Dammit, now I can't write a bunch of these things because you beat me to them.
Yes, there is nothing "reciprocal" here because tariffs in both directions harm both sides. The pain doesn't cancel; it stacks. And yes, the "working class"'s problem is that its cost of living is massive due to regulatory requirements imposed by our government that didn't exist before and don't exist in other places. Don't tell me it's an "income problem" when McDonald's ads offering $20/hour go unanswered.
And yes, your stonks are "all the way down" to where they were a year ago. Honestly, this might be the most brilliant part of it from Trump's perspective - popping the AI/tech bubble three months into his presidency so he can reset and get a nice upward trendline going before the next time America votes.
But most of all, yes, the COVIDians can go F themselves, because they did quite a bit worse for reasons that were both more malicious and more stupid. Especially if Trump really does end up negotiating a bunch of "bilateral zero tariff" deals with major countries.
Now about congress taking this extraordinary power away from executive fiat... a smart Thune would propose this in October 2028.
"Honestly, this might be the most brilliant part of it from Trump's perspective - popping the AI/tech bubble three months into his presidency so he can reset and get a nice upward trendline going before the next time America votes."
Man if that's true he's smarter and more evil than I thought. But I don't think there's enough evidence to update my default opinion that he's generally "just" an idiot with the most important job in the world.
Well... *partially* capitulated. Depends on what "industrial" ends up meaning in practicality.
But yes, in general, I agree. This seems to be having the desired effect, except for with China. And, well, depending on what effect is actually desired, possibly there as well.
Don’t forget Obama put tariffs on Chinese and Korean tires to protect Bridgestone. I miss the days when… well both sides of the aisle haven’t been consistent ideologically ever most likely, but at least they seemed to be more consistent when I was young.
"...both sides of the aisle haven’t been consistent ideologically ever most likely, but at least they seemed to be more consistent when I was young."
True, but that was mostly because other than on taxes, abortion and maybe guns, the GOP would just go along with whatever the Dems proposed, while watering it down some.
Be clear that this is not a defense of the most populist Trump stuff. Just pointing out that the halcyon days of yore weren't always that great.
Even if the 90s, where the differences were the least large, were indeed pretty good.
Hehe yea sorry, that was a bit of a self indulgent inside joke on my part. Inside a group of one, really… I once wrote a paper, that I gave up on getting published when I left academia, arguing that ideological consistency was nonsense when it comes to political parties, and that political positions were effectively based on random and ever shifting coalitions where people care a lot about one or two issues then just adopt the positions of other people on the party that sides with their preferred one or two policies. I caught myself writing that I miss the days when Republicans were free trade, but realized that hasn’t been entirely true ever :)
Prior to Trump, both parties were moving in predictable ways, the Dems hard left (though the anti-free speech part I don't think was forseeable), and the GOP drifting left on some social issues, but becoming more conservative/libertarian on most.
It was Jim Crow conservative/moderate Democrats in the South who caused the even lesser ideological conformity of Dems vs GOP in the 60s, 70s and into the early 80s.
Trump has been the mega wildcard no one saw coming. What becomes of the GOP after Trump is a mystery whose outcome no one can be at all confident in.
I think random is a lot more fitting than people are comfortable with, and what people do is make up post hoc stories about why the drift made sense. After the fact of course X and Y drove this party coalition to change, but a priori it is pretty unpredictable. Not only unpredictable, but different across countries and even within countries. For example, it is pretty hard to get elected to Congress or the Senate in PA if you are anti-gun even as a Democrat; too many people still hunt in a very rural state. Coincidentally there are many pro-gun Democrats here, but you would need to know about the state and culture to predict what a candidate or official’s position would be, not his political party.
Anyway, it is a long subject, awash with the seemingly odd behavior of politicians and voters of the “coherent political philosophy” model of right wing vs left wing parties were true.
If the tariffs stay in place long term, then versus China they are very bad, and versus everyone else they are indefensible. Period.
Yes, he used a goofy formula to come up with the per-country tariffs. So what?
Yes, said formula "punishes" Vietnam more than others, because Trump got manufacturers to move out of China and into Vietnam last time around. If these new tariffs were locked in stone, this would indeed be a travesty.
But have you seen anything of Trump the last 10 (40) years? The guy is all about negotiations.
That you don't seem to even consider the possibility that this is again Trump trying to "get a better deal" means your "woke" comparison is just silly.
