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From an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists. One day it’s a 145% tariff on China. The next, it
by cinbun8 1y ago
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists. One day it’s a 145% tariff on China. The next, it’s “Well, it’s still 145%, but Apple and Nvidia are exempted because their stock prices might take a hit.” Then comes a 90-day pause, adding to the confusion.
It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thought through.
- whalesalad 1y agochaos is the strategy
- Henchman21 1y agoDestruction is the goal.
- csomar 1y agoChaos is a strategy but in this case it's just chaos.
- goatlover 1y agoNo, other autocrats have instituted chaos to grab power before. Too many people underestimate Trump and his allies. They are going to grab as much power as they can for as long as they can.
- ArinaS 1y ago> "assuming one even exists" I actually doubt it does. Everyting is just too chaotic to be a strategy.
- FabHK 1y agoAgreed. I think at this point we can discard the assumption of 4D chess. (This is not to say that there aren't some Project 2025 plans in the background that parts of the administration are aiming to push through.)
- _Algernon_ 1y agoIf there is a strategy it is probably dominating the news cycle with this chaotic bullshit, while they navigate towards the real goal in the shadows.
- alabastervlog 1y agoIt's not in the shadows, they're breaking everything that can oppose them to try to make the US an autocracy. It's right out in the open.
- dkrich 1y agoThere is no plan. Talk tough, reverse under pressure, rinse repeat. Anyone surprised must not have watched season one which aired in 2019.
- BeFlatXIII 1y agoIf Trump is America's Napoleon III, who is the world's modern Otto von Bismark?
- yareally 1y agoProbably Putin.
- vdupras 1y agoI'm curious as to why you chose Napoleon III. The context under which he rose to power seem quite different from Trump's. America isn't in the middle of a 60-years long revolution/counter-revolution cycle. What are the similarities?
- Spooky23 1y agoConservatives think so.
- BeFlatXIII 1y agoThin-skinned, seeks popular acclaim as a substitute for respect from the old money he despises, erratic and contradictory policy strategies.
- crq-yml 1y agoI'd nominate Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. As authoritarian "president for life" since 1986, he's demonstrated some savvy statecrafting amid Africa's resource wars and ethnic violence, making the country a point of stability and economic growth on the continent. (Of course, he's got plenty of negatives on the record too. But I think in the game of "Great Man History", he's already left a big legacy.)
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- jmull 1y ago> assuming one even exists Why would you assume that? I don't know why people keep expecting Trump to be different than what he has consistently shown us for all these years. There's no subtle plan. There's no long-term plan. He's cranking the levers immediately available to him for the drama, as he has always done. People around him may have ideas and plans. They can sometimes get him to agree to one of these, but it never lasts long.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoI mean, his rich friends made 340 billion in the stock market chaos. So I suspect there is at least a vague plan, but it has nothing to do with anyone but himself and those who support him getting richer. But that's the only plan I think Trump has ever had in his entire life, or will ever have. Like he's just not that deep. He's an incredibly shallow, inexperienced, dim, incurious old man who has never worked a job in his life, never built anything, never did anything. He arrived on top and his greatest achievement in life was managing to not lose it, in a country where it is specifically very hard to do that. And hearing his supporters talk about how strong he is is just objectively hilarious. Man looks like 4 steepish flights of stairs would kill him stone dead.
- badc0ffee 1y agoI don't like him either, but it's not like accomplished nothing: https://www.cnbc.com/2010/11/09/Donald-Trumps-Best-and-Worst-Gambles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2010/11/09/Donald-Trumps-Best-and-Worst... There are some failures in there but also some wins, like buying air rights for. Heap and making effective use of them.
- jmull 1y agoYou found a puff piece from 2010 to extoll Trump? (It appears to be a promotional piece for a "CNBC Titans" episode featuring Trump.) I try to assume good intent, which includes not writing off the odd things people post as bot-generated, but in this case, attributing this to a bot is quite a positive spin.
- backWurdz 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andreygrehov 1y agoWhen it comes to global impact, can you even confidently say you're being strategic? It almost feels like staying tactical is the only viable strategy - there are simply too many variables. The chances are high that any strategy you come up with is doomed to fail.
