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#10 | Posted by chiligordo at 2025-05-03 06:20 PM
Short term pain for long term gain.

Pain is obvious. What makes you think it's only short term? Because we'll get used to it, so won't feel it as much?

1. What exactly would constitute "long term gain" (even if achievable by businesses-killing, inflationary tariffs) because Trump has not defined it.
2. Expect about as much "long term gain" from Trump as was promised by his numerous failed businesses, including first DJT public company.

The trade deficits and resulting debt must be addressed or else Americans will end up picking cotton on Chinese-owned plantations.

This is nonsense - "[national] trade deficits" don't result in fiscal deficits and debt - you're conflating different things: real, government fiscal / budget deficits (government spending and having to borrow more money than it brings in from various sources) with purely statistical "[national] trade deficits / surpluses" (balance of trade, i.e., buying and selling goods and services by people and businesses who happen to live in "other" countries, mostly unencumbered by protectionist tariffs) - that's just parroting our seriously economically illiterate Influencer-in-Chief.

In fact, "[national] trade deficits" actually allowed / subsidized disinflationary expansion of our economic growth and helped finance fiscal budget deficits, and firmed up USD as world's "reserve currency" through non-inflationary growth of US money supply. Trade "deficits" is a non-issue, a "fake problem":

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#6 | Posted by ScottS at 2025-04-24 06:39 PM
China's economy is collapsing and the speculation inside the country is that Xi may lose control of the CCP.

Chinese economy has been "collapsing" for years, because of failed BRI and wild overinvestment in real estate and what are now "ghost cities" - not unlike our poor investments in "manufacturing infrastructure."

In the latest move, countries like Vietnam are ending the Chinese trans-shipments to hide the true country of origin.

Korean and Chinese-owned factories in North Vietnam, like Goertek, Luxshare, etc., are already part of Apple's supply chain and didn't need to "hide country of origin." India couldn't ramp up and has much higher manufacturing costs.

#12 | Posted by ScottS at 2025-04-24 08:02 PM
... due to the Chinese economic collapse kicked off by Trump's tariffs his first time around.

... Hard facts - China has already lost the trade war. The latest news is Foxconn moving their iPhone manufacturing to India and Vietnam causing a few million more Chinese to lose their jobs.

Apple and Hon Hai/Foxconn have been trying to move their supply chain and manufacturing to India, Vietnam and elsewhere for years. If you've ever been to Shenzhen (China's 'Silicon Valley') and seen Foxconn's factories, they are highly automated and there aren't "millions of Chinese" working there. Foxconn - Taiwanese co, and world's largest EMS, dwarfing (3x) 3 largest US + 1 Canadian EMS combined - has been replacing iPhone factory in Shenzhen with other customers.

US farmers lost soy and sorghum sales (again), since China can easily source them from Brazil and Argentina. China is now buying LNG from Russia instead of US.

Millions of US jobs are at stake as VARs/VADs are or will be closing their shops if they can't replenish their inventories with Chinese or other cheap enough components.

Hard fact is that everybody loses from trade wars, but the US has most to lose, including trust, good will, and USD status as "reserve currency."

If China already "lost" why are CEOs of S&P500 asking Trump to stop it? Why is Charlie Gasparino **, Fox biz commentator and NYPost columnist, saying we lost it, and begging Trump to save face by "declaring victory" and back off trade wars?

But, due to your blind hatred of Trump - you can't seem to understand these things. Doesn't matter - reality is reality regardless of how much your plug your ears and bury your head in the sand.

That's "Apprentice" TV version. Reality: replace "blind hatred" with "blind adulation of 'golden calf' Trump" and you'll be on right track.

Can you explain what is the end goal of the stupid tariffs, and what "winning" trade wars in global economy looks like? Because Trump didn't, except saying that "America was treated very badly and was taken advantage of" which is economically illiterate and literally and figuratively stupid.

Far from playing 3D/4D chess, Trump is can't see beyond his half-moves. Peter Navarro and Stephen Miran are the same kind of economic charlatans, claiming "new financial theories" as Stephanie Kelton (Bernie's/Biden's economic guru) was with her "MMT doesn't cause inflation and deficits don't matter."

