Posted by tosh 4/12/2025
https://wccftech.com/trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-have-reported...
Or, the primary source seems to be:
https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-3db9e5...
But you'd have to look up those codes to know they're for PCs, smartphones
The title is sensationalism when it should be phone and computer associated parts are exempted from tariffs or something like that.
Makes a lot of sense if you don't think about it.
He announces big tough tariffs on China, his base claps, hoots and hollers. He quietly walks it back via internal memo to CBP on a Friday night.
His base gets to see him be tough on China, without actually suffering any consequences of goods shortages or price increases.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good
Especially when it comes to certain areas of the economy:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
> China has rapidly established itself as the world’s dominant shipbuilding power, marginalizing the United States and its allies in a strategically important industry. In addition to building massive numbers of commercial ships, many Chinese shipyards also produce warships for the country’s rapidly growing navy. As part of its “military-civil fusion” strategy, China is tapping into the dual-use resources of its commercial shipbuilding empire to support its ongoing naval modernization
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/ship-wars-confronting-chinas-d...
But none of the current "reasons"—which may simply be rationalizations / retcons by underlings for one man's fickle will—really make much sense:
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/all-the-arguments-for-tariffs-...
And tarriffing imports doesn't make a difference in the case of something like shipbuilding where the real problem is the government hasn't got a consistent order-book to keep factories staffed, operating and training - nor a plan to allow that capacity to leverage into being self supporting.
Like a much better plan has always been defence exports: increase your customer base to spread risk and reduce per unit prices. The F-35 and it's adoption was a great idea in this regard...right up till the US started threatening NATO allies and cutting off avionics support to partner nations (Ukraine) in the middle of a war.
You don't get a defence manufacturing industry without actually paying for a defence manufacturing industry. The whole "bring manufacturing back" idea is almost wholly disconnected from it: a ton of factories extruding plastic childrens roys aren't suddenly going to start making anti-shipping missiles - in fact this is related to a secondary problem which is that it's not remotely clear that a peer/near-peer conflict would look anything like the long wars that WW2 represented due tot he delivery timelines on advanced weapons systems. You basically go to war with the military you have.
The war in Ukraine shows what a current-day war looks like: You rapidly expend stockpiled traditional weapons, and then rapidly ramp up low-cost drone manufacturing.
Currently, the #1 drone manufacturer in the world is probably Ukraine, with Russia and China somewhere in the #2 and #3 spots. The United States is somewhere on the bottom of that list.
Subsidising civilian drone manufacturing alone would catch up the United States dual-use manufacturing capability for any potential future war for the next half-a-decade or so. After that...? Something-something-AI-murder-bots.
No amount of 3D printed FPVs is going to bring down a modern warship - they're unlikely to even get near it (conversely the sea drone threat is enormous - but those aren't civilian assets in anyway, but can be as cheap as "brick on a speed boat throttle").
Absolutely. Ukraine was able to push Russian surface fleet into Russian ports using sea drones. If Taiwan builds a fleet thereof, the Chinese blockade fleet will face Armageddon.
I saw an interview with a former naval radar guy, who claimed that the natural state of the sea produces so many small false blips that a smartly built sea drone of certain size is basically impossible to distinguish from those.
Because for the first year of the war was the "burn down existing cold war era stocks" phase. More importantly, neither side realised the impact that drones would have.
Now that every military has seen years of video clips on Telegram of tank after tank being blown up by $500 drones, the next war is going start with swarms of drones on day 1, not day 400.
The Ukrainians absolutely realized that, and I saw a lot of reports about Ukrainian drone operators in 2022 already. It was just after the Nagorno-Karabakh war, where Turkish-made drones were a significant factor in Azeri victory.
There was something else at play. The supply chain had to be built up, plus the Russians were/are quite strong at radioelectronic warfare. Overcoming Russian jamming was a serious uphill battle.
This is too limited in thinking. It's not just about "defence critical components", but the know-how and having the production workflow knowledge. It's all well and good to have rules on what goes into frigate, but if you don't have the shipyards to build things then it's a bit of a moot point:
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/ship-wars-confronting-chinas-d...
> You don't get a defence manufacturing industry without actually paying for a defence manufacturing industry.
It's not just about industry but about capacity as well: if you have (in this example) only (say) 4 shipyards you're going to have a tough time beating someone who has 40.
This is the problem with these assumptions: they're all rooted in the industrial warfare the US won in WW2 but are not contextually accurate to today. WW2 wasn't fought with satellite targeting and precision cruise missiles which could be fired from half the planet away. Ukraine is currently hitting targets on the other side of Russia - "behind the lines" doesn't really exist for strategic assets anymore.
The analysis is reasonable, but let's just replace "defending your freedoms" with "reaping the benefits of being the biggest bully in town". This is what China's competition means, not the risk of being attacked and losing your freedoms, but that of losing the power you got used to and profited from.
People were worrying about this as early as the 1970s when Japan started importing cars, and in the 1990s when Chinese markets started to open up under the condition that the Western companies partner with Chinese ones and effectuate technology transfers to them. These folks foresaw the future, but politicians and corporate managers didn’t care; they were focused on expansion at all costs.
Now that the future is today, all they can say is “I told you so,” which isn’t much comfort to anyone.
The debt/deficit is on politicians (and the public who votes them in). See also issues with US Social Security (Canada was on a similar path, but the government(s) sorted things out in the 1990s).
At least for the US, it has not de-industrialized, as exports have never been higher. It makes a smaller portion of total GDP, but that's because of growth of other sectors; and a smaller portion of the workforce, but that's because of automation:
* https://www.csis.org/analysis/do-not-blame-trade-decline-man...
The largest problem nowadays is probably housing costs, and that has nothing to do with trade, but is about things like NIMBY and zoning.
If you want more than "a particular section of society" and more folks to benefit look into redistribution, which plenty of conventional economists will happily agree with.
Name me a country where this is not the case. The only thing we've failed to do is educate enough of our people to prosper as a deindustrialized nation. That and failed to protect our democracy.
