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.”

Seems like someone should have considered "where do we get all the stuff to make da bombs" before generating a bipartisan consensus on Cold War 2 with China.

Permanent magnets are used to generate electricity in vehicles with magnetos (vs. alternators) to charge the battery.

ooooh - Trump is getting China to repress the Rare Earth back catalog?!

The MAGA / Juggalo axis of LOLs

What’s this about the obscure Motown sub label?

Juggalos are libs, though.

Ilxor.com does not have any threads about Juggalos. I am not familiar with this term.

The Insane Clown Posse family. The feds have labeled them a gang, they ended up joining some anti-fascist marches during the first term.

Are you suggesting that the fan base of a band has become something like its own subculture? Wild.

So this fantastic 'deal' still includes 55% tariffs?

The 55% tariff total appears at first glance to be a hike from the 30% rate agreed in the truce struck early last month when both sides slashed triple-digit rates. However, a White House official said it merely reflected Trump’s worldwide 10% baseline “reciprocal” tariff on imports, the 20% fentanyl trafficking levy and a 25% pre-existing tariff on China.

55% tariff on China would be really really bad for the economy right?

consumer spending is only ~2/3 of our GDP nbd

Major downer today with the obvious exceptions

starting Monday I have a 401k equivalent with a 5% match so I must now be deeply concerned at all times with line goes up, not looking forward to it

403(b)? nice to have that match, that'll help ease the inevitable erosion

TSP - Thrifty Savings Plan

Lol you are young enough that you can continue to care about actual people being fucked rn and not the stock market tbh

congrats milo!

Wait Milo got a federal job?!?

I’m now personally responsible if your mail is lost.

Congrats and good luck

I hope they used the recruitment slogan "Go Postal!"

great detailed posts digging into data on imports since april 2

https://www.apricitas.io/p/how-tariffs-are-breaking-us-trade

Although virtually every part of US trade has been affected by these tariffs, the shifts in the overall trade deficit have been dominated by only two types of goods: pharmaceuticals & gold. US imports of gold spiked to record highs early this year as uncertainty spiked gold prices and fears that gold would not be exempted from tariffs caused a rift between American and European prices. The end result was a massive surge in gold imports, especially from Switzerland, as panicked consumers searched for safety and financial firms worked to arbitrage the American price premium. That surge in imports rapidly dissipated when it became clear that gold bullion would be exempt from the tariffs, leading to a historic drop in imports during April. Yet this is a great example of the costs of tariff uncertainty, as exempting gold imports from the get-go would have avoided much of this panic buying.

^great example of the uncertainty costs

The second major contributor to recent historic shifts in the trade deficit has been pharmaceuticals, where imports peaked at 142% above their 2024 levels before dropping. Drug imports have been mentioned as a key tariff target for months, and while they have so far remained exempt from almost all of Trump’s tariffs, pharmaceutical companies are not taking any chances and stocking up as much inventory as possible. The vast majority of that import surge has come from the European Union, home of research and manufacturing hubs that have long been America’s number one foreign source of medicine—and they’ve been particularly concentrated in Ireland, where many drug multinationals manufacture for tax avoidance purposes.

^i hadn’t realized the extent to which tariff threat was driving import demand in non-tariffed industries

The largest tariffs America has implemented are those on China—at peak, tariffs on most Chinese goods were a staggering 145%, and even now they sit at a historically unprecedented high of 30% for most goods. To put the intensity into perspective, half of all April tariff revenue was collected from Chinese imports. Those tariffs have dramatically reduced the amount of direct trade between the world’s two largest economies, with US imports from China dropping more than 40% between January and April, reaching the lowest levels since March 2020.

That drop in Chinese imports was led by the country’s large consumer electronics sector, which has long been the world’s primary source of technological devices. US imports of Chinese computers are down 70% compared to last year, with laptop imports dropping to the lowest level in more than 20 years. Imports from Taiwan, Mexico, Vietnam, and a few other countries (like Thailand) have largely made up the slack but are still collectively struggling to meet America’s ravenous demand for computers.

