Retailers will soon have only about 7 weeks of full inventories left

The biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker. People in the US will need to buy less shit, and pay more for what they do buy. People in China will need to work fewer hours and bring home less money.

Of course, the situation is fractal and ridden with unknowns. But I think a lot of people have this view of China as being a young slick economic powerhouse and the US being a weak economy with old decrepit money pile. That's far from the truth.

It's funny that I saw more and more opinions that Chinese will win the trade war by shopping and eating out more.

Let's look at car head-lights. These are highly integrated components, designed and manufactured by third parties using tools made by forth parties with the knowledge not in the hands of the car manufacturer. Swapping them may well need re-designs and re-certification. Hard to put an estimate on the overall process but it won't be quick.

And last but not least how is new business attracted: The rule of law makes a country safe for an inherrently very risky process of overseas investments. Expats are critical resources for knowledge ramp-up and managing the first years. Billionairs with a seat on Trumps table may not care so much about the rule of law but SME business do. Expats who may move with their family need to be able to rely on visa, green cards and travel being safe. The opposite of what is needed to attract business is done as far as one can see from afar.

A trade war with no clear path for winning started from a position of weakness.

Only chickenhawks that dodged the draft

> The US has benefitted for a couple generations by being the reserve currency, meaning that we can make big mistakes and not suffer for them, while any other country would suffer. This coming trade war, if it actually happens, may finally break this exceptional status.

Very doubtful. The main danger is lack of fortitude with continuing and enforcing policies, and letting ideological battles get the best of the Trump administration for cutting good and fair deals with the EU and others. You're welcome to invest in Chinese, Russian, or whatever capital markets, though.

But they did not, though. Nobody gave any argument about why it needed to be done now instead of in 6 months or a year. We can speculate all we want, but the overwhelming evidence points to recklessness and stupidity.

Dugin envisions the fall of China. The People's Republic of China, which represents an extreme geopolitical danger as an ideological enemy to the independent Russian Federation, "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled". Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet–Xinjiang–Inner Mongolia–Manchuria as a security belt.[1] Russia should offer China help "in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam, whose people is already pro-Russia), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia" as geopolitical compensation.[9] Russia should manipulate Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan and provoking anti-Americanism, to "be a friend of Japan".[9] Mongolia should be absorbed into the Eurasian sphere.[9] The book emphasizes that Russia must spread geopolitical anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

You're going to start a hot war with China demanding....what? That they reload the container ships with Shein clothing?

[1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/29/mr-art-of-the-deal-str...

I am firmly of the opinion that his only goal is the be the center of attention, and the more outrageous the things he does are, the better. Ie, there's no such thing as negative publicity.

Is it the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Or is it the rescinding of those tariffs a day later. Or is it the pause but when the pause was supposed to end nothing really changed?

Or is it the liberation day tariffs on everyone? Or the subsequent reduction of liberation day tariffs a few days later but an increase in tariffs against China.

Or is the “it” the fact that the administration reveals these major market moving actions a few hours before making them public to friends, family and donors?

Once anyone can figure out what “it” is supposed to be one can have a discussion about whether it’s good or not.

Testing tariffs in realtime is nothing like, say, fuzzing idempotent methods in a framework.

It is a lot more like testing sending out spam from a set of static IP addresses. It's not just that you could fail-- it's that you could end up fucking up those IP's ability to send email into the foreseeable future.

Yes, you can argue that [person] is [performing an action] because they believe, from their POV that [reason1, reason2, reason3].

> Or does [what person believes] not matter when they act upon it?

Yes.

What people choose to believe is distinct from fundamental baseline reality.

Let me put it another way for you; if I believe that fairies have invaded from space and I go out smashing peoples cars because, I personally, believe that this will make the fairies go home…

…does it help to argue about whether I believe in fairies or not?

It does not.

The arguement must be about whether fairies exist in baseline reality or not.

What I believe is not a point worth discussing.

…so, to take a step back to your argument:

Does he believe this will help? Who. Gives. A. Flying. Truck? Does it matter what he believes? Can we speculate what he thinks? It’s a useless and meaningless exercise and a logical fallacy; because anything can be justified if the only criteria are “you believe it will work”.

The discussion worth having is, in baseline reality, will it actually help?

Which is what the post you are replying to is addressing; but instead or following that up, you’ve moved this discussion into a meaningless sub thread of unprovable points about what people may or may not believe.

Which is why you’ve received my downvote.

This seems completely wrong and ascribes motivations to Trump he clearly doesn't have. I think his framing is much more "everything I do is correct therefore this will work." Everything he does makes sense when framed that way.

This is a sufficient question, and sufficient answer for a meager understanding of how economies work.

For the kind of place America is, with the kind of intellectual, economic, and procedural fire power it holds?

