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  • I know nothing. I am no expert in anything economically. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that some very telling things have happened.

    • Colombia getting their way with the deportations. Maybe not a full loss for Trump, but still.
    • China only getting a 10% tariff, I imagine to try to avoid raising prices too much/keeping China from strongly retaliating.
    • The destruction of USAID
    • Marco Rubio recently saying the world is now multipolar

    Republicans want power internally, and they are willing release most power externally to get it. Fascists want Europe to be Fascist are willing to give up all of the worlds' resources to do it. Trump wants to be a real statesmen guy and add territory to the US and win trade wars to prove it. US Hegemony was already failing, but the infrastructure to replace is isn't there yet. So my best guess is that Trump wins for a year or two, midterm blue wave locks up the country domestically and every nation the US tries to bully has built up the infrastructure with each other/China to start cutting the US out. It will be a long process still, but I imagine the talks are already happening. The US status as the world importer ends both as a consequence of increased domestic manufacturing and other states realizing it's going to happen anyway due to a depression and they might as well plan for it. BRICS figures out a solution to the currency issue (probably not an intentionally permanent one but if it works no one will fix it.) Trump's tower begins to fall, he tries to course correct but it's too late and the the stress kills him. Republicans look at Elon for leadership, but he's too weird to them to be a charismatic fascist leader so they fall back on old style conservatism. California exerts more control over the rest of the country until Newsom is elected president and he actively jettisons the south of the US, then invades them just to bully them.

    • This still doesn't make sense to me. Much of the government's power internally comes from it's external power ie imperialism, the extraction of superprofits, migration of skilled labor, cheap commodities from primary production etc etc. Giving up external power will just make them less powerful overall, there's no benefit to their internal power.

      This won't work out for them unless I'm really missing something.

      • There's been some indication that Trump's being influenced on some of this stuff by the project 2025/Heritage Foundation people which is a billionaire backed think tank. I suspect this is a Shock Treatment in all but name with global Capital doing everything they can to rip the copper out of the walls and put the 99% of the US on a footing more equivalent to those in the third world. They'll weather a few years of passing on tarrifs to the consumer, investing to gain from Brics wins, all while also profiting from the war machine and watching us cut each other's throats to survive.

      • I never said they were smart. I also never said 'the government' wants power internally, I said the republicans do. There are many forms of oppression and control that do not rely on or even include a federalized government.

      • I mean, this is true, but you have to also remember that these states exist as interacting blocks of capital and all of our efforts that go into subjugating foreign states means that we are putting less effort into developing our own national capital and national product. Eventually, our meddling in world affairs develops nations economically, at a rate faster than we developed economically. Most obvious example of this, I think, is China, where we negotiated with them to liberalize their economy. They did so under very specific conditions, and then utilized the capital we were pouring into the country to rapidly industrialize themselves at a rate faster than we ever could have, given the conditions under which we did.

        If you think about the UK Empire, while the United Kingdom was developing industrialization across its empire, it was also aiding in the development of It's territories that it controlled. The competition, they brought to the table, caused places like the United States, Japan, and Germany to seek their own form of rapid industrialization.. Eventually, the United Kingdom had to turn to protectionist policies in order to maintain its imperial goals and its dominance as the workshop of the world. Free trade had effectively weakened its position over time on the global stage.

        These contender countries did not have to go through the same kind of developmental process that the United Kingdom did, where they went from a feudal country to a mercantile country to a capitalist country. They jumped right to being a capitalist country. After the Civil War in America, for example, industrialization of agriculture exploded since the central tension of the Civil War was surrounding the industrialization of the East Coast method and the slave labor of the South.

        This meant that the United Kingdom was now competing with a former colony on the same footing which was industrial production. And it required the United Kingdom to do protectionist measures in order to maintain its supremacy. But this was a futile effort.

        I think what we're seeing here is a similar kind of shift in policy for America, except instead of it being centered around industrial capital, it's being centered around technological capital. So much of our world is driven through cloud computing and large data analysis and every day personal computing and China is no longer trailing behind us in this regard. They have established themselves as the chip foundry of the world. They achieved this goal due to the relationship between our capital investment in their low cost labor and their communist five-year plan model.

