USA Economics - Protectionist Waste Management down 2pc

New American economics thread

would love to post here but need to spend the afternoon reviving beatles threads in order to make up for the current deficit

calstars just woke up, maybe we can see what he thinks about futures for imported beer

how bout that american economy yall

previous thread from the 2008 crash:
Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

USA: "hold my beer"

line go down

if you were in australia then line go up, makes u think 🤔

maaaate

that's a bloody outrage it is

I have had it up to here waiting for the US economics thread to get rebooted!

lol markets were up bigly this morning and took like a 2000 point swing to the negative by close

no one has any idea what going on or why theyre doing what theyre doing

we did it

idk shit about the market but the upticks right now are the admin trying to hold things up with twigs and bubblegum until the investors see through it and down she goes

Surely you can leak a story every morning about how tariffs are being clawed back and then say "nuh-uh" in the afternoon and the stock market will stay even forever.

lol markets were up bigly this morning and took like a 2000 point swing to the negative by close

Brokers clocking in saying to each other, "Surely he'll have given up on this insane bullshit, right?" Then realization that no, insane bullshit is pretty much his only mode now, and... down, down, down we go.

Public Image Ltd. Album Titles appropriate for the moment:

This is what you want…this is what you get
Happy?
The greatest hits, so far

I think it was the doubling down on China that punctured whatever hope helium there was. Or that plus just everyone trying to guess where the bottom's gonna be.

I alone can fix it.

cool thanks

Sorry, that was supposed to read “AI alone can fix it.”

damn

that's what you get for asking chatgpt to make yr posts ;)

I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me you can call AI

Mr Krasnov, tear down that wall!

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

I think it was the doubling down on China that punctured whatever hope helium there was. Or that plus just everyone trying to guess where the bottom's gonna be.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

we're in portland. we're _all_ in portland.

please send tops. don't worry about that hope helium, we're all _very_ good at blowing.

lol

Trump claims tariffs bringing in $2bn a day for US
Donald Trump has been speaking as he signed executive orders from the White House.

Trump claimed that the US is making $2bn a day from tariffs. He did not provide any details.

“The tariffs are on and money is pouring in at a level we’ve never seen,” he said.

“America is going to be very rich again very soon,” he said.

What can you even say...

“America is going to be very rich again very soon,” he said.

with U.S. taxpayers' money

I was just thinking if he was referring to people paying taxes which include higher capital gains in 2024 and more babby boomer RMDs

What can you even say...

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:03 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thread for Screaming Into the Void

Here is more details on who might be making that money.

https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/engineered-volatility

^^^

"buying the dip" but on AI steroids

An economic lesson from er, Ronald Reagan, tweeted by er, Chinese embassy US account.

Ronald Reagan vs. #tariffs : 1987 speech finds new relevance in 2025pic.twitter.com/CuAMw1eQXN

— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) April 7, 2025

as one does

William Huo, Intel’s first rep in Beijing: “America got conned by its own elite. And now we’ve got the privilege of importing our own poverty in shiny containers labeled “Made in China. When a politician promises to bring back American manufacturing with tariffs, ask them: who’s going to rebuild the ecosystem Wall Street torched three decades ago? Tariffs won’t fix decades of deindustrialization driven by elite consensus. Only massive, consistent investment in R&D, education, and infrastructure ever could. But first we have to say the quiet part out loud: America was deindustrialized not by China or Mexico, but by its own ruling class chasing yield.”

Yep.. anything to get away from paying a living wage to American workers

on the other hand we got cheap tvs have you seen these things its like $300 for a big flat screen tv

theyre quasi disposable

my (much-older) cousin runs a small music store in a small CA town, and as much as he'd love to have his walls lined with shinty Fender, Martin & Gibson guitars, he just can't really afford to, so he orders guitars from Korea, China & Indonesia. He's shown me a few and I have to admit they seem pretty well constructed, probably using a lot of computer-assisted machinery. They're not 'rough' like we think of Japanese & Italian guitars from the 60's. And they actually sell, because he's not really selling to pros but to people just starting out.. same with brass & woodwinds

theyre quasi disposable

the alleys of Oakland are littered with them, I can attest

This passage from Bob Woodward's book Fear shows just how fucked we are:

Of course the United States manufactured things, but the reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America — locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. [Gary] Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories...

Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president.

“See, the biggest leavers of jobs — people leaving voluntarily — was from manufacturing.”

“I don’t get it,” Trump said.

Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?”

Cohn added, “people don’t want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don’t want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal dollars, they’re going to choose something else.”

Trump wasn’t buying it.

Several times Cohn just asked the president, “why do you have these views?”

“I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”

He really believes his insane bullshit, and no one can convince him otherwise.

far from the worst thing during this cursed time but can i just say that i’ve really been disliking seeing scott bessent’s stupid smug face

Cohn’s mistake was referring to other people, who don’t exist to Trump. Should have asked him do YOU want to shovel coal eight hours a day

People might actually take factory jobs over service industry/LVN/etc. jobs if they existed and the pay was decent, the idea that the two options are "blast furnace" or "incredibly easy e-mail job" isn't real life.

So many not-blast furnace trades jobs (HVAC tech, plumber who gets called out at midnight when the shitter is backed up, etc.) are a) highly demanding of overtime and b) now actually sales jobs because staying employed and making a living wage depends on upselling the person whose AC you're fixing in the middle of August.

From the old thread, ShariVari sez

Lots of angry chuds out there trying to Gamergate the fake, woke, feminised economy (in this specific case, a viral TikTok video from Australia they are all still mad about a year later).

And I was like wha? Like, doing office work is for women? Then why were they excluded from it, in living memory?

And lo, yes there are people saying things like this.

https://wapo.st/42nDYfR

Rotimi Adeoye

Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.”

Men in America don't need incomes to make a living

I think there are a few layers.

One is definitely the ‘real men build things’ bit. Apps, B2B SaaS and moving numbers around on spreadsheets are not ‘real’. There is a major push at the moment to re-centre American tech on making things (often drones / military hardware) - with ‘the Gundo’ positioned as the successor to Palo Alto, etc, but there is also a much broader sense that trad occupations - being a (well-remunerated) carpenter, electrician, lineman for the county, etc, all of which these people could actually train to do if they wanted, is just more dignified for men.

Another is definitely the way certain jobs, which remain heavily male-dominated, have been social-media-marketed. It’s at least highly likely that a lot of the ‘my day at company x’ TikTok videos - which suggest there at lots of attractive women milling around in the office, going for coffee or juice breaks between emails, etc, were engineered to drive job applications from men / make returning to the office seem more fun. A lot of very stupid people have taken them literally and think Google is paying 22-year-old women $200k a year to essentially do nothing.

A lot of men resent having a female boss to begin with, which is less likely than it should be but more likely than it was.

The other element is obviously DE&I, which is perceived as making corporate jobs a hostile environment for conservative men or off limits completely which, idk, might be true if you’re Matt Forney and your CV reads Sex Tourist (2012-2017).

So stupid but relevant.

Trump: "One thing I learned about the coal miners -- that's what they want to do. You could give them a penthouse on 5th Avenue and a different kind of a job and they'd be unhappy. They want to mine coal. She was gonna put them in a high tech industry where you make little cell… pic.twitter.com/whdR6QSnBz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 8, 2025

You watch a Boyd and Raylan “we dug coal together” montage one time…

this is a good explainer about men being resentful of women having what they think are fake email jobs: https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/doge-is-about-sex

I can guarantee you all these social media chuds talking about the manly dignity of manufacturing jobs have never once worked in a factory. I have, more than once. It fucking sucks! And as frustrating and inane as it often is, the desk job I have now is a thousand times better. Sure, it's nice to have something to do with your hands. Take up woodworking, ffs

People might actually take factory jobs over service industry/LVN/etc. jobs if they existed and the pay was decent, the idea that the two options are "blast furnace" or "incredibly easy e-mail job" isn't real life.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, April 8, 2025 11:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

couple factories near me advertise on tv begging people to work for them offering four day work weeks continuing education grants and free thanksgiving turkeys, and its not intense dangerous heavy industry one does cosmetics the other assembles commercial kitchen appliances, i think factory work just isnt that desirable which i can understand it seems pretty tedious, think theyre paying ~$25 a hour which is prob dece for unskilled labor around here but obvs is not a lot of money in the big scheme of things, certainly not union heyday raise a family on one salary money

if i had to work at a local factory i would def choose the cheese factory tho

And think of all that food you'd take home!

mr cheese the cheese man

Be careful! My dad worked for a company called Food Producers and as a result it was some years before we were allowed to have Dairy Queen - the company made the ice cream formula. They made a few other things my dad also refused to eat when encountered in daily life, but I can’t remember what those were.

ha yeah im sure itd get old quick

Maybe even moldy

lol

It’s funny because most of the folks i know working blue collar jobs are not in factories but in amazon warehouses

yeah thats the new factory

My granny worked in a biscuit factory (hooray!) and a pickle factory (which I didn't appreciate at the time but would very much appreciate now).

Your entire life would smell of vinegar and dill.

My dad worked as a machinist in that food factory (and a few others).

(xp) I prefer to remember the bags of "brokies" she would bring from the biscuit factory.

factory work is skilled work unless you’re like the janitor

its just a category thats why i put it in italics, tho idk why youre excluding the janitor, poor janitor

(xp) Is putting pickles in a jar skilled work?

after watching all of the things janitorial staff are expected to do, I would absolutely not call that unskilled work

i mean all labor is skilled to some extent obvs a better name to refer to jobs that you can come in with no experience and get trained up pretty fast would be good

recall a friend who did piece work shucking oysters telling me how fast some of the ladies who had worked there forever were

factory work sucks for the most part what used to be good about it were all the other things that came with it and made it worth it.

yup

lol nothing against janitors. working factory machinery is skilled work and used to be paid commensurately. of course there's levels. poultry processing requires less training but is absolutely brutal in terms of speed required

Trump just now, unconvincingly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMMAB3MNCKw

My one and only factory job was at a factory somewhere half an hour from Southampton, they put on a minibus for us. it was a place called vitacress that made bagged salad, my job was to pick out any (brown) bugs from in amongst the (green) leaves, however I am severely colour blind and couldn't see any so I used to just pretend I was doing it. so throwing leaves up in the air as they went up a conveyor belt, occasionally putting a bit of stalk in a bag, all inside a giant fridge. I did not last very long.

lol thats some i love lucy shit

some factory work more skill than others no doubt like putting items into a box prob doesnt take that long to pick up sewing a dress prob a lot longer

my dad worked at a wire factory before he finished his degree, which sounded like it fucking sucked and is also why he taught me to support unions

this whole situation is very brexity, a harebrained scheme that assumed trade partners would roll over for it, its of course much worse of an idea than brexit but i guess has the upside that it can be stopped any time

BREAKING: The European Union has approved tariffs on over $23 billion in US goods in retaliation for the 25% duties Trump imposed on the bloc’s steel and aluminum.

Ryan Broderick‬ ✧@ryanhatest✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
·
1h
So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi's demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidentally say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.

Of course most factory jobs suck, and coal mining jobs suck even more, and Trump's fixation/obsession with them is a combination of two different nostalgias — for the postwar U.S. economic boom, and the Industrial Revolution era when people knew their places and their places were in giant brutal factories and crawling around underground in the dark.

The full Ryan Broderick thread is worth quoting:

So from my uniquely weird perspective after living in the UK through Brexit, being in India during Modi's demonetization, and living in Brazil when the real tanked during the Bolsonaro administration, I can confidentally say that Americans do not and can not understand how bad this is going to be.

To sort of broadly describe what is about to happen if the Trump admin doesn't reverse course, we are quickly racing towards a world where not only does our money just not work correctly anymore day to day, but the background radiation of a crumbling economy will become impossible to ignore.

After the Brexit referendum, everything in London just got slightly worse. A year or two in, you could feel it. But that's because it took five years for the country to actually leave the EU. We're speedrunning that. In Brazil, prices would change overnight, stores just wouldn't have stuff.

Covering the demonetization experiment in India as a journalist, we spent a day basically trying to get someone to break the equivalent of $50. It took all day and after a couple hours I actually started to feel like a unique form of dread. Like what if your money just suddenly didn't work anymore.

I've seen a lot of Americans sort of saying, "oh it'll be like the Great Depression" or "it'll be like the Great Recession," but the global economy is different now. It's way more connected than it was even in 2008. And we essentially just removed ourselves from it this week and then doubled down.

You can tell yourself things like, "I guess I won't buy stuff anymore," but it's not that simple. If the tariffs stay in place, we're looking at hyperinflation like Argentina experienced last year (didn't go there, but knew people living there). At certain point, money just doesn't work.

