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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   32390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Breaking: all reciprocal tariffs halted for 90 days EXCEPT on China. Tariff rates over 100% on Chinese exports.

So it seems like it’s more of a targeted war against China specifically? Likely giving other nations time to choose (with us or against us), and slapping the nations who chose to align with China with huge tariffs in 90 days.

Interesting choice to make as a country then… do we want cheap goods from China but lose access to the American market? Or do we want to be able to sell to Americans?

The next “stick” will be weaponizing the financial system against China-aligned nations, while China dumps treasuries and tries to spark a financial crisis.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-holds-back-retaliation-opts-strategic-messaging-through-white-paper-trade

I've largely ignore all the tariff talk the last, jeeze, two weeks? Three weeks? It's just repetitive top level posts really adding nothing over and over and over again, everyone so certain they know what's going to happen.

Nobody knows what's going to happen. Did anyone know this would happen? Does anyone know what happens next?

I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop. I've repeated my criteria for the Trump administration, and my hesitancy to rush to judgement too quickly. I'm waiting until the mid terms to see if my life has gotten better, or worse. I don't care about twitter post, I don't care about stock market swings, I do care about inflation, but in the "Has my pay risen faster than my grocery bill" sense and not a "Here's how the federal reserve is lying with statistics" kind of way.

Can we all reflect, for a moment, about all the breath and ink that has been feverishly spilled over this topic the last two weeks, to come to what? Do we even know what this point is supposed to represent? Or what tomorrow's tweets will be?

We've had topic bans before, and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to a month long ban on tariff discussion. Or putting it into it's own thread. Might as well be arguing alternate histories as far as I'm concerned.

I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop.

"It feels like a psyop"? Oh good heavens.

I feel like you're only upset about the topic because it reflects poorly on your ingroup, and it's providing fodder for your outgroup. Democrats were practically wallowing in despair for several months after the election, but Trump's buffoonishness was such a blatant shoot-myself-in-the-foot moment that suddenly the Dems were getting very talkative again, and almost became triumphant. They were practically egging on a crash, and reality was largely granting it to them until Trump waffled.

I doubt your reaction would be similar if the shoe was on the other foot, e.g. if Biden suddenly tried to force 1 in 20 people to undergo a sex change in the name of diversity.

I doubt your reaction would be similar if the shoe was on the other foot, e.g. if Biden suddenly tried to force 1 in 20 people to undergo a sex change in the name of diversity.

As rude and susceptible to partisan bias as it is to speculate on someone's partisan motivations, I find myself agreeing with your assessment of WhiningCoil in most of this comment, but this last part is pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure there's a level of behavior about tariffs that any POTUS could do that would come within an order of magnitude as extreme as actually forcing anyone to undergo sex changes, which would be legit authoritarian overreach in a way that the tariffs or even Trump's recent behavior with respect to deportations aren't. To say nothing of forcing millions of people to undergo sex changes. Like, even if Trump decided to enact Graham's Number% universal tariffs one second and then 0% the next second and varied wildly between them 3600/hour for every waking hour of his presidency, that wouldn't be anywhere in the same ballpark (though certainly it would provide a ton of legitimate fodder for conversation!). Yes, they're both examples of politically shooting oneself in the foot, but you're comparing doing so with an assault rifle and doing so with a nuke. And the precise examples of comparison isn't the point, but using such an obviously absurd hypothetical makes this comment appear in bad faith. Which is unfortunate, because, again, I think the main thrust of the comment is accurate.

I'm not sure what the equivalent of Trump's recent tariff behavior would be from the Democratic end. Something like a wealth tax on some ridiculously low amount of wealth that would apply to a majority of households, for the purpose of funding entitlements, maybe? That'd certainly be worth discussing plenty, and certainly there would be plenty of Democrat-aligned people trying to minimize the discussion as much ado about nothing as a way to distract away from something that made their side look bad, though I'd hope that no one on this forum would do so (and I'd honestly guess none of the regulars would do so).

OK sure, my particular example was dumb for the reasons you pointed out. I wanted to think of something that had partisan valence in the other direction, but at this point Republicans are mostly only pro-business as a historical accident. Most of the base hates "Wall Street" and "Big Business", so I think their response to Bernie-style economic leftism would be relatively muted compared to, say, 20 years ago.

