So, Trump sent a letter to Brazil announcing 50% tariffs. His demands are that Brazil stop prosecuting Bolsonaro (ex-President who tried to steal the last election, and stole the one before by getting Lula locked up on bogus charges) and that they let US social media platforms operate unfettered the country. If Brazil puts tariffs on US goods, then the US will increase its tariffs by the same amount.
Here’s the thing, Brazil and the US have essentially even trade:
(light blue is exports, dark blue is imports)
The most recent services data I can find indicates that the US has a services surplus.
But more to the point, Trump wants to interfere in Brazil’s internal politics in a way that no Brazilian patriot could countenance. Nor would would Lula be wise to submit.
And Brazil’s exposure to the US market isn’t as serious as it may seem, the exports amount to a bit less than 2% of Brazil’s GDP. It can weather this storm easily. It’ll just sell more elsewhere or even just eat the loss.
What it does do is encourage Brazil to move away from trade with the US entirely, and the US’s main exports to Brazil are refined petroleum, aircraft and parts, nuclear reactor parts and electrical machinery and parts. With the partial exception of aircraft parts and nuclear parts (for US manufactured aircraft and US designed reactors) there’s nothing there Brazil can’t buy from someone else and Brazil imports the things any sane trade policy would want other countries to import: largely manufactured goods other refined petroleum.
Even with nuclear and aircraft, China is now an alternative for new planes and new plants.
So Trump doesn’t have much leverage, actually. Way less than with Europe and Canada and Mexico and Japan and even Canada, Mexico and Japan have resisted his trade war.
All Trump is doing is pushing Brazil away and into the arms of Chinese, and giving them reason to de-dollarize sooner and faster.
Insanity.
Then there’s Trump’s announced 50% tariff on copper imports. Now, on the face, this makes some sense: copper is important in industrial manufacture and having the US dependent on other countries, especially China is bad.
BUT starting at 50% just means that costs for virtually all manufacturing in the US will go up and US manufacturing will be less competitive.
Once again, the way to do tariffs is announce they will happen in X years, where X is the amount of time it will take to build new mines and refineries in the US. Or you could star them at 1% say, and raise them another percentage point every two months till they reach whatever level is necessary to get people to mine and refine in the US.
Just imposing them is the stupidest possible way to do it.
Trump’s just fundamentally incompetent at policy. He can’t do it. Policy under Trump only works if he lets someone else do it and leaves them alone, but for anything high profile he constantly wants to meddle, and he’s a boob.
Trump’s economicpolicy mix — defunding research wholesale, starting a trade war with the entire world, vastly slashing social welfare, discouraging visitors and immigration and getting rid of migrant workers is just accelerating America’s decline.
Trump is an idiot, a fool and the will likely go down as the President who sealed America end as a hegemonic great power. Among post-war Presidents only Obama and Reagan are in competition with him for last place, but because they started and managed US decline, they will avoid much of the blame.
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Eric Anderson
One is almost forced to ask the question: What’s the upside for Trump’s intentionally destroying the U.S.?
Oakchair
Trump will likely go down as the President who sealed America’s end as a hegemonic great power.
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Now that would be worthy of a Nobel Peace prize.
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All Trump is doing is pushing Brazil away
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Yea, but maybe Brazil will follow the Germen model and prostrate itself to be stomped on the face. If there’s one thing the Empire is good at it’s convincing people to sell out their country.
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What’s the upside for Trump’s intentionally destroying the U.S.?
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When the value of everything crashes he can buy everything for pennies on the dollar!
Similar to how the oligarchs sent manufacturing to China, addicted the country to opioids, and pumped every man women and child with expensive “safe and effective” drugs. A lot of money can be made off of destruction.
Purple Library Guy
It cannot be said that Trump is the straw breaking the camel’s back. Yes, that poor camel was already carrying a near back-breaking load, but give Trump credit, he’s a pretty solid log, not just a straw.
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…he’s a boob.
That’s an insult to boobs. Boobs are a good thing, Trump is a bad thing. Considering Trump himself is admittedly a “boob man”, even he agrees that to label him a boob is an insult to boobs. He’s on record on the Howard Stern show proclaiming a woman who has no boobs or small boobs cannot be a 10.