What education did we give them to prosper as an industrialized nation? It seems to me that the population was able to discover that and benefit from it entirely on their own. Why do they need "education" to "prosper" in current conditions?
Aren't we currently living in the most educated time already? That is we have more people going to and graduating from college than ever before. What is currently missing? Do we need to force everyone to go to college? What about those who don't graduate? They just won't ever be able to prosper?
> That and failed to protect our democracy.
I think a little more than half the country would disagree with this assessment.
That's an odd question, given that Prussian schooling was invented to turn children into productive factory workers.
There's nothing odd about the question. What's odd is that you assert that conditions 200 years ago are relevant to it.
You don't even have a point about the deficit. While there are plenty of economic schools that will give you high deficits, the US didn't get his by following any of those either.
One thing is throwing and seeing what sticks, but at the seat of the presidency, it seems like such an antipattern for leadership. And yet, the support is unwavering. It's exhausting.
A lot of my friends are rethinking sending their children to US for college education while Trump is in power and are considering European schools. That's probably a few million dollars over next 2-3 years potentially lost from the US economy from just people i personally know. And no one is coming from China.
Do you think all the tech CEO’s attended his inauguration for nothing?
I never imagined I would see such public corruption in any western country. I am saying this as someone who supported some the current administrations agenda
Which is still corruption.
It burns me up that massive companies like Apple and Nvidia get a free pass while everyone else is subject to the most brain dead economic policy anyone alive today has ever lived through.
My dad is a retired EE who dealt with the 90s offshoring wave and described the process of spinning up offshore production with a new supplier/factor/product as a 1-2 year process.
Now imagine every producer with China exposure trying to do this at the same time dealing with the same limited ex-China options? Nothing was happening in the 90 day pause, let alone before the 2026 midterms or before the end of his reign in 2028.
Complete chaos for American companies who are left with no good options other than try to wait it out, and pass on excess cost to consumers in interim.
Once we eat through inventories and stuff that left the ports & currently on the water, prices will go up.
The country went insane when inflation crossed 5%, are we really going to do it again.. when the reason for it will be so singularly obvious?
And their target market will eat it up and ask for seconds.
This is actually one of the few reasons I'm hopeful for the next election (assuming we still get one) - last time, regardless of the root cause, the country blamed those in power right then.
The dirty secret that nobody talks about is that the vast majority of our rich people are literally in filter bubbles of their own making and are disconnected entirely from reality. Like really bad ones too, not anything interesting, just generic Fox News based ones.
Whatever the banana republics were they were turned into that by the US's doing, so it's funny that now the term comes back home.
Thanks, man, I am now in the rabbit hole of reading up.
In that same context, did you read the article about how diplomats were "convincing" the Mexican government to not use open source over Microsoft?
It sure sounds like the same strategy.
> only the richest companies getting exemptions
…when the reality is that certain classes of goods were exempted. You reiterated the clickbaity headline.
Products like the Librem phone have exceptions. Is Purism one of the richest companies?
8471 8473.30 8486 8517.13.00 8517.62.00 8523.51.00 8524 8528.52.00 8541.10.00 8541.21.00 8541.29.00 8541.30.00 8541.49.10 8541.49.70 8541.49.80 8541.49.95 8541.51.00 8541.59.00 8541.90.00 8542
| Code | Description |
|--------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 8471 | Automatic data processing machines (e.g., computers, servers, laptops) |
| 8473.30 | Parts/accessories for machines of 8471 (e.g., computer parts) |
| 8486 | Machines for manufacturing semiconductors or ICs |
| 8517.13.00 | Smartphones |
| 8517.62.00 | Data transmission machines (e.g., routers, modems) |
| 8523.51.00 | Solid-state storage (e.g., USB drives, flash memory) |
| 8524 | Recorded media (e.g., tapes, disks — mostly obsolete) |
| 8528.52.00 | LCD/LED monitors for computers |
| 8541.10.00 | Diodes (not including LEDs) |
| 8541.21.00 | Transistors (<1 W dissipation) |
| 8541.29.00 | Other transistors |
| 8541.30.00 | Thyristors, diacs, triacs |
| 8541.49.10 | Gallium arsenide LEDs |
| 8541.49.70 | Other LEDs (not GaAs) |
| 8541.49.80 | Other photosensitive semiconductors |
| 8541.49.95 | Other semiconductors not elsewhere specified |
| 8541.51.00 | Unassembled photovoltaic cells |
| 8541.59.00 | Other photovoltaic cells/modules |
| 8541.90.00 | Parts for items in 8541 |
| 8542 | Electronic integrated circuits (e.g., microprocessors, memory chips) |
As other commenter says, it’s interesting that there are also exceptions within the exceptions.
Apple has already "committed" to investing in US manufacturing. Also, many companies have committed to AI investments on US soil which would be heavily NVIDIA dependent. Could be a justification for the exemption.
It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thought through.
https://www.instagram.com/share/_jW_V1hwM
This is Senator Chris Murphy explaining it’s not economic policy, it’s an attempt to blackmail corporations into submission by making a deal with him in return for sanctions relief.
Keep an eye out for what Apple and nvidia might have agreed to give.
The last time tariffs were this high, it led to rampant corruption as companies would pay off customs officers. This was one of the reasons for switching to an income tax. For the current administration this possibility counts as a major opportunity to generate personal wealth.
But this isn't the only reason for the policy. For someone who is at heart a coward, bullying and brandishing raw power over others is its own reward. That reason enough for the policy, and damn the consequences for the nation.
Just about anything useful and high quality has been tariffed out of existence in India. It is done in the name of protecting our industry while they catch up with rest of the world.
Exactly backwards has happened. The cars we get here are so bad they are sometimes called tin cans on wheels. Without competitors from across the world Indian auto makers have absolutely no motivation to build world class cars. And it shows on the road.
I expect lower tariffs in India to cause harm while also forcing economic activity.