That you are effectively denying that using a gambit to get others to lower their tariffs might possibly be a good idea shows either partial TDS, complete lack of imagination, or outright dishonesty.
What Vietnam is doing is surely evidence of this possibility, is it not?
That the stock market hasn't fallen even further is surely evidence of that possibility, no?
With your "analysis", you are falling victim to the Salena Zito-articulated sin of taking Trump literally not seriously.
[Now that said, I don't claim to know exactly how this will play out, and I don't deny there is a pretty high chance it goes badly. But that you claim to know what's going on with anything approaching certainty is just dumb.]
P.S. Your skewering of leftist critics is spot-on as far as it goes. Just wish you'd gone deeper into what's going on, rather than give credence to opening bid tariff formulas.
Peter Navarro has stated there will be no tariff negotiations and the entire thing is about trade balancing, proving the thesis of my post. His exact quote:
"Let's take Vietnam. When they come to us and say 'we'll go to zero tariffs,' that means nothing to us because it's the nontariff cheating that matters."
Navarro is literally saying the exact same thing I am, so I do not believe this can be ascribed to TDS unless Trump breaks up with Navarro more quickly than he drops Musk. In fact, I expect Musk is going to be out the door in a month or two tops over tariffs.
Peter Navarro is an adviser. He is not the president.
Yes, we are all screwed if he gets his way.
Just because that is a possibility, does not mean it is inevitable.
Trump is #1 a negotiator.
But the other thing that drives him is not to be a loser. If he is now inclined to go full Navarro, he will fire him and backtrack when he realizes how disastrous it is. (If it takes that long, though, then Dems will sweep 2026 and probably take the presidency in ‘28).
And that said, no one knows how this is gonna play out.
Credit where it's due, you're at least half right, maybe more. But I don't perceive this as a successful negotiation tactic since he did not appear to actually negotiate for anything.
He's gotten at least Vietnam to come to the table and offer to reduce their tariffs on the U.S. to below where they were in January. That's not a successful tactic (at least in that instance)?
The goal of the tactic is to bring people to the table.
NO ONE was coming, nor was going to come, to offer to lower tariffs on American exports absent this tactic.
How is that not a successful negotiation tactic?
Now depending on the totality of what else he does, the combination might ultimately backfire, sure.
Again, I do NOT know how this will turn out. We do not know *all* other of Trump's goals, how he weights them, nor exactly what he will do. I ain't trying to defend all things Trump.
As I read it, you believe the Trump tariffs are directly tied to the import/export ratio for each country (I don’t disagree).
Your tie to the left is their hypocrisy of being pro-EPA/Union/DEI yet hating the tariffs that would support their regulatory programs that undermine US competitiveness (again, don’t disagree).
Finally, you hate the tariffs because they create market instability and support left agendas, even though Trump is imposing them and the left hates them. They’re another form of taxes that will stack cost for the consumer (still on the same page).
So is your argument that we should strip out all regulatory policies that impact domestic pricing (exports) and/or impose global regulations that impact others (imports)? In my opinion, this is the red/blue tug-of-war that has been going on since we were born, has led to our unsustainable debt trajectory, and has allowed China to quietly dominate the economy. Per your article, I’m a simpleton for thinking the tariffs may help level the playing field since the US holds all the chips as the largest importer in the world, and does so at the cost of US blue collar labor. I’m with Trump on this one, and I think this truly threatens China’s global economic position they’ve achieved through morally questionable practices.
I agree with 95% of his article, but disagree with your final conclusion that tariffs have to be woke. I think they are woke if left in place long-term as a global tax and permanently drive up cost and inflation. However, I think tariffs are going to create instability similar to Volcker in the early 80s, and they’ll ultimately lead to long-term stability, global balancing, and debt reduction. They can be a negotiating tool and a lever to pull industries back to the US, particularly industries with national security implications. Am I completely off base? Admittedly, I’m not an economist, nor do I claim to be an expert. Just trying to stay informed.
I didn't make an argument about what we "should" do. I usually don't to be honest, because I don't feel our system of governance is capable of doing the sorts of things that we "should" do. But if we had a different system of governance that was rational and reasonable and based on game theory and mathematics, I expect that system would do this:
Every environmental regulation, occupational safety regulation, or other regulation that is intended to make American lives better but also impacts the ability for American businesses to compete in the global manufacturing marketplace must have an associated tariff tied exactly to that regulation, which is assessed annually to compare how much the product would have cost in Vietnam if Vietnam had US <insert policy here, say minimum wage>. That would create an exactly even playing field, would generate federal revenue, and Vietnam could dictate the terms of their own tariff by simply implementing <US Policy> which would fit the liberal agenda because it would bring the benefits of that agenda to others globally, while insulating US businesses and disincentivizing offshoring of labor. Then if we decided we didn't want the tariff, then we roll back the minimum wage, or the OSHA regulation, or whatever it is that created the disadvantage.
