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As most are aware, Trump has announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on China. It seems to me that it presents a number of opportunities.
Being a Rationalist-descended forum, many here believe in listening to experts, following the data, and trusting science to guide our policies. On the other hand, many others here have observed numerous cases where expertise and data collapse when confronted with unexpected real-world events, and have grown far more skeptical of expertise. I have stated previously that I have little faith in Economics as a discipline; I've seen a lot of failed mainstream predictions and what at least have appeared to be failed policies. These new tariffs are the largest and most consequential policy departure from consensus economics in living memory, and as such they present a profoundly valuable natural experiment. For my entire lifetime, the consensus of economists has been that tariffs are a rotten economic policy, that they stunt economic growth and induce stagnation. These tariffs are very large, are aimed directly at our three largest trading partners, and arrived with very little warning; while Trump had stated his intentions clearly, Trump says a lot of things and no one actually expected this to happen. As such, it seems to me that we have an unusually-good natural experiment here, and we should be exploiting it for maximum value.
Simply put, what happens next?
The proof of a theoretical model is the ability to make accurate predictions. Predictions of large-magnitude changes are more valuable than predictions of small changes. Naïvely, it seems obvious to me that large policy changes should have large effects, and this is very clearly a large policy change. If consensus economics is valid, it seems to me that they should be able to predict with reasonable accuracy the consequences of these new policies, and that those consequences should be unequivocally negative. What negative outcomes should we expect, specifically? There was some discussion last week about whether or not our last attempt at tariffs caused the Great Depression; is that the expected outcome here?
One of the old Rationalist traditions is betting, and it's been a somewhat contentious topic as our community has drifted further from the mother country of Scott's comment section. Some people, myself among them, really don't like betting. Happily, this experiment comes with its own betting baked in: what should we expect the stock market to do as the consequences of this policy change roll out? If the economic consensus is valid, what better bear signal could there be than an unexpected, dramatic departure from sound economic policy by the world's dominant superpower? A quick googling tells me that the markets are down generally this morning; should we expect this trend to continue? How do people here intend to manage their investments, given these events?
For reference, previous discussion of the tariffs from last week.
Nobody is more weak to flattery than Donald Trump. I have argued here before that if Barack Obama called Donald tomorrow and told him he fully agreed with his policies, he was doing what Barry hadn’t been powerful enough to do, and he was undoubtedly one of the best presidents of his lifetime (other than himself), he could parlay that into regular golfing and a weekly phone call to ‘discuss’ the big issues with minimal real effort. People forget that the biggest reason Trump never went after Hillary in office is that he actually kind of likes her, Bill and her always made nice small talk at Manhattan parties after all, and he can only really be tough forever (rather than for brief moments) against people he actually doesn’t like. He certainly doesn’t like Trudeau. But who can forget how his view on Macron went 180 degrees after he got invited as guest of honor to the French Bastille day military parade, had all the soldiers salute him, etc.
Why is Trump not going apeshit on the UK despite the fact that the trade relationship is still a deficit AND Musk’s recent spergout over Rotherham? Because the Labour government smartly decided that they would deploy Prince William to all diplomatic meetings with Trump, and William being a man of very modest intelligence nevertheless trained from birth to always flatter his foreign contemporaries is well liked by The Donald. Nations are people in the Trumpian world view, personal flattery determines everything. He soured on Kim not when it became clear that he wasn’t going to change his nuclear policy, but when it became clear that he didn’t really seem to like Trump very much. His relationship with Putin is similarly ambivalent, I don’t think he likes the guy because on some level he realizes that Putin doesn’t take him seriously.
I also think this is what frustrates Elon about Trump’s embrace of Altman, Bezos and so on. It’s like spending years building up a business relationship only to have your competitor win a deal after a single dinner and some Grade A bullshit game, it’s seethe-worthy. But Trump has few eternal enemies and even fewer eternal friends. His greatest weakness (and, in some ways, a great strength) is that his primary criteria for loyalty are strictly temporal, rather than historic.
Regarding Kim, one of the most fascinating things about Trump is that no matter how much he rants about communists and Marxists on a general level when it comes to his domestic opposition, this doesn't seem to translate at all to foreign policy, which is ruled by non-ideological "you like me, I like you" considerations as his other interpersonal relations, as shown by the recent U-turn on Maduro. (Sure, there are arguments to be made regarding the actual levels of Marxism within both Kim and Maduro administrations, but that's at least how they are generally seen.)
Sounds pretty based to me. I really don't like people who try to spread their worldview globally.
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Strong agree with all of this. Trump is a vibesmaxxer-in-chief, being far more concerned with how he appears on cable news than any objective measurement of the impact of his presidency. There's a very good chance that some symbolic concessions could delay, reduce, or even cancel the tariffs altogether. None of that is guaranteed, but there's a good chance.
Damn, good call: https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429
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Would this be a prediction that the tariffs don't actually happen, then?
Why? Other people have pride, too. As far as the tariffs, Trump likes the market to do well, and that ultimately places an upper bound on tariff policy.
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