Export cliff | US soybean farmers are near a “trade and financial precipice” and cannot survive a prolonged trade war with China, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland wrote in a letter to Trump. China hasn’t purchased a single cargo of soybeans from the next harvest, which starts in September. In typical years, the Asian nation ordered an average of 14% of its estimated purchases from the US before crop gathering began.."
Turns out my Chevy Volt is known for failure of the window motors. Had to replace one two years ago - GM ACdelco part price $90. Had to replace another on yesterday. GM ACdelco part price $190. I think this consumer is feeling the tariffs.
Fedex, as the importer, has invoiced my friend a 40% combined tariff on $290 worth of goods ordered online from China, with parts sourced from Canada and UK
Big box grocery chain today. Beef tenderloin $36 lb. (!!!). Irish butter, popular brand $4 a stick.
Still no "thanks Trump!" Stickers. In fact I made so many friends with my untoward mock surprise effort who shrank away from the "value shopper". "Hurrry honey, get away from that weirdo who's complaining about 100% real America!"
Your second paragraph describes the fact that in the minds of the people, there is no popular alternative to Trumpism, regardless of how objectively bad Trumpism gets.
A majority has decided that the Democratic Party is not viable because of their support for illegals, attacks on traditional privilege (the woke fetish), and threats of socialism (even though the most socialist proposals I've seen from the likes of AOC and Sanders are still somewhat benign).
You can't beat anybody with nobody. Right now, the Democrats' brand, especially at the national level, is NOBODY, and going nowhere.
i think just a cadre of new young fresh faces probably with a wide variety of democratic positions that none of us agree with -- will in fact be a brand refresh and do the job. then it'll be the gop stuck with a bunch of old fat cranks ...
The sad thing about Tariffs is that their utility is limited. Great for a developing economy that want to develop one aspect of its economy. Great too for the USA in 1816. Also useful in a limited way to prop up an industry that he key to some aspect of the economy. Thus there may come a time when we need to prop of Boeing (Quotas are also helpful{).
Bot overall tariffs are not good. It is silly to place tariffs on aluminum, steel or wood that go into other products. Silly to to tariff coffee. Really. Or tomatoes from Mexico.
A "friend" with whom I'm intimately familiar has recently seen his start-up company's imported raw materials costs increase by 50% due to tariffs. The friend and his business partner have decided to suspend operations and, as a result, cancel approximately $200k annually of US vendor contracts to further process, package and dispatch to US end users. The US vendors provide personnel-heavy services, so there's plainly a toll on their labor needs. The friend and his business partner are out their significant investment plus anticipated profits, tax revenues, and reinvestment. And so on.
trump and low expectations are synonymous. I read that Russia was bombing Kyiv as the bloated, orange, clown sat with the Butcher of Bucha. My biggest concern is that trump sells AK back to Russia for a few million putin purchase of trump meme twitcoins. Or, putin might try to swpa Greenland for AK, as the clueless trump nods his head in agreement.
I keep wondering if people understand that tariffs are taxes. He has found a clever way to funnel a lot more revenue to the federal coffers. One way to offset the huge tax cuts that were packed into in the big bill. In his perfect world, people who need to buy things to live - which includes everyone- will be funding the government as never before. Involuntarily. Do people get this? It's a lot more than just his way to extort businesses, and choose winners and losers for his own grifty, shady purposes. The tariffs are an enormous forced taxation on the American people.
It's plutocratic policies marching in under the banner of "populism," plus moral cynicism in the name of "defending Christian culture," plus autocracy masquerading as "saving the constitutional republic" and "restoring American values."
I just want to comment on the Trump-Putin "summit". Seems to me Trump has already "won". No one is talking about Jeffrey Epstein now. Thar's all he wanted out of this.
Watching this idiot pseudo president smiling, glad-handing and literally rolling out the red carpet for this KGB murderer was sickening. Utterly sickening. And watching the Russian war criminal smiling and waving from his seat in the Cadillac next to our idiot made me so mad I nearly threw a brick at the TV. Welcome to the Era of Outrage. The only "good" thing is I know the Ukrainians will not accept being sold out by two horrible, horrible men.
I'm old enough to remember when it was mostly democrats opposing "free trade," and mostly Republicans touting it. Clinton caught a lot of grief from his own party over NAFTA, which had been negotiated under Bush 1. Ross Perot ran a strong 3rd party effort on being against NAFTA.
Economists were nearly 100% in favor of tariff free trade. I've always been skeptical. Yes, in theory it should be best. But in fact real people and real communities suffer the effects of a migration of industry to low wage, low environmental and worker protection countries.
Trump's effort to dial this back appears clumsy, not thought out, random, and is probably going to harm more people than it helps. But still.....is free trade really as good as we like to think?
Let's not discuss free trade but instead talk about real manufacturing. So we import much of our steel and aluminum. Also a lot of our wood. Oh and half of our copper. So free trade is embedded in the system. If we imported only a small sliver tariffs could work - but not as it is now. Tariff mean a more expensive car or more expensive house.
