The Real timschochet

Elon appears to be finally waking up. Makes sense: he lost 30 billion in the last two days. Anyhow he ripped Peter Navarro (Trump’s main tariff advisor) as an idiot and said he wants a no tariff zone between us and Europe. if only. But I doubt Trump’s going to listen to him either…

Sorry for your son being brainwashed.

One of the issues that nobody is paying much attention to yet: the large number of people from Europe and Canada who are cancelling their planned trips to the USA as retaliation because they don’t want to spend money here. This shouldn’t be dismissed; the impact could be terrible for us, particularly in California and Florida.

Not the best description of my life but it does apply well to Trump’s.

If you can explain why this subject is at all relevant to issue of tariffs I’ll be happy to tell you exactly how that all went down.

You might as well stay in that deck chair. The band is still playing after all and the lifeboats are all full.

Not a Nazi.

My Nazi lies…

As this situation gets worse and worse, we’re going to hear a lot of folks here and elsewhere proclaim that they don’t like Trump, they don’t like Democrats either, damn the lot of them, let’s try something new. They will NEVER take responsibility for having voted for Trump, and they will NEVER credit liberals for opposing Trump. They’ll simply say they’re sick of all of it.

I really don’t need to do that. Nothing I write will change his status. ETA- but I really did lose a lot of money the last few days (on paper). So I would like to get that back, please.

Uh oh, Timmy made an argument I have no rebuttal for. Whatever shall I do? I know! Bring up Polanski again!

I will cheer. I hope it happens soon .

As usual you refuse to address any of the points raised. Yes we need to do something. We don’t need to make things worse. The debt is so huge we can’t possibly solve it by cutting spending- we can never cut enough. The only way out is to grow our way out of it- and that means MORE trade not less. Trump is proposing curtailing trade and increasing the debt through tax cuts, the exact opposite of what we need to do. I pointed this out when he was running for office. Now it’s too late. But please don’t attempt to scold Democrats. We didn’t vote for this moron; you did. Now we all pay the price.

In principle yes, in practice no. From what I can observe they used a hammer, not a chisel.

If the goal is to address the debt, then there couldn’t be a worse solution than tariffs. And coupled with the fact that, in just a few weeks, the Republicans are going to explode the debt to brand new depths by passing a new tax cut, it’s absurd even to bring this topic up.

Again bullsh!t. Go ahead and provide some links of Obama calling for worldwide tariffs.

These two questions represent the flawed thinking that so many folks still have about this whole affair. Trump’s action was not caused by the policies of other nations. For many of them there is no concession that they can make that would change anything, because the tariffs are based on trade deficits, not on reciprocal tariffs. This doesn’t end with other nations changing policies or giving in to our demands- we don’t have any demands. It ends when we decide to go back to what was previously status quo.

All at once, based on trade deficits, for every country on Earth? I call bullsh!t on this one.

You guys are trying to make yourselves feel better with “I could never have voted for Kamala” nonsense. Here’s why it’s nonsense: 1. Trump’s tariffs are either going to severely harm our economy or destroy our economy. Those are your two options. There’s nothing else. Don’t take my word for it; listen to the economists. 2. Kamala Harris wouldn’t have done this. And that’s all there is to it. No matter how much you might have disliked her other policies, or her personally, none of that is at all important compared to this issue. So yeah, sorry, you guys are going to regret your vote. You blew it.

It’s not that you don’t know; it’s that the answer is it’s not possible. Keep in mind that even if somehow this situation ultimately results in more manufacturing in the USA, it will be mostly automation doing the work. We’re not really going to gain from that.

So much wrong with this. But let’s start with a very basic question: please explain why trade deficits are bad for the United States.

That’s wrong; I said plenty in support of Governor Newsom. What a stupid, terrible comparison you have made. Covid wasn’t a voluntary decision by anyone and Governor Newsom and other governors correctly followed the leads of medical experts all the while President Trump’s incompetence cost us thousands of lives. If only we had paid attention to that mess, we wouldn’t have entrusted this moron to create another one, in this case (unlike that one) an unforced error of catastrophic proportions. For you to bring this up as somehow a defense of Donald Trump is beyond imbecilic.

If so, a pretty smart one. Smarter than you anyhow on this subject.

I think this will turn out to be right.

Look you’re going to find plenty of Democrats in the past making arguments for tariffs: that’s because government intervention in business is traditionally a liberal, not a conservative thing. But it’s a dumb argument by you because NOBODY in modern history has ever recommended across the board tariffs on everything. It’s unheard of because it’s so stupid. You’d have to be a complete moron to attempt it. That being said, in future years when we look back on this calamity, there will be just as much attention paid to those who blindly went along, or cheered this, as to Trump himself.