Does anyone think they’re doing it on purpose to profit from short selling stocks? I mean they peddled two sh*tcoins right on Inauguration Day so it doesn’t seem too far fetched they would intentionally tank the stock market as well. It’s hard to see any other angle to this ridiculous policy. If you know where stocks are going you can profit regardless whether they go up or down, and making them go down is easier than making them go up, as a president.
Consider if you were kind of a dumbass but born very wealthy. You go your entire life running from income tax. Then someone mentions tariffs to you. A complete dumbass in this situation would, obviously, be extremely excited about the idea of replacing income tax with tariffs. And fortunately for him/unfortunately for us, it's one of the few things POTUS can basically do unilaterally.
It has side-benefits like centralizing power so everyone has to come to you for exemptions, it makes it look like you have a chance of moving American industry back a few decades which would be great for a chunk of your constituency, etc.
But fundamentally he's just a dumbass and the people around him are fully indoctrinated into his cult. Very dangerous combination.
He is not just stupid but he has unlimited energy so the famous Hammerstein-Equord quote about 4 types of officers applies.
Add modern context of the Attention Economy built on exploiting the fact that people have limited Attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to Receive Attention. Trump being the textbook example. So we have a double whammy.
> I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage
There is also the obvious angle to destabilize the world economy to benefit Russia, whose name was not on the tariff board at all.
Yes, the excuse was that sanctions already apply but who would like to place bets on when those are lifted (as a negotiation for Ukraine)
Were it not also the fact that the US just canned the head of the NSA and publicly ceased cyber activities against Russia, it’s hard see this any other way
Nobody has come up with anything halfway rational to explain this behavior. The closest, the so-called "Mar-a-lago Accord", is filled with so many holes that it cannot be a coherent theory. (See, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfDKbWA1NzY for an explanation of it and why it's obviously wrong).
One thing that dictators reliably do is tank the economy to destroy the middle class, which consolidates power for them. That's the most coherent motivation that I have bene able to find.
That is roughly the Mar-a-lago accord idea, but the both the financial leverage for that and the negotiating tactics have been completely mismanaged if that's the goal, it really doesn't make any sense.
Someone is probably insider trading on this, but so far they look more like True Believers who don't expect it to go badly than 5D chess manipulators. In particular, Musk tying his reputation so strongly to the far right has been nothing but bad for his stock holdings.
Musk's case is at least somewhat understandable. The critics who call him the "ultimate government welfare queen" are not wrong; practically every dime he has earned has either come from government contracts or subsidies, or depends on maintaining a good working relationship with agencies ranging from NASA to the Department of Transportation.
Following his takeover of Twitter in 2022, he would have been among the first to understand what was about to happen in 2024. Pivoting to the right -- not just pivoting to the right, but actively embracing it -- is something he had no choice in, if he wanted to keep his companies healthy. They were built atop a government that was about to disappear, so the only logical thing to do was to signal loyalty by throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at the Trump campaign.
Of course, his Nazi salutes made no sense in any context, but then neither did cheating at video games or calling Unsworth a pedophile for dissing his submarine idea. I'd chalk his erratic behavior up to drugs or ongoing mental challenges that ultimately don't have much to do with politics.
Zuckerberg and Bezos were slower to catch on but they did catch on in the end. They understood that they had an enormous amount to lose by alienating Trump. If the wires of democracy, from Section 230 to the US Postal Service, were about to be ripped from the wall by Trumpers, they had to get in position to influence those events. See also Sam Altman.
I don't blame any of these people for acting rationally. The question I have is, when are all these big billionaire alpha moguls going to stop reacting to a chaos monkey and start pushing back, if only behind the scenes? Who has more to lose from tearing down the established world order than the people who succeeded so massively under that very system? Don't they understand that while they will continue to be players, their playground will become a much smaller, weaker kingdom, one surrounded by rivals who now have an incentivize to organize against us?
Musk is explainable. Tesla WAS going to fail, and that became inevitable long before the election. Musk was going to lose big whether Trump or Harris (or Biden) got elected. Granted, probably less dramatic and slower failure than what we see now, but it was always going to fall big. Musks' new design, the cybertruck is a disaster, and he would have been the first to know. BYD is eating Tesla's lunch ... and BYD is merely the first and currently highest profile of 10 Chinese companies coming out with electric cars.