There is NO CHANCE something like that could be implemented here because the assholes on Substack are all Mistake Theorists and t he assholes in DC are Conflict Theorists, and once you understand that maybe it'll ease your mind and save you some time typing.
Great link with plenty of educating rabbit holes. I definitely understand your point, and you articulate your position well. It’s pretty sad that DC has embraced identity politics and subsequently operates almost exclusively as Conflict Theorists. Just a couple questions:
1. What would be the system of governance you prefer? Something more aligned with the philosophy of either Emile Durkheim or Max Weber?
2. Between the status quo and Trump’s tariffs, which do you prefer? I think I still lean towards trying something (even if over-simplified) vice doing the same thing but hoping for different results. I think this administration is biased towards action, and hopefully someone in DC is still intelligent and brave enough to course correct along the way (I fully acknowledge the sensational optimism required to even type that last sentence).
1. I don't think any system of government works particularly well at this point. I think that a regime of protofascist technocrats like we have now could do an okay job, to be honest, as long as they're held in check by fear of the armed masses. I make that case here:
Those are the only articles I can think of where I've talked about what we "should" do.
2. I don't really care. To be honest I prefer cheap Chinese underwear and don't have any friends who are factory workers, so outsourcing our industrial production to China and using Chinese child slavery and environmental disaster to prop up our economy isn't a bad solution domestically, for now. The problem is if we become dependent on China we can't get into a war with China, and if there's any country you literally cannot get into a war with that makes you their vassal state by default. So that could be a problem.
If we wanted to talk about pie in the sky shit that would "work" intellectually, then what we should do is do an analysis for every piece of legislation we have and every agency we have that impedes our manufacturing production capacity, such as the EPA or OSHA or minimum wage, identify what impact that has on our ability to compete in the global marketplace against any given country, and tariff that country that exact amount in an earmark that is tied to that law. So if people want to bitch about tariffs being too high, they can revise the Clean Water Act to reduce the burdens of it and reduce the tariffs at the same time.
That would bake in the argument to the law itself, and then the blues could decide for themselves whether the law is worth it or not. But that's too smart for us. We are a very dumb people.
Great response. Your Guns and Protofascism article should be required reading within HWFO. Maybe it is, and I’m still just relatively new to discovering this.
And the tribal thread between football and politics is eerily on point.
We don't really have required reading, but we do have me spamming up the channel when the discussion goes down a path that I've already written about. That article probably gets posted on Slack every other month TBH.
> Thankfully the mop handle industry never fully dried up here, so all the 3% APR Boomers and Covid Karens who owe me a fluffy tail before they open their mouths again can get their requisite ass penetrating mop handles from Holmes Custom Moulding Ltd. of Ohio USA, available for B2B manufacturing supply of all varieties of custom and specified millwork.
*literally choking laughing because wow did I take a drink at exactly the wrong moment*
I do believe "owe me a fluffy tail" has just been permanently added to my personal lexicon...
"Thus, Trump’s tariffs are reciprocal tariffs - but what they reciprocate against is unfair trade practice in generally, evidenced by an imbalance of trade, and not tariffs specifically."
First, it shows "since 2012". Why show something from 2016 election?
The one from 2024 got cut off early in the night (once it was obvious he won), but if you completed it the reason for Trumps win is a mixture of Hispanics defecting and Gen Xers. Baby Boomers in 3% mortgages swung to the left. People aged 65+ in the Rust Belt voted majority Harris. The "Our Democracy" stuff really worked on then. The median age of a CNN viewer is 66 or so.
The biggest swings were actually brown people in deep blue cities getting fed up (not enough to swing them, but fed up).
We shouldn't blame other countries. We gutted our own industries in order to weaken the unions and make Wall St. happy. Also, obsolete theorems in econ texts.
What if we just treated the world as a black box. Then ask ourselves: why should goods coming from this black box get a tax advantage over goods made here? Why don't we treat domestic goods and services equally with that black box?