As for the tariffs, there seems to be a disconnect between Trump’s proclamations and the levying of the tariffs. I have yet to see the apocalyptic knock-on effects of all these proclaimed tariffs. Is anyone managing this on the back-end and if so, where is the effect of these draconian tariffs? The terrible effects we’ve been promised and told to fear because it’s coming, just you wait and see?
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A solid log? Hardly. He’s a gelatinous jellyfish more like it. A knife goes through him like butter. At best, he’s a man o’ war — a spineless creature fatally stinging everyone who enters his orbit or sights.
Daniel A Lynch
Ian said ” there’s Trump’s announced 50% tariff on copper imports. Now, on the face, this makes some sense: copper is important in industrial manufacture and having the US dependent on other countries, especially China is bad.”
Yet Japan imports most of its raw materials, turns them into value-added products, then exports value-added products. That works well in peace time. Maybe not so well if there are conflicts where trade is used as a weapon.
Mining and processing copper is a nasty business, and I am content to let some other country deal with it. If war breaks out, we can ramp up mining and smelting. But if we were smart, we would avoid wars, and try to get along with the world.
Jan Wiklund
I’m now reading George Kennan’s Memoirs. Dealing with his WWII memories he says that he never doubted Germany would be beaten, because it took on too many enemies at the time.
The Nato countries have called innumerable state leaders who have irritated them a “Hitler”. It appears that the most hitleresque of them all is Trump. He takes on too many enemies at the time.
marku52
Like I commented somewhere else, Trump’s industrializing thru tariffs policy could have worked……
If it had been done 20 years ago by someone with operational competence…..
Now it is just destroying what little is left. The rest of world now just sees the US as deranged. The end of USD dominance will hurt a lot of Americans, but it will end the empire. And that can’t happen soon enough.
Bullweather
Regarding the copper tariffs. Your overall assessment is correct. Just want to add a little color being spread around.
Trump floated the original copper tariffs around March or April. This created a spread in the NY and London copper prices that have been getting arbitraged for months now to the point that the US has imported a year’s worth of copper imports in the first six months. Originally the spread was around 15% as the assumption was max 25% imports, but markets indicating around 28% premium NY over London which some analysts assume with close to 50% over time.
So because of the arbitrage, the US has front loaded a year’s worth of imports in six months or so. The US also sits on heaps of scrap that it generally exports. Now we get back to your point. The US does not have the mining capacity to increase copper production in six months, nor does it have smelting capacity to handle the amount of scrap that needs to be processed. There’s one plant that can process 150kmt of scrap, but it’s offline. The US exports 600kmt of scrap, so there’s a large gap.
It’s like you’ve mentioned several times. Trump has some good ideas that are being implemented horribly. Why would you tariff everybody at once? Why would you impose huge tariffs on critically important materials with building out a reliable domestic supply chain? Aluminum is another great example, but at least there are some carve outs for important suppliers.
mago
As Daniel A Lynch noted, copper mining and processing is nasty business. I remember the Kennecot open pit copper mine in Utah. What a mess. It’s pretty much depleted now as are other US copper mines, so where’s the future supply coming from?
Check out the Congo. Probably won’t see those pesky tariffs applied to that corrupt and copper rich country.
Just as an aside, Trump is indeed a boob, just not the mammary gland variety.
different clue
I will again offer another possibility which deserves to be considered. It is one which nice kumbaya moderates will not consider because it is not nice to think not-nice things about people. Also, since they have been brain-marinated since birth to believe that hatred and spitred are not-nice emotions and not-nice people don’t ever feel them, they have put themselves out of touch with their own hatred and spitred. They are therefor unable to see hatred and spitred in others when it is on big honkin’ naked display.
Trump is motivated by hatred and spitred. Those are his basic emotions and his compass coordinates. He hates America and he hates Americans. He hates people whom he suspects may think that they are smarter and better than he is, because he fears they might be right to think so. So he hates them pre-emptively just to make sure.
He is the Joker of American politics. He just wants to watch the world burn. Especially America.
The National Christianazi Fascists hope that he, the Republican Party and the Magas will help destroy American society thoroughly enough that the National Christianazi Fascists and the New Apostolic Reformationists can re-arrange the pieces into a beautiful new Gilead Republic of Christianazi Satano-Fascistan. Trump’s random hate-based spite-based destruction of everything Trump can reach serves their longer-range purposes.
The next few decades will be a time of Darwinian Filtration and Selection for us all.
