Best Of

Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor says “Any discussion of recession seems silly” whilst noting, practically in the same breath, how great it was that oil prices are falling. Like the 2 are unconnected.

This is not going to end well

Peter Navarro is - and has always been - an idiot.

He represented the steel companies in the fight under the Bush administration to get tariffs imposed on steel imports.

The result of the tariffs was a marginal increase in employment (like 1,000 jobs) in the steel industry, and a loss of 100x that in steel consuming industries.

You know: there are many ways one could implement tariffs in a way that maximized the likelihood of increasing US manufacturing employment and production.

There are ways you could implement tariffs in a way that maximized the US's negotiating power.

But what the Trump administration has implemented hammers US firms that have foreign components anywhere in their supply chain. And because it is so dumb, no one believes that the tariffs will last, so no one is going to onshore production.

For economic idiocy, the current US government takes some beating.

I didn’t follow the news around what Trump said he was going to do regarding tariffs, but if it was known that he intended to hit every country with them, why didn’t the world and his wife short the companies that were likely to be affected, o as well as the FTSE etc?

I don't think even the pessimists expected anything quite as bananas as what Trump came up with.
And the "I regard any trade deficit as a loss" is so batshit it makes any realistic negotiation with him impossible.

A 10% tariff across the board, for example, might have encouraged, over time, onshoring of production at the margin, and would have raised a shitload of tax, while provoking only a fraction of the current response.
While a lot of people (including me) would have argued against it, it wouldn't have been regarded as utterly irrational.

As it is, we're dealing with a man who has completely lost what little sense he had.

(FWIW, I did actually predict that he might crater the world economy with tariffs, before the election.
Which was labelled TDS by some.)

Oh indeed:

The real Trump Derangement Sydrome, it turns out, was thinking that he wouldn't act in a batshit crazy way.

We knew Trump was going to surprise on the downside the minute our Leon started wibbling on about precisely the opposite.

I didn’t follow the news around what Trump said he was going to do regarding tariffs, but if it was known that he intended to hit every country with them, why didn’t the world and his wife short the companies that were likely to be affected, o as well as the FTSE etc?

I don't think even the pessimists expected anything quite as bananas as what Trump came up with.
And the "I regard any trade deficit as a loss" is so batshit it makes any realistic negotiation with him impossible.

A 10% tariff across the board, for example, might have encouraged, over time, onshoring of production at the margin, and would have raised a shitload of tax, while provoking only a fraction of the current response.
While a lot of people (including me) would have argued against it, it wouldn't have been regarded as utterly irrational.

As it is, we're dealing with a man who has completely lost what little sense he had.

(FWIW, I did actually predict that he might crater the world economy with tariffs, before the election.
Which was labelled TDS by some.)

I didn’t follow the news around what Trump said he was going to do regarding tariffs, but if it was known that he intended to hit every country with them, why didn’t the world and his wife short the companies that were likely to be affected, o as well as the FTSE etc?

I don't think even the pessimists expected anything quite as bananas as what Trump came up with.
And the "I regard any trade deficit as a loss" is so batshit it makes any realistic negotiation with him impossible.

A 10% tariff across the board, for example, might have encouraged, over time, onshoring of production at the margin, and would have raised a shitload of tax, while provoking only a fraction of the current response.
While a lot of people (including me) would have argued against it, it wouldn't have been regarded as utterly irrational.

As it is, we're dealing with a man who has completely lost what little sense he had.

(FWIW, I did actually predict that he might crater the world economy with tariffs, before the election.
Which was labelled TDS by some.)

Oh indeed:

The real Trump Derangement Sydrome, it turns out, was thinking that he wouldn't act in a batshit crazy way.

This week is key. It appears that the trade war is heating up, not cooling down. MAGA claims to have dozens of countries now negotiating with the US. Really? And a negotiation that will go to the US position?

America voted for this. I hope they enjoy Gilead. Because we know where this is going. The US vs ROW trade war makes Murica even more insulated. One of the free speech things they are trying to ram down our throats is the "christian" right funding anti-Abortion campaigners here. As the US closes its borders to the world, with illegal aliens being rounded up out of their homes and workplaces, the womenfolk are next.

As the rout continues this week I hope that global consumers apply even more pressure as Canadian ones have done.

The war on women has been going on for some time now.

There's no reasoning with economic illiterates like Trump. The deficit he complains about would disappear if we all stopped buying US goods. So we'd better get on with doing just that and rebuild a trading area that ignores the US.

As for US people who have lost money I couldn't care less about them, They voted for this nonsense. I didn't and have lost out. So no to any trade deal with an untrustworthy country intent on causing harm.

Donald vs. Devon: lady in the local garage as I was paying for fuel.

"Oh - I'm not sure we should be buying American Coca Cola now should we?"

She put it back.

This Trumpy thing has cut through to loads of people in the UK who take no interest in news, don't engage at all with politics, and especially take no interest in news or politics in abroadland. There are millions of these.

I think a precipitating feature is the threat to Canada. Non political types like Canada. They know someone who has an aunt there. It is an icon of harmlessness and generalised decency.

More locally, in Cumbria, where I have lived for decades, there is a strong quiet aversion to people who big themselves up and draw attention to themselves. Trump scores a bit sub-optimally there too. He is begining to get a quiet mention here and there as not altogether a satisfactory person. It's even been mentioned in church, ('he isn't always very nice is he?') though not yet to the extent of knocking the coffee rota off prime spot.