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#14 | Posted by fishpaw at 2025-08-12 03:05 PM
No tariffs and 500 billion invested in the US
That's just another "pacifier" to baby-bully, who needs constant affirmation of his "deal-making greatness"... Apple's total annual capex for 2025 TTM was ~$12.4B including spending outside the US, which will continue.
To get to $500B will take 40 years of non-inflation-adjusted dollars, or 5 years of foregoing annual profits ($99B TTM to date). Of course, with new Trump-induced lower short-term interest rates, higher inflation and policy of weaker ruble, er, US dollar, this may come much sooner.
IOW, "Art of the Con" artist Trump is ---------- us, and Apple and those who depend/relied on NORMAL economic relations with the US are just playing along and for time, until "This, too, shall pass". Trump (and MAGA cult) didn't even understand the backhanded slap in the face when Tim "Apple" Cook presented him with the "golden calf"... er, plaque.
Same with the countries and blocks he made supposed "deals" with, e.g., Japan ($550B) and Korea ($350B) - they don't know what he was bragging about: there was only specific commitments to buy $16.5B worth of US goods, the rest was vague promises of "investment" in loans and IOUs ... and there was nothing about "90% of 'profits' going to the US" ... and nothing was formalized, of course.
Some countries make "deals" only to lower "tariff rates" (taxes on Americans), others don't, but every one is waiting and hoping for lawsuits in US courts to strike tariff authority down.
And as far as "not causing inflation" - remember that companies pay tariffs to Treasury immediately and they did inventory front-running, so we didn't see increases in the consumer pipeline yet... but core CPI moved up at fastest pace in 6mos to annualized 3.1%, and the latest PPI / wholesale core and headline numbers hit 0.9% for July - far above 0.2% expected, most of which will be passed along to consumers and some possibly absorbed by the companies while they are cutting tariff costs by layoffs and automation. So we have both weakening economy and employment, and rising prices - consistent with some forecasts of what was called "stagflation" in the '70s.
And some tariffs increased on August 7, so we haven't seen the effects of that yet.
Something that Trump doesn't [want to] understand : money from tariffs is not "flowing into the US" from other countries - they are paid/transferred to Treasury from American businesses / importers - IOW, it's an internal tax on imports, which was about 13.5% of US economy in recent years. Exports, which represent about 30+% of revenue by S&P 500 companies may also shrink as consumers of other countries "buy local" and boycott American goods if there are alternatives. Las Vegas and other tourist destinations already see some of it.
In July 2025, 71 large US companies filed for bankruptcy. Year-to-date 446 bankruptcies, already surpassing full year totals for 2021, 70 of them in the industrial sector.
IOW, Trump's tariffs may reduce meaningless metric of "US trade deficits" ("Yay, success!") but they are also shrinking world trade... and economies, including the US... which you may not see clearly due to lower USD.
Oh what a tangled web we "weave"...
And CBO projection of One Big Bloody Bu**-Ugly Bill creating additional $3.5T in debt in the next 10 years? I think we can do "better" and do it in 3-4 years, despite all of the imagined DOGE "savings" and "trillions or hundreds of billions of dollars flowing in" in tariffs.
US deficit hit $291B in July - that's an annual pace of $3.5T. July tariffs brought in $25B - Trump called it "incredible revenue" - but the government spent $630B.
"It's the spending, stupid."
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