Comment by melenaboija
7 days ago
What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision.
When you put someone incompetent in charge of a country, a company, or a sports team, collapse is inevitable, no exceptions. We’ve seen it play out over and over again because of stupid choices only driven by ego.
Now it’s the US’s turn
For extra sauce on the "they're barely even thinking about this" cake someone figured out where those crazy "Tariff Charged" numbers were coming from, they're taking the trade deficit and dividing by the total imports from that country.
https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T
edit: The White House deputy press secretary posted their formula and it is just trade_deficit/2*total_imports per country just dressed up with a lot of fancy language to make it seem smarter but the two extra terms are constants.
https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
I just asked ChatGPT with a lazy prompt: "Come up with a formula to impose reciprocal tariffs that will reduce America's trade deficit to zero" and it came up with basically the same formula.
Oh man if people in the White House are just using ChatGPT...
https://chatgpt.com/share/67ee890e-b400-800b-ac83-90a6147d32...
(edit: fixed link)
> chatgpt.com/share/67ee890e-b400-800b-ac83-90a61463212
404.
> White House are just using ChatGPT
Likely, Grok? https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_e8b4c405-3bb8-4f01-9...
The Terminator franchise had it that the AI has to nuke humanity and fight a giant war including time travel to take over.
Nah, all it has to do is offer to be "helpful" and do stuff for us and we'd be like "sure, go ahead, take over, here let me cut and paste your advice right into a policy document."
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I never know for sure if that's the source or if the bots are just reading the same "Tariffs for Dummies" source the administration is working from.
I can't believe that could be real at all, but then remembered we're still on the "Biff has the Grey Sports Almanac 1985" timeline
Good to see that Trump will be providing subsidies on goods imported from Australia to balance out the -107% trade relationship they have with them.
Oh wait its a 10% tariff on Australia too. Better make a new version of this chart with a -117% benefit to the US then...
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I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. What rtkwe described is literally what they are? They didn’t say the tariffs are random (unless the comment changed, which would explain why yours makes no sense to me), they said they aren’t what the White House is claiming they are.
If you think trying to balance out the trade deficit with every single country without any other nuanced consideration whatsoever is a good approach, that’s one thing (a lot of people would disagree), but there’s no getting around that the information around this is either misinformed or deliberately misleading.
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I've seen this comment a couple of times. What would be a better way of doing it? Also consider that if they would've had a more complex formula, what would be the cost of needing to explain it publicly? Would they then need to start defending the fairness of each tariff vs doing it the simple way and having a single formula across the board?
How about “not doing it at all”?
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Um, by picking and choosing what goods need protection in the long term?
Like, we can't make more fish. Avocados take a few years to grow new trees. Steel mills don't just appear in Ohio.
The worst part is that, even if you believe Donny, he's so mercurial with these tariffs that no one is going to give you a loan to do anything about any of this. This Katy Perry doctrine [0] he's established is just poison to any sort of capital investment. You've got no idea if any of these tariffs will make it to Monday, let alone to the time it takes the mortgage on your t-shirt factory to be paid off. And then you've got a new administration in four years and no idea if they will keep that protection for you either. How are you going to plant a whole vineyard and get it profitable in 4 years when grape vines take 7 years to mature to fruit bearing?
There's no point to any of this, even if you believe him.
[0] 'Cause you're hot, then you're cold You're yes, then you're no You're in, then you're out You're up, then you're down You're wrong when it's right It's black, and it's white We fight, we break up We kiss, we make up
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The problem is it's economically illiterate. Trade deficits aren't bad in themselves - they can be a sign that you're getting a good deal. Consider the case where a country with low wages exports raw materials to the US, and doesn't buy back as much from the US. This is the situation for lots of poorer countries who are exporting cheap raw materials to the US, and the US gains from these situations. Trump's policy simply makes all these raw materials more expensive.
Another way of reducing trade deficits would be to make Americans so poor that they can't afford to buy things from overseas. Eliminating trade deficits in itself isn't a rational economic goal.