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#4 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-04-24 01:43 PM
I was a bit surprised that this blatant attempt at propaganda was not headline news for a week. But it was buried under a mountain of his lies so it's understandable. It was briefly mentioned then just as quickly forgotten. Just one more example of probably thousands of his blatant lies to the American people he has made in the first 100 days.

So many lies and "headlines" - so little time to cover, process and remember them all.

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#8 | Posted by itchyp at 2025-04-07 12:58 AM
WE are winning! All of US! Say THANKS PWESIDENT TWUMP!!

The reason you think "we" are winning is because you don't understand the game, and in all of the excitement of "Winning!" you lost the sight of the end-game - you're just one of the "apprentices" who buy DJT "vision" and stock and meme-coins... and HODL until they eventually go to 0... just like suckers who bought into his "brand" before.

Your attention is being focused [by Trump] on the "battle of tariffs" while it's only a tool that's supposedly is going to solve the "problem" of "trade deficits" and, of course, at the same time to make the US "rich" by collecting huge tariff duties and revive and protect jobs in US "manufacturing" - these are supposed to be the end goals of the "game" according to Trump, no?

That assumes that 1. the USA only has "trade deficits" because it's been "taken advantage of / raped" by countries with high tariffs that make US goods too expensive to import; and 2. the USA can import enough goods that taxes / tariffs on them will compensate for shrinking real inflation-adjusted GDP and higher costs to consumers.

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#2 | Posted by et_al at 2025-04-03 05:32 PM
Yeah, well good luck with dat.

Interesting recent development, from unexpected(?) source:

"The first known lawsuit against President Donald Trump's tariffs has been filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) on behalf of a Simplified, a Florida-based home goods and stationary company, who is arguing that the president "unlawfully" overstepped his authority to impose the levies.

The lawsuit is challenging Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which requires extensive investigations before sanctions can be imposed. Trump has used opioid trafficking from China as a reason for the "emergency" tariffs against the country.

The lawsuit contends that Trump has not shown that his actions are "necessary" or tailored to address a drug trafficking emergency. In fact, lawyers note, Trump has said the actual reason for the tariffs is to reduce a trade deficit.

In any case, the IEEPA allows for asset freezes, trade embargos and similar sanctions, but not tariffs, the suit argues.

The law "authorizes presidents to order sanctions as a rapid response to international emergencies. It does not allow a president to impose tariffs on the American people ... Presidents can impose tariffs only when Congress grants permission," the suit states.

"Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy," it states.

"In the IEEPA's almost 50-year history, no previous president has used it to impose tariffs. Which is not surprising, since the statute does not even mention tariffs, nor does it say anything else suggesting it authorizes presidents to tax American citizens," the lawsuit notes.

NCLA is a right-wing group with financial ties to Leonard Leo and the Koch network is aiming to halt Donald Trump's tariff plan.
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#12 | Posted by itchyp at 2025-04-04 05:08 AM
-Of course Congress want 'more power'. They can't peddle the influence without the power.
It's sort of their own fault for paying themselves only 174K+tip. Most can make more than that on just one selfdeal.

No, actually they want to claw the power back, as Congress should have never delegated it to Executive / President in the first place, albeit with good intentions - to facilitate rapid execution of it in case of "product dumping" at costs below export country's production and negotiating trade agreements - which have not caused problems, until Trump decided to grossly abuse it - just like he did with many other laws in his personal-business-political-scam_artist life, which got him impeached twice and should have put him in prison, if not for the gross incompetence of Biden, DOJ, federal and state prosecutors and help from corrupt judges and lawyers.

"In recent years, Presidents Trump and Biden have exercised an aggressive level of executive authority to raise tariffs on imported goods. Most of these tariffs have been implemented under broad authority delegated by Congress to combat unfair practices or national security. As a result, tariff revenue as a share of total tax receipts peaked in 2019 over the last eighty years, surpassing levels not seen since the mid-1970s."

Ah, mid-70s, when we last had [national] trade surplus... and high inflation + stagnant growth ("stagflation") and "malaise" - why not re-live those "good times"?

