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

The only constant with this administration is that whatever it is thought to have achieved this week will be completely forgotten next week when Trump announces another brain fart table flip inspired by something he saw on TV over the weekend..

The US stock market overall valuation can still climb on diminishing volume.

In a normal economic cycle t bonds would be the bolt hole in times of uncertainty. Now the only way for US citizens to diversify away from Trump's Peronesque economic nationalism is to head for stocks with an international income that can insulate against USD devaluation.

Combined with foreigners pulling back from USD devaluation risk the investment pool in the US will decline.

At the height of the GBP dominance Harrods of London opened a store in Buenos Aires. But the tariffs of the UK Imperial Preference policy undermined it's viability.

Any advantage accrued by protections and devaluation will be eaten up by rising costs and reciprocal tariffs.

It is strange timing that the populist Milei of Argentina is dismantling Peron era protectionism while the populist Trump raises trade barriers.

They may salute eachother in passing but Milei is on the ascending escalater while Trump is on the escalator heading for the bargain basement.

USA can sell something they produce next to nothing of (hormone and antibiotic free, traceable beef) to the UK and UK can sell something they produce (cars) to the USA.

Got to admire the art of the deal 🙄

Well that's some spin. He has not organised any big trade deals, his fans like to portray things as trade deals. The reality is we could be as easily be in a calm until the 90 days are through. On top of that, you seem to be ignoring that tariffs were rolled back on because businesses like Target called him out about it, they were not intended to be frozen

You seem to be trying to spin a disastrous first few months as a success when the reality is he's only served to destabilise their global position.

The new acting head of the library of Congress is Trump's former lawyer. So they went to a highly qualified librarian with a great reputation to a lawyer…

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/12/nx-s1-5395879/trump-todd-blanche-librarian-congress

Land Rover paused exports when the initial tariffs were announced so even they knew a 25% tariff would affect sales. There's also Mini's, over 20k exported to the US. That production is split between the UK and Germany so I wonder if Germany will ship the parts to the UK for them to assemble and export to the US to avoid the 25% tariff.

As the details haven't really been fleshed out and with the US auto industry's pushback, I wonder if there's any sort of % of parts to make them a UK car, rather than a UK assembled German car.

The US is still trying to figure out what % of an American assembled car is actually American, they don't split the US from Canada manufactured parts, it's all just classes as North American.

Authoritarians burn books for a reason.

Unbelievable, what is this guy going to actually do given he is a lawyer.
On another note I see his AG Pam Bondi was getting 100k dollars a month from Qatar as a lobbyist.

The arrangement for the UK to be allowed export up to 100,000 cars at a lower tariff is a type of Tariff Quota. Administering these can be complex, and if the demand for UK cars in the USA is > 100k, then what? You can't sell some cars at one price and and other idential cars at another price. Also tariff concessions are worth far more for upmarket cars than for basic models.

No wonder we see this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/13/bentley-car-sales-to-us-still-frozen-amid-confusion-about-when-tariff-cuts-start

Also, quotas can be a source of corruption: who decides who are allocated the quotas? You could have a proper and transparent auction, or you could have corrupt side-payments. Guess which one fits with the ethos of the Trump administration.

Might have been online sellers putting the tariff cost on their sites that encouraged him to roll back.

Can't have the truth becoming real.