It's important to remember that the stated rationale for any of this is a lie. It has nothing to do with saving money or reducing the debt or lowering prices, and everything to do with cementing autocratic power and destroying the government as we know it. Trump shitting on the board is not 5-D chess, and anyone nosing through the shit looking for a 5-D strategy is either covering for him or is a fucking idiot. Or both.
🦄 Domestic consequences of the 2024 US presidential election: the quickening
- Thread starter Scotttheking
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It's important to remember that the stated rationale for any of this is a lie. It has nothing to do with saving money or reducing the debt or lowering prices, and everything to do with cementing autocratic power and destroying the government as we know it. Trump shitting on the board is not 5-D chess, and anyone nosing through the shit looking for a 5-D strategy is either covering for him or is a fucking idiot. Or both.
When 4 "black swans" show up in 24 years (2001, 2008, 2020, 2025) maybe they're just "swans" now?
Black Flock Event. May be Annual Black Swan Event?
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Black Eye Event
If at least Americans opposed to what is happening would acknowledge that the US is becoming a fascist state beholden to Trump... but no. Business as usual in politics. Society has succumbed to fascism. Sad and deplorable.
So the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy has done some sums and their current estimate of the tariffs is thus:
Well, that sure sounds like a pretty hefty recession to me and many, many job losses.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/kiel-trade-and-tariffs-monitor/
- A nearly 20% drop in exports from the US
- A 7% increase in inflation in the US
- A 2% drop in industrial production
Well, that sure sounds like a pretty hefty recession to me and many, many job losses.
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/kiel-trade-and-tariffs-monitor/
Which Americans are you talking about? Every Harris voter I know agrees that the US is becoming a fascist state beholden to Trump.
SuinusLatinus
Ars Tribunus Militum
The ones that are not standing up. Which is most of you.
The next planned day of action is literally tomorrow: https://handsoff2025.com/
Colour me unimpressed. That's not going to be mass protest, is it.
Well, it is coming: Michael Feroli, JP Morgan's chief economist for the US, sees US GDP contracting in 2025 and projects a "recession in economic activity", with projected unemployment at 5.3%. 2025 is going to suck for everybody.
JP Morgan is the first bank in the US forecasting a recession.
Bloomberg source.
JP Morgan is the first bank in the US forecasting a recession.
Bloomberg source.
Sorry but you know, indignation is quite out of place when two thirds of the USians either don't care or are fully on board with this shit. Eat it up: the US fucked up big time as a country. Again. And looking from the other side of the pond, most of you are ok with what's going on.
And third of us are tied up in the baggage hold as the plane goes down.
I have already posted in this thread why French-style mass protests in the US are not feasible, and even the BLM protests were mostly only possible because of what Covid did. The biggest protests the world had seen up until that point were against the Iraq war and GWB, but it did a fat load of good.
Simply put, protest isn't effective as a form of opposition in the US, by itself. It has to be a method of organizing, and has to engender other things. The Civil Rights Movement wasn't effective because of the protests, it was effective because it was a reminder that without an outlet, that entire movement would go full Malcom X. It's why I have been reminding my representatives they need to be planning for a general strike. Using these town halls where Republicans fear to tread as breeding grounds for action, not just discontent.
But don't move the goalposts by saying that people aren't acting, when they have, many times already, and will continue to do so.
Yeah, and I'm sorry for all the suffering that this is causing and is going to. Yet, you guys fucked up big time, I'm not seeing a third of the USians protesting on the street, I'm not seeing a general prolonged strike... I'm actually only seeing a bunch of people protesting. A very small bunch.
So whatever you want to tell me, I will still think that @derMarc is completely right when they say that most Americans just DGAF.
The stocks had risen because there was speculation that the Bank of Japan would raise interest rates further than it did, but the tariffs led to a delay of rate increases.
It is hard to protest in the street when a single missed day of work can translate to the loss of your family's access to medical care, housing and food all at one blow. So many Americans being paycheck to paycheck and the sheer lack of employment protections collude to make any protesting a very high risk venture. For it to be seen as worth it the probability of a payoff needs to be very high and the effect of the payoff needs to be very significant. Neither of which is apparently the case in our ossified system.
methinkgud
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Don't forget the high chance of getting shot.
