Quote from: Fortify on June 27, 2025, 01:26:03 PM

Quote from: slapper on June 27, 2025, 04:43:17 AM

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Trump is an anomaly, even if he has been elected twice, that hopefully causes the American people to wake up and realise that you cannot bully every single other country in the world without their being a backlash. Trump will never admit it, but he caved after seeing that other countries would not bow to his bullshit tariffs (they'll make minor concessions so he can appear victorious but China would not even do that). When the ports started to empty and it looked like the US economy was ready to fall of a cliff, he blinked. He definitely has and maybe intended to engineer a scenario where the dollar weakens because it is actually advantageous to manufacturers - at the expense of every other industry that has replaced it.

This urge to return to a manufacturing economy is so naive and short sighted, but he wants to return to some imagined golden era of his childhood back in the 1960's - yet the world moved on.

Time hasn’t moved on and global value chains haven’t changed. The nostalgia thing runs deep, not just for Trump, but for a chunk of the political base that still wants to believe America can just snap its fingers and be the industrial engine again. The reality (as you say) is every time they try to push that kind of brute-force economic nationalism, the rest of the world does eventually push back, not in the obvious way people expect

The Section 899 showdown was more of a manufacturing narratives than anything of policy. Yeah, the ports were emptying out and the data was getting ugly, but what people forget is that the appearance of economic toughness was more important than winning a sustainable trade war. When the second real pain began to hit (market outflows, dollar wobbles), the retreat was choreographed in a manner that no one needed to say “we lost”. It is just a theater for the voters, investors, and "the base"

I 'm less convinced that it is all about Trump. The temptation to save "national champions" and use fiscal policy as a weapon appears to be hard-wired into both parties these days. It’s just Trump’s version is louder and messier

I also ask myself how long other nations will continue to play along, making "minor concessions" so that America can save face. You said that China did not blink. Do you believe that Europe or other parts of the world will begin to follow that model more forcefully? Or will we all find ways to escape in silence as the U.S. continues to spin its stories?

Quote from: takuma sato on June 27, 2025, 06:25:50 PM

Section 889 would crash the SP500, because a lot of money would get out of the market since you would get taxed way too much and this capital would probably go into European stocks, gold, Bitcoin, whatever else. Everyone knows most americans have their retirement money on the stock market, so they don't want the stock market to crash. Conclusion: They will do anything it takes to keep the stock market up, including backpedaling when/if they put this in place, so this is just more FUD by Trump to try to get his way.

The reality is that Trump is not achieving his goals. He failed to stop the wars, he failed to force others pay more via tariffs, and fools think he got his way with the NATO 5% thing (no one is going to be complying with that, and they know it, they are playing Trump in any case). It gets revised by 2029 so nobody cares. He is also failing to get rates down as he wanted. So yeah, americans are deluded and think they have more power than they think they have, the reality is you are limited in what you can do.

Fair take. If Section 899 had actually implemented, the S&P would have been on fire. Not only due to the short term tax pain, but the chain reaction of global investors running for the exits. I understand: it's not only Wall Street fat cats, it's the pension of every firefighter and schoolteacher that is on the line, so of course politicians put on the brakes. That is why the threat was powerful, yet the follow-through was never. I can also understand your "Trump FUD". All this has a certain manufactured crisis to it. Cause the world to flinch, then retreat and declare a victory, even when nothing really happened (at least in the public’s eyes)

Even if most people know the U.S. won’t let the market crash, every time these threats happen, a little more trust leaks out. Not all at once, but enough that some capital does move, or at least hedges get bigger. That slow erosion isn’t sexy headline news, but over years, it can change the game. It’s not just Americans who are deluded about their power. Every country is acting, to some degree, out of old assumptions about what markets “must” do

I also don’t think the U.S. is all-powerful. 2025 proved that even the biggest players can get checked by market reality, by allies, and sometimes even by their own data. But even these failed or fake moves have side effects. They signal to everyone (corporates, sovereigns, regular folks) that the game can change overnight, and that is what creates long-term shifts. Sometimes what matters isn’t whether Trump gets his way, but how much people believe the rules can change on a tweet