Well, maybe. Who the hell knows what he’ll do. Anyway, tariffs are back to 30% on China and 10% on America.
This is exactly what China demanded, for tariffs to go back to what they were before April 2nd.
There will still be a two month trade burp. Ships weren’t leaving China for the US at all, literally zero. Lot of freight companies are about to make a mint, though. So expect some shortages, but nothing worse than Covid, and hopefully lasting less time.
The fundamental problem remains, however, which is that there’s no certainty around any of this, so business people can’t make long term plans, including plans to build or relocate manufacturing. Trump and the US can’t be trusted to stay steady on policy, so avoiding making big plans involving the US makes sense.
The Great Power picture is clearer, however. The US tried to impose its will on China and failed. China wouldn’t negotiate till its pre-conditions were met. The world has two great powers, with the EU bidding to become the third (I think they’ll fail, but that’s what the rearmament is about.)
And, in economic terms, China is by far the pre-eminent great power. It isn’t even close. The era of American hegemony is officially over. The US tried to impose its will on the world and failed.
Larry
Such a quick failure too. It does seem to mostly boil down to Trump enriching himself in these “deals”. Is he just trying to get TikTok still? It’s so pathetic and deeply damaging American business, especially smaller ones, in the process. The WSJ ran a very good piece on how this is hammering small business owners who have the least ability to absorb these absurd fluctuations:
https://www.wsj.com/business/entrepreneurship/small-business-tariffs-e6dfaccb?st=BTHPSs&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
The Heretic
‘The sight of one swallow does not make for a summer. ‘
We need repeat of this activity for confirmation
different clue
Homeless Americans probably don’t care about American hegemony. If they didn’t benefit from it while it was here, they won’t miss it when its gone.
How about the vastly huger population of one-paycheck-away-from-homelessness Americans? Will they try to comfort themselves in the mental mud wallow of hegemostalgia? ( hegenostalgia? hegemonostalgia? how does one spell that?) If so, for how many years to come? Could candidate Vance sail to victory on a campaign of “Make America Greater Than Ever Before ( MAGTEB) ” . . . ?
And will the DemCandidate run on “restoring American Leadership” with a “Kinder Gentler Rules-Based-Order with a Smiley Face on it” ?
People who are ready to let Hegemony go will be ready to move on to Survivalism or Social Survivalism or Separate Survivalism or whatever they end up deciding to call it and deciding to make it mean.
Maybe National Survivalism. Survivalism in One Country. ” America has Stood Up!”
Isn’t it lovely to dream about?
In the meantime, I will use part of my currently on-vacation time to visit some stores I sometimes visit anyway to look at the state of the shelves. That will be my baseline observation.
KT Chong
Have to say I was surprised by this (FAKE) “trade deal”. I had thought China would want to make Americans SUFFER and Trump SWEAT before they came in with all the leverages and pressures to make America and Trump yield.
With that being said:
1. Why is everyone calling it a “trade deal”? America and China simply dialed back and went back to the previous tariff levels before Trump’s “Liberation Day”… just as China had demanded before it’s willing to start any trade talk with America. So now China is actually willing to talk to America about any “trade deal”.
2. Both China and the US rolled back their tariffs to the pre-Liberation-Day levels… BUT China is not rolling back any of its “non-tariff” retaliatory measures… especially its export bans/control on critical or rare earth minerals to the US! Those export bans and control of critical/rare earth minerals are actually the China’s more powerful trade weapons, and they stay. So China still came out ahead of this (fake) “trade deal”.
Purple Library Guy
I hate to say it, but this is one way in which Trump is actually less stupid and dysfunctional than the traditional foreign policy elites in the US. Yes, he does insane things. But when something blows up in his face, he pretends it never happened or that he somehow won and stops doing it and does something different. At least for a while.
When something blows up in traditional US foreign policy elites’ face, they say “Well, but we’d lose credibility if we stopped doing it–we’d have to admit we made a mistake, or admit that someone had the power to stop us from doing what we want! We’ll just have to keep doing the same thing, only harder!” That’s why they were in Afghanistan for twenty freaking years. That’s why they’re still blockading Cuba after 60 years.
KT Chong
3. Also, China has cancelled lots of orders for US agricultural and energy, and replaced them with new contracts with Australia, Brazil, Canada, etc… Those are not getting “rolled back”.
I suspect most if not almost all US businesses will resume buying from China. However, now that China has switched over to buying agricultural and energy replacements from Australia, Brazil, Canada, etc., China will NOT break the new contracts and resume buying agricultural and energy products from the US, certainly not at the previous price levels.
Art
“Who the hell knows what he’ll do.”
