Summary
Trump announced that 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will take effect on February 1, though a decision on including oil remains pending.
He justified the move by citing undocumented migration, fentanyl trafficking, and trade deficits.
Trump also hinted at new tariffs on China.
Canada and Mexico plan retaliatory measures while seeking to address U.S. concerns.
If oil imports are taxed, it could raise costs for businesses and consumers, potentially contradicting Trump’s pledge to reduce living expenses.
Just like the war on drugs, you’ll be able to buy black market tacos in alleys.
Someone make this into that Gru meme:
- Slap a 25% tarrif on goods coming from your 3 biggest economic allies
- Economy will strengthen due to American consumers preferring American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
I’m morbidly fascinated to see how all of this shakes out.
Everyone on the left is saying it’s a terrible idea with very predictable and deleterious consequences.
Trump seems to think it’s as great as it sounds at face value - tax things that sound bad and get money.
Either way it will be a feature of economics text books for centuries to come.
Obviously I want to see Trump fail spectacularly, but it fucking sucks that would harm those of us who can least afford it.
If you went shopping last week and half value of your purchases originated in Canada or Mexico, then will the same purchases next week cost 12.5% more ? That’s pretty staggering inflation
One trick pony
Master of negotiations!
I love how old the orange asshole looks in the photos. Hopefully things just work out in our favor soon. It could be a permanent sleep or maybe a nice golf ball to the forehead or choked on a pretzel. I think we should probably place some …legal… Bets on how it all goes down? It shouldn’t that that long. I remember when my Grandma looked like that and we buried her a few months later.
choked on a pretzel
I wonder how many people reading this remember that this actually happened to Bush the 2nd.
Man look at Kissinger and the Bush Family.
If you’ve got a high enough body count you just live forever.
Man have you seen him speak? I don’t know what concoction of drugs he is on or if he’s just showing his age but he’s definitely not the rager he was 5 years ago. Seems tired and much less coherant. Makes me optimistic he might be in mental decline more than I theorized previously. But if we go by the ‘asshole’ rule he’ll outlive most of the Senate just out of stubbornness and hatred. We definitely need a quick solution.
It’s not like this buffoon being gone will stop the rest of the out-of-their-minds and now fascist Republicans or Muskrat from continuing the work.
The thing is, I think that might be out of the frying pan and into the fryer at this point.
Vance is cooler under pressure in interviews and generally more coherent sounding. I think he does a far better job of saying ridiculous unreasonable things with a convincing tone of voice and demeanor than does Trump.
If Trump has one too many cheeseburgers tomorrow, then we’ve got young, clean-cut, smooth talking first-term President Vance to worry about, and I bet he won’t be threatened by the attention Musk gets as long he he gets his cut. (Hell, I’m not even sure having to take over for Trump in that circumstance would count as his first term.)
As an American, I’m loving this… Really. Its high time we feel the pain we’ve inflicted on other countries. Our “comeuppance” if you will.
Unfortunately, it’s just going to become another massive wealth transfer when those that have the means buy ups heaps of cheap stock after the resulting market downturn.
Maybe then, enough people will see the guillotine as a good solution.
When the people can’t even afford the lumber to make the guillotines, what do we do then?
We take the lumber…
There is strength in numbers, and in solidarity! They cannot kill us all, because they need us more than we need them!
If empty platitudes could strike down the bourgeois, you’d be the greatest hero our world has ever known.
Great so now my food will cost even more?
WAY more. We import a lot of food from Mexico as is, and the immigration and ethnic clensing the Trump goverment is engaging in is already forcing farmers to watch their crops rot on the ground with no one to harvest them. So we’re following in the great tradition of Stalin and Pol Pot, we have a dumb fucking asshole with a hard on for ‘‘strong man tactics’’ demanding we change how we get food in many extreme ways immediately, you know, instead of gradual change, so we’ll all get to see what an artifical famine looks like! Do you think Trump will let other nations send us emergency rations so we won’t die? Or will he confiscate them at a dock or border and have them dumped into the ocean so he doesn’t look weak? North Korea knows.
We also export a hell of a lot of soybeans, so when retaliatory tariffs kick in I guess our new ultra-masculine conservative government is going to have us all eating lots and lots of soy.
He’ll take them for his friends and family ao they don’t have to buy food
And sell the surplus to his billionaire cabinet to be resold to the less than poor while the poors starve.
