I went to dinner, a Mexican restaurant, and was highly disappointed. Food was ok, but staff was rude. We were seated and left 30 minutes later without even drinks. There are too many excellent dining options availalable to subject my family to that.
China, Canada, India, and Japan (so far) have other options for steel as well. Would you put up with an up-and-down, on-and-off again tariff war, and having to deal with insults from an uneducated grifter, when you have better options.
U.S. trade futures. Ha! That ship has sailed. None of these countries are coming back, not anytime soon anyhow. Remember soybeans? tRump killed our market with tariffs during his last term. China, our biggest purchaser, found a new source. End result, we paid American farmers ~$20B for losses. The ones that are left are trying. Maybe they should get tRump to broker a deal.
It is just absolutely amazing how a guy, operating at a grade 4 level math and the poverty in vocabulary of a kindergarten child can become president and do so much damage in such a short period of time. Even more amazing is the fact that he is able to find otherwise fairly well educated people to support him.
The completely senseless use of tariffs, which are hurting the US consumer more than the producers in foreign countries, demonstrates that he does not have any idea about international trade. Today a tariff is 15%. Tomorrow or next week it may be 25% and next month it may be 50 or 100%. There is no way to plan for this erratic loss of direction.
This is the main reason why many foreign countries have given up on trading with the USA. Many of these countries find new trading partners which are more dependable and even after the US has come back to its senses, many of them won’t return.
The why is simple… It’s Trump’s chaotic tariffs that have no plan, no reason and no predictability. The chaos and lack of lead time are what make exporters and importers hold off, more than the tariff itself.
As far as “US trade dominance”, no such thing! The US has a juicy middle class to sell to, but even that easy picking represents only just over 10% of world trade. Trump’s tariff will substantially reduce that 10% so although the US doesn’t have a trade dominance, its influence on trade and security will be even less after Trump imposes the tariffs (if ever).
Trump has a big mouth, an even bigger ego, and is unbelievably ignorant, but he’s not stupid. It is likely that after all the chaos subsides, the US will have a 10% to 15% universal tariff; everyone can live with that, so most of the trade the US is losing now will eventually return as Americans get used to the new 10% to 15% tax. The bit that won’t return is the trust and influence the USA has lost with its allies.
The only losers are the USA and the American citizen. The rest of the world is fine, even to the point that if Trump were to isolate America completely, the rest of the world would be fine with that and really couldn’t care less.
As a non-American, nothing Trump does or says affects me or my country, so, for now, Trump is purely a local American problem and an amusement for non-Americans; however, what does worry me is that I don’t see Trump leaving the Presidency peacefully.
No would-be dictator puts in so much effort to gain absolute power and then gives it up after just four years.
It’s a shame that the elderly Trump won’t be around to see the results of his efforts. In a decade or so, China will surpass the USA economically and militarily, aided by the countries that have shifted their alliances away from the USA and toward China.
It used to be Russia, and now it’s communist China. What rational person with at least a basic working knowledge of international affairs would impose crippling tariffs on tiny developing countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Penguin Islands? China couldn’t be happier with everything Trump is doing.
I am really, really puzzled by what Trump is actually trying to achieve…. He said he wants tariffs to make foreign goods less competitive so that manufacturing is brought back to America, but then he criticises Walmart, Amazon, and others for increasing prices on foreign goods, criticises Powell for being cautious while tariffs are sparking inflation and this “genious negotiator” reaches reciprical tariffs agreements of 15% with countries like Japan that originaly had an average tariff on US goods of just 1.35%.
Also, if revenue is the ultimate purpose of tariffs, Trump could have introduced a 2% consumption tax, which would likely not have upset anyone and would hardly have been noticed, while still generating the $300 billion in revenue he aims for.
Did Trump buy his economics degree at a flea market, or did he really study economics?
