Tracking toy tariffs

[JakeEkiss]

I want to say it's his way of funding the biggest tax break on the wealthy we've ever seen, but that assumes he cares about blowing up the deficit. There's no evidence he does, so I just can't figure it out.

So, not to sound like a crackpot, but if you take this in context of other things he's said a plan does form. Let's look at the idea we'd grab Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. In a vacuum, those are all insane things to do. However, if you assume he's a Russian asset, or at least that his ties with Russia will only get closer over time, you might notice that a US/Russia alliance, with those places under US power, would effectively make the entire arctic circle a no-go zone for NATO allies. Well it's mostly ice you say... well, that's changing fast. Very fast. If you assume we took the canal as well, this basically forces everyone else to do intercontinental trade through the Suez, overland through China, or around the southern tips of Africa and South America.

This could be a play at global trade dominance.

Now, you might say, Trump ain't that smart. And no, *he* probably isn't. But you know who is? The ex-KGB bastard in charge of Russia who he's never stopped kissing up to. And if the whole plan doesn't go through (and it likely won't for a number of reasons), then the failure of that plan just alienates the US from all their NATO allies and crashes their economy, reducing the world superpowers to just Russia and China. Win-win for the dude who would actually think up that plan.

 

[Ru1977]

My best guess at the time was a national divorce. I don't know. How long will blue states let the administration pillage them for tax dollars and send nothing in return? If the Constitution is vapor (it basically is at this point, the Executive Branch disregards both Congress and the Judiciary), then we have no union.

This is actually an idea I almost brought up earlier today. I remember Colin Quinn talking about breaking the country up into city-states, united in war time like ancient Greece but otherwise separate because different systems work for different temperaments. But I dunno, I'm no economist nor am I at all a political scientist.

But yeah, the Constitution is just paper now.

 

[Ru1977]

So, not to sound like a crackpot, but if you take this in context of other things he's said a plan does form. Let's look at the idea we'd grab Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. In a vacuum, those are all insane things to do. However, if you assume he's a Russian asset, or at least that his ties with Russia will only get closer over time, you might notice that a US/Russia alliance, with those places under US power, would effectively make the entire arctic circle a no-go zone for NATO allies. Well it's mostly ice you say... well, that's changing fast. Very fast. If you assume we took the canal as well, this basically forces everyone else to do intercontinental trade through the Suez, overland through China, or around the southern tips of Africa and South America.

This could be a play at global trade dominance.

Now, you might say, Trump ain't that smart. And no, *he* probably isn't. But you know who is? The ex-KGB bastard in charge of Russia who he's never stopped kissing up to. And if the whole plan doesn't go through (and it likely won't for a number of reasons), then the failure of that plan just alienates the US from all their NATO allies and crashes their economy, reducing the world superpowers to just Russia and China. Win-win for the dude who would actually think up that plan.

Not to sound like a crackpot either, but in my mind this makes complete sense.

 

[hmmberto]

There's the question of what Trump wants, and the question of what those in his orbit are after.

Look to the Mar-a-Lago Accords for an idea of what the latter might be after.

The theory I gravitate towards for what Trump is after is that tariffs are the ultimate power + money move for him personally. He's been given carte blanche to impose or remove them unilaterally, and he can use it force companies or entire countries to come to him for relief. Not as part of some master trade negotiation, but a straight up racket accruing to his own benefit. It gives him power and money - the amount of cash flowing into his companies and meme coins is probably staggering.

That, or he's just trying to wreck everything.

 

[JakeEkiss]

The theory I gravitate towards for what Trump is after is that tariffs are the ultimate power + money move for him personally.

Yeah, outside of my thoughts on his moves in aggregate, how he got those ideas and what they mean in a long term global way, this is actually what I think Trump's moment to moment thinking is. He negotiates like a bull in a China shop because he's not bright and he's always been a big enough bull relative to his dance partners that nobody wants to cross him because he's just big and stupid enough to wreck everything without even noticing. Now he's the biggest bull, and everyone else is just trying to keep him from crashing into the fine dishware. He gets what he wants not because he's cunning, but because he's so erratic that he forces everyone else to play defense.

There's the question of what Trump wants, and the question of what those in his orbit are after.