And yet, I do think Musk is actually worse off in his current position than he would have been under Harris. Which shows, yet again, what a "great thinker" he is cough. He acted, because he's under threat, that makes sense, but his actions made his situation worse than it would have been had he done nothing.
Then again, in this market, I bet a lot of people feel like that.
Agreed that Musk would have been vastly better off with Harris, but I think his actions are purely reactive. It's not his fault that Harris lost. He's just trying to make lemonade, having seen early on that life was about to hand us all a lemon. For every normal person who refuses to buy a Tesla, he has to sell one to a MAGA cultist, and that is never going to happen.
The fact that his "lemonade" tastes suspiciously like pee is his fault, though.
I could also see a plan to transfer a large portion of corporate ownership to a smaller number of individuals with a lot of wealth by tanking the stocks and buying when they're rock bottom, then implement "recovery plan B" and let them go back up.
Maybe. There were exemptions to the tariffs. The exemptions included Russia. If the tariffs remain, companies are incentivized to invest in places with no tariffs to USA (as Trump removes Russia sanctions whenever it's convenient).
So, we've been hit with the largest tax increase (peacetime) in US history with no coherent explanation. Even the Project 2025 master plan suggests the idea is to devalue the dollar to save hundreds of billions. We've already lost trillions, so that didn't work.
I think the most obvious answer is incompetence, but there are piles of shit and coincidence with MAGA and Russia. I'm not in denial.
It's possible. The wealthy are a lot better positioned to make a lot of money during a bear market then the average person, as they can afford to buy a lot of stocks when they're cheap. Just look how much money billionaires like Bezos or Musk made during COVID.
But even if that's their plan, that doesn't mean they're executing it competently. The specific tariff amounts do not seem well thought through, and fighting a trade war against literally every other country in the world seems like a bad idea.
There's an idea called Hanlon's Razor which states "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". It's a good rule of thumb, but it implies that malice/stupidity is an either/or choice. I think that the Trump tariffs are a malicious plan executed stupidly, and if nothing changes the effects will be catastrophic.
Imagine being Fed Chair Jerome Powell. You've just successfully nailed the post-COVID disruption softlanding by amazingly bringing down inflation AND unemployment at the same time. The American economy is roaring and the envy of the world. Then, a collective of the absolute least-qualified, most vindictive, idiots comes in and sets the US back 100 years for absolutely no good reason. Voting everyone involved out of office won't be nearly enough.
Look back at expectations at the beginning, and you'll see that nearly everybody was predicting massive recession and even hyperinflation. Balaji bet $1M that there would be hyperinflation:
Yet that didn't happen. We dodged a major bullet, and survived far better than the rest of the world. We must look back at predictions and outcomes with clear eyes, not with the narratives that are being sold in the current day.
What ends up destroying fascism is prizing loyalty above all else. If you look at the likes of Luaren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor-Greene, these are seriously, without hyperbole, some of the dumbest people on the planet. But they're loyal. And that's the point, so we end up with sycophantic morons.
I say this because if we had a legislative branch that hadn't completely abdicated its responsibility, they would act to strip tariff power from the president, at least temporarily, which they can do with a simple Act of Congress with a veto-proof supermajority. The Democrats would be on board.
Just remember this: as much damage as the president is causing, Congress could step in at any moment but they don't and won't, at least until things get much, much worse.
Blanket tariffs don't work. The goal here seems to be to reduce reliance on Chinese goods (without setting up any manufacturing to replace it, I might add) and/or to get rid of the one remaining progressive tax: income tax.
We have precedent for all this: tariffs in the early part of the Great Depression. And what did they do? They made everything worse and the US sunk further into recession.
I'm not sure people realize just how dire the situation is. In other countries, this would have us sliding dangerously close to coup territory. Yet a significant portion of our population, who are the most affected and will see their standard of living decline further, celebrate it.
I keep thinking how radically/anarchically/unintentionally degrowth this administration is. We will probably see further reduced demand for oil because of global recession.
Oh don't worry, I'm sure they've got some plan to burn down all the forests on NFS land or something that equally serves no purpose except to own the libs.
