Political Posts

[mcliu]

Why do people automatically assume the outsourced jobs are shitty sweat shop menial labour stuff? That stuff doesn’t even make the top 10 list. 

 

So what are the top 10 US imports?

The following are the top 10 US imports in 2023. This top 10 accounts for over 65% of the total US$ value of all imports to the US.

1. Electrical Machinery & Equipment – US$463.4 billion (14.6% of total US imports)

2. Machinery Including Computers – US$459.2 billion (14.5% of total imports)

3. Vehicles – US$381.0 billion (12.0% of total imports)

4. Mineral Fuels  – US$266.6 billion (8.4% of total imports)

5. Pharmaceuticals – US$177.8 billion (5.6% of total imports)

6. Optical, Technical & Medical Apparatus – US$118.3 billion (3.7% of total imports)

7. Gems & Precious Metals – US$89.5 billion (2.8% of total imports)

8. Plastics – US$72.3 billion (2.3% of total imports)

9. Furniture, Bedding, Lighting, Signs & Prefabricated Buildings – US$69.0 billion (2.2% of total imports)

10. Organic Chemicals – US$66.6 billion (2.1% of total imports)

 

https://www.agi.global/news/what-are-the-top-10-us-imports

[cubsfan]

9 minutes ago, Jaygo said:

 

Cubs that an interesting point. From an outsiders perspective the USA seem to have it made. The economy is doing well, your companies are the most profitable in the world, your GDP is way higher than everyone else but yall are bitching and moaning about jobs. I get it, a man needs to work but you guys have an amazing opportunity to take the reserve currency status and fix your home grown problems.

 

Why dont you guys fix your social problems and your schools and have a small business renaissance. Where are all the engineers? Ground up kind of manufacturing similar to the way it was long before globalization. I'm not talking Etsy crap i'm talking guys tinkering in their garages and building rockets and flying cars, and then building 30-100 person companies. Make being awesome cool again.

 

I used to go to NHRA drag races as kid. My uncle and I would road trip to middle America. I loved the Midwest. The nicest people, the best food and the biggest trucks.

The farmers, mechanics and the engineers would be in the pits building crazy shit and I remember thinking how incredible America was. Last time I went to a race the pits were closed to the public (safety bullshit )and 1/3 of the people were dead drunk ( social degradation ) or too fat to lean over the damn cars. 

 

I just want that America back, the America that kicks ass, the strong America that doesn't whine about poor people ripping you off. 

 

Let the SE Asians assemble your barbies and sew your socks. Hell, let the Chinese build you merchant ships if their willing to take a loss on it. Focus on the real shit that improves everyone's standard of living while the world is willing to take your phony money. 

 

Jaygo - your's is such a great post. There is a middle ground here.

That's what much of this fight is all about - getting back to what America used to be.

We're turning into our own version of haves and have nots. That's the battle.

 

America losing it's meritocratic culture to radical wokism. The fight against our Universites being politicized and dumbed down, instead of science/engineering leaders. DEI, ESG, Climate change garbage all reducing the productivity of our businesses. Insane Green New Deal straight-jackets on energy production. Bloated, inefficient government full of waste, fraud & abuse. Destroying a border and letting 30 million illegal aliens in, with all those associated problems.

 

This is all about fixing our OWN home grown problems, because they are destroying America.

 

America has failed, not because of the rest of the world, but because of poor leadership.

 

Leadership did let down millions of Americans by outsourcing so much of what we were good at.

And they did it with a smile "it will be good for you in the end".  That whole creative destruction argument. 

 

It has not worked out well for so many. As a country we need to find a middle ground.

Unfortunately, it impacts the rest of the world.

 

I like you, much prefer the 1985 America vs today.

 

 

[Parsad]

3 hours ago, gfp said:

 

Blake, it's either you and your friends get to sewing or that tiny little lady in Vietnam needs to take out a loan for a GMC Sierra.  I don't see any other solution bro

 

LOL!    Cheers!

