Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 458: That's On Top Of The 20% Fentanyl Tax

(+) Yeah! (+)

We've had over a century of evidence that tariffs are bunk

What is the date he proposed for us to judge it instead?

The effective judgment date is November 2026. I wonder if he'll still be crying about it then.

foolm0r0n posted...

What is the date he proposed for us to judge it instead?

The effective judgment date is November 2026. I wonder if he'll still be crying about it then.

I think it's November 2028, unless Congress grows a spine and takes back tariffing power from the President.

FFDragon posted...

He's already saying this is still Biden's stock market and none of this volatility is because of tariffs so far

but also he said it was his (trump's) stock market in early 2024 so it's literally "if it's good, it's mine even if i'm not in charge" and "if it's bad it's not my fault even when i am"

https://bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3lnzyiwzyok25

He also said today that "next quarter is sorta Biden"

red_sox_777 posted...

I think it's November 2028, unless Congress grows a spine and takes back tariffing power from the President.

It is definitely 2026. But you think Trump is confident he'll have positive results from tariffs even by 2028?

LOL - Trump really going with, "You'll get less and it'll cost more and the shelves might be empty but you'll like it."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lo2dloetgk2l

foolm0r0n posted...

It is definitely 2026. But you think Trump is confident he'll have positive results from tariffs even by 2028?

I don't think he can be confident about that, but with something like the trade deficit or the national debt, if every president thinks only in terms of 4 years the trend will never change. You need someone willing to use a longer time horizon even at the cost of maybe losing an election for themselves or their party.

I think Trump truly believes that the trade deficit is a problem, and he's probably right about that. Here's another way to look at it:

Trade always requires that both sides receive something they feel is of at least equal value to what they are giving up. So trade deficit is sort of a misnomer, because we are exporting something that other countries believe is of value. So what are we exporting? Money. Specifically, U.S. dollars. Many Americans think this is a great deal for us, because we are exchanging things we can just print out of thin air for real goods with real value. And they are right, but how sustainable is this?

Consider the case where instead of fiat currency, but we had the world's only gold mine, from which we can extract gold at very low cost. Our trade would be very similar to what it is now - we export gold and import goods. Is there a time when this comes to an end? Yes, when the gold mine runs out of gold. At that point, we would face economic ruin because our whole system relies on exporting gold that we will no longer be able to mine.

So, can this happen with the dollar? Eventually, yes. The world thinks the dollar is stable and safe and valuable now. But if our national debt goes to 200% of GDP? 300%? At some point, probably not. And then we won't be able to export dollars and import goods like we do now anymore.

So one way of dealing with this is to make our GDP grow so fast that our national debt as a percentage of GDP is stable or goes down. For example, if the market believes that an iPhone (n+1) is 5% better than an iPhone (n), and a new iphone is released every year, then we can achieve 5% real growth. But, in recent decades, national debt growth has been much faster than GDP growth. As a result, the debt as a percentage of GDP has rapidly increased.

So Trump wants to try a different approach to the problem - making the national debt problem less relevant by providing us with other resources to export besides dollars. And/or making it so that we need less imports because we can manufacture things here.

Thorn posted...

LOL - Trump really going with, "You'll get less and it'll cost more and the shelves might be empty but you'll like it."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lo2dloetgk2l

The comments mention austerity - to be clear this is nothing close to austerity. Military budget hits $1 trillion this year, and who knows how big the fed budget will balloon to by the time Congress is done with it.

It's austerity for individuals, not for the government

red_sox_777 posted...

if every president thinks only in terms of 4 years the trend will never change. You need someone willing to use a longer time horizon even at the cost of maybe losing an election for themselves or their party.

1000% agree with that and have advocated for long-term politics forever. But is Trump doing that? Does he give a date beyond 4 years where he expects this to pay off, and does he explain how absolute Republican destruction in 2026 and 2028 won't stop that plan? Is there any indication he sees beyond 1 year let alone 4?

Every time Trump crows about how Biden's 4 years were the worst period in America, he's saying that even if he is a total genius like in his first term, it can and will still be followed by the worst period in America. He's saying it will happen again, because he's doing the same thing as 8 years ago.

I don't think he's given a time estimate, but you don't necessarily need to have one. As for losing elections, he's going to lose a lot of support if he doesn't follow through on his biggest, most consistent, campaign promise over the last 10 years. The people want tariffs, and they will get them.