        Their great firewall has protected and insulated the development of their own technological capital. They have some of the most widely used apps in the world thanks to their sheer population size and those apps account for every aspect of a Chinese citizens digital life. In China, you do not have to carry a wallet. You just need your cell phone in some parts of the country.

        We know that Silicon Valley has been desperately trying to recreate the everything app like they have in China. And they have failed to do so for decades. They have not been able to recreate the kind of success that China has had. Between their failing front on Ukraine, and the PR nightmare that is Israel, all the time spent in Iraq and Afghanistan that amounted to very little, We have not had the same kind of success that the United Kingdom had with their empire, and it is because we are trying to subjugate developed countries as supposed to countries that were not full capitalist industrial nations.

        I think there is a distinct possibility that these kinds of moves would have been made by the Democratic Party as well, in terms of tariffs on China at a minimum. But possibly, tariffs on Mexico and Canada as well. So much of our manufacturing, especially cars, for example, come out of Mexico and Canada. Instead of paying workers in Ford factories in America to assemble Ford trucks, we pay workers in Mexico in factories to assemble Ford trucks and then we pay to ship them here. All of the parts that are manufactured externally get shipped to Mexico and the cost of importing is a lot less.

        The problem with that, however, is that we have industrialized Mexico in such a way that makes them a prime candidate for other countries to build cars as well, which is why we are in a conflict with China. China understands that Mexico has a very skilled labor force when it comes to car assembly, and they wish to use that labor force to build their own cars.

        Naturally, this is a problem for America because now America has to compete with Chinese cars. And as we know from people like Peter Thiel, competition is for losers, according to them. They would rather have a monopoly. The way that you do that is by returning manufacturing internal to America. Forgoing the external development of other countries so that we may, "have cheaper cars", or more accurately so that a greater portion of surplus value can be extracted from cheap labor abroad, So that we can avoid having to compete on a global market with global car manufacturers who are producing them at a cheaper rate, create this condition where people like Peter Thiel can have their monopoly.

        The calculation from what I can estimate is that having a monopoly at home stands to be better than having a monopoly globally. Because having a monopoly globally causes problems, problems of development where these countries are becoming more and more developed as a result of building their productive forces. Because they become more developed, they become less reliant on our need for development. Then we become in conflict because they become contenders. India is another example of a country that soon will become a contender state that will no longer need the developmental aid of a place like America.

        In order to bring labor power back home to America though, you need shock therapy in order to reduce the cost of that labor power. And while there has not been an official declaration of emergency at the federal level that would necessitate the need for shock therapy, I think they have realized that they don't need to declare any sort of state of emergency. They understand that the deck is stacked so far in their favor over the decades of manipulation of the courts that they can do anything and it will take far longer to undo the damage they've done than it would for them to do the damage in the first place. The result is the same even if it's criminal.

    • I was under the impression the relatively low China 10% tariff number was because it's on top of already-existing tariffs?

    • Elon musk actually called out USAID what it is. Fascinating.

    • Marco Rubio recently saying the world is now multipolar

      They say that, as if it's not their fault.

      • That's kinda what I was getting at in the post, they are actively exchanging America's soft power for hard power domestically. Likely there will be a roll back of military in other countries with an increased military presence in America, especially at the border or at protests.

  • I already wrote in the news mega that the situation is completely unpredictable lol.

    It really depends on how seriously you take Trump’s unrealistic words, and whether the bourgeois ruling class has plans of their own with Trump’s policies.

    Since we can’t read their minds, we can only entertain the question here with some educated guesses:

    First, we need to ask: what is the principal contradiction facing the US empire today?

    It is the irreconcilable opposition between industrial and finance capital. Wall Street needs dollar hegemony to rule the world, while the dollar hegemony also led to the long term deindustrialization of the US itself, the stagnation and loss of real wage increase, the transformation of proletarian working class into indebted consumers with increasing burden of mortgage, healthcare and consumer debts that are unlikely to be repaid without wage increase.

    This inevitably led to the rise of the grassroots Bernie Sanders movement, and in parallel, Trump’s MAGA movement, that sought to challenge the neoliberal status quo represented by the establishment factions of their respective parties.

