Trump and his tariffs

[borneomom]

I don't find Twitter nonsense. I continue to get a great deal of important information, especially on the current situation in the USA from that still valuable source. I haven't seen any posts there about Barron's paternity.

I don't (obviously) know where you are, or who you are, Red Neck, and I certainly don't want to offend you. But as a British/ German dual citizen, with all the weight of history those nationalies involve, having lived in the USA, receiving mails every day from dear friends living there who are devastated at what is happening, as a grandmother and teacher, it's of utmost importance to me that what I post anywhere online, including here in ML, or tell my students, is factual to the very best of my ability. I want people to trust what I post. Where, otherwise, is our basis for discussion?

If this post feels too goody-two-shoes, or too Teutonically unhumourous, I'm sorry-not sorry. We know exactly how Hitler seized power and it is heartbreaking to see it happening in our times, in the so-called land of the free. I can't find anything light in all this.

[Granny Mutch]

Oh dear, the Don is "pissed off" with his pal Vlad.

[maisiepusscat]

I must say, Barron and Donald do seem to share the same rather vacant look.

[JuliaFelix]

Oh dear, the Don is "pissed off" with his pal Vlad.

He is? (Good!) Link?

[steenbok]

He is? (Good!) Link?

Trump 'very angry' with Putin over ceasefire negotiations,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20x7z36d56o

[CloggyMcClogFace]

I don't find Twitter nonsense.[...] it's of utmost importance to me that what I post anywhere online, including here in ML, or tell my students, is factual to the very best of my ability. I want people to trust what I post. Where, otherwise, is our basis for discussion?

Well at least Red Neck got the name right. (X, not Twitter - I've never been on either so have no skin in this game but I couldn't help noticing this contradiction in your post. Sorry for nitpicking.)

[borneomom]

If you were on that particular form of social media you would know that there are very many contributors who continue to call it by its original name.

ETA: it's been a really valuable source of information for many years, for many people, and there are plenty of contributors who refuse to let that be spoiled by the fact that Musk happened to have enough money to buy it. Calling it Twitter is probably childish and irrelevant, but it's part of refusing to let him steal something we value.

[steenbok]

If you were on that particular form of social media you would know that there are very many contributors who continue to call it by its original name.

The original name was a well-known brand — by buying it and stripping the original branding, Musk made an instant loss.

We know he didn't buy it to make money (at least not directly). Why did he buy it, then? It wasn't for altruistic reasons.

The bargepole with which I wouldn't touch it got a lot longer with the changed ownership.

[Perkin Warbeck]

For someone 'clever' elon is remarkably stupid. His rebranding of twitter was an utter failure, his 'car' the cybertruck is dire and is pretty much uninsurable, and his cosplaying fascism extremely daft - in addition to just being wrong, it was guarenteed to p- off the sort of people who buy an ecofriendly car.

And these are all pre-meditated stupidities.

Mind you, has he ever achieved anything other than having a lot of money from his daddy's apartied emerald mines?

[hilde]

Trump's Executive Order around felling has got under way. Timber companies are increasing their felling and some people in Montana are very concerned. Others have suggestion there is now no restriction on felling redwoods. I can't confirm that. It isn't looking good though.

[shell-like]

This was 2019, it's only notable because Melania is friendlier to Trudeau than she seems to be towards her husband:

https://youtu.be/O08PD8Fqk14?si=Lvz9DIN312UJxEKB

The action freezes before they make contact, so the degree of passion is impossible to assess.

The voice-over reporter is CNN's Jeanne Moos, their Canada correspondent, presumably.

[Lady Macbeth]

The original name was a well-known brand — by buying it and stripping the original branding, Musk made an instant loss.

We know he didn't buy it to make money (at least not directly). Why did he buy it, then? It wasn't for altruistic reasons.

The bargepole with which I wouldn't touch it got a lot longer with the changed ownership.

He had painted himself into a corner.

[steenbok]

ETA: it's been a really valuable source of information for many years, for many people, and there are plenty of contributors who refuse to let that be spoiled by the fact that Musk happened to have enough money to buy it. Calling it Twitter is probably childish and irrelevant, but it's part of refusing to let him steal something we value.

I'd like to apologise for annoying you with my comments about X/Twitter. I was never a member, so I didn't have to suffer that experience.

My original avoiding of it (as opposed to FB) was based on the 128 char limit being inferior to the unlimited length of posts in Usenet threads.

FB (when I evaluated them both in 2013) was obviously about harvesting and monetising user data.

[borneomom]

How kind, steebok, thank you.

