Comment by anigbrowl
8 days ago
Have you considered the possibility that they know perfectly well what they're doing and they're just lying about it? Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald for over 2 decades. The treasury secretary has a similarly stellar resume. There is no way these people don't understand the difference between expressing a trade deficit as a ratio and actual tariffs laid by other countries.
Trump personally may or may not understand it (I think he does) but his political superpower is his willingness to stand up in public and say complete bullshit knowing that it's bullshit, knowing that some people are fools who will uncritically believe the bullshit, and other people are cynics who who will nod along with the bullshit either to make money out of the rubes or because they think it serves a strategic purpose.
You can waste years wondering which side of Hanlon's razor someone is on, but it's important to remember that obsessing over such dilemmas can lead to paralysis. Just like there are a lot of street hustles and cons that depend on confusing/misleading the mark before tricking or mugging them out of their money, there are a lot of political gambits that depend on inducing analysis-paralysis in opponents. Manufacturing dilemmas is also a key element in military strategy.
My advice is to stop worrying about whether these people are such fools that you owe them some sort of empathy and an effort to save them from themselves, or you will end up like Charlie Brown having the football pulled way by Lucy yet again. It is OK to cut them off and treat them as bad actors, for the same reason you should often round off quantitative values instead of obsessing over precision.
Let’s not forget Congress could assert its authority over tariffs at any time. This isn’t just the executive branch unilaterally creating the biggest, most regressive tax hike in our lifetimes, it’s a coordinated GOP operation.
I wonder what kind of phone calls their donors are having with them.
Yes, it's never a good idea to underestimate the intelligence or agency of the enemy.
But in this case: what is the game plan? What are they trying to achieve? Is it simply chaos, so that they can rule in perpetuity?
One thing they do is allow him to raise taxes on the middle class and poor, who will be paying those tarrifs, while lowering the taxes for the rich. Everyone's talking about some 3D chess when "more money for the rich" has always been the only consistent Republican policy.
> when "more money for the rich" has always been the only consistent Republican policy.
You probably want to be more careful with how you phrase that. The Republican party passed the Civil Rights Act and ended slavery, among other things.
Those may not be the type of Republicans you are thinking of today, but they still had that little (R) next to their names.
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My interpretation: "No one really knows what will happen but it could work to bring some production back to our country, let's give it a try, if it doesn't we try something else."
>Have you considered the possibility that they know perfectly well what they're doing and they're just lying about it?
Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
>There is no way these people don't understand the difference between expressing a trade deficit as a ratio and actual tariffs laid by other countries.
I don't think most people deny that these are capable individuals. The problem is - I think the people in Trump's inner circle now are sycophants first. They know what Trump is doing is destructive, but they are just choose to be yes men. Remember, this isn't Trump's first go-around, and the majority of people who stood up to Trump the first time (Pence, Barr, Perry, Price, Rex Tillerson) are gone.
Funny enough wikipedia has an article[1] about this that is so large that it has many sub articles. Ultimately, I can't trust that his appointments are exercising any sort of discernment because a large number of his 2016 appointees were fired for doing so.
In short, Fitzgerald could be a genius, but all signs point to him being a yes-man that would rather sink the ship than stand up to Trump.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dismissals_and_resigna...
> Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
To hide their motives, if you think they are just dumb then you will not look for the real reason they do it.
Not sure that is what happens here, but that is a very common reason to play dumb.
> I think the people in Trump's inner circle now are sycophants first
If this is the case, we could at least likely put to rest most concerns that Trump will be implementing much of Project 2025.
I'd be very surprised if he had too much to do with that plan directly. Assuming that's true, and if he's only surrounded by yes men, no one is there to convince him to do anything other than exactly what he himself wants to do.
Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
I told you: because it creates a strategic dilemma that paralyzes the opposition. The same reason a hustler pretends to be dumb to lure the mark, the same reason trolls use shitposting to bait people.