I’d bet a sawbuck that this 90 day break is mostly about backing away, one commentator called it ‘moonwalking’ back (quite apt IMHO), from this brain-dead mistake and hoping people forget about it. Nothing was accomplished. Progressives need to remind the public at every turn. It isn’t a good look. These gratuitously destructive reversals are serving to highlight DJT’s carelessness and flagrant idiocy.
I think it is increasingly clear that one of the many reasons few want to build businesses in the US is that we presently have, and may again, have a quasi-dictator with power to , on a whim, alter the business landscape. Presidents have long had influence but it was, generally, much more constrained. More rarely and very much more gently used.
It doesn’t help that his understanding of how things work is simply wrong. Although I feel a lot of people are confused simply because he: 1) has no actual plan, just ideas for a plan and; 2) is willing to destroy the US as vengeance for us failing to recognize and align our lives to his genius. DJT is absolutely sure that he can’t fail; he can only be failed. Failing to be proclaimed God-emperor he, deep down, wants to destroy the temple.
NR
PLG: I think Cuba is a pretty bad example considering that Trump intensified the blockade in both his terms.
Mark Level
PLG makes a very good point. The Biden-Blinky-Sullivan Axis would never admit when policy choices blew up in their faces, and there was nobody forced out for huge failures or cock-ups. (Vicky Nuland was quietly forced out 3+ years after starting a war the US will lose, whether they admitted that last part or not.) On the other hand, when Mike Walz betrayed Trump by being an agent of Netanyahu’s interests, he was fired as NatSec Advisor but given a consolation prize of UN Ambassador instead of being shown the door. (Netanyahu paid a price, at least in the short term, given Trump’s lack of consistency, we’ll see if that’s lasting.)
Art writes and interesting commentary, though I have no idea what “Progressives” he thinks exists or will effectively push back against Daddy? Okay, Chris Van Hollen was effective in El Salvador pushing back against the Trump Torture Gulag for Profit plan for “illegal” migrants (even ones with Green Cards, citizenship, etc.) or those who dare write a college editorial sympathetic to Palestinians. Bernie and the utterly vapid and empty AOC are trying to sheepdog people back into the Dimmie party which we all (should) know if returned to power will produce (per Obama) NO hope and NO change and just be an interregnum before handing it back to the other team. His final paragraph however is excellent, yes, Trump is deeply stupid, so any feints he make usually end in Nothing-burgers. He has no strategic goals beyond assuaging his huge insecurity by demanding attention.
Speaking of which, he does have some sharp political instincts nonetheless. Will he be able to slash Big Pharma costs? That would be tremendously popular, I do see that their stocks are getting hammered. Will their be any payoff? Not sure he can make such a big change just with an Executive Order. Since both the R’s and D’s in office are all on the Big Pharma-Insurance-FIRE gravy train, count me skeptical of any positive change. I’d bet on something like Sullivan pulled with the Dem promise to raise the minimum wage– What’s the Republican equivalent of the omnipotent Parliamentarian, vested magically with more power than the President? We’ll likely find out soon.
Trump listens to the dumbest of his aides (and no, very few on his staff are “the best people” except at grifting.) He listens to fellow octogenarian Keith Kellogg’s Korn Flakes & NeoCon former Rent Boy “Little Marco” to side with losing Ukraine, so now that War is Trump’s War, no longer Biden’s. I’m no JD Vance fan in any way, but hey, broken clock is right twice a day, yet Trump won’t admit what Vance knows, Russia has won. Witkoff on the surface is totally unqualified for his negotiating position, apart from one thing that I just learned from the Duran, that he speaks fluent Russian. Trump is “a malignant narcissist Manchild who thinks the US can’t lose” (as a Duran supporter just called them out for too much faith in Trump put it), so he ignores Witkoff as well. So the War drags on, China, India, and Russia continue to rise, Iran is (thankfully) left unmolested, Israel sidelined unless Miriam Adelson pulls hard on the money reins.
KT Chong calls it viz the rest of the world’s, especially China’s response to the Trump incoherence. Who wants to work with an ever-changing business partner who could pull the rug out from under you at any moment?
I’m glad to see the US Courts standing up to Trump much more than I ever would’ve imagined. That is one of the few positive outcomes of his endless Squid Ink squirted out onto the public. Also gratified to see Diff Clue getting a Clue about the Dems with the following: “And will the DemCandidate run on “restoring American Leadership” with a “Kinder Gentler Rules-Based-Order with a Smiley Face on it” ? . . . Glad to see movement beyond bargaining and denial– it’s failed spectacularly once, why would anyone buy that product again? Better late than never to wake up, though.
There might be truth and alternatives out there somewhere that can be searched for. Neither will be found with the Duopoly parties or their sold-out crooks and sociopaths.
