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

Thanks for the responses, first time I checked as asked the wrong question and the answer was not clear. Once you have seen the answer its obvious but at first glance it doesn't make a lot of sense.

I find it amazing that he has on problem playing ‘Heavy weight boxing’/ ‘ Senior Hurling’ with China but he will only play ‘snap’ with Putin. What is he afraid of?????????
Also , Trumps Tresuary Secretary has stated that China is also exporting goods to the US BY PROXY. ie set up a Chinese built /owned factory in another country and export to the US from there eg Vietnam, Cambodia.
BUT, BUT, BUT, BUT he has no problem In purchasing / turning a blind eye to Russian exports being ‘ LAUNDERED through other countries and on to the world market eg India and oil

I'm not going to look it up but my recollection from other posters is that the ruling refers to presidential duties.

I don't think giving your backers early warning that you're about to reverse course counts as an official act.

What a climb down. We all knew that this administration would stumble from catastrophe to catastrophe. But this was a new level of incompetence. He's damaged the US's reputation as a stable trading partner. That's incredibly more serious than it reads and will have consequences for the United States for the foreseeable future and beyond you would think. Predictability when trading is a corner stone.

Other trading blocs are surely now going to move further away from reliance on them until a point where they can be trusted to not vote in people who do not know what they are doing. Art of the deal my swiss role.

Where's all his supporters gone since the climbdown was announced?

The issue is he could argue that such things are Presidential duties; that he advised some companies/investors in advance in order to kickstart the spike in the stock market before he made his announcement. There's also the fact that he posted on Truth Social for people to BUY, and therefore that message went out to everyone, not just particular investors.

Does that make sense? No. But is it arguable? With Trump, everything is, and there's not a hope anyone survives long enough in their job to carry out an investigation into it, and even if they did, that the Supreme Court would go against him on it.

Trump can simply argue that everything he does is an official act as President.

Well if we exempt the Krasnov theory the one thing Russia and the USA have in common is that they are both major oil exporting economies, the USA actually more so now than in the recent past.

I read yesterday that 40% of the worlds electricity is now produced by solar, and China is the leader in this field. Both the USA and Russia lose in this revolution. Even Saudi Arabia signed a currency swap arrangement with China last year because they know the tide can't be held back and even started flooding the oil market in the last month.

This new tech is allowing all countries more independence from the 20th century superpowers and their resource mindsets. Until Trump's tariff odyssey energy independence away from the USA was probably the biggest threat to the ubiquity of the USD, now countries will want to reduce their exposure to US debt.

edit to add, reducing oil dependency further erodes the USAs excuse for meddling in the meddle east amongst other places. This would also have a knock on for the US defense industry if there's fewer commodities "needing protection".

He hasn't dropped tariffs withs smaller countries; he has a flat tariff of 10% on the whole world, except 125% on China and 0% on Russia and, I think, the Yemen. That leaves most countries facing significantly higher tariffs than they faced before Stupid Thursday. And who knows what he'll do in another 90 days?

10% may not sound like a lot by comparison with the 20%, 40%, 60% figures that he bandied around on Stupid Thursday, but when Trump came into office in January the US's trade-weighted average tariff rate was 1.4%. The US tariffs that most countries face have gone up 7-fold; that's no basis for increasing your exports to the US.

Plus, Trump's whole schtick is that he wants these countries to export less to the US, and import more from the US. Any country adopting the ambition of becoming "the place to be for cheap production for the United States" in place of China would be a red rag to a bull, as far as Trump is concerned.

A more likely outcome is a new "doughnut pattern" for world trade, with the US as the hole. Most countries will seek to trade more with one another, and less with the US, where high barriers and political volatility may investment in building up trading relations a very dodgy practice. The US will import less, and export less, than it current does, and other countries will refocus their efforts on developing trade with countries that aren't the US.

If this is what the start of this regime looks like, just think what chaos the end of the 4 years will be like. I’ve absolutely no doubt that MAGA will trash America and the world trade if they think they’re going to lose - ie deliberately tank the economy as the democrats get back in

The disciples on social media keep referencing the '75 countries' supposedly begging Trump for a deal but he hasn't name checked even one of them bar South Korea.

Has also backed down on the huge fees for docking non US ships.

I mean he might. America and Russia in bed again at the cost of China could very well be a plan that suits both America and Russia. A plan doesn't have to have morals for it to be a plan.

The fact that Simon was in DC yesterday is enough for him to stick Ireland on his beggars list

Just like Boris, he wants to be 'World King'

Every country is paying the 10% base tariffs (except China, Mexico and Canada, they have different rates) and of course Russia still at 0%.

The reciprocal (made up figures) have been dropped to the lower 10% base rate, that's the 90 day pause.

Ah I initially thought there was a 90 day pause with no tariffs then it would be 10% after that . My bad .

So if you are in UK and you were announced as 10% last week, what is their win since yesterday?