Far left/far right ideology here. People that are punished are consumers that buy products with steel in them at a higher price.

Which is basically everyone indirectly.

This post was edited by FGdumpster on Mar 2 2018 01:21pm

LOL reports saying Trump raised the tariff from 24% to 25% because "its a round number"

trollinchief/10

Yes, Donald Trump says and does stupid things to troll, not because he's an actual idiot.

This post was edited by IceMage on Mar 2 2018 01:57pm

I heard that trade wars are easy to win though.

Anyways... I think history shows that tariffs like the one Trump just imposed work opposite of how they typically expect them to. See the Bush steel tariffs or the Nixon tariffs.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/02/carl-icahn-shares-sell-trump-steel-tariffs-announcement-timing

Looks like his good friend Carl Icahn made some pretty huge moves just days before the announcement.

Martha Stewart-esq timing for the former Trump campaign special adviser.

christ.............."no conflicts of interest to see here, you can totally run the govt like a business"

So a guy worth $17 billion made a couple million on a trade as part of dropping dozens of other assets on the same day, on information that was so 'insider' it was plastered on the wall street journal that day and has been widely forecast by economic analysts for the weeks/months prior. This is an example of how the media can be so wildly irresponsible in its reporting. The wall street journal was predicting reciprocal tariffs that same day, and tariffs on steel were part of Trump's campaign platform, and there's been endless chatter openly in the media for months now- not even talking about stock analysts making predictions behind closed doors, there was enough information that in 60 seconds of googling I could have told Icahn to sell sell sell steel. And he wasn't even dumping significant steel holdings in some all-in move, it was just one asset out of many he happened to trade that day. And the company itself was lagging with bad projections before the sell-off, he didn't even get out of it before it fumbled from its peak, and basic stock arithmetic showed it worse forecasts than other companies in the same category

Now remember that thing where I am always skeptical of sensationalized news and claims by default? Well this one sent up enough flashing red flags about being a bogus article that its particularly damning it came from the guardian. At least they steer clear of libel laws

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 2 2018 03:41pm