We put tariffs on some islands that are uninhabited (Heard and McDonald islands), as well as an island that's mostly inhabited by US military and contractors (BIOT). Feeling like they didn't do...
We put tariffs on some islands that are uninhabited (Heard and McDonald islands), as well as an island that's mostly inhabited by US military and contractors (BIOT).
Don't worry though, the greatest unjust trade relation the US has with any other country has now been tackled. As South Sudan now has been imposed a whopping 10% tariff. ...while that is somewhat...
Don't worry though, the greatest unjust trade relation the US has with any other country has now been tackled. As South Sudan now has been imposed a whopping 10% tariff.
...while that is somewhat funny, it's more depressing more than anything how dumb this is. It does nothing except harm all countries involved. Developed countries and especially the EU will be able to punch back, but developing countries especially will be hit hard. After USAID was already purged.
I think Trump alone shows that the world economy shouldn't revolve around one country.
I hope that everyone is clear that he can't just "do" this. It requires that congress allows it. Specifically, the republicans in congress. So they could put an end to this all quickly. He would...
I hope that everyone is clear that he can't just "do" this. It requires that congress allows it. Specifically, the republicans in congress. So they could put an end to this all quickly. He would veto, then they would need 2/3 vote to end it again. And that would be it. Also, they could impeach him and remove him from office if they chose to.
It's too bad that political parties have disabled the checks and balances that we are taught about in school.
Senate passes measure to revoke new Canada tariffs as four Republicans break with Trump Sens. Susan Collins of Maine; Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska Two...
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine; Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
Two moderates, a libertarian and the former head of the party in the Senate.
For clarity they voted to end the "emergency" at the Canadian border but it would need passed by the House and signed.... I think? This is where I lose the twists of how things should work vs what they say vs what they're actually doing.
I would be surprised if they even hold a vote. If they do and it passes, won't Trump just veto it? No way congress gets 75% to override the veto. The insane gymnastics that are used to justify the...
I would be surprised if they even hold a vote. If they do and it passes, won't Trump just veto it? No way congress gets 75% to override the veto.
The insane gymnastics that are used to justify the "border crises" as an actual emergency for this is just... I don't even have the words to describe it.
It was at least some movement from the Republican Senators. Idk if McConnell is thinking about legacy or just saying "fuck you" to Trump but maybe Collins and Murkowski just needed an excuse .....
It was at least some movement from the Republican Senators. Idk if McConnell is thinking about legacy or just saying "fuck you" to Trump but maybe Collins and Murkowski just needed an excuse
.. again? Idk.
(No idols, just acknowledgement that they moved, a centimeter. )
I doubt it. Voting no when you know it won’t do shit is a common political tactic. They can go on record saying they tried, the tariffs still go through. Oddly maybe Mitch actually gives a damn...
I doubt it.
Voting no when you know it won’t do shit is a common political tactic. They can go on record saying they tried, the tariffs still go through.
Oddly maybe Mitch actually gives a damn because he’s been speaking about what a mess trump is, but who fucking cares given how instrumental he is to this entire mess.
My read on it was that the Republicans who broke rank have no danger of being primaried, so they could afford to do so. McConnell is retiring, Collins and Murkowski are generally very popular for...
My read on it was that the Republicans who broke rank have no danger of being primaried, so they could afford to do so. McConnell is retiring, Collins and Murkowski are generally very popular for their states as is, and Rand Paul has always been kind of a unique one off case in his own right.
If it came down to a veto, I don't see much else moving on the Republican side. Congress has basically abdicated their responsibilities in favor of holding onto their own seats.
The question is whether they're going to hold their seats if they continue to back Trump. This set of special elections that just happened already showed a 10 point swing away from Trump. If he...
The question is whether they're going to hold their seats if they continue to back Trump. This set of special elections that just happened already showed a 10 point swing away from Trump. If he keeps burning everything down and the Republicans in Congress keep supporting that, they will have to worry about keeping their seats.
In general, even when I try to have a joke in my comment, I try to contribute to an actual discussion on Tildes. This has led to me not sending something a few times, because well, that is the...
In general, even when I try to have a joke in my comment, I try to contribute to an actual discussion on Tildes. This has led to me not sending something a few times, because well, that is the culture we try to foster on Tildes.