If you add up the income and wage taxes levied on domestic businesses, you get the equivalent of something like a 25-30% tariff. (Tariffs and sales tax rates look higher than income tax rates because they use different denominators.) When Gary Johnson was calling for replacing federal income and FICA taxes with a national sales tax, he was effectively calling for a 30% tax on all foreign made consumer goods -- as well as an equal tax on domestic goods.
One can argue that those FICA taxes paid by domestic workers create future obligations, and that domestic industry uses more government infrastructure. All true. But decent paying wages for high school graduates with bad grades are a great social program, lessening the welfare burden greatly. I'd rather pay more for a pair of blue jeans than pay taxes for HUD developments and prisons.
But what about the rest of the world? Answer: let them do as they see fit. Once upon a time, countries the size of a mid sized US state had their own auto companies. Losing some economies of scale in return for making the world exotic again is a good deal IMO. And if the world doesn't want to buy our corn and soybeans, then we turn our excess fields into forests or pasture for nutritious grass fed beef. This would be very good for our environment.
While some of this appears to be simplistic thinking - and may well be - I do think the sharper minds around Trump like Bessent are looking for specific effects even if the method to get them is very messy. So I do think this mostly about China, the Administration is totally fine with driving the market down to get lower interest rates, and assumes the recovery will be in full swing well before the 2026 elections.
“If you were one of the people who were running around on Facebook in 2020 supporting the Covid lockdowns and Covid bailouts, which precipitated a historically high inflation spike that literally priced an entire generation out of being able to buy a house, and now you're whining about financial instability from tariffs, you can shove an entire mop handle up your rear end until it makes a fluffy tail.”
Yes, yes, yes.
We can mess up the economy with stupid populist policies, but don’t you try it, Orange Man.
While the article is very solid, the very fact you had to write it proves you are incorrect about one of your two basic political viewpoints- "It doesn't matter who wins elections."
We've argued this before. I'm willing to concede it doesn't matter much when both candidates are vetted by and put forward by the system. Trump is the first successful non-system candidate since the system has been in existence (I would say roughly the Wilson administration). I'm not sure we'll see major changes. I'm not sure changes we see will have positive effects. This is the first presidency to even try (yes, that includes Trump 1.0- he had no idea what he was dealing with the first go around).
As to your other political opinion, I'm 100% on board.
I've been waiting to have the time to read this in detail so I could tell you how the tariffs were actually calculated.
Really should have seen it coming that, since it's a math thing, you would have it correct.
I disagree that what you describe as "woke tariffs" is a dumb strategy. I'll state that removing the environmental/labor regs, or simply requiring minimum standards for the same to be followed in the production of imported good would be the best approach. Unfortunately that requires acts of congress and getting a filibuster proof majority in the senate can't happen. So yeah, it's like using a hammer to install a screw, when you only have a hammer. It's not ideal, but it beats looking at the screw and hoping it will sink into the board. Our economy is a disaster. We don't make the necessary components of modern life and we need to. Whether we will see an improvement from the trade war, I'm not going to predict. I do support an attempt to alter a course heading for certain disaster.
"And they’re totally intellectually consistent with the pro-labor left, the pro-environment left, the living-wage-left, and the left wing people who screamed for lockdown-test-and-trace during Covid which is not possible without a border wall and an import ban."
These same people also love taxes, and will now tell you how tariffs are bad because they make everything more expensive. Yeah, no kidding, all taxes make everything more expensive.
Dammit, now I can't write a bunch of these things because you beat me to them.
Yes, there is nothing "reciprocal" here because tariffs in both directions harm both sides. The pain doesn't cancel; it stacks. And yes, the "working class"'s problem is that its cost of living is massive due to regulatory requirements imposed by our government that didn't exist before and don't exist in other places. Don't tell me it's an "income problem" when McDonald's ads offering $20/hour go unanswered.
And yes, your stonks are "all the way down" to where they were a year ago. Honestly, this might be the most brilliant part of it from Trump's perspective - popping the AI/tech bubble three months into his presidency so he can reset and get a nice upward trendline going before the next time America votes.
But most of all, yes, the COVIDians can go F themselves, because they did quite a bit worse for reasons that were both more malicious and more stupid. Especially if Trump really does end up negotiating a bunch of "bilateral zero tariff" deals with major countries.
Now about congress taking this extraordinary power away from executive fiat... a smart Thune would propose this in October 2028.
"Honestly, this might be the most brilliant part of it from Trump's perspective - popping the AI/tech bubble three months into his presidency so he can reset and get a nice upward trendline going before the next time America votes."
