Posted on 04/04/2025 7:11:15 AM PDT by lasereye
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cautioned last month that Americans will likely experience "a detox period" after President Donald Trump implements his wide-ranging tariffs.
What are we detoxing from, exactly?
From an abundance of affordable goods and the world's highest living standards? From consistent economic growth? From leading the world in nearly every possible innovation and quantifiable economic measurement? From being an evolving manufacturing powerhouse? From enjoying an unprecedented per capita GDP or the low unemployment rates?
The Trump administration suffers from Munchausen syndrome by tariff, prescribing toxic cures for mythical ailments to gain attention.
That's something to remember as Trump celebrates "Liberation Day" this week, promising to free us from the tyranny of affordable car parts, oil, produce, computers, phones and furniture, among thousands of other products.
Biden-era Democrats believed "transitory" inflation was worth suffering through in order to "remake" the economy. Trump officials are now making the same terrible bet on transitory economic pain.
And it's impossible for a voter to keep up with the MAGA reasoning for tariffs. One day, trade wars are merely a means of finding fairness. The next day, tariffs are going to replace the income tax and build a complete "self-sufficiency" utopia where people will once again be paid big bucks for assembling widgets in factories.
According to protectionists like Vice President JD Vance, the public is the victim of stagnant wages and a lack of good jobs due to "deindustrialization." Not only is manufacturing output at historic highs right now, but real annual family income has spiked $28,000 since NAFTA was enacted, while overall wealth rose close to 500%, outpacing inflation five times over that time.
The U.S. per capita income over the past 10 years is unrivaled. The middle class has only shrunk because of the growth of the upper middle class.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
That said, like many people, Harsanyi misses one very big thing: This is a tactic to force other countries to reduce their tariffs. I don't know how he could miss that. In fact, some countries, like Vietnam, are already signaling that they are going to reduce their tariffs.
IMO he makes one good point: The Trump administration has not clearly articulated what exactly the tariffs are supposed to be solving.
What's the rebuttal to his argument that the numbers show that manufacturing and the American standard of living generally are doing fine?
Stock market's tanking again today.
Do Communists have a Plan B after Trump succeeds?
Because predatory practices by foreign countries can wipe out farmers as well.
What exactly about reciprocal tariffs is so hard to understand?
Those countries are charging us tariffs on our food exports, example Canada.
SO yes food too. thus reciprocal! Pretty easy, drop your tariffs and we drop ours, viola, actual free trade!
>IMO he makes one good point: The Trump administration has not clearly articulated what exactly the tariffs are supposed to be solving.
Multipurpose:
1. Return manufacturing and consumption of American goods
2. Put stock moneys into treasuries and lower interest
3. Save home construction and remodeling with 2.
4. Increase employment
5. Reduce dependence on foreign goods and tech
There’s going to be a Reagan-esque 1982-type recession that will invert by mid-2026, I believe. The market has to be reformatted.
Thank you. Some people act as if the decades of other countries raping USA had No effect on any companies/ workers here
We’ve been in a recession for the past four years.
The U.S. has trade deficits with many countries simply because they produce a lot of things we don't have ourselves (like coffee, tropical fruits and bauxite ore, for example) and can't afford to buy the things we produce (Boeing passenger jets, John Deer harvesters, and Ford or Toyota cars).
Trump need to get out it front of this better by doing televise weekly addresses. Tell the people there wI’ll be short term pain or long term gain. Stay the course Boss.
Tariffs, which are on imported goods, should not cause a recession, in fact they should cause an uptick in domestic manufacturing to replace any necessities that are imported, which are really few.
Luxury items like wine, cheeses and other foodstuffs of course will be higher, but manufactured items can be replaced by domestic manufacturers.
There would be a temporary supply chain disruptions as the market adjusts to the new order, but that shouldn’t take long.
I would bet that the auto parts supply chains are being re-routed domestically even as we speak.....................
Plan B, buy the countries holding out as they will suffer more than we will.
We want our food to be grown and processed here in the USA.
Let me know where I can find some land suitable for a coffee plantation here in the U.S.
That's pretty vague. What are some examples of that? People are going to pay more for groceries. That was one of the things that got people mad at Biden.
3rd paragraph describes all of the phony bologna plastic banana good time rock n roll Horseshiite of the Globalists.
Pick each piece.
All Globalist talking points that half the country can easily dispute.
This is getting ridiculous. All this desperation to create a narrative that only the US will lose by this. Every other country will be just great. Makes no sense.
Think of it this way...
A company’s (any given country) largest customer (US) decides to take its business elsewhere. Who do you think suffers the most? Which one needs to make adjustments to try to get the customer back?
Re the article’s celebration of American wealth —
IT’S BORROWED MONEY.
Everyone has seen the neighbor who drives the ultra expensive car(s) and it happens because it is funded with debt beyond their capacity to service.
I view all this as “tariffs can succeed only if they fail.”
The point. . . well no, a point, of tariffs is to generate government revenue to address that $37Trillion funding the expensive car. This only is generated if people continue to buy products with the tariff price jump on them. But another point of tariffs is to get people NOT to buy that product because of the price and have that product’s factory move to the US.
So . . . if the tariff succeeds and people don’t buy the product, then there is no revenue generated to address the mega debt. If the tariff fails and people do buy the high priced item regardless of that price, then the debt is attacked.
Trump has made it perfectly clear. Do you even realize how close to total financial collapse we are after the 4 horrid years of RATs in rule?
Do you know they were purposely trying for a collapse in order to rebuild the commie way? Remember the RAT/WEF slogan
“Build Back Better”? Biden’s BS slogan.
Trump is resetting the economy dumping the globalist way and you should be patient because collapse was coming quickly if a democrat had won in 2024.
People complained when Reagan didn’t fix it overnight, but he did bring a recovery and it took some time to work.
” From consistent economic growth? “
Most of our growth has been through unsustainable government spedning - if that keeps going, we collapse.
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