[Parsad]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Nah Bessent is just another mindless knee bender in the administration and oh by the way, did you hear! His AUM declined!

 

At some point, he'll probably stop bending the knee and then he'll just be another exiled administration staffer.  

 

What's the spread on Musk being booted before the end of the year...I suspect it's closer to 2 months than end of the year now.  How long does Bessent have?

 

You either suck it up with Trump or he says "bye-bye...what a great word...bye-bye.  Nobody uses that word better than me...it's one word, but two words with a minus sign...whoever made bye-bye...we need to hire good people like that!"

 

Bye-bye!  Cheers!

 

[Hektor]

5 minutes ago, Parsad said:

What's the spread on Musk being booted before the end of the year...I suspect it's closer to 2 months than end of the year now.

I think both Trump and Musk had hinted to a exit at the end of 130 days.

[treasurehunt]

4 hours ago, gfp said:

If the fiscal deficit is too large relative to GDP, raise revenue and cut spending the best you can pull off without putting the economy into a depression.  If the economy falls apart, revenue will plummet and the deficit will be larger.  I disagree that the trade deficit (the other issue) is a problem at all and I certainly disagree that individual bilateral balance of trade between any two countries needs to be even. 

 

If you are the president and you think we need to run balanced trade with Vietnam, you are an idiot.  I expect that stuff from bums at the local pub - not the oval office.

 

Great post. Some of the posters here seem to have conflated the fiscal deficit and the trade deficit. Dimon's letter, for instance, was referring to the fiscal deficit being unsustainable, not the trade deficit.

[Blake Hampton]

10 minutes ago, treasurehunt said:

Great post. Some of the posters here seem to have conflated the fiscal deficit and the trade deficit. Dimon's letter, for instance, was referring to the fiscal deficit being unsustainable, not the trade deficit.

 

Trump himself has it confused. On Wednesday while he was announcing the tariffs, he kept rattling on about how our trade deficits were responsible for our debt.

[Cigarbutt]

27 minutes ago, Blake Hampton said:

 

Trump himself has it confused. On Wednesday while he was announcing the tariffs, he kept rattling on about how our trade deficits were responsible for our debt.

Basic math addition to help the discussion:

Trade deficit (M – X) =  Domestic investment – Private domestic saving – Government (or public) saving (fiscal deficit)

So keeping domestic investment and private saving constant (note: both have shown a secular down trend), the trade deficit will move in tandem with the fiscal deficit.

A national economy is not a household but it's easier to see this link from a household perspective. One way to decrease debt/deficit then is to make imports from neighbors more expensive. Of course, there may reasons as to why you get into debt to buy from neighbors and it's not necessarily 100% the neighbors's fault..

-----

An interesting aspect is that, as Mr. Buffett predicted long ago, absent some reformation, the US net international investment position has moved more and more into negative territory (compared to GDP) but the US net international investment income has remained positive and has been moving slightly higher (meaning the US gets better yields on their foreign investments than vice versa, something which Mr. Buffett may not have anticipated, some kind of (un)sustainable exorbitant privilege?).

Edited April 8, 2025 by Cigarbutt
spelling

[Spekulatius]

The low crude prices are about the worst thing that could happen to Russia as it will impede their ability to finance their war machinery. Drill baby drill the Russian war machine into the ground.

[LC]

27 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

The low crude prices are about the worst thing that could happen to Russia as it will impede their ability to finance their war machinery. Drill baby drill the Russian war machine into the ground.

 

I wonder if we will see a change in strategy from Ukraine - if the Russian oil apparatus just became less valuable, does Ukraine find other targets for its missiles?

[Kizion]

10 hours ago, Fly said:

 

 

The issue I see is that they all speak different languages - let me make it more clear, what Trump considers a tariffs is not necessarily the same as EU is considering as a tariff. And because they look at it differently, they will not understand each other, they will keep thinking the other party is stupid and trying to make use of them. 

