Comment by formerly_proven
7 days ago
It's pretty hard as an indicator to miss this, considering that it's one of the very rare times a government loudly and proudly declares it's going to intentionally cause a recession.
7 days ago
It's pretty hard as an indicator to miss this, considering that it's one of the very rare times a government loudly and proudly declares it's going to intentionally cause a recession.
A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas.
To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
It’s also eye-opening to watch so many people in my extended family and social network cheer on DOGE and tariffs right until they impact their own jobs. Lot of people out there didn’t connect the dots about how their own jobs were going to be impacted by tariffs.
> Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
Again, these workers don't have jobs. When the John Deere factory closes down in your town and moves to Mexico, tariffs sound good even if it's just to punish such companies and the abuse of their workers.
If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life. Factories may even return, and your life may improve. It's better than just accepting your situation.
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It does matter if things get worse and it's very uncaring to say otherwise. The import taxes are going to make wealth inequality much worse and significantly hurt not just almost all American's but large swathes of the world too.
The unemployment rate is near historic lows. Apparently there’s plenty of jobs going round.
Not that that’s going to last if actual economic headwinds hit the economy.
labour participation rate is the number you want to be looking at - unemployment excludes people who have given up looking
anectdotally, you dont see people dropping out of universities en masse because businesses are desperate for workers and willing to make it worth students while to put off or skip the education.
you see that in and out in tech/software dev, but not across industries
You believe the official government unemployment numbers?
That's kind of like saying you believe the official government inflation numbers.
> A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas
A lot of us were also in the market before the pandemic (aka before 4 years ago), so we remain in the green.
Personally, it's a win-win.
1. Based on past tariff action, the current tariffs will not be repealed by any future administration - there is plenty of harsh feelings amongst some of us Dems who were IRA adjacent to France and Germany's lobbying against the Green New Deal and calling it "protectionism".
2. This plus DOGE has caused short term pain as reflected in the NY by-elections leading to Stefanik's nomination to the UN being pulled.
3. Those of us with some sympathy for economic nationalism but don't caucus GOP have been vindicated, but have a messaging tool now as well.
4. We can finally take the UAW and ILA national leadership behind a shed and pull a metaphorical old yeller. There's no point trying to make peace with National when much of their local leadership leans GOP. Makes it easier to concentrate on AZ, NV, and GA - states where the demographic and union makeup is completely orthogonal to the UAW and ILA's cadre. Makes it easier to help the AFL-CIO as well.
5. Sullivan and Raimondo's doctrine has been vindicated. Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, and India have now been made much more cost competitive than China or transshipment via Vietnam or Thailand - either you reduce transshipment from China or your competitors in apparel, textiles, and electronics are subsidized. Vietnam already has sent their Dy PM to negotiate as we speak to reduce tariffs.
Europe also has no option but to diversify away from China as well. Either you fund a state selling intermediate parts to Russia in Ukraine, or start building domestic defense and industrial capabilities like that which existed before the 2000s (which they are now doing).
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Already, some of my peers from my previous life have started testing the waters for a Dem equivalent of the Tea Party. Lot of realignment coming in the next 2 election cycles.
curious what the Dem equivalent of the tea party means? Does that mean a libertarian streak before populist takeover, or is that meant more in terms of a critical voting block to extract concessions?
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Plenty of his supporters are SMB owners or people that work in trades/factories. This is not a revolution of the indigent. What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General. These people have no class awareness and they voted in a representative of the ultra wealthy intent on pillaging our economy. Some may believe that Trump will usher in some era of economic prosperity but they are wrong.
On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
> What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General.
More people making under 50K per year voted for Trump in 2024 than voted for Harris.
Your numbers are off.
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> On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
Not so implicit, "I will be your retribution".
And this part is very much a normal Republican position. The realisation that Americans will vote for a policy which hurts them so long as it's positioned as hurting the people they hate was key to Republican success.
"Nobody gets kicked in the head" loses in American politics if it's up against "Everybody gets kicked in the head, yes those awful people you don't like will get kicked in the head"
And when your implementation "accidentally" forgets to kick the wealthy in the head? Well the important thing is you kicked people in the head - you're not one of those scum who don't want to kick the awful people in the head.
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> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Yet.
Things can always get ~~worst~~ worse.
If people don't want things to continue to deteriorate, then the economic disenfranchisement of the American working class must be put to a stop. It's really pretty simple.
Things cannot get worst because they can always get worse.
