changegonnacome

The great lie that Trump has told his supporters.........is that the US is a victim of the world trading system......when conversely the US owns basically every globally dominant company you've ever heard of in tech, biotech, enterprise software, pharma, early stage, banking, investment management, insurance........victimhood used to be the preserve of the socialist left.......pathetic to see it leach into the minds of the conservative party.

Amen - our choice was Tweedle Dumb & Tweedle Dee….

Did you know that Friday he dodged a ceremony for the returning dead service men who tragically died in an accident in Eastern Europe to fly down to Florida to go play golf in Doral with a bunch of Saudi billionaires….that is not admirable https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-picks-golf-dinner-over-033719743.html Confirmed by the WH- https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-skip-lithuania-soldier-memorial-golf-dinner-florida-what-we-know-2055166 The list of those who saw Trump as a policy vehicle and ignored the idiocy, pig headedness and malignant narcissism and later regretted it is long. Trump 1.0 is littered with the bodies of them.

Yes I do have an issue with sanctuary cities - and I don’t think cities/states can overrule federal law. re: Trump / Meme coin launch prior to inauguration….i think that truly the Rorschach test for folks with inverse TDS…..if your an American and you don’t see a problem in what him and First Lady did…then you’ve jumped the shark IMO….it doesn’t require any of knowledge of crypto…the President elect of the United States & First Lady 72hrs before inauguration…enriched themselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Unbelievably unethical if not illegal.

Yep agree not there yet by any means - but globalism is the goose that laid the golden egg of the last number of decades of aggregate prosperity…Trump is messing with the model here with this nonsense….SPY/QQQ revenues are an international phenomenon….easily 50% of which come outside the US….and the HQ’s in the USA are exactly where these top 20% income earners sit…they earn so much cause they sit at the top of infinitely scalable (in the case of tech) global digital empires….enabled by globalization. To do as Trump does and claim the US is a victim of trade is really something else….as every tech/biotech/conglomerate of note is American.

Separately apart from the stupidity of this approach with tariffs......which is to say lowering aggregate standards of living in the hope you can raise up one sub-segment of the population is quite hubristic all by itself.....that your doing it without the approval or continuity of congressional legislation on a Presidential timeline which simply doesn't work politically makes it even dumber. The other thing lost on many who turn around and say Wall St isnt Main St. as the Nasdaq drops 22% completely forget the consumerist math that drives the USA - The top 10% income earners: account for roughly 40–50% of total household consumption expenditures. The top 20% income earners: account for 60–70% of total consumption. I can assure you a great many of these high earners have both a 401k's that at the margins support purchasing intent and also I'd guess in the main work in multinational corporations or their sub-suppliers who sell their services/products globally. You mess with these people at your peril....they are the US economy.

Exactly - I think some folks have lost their critical facilities.....I can see the good in some of Trump's policies (immigration for example) but even there some of the actions I disagree with (emergency powers again - deportation with no due process like a 3rd world country) etc. etc. Biden was the same....some good, some bad. @cubsfan as the kind of ride or die Trump guy on here - can you think or say out loud something that Trump has done already in his 2nd term that you think is simply wrong or an overreach?......like any of power grab tactics that attempt to expand the executives power beyond the constitution........or say for example launching a crypto meme shit coin two days before you take office making millions personally for yourself and family off the back of the Presidency?

@cubsfan luckily we have data on the middle class….and the economy….happy to be wrong on this….but let’s see how Trump does….we’ve got our starting point Inauguration Day…let’s see how the deficit, unemployment, GDP, inflation, real wages (across quartiles), manufacturing job #’s progress….at six month intervals from here. I assume in two or three years time if all these numbers are meaningfully worse you’d be happy to admit Trump was ultimately wrong on this course of action?…it’s one thing to say you care about the middle class….and it’s quite another to come up with the right solutions and the ability to execute on those solutions to make it happen. IMO the electric shock therapy he’s dropping right now is insane & financially illiterate but very happy to admit my mistake in two or three years if all those numbers above are higher and hope you’d say the same?

The ghosts of the old (maybe future) Republican party....calling it like it is.....tax hikes....and deeply regressive ones at that.

Yep. Tariffs on Bangladesh/Vietnam are like a hedge fund manager fighting with his cleaning lady to get the right back to clean his own toilet. It's retarded.

My big fear all along as a centrist conservative - is that Trump through his stupidity would somehow Frankenstein together a populist of the left who can win.......and you would truly have a fiscal crisis & an unwiring of what makes America already great in retort to Captain Chaos.......we are one step closer to that tonight if the Walmart/Target shoppers of America get handed receipts in two or three months time with a stealth federal sales tax tacked on to it... from literally a bunch of billionaires in the WH who haven't been inside a Walmart in decades.