This is why any headlines about "de-dollarization" right now should really scare you. Americans have been insulated from the worst of the economic collapses of the 21st century because of the dollar. We are about to find out what it feels like when that's no longer true.

the main thing I remember from my summers at a factory is how strict everyone was. OSHA regulations required you be given 15 minutes to clean up at the end of the day and if you finished early you still had to wait by the punch clock and if you clocked out a minute early you'd hear about it from three different people. at one point someone messed up and we didn't have any parts for two weeks so there was effectively nothing for us to do so we had to sweep the floors every single day even though there wasn't a speck of dirt on them after the first day. and yet if you were caught slacking off you'd get reprimanded. all this for $6.50 an hour

Huh. I always thought factory jobs were like the ones in Modern Times

I never worked in factories, but I worked in auto parts warehouses, loading exhaust pipes and brake pads and rotors onto trucks for delivery. It wasn't awful — I was promoted to managing a small secondary warehouse all by myself, and once the inventory was taken or a delivery of pipes was shelved, I could basically hang around in the back listening to Ornette Coleman all day, waiting for someone to need a particular pipe — but at its worst it was hard physical work, and I was very glad to get a job in an office.

So many not-blast furnace trades jobs (HVAC tech, plumber who gets called out at midnight when the shitter is backed up, etc.) are a) highly demanding of overtime and b) now actually sales jobs because staying employed and making a living wage depends on upselling the person whose AC you're fixing in the middle of August.

This is otm ime … some of this is related to corporate chains vs small businesses/ the one person shop… and then because the 24/7 corporate model exists, customers have come to expect they can get someone out whenever, so the “little guy” can get stuck trying to compete with the big corporations…

(xps) To be honest, I think he's exaggerating the Brexit effect more than somewhat, as many hardcore Remainers are wont to do.

I did warehouse work in my 20s and saw dozens of guys fuck up their backs, one got a hernia, another fell off an industrial shelving unit and later died … no heat, no A/C … like unperson, when I ended up with an office job after a few years of warehouse work… I had an appreciation for it that probably people who had only had desk jobs didn’t have.

When I was first interviewing for journalism jobs I used to joke in the interview, "If you hire me, I'll be the only editor you've got who can drive a forklift."

And re janitors— my ex had worked as a janitor while in college… it was really great to be in a relationship with a man who knew how to clean things.

I did warehouse shit for a little while, too. Loading trucks at a distro center. Bear in mind I was, and am, a skinny dude without a lot of muscle. Shit was miserable, and it made me realize for the first time in my life why so many people choose to drink themselves into oblivion on the weekends.

I never had a factory job, but did spend four summers doing road construction work for a local county highway department. I can tell you that spending 100 degree plus days in August shoveling hot asphalt or walking behind a trailer filling cracks with hot tar from 7:30 a.m. until dusk was enough to still make me appreciate every single desk job I've had.

Xp did you do the thing where you had a person or two stand on a pallet and use the forklift to lift them up to adjust items on a high shelf so that they wouldn’t fall off the pallet when you brought it down? …

I knew a guy who was a roofer. He was the person I envied the least. Out in the sun all day slapping down coats of tar or spending the whole day on your knees stapling shingles into place.

I was just gonna mention roofing. Which I've never done, but I see those guys out there in the sun and whooee. Plus there you have the ever-present danger of falling.

Physical labor is mostly really hard! The most "physical" jobs I've ever had were in bartending, restaurant kitchens and retail, and even there just being on your feet for 8 hours is exhausting. (Plus I was in my 20s and early 30s for those jobs, could absorb it a lot better.)

lot of ex cons in roofing guys who cant get work elsewhere

One of the other problems with physical labor like roofing, warehouse work, etc is there is often not enough of a financial safety net in those professions so that if a worker gets hurt, they are often extra fucked … like I remember downplaying a foot injury so I could continue to work, because I needed the money.

ive worked in kitchens which i kind of liked because i like cooking and theres some camaraderie to the scene but its def pretty hard work, at least doesnt involve lifting that much heavy stuff tho

can i ask a dumb question very specific to my life because i don't get any of this stuff and i trust you all (while also understanding that anything can happen)?

i'm close to buying a $50Kish car this weekend. like literally calling the dealership today (because another deal fell through), talking to them about it, and then hopefully driving over there Saturday and buying it.

should i, like, *definitely* do that because now's the time and shit's about to get bad? or should i not do that because shit's about to get bad and things are going to change in a way that is advantageous for me?

it *feels* to me like it's the former, but i guess i'm interested to hear what you all think. the Broderick thread above got me spooked.

Many of these jobs are done by undocumented immigrants…. including farmwork … idk if the government has nostalgia for the dust bowl era but it wasn’t like a bunch of white MAGA types were moving to California to pick lettuce…

Yes, buy now. Prices ain’t goin’ down.

I worked at a grocery store in high school that also had its own cows and milk bottling operation. Part of my job was to put on rubber boots and stand in the bed of a pickup full of half rotten produce and shovel it to the cows a couple of times a week. The smell was pretty bad, especially in the summer.

Alpine, please do not buy a new car … get a used car.

should i, like, *definitely* do that because now's the time and shit's about to get bad? or should i not do that because shit's about to get bad and things are going to change in a way that is advantageous for me?

it *feels* to me like it's the former, but i guess i'm interested to hear what you all think. the Broderick thread above got me spooked.

100% buy the car as soon as you can.

xpost i'm sorry, i should've specified: it's a 2022 car w/ 18K miles on it - what i think is a nice, solid, safe, reliable car (a Volvo XC90)

i could've written that better ... added the make/model after the rest, sorry

Good choice!

i don't know that buying a new vs used car is much better either way at this point

if you need a car id get it, if you can hold off with your old car id do that

since we're on this topic should i get a new phone? maybe this should be it's own thread. iphone 14 plus bought in August 2023. battery is fine.

no

phew

gonna have to pry my 2020 iphone 7 outta my cold dead hands

^^

i buy my phones second hand on ebay much rather be walking around with a $150 computer in my pocket that i might break or lose at any minute than a $1000 one

Yeah the phones are pretty well built to last now. My last two were a 9 and then -- six years later and only because I figured 'eh, might as well' -- a 15 Pro, my current one. It absolutely does everything I need it to and then some.

I did buy a 4th backup hard drive yesterday

I bought Lindt chocolate lol

xpost There is wisdom in this approach. (Probably mentioned it elsewhere but in late January with the initial rumblings happening I figured 'you know, I should do this' and upgraded to the latest MacMini and I'm rather grateful.)

I wish I could spring for a new Mac to future-proof but I'm not brave enough to put it on credit and let the chips fall where they may yet.

i should also add that i have a 15yo and a 12yo who will presumably need cars at some point in the near-ish future. i think we need to buy the nice, reliable car that will hopefully last us for 15 years.

if i'm lucky, we'll have to figure out how to take it with us to another country to live.

is there a thread for wondering and worrying about the world you brought your kids into

Obama was president when they were born. i know he's not perfect, but...

just got a refurbished 2022 macbook air, should be good for the next 10 years

Oh indeed?

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/04/09/congress/bessent-cancels-hill-appearance-amid-market-turmoil-00280957

Per the final sentence: "Lawmakers were told Bessent was called into a meeting with Trump, the person said." But for all we know that could just be getting Bessent to change his diaper.

I’m basically fucked right now, gl everybody

‪Nicholas Grossman‬ ✧@nicholasgross✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
·
5h
The bond market shows capital flight from the United States, with people selling off US debt.

It’s the opposite of what usually happens during economic turmoil, when people buy US debt because they think it’s the safest asset in the world.

The US-led global economic system is dead. By suicide.

gl brimstead

yeah the Treasury Bond thing is crazy.. I guess people in the administration have already been plotting ways to not make interest payments to foreign countries holding U.S. securities, like 'we spend so much to protect you, and then you expect us to pay YOU interest?' etc.

That's normally a rock-solid safe haven to park money during crazy times

Here: In a recent development, President Trump's comments about the US debt, specifically suggesting the possibility of renegotiating or defaulting on some Treasury bonds, have sent shockwaves through financial markets, causing a sell-off in US government debt and raising concerns about the US's financial stability.

lol 90 day tariff pause, Dow jumps 2500 points. so fucking shady

holy shit...there was a market update on Bloomberg that started a with the market less than 1% and ended ~2 minutes later up 5%. insanity.

you damn well there are people in Donalds orbit that are getting the heads up on this shit

you know*

he did another 'Thank you for your attention to this matter!' WTF

yeehaw

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:43ck35s3crmdzqkghid2zsgv/bafkreids3le33lg72teuvctdh3beborrx6xur7lmzcxwg3opqo35mhbaw4@jpeg

Yet he's raising the China tariffs to 125%... I think he still really believes that China will be paying that

if he doesnt lift chinas tariffs then it kinda doesnt matter if he lifts the rest

you damn well there are people in Donalds orbit that are getting the heads up on this shit

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:35 PM (five minutes ago)

he posted "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" this morning on TS

trump blinked first

right, bro's getting sonned in his own trade war

jesus christ so crazy

Why doesn't he just raise tariffs to a million percent?

We would all get instantly so rich.

i bought a new laptop at a goooood price last Dec or so, we will be good for awhile.

i did read something where people were kinda hoping the market would crash hard so trump would be punished and stop being so psycho

doesn't seem like that's going to be the case

I think the treasury bond sell-off probably freaked them out, that was unexpected I'm sure

From The Guardian:

It was not clear whether China, which is one of the world’s largest holders of Treasuries, included among its policy changes the sale of those bonds, accelerating the sell-off and the US administration’s financial pain.

haha you fucked with the wrong country Donnie

i did read something where people were kinda hoping the market would crash hard so trump would be punished and stop being so psycho

doesn't seem like that's going to be the case

― a (waterface), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 12:45 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

we'll see if he does this again in 90 days

If he were really smart he would pause every other country's tariffs on *us*. Dipshit needs to think outside the box.

Still holding cash tyvm

Actual footage of White House trade negotiations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK_ArvBk8H0

Headline: Dow surges 2,600 points for biggest rally in 5 years after Trump pauses some tariffs

Let us celebrate the near return to baseline of a patient that had every reason to believe they might be dying until the doctor said 'sike', and let us ignore the inevitable slow degradation of that patient's health that was spurred by the doctor's very very funny practical joke

So is this market manipulation is going to happen every 90 days? Cool.

its “funny” how republicans are against government regulating and doing stuff, this all sure smells like “government overreach” or whatever it is they pretend to get mad about

I don't know why anyone would even take him at his word about the 90 day pause. His Majesty could restart this shit again later this afternoon if it's His will to do so, who even fucking knows at this point

Maybe the CIA showed him the secret files on JFK this morning.

"Sir, take a look at just how easy this was to pull off."

Reusing the Castro R&D to throw together an exploding Diet Coke can.

DEEP STATE, IF YOU'RE LISTENING

now watch as he transforms this abject failure into an incredible world-changing deal

they're definitely fretting about the China thing, Beijing shows no signs of backing off

so when do we break ground on all the new factories?

im building a factory right now, just need to get a shovel

from the CBC's liveblog:

14 minutes ago
Prime Minister's Office in the dark
Rhianna Schmunk

I’m a senior writer on the national desk. A spokesperson with the Prime Minister's Office said Ottawa has no further clarity on Trump's shift this afternoon.

16 minutes ago
Canada gets the new tariff
Alexander Panetta

Now, some bad news from Washington: the White House says Canada and Mexico will be subject to the new, worldwide tariff of 10 per cent.

It was confirmed in a statement to CBC News.

What's not clear, and we're awaiting details from the White House, is what happens to the earlier tariffs on Canada, the so-called fentanyl tariff of 25 per cent on some products, and similar tariffs on steel, aluminum and some automotive trade.

There's no answer yet. What we do know is that this is a very chaotic development. Trump's trade representative had just been on Capitol Hill and had insisted that Trump was abiding by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, because he had spared those countries from a broad tariff.

