Australia’s chances of escaping America’s global steel and aluminium tariffs appear all but extinguished, with the US president reconfirming his commitment to a comprehensive tariff regime he argues will be “the greatest thing we’ve ever done as a country”.

“We’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money,” Donald Trump told reporters on board Air Force One flying from Florida to Washington DC.

“We’re basically going to take back the money – a lot of the money that we’ve given away over many decades.”

    • @[email protected]
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      61 month ago

      “Think how stupid your average American person is, and then realize half the population is dumber than that.

  • ms.lane
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    51 month ago

    How is he going to get “Hundreds of Billions”?

    Putting aside that’s not how tariffs work- we only export around $13billion per year to USA. Even a 25% tariff would require somewhere around 30 years for that US consumer paid money to even hit $100m, but he said Hundreds (plural)

    Is this some 42D Chess (no) that Australia is going to see a 5x or more uptick in exports to USA?

  • @[email protected]
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    61 month ago

    I think the rest of the world has 5 billion total. All the rich assholes have 3 trillion total.

  • @[email protected]
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    181 month ago

    Trump is very clearly there to line his own pockets with these tariffs. Do they really need to cut all these federal jobs with all that new federal income?

  • @[email protected]
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    271 month ago

    As an American, I am just hoping Trump doesn’t learn any additional economic terms. I keep expecting him to try to replace our federal income tax with a VAT.

    Dear Australia, please sanction the shit out of us. We deserve it. Sorry we are so terrible.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 month ago

      VAT has tax in the name, and it goes on a receipt. It would be harder to tell people other countries are paying for it

    • @[email protected]
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      121 month ago

      Especially now that

      1. The US have told the Five Eyes to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine - something I suspect the other Four Eyes may have a moral problem with, and

      2. The US is obviously compromised. Sharing intelligence with them is akin to just handing that intelligence straight to the “enemy”, whoever that may be these days.

  • @[email protected]
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    341 month ago

    I can’t wait for Trump to come up with the brilliant, never before thought of “just print more money.”

    • @[email protected]
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      1 month ago

      "“We found the gold that was in Fort Knox! It was just sitting there. We could just use that. America will be so rich with all this gold Sleepy Joe and his people wanted to keep from all of us. We’re gonna take this gold. It’ll be the best thing. Lotsa lotsa gold. It’s a lotta gold. Gold…yeah.”

      Said President Musk’s little orange pet on Monday."

      /s

      Unless this already happened in our reality…man I wouldn’t even be surprised anymore…

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    He was never going to give us an exemption and anyone believing he will is delusional, like Trump.

  • @[email protected]
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    131 month ago

    I fucking hate this. I fucking hate every day in this countrymen I FUCKEN HATE YOU TRUMP

  • @[email protected]
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    261 month ago

    I don’t speak for all Australians, but fuck Trump.

    Maybe learning Mandarin wouldn’t wouldn’t so bad

    • Random_Character_A
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      141 month ago

      If you have to chose between Mango Mussolini and Winnie the Pooh. Winnie starts to sound better all the time.

      • @[email protected]
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        241 month ago

        At least the CCP values education, and is basically the most highly educated regime in all of history.

        America is just a religiously mentally ill idiocracy that aggrandizes pure narcissism and individualism. It’s a dead end.

  • @[email protected]
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    161 month ago

    This is just a way to plunge the market value so he and his cronies can buy cheaper stocks.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Plunge the market so they can do options on the way down. Then with the profits but the stocks at a cheaper price. Also do options on the way up.

  • @[email protected]
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    91 month ago

    So the US recession is not coming fast enough then.

    Civil war when? When will people take to the streets to get rid of this guy who is making their country even worse than it was before?

    • @[email protected]
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      41 month ago

      americans are still to content and complacent and coddled to even go through a civil war right now.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Maybe at the higher end of things, in the nice neighborhoods.

        Lots of us are wondering by now when that whole “… Against enemies foreign and domestic.” clause will kick in for the supposed defenders of the Constitution, seeing as we’ve got plenty of both in the Casa Blanca right now. Still waiting…

        As for the working class: A majority of folks are just constantly bombarded socially and civically by a thousand little dictators. Their bosses, the landlords, the grocery chains, the media, their utility companies, whatever. They keep having to scramble to find the next thing to keep themselves above water. There’s so much noise.

        They don’t know who to trust, or where to start.

        And it’s structured in such a way that it’s so individualized, and difficult to create a rallying banner to do anything meaningful under. When most people are a single missed paycheck from abject poverty, how can you convince them to take up arms, much less go protest, or whatever?

        Also the democratic party has poured tons of money into making liberals (not leftists) terrified of gun-like objects, so you’d have to train them on how this whole use of force thing works before arming them. They’d probably still refuse and decide buying matching outfits was solidarity enough for one day. ✊ Lol

        That’s the real struggle we have right now: Nobody knows each other, and the “radicals” who would organize are sometimes more focused on maintaining absolute ideological purity rather than rallying various viewpoints under the same cause.

        Then you gotta figure out what moves would actually hurt the bottom line of the oppressors. And we’re back to “Why didn’t they just do this to their bosses ages ago then?”

        Because it’s the same people. Orange Menace / Krasnov / and his puppetmasters want to “run the country like a business.” Like (y)our bosses. They want to be petty, and isolate workers, and cut incomes, and demand more than ever. It’s just suddenly really bad because the moderately privileged realize “Just get a better job then lol.” is even less practical than it was, when you’re talking an entire country’s economy sliding down the hole.

        This is all by design, it’s the same tactics that shitty retail work might use to keep employees feeling powerless and miserable, with the stakes and scale multiplied.

        We saw some movement with the AntiWork crowd, because they would educate each other on unions, and share their stories of standing up to their bosses, and quitting defiantly. We need that kind of ideological action x20.

        If you could defy the fascists in some meaningful way, and know that you’d have people backing you up, that could be powerful. Powerful enough that we wouldn’t have to fire a shot. But I don’t think we’ll be THAT lucky.