This is also a great point. There's factions within his government all after different things. Guys like Miller want an ethnostate. Musk wants large scale wealth transfer. There's other folks who are religious zealots. There's plenty who are just simple con men and opportunists. Middle managers of corruption. The one thing they all have in common is they all get more of what they want if the break every system they come across. All of their goals become easier if there are no guardrails, and most of them, even if they aren't strong believers in each other's goals, aren't bothered by them enough to block each other.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

I don't think he does anything intentionally. He's a dumb man obsessed with looking "strong." He has no impulse control. There is no master plan. He hears the term "trade deficit" and thinks it means we're getting ripped off.

I highly, highly doubt that about tariffs. I mean, I used to think exactly what you're saying when he first started lying about them during his first term, but once I learned he was getting his ideas from Robert Lighthizer I started taking him more seriously. Not that I think he's following all of Lighthizer's advice--he clearly isn't--but he usually learns enough from the people he brings into his orbit to make up for the deficiencies you're pointing out which I agree are quite real and repeatedly surface. My assumption is that he took just enough of Lighthizer's advice to benefit himself, but I haven't figured out whatever angle he came up with yet. Did he come up with his $TRUMP meme coin himself? Of course not; someone pitched it to him as a way to take bribes, and he went with it. You can make up for your own deficiencies by surrounding yourself with smart people and stealing their ideas.

I still think Trump would have never been president if not for Steve Bannon teaching him the playbook he's followed ever since they met back in 2010. Trump has had a number of key influences that brought him to the presidency--Roy Cohn who he has repeatedly credited over the years, his lawyer Michael Cohen, Bannon, etc etc. Jesse Ventura claims that Trump stole his campaign techniques and has been using him ever since they first considered running together as a third party ticket around 2000.

In terms of his public persona he was always guarded in what he said even back when he was a regular on David Letterman or Howard Stern in the 1980s, and 1990s, but after he started getting political ambitions in the 1990s first with the Clintons and later with Jesse Ventura he seemed to learn to just completely be whatever he thought people wanted out of him to gain influence and power. We have only fleeting glimpses as to what the man himself is like anymore; 90% or more of what comes out of his mouth is manipulation of public opinion for at least the last two decades, and he was working on that behavior long before that.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

I dunno what Trump's fascination with Russia is, but he's had it for decades. He's been trying to buy real estate and run his beauty pageants there long before he ran for president. Maybe that's where his family originally immigrated from so he fixated on it from an early age? I have no idea, that's just a wild guess.

 

[Justice]

Trump has an unhealthy obsession with projecting a strong image and being the big tough guy. Which, is amusing to me considering the amount of make-up he wears.

I don't know that the tariffs are any more than a projection of strength. He is also obsessed with the stock market and loves to use that as a benchmark for how well he is doing.

Or may they just want to crash the whole thing so they can buy up all these stocks at a better price and then reap the benefits the next time a Democrat becomes president and gets everything going again with the economy.

 

[mrboshek]

Are there even enough people in the US to take the jobs we're supposedly going to bring back? The years feel like they're blending together, I think it was 2021 when nobody seemed to want to work and you had some upticks in wage growth to entice people...I'm sure that played some factor in inflation. Unemployment had been around 4% or what's considered full employment, the economy was too hot, so interest rates were raised to lessen investment and cause some layoffs. Isn't that cycle going to happen again, it's like the system is rigged.

Tfw2005 (transformers message board) has banned tariffs talk.

 

[Justice]

There are definitely not enough people in the US willing to take those jobs. There's no way figure production is ever going to start up over here. Toy companies are going to just try and weather the storm and hope he backtracks, gets impeached, dies in office, or gets replaced in 4 years.

 

[Chooch555]

Clearly the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed government employees will be happy to start working in factories making our toys. Where they can be productive.

Sarcasm aside, we're already seeing a rough job market. Companies are feeling their power again, slashing jobs themselves, and feeling justified. I just saw on LinkedIn an open position got 10,000 applicants in the first day. That's probably not common, but it's a bad indicator for job seekers.

