As world leaders reacted to the US president’s “liberation day” tariff policies demolishing the international trading order, about $2.5tn (£1.9tn) was wiped off Wall Street and share prices in other financial centres across the globe.
World leaders from Brussels to Beijing rounded on Trump. China condemned “unilateral bullying” practices and the EU said it was drawing up countermeasures.
While Trump timed his Wednesday evening Rose Garden address to avoid live tickers of crashing stock markets, that fate arrived when Asian exchanges opened hours later.
As long as American products are not competitive in international markets, be it because of price, quality, or marketability, there will always be a trade deficit.
Just take cars. The US produces cars basically for the American market only. No other country produces or uses cars like that. But they all produce cars they like, that other countries like, and even Americans like.
American car companies cannot expect to sell goods to other countries that simply have no markets in those countries.
From a UK perspective, a lot of US cars would be illegal to drive on public roads here - too large, too dangerous for pedestrians and other road users. “Dangerous” also applies to some of your other potential exports too. Chlorinated chicken, for instance, isn’t considered safe for consumption. So the absence of a market for those goods isn’t simply “customer preference”.
As a European, we’ve been too dependent on the US on some things for too long. We need to be more independent. The situation in Ukraine has shown that; we need to be able to support our allies better. But the US trashing their own economy, making themselves into global pariahs and handing over their superpower status to China is what I would have described as “not my dream way” of achieving that.
Apart from the point that I’m not an American, I consider the issues you raised as part of “marketablility” – if it is so unsafe that it is illegal here, you can’t bring it on the market. But it also includes issues like American cars simply being to big for European roads (I recently had an issue with a US brand pickup truck driver noticing that the car is too big for the city’s underground car park. As he was in the queue in front of me, it took a while to sort this mess out).
That we Europeans have to stick closer together is something I preach for decades now, If Trumps tantrums finally helps some European politicians to see the light, so be it. And if this leads to taking down American market dominance at the same time, I’m not going to cry a river.
Trump is a walking disaster honestly he’s got to be the dumbest moron on the planet.
The morons voting for him TWO TIMES are infinitely more moronic than him.
He’d probably still win that election…
What about the morons who ran a candidate with very public dementia?
Yeah. That’s how sycophantic the Republicans are.
America did it with Reagan’s last term.
It’s not a good comparison, though, as Reagan could still publicly present as a cognitively-functioning person.
Biden couldn’t. The June debate wasn’t the first time we’d seen his brain melt in public. It was just the worst.
It is a good comparison … you just don’t like it because it doesn’t agree with your confirmation bias.
Yet Reagan’s “Alzheimer’s Controversy” recently resumed, CBS News noted yesterday, after Ron Reagan suggested, in a just-released book, that the former president “may have shown signs of Alzheimer’s disease as early as three years into his first term.”
In My Father at 100, Ron Reagan writes of a “growing sense of alarm over his father’s mental condition.” He recalls the presidential debate with Walter Mondale, October 1984, in which his father seemed lost and unable to articulate himself. In “Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s while president, says son,” a short piece on the fracas by the British Guardian, Ron Reagan is quoted as saying: “My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words. He looked tired and bewildered.”
… Lesley Stahl, in another new book on Reagan, describes a visit with her family to the White House in 1986, ending her time as a White House correspondent. She writes,
- "Reagan didn't seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he's gonzo, I thought. I have to go out on the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet."
That’s an insult to morons. He’s a fuckwit, a sentient turd.
I wouldn’t call him the dumbest, but is certainly one of the most evil and manipulative.
The biggest take away I see from this is how easy it was to remove $2.5 trillion dollars … yet the world didn’t end.
I mean, the stock market is still up 5% or so from a year ago. Which doesn’t refute your point that it’s disconnected from reality, but rather that the wealthy people are not exactly suffering due to a single day or even a few weeks of market losses.
Check your pension fund
Imagine they go into building trains and tracks!
Investors have a long way to go before they’re living like subsistence farmers.
There’s always someone else who is working harder for less, so the idea work won’t get done is bullshit.
Yet
It is almost like the Orange Turd does not know what he is doing.
Or perhaps he does and simply isn’t being transparent with his true objectives for America. He did say everything was going to plan, after all …
His handler’s goal is to dismantle the US. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he just knows he gets to sniff the mushroom every time he follows orders
Putin could not possibly have any dirt on Trump that is worse than the publicly available knowledge we have of his personality and activities. If he’s working with Russia it’s because he wants to, not because he’s being coerced.
If Trump is a Russian asset as we all believe then Putin will have irrefutable proof that would be able to put Trump in prison.
He’s also likely to have evidence of other crimes that everyone is pretty sure that he has done and is doing.
A lot of the publicly available stuff has a lack of evidence, a lack of motivation to get the evidence or a lack of will to impeach and prosecute a sitting president. It’s possible that Putin could release enough information to overcome those barriers.
Putin will have dirt that trump thinks is important, like that he has a comb over or some other trivial crap.
That the whole world knows he’s a weird, small handed, incontinent, idiot doesn’t register with his own opinion of himself.
Nah pretty sure that’s him just not having the ability to even acknowledge its going to shit. Never admit defeat type of mentality.
por que no los dos?
He knows exactly what he’s doing. Running a protection racket.
It’s always unclear whether he’s deliberately destroying the West in the service of Russia, or whether he’s just unwittingly destroying the West in the service of Russia. That’s his great mystique.
Although by leaving Russia and only Russia out of these tariffs he may have just made himself a little less intriguing.
So much winning!
No one wins a trade war. We all get to lose because of one loser (well, plus 70 million other losers).
You should also hold the non voters accountable.
As far as I’m concerned if you didn’t vote against him then you’re also to blame.
It’s a repost of a meme, but damn, there’s so many great opportunities for this one:
I wouldn’t say all of them are in turmoil, the US markets have been hit about twice as hard. And most of my European stocks actually went up today.
Lol
I’m only invested in broad market from all over the world, everything is down on average.
Putin’s puppet Krasnov pushing it as far as he can get away with.
Looks like the American stock market was hit the hardest…
Lmao