I'm in a bit of a hurry, classes about to start, but: I've spent the last decades being regaled here in Germany and in the USA about the dreadful quality of British food. When I (keeping calm) ask what the person ate, or where they were in the UK, 99% of the time the answer is along the lines of 'Oh I've never been there, but that's what I heard.'

My students all know that I get very prickly when people give opinions about places they've never been, food they have never tried, or media they don't know.

My OH was quite sceptical at the beginning about my extensive use of social media. Now he laughs, because he knows what I read to him this morning from Twitter, or the clips we watch on TikTok whike drinking our morning tea/coffee, will be in a scholarly article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or on BBC R4 tomorrow.

Viele Grüße!

Oh and PS: I always found/find the characetr limit an interesting and challenging puzzle.

[borneomom]

And I'm sorry about the typos - I was really in a hurry!

[borneomom]

Extremely worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXR5HLodsT8

20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder / read by John Lithgow

[kindmrslovely]

Meanwhile - this seems like good news:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... esult-race

[Melusine]

And here's some light relief..... sort of.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wTQFvomTcuo

[Madeleine]

Well, what a rambling lot of incoherent nonsense that was .
Why is Trump so convinced the rest of the world is trying to rip them off?
Anyway the U.K. has come out at the lower end of tariffs, but I think it will still be damaging.
And as for his visual aids ? I thought it looked like a school,project. Chris Mason reckoned he looked like a bookie calculating the odds. What a prat, Trump, not Chris Mason.

[annakist]

He is paranoid liar.

[steenbok]

Well, what a rambling lot of incoherent nonsense that was .
Why is Trump so convinced the rest of the world is trying to rip them off?

I don't think he believes any of his nonsense, it's just a "narrative".

I thought the reason that America had outsourced so much of its manufacturing was the doctrine of maximising shareholder returns, at the expense of anything else that might matter a hell of a lot in the long term. Things like communities (and, ahem, not making ourselves extinct).

Didn't that doctrine originate in the US?

Anyway, it takes years to build factories, so are his voters all going to tighten their belts and wait patiently for "jam tomorrow"? I can't see that fitting in with the instant gratification culture.

Meanwhile, the "sanctions this week, no sanctions next week" shilly-shallying looks like it would cause knowable, rapid stock market movements. Why would anyone want that? Paging Mr Sherlock Holmes...

[borneomom]

James Surowiecki (Contributing writer for Fast Company and The Atlantic. Editor at The Yale Review, Author of The Financial Page for The New Yorker.) writes:

"Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is."

Kush Desai (Deputy White House Press Secretary) contradicted Surowiecki, revealing the formula for these calculations used by the White House. Surowiecki then continues:

"This is truly amazing. The Deputy White House Press Secretary is claiming that I'm wrong, and that the "tariff rates" on Trump's chart were calculated by "literally" measuring every country's tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers.
To prove it, he screenshots the formula the USTR says was used to calculate the reciprocal tariffs we imposed on other countries. And when you back out the Greek symbols, what is that formula? Trade deficit/imports - exactly what I said it was.
I don't know if the Deputy Press Secretary was misinformed, or is just being misleading. Either way, the Trump administration did not "literally calculate tariff and non tariff barriers" to determine the tariff rates it's imposing on other countries. As I said, it divided our trade deficit with a country by our imports with that country, and then multiplied by 0.5 (because Trump was being "lenient").
Oh, and if our trade deficit/imports with a country is less than 10%, or we have a trade surplus with a country, Trump slapped a flat 10% tariff on that country."


Such stupidity is embarrassingly pathetic. Horrible that such a ship of fools can have so much influence on all of us.

[Perkin Warbeck]

Well, what a rambling lot of incoherent nonsense that was .
Why is Trump so convinced the rest of the world is trying to rip them off?

Projection. He's a grifter, thinks the rest of the world is too

[Perkin Warbeck]

Re imports.

No one forces people to buy imports rather than local produce. They do it because

1 they are better
2 they are cheaper
3 it's specialist

So its a move to worse, more expensive products with less choice

Its effectivly vat on foreign goods...but prople don't like taxes, but, somehow, the brain dead 'USA USA' types like tarrifs.

Also, i find it ironic in 'free speech' america a chant of 'USA USA' is often used to shut down freedom of speech.

[wessexwanderer37]

Has he asked why companies move manufacturing to places such as Vietnam, China, Cambodia, etc? Because it's much cheaper.
If they move back to USA what will that do to prices?
American consumbers won't be happy with increased prices.
ww