Likewise, US smartphone imports dramatically tanked as tariffs on China ramped up, with imports also dropping 70% compared to last April. America instead bought more phones from India and Vietnam, with both countries surpassing China as a source of imports in the last two months. This largely represents the decision-making of Apple, the country’s dominant phone brand, which has long worked to partially diversify its supply chains out of China and is now putting in overtime to assemble most American phones in its Indian & Vietnamese factories. Yet right now, those non-Chinese-made phones are still nowhere near enough to make up for the shortfall caused by the China tariffs. That’s despite those non-Chinese phones remaining exempt from all tariffs, as Trump has made no moves to implement his long-promised semiconductor and electronics tariffs

seems like demand is outstripping supply, must be inevitable that more expensive smart phones and laptops are coming soon

There are investors who undoubtedly made huge profits buying low and selling high over the past two months on gold, and gold-related stocks. I made a few hundred bucks from this.

There has also been an increase in portfolio managers wanting gold and gold-back assets for diversification and hedging purposes which has also led to an increase in those shares.

It’s part of the “flight to safety” thing that in the past led to a big demand for US Bonds (not Gary).

https://www.cfr.org/article/what-trump-trade-policy-has-achieved-liberation-day

Fairly informative multi-opinion piece

A nice summary of opinions I have read already … good to know they are shared!

Lesotho faces a crisis after U.S. tariffs crippled its garment industry, threatening jobs and reversing years of economic and social progress. pic.twitter.com/idyUHJEeQ2

— African News feed. (@africansinnews) July 15, 2025

Free trade RIP

I thought we hated free trade

A joke for the fans.

---

Trump’s use of trade to pressure Vietnam to balance against China is built on a faulty premise. The U.S. thinks that if it pushes Vietnam hard enough with both sticks and carrots, coupled with Vietnam’s own maritime disputes with China, Vietnam will drop its multilateral foreign policy in service of Washington’s anti-China objectives in the Indo-Pacific. This is a superficial understanding of Vietnam’s security thinking. Hanoi will always prioritize security over its economy, and with the maritime disputes with China frozen to Hanoi’s benefit, Vietnam will not join any U.S.-led balancing coalition against China no matter how hard Washington pushes it on the trade front.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/07/why-vietnam-will-not-balance-against-china/

Not much to shout about in this deal with Japan.

https://www.ft.com/content/c1183b13-9135-41f6-9206-7b52af66f0a5

Looks like EU got fucked by the US. This article by a chap called Mao explains it.

The comprador-bourgeoisie is always a running dog of imperialism and a target of the revolution. Different groups of the comprador-bourgeoisie belong to the monopoly capitalist groups of different imperialist countries such as the United States, Britain and France. In the struggle against the various comprador groups it is necessary to exploit the contradictions between imperialist countries, first coping with one of them and striking at the chief immediate enemy.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_54.htm

this just in: mao is still dead!

Swift thread on tariffs from Setser. My political read is we need stuff to go bad in the US much faster than it is, but the admin is sneaky with practical short term impacts being mitigated...long term that world is falling apart, perhaps, but he only mentions unintended consequences, which politically can be denied and hard to track back to Trump.

Trump's new tariff rate lack rhyme or reason (other than rewarding big countries that made an effort to give him a win ... )

But -- as the decision on Brazil showed -- it is always important to know the exclusions as well as the headline rate ...

1/

— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) August 1, 2025

I think it shows that this Trump admin is getting stuff done, politically. There is a focus this time around that I don't quite remember being there in the first admin, plus covid probably derailed things too...

Striking re: Mexico and Canada.

It is striking how nothing about the tariff process has been global.

The US did not try to bring everyone to Mar a Lago for a global arrangement but instead went bespoke country-by-country.

And basically no countries joined together in common cause, not even Mexico and Canada.

— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) August 1, 2025

Does some crony need to cover his short positions…

The jobs revisions for May and June look particularly dire.

The economy added just 19,000 in May, a massive downward revision from the 144,00 initially thought.
June job gains were revised down to 14,000, down from the 147,000 first estimated.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ar-AA1JITmG

June was the weakest month of job growth since December 2020, the last full month of Trump's first term

jukin the inflations stats

from the NYT

Cuts to Data Collection May Erode Reliability of Economic Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is reducing or ending the collection of data that is used to calculate the Consumer Price Index.