    So, to reduce the friction with the working class, the US cannot continue to run a persistent trade deficit, but fixing this with re-industrialization would also oppose the interests of the Wall Street finance capital and challenge the global hegemony of the dollar itself.

    How can such a contradiction be resolved? Well, resolved is maybe unlikely at a fundamental level, but there are ways to delay and even shift the contradiction elsewhere, and that pertains to how the US chooses to export its dollars overseas.

    Since the end of Bretton Woods in 1971, the US has been running a permanent trade deficit to export its dollars to other countries. How do you retain dollar hegemony while reducing trade deficit? You would have to shift the dollar export from trade deficit into foreign direct investments - this allows the dollar to continue to be exported, while reducing trade deficit will allow some limited form of re-industrialization - at least adequate to keep the working class from erupting in mass anger.

    But many countries have capital controls precisely to prevent foreign capital from flooding their countries, with some countries like China and India having long-term capital control in place.

    Back in 2018, Trump started the unexpected trade war with China by sanctioning Chinese telecommunication companies and with tariffs. But nobody maybe other than Trump believes that imposing such tariffs can lead to the re-industrialization of America.

    Instead, it was likely to probe China’s red line, see how much they would tolerate, and how they would react under such restrictions.

    Enter Biden 2021-2024: a few things changed the global situation dramatically apart from Covid.

    First, the Ukraine war has decimated European economy growth, such that they can take up the role a major consumer in the event of a trade war with China.

    Second, the inflation in the US led to the Fed hiking rates (fastest since Volcker shock) that rapidly drew international capital away from the rest of the world back to the US. As a result, countries in the Global South began to run into dollar liquidity crisis and rising interest payments.

    Third, the huge volume of US treasuries began to mature starting in 2023, pumping out nearly $1 trillion dollars in interest payment alone a year - most of this fresh money creation went into the stocks and bonds, which is why you see S&P500 doubling in spite of an inflationary environment. Now, these money needs to get somewhere, and foreign sector would be the next target.

    All these three conditions have created an opening for countries to open up their capital controls in order to receive dollars to save their economy. In fact, China has been doing so since the September 24 policy following the Fed lowering its interest rate for the first time in two years.

    Finally, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on the entire world can only lead to a plummeting of US consumption due to an anticipation of inflation, and threatens to wipe out the export industries in the Global South (Europe and Japan no longer have the capacity to consume, while China still wants to run a huge trade surplus and is in a consumption slump itself so unlikely to absorb the loss of demands from US consumers).

    The end result? The US goes into recession (if Trump/Musk does the budget cuts), IMF bailouts and privatization of the assets in the Global South whose economies could not sustain such an economic shock, and as such Wall Street not only gets to export dollars to the rest of the world, at the same time the US can also reduce its trade deficits. This will complete the transition of exporting dollar capital from running permanent trade deficit into foreign direct investment becoming a major channel of how dollar flows to the rest of the world.

    Is this a permanently viable strategy? Unlikely, as it also comes with its own contradictions, but finance capital, like a parasite, simply needs to jump from a dying host to a new host to delay its own demise.

  • First things first, if things start going sideways, the admin will be forced to pump brakes on tariffs, or make loopholes. And if the tariffs do go through at their fullest extent, sellers will still find ways around the tariffs to minimize their impacts. Already the Trump admin imposed tariffs on China in 2018, but Chinese exporters just found a whole bunch of loopholes around these tariffs (ex - splitting packages to less than $800 to avoid customs checking).

    The impact right away won't be as big or catastrophic as one might think. However, it will certainly accelerate the downfall of American industry over time, as American capital is in a poor position to replace external manufacturing. This is because America doesn't have enough skilled workers (and is being racist to the ones it imports) or government policy to sustain a large manufacturing base. Basically, the productive forces of the imperial heartland will decline, and this will be most notable in agriculture (and industry where prices are already high from bird flu, gas price increases, ecological devastation and so many more factors). Imagine what will happen if the Trump admin successfully turned down the flow of industrial parts for food production from China.

  • Too soon to tell. Also not sure what their plan is and what success means there.