Yes they do own Jaguar and Range Rovers but it’s not meant for the Indian market. They do sell them here but not many takers.
The effects are so bad that nearly everyone who remembers the disaster must have died off for anyone to think it is a good idea.
At this point, it is obvious that there is no geo-political or geo-strategic plan of any type. The administration is just winging it, and Sen Murphy's explanation is the only one available.
It was also noted that the person occupying the president's chair said "they must be forced to negotiate". When someone is forced to negotiate, that is not a negotiation, that is extortion. Welcome to another nation run like a mob office.
"Why these exemptions?"
"Who knows? None of it makes sense."
But, of course, it does.
It's also consistent with other, publicly-wielded cudgels, like the law-firm extortions under threat of executive orders.
"The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession" - https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
Rule 8.4: Misconduct: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibili...
Weirdly the same explanation works if you're being less uncharitable, i.e. Apple agreed to invest $500B in the US but everybody knows new factories aren't going to be built overnight, so they get a reprieve from the tariffs for now provided they continue to go through with the investment. Which in turn makes them immune from future tariffs once they're actually making iPhones in the US, while allowing the tariffs to be reinstituted against anyone who didn't do likewise.
Building a factory takes years, and a big chunk of that happens long before you actually start work on site.
You gotta find a site, work with local govt to negotiate servicing, environmental report (there's a couple years, and potentially a couple go-arounds right there.)
So there can be lots of activity, lots of progress reports, lots of optimism, for a decade or more before any real money has to be spent.
Ultimately Apple et al can "agree" to anything, the president can have his "big win" and things can carry on just as before.
The $500b was announced more than a month ago
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
It's easy to forget that for a day or two they said it was because of fentanyl.
Annoyingly, "assume the worst about people, especially those on the opposite side of the political spectrum" seems to be the norm these days.
Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
It's a terrible way to go through life. We should show a little grace sometimes.
And was caught on mic saying he likes to grope women.
I would not say anyone is ‘automatically’ questioning Trump’s character or intelligence.
There is plenty of evidence he has neither.
“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute ... is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?"
"Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that”
https://www.axios.com/2022/04/26/birx-calls-trump-disinfecta...
Edit: found the actual video. Enjoy!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
The guy is a full on moron who thinks he is a full on genius.
Never suggested it or said it's a good idea. Just said it's interesting, worth checking out, and has to be done by medical doctors.
Completely manipulating and twisting what Trump said to further your agenda - again proving the user above right. Is what Trump said stupid? Yeah. Did he suggest to inject bleach? No
He also talks about putting UV lights inside the body, which is still a bit dumb, but not as dumb as injecting or ingesting disinfectant or bleach.
If you want to say he is only says it could be ‘interesting’ to inject or consume disinfectant then sure, why not - that’s still insane and dumb in equal measure.
He even tries to walk back his comments later saying he was being ‘sarcastic’ which he very clearly was not.
> Just a good time to remember that the same guy who thinks tariffs are a good idea is the guy who stood at a podium during Covid next to the world’s leading expert and suggested injecting bleach into Covid patients was a good idea.
First sentence, right here. It's complete dishonest framing to make what Trump said seem as bad as possible. Which just goes back to the parent user's comment:
> Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
Not really. The major point the user brought up: "I would not say anyone is ‘automatically’ questioning Trump’s character or intelligence. There is plenty of evidence he has neither." That's like reading comprehension 101.
>First sentence, right here. It's complete dishonest framing to make what Trump said seem as bad as possible. Which just goes back to the parent user's comment:
Not really.
>> Everyone on both sides automatically thinks the worst about everyone on the other side these days, usually just to score some internet points.
Exactly what you did to the other poster. The other poster was clearly saying there is great reason to not assume the best about Trump. Your response? Ignore that and bicker about a minor detail.
> Not really.
Yes really.
> Exactly what you did to the other poster. The other poster was clearly saying there is great reason to not assume the best about Trump. Your response? Ignore that and bicker about a minor detail.
No. The poster used that bleach argument as the reason here - which is a completely dishonest argument. It's not a minor detail.
Is this how the discussion should go, in your dream world?
- Trump is bad!
- Trump is good!
- Trump is bad!
Since, according to you, actually discussing the exact cases/reasoning brought up is quibbling over minor details, nitpicking.
It was but one example of a list much longer than the post you responded to, which anyone who was fair would recognize.
>Yes really.
No, not really.
>No. The poster used that bleach argument as the reason here - which is a completely dishonest argument. It's not a minor detail.
The bleach argument was one example and you're being nitpicky about it anyway.
>Is this how the discussion should go, in your dream world?
Strawman.
>Since, according to you, actually discussing the exact cases/reasoning brought up is quibbling over minor details, nitpicking.
You're not engaging the substance of his argument while decrying that exact failure in everyone else. You say people should focus on main points and not quibble about small details and it's exactly what you are doing.
When did you engage with the main point that Trump has poor character and is unintelligent? You didn't. You're bickering about whether or not he literally said inject bleach. Okay, throw out the bleach part. The point still stands but you don't want to discuss it because you just want to quibble about the bleach. It's a complete waste of time for anyone interested in engaging in a conversation. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he misremembered, maybe in this one instance he isn't being fair. You don't engage in any of that and you assumed the worst. It's exactly what you're complaining about and I'm not going to sit here repeating myself because you like to argue.
"Anyone who is fair would see it exactly how I see it!"
> No, not really.
Yes, really.
Wonderful way to have a conversation, isn't it. Everything else in your response is nitpicking and hanging up over minor details!
> The bleach argument was one example and you're being nitpicky about it anyway.
The other example was groping. So I refuted half the points the user made, pretty major to me. It's not being nitpicky, it's major difference. If I said Kamala wanted to establish soviet like price controls, people would rightfully correct that and that wouldn't be nitpicky or hanging up over minor details.
> Strawman.
No, you are just nitpicking.
> When did you engage with the main point that Trump has poor character and is unintelligent?