Having said that, American manufacurers on average will likely benefit (though maybe not if their raw materials are too much more expensive), but this benefit will only come at the cost of American consumers, who are denied cheaper options from overseas by the tariffs
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Consider actual tariffs? A trade deficit isn't a tariff or trade barrier it's just the natural flow of commerce from them selling more stuff than they buy. They're dressing it up like these countries are charging US imports these crazy tariffs but they're not at all, especially not across the board.
That's imminently doable but would require more work than plugging in 2 numbers from the US trade delegation website so we get this complete lie instead. Trump has had it in his head for ages that trade deficit == tariff (or is lying about that to make his supporters swallow this as the US just fighting back) and it's a completely broken understanding of trade.
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It’s been our turn for a hot minute. Republicans have been blowing up the status quo since Reagan, and the Democrats enforcing austerity since Clinton. American corporate leadership is excellent at hitting quarter-after-quarter KPIs for bonuses and share price growth, but there’s ample data it has all come at the expense of workers - increased precarity, decreased wages, increased costs of everything, as the country is plundered down to its core and sold off piecemeal.
Post-Carter United States (and South Korea, and Japan, and the UK, and much of the developed world in general) is a prime example of the follies of prioritizing numbers-on-a-spreadsheet growth in the short term, over a balanced and robust domestic economic engine that ensures a healthy, happy, stable populace that wants to have kids (since they have the money and time to be good parents).
Clinton was the last fiscally responsible President, using a strong real economy to pay down some of the debt which had service costs equal to the costs of US federal debt today. You can't criticize that given how high the debt was in the 1990s.
> Clinton was the last fiscally responsible President, using a strong real economy to pay down some of the debt
The Clinton social program cuts combined with the Bush II tax cuts is what gave us the poor distributional effects of the 2001-2008 expansion, which both set the stage for and magnified the impact on all but the narrow slice at the top of the Great Recession; while they seemed harmless in the unusually strong boom economy they were implemented in, monentary nominal budget balance acheived that way has had massive adverse long term effects.
It also, contrary to your claim, didn't pay down any of the national debt, which increased by at least $100 billion every year of the Clinton presidency.
I can when he did so not through raising revenue, but by gutting social safety net programs.
If you have a debt problem, you need to both raise income and cut unnecessary spending. Clinton - and every Democrat since Carter, really - only ever did the latter, and always targeting the working class for spending cuts as opposed to the corporate or wealthy classes. God forbid we curtail subsidies to fossil fuel companies or sugar producers or big box stores with a disproportionate amount of workers on government assistance programs, god forbid we stop bailing out failed banks or bankrupt private enterprise, let’s instead make sure poor people can’t have housing and children can’t have three meals a day.
Throwing large numbers around without examining how those numbers were achieved is what politicians and despots bank on the populace trusting, because once you know how those figures are reached, you’re confronted with how the system really works and suddenly have a distaste for it.
> What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision.
I'm no economist, but I can see that there are second order effects that this addresses that other systems would lack.
1) Tit for tat on tariffs doesn't work because of other barriers to trade such as currency manipulation, subsidies, regulations, etc.
2) We've learned from games such as iterated prisoner's dilemma that strategies that succeed are ones that clearly communicate how they'll act and respond. A clear formula such as deficit/imports accomplished this. Countries know exactly what they must address in order to access US markets.
3) You can end up playing whack a mole with countries in that they can set up shop in other countries to bypass tariffs in their own country. By applying a consistent formula to all countries, you no longer have to play whack a mole.
Then why not just set a flat 10%? Why gut the industrial subsidies? Why gut state capacity?
It seems thoughtful if you or your children or your friends are heavily invested in crypto and think removing the USD as the primary currency of trade is a good idea.
I know it's a Republican joke to blame evil meddling globalists for the US's problems but it sure seems like a bunch of people looking to ruin the US for their own global ambitions are running the show right now.