Again, he isn't President of some backwater, and he isn't lacking for advisors, to give even more sophisticated analyses than what any Econ 101 student can do.

And now, to your own point:

> he tries [even just being president] will be fought,

by who? the Repubs have all 3 branches. Thank god, otherwise people would spend another decade ignoring the obvious and blaming forces other than Trump and Trumpism for Trump's actions.

---

The emperor has no clothes. Everything else, is people projecting from past Presidents upon the tableau they see.

He could do it the right way, if he wanted to.

Presidents do typically get a pass during the first 100 days, and they do try to fit in as much as possible before inertia bogs down whatever they are trying to do.

I've heard the same said about Roosevelt (FDR). That he came in and made radical changes, defied courts, upset the norms, etc...

The problem is that the current president is going a bit more 'radical' than anybody has experienced since, lets say late 30's Germany. Like the executive order to send military equipment to the police to, lets say, 'quell dissent'.

So even thought Presidents do make big moves in the first 100 days, this is so far beyond norms, that saying it is "just typical of presidents in first 100 days" is really downplaying what is happening.

The fact that the MAGAts are so utterly incompetent that even the idea of opposition sends them into chaos and whining fits while they control the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government is itself supportive of if the "these morons are too stupid to make a plan" type theories. Instead of planning they attacked anyone who asked how they would handle the obvious consequences, they deny that the obvious consequences that are clearly happening are actually happening. They attack anyone asking for metrics that the plan is working, make unbacked claims that they are in talks to fix the situation that caused the trade war (while refusing to even articulate what the goals are and attacking anyone who asks that too). They aren't even communicating with each other to coordinate something that looks like a plan: how many times have one group of lackeys been talking about plan X while another group or the president himself does the opposite to the surprise of everyone.

There is no evidence that one of the key bullet points of a campaign platform was ever more than a bullet point - no plan, no attempt to prepare for consequences, nothing indicative of a plan at all. They truly believed that imposing tarrifs would magically make factories appear overnight.

edit: The pro trump voting bloc showed up. Comment went from +2 to -3 in a minute. This chain will probably be flagged to death within the hour.

Normally someone makes a case and tries to sell it to the public, congress. What's the purpose of tariffs to bring in income or to bring back jobs or to level trade agreements? You can't do all things at once and how does that work with other promises like lower prices. The lack of an overall plan is causing the issue.

If you take immigration he has a plan and he stuck to it and those are where his highest approval numbers are. Imagine he one day opens the border another day closes it starts kicking out American families the next day invites the world back in. That's his trade policy.

Get a solid plan, understand the downsides and if you can live with it stick with it and keep the personal insults out.

The Brenner tunnel is part of an EU-wide transport network called TEN, planned and built since he nineties. It hasn't taken 30 years because of delays, but rather because it required planning far ahead and a lot of execution.

Are you sure? People often claim this, but don't follow through. There's even an expression, "fair weather fan".

It's true some people seem to support some political parties beyond all reason. But to keep the support through personal hardship is different, and hasn't been tested as often. Worldwide, nothing particular to US.

It wasn't because they're ontologically evil. It's because order is a very delicate thing. As we've seen, it's incredibly easy to espouse reactionary sentiments and get a lot of people supporting things out of misplaced fear.

If for example you're trying to build a social/political project based on dialectical materialism, a particularly enigmatic liar is like a fire in a barn. You can't "Marketplace of ideas" your way out of a liar who serves to benefit off their lies.

So what do you do? You throw them in the gulag, shoot em, put them to work, put them into reeducation. One liar isn't worth sacrificing the project as a whole.

Cuba reached near 100% literacy, eradicated parasites in children, and took the mob bosses who ran the country out of power. Of course they had to show no mercy to the bay-of-pigs types. The people who benefited when children had feet full of worms and the laborers couldn't read. They were a fire hazard.

That will only intensify if his policies go and tube the economy; the reason he got re-elected was because enough people wanted the 2019 economy back and thought his policies would do it better than Harris's.

Along with more conventional and familiar ideas, I like to toss in the occasional radical one like "abolish the senate" to stretch people's minds a little.

Opinions on the filibuster are often also time dependent. If the person's preferred party has a majority in the Senate, then the filibuster is called an evil relic of the past that should be removed. If the other party has a majority, the filibuster is a sacred part of democracy and must not be touched.

If you had open system (not one or two-party system) there would be more than three parties.

Do not imply that both parties are the same on this. That is factually incorrect and Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated an interest in improving democracy.

The GOP, on the other hand, is cheering Trump on as he arrests judges and ignores due process.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/de...

I'd rather use the scientific method: make predictions, let the experiment run, and compare to the results. Predicting that the national debt ceiling will be raised or removed, taxes cut, labor unions attacked, and "elites" not correcting anything or being heroes.