I did, by engaging in the DIRECT argument that the user provided for him being unintelligent. User said "Trump did X. He is unintelligent". I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion? In an actual conversation, you engage the reasons provided - otherwise it just turns into unproductive "no/yes/no/yes" conversation.
That's not what I was saying. I was saying anyone would reflect there is a long list of questionable behavior. Whether or not you think that is disqualifying is your opinion. Scam university, scam banks, scam businesses. These are facts of Donald Trump's past, not opinions.
>Wonderful way to have a conversation, isn't it. Everything else in your response is nitpicking and hanging up over minor details!
It's not everyone else. It's you. And it's because that's what you did to the other poster and I was rightful in calling it out. You could just stop instead of digging in.
>The other example was groping. So I refuted half the points the user made, pretty major to me. It's not being nitpicky, it's major difference. If I said Kamala wanted to establish soviet like price controls, people would rightfully correct that and that wouldn't be nitpicky or hanging up over minor details.
You didn't say that the other example was groping. You only talked about "injecting bleach" and even then not reasonably engaging in it, just pulling the kind of "technically right but clearly not getting the point" kind of argument that I accused you of. If you want to engage with the other poster fairly, you can. You didn't. It's not the end of the world but no need to keep belaboring the point by bringing up things you never expressed which would have totally changed the situation.
>No, you are just nitpicking.
How is that nitpicking? I never said conversations should go like that, so there is no reason to ask me why I would prefer it go that way. Do you not know what a strawman argument is?
>I did, by engaging in the DIRECT argument that the user provided for him being unintelligent. User said "Trump did X. He is unintelligent". I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion? In an actual conversation, you engage the reasons provided - otherwise it just turns into unproductive "no/yes/no/yes" conversation.
That wasn't the entire argument. Are we now going back to grade-school reading comprehension? I quoted his point. You ignored that in your response to me where you continue to pull this obnoxious shtick. ENOUGH!
> I'm supposed to say "ohh no but he is intelligent" completely ignoring the reasoning for his conclusion?
You did completely ignore the reason for his conclusion. He said there are many reasons why Trump has questionable character, you zero'd in on a minor detail of one of those arguments and did not address anything else, let alone Trump's actual character and why it would or would not be good based on evidence. Then you accused him of doing it on purpose! You're really rude and a really bad poster that is doing exactly what you complained about and now your ego is too big to walk away. Sad!
If I address any of those points, would I be nitpicking and picking on minor details?
> You didn't say that the other example was groping. You only talked about "injecting bleach"
The user brought up groping and injecting bleach. I refuted the bleach argument, leaving the groping argument alone. It's also not technically right, it's completely incorrect and absolutely disingenous framing.
> You did completely ignore the reason for his conclusion. He said there are many reasons why Trump has questionable character, you zero'd in on a minor detail of one of those arguments and did not address anything else
I addressed ONE of the TWO reasons the user provided. What other reason am I supposed to have addressed? Should I start making some up?
Rest of your post isn't worth addressing it's just the same junk.
If you only did that while ignoring my main point, yeah. Not sure why this is a difficult concept for you to grasp.
>The user brought up groping and injecting bleach. I refuted the bleach argument, leaving the groping argument alone. It's also not technically right, it's completely incorrect and absolutely disingenous framing.
Disagree there, which can be fine and reasonable. But don't pretend you addressed the poster's point, which wasn't the bleach thing. This is basic reading comprehension, again.
>I addressed ONE of the TWO reasons the user provided. What other reason am I supposed to have addressed? Should I start making some up?
He provided more than two and you didn't address his point at all. You just repeatedly bickered about small details about one of the points and said he had bad intentions.
>Rest of your post isn't worth addressing it's just the same junk.
Look who is talking. I wish I could report posters like you, you're the worst.
> He provided more than two
What other reasons did he provide?
Similarly, democrats need to acknowledge that they are responsible for Trump getting elected. Immigration was one of the biggest issues for voters and it went rampant under the democrats.
> A central guiding force behind the austerity measures implemented in 2025 was "Project 2025," a comprehensive policy blueprint developed by conservative think tanks. This project advocated for a fundamental restructuring of the federal government, calling for a reduction in bureaucracy, significant tax cuts, and decreased spending across various sectors, including major social programs like Medicare and Medicaid
> The Social Security Administration (SSA) experienced significant changes and faced substantial workforce reductions under the Trump administration's austerity drive in 2025. Driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration announced plans to cut approximately 7,000 employees from the SSA, representing about 12% of its total workforce. This reduction followed a decade of underfunding for the agency's administrative budget, which had already shrunk the workforce considerably. Alongside these staff cuts, the SSA initiated the closure of regional offices and the termination of leases for numerous field offices across the country. These physical closures raised serious concerns about diminished access to in-person services for beneficiaries, particularly those residing in rural areas or lacking reliable transportation.
> Further limiting accessibility, the SSA eliminated phone services for most applications and for changes to direct deposit information. This policy shift mandated that individuals needing these services either visit an SSA field office in person or utilize the agency's online tools. This change disproportionately affected seniors, individuals with disabilities, and those without consistent internet access or digital literacy. Adding to the concerns surrounding the program, reports emerged of the administration classifying living immigrants as deceased, leading to the cancellation of their Social Security numbers
> Adding to the uncertainty, the House budget resolution for FY2025 called for significant spending cuts from the Energy and Commerce Committee, the very committee with jurisdiction over Medicare. Analysts raised concerns that the magnitude of these proposed cuts, totaling $880 billion , would be virtually impossible to achieve without impacting major healthcare programs like Medicare.
