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

Trump/ MAGA can do without these ‘good for nothing’ individuals/imbocils!!!!!!!!!!!!

The irony is that he's kinda gotta point! One that happens to be completely at odds with the consumerist capitalist model that has enriched the US over so many decades and infected the economies of so many other countries.

There was that story a few days ago of the woman who always has 20 or 30 Temu orders on the go at any one time, and how the tariffs are going to hurt her so badly. Well, she could save money by ordering less and do more/better with what she does order.

It's the same with the "thirty dolls" scenario. Mattel may not like it, but there's really no reason why a child should feel they need a collection of thirty Barbies, and no good reason for any parent to be buying them the hottest new variation every Christmas …

Not that I think Trump's reasoning is joined-up enough to be behind a crafty attack on manipulative advertising and the deleterious effects on the third-world workers who feed our Western consumerism.

Aka Marie Antoinette had a point when saying "let them eat cake".

This is exactly it, including Trump. People are looking at the end product when its a tiny fraction of trade. For example, the US still has quite a number of big Air conditioning manufacturers who do have facilities in the US, but I'd say 90% of their parts come from China. They're just assembly lines. So the tarriffs will not only shut these down, but it will also reduce the volume or replacement parts and those that do get through will treble in cost. So if the AC in your house or shopping mall in Florida or Georgia packs it in over the summer, you probably won't be able to buy a replacement and if you do it'll cost you treble what it did last year.

Its these kind of real world scenarios that are going to explode in the next 3 months. Barbie dolls are the least of their worries.

Japan has always been an strong ally of the United States they are threatening to sell some us Treasury bonds because of trumps new tariffs if they do so it will cause us interest rates to rise and the dollar to fall in value we can take nothing for granted trumps policy's are having negative effects in the us economy

The layoffs of irs staff will encourage more rich people to evade paying tax as the most highly qualified staff are gone The ones who audit company's like Intel apple and billionaires tax returns tax. Revenue will fall by at least 500 million

There.s no way doge is going to save the government money in the long term

An irs employed on 80k collects millions in tax revenue by doing audits of rich taxpayers

Trump is destroying international trust in America he is also encouraging people to buy digital currencys instead of the dollar

He has a trump coin

Now all.movies made outside America have a 100 per cent tariff most Hallmark movies are made in Canada as it's cheaper and there's tax credits Hollywood is in decline more films and tv shows are being made outside los Angeles

There a quiz show made in Dublin to take advantage of tax credits

1000s of experienced scientists are leaving America as doge takes apart federal agencys

Doge is basically a bunch of arrogant tech bros whose main policy if there's 1000 people working here let's lay off 500 people regardless of their experience or qualifications in the guise of reducing waste or fraud

I

Seems like Jon Voight has been discussing plans with studios to get them to film more in the US, and put forward a plan to Trump which included some moderate tariffs, but also some incentives to entice studios to film in the US.

So instead Trump just publicly said there'll be sweeping 100% tariffs.

Because all Trump is is a businessman who now has the ability to affect his competitors prices. So rather than offering deals to consumers, incentives to suppliers etc, he can now just raise his competitors prices.

You get the point

Trump saying he's going to defer to his DoJ's interpretation of Supreme Court rulings.

Here's live footage of his DoJ interpreting (contrary) SCOTUS rulings.

As I've said and will continue to say: the SCOTUS has no real power if the mechanisms to enforce their rulings become compromised.

I don't think another one currency will replace the position the USD has. It was attached to oil, the literal lubricant of the post WWII global consumer expansion.

even China prefers to use it's USD surplus for belt and road investments. Currency pairings between central banks like the one betwixt China and Australia since 2014 are becoming increasingly common. So while they may use less USD, they're not replacing it with another third party currency.

I think Trump thinks there's containers of VHS tapes that get shipped into the US for films filmed outside of America or something.

I'd love to see how they plan to collect tariffs and how the studios can get creative. Film in Europe and then Paramount EU licence the film to Paramount US for a licence fee. So is he planning on tariffing royalties? In that situation the money would be leaving the US, which is even worse for the US.

I heard this explanation and it put the situation in understandable terms.

The Chinese didn't "steal" any jobs.

Years ago, companies paid US workers f**k all and workers had no rights.

Next, workers got smart, joined unions and demanded proper pay.

Rather than pay US workers what they were worth, and to protect their "bottom line", said companies moved their jobs abroad in order that they pay chinese workers f**k all and maximise profit.

That's it in a nutshell.

If you want to "bring the jobs home", you will either have the companies pay their staff more (not gonna happen), or charge more for the items (not gonna happen).

Roll on for the Trump/Carney meeting, waiting to see if Trump will have Vance as a back-up in the meeting or will he be standing alone at the meeting.