He absolutely needs a timeline, because it's pure BS otherwise and everyone knows it. Even if he said 10 year, everyone knows it's BS because dozens of 10-year budget bills that have passed, and they always get repealed when government changed hands. Except this is worse because there's nothing to repeal because it's not even an actual law. It's still a glorified tweet.

There is also no basis for losing support due to broken promises since before Reagan. Not to mention that Trump voters don't know or care at all about tariffs - only his funders do ("people" is a strong word for that handful of individuals).

red_sox_777 posted...

So Trump wants to try a different approach to the problem - making the national debt problem less relevant by providing us with other resources to export besides dollars. And/or making it so that we need less imports because we can manufacture things here.

And he's doing this by completely ignoring the SERVICES that the United States exports? And believing that in every single instance we should be selling more to a country than we buy from them?

Especially as manufacturing becomes increasingly automated we have to embrace industries and products that are beyond factory jobs, full stop.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

And he's doing this by completely ignoring the SERVICES that the United States exports? And believing that in every single instance we should be selling more to a country than we buy from them?

Especially as manufacturing becomes increasingly automated we have to embrace industries and products that are beyond factory jobs, full stop.

Are services subject to tariffs?

FFDragon posted...

https://www.reddit.com/r/law/s/RMnMvaLSEZ

The man lives in his own delusions.

(Also admitting that they'll fabricate evidence to deport people)

Wanted to circle back to this because this is insane.

I knew that they were saying that Abrego Garcia had "MS-13 tattoos", but my understanding is that they were saying the tattoos that he had indicated an affiliation with MS-13 (which they don't). I thought when they took a picture of his knuckles and overlaid the image with "MS-13" they were decoding the images with the (incorrect) interpretation of what they believed they represented.

But no, this clown literally thinks that he has the letters and numbers "MS13" tattooed on his knuckles because of this image:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6ed57747.jpg

He thinks the M is literally tattooed above the Marijuana leaf.
He thinks the S is literally tattooed above the Smile.
He thinks the 1 is literally tattooed above the Cross.
He thinks the 3 is LITERALLY tattooed above the Skull.

This isn't even like pseudo-believable AI art. Our president is literally being fooled by MS paint level mark-ups on a photograph.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

I knew that they were saying that Abrego Garcia had "MS-13 tattoos", but my understanding is that they were saying the tattoos that he had indicated an affiliation with MS-13 (which they don't). I thought when they took a picture of his knuckles and overlaid the image with "MS-13" they were decoding the images with the (incorrect) interpretation of what they believed they represented.

I think the people who created the image were doing that. They were just putting a guide in to make it "easy to understand".

Trump is just that dumb.

foolm0r0n posted...

My only explanation is that Trump legitimately believes he created a good economy his first time and wants to bring it back within 1 year before midterms, instead of the usual delay of 2-4 years. His best 4d chess move ever was causing an insane amount of inflation under Biden, and then blaming it on Biden, but now it's clear that he believes his economics did not actually cause that inflation. There's no chess being played, not even checkers.

His accelerationist handlers are happy with this though since it's peak accelerationism. They probably fed him the right "facts" to make him adamant about these tariffs. But I would also believe he is just dumb enough to believe them himself, considering his decades of economic failure.

Tbf inflation was worse in the rest of the world so you cant singularly blame Trump.

It's insane how pro-Trump LMS became after the election.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

It's insane how pro-Trump LMS became after the election.

Is it? For a person who explicitly has no independent thoughts of his own and just regurgitates whatever the big social media algorithms give them?

The thing about LMS is that LMS doesnt bother me so much as the overwhelming evidence that there are many millions of him out there, brewed in the ever-churning soup of those algorithms.

maga is a cult and lms is very susceptible to and mailable and actively searches out cult-like behavior

it makes the most perfect sense

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Tbf inflation was worse in the rest of the world so you cant singularly blame Trump.

Elaborate on this logic. You're pretty close.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a656862a.jpg

based grok

Cant believe Clinton and Soros got to Grok

the woke mind virus has evolved into something like the logic virus from nier automata

not even ai is safe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOK2NW7Va6E

Good speech in the Senate from Rand Paul. At least one senator is standing up for the principle of "no taxation without representation."

The only effect of that speech is that Trump might come out with an EO declaring every day is his birthday

Waltz getting put in the "we don't care at this position at all so you can't screw it up no matter how incompetent you are" role makes sense but it also means Hegseth most definitely survives for the foreseeable future.

