Kansas Crimson

defixione wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 3:44 pm And now, drum roll, Canada and Mexico say that if they are tariffed, they will comparably tariff the US on exported goods. 25% overnight!

defixione wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 3:44 pm And now, drum roll, Canada and Mexico say that if they are tariffed, they will comparably tariff the US on exported goods. 25% overnight! This is going a whole lot better than the inflation under Harrison Biden.

Here is my concern about Trump’s announcement that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada starting on January 20:

I’m concerned that he won’t actually do it.

Is it possible that Trump will actually slap that 25 percent number on all goods entering the country from Mexico and Canada until they stop all undocumented migrants from crossing the U.S. border and the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States drops to zero?

Uh, sure. That is one possible outcome.

And if that happens, then prices of consumer goods in the United States will jump and we’ll slingshot into a recession.

Let me tell you a story about a more likely outcome:

On January 20, Trump will issue an EO with his 25 percent tariffs. The trigger date for implementation will be some point in the medium-future. Fox will talk about this great achievement nonstop. The mainstream media will talk about how potentially destabilizing the tariffs are.

And then at some point—maybe before the tariffs kick in, or maybe shortly afterwards—Trump will declare victory. Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

We’ve seen this story before, over and over.

Remember Trump’s “Muslim ban”? He signed a couple of executive orders, the courts halted them. Lawyers did a lot of pro bono work. After a few weeks everything was business as usual.

Remember when Trump tore up NAFTA? Except that he never did. He simply negotiated a “successor” agreement that was little more than new paint on the same vehicle.

Remember when Trump built the wall that Mexico paid for? Trump replaced about 400 miles of existing barriers and built 52 miles of new fencing—52 miles! The U.S. government paid for all of this.

This is Trump’s modus operandi.

He promises his base crazy shit. He then announces that he’s about to do the crazy shit. The media freaks out at the prospect of said crazy shit. Trump then wriggles out of doing the crazy shit and—this is the key part—his voters give him credit for the crazy shit anyway.

That’s Trump’s secret sauce: The fact that his voters are never let down. No matter how little he actually does for them, no matter how many promises he breaks or fails to deliver, then never feel betrayed by him.

How do we break this cycle? We need a paradigm shift in how we approach Trump:

Stop freaking out about things Trump says he’s going to do. And start demanding that he actually go through with them.

If you abstract Trump’s approach to governing it looks something like this:

* Trump promises to do something that makes his base voters happy even though doing that thing would negatively impact their lives.

* Some other institution—Democrats, normie Republicans, the courts—stops Trump from implementing the destructive action.

* Trump takes credit for doing the crazy thing (even though it never actually happened) and also takes credit for the fact that none of the negative impacts materialize.

* Then he demagogues the responsible institutions that stopped him.

I cannot emphasize this enough: We should stop participating in this cycle.

Trump says he’s going to put a 25 percent tariff on everything Mexico and Canada?

* Cool idea, bro. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Trump says he’s going to use the military to deport millions of immigrants?

* Sure, Jan.

Trump is going to end U.S. support for Ukraine?

* Okay. Show me the money.

When we freak out prospectively about things Trump says he’s going to do, we help him in two ways.

(1) We help him sell the idea that he’s actually doing it, thus building his credibility with his voters.

(2) We help restrain him from actually doing the thing, thus insulating him from the consequences of his proposals.

In short: Let people touch the stove.

Caveat: There is one area in which Trump actually means all of the crazy shit he says: The pursuit of power.

Trump was never going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. But he was deadly serious about blackmailing the president of Ukraine in order to beat Joe Biden. He fired the director of the FBI to keep investigations away from his administration. He sent his attorney general out to discredit the Mueller report. He actually did attempt a coup.

The principle here is obvious: The only person Trump is willing to spend political capital on is himself.

Which is why the one area in which I absolutely take Trump both seriously and literally is in his approach to amalgamating personal power in an authoritarian manner. So I intend to take his statements on such subjects—and here I include everything from Schedule F to the Twenty-second Amendment—at face value.