Agreed, Glenn Greenwald of all people had it pegged 8.5 years ago when Trump first won and with Brexit:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... https://archive.ph/tfd39
I guess Vincent Bevins has the money quote:
> Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”
The problem is that the actual solution is taxes and redistribution but if you try that, they’ll lynch you (the very people who would benefit most from it). Better to have weird Trumponomics than that.
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All the voters did is allow the elites in rich countries to buy the rest of the country on the cheap once the American economy crashes and burns.
They don’t have to own stocks. If they like eating and buying household goods then this will affect them negatively. It will help very few people for a long time, even if it goes perfectly to plan.
I’d be extremely surprised if other countries meekly do what Trump wants. There are many options on the table, and change is more likely in a crisis.
> To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Really? How do you even know that? You think another round of price hikes within the year is unimaginable, which what the economic consensus on immediate tariffs this high predicts?
The unemployment rate is 4%. The amount of liberation day tariff supporters is an order of magnitude higher than that. Pretending that things can't get worse is dangerous and stupid.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable
Horseshit. The most fervent Trump supporters are upper-middle class professionals who are bored with their lives. Hence the frequent boat parades for Trump. It's why the huge, expensive trucks are the ones flying the Trump flags. And practically all of them have 401ks, which means they are at least indirectly invested in stocks.
That may be your lived experience, but it doesn't match the data.[1]
The working class is shifting to Trump because his rhetoric matches what they want to see: trade restrictions, protections on domestic labor, and the return of good/stable manufacturing jobs.
Trump is almost certainly not the best representation of the American worker, but he's winning because he, at least, tells them what they want to hear.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183060/why-working-cla...
> every economic headwind imaginable.
Freaking what? Are they food insecure? Facing a military onslaught. Come on.
The local food bank I donate to sends out a quarterly newsletter and the number of families it serves has more than quadrupled since 2020.
I think this is the primary reason the Democrats have been losing, clearly voters are feeling economic hardship in a big way, and ignoring it or belittling the point is what lost voters.
We can't focus on social issues when the hierarchy of needs isn't being met.
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This is quite an anti-worker comment.
"They still have cereal and fast food and they're not getting shot so they're fine." LOL.
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Its a perspective thing. I saw an interview a couple weeks ago of a man in his 30s saying he finished high school and couldn't find a warehouse job like his father did and had been working odd jobs ever since.
To my parents that was an unacceptable thing, had I finished high school and not done college (or some vocational school) I'm sure they would have kicked me out of their place. So not continuing my education was never an option, I had to, because from their perspective that was the only way.
This other dude never had this, his dad worked an warehouse job at some big box store more likely, went up the chain there and made a decent living for his family. The expectation for the family was that if their kids had done the same, it would have been fine, he said his father never even finished high school, but that isn't reality anymore for most people and I don't think this has been a culturally set reality in the US.
People were very much still expecting this would continue to be a thing but its very hard for you to do that in a place where there is very little manufacture and with so much tech taking over brick and mortar stores.
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I don't think the parent is seriously describing these people as actually facing every economic headwind, but is instead pointing out the lack of imagination on the part of the people supporting this policy.
Not OP, but a) "to them", and b) I would add that they are being nudged - ever so slightly - to believe in an exaggeration of the facts.
Are they food insecure?
You'll have been quoted on thirty different subreddits by the end of the week. This is hilariously tone deaf to the hardships many are facing.
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sources? I can't find any Trump official that is claiming they are trying to intentionally cause a recession.
"minimum 10% tariff on all imported goods and materials" certainly sounds like a way to increase costs.
Increasing costs seems generally worse for an economy than decreasing costs.
I feel like most people could follow this logical chain of reasoning to a conclusion of "thus you have a elevated risk for an economic recession compared to the state of affairs before the tariffs."
I haven't announced I would post here therefore this post you are reading does not exist.
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-china...
Or as Lord Farquaad put it: "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kaboom-elon-musk-predicts-...
From five days before the election...
https://www.vox.com/politics/381637/elon-musk-donald-trump-2...
“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit - there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…Market will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy.”
Musk replied, “Sounds about right.”
They have been told many times and have stated that they accept that as a consequence.
Does he need to say the word recession? How direct does he need to be?
https://time.com/7266187/trump-recession-tariffs-us-economy-...
There's a theory going around that the administration wants to crash the market so they can buy everything up for cheap, in a similar way to what happened in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
At the same time though it seems like the current president has always been pro tariffs even though they are almost always bad for a economy, the reason why the admin is applying a lot more of them is because almost everyone left in the admin's circle is a yes men.
not buy up everything, but make US national debt servicing cheaper once the interest rates go down (and recession will bring them down).
I highly doubt the current administration can play that kind of 3d chess. Just simple populism.