.
|------- The constitutional authority to levy taxes, including customs duties (tariffs), indisputably rests with Congress under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. This authority is fundamental to the government's ability to fund its operations, including national defense, public services, and infrastructure spending.

Until the early 1930s, tariffs, like all other tax rates, were determined by Congress. The enactment of the Trade Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot-Hawley Act, exposed some of the risks of imposing large tariffs to protect American workers. Smoot-Hawley Act imposed the second-highest tariffs in American history, targeting agricultural imports to protect American farmers. The act triggered a global trade war - by 1933, U.S. exports had fallen by at least 60% - and deepened the on-going macroeconomic crisis. This would also be the last act implemented by Congress to set tariff rates.

On the heels of this disaster, Congress began a decades-long trend of ceding the authority to lay and collect customs duties to the executive branch. Importantly here, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1934 granted authority to the president to impose tariffs if imports were found to threaten national security.

The Trade Act of 1974 granted the president new authority to negotiate trade agreements and adjust tariffs, while also creating mechanisms to protect U.S. industries and workers. Section 201 provides a mechanism for the U.S. to protect domestic industries from serious injury caused by import surges, and Section 301 grants authority to the U.S. Trade Representative (a cabinet-level position) to take action against foreign countries that violate trade agreements or engage in practices that are deemed unfair. -------|
.

These kinds of far-reaching decisions should never be left to a single person, just like the right to Presidential pardon (which is unfortunately in the Constitution) which clearly leads to temptation and/or corruption, and needs to be abolished / remedied by Constitutional Amendment... which after what we saw it having been abysmally abused by Trump and Biden recently (but also by Presidents before them) should not be that difficult.
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#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?

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#10 | Posted by dutch46 at 2025-03-31 12:07 PM
As I read the headline, the image of a snake devouring it's own tail instantly came to mind.

Ouroboros. Interesting visual, but analogy is not incongruous, especially in financial engineering.

As I've said here before, Musk's purchase of "X/Twitter" entity was never planned to be stand-alone, but rather a leveraged stage 1 for merger with another platform, most likely with financial or sales component - trying to emulate the Chinese all-in-one apps/ecosystems like Tencent or Alibaba.

X/Twitter was never going to go public, but xAI most likely will, at high enough valuation (Musk "proposed" the combo of xAI and X is now worth ~$80B) - not bad for a glorified search engine chatbot, trained on X-"wisdom" and disinformation. For comparison, OpenAI just closed a round of investment at valuation of $300B.

Guess what happens when xAI goes public - all personal debt Elon assumed with the purchase of Twitter will become debt of public company shareholders, allowing Musk to participate in public company riches while "sharing" the huge debt with people buying the common stock.

This is EXACTLY, only on much larger scale, the scam Donald Trump pulled when he used his [father's] name and reputation for ~$1B in personal loans for 2 casinos that he was certainly going to default on, then folded one into DJT / Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts public company, then did the same with another one... and poof, his personal debt disappeared and became "property" of the unsuspecting suckers aka DJT shareholders.

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Elon Musk's Company Buys Another Musk Company
Musk said his startup xAI is... valuing Twitter at $33 billion.

#3 | Posted by REDIAL at 2025-03-29 02:19 AM
Got a good deal too... $11 Billion less than he paid for it the first time.

Ha-ha, funny. Considering the market value of still money-losing eX-Twitter was most recently estimated at about $8B-$9B.

Seriously, though, this self-dealing (similar to Elon's "sweetheart deal" acquisition of nearly bankrupt SolarCity, partly owned and run by his cousins, by Tesla and renaming it into Tesla Energy) is "valued" by Musk/xAI at $45B ($33B + assumption of eX-Twitter's $12B debt) and is likely to provide lifetime of tax write-offs. It already pushed the EV (enterprise value) of xAI to "self-estimated" $80B MV, against which Musk can seek debt or outside investment, among other bennies.

As the song says:

Hah, that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Money for nothing and your chicks for free
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The US is pushing to control all major future infrastructure and mineral investments in Ukraine, potentially gaining a veto over any role for Kyiv's other allies and undermining its bid for European Union membership.

