82 Replies to “Bad Advice”

  1. After hours futures traders knocked off 3% of the S&P500 after Trump’s announcements. Tomorrow should be real interesting. It won’t be screams from Canadians that will affect Trump. Good time to be short.

    1. Yes I am perplexed by Trump’s tariff fetish. It will interfere with global trade, in which American companies are large participants. He wants to bring manufacturing back to the US; there are better and more effective ways to do this. Does the Rest of the World (ROW) need to trade with the US, or is there enough trade amongst the ROW to be “self-sufficient”. This tariff stratagem seems to me to be a bully tactic, consequences not thought through, and probably self-defeating.

      Fortunately, Trump is a man without shame, and can easily reverse himself if he sees a mistake.

        1. Robert, I agree with you. The tactic makes no sense. Tariffs function as a sales tax. They only affect the final purchaser of a product. They don’t affect the government. All they do is create resentment and hostility for those they are imposed on.

          What is also apparent is that the US has forgotten its own history. In 1930, the United States decided to correct trade imbalances by imposing a global tariff. The result was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. In imposing tariffs on everyone and everything, it turned a world recession into the Great Depression.

          You cannot “tariff” your way into forcing hostile people to buy your products. Just as you cannot “tax” your way into creating overall wealth and a prosperous economy. The US objectives may be sensible, but their method of achieving them is silly.

          1. This is not a sales tax. Sales taxes are relatively efficient and a much better tax than say income tax, and they are efficient at raising monies. Tariffs aren’t even supposed to raise money and do a lousy job of it. Sales taxes are a tax on consumption while tariffs are a tax on trade. The latter is infinitely more destruction.

          2. Federal Reserve long ago admitted it’s tight money policy strengthen the Depression. Then FDR with constant massive intervention induced regime uncertainty. Every year of FDR the economy got worse.

        2. yup. theyre hemorrhaging cash out of a main artery (debt).
          it just CANT continue. well the dbt might continue put the economic dominance wont. they will be forced yet again to halt many govt programs gonna make DOGE look like a dry run.

      2. Not thought through? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s been “thinking this through” for the last four years. Longer, because he used tariffs as Pres 45 also, successfully, though not yo this extent, of course.

        1. “Not thought through? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s been “thinking this through” for the last four years. Longer, because he used tariffs as Pres 45 also, successfully, though not yo this extent, of course.”

          So much misinformation about tariffs floating around. Tariffs, while governments undoubtedly can profit from them in various ways, are actually designed to make one product more expensive to purchase than another…thus creating an incentive to buy a different product, in this case American-made ones.

          There will be short-term pain, but in the end the tariffs will work as planned. Don’t blame Donald Trump for this: blame the greed of companies like Apple, Intel and Dupont.

          1. Fyi, Canada supplies 80% of the U.S. demand for aluminum and 85 % of the demand for potash . They is no capability for the U.S. to supply this demand and the tariffs will roll through the system causing price increases. The U.S. consumer will be the source of the effective push back.

          2. Take Econ 101 then come back and share your wisdom. Why do you think the American lifestyle is as good as it is? It’s because Americans do what they do well at the lowest cost and the shithole world does what they do well at the lowest cost. It’s called comparative advantage. Everybody thrives. Tariffs force people to accept the highest cost option and nobody does well. If the US produces the high cost option they will export nothing and not have the advantage of low cost imported goods. The mid-terms will be a slaughterhouse.

            There are those who believe the manufacturing phase was a step in industrialization that we have passed through. Ever look at an auto assembly plant? You don’t see many bodies compared to 50 years ago. To a large degree, more than manufacturing jobs going overseas, they are going away and they ain’t come back no matter how much whining the UAW does.

          3. “There will be short-term pain, but in the end the tariffs will work as planned. ”

            No they won’t. Your dumb immoral ideas have failed everywhere from America to Argentina. The pain of today will only lead to more pain tomorrow-and that’s before FDR 2 gets elected.