I can’t believe some people think that putting tariffs on a country means the country will just give the government 25% of everything and the merchants of that country are not just going to raise the prices to match the new expenses(or maybe even a little bit more since they have a good excuse to change prices).
I guess I can stand to eat a bit less, we can call it the economic collapse of the US diet! Just think of all the profits from the diet books! To bad they are going to cost 30% more now that my Mexican publisher is paying a tarrif to bring the books into the US. That’s OK, spending more money on the book just means that you won’t be able to afford as much food, making the diet work even better!
I can’t believe some people think that putting tariffs on a country means the country will just give the government 25% of everything and the merchants of that country are not just going to raise the prices to match the new expenses(or maybe even a little bit more since they have a good excuse to change prices)
I’m not sure anyone believes that. The point of tariffs is that merchants will have to increase prices to keep the same profit, causing people to purchase less of the product and look for cheaper alternatives (those without tariffs).
Yeah targeted tariffs only products where there’s a domestically produced alternative might do that. Putting tariffs on everything means people will just have to pay more for some things. Canada and Mexico will do the former, while the US is doing the later (much dumber) approach.
Anyway… this Canadian has just remembered a few more US based services to cancel. Not because of any price changes have happened yet but because apparently Americans have to learn the value of trade the hard way. Trade goes both ways, and that’s not going to happen as much now.
It will unless it can come from somewhere else.
Lol, do it, bitch. Bet you’ll chicken out of this one too.
A friend of mine works for an electric semi truck company. The vast majority of their parts are manufactured in Canada and Mexico; they’re just assembled in the US. His mom voted for Trump and really wants him to move back to Ohio so he can have space and be close to family. He wanted to go back, too, and had a transfer and promotion within the company set up before the election. Now there’s a company-wide freeze and his transfer is gone. The company’s internal financial projections are not good.
His mom refuses to recognize that she just voted for her son to stay in Seattle indefinitely, even though he wants to move back. She keeps thinking that any day now, the economy will be so booming that his company will be doing great. He can’t talk to her about it anymore.
Why the fuck would you want to go back to Ohio?
That state sucks balls.
Can confirm am leaving it to move to Seattle funnily enough
For real though, aspects of Ohio are awesome. Republicans ruined it though
The entire state smells like balls too.
Has the second best CoL/MedianSalary ratio in the US. Ironically, the only state I saw that was consistently better was Michigan.
Plus we have Hocking Hills, which pretty consistently showed up on r/earthporn. If you want flat, we’ve got flat. If you want hills and mountains, we’ve got Appalachia.
Nice try Ohio
Yeah but any time the state does anything good by ballot initiative the state government does something regressive out of spite
Lol
Not to mention roller coasters. Two of the largest thrill parks in the US.
I have been to Ohio exactly ONCE, and I can confirm that the state does in fact suck balls. It’s so fucking FLAT…
Ooh you missed out on Athens Ohio. Beautiful city in the mountains
Can’t say I disagree lol
He justified the move by citing undocumented migration, fentanyl trafficking, and trade deficits.
Translation: “We’re going to artificially increase the prices of our competitors’ products so the American ruling class can profit off of giving Americans a worse deal.”
The problem with these kinds of conspiracy theories is that it assumes the conspirators are hyper-competent people.
It’s far more plausible that they’re just idiots.
American ruling class, “Oh would you look at that, we just found a 24.99999% price hike that we definitely have to do because economy. Still cheaper though than the Canadian and Mexican imports.”
It’s just the rest of America that is going to get fucked.
I don’t doubt he thinks that’s possible, but what every one who repeats this idea seems to not grasp is that the US doesn’t manufacture consumer goods, and increasingly we aren’t able to farm our own food, particularly right the fuck now while we’re depopulating the country of farm labor. There’s nothing here to replace what we can’t get now. There’s no American alternative. We don’t do that, we pay other people to do it in a country with no labor protections and garbage pay and economy. No one wants to start manufacturing anything new right now in the US because it will become even less profitable the second the moron is out of office and all this stops, then there’s the fact that even if we had people who wanted to start doing all this manufacturing, it would take them often more than 5-10 years to get off the ground and that’s not even getting into finding labor in the US to do this work. While we’re being depopulated. Apparently the 1m dead from Covid simply wasn’t enough.
But wages will go up because more stuff will be made in the US! /S (Basically my father’s argument)
Narrator: no they won’t
Yes, but i don’t believe trump KNOWS that. Instead he’s been told to do this.
