I know Trump is dumb. I know his administration is dumb. I still can’t fathom that someone is this stupid.

Oh but it can get more stupid, don’t you worry. The following is a quote from Trump’s Trade Representative, where they describe how the tariffs were calculated:

The recent experience with U.S. tariffs on China has demonstrated that tariff passthrough to retail prices was low (Cavallo et al, 2021).*

What is this recent experience that the Trump administration learned from, you ask? Cavallo et al studied the impact of Trump’s tariff on China in 2018! What else did they find?

US profit margins decreased on both imports AND exports as a result of the tariffs, while China’s was much less affected. The paper clearly shows American tariffs hurt Americans more than literally anyone else, and the Trump Administration “read” that paper and publically cited it as a source on a government website.

Our analyses indicate that the price incidence of US import tariffs falls largely on the United States… Our results suggest that retailers are absorbing a significant share of the increase in the cost of affected imports by earning lower profit margins on those goods… [These analyses reveal] that the recent tariffs applied by foreign governments on US exports have affected total foreign import prices far less than was the case for the recent US tariffs

*Please note while prices remained stable in response to that one tariff, Cavallo did not suggest it was a generalizable fact. It’s not.

TL;DR:

• Research shows Trump’s 2018 tariff hurt US importers’ profit margins more than anyone else. They paid the cost (that time) to keep prices stable.
• It also shows China’s reciprocal tariffs hurt US exporters much more than it hurt China’s importers.
• The Trump administration legitimized this research when they cited it in their flawed reasoning that domestic prices always remain stable after tariffs (they don’t)

Plenty of people supported Coolidge and Hoover until they felt it in their wallets. This is going to hurt, for everyone, and it will provide opportunities to change minds. Not just the minds of Trump supporters, but the minds of everyone who thinks there’s no point fighting. We have a lot of common ground opening up beneath our feet.

This is a terrible mistake for them to make. The Republican party has made this mistake before. It lead to the New Deal. History sure is rhyming, and things aren’t playing out quite the same, but we have a chance - however small it is - to take advantage of their mistake again, and turn things around.

The evidence that Trump’s Administration themselves cited in their official explanation of their tariff “calculations” (trade deficit / imports) flat out states that when the US tries to tariff other countries:

1. American importers pay for the US tariff AND
2. American exporters pay for the foreign retaliatory tariffs.

The source (Cavallo et al, 2021) clearly demonstrates that American tariffs are paid directly by Americans in both directions, meaning out of everyone on Earth, US tariffs screw the US the most. Trump’s administration legitimized the source by citing that research for its calculations on the tariff rates.

The Trade Representative’s explanation freely admits that the stupid parameters were chosen more or less arbitrarily, and they cited the paper to justify their position on tariff price throughput but conveniently didn’t list it in their “References” section.

Our analyses indicate that the price incidence of US import tariffs falls largely on the United States… Our results suggest that retailers are absorbing a significant share of the increase in the cost of affected imports by earning lower profit margins on those goods… [These analyses reveal] that the recent tariffs applied by foreign governments on US exports have affected total foreign import prices far less than was the case for the recent US tariffs

This is really not true. The wealthy aren’t playing 4D chess with the economy, they are just as short-sighted behind closed doors. The Great Depression fucked a lot of wealthy people up and turned the entire nation against them. It can happen again.

Edit - and for the record, the abundance does vanish in a depression scenario. Factories shut down, productivity collapses. The world will literally extract, refine, process, and build less of everything. You can’t build a fleet of yachts without a functioning economy.

I agree. People underestimate how our perspectives of war have shifted tremendously in the past century. The ideological shift towards xenophobia and nationalism in recent years is undeniable, but it lacks the context of the world prior to the world wars.

War was the default state. It was expected. Not just colonization, oppression, or revolution. No. Prior to the 20th century, humanity had experienced a nearly constant stream of full-scale, all-out, nation-making and nation-breaking wars.

In the modern day, American “wars” happen in deserts and distant places. There is a level of cognitive dissonance in the public and military consciousness, a separation of “us” vs. “them”, a facade of bringing “justice and peace”. There is, always, a one-sidedness to the engagement. Even when America “loses”, it has no fear of a counterattack, because in every case it is merely “protecting democracy”, as opposed to actually being at war.

The implicit biases against empathizing with other people - especially impoverished non-white refugees - have kept the nation from properly grappling with its history of tyranny. Many people have always believed in the greatness of the Land of the Free, simply because they could physically and emotionally distance themselves from the victims of “freedom”.

An American invasion of Europe would completely shatter the Union. Full stop. No amount of xenophobic lies can prepare the troops and civilians fast enough for such a dramatic cultural and ideological shift. The rhetoric will ramp up, the core supporters will rabble rouse, and the soundbites will be bloodthirsty, but the actual bloodthirst won’t be there among the rest of the population or the military.

War was easy to sell to Germany because it was billed as the only way out from the under the oppressive burdens of the last war. War was in the public mind. It was living memory of everyone else on the planet banding together to screw over Germany in particular.

War will not be so easy to sell here. Americans literally identify themselves as European Americans. They’re italian and irish and german. They want to visit, they want to find love, they want to dine in Paris and party in Dublin and see the Vatican. American soldiers are literally stationed all across the region partying with the locals.

We don’t remember war as a culture. We remember oppression, and “police actions”, and Vietnam. But we don’t remember world war, and we can’t imagine London or New York falling. That will all change if we attack our friends, and the cultural and ideological whiplash would tear the nation to pieces.