Summary
Global leaders criticized Trump’s new tariffs, which range from 10% to 49%, warning of trade wars and economic fallout.
The UK and Italy urged negotiation, while Brazil passed a reciprocity bill. China and South Korea vowed countermeasures.
Australia and New Zealand rejected Trump’s logic, citing existing trade deals and low tariffs. Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.
Financial markets dropped, oil and bitcoin sank, and leaders warned of inflation. Analysts say Trump risks fracturing global trade with little to gain economically.
Trump’s government has made the US a village idiot - and if the idiot gets into a fight with the whole village, the idiot will have more bruises.
Why he does that - I don’t pretend to understand.
Have we forgotten that he has done this each month since he was Inaugurated?
Today the stock market will crash on this news. The wealthy will buy on this massive dip, and in a few days, HitlerPig will announce that the countries on his list have responded to his tariff threats, so he is postponing them for a month or so.
The stock market will recover a bit, and the wealthy will make a fortune. In a month, he’ll do it all over again.
It’s deliberate market manipulation.
And we’ll all be destitute for it. Everyone loses when they do this, yes, even they do in the long run. Once nobody can buy a loaf of bread I’m sure we’ll collectively decide right at that moment that the rich actually do taste good and maybe they should pay more in taxes.
Someone asked chatGPT how to apply tariffs to give America an equal playing field and it spit it a formula that looks shockingly similar to how trump calculated the tariffs
Try grok and you’ll get an exact match.
Dead horse economics:
Wake up you lazy horse!
I hope the EU reacts with something non-tariffy. Like forbidding US online platforms to serve ads and collect personal data, with severe punishments if they still do.
or something ultra specific that is super easy to source from any other country, to exclusively hurt the american businesses
We can only hope.
You know what’s fun? Cancelling stuff and citing the reason as ‘tariff-related inflation’. It’s too new and there is no response script yet, so customer service doesn’t really argue.
None of Trump’s policies have any basis in reality
I’ve been saying this for years - why does anyone listen to him? He has no credibility - his whole life bio shows this clear as day.
Americans are trained from birth to value ignorance as the greatest virtue. Donald Trump represents everything that American culture venerates.
Failing upward. Trump Steaks, Trump University, hell, he couldn’t make money running a CASINO: Trump Castle Hotel and Casino, bankrupt. Trump Plaza Casino, bankrupt. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, and Trump Entertainment Resorts… all bankrupt.
Now he can add the US economy to his trophy case of participation ribbons.
Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the British government said the United States remains the U.K.’s “closest ally.”
I’m sorry TERF island, that’s not gonna keep Trump from stabbing you in the back too.
It’s heartbreaking, really.
The UK is like a kid who just got his face covered in mud by bullies, and goes “aren’t my friends wonderful for playing with me?”.
The UK already shot themselves in the foot turning their back on the EU… they have no one left, they are done for
Heads up, UK, the US will use you as a toilet every chance you give it, and we’ve just dropped all pretense, however thin it may have previously been, about caring about our “allies”. Speaking as a US citizen, I would strongly advise against considering yourself a close friend to the US until we get our shit sorted.
Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.
Ahahaha. For a day, I want to be inside his head and see the world through his eyes. It would be the most valuable insight for humanity… If only to learn exactly what not to do.
No thoughts. Only anger at being confused.
More then racism, Trump’s appeal is being a simple answer to a complex question. Which happens to mean racism when applied to race relations, but also harebrained economic policies or injecting bleach into yourself. This is the same man who used a sharpy to change the path of a hurricane on a map rather then admit he misspoke.
It would be like that scene in Braveheart, where the Prince is having servants walk in front of him holding a full length mirror, so he can constantly admire himself.
No basis in logic if he were actually trying to do what he says he is. He’s not. They make perfect sense if the goal is to destabilize the country. We elected a fucking Manchurian candidate twice, and the in-between term was spent on a bunch of business as usual and not setting up protections in case it happened again. This country is fucking done.
I don’t buy that Trump has anything to do with the logic behind this world-destabalizing shock and awe spectacle.
The conversation would be different if people stopped attributing authorship to him and acknowledged the massive decades-old machine using him as a mouthpiece.
But it sure makes people feel smart though. Gives them something to meme about while the people who planned this get the real dirt done. Maybe he’ll misspell a country name next… Do another ad for Leon’s dinkeys, Israeli beans or something. Stoopid Donald got poopy pance. lol.
I saw someone say it seems that the tariffs were calculated by dividing our trade deficit by their exports to us and cutting that number in half. Another person analyzed his charts and concluded they look a lot like they were generated by AI.
So, there is, literally no basis in logic. Either one of Trump’s minions calculated what it would take to recoup the difference in the trade deficit and just wrote it down and he announced that as the new basis for international trade, which has never, ever been done, for the reason that it is fucking idiotic, or he asked Gemini how to execute his already objectively stupid policy and wrote an Executive Order making it the law.
And the fact that we are forced to accept people on the Internet’s guesses about how he calculated these numbers may actually be worse than the fact that just about every product on the market more complex than a stapler just jumped about 30% in price.
AI would make a lot of sense, considering that there are uninhabited islands on the list.
Heather Cox Richardson, historian of the republican (Lincoln) party said that in her daily newsletter. She cites all her sources.
“No basis in logic”
No shit, this whole administration has no basis in logic. Just look at Project 2025 and the progress they’ve made on it in a little over 2 months.
and the price of bitcoin dropped 4.4%.
I cannot express how much I hate that this appears in a serious economic article.
You don’t like hearing about made up currency with no backing that’s primarily used for pump and dump schemes and money laundering?
But arent all fiat currencies made up since there’s no gold standard backing them.
If I can’t pay my taxes with it, it isn’t a real currency.
By that logic you don’t think foreign currencies are real?
Sure they are, as long as foreign nationals pay their own taxes with them.
I pay my taxes with Euros so I guess Mericuhn Dollers are not a real currency
Depends. Do Mericuhns pay their taxes in Dollers?
Bitcoin is primarily used for pump and dump schemes? You mean like the middle step trade between scam crypto and real money?
Because Trump is getting demented. This is all his idea