> Simultaneously, the Trump administration proposed several changes to the ACA. These included shortening the annual open enrollment period by a month, ending coverage eligibility for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and limiting the coverage of gender-transition care by defining "sex-trait modification" as not an essential health benefit. Furthermore, enhanced ACA subsidies, which had significantly lowered premium costs for millions of Americans, were set to expire in late 2025. The administration also significantly cut funding for community-based organizations that assisted individuals with enrolling in ACA coverage, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
> The Trump administration's austerity measures in 2025 also significantly impacted unemployment benefits and workforce development programs. Republican funding bills, shaped by Project 2025, proposed the elimination or substantial reduction of funding for key workforce development initiatives, including Youth Job Training Grants, Adult Job Training Grants, the Senior Community Service Employment Program, and the Women's Bureau. These cuts directly diminished the resources available for individuals seeking employment training and job placement assistance.
> The austerity measures implemented by the Trump administration in its second term in 2025 represented a significant and multifaceted retrenchment of the federal social safety net. Driven by the policy framework of Project 2025 and operationalized through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), these measures encompassed substantial workforce reductions across federal agencies, significant proposed budget cuts to key social programs, and policy changes aimed at tightening eligibility and restricting access to benefits. While the administration often framed these actions as necessary for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency, the analysis of available information reveals a consistent pattern of cuts and changes that disproportionately impacted vulnerable populations. Seniors, individuals with disabilities, low-income families, children, and immigrants faced increased barriers to accessing essential services and benefits across Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, SNAP, and housing assistance programs. The reduction in workforce development initiatives further threatened opportunities for economic advancement. The cumulative effect of these measures painted a picture of a significantly weakened social safety net, potentially leading to increased poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, and lack of access to healthcare for millions of Americans.
Mostly Gemini delivered a good overview of the changes, but it doesn't include stuff like people's pension plans being dependent on economy being in "number go up" state, which is not the case now.
Please tell me, what social nets could one rely on before Trump that they cannot now?
> but it doesn't include stuff like people's pension plans being dependent on economy being in "number go up" state, which is not the case now.
Sounds like a ponzi scheme.
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-social-security-office-cl...
If you still insist that none of what I posted fits your definition of social net being dismantled, I invite you to post a definition that you have in mind. Given that I am confident I can find a match for it in activities of the admin.
Dismantled means destroyed. To take apart. It means that people can no longer rely on it. Them having to use the internet instead of calling is not dismantling.
And if you read the article I linked, you would find there why this effectively removes access to it for some people. Some of the people in most vulnerable groups of population who need these nets most don't have access to reliable transportation and internet or struggle using devices to access it. It doesn't mean they don't deserve to have it.
The $500b investment is going towards a bunch of things, including a factory to build servers for their AI services.
I recall the Foxconn Wisconsin situation, and I have no doubt Apple et al are well aware of it. String out a pretense of building factories in the US for the next three and a half years? Easy peasy. President Trump will soon get bored of this game anyway and move on to the next one; he already looks like he's bored of it and it didn't bring him universal acclaim and admiration.
It’s a sop to Trump just like when Cook did the dog and pony show and bragged about making the 10 Mac Pros that they ship in a year in the US.
How well known is Murphy? I’d never heard of him until I saw this video but he seems very impressive and much more electable than Biden or harris.
We have hundreds of Members of Parliament here in the UK, but probably only 10 that most people could name.
I wondered how big his public profile is.
- done a non-negligible Presidential campaign
- been born from a famous family
- the press either love them or love to hate them
- have a leadership position and/or are conspicuously ancient
Relentless self-promotors are a superset of 3, the ones who succeed
Unfortunately being sensible, cooperative, or good with policy isn’t on the list
It can occasionally work for state Governors
He's the senator from the state I live in, so I know him and think he's excellent.
> much more electable than Biden or harris.
He represents a northeast blue state. It's difficult for those types of Democrats to carry non-coastal states in a presidential election, no matter how good they may be.
I suspect Bill Clinton tacked rightward to carry some southern states in 1992 and 1996, which led to his election.
Christ, Al Gore (2000 election) couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee, so you can see how difficult it is to elect a Democrat to the presidency.
John Kerry (Dem from a northeast blue state) got smoked by George Bush in 2004.
I'm still trying to understand how Obama won twice, but I think it boils down to the fact that he invigorated the African-American vote in some key southern states.
tldr: Chris Murphy is great--unfortunately, he's the kind of Democratic presidential candidate who'd probably lose outside of the coastal states.
* edit: I would have been 'happy' with either outcome in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. McCain and Romney are/were decent and serious people. In fact, Romney was roundly mocked by the Dems in 2012 for saying that Russia was the US's greatest external threat. In retrospect ...
Well we know Nvidia did give a million dollars already:
"A $1M-per-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago is how you get AI chips to China" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43652504
At this point it's something like 100D chess, because 99 levels of "Why?" have been explained by "because they're morons" but the defenders keep believing there's an extra dimension...
It's all blunt-force checkers that any simpleton with power can easily understand.
For all the accusations of fascism, nobody seems to remember that a key feature of fascism is a corporate-cabal shadow government that legitimizes its activities/policies by puppeteering the "real" government to both execute and justify them.
"In 2020, Gaetz was accused of child sex trafficking and statutory rape. After an investigation, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to charge him. In December 2024, the House Ethics Committee released a report which found evidence that Gaetz paid for sex—including with a 17-year-old—and abused illegal drugs during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives."
I'll have to look closer at Trump's public appearances.
He knows exactly what he is doing[0], and the rest is designed to distract voters from noticing
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43661680
[0] https://www.dataandpolitics.net/70-million-in-60-seconds-how...
At best, he's using these tariffs as a temporary means to exert pressure and watching how others respond to them, almost like acting like the crazy man with a gun to make people a little more willing to negotiate terms more favorable for the gunman. At least as a matter of intent, anyway. The actual effect is another matter.
That's a very European point of view (though not uniquely European, it's also shared across many other cultures, e.g. in East Asia). The US has done pretty well with private rights of action. In fact, because our culture is so conservative and anti-authoritarian, centralized bureaucracies are rather quickly defanged or grossly underfunded. The most recent example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more quietly the FTC. Democrats would have done much better to roll back judicial expansion of the Federal Arbitration Act and devolve "regulation" back to states and private class actions, rather than to create the CFPB and elsewhere double-down on anemic, extremely inconsistent, and often highly partisan agency regulators.
