the US make that Cambodia needs/wants? There’s no way for them to close the gap on trade other than to stop selling to the US.
brookst 1y ago
And yet even after stiffing the contractors, the casinos still went bankrupt. It’s a culture thing.
llm_nerd 1y ago
>Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far. Has it? To who? Canada hasn't, and won't, negotiate a single thing. We increased border patrols for a made up problem and thus far it has entirely served to catch guns and drugs and illegals coming from the United States. The United States has lost tens to hundreds of billions of sales to Canada. They are never, ever coming back. Trump sabotaged a critical trading relationship in a way that Americans just cannot comprehend, through his laughably stupid "bullying". Similarly, supposedly Vietnam has come "hat in hand". Vietnam has literally nothing to offer. It has negligible tariffs or blocks on US trade, it just happens to be a poor country. The bullying is utter stupidity. Mexico thus far has taken being pissed in the face because they're 100% of Trump's purported problem -- from drugs, to migrants to cartels to funnelling Chinese goods, and the likelihood is that Mexico ends up being the biggest beneficiary.
- outer_web 1y ago
  I mean over the course of his career.
- Whoppertime 1y ago
  Wasn't appointing a fentanyl czar and agreeing to spend more on border enforcement a form of concession? https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 This doesn't seem like Canada isn't negotiating a single thing. What am I not understanding here?

fracus 1y ago

Leopards eating a lot of American faces.

steveBK123 1y ago
But they were supposed to eat other people’s faces. You know THOSE people.
- FiniteField 1y ago
  [flagged]
- paxys 1y ago
  About a quarter of America (whose vote collectively counts for >50%) will happily suffer if it means that people they don't like suffer slightly more.
  - tstrimple 1y ago
    Reminds me of this: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying-whiteness/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying... > Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.” > At the most basic level, Trevor died of the toxic effects of liver damage caused by hepatitis C. Yet Trevor’s deteriorating condition resulted also from the toxic effects of dogma. Dogma that told him that governmental assistance in any form was evil and not to be trusted, even when the assistance came in the form of federal contracts with private health insurance or pharmaceutical companies, or from expanded communal safety nets. Dogma that, as he made abundantly clear, aligned with beliefs about a racial hierarchy that overtly and implicitly aimed to keep white Americans hovering above Mexicans, welfare queens, and nonwhite others. Dogma suggesting to Trevor that minority groups received lavish benefits from the state, even though he himself lived and died on a low-income budget with state assistance. Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities.

bdelmas 1y ago

I think that those in command are also waiting for the next President to undo all that but it is going to have a tremendous effect for a decade or more. Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through... Cutting off countries like Japan or Taiwan like that when we know their geopolitical situation with China and how critical their economy is to the US is quite crazy.

OhioMan2943 1y ago
On top of all of their other preexisting and pending crises..
OJFord 1y ago
> Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through... Err.. do tell about the UK's larger crisis than US'?
- Gregaros 1y ago
  I’ve been seeing people call this GEXIT, or global exit.
  - OJFord 1y ago
    As a comparison to Brexit? At what point even momentarily was that in a worse situation, nevermind as an ongoing matter?
    - losvedir 1y ago
      Are you pretty young? The narrative when it was happening was pretty catastrophic. I remember reading about people not being able to get prescriptions, for example, because no one knew how imports worked. I don't know how things panned out, but the discussions in the early days around Brexit were absolutely on par or even worse than what we're seeing in these two days of discussions around tariffs.

colechristensen 1y ago

The "4D Chess" is that some powerful internal people doing a lot of manipulation want America to be an isolated very independent fascist state, and some powerful external people want to destabilize America and reduce its foreign influence. They're both making solid progress towards their goals. The majority of the American people who voted for the current regime are being taken advantage of but like many they'll progressively more and more identify with wanting whatever outcome "their" team achieves.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

antiquark 1y ago

This could lead to the largest "free trade zone" in the world... everyone but the USA.

monero-xmr 1y ago

[flagged]

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Are globalist multinational corporations the main ones that get hurt by tariffs?
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  Yes, in the current American system!
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Do those giant corporations employ any Americans? Are they gonna struggle to feed their families?
    - monero-xmr 1y ago
      They do employ Americans! And now they will employ fewer Americans! This is bad!
  - californical 1y ago
    Very untrue. Major corporations can absorb the damage for a few months without raising their prices, since they have more inventory, bulk discounts, etc. Small companies are often running nearly paycheck-to-paycheck, which requires them to raise prices immediately, making them completely uncompetitive with the large corporations. The large corporations know this and are happy to keep their prices low and burn money until the small business competition dies, then they can raise their prices.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
- Terr_ 1y ago

anon373839 1y ago

4D chess is an absurd notion when you consider the actors involved. Only malice and incompetence are credible theories.

