Tracking toy tariffs

TheSameIdiot said:
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.
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No kidding! Talk about head in the sand. No, here we are gonna talk this out!
 
This is nothing but bad news for our hobby and for our country. I work at a very high profile institution with many economists and no one really has much faith in this.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
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.
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While I think a great deal of this is true and there are certainly people grooming him in the margins I think mostly that Trump is reflexively a selfish, egotistic bully and that resonates with a country full of much of the same.
 
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There's a real lack of empathy going on in our country with people of a certain political persuasion. They see empathy as a weakness. So if you don't feel empathy for others, you can more easily justify only caring about yourself or people in your immediate bubble. And if your self-centered actions and views cause others harm, it doesn't matter, since you don't have empathy. Our glorious leader doesn't have empathy. Doesn't believe in charity or helping others. Hence why we're ending foreign aid and charitable causes. Every exchange must be transactional, and you must get something physical in return. Soft power doesn't exist. Nor do ethics or morals.
 
New worry today - the sources of our hobby bump up prices to deal with the tariffs, folks scale back on buying, these stores end up sitting on stock they can't get rid of... and in a year we've got Amazon left as our only source (assuming anyone can still afford action figures).

And then there's the most depressing thing I've read today.
 
docsilence said:
New worry today - the sources of our hobby bump up prices to deal with the tariffs, folks scale back on buying, these stores end up sitting on stock they can't get rid of... and in a year we've got Amazon left as our only source (assuming anyone can still afford action figures).

And then there's the most depressing thing I've read today.
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I had heard there was speculation they had used AI to generate this tariff plan which would be just about right for this administration.
 
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Justice said:
I had heard there was speculation they had used AI to generate this tariff plan which would be just about right for this administration.
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I think you and I have talked about it before, but after working in tech for almost ten years, I said, out loud, "I gotta get out of tech before it kills me" and about 90% of my reasoning was the bullish push for shoddy AI (that and the truly, truly dumb CEOs I kept meeting). I got out out before the ship hit the iceberg and still got hit with sinking debris.
 
Justice said:
I had heard there was speculation they had used AI to generate this tariff plan which would be just about right for this administration.
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From this Axios article:
The formula is to divide the U.S. trade deficit with each country by that country's exports to the U.S. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10% (which applies even to those countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus).
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Could have been AI they used, but this is basic spreadsheet stuff. And an incredibly stupid way to calculate this information.

I just found out a coworker of mine (who has been living and working in the US for 15ish years?) had his visa revoked and has to leave the country *tomorrow*. This guy has a partner and two kids, works and pays taxes in his community, all that good stuff. Who the fuck is this for?
 
hmmberto said:
From this Axios article:

Could have been AI they used, but this is basic spreadsheet stuff. And an incredibly stupid way to calculate this information.

I just found out a coworker of mine (who has been living and working in the US for 15ish years?) had his visa revoked and has to leave the country *tomorrow*. This guy has a partner and two kids, works and pays taxes in his community, all that good stuff. Who the fuck is this for?
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The "who is this for" thing is what I can't fathom. I can grasp relentless hatred or bigotry, I can grasp relentless greed, but the whole thing in total just feels like ruining lives to ruin them. It's petty mad king shit.

One of my jobs involves helping an immigrant services team and they were telling me they've got constituents - taxpaying, legal residents - who won't leave their house right now. (Of course this is in a city with a recent very public incident so it's as close to home as it can get.)
 
As long as we are willing to embrace the reality of “this is a [at least attempted] fascist coup”, then “who is this for?” is solved by the extant need for enemies and “othered” classes of humans so that Big Brother (or “Daddy”, if you like) can control through fear and forced conformity. Like it’s literally the plot of Wicked, which is wild to say but also true.
 

Seeing if I can figure out video embedding. Teaser Trailers are maybe my most favorite thing in the world and this is probably the best one I've ever seen. Posting here because it seems to bridge our loves and our fears.
 
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