The democratic collapse and the Trump victory narrative remain completely detached from reality.....as you found out last night in Wisconsin......and as you can see from the Presidential......I agree with your assessment that the Democrats lost their minds with this culture war nonsense......but even with them losing their damn minds down a pointless trans rabbit hole.....Captain Chaos & his version of the Republican party could only pull off a historically narrow popular vote win for the WH and an even more historically narrow majority in the House. This is not what a mandate looks like for radical change........and the GOP are going to get their asses handed to them in Midterms. Closest Presidential Elections by Popular Vote (1900–2024): 1960: John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon — 0.17% 2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore — 0.51% 1968: Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey — 0.70% 2024: Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris — 1.48% 1976: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford — 2.06% 2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry — 2.46% 7. 1916: Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Hughes — 3.12%

Agree - if true its beyond aggressive......Chimerica is dead.....long live China v America the UFC edition....sounds like the opening bell in the official overt Cold War 2.0 has just been rung......and done at a time when the Chinese economy is fragile......to the Chinese I'm sure it feels like economic warfare......cause it kinda is. The Taiwan moment inches ever closer.....it feels like a moment when Xi might announce the arrival of China as a peer not a little brother who can be pushed around. Still can't help but feel that Captain Chaos looks at the each of these countries tariff punishments as just a future PR event where he can sell some climbdown as a great deal that only he could have gotten for USA Inc..........all nonsense, all not meaningful in the scheme of things.....but it puts him at the centre of things. The great dealmakers. The saviour of the Republic. I say this because without a relatively quick climbdown on this stuff its political suicide.....that voter in Akron, Ohio is easily two or three years away from even knowing somebody who might have benefited from tariffs whereas in two to three months he going to be staring twice at his Walmart receipt wondering what the fuck is going on.

Exactly right......It's very strange - he just nerfed the Trump/MAGA coalition that put him over the top in 2016 and 2024...which I kind of define as stereotypical non-college educated democratic voter who lost touch with the democratic party in the mid-2010's with the whole DEI thing and liked Trump's plain speak.......their Walmart basket of clothes, home goods, auto repair stuffs.....its Bangladesh / China / Vietnam all the way......its a real kick in the teeth for these folks with the cumulative inflation they've had.....and just as 2024 saw real wage growth kick in for the first time since 2019....Trump decides 2025 would be a good year to murder their household purchasing power.

Explains why the 30-40 page tariff document I was expecting from treasury is never coming. They are literally making this stuff up on the fly….they’re not trying to balance anything….the point of tariffs are tariffs….the real point of tariffs of course is that it puts Captain Chaos at the centre of the world…..a narcissists dream. Can’t wait for the hangover.

True.

" The White House clarified to CNBC’s Eamon Javers that the tariff rate on Beijing comes in addition to existing 20% tariffs on Chinese imports, meaning the true tariff rate on China is 54%." 54%.......on China......

Yep - total information underload from the WH right now...I was expecting a 30 page document......all we got was Captain Chaos holding a piece of cardboard in the wind.....quite funny........but a flat 10% on ALL imports seems to be the base tariff layer.....on top of which countries are getting penalized.

Bangladesh & Vietnam - 37% & 46%........big opportunity to get your kids into the apparel production business.....stitching, sowing, dye-ing......live the American dream MAGA....by going back in history 80yrs....in reality....your kids are gonna need a bigger allowance......cause the basket of clothes, toys they pick up in Target/Walmart is going up, up When you see something as radical as this is - in terms of its impact to everyday American's pocket books just remember this is the Trump mandate has to do this.....to say nothing about the FAKE emergency powers he envoked to do this: Closest Presidential Elections by Popular Vote (1900–2024): 1960: John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon — 0.17% 2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore — 0.51% 1968: Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey — 0.70% 2024: Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris — 1.48% 1976: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford — 2.06% 2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry — 2.46% 1916: Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Hughes — 3.12%

No doubt - and to it you can add Manhattan, Miami etc real estate…. Lots of US assets have a bid underpinned by recycling - but also underpinned by the predictability/reliability of the sovereign (rule of law, property rights). Those two things are being eroded….the big question is whether MAGA exists without Captain Chaos at the top….if it has no future….for example this tariff gambit blows up in its face….then one could see international folks starting to look through to the midterms first, then 2028 for an off ramp from chaos…big question…. is whether the Trump effect propagates over time or creates a populist/nationalist of the left to replace it…or if we can ever get back to the centre. A lot of the re-shoring is going to be predicated on a political timeline/outlook….pharma plants don’t move in weeks, months or even two years…..if MAGA blows up under the weight of its own hubris…lots of folks in industries with long capital cycles can wait it out.