President Musk? Or just some randome other Oligarch?
Probably, and the people who wrote project 2025 are telling him what to do
I was going to give up eating this year anyway. Food just takes too long to buy, cook & eat.
If oil is excluded the truly boss move on Canada & Mexico’s part would just be to introduce a 25% export premium on those products while the tariffs are in effect.
Canada’s boss move is to remove the intellectual property laws that the US asked for and let Canadian companies and consumers thrive again.
This makes no sense. If Canada could make a phone viable without any changes to tariffs, why wouldn’t it have already happened? Why would tariffs make that less likely to happen?
This would be beautiful. I remember when there were mod-chip stores beside internet cafes, where i could bring my xbox and pay to have a chip and a hard drive installed that let me copy any game i wanted from a rented disk or downloaded off the internet right onto the console. I still have that console and pulled it out during quarantine to make use of the huge library of games on the hard drive. Having this sort of freedom for all types of goods and electronics would be incredible, but i doubt it will ever happen.
I really like this idea.
This is a really good read. Thank you.
Exactly, clearly they’ll still pay for it if it’s important enough to exempt. In Canada’s case we could give Alberta the extra revenue just so they won’t get too cranky.
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more, but I’m sure it’s mostly just trying to destroy the the US’s relationship with it’s most important allies.
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more
Trump is running the US the same way I ran my cities in SimCity2000
“Oooh it’s December, time to raise taxes to 20%. Ok January again, lowering taxes to 0%. The people love me!”
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more
This is a technique commonly employed by Sisi in Egypt so while it’d be surprising that America sunk that low that quickly I can see it happening. And by the way, yes America is now being compared to Egypt out of all countries so… Uh… Good luck.
I’ve compared to Afghanistan many times.
but I’m sure it’s mostly just trying to destroy the the US’s relationship with it’s most important allies.
Close, but no cigar.
As usual, it’s to make the American ruling class richer. That’s all. Full-stop.
Let’s stop distracting ourselves from it 🙂
Its very possible to enrich corrupt elites without taking an axe to the US’s strategic position. That would be preferable for securing the wealth of the ruling class in the future.
Of course they want to make the rich richer, but this level of systemic destruction isn’t the most efficient way to do that. The damage is clearly part of the goal.
Its very possible to enrich corrupt elites without taking an axe to the US’s strategic position.
Yes. But not for a very stupid easily manipulated “businessman”.
It’s already destroyed.
Not by him, his threats and tariffs are old news. By the people - The People, the royal We - who actively, unironically and with great power of democracy, chose an aggressive, compromised, and stupid fascist with ample evidence that this, hate, and war were a consequence.
Because the hate and apathy was stronger I guess. For electing a woman. For people being bullied by a juvenile government wielding adult violence for who they aren’t - a cis white right male.
They went to the dark side and joined a tri-polar world of evils to bully and rape the rest of us until we all burn to death. So yeah.
Never again.
Never again.
Optimistic
I can’t wait for mainstream business media to attempt to explain this rationally while keeping a straight face AND still bootlicking at the same time.
I don’t envy that job.
It’s not just the media that loves tariffs.
Plenty of regular, stupid people have been convinced that a worse deal is better if they’re making someone domestic richer instead of someone foreign.
The domestic aristocracy doesn’t care about America, or else they would take a hit to their profits to provide Americans a better deal.
Plenty of regular, stupid people have been convinced that a worse deal is better if they’re making someone domestic richer instead of someone foreign.
No, regular people don’t understand how tariffs work at all. They literally think that Canada, Mexico, and China are the ones that pay the tariffs.
Its Americans trying to buy food who will be hit with a 25% tarriff, not Mexico. And Mexican farmers wont see a dime of that revenue, if anything they will see a decline in revenue as people stop buying the products. It all goes to the US treasury.
Nah, EU likes them avocados and fruit too, especially in winter.
Looking forward to cheaper maple syrup!
“Fresh fruit in the wintertime, nothing is too good for my people”
deleted by creator
Canada and Mexico are still part of that North American free trade agreement thing. We (Canada) will just get our food from Mexico and South America like we’ve always done. We’ll just skip America.
Yeah, as a Canadian I’m down with strengthening our trade with Mexico.
Problem there might be transport. You need to do it without crossing a US border.
How much shipping goes between Canada and Mexico?