Man if that's true he's smarter and more evil than I thought. But I don't think there's enough evidence to update my default opinion that he's generally "just" an idiot with the most important job in the world.
narrator: "he wasn't particularly smart"
As I wrote yesterday:
"""
When foreign countries place tariffs on things that Americans sell them, both American sellers and foreign buyers are worse off.
When America places tariffs on things that foreigners sell us, both foreign sellers and American buyers are worse off.
The reciprocal tariffs do not cancel each other out. They stack.
"""
https://x.com/PrincipleTribe/status/1909358911268044899
They WOULD stack, IF 47 invoked a tariff and enforced it.
He ain't doin' that and he doesn't want to. He wants them to Knock. That. Shit. Off.
And they are lining up to do just that.
Win!
You're describing the process of threatening-but-not-executing tariffs, which I liked from Trump as of a couple of months ago.
https://principlesvstribes.substack.com/p/the-tariff-bully
This last week COULD still be that strategy on steroids, but it's going all-in on the bluff.
Perfectly stated.
Yep and its working a treat. 50 Countries are calling the White House tryna make a deal. The EU capitulated, too.
Well... *partially* capitulated. Depends on what "industrial" ends up meaning in practicality.
But yes, in general, I agree. This seems to be having the desired effect, except for with China. And, well, depending on what effect is actually desired, possibly there as well.
If you are right - and you might be - we will all be better off.
If you are wrong - and you might be - we will all be worse off.
Anyone who is sure - or even pretty sure - which way this is gonna go is fooling themselves - or simply a fool.
Damn, reality takes no prisoners! My response to the 401k whiners is "Hey dumbfuck, it's not a bank account."
Don’t forget Obama put tariffs on Chinese and Korean tires to protect Bridgestone. I miss the days when… well both sides of the aisle haven’t been consistent ideologically ever most likely, but at least they seemed to be more consistent when I was young.
"...both sides of the aisle haven’t been consistent ideologically ever most likely, but at least they seemed to be more consistent when I was young."
True, but that was mostly because other than on taxes, abortion and maybe guns, the GOP would just go along with whatever the Dems proposed, while watering it down some.
Be clear that this is not a defense of the most populist Trump stuff. Just pointing out that the halcyon days of yore weren't always that great.
Even if the 90s, where the differences were the least large, were indeed pretty good.
Hehe yea sorry, that was a bit of a self indulgent inside joke on my part. Inside a group of one, really… I once wrote a paper, that I gave up on getting published when I left academia, arguing that ideological consistency was nonsense when it comes to political parties, and that political positions were effectively based on random and ever shifting coalitions where people care a lot about one or two issues then just adopt the positions of other people on the party that sides with their preferred one or two policies. I caught myself writing that I miss the days when Republicans were free trade, but realized that hasn’t been entirely true ever :)
Pretty much agreed, other than the word "random".
Prior to Trump, both parties were moving in predictable ways, the Dems hard left (though the anti-free speech part I don't think was forseeable), and the GOP drifting left on some social issues, but becoming more conservative/libertarian on most.
It was Jim Crow conservative/moderate Democrats in the South who caused the even lesser ideological conformity of Dems vs GOP in the 60s, 70s and into the early 80s.
Trump has been the mega wildcard no one saw coming. What becomes of the GOP after Trump is a mystery whose outcome no one can be at all confident in.
I think random is a lot more fitting than people are comfortable with, and what people do is make up post hoc stories about why the drift made sense. After the fact of course X and Y drove this party coalition to change, but a priori it is pretty unpredictable. Not only unpredictable, but different across countries and even within countries. For example, it is pretty hard to get elected to Congress or the Senate in PA if you are anti-gun even as a Democrat; too many people still hunt in a very rural state. Coincidentally there are many pro-gun Democrats here, but you would need to know about the state and culture to predict what a candidate or official’s position would be, not his political party.
Anyway, it is a long subject, awash with the seemingly odd behavior of politicians and voters of the “coherent political philosophy” model of right wing vs left wing parties were true.
If the tariffs stay in place long term, then versus China they are very bad, and versus everyone else they are indefensible. Period.
Yes, he used a goofy formula to come up with the per-country tariffs. So what?
Yes, said formula "punishes" Vietnam more than others, because Trump got manufacturers to move out of China and into Vietnam last time around. If these new tariffs were locked in stone, this would indeed be a travesty.
But have you seen anything of Trump the last 10 (40) years? The guy is all about negotiations.