Those who understand that may still not be able to make all the survival preparations to withstand all possible contingencies. Those who do not understand that have no chance of surviving at all ( except for those few innocent idiots who might well be among God’s Chosen Fools).
shagggz
He’s accelerating the endgame our cryptocratic shitlords preordained decades ago, and with a showman’s panache to boot. Best imperial collapse ever!
GrimJim
The MAGA/Trumpist/Project 2025 goals are:
1) Make America White Again (MAWA)
2) Return to an Isolationist and Xenophobic State
3) Maintain Power Indefinitely
1) Getting rid of Birthright Citizenship — ALL Birthright Citizenship, such that they can Un-citizen you as they wish, and then enslave you or export you — is central to #1
2) Destroying US trade with other countries via the current “Tariff/Trade Insult” regime is central to #2; with no trade and no one wanting to come and visit, no need to interact with the world at large. “Hegemony” is not really core to their beliefs (and they are too stupid to realize the US economy is entirely depends on international trade).
3) #1 and #2 combined make them all-powerful. Install White Christian Theocracy, hold on to power for generations… a New Thousand Year Reich.
They are far more likely to cause a complete and utter collapse, even without the coming climate apocalypse, but no one has ever accused them of being truly intelligent, just cunning and without ethics or morals.
Jessica
The easiest one-stop explanation for much of what Trump and his folks are doing is that they believe that most of the US’s problems come from the US being too nice, being wusses. If we just replaced those puss**s in Washington with folks with the balls to just do what is needed – fire all those parasite federal employees and show foreign countries who’s boss – then everything would be fine.
This might have almost worked in the 1990s when Russia was prostrate and China was barely more than an oversized North Korea and US still had a fair amount of manufacturing and its know-how and rentier financialization had not yet metastasized so far, but now of course, is quite counter-productive.
The other element crucial to understanding why such flagrant incompetence is tolerated is that since the Reagan election in 1980, the leaders of the US have more and more focused on plundering the country rather than trying to actually lead it. (I don’t mean the politicians so much as the folks behind stage with the real power.) Right now, those elements in the ruling class who might be expected to try to step in for their own long-term good are too busy congratulating themselves about how much money the new tax cuts will feed them.
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No, he doesn’t. Trump has never had an idea in his life aside from his own glorification. If he ever would do anything I agree with, it’s not because it’s his idea and it’s purely an accident and certainly not for the right reasons, i.e. canceling the EV mandate.
The POSSIBLE tariffs on Brazilian copper are but one example. This is a good thing if you, like me, realize that the only way possible to manage the imminent environmental collapse is to contract the world economy substantially, and even then that’s no guarantee. Driving up the cost of goods and thus the price will result in people buying less of it and that’s a good thing. This is why I will never cheer on China’s growth as so many on the left do.
However, that being said, the copper relationship between Chile and China is of most concern. Money is not for nothing and the chicks are not free. Hiding the true costs of copper mining doesn’t make those true costs disappear. They are accumulating and awaiting their day — a day soon to come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J_hAa0ehnw
Mark Level
So there’s a classic old Simpsons episode (decades old, when it still had something to say) where Sideshow Bob is driving a pick-up truck full of rakes and crashes, flinging the rakes everywhere around the vehicle. He then steps out of the truck, stepping on one rakehead after another such that they bounce up and the handle smashes him in the face. Repeated over and over as he groggily stumbles forward after the last hit . . . that’s Donnie Dumbo’s first 7 months in office as Prez #47.
News moves fast, those rakes don’t step on themselves!! In the last 48 hours, Lula of Brazil rebuffed Dumbo’s demands that a trial of Donnie’s “friend” Bolsinaro for trying to launch a military coup d’etat when he lost an election, & Donnie says stop the trial or there’ll be 50% tarriffs on ALL Brazilian goods forever. Lula responded that Brazil’s sovereignty and internal justice system does not respond to foreign interference and threats, and noted (see Jessica’s comment) that there is not at this point in history a world “dictatorship” that controls all countries everywhere, so stuff it where the Sun doesn’t shine, Dumbo.
Also last week, our widely beloved Genocider Mr. Netanyahoo made a pit stop at the White House to supposedly talk about a Gaza “Cease Fire” with Hair Fuhrer, & get his and his wife’s laundry done on the US taxpayer dime, and brandished for all to see the Zionist Entity’s nomination of Trumpy for the Nobel Peace Prize (see Oakchair’s comment.) What’d Dumbo Donnie do?