That's a pretty good way to spin writing a dumb comparison and then admitting that you can't think of a better one. But not good enough to actually distract me sadly.

though I'd hope that no one on this forum would do so (and I'd honestly guess none of the regulars would do so).

While we have quite a few good eggs around here, a brief look at the past 8-9 years should be enough to dispelled most of this hope. We've had regulars argue against Damore, against Nick Sandman, in defense of BLM burning down that police precinct, that Kavanaugh was a rapist, and I don't recall more than a handful of progressive/liberal-leaning posters saying anything about it (and the ones that did probably wouldn't be recognized as progressive/liberals by other progressives/liberals).

I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop.

When the market posts the biggest decline since Covid or 2008, of course people are going to care . It was the market crash that got people talking about it. And the fact the tariffs were so much more onerous compared to past tariffs.

Look, I understand finding a topic uninteresting but we're talking about a thing that could upturn the whole world economy. And the reason there is so much uncertainty about it is because the president of the united states is intentionally yoyoing us back and forth across the precipice. It's not a psyop that this is being discussed, some thing are actually genuinely important.

But it is very tiring to see people suddenly pop up acting like they're experts after months of low/no engagement, just because they suddenly have a stick they can hit people with.

I keep asking them tariff questions from last year and never get a response, because they never cared about tariffs until this week.

But it is very tiring to see people suddenly pop up acting like they're experts after months of low/no engagement, just because they suddenly have a stick they can hit people with.

Trump blowing his own foot off and staggering around bleeding while the stock market tanks and his supporters flood the internet with contradictory asspulled copes about what he might be trying to do isn't actually tiresome or boring, no matter how little some people want to talk about it. If you guys don't like it, minimize the subthreads like everyone else does for everything else they don't care about.

Tariffs weren't really a huge deal until last week. They were generally considered bad policy with a couple edge cases and much of America's presence in the world was preaching free trade, which in practice meant no to low tariffs. Trump's hallucinated list of tariffs imposed on us notwithstanding there was bipartisan consensus that they were bad policy outside of very specific targeting. When the bear wakes up from its long hibernation and begins mauling people it is unsurprising that bear related discussions go from very rare to quite frequent.

The thing is, to me it seems that high tariffs are obviously bad for me, in a way that many of Trump's other policies are not obviously bad for me. I'd prefer to keep buying cheaper products, as opposed to more expensive products. I have no desire to go work in manufacturing. And I care almost nothing at all about the US becoming self-sufficient in national security-related products because as far as I am concerned, the oceans and the nukes are all we need to keep the US safe from any major threat.

Given that tariffs offer me nothing that I value, and only seem to offer me bad things, of course I go criticize them online. It's not some general attempt to bash Trump on my part, it's a specific criticism of a specific Trump policy that I would really prefer he dropped.

  1. Before 2001, most people had never cared about airplane cockpit security.
  2. Before 2008, most people had never cared about mortgage-backed securities.
  3. Before 2020, most people had never cared about coronaviruses.
  4. Before 2025, most people had never cared about tariffs.

Why is 4 different from the others?

I still don't care about coronaviruses or airplane cockpit security; the threats were wildly overblown by a single high-profile incident. We didn't need to respond to covid at all(and indeed, the correct response- both with the information available at the time and with benefit of hindsight- was to just shoot the chicken littles trying to shut down society over it and declare it 'not a big deal') and 9/11 can be safely considered a one off event.

So the real question becomes 'why are tariffs more like mortgage backed securities than covid?'

The cockpit security doors are less obviously insane than most of the anti-Twin-Towers measures. There's a drawback in the whole "pilot suicide" issue, but pilot suicides are a lot less bad than ramming attacks and are in some ways easier to stop.

Yes, the Flight 93 scenario is the norm now which makes it far harder to pull off a lookalike, but some defence in depth isn't crazy.

The cockpit security doors are less obviously insane than most of the anti-Twin-Towers measures.

As far as I know they are the only such security measures to have resulted in the loss of an aircraft Germanwings 9525 with all aboard. Pilot suicides might be less bad than ramming attacks... but it's an open question about whether they are less common, or if the security doors enable more suicides-with-all-aboard than they do mitigate ramming attacks.

