Summary
Trump snapped at a reporter who asked how much economic pain he was willing to inflict amid plunging markets triggered by his new tariffs.
Speaking after a weekend at his Florida resort, Trump dismissed speculation he was trying to crash the market, claiming tariffs would bring in “$1 trillion” and spur U.S. manufacturing.
When asked about a pain threshold for Americans, he called the question “so stupid,” arguing economic “medicine” was necessary to reverse decades of “stupid leadership.”
He insisted the strategy would make the U.S. “solid and strong again.”
…claiming tariffs would bring in “$1 trillion”
They’ve already LOST $11 trillion. What an utter imbecile!!
So it’ll just take 11 years to even out.
Edit: Just double checked, it’s 1 trillion in the “next year or so”. So x >= 11 years :(
tRump maths…lol.
In fairness to Trump, he has never, ever experienced the consequences of his actions. Bankrupt? Didn’t put a dent in his life since his father and banks kept the money flowing to him regardless, more than once. Rapist? No jail time. Fraudster? No jail, not sure that any fines have even been paid. So why would he think, when nothing bad happens to him and he can still golf the weekend away, that anything bad will happen to all the people losing their jobs, their investments, their retirement, their homes? Why don’t they all have rich fathers and sycophantic bankers to bail them out? At very least they should have Russian mafia backers like he does, that make it look like he’s a billionaire, even if it really is billions in debt to them.
I agree that he wouldn’t consider the consequences, but you’re mistaken if you think he has given even a single thought to the plight of the people his tariffs are impacting - his narcissism wouldn’t allow the thought to even form in his orange head.
It’s amazing how confident the truly stupid are.
This rhetoric seems similar to that used by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics. They applied ‘economic therapy’ to left-leaning economies in the late 1900s which involved rapid privatization of nationally owned industries. Negatively affected many otherwise healthy countries including England, Russia and Chilie.
The Shock Doctrine does a round robin of these events; highly recommended.
Project 2025 is about privatizing branches of government while citizens are too busy dealing with the fallout of economic collapse.
They’re seriously going to privatize the weather service and social security if we do not continue to take to the streets.
Russia was not healthy when it applied shock therapy. The Soviet Union was collapsing, massive political instability in Moscow, all sorts of countries moving out of the Russian sphere of influence, the first Chechen war started and so forth. It was fairly obvious that big decision had to be made, but unfortunatly Russia choose poorly.
Everybody is thinking way, way too much into this.
If Trump would have to answer a question where he doesn’t know the answer, or would have to admit that people disagree with him, or he feels even mildly challenged, this is considered a personal attack on him. You are trying to get him to admit to not being 100% perfect 100% of the time. And he responds to that by lashing out like a small child, attacking you, making up childish names for you, and insulting you. This is how he has always responded.
This has nothing to do with his thoughts on economic policies or the effects of his tariffs. He doesn’t think far enough ahead to either know or care. This reporter had the audacity to challenge him, and Trump lashed out. That’s all. That’s how he always responds.
I can’t understand how more people don’t understand this. There’s no depth to any of this. An immature, ignorant, narrow-minded idiot doing immature, ignorant, narrow-minded things. The media’s sane washing is to blame, I guess, if not the straight propaganda from right wing outlets. But at this point if you’re still giving the benefit of the doubt you’re part of the problem.
So true. You don’t have to dig deep into any of his responses when you criticize anything about him. He will lash out. He’s a child. That’s it.
Well, it is a stupid question. A real journalist would ask how much more pain he’s willing to let the American people tolerate for his poorly disguised reverse pump and dump scheme
Even if his tariffs do bring in $1 trillion, that’s not even half the loss his tariffs have cause in just 3 days.
His motives may be unclear, but his actions are crystal clear. He’s tried to enact tariffs already and been stopped before they were implemented because everyone knows the level of damage they cause. He’s moving forward this time. He’s deliberately crashing the global economy.
Why? Who knows? His Silicon Valley overlords demand it? I doubt it’s Putin, because Russia’s economy is hanging on by a thread, and the last thing they need is a global downturn, especially when it craters oil prices. Is it just that Trump is stupid, maybe senile, and ultimately in charge?
Regardless, the leader of the biggest economy in the world has decided that it’s time for a global recession/depression, so unless that course is changed, that’s probably what’s going to happen.