We also import many of the machine tools we use to form metal. i worked in a machine shop in 1982-3 and we used swiss made automatic screw machines. They used a process patented in 1948. we also purchased many metals, some from the US but some from Canada and Sweden.. Also maybe from Japan.
If you wanted to start a business making vacu-form plastic toys you would need to get the machines from China. No one will be building new toy companies in the US soon.
The mix of things used to make other things is very hard to unravel. Be better to pick one industry and work with industry leaders to see what could be done.
Free trade is good IF it is carried out between friendly, reasonably democratic nations where workers have rights and reasonable environmental protections are in place.
As a farmer living among farmers with a lot of local Latino workers, I think what we are going to get, if Trump keeps this idiocy up, is not so much food inflation as empty shelves, especially on fresh fruits and veggies. It takes a day for a strawberry to get overripe. Just a day.
That just means there are more jobs availablefor real, red blooded Americans! I’m sure they will just love all the healthy exercise they will be getting from picking strawberries all day in 90° weather! /s
It used to be conservative orthodoxy that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were the main cause of the Great Depression. Then along came the spray-tanned messiah with his tariff fixation - and his general ignorance and unwillingness to learn anything - and "conservative" thought-leaders started praising the patriotic wisdom of tariffs, after abandoning their long-hold doctrine that character is essential to good leadership.
I have to wonder how many of those people are just trying to maintain the bizarre fiction that Trump has a special understanding of realities that other people can't see, and that he really, truly knows what he's doing.
Magical thinking for the maga masses ("he must know what he's doing"), plus the momentum behind Project 2025, using Trump who, after all, is an entertainer/failed businessman, as their Trojan horse, to bring America back, culturally, to the 19th C.
From Bloomberg this morning:
Export cliff | US soybean farmers are near a “trade and financial precipice” and cannot survive a prolonged trade war with China, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland wrote in a letter to Trump. China hasn’t purchased a single cargo of soybeans from the next harvest, which starts in September. In typical years, the Asian nation ordered an average of 14% of its estimated purchases from the US before crop gathering began.."
Turns out my Chevy Volt is known for failure of the window motors. Had to replace one two years ago - GM ACdelco part price $90. Had to replace another on yesterday. GM ACdelco part price $190. I think this consumer is feeling the tariffs.
I would like to see a balance sheet on costs to all consumers and business and what is actually collected in tariffs
Fedex, as the importer, has invoiced my friend a 40% combined tariff on $290 worth of goods ordered online from China, with parts sourced from Canada and UK
Big box grocery chain today. Beef tenderloin $36 lb. (!!!). Irish butter, popular brand $4 a stick.
Still no "thanks Trump!" Stickers. In fact I made so many friends with my untoward mock surprise effort who shrank away from the "value shopper". "Hurrry honey, get away from that weirdo who's complaining about 100% real America!"
Same thing at a high quality chain grocery. Only upside is that it makes my local butcher competitive
Your second paragraph describes the fact that in the minds of the people, there is no popular alternative to Trumpism, regardless of how objectively bad Trumpism gets.
A majority has decided that the Democratic Party is not viable because of their support for illegals, attacks on traditional privilege (the woke fetish), and threats of socialism (even though the most socialist proposals I've seen from the likes of AOC and Sanders are still somewhat benign).
You can't beat anybody with nobody. Right now, the Democrats' brand, especially at the national level, is NOBODY, and going nowhere.
i think just a cadre of new young fresh faces probably with a wide variety of democratic positions that none of us agree with -- will in fact be a brand refresh and do the job. then it'll be the gop stuck with a bunch of old fat cranks ...
We were waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fool said to push on.
The sad thing about Tariffs is that their utility is limited. Great for a developing economy that want to develop one aspect of its economy. Great too for the USA in 1816. Also useful in a limited way to prop up an industry that he key to some aspect of the economy. Thus there may come a time when we need to prop of Boeing (Quotas are also helpful{).
Bot overall tariffs are not good. It is silly to place tariffs on aluminum, steel or wood that go into other products. Silly to to tariff coffee. Really. Or tomatoes from Mexico.
For a look at when tariffs were useful: https://open.substack.com/pub/terrymckenna/p/tariffs-were-good?r=1t8ls&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
A "friend" with whom I'm intimately familiar has recently seen his start-up company's imported raw materials costs increase by 50% due to tariffs. The friend and his business partner have decided to suspend operations and, as a result, cancel approximately $200k annually of US vendor contracts to further process, package and dispatch to US end users. The US vendors provide personnel-heavy services, so there's plainly a toll on their labor needs. The friend and his business partner are out their significant investment plus anticipated profits, tax revenues, and reinvestment. And so on.
trump and low expectations are synonymous. I read that Russia was bombing Kyiv as the bloated, orange, clown sat with the Butcher of Bucha. My biggest concern is that trump sells AK back to Russia for a few million putin purchase of trump meme twitcoins. Or, putin might try to swpa Greenland for AK, as the clueless trump nods his head in agreement.