Where private rights of action tend to fail is when they concern inchoate or non-individualized harms, like you often see in environmental protection law. Then what you get is complete paralysis, such as with real estate development; largely because its the process, not the end-state determination of rights, that private actors weaponize. But when they're firmly anchored to property rights, personal injury or loss (including fraud), etc, they seem to do as well as centralized regulation. And in the US, they arguably do better, because of our political dynamics.
Conservatives are dismantling environmental protection, but it has nothing tondo with freedom or being anto authoritarian. They just dont care about consequences as long as their donors can earn more money in the short term.
Yet also, US seems to be crumbling and rhe source of instability. They may succeed in exporting their dysfunction to Europe, but it did not happened yet.
No, that's a very Smithian Economics point of view, an economic philosophy which underpinned most of American capitalism's history.
I mean… Europe isn’t particularly well-known for being particularly business friendly. There’s a lot of good there for sure but there’s also a lot of barriers. And I say this as a Canadian who is also disappointed by the overall business environment at home.
Tariffs are only usable as extortion if the companies have outsourced the manufacturing that gutted our middle-class.
Externalizing variables comes with risk. This risk should be factored into planning in the future. Just because a politician in the 90s promised cheap labor through globalization, a president 30 years later can flip the script
"Tariffs apply to imports, so produce locally instead".
The argument unfortunately has 2 flaws;
A) local production is expensive (which is why manufacturers fled decades ago.) If it is reintroduced here those goods remain expensive.
B) most things are not made in one place. Steel comes from here, electronics from there, energy from somewhere else, and so on. Even farmers use imported fertilizer, machinery and so on. Since the Tariffs are on "everything" (not just finished goods) they drive up the cost of local manufacturing even more.
A long-term strategy to increase local production makes sense. But it has to be done in a targeted way so as not to harm everything else. Typically it starts with finished goods, then slowly working down the food chain to improve the supply of parts making up those goods.
Exemptions on finished goods (like electronics) kills any gain. He might have, for example, exempted electronic parts. Which would then incentivize assembly to be local. Once you have local assembly you could look at say packaging, and so on.
The approach taken though doesn't lead to the outcomes being touted. Tariffs at country level are dumb. Excempting finished goods is dumb. Tariffs on things that can't be made locally (like coffee) is dumb.
That's before we talk about stability and certainty. For Tariffs to work you need both, and neither are in play here.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/small-business-owners-voted...
They are getting exactly what they voted for. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for anyone who is being hurt by Trump who voted for him.
By the way I don’t think this is 4D chess. More like basic classical international relations. It just looks more like the 1800s than the 2020s, which makes people confused. It doesn’t take any particular cleverness to enact basic negotiating strategies. It just takes a lack of caring about collateral damage.
No need to go that far. 1970s would suffice.
I would expect him to post "Tim Apple came to kiss my ass great guy I will allow him to make great computers in America!"
What worries me more is a promise of cooperation helping Trump identify people to put into concentration camps.
Requesting curbs on rampant disinformation is not even close to the same thing as crashing the economy to extort our closest allies and major business and industry players.
Yikes
Who are you to decide what is or isn't disinformation?
Who is anyone?
I prefer to do my own critical thinking.
It is also well documented that Meta's rampant censorship extends far beyond "disinformation".
https://web.archive.org/web/20250411170102/https://www.drops...
You can ask this question about any belief or position on a topic. We each decide for ourselves the answer and society decides this through its elected leaders and the judiciary. All societies regulate speech.
Of course there are edge cases, but blatant and hard-debunked falsehoods such as "The earth is flat", "Contrails are chemical spraying", Russia did not attack Ukraine", "Vaccines cause autism", "Auschwitz and Dachau were not concentration camps where people were killed" are all disinformation, and they are disseminated for the very specific purpose of undermining trust and the capability of western societies to survive, for the purpose of implementing authoritarianism.
If you evidently expect a society to unilaterally disarm and do nothing, you are part of the problem.
It's like saying "if it's white, fluffy and has four legs, never assume it is anything but a sheep". If the wolf knows you're applying that logic, what happens next?
And are only large corporations expected to play? I import shopping bags from Chinese manufacturers from my store, like millions of other small businesses do. What exactly are we supposed to offer Trump?
You'll eventually be buying them, for more than you pay now but less than the imported price, from a large US company that bribed whoever Dear Leader is at the time, for exemptions.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
I don't see him completing his term. He's going to be impeached.
Americans often point to outside forces instead of holding the government accountable.
Years of messaging have trained people to support tariffs, spending cuts, and even anti-immigrant policies—despite the need for labor.
The real issue isn't spending, it's taxation. And we've let China ignore WTO rules for too long. Trump should've targeted tariffs at China alone—but he is the president, not me.
China's WTO compliance record is often criticized for several reasons, including violations of market orientation principles, state-led industrial planning, excessive subsidies, and non-transparency regarding subsidies. Furthermore, China's policies on forced technology transfers, intellectual property protection, and governmental procurement have also faced scrutiny. Here's a more detailed look at the specific WTO rules China has been criticized for ignoring:
Market Orientation and State-Led Industrial Policies: China's approach to economic development, characterized by state-led industrial planning, is seen as inconsistent with the WTO's principles of market orientation and non-discrimination.
Subsidies and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): China's extensive use of subsidies for domestic industries, including SOEs, and its failure to make timely and transparent notifications of these subsidies, are major points of contention.
Forced Technology Transfers and Joint Venture Requirements: China has been criticized for requiring foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms as a condition for market access, which violates WTO principles of fair trade and market competition.
Intellectual Property Protection: China's record on protecting foreign intellectual property rights, including trade secrets, has been a long-standing issue, with concerns about theft and lack of enforcement.
Discriminatory Trade Practices: China's policies on governmental procurement, discriminatory standards for technology, and restrictions on market access in services sectors have been criticized for hindering fair competition and market access for foreign companies.