Now? Who knows. Representatives of various industries are scrambling for clarity. As are we.

canadian fentanyl smells like maple, it's easy to spot

Ok we can all buy new apple products now

until he changes his mind again tomorrow morning at 3 AM

yeah so get on it!

with the 125% china tariff and 10% tariffs on canada and mexico, tariffs are actually higher than they were after last wednesday's big announcement
https://bsky.app/profile/peark.es/post/3lmfnb6klks2b

So this is very clearly and obvious market manipulation, no? Trump's cronies get the heads up on these announcements and act accordingly. Good reason for him to obliterate oversight too. It's all a grift.

i dont think its the primary motivation, that would be trump just really liking tariffs, but if you can get a little grift in on the side sure why not

i think he didn't even realize the effect he could have until the little tease on Monday

The NYT still calls them 'reciprocal tariffs,' lol

enjoying the stock market redditor meltdowns: "sir, this is BLATANTLY market manipulation and clearly illegal insider trading!!!"

ah, sorry jon v jon, i didn't see your post.

my point's just it's always been a scam and might as well burn to the ground

my core understanding of the stock market is that it is complete and total bullshit, but I still can't help but ask: Apple stock plummeted due to the company's dependence on China, why is it now rebounding due to the announcement of even higher tariffs on China? is it just that my theory is true + traders are deeply stupid herd-like creatures?

yes, which is why you don't drive in circles around them in an ATV firing a shotgun in the air

Apple has been trying to spread out its supply chain away from China, rolling back tariffs (somewhat) on the rest of the world might be good enough to offset the increased China tariff.

ah thanks milo, and yeah I'm now reading that they set up production of some products (iPads, airpods) in India and Vietnam...but I'm also seeing that 90% of their iPhones are still made in China

ok lol the nyt says:

To add to the uncertainty, the president said he might consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs over the 90-day pause period. He said his thinking on this would be made “instinctively.”

outta respect for the markets

Maybe, as per thread, this is an own goal, we'll see.

what happened is actually massive. they all stared down the barrel and the rest of the world said ‘okay we’ll unload your treasuries’ and bond yields spiked. the idea that the US can just push everyone around at will is over

— BO (@bo_austin_) April 9, 2025

he might consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs

"Once I see what they might do for me, you never know..."

"If I get a taste... then BAM! no more tariffs"

Well yeah, it’s a global shakedown. And it’s not going to stop, this is his only and entire MO. Not just in terms of tariffs but in terms of literally everything. This is what we have endlessly for (nearly) four more years. We’re trapped with this dickhead and everyone has to pay attention to every stupid thing he does.

this is probably obvious to everybody but there was definitely some massive insider trading going on here - if the Dems had any balls they'd hammer them on this

https://i.imgur.com/oye5PHx.png

I'll be very disappointed if a newspaper doesn't use the headline Capitulation Day.

My least favorite Rush b-side.

ok lol the nyt says:

To add to the uncertainty, the president said he might consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs over the 90-day pause period. He said his thinking on this would be made “instinctively.”
― rob, Wednesday, April 9, 2025 4:29 PM (fifty minutes ago)

this will lend further creedence to the 'kiss the ring' motivation for all of this.

also if the biggest china exporters like apple end up getting an exemption, tariffs are gonna end up being pretty toothless

pretty sure that's a drive by truckers song xp

Make America Grovel Again.

Predictably, they're already crowing about what a negotiating masterstroke this was: "By god, he DID IT!"

Everything went to plan

classic move from the abusive dad playbook, destabilize everyone with threats you almost follow through on - to the point where it's debatable whether you actually did or not - and then "rescue" everyone from them.

^^^

We've alienated all of our allies around the world so no one is going to trust our country again, no one, and I'm including people who run companies here in the US, who will be reluctant to hire new people or make any kind of investment in the future. He will do innumerable crazy things on a daily basis to benefit himself and his billionaire cronies at our expense, it will destabilize us and we will be on an inevitable downward slide for at least the next 4 years, probably longer, becoming poorer and more isolated

So many people I know, including people on the left, didn't seem that alarmed about the possibility of this happening and didn't think it would affect them personally. This also includes my rich friends who thought they would benefit from republican tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts but are now shocked at the mayhem

But his craziness was plainly laid out beforehand for all of us to see

Reusing the Castro R&D to throw together an exploding Diet Coke can.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:37 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

DEEP STATE, IF YOU'RE LISTENING

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:43 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lee, its your cousin, marvin harvey oswald

I'm pretty sure someone could convince him to ride through downtown Dallas in an open convertible.

Xp Dan - anyone who likes capital gains tax cuts would be unhappy with this current situation.

yes, since there are no capital gains!

lee, its your cousin, marvin harvey oswald

I got the reference!

He's trying to hijack the entire economy. This all really does feel like a drive to trigger a great crisis, that they can use to crack down on whoever they want.

Meanwhile the deal between the IRS and DHS is pretty scary in a looming police state way.

This is what I've been banging on about in my own inarticulate way for the past month. They are engineering crashes and chaos so that they can profit while tightening the screws on everyone else.

xp

lol what if it is just the Russians? They're acting like they would be if it was just the Russians (or some cabal, but especially Russia) calling the shots. If it's the Russians, then of course they don't give a shit about any of the things we care about, government- or law-wise. They want to just dispense with them, or bring them to heel. It's what Putin did. And lots of other strongmen, obviously. But it's a Putin-esque model.

The weird mascunlinity nonsense is very Putinesque.:.

There seem to be two different levels, the first being the ideological affinity with the Russian model across the board from Thiel, Yarvin, Sachs, going back 15+ years. I don't think that needs anything external

But the second, of seemingly wanting to advance Russia's interests, not just replicate Russia, is more difficult to parse

our gangsters are so strangely like russia's gangsters because they're gangsters and gangsters are alike. they help each other out because even gangsters from different gangs share a preference for things in general to be good for gangsters. that's why our gangsters helped their gangsters destroy the soviet union. now their gangsters are helping our gangsters destroy the postwar united states. but if their gangsters disappeared tomorrow, our gangsters would happily carry on destroying it all by themselves.

I think there is a definite sense of Trump trying to centralise his authority over all potential sources of power (education, federal workforce, courts, big business, etc), in a manner consistent not just with Putin but other autocrats like Orban, to which the market has just said ‘lol, get fucked’.

trying to centralise his authority over all potential sources of power (education, federal workforce, courts, big business,

This has pretty much been successful. Universities, law firms, and corporate America have tripped over themselves to ditch DEI and cut deals that preserve their access/funding.

It's the seven towers thing, they've been quite deliberate about it...

Market rapidly giving up yesterday's gains. I wonder what stunt he can pull to juice it up again.

now that america is great again, i'm looking forward to working in an amazon asbestos packing plant with no HR department for $12/hr. to own the libs

its such a farce if the tariffs stay in play much longer the real material effects will hit home and no amount of malarky will be able to change it

Tariffs on China at 145%. This is the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posting

We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We don’t back down. 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/vPgifasYmI

— Mao Ning 毛宁 (@SpoxCHN_MaoNing) April 10, 2025

it definitely seemed weird to me that the market made a near full recovery yesterday despite there still being a huge tariff on China, the country that's become synonymous with "cheap goods"

it's also strange because he didn't say he was pulling the tariffs, he said "90 day pause", which means it's all being kicked down the road until July, at which point the market is assuming Trump will either forget about them, or claim that they've made big beautiful deals with everyone? or maybe they've all figured out that this is just yet another pump and dump scheme?

He's waiting for another dip he can goose with his "terrific deal making" for his cronies to make another grab.

Frogbs otm — it was very weird to watch … I kinda think the bargain hunting mentality was at play, as well as the analysts kinda improvising in terms of valuations… because they are supposed to assign values to things and not say … I have no fucking idea.

Laminariales @kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social‬

Ironically the pause gives every other country on Earth the breathing room to figure out how to excise the USA from their international trade flows as much as possible. Now they can all deliberate as a bloc.

If he kept them on there might have been some panic, and pressure to make a bad deal.

the initial headlines were just that the tariffs were paused and i dont think we got all the specifics til after close

Not every stock is down today. I was checking to see how much blood was on the floor and one stock caught my eye. Wheeler Real Estate Invesments (WHLR) is UP 21.5% so far today, from 2.37 to 2.88! Then I noticed its 52 week high was, uh, 3,588.

There’s also short-term thinking vs long-term … like, take Apple as an example… at one point it went back up to $200/share … long-term thinking might be “$200/share is a really good deal as I think it will go back up eventually”

Rheinmetal had a very good morning too

it definitely seemed weird to me that the market made a near full recovery yesterday despite there still being a huge tariff on China, the country that's become synonymous with "cheap goods"

it's also strange because he didn't say he was pulling the tariffs, he said "90 day pause", which means it's all being kicked down the road until July, at which point the market is assuming Trump will either forget about them, or claim that they've made big beautiful deals with everyone? or maybe they've all figured out that this is just yet another pump and dump scheme?

― frogbs, Thursday, April 10, 2025 12:30 PM (thirteen minutes ago)

it's because the markets got confirmation trump is a wuss who'll back down. which means in 90 days trump is gonna put on another pause

it definitely seemed weird to me that the market made a near full recovery yesterday despite there still being a huge tariff on China, the country that's become synonymous with "cheap goods"

it's also strange because he didn't say he was pulling the tariffs, he said "90 day pause", which means it's all being kicked down the road until July, at which point the market is assuming Trump will either forget about them, or claim that they've made big beautiful deals with everyone? or maybe they've all figured out that this is just yet another pump and dump scheme?

― frogbs, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:30 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think yesterday’s rally was mostly relief at the signal that trump does in fact still respond to external stimuli and isn’t completely dug in. according to maggie haberman it was the rise in treasury yields that spooked him. even if the economic damage from tariffs didn’t decline much, the pause is reassuring in that trump seems to want to avoid spooking the markets into a broader financial crisis

Well things are down again today

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/ross-douthat-interesting-times.html

I thought this was surprisingly excellent. Cass makes the more sane and cogent case for use of tariff policy but concedes, under some sharp questioning from Douthat, that the way Trump did it isn't likely to achieve the stated goals. Douthat makes a pretty good case at the very end that it's worse, that Trump may have actually killed off any appetite for the kind of protectionism Cass advocates.

Apparently, yesterday after the Big Announcement that Totally Contradicts the Previous Day's Big Announcement (BATTCTPDBA for short) the Treasury Secretary told curious reporters that Trump had showed 'incredible courage' by holding firm "for as long as he did". This man is clearly an adept toe-sucker.

oren cass is such a hack

Well things are down again today

― sarahell, Thursday, 10 April 2025 12:50 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sure, but yesterdays rally was only a partial recovery anyways, it didn’t even recover to where it was april 2nd, and markets are still far away from recovering back to where they were in february

Yields, stocks and dollar going down. Assuming the markets want Trump to back down on Chinese tariffs.

https://i.imgur.com/MjR3pJj.jpg

too soon ;)

i can't believe i fucking miss that guy

A three month pause is also too much volatility.

Also needs saying his mental health could degrade even further by then lol. Can't see Trump seeing out four years of this xps

i'm never going to listen to 48 minutes of a ross douthat podcast, but giving oren cass the respect and time of day is way out of line. he should be laughed out of the room. the idea that any of this is even about economics, that there is a "debate" to be had among rational people, totally misses the mark. as others have said, it's all about creating chaos, and using the ensuing uncertainty to do various cronyisms as well as crack down on perceived enemies. oren cass is a joke but douthat is a fool and a stooge in his own way

the market losing all the gains from yesterday. has Donald let us know it's a good time to by again yet?

Budo, you are too generous… I can’t even do a “4 minute read” by that guy … I would rather street team Andrea Long Chu … which I am also not going to do lol

the idea that any of this is even about economics, that there is a "debate" to be had among rational people, totally misses the mark. as others have said, it's all about creating chaos, and using the ensuing uncertainty to do various cronyisms as well as crack down on perceived enemies

i mean it’s definitely about economics. extremely stupid bad and wrong economics perhaps, but economics nonetheless. it’s not like trump and navarro got together and said “hey, what’s the best way we can create chaos and uncertainty? how about implementing the crackpot economic theories we’ve been advocating for publicly for decades”

GWB laid a lot of the groundwork for the loss of civil liberties we are experiencing now, so miss me with "miss me"

the idea that any of this is even about economics, that there is a "debate" to be had among rational people, totally misses the mark. as others have said, it's all about creating chaos, and using the ensuing uncertainty to do various cronyisms as well as crack down on perceived enemies
i mean it’s definitely about economics. extremely stupid bad and wrong economics perhaps, but economics nonetheless. it’s not like trump and navarro got together and said “hey, what’s the best way we can create chaos and uncertainty? how about implementing the crackpot economic theories we’ve been advocating for publicly for decades”

― flopson, Thursday, April 10, 2025 12:23 PM (twenty-three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'll ask for an explanation about what's "crackpot" about Cass another time, preferably one broader than what happened to some washing machine factory over the course of a couple years.

