HN Reader

I have very little understanding of geopolitics or economics, so these tariffs don't make sense to me, and they don't seem to make sense to most people.

What’s the best steelman argument for them?

I’ve read a bit of Peter Navarro and others who support this line of thinking, but I’m trying to understand: is there a coherent endgame here that benefits the country long-term, or is this just short-term political theater dressed up as strategy?

What would the best possible version of this policy look like if it were smart?

Who would have thought ...

Can someone explain how tariffs aren’t both a tax and inflation, all rolled in to one? These are two of the most toxic words in politics and yet those most allergic to them are relatively quiet.

Hoping the VC bros are enjoying what they sowed.

IPOs already getting pulled, M&A market dead, market selloff, inflation persisting (soon to rise), probable max tax brackets to rise, etc.

Wikipedia has a list for this, point-wise today was #3 pushing yesterday down to #6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_...

I'm willing to believe this administration is acting in good faith, but two things seem to contradict that, although maybe I'm wrong:

1. Why didn't they include services exported by the US in their 'tariff chart' ? The EU for example, imports a lot more US (tech amongst others) services than they export to the US. It seems disingenous

2. Why couldn't this tariff strategy be implemented in a more calculated, predictable, slow way to give everyone time to adjust, at home and abroad. What's to gain from doing it this way over the one I mentioned ?

Be gready when others are fearful, glad to see everyone on this thread is the greatest hedge fund manager of all time selling and shorting, happy days

What's especially interesting is that the market already had tariffs priced in, yet what Trump announced was SO bad that the markets have dropped another 10%...

My European friends and family are amused... China is going to take the US' place in the world economy, Europe will become more self-sufficient and innovative, the US turning mercantilist will simply reduce their influence in the global marketplace... There's not much the world truly NEEDS from the US... Stuff like semiconductors were outsourced long ago, ASML and TSMC are the most important companies in that equation, neither are American.

Stocks have now declined to where they were about a year ago. The Shiller ratio is at 31.3.

Stocks have done very well and have been at historically high prices. There is still much room to fall.

By the way, in US do federal and local governments give a preference to locally manufactured products in government purchases?

Something like 60% of consumer spending is by the top 5% of income earners.

This is actually a tax on the rich. And they won't care about higher prices.

First of all, I don’t like Trump. I’ve voted blue all my life. Having said that, Trump is the only one willing to play ball with the Chinese. And the US national debt is not sustainable at this level. Something has to break in order to bring down servicing costs. I am not saying this is the right way to do all this. Far from it. But we do have a huge debt problem in this country and Chinese corps do not play by the rules (ie IP is nonexistent).

This could go wrong in so many ways and eventually undermine US strength while boosting Chinese global influence even further.

Incompetence has a price

I didn't understand put options until this month. Today I bought puts w/ 1 or 2-week expirations on virtually all of the top 20 companies (by size) that were at their 52-week high. Didn't matter that I never had heard of some of them (AWK is a water company?), made gains on everything. My only mistake was not betting against Phillip Morris, thinking that people will probably want to vape/smoke even more during this crisis, but nope, they fell 7% too.

Obviously it can't be that easy, but seems like the market still thinks Trump might just do a complete 180? I guess he's done so multiple times the last two months, but those threats/alarms seem like dry runs from which he's crafted his current policy.

Wow. Who would have thought that international trade policy written in crayon could go this wrong. Shocked.

He had a choice of hard landing vs soft landing. He chose hard landing — looking at history, large scale war follows failed economic war and alliances are arming up in anticipation. I hope Hegseth is ready.

The reason it is not a real market crash yet is the uncertainties around those tariffs, as they seem too absurd to be kept as announced.

And I believe this is a correct analysis, but I also think that Trump is over playing his hand and miscalculating the reactions of the world at large.

We are going to see a lot more chaos and weird moves during the coming weeks, but I am not optimist about the final outcome.

Trump and the Republican Party have forcibly assumed control of the federal government, dismantled it, voided every function of the Constitution and replaced people critical to the functioning of global affairs with morons and lunatics. The economic and social and international underpinnings of the planet have been detonated on purpose so the remaining pieces can be reordered for their exclusive benefit.

This is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to see even more threads here trying to rationalize why this is all Good, Actually before a thread discussing the end of Pax Americana gets killfiled by an Altman acolyte.

Are these tariffs even popular in the US?

If I wanted to source semiconductors from the US to avoid tariffs, how would I go about doing that?

Don’t micron, intel, and GF have US fabs?

Related earlier:

Dow Slides Another 1k Points. Nasdaq on Pace to Enter Bear Market

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43582292

China retaliates with Tarries hmmm dont Family Dollar Dollar General dont they have a lot of Chinese stuff? Well guess who if frequenting those stores more and more As inflation hits harder, middle-class shoppers gravitate to dollar stores Dollar stores have traditionally served low-income and rural shoppers who have few options to stock up on what they need — but the pandemic is changing that. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/inflation-hit...

Say hypothetically the Tarrifs are all reversed on Monday, does the market go back to normal?