alt Hacker NewsQuiet? Trump has been bellowing about his tariffs for months. China, South Korea and Japan -- long absolute adversaries -- even had a meeting about how to respond. The actual tariff plan is 0% based upon reciprocity, and instead is based upon "we're a rich country that buys lots of stuff, so let's punish the citizens who buy stuff" (as the largest tax hike in history). There are tariffs for unoccupied island chains.
And these apply immediately. This is an administrative impossibility. CBP is going to have a disastrous couple of weeks about this rag tag collection of barely defined nonsense.
This is 100% disaster, top to bottom.
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All that is correct, but I think you missed the point the other poster was making. What if, instead of blundering about stupidly, the goal is to cause as much chaos as possible in order to consolidate political power?
Details of the tariffs weren't known at all until yesterday, they were quiet.
The comment I replied to was claiming that Trump himself was still deciding what the tariffs would be until this week. My question was how we could be so certain of that.
As far as reciprocity goes, how is this plan not based at least in part on reciprocity? They claim other countries have taken advantage of the US and we're on the losing end of trade deficits. The tariffs they announced seem to be based entirely on trade deficits/surpluses with each country.
I have no idea if this would work or what the administration's real motives are, but the on the surface it sure seems like they proposed tariffs that target the problem they claim - trade imbalances.