Every accusation is an admission when it comes to Republicans.
Luckily the US has quite some momentum so it can be hoped the damage is limited before the next election so it can then be reverted.
In this case it's much much worse than just incompetent. You're looking at someone who takes an evil delight it doing the opposite of what smart people say to do, and destroying stuff.
This is what forced me vastly curtail my news consumption for the most part. I can only take so much breathless reporting about the "strategy" of the Trump administration, when it's plainly sheer incompetence with the winds of malice in the background. There is no actual plan to "make America great again", it's non-stop incompetent pandering to a base that just wants others to suffer.
This has been termed "sane washing" and is extremely irritating: smart media people reverse engineering a vaguely plausible logic from the regime's actions when on closer inspection they never gave said logic as their reasoning.
> What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision
Maybe it's the "Why not inject disinfectant to beat covid" [1] for the economy. But this time nobody around him said no. (note: added around him)
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177
Loads of people are actually actively saying no. Those in power have goals that don’t comport with listening.
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It isn't the "view" that's criticized but the method to fix the problem. Just like the "injecting bleach" method.
There are other solutions to trade deficits.
To cure trade deficits imposing tariffs is rather like injecting bleach yes.
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Plenty of us knew the outcome would be catastrophic. We were outvoted by the idiots.
Also you were outvoted because the Dems didn't have a reasonable alternative. Mrs Harris was incompetent. She was a poor public speaker, which further made her look incompetent given her previous role as a prosecutor. Further, the Dems didn't offer her as part of an open primary. They forced her on everyone.
The US presently suffers from future shock and stilted political process. We need more parties and better voting options both in the HR department and the mechanical process like ranked voting.
Since both parties benefit from the status quo, we shall see no change.
My cat is a reasonable alternative to the current potus. Sometimes, the people get what they deserve.
> Further, the Dems didn't offer her as part of an open primary.
The only people promulgating this red herring would never have voted for her anyway.
> She was a poor public speaker,
Compared to Trump? A man known for his incoherent ramblings?
Agree with paragraph 2.
Paragraph 3 is a cynicism I don't yet fully buy: There are enough liberals and so-called Democrats that care about this country that perhaps they will be open to ranked-preference voting and the opening of our "political markets" to save the country.
Partial on paragraph 1. Biden should have left a lot sooner, and Harris, loyal to the president and unable/unwilling to break with him on anything of value, should not have been the "pick".
But she was and is infinitely better for this country than Trump in every manner, unless we're into accelerationism. I don't think she is incompetent. She was unwilling.
I'm really do appreciate all those on HN who comment either for or against these tariff measures by including cogent arguments and relevant facts. As against ...
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There’s been many people opposed to free trade for decades, on both sides like Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders. You can think those guys are incorrect in their analysis, but calling it “mindless” is just ridiculous.
This tariff regime is simply a “minimal viable product” aimed at the idea of reducing structural trade deficits.
My theory is that it actually has nothing to do with trade at all--why else would the story changes so much when they are asked to describe the methodology or rationale?
This is how they cut taxes without cutting taxes. They've even said as much: "We'll do this huge tax cut and revenue from tariffs will pay for it." But tariff revenue IS tax. It's just a tax on spending versus income. It's quite clever because a tax on spending disproportionately impacts the poor and the middle class (who spend a much higher percentage of their income).
Yes and: IIRC, their intent is to bolster the US dollar as the reserve currency.
Not that I understand it, cuz am noob:
Admin thinks US dollar is too strong. So they want to devalue it. Which will then trigger a sell off of US Treasuries, further devaluing the US dollar.
I have no idea if this is the Admin's actual plan, the merit of such a plan, or if there's any realistic hope for achieving the intended outcome.
If any one can make any of this make sense, please chime in. TIA.
Devaluing the currency is a standard approach to encouraging an export-oriented economy. See China and Japan.