That you don't seem to even consider the possibility that this is again Trump trying to "get a better deal" means your "woke" comparison is just silly.
That you are effectively denying that using a gambit to get others to lower their tariffs might possibly be a good idea shows either partial TDS, complete lack of imagination, or outright dishonesty.
What Vietnam is doing is surely evidence of this possibility, is it not?
That the stock market hasn't fallen even further is surely evidence of that possibility, no?
With your "analysis", you are falling victim to the Salena Zito-articulated sin of taking Trump literally not seriously.
[Now that said, I don't claim to know exactly how this will play out, and I don't deny there is a pretty high chance it goes badly. But that you claim to know what's going on with anything approaching certainty is just dumb.]
P.S. Your skewering of leftist critics is spot-on as far as it goes. Just wish you'd gone deeper into what's going on, rather than give credence to opening bid tariff formulas.
Peter Navarro has stated there will be no tariff negotiations and the entire thing is about trade balancing, proving the thesis of my post. His exact quote:
"Let's take Vietnam. When they come to us and say 'we'll go to zero tariffs,' that means nothing to us because it's the nontariff cheating that matters."
"nontariff cheating" = "systemic unfair trading practices" = Critical Trade Theory.
Navarro is literally saying the exact same thing I am, so I do not believe this can be ascribed to TDS unless Trump breaks up with Navarro more quickly than he drops Musk. In fact, I expect Musk is going to be out the door in a month or two tops over tariffs.
Peter Navarro is an adviser. He is not the president.
Yes, we are all screwed if he gets his way.
Just because that is a possibility, does not mean it is inevitable.
Trump is #1 a negotiator.
But the other thing that drives him is not to be a loser. If he is now inclined to go full Navarro, he will fire him and backtrack when he realizes how disastrous it is. (If it takes that long, though, then Dems will sweep 2026 and probably take the presidency in ‘28).
And that said, no one knows how this is gonna play out.
So I reply today to take only a *partial* victory lap, since I still don’t claim to know how this will ultimately turn out.
But this just announced 90 day pause demonstrates we don’t live in a pure Navarro world.
And demonstrates once again that Salena Zito was brilliant when she explained that one should take Trump seriously but not literally.
Credit where it's due, you're at least half right, maybe more. But I don't perceive this as a successful negotiation tactic since he did not appear to actually negotiate for anything.
He's gotten at least Vietnam to come to the table and offer to reduce their tariffs on the U.S. to below where they were in January. That's not a successful tactic (at least in that instance)?
The goal of the tactic is to bring people to the table.
NO ONE was coming, nor was going to come, to offer to lower tariffs on American exports absent this tactic.
How is that not a successful negotiation tactic?
Now depending on the totality of what else he does, the combination might ultimately backfire, sure.
Again, I do NOT know how this will turn out. We do not know *all* other of Trump's goals, how he weights them, nor exactly what he will do. I ain't trying to defend all things Trump.
You show one big graphic and project that onto the entire economy.
Not cool to oversimplify.
Lotsa balls in the air and the DOW is not all of them.
Creating real jobs to employ all the laid off .FED parasites is important, too.
Having trouble with this one.
As I read it, you believe the Trump tariffs are directly tied to the import/export ratio for each country (I don’t disagree).
Your tie to the left is their hypocrisy of being pro-EPA/Union/DEI yet hating the tariffs that would support their regulatory programs that undermine US competitiveness (again, don’t disagree).
Finally, you hate the tariffs because they create market instability and support left agendas, even though Trump is imposing them and the left hates them. They’re another form of taxes that will stack cost for the consumer (still on the same page).
So is your argument that we should strip out all regulatory policies that impact domestic pricing (exports) and/or impose global regulations that impact others (imports)? In my opinion, this is the red/blue tug-of-war that has been going on since we were born, has led to our unsustainable debt trajectory, and has allowed China to quietly dominate the economy. Per your article, I’m a simpleton for thinking the tariffs may help level the playing field since the US holds all the chips as the largest importer in the world, and does so at the cost of US blue collar labor. I’m with Trump on this one, and I think this truly threatens China’s global economic position they’ve achieved through morally questionable practices.