- jonplackett 1y agoThis is the only explanation that has made sense to me so far. And it makes even more sense based on these exemptions. https://www.instagram.com/share/_jW_V1hwM https://www.instagram.com/share/_jW_V1hwM This is Senator Chris Murphy explaining it’s not economic policy, it’s an attempt to blackmail corporations into submission by making a deal with him in return for sanctions relief. Keep an eye out for what Apple and nvidia might have agreed to give.
- zzzeek 1y agoco-sign, it's the King's Tax (as Murphy had explained in a different video I watched of his). it's that simple. also it was a giant elephant to make everyone forget that they just exposed an entire military action over Signal in a completely illegal and extremely incompetent way.
- jonplackett 1y agoI’m British so not that knowledgeable about us politics beyond the big players. How well known is Murphy? I’d never heard of him until I saw this video but he seems very impressive and much more electable than Biden or harris.
- zzzeek 1y agohe's a US Senator. Senators are very important here
- jonplackett 1y agoYeah I get that he’s a senator! I mean how much in the public eye is he. Would a random person know who he is? We have hundreds of Members of Parliament here in the UK, but probably only 10 that most people could name. I wondered how big his public profile is.
- jraines 1y ago
- pkulak 1y agoThe plan is to make every country and CEO grovel at the feet of the boss to be exempted from the tariffs. I’d say it’s corruption, but it’s more like a protection racket. I wonder what these companies had to offer?
- TheSwordsman 1y agoAs an American, I regret to inform you that you're trying to use logic to understand a situation where it seems like logic wasn't used (in terms of the economic impact). These are the same fuckwits that tried to claim a trade deficit is the same as a tariff.
- throwaway48476 1y ago[flagged]
- galleywest200 1y agoI am unsure why anyone would want to change the trade imbalance when you are arguably the richest country on earth. You have a trade imbalance because you are rich and can buy everything you want. Nobody in onshoring manufacturing with this level of instability in the finances of this country at this time. Trump changes his mind too often to build billions of dollars worth of factories.
- throwaway48476 1y agoThe US was rich before there was a trade imbalance and remains rich in spite of it, not because of it.
- vbezhenar 1y agoTrade imbalance causes debt. Debt causes payments. As debt grows, payment grow. Eventually it causes default. It's OK to have trade imbalance for some time. It can't last forever.
- coliveira 1y agoThat's how corruption works in a banana republic. Good things for my friends, hell for everyone else. It is the furthest you can be from free trading capitalism that the US was preaching while it was good for them.
- vFunct 1y agoThere is no planned strategy. Planning requires learning about entire systems, and Trump isn't smart enough to do that. He can only act on things placed before him. If he sees foreigners making money by selling into the US, he has to raise tariffs on it. There is no second order, third order, or any deeper level of understanding of what's going on. It's purely superficial action, on things Trumps eyes sees, not what his brain sees. There is no brain in there that can predict what would happen if tariffs were raised. He can only raise tariffs. To be smart is to have systemic understanding, and Trump & the Republicans are incapable of that. It's exactly what happened in his first term, when he got rid of the nation's pandemic preparedness because why would anyone ever need that, right?
- throwaway48476 1y agoEvery company that wants an exemption has to pay. It's a personal tax system.
- reaperducer 1y agoit’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists The strategy is to keep everyone unsure what might come next. It's like in boxing. When you hit your opponent and leave them confused and uncertain what you might do next, you use that to your advantage and keep on hitting. It's how you "win." As if there are any winners here.
- Flip-per 1y agoHe isn't really hitting an opponent though, he is mainly hitting the U.S.
- grey-area 1y agoThe US is what needs beaten into submission so he can rule over the ruins.
- rchaud 1y agoIf Trump has learned anything, it is that the US is a lot easier to bully than others. He is convicted of a felony, he talks down to his own voters, abandons his biggest promises (repealing ACA and building a wall) and they still let him lead the country!
- Qwertious 1y ago>The strategy is to keep everyone unsure what might come next. If the goal is to encourage investment into US manufacturing, then that's the exact opposite to the strategy he needs - investment requires stability and confidence that the N-year investment will eventually pay off. Nobody will invest due to tariffs if the tariffs might disappear tomorrow.
- ranger207 1y agoIt's vibe governing, just like any other populist government
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- stefan_ 1y agoImport Chinese battery: 145% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff Truly this will bring back American manufacturing!
