The Great Walkback continues. First, Donald Trump said he couldn't guarantee that his tariffs wouldn't raise prices. Then he admitted that he couldn't bring down the cost of groceries after all. Today comes news that he's backing down from his sweeping tariff plan on everyone:
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
....Exactly which imports or industries would face tariffs was not immediately clear. Preliminary discussions have largely focused on several key sectors that the Trump team wants to bring back to the United States, the people said. Those include the defense industrial supply chain (through tariffs on steel, iron, aluminum and copper); critical medical supplies (syringes, needles, vials and pharmaceutical materials); and energy production (batteries, rare earth minerals and even solar panels), two of the people said.
At a guess, this stuff accounts for less than 5% of US imports—and some of it is subject to high tariffs already. Stay tuned for more.
The bribes (*ahem*, "gratuities") are starting to flow in.
Right on 10+
Don’t doubt this is true but bribes will also have the tendency to raise prices. Either the companies that paid them will roll them into future prices to keep profit margins the same and/or competitors who can’t afford the bribes will fall out of the market and the remaining winners will gain monopoly-like powers to raise prices without fear of competitors undercutting them.
Countries that function on lots of bribes tend to have expensive imported goods.
You would think so, but in the US it takes a very small bribe for a huge payoff. A 1 million dollar contribution to an inauguration will net you several hundred million back.
He'll hold the line on core promises -- the ones involving beating up on the lesser breeds without the law (to the extent possible without crippling industry.)
Gun stuff.
Stunt suits against individuals, and media outlets who platform them.
Universities and public schools.
The environment.
How good theater is it? How bad theater is would any backlash be?
'Tanking the economy' is much worse theater than anything PR-positive you get from tariffs.
If Trump were smart he'd just let the really good Biden economy continue and take credit for it. The Democrats suck at getting credit and Trump is a genius, oh, and the people are fucking morons so they'll believe it.
Mass deportations and tariffs would crater the economy so I've been thinking for a long time that he won't do nearly as much as either than he has promised. I'll hedge my bets some on the mass deportations because that is something his hardcore base really wants to happen and they will notice if he doesn't. But, even there, he could deport a small fraction of the 10-20 million he promised and that will likely placate his base enough.
I suspect you will find that the hard core MAGAts are going to be really demanding about deportations. They will not be placated with hearing about some token number of deportations; those of them in the states with high numbers of illegal immigrants are going to expect to see many fewer brown faces on the streets and to hear much less Spanish spoken. Indeed, most of them will expect to see the number of visible Hispanics go to zero, notwithstanding that many of those Hispanics are natural born citizens.
How will they hear about token numbers? Trump can just claim to have deported ‘millions’; Faux Nooz and all the right-wing media will repeat the lie, and the MAGAts will believe it.
This is exactly right. They were all stirred up and angry about "immigants!" despite there being statistically zip impact on their lives. Numbers were never a part of it, and the innumerate do not have the capacity to assess, care about, or even notice how many -illions of immigants are moving/being moved in any particular direction vis-a-vis any particular border.
It'll be more nonsense about pet consumption and caterwalling about some opportunistically-selected single incidence of a crime where an immigrant was involved.
This. If he deports, say, 100,000 people, the news will show footage of “lots of people” and the MAGA faithful will believe it’s really 10,000,000… just like they did with his first inauguration crowds. Numeracy isn’t strong with most people, especially the MAGAs. Once the number is higher than say a hundred in a video, it’s really easy to believe the video is showing orders of magnitude more. (This is how Hollywood gets a few dozen extras to represent “massive crowds fleeing citywide destruction” in their disaster movies too.)
Plus he'll just blame the Dems for slowing things down.
As I said, as long as the MAGAts can still see Latinos on the streets of their home towns, they will regard the deportation program as a failure. "Lots of people" is just not good enough. "All of them" is what will be expected.
If Trump were smart he'd just let the really good Biden economy continue and take credit for it.
Assumes facts not in evidence. He is, however, quite cunning. So as long as he sees benefit in it he'll claim good economic times as his deeds.
He did the exact same thing in 2017. Remember how he ran around during the campaign claiming the Labor Dept statistics showing low unemployment and strong growth were "rigged," only to pivot instantly and start claiming their were "great" once he was in office. The chutzpah was simply off the Richter scale, or whatever you want to measure it in ("Trumps"?), but of course no-one cares when Trump lies his ass off. It truly is a political superpower.
Dang, and I was so looking forward to the trillions of dollars other countries would pay so we wouldn’t even need an income tax and have so much extra money that child care would be paid for too. I guess the only thing to do is lower taxes on the rich so that our munificent job creating benefactors will have extra money to create lots of jobs and wealth for all.
I'm looking forward to him completely backing off no tax on overtime amd tips. I'm not sure how many of his cult believed him but who ever did is a fool. He'll use some lame ass excuse as to why it can't be done and most of his idiot followers will believe it.
Their attachment to Trump is totemic, not transactional.
Do you fire Smokey the Bear because we still have forest fires?
I'm shocked to hear this.
Other than MAGA did anyone really believe this tariff nonsense? Lots of ink was spilt on hand-wringing analyses, but the cognoscenti knew all along this was just bluster meant to make him look strong.
Now I hear that he wants to pass all his priorities in one single bill, presumably so he can spend the rest of the 4 years playing golf. Yeah, good luck with that. Given the disfunction of the current Republican party and the incompetents he is going to have in his administration, it's a long shot that they could pass a single item bill.
A clown with a flamethrower still has a flamethrower, but it's a lot better than having a malicious expert with a flamethrower.
This has a note of triumphalism ("I told you he was a liar!"), but frankly this is a worst case scenario for Democrats. All of Trump's promises would have been a disaster for Trump and the country as a whole. If he abandons all his promises and just lies to his constituents, he'll have a really successful presidency.
If by ‘really successful’ you mean ‘getting nothing but more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations’, well, yeah.
I meant doing that plus not tanking the economy so badly that everyone blames him for tanking the economy (and thereby keeping his approval ratings comparatively high)
This is actually interesting because congressional appropriators were relying on tariffs to justify their gargantuan tax cuts, so the question now is, where will they find their revenue, word in the street is that they will go after Medicare, if so, undermining another Trump promise.
Haven't you heard? Since the tax levels are current law, extending them doesn't cost anything relative to current levels. It's the most transparent sleight of hand trick ever.
Congressional appropriators can always pass tariffs. That's the way it should be done; this whole business of tariffs being imposed by the executive is only possible because Congress has delegated WAY too much to the president. Tariffs are taxes and should only be imposed by legislation.
Good to know that our greatest constitutional safeguard is that we can rely on Trump to lie through his teeth and break every promise he's made.
Almost all his promises are meaningless and his supporters do not care. He will always deliver on the one promise that is the key to his popularity: he will scorn, antagonize, and disparage the people they hate. That's it. That's why they love him and will forgive everything else.
Following the script for massive bribes/corruption.
Hint at new rules, massive disruption.
Hint at walking back this massive disruption and an openness to persuasion.
Provide no clarity but insist that targeting some unspecified areas will still occurr.
Wait for $$ to roll in.
Textbook
At least these three categories make sense, especially after the pandemic highlighted this.