      3. Robert, in your sinario, when the ROW trades only with the ROW,,, do the ROW countries put up with the protectionist percentage tariffs that the USA has been till now, when they trade with the other ROW countries?
        Will Canada accept NZ’s 20% tariffs, Thailand ‘s 72% tariffs, China’s 67% tariffs, the EU’s 39% tariffs???

        1. Good point. It will end global trade! Yes, that’s the point. Who really benefits from said global trade? Who has had to pay the lion’s share of keeping that global trade afloat?

      4. Robert of Ottawa – US = $ 20 trillion expenditure per year; China is half that. Do the math.

        Trump is honest with the voters. He has no such obligation to those who wish to do harm to the US.

        1. Trump is the one doing harm to the US, and you don’t even understand what ‘honesty’ is.

          1. Wall St. billionaires and disgusting boomers like you are no longer in charge. We are taking a wrecking ball to the skewed fake economy you built. No one cares about your FIRE bullshit economy anymore. The bad money is being destroyed. Good riddance.

      5. ‘Need’ is very much subject to your definition.

        A large portion of the world is making a lot of money selling into the US where we make up a large percentage of the value of their exports and imports. But in general, any given country makes up a small percentage of American import/exports.

        So, sure, tariffs hurt us – but they hurt our trade partners much more.

        The saving grace here is that Trump, contra to his ‘I love tariffs’ rhetoric seems to be using tariffs more as policy tools to get other countries to lower their barriers to trade with the US (especially tariffs, which foreign governments – like Canada – also love, but no one seems to want to talk about those).

        Unilateral free trade is good, multilateral free trade is best and Trump *seems* to be using American tariffs to force the latter.

        1. “So, sure, tariffs hurt us – but they hurt our trade partners much more. ”

          No they don’t. The tariffs are paid for by Americans.

          “contra to his ‘I love tariffs’ rhetoric seems to be using tariffs more as policy tools to get other countries to lower their barriers to trade”

          Pure delusion and cope malarkey. Navarro and Lithghizer and Lutnick have all made it clear that they think tariffs and protectionism are peachy and Trump has been on the warpath against trade since the ’80s. You are just insane.

          1. Tariffs hurt us too by making our products unaffordable to American companies, costing us jobs, shutting down our industries, hurting our economy.

            And then when our idiot government imposes tariffs in response, we pay for them.

      1. Trumps announcement was after the stock markets closed. The bloodbath will be tomorrow.

  2. Experts! They’re the experts, you are not. And another government agency is required immediately!

    Rhetoric. It makes you wonder how much of this bullshit report is just rhetoric.

    But then again, these “experts” are responsible for our standard of living declining for ten years.

    One would think they might grow up behind closed doors, I’ll think about that and the home I can’t afford.

    2. No, Kenji.

      The people voted to ending freeloading off the US. Are you now a globalist?

      Canada refuses to pay its way in NATO, and is a haven to fentanyl manufacturing and money, laundering, both of which makes it a national security threat to the United States.

      Canada negotiates in bad faith.

        1. It really is – because of the Chinese influence your ‘elites’ are being bought by.

          I mean, Canada has ‘Chinese police stations’ – what sort of country would allow that?

          1. No it isn’t, and the ‘police stations’ are our problem not yours.

            Chinese influence is about to spike up by the way. I’m sure to demand my MP start talks with China for an FTA! Countries all round the world are going to look to China for trade and stability. Trump is the best thing that ever happened to China’s aspirations.

          2. Countries all round the world are going to look to China for trade and stability.

            Would this be the China with large tariffs, and the China threatening Taiwan and every other non-groveling neighbor with takeover? That’s the stability you want your MP to suck Xi’s dick about!?

            Thanks for demonstrating yet again what a demented smoothbrained reality-averse clownshoes you are.

            #TeamCanada! #TeamRetard!

          3. China unilaterally dropped tariffs for various African countries and has come to ‘trade peace’ with Australia.

          4. Lol, they dropped tariffs on African countries they practically own.

            Wow, that’s a big win for Canada, the US and Europe.

            And you haven’t addressed their increasingly aggressive military posture in Asia.

            Because doing so would mean confronting your blinkered retarded nitwit worldview.