I definitely do not think Trump hatched some brilliant plan to create chaos. I think he is a moron who doesn't know what he's doing.

the yet party of miss me yet is pretty funny at this point since it was so long ago like he shows up periodically to ask the question then glumly goes home to do more painting

Yields, stocks and dollar going down. Assuming the markets want Trump to back down on Chinese tariffs.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 10 April 2025 13:05 (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yields down is good for trump’s pov. what spooked him yesterday was yields going up because people were dumping treasuries and buying dollars

usd going down is kinda good from his perspective too, since it makes us exports cheaper. makes the tariffs more painful for consumers and importers though

feel like he would want a strong dollar tho he likes strong things

higher yields = US debt is perceived as riskier and gets more expensive, the opposite of what he (or anyone) wants

*borrowing gets more expensive

Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth about whether he wants a strong or weak dollar. He somehow wants to be able to have the benefits of both.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/briefing/donald-trump-currency.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k4.vsTr.566wbNoFGY9n&smid=url-share

same

I'll ask for an explanation about what's "crackpot" about Cass another time, preferably one broader than what happened to some washing machine factory over the course of a couple years

i was calling navarro and trump’s economic theories (i.e., any bilateral trade deficit is prima facie evidence of unfair non-tariff trade barriers) crackpot. cass is just a hack who constantly lies. i wouldn’t go so far as to call cass a “crackpot”, but he’s chosen to throw in his lot in with trump and navarro so

i have many other studies other than the washing machine one, very happy to share and discuss. tho i suspect what happens the next few months will obviate the need for any careful econometric analysis of the question “do tariffs really raise prices a lot more than they create jobs”. with a shock this big it should be pretty clear

“full faith and credit of the us government” doesnt hit as hard when the us government is actively being dismantled xp

if the value of the dollar crashes, we at least want individual dollars to be strong enough to be used as a good substitute once the emergency hits the inevitable toilet paper shortage stage

feel like he would want a strong dollar tho he likes strong things

― lag∞n, Thursday, 10 April 2025 13:27 (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don’t think trump has ever said “i want a weak dollar” but the idea, known as the “mar-a-lago accord”, was originally proposed by chairman of trump’s CEA stephen miran. iirc vance tweeted something along those lines once?

You don't like weak dollar, you get bored so quick
You don't like strong dollar cause they're hip to your tricks

The panic happening among investors is that money has to be somewhere. When you pull your money out of US stocks, you must decide where else will it go? The greatest fear of money managers is losing the money they manage. So they look around the entire global financial system and everywhere is in disarray. They must choose something right away. Even cash must be in some form of currency, but which? USD? Euros? They have no ideas. Nothing looks safe. Their money is in jeopardy. Panic time!

The panic happening among investors is that money has to be somewhere. When you pull your money out of US stocks, you must decide where else will it go? The greatest fear of money managers is losing the money they manage. So they look around the entire global financial system and everywhere is in disarray. They must choose something right away. Even cash must be in some form of currency, but which? USD? Euros? They have no ideas. Nothing looks safe. Their money is in jeopardy. Panic time!

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, April 10, 2025 12:56 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/490011119_10171094028035304_5209719871657155512_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=ei6FDpx0kcsQ7kNvwEHoGGY&_nc_oc=AdkY4jbIz2wL0nugtQO4ozyRdAb9KalAnBkrH6YSw2JXD4fxHF_UxI4bBrMbqf9OTCg&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&_nc_gid=G7qXlyC6kq5j8b3jlSJokA&oh=00_AfHtgGiwvnNCgAJvXzbsisPmZO0D9Uu1sMtODtyRU7-oSA&oe=67FDC8DB

Up 19% over the past five days

"yields down is good for trump’s pov. what spooked him yesterday was yields going up because people were dumping treasuries and buying dollars"

Sorry I meant its going up again (I just said 'down' as in its bad again). Referring to this post as of an hour ago. But its all v fluid rn..

The miserable triple whammy begins again: Stocks down, 10yr bond yields up, dollar down. pic.twitter.com/vXiYIAH1y7

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) April 10, 2025

helllllo crypto, the safe money storage dept

i mean you caint cheat with crypto it aint fiat money, it’s magic electrons my computer and some dudes with great pods

And yet Bitcoin down 4% today too, funny about that.

that’s quitter talk

gold goes up, up, up though

haha I was just wondering abt that

gold? sure it's going to go up. but there's far too much money sloshing around looking for a safe haven. if it all went to gold, it'd be $1m a troy oz in no time. the winners in this free for all will be managers who can jump to the next haven fastest, stay long enough to make their profit, then cash out quick and race to the next 'safe' haven fastest.

From the NYT:

U.S. stocks tumbled about 4 percent in early afternoon trading on Thursday as investors assessed the worsening trade war with China, and President Trump clarified that he had raised tariffs on Chinese goods by a total of 145 percent since taking office.

There were other alarming signs on Thursday: In the government bond market, U.S. Treasuries started to sell off again, with the yield on 10-year Treasuries climbing to 4.37 percent, the highest since February. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite index dropped nearly 7 percent, with shares in Apple, Nvidia and other tech giants falling. And oil prices fell about 4 percent, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, trading below $63 a barrel.

Together, the signals pointed toward a mood shift since Wednesday afternoon, when the markets cheered Mr. Trump’s decision to postpone many of his tariff plans for three months.

Just highlighting "Wednesday afternoon" because lol, that's just 24 hours, how long can we keep doing this.

shit I'm gonna buy a barrel of oil

'Just leave it on the sidewalk, thanks.'

oil is down, too

oil being down is pretty straightforward - a recession means less demand for energy

it's been going down ever since liberation day

Xp Aimless— American Rebel Holdings — this is outpacing Tesla & Palentir in terms of volatility

shawn fain wearing a red and white t-shirt with “Ross Perot Was Right” written on it on david sirota’s podcast lol.. what a world

https://www.levernews.com/content/images/size/w1200/2025/04/LeverNews-ShawnFain-SOCIAL.png

Trump said he was “resetting the table” and that he had “great respect” for Chinese president Xi Jinping who has been “friend of mine for a long period of time”. Trump added:

I think that we’ll end up working out something that’s very good for both countries.

In contrast European stock markets have been doing pretty well.

Gonna have a keg party, no Bud Lite, just crude.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mf5dzzqkp7fnmby6blfeljwj/bafkreiegohfgslcpqmj4f3mmrgrvtpnbadl4d4ysqcaihynqucr3tji4ey@jpeg

life comes at you fast etc

what the fuck was she celebrating about anyway? that the Dow & Jones was creeping back towards its high last week? it's still down dumbass

What was that map said about the abusive dad dynamic of causing a crisis and then ending it, then you’re the hero.

yep

European stocks have also been down…

that lady is a dumbass

My favorite thing about this whole episode has been Karoline Leavitt and the MAGA folks saying "Clearly you missed The Art of the Deal." Oh right, that classic negotiation strategy where no one can actually understand what your offer is, and where you contradict the messages sent by your own side, and then you suddenly back down and no one has any idea what "deal" was made.

https://preview.redd.it/1vx0c542lute1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=bb7eb63a65506c2acee3633fdedd7bb20f429470

Much to consider.

Wow Argentina swung from a huge trade deficit in 1998 and to an even huger trade surplus in 2003.

Legendary policy success, I wonder why nobody talks about it pic.twitter.com/GVfBTXNHJJ

— Guy Berger (@EconBerger) April 11, 2025

European Commission trade spokesperson Olof Gill told Ireland’s RTE radio:

The trade commissioner is gong to Washington to try and sign deals. That is what we are focused on.

However, he suggested the EU are not ruling out further retaliation if talks turn sour:

All options are on the table should that not lead to a good outcome.

One thing is giving Trump a call and setting up meetings. Another is actually striking up a trade deal that is a good outcome to all parties.

Hope they wear suits and say thank you, or some such bullshit.

https://open.substack.com/pub/deanblundell/p/carneys-checkmate-how-canadas-quiet

The art of the Carney

Dean Blundell?! massive grain of salt on any take that guy has.

Just a very triumphant tone. Might be right but makes me (that's right) pause.

The sell-off in US Treasuries has continued, with yields on short and long-term bonds still on the rise.

The yield on 10-year note has jumped to 4.4% and is on course for its largest weekly rise since the early 2000s. That compares with 4.1% at the start of the week on 7 April, and 3.99% last Friday.

Long-term yields are also up, with the 30-year at 4.9%.

Some are debating whether angered Beijing may be behind the moves.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, said:

The latest lurch down followed US confirmation that the cumulative tariff rate on China was now 145%, leading to more widespread selling of Treasuries with the concomitant rise in yields, such as the 10-year note which jumped to 4.4% and is on course for its largest weekly rise since the turn of the century.

There is also some speculation that the US moves have resulted in some unintended consequences, with the possibility that a proportion of the selling is actually coming from China, who are moving out of their Treasury exposure.

Dean Blundell?! massive grain of salt on any take that guy has.

he used to be a (obnoxious) morning radio host in the early 2000s for an alt radio station in Toronto. so for my morning alarm i was kind of stuck with him. somewhat popular but typical morning jock, with a few cackling sycophants hanging around and would often act like an asshole, because he wasn't really all that funny or intelligent.
anyways – one morning they had Ben Mulroney on the show (nepo baby son of a former prime minister who was a tv celebrity news host). never cared for the guy much and especially didn't care for his dad. anyways they're having a boring convo and dean is trying to be edgy, while also sucking up to the guy – and they are about to wrap up and Ben asks Dean something along the lines of "well, now that you have me here, is there anything you'd like to say to my face?" and dean is just kind of like "huh?". ben proceeds to rip into him for trash talking him and his wife and then sucking up to him in person. like he really fucking gave it to him and dean was literally speechless. it was fucking hilarious. dude was incapable of stammering any kind of response and then they cut to commercial.
when they came back it was just dean and of of his fart sniffers and they all tough talk like "lets see him come back here and say that stuff" (which makes zero sense because he was just there). dude's all mouth when they guy has left, it was pathetic.
i realized that was the first time i'd laughed listening to him in a looong time and switched my clock radio to like cbc or something like that and maybe 5 or so years later he was accused of some defiant behaviour with an coworkers or something and he was done.
anyways, that's dean blundell.

defiant=deviant

BOOM:

*US TOLD CHINA TO REQUEST A XI-TRUMP CALL: CNN

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 11, 2025

TRUMP DID A BOOM BOOM!

y'know, only nixon trump could go to beg to china

"We insist that you ask us to call you! No, you're a desperate, sweaty loser! Shut up!"

yo is it true dean blundell got sonned by ben mulroney in a wife beef??????

car dealers are buying cars back at higher prices than they sold em for

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-04-11/-i-need-to-buy-your-car-back-trump-s-tariffs-cause-chaos-at-dealerships?sref=vuYGislZ

i forgot who was posting about buying a volvo recently... i guess you should buy it??

My dad is getting ready to sell an old but low-mileage car, he's probably timed the market well.

Two senior White House officials tell CNN that the US will not reach out to China first. Trump has told his team that China must be the first to make the move, as the White House believes it is Beijing that has chosen to retaliate and further escalate the trade war.

That stance has been conveyed to Beijing for roughly two months, with Trump’s team clearly telling Chinese officials that Xi should request a call with Trump. But Beijing has repeatedly refused to arrange a leader-level phone call, according to three sources familiar with the official communications.

One hurdle, Trump’s team believes, is Xi’s desire not to be seen as weak by making the first move and approaching the US for talks.

fucking toddlers

One hurdle, Trump’s team believes, is Xi’s desire not to be seen as weak by making the first move and approaching the US for talks.

But stomping his foot and insisting that Xi be the one to reach out — and making this insistence public knowledge — makes Trump look strong, right?

trump and his handlers don't realize that we azn people put on the honor and face shit but we're all making *screwball gestures* *wank motions* once we get back to the house

Admirably, correctly.

_One hurdle, Trump’s team believes, is Xi’s desire not to be seen as weak by making the first move and approaching the US for talks._

But stomping his foot and insisting that Xi be the one to reach out — and making this insistence public knowledge — makes Trump look _strong_, right?

I'd like to see Trump try to jump hurdles.

"HERE IS A HUGE TARIFF OUT OF NOWHERE! Don't retaliate. If you don't retaliate, I will give you a better, lower tariff. WHAT, YOU RETALIATED?! I WARNED YOU! HERE IS A HIGHER TARIFF! OH, YOU'RE RETALIATING MORE?! WELL HERE IS AN EVEN HIGHER TARIFF! OH, YOU'RE RETALIATING AGAIN?! Please give me a call to negotiate. Why aren't you calling?"

everyone on the conservative subreddit is deep into "why do leftists want chinese children to be enslaved to make us cheap junk??" their brains are working very hard

we could be enslaving children right here at home!

they yearn for the mines

“When our children can?”

DeSantis is on it!

There was just a China v. Russia poll on ILX, which China won, time for a China v. USA poll?

To a lot of emotionally deranged people, that’s manly alpha dog behavior.

― Crack's Addition (Boring, Maryland)

i think people tend to underacknowledge how utterly deranged trump supporters are. i've known people who were more sensible while in the depths of an ether binge.

