Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

Tariffs are something Trump can effectively impose with the stroke of a pen without going through going through the legislative process is my understanding of it.

There is this notion doing the rounds that "don't worry, in 4 years he'll be gone and so will his changes".

Biden didn't only not undo Trump's tariffs from Trump's first term, he increased them. So don't rely on the Democrats - particularly don't rely on them if Trump's actions work and create a lot of jobs.

All I'm saying is we shouldn't adapt our own policies on the assumption the Democrats will bail us out.

The president does have broad power to put tariffs on items or things coming in from foreign nations. However, congress can check that power if it then rejects a tariff through legislation.

I don't support trump but they are putting extra resources into stopping immigration ,trump threatened mexico with tariffs and mexico sent 1000s of troops to the border to stop illegal migrants. I am saying the democrats have to address issues that effect the working class and Latino voters if they want to get elected .One thing trump has from his experience on tv is he able to speak in simple language and get his message across .

Of course he is destroying the federal government and giving more tax breaks to the rich . He says he won't cut medicaid or social security but doge is closing down offices and sacking staff so if an old person or disabled person wants to apply for a pension or social security payments that,ll have to travel a long distance to find an office and wait for hours in a long queue .imagine if there's a 1000 people phoning an office and there's only 5 people there to answer the phones .

The IRS is expecting to lose 10 per cent of tax revenue this year due to staff cuts and interfere nice by doge .

It makes no sense to sack irs staff who collect billions from large corporations .There's no money to be saved at the IRS.

Trump is making so many executive orders it's hard for the democrats to react and he's no attacking judges who are trying to stop doge from doing illegal acts like accessing private tax data on citizens . Students are being arrested because the protested against the war in Gaza . universities are clamping down in protests because the fear losing federal funding .

The whole tradition of protest and free speech is in danger of being abandoned as company's and schools fear they will be punished by the government .

Absolutely disgusting

“We are going to be doing tariffs on pharmaceuticals in order to bring our pharmaceutical industry back,” Mr Trump said in the White House on Wednesday.

“We don’t make anything here in terms of drugs, medical drugs, medicines. It’s in other countries – largely made in China, a lot of it made in Ireland. Ireland was very smart. We love Ireland. But we are going to have that,”

Oh fun.

Are we in for a rough ride with American pharma holding off or at least lessen any investments in Ireland for the foreseeable future? It's not simple nor an overnight thing to suddenly have manufacturing capability be built, supply chains stabilized, and then be competitive.

I'd be curious to know how the EU is going to respond to this. First on the vehicle manufacturing and then the very likely pharmaceutical tariffs imposed onto Ireland.

We're overexposed in this industry right?

USA. "Hey Greenland. Come join us". Greenland. "No". End of discussion.

Saw this earlier today. Gold.

more democracy about to be delivered…

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/massive-american-bomber-build-up-suggests-upcoming-strike/

I believe this is what is actually going on, Trump is a useful idiot. Vance is their man and if they succeed we just had the last election for some time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

The Democrats are awful at talking to voters and getting the message across to working class people talk about sanctuary citys and LGBT trans rights does not appeal to the average voter . Wheres the next Clinton or the next obama.?

Trump use as the language of ordinary people and is very clever at using tv media to connect with people

The American Apparel story is really probably the best example of how Trumps plan would work in practice.

Was an ultra popular brand back in the day. Made fairly plain basoc clothing. Pitched themselves as selling clothing that's entirely made in America, no cheap Asian labour making your t-shirts, etc...

The price was a bit higher, but it was made in the good old US of A.

The problem was, it was am unsustainable model for the type of product they made, and the company went bust.

A Canadian company (pretty sure it was Canadian) came in and bought the company. They were going to move manufacturing to a low cost centre, because the business couldn't be kept going with American only manufacturing.

Was a bit of uproar from the die-hard brand fans.

So, they came up with a compromise. They would offer 2 products on the market.

• More expensive American made clothing
• A cheaper identical equivalent made in a lower cost country.

The net result, pretty much all of their sales shifted to the lower priced products (because which student is ultimately going to spend $15 on a grey t-shirt when you can buy the same one for $10 on the same site).

Moral of the story ultimately is, even with tariffs, American manufacturing is more expensive than a low wage country and the consumer either will have to foot the bill for more expensive foreign produce, due to the tariffs, even more expensive American produce, because it'll still cost more to make in America than a tariffed foreign product. Either way the American consumer loses.

whats this about?