Senators have introduced bipartisan legislation to grant Congress more power over instituting tariffs on other countries following President Trump's announcement of wide-ranging taxes on nearly all U.S. foreign trading partners.
When you've lost Chuck Grassley
-- Michael McDonald (@electproject.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 11:09 AM
[image or embed]
Yeah, well good luck with dat.
This typical Lawfare Media deep dive explains why. www.lawfaremedia.org
__________
#8 | Posted by itchyp at 2025-04-04 04:10 AM
OK I know how to settle this. Make the law to apply the same tariffs on the same products that other countries charge us.
Settle what? What "problem" is Trump (and you) are trying to solve?
For example, do you think Canada's 40M people should buy the same amount of "stuff" from US, as 340M buy from Canada. Also, in case you didn't know, excluding oil trade, USA has trade "surplus" with Canada. So, should the companies in the US buy oil somewhere else because Trump can't do kindergarten-level math?
Trade deficits are not the [national] problem - countries, for the most part, don't trade with other countries. People in the US, having for the long time the fortune of the world's largest economy and being prodigious consumers of US-made and foreign-made goods (which are often cheaper and/or better-made or have better/bigger/attractive brands that consumers want) keep buying more of smaller economies' goods, while people in smaller economies keep buying more advanced US services (USA has substantial service trade surplus vs the "rest of the world") and particular products (e.g., technology, military etc.) where we have what David Ricardo called "comparative advantage" (see Paul Krugman's excellent essay Ricardo's Difficult Idea - web.mit.edu - TL;DR: "Free trade good").
drudge.com - Is Trump Trying to Engineer a Recession?
Since 1980s we have been importing disinflation from other countries, initially too poor to buy our products (or debt), but growing and becoming richer and more capitalist in the process, e.g., "Made in" Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, China (since Deng Xiaoping), Vietnam etc., while at the same time supplying them with non-inflationary expansion of USD, thus maintaining / expanding "reserve status" of USD and promoting more trade, which increases our service and manufacturing, i.e., "expanding the global economic pie" rather than trying to grab larger share of smaller one.
98% of the world trade is governed / covered by WTO and/or other FTAs. Most tariffs are either on goods we don't sell in significant quantities in particular geolocation (governed by their specific rules, like medical content, trademarks etc. or there is no sufficient demand for import) or have been exempted for particular negotiated reasons and don't significantly affect either irrelevant [national] "balance of trade" or GDP - at most about 0.50 one-time increase in GDP - definitely not worth all the noise, let alone world-wide trade war which will alienate long-time trading partners, re-route major supply chains away from the [no longer reliable, if not outright "hostile"] US suppliers
How is that "abuse" and "rape" of the USA, when we have been the biggest beneficiaries of generally free trade?
Even CNBC's Jim Cramer, who has been against "free trade" and is for what he calls "fair trade" and tariffs, railed against Trump's idiotic trade war: www.thedailybeast.com - Jim Cramer Hits Trump With Kiss of Death as 'Liberation Day' Looms - 2025-04-01
So Trump needs to change the hard-won free-trade (aka "capitalism") world order (to our detriment) because Prof. Peter Navarro put a bug in Trump's hole in the head where brain should usually reside, and Trump thinks that he "invented" something new, that "no one has ever seen before." It also, along with trying to expand crypto's role in US economy (and self-dealing, as usual), jeopardizes "reserve status" of USD, with serious implications for US economic well-being.
__________
In 1989 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were ousted. A hasty court-martial tribunal was convened, charging them with:
-Genocide: Over 60,000 victims
-Subversion of state power by organizing armed actions against the people and state power.
-Destruction of public property.
-Undermining the national economy.
-Trying to flee the country with $1 billion deposited in foreign banks.
Found guilty, the couple was executed by firing squad on 25 Dec 1989: preview.redd.it
Now compare with the 2025 Dotard Trumpf junta.
Drudge Retort Headlines
Huge Crowds at 'Hands Off' Protests (93 comments)
Stock Market Has Wiped Out $9.6 Trillion Since Inauguration (31 comments)
Texas Measles Outbreak Nears 500, Spreads to Day Cares (21 comments)
Trump Oversells Success of $200 Million Houthi Airstrikes (20 comments)
China Retaliates with Sweeping Tariffs on U.S. Goods (20 comments)
Massive Storm Risk for South and Midwest Not Over (18 comments)
Felon Freed by Trump Charged with Assaulting Child (17 comments)
Board Game Industry Will Be Crushed by Tariffs (16 comments)
Billboard: 'Tariffs Are a Tax' (15 comments)
A Few Takeaways from Elon Musk's Utter Humiliation in Wisconsin (14 comments)