I cannot describe how utterly fucked the US appears to be right now. Abortion outlawed in many states. Guns absolutely everywhere. On the precipice of no longer being the global financial hegemon. A completely fucked civil society that is being further fucked daily. Republicans in charge of most state senates. Anyone who speaks up against *checks notes* Israel deported. What the fucking fuck. It’s APRIL. I’m sorry this is doomposting and I’m sorry my oh my fucking god. We’re a long way from idly figuring out how to bring trams back to metropolitan areas.

Its seriously crazy that because one guy won't call the other one first we might get some kind of global financial meltdown.

At least we have the weekend off on that front.

Its seriously crazy that because one guy won't call the other one first we might get some kind of global financial meltdown.

Also kinda fucked to find oneself actively rooting against one's own country. Like, I'm not actually much of an "America must be destroyed" type. I like it here, for the most part. But Donald Trump must be destroyed. Nothing bad that happens to him is too much. Heart attack? Stroke? Necrotizing fasciitis? Absolutely, bring it on. Whatever it takes.

can't we all just agree to hurry up and get to reconstruction?

Absolutely, bring it on. Whatever it takes

maybe not death though, because then we get the couch fucker

Tracer, I get your anxiety.. I try to focus on good things in my life (like going backpacking with friends in the redwoods tomorrow) but the incessant shittiness coupled with the smug grins of these fucks is a lot to handle. Maybe I should reduce my media consumption but its all so awful, you absorb it through osmosis anyway

I'm also getting more and more pissed at Trump voters, whom I blame, and that's not exactly helping the polarization in this country

The few people I know who Should Have Known Better seem to actually be regretting it (tbf, they are not in states where Trump could have won so their votes didn't matter) and I am really resisting tearing their heads off.

The Trumpers I'm aware of are still sounding like this

"You are completely wrong.

Trust me, it’s all going to work out perfect. Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s all under control.

Why do you keep saying these things? I can tell when there’s trouble looming, and I really don’t sense that right now. We’re in control of this situation, and we know what we’re doing. So stop being so pessimistic.

Look, you’ve been proven wrong, so stop talking. You’ve had your say already. Be quiet, okay? Everything’s fine.

You’re wrong."

the high-profile deportation cases are pushed to the front on Fox & Fucks to distract from the economic nightmare unfolding... angertainment

I've done a pretty good job of excommunicating the people in my life that I know voted for Trump. Fuck 'em all, what the hell did we ever have in common anyway.

I don’t have many vocal right-wingers on my regular feeds, but the few I do I’ve just started blocking. I don’t care what they have to say, and I especially don’t want to get baited into arguing with them. I have checked the box about where they’ve landed and leave it at that.

There's that one whataboutist dipshit on your FB that makes my blood boil.

WHO makes my blood boil, sorry.

there used to be, in my mind, a distinction between country club republicans like Romney, Colin Powell etc.. and the MAGA/Tea Party numbnuts

that distinction is pretty much eroded by this point

Yeah he’s terrible, I’ve put him on snooze and deleted a bunch of his comments, but blocking is in order. It’s too bad because he was the last guy on that side I could talk to at all, but what’s the point.

it's seriously unnerving to look at the people you know who used to be very clearly country club republicans, and not know when they went through the metamorphosis

Thanks to Fox & Freaks, most likely

Xp - some of the country clubbers became democrats… not a huge ideological jump at this point tbh

the short jump to centrism v. the crisco-lathered slide to 'recessions are patriotic actually'

on Easter morning, the kids have to share one egg to hide

How to understand the market if you only watch Fox News:

https://bsky.app/profile/thedailyshow.com/post/3lmfloenso22e

Perfect

There are probably some country club Republicans who are hanging in there hoping the party will come back to its senses. They’re a bit like the southern Democrats who hung in through the 70s and 80s waiting for the party to get racist again.

country club Republicans were barely less crazy and just better at not sieg heiling in public

The few people I know who Should Have Known Better seem to actually be regretting it (tbf, they are not in states where Trump could have won so their votes didn't matter) and I am really resisting tearing their heads off.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

there's no _point_ is what i've learned. either they change their ways or they don't. nothing any of us say or do will change them. that's the despair, knowing that these people are in power and the people who had the ability to stop them - that's not us - didn't. my despair is less about the republicans and more about the _democrats_. they _will not fight for us_. what the hell are we supposed to do, you know? they got the guns _and_ they got the numbers. the one thing we got going for us is that they just want to shoot, and they don't give a fuck who they hit.

the thing about fascism of this sort is that it _doesn't win_. it's idiotic and self-destructive. i mean, who the hell is going to fight for america, at this point? what the hell is there that's worth fighting for?

this long ago stopped being an aberration. this is a culmination. this is what 250 years of "america" have brought us to. america is over, if you want it.

don’t you guys have a politics thread for this

the tariffs exemptions have started

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency announced good news for Apple, Nvidia, Dell, and others late Friday night. A new list of goods to be exempted from the latest round of tariffs on U.S. importers was released, and it includes smartphones, PCs, servers, and other technology goods, many of which are assembled in China.

Importers of these electronics will no longer face the newest taxes, and it cuts the Chinese rate down to 20% for them. The exceptions cover $385 billion worth of 2024 imports, 12% of the total. It includes $100 billion from China, 23% of 2024 imports from there. For these electronics, the average tax rate went from 45% to 5% with this rule.

The biggest global exemption is the import category that includes PCs and servers, with $140 billion in 2024 imports, 26% of it from China. Circumstances may change again, but this benefits AI king Nvidia, server-makers like Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Super Micro, and PC makers like Dell and HP. The average tax rate went from 45% to 5% here, according to Barron’s calculations.

The biggest newly exempt category for Chinese goods is smartphones, with $41 billion in 2024 U.S. imports, 81% of all smartphone imports. A 145% tax on that would be $60 billion, but even the new 20% tax is a hefty $8 billion.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/tariffs-exclusions-exemptions-apple-nvidia-dell-smartphones-pcs-b2e069ff

that's really funny

don’t you guys have a politics thread for this

― flopson

i... don't understand the objection. the problem i have talking about politics is that people seem _really caught up in the moment_ and don't step back to look at the bigger picture. i don't see why i'm supposed to care about what the trump administration is announcing exactly this minute, because they're clearly deranged and will say the opposite five minutes from now. american economic policy is functionally identical to "grifting". does anyone care to dispute that statement?

just do it in the us politics thread is all i ask

i... don't understand the objection. the problem i have talking about politics is that people seem _really caught up in the moment_ and don't step back to look at the bigger picture. i don't see why i'm supposed to care about what the trump administration is announcing exactly this minute, because they're clearly deranged and will say the opposite five minutes from now. american economic policy is functionally identical to "grifting". does anyone care to dispute that statement?

― Kate (rushomancy)

I hear you, which is why a better solution -- one I follow -- is to refrain from posting unless I really have to and unless I have a zinger.

that's really funny

― 龜, Saturday, 12 April 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Seems healthy

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/12/trump-tariffs-on-china-mean-irreversible-damage-for-most-businesses.html

just do it in the us politics thread is all i ask

― flopson

i don't follow the uspol thread! this is the thing, i don't usually engage in politics, especially not if i have a zinger haha (you know me, i'm prone to walls of text). i really don't understand where you're coming from here, genuinely. to me, economics is political.

anyway, if i'm engaging in politics, it's for personal reasons - it's because there's something going on that does directly affect me. my posts are definitely less rhetoric-based and more emotion-based, and i'll readily admit that i do have a history of clinical paranoia. i just don't know how to discuss us economics rationally at this point. trump is clearly not a rational actor. how can i have a rational response to someone like that? i'm certainly willing to be talked down, and in fact, have been talking myself down. i'd love to see america reach some kind of stable economic and political equilibrium, providing it's one in which i have, like, basic human rights. it's really hard to see a path towards that right now.

sometimes i gotta say things, because otherwise i'm carrying all this dread and despair around in my head. writing is how i talk myself down from it. i try not to share it, but i mean, honestly, your critical response, even though i don't understand it, has helped me talk myself down. that's not something i really get from the uspol thread.

it's very easy to forget what thread i'm on lately. US politics, Canadian politics, US economy, world economy, occasional baseball threads... it's all being dominated by one absolute cancer of a human and his shitgoblin's antics.

to man alive: tell them off and cut them out. they deserve to hear it we have all earned our cathartic eruptions at this point.

anyways, will save that stuff for the politics threads going forward.

so if you’re a giant business with lobbyists trump has time for you. Got it.

i really don't understand where you're coming from here, genuinely. to me, economics is political

i don’t disagree with this and i’m not typically one to thread police, but you all were on a pretty long tangent about whether or not to block the one right wing guy on your fb/twitter feed when i tut-tutted

Dividing the last thread between a global economy thread and one which has 'US' on the title has led us on a strange path.

i’m reading that the china tariff exemptions on electronics computers phones and chips only applies to final products, so e.g. a us-based plant that manufactures electronics using parts made in china still has to pay 145% while making the whole thing in china is a 20% tariff. hilarious rakestepping doofus move

Dividing the last thread between a global economy thread and one which has 'US' on the title has led us on a strange path.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 12 April 2025 12:52 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

the shittest of paths

This is a continuation of the previous US economy thread … that had US in the title …

Unfortunately, the US had to drag the rest of us into it.

hilarious rakestepping doofus move

Good title for May's US politics thread.

just speculating here but i think the consumer electronics exemption may augur the beginning of the end of liberation day tariffs. after upping the ante with the 145% tariff and publicly begging china to call him, trump starts unilaterally reducing barriers while china keeps theirs in place. he’s shown his hand, every industry will now barge in begging for exemptions, all china has to do is wait and the tariff wall will crumble, and they keep all the leverage. if team trump have any foresight they’ll anticipate this and take actions to try to save face and precipitate a “deal” next week

They’re a bit like the southern Democrats who hung in through the 70s and 80s waiting for the party to get racist again.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President

Well, worked out for them tbf

Oh i’m sure they’d have been thrilled by the last nominee

lol now lutnick is saying the tariff exemptions on tech are only temporary and a bunch of other people in trump world are contradicting him

Smartphones, computers and other electronic devices that won exemptions from some US tariffs will be part of a forthcoming levy on semiconductors, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, dampening what China had called a “small step” toward easing the trade fight between the world’s two biggest economies.

Breaking: A senior Wall Street executive w ties to the Trump White House described @howardlutnick ’s comments about the temporary nature of the tariff exemptions as “off message. Now the market will open way down again since it appears the administration is totally confused. Susie (Wiles) needs to get control of Lutnick. He is a wrecking ball.”

Scoop: There is significant division inside the @WhiteHouse over @howardlutnick ’s comments on the temporary nature of the tariff exemptions, an apparent 180 from where the world thought the trade negotiations were going, sources tell me. Of course the only opinion that really matters in the president’s but I am told plenty of people really believe he is “off message” of trying to create a trade regime that involves negotiations even with China and actions that don’t roil the markets including the all important bond market. This story is developing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyL9cdXqXtE

well, ofc the only people who are both acceptable to Trump and willing to serve under him are basically irresponsible, dim-witted, or otherwise unfit to fill their position under any other president. by his own design they're all just bits and bobs hanging off his coattails.

This shit is so idiotic nobody’s gonna want to deal with us anymore

Hope so.

"Liberation Day" may come to have many more meanings than Trump intended.

No leftist is more committed than Trump to destroying capitalism and American hegemony

It is true that he burned through what passed for the A-team during Trump 1 so we are really left with the crustiest combo of incompetence and utter lack of scruples that can be found in the united states. cockfarmers to a man

trump’s showman instincts where he wants everything to have maximum suspense and drama are a hilariously disastrous fit for econ policy making. like apparently there are new tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals coming in a couple weeks? why not just announce everything all at once?

sounds like you're little yippy, flopson

Ratings! xpost

It is true that he burned through what passed for the A-team during Trump 1 so we are really left with the crustiest combo of incompetence and utter lack of scruples that can be found in the united states. cockfarmers to a man

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 13 April 2025 15:28 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mnuchin was legit pretty good. i wonder if he’d come back under the right circumstances once bessent and lutnick get thrown under the bus

everybody needs not to panic. we're just raising taxes on all of our trading partners at once for no discernible reason, let's be cool about this

raising taxes on all of our trading partners at once

by making the basic 10% tariffs universal and not playing favorites it ensures there are no winners and losers in this trade war. there are only losers.

lol at being off message. How can anyone in or out of the administration have any idea what the message is?

And that's a good point about Trump's need for the spotlight. He loves the executive orders. He loves playing the role of Strong Leader in tweetable bites. If that means keeping everyone guessing about everything, he likes that too.

DETROIT — As President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on imported vehicles remain in effect despite a pullback this week on other country-based levies, analysts are expecting massive global implications for the automotive industry due to the policies.