Not if the stuff we do buy is worse for the environment. I just bought an EV, I’m worse off financially for it, but I could afford it. If I was worried about a recession I wouldn’t have splurged like that. Same with installing a heat pump and reinsulating my attic.
For the first time in my investing life I'm not invested in the S&P 500. I'm 80/20 in European/Pacific index funds--hopefully the rest of the world can do better.
I had been super bullish on US stocks and I went super long on margins. Now, I am looking at losing everything and starting over from scratch in my 60s. I can’t even hold water down right now. I feel like I need to go to the ER. Pray for me.
You are right. I gambled everything away but the drop is much more than single digit at this point. I was concentrating my bets very aggressively. It is sinking in. Fortunately I will have some adult children who might be doing ok. I hope they will be willing to lend a helping hand. I am feeling so much shame. I cannot stomach my current predicament.
Best of luck to you. I hope it won't be as bad, but I am reminded of my grandfather losing most of his hard-earned life savings during the changeover from communism to democracy in Russia. I'm sure it was devastating for him, but we took care of each other and he ended up OK. Alas, sometimes shit just hits the fan.
Sincerely I feel bad for everyone with a 401k. According to the CFRA as long as the stock market doesn’t fall 20% or more and enter bear market territory, it takes on average four months to recover from a correction. Unfortunately we already see the bear coming.
Unlike previous market turmoil (2008, 2020) where the U.S. at least had established global trade order to lean on for the recovery, this feels like the U.S. could be entering a period of sustained damage. I don't see how the U.S. recovers from this in anything like he near term. Americans will have to get used to a long stretch of low economic growth.
The global trade order is going to be reconfigured, but not in the way the Trump thinks. The U.S. is throwing up a wall around itself, but the rest world will continue with the current regime and likely move away from the U.S. permanently.
What's sad is, the Congress could simply revoke the ability for Trump to single-handedly make these tariffs, but they appear too cowed to do anything about it.
The senate voted to null trumps Canada tariffs, but it's not expected to pass the house. The president can also veto the decision and it would go back and require a 2/3 majority. Not impossible just unlikely.
The hopeful path is to knock down the made up national emergency via the courts.
Right now there are suits in the courts to declare that fentanyl crossing from Canada is not a national emergency. That's a tough case because there is no definition for national emergency, so the court will likely defer to the president's definition. However if Congress says it isn't a national emergency then the courts have the option to defer to Congress's decision rather than the president's. And once the national emergency declaration is gone, Trump needs Congress's support to pass tariffs.
In my opinion it's clear that Trump does not care about global trade and is only trying to consolidate power by destroying the economy and the middle class. Canada is closer to realizing what's going on, but not quite yet, and France is really far away from realizing what's going on, but they will faster than the rest of Europe.
Canada's likely new Prime Minister Carney: "Canada must be looking elsewhere to expand our trade, to build our economy, and to protect our sovereignty. Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building a coalition of likeminded countries who share our values… If the US no longer wants to lead, Canada will"
France's Macron: "It was important for us to meet as quickly as possible after last night's announcement from President Trump, which are a shock to international trade, not just for the EU and France, but fundamentally for the proper functioning of global commerce. What's important is that we pause future investments, or these announced in recent weeks, until we've clarified things with the United States. What would be the message of having big European players investing billions of euros in the American economy at a time when they are hitting us? So we need collective solidarity." https://bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3l...
A bunch of the tariffs still haven't even taken effect (despite his repeatedly saying they were hitting at midnight when he made the announcement Tuesday—I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out Wednesday that that was bullshit, but I still was).
This continues to mostly be harm from him just constantly going back and forth on the notion. It can get so much worse if he sticks with it this time.
And yet he's brainwashed (slightly less than) half of the population into believing heart and soul that he's here to save Western civilization. By ushering in the end of American hegemony and paving the way for China and Russia. We really are living in the post-truth era.
I don't think the public opinion is as dire as it seems. He has a very vocal cult following, but the real swing in the election was politically disaffected people who are just really hard to reach. This is sad but the good news is that it's just a matter of reaching them — and MAGA is clearly and demonstrably failing on the number one issue for the vast majority of voters which is economy.
