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  • Hope he suffers as much as humanely humanly possible. He voted for an anti-democratic felon rapist to own the libs. As far as I'm concerned he's a traitor.

  • Trump: I have concepts of a plan.

    This guy: Oh boy, I hope those concepts survive his term!

  • I'm actually impressed by some of the critical thinking going on! Some are saying this would cause more US based steel manufacturing while others point out nobody is setting up a company when even Trump himself can't commit to keeping the tarrifs in place for 4 years. However, nobody is discussing why there needs to be more US based steel production.

    What is bad about importing steel? An American factory producing steel and an American factory producing cars from imported steel are both American factories. Why is it so important for the US to produce all of their steel domestically?

    • I think they're focused on when you import more than you export, that's a net loss, or a trade deficit.

      One way to view it is that you are propping up someone else's economy, or you are funneling your money outside.

      So I think nationalistic morons just hate that at face value without any critical thinking.

      In some formulas this is included in GDP, and growing up in rural America, I always heard whining about how America needed to stay on top and not be beaten by China or whoever else, and a lot of that rhetoric sometimes simply stems from made up crap like who has the bigger number, such as GDP. I can tell you how often I've heard idiotic ideas like how some other country like China will just invade and take us over if we aren't #1 in everything. Like being #2 or 3 somehow means death.

      I usually waste my time trying to point out the sun now sets on the British flag every damn day, and yet they still have their country and they still live pretty decent lives. The British didn't just disappear once their empire was basically over.

      Conservatism and nationalism is toxic.

      • The vast majority of American imported steel comes from Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea. As for aluminum, Canada is the only one worth mentioning. Source.

        Canada and Mexico weren't even considered adversarial until Trump pissed and moaned about how NAFTA is soooooo bad.

        For starters, the United States, according to the Reuters article, imported some 508,000 tons of Chinese steel in 2024. By comparison, we imported 6.6 million tons of steel from Canada. According to the American Steel and Iron Institute, American steel production was 1.6 million tons in one week in November alone, and the nation produced over 74 million tons by November 2 of last year. You can annualize that to about 88.4 million tons last year. You can dig as far down to that number to calculate that we produce more steel domestically in two and a half days than we import from China in a year.

        They're really bitching and whining about maybe a dime flowing out of the country when the other 90 cents stays in it.

        The American steel industry isn't what it was in, say, the Carnegie days, and if you think that's what it should look like, get in a time machine and go back to the gilded age. Please. While your eight year old daughter works from sunup to sundown with your wife at the coat factory, you'll spend sixteen hours a day seven days a week mining iron ore with your ten year old son. You'll live in a company town where you're paid peanuts in what are essentially coupons that aren't accepted anywhere in the world except that specific company town. Meanwhile, Andrew Carnegie gets to make real money selling the steel you break your back mining for over a hundred hours a week. And he gets a fuck ton of it, too. Just consider yourself lucky your wife didn't die from a postpartum infection because the doctors didn't wash their hands.

        Yes, it is not what it was in those days, and it should never be that way again. American-made steel is still, by and large, a pretty healthy industry. They're doing fine. The real whiners are the filthy rich owners who want to squeeze every nickel and dime out of everything. So they're happy to act in protectionist ways that maybe prop up the industry in the short run, but makes everything more expensive in the long run. They don't care. They know we need these metals for basic shit in our lives. We'll buy them no matter what they cost.

        Finally, the rights you have as a worker today are written in blood. And now, the government we the dopes have elected is working hard to bleach and torch them. People - lots of em - died fighting for what little we have today. And if you think we're whiners for clinging onto those rights so the richest people in the world get to sleep on a mattress stuffed with a couple fewer hundred dollar bills, maybe it's time to learn your fucking history.

      • I can tell you how often I've heard idiotic ideas like how some other country like China will just invade and take us over if we aren't #1 in everything. Like being #2 or 3 somehow means death.

        Like all things this is GOP projection. I've been being told from the day I was born that if the USA lost its stranglehold on the world then we'd immediately be facing a large scale ground invasion from China or Russia or Iran. As if they were just itching for any opportunity to show up and destroy us because America was just too awesome. Everyone in the entire world hates us because we have so much money and do so well at being the world police, they call us the Great Satan, etc etc.

        Lo and behold, the US has been in over 200 military operations since 1950, where we keep itching to show up and destroy someone who doesn't want us around. People didn't hate us because of our culture or our money, they hated us because we kept showing up to weaker countries after big devastating events and informing them that they now have a new leader that answers to America, and if you don't like it, we'll bomb you for the next 20 years.

        The conservative response to any other nation showing some sort of weakness is, traditionally, to load up some boots and some bombs and send em on over to see what sort of profit we can blow up. They cannot fathom that anyone else would do something differently.

    • Didn't Dump himself say that it's a negotiating tactic?

      He seemed happy to extract low value concessions from Canada and Mexico. Could be he wants an early win, could be he's misleading attention, could be he's appeasing some donors, and could be a fishing expedition to see what concessions he can get from the allies.

      Any extraction will enrich himself and cronies, as well as please the autocrats he's serving and/or courting.

    • Vertically integrated economy.

      If your economy has companies performing all steps in the supply chain for making a complex commodity, like cars, you get to extract profit at each step rather than just the last step.

      The USA's economy and geography is large enough to have an almost entirely self sufficient economy.

  • The current situation we find ourselves in makes me think of this quote more than ever:

    Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

    H.L. Mencken

  • Well, look - my softie bleeding heart librul values make me absolutely hate it when economic uncertainty leads to people losing their homes and their livelihoods. But this is the government that we, the people voted for. And if the government that we, the people voted for is creating economic uncertainty that is causing people to lose their homes and their livelihoods, then my bleeding librul heart bleeds for the people who are displaced. But I am also well versed in irony, and brother, this is an irony smorgasbord.

    If you're one of the people who voted for the guy who's creating the economic uncertainty that's currently fucking your shit up... brother, I'm not sure what I can do for you.

    Resistance is always the last option. The best option, and the first you should turn to, is voting in a way that is consistent with your values and your economic priorities. If you voted for this, and you're upset at what your voting got you... I'm not sure that you're going to like what I've got to tell you.

124 comments