Pilot suicides might be less bad than ramming attacks... but it's an open question about whether they are less common, or if the security doors enable more suicides-with-all-aboard than they do mitigate ramming attacks.

They are much more common but the right comparison would be between pilot suicides and ramming attacks if the latter was still possible. But the safety doors don't really matter for pilot suicides, they happened just as much before and logically you don't need a long time to crash a plane. You couldn't do it the way the germanwings guy did it but the SilkAir way would still work.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_control_of_whole_flight

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There's a drawback in the whole "pilot suicide" issue, but pilot suicides are a lot less bad than ramming attacks and are in some ways easier to stop.

This doesn't even seem to be that big of a problem in the US. The largest differences from the Germanwings flight being:

  1. There are always two people on the flight deck now. Even when one pilot has to take a relief break a flight attendant steps onto the flight deck. Even if the FA has no idea what is going on, the added sense of shame from committing the act in front of another person is a strong deterrent. I also assume the FA would at least notice when the plane starts calling out "Terrain terrain. Pull-up Pull-up."
  2. Roughly (1,000 + 500) + 1,000 flight hours to fly a 737 or A320 size aircraft. Through a combination of rATP, ATP, and scope clause/regional captain restrictions. There would have been substantially more time to detect the Germanwings pilot unfitness with US airline levels of flight hour requirements. He only had 630 hours at the time. This would barely be enough to fly a clapped out Cessna 172 on pipeline patrol in the US.
  3. The FAA making it practically impossible to hold a first class medical after a severe depressive episode like the Germanwings pilot had. There's some argument for allowing pilots with minor problems to seek help, but not everyone is suited to every job. You've got to draw a line somewhere.

I actually don't follow in terms of how mortgage-backed securities are different than the other two examples here. If anything I think the tariffs are the odd one out here, since my modal expectation is that Trump walks them back and there is approximately zero long-term impact (at least relative to the other three examples). If you had said "4 is different because it's a nothingburger" I would admit you might have a point -- but to say that tariffs are nothingburgers like 9/11 and covid, not real like the GFC... I notice that I am confused.

My original point was just that there is frequently some Event which impacts everyone, and where everyone gains strong opinions about Adjacent Topic where they didn't really have an opinion on Adjacent Topic before Event, and so pointing out that people had no opinion about Adjacent Topic before Event isn't particularly informative.

Mortgage backed securities are different in that they actually had an effect different from people reading too much into them following a high-profile news story. You couldn’t have just ignored sub-prime mortgages in ‘08 the way you could have the virus in 2020.

I've repeated my criteria for the Trump administration, and my hesitancy to rush to judgement too quickly. I'm waiting until the mid terms to see if my life has gotten better, or worse.

Then I'd recommend utilizing the little bar next to any post about Trump for the next eighteen months to minimize discussions on it.

This is such a weird reversal in the demand for hugboxing, that I'm seeing on Twitter and IRL as well. Where I felt like last year the story was "SO WHAT IF BIDEN DOESN'T KNOW WHO THE PRESIDENT IS, WHAT ABOUT FASCISM!?!?" Now I'm seeing so many right wingers telling people to stop talking about the tariffs because idk there's a trans fencer or something.

Has there been a topic moratorium in years? As I understood them, the topic moratoriums were put in place to soothe a plurality of people uninterested in (or uncomfortable with) the 10th weekly HBD/trans thread. A vestige from a more complex environment where mods had to account for significant differences to keep the peace. Most of those interests are gone along with the contributors that enjoyed those efforts. Unlike the dark arts behind HBD poasts this is an active and developing news item that has immediate and potentially long-lasting impacts on the world.

Taking the grill pill is fine. Welcome. Embrace the grill pill and accept what will be. To fully transcend you must let go the desire to rain on other parades.

There has not been a topic moratorium ever on themotte. There was one in the culture war thread in the slatestarcodex subreddit.

We have implemented rules about single issue posting for specific users that can get annoyingly stuck in a single issue.

We have sometimes had containment threads, but there isn't tons of enforcement of that containment. I don't think anyone has ever had so much as a warning for violating those.

Congratulations, you just made the worst argument in the world for the millionth time. "You don't care? That makes you a bad person."