But how is anyone supposed to response to this in a way that we can sensibly talk about this? The President of the USA has actually imposed an increase in tariffs on an island on which penguins lives, but not humans. I know the negative effects of social media, Russian interference, economic grievances have caused people to vote irrationally. That, I can understand - we are humans. And dumb shit happening in history is nothing new.
But this man, this. This isn't horrifyingly lack of empathy, or a poorly executed April's fool joke. This is not a simple slip-up either, although I've seen people suggest the tariffs may be based on some crappy LLM prompts. This is an actual action by the POTUS, imposed on an island habituated by penguins. How can anyone make sense of this? This has gone beyond /r/nottheonion and straight into the realm beyond post-facts politics into some kind of fantasy-era politics where feelings matter more than physical reality.
Like, where do we go from here? How do we even begin to address this? This is like some stupid pub joke turning into actual politics and... man. I just hope we can bring facts into the conversation again.
Probably the worst/most Orwellian aspect of all of this are Trump's officials going around saying what a genius Trump is, how it's going to make America so rich, and how Americans are supportive....
How can anyone make sense of this?
Probably the worst/most Orwellian aspect of all of this are Trump's officials going around saying what a genius Trump is, how it's going to make America so rich, and how Americans are supportive.
That's right: Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, said this morning on CBS News that Americans are behind Trump.
I don't know about you, but I've not seen a single person outside of this administration say this is a good idea or even well-executed.
The markets are crashing, the spin is useless. They really believe we have no ability to think on our own.
I am from the Netherlands, so obviously not only is my view very different, but the Americans I interact with will tend to come from a certain patch of people - that tended to not like Trump at...
I don't know about you, but I've not seen a single person outside of this administration say this is a good idea or even well-executed.
I am from the Netherlands, so obviously not only is my view very different, but the Americans I interact with will tend to come from a certain patch of people - that tended to not like Trump at all.
But personally the longer this craziness goes on the more I wonder whether we'll see French revolution-style chaos headed towards the oligarchs and upper echelons of the political class. And to be very clear here, I do not approve of that in the slightest, it just seems to become more and more of an inevitability.
Boycotts by your closer partners, tariffs crunching supply chains, hurting the investors when your power comes from the wealthiest among you, crushing soft power... a full blown depression may not be certain, but a recession sure seems like a fact by this point.
I've seen a few, but they're all ideologically-committed guys I've seen online. I think one of the problems they're going to have with this trade war is that, while they do appear to have a plan...
I don't know about you, but I've not seen a single person outside of this administration say this is a good idea or even well-executed.
I've seen a few, but they're all ideologically-committed guys I've seen online.
I think one of the problems they're going to have with this trade war is that, while they do appear to have a plan (of sorts), that plan and the justification for it is kind of complicated. The Republican propaganda machine is superb at stoking negative emotions (fear, hatred, anger, disgust, contempt) towards ideological opponents, and it's also good at disseminating simple thought-terminating cliches. It's not so great at disseminating long-term goals based on multi-step policies.
"Short-term pain for long-term gain" is, I guess, a workable slogan, though I think they've heretofore done a pretty bad job of making that the official story. Trump's messaging around tariffs has been all over the place. But it looks they're trying to make this one stick now.
But will the American public really go for the "short-term pain" part? I want to say they won't. I want to say that Americans are too lazy and selfish and entitled to go for such a message.
But---and I can't be the only one thinking this---I have to admit that I kind of admire and envy the ambition I'm seeing from the Republicans this time. They're doing something that the Democrats have been terrified to do since, uh, Carter? LBJ?---a radical break with the status quo, risking instability and unpopularity in the short term for (as they see it) a vision of the world transformed for the better. God damn, why can't we get anyone willing to take risks like this?
It's a catchy headline, but that doesn't mean this is a joke. If we use Trumps idiotic math, Russia should have one of the highest tariffs around, of 41%. Trump clearly made zero other exceptions,...
It's a catchy headline, but that doesn't mean this is a joke.
If we use Trumps idiotic math, Russia should have one of the highest tariffs around, of 41%.
Trump clearly made zero other exceptions, even for other countries facing heavy sanctions.
...You know, journalists should just go all-in on the tariffs on the island of penguins. I'm serious. That's one of the easiest ways to show how absolutely absurd these tariffs are no matter what...
...You know, journalists should just go all-in on the tariffs on the island of penguins. I'm serious. That's one of the easiest ways to show how absolutely absurd these tariffs are no matter what economic knowledge you have. And I can't think of a good answer from the Trump admin to try to handwave the tariffs as good or logical.
