They’re just doing good cop, bad cop on global trade. Seems like a good way to run the economy.
Economics Thread
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
sturg33
I
lol
Listen, all I’m saying is the number of people who will defend this argument in between rage-tweeting about New York nominating a Socialist is going to be way, way higher than it has any business being.
This dude is just outright asking why the increased taxes being collected by the Federal Government is not being positively factored in when discussing economic growth potential.
acesfull86
Well-known member
Setting aside the humor of further restricting the already limited pool of who benefits from this tax change, what would stop someone like a hairdresser or barber from charging $1 for a haircut but including a gratuity of the rest of the amount? I think they kind of have to grapple with how certain industries could use this bill to not pay taxes at all if you didn’t restrict it.
Tapate50
Well-known member
Lefty academic?
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://reason.com/2025/06/27/90-deals-in-90-days-trumps-trade-war-is-failing-on-its-own-terms/
"We're going to run 90 deals in 90 days," Peter Navarro, the White House's top trade advisor, told Fox Business on April 12, shortly after Trump paused those tariffs—ostensibly to allow negotiations to take place.
It's been 76 days since then, and there have not been 76 new trade deals. Not even close. The actual tally is two, and that's only if you count the "framework" deals with China and the United Kingdom—neither of which amounts to a full trade deal at the moment.
On Thursday, the Trump administration officially backed down from the "90 deals in 90 days" posturing. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the early July deadline for re-implementing those paused tariffs was "not critical.
...
What's becoming more certain is that Trump's second-term trade war has failed on its own terms. That's evidently not only in the lack of new trade deals that have been delivered, but also in two other data points that crystallized this week.
First, data from the Commerce Department showed that America's trade deficit—the gap between the value of all imports and all exports—widened to $96.6 billion in May. That's an 11 percent increase over April. The main culprit in the growing trade deficit was a decline in exports (which fell by $9.7 billion) even as imports stayed flat.
Shrinking the trade deficit has been one of Trump's obsessions since first taking office in 2017, and he has repeatedly claimed that higher tariffs would accomplish that task. What he forgets, however, is that declining exports are a major consequence of higher tariffs. This happens because American companies become less productive as tariffs disrupt their supply chains and foreign countries retaliate by raising their tariffs in response. The same thing happened during his first term: Higher tariffs caused exports to decline, and the trade deficit widened.
Second, a separate Commerce Department report showed that foreign investment into the United States also slowed during the first quarter of the year. While that's not a direct response to the "Liberation Day" tariffs imposed in early April, it likely reflects "high business uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariff plans," as Reuters noted.
Remember that Trump imposed tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China in February and spent his first few months in office promising more tariffs in the near future. It's no wonder that businesses pulled back on investment plans in the U.S. while they waited to see how all that would shake out.
Again, this shows the failure of the trade war's fundamental premise. Rather than encouraging more investment and production in the United States, the higher costs and economic uncertainty created by tariffs (and the threat of tariffs) is reducing those very investments.
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I guess it turns out that decades of actual real world data on the impact of tariffs weren't invalidated because they happened to be collected before COVID and the existence of the CCP.
"We're going to run 90 deals in 90 days," Peter Navarro, the White House's top trade advisor, told Fox Business on April 12, shortly after Trump paused those tariffs—ostensibly to allow negotiations to take place.
It's been 76 days since then, and there have not been 76 new trade deals. Not even close. The actual tally is two, and that's only if you count the "framework" deals with China and the United Kingdom—neither of which amounts to a full trade deal at the moment.
On Thursday, the Trump administration officially backed down from the "90 deals in 90 days" posturing. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the early July deadline for re-implementing those paused tariffs was "not critical.
...
What's becoming more certain is that Trump's second-term trade war has failed on its own terms. That's evidently not only in the lack of new trade deals that have been delivered, but also in two other data points that crystallized this week.
First, data from the Commerce Department showed that America's trade deficit—the gap between the value of all imports and all exports—widened to $96.6 billion in May. That's an 11 percent increase over April. The main culprit in the growing trade deficit was a decline in exports (which fell by $9.7 billion) even as imports stayed flat.
Shrinking the trade deficit has been one of Trump's obsessions since first taking office in 2017, and he has repeatedly claimed that higher tariffs would accomplish that task. What he forgets, however, is that declining exports are a major consequence of higher tariffs. This happens because American companies become less productive as tariffs disrupt their supply chains and foreign countries retaliate by raising their tariffs in response. The same thing happened during his first term: Higher tariffs caused exports to decline, and the trade deficit widened.
Second, a separate Commerce Department report showed that foreign investment into the United States also slowed during the first quarter of the year. While that's not a direct response to the "Liberation Day" tariffs imposed in early April, it likely reflects "high business uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariff plans," as Reuters noted.
Remember that Trump imposed tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China in February and spent his first few months in office promising more tariffs in the near future. It's no wonder that businesses pulled back on investment plans in the U.S. while they waited to see how all that would shake out.
Again, this shows the failure of the trade war's fundamental premise. Rather than encouraging more investment and production in the United States, the higher costs and economic uncertainty created by tariffs (and the threat of tariffs) is reducing those very investments.
-----------
I guess it turns out that decades of actual real world data on the impact of tariffs weren't invalidated because they happened to be collected before COVID and the existence of the CCP.
Let’s just do all public policy this way. Some important deadline for a spending bill? Nah, just have the President unilaterally extend it. Tax day coming? Nah, that’s in May now.
Nah, I want to try new awful things, not what Trump and Biden alike have already figured out is successful.
sturg33
I
Oh aces, dont worry. I'll be here in Q1 2026 to serve you that crow
I disagree with this conceptually. Certainly Amazon is innovative and highly successful in no small part due to Bezos’ leadership. But it’s not like he discovered the answer to some impossible riddle. He just did e-commerce best, just as Walmart did big box retail best. If Jeff Bezos never existed, we’d likely still have these same technological advances and we’d be thanking the guy who created some other website.
I take no issue with the fact that he’s earned whatever he has, but he didn’t *really* personally create that amount of societal value. He was simply the winner of the capital war and was rewarded thusly. He can pay whatever taxes he owes.
Well sure, I understand both sides of this. Less restrictive taxation encourages more innovation and employment, more taxes means more government bloat, all of that.
Where I disagree with you is on the personal value of Jeff Bezos within this ecosystem and the subsequent value of his labor. Amazon is Amazon in part because of Bezos and in part because of every other person within the company. Bezos certainly brought more value to the company than any of the other individuals within it and Amazon is allowed to spend their capital as they see fit, but if we’re placing a societal value on his personal contributions, I don’t think it’s so high that he *shouldn’t* pay taxes on his enormous wealth. He didn’t save the world, he just made a bunch of money being first and/or best in a highly competitive space.