They’re expecting to see a drop in vehicle sales in the millions, higher new and used vehicle prices, and increased costs of more than $100 billion for the industry, according to research reports from Wall Street and automotive analysts.

“What we’re seeing now is a structural shift, driven by policy, that’s likely to be long-lasting,” Felix Stellmaszek, Boston Consulting Group’s global lead of automotive and mobility, told CNBC. “This may well be the most consequential year for the auto industry in history – not just because of immediate cost pressures, but because it’s forcing fundamental change in how and where the industry builds.”

BCG expects tariffs to add $110 billion to $160 billion on an annual run rate basis in costs to the industry, which could impact 20% of U.S. new-vehicle market revenues, increasing production costs for both U.S. and non-U.S. manufacturers.

The Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan-based nonprofit think tank, believes costs for automakers in the U.S. alone will increase by $107.7 billion. That includes $41.9 billion for Detroit automakers General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler parent Stellantis.

Both analyses take into account the 25% tariffs on imported vehicles implemented by Trump on April 3 as well as forthcoming levies of the same amount on automotive parts that are set to begin by May 3.

Automakers and suppliers may be able to bear some of the cost increases, but they’re also expected to pass them along to U.S. consumers, which could in turn lower sales, according to analysts.

“We believe the tariffs as proposed will raise the cost of both importing and manufacturing vehicles in the US by at least a low to mid single digit thousand dollar level on average, and we believe it will be hard for the auto industry to fully pass this on, especially with softening consumer demand more generally,” Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney said in a Thursday investor note.

Goldman Sachs assumes new vehicle net prices in the U.S. will rise by roughly $2,000 to $4,000 over the next six- to 12-month timeframe to better reflect tariff costs.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/12/auto-tariffs-sales-costs.html

great piece by adam posen arguing that china, not the us, has "escalation dominance" leverage in the upcoming trade war

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trade-wars-are-easy-lose

In 2024, U.S. exports of goods and services to China were $199.2 billion, and imports from China were $462.5 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $263.3 billion. To the degree that the bilateral trade balance predicts which side will “win” in a trade war, the advantage lies with the surplus economy, not the deficit one. China, the surplus country, is giving up sales, which is solely money; the United States, the deficit country, is giving up goods and services it does not produce competitively or at all at home. Money is fungible: if you lose income, you can cut back spending, find sales elsewhere, spread the burden across the country, or draw down savings (say, by doing fiscal stimulus). China, like most countries with overall trade surpluses, saves more than it invests—meaning that it, in a sense, has too much savings. The adjustment would be relatively easy. There would be no critical shortages, and it could replace much of what it normally sold to the United States with sales domestically or to others.

The United States will face shortages of critical inputs ranging from basic ingredients of most pharmaceuticals to inexpensive semiconductors used in cars and home appliances to critical minerals for industrial processes including weapons production. The supply shock from drastically reducing or zeroing out imports from China, as Trump purports to want to achieve, would mean stagflation, the macroeconomic nightmare seen in the 1970s and during the COVID pandemic, when the economy shrank and inflation rose simultaneously. In such a situation, which may be closer at hand than many think, the Federal Reserve and fiscal policymakers are left with only terrible options and little chance of staving off unemployment except by further raising inflation.

This could all be intended as just a negotiating tactic, Trump’s and Bessent’s repeated statements and actions notwithstanding. But even on those terms, the strategy will do more harm than good. As I warned in Foreign Affairs last October, the fundamental problem with Trump’s economic approach is that it would need to carry out enough self-harming threats to be credible, which means that markets and households would expect ongoing uncertainty. Americans and foreigners alike would invest less rather than more in the U.S. economy, and they would no longer trust the U.S. government to live up to any deal, making a negotiated settlement or agreement to deescalate difficult to achieve. As a result, U.S. productive capacity would decline rather than improve, which would only increase the leverage that China and others have over the United States.

and china is already restricting exports of rare earths and minerals

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/business/china-rare-earths-exports.html

China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.

Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors.

Yeah it's like putting out fires by now, you cover that one (tech, meds), the other one flares up (shipping, agriculture, oil), all the while having to pretend this little dance was not doomed from the beginning. When you think about it, he could have done that for an industry or two, gradually, moderately, the automotive industry probably - ISI is a real economic development theory after all, it was discussed in my masters program. It will be a minute before he finds scapegoats in his own advisers, and the various impacted industries don't have to be too smart to encourage it until they have peace. This tariff thing might be over before it has the time to do long-lasting damage: just enough to have the US barely avoiding a technical recession, to sour relationships with China for the rest of his term, widen the number of his enemies, and give them plenty of bullets.

Interesting how US agriculture was harmed during the 1st trade war.

https://www.ft.com/content/3b101afd-b51c-4d64-ba2f-45ad4590e819

Tariff article; can’t read

archive.ph = Hong-Kong

Communism is great.

Eggs are going for 4 yuan (about 50 cents) per dozen in a Chinese supermarket. But at what cost?? pic.twitter.com/XmLge66FUe

— Kyle 🚄 (@KyleTrainEmoji) April 14, 2025

thought that was NYT Pitchbot for a sec

Eggs are back down to $6 a dozen in my local supermarket. Hail Trump!

Probably not a big deal.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-halts-shipments-vehicles-china-183358401.html

This guy runs the biggest (only?) freight data news site, and has been a Trump supporter. But he says shipments are taking a big (sorry) dive. A lot of stuff is not being sent in either direction — which is bad news for the trucking/transport industry.

https://i.imgur.com/UhVcBaC.png

lol Trump's actually going to end up reducing carbon emissions.

just heard an interview with a small board game company owner.. she said a container usually cost about a hundred grand to ship from China, but now will be $200K+ which they can't afford so the container is just sitting in a port in China

This guy runs the biggest (only?) freight data news site, and has been a Trump supporter. But he says shipments are taking a big (sorry) dive. A lot of stuff is not being sent in either direction — which is bad news for the trucking/transport industry.

🖼

I backed an rpg kickstarter a while back that was due to fulfill any time now and just got an update that (1) everything is printed and ready to go, (2) they aren't increasing the price; and (3) they are delaying fulfillment to an unknown date. This says to me they are banking on the tariffs being lifted at some point this year.

Board games are worse, because the components costs are going up way more than the printing costs.

Let me guess, he supported Trump despite everything that Trump said he was going to do when he was an office?

I think that’s exactly right lol. I looked him up, he lobbied to be secretary of transportation, and he posts bitchy things about Sean Duffy being stupid. But he does seem to know his freight.

this is insane

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/91e96152-cdc2-4128-ba0e-f9febc91dbb9_1060x834.png

That is the effect of rewards/cashback card percolating down the stack of credit cards. Rather than competing on cost of debt the competition is on the miles or whatever. That only ever made sense if you paid your bill off in full every month. Now it’s just a loan sharking tool designed to trap people on unsustainable debt in order to board a plane 2 minutes earlier and maybe not have to gate check your bags.

Ed otm

(3) they are delaying fulfillment to an unknown date. This says to me they are banking on the tariffs being lifted at some point this year.
Yep very large corporations making hard goods in China are doing exactly the same.

I wonder where the miles and miles of finished goods are being put for the moment

Containers stacked in port facilities and on docked ships

Xp Ed — idk it seems like more people are being denied credit so the loan sharking aspect seems less uh bloodthirsty? Idk like people who need credit cards are getting denied … meanwhile, I am one of those pay the bills off in full 11 months out of the year people… I keep getting ads for every credit card it feels like, balance transfer low APR whatever cards and I am kinda baffled because they presumably have info about me, including the fact I don’t have any balances to transfer … am I supposed to tell a friend or something?

I actually need to transfer a balance to somewhere with no interest for 12-18 mos so I can get rid of the only debt i have. Annoyingly.

I actually need to transfer a balance to somewhere with no interest for 12-18 mos so I can get rid of the only debt i have. Annoyingly.

The fact that I have a bunch of stuff on autopay makes switching from the 1.5% rewards card to the 2% rewards card something that seems like too much effort

I am one of those pay the bills off in full 11 months out of the year people… I keep getting ads for every credit card it feels like, balance transfer low APR whatever cards and I am kinda baffled because they presumably have info about me, including the fact I don’t have any balances to transfer … am I supposed to tell a friend or something?

Same here. Pay the full balance every month, use the credit card to pay for internet and electricity and groceries and very little else, and yet I get emails and letters from Chase and American Express every goddamn week asking me to sign up for new credit cards, both in my personal name and corporate cards for Burning Ambulance. It's crazy.

If I wanted to, I'm pretty sure I could get a sizable business loan for BA — like a quarter million — and use part of it to get the fuck out of this country, but I don't think my wife would go for that plan. She's way more debt-averse than I am.

isn’t the reason interest rates on credit cards increased because interest rates increased? the spike in the chart tracer hand posted coincided with when the fed started hiking, and rates were rock bottom for over a decade prior

yup

The credit card companies want your balances even if you historically have paid them every month because all it takes is a pretty routine life change (medical emergency, lost job, etc.) and someone can no longer pay those balances in full. I'm sure they have data on how likely that is to happen.

About a month back I signed up for something that at least purportedly is supposed to stop automatic mailouts of preapproved cards and stuff like that, the idea being to prevent fraud. Annoyingly I can't recall the info at present, was a free thing. It does seem to have dropped off for me at least.

The card companies make money with every transaction (processing fees etc) so they are fine with folks who don't carry balances. There's money made by some entity every time money moves, so transfers are also more about churn.

Containers stacked in port facilities and on docked ships
Yeah but on a scale previously undreamed of, surely

Ho hum, Dow just down another 1,000 or so today.

its only slightly above where it was at before Trump announced the 90 day pause. down nearly 10% in a month. I knew all the clips of FOX/CNBC morons celebrating getting to see "The Art of the Deal" in real time would age badly but I really didn't think it would happen so quickly.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-tariffs-capitalism-global-us-economy-stock-market-wall-street.html

good read, reporter got some good sources for this

isn’t the reason interest rates on credit cards increased because interest rates increased? the spike in the chart tracer hand posted coincided with when the fed started hiking, and rates were rock bottom for over a decade prior

― flopson, Sunday, April 20, 2025 12:03 PM (yesterday)

it's not a 1:1 correlation though - fed cut rates to 0 during covid but the corresponding credit card interest rate didn't really dip to 2014 levels

Ha ive got thru half of that newyorker piece, the article is put together from takes by all hedge fund managers. Don’t make it wrong by any measure, but that is a particular set of “investors.” Hedge fund ime can mean anything really, but mostly it means you won’t really know what their investment strategy is or what and how they’re holding shit. That scaramucci is said to run a fund of funds in the group is itself pretty hilarious to me, i never thought if such a thing was even possible because it’s like the next level of randomosity. Volatility would be tempered because it’s grouping unknowns and ending up less volatile only by chaotic diversification? I dunno enough for sure so maybe i got wrong. Hedge funds can be incredibly predatory and are unpredictable, often close to being speculation by deep pockets. I don’t know what portion of wall st that is by money or population.

something that drives me absolutely insane is this widely-spread perception that Trump would somehow be good for the economy. some of the more reasonable people I knew who voted for him used that as an excuse. outside of immigration it was the one issue voters consistently trusted him on. there were signs everywhere that said "KAMALA HIGH PRICES TRUMP LOW PRICES". and I always wanted to yell at these people, "HOW!??" he has no economic plan outside of "cut taxes on the rich", something which never works, and tariffs, which every economist on the planet knows will drive prices way up. he has no clue how the economy works on even a basic level and was a notoriously shitty businessman who made all his money through inheritance and fraud. all these Trump-voting stooges going "well I didn't think it would be *this* bad" can go fuck themselves. you sold your soul in service of this man and yet seem to have no idea how he actually works. I'm glad your portfolio is circling the fucking drain. sucks that mine is too though

Literally any (other) actor who played a prominent businessman on TV would have done a better job.

RIP Robert Chew

it's not a 1:1 correlation though - fed cut rates to 0 during covid but the corresponding credit card interest rate didn't really dip to 2014 levels

― 龜, Monday, 21 April 2025 15:42 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was curious so i checked the correlation using data on FRED. the credit card series goes back to 1995. correlation is it’s 0.6

library(fredr)
library(dplyr)
fredr_set_key(fred_key)
#Effective Federal Funds Rate (monthly average)
effr =fredr(
  series_id = "EFFR",
  observation_start = as.Date("1995-01-01"),
  frequency = "m"
)
#Credit Card Interest Rate (All Accounts)
cc_rate = fredr(
  series_id = "TERMCBCCALLNS",
  observation_start = as.Date("1995-01-01")
) %>% 
  filter(is.na(value) == FALSE)
merged_data = inner_join(effr, cc_rate, by = "date", suffix = c("_effr", "_cc"))
cor(mfa ya$value_effr, data$value_cc)
[1] 0.6044181

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1IpDz&height=490" class="noborder">

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1IpDL&height=490" class="noborder">

So... the San Francisco nonprofit I work for has a tiny staff in Canada. One departing Montreal employee just FedEx'd us her used laptop, and the international shipment cost a little over $200.