        2. Hahahaha ha ha ha ha … We don’t fear all the Canadian brown skins, err brown shirts any more than we fear the Bangladeshi military. Puhleeze.

          1. That 15 years in Vietnam and 20 years in Afghanistan had those brown skins quaking in fear when you tucked your tails and ran on home. Hey tough guy?

          2. We don’t “win” wars … we just kill people and break stuff. For a while. Until we get bored. Then we move on to the next weapons industry showcase.

          3. Wow, if Comrade Stalin tells you to disparage the Americans, I guess you really gotta disparage the Americans! If it takes shameless lying about Vietnam and Afghanistan, well, if you needed shame Comrade Stalin would provide it for you, wouldn’t he? So why worry.

    3. If the human race were capable of producing such a person, our nature would be such that such a person wouldn’t be necessary.

      We are as we are.

  4. Tariffs are a penalty the consumer pays for not supporting domestic industries.

    They are also a penalty the consumer pays for voting for hostile regulations and taxes that increase costs and make domestic industries less competitive to foreign industries.

    There’s a reason that the U.S. textiles industry has collapsed, that our steel industry is hollowed out, that our electronics industry has been crushed. The same hold true in many western nations.

    1. I moved from Sacramento to the Silicon Valley shortly after the transistor was discovered … and the semi conductor industry was starting to explode. I distinctly remember decades of EPA and State regulators shutting down laboratory after laboratory for poisoning the ground water with all manner of cancer causing chemicals. So those businesses moved to a country that doesn’t give a shit about polluting the environment … for American dollars. And the Communist Chinese industry exploded.

  5. Truth is that the US benefits from tariffs, which is why the Trump administration is pursuing them. The producers will pay most of the tariff as there are no other markets. We can export to 190 other countries but either they are broke or have trade barriers already. The EU will soon be both. Likewise, the US is a supplier of last resort in the export market. A country will only buy from the US what it can’t get from another source. So a US tariff will not suppress exports from the US. It can’t.

    1. America has never benefited from tariffs. No one has. Again: your ideas have failed every time they have been implemented.

      “The EU will soon be both. ”

      America will be first.

        1. *Shudder* don’t have to. Life was terrible back then. Darkness and despair. Uncompetitive garbage wine. Expensive bad clothes. SHITE CARS

          1. Now we have prize-winning garbage wine! Made from only the finest garbage, artfully fermented…

          2. Your mom should have swallowed in the back seat of one of those shite cars, like a Lada Niva.

            You fetid troll.

        2. You can’t tell him to do that. He has blithe Econ 101 blackboard bromides to back him up.

          Reality, less so much.

          Once your car plant has gone to Mexico, it’s not coming back.

          But who needs manufacturing? We can just sell each other our houses back and forth.

          1. Ignore that ballooning debt.

            Ignore that plummet in competitiveness.

            Ignore the interest payments, now more than our self-fellating “greatest health care system on the planet” expenses.

            It’s all good. It’s fine. I paid a bit less for my shitty socks!

          2. “But who needs manufacturing? We can just sell each other our houses back and forth”
            Like it or not that’s the clearest statement in this thread so far.
            Unfortunately it seems the time has come for people to pay the Piper.
            And it sucks but if your honest with yourself almost everyone here knew it was coming.
            And if not when, and how much worse will it be?

      2. “America has never benefited from tariffs. No one has.”

        Then why does Canada have so many? Provicially being the largest hurtle to economic growth in Canada. Lower tariffs, less protectionism and greater competitiveness would go a long way in Canada.

  6. All of this discussion may be moot, as the chickenshit Republican congresscritters start to see their own personal oxen being gored and back away quickly from supporting Trump.

    They are why we can’t have nice things.

    1. Remember what I said about the Democrats painting themselves into a corner of their own making, and that the Republicans/Libertarians had done the same.
      This wasn’t about just ‘getting the Dems”, there are plenty on the right who need to be ‘got’ as well.

  7. It is all about price setting.
    If you have the shite people want, and others don’t. then set the price and you win.