    It's quite possible they intend to do the whole small yard, high fence thing they've been pushing with Democrats for a long time but really kick it into gear. This has the benefit of crashing quality of life and increasing expenses for the working class which increases their desperation and the potential for exploitation of enlarged underclasses of people who've slipped under from all of this and are only barely not drowning.

    It would also involve (attempting) reshoring from China, beating corporations until they comply like with Russia, allowing a few carve-outs (as with Russia), then stoking a war over Taiwan, using the resulting propaganda storm to force heavy sanctions and decoupling (with again some carve-outs for valuable corporations that can't or refuse to pull out right away). That plus the rising reaction in the US and Europe bodes ill for those in the imperial core. What they do next in such a scenario is up for debate. I personally think naked resource grabs like what Trump talks about, just taking Greenland, openly invading/couping nations in Africa and Latin America, completely dropping the mask and seizing as much as they can to pull into their "small yard" behind their high fence and put up as much of a wall around China/Russia and as much of a squeeze on the two of them as they can by using what power they can to deny them as many markets as possible and to maximally disrupt their supply chains (Trump's talk of taking the Panama canal for instance would be potentially part of the US shoring up its naval control of the world, it has only sea-power not land-power potential so must maximize control of choke-points to dominate and enforce embargoes and sanctions). They'd try to combine this with continued operations to foster terrorism and instability in key regions to block the belt and road as well as resource extraction for China's manufacturing.

    It's also possible they do something else.

    So I think it's possible it's an attempt to use the power of their hegemony before it slips further to shape and direct the world into a shape they believe they can exploit to maintain a dominant position.

  • This is a low confidence guess, but I think it will initiate another inflationary period after a surge in profits from rents for American companies, especially if Trump can pressure the federal reserve into lowering interest rates (enabling Americans to borrow to cover rising costs), unless I am underestimating how much money the government will raise from the tariffs. The stock market looks like it's going to drop tomorrow but it is not going to be clear whether those losses will stick until it's long over. It is always possible for it to revert to its previous level about as quickly as it left. And that's usually what happens. But if the market continues dropping, that will reflect a major decrease in investment and Trump really is the next Grover Cleveland (non consecutive terms and the second one was an economic depression).

  • First, a bit of background: AFAIK, the US has been running trade deficits for years - (somebody please correct me if i misunderstood that). Trump is trying to stop that, mostly by just stopping trade altogether. Which, IMHO, is actually kinda sane.

    I guess you can only understand the current developments with at least a bit of religiosity/seeing the bigger picture. The influential people in the US are all fundamentalist christians, which means they believe in "the second coming of god", as foretold in the bible. It means, god will come to earth, and transform it permanently. The good guys go to heaven, the bad guys go to hell, or sth.

    I guess that they're trying to make that real by developing spaceflight and sending the "good guys" (in their own eyes) to Mars, while not really caring about what happens on Earth, if i understand things correctly.

    This is my own view of it, as i have thought about it trying to make sense. I don't know whether it would convince anybody else, though.

  • One likely possibility is that he ends up walking them back and either claiming

    or giving a non-apology.

    Another possibility is that they actually stay up for a year or more, and put a huge dent into the purchasing power of Americans. I still wouldn't expect Teflon Don's approval rating to drop below 32% just from this, even if gas reaches $4 a gallon everywhere.

  • There's no indication that tariffs are going to be followed by an announcement of massive financing or investment into industrial capacity in the United States. Even if they released the news Wednesday, it would take years to take effect. The most likely outcome is that the economy starts to shit itself. The stock market, by no means the economy itself, will start to mirror anxiety and concerns about consumer confidence, revenue, and income. Companies already laying off people due to high interest rate on loans (which is how they make payroll) will look to cut more people, as inflation, and the Fed's possible rate increase to counteract it, will bring the economy to stagflation, net 0 or sub 2% growth and ramped up inflation.

    Now Trump is an opportunist, unlike Kamala who didn't believe in anything, Trump will grab whatever works. If the tariffs start to collapse the economy, my assumption is that he'll try something deemed "controversial" like using war power acts to claim control of production at home. Most likely he'll start fielding phone calls from all the oligarchs begging him to cut this and that company, this and that industry a break, which he might or might not acquiesce to depending on how ugly they are, or how beautiful their industry are.

    False alarm, lmao

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