Economics Thread

If we want to associate a "strategy" to this, the best I can think of is that he is wanting to plunge us into a recession to get lower interest rates.

Mind you - i think that's a terrible strategy. But the only thing I can make sense of

Hard to get on board the “let’s give him a chance and wait and see” train when he shows no evidence of understanding how any of this works. The contradictions are endless. Trump doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
 
Hard to get on board the “let’s give him a chance and wait and see” train when he shows no evidence of understanding how any of this works. The contradictions are endless. Trump doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

He was elected, and his tariffs aren't from out of left field. He ran on them, so yeah, he should get a chance to do them. I have no confidence in him at all, but the voters gave him power to run the country.
 
He was elected, and his tariffs aren't from out of left field. He ran on them, so yeah, he should get a chance to do them. I have no confidence in him at all, but the voters gave him power to run the country.

I agree with this. He's been very consistent about his faith in tariffs. No one should be surprised.

Otoh there is a strong element of the blind leading the blind in all this.

Unfortunately, that be a cliff that the blind man is leading the country over.
 
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I agree with this. He's been very consistent about his faith in tariffs. No one should be surprised.

Otoh there is a strong element of the blind leading the blind in all this.

Unfortunately, that be a cliff that the blind man is leading the country over.

While I don't have confidence in Trump, I do think he will be smart enough to abandon ship if the tariffs blow up in his face.
 
He was elected, and his tariffs aren't from out of left field. He ran on them, so yeah, he should get a chance to do them. I have no confidence in him at all, but the voters gave him power to run the country.

I’m not disputing whether he should have the opportunity to execute his agenda, I just disagree with the sentiment from those who are comfortable taking a wait and see approach on evaluating that agenda.

I also don’t believe there’s any overarching strategy, especially considering how he’s been flailing around for weeks now.
 
While I don't have confidence in Trump, I do think he will be smart enough to abandon ship if the tariffs blow up in his face.

I’d like to join you on this, but the shift from “I’m going to fix things on day 1” to “prices will go up in the short-term as we recalibrate the economy” isn’t giving me a ton of hope that he’ll be intellectually honest about the effects tariffs are having on the economy and he’ll rush to find some way to blame Biden, immigrants or George Soros and globalists or something.
 
I’d like to join you on this, but the shift from “I’m going to fix things on day 1” to “prices will go up in the short-term as we recalibrate the economy” isn’t giving me a ton of hope that he’ll be intellectually honest about the effects tariffs are having on the economy and he’ll rush to find some way to blame Biden, immigrants or George Soros and globalists or something.

Actually it was "ONLY I AND I ALONE CAN FIX INFLATION".
 
I’d like to join you on this, but the shift from “I’m going to fix things on day 1” to “prices will go up in the short-term as we recalibrate the economy” isn’t giving me a ton of hope that he’ll be intellectually honest about the effects tariffs are having on the economy and he’ll rush to find some way to blame Biden, immigrants or George Soros and globalists or something.

Yeah. That shift has raised some doubts in my mind about his intellectual honesty.
 
I think the people around Trump, their political calculus (since we know he doesn't know what he's doing) is to reverse the typical mid-terms trend.

They want as many short-term "wins" as possible to dominate the headlines while drowning out the bad, so the GOP have a better chance at holding serve in the mid-terms.

A win for Trump doesn't actually have to benefit America, it's just the media appearances where he can go in front of a camera and say THINGS ARE WORKING even if it's contrary to what's happening. We know his base and a lot of independent voters don't know what's really going on or know any better, and that's who their team is riding on being oblivious in 2026.

Whether it's people like thethe spinning stuff on behalf of the admin, like implying the Signal texts were purposely leaked by the admin lol.
 
The retrospective review of the viewpoints on tariffs are going to be amazing starting in 26.

The middle class with better jobs will be loving it.
 
The retrospective review of the viewpoints on tariffs are going to be amazing starting in 26.

The middle class with better jobs will be loving it.

I'm curious which parts of the standard viewpoint are wrong. And the standard view is prices will be higher. As a bonus, I think growth will be lower due to the on-again-off-again way of rolling it out and not providing sufficient time for supply chains to be reconfigured. But since we don't get to run history twice (once with and once without tariffs) it will actually be difficult to say at the end of 2026 that prices were higher and growth lower than would have otherwise been the case.

Moreover, if growth does slow sharply over the next year or two there are other factors we could point to besides tariff. Reduced immigration. Monetary policy. Fiscal policy. Retaliatory action by trade partners. It will always be the case that multiple factors are at work. Empirical models allow us to attribute causality but imperfectly.
 
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I'm just curious which parts of the standard viewpoint are wrong. And the standard view is prices will be higher. As a bonus, I think growth will be lower due to on-again-off-again way of rolling it out and not providing sufficient time for supply chains to be reconfigured. But since we don't get to run history twice (once with and once without tariffs) it will actually be difficult to say at the end of 2026 that prices were higher and growth lower than would have otherwise been the case.

That the health of a country is primarily dependent on economic performance defined by GDP

That tariffs cause a massive spike in costs

That manufacturing shouldn't be done in advanced nations and we should stick to a service based economy

Those are three big ones that I think are going to be crushed with the performance in the next couple of years.
 
That the health of a country is primarily dependent on economic performance defined by GDP

That tariffs cause a massive spike in costs

That manufacturing shouldn't be done in advanced nations and we should stick to a service based economy

Those are three big ones that I think are going to be crushed with the performance in the next couple of years.

Is there a way to assess whether the conventional view is correct or "crushed"?
 
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