The democrats have an even lower approval rating and seem to be staunchly refusing to change. Assuming we still have elections, I don't see how it ends as anything other than swapping desperately back and forth between the two corporate parties.
> The democrats have an even lower approval rating and seem to be staunchly refusing to change.
These two statements can't both be true for very long. The Democratic Party is going to reinvent itself. Turbulent and uncertain though it may be, this is how it works.
The GOP just used its generational transformation, has been given free rein to prove their ideas, and lo and behold: they suck!
They haven't yet - they approved Trump's budget bill and Marco Rubio was voted in unanimously 99-0. They're still doing talks alongside Peter Thiel. Protestors are being arrested by Blue Govenors in Blue States.
I used to be more hopeful but if they won't act now, in the direst of times, then they must actually be completely bought by corporate interests.
Parties don't change by the individuals within them changing their minds, they change by replacing the individuals. People are absolutely livid about the things you're mentioning, which is why their approval ratings are low, which is why they're going to be replaced.
> then they must actually be completely bought by corporate interests.
This is a non-sequitur. I know it's an easy out to avoid thinking through the actual mechanics at play here (one of which is certainly corporate interests), but it's worth being more curious about this stuff and the individuals' motivations.
It seems like their plan is a repeat of 2016, 2020, and 2024- to hope that Trump will be so unpopular that they can get elected without changing anything.
Don't just hope! Find and back new candidates in your local area who will represent the change you want to see. Politics at the end of the day is just conversations like these.
Other than the stock market what metric are you using to indicate that the economy is doing badly? A jobs report just came out today indicating good growth there.
The only leading indicators that really matter due to their self-fulfilling nature: people's confidence. The below is from before he started doing the thing "he's not stupid enough to do," these tariffs.
> A poll of more than 220 U.S. CEOs finds business confidence at lowest level since November 2012—and recession fears on the rise.
> Consumers’ expectations for the future at a 12-year low
Consumer confidence isn’t actually a metric of the economy. At best it’s a correlate to an actual indicator, which can be something you can link if available.
Simplest way to make my point is to look at the confidence during covid vs January of this year.
There’s no such thing as an “actual indicator.” The economy isn’t a real thing that exists. It’s all correlates, some leading, some trailing, some accurate, and some inaccurate.
The contents of the shopping cart of the person in front of you is an indicator.
> The contents of the shopping cart of the person in front of you is an indicator.
yes.
> It’s all correlates, some leading, some trailing, some accurate, and some inaccurate.
no. some things are actually measured, like employment rate.
sentiment also can be measured, but is meaningless, because it can contradict behavior, which actually affects the real world. sentiment certainly is correlated to behavior, which is why it's a good leading indicator, but is often wrong about what is happening (see the USA 2024 election, and covid).
> no. some things are actually measured, like employment rate.
Sure, employment rate is measured though uhh, via a survey just like consumer sentiment. The relationship between employment rate and "the economy?" A correlation.
The rest of your comment is umm... internally contradictory.
Trump is supported by the people running Silicon Valley (Musk, Thiel, Andreessen - with Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos financing his inaugural), hedge fun titans like Robert Mercer, heartland industrialist like the Uihleins. Plus white, Christian, married families who don't live in large coastal cities support him in the majority.
So I take this in the dialectic sense - that it is not destructive but self-destructive.
Also the opposition's obsession with Russia points to their loss. The average American doesn't give a damn what Putin thinks. Trump is focused on the US (or maybe Canada or Greenland) while the opposition is focused on Russia. Liberal Denocrats disliked Russia when Khrushchev was in charge too, they just have some anti-Russian animus that you can read about in the New York Times back to 1925 and before.
In 2012 the Republican candidate for president said that Russia was our biggest geopolitical adversary in the debates and the left laughed at him. Obama said something flippant about the 80s
Mitch McConnell, arguably the most powerful Republican senator in a generation, has also recently issued a rare criticism of Trump and his alliance with Putin, deeply damaging his own standing in his party.
We can also add many other conservative leaders who are no longer in power to that list, because there is no space for dissent in a fascist party.
But please continue to try and strawman the left as having no good reason aside from loss to raise the alarm on an obvious Russian asset controlling the worlds largest superpower
The price of eggs at my farmer's market hasn't changed in a year.