Failure to Reciprocally Open Government Procurement: China has been criticized for not fully reciprocating the government procurement concessions it pledged as part of its WTO accession agreement. Retaliatory Use of Trade Remedies:
China's use of trade remedies, such as anti-dumping and safeguard measures, has sometimes been seen as retaliatory and inconsistent with WTO princip
(They were also supposed to let Visa and Mastercard in)
Also Capital Controls are a big one. You can't get your money out and I have read several times people are forced to spend more money in China to get part of their money out.
More Google AI
China maintains strict capital controls, limiting the flow of money in and out of the country. These controls affect both individuals and companies, with restrictions on repatriating profits and capital. While there are annual limits for individuals, businesses also face specific procedures and conditions before they can repatriate profits, according to INS Global Consulting. Elaboration: For Individuals:
Annual Limits:
Chinese residents have an annual limit of $50,000 USD equivalent for transferring money out of the country, says Wise.
For Companies (FIEs - Foreign Invested Enterprises):
Capital Account Regulations:
China's "closed" capital account means companies must comply with strict rules when moving money in or out, according to CNN.
In Summary: China's capital controls are a complex system that limits both individual and corporate capital movements. While there are some recent efforts to relax controls, they remain a significant factor for businesses and individuals operating in China, requiring careful planning and compliance with regulations before any money can be moved out of the country.
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...
Crazy knife edge.
Per Churchill, “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.” .
lol
Even the San Francisco city council is bullying American tech companies and tech executives.
The power of US tech companies is vastly overstated.
What does "enough" look like?
The examples you provided are more fundamental and I won't trivialize them, but making you lose your "keys to your own digital space" is a very real power they have over you.
I lose my Amazon account, so what?
How?
Nobody in onshoring manufacturing with this level of instability in the finances of this country at this time. Trump changes his mind too often to build billions of dollars worth of factories.
It's OK to have trade imbalance for some time. It can't last forever.
The US domestic economy is vastly larger than its foreign trade (which is only 20% of America's GDP), so you can in fact run a persistent trade deficit and a budget surplus at the same time, which the US actually did for a while during the 90s and early 2000s. We need to teach more economics honestly.
This isn’t some analogy.
This is precisely what just happened!
The bond market imploded and less stupid people forced Trump to backpedal.
He’s a child playing with many-trillion-dollar matters. I wouldn’t trust Trump to split a dinner cheque.
I spend far more on restaurants, household services, and vehicle maintenance than those companies pay me. I have a massive trade imbalance with those companies.
But that has nothing to do with whether my household budget is balanced.
Do people really think that making goods more expensive for consumers will somehow produce the funds to support even greater tax cuts for billionaires?
And if, for example, a sales tax was increased this would motivate you to buy less services, make food at home and learn how to fix your car.
Are you moving the argument from conflating budget and trade deficits to saying the United States’ multi-century economic focus on consumer spending is a mistake, and we need to shift to a savings-focused economy like China used to be? I also think that’s wrong, but it has nothing at all to do with the federal government’s budget deficit.
Or are you under the mistaken impression that trade income is the only income the country has?
This is all very confused and nonsensical.
1) He is completely restructuring global trade and decoupling us from China which is tough but necessary medicine because our biggest geopolitical adversary cannot be our largest trading partner
2) You can't believe half of what he says, he's all bluster, he's addicted to deals and will sign some fake deals to score a domestic win and we will resume status quo
Like yeah - sounds smart, but which is it?
1 is wrong because if he wanted to decouple us from China he'd lower tarrifs on other countries especially close allies
The trust in the US (dollar) hegemony has now been eroded, and will probably continue until a purge of the regime of idiots (not just the oust of one idiot...).
No president is going to ride out a self-imposed multi-year global trade reconfiguration triggering inflation, shortages and unemployment.
Nor is putting the genie back in the bottle possible now and so even if you return to status quo trade policy, you've now spooked the world re: reliability of US as partners, US dollar, US debt, etc.
Worst of both worlds really. Incredible self owns over and over.
I don't think he'll be let off the hook, though. He's tasked to ruin us well below 'status quo', even for people diligently not paying attention.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...
(Of course, he's got plenty of negatives on the record too. But I think in the game of "Great Man History", he's already left a big legacy.)
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff
Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff
Truly this will bring back American manufacturing!
You can be sure some crony owns the company that screws the display and puts stickers on the laptop with minimum wage workers.
I wonder what these companies had to offer?
The evidence is "incoherent" because the hypothesis is wrong. A policy for America isn't there.
In contrast, everything becomes exceptionally coherent if you instead ask what the policy is for Trump's personal goals: punishing disagreement, amassing wealth, rewarding apparatchiks, and always being in a room full of flattery.
To be smart is to have systemic understanding, and Trump & the Republicans are incapable of that.
It's exactly what happened in his first term, when he got rid of the nation's pandemic preparedness because why would anyone ever need that, right?
I actually doubt it does. Everyting is just too chaotic to be a strategy.
(This is not to say that there aren't some Project 2025 plans in the background that parts of the administration are aiming to push through.)
Not sure why there is a presumption that one exists or that its coherent. With even the slightest critical eye its easy enough to discern that this isn't about economic policy or trade and that the proposed "policy" doesn't make any sense. The guy in charge of this stuff is either seeing what he can get away with, fucking with people, or building a narrative...
that is to say what you are watching isn't "real".
Why would you assume that?
I don't know why people keep expecting Trump to be different than what he has consistently shown us for all these years. There's no subtle plan. There's no long-term plan. He's cranking the levers immediately available to him for the drama, as he has always done.
People around him may have ideas and plans. They can sometimes get him to agree to one of these, but it never lasts long.
Like he's just not that deep. He's an incredibly shallow, inexperienced, dim, incurious old man who has never worked a job in his life, never built anything, never did anything. He arrived on top and his greatest achievement in life was managing to not lose it, in a country where it is specifically very hard to do that.