epgui 1y ago
This is charitable.
sethammons 1y ago
When the markets are down, they are on sale for the rich. Eliminating competition via tariffs is good for those who want to compete where they couldn't before. They would let everything burn to further enrich themselves or push their ideology.
- Whoppertime 1y ago
  Why are they only on sale for the rich? I thought everybody could buy it. When Wall Street Bets was buying GameStop was that an investment "for the rich"? And if not why can only rich people invest when markets are down, and only not rich people can invest in GameStop when they are being short squeezed?
jredwards 1y ago
I think the combination of malice and incompetence remains the most credible theory: Trump believes that the he/the US has the more powerful position in all of these relationships and wants to impose his will on the rest of the world and make them submit to his/US superiority. Which might actually work if he picked one target at a time. But you can't beat up the whole school at once. The fact that he can't do this to everyone at once, combined with his utter misunderstanding of what trade imbalance actually means, will lead to an outcome that is bad for everyone, but worse for the U.S. than most. There are two other theories that I think have some shred of credibility, and they're both worse: 1. Trump intends to use his apparent ability to unilaterally impose or negate these taxes at will on a granular level to force countries, companies, and individuals to come groveling to him for favors, allowing him to use the presidency to further enrich and entrench himself. 2. Trump is divesting of dependence on allies because he thinks they might soon be adversaries. That's the most harrowing potential interpretation, but it relies on the notion that he has any kind of foresight. This is really only credible if you genuinely believe that it's Putin pulling his strings. Which is a possibility that's hard to dismiss.

toddmorey 1y ago

Very well put. Alliances take years to build but can be broken in just days. I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back towards an interest in global stability, but I think anyone partnering with the US would do so VERY carefully and right now the entire world is plotting how to remove US dependencies.

owebmaster 1y ago
> I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back The pump'n'dump scheme against Ukraine will forever change how small countries see the US support for democracy, even if it changes back to the previous status-quo.
- gonzo41 1y ago
  The US treatment of Ukraine is having a massive impact on how everyone thinks about security. All the US had to do was supply it's old weapons to Ukraine whilst replenishing it's stock (creating jobs in America) and things would have been fine. Now we're all in a world were Europeans are openly talking about developing nuclear weapons. Taiwan is totally on it's own, and Greenland is worried about being annexed. There's real trouble coming.
  - 8note 1y ago
    canada is also worried about being annexed, and that nato partners wont heed the call to article 5 against a US invasion and naval blockade
  - dboreham 1y ago
    Quick note that Europeans have had nuclear weapons since 1945.
    - ttyprintk 1y ago
      Europe is openly talking about its own cooperative nuclear umbrella. Trump is correct that he deserves 100% of credit/blame for that, taking the heat for Putin.

keyle 1y ago

It's not 4D chess. It's not even 1D chess. Sparking the local industries needs to happen with incentives, not a tsunami. You can't swap the supply chain to a local-first instantly. Many things aren't done locally. The factory buildings are gone. The labor isn't there or trained. The basic materials aren't local and need to be imported. The machines needed to produce the parts don't exist locally and need to be imported themselves; sending margins to unrealistic numbers and making it a non-starter environment. What it is, is another flip of the table, an upset, to cause chaos and feed a positive environment for more chaos, which only suits those who benefit from chaos.

arwhatever 1y ago
The episode of the Search Engine podcast “The puzzle of the all-American bbq scrubber” goes into detail on an example of this, is very interesting and makes the same points you’re making here.

popalchemist 1y ago

In the case of Trump, never attribute to ineptitude what can be explained by greed. He is tanking the US economy so he and his billionaire cohort can buy things (businesses, real estate, stocks, etc) at a low price. Thus amassing more control and capital. This is how the Russian oligarchy came into power.

loudmax 1y ago
Trump's businesses have repeatedly declared bankruptcy. Don't rule out ineptitude.
- larrywright 1y ago
  He bankrupted a casino. I’m not sure how you even manage to do that.
  - heigh 1y ago
    He bankrupted casinos 6 times. Six. Managed to lose money on a money printing machine.
- popalchemist 1y ago
  Yes, he is inept. But in this case, he is following a playbook that was deliberately written to achieve the ends that this series of actions is bringing about.

labster 1y ago

There’s still a way out, the US Congress could convene over the weekend and revoke the President’s ability to impose tariffs. Restore it to Congress as stated in the constitution. Of course they won’t do that. Sic transit gloria mundi.

tayo42 1y ago
I started wondering if there's a way for citizens to push the issue that these tarrifs are unconstitutional. Like a lawsuit that got escalated to the Supreme Court or some thing if congress isn't going to. Some of the senators are breaking away though. If the country survives this though the next thing through executive order could be just as bad or worse. There doesn't seem to be any realistic way out of this insanity.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  are they unconstitutional? i imagine, like many things, congress has constitutionally saw fit to cede its authority to the executive many many moons ago
  - Jtsummers 1y ago
    They could be unconstitutional. The ability of Congress to delegate its authority to the President does have limits. If companies (the ones in a financial position to do this) sued, they'd have standing and could make their case. Whether it's successful or not would take a while to find out, and this is an instance where judges would likely leave the tariffs in place until the suit was settled in a court (before appeals) if the plaintiffs won.
    - 8note 1y ago
      they could be unconstitutional, but does that matter? the executive gets to enforce whatever it wants however it wants. nobody has to listen to congress or the courts when the executive is all aligned on what theyre gonna do

itake 1y ago

China is isolationist and they seem to be growing. The problem is the USA is a consumer economy which isn’t sustainable. We could get away with it as a tech leader, but with China stepping ahead (Deepseek) china will be a tech leader and manufacturing leader. What will the USA have?