No, all of these business rely on percentage margins to stay cashflow positive, not absolute revenue. It's possible that a few companies will absorb a small amount of the percentage, and result in it costing 2200 or something, but the tariff is not like VAT, it won't get "tacked on at the end", because each step in the chain depends on economies of scale that in turn depend on demand that are sensitive to price. Price going up decreases sales, which incurs additional overhead per sale, etc. Businesses are not going to give up their net margin for free, they'll only do it if it's the least bad way to address the shortfall of sales as a result of price increases.

this is in indication you live in a bubble

I know plenty of people that were watching the clock

some were very unhappy, some were jubilant, but most were completely indifferent

Your parallel to ag is a good one: it's something we need to be here, and we wisely embraced automation to ensure 1. we could do it even in wartime, when our male population is needed elsewhere, and 2. that we could produce in a way that cost little for the average consumer and the export market. We need the same thing to happen here.

I mentioned the "factory jobs aren't coming back" point more because Trump is playing hard to a rust-belt base that wants those jobs back, doing this in some ways as a hand-out.

You'll notice that hospitals are the largest component. Physicans and clinics are also substantial. Insurance costs fall under "Other health", which includes "spending on durable and non-durable products; residential and personal care; administration; net health insurance; and other state, private, and federal expenditures."

Drug costs, the other frequent alleged cause, are even smaller, representing less than a tenth of expenditures.

Then go look at the finances of those who take in insurance money.

Trust me, it's _very_ (read: very) clear who holds all the bargaining power in the healthcare market. People target their anger at insurance companies because that is who they pay. "My healthcare provider is good and my health insurance is evil" is exactly backwards. You are not the one paying $400 for your "I have a head cold" virtual visit.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/insurance-companies-arent-the-...

I agree that paying workers well is a good thing; I like that the advanced mfg model still allows people to give good salaries. But, I don't see how it's strongly tied to the issue of tariff policy in terms of economic outcomes.

- $1.53B for expansion of small unmanned surface vessel production.

- $1.8B for expansion of medium unmanned surface vessel production.

- $1.3B for expansion of unmanned underwater production.

- $188mm for development and testing of maritime robotic autonomous systems and enabling technologies.

- $174mm for the development of a Test Resource Management Center robotic autonomous systems proving ground.

- $250mm for development, production, and integration of wave-powered unmanned underwater vehicles.

Perhaps less-safe seas will mean it's better to on-shore, but we do seem to be focused on keeping them secure. If nothing else, while America is more capable of autarky than most, we still pull a lot of critical minerals and other feedstocks from other places.

The healthcare debate is really complicated. We do spend a ton, but we also demand an extraordinarily high standard of care. We don't tend to deny people anything and waitlists are very rare. Now while a universal healthcare policy is doable, a lot of Americans would demand some level of additional private care, which means net healthcare spending might rise between the two systems.

I tend to hear arguments for universal healthcare like "negotiating drug prices". While that could save some money, we spend less than one-tenth of total dollars on prescription drugs. Hospitals are still the largest chunk at ~30%, and I'm unsure how universal care would realistically save us money there. Doctors/clinics are about 20%, and I don't see obvious savings there, either. "Other health" is opaque but there's potential for savings here; it includes "durable and non-durable products, residential and personal care, net health insurance, and other state, private, and federal expenditures."

This is a very hard problem to solve, and is compounded by the fact that we have an incredibly unhealthy population. I also hesitate to attribute this to "lack of care": obesity is massively comorbid with heart disease (the leading cause of death in most states), diabetes (a large ongoing drain on the health system), and end-stage renal disease (dialysis accounts for ~2% of the entire federal budget.). And yet, obesity is strongly prevalent in every income group, across men and women both.

There are people who say we have a moral obligation to give free healthcare to everyone. I don't agree, but I understand that's moral position. But I am less sure that data bear out the idea that publicizing healthcare would magically save so many dollars.

I'm not "avoiding" criticizing the rich or capitalism. I'm just not motivated by my personal morality to do so. I understand you and others are, and can respect that too, but these are two separate conversations: on one hand, what is practically right and wrong with the current policies? On the other, how ought we to act? The latter underlies the former and, if you want to criticize the former on grounds of the latter, you've got a long row to hoe. It's probably easier to segment practical discussions to one place and moral dialogue to another.

Expenditure data: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...

Obesity prevalence by income: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db50.htm

Surgeons can push the limits of better and better surgery if they can spend their entire career focused on just that. If they’re required to farm or sew clothes half of every day, they will not be able to advance surgery as far.

The same specialization-driven innovation happens between companies who can trade freely, and between countries who can trade freely. Paul Krugman won a Nobel prize for exploring this idea.

Tariffs allow otherwise more expensive domestic products to compete against cheaper products from abroad.

