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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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Godfather of AI Says His Creation Is About to Unleash Massive Unemployment
Luddites, you lot.
Every technological change led to disruption and change and obsolete whole industries, both in "manu-facturing" (literally L. "production by hand") and services - horse-and-buggy / pony express transportation to telephone switch operations etc.
Human workers have been replaced by robots and cobots, automation and computers for a lot less time than Industrial Revolution replaced manual labor, yet most of the people who want a job have had one.
For example, 3D-manufacturing, additive and reductive, as well as specialized robotics, have significantly improved the process and production times while reducing the need for human "brawn" in both manufacturing and service industries, as well as making it less expensive amortized over time.
I know, "this time is different" because this time "they are coming for white-collar jobs"... but the doomers (including those who have advanced the technology) told us that it was "different" all those times as well. And they were somewhat right - real progress is made by technology, not the politicians, especially ones who try to "stop or slow down the doomsday"... like Elon Musk recently suggested... for others, not his own "AI" development.
The point is that laws will stop no one else nowhere else from technological progress - which, as usual, brings with itself and can be used for good as well as bad.
New "industries" and services, adopting "AI" will come up, that you have no idea about yet, same as using technology before freed people for more productive endeavors.
#6 | Posted by Nixon at 2025-09-10 07:06 AM
Maybe trading our manufacturing and agriculture for desk jobs pushing numbers was a bad idea.
Too late now, people are complacent to pay $150 for a 55" HDTV. There is no way they will pay $1500 for the same thing.
That sounds awfully like "America First / MAGA" - "bring manufacturing and agriculture(??) home!" - this is exactly how Trump got so many of formerly reliable Democratic "identity politics" voters to abandon increasingly elitist (20%) "progressive" party.
The idea that "we" (the US government? the "rich"?) "offshored" manufacturing and the reason for our "problems" is that "we" (the people) no longer want to pay $1500 for items that cost less than $150 to produce somewhere else has been debunked many times over - it's called "pricing yourself out of the market" and "Money goes where it's welcome and stays and multiplies where it's well treated."
Damn those "globalists"! "Bring manufacturing home!" "America First"! "MAGA!"
Howard Lutnick's "army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones - that kind of thing is going to come to America" is not "coming to America" - it's a fantasy of the times long past by the "globalism deniers" and believers in Trump Org "Central Committee economic planning" - it plays on the voters' economic illiteracy and ignorance of history, and putting the "blame" on one or the other party / President / "the rich/elite" / "greed" for natural progress and adoption of technology.
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