Summary
Global leaders criticized Trump’s new tariffs, which range from 10% to 49%, warning of trade wars and economic fallout.
The UK and Italy urged negotiation, while Brazil passed a reciprocity bill. China and South Korea vowed countermeasures.
Australia and New Zealand rejected Trump’s logic, citing existing trade deals and low tariffs. Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.
Financial markets dropped, oil and bitcoin sank, and leaders warned of inflation. Analysts say Trump risks fracturing global trade with little to gain economically.
I saw someone say it seems that the tariffs were calculated by dividing our trade deficit by their exports to us and cutting that number in half. Another person analyzed his charts and concluded they look a lot like they were generated by AI.
So, there is, literally no basis in logic. Either one of Trump’s minions calculated what it would take to recoup the difference in the trade deficit and just wrote it down and he announced that as the new basis for international trade, which has never, ever been done, for the reason that it is fucking idiotic, or he asked Gemini how to execute his already objectively stupid policy and wrote an Executive Order making it the law.
And the fact that we are forced to accept people on the Internet’s guesses about how he calculated these numbers may actually be worse than the fact that just about every product on the market more complex than a stapler just jumped about 30% in price.
They published their “methodology” today, and it’s as dumb as you’d imagine: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
AI would make a lot of sense, considering that there are uninhabited islands on the list.
I’m dumb but that just means that every product will be 30% more expensive for Americans, right? And the 30% is just… Going to the state or something? So it’s just taxing your ppl?
Companies will raise prices to account for what they’re losing on the tariffs.
Effectively, yes. Tariffs are basically just a sales tax. It’s a little more complicated than that but the end result for consumers isn’t really any different.
Heather Cox Richardson, historian of the republican (Lincoln) party said that in her daily newsletter. She cites all her sources.