It's Greek to me

Yup, sounds like the other countries "tariffs against America" were really just Drump complaining that they weren't buying as much as he thinks they should lol

Yep. Been saying this for months now.
He literally, fundamentally, does not understand the concept of a trade deficit... nor a tariff... and he has surrounded himself with people too stupid and too sycophantic to be able to disagree.
- I mean, if the intention is just to crash the economy the methods don't need to be smart. Who the fuck knows what the real goal is here, the stupidity might just be there to obfuscate what the real intentions are.
  Even if Trump has no clue what's going on his bank rollers and handlers like Thiel and Putin might have more strategy in mind.
  
  I genuienly think Trump is so stupid that he thinks what he is doing will work and makes sense.
  Of course, many smarter people with lots of money, inside of his orbit or outside of it, are capable of being comparatively better off after this all blows up... but I really do think this is more hubris and incompetence than intentional evil.
  Like, I wouldn't say Warren Buffet is a big Trump fan, but he started pulling huge amounts of his investments out into just liquid cash, and has just been sitting on that cash... over 6 months ago now.
  I would think you'd want to be smart enough to lie, to intentionally obfuscate, but Trump has been lying so egregiously, for so long, and so often that he just created a cult of personality where he is a God King, and he just now believes ... that he really is, that there is no need to worry about a cover story because many people are saying he is always right.
  But yeah, Theil, Putin, many others have, can and will continue to manipulate Trump, and the wider economy he is currently immolating.
  
  I don't disagree, but I hear the same sentiment often and it downplays the reality of the fact they keep succeeding in various ways, like trump staying out of prison and the supreme court getting stacked.
  
  Yes, those things are very important as well, the fact that he has basically avoided serious punishment (actual jail time) for all of the numerous crimes he's committed his entire life... teflon don thinks he can get away with anything.
  A lifetime of that and you get a delusional megalomaniacal personality.
  I'm not trying to say he isn't evil in general.
  I am just trying to say on these specific things (tariffs and 'deficit'), I think he has gone past the event horizon and is basically just senile/delusional.
  
  Like, I wouldn't say Warren Buffet is a big Trump fan, but he started pulling huge amounts of his investments out into just liquid cash, and has just been sitting on that cash... over 6 months ago now.
  What does he know and how terrible is it for common people? 🤯
  
  Well, a good 'smart money' investor ... doesn't tell you their exact reasoning... because then everyone else knows what you know, and you lose your advantage of being able to do something first.
  But uh basically, even before the tariffs... pretty much every possible warning sign that exists has been flashing red for years now.
  I am not Warren Buffet, but uh... as I see it:
  The housing market is now starting to crash.
  Consumer debt has exploded, along with delinquencies.
  No one is actually hiring, companies just post ghost jobs, fake openings, to look like they are rapidly growing when they aren't.
  Many, many companies have been actually laying people off in the 10s of thousands.
  The stock market is wildly overvalued and based on speculation, very far away from fundamentals, from reasonable pricing.
  The bond yield curve has now inverted and univerted twice without yet a massive economic downturn.
  In the history of basically all modern economics, last 200 years, any time the bond yield curve inverts, the economy crashes when it uninverts.
  ... I could go on.
  
  So he basically said "this shit ain't right" and chose to pull out money from stocks even though cash loses value to inflation if sat idle?
  
  You got it.
  When people with a lot of investments, who are not otherwise facing some immediate cost... literally cash them out, and hold cash, as Buffet has done /is doing...
  That means he is betting the losses from inflation will be less than the losses from those other investments tanking.
  That means Buffet is roughly predicting something like a -2 or -3 % (or worse) Q1 25 GDP 'growth'... ie, general economic decline.
- considering that the us is bigger than a lot of countries, the only way to reduce trade deficit is to reduce american exports
  
  Either I am misunderstanding you, or you have it backwards.
  America exporting less would result in a larger trade deficit, from America's pov.
  If exports are 10, imports are 20...
  10 - 20 = -10
  Trade deficit is thus 10.
  If exports drop to 5...
  5 - 20 = - 15
  Trade deficit has increased.
  You would either increase exports, or decrease imports, to balance a trade deficit... which is, very simplistically, what tariffs try to make happen.
  But, a basic macroecon course will tell you that all that does is make everything more expensive for everyone, a lose-lose situation.
  Advanced macroecon will tell you there are sometimes good reasons for highly specific, targeted tariffs, coupled with domestic policy to incubate or support a specific industry...
  But willy nilly, slapdash, tariff everything?
  Just historically verified to blow up every large, developed economy that implements them.
I genuinely think turd is not able to understand what a trade deficit is. He probably just saw the minus sign and the word negative and thought right, let’s see about this

Specifically the goods trade deficit, not including services. The US tends to import more goods and export more services like most advanced economies, but they're only counting the goods portion of it.

Their reasoning:

If we have a trade deficit, that is because they're imposing barriers on us! Therefore if the trade deficit is of 50% it's equivalent to a 50% tariff!

This is not just Donald trump math. This is being done by actual people with economics backgrounds. Some might even have PhDs

You think Trump and the Republicans are actually hiring or listening to real economists?
If there are any on staff they're definitely there just for looks, cause even at the college level this would be considered beyond stupid.
- Someone definitely thought this was stupid then decided not to bring it up. First because they likely were not allowed into the room were it was decided and b, they figured any push back would have them fired and they need the job.