Zelensky has already dismissed the latest version of the draft (middle finger emoji here) saying Ukraine will not agree to any deal that 1) doesn't have iron-clad "security guarantees" and 2) violates or undermines Ukraine's "economic sovereignty" required for EU accession, which is obviously exactly opposite of what Trump keeps looking and pushing for.

This was also confirmed by several members of Rada, who called revised draft a "horror show" that doesn't have "even a hint" of security guarantee.

Trump, of course, can use it as an excuse to deny support to Ukraine, but they are now making it clear that they know whose side he is on and don't expect much from Trump "easy deals" in any case.

Zelensky is also cleverly screwing with Trump's brain by planting the idea that "Putin will die soon."
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China's BYD Auto just reported final numbers for '24 revenues: $107B... compared to $97.7B for Tesla. Average price of BYD EVs is significantly lower than Tesla, which means they had to sell a lot more cars to reach that number.

And BYD announced a drive to double its foreign sales, targeting UK, LATAM and Southeast Asia in particular.

Elon Musk's reaction to buyers' strike / boycott: "Tesla is a peaceful company; we've never done anything harmful, I've never done anything harmful; I've always done productive things. So there's some kind of mental illness thing going on because this doesn't make any sense."
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"Hell hath no fury like a 'tribe' scorned."

Latest poll data on Elon Musk stuns CNN political analyst Harry Enten: "even MAGA voters are starting to get fed up with Musk"

"I have rarely ever seen any change of perception as dramatic as this one. I mean, Elon Musk's net favorable rating, it's dropped from +24 to -19 overall from 2017 to 2025. ... He used to be beloved by Democrats at +35. Look where it is now. -91 points on the net favorable rating.

That is a movement of over 120 points in the negative direction, falling through the floor. Now, among Republicans, he has gone up from +18 to +51, but that doesn't at all make up for the gap that the Democrats have completely fallen off the rails for Elon Musk, and among independents, that drop has been from +17 to -17."

... "I mean, you can see this in terms of new registrations for Teslas in the United States. Car registrations in 2024 versus 2023. ... Down 5%. I was interested, did that movement continue into the new year? Absolutely. If anything, it accelerated. ... New car registrations down 11 percent. And this has occurred as other EV carmakers have seen their registrations go up. And it has also occurred as Tesla's registrations and the people buying Teslas worldwide has also dropped. It's not just a U.S. phenomenon."

"Part of the reason is who buys EVs... The share of EV owners who are Republicans, just 20 percent. When you're falling with Democrats, falling with independents, you're giving up a large share of the market. And that is a big reason why Tesla is struggling..."

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#100 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-03-21 08:49 PM
Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio: Definition, Formula, and Examples
...
The price-to-earnings ratio compares a company's share price with its earnings per share. Analysts and investors use it to determine the relative value of a company's shares in side-by-side comparisons.

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By comparison, Tesla's value makes no sense. It offers nothing that Toyota doesn't also offer.

Tesla value never made any sense - Toyota's stock is cheaper and better not just on P/E basis (P/E alone is subjective, may depend on many factors so is not sufficient to determine relative value), but:
Toyota's gross, operating and net profit margins, ROI, ROE are all better than TSLA's (not even counting "carbon credits" which accounted for 68%-100% of TSLA EBITDA profits) and Toyota has 3+x sales of TSLA (85% of GM+Ford combined), yet its market value is only 1/3 of latest TSLA MV, and only 1/8x of TSLA price/revenue, even after TSLA lost more than half its MV from Dec. 2024 peak.

The only reason for absurd valuation was Musk hyped as the "man of vision" and Tesla as the "tech, not car" company, with sell-side "financial analysts" raising PT with rosy scenarios of new "fantastic" capabilities and treating it as a "futuristic" tech company, so TSLA stock was the only way hoi polloi were able to participate in that "vision", providing Musk with a private currency to invest in / buy other tech products (AI, FSD, robotics)...

