The unfolding economic situation will be an inescapable backdrop for all upcoming elections – no matter how far down-ballot. Trump’s policies are creating havoc and strongly impacting all Americans. His newly announced tariffs are utterly incomprehensible, especially to anybody who has taken even an introductory cours…
The unfolding economic situation will be an inescapable backdrop for all upcoming elections – no matter how far down-ballot. Trump’s policies are creating havoc and strongly impacting all Americans. His newly announced tariffs are utterly incomprehensible, especially to anybody who has taken even an introductory course to Economics.
This morning’s top story on the usually-staid Axios is a devastating takedown of Trump and his tariffs.
Nice summary and analysis! Food for thought, although I don’t agree with all of it. One of my big automation fears is self-driving 18-wheelers and other vehicles used to transport and deliver goods. Likewise warehousing.
Note: The transportation and warehousing industries employ 6.6 million people, accounting for 5 percent of all private-sector jobs.
Trump tariffs will decimate the livelihoods and businesses of a lot of Americans and people of the Global South. Has America become Great Again?
Even if we start manufacturing and growing everything here in America, we will never be able to fill the comparative advantage gap and this will not happen immediately. The result will be high inflation. This will also provoke massive trade wars which will hurt us exports severely.
NAFTA was a net positive for whom? Not for U.S. unskilled workers, that's for sure. Not for Mexican farmers, who were forced off their land because they could not compete with U.S. agribusiness. The result of which has contributed to increase in immigration to the U.S. It was merely protection for capital, free trade for labor.
There have been more than 3 "experiments" throughout U.S. history. Tariffs have risen and fallen throughout the decades. And Reagan himself placed tariffs on Japanese steel, among other commodities.
Someone in my office who I knew was at least Republican leaning but thought was intelligent was praising the tariffs yesterday, calling VAT's tariffs, and considered the board Trump used to explain it brilliant. It was fascinating to realize that this very successful woman was also a total idiot.
I had to listen to someone in my carpool today who is convinced that manufacturing jobs are already set to be coming back and we'll be getting trillions in new investment dollars. It is painful - and part of it is my fault for humoring this guy too many times.
Even if some manufacturing moves back, it will employ far fewer people than it used it. And the whole reason why manufacturing jobs are thought of as "good jobs" is because they historically had strong unions. There's no market based reason why they would be high paying and before the unions successfully organized mass manufacturing, they weren't.
By like a dollar or two an hour. Not to say that those jobs aren't important for the local economies of small towns where, say, a paper mill is big employer. But they aren't going to magically be high paying. They're going pay as little as the bosses think they can get away with, unless the workers organize, which given the precarious nature of manufacturing work these days, they're often reluctant to do.
As I saw someone say on BSky the other day, people don’t miss manufacturing jobs, they miss the effects of living in a society with high union density.
There's also no company that is going to onshore jobs with the expectation that these tariffs are going away in no more than 4 years. By the time a factory was up and running they'd get 6 months of profits before production moves back to Vietnam.
I wouldn't even call this a gamble. With gambles at least you have a chance to win. The best outcome Trump can get at this point is to quit while he's behind.
When even the sycophants on r/conservative are throwing around terms like “political suicide” and “categorically nonsense” you know there’s not going to be a favorable outcome for the GOP.
It’s just a question of how bad it gets for the rest of us first
DEVASTATING TAKEDOWN
The unfolding economic situation will be an inescapable backdrop for all upcoming elections – no matter how far down-ballot. Trump’s policies are creating havoc and strongly impacting all Americans. His newly announced tariffs are utterly incomprehensible, especially to anybody who has taken even an introductory course to Economics.
This morning’s top story on the usually-staid Axios is a devastating takedown of Trump and his tariffs.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-confidence-americans-gamble
Nice summary and analysis! Food for thought, although I don’t agree with all of it. One of my big automation fears is self-driving 18-wheelers and other vehicles used to transport and deliver goods. Likewise warehousing.
Note: The transportation and warehousing industries employ 6.6 million people, accounting for 5 percent of all private-sector jobs.
Trump tariffs will decimate the livelihoods and businesses of a lot of Americans and people of the Global South. Has America become Great Again?
Even if we start manufacturing and growing everything here in America, we will never be able to fill the comparative advantage gap and this will not happen immediately. The result will be high inflation. This will also provoke massive trade wars which will hurt us exports severely.
https://youtu.be/5t5QK03KXPc?si=BdOErB5aKLxTo9kU
NAFTA was a net positive for whom? Not for U.S. unskilled workers, that's for sure. Not for Mexican farmers, who were forced off their land because they could not compete with U.S. agribusiness. The result of which has contributed to increase in immigration to the U.S. It was merely protection for capital, free trade for labor.
There have been more than 3 "experiments" throughout U.S. history. Tariffs have risen and fallen throughout the decades. And Reagan himself placed tariffs on Japanese steel, among other commodities.
The bigger sins were letting the PRC into the WTO and giving them most favored trading status with the US.
Yeah that was way, way worse.
Here is a less academic analysis of Trump’s tariffs:
https://www.joeydevilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/how-tariffs-work-768x599.jpg
Someone in my office who I knew was at least Republican leaning but thought was intelligent was praising the tariffs yesterday, calling VAT's tariffs, and considered the board Trump used to explain it brilliant. It was fascinating to realize that this very successful woman was also a total idiot.
I had to listen to someone in my carpool today who is convinced that manufacturing jobs are already set to be coming back and we'll be getting trillions in new investment dollars. It is painful - and part of it is my fault for humoring this guy too many times.
Even if some manufacturing moves back, it will employ far fewer people than it used it. And the whole reason why manufacturing jobs are thought of as "good jobs" is because they historically had strong unions. There's no market based reason why they would be high paying and before the unions successfully organized mass manufacturing, they weren't.
They would be high paying compared to working at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.
Yeah but limited to maintaining the automated assembly lines. And sentenced to life in prison if they decide to go Luddite and smash up the robots.
By like a dollar or two an hour. Not to say that those jobs aren't important for the local economies of small towns where, say, a paper mill is big employer. But they aren't going to magically be high paying. They're going pay as little as the bosses think they can get away with, unless the workers organize, which given the precarious nature of manufacturing work these days, they're often reluctant to do.
As I saw someone say on BSky the other day, people don’t miss manufacturing jobs, they miss the effects of living in a society with high union density.
In more rural areas, sometimes there isn't a lot of alternative without driving hours each way. And high housing costs make relocating a challenge.
There's also no company that is going to onshore jobs with the expectation that these tariffs are going away in no more than 4 years. By the time a factory was up and running they'd get 6 months of profits before production moves back to Vietnam.
I wouldn't even call this a gamble. With gambles at least you have a chance to win. The best outcome Trump can get at this point is to quit while he's behind.
When even the sycophants on r/conservative are throwing around terms like “political suicide” and “categorically nonsense” you know there’s not going to be a favorable outcome for the GOP.
It’s just a question of how bad it gets for the rest of us first