I'm pretty sure maggats will defend the math.

The actual math is more complicated as explained here

Greatest mathing of all time.


The real issue though for countries is, okay this comes out of left field at them, like 180 countries on this list. The USA came up with a total bullshit number, so even if you say, lets work to a totally unnecessary resolution here, what's the real number to actually try to get to. If you're the penguins how much are you supposed to actually try to bring things down to when its a totally made up number essentially.

I don't think even if you support tariffs you should be happy with this approach. I think the use of tariffs is for other things, trying to get non-economic things done, for instance, boarder security, okay. Economic pressure to get a bolstered boarder. This is just, we don't like that every country in the world does not buy exactly as much as we buy from them?

Also lets look at the 10%'s on that list, those countries buy more from the USA then they sell! And he still just tossed 10% on all of them. How is anyone pleased with this?

This post was edited by SBD on Apr 4 2025 08:21am

China starves without US food imports lol

Do they want a famine again?

Trump will cave before China does. He is weak.

Real risk to China is not food imports from the US. If hog or soy is more expensive, you eat rice and fish. Real risk is the level of global demand slowdown. GDP forecasts have already been slowing in 2025, they can't afford for the US market to say no thanks to their products.

When you are a huge producer, inventory churn is absolutely critical. Some producers will literally sale at cost simply to move the product because there's other suppliers that depend on that churn. If you turn off the factories, that's a huge problem for China though, because they are massively levered. So imagine you're running a factory, you have all these other upstream suppliers depending on you, you have bank loans, you have a huge working force. You're better producing at cost or even at slight loss versus turning everything off.

The tarrif math deserves its own thread alone imo

This has all been priced in.

10yr treasury bond is at 3.9% falling a ton already from 4.2% a week ago. This is not only about trade policy. I made this point before, we have tens of trillions that need to be refinanced. Refinancing at 4.5% vs refinancing at 3.5% is a huge difference in the interest paid.

Quick back of the napkin math example:

36 trillion refinanced at 4.5% =1.6TR interest expense per year
36 trillion refinanced at 3.5% =1.25 TR interest expense per year

So $370BN difference per year, which is absolutely huge.

We NEED rates to come down or our interest expense becomes widely unaffordable. Only way to get IR cuts is try to trigger some fear of slowdown (job cuts, recession, unemployment rate ticking up, etc)

This to me is starting to look like a planned demolition. There was never an easy way out. That's why some of us were yelling at top of our lungs when government was pumping trillions into the economy through debt. Time has come to reap the consequences.

I keep beating this dead horse but we’re just too tribal. A lot of folks in this thread are “fine with this” because they’re wearing their red team hat and red team administration is doing.

But you can bet your ass if a democratic administration had made up a bunch of fake stats to justify harming the economy with very little idea of what they were even trying to accomplish those exact same folks would be losing their F’ing minds right now.

But again, they’re fine with it, because red team is doing it.

Agreed. Id like to get your opinion on something i was reading. There seems to be an idea that these tarrifs were designed to isolate China as a by-product of taxing everyone.

I can believe this because of two reasons:
1. Trump has always wanted to get into a trade war against China
2. China is seriously starting to give uncle sam a run for its money. Theyre all caught up in almost every facet in terms of miltech, and their production blows the US outa the water. The US military just pulled out one of their aircraft carrier groups from the south Pacific and moved em into the ME. This trade war seems like the onlynway to preserve Taiwan without a direct confrontation(imo)

Vietnam just bent the knee. If trump is able to get other SEA countries into a trade deal while still imposing tarrifs on china, this should overwhelmingly favour the US right? Not sure how that line of reasoning plays out economically, so im interested to see if you think thats feasible without tanking the US economy.

Vietnam:
Just had a very productive call with To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114280292618523684