Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning added to OP 10/1/26

I honestly think this is all a grift. You'll have a hard time convincing me there isn't some insider trading with shorting the market and buying up again to pump the market.

The problem with this strategy is the market won't recover as trading partners no longer have any trust in the US.

Exactly they only way to deal with extortion is to plan an all out attack with everything you have at the moment of your choosing or be a slave to the extortionist forever

It will be because America is too important and exceptional a market.

You seem to be suggesting the EU should be tough. You do know you are saying that from a country that could be economically crushed with the stroke of a pen by Trump?

This is the connundrum now. We have Micheál Martin desperately telling the EU not to retaliate because of the consequences for us and the French saying the opposite.

Good for France. It won't be them who suffer most.

Even the most fanatical EU supporter must see the cracks here. It's not only Ireland that disagrees with France and Germany. Italy and Sweden have also been clear they don't want retaliation, they want negotiation to get these tariffs lowered or removed.

Why such stark differences? Because each country is exposed differently. Some have everything to lose and some have relatively little to lose.

This is as a big a test for the EU as the financial crisis. When times are good these differences don't have to come to light so sharply but when times turn bad that's when tensions come to the surface along with national self interest.

Already we are now at 100% tariff disadvantage with our largest trading partner compared to the UK.

This is not a good place for us. We need to get those tariffs down and the EU needs to negotiate that.

What happened the Democrats? Oh wait yeah they were bought out by all the billionaire corporations. 🤣🤣

What Trump is doing now was the standard left position not too long ago. Protect jobs and industry with subsidy and tariffs on foreign goods. Global free trade was the right wing position.

Trump is not helping the American consumer or the economy the stock market is down by trillions , when the stock price of a company go,s down it makes it harder to get cheap finance for factorys or other projects . 401k pension funds investment s are mainly based on the stock market .

If anyone advised trump on tariffs they are idiot .Russia is under trade sanctions do tariffs are not relevant in this case .

Just gave me a little giggle 😃

Had Donnie been in a position to pull this twenty years ago it might have worked but other economies have grown and American exceptionalism is a thing of the past.

The EU should do nothing, there's a graph in the link posted by @gormdubhgorm that shows Germany by itself is more industrialised than the entire US. You have yet to explain how Ireland could be "economically crushed with the stroke of a pen by Trump". The majority of our trade doesn't go to the US and what we do export to them isn't easily moved.

As I understand it the consequences of retaliation are that Trump increases the tariffs on imports. It looks like this will speed up the devaluation of the dollar while increasing inflation in the US. Meanwhile the price of oil (in dollars) is dropping. The cost of energy has been the biggest problem for the EU in recent years. If its cost and the currency it's priced in are dropping, how is that bad for Ireland?

You're quite right, France won't suffer the most from higher import tariffs into the US. That'd be the US consumer because the US has become reliant on cheap imports due to the strong USD. They don't have the capacity to produce either the food or the goods they want.

I think you'll be surprised at how a common enemy will strengthen the union. This is both in physical defense against Russia and economic defence against the US. Brexit was a nice warm-up, those same negotiating structures are still in place.

Our largest trading partner is the EU. Last year we exported more to the Netherlands than the UK. Both of your points here are incorrect. If you can get a breakdown of our exports by US state maybe you can build an argument here.

Or alternatively. The US wants to isolate itself from the global economy? Sure leave them at it. Did it work for them it in the 1930's?? I'm almost sure there's a reason they've tried to direct the global economy for the last 80 years.

low water pressure, sharks that attack boats, could tell they had tears in their eyes….. Sounds like he was talking to the penguins!

The above was response to this. Forgot to quote it

I meant at a R&D level, governmental level etc. The EU and Ireland have hitched to the US in many areas and thought grand one of of our allies covers that, we don't need to focus. I think now is a good time to change that.