yip GOP Senator To lead bipartisan bill to limit Trump on tariffs Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the upper chamber’s longest-serving GOP member, is pioneering the “Trade Review Act of 2025,” which would limit the president’s authority to impose new tariffs by introducing new oversight requirements. US Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, To Break from the GOP to oppose Trump's tariffs China has been the largest customer for Maine lobsters
Financialization is a problem. What has the Trump admin done to stop or decrease financialization? Absolutely nothing. They got rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because Musk, Andreesen and Zuckerburg went on Joe Rogan and whined about it. In reality the government was blocking them from financialize their platforms and ripping off consumers. Hell, they eliminated a limit on overdraft fees almost immediately. The Tarriffs are a lever to give Trump more power. It has nothing to do with helping the working class. Do you believe the guy who ran a crypto scam on his followers gives a damn about the working class? You guys are dumb as bricks.
Who is the thought leader that is driving Trump's push for tariffs? That Ron Varra is a real Genius! It is too bad that he is fake. This sums up the entire trump Presidency.
Trump's top trade advisor Peter Navarro's books frequently cite a made-up scholar named 'Ron Vara' who appears to be his alter ego The revelation that Ron Vara is a nonexistent economist was mainly uncovered by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, an East Asian studies scholar at Australian National University who dug into the character of Ron Vara while doing research on the parallels to Navarro's extreme rhetoric on China to the "yellow peril" and anti-Asian sentiment pervasive in much of the 20th century. In her research, Morris-Suzuki couldn't find any evidence that Vara actually attended Harvard in the 1980s, or existed anywhere outside of Navarro's books. In response to the Chronicle Review, Navarro claimed that Vara is a "whimsical device and pen name" that didn't serve as a factual source for any of the content of his books on China. The co-author of "Death by China," USC professor Greg Autry, told the Chronicle Review that Vara was an "alter ego" figure who, as the Chronicle described, "dispenses cutesy business aphorisms as well as dire warnings about Chinese food." But as the Chronicle noted, Navarro described Vara as a completely separate person in his 2001 book "If it's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks."
And he chose the one where "big balls" typed into ChatGPT "how to calculate Tariffs". https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-ai-chatgpt-gemini-claude-grok A number of X users have realized that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an “easy” way to solve trade deficits and put the US on “an even playing field”, they’ll give you a version of this “deficit divided by exports” formula with remarkable consistency.
Trump doesn't treat scammers and fraudsters like other criminals. All you have to do is look at the types he pardons. Whether it's millions of dollars in Medicare and healthcare scams, or crypto scams, white collar criminals get his special treatment. The more they make, the more he can bargain pardons in his future. Crypto scammers, and those allowing illegal activity and money funneling are some of his latest pardons. Corporate executives are paying millions to meet with him now, and don't think for a second that there isn't going to be a lot more laws bent their way, and more consumer protections and health and safety regulations disappearing. He just recently pardoned four founders of BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange convicted of flouting money laundering rules and failing to police the exchange. Everyone Trump gives special treatment is expected to return the favors. He broadens his circle of white collar criminals, billionaires, and scam artists more and more. It's no wonder the Trump family has entered the crypto business themselves. What a great opportunity to funnel money for favors at home and abroad. It all reeks of ripping off Americans, and enabling foreign leaders and corrupt officials and others to pay for favors. Everything Trump does just reeks of corruption.
And again, a blanket global tariff is not the way to get there. No one wins in a trade war, but the U.S. stands to lose the most with its war against everyone, including penguins.
Trump's tariff formula confounds the world, punishes the poor https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-tariff-formula-confounds-world-punishes-poor-2025-04-03/ April 3 (Reuters) - Ridiculed for imposing trade tariffs on frozen islands largely inhabited by penguins, Donald Trump's formula for calculating those levies has a serious side: it is also hitting some of the world's poorest nations hardest. The math is simple: take the U.S. goods trade deficit with a country, divide it by that country's exports to the U.S. and turn it into a percentage figure; then cut that figure in half to produce the U.S. "reciprocal" tariff, with a floor of 10%. That's how the volcanic Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic ended up with a 10% tariff. The penguins got off lightly, you might say. But Madagascar - one of the poorest nations in the world with gross domestic product (GDP) per head of just over $500 - meanwhile faces a 47% tariff on the modest $733 million of exports of vanilla, metals and apparel that it did with the U.S. last year. "Presumably no one is buying Teslas there," John Denton, head of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), told Reuters, an ironic reference to the improbability of Madagascar being able to placate Trump by buying upmarket U.S. products. Madagascar is not alone: the bluntness of the formula as applied to economies which cannot afford to import much from the U.S. inevitably leads to a high reciprocal tally: 50% for Lesotho in Southern Africa, 49% for Cambodia in Southeast Asia. "The biggest losers are Africa and Southeast Asia," said Denton, adding the move "risks further damaging the development prospects of countries already facing worsening terms of trade". .... "One practical question it does raise is whether there's any scope to negotiate this away ... The U.S. hasn't identified any specific measures that might be changed in order to convince the president to change his mind."
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/05/musk-trump-tariffs-navarro-tesla Musk slams key Trump adviser Navarro, calls for more free trade ...
yeah, no thanks. I don’t think I will give any weight to your assessment. Not when the vast majority of economic experts and people without crap for brains recognize that the tariff plan is worthless. I don’t give one crap about your Nintendo switches or whether you can sell houses. You voted for this crap, your are not my concern. While I don’t go out of my way to wish economic misery on Trumpers, if it happens, I’m not gonna worry about them one bit. You jackasses voted for this nonsense. I feel sorry for the folks who worked their lifetimes to save and now can’t retire or their retirements are f-cked. Or even worse, the folks who already couldn’t make ends meet who are even more worried now.
Pretty heartless stuff. But what can you expect from a guy who looks at the Gaza situation and thinks, "well if we can just get those poor people out of there, we can build some great resorts."
You do realize @Space Ghost is a troll right? He's against the chips act which onshored hundreds of billions of dollars of semiconductor manufacturing while not raising prices but now suddenly claims universal tariffs are smart lol Yall keep getting fooled by that troll You trolls literally cried about inflation every day in the Bidenomics thread but suddenly we should all be okay with prices going up cuz now your cult orange messiah did it lol Theres nobody dumber than MAGATs sincerely
Don't forget Trump installed a union busting amazon lobbyist as head of the NLRB who's main job is to ensure unions don't grow while taking the employers side in contract disputes. Trump also gutted OT rules and put a lobbyist as head of OSHA who will look away when they see workplace abuses. Hes installed nothing but anti worker lobbyist as regulators but his braindead cult will gas light you that the tariffs are about high paying jobs
Yeah, I don’t think it’s smart policy either. Much like the cuts to USaid, these extremely high tariffs on poor, developing countries could unintentionally push them into China’s or another economic sphere. China has already made significant investments in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative, which could further consolidate its control and influence in the region, challenging U.S. interests there. For example, Vietnam, while not a formal ally, is a close partner to the U.S. and has tensions with China. These high tariffs, at 46%, could strain that relationship and empower other geopolitical powers, like China, to form new economic blocs, thereby lessening U.S. influence in Asia. This gamble could isolate the U.S. for the long term, and instead of remaining a dominant power, we could lose that position quickly, especially if foreign investment into the U.S. slows down, as France is already calling to stop the inflow.