This was always caused by corporate middlemen--as much as I'd like to blame Trump/Republicans, the egg cartel is the real problem here, and Trump/Republicans are only to blame inasmuch as they don't have the will to break up the monopoly.
In contrast, when Lizz Truss wrecked havoc in the UK, she lasted only more than a month. And that was in a place that has only a fraction of billionaires as US do.
Obviously this will have enormous economic consequences if the "policy put" has a lower strike than the world needs, but I'm honestly more curious about the long-term political effects of this.
Trump has made the GOP more populist and in response the Dems have become more institutionalist. Long-term tariffs could lock in this trend, with finance and business resigning themselves to settle for the latter political camp. Basically, business would trade vicious efficiency for reliability/predictability, while the dems would trade Bernie bros for the business class.
my conspiracy hat tells me that this one is one of the biggest incidences of insider trading ever, where the government willfully tries to push down the markets because Participants might have secret put options.
I know people who had to retire (via IBM) last year. Their biggest worry when Biden was elected in 2020 was "Biden will destroy my 401k".
Now that their retirement account has fallen +10% thanks to Trump, I will have to find out what they think. Could be a risky question if I decide to ask them.
Also I am surprised Wall Street is not revolting against the GOP. My guess is they are praying for the big tax cuts first.
Between this and the tax cuts, Zimbabwean Dollar is looking good /s
Does anyone think they’re doing it on purpose to profit from short selling stocks? I mean they peddled two sh*tcoins right on Inauguration Day so it doesn’t seem too far fetched they would intentionally tank the stock market as well. It’s hard to see any other angle to this ridiculous policy. If you know where stocks are going you can profit regardless whether they go up or down, and making them go down is easier than making them go up, as a president.
Another angle: he's a very stupid person.
Consider if you were kind of a dumbass but born very wealthy. You go your entire life running from income tax. Then someone mentions tariffs to you. A complete dumbass in this situation would, obviously, be extremely excited about the idea of replacing income tax with tariffs. And fortunately for him/unfortunately for us, it's one of the few things POTUS can basically do unilaterally.
It has side-benefits like centralizing power so everyone has to come to you for exemptions, it makes it look like you have a chance of moving American industry back a few decades which would be great for a chunk of your constituency, etc.
But fundamentally he's just a dumbass and the people around him are fully indoctrinated into his cult. Very dangerous combination.
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/20/commerce-secretary-lutnick-...
Another angle: The planned demolishment of democracy involves a recession/depression.
He is not just stupid but he has unlimited energy so the famous Hammerstein-Equord quote about 4 types of officers applies.
Add modern context of the Attention Economy built on exploiting the fact that people have limited Attention to give anything, but unlimited capacity to Receive Attention. Trump being the textbook example. So we have a double whammy.
Had to look it up, that's great thanks:
> I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
There is also the obvious angle to destabilize the world economy to benefit Russia, whose name was not on the tariff board at all.
Yes, the excuse was that sanctions already apply but who would like to place bets on when those are lifted (as a negotiation for Ukraine)
Were it not also the fact that the US just canned the head of the NSA and publicly ceased cyber activities against Russia, it’s hard see this any other way
Nobody has come up with anything halfway rational to explain this behavior. The closest, the so-called "Mar-a-lago Accord", is filled with so many holes that it cannot be a coherent theory. (See, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfDKbWA1NzY for an explanation of it and why it's obviously wrong).
One thing that dictators reliably do is tank the economy to destroy the middle class, which consolidates power for them. That's the most coherent motivation that I have bene able to find.
The best explanation I can think of is that sanctions relief will be exchanged for haircuts (restructuring) of foreign held debt.
If you’re familiar with bankruptcy - and the president is - then you know all about reduction of principal…
That is roughly the Mar-a-lago accord idea, but the both the financial leverage for that and the negotiating tactics have been completely mismanaged if that's the goal, it really doesn't make any sense.
Someone is probably insider trading on this, but so far they look more like True Believers who don't expect it to go badly than 5D chess manipulators. In particular, Musk tying his reputation so strongly to the far right has been nothing but bad for his stock holdings.
