Summary
Global leaders criticized Trump’s new tariffs, which range from 10% to 49%, warning of trade wars and economic fallout.
The UK and Italy urged negotiation, while Brazil passed a reciprocity bill. China and South Korea vowed countermeasures.
Australia and New Zealand rejected Trump’s logic, citing existing trade deals and low tariffs. Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.
Financial markets dropped, oil and bitcoin sank, and leaders warned of inflation. Analysts say Trump risks fracturing global trade with little to gain economically.
Dead horse economics:
Wake up you lazy horse!
You know what’s fun? Cancelling stuff and citing the reason as ‘tariff-related inflation’. It’s too new and there is no response script yet, so customer service doesn’t really argue.
It’s illogical to expect an illogical man to act logically.
Someone like trump needs hit first to avoid a confrontation.
They’re AI generated tariffs. He asked Grok and these are the numbers it spat out.
They’re mostly [Trade deficit]/[Exports to US]
Which is a fucking stupid basis for tariffs.
It’s possibly the most stupid basis for tariffs. The penalty is directly proportional to U.S. reliance on a country’s imports. The countries that are the most important suppliers to the U.S. are penalized the most. It’s a policy designed to cause maximum reshuffling of production, which maximizes the start-up costs of developing new factories and so on. And those factories are not going to be in the U.S. Import substitution industrialization is a failed policy and it won’t work for reindustrialization either.
The depth of stupidity of this Administration will be studied by mathematicians for centuries as a new form of fractal.
He’s imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands… what a fucking moron…
There are penguins! 🐧
McDonald’s fucked up his order recently which is why their island received tariffs.
He’s going to get free hamberders for life when they cave.
True. Those freeloading penguins.
they have it hard enough already without tarrifs. wasn’t it last year or the year before where an entire colony of emperor penguins had every single chick die that breeding season? that’s extremely sad. but sure, hit 'em with tarrifs too, why not
Maybe this is some 5D chess move against the rise of penguins
These penguins managed to put USA into trade deficit with the island somehow?
Give him some credit (not a lot). What if China were to give these penguins cars to resale? Middle men penguins is what they are. They should call the island Midway island, a term invented by his assholness.
Good god he is so freaking stupid I can’t even…
Art of the deal, folks
None of Trump’s policies have any basis in reality
I’ve been saying this for years - why does anyone listen to him? He has no credibility - his whole life bio shows this clear as day.
Americans are trained from birth to value ignorance as the greatest virtue. Donald Trump represents everything that American culture venerates.
Failing upward. Trump Steaks, Trump University, hell, he couldn’t make money running a CASINO: Trump Castle Hotel and Casino, bankrupt. Trump Plaza Casino, bankrupt. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, and Trump Entertainment Resorts… all bankrupt.
Now he can add the US economy to his trophy case of participation ribbons.
No basis in logic is a nice summary of the Trump administration in general.
All the goods that Trump excempts from tarrifs is tipping his hand. If I were one of these countries like Taiwan where semiconductors are exempted, I would apply an export duty equal to the tarrif on other goods. If you want to tarrif me fine but you’re going to have to commit.
I hope the EU reacts with something non-tariffy. Like forbidding US online platforms to serve ads and collect personal data, with severe punishments if they still do.
I recently read an article that suggested the best retaliation would be to stop enforcing US intellectual property in the EU. One of the biggest exports they have is media, if we would stop enforcing their copyright it would cost them a lot of money.
Official EU website hosting American-made media for a nominal fee. Can’t tariff data!
I think a lot of that kind of stuff is going to happen. I don’t think other countries are insulted, as much as they find it ridiculous, and to be ridiculed, I think they’re going to do some inventive chaos. I think we need to be building some world bingo cards, and I’ll bet we won’t guess all the (hopefully hilarious) petty revenges about to snowball.
Of that I am not convinced. This will work with a lot of smaller countries that don’t have much of a copyright portfolio, but not with Europe.
Would also save the EU an enormous amount in monitoring and enforcement
You don’t even have to go that far. Just adopt sane copyright laws, like copyright only lasting the life of the artist.
Thats still too long imo. Patents are 20 years, so should every IP protection.
If it’s good enough for inventors, it’s good enough for musicians, writters and software developers.
Exactly. Especially when you figure in the longer scale up time with an invention. You can’t just flip a switch and start making money.
Yeah, but think about the grandchildren of the CEO who bought that IP from the artist‽
Do you want them to
starvehave to work for a living?
We can only hope.
or something ultra specific that is super easy to source from any other country, to exclusively hurt the american businesses
or something ultra specific that is super easy to source from any other country, to exclusively hurt the american businesses
That was part of what went into how Canada chose the targets of out first rounds of counter-tariffs.