What Trump meant about a possible 25% failure of the summit is that the summit is 75% more likely to help get him a Nobel Peace Prize.
I keep wondering if people understand that tariffs are taxes. He has found a clever way to funnel a lot more revenue to the federal coffers. One way to offset the huge tax cuts that were packed into in the big bill. In his perfect world, people who need to buy things to live - which includes everyone- will be funding the government as never before. Involuntarily. Do people get this? It's a lot more than just his way to extort businesses, and choose winners and losers for his own grifty, shady purposes. The tariffs are an enormous forced taxation on the American people.
It's plutocratic policies marching in under the banner of "populism," plus moral cynicism in the name of "defending Christian culture," plus autocracy masquerading as "saving the constitutional republic" and "restoring American values."
I just want to comment on the Trump-Putin "summit". Seems to me Trump has already "won". No one is talking about Jeffrey Epstein now. Thar's all he wanted out of this.
Not quite all. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize and the approval of Vladimir Putin.
Watching this idiot pseudo president smiling, glad-handing and literally rolling out the red carpet for this KGB murderer was sickening. Utterly sickening. And watching the Russian war criminal smiling and waving from his seat in the Cadillac next to our idiot made me so mad I nearly threw a brick at the TV. Welcome to the Era of Outrage. The only "good" thing is I know the Ukrainians will not accept being sold out by two horrible, horrible men.
Everybody, this would be a good time to make a donation to United 24. https://u24.gov.ua/
Just because our President wants to throw the Ukrainians into the fire doesn’t mean we have to go along with his plans! Slava Ukraini!
I'm old enough to remember when it was mostly democrats opposing "free trade," and mostly Republicans touting it. Clinton caught a lot of grief from his own party over NAFTA, which had been negotiated under Bush 1. Ross Perot ran a strong 3rd party effort on being against NAFTA.
Economists were nearly 100% in favor of tariff free trade. I've always been skeptical. Yes, in theory it should be best. But in fact real people and real communities suffer the effects of a migration of industry to low wage, low environmental and worker protection countries.
Trump's effort to dial this back appears clumsy, not thought out, random, and is probably going to harm more people than it helps. But still.....is free trade really as good as we like to think?
Let's not discuss free trade but instead talk about real manufacturing. So we import much of our steel and aluminum. Also a lot of our wood. Oh and half of our copper. So free trade is embedded in the system. If we imported only a small sliver tariffs could work - but not as it is now. Tariff mean a more expensive car or more expensive house.
We also import many of the machine tools we use to form metal. i worked in a machine shop in 1982-3 and we used swiss made automatic screw machines. They used a process patented in 1948. we also purchased many metals, some from the US but some from Canada and Sweden.. Also maybe from Japan.
If you wanted to start a business making vacu-form plastic toys you would need to get the machines from China. No one will be building new toy companies in the US soon.
The mix of things used to make other things is very hard to unravel. Be better to pick one industry and work with industry leaders to see what could be done.
Free trade is good IF it is carried out between friendly, reasonably democratic nations where workers have rights and reasonable environmental protections are in place.
Of course, those are a lot of ifs.
Yes. And it can preclude poorer countries from using the only advantage they have, cheap labor, from getting in the game and building up.
Looks like the citizens of this bountiful nation may be forced to live within or (gasp) below their means. Quel catastrophe!!!!
Ultimately the cost of tariffs has to be transferred to the prices people pay. Also in lost productivity, but that's longer term.
It's already been transferred on the groceries I buy. And I do mean food prices.
It appears to be happening. Yes. Hopefully fast enough and steep enough to get everyone's attention.
Agreed, for sure. That said, food prices are going to go even higher as the immigrant deportations continue. No workers.
As a farmer living among farmers with a lot of local Latino workers, I think what we are going to get, if Trump keeps this idiocy up, is not so much food inflation as empty shelves, especially on fresh fruits and veggies. It takes a day for a strawberry to get overripe. Just a day.
That just means there are more jobs availablefor real, red blooded Americans! I’m sure they will just love all the healthy exercise they will be getting from picking strawberries all day in 90° weather! /s
There's a myth that American kids used to do it back in the day. But it's always been Latinos.
It used to be conservative orthodoxy that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were the main cause of the Great Depression. Then along came the spray-tanned messiah with his tariff fixation - and his general ignorance and unwillingness to learn anything - and "conservative" thought-leaders started praising the patriotic wisdom of tariffs, after abandoning their long-hold doctrine that character is essential to good leadership.
I have to wonder how many of those people are just trying to maintain the bizarre fiction that Trump has a special understanding of realities that other people can't see, and that he really, truly knows what he's doing.
Magical thinking for the maga masses ("he must know what he's doing"), plus the momentum behind Project 2025, using Trump who, after all, is an entertainer/failed businessman, as their Trojan horse, to bring America back, culturally, to the 19th C.