In and of itself, that says nothing about quality one way or another. In practice, it often means the opposite of what you suggest: domestic goods are often of higher quality, and/or are made by workers in better conditions, because of stricter laws here than in the places manufacturing has moved to. (And not by coincidence—the cheaper labor and looser laws are exactly why manufacturing moved to those places.)

Of course, all of this only applies when tariffs are carefully considered, strategically applied, and left in place for a long and predictable length of time.

These countries also were lifted from poverty and into relative prosperity by this. It looked like a win-win, under a certain angle, back in the day; the US would turn into an innovative economy producing high-tech gear, doing high-grade R&D and engineering, and producing software, all the stuff the Bangladeshi or even Chinese were not supposed to be able to do comparably well. It just turned out that the engineering and development thrive next to the actual production capacity, and can be studied and learned. Now Chinese electronic engineering rivals that of the US, same for mechanical, shipbuilding, even aircraft / space and weapons.

A similar thing once happened to Japan, then to South Korea: they turned from postwar ruins and poverty into high-tech giants competing successfully with the US by exporting inexpensive, good-quality stuff to the US. But these are politically aligned with the US and the West in general; places like Bangladesh or Vietnam, not so much, and China expressly is not.

I think we should do pretty much exactly what China does:

1.) you want to sell a product to the US? You have to produce it here and the facility must be partially owned by a US company. Also you must transfer IP.

2.) Since we can't get away with massive forced and/or slave labor (legally), then create a new visa class for temporary workers that is excluded from minimum wage, worker protections, social security, etc. (yes, basically a slave class)

Once we build capacity and knowledge back, then start shift back to a more domestic workforce.

Very very nasty... but doable. The other option is to just nuke China.

(Personally, I think they got played.)

why are there are a great many democratic nations with (many) more than two parties, even with new parties arising and old parties diminishing. (I have firsthand experience with some of them. I highly recommend the experience.)

Is it wrong to 'intuit' that those nations may have a more vibrant democracy than a system of two parties that are both beholden to corporate capture?

Of course I will not be surprised at how asking this on HN will affect the scrip - oops I meant to say karma of course! - of such an inquirer as myself.

If you really want answers, best thing to do is hang out in an area dominated by Trump supporters for a few weeks. Talking to them has changed my perspective on a lot of things. I don't agree with a lot of what they say, but I understand them now. They often aren't great at articulating their thoughts. They think in terms of macro-level complex systems. I shouldn't say 'think' - more like they intuit. They feel something is wrong, and they don't necessarily know why. You have to (kindly and with curiosity) interrogate them a bunch to figure it all out.

I follow a bunch of them on X, and they seem outraged by some of what Trump is doing, particularly the pro-war stance. Hence the low poll numbers?

[Sorry I really geek out on anthropology and understanding cultures.]

To what degree relative to what we're seeing now, though?

Very free market.

When the stock market (and confidence in the U.S.) falls, people typically flock to gold and bonds. If the U.S. is seen as unstable and at risk of not making debt payments, bonds are a bad place to move money into. That leaves gold (and to a lesser extent foreign stock markets).

With crypto though- that’s a con man’s wet dream. Volatile. No government oversight. Crypto pump and dumps are literally legal (though come close to being fraud, as people like Du Kwon have learned).

I’m curious when they plan on deploying this. It specifies a 3-year schedule so you think okay is this to be signed into law in 2025 so that the IRS is abolished during the next election year, or are they going to wait a year or two and have the IRS abolishment only “trigger” if Republicans continue to control the government beyond 2028? Or perhaps they will push it through if/when Democrats retake some or all of Congress in 2026?

One thing’s for sure though, the 1% will use cryptocurrency to dodge this consumption tax and it will (as usual) disproportionately affect the lower and middle classes, who aren’t as savvy in tax fraud/evasion/“loopholes”.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/25/t...

Not true. If you have watched Shark Tank you have seen that products cost, as an example, $6 landed, but retail for $24. Tariffs are 145% of $6, so around $9. So they only have to increate the retail price from $24 to $33 to keep the same profit margin. In this example that's a 37% increase, not 145%.

Tobacco and alcohol, both of which have objective, measurable negative health outcomes supported by decades of research, versus some vague notion of "junk products" as defined by... who? And this is without even getting into the fact that the tariffs will raise the price of everything, not just these supposed "junk products."

i.e. If the price is supposed to be a lever for labor conditions, why just tax China heavily and not Bangladesh?

Why tax more fuel-efficient European cars instead of American-Built Jeep Grand Cherokees?

And if reducing plastic waste is the priority, why would Trump's day include unbanning plastic straws?

Answer: It's not actually about reducing negative externalities, it's about geopolitics, otherwise it wouldn't be so negatively weighted towards a single actor.