I don't care because I already lived through worse in 08, assorted points during Obama where we nearly "broke the buck", COVID, and most recently at points in 2022 where all the gains of my portfolio were wiped out going back to 2017. These tariff hiccups don't even take my portfolio back to the beginning of 2024.

Also, it's not a loss until you sell. Which if you do, you're a chump. Panic selling the bottom is how they get you.

I don't care about daily stock market swings because they are fucking retarded, and you shouldn't either.

  • -16

I'm not sure that @newintown is saying that if you don't care, you're a bad person. At least, that's not how I read it. To me it seems that he is pointing out why he cares.

at points in 2022 where all the gains of my portfolio were wiped out going back to 2017

What the fuck you invested in? Year end 2017 S&P 500 was below 2,700, the low point in 2022 was over 3,500.

These tariff hiccups don't even take my portfolio back to the beginning of 2024.

Until Trump climbed down today the slide was showing no signs of stopping whatsoever. We're barely more than a week removed from the original announcement.

Until Trump climbed down today the slide was showing no signs of stopping whatsoever. We're barely more than a week removed from the original announcement.

I will say, having my net worth in term deposits (because I'm a pessimist, if largely for other reasons) has served me well this week.

Sure, I wouldn't care either if I didn't have hundreds of thousands invested in the market, like millions of other people do through various retirement accounts.

Maybe I read too much into it. That just pattern matched to "millions are suffering and I care like a good person should". And I refute both points. Retirement accounts are not lost in a day unless you sell the bottom like a hysterical woman, and we've seen worse event in recent memory, much less living memory.

I also didn't see your post as insinuating he was a "bad person". I don't know how he came to that conclusion or what he means by that.

Shit man, if you are 59 years old you really ought to have figured out what a bad person is by now. Or at least have some inkling. I am similarly confused if you meant you don't understand what he meant by 'insinuate you are a bad person'.

This is a news discussion forum and this has been the biggest news for a while, clearly it’s going to be the central topic.

It’s fun to see opinions in real time.

Be boring if we all held our breaths until everything is over.

I mean, I get that, but I don't.

Like, I get that if we're talking about a court case. Diving into the minutia of which legal arguments the Supreme Court will agree with, and which justices will go which way. Less so when it comes to individual court cases, like Rittenhouse, although I understand they are good drama and lightning rods for the culture war. I certain dove all in on some of them.

I get it when it comes to hot conflicts like Ukraine and Russia, and debating tactics, strategy and capabilities. Especially because reality quickly asserts itself.

The tariff discussion though... all I know is that all the same talking heads who've been wrong about everything insist tariff's will destroy the economy. They quote that the last time we did this was 100 years ago, and that simultaneously that's how we know it's a terrible idea, but also that the world has changed so much tariffs won't work like they used to when Trump brags about how great they were 100 years ago.

Fact of the matter is, Trump is a singular figure in history. He doesn't compare to anyone else. As well, these tariffs, coming from him, with the state of the world being what it is, is a singular moment in history that cannot be compared to any other. 10 years from now, some people might rise to the top as "having been right about the Trump tariffs". Some of them might have even done so on purpose! But I would also not be shocked if they lead to outcomes nobody predicts and nobody gets it completely, or even half right. You might as well be arguing about the next number at the craps table.

I haven't been taking my opinions on the tariffs from talking heads. It just seems evident to me from first principles that the tariffs are more likely to hurt me than help me. I can't think of any way in which they could possibly help me. I don't want to work in manufacturing and I don't care about increasing US national security from its current level of "almost completely impregnable" to "so ridiculously impregnable that it's hard to imagine it being much more impregnable, barring the invention of effective anti-nuke defenses".

Ok, but until he climbed down the expert consensus was exactly right on what the reaction of the markets would be.

I struggle with economic discussion in general because

A. I know almost nothing about economics and what I do know makes the entire system seem like a massive fraud i.e. it's a ponzi scheme when I do it but they're treasury bonds when the feds do it

B. The kinds of people who are able to discourse about economics are overwhelmingly PMC and will represent PMC interests and when economics are discussed at all then what is considered to be "good policy" will be policy that doesn't take into consideration blue collar workers

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