Joan
I remember in the early 2000s people calling it the Asian Century. It makes sense from that perspective for it to get going by 2025 I suppose. It never made sense to me that the US would be able to boss China around when they’ve offshored so much of their industry to them.
Purple Library Guy
NR: Yeah, true, Cuba was a poor example. And while I think there have been costs to the US over the years for pursuing the Cuba blockade, they are subtle, just a general resentment in the third world and more specifically Latin America, which has sometimes contributed to political backlash, particularly during the Pink Tide years. And it’s likely that US policymakers are convinced any such costs are worth it for the gain of intimidation–that there would have been MORE political backlash if it weren’t for Latin American countries fearing to be next. So although I resent the fact, it’s probably true that blockading Cuba is not in fact a policy that has blown up in the US’ face. Not yet, at any rate.
different clue
@KT Chong,
You merely projected your own desires onto the ChinaGov when you “thought” that they would want to make Americans SUFFER and Trump SWEAT. That’s what YOU wanted, want and will always want. The ChinaGov/Business-Industrial Complex just wanted, wants and will always want to do reliable business with reliable business partners.
Yes, the ChinaGov will keep its agricultural import contracts that were switched elsewhere. They will stay elsewhere. If the BrazilGov isn’t careful, China and its ag importers will end up paying Brazil to burn down every last tree throughout the whole Amazon to turn it all into soybean plantations for China. But that’s up to the BrazilGov to go along with or not.
( I will claim that decades ago when China still looked poor and Japan was the big scary threat, that I used to tell people . . . just wait till China is industrialized. We will be facing “Ten More Japans” after that happens.)
The upside for America permanently losing agribulk-commodity export contracts to China is the opportunity it provides for America to repurpose all that land from monocrop annual petrochemical agribulk-commodity plantations over to multispecies pasture and range for strictly-only grass-fed cattle/sheep/etc. for grassfed meat/wool/etc. If done right, it could turn all the currently corn-soy belt soils from an attriting carbon-gasoff wasting resource site into an eco-viable skycarbon-resuckdown bio-carbon-sink, paid for by sales of strictly pasture-and-range fed animal products. Perhaps millions of acres of that land could be re-homesteaded to young strong inspired live-in agronomists ready to apply eco-correct knowledge to the mission of carbon resuckdown pasture and range animal farming. And perhaps some of those millions of acres of land could be turned back over to the Federal Treaty Indian Nations who still own all that land, legally speaking, unto this very day.
National Survival Greenism in One Country.
Saudi Arabia and the Lesser PetroGulfies have more money than Miriam Adelson. However hard she can pull on the money reins, they can pull harder . . . if it is just an matter of money. If it becomes an issue of keeping or losing tens of millions of devoted supporters, the American Christian-Zionist RaptureGeddon End-of-Days engineers can pull very hard on the voter-base reins. Harder than Adelson. Harder than KSA and the Lesser Gulfies?
Art is correct about Trump. Trump hates America. His MAGAnazi scum base and his Christian SatanoFascist base hate America. That is why they love Trump so much.
He and they have love-bonded over their shared hatred for America. How much does the MAGAnazi scum base hate America? They hate America so much that they can’t even take pride in the ascension of the first American Pope ever in history. The new pope doesn’t love MAGAnazi Trump and ChristoFascist Vance enough to satisfy them, so they hate the new Pope.
I am ever so gratified to see that Mark Level has not forgotten all about me. I would invite the collective readership-commentership to go back over my comments and see what I always thought about the DemParty and what it ever offered lately, and then compare their own analysis of my comments with Mark Level’s analysis of my comments.
If the DemParty offers another neoliberal hegemonostalgiast ticket, I will vote for it in hopes of buying 4 more years of interregnum before the next Christianazi-Satanofascist Administration. That would give Separate Survivalists 4 years to entrench Separate Survivalism in those states which are ready for it. It would give those Liberals who are human enough to arm themselves and train for self-defense a 4 year chance to do so. As to those ethical-subhuman Pacifist Liberals for Gun Control, they can spend that next four years pursuing their Gun Control, and let Darwin take them after that. No sensible human being would risk their life defending and protecting an ethical-subhuman pacifist who would never risk its life for them in return.
Those puristocrats, lefter-than-thous and above-it-alls who are PMC enough and who made and have enough PMC money to be able to flee to Thailand or Mexico or wherever can strike all the poses they want. Those of us who were/are bi-weekly wage-earners and don’t have and never did have the money to flee with, and are too old to flee in any case, will make our own best decisions here for enhancing our own survival here as best we can. And if that makes them mad, then that makes me sad, but I can live with that.