Oh yeah, the US is a completely special place that is completely different than any other democracy in the world. Exceptionalism and what not, because people in the Rest of The World™ don't lose anything or don't risk anything when they get out and protest, or when they participate in a general strike or whatever else they actually do to try to change things. Sorry if I don't buy it.
I will let my self out of this discussion for a while because right now I'm pretty angry. I don't think I can contribute anything for a while. You know, today's my birthday and I was gifted a nice -100k on my NW, courtesy of a bunch of morons at the head of the US government.
I will let my self out of this discussion for a while because right now I'm pretty angry. I don't think I can contribute anything for a while. You know, today's my birthday and I was gifted a nice -100k on my NW, courtesy of a bunch of morons at the head of the US government.
Peaceful protesting is almost always pointless in circumstances where the thing being protested doesn't care about your concerns and even less so when they delight in your displeasure. That you're protesting them let's them know that what they're doing is working. This is why I've always been pro-riot, so long as it's actually happening in a place and manner that disrupts your oppressor.
I'm not discouraged by a lack of random peaceful protests. I'm discouraged more by the relentless offering of it as some kind of worthwhile endeavor, other than as the total waste of time, energy, and organizing capacity that it is. Similarly for something like a general strike. The government just decimated the productive economy 100,000x as much as any plausibly executable general strike could ever hope to achieve, and it doesn't care about the impact. They're not going to care about the imperceptible blip of a general strike.
I am encouraged by things like clearly motivated and correlated protests of helping Tesla's realize their potential energy, however. There comes a point where things are so radically off the rails that unless the protest is sufficiently militant, then it's indistinguishable from masturbation.
Protests can be a time to hang out with people who are mad about the same stuff you are, but without your adversaries caring about your concerns or being motivated by your methods and manner of protest, then a protest is just a social outing, not a solution to the problem.
I'm not discouraged by a lack of random peaceful protests. I'm discouraged more by the relentless offering of it as some kind of worthwhile endeavor, other than as the total waste of time, energy, and organizing capacity that it is. Similarly for something like a general strike. The government just decimated the productive economy 100,000x as much as any plausibly executable general strike could ever hope to achieve, and it doesn't care about the impact. They're not going to care about the imperceptible blip of a general strike.
I am encouraged by things like clearly motivated and correlated protests of helping Tesla's realize their potential energy, however. There comes a point where things are so radically off the rails that unless the protest is sufficiently militant, then it's indistinguishable from masturbation.
Protests can be a time to hang out with people who are mad about the same stuff you are, but without your adversaries caring about your concerns or being motivated by your methods and manner of protest, then a protest is just a social outing, not a solution to the problem.
I'm definitely expecting a Lavender Scare Part II to start sometime before the next mid-term election.
Nice "democracy" you're living in.
Just saw this on the BBC, 'we'll make mistakes' they claim. The incompetence of this administration, either willingly ignorant or malicious, or both 
.
.In this case, it quite literally is. There is nowhere that has this combination of geography, lack of security net, and firearm density that has effective protests. It's not American exceptionalism, it's acknowledgement of on-the-ground reality.
And let's be real. If we had millions protesting in various cities around the US tomorrow, a great many of you would dismiss it anyway, because it's not in DC. Which is simply not gonna happen. Even the best-organized and impactful DC-specific protests are lucky to hit a million people, and even those are once in a generation events.
You all are going to have to accept that people in the street for the sake of being in the street is not an effective message in the US. It has to be a call to real activism. Which is where Americans frequently fall down on, in no small part because we're taught that protest solves problems, not activism.
After the GFC, the Occupy Wall Street protests going on in NYC, DC, and elsewhere did strike a nerve—and these weren’t million-member-events. The result was a push to get the protesters out through harassment, intimidation,
and other means.
If the Trump Administration’s actions cause more to face hardship, it will provide more people who feel they have nothing to lose. Without a constructive framework where these dispossessed could channel there energies, it could get interesting indeed.
and other means.
If the Trump Administration’s actions cause more to face hardship, it will provide more people who feel they have nothing to lose. Without a constructive framework where these dispossessed could channel there energies, it could get interesting indeed.
What that is going to cause is an epidemic of Luigi-itis in the United States. Too bad the government just axed the CDC.