I agree with 95% of his article, but disagree with your final conclusion that tariffs have to be woke. I think they are woke if left in place long-term as a global tax and permanently drive up cost and inflation. However, I think tariffs are going to create instability similar to Volcker in the early 80s, and they’ll ultimately lead to long-term stability, global balancing, and debt reduction. They can be a negotiating tool and a lever to pull industries back to the US, particularly industries with national security implications. Am I completely off base? Admittedly, I’m not an economist, nor do I claim to be an expert. Just trying to stay informed.
yes, yes, yes, no.
I didn't make an argument about what we "should" do. I usually don't to be honest, because I don't feel our system of governance is capable of doing the sorts of things that we "should" do. But if we had a different system of governance that was rational and reasonable and based on game theory and mathematics, I expect that system would do this:
Every environmental regulation, occupational safety regulation, or other regulation that is intended to make American lives better but also impacts the ability for American businesses to compete in the global manufacturing marketplace must have an associated tariff tied exactly to that regulation, which is assessed annually to compare how much the product would have cost in Vietnam if Vietnam had US <insert policy here, say minimum wage>. That would create an exactly even playing field, would generate federal revenue, and Vietnam could dictate the terms of their own tariff by simply implementing <US Policy> which would fit the liberal agenda because it would bring the benefits of that agenda to others globally, while insulating US businesses and disincentivizing offshoring of labor. Then if we decided we didn't want the tariff, then we roll back the minimum wage, or the OSHA regulation, or whatever it is that created the disadvantage.
There is NO CHANCE something like that could be implemented here because the assholes on Substack are all Mistake Theorists and t he assholes in DC are Conflict Theorists, and once you understand that maybe it'll ease your mind and save you some time typing.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
Great link with plenty of educating rabbit holes. I definitely understand your point, and you articulate your position well. It’s pretty sad that DC has embraced identity politics and subsequently operates almost exclusively as Conflict Theorists. Just a couple questions:
1. What would be the system of governance you prefer? Something more aligned with the philosophy of either Emile Durkheim or Max Weber?
2. Between the status quo and Trump’s tariffs, which do you prefer? I think I still lean towards trying something (even if over-simplified) vice doing the same thing but hoping for different results. I think this administration is biased towards action, and hopefully someone in DC is still intelligent and brave enough to course correct along the way (I fully acknowledge the sensational optimism required to even type that last sentence).
Thanks for engaging my original response.
1. I don't think any system of government works particularly well at this point. I think that a regime of protofascist technocrats like we have now could do an okay job, to be honest, as long as they're held in check by fear of the armed masses. I make that case here:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/guns-and-protofascism
Although I think it'd work better if we carved up into smaller units that were more socially cohesive, which is the case here:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/abolish-the-federal-government-and
Those are the only articles I can think of where I've talked about what we "should" do.
2. I don't really care. To be honest I prefer cheap Chinese underwear and don't have any friends who are factory workers, so outsourcing our industrial production to China and using Chinese child slavery and environmental disaster to prop up our economy isn't a bad solution domestically, for now. The problem is if we become dependent on China we can't get into a war with China, and if there's any country you literally cannot get into a war with that makes you their vassal state by default. So that could be a problem.
If we wanted to talk about pie in the sky shit that would "work" intellectually, then what we should do is do an analysis for every piece of legislation we have and every agency we have that impedes our manufacturing production capacity, such as the EPA or OSHA or minimum wage, identify what impact that has on our ability to compete in the global marketplace against any given country, and tariff that country that exact amount in an earmark that is tied to that law. So if people want to bitch about tariffs being too high, they can revise the Clean Water Act to reduce the burdens of it and reduce the tariffs at the same time.
That would bake in the argument to the law itself, and then the blues could decide for themselves whether the law is worth it or not. But that's too smart for us. We are a very dumb people.
Great response. Your Guns and Protofascism article should be required reading within HWFO. Maybe it is, and I’m still just relatively new to discovering this.
And the tribal thread between football and politics is eerily on point.
We don't really have required reading, but we do have me spamming up the channel when the discussion goes down a path that I've already written about. That article probably gets posted on Slack every other month TBH.
Nobody who's a partisan likes to read it. :)
> Thankfully the mop handle industry never fully dried up here, so all the 3% APR Boomers and Covid Karens who owe me a fluffy tail before they open their mouths again can get their requisite ass penetrating mop handles from Holmes Custom Moulding Ltd. of Ohio USA, available for B2B manufacturing supply of all varieties of custom and specified millwork.
*literally choking laughing because wow did I take a drink at exactly the wrong moment*
I do believe "owe me a fluffy tail" has just been permanently added to my personal lexicon...