Also trade deficits leave overseas producers with dollars which flow back into dollar denominated assets (due to reserve currency status)……….becoming an incremental purchaser for sovereign debt….suppressing yields lower than they would be otherwise….crudely but in some respects….Chinese savers working 9-9-6 issued America a super low interest rate China store credit card in the 90’s….lets call it vendor financing….and we went to town on it…. both with import substitution but also increasing fiscal borrowing…it was something of a flywheel. Kind of global savings glut meets U.S. consumption machine feedback loop. Quite ingenious by the Chinese as mechanism by which they accelerated their growth by hitching their communist wagon to a consumerist capitalist engine like the US….. exporting deflation, drove rates lower, dollar recycling lower again which expanded debt to gdp cause servicing costs remained low….but now the parties over as it played out to its natural end…. The Chinese capability scares us…. They are real peer competitor. Big question in a world of shrinking US trade deficits is who in the hell is gonna finance all this US debt coming due….cause you’ve just torched a natural endpoint. To say nothing of the trustworthiness of the US as a counterparty to bilateral agreements of any kind. If you can rip up the freshly inked USMCA, you can rip up a 10yr treasury held in Bejing….maybe those Chinese bond holders deserve to get torched, they turned American consumerism against us and provided us the credit conditions to be reckless.

Really? Then tell me why Trump and the Republican Party is terrified to hold a by-election for Elise Stefanik’s seat right now? if wipeouts are on the cards sounds like a perfect time to do it?…they aren’t…it’s why they’ve pulled her nomination to the U.N. and asked her to sit tight in Congress to shore up the tiny majority there.

Imagine being handed the United States to manage - what a set of cards!........I mean messing that up would be like messing up running a Casino....you simply can't lose. This resounding win and mandate talk is a twisting of reality @cubsfan - the last election across the WH, Senate, Congress was a resoundingly close affair.....historically so in the Presidential and Congressional sense. Let's look at them with FACTS- Presidential: The electoral college was not close. However the popular vote (where true mandates for radical change are made IMO) was amongst the closest in history. Indeed you need to go back to Presidential races in 1960, 1968 and the most recent Gore v Bush election to find a race closer than this one. The margin was simply tiny. Put another way of the 32 total Presidential elections of the 20th and 21st century....Trump v Harris is 4th tightest....which is to say that 27 of the last 32 Presidential races had BIGGER "mandates" than Trump has. Closest Presidential Elections by Popular Vote (1900–2024): 1960: John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon — 0.17% 2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore — 0.51% 1968: Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey — 0.70% 2024: Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris — 1.48% 1976: Jimmy Carter vs. Gerald Ford — 2.06% 2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry — 2.46% 1916: Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Hughes — 3.12% This not what resounding mandate looks like. I'm sorry Congress: This one is slam dunk to smash the mandate talk. Its the smallest congressional majority since the 1931 congress. Placing it in the 0% percentile for majorities in Congressional history. So small they've had to pull Stefankik going to the UN cause its so "fragile" https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-reveals-why-he-pulled-stefaniks-un-ambassador-nomination-cannot-take-chance Senate: Less historically narrow margin here - given that the Senate has 100 seats, a 53-seat majority represents a 6-seat advantage over the opposition. Therefore, the current 53-seat majority falls within the lower range of historical majorities, indicating a relatively narrow control Republican.

@Spekulatius is right....and some of the European's already have small 2-3% DST's on the books filtered by revenue which only ensnares the US tech giants.......one could see these DST's going much much higher.....they would be hugely tax generative for France/Germany etc.....and the beauty (perhaps) of putting a tariff on a really high margin, almost zero marginal cost product like digital services....is its much more likely the producer will take a large margin hit to maintain market share.......a low margin producer (like a car maker) has no choice on what he/she has to do. Re: Ireland/Luxembourg/Holland and US multinationals.....the loopholes are now gone......there is a 15% global corporate tax minimum for tech giants now in Europe......incl Ireland......now lots of European profits get booked in these jurisdictions like Ireland as the European HQ's are there....these HQ's house large pan-European tech and inside sales teams and at some point in the past the Irish subsidiary bought the international IP rights from the parent company.....these digital services (like Google Adwords) are sold into France etc. The DST's we're an attempt by the French (& others) to more closely align profits with domestic end markets.....versus the usual where was the 'value' created model (in this case at the European HQ). Anyway so US tech/services subsidiaries already pay now pretty much full bore corporate tax in the European Union (lots of it) but alot less if they are in low tax places like Luxemburg, Ireland....the minimum being 15%....but the reality still stands......on an individual country basis or at the European Union level.....the tools are there to squeeze Google, META, Apple etc.