Or as a rather apt gif on Reddit put it: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/kqvb2o4r2wse1.gif
OP profile for the gif: https://old.reddit.com/user/adamtots_remastered
The only thing I can think of that all Harris voters could do is general strike until actual change (whatever that demand would be I don't know). That is scorched earth while the administration is already playing that game. I don't think change will be coming from the plebes this time around unless somehow MAGA turns.
One term for a flock of swans is a "lamentation". There's also "herd", "gaggle", "bevy", and "whiteness". But I think "lamentation" is most appropriate.
What on earth does Newsom have to offer? From the article, it sounds like he's saying "Please exempt us from your tariffs (which are the only actually retaliatory ones) because ... we're California! Okay, your goods will still face the US tariffs but let us off the hook because we have Disneyland" effectively.
How can you negotiate when you have literally nothing to offer?
It's not an easy thing to be unimpressive in a spectacular and memorable way but Newsom managed it.
If they did this a very large percentage would be fired by the end of the week.
The following article gets the opinion on tariffs from the residents of a small town called Delta in Ohio, the core argument seems to be about fairness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4nr3230e7o
The basic principle of fairness isn't wrong, the problem is the lack of fairness is actually inside America, not really with other countries which to some degree is just smoke and mirrors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4nr3230e7o
The basic principle of fairness isn't wrong, the problem is the lack of fairness is actually inside America, not really with other countries which to some degree is just smoke and mirrors.
Oh they don't have to worry about that, the upcoming recession is going to do it for them.
In all seriousness, that could very well be what gets us that critical mass of people. With no functional safety net, and potentially millions about to be out of work, no better time to permanently set up camp on the national mall.
Fairness would be America not being able to live the high life on other people's money (trillions of debt).
What would happen if this tariff crap triggers a global "bank run" on American debt?
The “fairness” they are referring to is a lie they were fed because no one understands basic economics. A trade deficit isn’t “unfair”, it simply means we buy more from them than they do from us. There are a number of different reasons for that, but most of them are favorable to us.
So, a couple of thoughts, on tariffs (I know more of that conversation is going on the Global thread, but I'm thinking locally).
1. Tariffs are not self-executing. This is going to be an administrative and enforcement nightmare. There is no way on earth Customs and Border Patrol is staffed and ready to handle all these new tariffs. And no way that importers are ready on their end, either. There's not even any details on whether or not those tariffs will include things already on a ship on its way here, because that alone is going to cause chaos, and probably bankrupt a few importers, meaning those goods are going to be left to rot.
2. Which means either imports are going to grind to a halt (think Covid import backlogs again), of there is about to be a huge amount of black/grey market trading and bribes done at ports to get this stuff through. Likely both.
3. And you know their systems and processes aren't prepared to handle the new tariffs at the rate Trump is claiming they're going to go into effect. I have to admit, I would be darkly amused if the DOGE team basically had to pull off everything else just to try and backfill and make those changes for CBP.
4. Luxury goods likely aren't going to be hurt much, but they might be localized a bit. If it becomes cheaper to fly to Paris to buy a new Hermès bag than to buy it in the US, then the wealthy will cry into their wallets and make that trip to Paris.
1. Tariffs are not self-executing. This is going to be an administrative and enforcement nightmare. There is no way on earth Customs and Border Patrol is staffed and ready to handle all these new tariffs. And no way that importers are ready on their end, either. There's not even any details on whether or not those tariffs will include things already on a ship on its way here, because that alone is going to cause chaos, and probably bankrupt a few importers, meaning those goods are going to be left to rot.
2. Which means either imports are going to grind to a halt (think Covid import backlogs again), of there is about to be a huge amount of black/grey market trading and bribes done at ports to get this stuff through. Likely both.
3. And you know their systems and processes aren't prepared to handle the new tariffs at the rate Trump is claiming they're going to go into effect. I have to admit, I would be darkly amused if the DOGE team basically had to pull off everything else just to try and backfill and make those changes for CBP.
4. Luxury goods likely aren't going to be hurt much, but they might be localized a bit. If it becomes cheaper to fly to Paris to buy a new Hermès bag than to buy it in the US, then the wealthy will cry into their wallets and make that trip to Paris.
Big Mouth Prick
Ars Centurion
Eh. The people who can spell their names without being spotted the first and last need to be purged.