But your mileage may vary. Maybe you think this approach is wrongheaded, or counterproductive. Of maybe you have a better heuristic for the coming age.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:26 pm Maybe MICH is half-right.

A New Approach to Covering Trump

Trump made the media his unwitting partner. It’s time to stop that nonsense.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-new-appr ... ring-trump

Here is my concern about Trump’s announcement that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada starting on January 20:

I’m concerned that he won’t actually do it.

Is it possible that Trump will actually slap that 25 percent number on all goods entering the country from Mexico and Canada until they stop all undocumented migrants from crossing the U.S. border and the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States drops to zero?

Uh, sure. That is one possible outcome.

And if that happens, then prices of consumer goods in the United States will jump and we’ll slingshot into a recession.

Let me tell you a story about a more likely outcome:

On January 20, Trump will issue an EO with his 25 percent tariffs. The trigger date for implementation will be some point in the medium-future. Fox will talk about this great achievement nonstop. The mainstream media will talk about how potentially destabilizing the tariffs are.

And then at some point—maybe before the tariffs kick in, or maybe shortly afterwards—Trump will declare victory. Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

We’ve seen this story before, over and over.

Remember Trump’s “Muslim ban”? He signed a couple of executive orders, the courts halted them. Lawyers did a lot of pro bono work. After a few weeks everything was business as usual.

Remember when Trump tore up NAFTA? Except that he never did. He simply negotiated a “successor” agreement that was little more than new paint on the same vehicle.

Remember when Trump built the wall that Mexico paid for? Trump replaced about 400 miles of existing barriers and built 52 miles of new fencing—52 miles! The U.S. government paid for all of this.

This is Trump’s modus operandi.

He promises his base crazy shit. He then announces that he’s about to do the crazy shit. The media freaks out at the prospect of said crazy shit. Trump then wriggles out of doing the crazy shit and—this is the key part—his voters give him credit for the crazy shit anyway.

That’s Trump’s secret sauce: The fact that his voters are never let down. No matter how little he actually does for them, no matter how many promises he breaks or fails to deliver, then never feel betrayed by him.

How do we break this cycle? We need a paradigm shift in how we approach Trump:

Stop freaking out about things Trump says he’s going to do. And start demanding that he actually go through with them.

If you abstract Trump’s approach to governing it looks something like this:

* Trump promises to do something that makes his base voters happy even though doing that thing would negatively impact their lives.

* Some other institution—Democrats, normie Republicans, the courts—stops Trump from implementing the destructive action.

* Trump takes credit for doing the crazy thing (even though it never actually happened) and also takes credit for the fact that none of the negative impacts materialize.

* Then he demagogues the responsible institutions that stopped him.

I cannot emphasize this enough: We should stop participating in this cycle.

Trump says he’s going to put a 25 percent tariff on everything Mexico and Canada?

* Cool idea, bro. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Trump says he’s going to use the military to deport millions of immigrants?

* Sure, Jan.

Trump is going to end U.S. support for Ukraine?

* Okay. Show me the money.

When we freak out prospectively about things Trump says he’s going to do, we help him in two ways.

(1) We help him sell the idea that he’s actually doing it, thus building his credibility with his voters.

(2) We help restrain him from actually doing the thing, thus insulating him from the consequences of his proposals.

In short: Let people touch the stove.

Caveat: There is one area in which Trump actually means all of the crazy shit he says: The pursuit of power.

Trump was never going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. But he was deadly serious about blackmailing the president of Ukraine in order to beat Joe Biden. He fired the director of the FBI to keep investigations away from his administration. He sent his attorney general out to discredit the Mueller report. He actually did attempt a coup.

The principle here is obvious: The only person Trump is willing to spend political capital on is himself.

