Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 457: Unlimited Tariff Works

(+) Yeah! (+)

Works to make your bank account empty.

https://twitter.com/orthonormalist/status/1907545265818751037?s=46

It's time for prices on literally everything to shoot up.

fun party game: where did the trade deficit/export "calculation" come from? Some WH staffer just hoping it was math-y enough to past muster if you just don't think about it or AI hallucination?

https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v

Good title, well done

Canada is a reality marble at the moment

So just wanted to do some napkin math on how our tariffs are meant to work.... Let's assume countries that trade with each other only sell 1 product per country and only buy 1 product per country...

Country A sells $60,000 of Corn to Country B

Country B sells $90,000 worth of Soybeans to Country A

Country A considers this to be a "losing" Trade Deficit so they impose a 33% Tariff on further Soybeans purchased from County B. The 33% is calculated by dividing the deficit of $30,000 by the B->A exports of $90,000.

In theory if the two countries buy the exact same amount of Corn and Soybeans the following year then Country A will still pay $90,000 and County B will still pay $60,000 resulting in the exact same 30k deficit.

But now Country A will also generate 30k in Tariff revenue that will be paid by their own importers/consumers.

So businesses in country A are still only generating 60k in sales, but now as a country they are spending 120k, of which 30k is kept by the government in collected Tariffs.

.

Does that about sum it up?

Chaeix posted...

Canada is a reality marble at the moment

I am the moose of my hockey stick
Maple is my body and Syrup is my blood

Forceful_Dragon posted...

So just wanted to do some napkin math on how our tariffs are meant to work.... Let's assume countries that trade with each other only sell 1 product per country and only buy 1 product per country...

Country A sells $60,000 of Corn to Country B

Country B sells $90,000 worth of Soybeans to Country A

Country A considers this to be a "losing" Trade Deficit so they impose a 33% Tariff on further Soybeans purchased from County B. The 33% is calculated by dividing the deficit of $30,000 by the B->A exports of $90,000.

In theory if the two countries buy the exact same amount of Corn and Soybeans the following year then Country A will still pay $90,000 and County B will still pay $60,000 resulting in the exact same 30k deficit.

But now Country A will also generate 30k in Tariff revenue that will be paid by their own importers/consumers.

So businesses in country A are still only generating 60k in sales, but now as a country they are spending 120k, of which 30k is kept by the government in collected Tariffs.

.

Does that about sum it up?

Yes this is how tarriffs work - BUT the idea supposedly is that Country B will now choose to produce more Soybeans resulting in purchasing 0 soybeans from country A in a year or 2.

You swapped the A and B, but yes, in theory domestic Soybeans in country A could become viable and they would not be a demand for the now-more-expensive Imported version.

But that's why Tariffs really only make sense to protect already established domestic industries. Not every country will produce enough of every possible product to meet their own demands.

There's just no world where a blanket punitive Tariff can do more good than harm out could make more sense than rational tariffs set to protect specific important industries

Alternative Title: Yes, it can still get worse.

It's just classic 18th century economics, before we discovered comparative advantage and that trade was actually not zero sum

How does anyone in literal 2025 think that trade is zero sum?

It checks out

https://bsky.app/profile/vfxgordon.bsky.social/post/3llv62sojcc2h

edit: what i just posted was already covered by the opening post in this topic i am blind

anyways here it is on a graph

https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1907600619420147833

As an addendum to my previous statement, I said that the youngest voters in last years presidential election had basically never experienced a Republican presidency. They were 2-5 when Obama was elected and 10-13 when Trump was first elected. You think they would have actually been paying attention to politics at such a young age?

Heck I would personally argue that the Federal prosecution of Trump during Bidens term bore a greater resemblance to the way the Nazis seized power than anything Trump has done.

shut the fuck up

NFUN posted...

shut the fuck up

just dont look, just dont look

Seanchan posted...

just dont look, just dont look

He's too much of a train wreck for me to block but good lord does that have consequences

This is a take so insane it kind of needs to be addressed.

Genuinely, if the first part of that is your argument then it applies to every president in history. In other words it is absolutely meaningless. Also people do form political opinions as children, I developed my hatred of the Tories as a child and they werent even in power except when I was very, very young. I was anti-Bush as a 12 year old. It is not that unreasonable.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Heck I would personally argue that the Federal prosecution of Trump during Bidens term bore a greater resemblance to the way the Nazis seized power than anything Trump has done.

This however is completely reprehensible, I shouldnt have to say how awful it is to say that a criminal being prosecuted is more like the Nazis than someone actually attempting a fascist coup, or a putsch if you will. This is genuinely horrible behaviour, it will get these topics banned again, and if you do anything like this again I cant speak for the other people who make these topics but from me you will get a block to stop you. Never say anything like this ever again.

