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

If someone thinking only having a 10% tariff (when your big exports are at 25% - motors and steel) is a win, it's best ignoring them. Nobody wins in a trade war.

I wonder will Trump spend the 90 day pause to actually figure out individual industries and countries that should have higher tariffs rather than the blanket rates.

I'd say we'll have an increase in tariffs well before the 90 day pause expires.

Interesting that even with the Dow rebound the USD is still on a weakening trend with the Euro, GBP and Yen.

A market can set new records even with fewer buyers. I'd imagine there's a lot of exporters to the US digesting this last weeks turmoil and concluding that aside from the 10% tariff on the buyers end the exposure to that trade needs to be reduced.

Sellers will have more reason to demand payment before shipping in their own currency rather than accepting USD.

They need enough pain that they start to view their country through a different lens altogether, even the non maga ones are convinced of their exceptionalism and 'greatest country in the world' mindset,. A good dose of pain may shake them out of their assumptions and start to demand real change in their institutions and politics. Only 15 years after their financial institutions caused a massive worldwide recession the political institution is causing the same.

Penguins don't kiss @$$ they kick @$$

Victory celebrations

At a fundamental level, is the entire idea of moving industry back to the US kind of gone? I simply cannot imagine big companies making the switch now. Trump has been banging on about it for decades, shot his load, and had to backtrack. I struggle to see how he can continue with this and make it happen when he backs down repeatedly.

And I wonder if there is going to be some wake up call at the fact that with their insane levels of debt give so much power to the rest of the world to just dump it and completely mess up the bond market and force change. It would appear to me that the US is the vulnerable party in all of this going forward and that is the true cost of the national debt, not the repayments.

This exact type of thing quickly undid Truss and quickly undid Trump's entire plan. And it wasn't even massively coordinated in either case. Inflicting tariffs on other countries slowly harms their economies while these bond selloffs are so immediately potentially catastrophic. In a rational world, it means economies have to act reasonably with those who hold their debt.

But you mention insider trading to MAGA and they'll just tell you Nancy Pelosi has been getting away with it for 38 years!

In relation to the earlier discussion where the supreme court ruled effectively that Trump is allowed to break the law. Just to be clear. The ruling applies only where he demonstrably did so for the good of the country. A higher and tricker bar when it comes to justifying insider trading. With the SEC effectively gone, it may look Impossible.....but if it's happening, dozens of people have to know about it and can say what they know. It only takes 2 of those people to kick off and drag down public opinion of Trump enough for Republican Congress members to feel empowered to start taking him down.

given Trump said “it’s a great time to get rich” as he stepped towards an aircraft (was a clip on rte news) and thought that was a perfectly fine comment to make, I do think this was an insider trading ploy. He is playing with the US economy the way he done his business deals for his companies. As long as he gets richer, consequences don’t matter.

And they'd probably be right. How any member of government or administrative staff are even allowed to trade on the stock market is beyond me. The capacity for insider trading by anyone connected to government is so blatantly obvious the only argument for allowing it is to allow corruption.

We've come a long, long way from Jimmy Carter selling his farm.

Trump's talking head acolytes on Fox etc seem to flip-flop regularly between it meaning more jobs for American citizens, and then when pushed about how that will drive up costs, start saying most of the manufacturing will be automated and robots.

And yet, setting up new manufacturing plants with specific automated processes to carry out the manufacturing would take years and a huge investment, during which time those companies would still have to keep their existing manufacturing in a country being tariffed, which will then cut into their costs and reduce the capital they have for investing in new manufacturing plants in America.

So what's the solution? Those companies bend the knee enough to Trump to get exemptions from tariffs contingent on huge investment in America and probably greasing the palms of Trump & his buddies for the privilege. Because ultimately, that's what all Trump's plans boil down to; something he can publicly point to as a win, something he can privately enrich himself with as the actual win.

How many times has Musk done or said something which caused stock prices in his companies to shift dramatically, and which he then financially benefits from? The issue is he gets investigated by the SEC, warned, and given a fine which is less than how much he had just profited by.

"If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class."

EU pausing tariff countermeasures for 90 days

published at 11:35

11:35

Breaking

The European Union says it is pausing its countermeasures on President Trump's tariffs for 90 days.

In a statement, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says that the EU wants "to give negotiations a chance" after Trump announced yesterday that there would be a 90 day pause for nations hit by higher US import tariffs.

Next 4 years

Meanwhile I see it was the Japanese as well who started it sell US bonds (they hold double of China)

Hopefully whoever is in charge of the Irish 330bn invested in US starts diversification promptly especially to Europe

It's to appeal to the "my pappy was a miner and his granpappy was miner and his granpappy was a miner" mentality spouted by people who have never been down a mine.

It's the same as the clowns from Yorkshire and Nord Pas de Calais who lap up the shte from Farage and Le Pen.

Under the law, members of congress are obliged to disclose any stock transactions (over $1,000) within 45 days of the trade and report these transactions publicly, making them accessible for scrutiny.

The issue with Nancy Pelosi is it's not her who's making the stock transactions, it's her husband. Spouse trades are not automatically assumed to be influenced by the member’s position even though the stock transactions > $1,000 made by them has to be reported also. There's a number of highly suspicious trades, very coincidental in timing, where Paul Pelosi made a lot of money very quickly!

What's even more interesting is unlike congress members, the president does NOT have to disclose stock transactions exceeding $1,000 within 45 days!

Considering he was completely unaware of the EU tariffs announced I'd assume Trump himself isn't involved in any decision making with market manipulation. The people surrounding him are most likely manipulating him, we know this from his first term. Basically once he was convinced to walk back the tariffs everyone in the loop got the buys in, same with when he announced the tariffs initially where shorts were taken.