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/balanced-trade :
"Thus, Trump’s tariffs are reciprocal tariffs - but what they reciprocate against is unfair trade practice in generally, evidenced by an imbalance of trade, and not tariffs specifically."
The map you show isn't actually accurate.
First, it shows "since 2012". Why show something from 2016 election?
The one from 2024 got cut off early in the night (once it was obvious he won), but if you completed it the reason for Trumps win is a mixture of Hispanics defecting and Gen Xers. Baby Boomers in 3% mortgages swung to the left. People aged 65+ in the Rust Belt voted majority Harris. The "Our Democracy" stuff really worked on then. The median age of a CNN viewer is 66 or so.
The biggest swings were actually brown people in deep blue cities getting fed up (not enough to swing them, but fed up).
We shouldn't blame other countries. We gutted our own industries in order to weaken the unions and make Wall St. happy. Also, obsolete theorems in econ texts.
What if we just treated the world as a black box. Then ask ourselves: why should goods coming from this black box get a tax advantage over goods made here? Why don't we treat domestic goods and services equally with that black box?
If you add up the income and wage taxes levied on domestic businesses, you get the equivalent of something like a 25-30% tariff. (Tariffs and sales tax rates look higher than income tax rates because they use different denominators.) When Gary Johnson was calling for replacing federal income and FICA taxes with a national sales tax, he was effectively calling for a 30% tax on all foreign made consumer goods -- as well as an equal tax on domestic goods.
One can argue that those FICA taxes paid by domestic workers create future obligations, and that domestic industry uses more government infrastructure. All true. But decent paying wages for high school graduates with bad grades are a great social program, lessening the welfare burden greatly. I'd rather pay more for a pair of blue jeans than pay taxes for HUD developments and prisons.
But what about the rest of the world? Answer: let them do as they see fit. Once upon a time, countries the size of a mid sized US state had their own auto companies. Losing some economies of scale in return for making the world exotic again is a good deal IMO. And if the world doesn't want to buy our corn and soybeans, then we turn our excess fields into forests or pasture for nutritious grass fed beef. This would be very good for our environment.
While some of this appears to be simplistic thinking - and may well be - I do think the sharper minds around Trump like Bessent are looking for specific effects even if the method to get them is very messy. So I do think this mostly about China, the Administration is totally fine with driving the market down to get lower interest rates, and assumes the recovery will be in full swing well before the 2026 elections.
“If you were one of the people who were running around on Facebook in 2020 supporting the Covid lockdowns and Covid bailouts, which precipitated a historically high inflation spike that literally priced an entire generation out of being able to buy a house, and now you're whining about financial instability from tariffs, you can shove an entire mop handle up your rear end until it makes a fluffy tail.”
Yes, yes, yes.
We can mess up the economy with stupid populist policies, but don’t you try it, Orange Man.
While the article is very solid, the very fact you had to write it proves you are incorrect about one of your two basic political viewpoints- "It doesn't matter who wins elections."
We've argued this before. I'm willing to concede it doesn't matter much when both candidates are vetted by and put forward by the system. Trump is the first successful non-system candidate since the system has been in existence (I would say roughly the Wilson administration). I'm not sure we'll see major changes. I'm not sure changes we see will have positive effects. This is the first presidency to even try (yes, that includes Trump 1.0- he had no idea what he was dealing with the first go around).
As to your other political opinion, I'm 100% on board.
I've been waiting to have the time to read this in detail so I could tell you how the tariffs were actually calculated.
Really should have seen it coming that, since it's a math thing, you would have it correct.
I disagree that what you describe as "woke tariffs" is a dumb strategy. I'll state that removing the environmental/labor regs, or simply requiring minimum standards for the same to be followed in the production of imported good would be the best approach. Unfortunately that requires acts of congress and getting a filibuster proof majority in the senate can't happen. So yeah, it's like using a hammer to install a screw, when you only have a hammer. It's not ideal, but it beats looking at the screw and hoping it will sink into the board. Our economy is a disaster. We don't make the necessary components of modern life and we need to. Whether we will see an improvement from the trade war, I'm not going to predict. I do support an attempt to alter a course heading for certain disaster.
"And they’re totally intellectually consistent with the pro-labor left, the pro-environment left, the living-wage-left, and the left wing people who screamed for lockdown-test-and-trace during Covid which is not possible without a border wall and an import ban."
These same people also love taxes, and will now tell you how tariffs are bad because they make everything more expensive. Yeah, no kidding, all taxes make everything more expensive.