Product categories that we also make here, or can easily get elsewhere or can comfortably do without for an extended period of time.
That combined with a consumer led boycott of anything "made in the USA " and even staunch Republicans like Mitch McConnell are starting to push back against Trump.
Yes that would be amazing and a great stimulant for EU companies to start developing a competing platform of it’s own (we have BeReal, Dailymotion, Medal and Dumpert, but they aren’t very big AFAIK)
Having Non-US platforms would be nice, yes, But leaving the US-based ones without ad revenue and a shit-ton of users would be nice, too.
Why not both?
Oh, do you guys think he might be a stupid maniac gosh
Thank you! Neither the BBC nor the Flemish public tv seem to say this yet (they just repeat the statement Trump gave)
This is the only person I have seen say this so I can only guess no one is repeating it but it appears to be correct when I checked a few countries.
Its fucking insane to think Cambodia has a 97% tariff, and he thinks they are getting rich off of it.
Just unfathomably stupid.
Nope, not for every country. Russia is missing from the tariffs
Overview In January 2025, United States exported $34.9M and imported $196M from Russia, resulting in a negative trade balance of $161M.
ok, then…
i have a huge trade deficit with walmart.
i buy way more from them than they do from me ($1200-1500 a year vs $0); just like the u.s. buys more from many countries than those countries buy from the u.s.
like the leaky diaper’s new
tariffsimport tax, i should charge myself a ridiculously high extra tax on purchases from walmart until they buy $1200-1500 a year of some mythical product from me to even out the ‘unfair’ imbalance?yea. that’ll work.
the “logic” is pretty much as you described it. Only, after charging yourself with the extra tax on Walmart purchases, you obviously can’t afford Walmart any longer, so you learn to make your own soap with ash and the fats of animals that you have started breeding in your own flat.
Or your neighbour does all the work instead of you, so you decide to buy soap from them. They’re next door, while Walmart is across the county line, so you decide you won’t charge yourself the extra self-tax with your neighbour.
Walmart"s soap, which used to be $2, is now $3, while your neighbour’s soap is $2.50.
A week later your neighbour sees that demand for their soap is huge because everyone is self-taxing. So they raise their price to $2.95 to make extra profit.
In case you think this is just a contrived fiction, this is exactly what happened to many goods, like solar panels, with Trump’s first-term tarrifs. Americans paid over double the average world price for solar panels.
Worse still, Trump knows this happened, yet somehow this time will be completely different. <sigh>
So sad and so true. You made me giggle and frown at the same time. Have some 🥇.
I think Trump doesn’t want to trade at all. He wants us to produce everything we need.
Well, artificially increasing the price of all the raw naturals we use to make those things will certainly help with that goal…
I’m actually pretty down with that that. We should be able and ready to produce whatever we need in case another country does what trump is doing or something happens that would prevent trade. If China attacks Taiwan, we should be able to produce our own chips. We should be able to function with as little dependence on other countries as possible.
In no way do tariffs fix that. You invest in yourself, slapping your friends because they’re better than you at something is really fucking stupid.
Meh, I think it’s fine and good for countries to specialize and be dependent on each other. Keeps the peace through mutually assured economic destruction. Global upticks in isolationism preceded the World Wars. Also, it just makes sense, because different countries have different resources, and their populations are differently skilled.
He’s hoping the foreign companies are going to open up shop in USA to avoid the tariffs.
Which they’re not going to do as that takes time and meanwhile he keeps moving the goalposts.
And they’ll just fill in the gaps with China, or other non USA alternatives.
Which they’re not going to do as that takes time and meanwhile he keeps moving the goalposts.
Just like Mussolini.
and see how well that turned out?
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I am really afraid that this is what America is coming to. The problem is that we have a third of the country that supports the Mango Mussolini.
We’ll have to see if that holds true after people watch their retirements get obliterated by a drastic drop in stock values across the board. Biden didn’t do enough to show the people that the economy was doing well, and recovering better than other countries around the world, under his watch. Trump won’t be able to pin this downward economic trend on Biden cause it happened too fast and multiple sources have cited the import tax, or fear of them, at the reason for the stock market tanking.
If owning the libs is so important that tRump voters will still vote for the ones actively hurting them, then those people are truly beyond help.
One can only dream. Joking there is no Resistenza in the USA.
That’s actually a pretty good and understandable explanation of what’s going on.
Sounds like you had better open a diaper factory in your house. Then you wouldn’t have to pay the tariff that you are charging yourself.
The “Empires last 250 years” thing is bad history and not really supported by fact…but…
Ooh boy, does my retirement account feel liberated.
