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.”

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.

‪More Perfect Union‬
✧@moreperfectun✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 12m
The price of vegetables rose 38.9% in July.]

Grocery Outlet stock price up 38% this month

the consensus seems to be that the Fed is going to do a rate cut next month, which will really help kick this inflation into high gear

Legendary Pink Dots
Difficult days indeed. It seems that from August 29 to February 28 , 2026 it’s being made literally impossible to send packages to the U.S. without there being a risk of the poor receiver being punished with an ‘import duty’ of $80 to $200. Utter madness for sure, but these are mad times. Thankfully a U.S. Tour means we’ll bring what we can across the pond while we’ll work on a solution for those lovely homemade releases ( all US orders for ‘Monument’ are already sent.). We’ve been there before… Monsters in high places have scant regard for the little band / artist focused upon mere survival and making the planet a happier place.It means some patience in the months to come but , hell, it’s 45 years now - we’re not quitting for this crap!

heard a radio interview with a woman who ordered her wedding dress online, with no idea it was going to be an import... and then the UPS driver told her to pay up for the tariffs, which was like hundreds of dollars, or he wouldn't release the dress.. she paid up

Wtf dad?!

Man votes for Trump and torpedos his daughter’s business. pic.twitter.com/9TduHmXYlv

— Tim Hannan (@TimHannan) August 21, 2025

xp - I've seen two UK based smaller labels announce today on social media that they are pausing shipments to the USA "for the foreseeable future" due to the de minimis bullshit.

I’m pausing shipments outside the US. Now that I have EU distribution it doesn’t make sense to ship individual orders overseas.

As if I needed another reason to hate this fucker, but losing access to labels from around the world is really pissing me off. Such needless stupidity.

it's so pathetic that trump voters think he gives a flying fuck about sMaLl BuSiNeSs

Wtf dad?!

🐦[Man votes for Trump and torpedos his daughter’s business. pic.twitter.com/9TduHmXYlv🕸
— Tim Hannan (@TimHannan) August 21, 2025🕸]🐦

lol it’s not like Trump has been pushing tariffs for a decade now.

it's so pathetic that trump voters think he gives a flying fuck about sMaLl BuSiNeSs

Doing a good job of killing small business in DC

classic Republican voter... bad things happen to someone else? comedy. bad thing happens to me or my family? tragedy!

Germany really fucked. This could be Trump tariffs and/or China too.

WTF is happening in Germany?!

Germany announced 125,000 industrial job cuts in 6 weeks.

Putting that into perspective... If the U.S. got hit at the same rate, that’s like ~300,000 factory jobs or ~500,000 total jobs gone in a month and a half.

Picture every factory worker in…

— Amanda Goodall (@thejobchick) September 16, 2025

According to the Financial Times, China has officially banned its companies from buying Nvidia chips. Nvidia was one of the companies that promised to pay Trump a 15% cut of revenues in order to get a license to sell their chips in China.

Also, China has not bought any US soybeans this year. Last year they bought something like $4 billion worth.

Xi and the top level of the Chinese government are patient and quite competent when it comes to knowing their power, growing their power, and using their power effectively.

The country imported nearly $13 billion of soybeans from the U.S. last year

Maybe we can export soyjaks?

xps- decline of german industry predates trump’s tariffs, which i don’t think they’re particularly exposed to. afaik it’s mostly due to high energy costs. they were very dependent on russian natural gas and also shut down all nuclear power plants in 2023. some effect of chinese competition too, but that affects other countries too, and the decline in german manufacturing and heavy industry is an outlier

Sure, yes. I guess both Ukraine and Tariffs are these geopolitical changes that are currently killing German industry.

actually tariffs might be hitting more now, they went into effect in july at 15% and lots of the big german export industries like autos, steel, chemical aren’t exempt

speaking of tariffs, seems like a super cool day for the Fed to cut rates, inflation will probably hold steady, right?

You can borrow at cheaper rates!

Xp flopson - their share prices have gone up since July, but I don’t think they report financial data with the same frequency as US corps?

China is absolutely eating the German car industry's lunch rn and they still don't seem to have any idea what to do about it. I read something recently where BMW was shrugging it off like, we survived when Toyota came on the scene. Buddy, this ain't Toyota

Xp flopson - their share prices have gone up since July, but I don’t think they report financial data with the same frequency as US corps?

― sarahell, Wednesday, 17 September 2025 16:15 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

they = german companies? DE40/DAX dropped at the end of march/april, recovered in may, and has been flat ever since. i think the stock market had more or less priced in the trade deal so it didn’t affect much. but stocks are doing way better than the rest of the german economy. unemployment is at the same level it was at in september 2020 😬

China is absolutely eating the German car industry's lunch rn and they still don't seem to have any idea what to do about it. I read something recently where BMW was shrugging it off like, we survived when Toyota came on the scene. Buddy, this ain't Toyota

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 17 September 2025 18:43 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ya they will probably ratchet up the tariffs on chinese cars but there’s not much they can do about the rest of the world

i personally agree with “this ain’t toyota” but fwiw some very smart china-watching economists i know say similar things. we’ll see what happens

https://www.ft.com/content/731a7ddd-128e-4b54-86b6-d7a423167ad5

I've no doubt US soybean farmers will appreciate the priorities at work.

These negotiations are hotting up again.

The US -- not just the Trump Administration -- lost leverage when President Trump over-escalated in April.

The US could not sustain 145% tariffs and more or less had to unilaterally back down. Xi and his team know that

1/ pic.twitter.com/vLRrLhVXLW

— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) October 15, 2025

Good thing Republicans are so good at the economy

The art of the deal.

https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3m3kl4nkchs2q

There doesn't seem to be anything about that at the listed source's website.

Also Peter Navarro thinks we can grow bananas.