Tariff - The Official Tariff Thread

[BLD]

Countries can reduce the tariffs on US goods. I think Trump will reward that because it makes him look like a winner. But tariffs aren't just about trade. I'd guess for example that countries such as Australia don't want US beef because of concerns about what it contains (e.g. growth hormones). Tariffs can also be about national security. Thailand should reduce its tariffs on US goods.

We don't want it because as an island we are very wary of introducing a biohazard from uncooked meat. Plus we have plenty of beef. Our pm summed it up.today and pointed out that we have a reciprocal tariff meaning %0. So why 10% ? It's fucking nonsense

[BLD]

Some folk felt covid was the biggest scam of the 20th century. Perhaps it was or perhaps it opened the floodgate.for these fuckos to see how easily the globe can be controlled with a bit of media. Cultism etc who knows? It's definitely fucked up and I'll be pissed if this orange cunto fucks up my super annuation. In my portfolio I've allocated 10% to US bluechips. That's 10% to much will be changing that shortly.

[Looper]

Our pm summed it up.today and pointed out that we have a reciprocal tariff meaning %0. So why 10% ? It's fucking nonsense

Trump could also be using the tariffs as a tool of coercion to game the upcoming Federal election down under (which would be a bit sneaky given Murka's continual complaints regarding foreign election interference!).

He does not like Labor's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd (after Rudd said rude and unkind things about him!)

He is also a conservative, obviously, so a change of government would probably suit him.

[NamPikToot]

Some folk felt covid was the biggest scam of the 20th century

it does feel like a long time ago

[BLD]

It was I.

At least you fessed up. I was gonna blame armo or cybil or even Tax. Why not? them boys are easily amused

[BLD]

Trump could also be using the tariffs as a tool of coercion to game the upcoming Federal election down under (which would be a bit sneaky given Murka's continual complaints regarding foreign election interference!).

He does not like Labor's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd (after Rudd said rude and unkind things about him!)

He is also a conservative, obviously, so a change of government would probably suit him.

Yeah . Great so we get a Dutton inflicted govt via Trump? Well nothing would surprise me. Australians are as daft as Americans and will vote for whoever Murdoch media plants the seed in there redneck bonce. It's not as weird as the states here yet. But it's getting there

[BLD]

it does feel like a long time ago

And yet it wasn't all that long ago. During it. That's all you heard, covid covid covid , fight in the aisles of woolies for the elusive 6 pack of toilet paper. In my opinion the whole covid thing kinda dumbed down the whole world. Left a huge opening for The Trumps etc. All the bad actors. I may have formed this opinion after one or 2 award winners but am I wrong ? ��

[NamPikToot]

its certainly helped the feckless to appreciate being supported by Govt benefits and that mental elf is the means to secure a life of support, be interesting when there is no one left to pay tax to support the lazy shits.

[Looper]

Poor Lesotho! After being insulted by being told that nobody has ever heard of them during Trump's address to congress, they have been hit with the highest tariff (after China at 54%). Lesotho copped a 50% tariff in response to a claimed 99% reverse tariff.

Australia got off light with a 10% tariff. We are one of the very few large economies that run a trade surplus with the US. We import more than we export.

I think the biggest thing Trump wants out of this is number 1 on the list

1. Basic fairness and equality of tariff application for US import vs export

How difficult would it be for countries to lower their tariffs they charge on imported US goods, and will Trump reciprocate if foreign tariffs are lowered?

We should find out soon if one or 2 countries volunteer to lower their import tariffs on US goods and see if Trump responds in kind.

[NamPikToot]

Poor Lesotho! After being insulted by being told that nobody has ever heard of them during Trump's address to congress, they have been hit with the highest tariff (after China at 54%). Lesotho copped a 50% tariff in response to a claimed 99% reverse tariff

Levis

Lesotho, the tiny southern African country, one of the poorest in the world, is another odd example, facing a tariff of 50%. Among its main exports to the US are diamonds and clothes – demonstrating how links around the world for rare minerals are important for the US economy, but also how the US sought to boost development in African nations in recent years – with policies to encourage manufacturing by companies including Levi Strauss and Wrangler.