Then FedEx just sent us a separate bill for about $2300 for the tariff and a brokerage fees. This is a laptop that WE own, being returned to the mothership. Why the 125% tariff on a used laptop? Because this Dell laptop was made in CHINA, CHINA

I just saw customs paperwork and it comes from the Department of Homeland Security
Shit's getting real

That is fucking wild

We're gonna try to track down the original sales invoice and dispute it, but probably a shitload of red tape to actually get a refund

She should've just left it on the sidewalk with a 'FREE' sign taped to it

lmao that’s wild

I wonder if all Trump's MAGA merchandise is going to find a way to avoid the tarriffs.

he doesn't care. he's huffing a different drug of choice

Wild story, and then you multiply that times 10,000...

honestly that story kind of reads like conservative fanfic, like the sort of thing you see getting posted around when there's a Democrat in office so they can go "can you believe how dumb our government is!??" except our government really is that dumb right now. ditto for the Hegseth stuff, like this is the kind of thing chuds kept insisting Hillary Clinton was doing but you knew even she couldn't get away with that. conservatives truly are manifesting the country they believed this was all along

A good friend who manufactures in part in china and also in taiwan just got hit yest with his first huge tariff. Part of the high rate was a miscategorization of the item type. He was surprised tho how easy it was to get the categorization corrected and the tariff vastly reduced— like one call. Anecdotal evidence.

xp Because Democrats in office are automaticly bad for business, according to some stupid folx.

That’s what I don’t get. Despite 40 years of tangible evidence that Republicans are bad at the economy, the median voter still thinks they’re the good ones.

they're all median temporarily embarrassed millionaires

we have the same problem over here with Tories.

So many people associate some kind of "being tough" with economic strength, military strength, strength in general. Which is a total misread of how economics, foreign relations, and the world at large really works. But it's deeply rooted in this kind of masculine mythology.

They threaten the economy, grab it by the lapels and yell in its face: “Be good!!!”

They think “capitalism” is self-actualizing and requires no plan, design, or management. To the extent that it is self-actualizing, it is one of few charms. But it also arcs on its own towards monopoly, ruthless extraction, and selfish criminality (that’s when it hasn’t already started there and as a non-economist i’d say it probably does). Nevertheless , those “capitalist”ideologies insist on some imagined moral purity and fuck them forever.

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2025/04/21/drum-machine-price-before-tariffs-399-after-tariffs-977/

The pro-Trump comments in response to this are perfect. None of them had ever heard the phrase "trade deficit" before last month but now the cult leader has made it a hill they'd die on.

Particularly fond of "tariffs increase wholesale prices, why are retail prices going up?????"

Whole damn country of Homer Simpson’s

heading back to penny candy and nickle matinee days, good times ahead

WSJ: The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed almost 1,000 points on Monday and is headed for its worst April performance since 1932, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

that means prices will be lower, right? *natalie portman meme*

But back up about 1,000 points today. People on Wall St. just moving money around.

Yeah it’s all a scam

Math is fake

if only it wasn't fucking with our savings as retired people

It's starting to look like a Southern Gothic redneck version of the Incal 'round these parts. Did the Wild Palms reboot get green lit yet?

I genuinely thought I was going to retire in a few years. Guess not!

No market manipulation to see here

https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3lni6msqq2k2g

When I’m President for Life white collar crime will be treated like we treat the homeless now.

nothing to see here, just laying down terms of safety nets/bailouts when the market collapses...

socialism for the rich is a different beast entirely

seems like trump’s chickening out and is going back to his term 1 strategy of “do something, then undo it if stock market doesn’t like it.” unilaterally backing down from the trade war with china, bessent semi-publicly saying it’s not sustainable, trump backing off on firing powell after the markets didn’t like it

Trump still a clown, what a surprise.

somewhat comforting to know that the network speech can still put the fear of god in him

Is he going to make up a call with Xi to justify backing down? Last I saw he was still on ‘they want to make a deal but just don’t know how to reach out.’

"One Trick Pony All Out of Tricks"

he's so pathetic lol

could be a wait xxp

Thing I learned from @Lingling_Wei newsletter: "The only instance in recent memory when a Chinese leader initiated contact with an American leader occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when then-President Jiang Zemin sent a telegram of condolence to George W. Bush" pic.twitter.com/3aX8nACSxH

— modest proposal (@modestproposal1) April 22, 2025

I'M DUMPING YOU - and don't even THINK about calling me!

I mean if you wanted to call me I wouldn't completely rule out talking about it. But YOU have to call ME.

.......Why isn't she picking up the phone???

This the art of the deal?

The art of the dealt.

The fart of the heel

Median voter: “he’s soooooooo gooooood”

3D chess baby!!

No other president could have resolved this trade war with China.

Now when will he retract his totally bogus declaration of a national emergency that supposedly granted him the power to raise tariffs overnight? And all those other national emergencies he's used to seize dictatorial (essentially wartime) powers?

Maybe the stock market will recover for a while because all that money has to flow somewhere, but the underlying instability is ever present, because he's accumulated so much power to abuse and misuse, and has no intention of relinquishing it.

is repeatedly saying you aren't going back down on this, and then quite timidly climbing down with yr tail between yr legs - is this the artform of the deal?

He learned all these tricks he loves so much while making real estate deals, negotiating licensing deals, getting loans, and negotiating other contracts. iow, situations where he only needed to dominate a relative handful of investors or executives. In that setting stuff like a sudden heel turn out of the blue, new crazy demands and the like probably worked, in part because they were confusing and intimidating and he was a billionaire. They've even worked pretty well on the Republicans in Congress, in part because Congress is a small group and not all that smart. They don't scale up to the level of global finance.

The herd is starting to grow restive

A majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump's handling of the economy, particularly his trade policies, per two new polls out Wednesday.

Why it matters: Over 10 years in and around public office, and despite all the other controversies surrounding him, one issue where people have consistently given Trump the benefit of the doubt was in his handling of economic affairs.

Not anymore.

By the numbers: 55% of U.S. adults say they are not confident Trump can make good decisions about economic policy, per a Pew Research Center survey of 3,589 people conducted April 7-13.

That's his lowest rating on that question in data going back to 2019, Pew said, and down 14 points from a survey conducted just after Trump's election last November.

"[W]hen it comes to the economy, Trump draws less confidence today than he did either in his first term or during the 2024 campaign," Pew said in a report.

That followed another survey earlier Wednesday from Reuters/Ipsos, which found 37% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy.

That is Trump's worst-ever rating on the economic question in Reuters/Ipsos polling, going back to the start of his first presidency.

It's also not far off the Biden administration's lowest numbers. Ipsos polled 4,306 people from April 16-21.

The intrigue: Respondents in both polls took a dim view of Trump's sweeping efforts to remake the global economy via historic tariffs.

Only 36% in the Ipsos survey said they approved of his performance on international trade, while just 39% in the Pew survey said they approved of his tariff increases.

The bottom line: The U.S. economy isn't in a recession, and there's no guarantee that one will happen either. But pessimism that one might be coming is off the charts.

New Gallup polling out this week shows that a majority of Americans, for the first time since at least 2001, believe their economic situation is worsening.

and he was a billionaire

probably not

perception is reality if it remains untested

Now when will he retract his totally bogus declaration of a national emergency that supposedly granted him the power to raise tariffs overnight?

his administration is gonna argue that trump being in office *is* the national emergency, so he does have that authority after all

Trump learnt not to mess with Capital.

Americans, minorities and migrants: no problem.

Tariffs haven’t been cancelled yet, he could still be visited by the Ghost of Tariffs Past at midnight.

China telling its airlines to stop ordering Boeing is pretty big... China withholding all exports of rare earth minerals to the U.S. is really big

Traders are choosing to interpret statements by Trump about not firing the Fed Chairman, and by the Treasury Secretary about the need to end the trade war with China, as if these were genuine changes of national policy instead of them simply saying what they think the markets want to hear, with no intention of resolving the chaos through decisive, coherent actions that align with those statements. Boy, will they be surprised when everything they say changes back again in a day or two. Then changes again the next day.

Meantime

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/23/musk-bessent-trump-white-house-irs

(what's up with bullet point articles? does that mean they're probably written by AI?)

That’s just Axios’ house style. Obnoxious.

When you're the kind of (Self-)Important Person who reads Axios, you just want the bullet points. You're busy! No time for style or nuance! Just gimme the facts so I can repeat them in my next meeting!

Axios articles are often almost unintelligible. Which is also their house stule. But i could gather, almost, that the people leading our nation are reqlly quite stupid after you get past their self-interested delusions.

Or style

The Stule Council

When Trump eventually caves in and reduces the tariffs on China, I hope the Chinese say they don't give a fuck and keep their tariffs on the US in place.

Trucking volumes down 8.3% month over month...

We are approaching COVID low levels in trucking. The market continues to stall. pic.twitter.com/e5urKKWn3c

— Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🚂⚓️ (@FreightAlley) April 24, 2025

The final art of the deal is that I'm chuckling at the idea that 45% of Americans in the second week of April still thought the president could make sound economic policy decisions. Where do they find those people. Or was there no "don't know / don't care / I'm here for the fun" option.

I only caught half of it on nhk news this evening but China seems to be turning out some really good exploding Tesla robot memes to win the trade war. So it’s not all masterly inactivity.

It is indeed pretty unbelievable that 45% of Americans can think Trump is an economic genius, even after all this shit. Hard to get past the thought that the root problem is not Trump it's Americans.

I mean nowhere else in the western world does Trump's approval ratings get over 10 or 15%. There are upcoming elections in Canada and Australia, and literally the only reason the right wing parties are on course to lose is Trump, and people looking over to the US and thinking holy fuck no

In the UK we are ready for reform. In Germany AfD are big. In much of Europe the coalition system stops far right parties from gaining power for now.

Canadians will get bored of Carney and will boot any centre left party because most of the West are either racists or will vote for racists if they don't get their package on time. We are all screwed.

According to polls from November, people who would vote for Trump in Europe ranged from 4% (Denmark) to 13% (France, Germany) to 27% (UK) 33% (Greece). Obviously its very theoretical. When local right-wing people show up, those percentages go past 30% and sometimes end up in government.

jfc, it's still extremely despairing to imagine that circumstances are so dire that they have pushed a country to rally around Mark fucking Carney, just merely because of the extremely low bar that is not approving of Trump.

Xpost to xyzzz: my very slightly more optimistic take is that while far right populism is definitely riding high in Europe, it may reach its high water mark soon, faced with Trump and Putin. The trussterfuck may have temporarily inoculated the UK from the truly moronic economic "policies" playing out in the US at the moment. And countries like France or Germany would never tolerate the gutting of government that's going on in the US right now. It's not much but it's something.

when Mark Carney was featured on the BBC Reith Lectures he was without doubt the most stupid, boring, intellectually vapid, greyer than a grey dogshit, Bill Gates foundation quoting. terminally dull neo-lib arsehole ever encountered since before VHS got banned from ILX.

what's wrong with the gates foundation?

never mind, forget I asked

lol, are you serious?

There's nothing good in politics right now, it's all bad vs worse, and if the choice is between some establishment neolib and a Trumpian fascist, I'm not going to assume equivalence.

What if the neolibs adopt fascist policies I mean a lot of this is already happening with immigration. In the UK lab is going to hemorrhage councilors next week and its not like that crowd need an excuse to stick the boot in.

yeah, it is better to judge their policies rather than their dire lyrics put in the public arena, but UK Labour are doing the hard-right fiscal and racist policies and the racist messaging. It's called sham democracy.

I know the critiques, so I was being faux-naive. My perspective is that I work for an organization that partners with the Gates Foundation on lifesaving disease prevention around the world, and my wife also has experience helping to manage grant funding from Gates toward other worthy causes. Right now a lot of these causes are being directly threatened by the Trump administration, as is the nonprofit sector in general. So I don't have a lot of patience for dismissiveness toward the Gates Foundation and similar orgs that are engaged in impactful humanitarian work, even though I understand the problems with the role that Big Philanthropy plays in the world.

the prioritising of commercial vaccine IP over the life prospects of millions of humans in 3rd world = impactful. Yes I agree.

can you guys take this to another thread?

fair enough. I won't post another word on BGF or his pathetic melt apologists.

thank you :)

This thread is for the US economy but it is going to get into world economy and politics now and then, for reasons that ought to be obvious.

i’m not usually one to thread police but i’ll take any chance i can get to not be exposed to the hundredth reiteration of these tiresome beefs. there are multiple threads i dont read precisely to avoid seeing this kind of stuff. can we just have one thread without it?