  8. I hear the American Senate or house?.. Voted down Trumps tariffs on Canada.. What that means is, I don’t know..
    Beyond more harassment and indecision to hurt our economy anyway.. Saved by the bell with 3 years and 9 months to go.. He is still president and the 4 Senators who jumped ship to do this, are not in good company..

    A good cop, bad cop Psyop..

    1. This is what it means…

      The Senate passed a resolution to end Trump’s tariffs.

      If the House of Representatives votes in favour of the Senate resolution then Trump’s tariffs against Canada will end. The trick is getting the House to even vote on it. The House leader can delay it indefinitely. But if the US enters a recession, there might be enough public pressure to force a vote.

  9. Canada will take the worst in a trade war. There’s no question of that.

    But that’s not the point. The point is to help drive the US into a recession or drive up their consumer prices or preferably both, creating enough public pressure to force the House of Representatives to vote on the recent Senate resolution to end tariffs against Canada.

    And that’s how you win a trade war even when you take the worst of it.

    1. “The point is to help drive the US into a recession or drive up their consumer prices or preferably both”

      The senate’s grandstanding was a bit of virtue-signalling, and not much more.The bill will lay on the house floor like sh!t on the street. The US has been skirting the rim of ‘recession’ since long before Trump II, but Canada has neither the will nor the power to push the US over the edge.. only the bluster..

      1. Can Canada alone push the US into recession? Hell no.

        But Trump has already done most of the heavy work. Combine Canada’s retaliatory tariffs with those from other major trading nations, and yes, a recession is possible.

    2. “And that’s how you win a trade war even when you take the worst of it.”

      Pure delusion. Canada’s economy is the size of California’s. Even if we somehow *could* hurt the US to the point of recession, Canada would be in a full-blown DEPRESSION by the time it happened, and the Americans would swoop in and buy our failing industries for pennies on the dollar.

      1. As I said above, Canada alone is not probably not capable of it. But combine that with the damage Trump himself is doing to the US economy, plus retaliatory tariffs from other countries, and it might be enough.

        1. And, your posts assume that Trump’s actions will result in failure, and ultimately in disaster. The jury is still out on that one, so we shall see. What was conspicuous to me was the rather subdued responses from the bulk of those listed (no reciprocation, no trade war.. they know why they were called out and accept it), verses the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth from a handful of select responders.. One can only speculate as to their motives (it’s obviously not free trade), and who is driving them to lash out in impotent rage, rather than seek ‘pragmatic’ negotiations.

        2. You know, if we play our cards right, we could raise Godzilla from the sea and he would devastate the world! Then we would just wake in and take over. After all Margaret Atwood tells us that any fantastic catastrophe might hit the US and it would have no effect on us. So I say, go for it! Come on, Godzilla!

        3. But it’s OK if China & EU use tariffs against the US.
          Which they have done for many years.

  10. No Butter For You.
    “Experts say” the thriving Canadian economy, product of a self-impoverishing government that destroys its most salient, and salable commodities in order to satisfy regional favorites within its own borders and dilettante environmentalists who dwell in emotional never-never-land can bring the US to its knees.

    I’m laughing and laughing and laughing.

  12. I find it highly instructive that when CA passes a $20.00/hr. Fast food minimum wage … Gavin Newsom insisted … as did all the Marxist economists … that fast food prices would NOT rise for the consumer because the franchise owners wouldn’t increase prices. No, it was argued … they would have to simply EAT the increase in cost … they would simply take less profit. Why? Because if they raised prices for the consumer … they’d simply LOSE customers and go broke.

    And here come the SAME Marxist economists to scream that Trump’s tariffs will now cost the consumers 25% or more! It’s a TAX! They scream! They claim BMW’s will now cost $25k MORE! Oh my! And the consumer will pay every dime of the tariffs. Sure we will. We will all be paying ALL the tariffs … and the consumers won’t simply STOP buying overpriced products. Of course we will. Only an IDIOT would pay $25k more for their new BMW … because that’s what the price tag says. Puhleeze. The consumer is farrrrrrr smarter than any Marxist econ. Professor.