His motives are always crystal clear. Ego. He wants people to grovel and beg for exceptions. He wants to feel powerful. The fact that mainstream news won’t say so is likely predicted on not wanting to be banned from the press pool like the AP was.
The government and media have a mutually parasitic relationship. The government uses the media to spread and reinforce their propaganda, while the media’s jobs are made much easier by having direct and ostensibly willing access to the people in government. If they want access, the media has to play ball. The rules seem to be unwritten, like their own little interwoven social contract. The result being that they’ve mostly become pushovers when some Orange Jackass comes along to play dictator and burn the country to the ground in pursuit of his own aggrandizement.
His motives are always crystal clear. Ego. He wants people to grovel and beg for exceptions. He wants to feel powerful. The fact that mainstream news won’t say so is likely predicted on not wanting to be banned from the press pool like the AP was.
He also wants personal “favors”. He will come out of this vastly wealthier, even if USA becomes a third world country,
It’s all plans from the '30s. Canada, the US, Mexico, Greenland, dismantling democracy to install technocrats, crashing the economy to bring back company towns - none of it is new, it’s just being implemented in a nonsensical and incompetent way, so it seems random
It’s not a good plan to start with, but there is a plan… One the oligarchs bought into, but without understanding how the plan was meant to be enacted
This is mostly consistent with what I’ve seen, but I would like to know more. Are there any books or articles on the topic, in particular how what is happening is like another attempt at the same plan now that most WWII vets and survivors are dying off/dead/otherwise incapacitated and so those who have the most reason to stop it from happening are much less likely to do so?
Sure. Wikipedia on technocracy movement
Basically, they want to control all aspects of society on high - no politicians, direct control of the economy, rigidly scheduled work and production, and expanding the borders from Panama to the artic circle.
Imagine centralized planning and authoritarian control of all aspects of society, but by business leaders (who presumably are the smartest and best at listening to science)
Here’s the movement described by proponents:
Technocracy is the science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population of this continent. For the first time in human history it will be done as a scientific, technical, engineering problem. There will be no place for Politics or Politicians, Finance or Financiers, Rackets or Racketeers. Technocracy states that this method of operating the social mechanism of the North American Continent is now mandatory because we have passed from a state of actual scarcity into the present status of potential abundance in which we are now held to an artificial scarcity forced upon us in order to continue a Price System which can distribute goods only by means of a medium of exchange. Technocracy states that price and abundance are incompatible; the greater the abundance the smaller the price. In a real abundance there can be no price at all. Only by abandoning the interfering price control and substituting a scientific method of production and distribution can an abundance be achieved. Technocracy will distribute by means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death. The Technate will encompass the entire American Continent from Panama to the North Pole because the natural resources and the natural boundary of this area make it an independent, self-sustaining geographical unit.[45]
Holy fuck there is some stuff in here with scary implications
I always thought there was something to Bill Hicks’ “smoke filled room” bit
Apparently not. A group of intelligent people would never pick Trump.
That smoke filled room of Republicans talked about the Overton Window 30 years ago. They decided that they could move that window just by pretending to be much farther right than they really were. The thing about pretending is that if you do it for long enough it’s not pretending anymore. Thirty years later they realized they’ve lost control of what they started. A quarter of the elected officials are now true believers, another half are under Russian blackmail. And anyone who speaks up (Liz- Dick Cheney, a list of others) loses their seat.
I agree with you on blackmail, but it’s obviously not just Russia. Do you think that Jeffrey Epstein was the first or the only guy blackmailing politicians and officials for Mossad?
Ooh, I can assure you his motives are just as clear as his actions.
I wouldn’t believe a word he said, nothing but self-truth (lies). I know his mother doesn’t.
tRump always speaks in a clear, concise, fact based, evidence based, and in a verifiable manner. He uses proof such as “medicine,” “stupid,” “someone said,” “I heard,” “everyone is saying.” “Economic medicine,” what is that?
Absolutely, and what I like best about him is his trustworthiness and respect for women.
He’s also a genius businessman who will run our country like his businesses, which will be great and lead to widespread prosperity.
A special kind of genius that can bankrupt a casino multiple times. How do you fuck up a license to print money?
Four Casinos
And not permitted by the gaming commission to get another license.
Americans circa 2025 about to take their economic medicine
sally has to say goodbye to puppy. weekly rations and all.
He will tolerate none for himself.
The rest of us can get fucked. STFU about the price of eggs, right? He’s no longer president. He’s gone full dictator. This is all about him.
