• @[email protected]
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    16 days ago

    Is … Is the US trading with Russia?

    Edit: pretty much no. Dumb rage bait article

    Double edit: fuck you, lemmy

  • @[email protected]
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    15 days ago

    Fairly sure that’s because Russia is heavily sanctioned by thr US already, alongside North Korea, Cuba, Iran etc.

    Things are bad but let’s not spread hysteria.

    • @[email protected]
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      115 days ago

      How does this point keep coming up? It’s been refuted like a dozen times in every post I see. Feels like intentional disinfo at this point.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 days ago

        You can believe what you like but I’m not here to spread disinformation. Looking at the replies from other people I think I’m just misinformed and need to do more research. It’s possible to be wrong on the internet without it being tied up in a conspiracy.

        • @[email protected]
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          315 days ago

          Right, but the number of people spreading the same wrong thing in multiple threads hours after they were openly provided direct info as to their error, starts to make it seem like a coordinated disinfo campaign.

          Yes, it is possible to be wrong on the internet without a malicious intent. It’s also possible to spread disinfo without being a malicious actor, since the whole point of disinfo is to get other people to take it up and spread it, occluding the real issue and disrupting genuine conversation about it.

          For clarity, I am not accusing you of being a malicious or disingenuous actor here. No offense, but I doubt you arrived at your position in a vacuum, you probably heard it from somewhere else first I imagine?

          • @[email protected]
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            215 days ago

            It’s a logical conclusion from quack, imo. It’s the second thing that came to my mind after the obvious ‘oh duh cause he’s Russias agent’

    • @[email protected]
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      315 days ago

      Yeah, it’s hard to put a tariff on a country that you have already sanctioned and don’t trade with at all. But that fact doesn’t play well here.

      • @[email protected]
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        15 days ago

        The US has 3.5 billion in trade with Russia. The tariffs include Iran; Venezuela, etc… they also slapped them on countries which we have a trade surplus with.

        It’s also looking like they used chatgpt to write the list but then specifically omitted five countries. Russia, north korea, Cuba, Belarus. Russia and its fine closest allies. How can anyone see this and not think the Kremlin does t own the Epstein tapes

        • @[email protected]
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          115 days ago

          they released the JFK tapes! several times!

          honestly i remain skeptical any “kompromat” on trump exists. or any Epstein documents remain that matter. we’ve all seen it

          • @[email protected]
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            415 days ago

            I was skeptical up until the tariffs. Now it’s obvious they’ve got blackmail.

            Alao an interview with epstein was leaked last year where he mentioned trump having sex on his plane. But in 2017 that clip was suppressed for some reason.

            We know trump flew on that plane many times and that it was rigged with secret cameras

            • @[email protected]
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              315 days ago

              I doubt it’s a blackmail thing, because at this point, not one of Trump’s supporters would give a damn if it was clearly proven that Trump personally took CP pictures.

              I think Putin just whispers sweet nothings into Trump’s ear and controls him that way.

              • @[email protected]
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                315 days ago

                A large part of their movement is based on aesthetics. And csam is probably a bridge too far for them. It just looks ugly. But I have no doubt many of them don’t care about that either.

                But from the blackmail angle, the public image of a sick pedo is not compatible with the orange man’s public facing persona and his narcissism would make him the perfect blackmail target

            • @[email protected]
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              15 days ago

              i wouldn’t say trump wasn’t a super gross Epstein buddy, we already know that.

              “rigged with secret cameras”, so what. where is it now.

              edit I know nothing is forthcoming. there’s nothing. stop fabricating and focus on what’s happening, because it’s already terrifying

        • @[email protected]
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          115 days ago

          In terms of nations, I really have no idea what 3.5 billion means. Like is that a lot? I feel like we probably trade that much with China in like what, a week? A month, a day?

          • @[email protected]
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            215 days ago

            He tariffed countries with no people and trade deficits of thousands of dollars, and tariffed Ukraine.

    • @[email protected]
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      2015 days ago

      That was also the official argument from Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson of the White House, although last years trading volume between Russia and the US still was about 3.5 billion USD (roughly three times of what Ukraine - US traded).

      The question whether tariffs for Russia makes sense or not is rendered meaningless given the fact that the whole tariff plan is just wild (super small countries with a mimiscule part of trading volume still got heavily sanctioned etc).

      You are right that we should not spread hysteria, but we should still question statements coming from government officials.

      • @[email protected]
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        1015 days ago

        Agree with what you’re saying here and I think I need to do some more reading. Getting the impression that I’ve been misinformed/mislead.

    • @[email protected]
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      2016 days ago

      https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia-and-eurasia/russia

      U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Russia was $2.5 billion in 2024, a 37.5 percent decrease ($1.5 billion) over 2023.

    • @[email protected]
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      316 days ago

      Yeah if I were being charitable I might imagine they aren’t on the list because they are already subject to extremely high tarrifs and embargoes. Maybe increased those tarrifs could be a bargaining chip in ending the Ukraine invasion. Impossible to tell with Trump though.

  • spirinolas
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    16 days ago

    Uh? Of course he isn’t. Why would Putin tell him to put tariffs on himself? That makes no sense.