You can tell LMS never goes outside and talks to people because he never realizes the kind of things he says would actually get him punched in real life.

Somebody stop the Rollercoaster. = /

Forceful_Dragon posted...

You swapped the A and B, but yes, in theory domestic Soybeans in country A could become viable and they would not be a demand for the now-more-expensive Imported version.

But that's why Tariffs really only make sense to protect already established domestic industries. Not every country will produce enough of every possible product to meet their own demands.

There's just no world where a blanket punitive Tariff can do more good than harm out could make more sense than rational tariffs set to protect specific important industries

Well yeah theres a lot of reasons we dont use them anymore because that model IS too simple

oh my god.

So the WH sent out the Deputy Press Secretary to deny the obviously-the-case claims by everyone who has analyzed the "reciprocal tariff" numbers and determined they totally just went "trade deficit/imports" to get their numbers. Press Secretary "released" a paper with a bunch of math and greek letters and claimed that was the source of their very serious calculation.

guess what their formula reduces to when you look at what the various letters stand for?

Also the, "they just asked Grok/ChatGPT to set tariffs" theory grows stronger because the very same paper states that one of the variables should be set "< 0." Then in the very next paragraph it states it sets that variable to 4.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:upfxijq6j2hbdoj34zef5xo2/post/3llvq3svxd22x

Did they fire all of the economic analysts who were telling them how stupid tariffs are?

Can't believe Lopen's global financial crash premonition is coming true so soon...

Sheep007 posted...

Did they fire all of the economic analysts who were telling them how stupid tariffs are?

Can't believe Lopen's global financial crash premonition is coming true so soon...

Reporting leading up to this was that Trump was getting annoyed at advisors begging him to dial the tariffs back and felt that listening to them in the first term had been a mistake and they were too soft then... so kinda, yeah.

Also this feels like such an obviously avoidable financial crash I hesitate to credit such a prediction because a Harris administration or even a any-Republican-except-Trump administration would not ask ChatGPT/Grok to set tariff policy so pre-election I'd say it was very much a question what would happen. If you assumed a Trump win then yeah sure we were going to have a crash because the guy told us what he was going to do and the result would be a crash - the market just kept trying to deny reality and prayed that he'd step back from the ledge like he seemed to mostly be doing with all the delays to this point. But if Trump ever did exactly what he campaigned on this was always going to be the outcome.

I personally don't think it's happening quite yet. But we're on the path.

Also I called this before Trump even heard of the word Tariff.

Lopen posted...

Also I called this before Trump even heard of the word Tariff.

1987?

I called this before Trump remembered the most recent time he'd heard of the word tariff

now that's just not fair that could have been hours ago

It has nothing to do with tariffs btw. It's overleveraged debt. Tariffs are just a pop thing to blame for it so people don't get wise to the fact that the financial system is inherently broken due to abuse and needs some liquidations to flush it.

Sheep007 posted...

Can't believe Lopen's global financial crash premonition is coming true so soon...

37th time's the charm

Also: US economy going to shit does not actually crash the whole world in this case. It actually gives them a ton of advantage and allows them to catch up to our post-covid performance.

Anyone with any competency knows to stay the hell away from anything to do with this administration.

LightningStrikes posted...

This is a take so insane it kind of needs to be addressed.

Genuinely, if the first part of that is your argument then it applies to every president in history. In other words it is absolutely meaningless. Also people do form political opinions as children, I developed my hatred of the Tories as a child and they werent even in power except when I was very, very young. I was anti-Bush as a 12 year old. It is not that unreasonable.

This however is completely reprehensible, I shouldnt have to say how awful it is to say that a criminal being prosecuted is more like the Nazis than someone actually attempting a fascist coup, or a putsch if you will. This is genuinely horrible behaviour, it will get these topics banned again, and if you do anything like this again I cant speak for the other people who make these topics but from me you will get a block to stop you. Never say anything like this ever again.

I was not judging the Democratic Party on morality, but when people have basically only known it and dont like what they experience then a federal prosecution of your primary political rival can seem pretty comparable to the Nazis banning all left-wing political parties in 1933. Sure what I said was a gross exaggeration but for someone not in the know it could easily seem like the government was trying to ban the Republican Party.

Tbh I did know about The War on Terror as a kid but I doubt someone born between 2003-2006 would be paying attention to it. Anecdotally no one can seem to remember anything that happened in Trumps first term before the pandemic, and given I couldnt either I am not surprised. There were also polls from last year indicating that most Americans remembered Trumps first term as being successful, so its clear people basically didnt remember it. Also please explain to me why Partisan Loyalty Begins at 18 is a popular theory if kids pay close attention to politics.

this is why you don't respond to it

foolm0r0n posted...