It was always all about him. The election was the only way he was staying out of prison and the campaign was lie after lie after lie, telling his moron supporters what they wanted to hear, in order to secure their vote. He doesn’t give a shit about those people once they’ve posted their ballot.
… Even… if Trump… can bring in $1 trillion… somehow…
US stock markets have wiped out $ 9 trillion in market cap since Trump became President.
… So uh. Yeah.
1 - 9 is -8, Don.
Great plan.
That $1 trillion he’s claiming also comes from the pockets of Americans, so it’s more like - 1 - 9 = - 10.
I am trying to give him a delusional level of benefit of thr doubt in thinking that some fucking how these tariffs actually result in 1 trillion in new US manufacturing industries/investments.
Even by his own… “”““logic””“” … his plan makes no fucking sense.
Of course yes, in reality… it makes even less sense, because you don’t get new manufacturing in a very high cost of living country without extremely well thought out industrial policy, subsidies, ways to attract needed talent, and investment, and … you get it.
Yep, but unfortunately it’s not going to matter how much manufacturing relocates to the US. The rest of the world is now starting to boycot US products en masse. Some countries are even banning investment into the US. And travel to the US is declining. So their trade deficit is going to get far worse.
On top of that, there was news yesterday that Trump removed the ban on the use of "forever chemicals, " like PFAS. So that’ll mean some US products won’t be allowed to be imported into other countries.
Yep. Im a US citizen, we are so beyond fucked it is actually funny, at least a third of the population are in a hardcore fascist cult of personality, our media is dominated by idiots gargling the balls of even more powerful and even more stupid idiots.
If anyone wants to do a sham marriage, I’d love to be able to leave.
I got basically crippled in an assault and now live off of SSDI. If Soc Security gets gutted further… I’m fucked, on the streets homeless, in a wheelchair.
I mean he covers that in the article. He straight says the tariffs will bring in money and then the new manufacturing will bring in more on top of that:
Those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion, in addition to the $1 trillion thousands of companies are going to relocate back into the United States,
I still genuinely am not sure if he legitimately understands tariffs. Like, surely he knows they are paid by the importer. He has to right? But time and time and time again he says that other countries will pay the money. I’m assuming he’s just lying but I can’t even tell anymore.
Regardless this $1 trillion he’s claiming are absolutely just a tax on Americans.
He is acting like there is basically perfectly inelastic demand for Americans to pay for imports and importers to pay the tariffs.
Elasticity is basically how demand changes in accordance with price.
Generally speaking, absolute necessities like food, water, housing… are less elastic than unneccesary luxuries.
… But… basically nothing is perfectly in elastic.
If anything was, the price could literally be either infinite, or totally free… and demand would not change.
Obviously that is nonsense. Even if you die without food, demand will drop if a meal costs a billion dollars.
Trump is acting like the US is so lucrative a market that… our volume of imports will be… the same… and … the importers just have infinite money to pay tariffs… and not do cost pass thru to consumers.
Even though every economist since the 1700s will tell you tariffs result in less imports, and higher prices for consumers.
He seems to genuinely think he is directly taxing other countries, when he is… just taxing American consumers and importers.
Its like when Elon got mad at advertisers leaving twitter and he threatened to sue them for… not buying his ad service.
These coddled corrupt criminal capitalists have gotten so used to just always getting their way… that they’ve broken fundamental underlying concepts of how the ‘free market’ works.
Their worldviews are internally inconsistent and do not make sense, they hold fundamentally contradictory ideas simultaneously, and when people point this out, they flail and bitch and moan and insult like the petulant spoiled brats they are, because facing the contradiction, resolving the cognitive dissonance would cause ego death… which is the same as suicide for a megalomaniacal narcissist.
For them, it is literally:
I can’t be wrong.
Ergo, everyone else is.
Even though every economist since the 1700s will tell you tariffs result in less imports, and higher prices for consumers.
That’s the plan:
https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-trumps-tariffs-are-a-masterplan/
Varoufakis is wrong.
Central to this new global order (Trump’s plan) would be a cheaper dollar that remains the world’s reserve currency — this would lower US long-term borrowing rates even more.
What Trump is doing will result in a cheaper dollar.
It was also destroy the USD as the world’s reserve currency.
wall of text further explanation so as not to clutter the thread
The USD has been the reserve currency because:
Huge, growing, stable economy.
Low debt to GDP ratio.