That's why he was/is frantically looking to buy [real] companies / tech while this currency still has/had absurdly oversized value, and was protected from [and probably denied capital to] better, cheaper competition:

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Capitalism has not been good to Trump; capitalism was 'very nasty' to Trump; Trump 'failed at capitalism, very very quickly, bigly' and often... Peter Navarro stepped in with "neomercantilism" which appeals to Trump because it suits him to a T:

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#61 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-03-10 05:20 AM
Musk, who is in regular contact with Putin, recently improved his AI computer platform Grok. Musk also wanted to purchase ChatGPT OpenAI

That's Elon Musk's MO: if you can't make it, try buying it... or poach talent from those who can. He tried / did that most recently with xAI, Neuralink etc.

Funny things: Musk's "anti-woke" chatbot, Grok 3 was "instructed" to ignore sources that state that Musk is spreading misinformation... yet it keeps spitting out "opinions" that are hilariously different from [current] Musk's views.

The latest Grok "gaffe" was that Donald Trump is 75%-85% likely to be a Russian asset. Wonder where it got that idea - eX-Twitter?

Grok 3: "Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations (e.g., ideological alignment or naivety), I estimate a 75-85 percent likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties."

Ironic, oui?
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** |------- The world's most popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are infected with Russian Pravda Network disinformation.

Kremlin-Backed Disinformation Network "Pravda" Targets AI Chatbots to Spread Propaganda

A sophisticated disinformation network originating from Moscow, ironically named "Pravda" (Russian for "truth"), formed in April 2022, is employing a novel tactic to disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda: targeting the data ingested by artificial intelligence chatbots. Rather than focusing on human audiences, Pravda floods search results and web crawlers with fabricated narratives and distorted information, aiming to contaminate the datasets used to train large language models (LLMs). This insidious strategy allows Russian propaganda to infiltrate the very core of Western AI systems, influencing their responses and potentially shaping public perception.

This targeted attack on AI was foreshadowed by John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive residing in Moscow and a known Kremlin propagandist. Dougan, speaking at a conference of Russian officials, asserted that manipulating AI narratives offered a powerful avenue for spreading Russian influence globally.

Pravda network, functions as a sophisticated laundering operation for Kremlin propaganda. ... The network spans over 150 websites in dozens of languages, targeting audiences in 49 countries. The sheer volume of content produced - an estimated 3.6 million articles in 2024 alone - underscores the scale of this operation. The world's leading AI chatbots have repeated false narratives trafficked by the Pravda network 33% of the time.

"By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how LLMs process and present news and information" ... which results in massive "amounts of Russian propaganda - 3.6M articles in 2024 - are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda."

The Pravda network achieves its impact through strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics. Despite having minimal organic reach among human audiences, the network's focus on SEO ensures its content ranks highly in search results. This makes it more likely for AI chatbots, which rely on web crawlers and indexed content, to encounter and incorporate the network's disinformation. This underscores the need for more robust mechanisms within AI systems to identify and filter out unreliable sources, particularly those engaging in manipulative SEO practices.

The implications of this AI infiltration are far-reaching. By corrupting the datasets upon which AI models are trained, the Pravda network aims to influence the very fabric of online information. This poses a significant threat to the integrity of information ecosystems and underscores the urgent need for AI developers to implement safeguards against such manipulation.

-------|

Data poisoning by Russian dezinformatsiya, then spread over by Putin's army of troll-bots... many of which are present on this site.

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#2 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-03-06 01:18 AM
Sounds more like the French don't have a military, and have been riding on the US taxpayers coattails to provide social programs.

That's what happens when one ignores reality and simply repeats Trump's / Russian lies.

US has 43% of global arms exports, more than 4x of next-largest exporter, France, as Russian continue to fall behind.

.

Too bad they didn't spend their money to defend themselves, is that Americas fault?

They actually did spend a lot of money - buying US arms, which [BT] came with explicit and implicit "guarantees," and funds our defense industry R&D and manufacturing. If they have to spend that money on developing their own - this actually leads to the unnecessary wasteful arms race. It may not be as good as ours, but it only needs to be "good enough" to ensure that "Ukraine" doesn't happen to them.