Hegseth will literally be president within 12 years. The new America is defined by failing up. Meritocracy is dead and buried. Hope you've been practicing your mandarin.

Someone blocked me on Bluesky for saying "You don't understand how the government works."

Sure, keep plugging your ears, buddy.

That's epic bro

foolm0r0n posted...

Hegseth will literally be president within 12 years. The new America is defined by failing up. Meritocracy is dead and buried. Hope you've been practicing your mandarin.

12 years? Shouldn't that be 8? (Trump's term, plus 4 years for a Democrat so voters will vote for a Republican again.) Also, if you can imagine Hegseth becoming president it won't happen. The next Republican president will be someone so awful that even joking about it would seem crazy now.

Vance when Trump dies during this term, and then maybe Nikki Haley?

LOL just the President of the United States getting fooled by a Facebook-quality level meme and INSISTING repeatedly it's legit

We're so fucking cooked

Not the Onion: Trump is renaming Veterans Day to "Victory Day for World War I"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/us/politics/trump-veterans-day-world-war-i.html

Veterans too woke? who the fuck knows with this admin

I don't think it's doomposting at this point to say that this admin has already done irreparable damage to the US brand.

The Fall of Rome in real time.

Only world War 1 veterans deserve a day I guess.

I can't imagine he cares about Memorial day.

Maniac64 posted...

Only world War 1 veterans deserve a day I guess.

I can't imagine he cares about Memorial day.

It's in the NYT story but he also wants to declare May 8, "Victory Day for World War II" completely omitting that was only V-E day and rather famously the war was not yet over, particularly for the United States.

but the other wars? yeah i don't know

Will have lots to say on the English local election results as more come in later. Is looking like a decidedly mixed picture overall. However thus far it looks like the Tories, the oldest political party in the world, might just be dead for real.

What I do want to highlight now however is actually in Germany, where the AfD, the main far-right party, has been labelled as an extremist organisation by the intelligence services there. Which means they could be banned, a good thing so heres hoping.

Thorn posted...

Not the Onion: Trump is renaming Veterans Day to "Victory Day for World War I"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/us/politics/trump-veterans-day-world-war-i.html

Veterans too woke? who the fuck knows with this admin

Given how horribly Gulf of America polled I could see this one polling at sub-20%

People HATE renaming stuff and this one sounds even stupider

if this somehow ruins my day of feasting I am going to lose my shit

Ill be supporting a record setting $1 trillion investment in our national defense, he said at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan on Tuesday. Were going to go $1 trillion, the largest in the world, largest ever in our country, but no other country has invested that much. We have a $1 trillion budget for military this year.

fucking why though

Neato.
It's still Veteran's Day.

FFDragon posted...

fucking why though

big

I'm so glad we cut funding from the CDC, Dept of Ed, FDA, IRS, etc so that we could increase funding to the DOD. It's always so underfunded.

LightningStrikes posted...

Will have lots to say on the English local election results as more come in later. Is looking like a decidedly mixed picture overall. However thus far it looks like the Tories, the oldest political party in the world, might just be dead for real.

What I do want to highlight now however is actually in Germany, where the AfD, the main far-right party, has been labelled as an extremist organisation by the intelligence services there. Which means they could be banned, a good thing so heres hoping.

AfD being banned would be good.

Reform, the British equivalent, getting in basically everywhere in England, less good. I know it's just local elections but looks like we're, after a decade, once again back to half the voting population being single-issue on an anti-migration platform. Looks like Labour will probably do a bit better in the last councils to come in, but Lib Dems and Reform being the top two when we're not far off the end of counting is damning.

The fun thing is that DOD funding always goes up, regardless of any other funding cuts

Trump says he's ending federal funding for NPR and PBS. They say he can't

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5384790/trump-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs

Having worked for a PBS/NPR station in the past, I am watching this with great interest.

If anything, it might help matters. Republicans have been trying to end funding for PBS and NPR for many years. Anyone remember Mitt Romneys controversial Big Bird comment? Or Mister Rogers testimony to Congress?

This is one of the issues where it's super easy to tell ideologically captured "conservatives" from actual free market conservatives. NPR and PBS do pretty well in the chaos of the media industry and have diversified income streams. But ideologues see them as a poster child of frivolous spending, despite being like 1% of 1% of the budget. They don't realize that the funding is actually far more valuable for the government to maintain influence in a national media station, not vice-versa. Imagine Stalin cutting funding for Pravda.