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‘From One Bucket Of Tariffs To A Different Bucket Of Potential Tariffs’
The Trump administration's now seemingly bent on undermining their own damage control initiatives be
Then he says this literally an hour ago – : “Nobody getting “off the hook” for unfair trade”
“There was no tariff ‘exception’ announced on friday”
“Chips to be assessed in national security tariff probes”
We are literally running a trade policy on social media.
I finally bought a few shares of Apple at its lows last week, and for a few moments Saturday night, thought I might actually avoid losing a finger or two.
I’m frankly surprised that anyone is still discussing these half-baked shenanigans under the rubric of or even in patriotic deference as “national policy.” I am equally surprised at even good-faith efforts to translate the tariffs into incremental Customs revenue estimates as a whole, or how they will be felt in either reduced profit margins or higher prices and inflation.
Because as we’ve seen from the jump and nearly every minute since, this is a mercurial joke in service of one thing and one thing only — Trump’s compulsion to erect toll booths — engineering conjunction after conjunction where he will need to be consulted and provide opportunities to get his beak wet or concoct some other self-serving quid pro quo. That’s it — the whole entire exercise. But Trump’s too stupid to know that even a mandated toll booth breaks down when the payers crowd and block the entrance to the booth and no one can get through.
Anyone with a functioning brain that gets an occasional spin in the real world knows this isn’t going to reshore much production and isn’t going to balance trade (or the budget deficit). It makes all those things worse — it’s just the official platform for extracting concessions, pressing leverage and maintaining control via chaos.
I made mention previously of being chided by a law firm client for advising its manufacturing client not to overreact or even do anything in the midst of this turmoil. The law firm’s point was that doing nothing may or may not be the right call, but at least doing something in the interim was more defensible. I had to concede the point. But look what happens when smart people are confronted with stupid policies, as ‘ol Tim Apple recently faced with the prospect of 25-50% tariffs on his $1,000 phones. Well, Tim reportedly put India on a 7-day work week until he could stuff 600 tons of iPhones onto flights from India to beat the tariffs. Guessing that set him back $3-5 million. Maybe he’ll do better with Trump’s next Commerce Secretary, the Honorable Roseanne Roseannadanna.
One way to ensure a domestic supply of chips, flat panel TVs, and other consumer electronics is to build them in government factories using government workers. But wait; we would have to fire all those government workers to make the government more efficient.
but, but, but,
the means of production in the hands of the government? The right-wing media circus would have an epic meltdown. Something something “-ism” 😉
I cannot for the love of me understand how Lutnick can lie between his teeth daily for Trump. The guy must think we all just fell off a turnip wagon, or he has no self respect or maybe he is a pathological liar himself?