Make America Go Alone has been a stupid idea 100 years ago... and we haven't learned the bloody lessons. America became great during and after WW2, but Putin's ------- is determined to piss it all away.

Sure, we can "take our ball and go home..." But that only means that other "kids" will eventually stop playing with us and we'll forego the opportunities to sell into one of the few industries where we [still] have the advantage, and have a "national trade surplus" - a superficial and irrelevant metric of country's economy, but one used by Trump to push his "beautiful tariffs."

That "defense" is net positive as it allows us to sell immense quantities of military goods and services, so much more than we "spend" on "their" defense comes back to us in POs... because they could rely on our R&D and production. It's an easy math. If that reliance / alliance stops, they will have to spend on their own defense but slowly yet surely we'll lose the market share to cheaper "good enough," and then your industry starts to shrink, like "Detroit"... "gradually, then suddenly."

Leadership has its obligations, but also has privileges - the "defense" role is huge in getting us not only good will, but with it a market share of goods and services - that's how it happened in Asia, as countries like Korea and India converted from mostly socialist economies.

Doesn't happen if you are transactional and only worry about "trade deficit," which really only serves to supply the counterparties with USDs which reinforces USD as "reserve currency" without domestic inflation and they, in turn, either buy US bonds/debt or buy goods and services (where we have a "national surplus") from the US... and all were happy... until Trump (and Peter Navarro) came along with goofy nonsense about "trade deficits" and tariffs as a way to "solve" them.

"Play stupid games - win stupid prizes." That's how Trump's businesses went bankrupt.

Trump is hell-bent on self-dealing and making sure that the US no longer is - and can't be relied on to be - a "leader of free world" - "America First!" In fact, his "strong-arm" tactics, language, and "tariff" games make him look no different than Putin to neighbors and [former?] allies. Long term, that's how nations and businesses lose their influence, power and wealth.

The people who can't or don't want to understand this "math" are either brain-damaged or get paid to spread Russian "Pravda" propaganda:

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That's way too much to read for some readers, if not all readers.
Amend prior instructions to include generation of an Executive Summary for lengthy responses

Just read what' in bold
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#18 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-03-07 05:34 PM
Connecting some dots here. Tell me if I'm connecting them good!
Trump is following a policy that, if it achieves the stated goal, will bring about malaise and stagflation.

With economic and political caveats re tenuosly connecting "stable genius" Trump to word "policy" instead of to word "tool" and assuming he is "successful" in using it/them to logical conclusion, then you're absolutely "connecting them good!"

Read the AP article in my post to see a perfect example of Maslow's Law [of instruments]: "When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

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#16 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-03-07 11:24 AM
Any gain there is more than undone, just with the on-paper math, simply by factoring in the tariffs.

Ah, that "most beautiful word - tariff" ... another populist idea Trump stole from Democrats, who have been champions of tariffs as protectionist measure on behalf of unions... not that it actually worked to protect the organized American Labor (unions now are at ~10% total, ~6% private labor force), only making it more expensive and "pricing [some] US goods out of the global and domestic markets."

Trump's guru / influencer on tariffs is lifelong Democrat Prof. Peter Navarro.

At least, UAW bosses, as usual, approve of [Trump's] tariffs: "Tariffs are a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals... [UAW] is in active negotiations with the Trump Administration about their plans to end the free trade disaster ... and looks forward to working with the White House to shape the auto tariffs in April to benefit the working class."

And tariffs don't solve the non-issue / non-problem of "national trade deficits" - just create disruptions and big "uncertainty" headaches for supply chain managers.

In a capitalist country / society, national "trade deficit" (bilateral or total) is irrelevant and is just an interesting statistic having no significant economic value (other than possibly tracking supply chains and bottlenecks), except in Trump's warped brain. Countries have very little direct trade between themselves - companies usually import and export goods, depending on supply and demand. For example, if you buy a Rolls-Royce for yourselves and Bentley or Mercedes for your mistress, does that mean the US now has a "trade deficit" with Germany, and "Germany" now has to buy equivalent $$ amount in goods from the US?