- tobias3 1y agoThe factories will be disassembling the laptops, taking out the batteries. Then the empty laptops will be sent back to China. That will increase exports to China as well.
- Spooky23 1y agoThat's another patronage angle. When the feds buy Lenovo laptops, they have to comply with TAA. So they ship the laptops to Texas, "materially transform" them, package and ship to the customer. You can be sure some crony owns the company that screws the display and puts stickers on the laptop with minimum wage workers.
- voisin 1y agoThe strategy is to sow fear and uncertainty to drive capital from stocks to government bonds and drive down the bond yield. Bessant is pretty clear about this. Once they get the bond yields down and refinance a lot of the short term debt into longer term debt they free up operating budget. Combine with Elon’s DOGE cutting costs and Lutnick raising some capital from tariffs, and it is a pretty good strategy. I don’t agree with Trump’s policies generally nor am I American, but this is a good short term strategy.
- alabastervlog 1y agoIt's not a good short term strategy at all. If that's really the goal, their left and right hands need to have a chat because one of them's going to make the deficit way worse, so if the other's goal is to "free up operating budget" by reducing debt service they really ought to get on the same page, because anything "freed up" is going to be eaten by the other bullshit they're doing. Besides, this is a wildly expensive way to go about it. The harm to receipts from the economic uncertainty will blow a hole in the federal budget and leave states reeling (to say nothing of the "other hand" making cuts at the IRS, which will also be a net cost)
- deng 1y ago> I don’t agree with Trump’s policies generally nor am I American, but this is a good short term strategy. This strategy has failed spectacularly, as bond yields are still up and treasuries are sold like crazy. US treasuries are no longer seen as safe havens. People rather invest in gold or treasuries from other countries which are not led by a corrupt government. Buying US treasuries is now seen as "lending Trump money", and since Trump runs the US economy exactly like he ran his companies, where IIRC he defaulted on debt at least six times, US treasuries are now a rather risky investment.
- ojbyrne 1y agoGreat strategy, except its not working. Bond yields are up (probably because foreigners and foreign countries are selling US bonds). DOGE cost cuts are insignificant. Raising capital from tariffs doesn't seem to be working because they're really taxes, and Americans don't like taxes.
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- foogazi 1y ago> but Apple and Nvidia are exempted because their stock prices might take a hit They already took a hit - which they monetized by both ways
- codedokode 1y agoCan we use Occam's Razor and assume that nobody knows what would be the optimal tariff rates and if you don't have a reliable mathematical model the only choice you are left with is experimentation and A/B tests.
- Glyptodon 1y agoI'd say it's clear that none of it was thoroughly thought through at the least.
- theropost 1y agoMillion dollar "dinners' seem to help. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/trump-reportedly-suspends-nvidia-h20-export-ban-plan-after-usd1-million-dinner-with-jensen-huang https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
- jayd16 1y agoI think its crystal clear there is no actual plan.
- rchaud 1y agoMuch like Russia's overnight transition to a market economy in 1991, which opened the door to oligarch pillaging of national resources, 2 successive economic crises and a bond default, and 2 brutal wars in Chechnya. Something tells me Trump's top economic advisers aren't based in the US, just as Yeltsin's strings weren't being pulled from Moscow.
- jayd16 1y agoMany people in trump's circle might have one or more plans but that is not the same thing as trump having or there being "a plan."
- ineedaj0b 1y agohttps://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
- riffraff 1y agoDid you link this implying "this is the plan?" Cause this talks of a gradual implementation of tariff to avoid scaring the markets, which is as far from what happened as it's possible.
- TZubiri 1y ago“Well, it’s still 145%, but Apple and Nvidia are exempted because their stock prices might take a hit.” That's a massive misread. You are confusing the direction of influence between secondary public stock markets and federal executive orders. The tariffs are supposed to strengthen self sufficiency, and discourage imports of stuff the US can do on their own. Chip manufacturing, (which by the way is often only the manufacturing and not the design or IP of the chips), is an exception for whatever reason, may be labour costs, but it may also be that chips are a mineral heavy and diverse product, so it's one of the few products where autarky isn't feasible or very rewarding. And there would be situations without exemptions where the US may have been incentivized to import the raw materials and rebuild megachip factories, of which there are only like a dozen in the world, creating a huge output inefficiency due to political reasons on two fronts. Exceptions are reasonable.