Which is why the one area in which I absolutely take Trump both seriously and literally is in his approach to amalgamating personal power in an authoritarian manner. So I intend to take his statements on such subjects—and here I include everything from Schedule F to the Twenty-second Amendment—at face value.

But your mileage may vary. Maybe you think this approach is wrongheaded, or counterproductive. Of maybe you have a better heuristic for the coming age.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 6:13 pm justine trudeau is a notorious toughie.

hope he doesn’t go hard on us with the maple syrup and blackberry taxes.

and canoes. canada is the #1 exporter of canoes.

Shirley wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:13 pm Speaking of "brilliant", I wonder if the Trump cult will enjoy paying more for gasoline?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump does not intend to spare crude oil from his planned 25% import tariffs on Canada and Mexico, sources told Reuters on Tuesday, as the oil industry warned the policy could hurt consumers, industry and national security.

Canada and Mexico are the top sources of U.S. crude oil imports, together accounting for around a quarter of the oil U.S. refiners process into fuels like gasoline and heating oil, according to the U.S. Department of Energy...

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 6:06 pm

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:26 pm Maybe MICH is half-right.

A New Approach to Covering Trump

Trump made the media his unwitting partner. It’s time to stop that nonsense.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-new-appr ... ring-trump

Here is my concern about Trump’s announcement that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada starting on January 20:

I’m concerned that he won’t actually do it.

Is it possible that Trump will actually slap that 25 percent number on all goods entering the country from Mexico and Canada until they stop all undocumented migrants from crossing the U.S. border and the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States drops to zero?

Uh, sure. That is one possible outcome.

And if that happens, then prices of consumer goods in the United States will jump and we’ll slingshot into a recession.

Let me tell you a story about a more likely outcome:

On January 20, Trump will issue an EO with his 25 percent tariffs. The trigger date for implementation will be some point in the medium-future. Fox will talk about this great achievement nonstop. The mainstream media will talk about how potentially destabilizing the tariffs are.

And then at some point—maybe before the tariffs kick in, or maybe shortly afterwards—Trump will declare victory. Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

We’ve seen this story before, over and over.

Remember Trump’s “Muslim ban”? He signed a couple of executive orders, the courts halted them. Lawyers did a lot of pro bono work. After a few weeks everything was business as usual.

Remember when Trump tore up NAFTA? Except that he never did. He simply negotiated a “successor” agreement that was little more than new paint on the same vehicle.

Remember when Trump built the wall that Mexico paid for? Trump replaced about 400 miles of existing barriers and built 52 miles of new fencing—52 miles! The U.S. government paid for all of this.

This is Trump’s modus operandi.

He promises his base crazy shit. He then announces that he’s about to do the crazy shit. The media freaks out at the prospect of said crazy shit. Trump then wriggles out of doing the crazy shit and—this is the key part—his voters give him credit for the crazy shit anyway.

That’s Trump’s secret sauce: The fact that his voters are never let down. No matter how little he actually does for them, no matter how many promises he breaks or fails to deliver, then never feel betrayed by him.

How do we break this cycle? We need a paradigm shift in how we approach Trump:

Stop freaking out about things Trump says he’s going to do. And start demanding that he actually go through with them.

If you abstract Trump’s approach to governing it looks something like this:

* Trump promises to do something that makes his base voters happy even though doing that thing would negatively impact their lives.

* Some other institution—Democrats, normie Republicans, the courts—stops Trump from implementing the destructive action.

* Trump takes credit for doing the crazy thing (even though it never actually happened) and also takes credit for the fact that none of the negative impacts materialize.

* Then he demagogues the responsible institutions that stopped him.

I cannot emphasize this enough: We should stop participating in this cycle.

Trump says he’s going to put a 25 percent tariff on everything Mexico and Canada?

* Cool idea, bro. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Trump says he’s going to use the military to deport millions of immigrants?

* Sure, Jan.

Trump is going to end U.S. support for Ukraine?

* Okay. Show me the money.

When we freak out prospectively about things Trump says he’s going to do, we help him in two ways.