I was thinking the malevolent corporate evil of the Gates Foundation has probably already been thrashed to death on other threads by now.

airlines one of the most cyclically sensitive sectors. one more thing to add to screaming recession indicators

American Airlines Group Inc. withdrew its full-year earnings outlook, joining a growing number of companies that say unease about the economy is making it difficult to forecast how the year will play out.

The carrier said in a filing Thursday along with its first-quarter financial results that it plans to “provide a full-year update as the economic outlook becomes clearer.” In January, the company had projected adjusted earnings per share of $1.70 to $2.70 for the full year on a revenue gain of 4.5% to 7.5%.

American’s action echoes those of Delta Air Lines Inc. and the parent of Frontier Airlines, which also pulled 2025 guidance as President Donald Trump’s trade war saps demand for travel. Waning confidence among consumers and businesses have “flat-lined” revenue growth, Delta said earlier this month. United Airlines Holdings Inc. took the unusual step last week of offering dual earnings forecasts, one for a stable environment and a reduced one based on a recession.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-24/american-air-aal-pulls-full-year-outlook-on-soft-travel-demand-worry

it’s gonna be hilarious when trump unilaterally drops all tariffs on china in a couple weeks. amazing how much leverage he gave them, and continues to give, by doing this

China demanded that the US revoke all unilateral tariffs and denied there were talks on reaching a trade deal, maintaining a defiant stance despite President Donald Trump’s recent easing of criticism of the country.

“The US should respond to rational voices in the international community and within its own borders and thoroughly remove all unilateral tariffs imposed on China, if it really wants to solve the problem,” Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong said at a regular briefing on Thursday in Beijing.

He also dismissed speculation that progress has been made in bilateral communications, saying “any reports on development in talks are groundless,” and urging the US to “show sincerity” if it wants to make a deal.

The remarks suggest that President Donald Trump’s comments this week signaling that he could lower tariffs on China — which currently stand at 145% for most goods — will not be enough to de-escalate tensions. The US leader said Wednesday that “everything’s active” when asked if he was engaging with China and that Beijing was “going to do fine” once talks had settled.

Trump has tried to get President Xi Jinping on the phone a number of times since he returned to office, but the Chinese leader has, so far, resisted.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-24/pboc-s-pan-warns-trade-frictions-threaten-trust-in-world-economy

ouch feels bad

https://preview.redd.it/gj5enhovvpi91.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=af593189f1c63ff02fda5e9e81912d7f909881f8

the meme of the next decade

Xi not taking Trump's phone calls is ice cold. Trump trying multiple times after the first rejection is what you might call a big clue to who has the upper hand. Would love to have a Xi spokesperson tell Trump "he's not holding any cards", as Trump famously told Zelensky.

i’m not usually one to thread police but i’ll take any chance i can get to not be exposed to the hundredth reiteration of these tiresome beefs. there are multiple threads i dont read precisely to avoid seeing this kind of stuff. can we just have one thread without it?

― flopson, Thursday, 24 April 2025 bookmarkflaglink

As politics get worse ILE will become more unreadable.

Ride it out, is what I say.

xxp

and the card he has is worthless to china

Oxford Economics estimates the difference in hit to China's economy between 60% tariffs and 145% is only 2% vs 2.2% because both are so punitive pic.twitter.com/JRLkIsH84n

— modest proposal (@modestproposal1) April 24, 2025

What do you do when you only have One Big Beautiful Idea and it turns out to be completely wrong? The ongoing education of DJT.

It is indeed pretty unbelievable that 45% of Americans can think Trump is an economic genius, even after all this shit. Hard to get past the thought that the root problem is not Trump it's Americans.

― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, April 24, 2025 7:21 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Let’s be honest, that last sentence is really the thing.

Hard to get past the thought that the root problem is not Trump it's Americans.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:22gl4rbpkgcoxytuhphhqofi/bafkreiaylghujq5boqijg75quqcvoww4dgkfbmynj7u7ebqemj7naxgqya@jpeg

what is that poll supposed to signify?

personally I wouldn't publish the fact that 9% of your respondants said they had a favorable opinion of the Black Plague

From the same freight data guy I cited earlier in the thread.

https://i.imgur.com/PYxnBqo.png

Deadheads going to Dallas to get loaded? Count me in

lol my thoughts exactly

in all seriousness tho, this is very bad

I bought a new large lithium battery yesterday, and just today I was told all prices are increasing

lol Andy

no one knows whether gregorian chant is good or not. checks out

“We wanna truck freight, we wanna truck freight to do what we wanna do! And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have a good time. We’re gonna be deadheads!”

when trump says trade talks with China are 'underway,' can we just assume it's a blatant lie? China says no talks are underway and I tend to trust them more

Definitely getting a António de Oliveira Salazar post-stroke "Just set him up with an office where he thinks he's doing things" vibe.

they could have done that from the start and he would've been hailed as a hero

Convincing

The US and China held talks on Thursday morning to help resolve an ongoing trade war, Donald Trump said.

The US president told reporters at the White House on Thursday, declining to say to whom he was referring. “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.”

he's fucking lying.. he lies like the rest of us breathe

They did that to Fred Trump when he had dementia. Sent him to the office and have him blank paper to sign.

He had a meeting with all one billion Chinese.

it was a pretty unruly zoom call, it's true

the thing with Trump is he's not exactly a wild card in fact he's actually very predictable and easy to manipulate in some ways. he wants to act tough but doesn't actually want to *be* tough. because being tough is hard work and at his core he's a fundamentally lazy and incurious man who is completely uninterested in any part of the job that doesn't involve being on TV. after a decade of this shit he's still unable to adequately explain a single thing about any US policy, he either lies through his teeth or gets everything horribly wrong. long story short the one tactic that works really well on him is to just tell him to go fuck himself. he doesn't have the conviction or the knowledge to fight for anything. even at his own felony trial he was constantly falling asleep. his only tool is to be a whiny bitch. feel like every country on the planet knows this and the next four years is gonna be everyone eating our lunch.

no one knows whether gregorian chant is good or not. checks out

Gregorian chant obviously good, wake up America!

Congress is trying again to eliminate the Estate tax …

We may reveal it later

i saw him say that and could not believe nobody in the room coughed the words "Bullshit"

it is actually pretty wild how often Trump is able to get away with that, I don't know if I've ever seen someone who is so obviously full of shit 95% of the time. and yet trillions of dollars worth of value are being gained and lost based on that shit. fucking incredible country we've built.

how has there not been one reporter that we've heard just call straight bullshit to his face?

they want to believe

Reporters that call him on his bullshit never get asked again

I must have missed when they tried

there was the exchange with kaitlan collins during the bukele meeting 10 days ago, but apparently it's impossible to find an upload of that video that isn't framed as "trump DESTROYS CNN journalist"

personally I wouldn't publish the fact that 9% of your respondants said they had a favorable opinion of the Black Plague

a lower population freeing up space for everyone

Surely my buboes are benign

sad that vikings are sorta 'meh'... they should have elicited a stronger response, that was the whole point

TRUMP ASKED IF CHINA'S XI CALLED HIM, RESPONDS 'YEP'

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) April 25, 2025

classic *walter

Love his photo there: it’s late night and I’m trying not to disturb the others in the group home

xps

sorry to hear about your loss PK :(

wrong thread obv - meant for the US pol one, but post still stands

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5masqigebv6augvgz62uko5i/bafkreifjq5hip42cqomlcc345bcntds3dc4ehb2wmockkdh565cvvlzdkm@jpeg

"you wouldn't know any of the countries I've made deals with, they all live in Canada"

NYT:

Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Friday morning, the president reiterated that he had spoken with the Chinese president “numerous times,” but he refused to answer when pressed on whether any call had happened after he imposed the tariffs earlier this month.

[...]

But his claims of talks have been rejected by Chinese officials, who have repeatedly denied this week that they are actively negotiating with the United States.

“China and the U.S. have not held consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs,” Guo Jiakun, the spokesman for the foreign ministry, said in a news conference on Friday. “The United States should not confuse the public.”

Mr. Trump also said, without evidence, that he had “made 200 deals.” He added that he would finish and announce them in the next three to four weeks.

lol he definitely is signing blank papers

nominating "The United States should not confuse the public." for May USPol thread title...

^^

yes

He added that he would finish and announce them in the next three to four weeks

like when he was replacing Obamacare with something so much better in his first term.. it was always a couple more weeks to finalize the plan, then a couple more

This explains much

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreidsbbpmjweds42div76d5fpx5kshkyauce64tkztjsqjsbhfucacm@jpeg

Gonna be great!

https://fortune.com/2025/04/25/albertsons-suppliers-tariffs-price-cost/

Such genius:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreiaf2iz3pho4rczn5wcjsa7xv6woexyctttxkzuydszi62bf7tvjni@jpeg

Actually I can see that he’s setting up to blame retailers if there are shortages. Stupid, but makes some sort of sense.

grocery stores should pre-order bananas and avocados

xp - Are those lawn signs of people they've arrested? wtf.

Hope u like *checks fields* nothing

The port of Seattle right now. It's completely empty with no new ships coming in.

We're going to have disruptions to access of basic goods unlike anything we have ever experienced in our lifetimes.

https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lnvjtgcxo22e

We are so unbelievably fucked. Most have no idea. Sadly, I don't even think empty shelves at Wal-Mart will get the cult to admit dear leader owns this one.

We have failed the dear leader, we must apologize to him for not having toilet paper

I have a .22, I'll be opossum hunting and foraging for a mess of wild mustard greens... make america gaunt again

I'll take the end of the US as the global hegemon and dollar as the reserve currency if Chinese tablets become even cheaper. Not trolling here, just saying this from the perspective of someone from a wretched, absolutely fucking cursed US vassal state shithole.

Heard today that wal mart is resuming shipments having agreed to eat the tariff cost themselves. No idea if true.

To say that Trump and the minions are desperately spinning the GDP numbers today is, how you say, understating.

we are doing great if you ignore the tariffs, which are going to supercharge the economy and make us all rich very soon!

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lnzwqewxju2r

Why I feel better already!

"If you ignore the raging fire that is currently rapidly consuming the entire first floor, we've got ourselves a lovely house with a great market value for resale!"

The thing is, the number is mostly depressed by tariff panic-buying pushing up imports. Assuming the tariffs have the expected effect of a big import drop-off in the 2nd quarter, absent other shocks there will probably be a big jump up in 2nd quarter allowing Trump to proclaim that his boom has arrived. When all that will really mean is that he artificially depressed GDP and then artificially boosted it via trade policy.

But that nuance is going to be hard to get across to yr average bear.

pretty optimistic assuming we'll survive another 3 months

I have tickets for concerts in September and November that I really wanna see, so I'm invested in the future!

Hell we just yesterday put down payments to be part of a parade in New Orleans next February, that's how bullish I am.

My current employment contract expires in three weeks. That's how far into the future I can see.

Assuming some of Stereolab's lyrics will hit harder in October.

it's a real problem that this is perpetually the case

I'm still a "Stereolab predicted 9/11" truther

Yeah, I'm either optimistic or dumb enough to have just bought tickets for a show in late September.

I figure the more shows you can buy in advance now the less immediate angst you'd face on waiting and then wondering if you have the cash for it closer to the time. Which sounds flippant but isn't meant to be!

Man I bought a National Symphony subscription into June 2026 I hope DC isn’t a smoking crater then.

So if c. the US election the economy looked great on paper, but didn't feel good for so many people, will the inverse hold true in the near future? That the economy will look bad on paper, but many of those same people will insist it's good?

yes

Consumer confidence is in the toilet and we haven't even been hit by tariff inflation yet.

Looks like the only economies with negative growth, out of those announced today, are the USA and Hungary. Fascism doesn't work, folks.

lol

Shipping from Asia to the US expected to drop 35% next week...

Reuters link

The Los Angeles port is expecting a 35% drop in cargo from Asia next week, Gene Seroka, the port's executive director, said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday.

"It's a precipitous drop in volume with a number of major American retailers stopping all shipments from China based on the tariffs," Seroka said.

Major American retailers have now stopped all shipments from China and that contributes to around 45% of traffic in Los Angeles, he said.

Seroka said that until some accord or framework is reached with China, the volume coming out of the country, except for some commodities, would be very light at best.

Fascism doesn't work, folks.

Fascism doesn't work on behalf of ordinary people. But it works as it is intended to work: to exert maximum control over ordinary people.

Ah yes

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreifly4zukbggjiazrbjz4pzmspbfh32tcy5imqvk7sy2yu7tdemeve@jpeg

https://theonion.com/trump-informs-nation-they-better-start-liking-those-little-canned-wieners/

corn husk dolls making a comeback