Musk's case is at least somewhat understandable. The critics who call him the "ultimate government welfare queen" are not wrong; practically every dime he has earned has either come from government contracts or subsidies, or depends on maintaining a good working relationship with agencies ranging from NASA to the Department of Transportation.
Following his takeover of Twitter in 2022, he would have been among the first to understand what was about to happen in 2024. Pivoting to the right -- not just pivoting to the right, but actively embracing it -- is something he had no choice in, if he wanted to keep his companies healthy. They were built atop a government that was about to disappear, so the only logical thing to do was to signal loyalty by throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at the Trump campaign.
Of course, his Nazi salutes made no sense in any context, but then neither did cheating at video games or calling Unsworth a pedophile for dissing his submarine idea. I'd chalk his erratic behavior up to drugs or ongoing mental challenges that ultimately don't have much to do with politics.
Zuckerberg and Bezos were slower to catch on but they did catch on in the end. They understood that they had an enormous amount to lose by alienating Trump. If the wires of democracy, from Section 230 to the US Postal Service, were about to be ripped from the wall by Trumpers, they had to get in position to influence those events. See also Sam Altman.
I don't blame any of these people for acting rationally. The question I have is, when are all these big billionaire alpha moguls going to stop reacting to a chaos monkey and start pushing back, if only behind the scenes? Who has more to lose from tearing down the established world order than the people who succeeded so massively under that very system? Don't they understand that while they will continue to be players, their playground will become a much smaller, weaker kingdom, one surrounded by rivals who now have an incentivize to organize against us?
Musk is explainable. Tesla WAS going to fail, and that became inevitable long before the election. Musk was going to lose big whether Trump or Harris (or Biden) got elected. Granted, probably less dramatic and slower failure than what we see now, but it was always going to fall big. Musks' new design, the cybertruck is a disaster, and he would have been the first to know. BYD is eating Tesla's lunch ... and BYD is merely the first and currently highest profile of 10 Chinese companies coming out with electric cars.
And yet, I do think Musk is actually worse off in his current position than he would have been under Harris. Which shows, yet again, what a "great thinker" he is cough. He acted, because he's under threat, that makes sense, but his actions made his situation worse than it would have been had he done nothing.
Then again, in this market, I bet a lot of people feel like that.
Agreed that Musk would have been vastly better off with Harris, but I think his actions are purely reactive. It's not his fault that Harris lost. He's just trying to make lemonade, having seen early on that life was about to hand us all a lemon. For every normal person who refuses to buy a Tesla, he has to sell one to a MAGA cultist, and that is never going to happen.
The fact that his "lemonade" tastes suspiciously like pee is his fault, though.
Trump seems to have legitimately held this position for a longtime. Look at this clip from decades ago:
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907456765215588734
I think he’s also surrounded by yes men who are afraid to tell him when his ideas are wrong.
Trump posted on his Truth Social account that he's crashing the market on purpose this morning [1] so, you know. Take from that what you will.
[1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1142796795728...
I could also see a plan to transfer a large portion of corporate ownership to a smaller number of individuals with a lot of wealth by tanking the stocks and buying when they're rock bottom, then implement "recovery plan B" and let them go back up.
I didn't expect this to be the top comment so I posted an identical take without reading first
Maybe. There were exemptions to the tariffs. The exemptions included Russia. If the tariffs remain, companies are incentivized to invest in places with no tariffs to USA (as Trump removes Russia sanctions whenever it's convenient).
So, we've been hit with the largest tax increase (peacetime) in US history with no coherent explanation. Even the Project 2025 master plan suggests the idea is to devalue the dollar to save hundreds of billions. We've already lost trillions, so that didn't work.
I think the most obvious answer is incompetence, but there are piles of shit and coincidence with MAGA and Russia. I'm not in denial.
It's possible. The wealthy are a lot better positioned to make a lot of money during a bear market then the average person, as they can afford to buy a lot of stocks when they're cheap. Just look how much money billionaires like Bezos or Musk made during COVID.
But even if that's their plan, that doesn't mean they're executing it competently. The specific tariff amounts do not seem well thought through, and fighting a trade war against literally every other country in the world seems like a bad idea.