    • @[email protected]
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      1916 days ago

      The US has been sanctioning Russia for the better part of the last decade. We aren’t tariffing them because we aren’t trading with them.

      We also aren’t tariffing Venezuela, Cuba, or North Korea, for the same reasons.

        • @[email protected]
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          1216 days ago

          https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306859/us-imports-by-commodity-from-russia/

          It does look like we import about $3B/year. Mostly fertilizers, which make up 1/3 of total imports, and some raw metals and a bit of heavy machinery. But that’s minuscule beside our trade balances with the top of his tariff list - China, the EU, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, and India. We do $20B/year with tiny little South Korea, as a point of comparison. We bring in $6B/year from South Africa.

          To my knowledge, we don’t import Russian vodka in any significant quantity. Anything “Russian” branded is typically imported from one of the neighboring states - Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania. Red Army Vodka, for instance, is from a Polish company.

        • @[email protected]
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          1316 days ago

          I was under the impression that we (in Canada) get our vodka mostly from Finland, but it’s been a while since I worked as an alcohol purveyor… I’m ashamed of the things I did during those years, but I’m in recovery now, thank you for your concern

      • @[email protected]
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        3316 days ago

        Maybe, but apparently we’re tariffing multiple uninhabited islands. It would seem that active trade is not a perquisite for tariffs these days. can’t be having people move out there and not getting tariffed in the future.

        I hope he puts tariffs on Mars next. Maybe after he falls out with musk.

      • @[email protected]
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        1616 days ago

        But tarrif on seals in the Antarctica region? Doesn’t seem like logic is driving any of this.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 days ago

        it’s funny that this is being downvoted. lemmy is basically reddit. rooting for the good guys, but also dogshit stupid

        • @[email protected]
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          216 days ago

          Systems that have voting mechanisms result in hive minds. It’s an inevitable result.

          1st someone is much more likely to vote something up or down depending on how positive / negative it is. So it snowballs sort of like compounding interest

          2nd the simplest most common denominator takes bubble to the top. Precisely because more people can understand and therefore vote.

          It’s why you’ll always see some screenshot of Twitter much higher than a long in depth article. Even though the article has infinitely more value.

        • Brumefey
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          1416 days ago

          Downvoted because it’s wrong : We aren’t tariffing them because we aren’t trading with them.

          So are some inhabited islands which are hit by tariffs. Maybe the dogshit stupid is the one not seeing the ties between trump and putin.

  • @[email protected]
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    3116 days ago

    I try to keep a sense of perspective, every president I disagree with seems to be the worst president ever at the time.

    I really want to say Bush’s useless Trillion dollar wars are worse than this.

    But it’s close and we have 3.5 more years of this.

    • @[email protected]
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      816 days ago

      I really want to say Bush’s useless Trillion dollar wars are worse than this.

      I would say Bush’s bailout of the O&G sector in '01 and the Financial Sector in '08 laid the seeds for worse social and ecological conditions over the subsequent two decades. Similarly, NAFTA and the subsequent midwestern de-industrialization was nightmarish for US industry and Mexican agriculture.

      These blunders set us up to need international trade. What’s crazy about Trump’s tariffs is that he’s not addressing the underlying infrastructure problems or the crushing post-Great Recession debt traps. He’s just squeezing at the point of the supply chain in order to punish American industry and labor for adapting to the sabotaged economic landscape of the neoliberal era.

      It is the economic equivalent of kicking a guy in the kidneys after he’s already been laid out on the ground.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 days ago

        As much as I despise Obama for vastly expanding our extrajudicial drone strike policy… All things put into perspective, yeah he was pretty decent.

        • @[email protected]
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          115 days ago

          Yes but look at the people who becomes US presidents. The bar needs to be low or none of them can reach it.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 days ago

        I was fine with like 80% of Obama and like 60% of Clinton’s actual policies while enjoying the economy that I don’t credit him for. But then W Bush was like a 10% and Trump 1 maybe 15% (Warp Speed, passing the vast majority of Covid stimulus, ironically all the stuff he’s against now) and I’m batting zero so far on Trump 2 but I assume at some point he’ll do something I agree with.

        • @[email protected]
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          116 days ago

          The only possibility of me agreeing with this old fuck is him stepping down as President… But then we would have to deal with a Vance Presidency and I’m not sure that would be better

      • @[email protected]
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        916 days ago

        Obama was pretty decent no?

        How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth

        Neil Barofsky, the bailout inspector general, later testified that protecting the banks was the actual goal. The administration’s aim was to “foam the runway” for the banks, as Barofsky witnessed Tim Geithner tell Elizabeth Warren. HAMP failed, in other words, because it was not designed to help homeowners.

        As a result, in many cases HAMP actively enabled foreclosure. Its re-default rate — the fraction of people who got a modification and later defaulted out of the program — was 22 percent as of 2013. Only about $15 billion of the original $75 billion appropriation was spent by mid-2016.

        Out of an initial promised 4 million mortgage modifications — itself a drastic underestimate — by the end of 2016 only 2.7 million had even been started. Out of that number, only 1.7 million made it to permanent modification, and of those, 558,000 eventually washed out of the program.