- insaneirish 1y ago> Exceptions are reasonable. If there were an actual strategy, exceptions would have been clear from the start.
- rpgbr 1y agoThe plan: What if we ran the richest, more powerful country on history as if it were a giant meme stock geared to benefit those in charge?
- joe_the_user 1y agoTo understand this, I think you have to neither overestimate or underestimate Trump and Musk. Both Trump and Musk seem be to essentially ideologues, visionary tough-talkers, who have actually succeed (or appeared to succeed) to various endeavors through having underling who work to shape their bluffs into coherent plans. This works well for various as long as the delicate balance of competent handlers and loud-mouthed visionaries is maintained. The problem is the process of Trump winning, losing and then winning again all him to craft an organization and legal framework to put forth he vision uncorrected, unbalanced and lacking all guardrails. And that's where we are.
- csomar 1y agoIt makes sense if you understand how Trump became president. He'll test something (through a tweet) to his audience and then amplify or kill it based on the response. It worked great with 50% of the US population or so; it doesn't seem to be working at all with the Chinese political elite.
- rchaud 1y agoThings like threatening Canada and Greenland's sovereignty, unilaterally tanking stock markets and levying huge tariffs on western trading partners are not popular with his voters. What they want doesn't matter anymore, these moves are about splitting the western economic and military alliances, a goal Russia has had since the 1960s.
- rchaud 1y agoIt's far from the only place the policy is incoherent. They fired the top ranking officer at the US base in Greenland for having the temerity to tell their host nation "I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US administration discussed by Vice-President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/creq99l218do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/creq99l218do
- Terr_ 1y ago> the policy The evidence is "incoherent" because the hypothesis is wrong. A policy for America isn't there. In contrast, everything becomes exceptionally coherent if you instead ask what the policy is for Trump's personal goals: punishing disagreement, amassing wealth, rewarding apparatchiks, and always being in a room full of flattery.
- ineedaj0b 1y agothey thought it up and published a report back on it in nov 2024. here's the plan, you can use it to advise your investments: https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese... the media is garbage and they can't cover anything well enough to inform. but i bet clicks are up!
- tdb7893 1y agoSo firstly if this is the theoretical underpinning the White House should be messaging that instead of what they've been saying. Also I've read that report before (this and some other reports have been referenced in media I have listened to) and I wouldn't say they are following it closely, if this was their plan it's already gone well off the rails laid out here. Edit: to be more specific it literally talks about the potential pitfalls of unilateral tariffs, suggests imposing them over time, etc. There's a lot of stuff in there the US did so but also a lot that they did not follow (and also there's just stuff that is outside the scope of this fairly short document). I think part of the reason the tariffs caught people so flat footed is even well informed people assumed this would be how they were implemented and got the rug pulled out from under them on "Liberation Day"
- davesque 1y agoAs a thoughtful person, you've got to learn to curb your instinct to make sense out of things like this. It's a waste of calories.
- jppope 1y ago> it’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists Not sure why there is a presumption that one exists or that its coherent. With even the slightest critical eye its easy enough to discern that this isn't about economic policy or trade and that the proposed "policy" doesn't make any sense. The guy in charge of this stuff is either seeing what he can get away with, fucking with people, or building a narrative... that is to say what you are watching isn't "real".
- sagarpatil 1y agoFeels like they are just winging it based on public response.
- Animats 1y ago> It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thought through. We know for sure that Greer isn't steering this. Greer was testifying before a congressional committee when Trump announced huge changes to tariffs on China. Greer hadn't even been told.
- raffraffraff 1y agoIt feels like we just hired a recent graduate, who is an egotistical know-nothing, to manage our databases. And he just decided to migrate all of the DBs to the cloud in the middle of the day without testing it, or checking any metrics. Now he wants to fail some of them back and thinks that should be "a cinch" but doesn't actually understand how anything works under the hood.
- lonelyasacloud 1y agoHis goal is to create confusion; to "flood the zone". Him and his cronies know when that flood is coming and can profit from it. It's only confusing if there is any expectation that he is working for the good of anyone else.