US economy going to shit does not actually crash the whole world in this case. It actually gives them a ton of advantage and allows them to catch up to our post-covid performance.

Relatively they gain but it still crashes them

It also isn't based on logic so they'll crash with full impact regardless for a time. But yes the end result is they'll be relatively better vs the US

Also I still consider this the same prediction not the 37th. My timeline was always "during the Trump presidency"

Why I don't think this is the crash is they're probably going to go back on the Tariffs pretty soon and you'll be saying "ha ha Lopen was wrong again." The first phase is densitizing people to the risk. Crash will happen after most doomers think the damage is done. No real damage has actually occurred yet.

Sheep007 posted...

Did they fire all of the economic analysts who were telling them how stupid tariffs are?

Even if they didn't, they are falling into the authoritarian's trap, which is listening to the most agreeable yes-man on difficult topics. Government is full of exploitative yes-men, but this admin puts them a the very top of the chain. They will never have a true win because not one person under Trump actually cares to give him a win, let alone give the country a win. It's all about themselves.

When BTC (the so called hedge against economic catastrophe that always moves in lockstep with it) is back at 4 digits then the crash happened btw.

foolm0r0n posted...

this is why you don't respond to it

But then LMS won't reveal that he doesn't know that US citizens start voting at age 18.

Thorn posted...

Reporting leading up to this was that Trump was getting annoyed at advisors begging him to dial the tariffs back and felt that listening to them in the first term had been a mistake and they were too soft then... so kinda, yeah.

Also this feels like such an obviously avoidable financial crash I hesitate to credit such a prediction because a Harris administration or even a any-Republican-except-Trump administration would not ask ChatGPT/Grok to set tariff policy so pre-election I'd say it was very much a question what would happen. If you assumed a Trump win then yeah sure we were going to have a crash because the guy told us what he was going to do and the result would be a crash - the market just kept trying to deny reality and prayed that he'd step back from the ledge like he seemed to mostly be doing with all the delays to this point. But if Trump ever did exactly what he campaigned on this was always going to be the outcome.

Did 2025 include stuff on tariffs? Or is this a case of the strategists losing control of their monster because it thinks it is the smartest?

Lopen posted...

When BTC (the so called hedge against economic catastrophe that always moves in lockstep with it) is back at 4 digits then the crash happened btw.

It could easily go back to 4 digits in 2018 dollars, it's crashed like that several times before. But in 2026 dollars? Basically impossible.

Easy. When you realize the banks control the price and you're not hedging against anything you'll realize it can go wherever.

Ah right, the (((banks)))

Who do you think owns most of the bitcoin

Salt of the earth good old boys like you?

mjf definitely owns some bitcoin

Do people still believe that anything other than physical commodities is a true hedge?

When the base of the ponzi scheme (the banks/elite) sell all their BTC, which is like 95% of the supply, the price will go well south of 10k. BTC is probably the worst asset to own right now because it's literally here to be collateral for margin calls on overleveraging and basically nothing else.

I'd be interested in hearing Cheeto's bullshit response to the simple question of: "What's a tariff?"

Lopen posted...

When the base of the ponzi scheme (the banks/elite) sell all their BTC, which is like 95% of the supply, the price will go well south of 10k. BTC is probably the worst asset to own right now because it's literally here to be collateral for margin calls on overleveraging and basically nothing else.

Even if 95% of BTC was sold for $0 (which like, why), the value would still end up being in the $5k range. Then USD would only need to devalue by 2x in order to bring the value up to $10k. That is very likely to happen in Trump's economy. Not by 2026 but probably around 2030.

The question you should ask yourself is, back when BTC hit 4 digits for the first time in 2013, you were probably spouting the same stuff about how it's a ridiculous inflated number and it will fall back to 2 digits. But now a 4 digit price somehow signals the death of Bitcoin? How did that happen?

Sheep007 posted...

Did they fire all of the economic analysts who were telling them how stupid tariffs are?

I think a lot about how the last time Trump was President he had groups of people subtly holding back his random lunatic decisions to keep the country intact. Trump's first term was him being secretly restrained. Those people aren't there anymore. He blames them for why he lost the re-election.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Part_of_the_Resistance_Inside_the_Trump_Administration

HanOfTheNekos posted...

Did 2025 include stuff on tariffs? Or is this a case of the strategists losing control of their monster because it thinks it is the smartest?

Project 2025? Not sure. Tariffs is a Trump thing though so it was something he would do regardless of its presence there.

Aside from implementing them in his first term (but at much lower levels because there were still advisors around him that talked him down a lot) tariffs and America being "ripped off" has been a thing of his since the 80s as I mentioned before. He's been calling for this forever and alongside his racism is one of those things he really has carried with him through the decades so it wasn't something that he could really be distracted from.