[misskit]

White House Spins as Russia Omitted From Tariffs List

The White House pushed back on critics who have pointed out President Donald Trump conspicuously missed Russia from sweeping new round of global tariffs issued Wednesday.


White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios the omission was by design, explaining that existing sanctions against Moscow already “preclude any meaningful trade.”


But that explanation raised more questions than it answered. After all, as Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf pointed out, the U.S. still trades more with Russia than it does with some of the microstates and territories that did make the list — in its piece, Axios pointed to Tokelau (population: 1,500) and Norway’s Arctic outpost of Svalbard (population: 2,500).

Leavitt defended the move by pointing out that countries like Cuba, Belarus, and North Korea were also skipped due to already sky-high restrictions.


“Russia could still face additional strong sanctions,” she added — a nod to Trump’s recent frustrations with the country’s President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine war peace talks progress.


The president told reporters this week he was “pissed off” at the Russian leader over his latest remarks on Ukraine, and even floated the possibility of secondary tariffs on Russian oil.


Still, the optics of sparing Russia — even amid threats and bluster — feed into a familiar perception that Trump’s Russia posture remains ambiguous. With the value of U.S.-Russia trade down from $35 billion in 2021 to just $3.5 billion last year, the White House insists there’s not much left to target. But critics see this is a political calculation.

White House Spins as Russia Omitted From Tariffs List

[bsnub]

The Dow Jones fell 1,679.39 points on Thursday, its worst single-day plunge since 2020, when, wait, let me check my notes, Donald Trump was President. $2 trillion in wealth was wiped out in 24 hours.

Stock market today: Live updates, Trump tariffs

[thailazer]

Trump is a bonfire of delusion, incompetence, and ego and now we are seeing how all that will work out. It sure is turning a lot of countries toward China.

[david44]

We are one of the very few large economies that run a trade surplus with the US. We import more than we export.

stick to the sheilas

[NamPikToot]

$2 trillion in wealth was wiped out in 24 hours.

unrealised paper wealth

[taxexile]

It sure is turning a lot of countries toward China.

who will live to regret it.

the chinese are much cannier than the asset rich tin pot dictatorships they seek to swallow up

america under trump is certainly a malign power, but he will gradually soften the blows. the chinese however plan 100 years ahead, and are far more expansionist and devious. get into bed with the chinese and ones emasculation is guaranteed.

however, the focus is on what trump has done when the E.U. under VDL has had double those tariffs in place for years, as has japan, switzerland, vietnam, thailand, you name it. i mean trump is wrong - tariffs always hurt the imposer most, since they’re simply a tax on one’s own consumer as singapore rightly reminded us today - but everyone else has been even madder for years. trump has just joined the club.

[39TG]

The population of China will fall by 400 to 500 million this century. Their population will age rapidly; I think they're fxcked.

Is Murdoch backing Dutton? I expect he is.

[david44]

WTF I started a thread about Trade , seems to have vanished, Trump and Looper may agree about who prefers what vocabulary the key issue is free trade versus a recessionary tendency to friction.
Trumps choices will enrich a few by beggaring the many as his backers intend.

I see little point in trying to debate economic ideas if we are to have just a Thesaurus wrangle .

Dear Looper surprised to see your support for Trump places you below the trailer trash in USA who have little knowledge or access to International media, has one your International harem hoodwinkered you?

Can you provide any example in recorded history of the benefits of tariffs in the long term.

[Shutree]

Poor Lesotho! After being insulted by being told that nobody has ever heard of them during Trump's address to congress, they have been hit with the highest tariff (after China at 54%).

As I understand it, the Lesotho factories are all Chinese who went there specifically because of its zero tariff when selling their clothing to the US. You can't blame them for trying.

[taxexile]

There’s method to Trump’s tariff madness.

Political considerations are just as important as the drive for economic gain, as Trump knows very well

03 April 2025 6:29pm BST

David Frost

We’re all free market purists now. Today’s airwaves are full of people reminding us that David Ricardo was right and that President Trump’s tariffs will boost inflation, increase costs, and hit global growth.

Obviously I agree. Taken in isolation, tariffs worsen economic outcomes. But the same is true of many other policies very much approved of by the right-thinking majority: planning rules, stamp duty, the minimum wage, trade union rights, unfair dismissal laws, environmental regulations – the list extends indefinitely.