His name is Howard Lutnick. He was CEO of a financial firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Lutnick
Yeah, and what if Lutnick doesn't care about making America better but just making money for himself? And his salary is not tied to his performance, but to his sycophancy?
It is not as if he is going to die of starvation because of tariffs. He has no skin in the game.
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A great example is Rubio. People may disagree with his politics, but he has been a competent government person for a long time. Even had a legit shot at POTUS at one point. And now, he's trying to shrink away while Trump and Vance make a mockery of the Oval Office.
>Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald for over 2 decades.
Lutnick clearly has zero actual influence in this administration. He's a barking dog sent to do TV soundbites, and his explanations are often full-bore nonsensical or completely contradictory to his prior explanations. Foreign officials (such as Canada) have repeatedly come out of meetings with Lutnick almost...assuaged....as if Lutnick is saying "he isn't really going to do this...there's no way", because even Lutnick doesn't realize just how stubborn Trump is about his outrageously stupid ways. These guys keep trying to pretend this is all some masterful negotiating strategy by the Art of the Deal master.
And based upon 100% of Trump's history in government, it won't be long before Lutnick and Bessent are out of this admin, both will be "RINOs" attacked by the MAGA cult, and they'll both be telling the tale of how outrageously stupid Donald Trump is. Like closing on 100% of Trump's administration in the first term.
Just look at the lead up to these tariffs. The day before Trump was still "deciding". This is something that a team of expert economists should have worked on for months, probably to conclude that free and liberal trade is what made the US the richest large country on Earth, but instead it was something that everyone had to sit around and wait for Trump to pull something out of his ass.
Trump has openly and widely talked about tariffs replacing income tax for years. This administration is clearly one where no one ever can counter any harebrained idea from Trump -- and they're all incredibly stupid ideas from that incredibly stupid man -- so whatever nonsensical takes he has they have to all try to make talking points around and create some post facto rationalizations. It is the most dangerous administration in human history, and the American voter looked at this traitorous, constitution-shredding, law-breaking imbecile and said "more please!"
There is no 4D chess happening here[1]. There isn't even checkers happening. No masterful long term negotiating strategy. It's just a fumbling moron (rapist, charity-stealing imbecile) that is doing the most nonsensical way to deal with a deficit rather than, you know, raising taxes. And to be clear the US deficit is untenable and needs to be dealt with, and the head in the sand approach by successive governments is not reasonable, but combining DOGE's ham-fisted stupidity with Trump's economic destruction and the deficit is likely going to be much, much worse. The US is on the fast track to insolvency.
"But China....next war....China!"
Trump started this whole thing by attacking allies. By dissolving alliances and trying to economically harm its closest friends. Precisely the opposite of expectations if the US were seriously trying to counter China.
[1] Aside from corruption. Tariffs are the foundation of corruption because everyone has to come, hat in hand, begging for exemptions. There is going to be a line to the White House of manufacturers and importers, from Apple to military contractors, begging for special waivers. Which they'll get if they grease the right palms, as this is the most blatantly corrupt administration in US history. He's selling pardons in the open, and operating a literal protection racket, and this is just...an ordinary day now.
Why are you so certain that these tariff plans were still being decided by Trump the day before? He sure likes to put on that front publicly, but I'm less clear on how we'd know whether that's him playing games or an actual representation of the reality of how his cabinet is operating.
If one does want to impose a large block of tariffs, it does seem reasonable that you would want to keep details quiet until the entire package is announced. You wouldn't want other countries responding early
Quiet? Trump has been bellowing about his tariffs for months. China, South Korea and Japan -- long absolute adversaries -- even had a meeting about how to respond. The actual tariff plan is 0% based upon reciprocity, and instead is based upon "we're a rich country that buys lots of stuff, so let's punish the citizens who buy stuff" (as the largest tax hike in history). There are tariffs for unoccupied island chains.
And these apply immediately. This is an administrative impossibility. CBP is going to have a disastrous couple of weeks about this rag tag collection of barely defined nonsense.
This is 100% disaster, top to bottom.
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