Well, he got Iran to sit with the US at a peace negotiations table as a set-up (as he gleefully admitted when he thought Israel “won” the first round) for a Pearl Harbor-style sneak attack on Iran. Then when Iran responded with hits to Izzy Infrastructure probably a dozen times larger than what they’d dished out (since Israel just focuses on the slaughter of their neighbors’ “gentile” sub-humans), and Israel incurred “defense” costs of hundreds of millions daily which they couldn’t sustain, closed airports, ports, IDF targets hit, Dumbo launched a US bombing on the top of a mountain, underneath which the Iranian nuclear materials had been removed many days’ prior, and Donnie Dumbo declared it the “Greatest US Military Victory” ever known, well above Lexington, Concord, or Omaha Beach, asked the Iranians to return to peace talks, and rebuffed, shut up.
Well, the whole world recognizes what a place of Peace and Kindness Israel is, right? Uhm, no, I guess not. Also how much peace and prosperity Netanyahoo has sowed worldwide (Torah does say you shall sow as you reap) since getting Bushie Jr. to invade Iraq, right? Uhm, okay, don’t hold your breath on Dumbo’s Peace Prize. Kissinger may not have been kind or desired peace, he at least knew how to be effective.
In the early 20th Century when Freemasonry had influence with the leadership class (Hell, even that dumb Missouri High School Grad Harry Truman was an initiated Mason), Initiates were taught the 4 Virtues of the Sphinx as a way to power. “To know, to will, to dare, and to keep silence” (Latin Scire, Velle, Audere, Tacere).
How well does Donnie Dimbulb follow this Leadership technique. “To know”, not at all. He doesn’t read, not the Intell briefings or anything else. (Okay, he probably does still read Variety to track what his fellow media celeb pals are up to.) His subalterns have considered presenting the briefing data in a Fox News format, since that will hold his attention between burger and fries helpings.
To will? Does a fruit fly demonstrate will? Probably the ones who survive do, and they eat and procreate. Donnie dose both of those, but human will, strategy to gain and hold greater power? Uhm, no, empty, bombastic (mostly) threats, madcap power grabs, and a fruit fly’s attention span that swings wildly from one imaginary prize to another. “I want to be the new Pope!” “Trump Gaza, get the sand niggers out and make it Jared’s Riviera!” “I should be the Israeli Prime Minister, they love me there!”
To Dare? Alright, credit where credit is due. He is Daring Donny Dumbo, imagining all kind of “Winning Bigly” schemes!! We will steal Greenland from the Danes, those cheese-eating former Vikings ain’t shit. I’ll tell Putin to stop winning his war (bigly!) and he’ll crumble. Oops, he told me to fuck off, now I hate him, he kills people!! (Unlike Netanyahu?) I will praise the President of the former US colony for forcibly deported blacks, Liberian President for how well he speaks English, the official language since the 19th century, that’ll win those dusky African folks over to how much USA loves ’em. “Dare to Be Stupid” is a great Devo song from back in the day, Donny Dipshit Dares to do so, de-evolution is a cool concept.
The final 4th Virtue of Silence is the 4th corner at the base of the Pyramid of Power. How does Donnie do there!? He suffers from endless, involuntary loggorhea, verbal diarrhea, oversharing the most inappropriate eruptions of his gigantic Id: “If Ivana weren’t my daughter, I’d probably be dating her!” “All these world leaders are calling me up and kissing my ass, I tell you it’s great, so much winning!” “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Etc. etc.
1 out of 4 bases means the structure won’t stand. Donnie the Dimbulb Dope is indeed a Deployer of Destruction, but to his own house and fortunes. Oakchair could be right that he imagines he will buy up the wreckage at pennies on the dollar. But owning slum housing it will never be the Palace he imagines as Trump Tower Gaza.
He perfectly encapsulates cannibalism of everything desirable until one is gnawing on one’s own extremities and entrails. Brilliant! After the senile moron Biden, we have a Mad Emperor worthy of American Greatness. Obama could at least pretend to be smart and eloquent while helping his Oligarch friends consume all the Seed Corn, U$A hasn’t had a presentable PotUS (what a great word, sounds like “potent” doesn’t it?) since Barry Hussein, obviously likely won’t ever again. Bush the former Mad King is somewhere offstage behind the curtain thinking to himself, “Heckuva job, Donnie!”