And hearing his supporters talk about how strong he is is just objectively hilarious. Man looks like 4 steepish flights of stairs would kill him stone dead.
There are some failures in there but also some wins, like buying air rights for. Heap and making effective use of them.
(It appears to be a promotional piece for a "CNBC Titans" episode featuring Trump.)
I try to assume good intent, which includes not writing off the odd things people post as bot-generated, but in this case, attributing this to a bot is quite a positive spin.
My point is, he didn't just sit on daddy's money, he actually pulled off a couple of savvy moves. There are plenty of other things to criticize him for.
45th and 47th president of the USA as a disaster seems to be setting the bar unbelievably high for failure.
The Tiffany's transaction definitely happened, and no landowner in Manhattan has left money on the table like that since. As scummy and self-promoting as he is, he changed the real estate market in NY and made some investments that paid off in the 70s and 80s.
I think that puts to rest this idea that he just rested on daddy's money and then lost money on his Atlantic City casinos, or whatever.
(Standard disclaimer that he has always sucked, and maybe he never made a good business move after the 80s.)
That's a massive misread. You are confusing the direction of influence between secondary public stock markets and federal executive orders.
The tariffs are supposed to strengthen self sufficiency, and discourage imports of stuff the US can do on their own.
Chip manufacturing, (which by the way is often only the manufacturing and not the design or IP of the chips), is an exception for whatever reason, may be labour costs, but it may also be that chips are a mineral heavy and diverse product, so it's one of the few products where autarky isn't feasible or very rewarding.
And there would be situations without exemptions where the US may have been incentivized to import the raw materials and rebuild megachip factories, of which there are only like a dozen in the world, creating a huge output inefficiency due to political reasons on two fronts.
Exceptions are reasonable.
If there were an actual strategy, exceptions would have been clear from the start.
Cause this talks of a gradual implementation of tariff to avoid scaring the markets, which is as far from what happened as it's possible.
Something tells me Trump's top economic advisers aren't based in the US, just as Yeltsin's strings weren't being pulled from Moscow.
The strategy is to keep everyone unsure what might come next.
It's like in boxing. When you hit your opponent and leave them confused and uncertain what you might do next, you use that to your advantage and keep on hitting. It's how you "win."
As if there are any winners here.
If the goal is to encourage investment into US manufacturing, then that's the exact opposite to the strategy he needs - investment requires stability and confidence that the N-year investment will eventually pay off. Nobody will invest due to tariffs if the tariffs might disappear tomorrow.
Him and his cronies know when that flood is coming and can profit from it.
It's only confusing if there is any expectation that he is working for the good of anyone else.
here's the plan, you can use it to advise your investments:
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
the media is garbage and they can't cover anything well enough to inform. but i bet clicks are up!
Edit: to be more specific it literally talks about the potential pitfalls of unilateral tariffs, suggests imposing them over time, etc. There's a lot of stuff in there the US did so but also a lot that they did not follow (and also there's just stuff that is outside the scope of this fairly short document). I think part of the reason the tariffs caught people so flat footed is even well informed people assumed this would be how they were implemented and got the rug pulled out from under them on "Liberation Day"
What they want doesn't matter anymore, these moves are about splitting the western economic and military alliances, a goal Russia has had since the 1960s.
They already took a hit - which they monetized by both ways
Both Trump and Musk seem be to essentially ideologues, visionary tough-talkers, who have actually succeed (or appeared to succeed) to various endeavors through having underling who work to shape their bluffs into coherent plans. This works well for various as long as the delicate balance of competent handlers and loud-mouthed visionaries is maintained.
The problem is the process of Trump winning, losing and then winning again all him to craft an organization and legal framework to put forth he vision uncorrected, unbalanced and lacking all guardrails.
And that's where we are.
We know for sure that Greer isn't steering this. Greer was testifying before a congressional committee when Trump announced huge changes to tariffs on China. Greer hadn't even been told.
Besides, this is a wildly expensive way to go about it. The harm to receipts from the economic uncertainty will blow a hole in the federal budget and leave states reeling (to say nothing of the "other hand" making cuts at the IRS, which will also be a net cost)
The reason for the pivot was because the 10-30 year yields didn't come down, the price on the 30 year got crushed. The 30 year almost went back to the lows.
There was literally no flight to safety. Completely the opposite.
This strategy has failed spectacularly, as bond yields are still up and treasuries are sold like crazy. US treasuries are no longer seen as safe havens. People rather invest in gold or treasuries from other countries which are not led by a corrupt government. Buying US treasuries is now seen as "lending Trump money", and since Trump runs the US economy exactly like he ran his companies, where IIRC he defaulted on debt at least six times, US treasuries are now a rather risky investment.
>This latest round of tariff rates is currently set at 125% for Chinese goods and a 10% tax on imports from other trading partners. China also had an additional 20% tax on its goods that began in March, bringing its total to 145%.
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
HPE
+2.91% , and Super Micro, and PC makers like Dell and HP
HPQ
+2.49% . 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.
I listened because I thought it would be funny, but the shitty behaviour and unapologetic corruption is just so naked that it actually left me feeling pretty upset for all of the obvious reasons.
I'd say that I don't understand how anyone can be charmed by this con artist, but the truth is that I have simply lost a ton of faith in the "average" person.
> I'd say that I don't understand how anyone can be charmed by this con artist, but the truth is that I have simply lost a ton of faith in the "average" person.
There is still a halo of "Democrats are bad at the economy" dating from the 1970s and rooted in the New Deal.
Because nobody likes admitting the why: The democrats are hated because of the Civil Rights Act, and how the feds enforced it in the south.
It is not a coincidence that states that tried to ignore the Civil Rights Act have been strong Republican voters ever since.
Democrat hatred is based in tyranny. The "tyranny" of being forced to treat black people as equals.
Enjoy your bridges.
I remember hearing those items are need to make assemble some components needed for some boards.
I hope Wall Street is still hammering this admin. on why these tariffs are bad.