    1. While instructive, it is just one more indicator of the absence of rationality that underscores all liberal policies. “Laws of science, economics and physics are de-activated at our whim.”

      Liberalism is a mental disorder, plain and simple.

  13. From the report:
    “Washington will insist we put everything on the negotiating table, including
    sectors that have traditionally been no-go zones for Canada. We must be
    ready for it. Their targets will include supply management in agriculture and
    restrictions in Canada’s policies on culture, transportation,
    telecommunications, banking, financial services, digital commerce, intellectual
    property, taxation policy and natural resources like critical minerals.”

    Why do we have “no-go zones”?

    Does the US have as many?

    1. We have all this crap, because at every step the Canadian economy is regulated and “managed” to produce outcomes, rather than products. Canada is over governed just as the EU is, can you imagine that with all the idiotic abuses DOGE has uncovered, Canada has twice as much governmental burden as the US. Our entire economy has become a life support system for a leviathan state, the end result is when the country can no longer host the parasite, new hosts are brought in by the million to give it more places to feed. Witness the uncontrolled mass immigration in both places. This is a short term survival instinct of the state on display for all, as the old mechanisms creak under their unsustainability. This won’t work, because the parasitic class can only feed, they can’t create, we are in the gradually, very soon to be the suddenly phase. It will be literally bloody I believe, to which I say “good.”

    1. It’s hard to hook up with a supply in Canada. He might have to find one in the US. How much fentanyl did US border guards seize at the Canadian border last year? 43 pounds. How much fentanyl did US border guards seize at the Mexican border last year? 21,900 pounds.

      https://www.cfr.org/article/how-does-fentanyl-reach-united-states

      A lot of retards or bullshitters are telling a different story, starting with the orange stain in the White House.

      1. Well, other than the US/Canadian border being ~5500 miles (~9000km) and largely unmanned, as opposed to the smaller and much more secure southern border, we have no Idea how much of that crap makes it across the border, only what is caught. I do believe that Trump is far more concerned with the brazen CCP linked triad drug money banking and money-laundering schemes, continuing unabated, and with impunity, as well as the Chinese precursor chemical distribution to Mexican Cartel interests operating freely in Canada as well. I would also assume that the unveiling of a Canadian ‘super-lab’, capable cranking out fentanyl and meth on an industrial scale caused a spit-take or two at Trump’s presidential briefings.. How many more of those are yet to be discovered?

        1. And there were only 2 million got aways in 4 years on the Mexican border. I am sure none of these two million were sneaking past border guards because they were smuggling drugs, particularly the guys with backpacks and guns.

  15. For those Canadians still following along with the Liberals campaign slogans of “Elbows up Canada! It’s a Trade War!”:
    The reciprocal tariffs my President just announced were not applied to you (or Mexico). You still have to come and deal with some other tariffs, but you did not get hit with these. According to Doug Ford you’ll get rid of all of your tariffs if America gets rid of theirs first. I never realized the comedic genius of Ottawa’s MP until now.

    Anyway, Carney just lost a campaign slogan, if the Conservatives will use it. Carney was just caught on camera looking nauseous over the idea of his beloved EU and China getting hit with them though (you should probably make hay on that one). Why is he not at least somewhat relieved that Canada dodged these tariffs? One would think…
    What are the recent Chinese tariffs on Canada again? Why isn’t Carney talking about those again? Why hasn’t your good buddy the EU fully ratified CETA again? Why isn’t Carney pushing for a good deal for your country on that? Why aren’t you holding the Liberals (and the NDP, and the Greens, and the Bloc who basically are the Liberals little helpers) feet to the fire on this?

  16. Over 3 trillion invested in the USA since Trump started. Expected to climb to 6-7 trillion soon. That’s over $10 000 in investment for every man, woman and child in the USA. Trump’s policies are working great for the American people, you know, the people who elected him.

  17. Look what Germany does to American cars!

    2023, the cost of an American car in Germany would depend on the specific model, but you can expect to pay a higher price due to import duties, VAT, and shipping costs, which can add significantly to the overall price.

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