 

[AceofKnaves]

Re: DJT’s mental state:
I think about this A LOT. There was a taboo, traditionally, regarding “diagnosis from afar” regarding public figures, for obvious reasons, but I think it’s feckless and cowardly for the psych community to hold that up in such dire circumstances. I can’t *diagnose* him, per se, but I can observe behavior and make extrapolations based on evidence.
The following is not shit-talking. I’m being as objective as I can:
- he demonstrates extreme narcissistic behavior. Whatever Fred Trump did to him as a kid, it caused a hole that will never be filled, no matter what he “accomplishes”.
-he seems to be low-intelligence, but he picks up threads and runs with them obsessively. I don’t think he understands tariffs, or transgender issues, or governance in general, but he hyper-focuses on an aspect, wrongly, and no one tells him “no”.
-he is incredibly incurious, reflexively anti-learning, not in the sense that he doesn’t like it, but in the sense that he can’t/wont do it.
-he is rapidly deteriorating in his physical and mental health, it definitely appears he is going straight downhill with dementia.
-the more he pushes the idea that he is “strong”, the weaker he actually feels. And right now he, personally, clearly feels very, very weak.
-he has to “win”. If he doesn’t, he will twist it in his head so he actually did.
-whether due to cognitive decline and co-morbidity with his other disorders, or simply something that was there all the time, it’s pretty clear that he is actually psychopathic. Many studies have been done about how psychopaths are apt to become CEOs, and this is the ultimate expression of that, which actually speaks more to our (intentionally) corrupted systems than the man himself.

Ultimately, it is my considered opinion that this is a human who cannot reckon with his own oncoming demise, and is driven to break and remake everything in his image, in the interest of a child’s idea of a Roman Emperor’s “immorality”. These tariffs guarantee him a place in the “history books”. Not that this guy would understand Machiavelli if he could even read it, but he had definitely fallen into the trap of “it is better to be feared than to be loved, if one has to choose”.

Also, not exactly a psych point but the guy holds power and stays out of a jail cell because he has sold himself to other powerful people. Any personal agency DJT thinks he has, evaporated long ago. He’s a puppet, and a puppet who may have convinced himself that he is pulling his own strings when he really REALLY isn’t. He’s still a scared child terrified of the cruel hand of a long-dead father.

Sorry to be grim. But I do feel that is who we are dealing with. There will be no three Christmas ghosts to change his mind. He is utterly lost, and unfortunately the world just needs to wait for him to leave it.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

I highly, highly doubt that about tariffs. I mean, I used to think exactly what you're saying when he first started lying about them during his first term, but once I learned he was getting his ideas from Robert Lighthizer I started taking him more seriously. Not that I think he's following all of Lighthizer's advice--he clearly isn't--but he usually learns enough from the people he brings into his orbit to make up for the deficiencies you're pointing out which I agree are quite real and repeatedly surface. My assumption is that he took just enough of Lighthizer's advice to benefit himself, but I haven't figured out whatever angle he came up with yet. Did he come up with his $TRUMP meme coin himself? Of course not; someone pitched it to him as a way to take bribes, and he went with it. You can make up for your own deficiencies by surrounding yourself with smart people and stealing their ideas.

I still think Trump would have never been president if not for Steve Bannon teaching him the playbook he's followed ever since they met back in 2010. Trump has had a number of key influences that brought him to the presidency--Roy Cohn who he has repeatedly credited over the years, his lawyer Michael Cohen, Bannon, etc etc. Jesse Ventura claims that Trump stole his campaign techniques and has been using him ever since they first considered running together as a third party ticket around 2000.

In terms of his public persona he was always guarded in what he said even back when he was a regular on David Letterman or Howard Stern in the 1980s, and 1990s, but after he started getting political ambitions in the 1990s first with the Clintons and later with Jesse Ventura he seemed to learn to just completely be whatever he thought people wanted out of him to gain influence and power. We have only fleeting glimpses as to what the man himself is like anymore; 90% or more of what comes out of his mouth is manipulation of public opinion for at least the last two decades, and he was working on that behavior long before that.

I'm a big fan of the mental gymnastics meme.

The top image is "he's stupid" and the bottom image is you projecting 4D chess onto Donald Trump.

I hope this doesn't sound mean-spirited, because it isn't meant that way. I get the desire to project some strategy onto Trump. It gives hope to a hopeless situation. I think I would've done the same pre-Trump. Watching empty shells like Trump and Elon succeed has taught me not to do that. First off, they were born on home plate. Second, they're grifters. Snake-oil salesmen weren't geniuses, they were opportunists. He didn't win because he's a super-strategist; he won because he's become a cult-like figure to the least educated people in the country.

He's a senile 80-year-old who gives audience to anyone who kisses his ass, then they manipulate him however they see fit. Why was Laura Loomer given a private audience with Trump in the Oval Office? Well, probably because they were fucking last summer, but also because she was willing to tell him he's a big, strong, smart man. We've all seen his ego and narcissism. I'm jealous of trained psychiatrists because he gives them unfettered access to his psyche in every speech. He needs to feel like the smartest man in the room and he needs everyone to acknowledge it. It's classic despot shit.