        Former Wells Fargo employees later testified that the bank deliberately tricked middle-class black families (who they called “mud people”) into subprime “ghetto loans.” Overall, a Center for Responsible Lending study found that from 2004 to 2008, 6.2 percent of white borrowers with a credit score of 660 and up got subprime mortgages, while 19.3 percent of such Latino borrowers and 21.4 percent of black borrowers did.

        The effects of the foreclosure disaster are starkly apparent in Survey of Consumer Finances data. To start, the homeownership national rate shows a marked decline over almost the whole Obama presidency, reaching the lowest rate since 1965 (before slightly rebounding).

    • chaosCruiser
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      2516 days ago

      Looks more like Russia and USA are in the same trade embargo, while the rest of the world is free to do whatever they want.

      • @[email protected]
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        416 days ago

        If anybody is paralyzed it might be Sk and Japan but SK is already jumping ship and trading with China, now.

  • franpoli
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    316 days ago

    Russia remains a key supplier of resources critical to U.S. industry (titanium, palladium, uranium). While technically replaceable, developing alternative sources would take years. This makes the current moment less than ideal for imposing higher tariffs on Russia, particularly when the priority is to reindustrialize the U.S.

    • @[email protected]
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      216 days ago

      I find it funny than instead of at least imposing 10% tariff by default on Russia and selectively exempt critical resources. Russian wasn’t listed at all.

      Even an unoccupied island got 10% tariff by default.

    • Match!!
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      916 days ago

      now explain why Russia is uniquely in this position or i user note you as a russian agent

      • franpoli
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        216 days ago

        Well, as much as I’d love a dramatic spy backstory, I’m afraid I’m neither an FSB nor an FBI agent. Just a regular person thinking out loud. I don’t have a definitive answer, just some suppositions. I share them so we can all explore the topic with arguments and counterarguments; no secret dossiers required! Open to hearing different perspectives.

  • @[email protected]
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    2016 days ago

    Guys I think there’s some evidence that this is, shall we say, Russia friendly (such as the astronomical tariff rate on Moldova of all places), but Russia isn’t included because it’s a “Column 2” country alongside Belarus, Cuba, and North Korea, and therefore all subject to the stiff tariffs we already impose on the worst of the worst. Please let’s not share things like this which just make us look gullable to the morons on the right supporting this buffoon. It’s not a good look.

  • @[email protected]
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    20116 days ago

    Un-fucking-real.

    This presidency will be such a shit stain on the world. The world will never trust the U.S. in the same way it did before.

    Over a century of trust and partnerships destroyed in less than 100 days.

    • @[email protected]
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      716 days ago

      As well as it should not trust the U.S. the same again. While i absolutely despise the orange turd he has shown what has been true before: The west has been too reliant on the U.S. ,which both sides enjoyed while it lastet, as the U.S. called the shots, the rest of the west followed and we all benefitted (often on the backs of the global south ofc). No more. Maybe some good will come out of it (strong hopium, i know)

    • @[email protected]
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      4716 days ago

      Well. The bridge took some damage in the previous Trump admin as well.

      I think far too many people forgot those times.

    • Fair Fairy
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      316 days ago

      Do people not realize there is no US Russia trade so tariffs would be moot.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 days ago

        no US Russia trade

        U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Russia was $2.5 billion in 2024, a 37.5 percent decrease ($1.5 billion) over 2023.

        https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia-and-eurasia/russia

        But what’s a few billion between friends?

  • Stern
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    You can view this one of two ways, possibly both:

    1. Krasnov
    2. Trump apparently was doing these tariffs based on trade deficits (Which is stupid on its own, if your dentist doesn’t buy the widgets you sell, that’s not a tariff.), if Russia wasn’t running one, then there you go.

    To rebuke 2 I present the following- https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia-and-eurasia/russia

    U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023. U.S. goods imports from Russia totaled $3.0 billion in 2024, down 34.2 percent ($1.6 billion) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Russia was $2.5 billion in 2024, a 37.5 percent decrease ($1.5 billion) over 2023.

    Based on that math, with the CNN article I linked for the formula (the country’s trade deficit divided by its exports to the United States times 1/2) we get - (2,500,000,000 / 3,000,000,000) * 1/2 = 0.416666…

    So Russia should have a 42% tariff based on their purported 83% tariff on us.

    • @[email protected]
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      315 days ago

      Trump seems to think the trade deficit is some sort of debt that we’ll have to pay off in the future.

      The overall goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US isn’t necessarily a bad one, but this is probably the worst way to go about doing it. One article I read pointed out that it would take many years of consistent tariffs to generate that kind of interest and investment - but anyone with half a brain knows these tariffs could be gone tomorrow, so there’s little inclination to actually try to build factories in the US based on this move. No reasonable investor would want to bet their company on Trump acting consistently.

      • @[email protected]
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        215 days ago

        …pointed out that it would take many years of consistent tariffs to generate that kind of interest and investment…

        That’s the scary thing. Citrus-Hitler assumes he’s gonna have himself and his policies in place for “many years of consistent tariffs.”