Only works if he keeps his word. And Trump’s word isn’t worth the shit its scrawled in. We’re already seeing this problem with Canada and Mexico, where importers are being told they’re going to get assessed the Chinese tariff on the full price of imports and then maybe eventually be eligible for a refund once the Trump administration figures out what percentage of the import qualifies as “Chinese”.
This Chinese-exclusive tariff isn’t any kind of relief, because too much manufacturing is sourced out of China. All we’re going to see is businesses resort to increasingly elaborate methods of concealing a product’s national origin.
Granted that his word is worthless, the rest of that is part of why I expect that he’ll take bribes - because he doesn’t have an end game.
I think he got into this whole tariff thing in the first place because he saw them as leverage, and as a desperately insecure overgrown child focused entirely on manipulating people into feeding his unquenchable greed, lust and insecurity, he can’t pass up an opportunity for leverage.
Early on, he made a lot of noise about forcing foreign manufacturers to open American factories, but by capriciously proposing, delaying, enacting and rescinding tariffs, he’s already guaranteed that that’s not going to happen. So about all that’s left already as a practical benefit is the fact that they’re essentially a tax increase on consumers, and that might’ve been enough for him, since he needs to fund his cronyistic spending and his tax cuts for the 1%, but he’s discovering that policy decisions have economic consequences that he can’t avoid just by throwing a tantrum, so it’s looking like he’ll have to either let that go or get blamed for destroying the US economy.
So now he’s in a prime position - he needs to weasel out of this whole tariff thing, but his ego still demands that he has to win somehow, which means that a foreign country should be able to come over here, set up a meeting, kiss his stinky ass and slip him a few million dollars, and he’ll congratulate himself on using the leverage to his advantage and turn his attention somewhere else.
And while his word is worthless, that’s not really what it comes down to. It’s not that he’ll hold to a decision on tariffs because he gave his word, but that once he’s mollified, he’ll happily stop thinking about them entirely and just look for his next opportunity to apply leverage to feed his ego, greed and/or lust.
Only works if he keeps his word. And Trump’s word isn’t worth the shit its scrawled in. We’re already seeing this problem with Canada and Mexico, where importers are being told they’re going to get assessed the Chinese tariff on the full price of imports and then maybe eventually be eligible for a refund once the Trump administration figures out what percentage of the import qualifies as “Chinese”.
This Chinese-exclusive tariff isn’t any kind of relief, because too much manufacturing is sourced out of China. All we’re going to see is businesses resort to increasingly elaborate methods of concealing a product’s national origin.
Granted that his word is worthless, the rest of that is part of why I expect that he’ll take bribes - because he doesn’t have an end game.
I think he got into this whole tariff thing in the first place because he saw them as leverage, and as a desperately insecure overgrown child focused entirely on manipulating people into feeding his unquenchable greed, lust and insecurity, he can’t pass up an opportunity for leverage.
Early on, he made a lot of noise about forcing foreign manufacturers to open American factories, but by capriciously proposing, delaying, enacting and rescinding tariffs, he’s already guaranteed that that’s not going to happen. So about all that’s left already as a practical benefit is the fact that they’re essentially a tax increase on consumers, and that might’ve been enough for him, since he needs to fund his cronyistic spending and his tax cuts for the 1%, but he’s discovering that policy decisions have economic consequences that he can’t avoid just by throwing a tantrum, so it’s looking like he’ll have to either let that go or get blamed for destroying the US economy.
So now he’s in a prime position - he needs to weasel out of this whole tariff thing, but his ego still demands that he has to win somehow, which means that a foreign country should be able to come over here, set up a meeting, kiss his stinky ass and slip him a few million dollars, and he’ll congratulate himself on using the leverage to his advantage and turn his attention somewhere else.
And while his word is worthless, that’s not really what it comes down to. It’s not that he’ll hold to a decision on tariffs because he gave his word, but that once he’s mollified, he’ll happily stop thinking about them entirely and just look for his next opportunity to apply leverage to feed his ego, greed and/or lust.