(1) We help him sell the idea that he’s actually doing it, thus building his credibility with his voters.

(2) We help restrain him from actually doing the thing, thus insulating him from the consequences of his proposals.

In short: Let people touch the stove.

Caveat: There is one area in which Trump actually means all of the crazy shit he says: The pursuit of power.

Trump was never going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. But he was deadly serious about blackmailing the president of Ukraine in order to beat Joe Biden. He fired the director of the FBI to keep investigations away from his administration. He sent his attorney general out to discredit the Mueller report. He actually did attempt a coup.

The principle here is obvious: The only person Trump is willing to spend political capital on is himself.

Which is why the one area in which I absolutely take Trump both seriously and literally is in his approach to amalgamating personal power in an authoritarian manner. So I intend to take his statements on such subjects—and here I include everything from Schedule F to the Twenty-second Amendment—at face value.

But your mileage may vary. Maybe you think this approach is wrongheaded, or counterproductive. Of maybe you have a better heuristic for the coming age.

Now you’re gettin’ it! The anticipation is worse than the event.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:22 pm

Shirley wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:13 pm Speaking of "brilliant", I wonder if the Trump cult will enjoy paying more for gasoline?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump does not intend to spare crude oil from his planned 25% import tariffs on Canada and Mexico, sources told Reuters on Tuesday, as the oil industry warned the policy could hurt consumers, industry and national security.

Canada and Mexico are the top sources of U.S. crude oil imports, together accounting for around a quarter of the oil U.S. refiners process into fuels like gasoline and heating oil, according to the U.S. Department of Energy...

Well, this is one way for the folks to learn that the oil we produce and the oil we refine into gasoline aren't exactly the same thing.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:26 pm

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 6:06 pm

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:26 pm Maybe MICH is half-right.

A New Approach to Covering Trump

Trump made the media his unwitting partner. It’s time to stop that nonsense.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-new-appr ... ring-trump

Now you’re gettin’ it! The anticipation is worse than the event.

(That is not what the article is about. But again, I remain fascinated by those Trump voters who seem to suggest that it would be best if Trump does not live up to his campaign promises.)

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:41 pm

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:26 pm

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 6:06 pm

Now you’re gettin’ it! The anticipation is worse than the event.

(That is not what the article is about. But again, I remain fascinated by those Trump voters who seem to suggest that it would be best if Trump does not live up to his campaign promises.)

I can’t speak authoritatively about the mind of Trump, but my hunch is that he threatens measures like tariffs, essentially saying, “Yes, it will hurt us initially, but you’re going to take a bigger, longer-lasting hit.” In response, China/Mexico says, “This dude is crazy enough to do it. Let’s meet him halfway.”

That’s the theory, anyway.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:47 pm

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:41 pm

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:26 pm

(That is not what the article is about. But again, I remain fascinated by those Trump voters who seem to suggest that it would be best if Trump does not live up to his campaign promises.)

I can’t speak authoritatively about the mind of Trump, but my hunch is that he threatens measures like tariffs, essentially saying, “Yes, it will hurt us initially, but you’re going to take a bigger, longer-lasting hit.” In response, China/Mexico says, “This dude is crazy enough to do it. Let’s meet him halfway.”

That’s the theory, anyway.

I suppose "halfway" might mean the difference between recession and depression.

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:47 pm

JKLivin wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:41 pm

jfish26 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:26 pm

(That is not what the article is about. But again, I remain fascinated by those Trump voters who seem to suggest that it would be best if Trump does not live up to his campaign promises.)

I can’t speak authoritatively about the mind of Trump, but my hunch is that he threatens measures like tariffs, essentially saying, “Yes, it will hurt us initially, but you’re going to take a bigger, longer-lasting hit.” In response, China/Mexico says, “This dude is crazy enough to do it. Let’s meet him halfway.”

That’s the theory, anyway.

I suppose "halfway" might mean the difference between recession and depression.