"What are the exports from the penguins on Heard and McDonald?"
"Have you gotten any official response from the penguins about the tariffs?"
"Mister President, who is in charge with communicating with the penguins?"
Something is telling me (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true) that there's some misrepresentation or misappropriation of information in that tariff chart that isn't telling the full...
Something is telling me (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true) that there's some misrepresentation or misappropriation of information in that tariff chart that isn't telling the full story of what these countries are "charging" us... I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong, but that's just my gut feeling.
Honest to god, I'm surprised some of these countries were even significantly trading with us to begin with, let alone "charging" tariffs at all.
This post suggests it was calculated by taking the trade deficit the country has with us and dividing that by the country's exports to us. I haven't done the math personally to verify that for...
Exemplary
This post suggests it was calculated by taking the trade deficit the country has with us and dividing that by the country's exports to us. I haven't done the math personally to verify that for each tariff, but it seems to work out in the example given.
Thanks for the post! Reading through it... yes, it looks like I was, at the very least, partially correct. Not particularly thrilled about that, but at least I know the context behind it. Clearly,...
Thanks for the post! Reading through it... yes, it looks like I was, at the very least, partially correct. Not particularly thrilled about that, but at least I know the context behind it. Clearly, barely any thought was actually put into these tariffs, but what part of this administration really has any thought behind it, anyway?
I can't Twitter, but not only does that math line up, Grok gave the exact same information Bsky link Idk how they think we should have no difference in trade with Lesotho of all places.
I can't Twitter, but not only does that math line up, Grok gave the exact same information
Yes, I was just about to follow up that based on this post it appears that multiple different LLMs all provide the same formula when asked how to calculate tariffs. Edit: Oh, this is the same post...
Yes, I was just about to follow up that based on this post it appears that multiple different LLMs all provide the same formula when asked how to calculate tariffs.
Edit: Oh, this is the same post in your screenshot, ahah. Well, yes, seems we can conclude they did indeed use an LLM to calculate the tariffs to be imposed. I have no commentary to add because it speaks for itself...
Very fair. I still have my Twitter account, if only so I can get the menswear guy's advice on what to buy. Not that I'll be buying much of anything with these tariffs...
Very fair. I still have my Twitter account, if only so I can get the menswear guy's advice on what to buy. Not that I'll be buying much of anything with these tariffs...
Yeah, but he doesn't use the platform as much as he uses Twitter. He posts like twice a week on Bluesky but multiple times a day on Twitter, and he's more responsive to questions there. I also...
Yeah, but he doesn't use the platform as much as he uses Twitter. He posts like twice a week on Bluesky but multiple times a day on Twitter, and he's more responsive to questions there. I also don't really want to create a Bluesky account because then I know I'll just be on both Twitter and Bluesky, which will just waste more of my time, though one of the upsides of Bluesky is that, like old Twitter, I don't need an account to see people's tweets (skeets).
You don’t need to double check it. Here is the administrations justification: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations It is trade deficit / trade imports…except two extra...
We put tariffs on some islands that are uninhabited (Heard and McDonald islands), as well as an island that's mostly inhabited by US military and contractors (BIOT).
Feeling like they didn't do their research.
It's only habitation is from the joint owned US and UK base.
And they targeted Svalbard.
It's so.... Dumb.
Don't worry though, the greatest unjust trade relation the US has with any other country has now been tackled. As South Sudan now has been imposed a whopping 10% tariff.
...while that is somewhat funny, it's more depressing more than anything how dumb this is. It does nothing except harm all countries involved. Developed countries and especially the EU will be able to punch back, but developing countries especially will be hit hard. After USAID was already purged.
I think Trump alone shows that the world economy shouldn't revolve around one country.
At this point if you told me they imposed sanctions on agrabah, the fictional land Aladdin takes place in, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
I did see someone say that he put 50% tariffs on Wakanda.... I'd believe it.
But they know who Russia is. Out of 160 countries, they aren’t one.
Isn't Russia still under sanctions? Or has he already gotten rid of those?
They're vibe governing.
Some vibe...
I hope that everyone is clear that he can't just "do" this. It requires that congress allows it. Specifically, the republicans in congress. So they could put an end to this all quickly. He would veto, then they would need 2/3 vote to end it again. And that would be it. Also, they could impeach him and remove him from office if they chose to.