There's an idea called Hanlon's Razor which states "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". It's a good rule of thumb, but it implies that malice/stupidity is an either/or choice. I think that the Trump tariffs are a malicious plan executed stupidly, and if nothing changes the effects will be catastrophic.
Imagine being Fed Chair Jerome Powell. You've just successfully nailed the post-COVID disruption softlanding by amazingly bringing down inflation AND unemployment at the same time. The American economy is roaring and the envy of the world. Then, a collective of the absolute least-qualified, most vindictive, idiots comes in and sets the US back 100 years for absolutely no good reason. Voting everyone involved out of office won't be nearly enough.
I wouldn't call the inflation that ravaged the world and real estate prices beyond the means of the middle class "saving".
His quantitative easing and zero interest rate policy only saved asset managers and corporate balance sheets.
Look back at expectations at the beginning, and you'll see that nearly everybody was predicting massive recession and even hyperinflation. Balaji bet $1M that there would be hyperinflation:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35201728
Yet that didn't happen. We dodged a major bullet, and survived far better than the rest of the world. We must look back at predictions and outcomes with clear eyes, not with the narratives that are being sold in the current day.
What ends up destroying fascism is prizing loyalty above all else. If you look at the likes of Luaren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor-Greene, these are seriously, without hyperbole, some of the dumbest people on the planet. But they're loyal. And that's the point, so we end up with sycophantic morons.
I say this because if we had a legislative branch that hadn't completely abdicated its responsibility, they would act to strip tariff power from the president, at least temporarily, which they can do with a simple Act of Congress with a veto-proof supermajority. The Democrats would be on board.
Just remember this: as much damage as the president is causing, Congress could step in at any moment but they don't and won't, at least until things get much, much worse.
Blanket tariffs don't work. The goal here seems to be to reduce reliance on Chinese goods (without setting up any manufacturing to replace it, I might add) and/or to get rid of the one remaining progressive tax: income tax.
We have precedent for all this: tariffs in the early part of the Great Depression. And what did they do? They made everything worse and the US sunk further into recession.
I'm not sure people realize just how dire the situation is. In other countries, this would have us sliding dangerously close to coup territory. Yet a significant portion of our population, who are the most affected and will see their standard of living decline further, celebrate it.
How are those egg prices doing?
On the bright side, the environment will do better since people will be buying less stuff.
I keep thinking how radically/anarchically/unintentionally degrowth this administration is. We will probably see further reduced demand for oil because of global recession.
It already dropped oil prices substantially. And they are denominated in dollars which also dropped. Trump is going to make Russia suffer!
Oh don't worry, I'm sure they've got some plan to burn down all the forests on NFS land or something that equally serves no purpose except to own the libs.
So many environmental regulations are ending in the USA. :c
Not if the stuff we do buy is worse for the environment. I just bought an EV, I’m worse off financially for it, but I could afford it. If I was worried about a recession I wouldn’t have splurged like that. Same with installing a heat pump and reinsulating my attic.
Trump during the midterms:
"You are going to buy, baby, buy!"
For the first time in my investing life I'm not invested in the S&P 500. I'm 80/20 in European/Pacific index funds--hopefully the rest of the world can do better.
I had been super bullish on US stocks and I went super long on margins. Now, I am looking at losing everything and starting over from scratch in my 60s. I can’t even hold water down right now. I feel like I need to go to the ER. Pray for me.
You're losing everything because you're a gambler, not because markets are down single-digit percentages.
You are right. I gambled everything away but the drop is much more than single digit at this point. I was concentrating my bets very aggressively. It is sinking in. Fortunately I will have some adult children who might be doing ok. I hope they will be willing to lend a helping hand. I am feeling so much shame. I cannot stomach my current predicament.
> the drop is much more than single digit at this point.
S&P, Dow Jones and most ETFs are down about 8%. Single digits
Best of luck to you. I hope it won't be as bad, but I am reminded of my grandfather losing most of his hard-earned life savings during the changeover from communism to democracy in Russia. I'm sure it was devastating for him, but we took care of each other and he ended up OK. Alas, sometimes shit just hits the fan.
Sincerely I feel bad for everyone with a 401k. According to the CFRA as long as the stock market doesn’t fall 20% or more and enter bear market territory, it takes on average four months to recover from a correction. Unfortunately we already see the bear coming.
