Summary
Trump warned automakers not to raise prices after announcing a 25% tariff on imported vehicles starting April 3, claiming the tariffs would be “great” and benefit U.S. manufacturing.
Industry leaders, including GM, Ford, and Stellantis CEOs, expressed concerns about inevitable price increases, with experts warning tariffs could add thousands to car costs.
Auto suppliers stated that absorbing tariffs is impossible, and dealers fear affordability challenges for consumers.
While the United Auto Workers union support the move as a job creator, trade groups predict higher prices and fewer manufacturing jobs.
So basically government price fixing. Isn’t USA supposed to be the pillar of libertarian capitalism?
So basically government price fixing.
Not even. He’s not doing anything to prevent prices from going up. He’s just whining at businesses for refusing to cut their margins to fund his government.
Isn’t USA supposed to be the pillar of libertarian capitalism?
It’s funny. There’s a couple of think thanks - the Fraiser Institute, the Hoover Institute, in collaboration with the CATO Institute - that are constantly putting out papers saying how America hasn’t gone Libertarian Capitalist enough. Historically, the two places in the world they consider “Most Libertarian” have been Hong Kong and Singapore.
However, over the last decade, they’ve been forced to delist both of these locations as Chinese business investment flooded in and American financial interests were shoved out. So now their new favorite spots are Switzerland, New Zealand, Luxembourger, and Ireland. Incidentally, these institutes are filling up with White Nationalists and other ultra-orthodox Christian Conservatives who refuse to acknowledge any country with brown people in it might have civil or economic liberties. The current issue of their annual newsletter blames a great deal of this shift on pandemic response and subsequent economic relief during the downturn. But there’s plenty of ink spilled denouncing any country that’s breaking away from the MAGA mindset, particularly Canada, China, and Mexico.
As our relationships with the BRICS and the various Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian states have deteriorated, our ability to recognize them as free and liberal have decayed alongside them. And the criticisms internally ebb and flow with the state of domestic politics - Obama ushering in a low-watermark for American liberty, for instance.
Funny story.
A while back someone posed a question online. They wanted to know why all Socialist countries fail? I answered that they don’t; look at Canada. They told me that I was a fool, because the Heritage Foundation had showed that Canada was freer than the USA. I asked why we shouldn’t have Canadian style health care? They never got back to me.
Reminded because of the folks you cited.
Removed by mod
Trading through coercion.
Extortion.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
It never has been. US capitalism has always been the kind that actually exists in the wild: corrupt, subsidy-consuming, protected by regulatory capture, and inextricably entangled with the workings of the government.
Libertarians’ ideas of what capitlalism is fail to reflect any historical situation anywhere, since their simplistic models fail to consider second-order effects, non-linearities and human nature. But coupling with other systems is inevitable, and there is no economics that exists independently of politics. Karl Marx got a lot of things wrong, but he knew that key fact.
Is that… is that a portrait of Reagan on the wall behind him? The man has no concept of irony…
It feels so gross upvoting a picture and quote from Reagan.
I felt pretty gross posting it, so, ya know, fair enough.
Truth is truth, no matter the source.
you’re upvoting an even worse than Reagan meme
May Reagan burn in hell.
Especially because that quote was to counter pressure to say that trade relations were invalid if one party wasn’t protecting the environment and human rights (for example, by imposing slave-labor conditions on factory workers).
Oh 100% agreed, Reagan was a piece of shit, I just find it hilarious that Trump reveres a man who spoke openly against exactly what he’s doing.
How great would it be if he somehow accidentally killed car dealerships
Fuckcars is delighted
Let’s do some overly simplistic bad economics just for fun. Let’s suppose that the American car companies are not hurt by the tariffs because those only target foreign car companies. Now all the foreign cars are 25% more expensive. This raises the demand for domestic cars. If the domestic car companies are trying to make money, they will jack up their prices 24%. And what are we told? Something about how they have duty to their shareholders? … Donald is having fun living in his dream world.
Yup that’s literarily what happened last time he did this shit with washing machines.
Now washing machines are more expensive across the board.
Trump is a moron, and his voters are even bigger morons.
I hope the car makers said ‘thank you’
trump has had 6 companies go bankrupt he is not a good business man.
Why’s he so utterly obsessed with tariffs? Like he thinks they just fix everything. It’s so stupid.
Usually, it takes Congress to agree on something to raise taxes on the working class. With tariffs, he can do it by himself like a real dictator would.
Keep in mind that Congress delegated that power to the President, and (if they were ever to become vertebrates) they could rescind that power too.
Like he thinks they just fix everything.
Like those who pull his strings know that tariffs are an effective means of economic sabotage.
In addition to what others have said, he also enjoys the direct power it gives him over corporate leaders. He wants to coerce them into subservience so they have to kiss his ass and be nice to him. Tariffs give him something to hold over their heads.
unions support the move as a job creator
… until manufacturers go bankrupt
Tariffs for Canada and Mexico would only be beneficial for automotive manufactures if A) American manufacturers were not heavily invested in and leveraging factories in Canada and Mexico and B) Canada and/or Mexico had any major auto manufacturers of their own competing with American brands. Neither of those is true. They MAY divest from Canadian or Mexican factories as a result and reinvest in domestic factories. BUT they are going to take big losses for that divesture AND be paying tariffs every time their parts ship between their factories across the borders right now. Their costs are going to go up and Americans will have to pay for the difference there.
deleted by creator
Is he so stupid he doesn’t understand how to fascism?
Don’t worry guys, he “saved them” by eliminating subsidies for EVs. That fad is clearly going away, and by gutting the American auto industry’s ability to grow their EV market share, we’ll clearly be poised for global dominance. Obviously the rest of the world LOVES smog and HATES silent/emissions free vehicles and will FLOCK to ICE cars that are priced the same as Chinese EVs.
The silent part is a bit of an issue though. For safety reasons.
Trivially solvable with regulation
Trivially solvable by looking, unless we are going to regulate millions of vehicles and add to noise pollution for the hypothetical sake of a few visually-impaired people.
idk about you but i greatly value the opportunity to track nearby vehicles that are outside my field of vision without having to turn around constantly or wear one of those hats with rearview mirrors
Just need to find good solutions.
Literally just require a noisemaker
Are you going to force bicycle riders to also put playing cards in their spokes so we can hear them too? Will pedestrians be forced to sing while in public? Or will people instead learn to actually look? Anyway, even a silent car emits lots of tyre noise, and every EV I’ve run across also makes some sci-fi-like noise whenever the motor is running.
I ring my bell when I pass people that won’t see me on my e-bike.
if I wanted to be a complete fucking jackass, I’d just pass them at 30 km per hour without making a sound.
I’m sure they would love that.
It’s the responsibility of the vehicle user to make sure that people know of them.
Noise is extremely useful as it’s a 360 radius.
It’s annoying, but useful.
Unless you can come up with other solutions to make pedestrians aware of vehicles. Beyond just looking. It’s extremely easy for a pedestrian to put their foot on the road before looking sideways just because he heard nothing.
Yeah… that’s not how that works. He’s shitting on us and blaming everyone else for it
Yeah, good luck with that. He has lost what little business sense he had
He’s a dementia riddled old man who shits in diapers. What do you expect?
This, again, shows the enormous reaches of stupidity that Trump fills.
Ugh, I hate this timeline, where a whole lot of people, countries, and organizations are trying to avoid incurring the wrath of a complete dipshit and total baby named donvict.
Capitalism at work, shithead. Get fucked
