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

And aren't their American shareholders reaping benefits through dividends and stock prices? Which the US could structure their tax system to tax…

Can you please point to one link that states EU tariffs would apply to goods made in the EU? Please, just one.

People can spin it whatever way they want but if Trump can reduce offshoring and profit shifting then that's a win for the US. Yes it will be damaging to other countries, but Trump clearly was on for tariffs during campaign. It's also not a good idea to just give whole industries away, national interests Trump corporate. You only have to look to China.

It's Brexit all over again where they truly believed the world would simply realign itself to their interests.

I have seen this claim a couple of times and I have to object. It depends on how you're measuring it

It terms of number of people employed, US Pharma is not more important to Ireland than US tech. The latter directly employs about 10,000 more people than Pharma employs.

In terms of how much corporation tax US pharma directly contributes to the Irish exchequer in comparison to US tech, Pharma is more important by a couple of billion Euro per year.

How is this going to work for example for Americas biggest car exporter ( by value) BMW ,,, other countries are going to have tarrifs so I presume they are looking at big job losses,, it's going to be a very mixed bag, they might lose as much as they gain.

America must have put effort and policy into encouraging and fostering the growth of such companies. Something that Ireland clearly does not do.

Ireland provides growth to these companies via EU access, invests in STEM education and the IDA actively courts US firms with grants, site support, and red-tape cuts.

It will be telling if Trump goes through with the Canada and Mexico tariffs. For the auto industry, it's so intertwined they can't even distinguish between US made and Canada made parts.

If he backtracks on the Canada tariffs, they may see some US auto moving to Canada. In the case of BMW, they can manufacturer in Canada and export to the US and Mexico tariff free and also free to export worldwide from Canada without any retaliation tariffs that have been placed on the US. Assuming they meet the % threshold for Canada made.

That's a whole case of Trump trying to unscramble eggs.

Even if and it's a big fcuking IF I bought into the idea that Trump was this altruistic white night of the working class.

I'd still come to the conclusion that his policies are ill thought out and unlikely to succeed in the way he hopes.

There's no way he's going to solve tax avoidance with a load of tariffs. It's non sensical.

What time is Agent Orange making his announcements?

After markets close cus hes a pussy and doesnt want to see the immediate red. That of course wont stop anything because global markets are still open and US stocks will take hits there but he will pretend the drop on Thursdays US opening bell wont be because of him and blame everyone else.

Around 9pm Irish time.

"the people have voted for change"

How's that going for them?

The whole onshoring of industries is really going to be a lot more complex and expensive than Trump can comprehend I'd imagine.

Firstly there's the cost issue, upfront cost in terms of infrastructure, and then the ongoing cost of production, which will be considerably higher in the US than it would be elsewhere. You're not going to be able to pay people what you are today, producing in some low wage, low cost centre. Which basically means the price of the goods goes up, further hitting Average Joe American.

Then there's the whole issue of expertise, which is massively lacking in the US. They de-industrialised a long time ago, so there's not a wealth of people who know what they're doing in terms of modern industrialisation and production. So they're going to be massively dependent on international trade partners to help establish and share knowledge. An example is ship-building, which Trump wants done in America. Its actually a good idea, but they haven't done this in scale in America for a long time. They're going to be reliant on help from international partners like Korea or China, who do this kind of thing massively today. But, Trumps busy pi$$ing off all his potential partners and potentially kicking off trade wars, so they may not be very forthcoming with info and help.

He's just, in reality, a stupid man, who essentially got to where he is on the back of the wealth of others. There's no great business brain there. Given money by family to get set up, been bailed out by banks and various shady sources. Bankrupted businesses that should never go bankrupt (casinos). Was in massive trouble till the apprentice came along. He's the monopoly man, a caricature of a business man, which enough Americans buy into.

Huge recession is on the way. It is time to sale property…while it is not too late yet