cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/19241243
Waving a big chart as a prop in the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump suggested his new tariff plan was simple: “Reciprocal – that means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that.”
Perhaps a bit too simple. The method used to calculate the most important numbers in international trade, politics and economics has left some of the world’s leading experts shocked.
For each country, the White House looked up its trade in goods deficit for 2024, then divided that by the total value of imports. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would, however, offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was even distilled into a formula.
This is a guy who has six business bankruptcies under his belt. What could he know about the economy? If he knew anything about the economy, those businesses would still be alive and thriving.
Keeping a business running takes sustained effort. This sack of shit is more in the strip out all the copper and turn a quick buck leaving wreckage in your wake type of business man.
With the “stripping all the copper” analogy you’re describing a strung out drug addict more than a businessman, though.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind you, just that you’re not making any supporting claim for him being a businessman.
I generally agree that he’s not a business man in the strictest sense. But he is undeniably “successful”. He’s lived the lavish lifestyle of his dreams, he’s never suffered any meaningful consequences, and he’s been elected president twice. Even if he is eaten alive by ants tomorrow, he’s already lived for 78 years, enjoying fame and attention, playboy interviews, committing crime with impunity, and seizing the nation itself to serve his pretty needs for vengeance. Hell, he has literally dodged a bullet. True justice is out of reach I’m afraid. It’s more like his measure of success is corrupted. Success to him is not synonymous with productivity. He is at his core, a rapist, getting what he wants is only technically the point. More important is taking it. Getting away with it. Stealing it. Breaking something. Exerting his will. That’s what he’s about. His business is spiritual, not material. It’s coercion, and force. And in this field, he is quite “successful” indeed.
I mean I think I read one was bought out in the bankruptcy and is doing alright under new management. Maybe we should find the guy who bought it
well, tbf for no reason at all, some of those bankruptcies were just to stick the russian mob money laundering operation under the rug and the losses to the shareholders.
So it wasn’t just incompetence, it was also malevolence and moral bankruptcy.
So it wasn’t just incompetence, it was also malevolence and moral bankruptcy.
Also known as the GOP Trifecta.
“hurr durr we need someone to run the country like a business!”
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
It is kind of seeming like this. Anyone who has a ton of cash on hand can get amazing deals on assets. Trump has said as much.
They are also designed to give Trump leverage over companies and countries.
Kind of like punching your neighbor in the face, shooting yourself in the foot, then begging your neighbor for help.
This is nonsense that gets spread way too often. The wealthy benefited from Covid, but they did not benefit from the Great Depression. Billionaires are shortsighted hoarders who can’t help but screw themselves over in their race to the
topend. They really are so fucking stupid and greedy that they will crash the economy by accident, AGAIN.
The economists are only “stunned” because they’re used to dealing with logic, reason, and numbers that make sense. You have to throw those things out the window when dealing with Mango Mussolini, folks!
Republicans have been confidently and fully wrong about economics for like a hundred years now dude, a republican making up economic bullshit that will hurt the American people should not be a surprise.
A brain dead Orange Turd running our country. What could go wrong.
Uh excuse me, where is your ridiculously oversized truck and bedsheet-sized flags?
Whoever did those calculations (and it wasn’t Trump, since he’s innumerate as well as illiterate) based these crude calculations on the assumption that the US economy should have a pairwise zero current-account balance with every country in the world. That’s beyond imbecilic.
+10%
Unless you are Russia…
54d chess you fools
Trump probably couldn’t even figure out how to stalemate or win every tic-tac-toe game.
Someone made it in excel in 10 minutes.
at $87,000 per minute.
Excel at least uses some sort of organizational schema. Those charts are thrown together completely at random.
No, there’s a formula. It’s just a transparently stupid one based on fallacious zero-sun thinking.
Hey, he used the good crayons
The reason the numbers are idiotic is because they don’t need to make sense. There is no point to these tariffs other than to crash the US economy so that fat cat rich scum can buy everything and create corporate feudalism.
‘Willing sycophants’ came up with simplistic formula that has thrown global economy into disarray
Way to shoot us in the crotch republiQans and eligible non-voters! You suck!
B-but muh egg prices! Also, something something okay with the economy crashing if it owns the libs.
Chat, are we cooked? (Yes)
Mentally, this is where I am at: https://youtu.be/rN6fcu1qCcw
Merely watching that guy “dab” was worth it. And he did it three times!
Now this is epic
“[It is] quite an extraordinary calculation after months of work behind the scenes,” said Jim Reid, the global head of macro research at Deutsche Bank. “[It] didn’t add much confidence on there being an in-depth strategic implementation plan.”
lol. First of all Deutsche Bank, how are you still operating, and secondly it’s your fucking fault the demented rapist is even here (thanks to Justice Kennedy’s son). Thirdly, anyone who thinks a trump administration effort is going to have an “in-depth strategic plan” is smoking crack. (Those of you arguing ‘project 2025’ remember that came from outside the administration)
The only thing that surprised me about the idiotic numbers was that they weren’t overwritten by even dumber ones in sharpie.