Very, very willing to cooperate with international trade deals.
Powerful military that can enforce its will as a hegemon.
Many deals with many oil producing countries who agree to only sell their exported oil via USD.
… all of these except the last are as seen in statistical comparison to other countries. Its all about comparative advantages.
Not sure if you haven’t noticed, but all of those are now rapidly crumbling, after a last 2 decades of slower, more incremental decline.
But ultimately, all of those things could be smoothed over by a reasonable presentation of trustworthiness and reliability generally.
Trump has utterly destroyed all of that now.
…
If Varoufakis were citing some kind of Project 2025 masterplan for this, I’d be more inclined to believe his read on the situation here is at least Trump’s plan.
But even then, it still won’t work as he describes.
Trump is acting with unimaginable hubris, his actions will destroy the USD as a world reserve currency, rapidly accelerate other countries looking for regional or possibly international alternatives, and as a result, less people will need to use dollars for trade, there will thus be less demand for US debt.
Less demand means we have to offer higher yields, higher interest rates on our debt, as the us dollar weakening means the real price of debt goes down.
Varoufakis may be correct in that this is what Trump will try to do, but I see no evidence that… the plan has actually been thought out that far by any actual administration or adjacent thinkers.
Beyond that, this plan won’t work.
We are acting like a rogue nation doing economkc terrorism to literally the whole world… other than basically Russia and Israel.
China, Japan and South Korea have recently entered into a pact, an agreement, to coordinate their responses of retaliatory tariffs.
Please take a moment to appreciate how insane that is.
The past … since ww2, SK and JPN have firmly been in the US’s sphere of economic influence and military collaboration.
They just fucking noped out of that the economic part of that and made a pact with China.
Japan is now rapidly trying to militarize and there are even talks of starting their own nuclear program.
Please, again, appreciate how fucking insane it is that the most anti nuclear weapons country on Earth is now maybe rethinking that.
Most other world leaders are not stupid. They know Trump will try to do piecemeal, one on on negotiations.
They are already forming into blocs to resist this tactic.
There’s talk of Canada joining or at least much more seriously integrating with the EU.
NATO is now basically defunct in all but paper only, the EU is finally ‘shouldering its burden of defense costs’, but uh, they’re working on an EU Army, that doesn’t involve the US, after Trump repeatedly threatens to acquire Greenland, and has totally betrayed Ukraine.
The EU is also rapidly pivoting away from being reliant on or using US software solutions.
These actual adults in the room have actual plans to deal with the US, and they have been enacted astonishingly rapidly given how comprehensive they are.
… The rest of the world does not need us anywhere near as much as Trump does, as much as Varoufakis estimates Trump thinks they do.
This article has been posted by me several times. You are only the second person who notices. The US cannot have it all. I think Varoufakis just doesn’t want to be the one who delivers the message. He must have known better.
I don’t fully agree with your outlook. The companies are not massively objecting. I think the concept has already been discussed by key people, in the US and internationally. Like Japan is prepared to build a nuclear bomb and Britain was prepared for Brexit, the big companies are prepared for decoupling from China.
It’s like the wall, really. But so much bigger, as big as it is reshaping global trade. Like the wall, it will never become a reality, except in some specific parts of the border. Well, some specific parts of the USA economy will still work, the American consumer market is irreplaceable in some extent, for now.
I would think regular Americans are already being affected by this?
Yep.
He just assumes he has god mode on and whatever he says will happen the way he says it will.
Megalomaniacal psycopathic narcissist.
Dark triad shit.
A pampered life of being born into money, never being told no, raping whoever he wants, scamming whoever he wants, … never any consequences.
This man hasn’t deserved the benefit of the doubt for at least 40 years
What’s the minus of 30 and 20?
Uh, it’s 80, Frito. It’s $80 billion.
The only way I see the US becoming “solid and strong again”, is a revolution that results in a Constitution v2.0 that fixes many issues with the structure of government, voting, and setting rules regarding wealth. Otherwise, odds are that the US will splinter apart into several major bodies.
On the plus side of splintering, it means many conservatives would flee out of Blue States, and the Blue States get more people who believe in governance, science, democracy, and society. They would be far more stronger and influential than Red States in the long run. Blue States won’t have to play ball with stupid conservative ideas, such as non-medical vaccine exemptions, anti-migrant policies, and so forth.
At least one revolution is already underway, but those responsible for the current change are wearing red hats. The neo-reactionary Butterfly Revolution.
