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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   33444 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Trump tariffs McDonald's:

BBC article for a more detailed overview.

Highlights or lowlights include:

  1. 32% tariffs on Taiwan, though I'm told that they thankfully exclude semiconductors.
  2. 46% on Vietnam and 49% on Cambodia, so gg to companies encouraged to diversify outside of China.
  3. 10% tariffs (the absolute floor, or Trump's idea of a sweetheart deal) on such interesting nations as Tuvalu (with that sweet sweet .tv license) and the Heard and McDonald islands, which are uninhabited.
  4. Some quite seriously speculating that the entire policy was AI generated. https://x.com/krishnanrohit/status/1907587352157106292 :

This might be the first large-scale application of AI technology to geopolitics.. 4o, o3 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily.

  1. Others note the resemblance to the common ReLU function in ML, but the gist of it is a hamfisted approach that is setting tariffs off the equation trade deficits/imports, despite denial by the administration (or at least the Deputy White House Press Secretary), who presented an equation that literally says that but prettied up.

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.

You know, we were just talking a few posts downthread about how the "experts" are willing to blatantly lie in order to advance their ideological agenda.

We have been told repeatedly for years by the experts that making any sort of adjustment, pushing any buttons on the control panel at all, to the global trade system would lead to complete economic collapse, the rise of fascist dictators, the end of civilization, and in general all manner of untold horrors.

But why should we believe the experts? We know they're ideologically motivated liars. So, fuck it. Let's just start pushing buttons. Smash away and let's see what happens. If for no other reason to prove that you can do something different, alternatives are possible, even if you may indeed get burned.

But why should we believe the experts? We know they're ideologically motivated liars. So, fuck it. Let's just start pushing buttons.

Well unless you believe the stock market doesn't follow economic signals but instead is in on an elaborate ruse to discredit tariffs, the disaster predicted by the experts is already underway. You also have to engage with the object-level arguments and evidence against tariffs, especially of this extreme nature - it's utterly pathetic to say, well I don't trust experts so I will merely act at random.

If for no other reason to prove that you can do something different, alternatives are possible, even if you may indeed get burned.

I doubt this will be a persuasive argument to consumers when everything goes up in price. If what you do is a complete fuck-up, surely it will only increase the dominance of the status quo. The tariffs will be a disaster and every economist will rightly say I told you so. Pol Pot proved that 'alternatives are possible' too.

the disaster predicted by the experts is already underway

Currently SPY is down roughly 3.9% on the day. Which is certainly a bit rough compared to the normal +/- 1% daily churn, but is a roughly 1% type event, so something you would expect to happen more than once a year, but not more than a few times. I am unmoved.

I suspect traders are pricing in the possibility Trump will at least partially reverse course.

Yes, our expectation should be a global recession/depression with lots of international supply chain snafus. The market is currently saying surely Trump isn’t that reckless

I do think that's quite possible, but we lived through a bunch of supply chain snafus in the last five years (toilet paper, unloading at Long Beach, the Ever Given fiasco, Houthis, chip shortages) and I will admit those weren't great times but we did make it through them, and systems (capitalism?) were more robust than at least I expected.

Yes. This should seem to me, on consideration, not quite so dangerous as "shut. down. EVERYTHING" of five years ago. I expected Armageddon then, but things surprised me with their resilience. And this time - well, the question is whether the intransigence of Trump or the coherence of his coalition is greater than the public's fear of The Pandemic, but - it might be more easily taken back.

Of course, the cost of "shut down everything" turned out to be - inflation! Inflation sufficient to take down not just the sitting President, but the President after him! I'd rather we just didn't.

I'd rather we just didn't.

I think the problem is that we honestly just can't not. I think destructive nonsense like this has become an inevitability in some way, and it's going to keep happening until enough destruction has passed.

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