Sanders might impose tariffs, but he would be smart enough to realize that if trade deficits need to be reduced what matters is reducing the deficit on the aggregate trade, not reducing the deficits individually with each trade partner.
Trump is treating each country as a separate issue and wants to reduce the deficits with each of them. That's completely stupid because even if every country got rid of all trade barriers and protectionism there would still be deficits with some countries and surpluses with others because different countries need to import different things.
For example say country A needs some natural resource that they have no domestic supply of, so they import that from country B. A uses that to produce goods for their own use and for export.
Country B's biggest need is some other resource that they lack, so they use the money they get from selling their resource to A to buy the resource they need from C.
In this scenario A runs a trade deficit with B and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.
The whole freaking point of money is to make it so you can trade for goods without having to have goods of your own that the other party wants.
In economic terms, its a transfer from consumers of cheap goods to producers.
Just posting something doesn't make it true. Don't be disingenuous by making it seems like Sanders supports this idiotic "plan" just because he spoke out in favor of certain tariffs or against parts of free trade in the past.
In fact he called these tariffs along with Trump's plan to cut taxes on he wealthy an absurd transfer of wealth:
> Trump's absurd idea to replace the income tax with a sales tax on imported goods would be the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history. If enacted, taxes would go up by over $5,000 a year for a middle class family, while those in the top 0.1% would get a $1.5 million tax break.
https://xcancel.com/BernieSanders/status/1850933809384137106
And Trump's economic plan "insane"
> https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-...
Many agree, most polls have Trump far underwater in his handling of the economy.
> Respondents gave Trump poor marks for his handling of the economy, which 37% approved of, with 30% approving of his work to address the high cost of living, an issue that also dogged Biden.
https://www.reuters.com/default/trump-approval-falls-43-lowe...
Sanders was a protectionist until it became seen as treasonous in Democrat circles: https://sandersinstitute.org/event/rep-bernie-sanders-oppose...
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> What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision.
It is. This is being done as part of a plan, with full intent.
I wonder how much more evidence American people need to see Trump for being a Russian asset and working against US interests.
We are in treason territory.
People that support him don't care about evidence. It's a cult following.
Authorities focused on "classic" terrorism when monitoring online content and propaganda and got completely blindsided by the take over of the media.
I find it particularly interesting how many popular US media people disseminate provably false Kremlin propaganda, as if someone flipped a switch.
Fascinating times.
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You could not have designed a more effective version of a “Manchurian Candidate” in my opinion.
In fact, this administration has been so effective and brazen that if you were to try and write this as fiction, the scope and scale of what is occurring would be deemed unbelievable and would require toning down for the audience.
>and working against US interests.
>We are in treason territory.
Are we just going to start throwing "treason" accusations whenever a political opponent does the wrong thing? Being anti-free trade? Hurts US hegemony and makes US consumers pay more. Treason. Being pro-free trade? Sells out hard working americans while enriching corporations. Treason.
Propaganda and lead poisoning did a number here.
It's the perfect storm.
I don't see an end to this
The best thing about your comment is you could be referring to Trump, or the GP. 9 out of 10 people who read your comment will say "hell yeah" and think you agree with them whether you do or not.
Brilliant.
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Well, enough of some Americans elected a convicted felon to the Oval Office, so...
Russia noticeably absent from the global and per-country tariffs
Trump is allegedly planning on sanctions against Russia if they do not agree to his peace plan.
Trump just added some additional sanctions on Russia for helping the Houthis.
Sanctions seem worse than tariffs to me, but I'm not an expert.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sanctions-russia-based-n...
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Sure you can wrap it in fancy words, but most people who understand tariffs can see it for what it is.
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You're using "whataboutism" to point fingers and say one side is worse because of this or that. I could do the same thing and say Hillary's emails don't matter because Mike Waltz is out there using Gmail to conduct official business. https://www.axios.com/2025/04/01/mike-waltz-signal-gmail-sec...
