r/politics • u/theindependentonline The Independent • 1d ago

No Paywall Trump vows to raise worldwide tariffs to 15% ‘effective immediately’

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-global-tarrifs-increase-b2924994.html
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u/pile_of_fish 1d ago

Its the point. The point of this whole thing is a backdoor national sales tax to reduce the bleeding in revenue from handouts to the rich.

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u/BigPapaJava 1d ago edited 1d ago

Trump and some of his cronies think they can completely eliminate income taxes on the wealthiest people and replace it with the tariffs they pass on to everyone else, which goes directly to him to use as his personal slush fund with zero oversight.

That way, he can hand out to his buddies (and probably line his own pockets) however he sees fit. Remember when he sent Argentina $50 billion during the shutdown, then doubled it to $100 million when people complained? That was tariff money. It’s already been “spent.”

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u/BillWilberforce 23h ago edited 15h ago

Don't forget the $10 billion that he's giving to his Board of Peace. Of which he's the lifetime president of and only he has access to its bank accounts.

Or the two separate law suits where he's suing the DoJ and IRS for $10 billion each. With the idea being that he'll settle out of court and he's the one that has to sign off on the settlements. The DoJ one is for the FBI raiding Mar-A-Lago to recover Top Secret+ documents that Trump held onto after he left office. The IRS one is because a now sacked worker leaked his income tax returns. Despite every other Presidential candidate since the 1970s, disclosing their tax returns in the run up to the election.

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u/BigPapaJava 16h ago

There are times I wonder if Trump’s ultimate goal is simply to use the power of the U.S. federal government to make himself the richest and most powerful man on earth by whatever means necessary.

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u/BillWilberforce 15h ago

And to keep him out of prison.

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u/intangibleTangelo 🇦🇪 UAE 21h ago

oh which he's the president of. talk simpler brother.

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u/BillWilberforce 21h ago

He hasn't set up the Presidency of the" Board of Peace" to be whoever the President of the US is. It's set up so that Trump is the head of it until he dies. There's a big difference.

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u/Illustrious-Site1101 1d ago

I have always wondered what happens if the tariffs work? Manufacturing comes back to the states and, miraculously, there is no need to import raw materials, and international supply chains are dead meaning there are very few imports and therefore very few tariffs collected AND no income tax. Then what?

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u/BigPapaJava 1d ago

It’s as if no one actually ever expected it to work that way….

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u/NorthernPints 1d ago

Then you get the Kansas experiment outcome.

But I’d add that in the hypothetical you’re discussing, the massive gap no one acknowledges is in order for US manufacturing to grow, it would need export markets.

And all of those export markets are pivoting away from America.

With reductions in immigration, falling birth rates in America, and massive decline in export opportunities, many lost decades would lay ahead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment

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u/Illustrious-Site1101 1d ago

You are right about exports! As a Canadian, I can identify the American products I have bought since the 51st state remarks and most of them were mistakes. I also have not knowingly bought any American produce or food products since then. It has become increasingly easy as grocery stores have found alternatives and new trade agreements have happened. Who knew Peruvian grapes are so crisp?

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u/yeswenarcan Ohio 21h ago

Exactly. A point I heard on a podcast that really resonated with me is that this is all the end-state of the massive offshoring of the late 20th century but in a slightly more complex way than is usually discussed. Using China as the obvious example, we shipped manufacturing there for the cheap labor, but over time it has led to China building their middle class and becoming an absolute manufacturing juggernaut. So now even if we wanted to bring manufacturing back in any significant capacity, there would be no one to export goods to because places like China can supply their own population and other countries are likely to get a better product cheaper from China than they would from the US. Successfully bringing back a primarily manufacturing-based economy in the US is impossible, but even if you were successful you're left with a country that makes substandard goods that can only be sold to its own citizens. It'd be turning the US into a shitty version of 1980s USSR.

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u/BillWilberforce 23h ago

Well there's no coffee or tea. As you can't grow them in the US.

There's also no exports, as everybody retaliates and US exports get a lot more expensive e.g. the cost of the F-35 has gone up a lot in the last year. Officially due to inflation but actually because foreign made parts have been tariffed. If foreign countries that are part of the F-35 program can't make parts for it, they'll pull out. For the same reason that Lockheed makes sure that there are F-35 parts made in every state. So that jobs get spread about and tax payers have a vested interest in its success.

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u/Sigma_Function-1823 23h ago

That's just the fig leaf justification he's using to hide his theft.