It's too bad that political parties have disabled the checks and balances that we are taught about in school.
Senate passes measure to revoke new Canada tariffs as four Republicans break with Trump
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine; Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
Two moderates, a libertarian and the former head of the party in the Senate.
For clarity they voted to end the "emergency" at the Canadian border but it would need passed by the House and signed.... I think? This is where I lose the twists of how things should work vs what they say vs what they're actually doing.
Yes, the Senate's vote would need to pass the house as well, and Mike Johnson will probably just not bring it for a vote.
I would be surprised if they even hold a vote. If they do and it passes, won't Trump just veto it? No way congress gets 75% to override the veto.
The insane gymnastics that are used to justify the "border crises" as an actual emergency for this is just... I don't even have the words to describe it.
It was at least some movement from the Republican Senators. Idk if McConnell is thinking about legacy or just saying "fuck you" to Trump but maybe Collins and Murkowski just needed an excuse
.. again? Idk.
(No idols, just acknowledgement that they moved, a centimeter. )
I doubt it.
Voting no when you know it won’t do shit is a common political tactic. They can go on record saying they tried, the tariffs still go through.
Oddly maybe Mitch actually gives a damn because he’s been speaking about what a mess trump is, but who fucking cares given how instrumental he is to this entire mess.
We've always known he gives a shit. It's just that he often gives more of a shit about the Party.
My read on it was that the Republicans who broke rank have no danger of being primaried, so they could afford to do so. McConnell is retiring, Collins and Murkowski are generally very popular for their states as is, and Rand Paul has always been kind of a unique one off case in his own right.
If it came down to a veto, I don't see much else moving on the Republican side. Congress has basically abdicated their responsibilities in favor of holding onto their own seats.
The question is whether they're going to hold their seats if they continue to back Trump. This set of special elections that just happened already showed a 10 point swing away from Trump. If he keeps burning everything down and the Republicans in Congress keep supporting that, they will have to worry about keeping their seats.
Trump Launches Trade War With Penguins, Not Putin (Rolling Stone)
In general, even when I try to have a joke in my comment, I try to contribute to an actual discussion on Tildes. This has led to me not sending something a few times, because well, that is the culture we try to foster on Tildes.
But how is anyone supposed to response to this in a way that we can sensibly talk about this? The President of the USA has actually imposed an increase in tariffs on an island on which penguins lives, but not humans. I know the negative effects of social media, Russian interference, economic grievances have caused people to vote irrationally. That, I can understand - we are humans. And dumb shit happening in history is nothing new.
But this man, this. This isn't horrifyingly lack of empathy, or a poorly executed April's fool joke. This is not a simple slip-up either, although I've seen people suggest the tariffs may be based on some crappy LLM prompts. This is an actual action by the POTUS, imposed on an island habituated by penguins. How can anyone make sense of this? This has gone beyond /r/nottheonion and straight into the realm beyond post-facts politics into some kind of fantasy-era politics where feelings matter more than physical reality.
Like, where do we go from here? How do we even begin to address this? This is like some stupid pub joke turning into actual politics and... man. I just hope we can bring facts into the conversation again.
Probably the worst/most Orwellian aspect of all of this are Trump's officials going around saying what a genius Trump is, how it's going to make America so rich, and how Americans are supportive.
That's right: Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, said this morning on CBS News that Americans are behind Trump.
I don't know about you, but I've not seen a single person outside of this administration say this is a good idea or even well-executed.
The markets are crashing, the spin is useless. They really believe we have no ability to think on our own.
I am from the Netherlands, so obviously not only is my view very different, but the Americans I interact with will tend to come from a certain patch of people - that tended to not like Trump at all.
But personally the longer this craziness goes on the more I wonder whether we'll see French revolution-style chaos headed towards the oligarchs and upper echelons of the political class. And to be very clear here, I do not approve of that in the slightest, it just seems to become more and more of an inevitability.
Boycotts by your closer partners, tariffs crunching supply chains, hurting the investors when your power comes from the wealthiest among you, crushing soft power... a full blown depression may not be certain, but a recession sure seems like a fact by this point.
I've seen a few, but they're all ideologically-committed guys I've seen online.
I think one of the problems they're going to have with this trade war is that, while they do appear to have a plan (of sorts), that plan and the justification for it is kind of complicated. The Republican propaganda machine is superb at stoking negative emotions (fear, hatred, anger, disgust, contempt) towards ideological opponents, and it's also good at disseminating simple thought-terminating cliches. It's not so great at disseminating long-term goals based on multi-step policies.