What's more, trade deficits not only do not lead to inflation, they help maintain USD "reserve currency" status and may help finance the US gov't debt, as China, Japan and many other countries have been doing until recently.

The US has a heavy equipment and service "trade surplus" with the "rest of the world" including China. Trade "deficit" is often a sign of strong economy and provide millions of retail and wholesale trade-related jobs, including in manufacturing.

Last time the US had "national trade surplus" was in 1970s - those were the "good times," right? "Malaise," stagflation...

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Is Trump Trying to Engineer a Recession?
Traders are starting to price in the possibility that the U.S. economy might fall into a recession - and one Wall Street veteran says that might actually be the Trump administration's plan.

Yes, he does. If recession is likely / has to happen "on your watch" (which seems more likely now) - then having recession as early as possible in your term is preferable, and may even be beneficial:

1. He could (and would) blame Biden (TFG) for the "horrible economy" and will claim that he "fixed it" when economy recovers.

2. Recessions come and go, inflations accumulate. Recessions are generally disinflationary, which could help his "inflation fighter" image.

3. Recent recessions have been short in duration, due to either very generous "stimulus" packages and/or The Fed rapidly lowering interest rates to stimulate business and consumer borrowing and depress savings rates, which in theory should encourage and lead to higher spending, helping the economy recover quickly, but in current environment of Trump's "unpredictability" and consequent general business "uncertainty" the Fed may have a dilemma of lowering Fed rates quickly and risking another bout of higher inflation, which has picked up in recent months. But then he could / would blame the Fed for it.

4. He wants to bring down the USD versus other currencies which [he hopes] could boost exports and reduce borrowing costs and so-called "trade deficit" - there is even talk about "Mar-a-Lago Accord" promoted by Bessent (an obvious copycat attempt of Reagan's 1985 "Plaza Accord" / 1987 "Louvre Accord," with a 'tariff twist' and personal side-benefit of 'Mar-a-Lago' enshrined in economic history) though I doubt it would be successful.

More likely it would backfire and be harmful, like tariffs and bullying of US trading partners / allies, especially on issues that have nothing to do with balance of trade, making the pretext of "trade deficits" obviously false:

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The key is here:

FTA: |------- Trump's fascination with autocrats generally and Putin in particular has been well documented for more than a decade. In 2013, he posted on social media that his hosting of a beauty pageant in Russia might win him Putin's approval.

"Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?" he wrote.

That was followed by years of attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow - an effort that continued straight through his first run for president in 2016, it came out later. Trump asked for Russian help to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton that year, and then knowingly used the hacked and stolen emails that Russian spies released during the final month of the presidential campaign.

Then, as both special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated Russia's role in his victory, Trump eagerly bought into a conspiracy theory concocted by Russian operatives that - contrary to the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia helped Trump win in 2016 - it was actually Ukraine that had tried to help Clinton win.

Trump sent his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to Ukraine to collect evidence - an effort that ultimately led to Trump's attempt to extort Zelenskyy into announcing an investigation into the Democrat he most feared in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, using U.S. military aid as leverage. Trump was ultimately impeached for that act, but the Republican-led Senate declined to remove him from office.

Trump's personal antagonism toward Zelenskyy, perhaps stemming from that episode, seems to have continued unabated...
-------|

To paraphrase Corleone, for Trump "It's not just 'business,' it's personal."
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#38 | Posted by brass30 at 2025-02-25 10:06 PM
So break this down for me. ... Ukraine is giving something, I assume they get what in return? And is Ukraine simply giving up the land lost in the war?

It's a nothingburger, PR opportunity for Trump. No one is getting anything of real value, it's MOU - Ukraine is not getting a defense guarantee and is only giving "access" to REE mining in the areas that are now occupied by Russia - just as agreements with financial firms like BlackRock and JPM and several E&P companies to develop gas fields and help post-war reconstruction, signed before and after Russian invasion.

Just another Trump's Apprentice s**tshow to stroke his ego, after his opportunistic extortion offer bombed ("Can't blame a guy for trying, right?") He will sell it as a "great win and looking after the American people."

Putin is selling Trump the same "access" to the same REEs in "new territories":