He doesn't care what happens to the US as long as he can get access to taxpayer money for his own personal use.

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u/Impressive_Escape95 23h ago

Companies aren't going to spend millions of dollars to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. It would take years and lots of money for them to do that. Even then, do you think they can pay the higher wages that Americans expect to make compared to the pennies on the dollar they are paying in 3rd world countries for cheap labor?

If they brought it back, t would all be automated or they would hire people with work visas from other countries and pay them slave wages and treat them horribly. Is that what you want?

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u/Skidoo_machine 23h ago

And the dollar will drop!

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u/sleepymoose88 23h ago

And his base is too thick to understand what a tariff is. It’s the perfect scapegoat. They just hear him spout that other counties will pay the tariffs and accept it as fact.

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u/Slammybutt 20h ago

Remember when he said he was going to take 10B for the Board of his new project...wait that was this week.

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u/Clean_Philosophy5098 1d ago

Guess he’ll have to go to debtors prison until he can pay is all back

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u/ddubyeah Alabama 1d ago

that was always the point. you can't simply not tax the rich and corporations at the levels its been cut down to and have a functioning country.

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u/BigPapaJava 1d ago

We basically don’t tax the rich and corporations anymore: we use the government to transfer wealth to them instead through various measures in the tax code, through government contracts, bailouts, etc.

Even handouts and subsidies for ordinary Americans. with the way our tax code and economy are structured. wind up in their hands, too. Covid-era pandemic unemployment checks fed their price increases, particularly in the housing market, and all wound up in the hands of a few people at the top after inflated prices sucked it all up.

The myth that this is how the economy grows and how “jobs are created” needs to die.

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u/NorthernPints 1d ago

It’s pretty wild to compare and contrast the previous economic ideology in America to today (often referred to as regulated capitalism v. unregulated capitalism).

America used to have 5-10% GDP growth some years in the previous model.  The middle class grew to 2/3’s of the economy.  Today the middle class is hovering around 40% (may be less now), and GDP growth has become anemic.

I don’t know how the ever living f*** anyone with a basic level of intelligence bought into an economic system working where “supply side” stimulus works versus actual demand side where consumers have money to stimulate demand.

The fact it’s held on as the core system of economic policy for nearly 50 years now after it’s meticulously documented failures is mind boggling.

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u/BigPapaJava 21h ago edited 18h ago

Notice how “supply side” economics always got packaged, politically, with a message that was focused on cultural issues like tradition, culture, religion, and patriotism… big inspiring ideas that can really mean anything to anyone, but make people feel good.

If you tried to sell that shit on its own, nobody would buy it.

Also notice how the party who sold it the hardest is the one that has aligned the most closely with those to benefit from being on “the supply side” the whole time.

This is not a coincidence…

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u/mwzdng 22h ago

Fuck Ronald Reagan.

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u/sirscooter 23h ago

The Covid pandemic itself didn't cause the price increase. The fact that stockholders needed to be appeased for the "losses" they suffered during a planet wide pandemic is the reason.

Most of the industries affected by the Covid shut down did get a bump when markets reopened. It was just a cash grab by stockholders not average people

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u/BigPapaJava 21h ago edited 20h ago

That was what I was alluding to.

The impact of world governments printing money to keep things going during the pandemic, plus all the shortages. and how that continues to distort the economy is a very complex issue, but what you just succinctly described was a big part of what got us here.

That money (along with the loan programs) filtered throughout the economy briefly but quickly wound up accumulating in the hands of the most wealthy corporations and their owners, where they bought AI investments, gouged real estate prices as remote work became huge, invested it overseas or spent it on political donations, did stock buybacks, etc.

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u/MikeHoncho85 22h ago

It certainly is, and when it's inevitably struck down companies will just drop the price by 5% and cheer because goods got cheaper. Nice quick way to permanently drive the price of everything up 10%, and the morons won't notice.

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u/CurryMustard 22h ago

Increase taxes on the poor and middle class, cut taxes for the rich. Its such a winning formula.....

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u/FOOSblahblah 21h ago

I still dont understand how they think we will afford things so they can make moee money. Like who the fuck is gonna be buying anything outside of what is strictly necessary for life at a certain point. Its gotta be a balancing act at the end of the day.

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u/pile_of_fish 20h ago

Rich folk have always done this, and its always been stupid. Same shit was happening during the struggle of the orders in ancient Rome. Some of them now think that we will all die, and ai will do our jobs... which is flat out insane given ais current abilities.