 

In my personal opinion the EU has the ability to listen and understand Trump. This willingness or ability doesn't seem to be present at Trump (he, and only he is right, all the others are stupid and wrong).

 

[Sweet]

Trump wants to eliminate the trade deficit with countries.  He said this to the Israelis PM yesterday, something along the lines of getting their trade deficit to zero.

 

So offers of zero tariffs from the EU is unlikely to be what he is after, but perhaps it’s enough for now.

 

Who the hell knows.

 

[Sweet]

 

case in point about it not being about tariffs 

[Paarslaars]

Happy to see Jon back doing what he does.  

[Paarslaars]

Well it never was of course, otherwise you wouldn't base your tariffs on trade deficit.

[Sweet]

7 hours ago, Cigarbutt said:

Basic math addition to help the discussion:

Trade deficit (M – X) =  Domestic investment – Private domestic saving – Government (or public) saving (fiscal deficit)

So keeping domestic investment and private saving constant (note: both have shown a secular down trend), the trade deficit will move in tandem with the fiscal deficit.

A national economy is not a household but it's easier to see this link from a household perspective. One way to decrease debt/deficit then is to make imports from neighbors more expensive. Of course, there may reasons as to why you get into debt to buy from neighbors and it's not necessarily 100% the neighbors's fault..

-----

An interesting aspect is that, as Mr. Buffett predicted long ago, absent some reformation, the US net international investment position has moved more and more into negative territory (compared to GDP) but the US net international investment income has remained positive and has been moving slightly higher (meaning the US gets better yields on their foreign investments than vice versa, something which Mr. Buffett may not have anticipated, some kind of (un)sustainable exorbitant privilege?).

I think the ‘basic math’ is overcomplicating things.

 

The problem isn’t that there is a trade deficit, it’s that there is a large fiscal deficit.

Fix it and most other things will take care of itself.

Sprinkle tariffs and non-tariff barriers on countries not trading fairly, or for industries of national importance, and move on.

 

Easy in theory, harder to do politically I acknowledge.

 

Edited April 8, 2025 by Sweet

[Paarslaars]

China calls Trump’s new tariff threat ‘a mistake upon a mistake’ and looks for opportunity in global trade war | CNN Business

 

Going cut my china positions today, much more pain to come here... they won't be backing down.

[mattee2264]

Trump's plan is that if he taxes foreigners via tariffs he can fund tax cuts for wealthy Americans without increasing the budget deficit.

And meanwhile through cutting perceived wasteful government spending via DOGE reduce the fiscal deficit and get long term interest rates down. Then there is the longer term aspect of national security and protecting domestic industry and encouraging domestic investment in manufacturing etc.

 

I think it is naive to think that Trump will abandon all of this and scrap his policies completely and even watered down their total impact will be negative for the US economy and stock market and the policy uncertainty is also killer. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Luke]

The crazy part is the US already controls more than 50% of the worlds economy and trump totally ignores the gigantic services sector via the MAG 7 that are international monopolies.

 

The US hosts some of the richest individuals on the planet and the most wealth by controlling economies internationally, and he still manages to portray the US as victims of hostile foreign countries that take "their jobs away". The opposite is the truth, US capitalists moved away all these jobs in a greedy decision to seek cheaper labor, as simple as that, while their massive service and tech sector can not employ and does not want to pay middle-class citizens because its becoming more and more automated and requires highly educated labor, not the typical maga voter, leaving the disappointed and perceived poor MAGA voter further behind. The factories will also become increasingly asset light leaving the disappointed and perceived poor maga voters behind again.

 

The US never managed to properly distribute the wealth so living standards rise equally and if they can not even manage some level of wealth distribution then they surely will not manage to move trillions of automated factories over to their country and organize an angry and entitled labor force to produce low margin factory goods.

 

Trump is the master of perception and has good rhetoric skills that move the masses which enabled him a second term but he wont achieve anything of what he promised: More money into the pockets of consumers.

 

What is going to happen when in 5 to 10 years factories run by themselves and only require highly educated Phd manufacturing/process engineers etc?

