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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37378 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Has there ever been a time in history when a superpower as economically huge as the U.S. implemented major tariffs?

Personally my take is that while economists are very intelligent and have put a lot of thought into these things, there really just isn't any way to know exactly what will happen. Tariffs could lead to:

  • economies getting destroyed overnight
  • a renaissance of modern industrial capacity in the U.S. & Canda
  • no noticeable effect on anything as large industries get exemptions carved out
  • closer relations b/w Canada & the U.S. as well as Europe and the U.S., as they are forced to negotiate
  • more distant relations, vice versa above
  • literal war with China
  • trade war with China
  • Greenland and Canada joining the United States to avoid tariffs
  • etc etc

There are just so many possibilities, and even with all the statistics and math in the world I genuinely don't think any economist has a great idea how things will shake out. The global market is one of the most complex systems in existance.

Either way, it's a high variance move and as others have said, it allows Trump a TON of leverage when negotiating with our allies. Personally I'm very curious to see what comes of all this.

Jacking up the tariffs in 1930 likely caused the Great depression. Other countries retaliated, international trade slowed down, companies reliant on exports for large part of revenue started losing money, market panicked, which led to more interventions in the economy, so on and on...

Didn't the Depression kick off in the late 20's?

One thing that really irritates me and makes me have less regard for economics as a study is that no one can agree on the cause of the great depression. Some people say FDR saved us, some people say he made it worse and was the real reason it went on so long. There are so many theories that completely contradict each other. If economists can't figure that out, I have no faith in their ability to make predictions in our time.

FDR’s real achievement is that he created enough of an appearance of “doing something” to prevent a communist or fascist revolution in the United States.

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