We do these things because we think simple maximisation of economic output is not the only objective. (In fact it seems about the last thing we think of nowadays – but that’s a separate point.)

So set aside the folk memory of the Great Depression, and try to look at tariffs in a non-hysterical way, as a policy with rational political aims. I don’t claim that Donald Trump has reinvented the laws of economics; I claim that he may be trying to do something other than maximise short-run output. Trump and JD Vance say the US economy has hollowed out, with disastrous social consequences. US businesses have shifted activity overseas. China’s entry to the WTO produced a wave of cheap imported products. And the under-valued euro for most of that disaster-zone currency’s lifetime has made Germany a super-competitive exporter.

Yes, business may have responded rationally to these trends: investing where the rate of return is highest and buying from the cheapest. All get richer. But there is more to it than that.

The world isn’t made up of businesses but of nations. You may not be interested in another nation getting richer if you think you might fight a war with them one day. And your own nation will only work well if there is a common sense of solidarity and political community: if the people who live there are “all in it together”.

That social contract is breaking down, in America as elsewhere. Big business often seems indifferent to the local consequences of its decisions. For the first time the US has a genuine far-Left strand to its politics. Even mainstream Democrats have gone nuts on identity politics and believe national borders are out of date.

It is therefore an absolutely crucial MAGA political project to try to put the country back together and generate a sense of “Americans first”. If citizens aren’t prioritised then what is the point of a nation at all? One of the ways of building that solidarity is to differentiate between things that originate beyond the borders and things that happen within them. When it comes to workers, most countries already do this, without even really thinking about it. You can’t – at least in theory – just come to the US or Britain and work. You need a visa and you need to meet certain conditions.

Usually there is a wage floor, which you might even argue is a form of tariff on labour costs. If we didn’t have these rules, and tried to introduce them today, it’s not hard to imagine businesses arguing that it stopped them importing the cheapest workers wherever they could find them and therefore harmed growth. But we would still think it a price worth paying because a nation is not a business.

So it may be with trade in goods. Western nations could gradually reduce tariffs after the war because all had a strong sense of national community and solidarity. But in current conditions, where Western nation states are starting to fray and national solidarity is collapsing, then maybe making borders meaningful and ensuring the wellbeing of your own citizens is worth doing?


If the effect of Trump’s tariffs is to get American businesses thinking “maybe it’s better to stay in the US and buy from US companies”, and if it gets Americans thinking that their country is sovereign again, then perhaps the political effect is worth having and will eventually pay off economically too. After all, it’s no coincidence that tariffs are so often used for nation-building: the Zollverein that helped build a united Germany, British imperial preference in the 30s, and of course the EU’s doomed attempts to create a federal Europe behind customs union tariff walls.

Let’s see what happens. Trump’s tariffs may or may not stick. They certainly need to be coupled with other policies with the same aim. But the US has the advantage of being a highly innovative continent-sized self-sufficient economy. If anyone can shift the paradigm, they can.

That’s not true of Britain. We too need to rebuild national solidarity, but it won’t be done by tariffs, retaliatory or otherwise. Our offer must be that of a smaller country: an economy open to our friends around the world, super-competitive in certain areas, innovative in most, efficient in administration, attractive in culture, and above all flexible and responsive to global change. Simply to describe it is to reveal how far from it we are. But the Blue Labour vision of worker rights behind a tariff wall isn’t going to get us any closer.

So we don’t need to imitate Trump’s measures. But we absolutely should share his broader goals – and find ways of achieving them here too.


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© Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited 2025

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[bsnub]

^

What a load of crap.

[taxexile]

^

What a load of crap.

deeply insightful.

as ever.

[BLD]

its certainly helped the feckless to appreciate being supported by Govt benefits and that mental elf is the means to secure a life of support, be interesting when there is no one left to pay tax to support the lazy shits.

Perhaps put a tax on the feckless?

[BLD]

stick to the sheilas

Looper. You need to.either shit or get of the pot? Looks like you think the trumpster is valid? Watch your superannuation go down.

[cyrille]

Trying to think of things the USA has actually done well with.

So far I've got Jazz and Basketball.