 

Whats the average education level of someone who voted for trump?

 

Do you guys really think that the future lies in the manual manufacturing of low margin "china goods" where they are produced in a fordist type way? Trump lives in the wrong century...that might have been the case from 1910-1980 but those times will never come back.

 

So closing the trade deficit will only lead towards one development:

 

1. Higher prices for the angry and disappointed trump voter

 

2. more costs for domestic businesses that won't become more competitive in the process, leaving them with higher capex than players that can compete internationally without tariffs and already own their factories in the right places

 

3. possible retaliation for already very successful businesses like Meta, Google, because Trump tries to distort trade, which hurts even the successful companies

 

4. Massive inflationary forces: there will be a price shocks worse than covid where all companies raise prices together leading to inflation levels above 10% yoy. Even if you remove the tariffs the prices will not go lower due to a unified price increase same as covid, then possibly a recession that is happening for the largest part in the US where trump then has to use a stimulus bazooka and monetary interventions.

 

 You can not reverse 30 years of Chinese manufacturing development with a Chinese labor force of 1/3 of global engineers and a domestic environment specialized in manufacturing. Just look at US university costs, the engineers are not developed enough there, costs are too high, the debt pile afterwards is too high, etc. You couldn't find the proper talent with the right work ethic.

 

Change my mind but who thought trying to reverse this is a good thing? Did anyone who says "the us has a trade deficit" look at gigantic international control of US corporations that never wanted to go back more into the US because you couldnt make a decent enough of a return there? Forcing them with tariffs will enable such returns?

 

As far as i see it, Trump is pulling a desperate move to force unproductive and no-return investment back into his country by playing an illusive remaining strenght of the US ecomony that can easily be replaced by China/Asia except for the tech monopolies.

 

I expect that he will try to force amazon, alphabet, apple etc to join him in his coercion by threatening with cut-offs of important servers and services, thats where it will hurt.

 

[Spekulatius]

44 minutes ago, Paarslaars said:

China calls Trump’s new tariff threat ‘a mistake upon a mistake’ and looks for opportunity in global trade war | CNN Business

 

Going cut my china positions today, much more pain to come here... they won't be backing down.

Keep in mind the bazooka China fired that nobody seems to talk about:

https://investingnews.com/china-rare-earths-export-controls/

 

I expect shortages to pop up fairly soon in many places that will surprise people like magnets (used electric  semiconductor tools, electric motors and a ton of others devices.

 

It’s not just the raw material that were export controlled, but also products. They’d did the same thing with Germanium a few weeks ago. Germanium is easier to ramp up or to replace in some cases, but rare earth, which there are many off is much much trickier.

 

Trumps emergency order that covers this a while ago probably leads to a bunch of investments but those take years to get online. 

[Paarslaars]

Yeah many applications have the option to switch to GaAs or Si instead of Ge.

 

But you are confirming my suspicion, China will go to war on this, hard...

Which means Trump won't back down and keep retaliating.

Political risk just got waaay bigger for China stocks.

 

[WFF]

And JD Vance just insulted China… calling them “peasants”.  China ain’t backing down either. The question is whether each side will continue escalating.  Presently, the ball is in Trump’s court, will he deliver the incremental 50% tariffs?  There must be a point where it doesn’t really matter anymore and other actions will be more impactful no?

[Luke]

10 minutes ago, Paarslaars said:

Political risk just got waaay bigger for China stocks.

Have you sold your holdings yet?

[Luke]

3 minutes ago, WFF said:

And JD Vance just insulted China… calling them “peasants”.  China ain’t backing down either. The question is whether each side will continue escalating.  Presently, the ball is in Trump’s court, will he deliver the incremental 50% tariffs?  There must be a point where it doesn’t really matter anymore and other actions will be more impactful no?

How can anyone take JD Vance and this Administration seriously? Calling Chinese peasants on live TV, wow. How lower can they go?

[Paarslaars]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Have you sold your holdings yet?

Waiting for the market to open.