To solve this we will all have to come together and accept that nobody on either side of American Politics are on the side of the working class. Instead of pointing fingers at democrats or republicans it is beyond time for us as Americans to come together and vote in people that will work for us as a collective regardless of what political affiliations they have.
> This combined with her running her own mail server and sending government emails through it should have landed her at least in jail for a couple of years.
I'm guessing you're cool with the current regime's handling of sensitive information, yeah?
> But lets focus on someone trying to avoid war with Russia at all costs and attempting to make peace.
So instead you want to give Putin the population of Ukraine to send in to get slaughtered as soldiers for his next invasion, and also send in Americans to get killed in Canada, Mexico, and/or Greenland? A++ very peaceful no notes.
See, that's what a 2-parties system does to one's brain. Trump can be bad, and many other things can be bad at the same time, without causation. If that's enough to distract from the bigger picture, you do not qualify as a voter.
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You are spreading disinformation. The FBI investigations into Russia collusion were separate from Mueller's special counsel investigations, Mueller's work did not refer to the Steele Dossier at all.
https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigati...
Mueller's key findings include
- Uncovering extensive criminal activity on the part of Trump associates
- that Russia engaged in extensive attacks on the US election system in 2016
- that there were numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign
- that there were multiple episodes in which Trump engaged in deliberate obstruction during the investigation
If you are taking Trump's "no collusion, complete exoneration" at his word, understand that he was lying. The report literally used the phrase "does not exonerate", and the only reason Trump was not indicted was because of the DOJ policy that you can't indict a sitting president.
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Without the Steele dossier, "Krasnov" has seen lots of attention. Now stir that with the absolute bizarro behavior of Trump around Russia/Putin.
There may not be hard evidence of a fire, but there is so much smoke I choke on it.
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On the Sam Harris podcast you can listen to a great interview with Anne Applebaum that goes in to some detail about the relationship between various US and RU politicians. There's a lot more to it than the Steele dossier.
I can fully understand how people on both the left and the right could have ideological differences with Trump, how they can hate the way he interacts with people, think he's picking unqualified cronies for high level jobs, etc. I disagree with the last one but I can at least see how a reasonable person would get to that conclusion.
"Trump is committing treason because he is instituting tariffs" or "Trump is a Russian asset" is not a position any reasonably intelligent person can come to without being blinded by partisanship. It's simply not a serious position to have.
At least some of his appointments make perfect sense as well (Tulsi, RFK, Bhattacharya)
If Trump were a Russian asset, what could he possibly do to advance their interests more than what he is already doing? Hell, he is running Putin's playbook on Canada and Greenland. Did you vote for that?
NATO is already over because none of our allies can expect Trump to honor our treaty obligations.
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> What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind of thoughtful decision.
I'm afraid it is. An unholy coalition of capitalist-anarchists and ultra-conservatives is the driving force behind it. They both want to reduce the influence of the government to a level as small as possible. That can only be done by dismantling the current federal government.
Dismantling the federal government by massively increasing the role of government in trade and imposing the biggest tax increase in a century?
That doesn't sound right...
The next step is to cut income tax for under $150k/yr earners. Tariffs raise prices by 20%, tax cuts let you keep 20% more earnings.
This would make the federal government dependent on tariff income, and, as the theory goes, diminish the funds the government has as American industry grows to avoid tariffs.
Probably not going to work out as it is only a first order effect view, but that is the idea they are chasing.
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The GP didn't say the people pushing this were smart or intellectually honest.
Think of it like when you take a car apart and now it's taking up more of the garage then when it was together.
That's what really blows my mind. Growing up as Reagan Republican. When did Republicans go from law-and-order, to anarchists?
Traditionally anarchism is a left-liberal idea. Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
> Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
This is a very strange view of it. Anarchism is extremely far from liberalism. "Anarcho-capitalists" are more or less just extreme libertarians, they share no history or ideology with any other anarchist movements, no other anarchist movements recognize them as anarchists.
