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Notes -
Trump tariffs McDonald's:
BBC article for a more detailed overview.
Highlights or lowlights include:
I'm not an economist, but I don't think it's a good idea to throw out tariffs with such clear absence of rigor. The only saving grace is that Trump is fickle, so if enough people yell at him from his in-group, he might pivot in a week. If not, bloody hell.
The lack of rigour is perhaps the most fundamental tenet of Trumpism. If these rates were based on actual facts or informed by expertise, then the policy could be argued with and modified based on reasons and data. This way, each other country has to negotiate its rate based on bargaining, flattery or retaliation.
The defence I hear of Trump/Musk's approach most often is that they just do things without looking too closely at data or potential harms, and that this is good because some action is better than none. Even further, this attitude seems to have become reified into something like 'if you aspire to rigour, you are a cuck and not suitable to be near power'.
I gotta assume that someone seeking to challenge the accuracy of Trump's tariff chart would be thrown out of the White House and not asked to come back, and that this preference for anti-rigour is more deeply ingrained in his circle than any particular policy.
Musk, at least prior to DOGE, erred on the side of being overly optimistic and discounting risk, rather than a clear lack of rigour. You can't run moonshot companies like as is literally the case for SpaceX, or Tesla, if you don't make sure you've done your best to account for all relevant factors.
Unfortunately, the move fast and break things approach is a bit harder to endorse when it comes to federal governance, not that I'm an expert.
As someone in the tech industry, I actually have the exact opposite take, to say the least.
The quiet "Mittelstand" of tech is based on domain expertise, driven by B2B sales, and moves slowly but is actively transforming industries as the largest corporations don't want to be "left behind" with new innovations. This, for me, is calculated and matches your pattern of doing the "best to account for all relevant factors".
Moonshot companies and big tech are strategically opposite: operate on hype-cycles and vibes driven by marketing and build enormous moats that will plug the holes of the flaws of the Version 2 of your product (see: enshittification). This is not only "move fast and break things", but also "fuck you got mine".
Edit: This is also my experience as someone who has worked for both types of companies, one which was sold for $3XXm as a portfolio subsidiary, only to later be shuttered as a $3XXm loss once a hike in interest rates exposed it as smoke and mirrors.
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