Unfortunately, most Democratic Party politicians today are the real conservatives in the sense that they simply want to preserve the old system.
And there are people who identify as Democrats but are increasingly disillusioned, who want reform or revolution in the direction of a egalitarian, democratic society with strong social welfare systems geared toward equity (let’s hope they grow in number), not in the direction of the elitist, authoritarian, technofeudalist, rigid hierarchical society proposed by adherents of the Dark Enlightenment ideas. Such people could redirect the current Butterfly Revolution in the opposite direction and foment division among Republicans.
Until the red states run out of food and start eyeing the neighbouring blue states
They can eyeball all they want, the red states are also the US’ welfare queens. They’re poor AF and would be bankrupt in a couple of years.
Plus the people that live in those states by and large aren’t capable of any kind of sustained physical activity
Where do you think food comes from exactly? It’s not New York City or San Francisco. California has a good bit of farm country, but a lot of the rest of our food does come from “red” states.
except lots are paid by the government to grow food. that money is now gone.
So if you think the “red” food-producing states would stop producing food altogether without government money, then where would the “blue” states get food?
By the way, it is not money that grows food from the farmers’ fields. They are still able to produce crops without subsidies. They just might not be able to produce a surplus of crops to export to other states.
A split would create North Korea 2.0
A split would create North and South Koreas. If we don’t split, I’m afraid we will only get North Korea 2.0
“sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something”
Exactly, medicine exists to fix something. What Trump is doing is substance abuse.
Wanna ask Trump if he’ll still be alive by the time American manufacturing makes his tariffs pay off
How long did it take China to build itself into a self-sufficient superpower that produced goods for the world?
Around 50 years, with a tight rein on the population and a leadership that had consistency and a 30, 50 and 100 year vision that they continually executed against.
Even in the best case scenario of everybody rallying behind Trump and pulling together behind a single strategy that miraculously turns out to work, Trump will be dead in 30 years or less.
So HE probably isn’t realistically thinking this, even if it’s what he’s decided to tell everyone this week.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation. He’s just ignorant of how to do that or what it would even look like when achieved.
Great points.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation. He’s just ignorant of how to do that or what it would even look like when achieved.
I don’t think he does. I think he wants to make it a better place for him, and he doesn’t get any further than that as a concept.
Being a narcissist, I don’t think he differentiates between making it great and making it great for him.
He does, because he sees the world as a zero sum game. For him to prosper, others have to suffer.
China’s growth is not a story of self-sufficiency.
It is a story of doing state directed capitalism, making extensive use of international trade, much more productively, intentionally, and strategically competently than… basically any other economy in the history of the post ww2 world.
They are not self-sufficient in the sense of autarky, a hermit kingdom like North Korea with 0 international trade.
Vietnam basically 80s onward, is a similar economic story of a ‘Communist’ government/society/economy that did a good job of introducing elements of capitalistic economic systems into itself gradually, with great control, and much of its profits siphoned into further reforms and building up public services and infrastructure… lots of international trade in all that, though they have been significantly less restrictive of foreign direct investment than China has.
… So is Japan, post ww2, minus the ‘Communist’ starting position, though with a good deal more foreign direct investment.
A free market republican/libertarian who learned how large of a role the government of Japan played in directly molding the evolution of its industries and manipulating its markets, openly, would call it ‘communist’, because they think ‘communism is when the government does stuff’.
In reality, its state directed capitalism, but in Japan, they call this capitalism, in Vietnam and China, they call this same thing communism.
Their political systems and culture are all very different, but their economic organization and growth patterns actually have a lot in common.
China does capitalism, its just that the state explicitly owns the largest corporations. But these corporations are still ultimately playing the same capitalism game as all other corps… they just have a lot more subsidies from and control by the state/Party officials.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation.
No. He just wants to be the leader of a great nation. Anything “great” that happens to America or Americans, would be entirely accidental. He never thinks about anything other than himself.
Don’t forget Krasnov Trump bankrupted his casinos. Only he knows why he is bankrupting US now.
I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation.
I gave W that credit. I don’t believe it’s true for Trump, outside of the fully narcissistic version.
It appears his first priority is pleasing Putin. His second is getting a small number of people to applaud him. He doesn’t give a single fuck about America or Americans as a whole.
Trump will be dead in 30 years or less.
I can’t wait that long to take a piss…