lunarboy 1y ago
In what plane of reality is China isolationist
- itake 1y ago
  China doesn't allow other tech companies to compete (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) .
- donnachangstein 1y ago
  Do you think walling their population off from the Internet doesn't qualify?
  - drowsspa 1y ago
    Economically and diplomatically? No, it doesn't.
    - itake 1y ago
      Is any foreign Google or Facebook or any social media website allowed to operate in China?
- gscott 1y ago
  They are the least isolationist they have to sell their goods, often by building the roads that carry them.
  - GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago
    I think term is protectionist? Not an economist.

gerdesj 1y ago

Sometimes your best mates go a bit mad. Cut them some slack. They will need a shoulder to cry on when they re-discover how well a trade war works out. The last ones seem to have happened at roughly 50 year intervals. The US seems to be incapable of learning from the past. The worrying thing is that Mr Trump is old enough to remember directly or what his parents told him about the last fucked up trade shit storm or trade war. You do not get to dictate how the world as a whole works ... ever. It has its own ideas about that. Even Britain at its most imperious could not do that and the US can't even stop itself from trying to impose tariffs on its own air base in .io! The best we can do from outside is to hope that the US does not collapse completely and that the downward trend stops at some point. If, somehow this all pans out that we will all benefit or even that just the US benefits then fine. Let's pick up the pieces and crack on. I do not hate Americans nor their rather odd President. We are seeing change happening. It might be for the good eventually but I doubt it but I'm not an expert. In the meantime I suggest we continue to act as friends towards an old friend. When you go barking mad, you might need your mates to stand beside you whilst you dribble and widdle.

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trhway 1y ago

>Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not but.. sometimes the person doing something crazy is just crazy at the end of the day. It is crazy and it does have some crazy logic. The US trade deficit is well pronounced only on material goods. If you add services, the deficit is much less, if any. The services are produced by the people and states mostly voting Democratic. So, Trump with his tariffs may succeed in causing the EU and others to retaliate against US services, thus damaging blue states and helping (well in his mind) the red states. Trump already did similar hit against blue states with SALT deduction for example, yet it was just a small preview.

ants_everywhere 1y ago

> I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess There is some regular 2D chess going on here, but it's not being played by anyone in the US admin. Putin wants to weaken NATO so he can continue expanding. America is a linchpin holding together much of the European alliances and not coincidentally the candidate he helped get elected twice is destroying the US's global standing and weakening the US dollar. The rebuilding going on in Europe, the increase in European military spending, and the talk about nuclear weapons in Europe is a direct consequence. I don't know if Putin just expected Europe to run around incompetently like the Keystone Cops, but it kind of feels like they're acting quickly and competently without the US. At any rate, all of this is bringing us much closer to a WWI or WWII style global military conflict.

Paradigma11 1y ago
If that really was Putins intention and doing he makes Trump look like a stable genius. Crude is already down to 62USD/barrel. If this goes on for any amount of time Russia is dead.

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lucasyvas 1y ago

> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess You mean idiots of course.

kentbrew 1y ago

"Mama always said ... stupid is as stupid does"

lunarlull 1y ago

> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not No one worth listening to.

rayiner 1y ago

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budududuroiu 1y ago

Trump is the actual anti-imperialist, and as he said, unifier. He’s so selfless that he’s putting the US on the line to ensure world peace and unity /s

refurb 1y ago

The US represents a huge proportion of global demand. These countries can establish as many new trade agreements as they want, but they aren’t going to replace the US market. And to claim that the US has lost allies is ridiculous. Countries have done far worse and remained allies. Let’s not overplay the impact here. Free trade is a relatively new thing. We’re just going back to the world the way it was a few decades ago.

mcv 1y ago

There is most likely a deeper plan behind it. It's not 4D chess, or if it is, it's played by people who don't really understand it themselves, but there is a goal behind it: ending Reagan's neoliberal economic world order. That in itself is not a bad goal, and it's one I agree with; neoliberalism has increased inequality, put excessive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, and looted nations of their infrastructure and social structures. Neoliberalism should die. The problem is that Trump's economic advisors seem to want a new world order where the rest of the world is even more subservient to the US, and they think they can enforce that by cutting everybody off from the US economy, and they'll only be let back if they accept America's new terms. The problem is of course that the US actually cut itself off from the rest of the world, and as big and powerful as the US is, it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together. It's not the rest of the world that will come crawling back; it's the US. After having squandered its 80 year dominant position in the global economy.