I know we all get by now that it’s always projection, but this really is getting ridiculous.

IIRC, Apple moved most of their manufacturing back to the US. If not, substitute some other US made product, it’s really not essential to my point.

And yes, Trump’s idea is to force it to happen, but that just doesn’t work. You can’t magically create a market for America trucks in Vietnam, because they simply do not have the money to buy those trucks. The only way to change that is to make Vietnamese people much wealthier, or American trucks much, much cheaper. No amount of “gunpoint” will change that fact. It’s like expecting to make a million dollars by mugging a stranger in the poorest part of town; no amount of threat or force can make people hand over money they don’t have.

Which is generally very good evidence that it’s an effective strategy. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be complaining.

A - Read the rest of the article. He addresses this.

B - I think it’s a reasonable description. As the author says, it’s a stupid, bad plan, but its more or less coherent, in the sense that there’s a basic A+B=C logic to it. He’s primarily contrasting this with the absolute incoherence of the execution.

Well, one half of Congress has. The Senate actually voted to strike down the declared state of emergency in regard to the tariffs on Canada, but the House is refusing to take up the vote on their side.

Can they even do this? What leverage does CA have here? Presumably any goods imported into the state would be subject to US tariffs because those are imposed at the Federal level, so it’s not like Newsom can offer to exempt other countries imports from tariffs if they’re bound for California.

Well, OK, in one sense he could, but he’d literally have to direct officials in California to defy US federal law, and possibly get into direct conflict with Federal agents operating in the state, right?

Assuming he’s not going to do that, how does this play work? What does he offer in return for other countries exempting CA from their counter tariffs?

Also, how is this not a stepping stone towards an independent California? (I strongly suspect the answer to that last question is “it is, end of answer”)

This feels like one of the least surprising news items of all time.

So, obviously, this part of the question gets more complicated.

Ideally, no one should want sweat shop jobs to exist anywhere. Ideally we should all be OK with paying more for clothes in order to have them produced by people who are getting paid a decent wage and have decent working conditions.

And tariffs, if used effectively and smartly, could be a part of solving that problem. A government might choose to carefully and thoughtfully apply tariffs on goods made with sweatshop labour in order to encourage companies to raise their employment standards in a way that that creates better employment opportunities both in their country and in the foreign nations where the manufacturing is currently being done.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with the bullshit spewing out of the white house.

Your assessment of Trump’s thinking is 100% correct, but I just want to pick up on this specific detail;

He will not consider WHY foreign trading partners do not want his inferior products. He is selling them and they must buy, and if they do not buy it is “how they rip off america”.

And point out that actually in many cases its not that the American made products are bad, it’s that the countries in question can’t afford them. No one in Cambodia or Vietnam is buying an American made car or phone. But Americans buy loads of products made with cheap Vietnamese and Cambodian labour. It’s precisely because that labour is cheap that Americans want those products, and it’s precisely because that labour is cheap that no one there can afford American products.

This is big part of the flawed thinking behind these tariffs. They’re trying to eliminate trade imbalances that are a direct result of America exploiting other countries for cheap labour, but they’re doing so by acting as if those countries are somehow exploiting America.

America: “Fuck everyone else, we’re going to create a totally isolated economy and refuse to buy anything from our allies. Fuck international trade, we don’t need you losers anyway”

Europe: “OK, we won’t trade with you then.”

America: “Wait, no, come back!”

No matter stupid you think he is, I guarantee it’s more than that.

It matters only insofar as Kramer is exactly the kind of person who MAGA thinks is really smart.

His opinion shouldn’t matter to anyone with two braincells to rub together, but a lot of people don’t meet that criteria and do care a lot about what he says.

It’s an important temperature check for how things are going in MAGA land.

Which actually makes this poll much, much worse for Elon. You’re right that a lot of that 33% saying “Yeah I’d totally buy a Tesla” are probably the MAGA cult who’ve downloaded the latest instruction set and are now responding as programmed. Which means a lot of those people live in areas that Tesla has previously underserved (because red voters were actively antagonistic to electric cars and their infrastructure), meaning have no infrastructure there; no dealerships, no charging stations. You can’t take a Tesla to a regular mechanic, and charging stations are a real problem when you live in flyover country where everything is 200km from everything, at a minimum. Most of the people who now support Elon because he’s “hurting the right people” probably have no ability to actually use his products.

Yes, it will suck, and people will die as a result. A lot of people. We’re still not remotely prepared for the scale of human misery climate change is going to inflict.

But it’s important to be clear about the distinction between “This will make things much, much worse” and “This will destroy any chance of things getting better.”

The latter is the message oil and gas execs want you to be spreading. Don’t do their dirty work for them.

We’ve already avoided 4C based on current trends.

This is because the world is rapidly pivoting to renewables, simply because they’re so much cheaper and better than the alternatives. It will be almost impossible to reverse that trend even with the damage the Trump admin will do.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have a LOT of work to do, but the situation is not hopeless. The number one spreaders of climate doomerism right now are oil and gas companies. They want you to despair, so that you’ll give up on trying to change things. In reality a lot of climate trends are already swinging in positive directions simply because of the economics. That on its own is not enough, and we’ll never solve a market driven problem with market solutions, but it’s a start.

This is not how climate science works.

Everything we’re doing is “later than we should have done it”, but nothing is ever “too late to make a difference.”

The climate isn’t a lightswitch, and it’s not a bomb with a count down timer. Everything we do to improve the situation reduces the amount of total suffering that will result from anthropogenic climate change.

The notion that there is a point of no return beyond which our efforts are useless is very popular… With oil and gas executives. The “It’s too late” message is being pushed heavily by people who want to keep polluting.

In reality, it’s like getting into a car crash. Even if you brake too late to avoid the impact, braking still reduces the severity of the impact. Everything we do to reduce our carbon impact (as a species) will save lives. We are past the point of avoiding any harm at all, but we can still reduce the harm that occurs and hasten the point where we begin to restore our climate to a healthy state.

This actually makes sense, once you understand what their problem is with communism.

You see, they have no problem with all the benefits that communism offers… What bothers them is the idea that those benefits would be given to people who haven’t earned it.

Heaven, to them, is a reward. Only the pure, the righteous, the faithful get to enjoy its benefits. Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.

A heaven for everyone, with no walls, no gates, no pitiful outcasts scrabbling to get in… That’s no heaven at all.

Because the crypto currency industry spent an absolutely ungodly amount of money helping Trump get elected.

The government buying and holding Bitcoin pumps up the price of Bitcoin. This is just the other side of the quid pro quo. They got him elected, now he has to make them richer.

But if you don’t insist then you’ve willingly given them your complicitly, which is what they want, because they fear your resistance. If they didn’t fear you, they wouldn’t need to silence you or shout you down.

So keep insisting. Keep shouting these facts from the rooftop. Force them to actually work to cover it up, and know that the truth will leak through.

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Yeah, this should scare the shit out of any investor.