Ah. You still dont understand how the US works. Send a small bribe directly to the Trump family and you can do whatever you like. I suggest using Eric Trump. If Dems are in charge send a bribe to AIPAC and they will give the dems their allowance. Either way its probably not even expensive.
Pfft… just buy some $TRUMP crypto coin. The graft is all out in the open now.
Also the “uncommitted” got their way and got Trump into power. So now AIPAC conspiracy stuff is just straight up antisemitism now.
Being called an antisemite doesnt have the sting it used to. Now it just means anyone the state of Israel disagrees with in any way.
Maybe the free trade would allow trains and the like to go right through the USA without selling anything?
Why would the US want to do that?
Isn’t that the whole.purpose of the free trade agreement?
You mean the free trade agreement that Trump is currently trying to tear down?
Hell, he’ll probably ask y’all to pay taxes on transport, even for things you aren’t selling here.
Right, but the tariffs will shoot that dead.
back in the first episode, lord diaper whined, and whined and shit on nafta, forcing it to be ‘renegotiated’ by him. he just had to have his name on everything.
nafta was a long time in the making, from reagan, to bush, to clinton when it finally went into effect. it had bipartisan support in congress, a little stronger from the right.
undone by a single shart from an orange moron that leaked, and then magically ‘fixed’ by the same…
in the end, what mr. art-of-the-fucking-deal managed to ‘negotiate’ is almost entirely the same as the nafta he hated so much.
now he’s shitting on his own fucking deal. fuck’m.
i fully support your efforts to avoid our products and companies for the next few years. and if anyone up there wants to come renovate the white house again… i won’t be in your way.
and if anyone up there wants to come renovate the white house again… i won’t be in your way.
🤣🤣🤣
I live in Texas, and it’s hard to overstate how much of our produce is imported from Mexico. This would be an almost immediate 25% price hike on food that basically can’t be grown at scale here because we don’t have Mexico’s climate. Surely he’d exempt food from whatever he’s about to do. Right…?
Don’t worry, the leopards definitely aren’t going to eat your face!
You’re not applying that saying correctly my friend
I expect food would be exempt as you don’t want an angry, hungry, volatile population. Bread and Circuses
Whatever he exempts is specifically what Canada and Mexico should target for export tarriffs in retaliation.
Yeah, like oil. When gas prices go up Trump’s base gets upset.
I could see that they try to get away with just Circus, tho.
“surely he’d exempt X from…”
Exact same reflection as all the people who depend on migrant workers that voted for him only for the bubble to burst in their face.
Will it benefit the average person? If the answer is yes, you can take it off the list.
Even if it benefits the rich, it would have to exponentially hurt the average American more for it to be considered. They’ve already turned their nose up at studies that have proven better working conditions, pay, and benefits would make them richer in the long run because it takes a little bit of control away from them. These people are sick, and the only thing that is going to correct it at this point is a violent uprising.
What does Mexico export to the US that isn’t a consumer good?
https://jwmason.org/slackwire/what-exactly-does-the-us-buy-from-mexico/
This is a good list from a quick search, other search results states a lot of vehicles (in this case we’d be talking about vehicles for industry) agricultural (I didn’t look far enough but it could be both produce which would be consumer, but it could also have some ag production products, and machinery, machinery probably being the largest non consumer good product depending on how much that agricultural divide is between consumer/industry.
Included in that list is oil, that would be non consumer, computers would be roughly the same split if not more than agricultural considering companies go through computers more than the average consumer. Computers is also a pretty broad tag so take that with a grain of salt.
Services and other seems kind of substantial, this is not my area at all, just relaying a search essentially, so that could go either way if included in the tariffs at all.
Those things will still have impact on consumer prices though. Agricultural vehicles costing more will increase domestically produced food prices (didn’t John Dear just move production there). Oil costing more increases transport costs on everything, but at least could be sourced from elsewhere.
I don’t really see how exceptions could be made to protect consumers without undercutting the whole thing. I expect to be on everything or nothing.
100% agreed.
Capitalism is designed to pass the buck to us. That’s just how it works. It might take a little longer if it is through the production pipeline like the examples above, but it’s still gonna fuck us.
it’s a 25% import tax paid by the importer. when their margins are added, and then the distributors’ on top of their higher costs, at each step of the distribution chain… it’ll be a fair bit more than ‘just’ +25% once product reaches the store shelves.
Thank you.
Finally someone rational who understands that tariffs are horrible for the working class.