The far left and the far right are not the same either where do you even get that! A far left party in the american context is something like democratic socialism, or sure why not actual marxist-leninism. While the far right is proud boys, groypers, literal neonazis, christian integrationists. You may have equal distaste for both but that doesn't mean they share anything else.
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Anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists. They share no history or ideology with any of the other variants of anarchism.
They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
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Reagan’s administration was very corrupt. So that law and order evidently didn’t apply to them. It was also very profligate. So that fiscal conservatism didn’t apply to them. I don’t see a lot of difference between the actor Ronald Reagan and the actor Donald Trump. Maybe in degree but not in kind.
I’ve been a left liberal my whole life. We haven’t gone anywhere.
It’s not “anarchism” it’s simply rolling back the bad parts of Reagan’s legacy: free trade, immigration/amnesty, and foreign empire.
When Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with Clinton, most of the liberal Reagan republicans and neocons became Democrats. What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social conservatives and business owners.
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It's because the far left and the far right are both made of up of people deeply disaffected by the status quo, and when those people talk they often find that at the very least many of their grievances overlap.
In terms of today's landscape there is a list of things like LGBTQ issues, race, gender equality, abortion, religion, etc., and if you avoid things on that list you'll find a huge overlap between the views of the far left and the far right. Both are broadly opposed to what's popularly called neoliberalism, the post-Reagan/Clinton post-cold-war order, and the reasons for this opposition overlap quite a bit if you again avoid the topics that I listed. From that perspective, blowing up the system is the goal. When they see trade policies like these crash the present system, they view that as a success because they think the current system is such a mistake that it must be smashed.
(I am not making a judgment in this post, just explaining the landscape.)
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Capitalist-anarchists are certainly opposed to tariffs - after all, tariffs are just taxes that expand government influence. Protectionism is a left-wing, big-government policy.
The goal would be dismantling the state, and hence (national) tariffs, for good. The people behind it are quite well off, and can bear the tariffs for now. And it's not just capitalist-anarchists. This is a cabal of spiteful people with different goals, but some shared ideas about the scale of government, prepared to use as much force as necessary.
> Protectionism is a left-wing, big-government policy.
It isn't left-wing. Just check the US history of protectionism. Or Germany's. Or the France's. Even the UK's. Or even simpler: look at what happened just now. How can you call Trump left-wing?
> An unholy coalition of capitalist-anarchists and ultra-conservatives is the driving force behind it.
It's called Oligarchy.
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Fair point, but America is getting rid of the parts of government that provide stability across the country and world. I don't see any major changes to the US war machine.
Shutting down USAID, cutting education, health benefits and dismantling the checks on executive power do nothing to curb what criticize. These actions actually destabilize and only give greater chance that what you dislike becomes more prevalent.
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That's why the public should demand their politicians to choose a better path for them and not fall for “we need to destroy the enemy”. When you close your eyes to your country's foreign “misbehaviours” (put it lightly) don't feel shocked when that comes back to you.
When you dismantle a government, which does include judiciary/legislative powers, who is gonna counterweight the executive branch?
You spend too much time listening to "experts" on TikTok.
The clearest evidence of incompetence for all to see is Trump's cabinet from his first term. If they're actively speaking out against him, something is seriously wrong.
> Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined,’ ‘doesn’t like to read' and tries to do illegal things
Sadly, people didn't vote for Trump so much as they voted for "anti-woke." Or: I am tired of being looked down on and this is my revenge.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-doge-false-claim-bill...
https://fortune.com/2025/03/13/doge-saved-federal-government...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-website-now-saved-105-billion...
https://fortune.com/2025/04/02/doge-claimed-contract-savings...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con...
Have I missed the reports of all of these people being charged with fraud?
> So many are quick to accept media narratives without questioning or verifying the facts for themselves.
> All the findings? Publicly available online.
You surely realise you are doing exactly what you criticise here? You are accepting a government propaganda narrative unquestioningly without verifying any facts.
The DOGE claims have been proven false numerous times. Get off your high horse and do some reading.
Nice opinion.
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