Tfw2005 (transformers message board) has banned tariffs talk.

Obviously I'm not going to do that because I'm a political person, but I can't understand this. Tariffs are about to bring this hobby to its knees and we can't even name them? Good luck with that.

Clearly the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed government employees will be happy to start working in factories making our toys. Where they can be productive.

Bingo. I said this on late-era Fwoosh: no American actually wants this. Manufacturing jobs are awful.

https://bsky.app/profile/beijingpalmer.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3llymfg2bek2v

One of the few things that gives me hope is that when Americans find out what austerity actually looks like, a slight majority will change their tune. Think Obama 2008.

Re: DJT’s mental state:
I think about this A LOT. There was a taboo, traditionally, regarding “diagnosis from afar” regarding public figures, for obvious reasons, but I think it’s feckless and cowardly for the psych community to hold that up in such dire circumstances. I can’t *diagnose* him, per se, but I can observe behavior and make extrapolations based on evidence.
The following is not shit-talking. I’m being as objective as I can:
- he demonstrates extreme narcissistic behavior. Whatever Fred Trump did to him as a kid, it caused a hole that will never be filled, no matter what he “accomplishes”.
-he seems to be low-intelligence, but he picks up threads and runs with them obsessively. I don’t think he understands tariffs, or transgender issues, or governance in general, but he hyper-focuses on an aspect, wrongly, and no one tells him “no”.
-he is incredibly incurious, reflexively anti-learning, not in the sense that he doesn’t like it, but in the sense that he can’t/wont do it.
-he is rapidly deteriorating in his physical and mental health, it definitely appears he is going straight downhill with dementia.
-the more he pushes the idea that he is “strong”, the weaker he actually feels. And right now he, personally, clearly feels very, very weak.
-he has to “win”. If he doesn’t, he will twist it in his head so he actually did.
-whether due to cognitive decline and co-morbidity with his other disorders, or simply something that was there all the time, it’s pretty clear that he is actually psychopathic. Many studies have been done about how psychopaths are apt to become CEOs, and this is the ultimate expression of that, which actually speaks more to our (intentionally) corrupted systems than the man himself.

Ultimately, it is my considered opinion that this is a human who cannot reckon with his own oncoming demise, and is driven to break and remake everything in his image, in the interest of a child’s idea of a Roman Emperor’s “immorality”. These tariffs guarantee him a place in the “history books”. Not that this guy would understand Machiavelli if he could even read it, but he had definitely fallen into the trap of “it is better to be feared than to be loved, if one has to choose”.

Also, not exactly a psych point but the guy holds power and stays out of a jail cell because he has sold himself to other powerful people. Any personal agency DJT thinks he has, evaporated long ago. He’s a puppet, and a puppet who may have convinced himself that he is pulling his own strings when he really REALLY isn’t. He’s still a scared child terrified of the cruel hand of a long-dead father.

Sorry to be grim. But I do feel that is who we are dealing with. There will be no three Christmas ghosts to change his mind. He is utterly lost, and unfortunately the world just needs to wait for him to leave it.

His senility was ignored by the media last year. He swayed to music for 40 minutes at a rally and yet Biden was the one losing his mind.

I read a story about Trump at some point in the last six months. Of course I can't find it now, but it was a tell-all from a former advisor. The crux of it was that they were shocked at how little he absorbed. You'd think from being in the rooms where these conversations were happening, he'd pick up a little by osmosis. Nope. The knowledge he entered the White House with was the knowledge he left with.

 

[AceofKnaves]

Indeed.
While there was certainly merit in being concerned about Biden’s cognitive state during his term, all the “SLEEPY JOE” stuff was massive projection from the team of a man who is clearly, indisputably in far greater decline, and far more dangerously so, than Biden ever was.
Virtually every accusation from the MAGA team is a tacit admission that what they are saying of others is true of DJT.

 

[Ru1977]

Sorry to be grim. But I do feel that is who we are dealing with. There will be no three Christmas ghosts to change his mind. He is utterly lost, and unfortunately the world just needs to wait for him to leave it.

Eh... I kinda came to that conclusion already, but appreciate all the evidence and scrutiny that backs it up. I copied and texted that whole post to my wife so she can share my mood, heh.