"Short-term pain for long-term gain" is, I guess, a workable slogan, though I think they've heretofore done a pretty bad job of making that the official story. Trump's messaging around tariffs has been all over the place. But it looks they're trying to make this one stick now.
But will the American public really go for the "short-term pain" part? I want to say they won't. I want to say that Americans are too lazy and selfish and entitled to go for such a message.
But---and I can't be the only one thinking this---I have to admit that I kind of admire and envy the ambition I'm seeing from the Republicans this time. They're doing something that the Democrats have been terrified to do since, uh, Carter? LBJ?---a radical break with the status quo, risking instability and unpopularity in the short term for (as they see it) a vision of the world transformed for the better. God damn, why can't we get anyone willing to take risks like this?
It's a catchy headline, but that doesn't mean this is a joke.
If we use Trumps idiotic math, Russia should have one of the highest tariffs around, of 41%.
Trump clearly made zero other exceptions, even for other countries facing heavy sanctions.
Examples exist in history. Sadly.
...You know, journalists should just go all-in on the tariffs on the island of penguins. I'm serious. That's one of the easiest ways to show how absolutely absurd these tariffs are no matter what economic knowledge you have. And I can't think of a good answer from the Trump admin to try to handwave the tariffs as good or logical.
"What are the exports from the penguins on Heard and McDonald?"
"Have you gotten any official response from the penguins about the tariffs?"
"Mister President, who is in charge with communicating with the penguins?"
The penguins said they found the whole thing fishy but insisted tariffs would never fly, plan to ice the US out of future trade.
The list of countries not tarriffed
Something is telling me (and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true) that there's some misrepresentation or misappropriation of information in that tariff chart that isn't telling the full story of what these countries are "charging" us... I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong, but that's just my gut feeling.
Honest to god, I'm surprised some of these countries were even significantly trading with us to begin with, let alone "charging" tariffs at all.
This post suggests it was calculated by taking the trade deficit the country has with us and dividing that by the country's exports to us. I haven't done the math personally to verify that for each tariff, but it seems to work out in the example given.
Thanks for the post! Reading through it... yes, it looks like I was, at the very least, partially correct. Not particularly thrilled about that, but at least I know the context behind it. Clearly, barely any thought was actually put into these tariffs, but what part of this administration really has any thought behind it, anyway?
I can't Twitter, but not only does that math line up, Grok gave the exact same information
Bsky link
Idk how they think we should have no difference in trade with Lesotho of all places.
Yes, I was just about to follow up that based on this post it appears that multiple different LLMs all provide the same formula when asked how to calculate tariffs.
Edit: Oh, this is the same post in your screenshot, ahah. Well, yes, seems we can conclude they did indeed use an LLM to calculate the tariffs to be imposed. I have no commentary to add because it speaks for itself...
Yeah I don't have a Twitter account and thus it's not useful to link to it anymore unfortunately.
I must again quote Benoit Blanc
Very fair. I still have my Twitter account, if only so I can get the menswear guy's advice on what to buy. Not that I'll be buying much of anything with these tariffs...
He's on bluesky now!
Join the... less dark side?
Yeah, but he doesn't use the platform as much as he uses Twitter. He posts like twice a week on Bluesky but multiple times a day on Twitter, and he's more responsive to questions there. I also don't really want to create a Bluesky account because then I know I'll just be on both Twitter and Bluesky, which will just waste more of my time, though one of the upsides of Bluesky is that, like old Twitter, I don't need an account to see people's tweets (skeets).
True, and also, way fewer Nazis.
And better filtering even if there were more Nazis, what with the ease of borrowing someone’s pre-vetted lists for following and blocking
I also like this reply, indicating that the locations appear to have been chosen by top-level internet domain(Bsky) rather than by, you know, country.
Not surprised in the least since I saw the islands that were getting tariffed.
It might be the ISO-3166 list, which is what gTLDs are based on.
You don’t need to double check it. Here is the administrations justification: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
It is trade deficit / trade imports…except two extra constants in the divisor.
Those two constants? 0.25 * 4
So yeah, it’s just deficit / imports
I think that came out after the initial announcement, but yeah they have confirmed it.
Finally, official US government recognition of Taiwanese nationhood