Federal Reserve policymakers have stressed that their decisions on interest rates in coming months will depend on what happens in the economic data.
Just one problem: That data may be becoming less reliable.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics last month said it was reducing its collection of data on consumer prices, and had stopped gathering data entirely in several areas. On Tuesday, the agency provided more details on the cutbacks and indicated they were more significant than previously understood.
Collecting the data that goes into the Consumer Price Index is a labor-intensive operation. Every month, a small army of government workers visits stores and other businesses across the country to check prices of eggs, underwear, haircuts and tens of thousands of other goods and services. The data collected is the basis for the inflation measures that Fed policymakers rely on when setting interest rates, and that determine cost-of-living increases in union contracts and Social Security benefits, among other uses.
In its announcement on Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in addition to suspending data collection in three cities, it had reduced the amount of data it was collecting in the rest of the country by about 15 percent on average. All together, the cutbacks meant that the agency suspended collection on about 19 percent of its data in June, said Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner at the bureau.
The cuts affected data on consumer products and on rents, both crucial information for policymakers.
“The main takeaway for me is that their data collection problems were much worse than we thought,” Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, a forecasting firm, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.
When the government can’t collect data on prices, it has to fill in the gaps with a statistical technique called “imputation.” The more data that must be imputed, the less reliable the overall numbers become.
The bureau, which is part of the Labor Department, hasn’t provided a detailed explanation for the cuts, but has said it “makes reductions when current resources can no longer support the collection effort.” The agency recently announced it would stop publishing some data on wholesale prices, also because of resource constraints.
Economists have become increasingly concerned about the federal statistical system in recent years. Response rates to government surveys have fallen steadily, gradually eroding the reliability of statistics based on that data. The agencies have been working to develop new techniques that rely less on surveys, but have been hampered by shrinking budgets.
Those concerns predate the current administration, but have grown worse since President Trump returned to office. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal statistical agencies have struggled with staff attrition as a result of the president’s freeze on federal hiring, combined with the buyouts he offered early in his term. The president’s budget also proposed further cuts to the bureau’s funding.
Asked about the cuts on Wednesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said policymakers were “getting the data that we need to do our jobs.” But he stressed the importance of the federal statistical agencies.
“The government data is really the gold standard in data,” he said. “We need it to be good and to be able to rely on it.”
In an email on Wednesday, Ms. Liddel said the bureau had taken a number of steps to ensure “the quality of C.P.I. survey data in times of tight resources,” including collecting data online and exploring new data sources to replace traditional surveys.
The bureau, in its announcement, indicated that the cutbacks have had only a minimal impact on the overall inflation numbers. A statistical analysis conducted by the agency found that suspending data collection in the three cities changed annual inflation estimates by less than one one-hundredth of a percentage point on average. The effects weren’t consistently in one direction; the cuts were more or less equally likely to push estimated inflation up and down.
But that analysis didn’t examine the impact of the broader cutbacks in data collection, Mr. Sharif noted. He called the agency’s study “extremely limited.”
“If that was meant to make us feel better about the quality of the C.P.I., it didn’t help,” he wrote.

eek sorry for the crap formatting

When the government can’t collect data on prices, it has to fill in the gaps with a statistical technique called “imputation.” The more data that must be imputed, the less reliable the overall numbers become.

they are guessing on way more prices than ever

My idiot congressman is out there tweeting END THE FED. Like it’s interest rates holding back investment and not the chaos goblin in the White House.

The jobs revisions for May and June look particularly dire.

_The economy added just 19,000 in May, a massive downward revision from the 144,00 initially thought.
June job gains were revised down to 14,000, down from the 147,000 first estimated._

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/news/content/ar-AA1JITmG🕸🕸

So you can for sure count on the 73k added today to be adjusted down about 80% as well

*Larry Kudlow voice* See, the effects of the Biden economy lasted all the way til June. But 73k is actually a big uptick now!

The turn against India is one of the craziest things.

India is all but locked out of the world's largest consumer market.

Trump- Modi standoff hands China the prize.

Read 👇🏼 https://t.co/yiUrSjdKQe pic.twitter.com/fF7ck2P8FK

— menaka doshi (@menakadoshi) August 7, 2025

Modi and Trump, Gruesome Twosome.