All this winning.
It's a step towards winning.
"A concept of a plan," really (sigh)
For whom?
Billionaires
Unlike previous market turmoil (2008, 2020) where the U.S. at least had established global trade order to lean on for the recovery, this feels like the U.S. could be entering a period of sustained damage. I don't see how the U.S. recovers from this in anything like he near term. Americans will have to get used to a long stretch of low economic growth.
The global trade order is going to be reconfigured, but not in the way the Trump thinks. The U.S. is throwing up a wall around itself, but the rest world will continue with the current regime and likely move away from the U.S. permanently.
What's sad is, the Congress could simply revoke the ability for Trump to single-handedly make these tariffs, but they appear too cowed to do anything about it.
The senate voted to null trumps Canada tariffs, but it's not expected to pass the house. The president can also veto the decision and it would go back and require a 2/3 majority. Not impossible just unlikely.
The hopeful path is to knock down the made up national emergency via the courts.
Right now there are suits in the courts to declare that fentanyl crossing from Canada is not a national emergency. That's a tough case because there is no definition for national emergency, so the court will likely defer to the president's definition. However if Congress says it isn't a national emergency then the courts have the option to defer to Congress's decision rather than the president's. And once the national emergency declaration is gone, Trump needs Congress's support to pass tariffs.
In my opinion it's clear that Trump does not care about global trade and is only trying to consolidate power by destroying the economy and the middle class. Canada is closer to realizing what's going on, but not quite yet, and France is really far away from realizing what's going on, but they will faster than the rest of Europe.
Canada's likely new Prime Minister Carney: "Canada must be looking elsewhere to expand our trade, to build our economy, and to protect our sovereignty. Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building a coalition of likeminded countries who share our values… If the US no longer wants to lead, Canada will"
France's Macron: "It was important for us to meet as quickly as possible after last night's announcement from President Trump, which are a shock to international trade, not just for the EU and France, but fundamentally for the proper functioning of global commerce. What's important is that we pause future investments, or these announced in recent weeks, until we've clarified things with the United States. What would be the message of having big European players investing billions of euros in the American economy at a time when they are hitting us? So we need collective solidarity." https://bsky.app/profile/rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3l...
Note that the Shiller ratio is still 31.3
There is much room for further decline. Stocks remain highly valued.
Hello margin-call, my old friend…
I've come to liquidate your positions again...
Trump really held a gun to the head of the American economy and pulled the trigger.
A bunch of the tariffs still haven't even taken effect (despite his repeatedly saying they were hitting at midnight when he made the announcement Tuesday—I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out Wednesday that that was bullshit, but I still was).
This continues to mostly be harm from him just constantly going back and forth on the notion. It can get so much worse if he sticks with it this time.
He is indistinguishable from a deliberate attack from Western civilization's worst enemies.
What would Trump do differently if he were a Russian asset? I mean, besides trying not to be so obvious about it?
A real life Manchurian candidate, whether by intention or not.
Funny that.
Also I think you mean agent, not asset. He’s obviously an asset.
And yet he's brainwashed (slightly less than) half of the population into believing heart and soul that he's here to save Western civilization. By ushering in the end of American hegemony and paving the way for China and Russia. We really are living in the post-truth era.
I don't think the public opinion is as dire as it seems. He has a very vocal cult following, but the real swing in the election was politically disaffected people who are just really hard to reach. This is sad but the good news is that it's just a matter of reaching them — and MAGA is clearly and demonstrably failing on the number one issue for the vast majority of voters which is economy.
The democrats have an even lower approval rating and seem to be staunchly refusing to change. Assuming we still have elections, I don't see how it ends as anything other than swapping desperately back and forth between the two corporate parties.
> The democrats have an even lower approval rating and seem to be staunchly refusing to change.
These two statements can't both be true for very long. The Democratic Party is going to reinvent itself. Turbulent and uncertain though it may be, this is how it works.
The GOP just used its generational transformation, has been given free rein to prove their ideas, and lo and behold: they suck!
They haven't yet - they approved Trump's budget bill and Marco Rubio was voted in unanimously 99-0. They're still doing talks alongside Peter Thiel. Protestors are being arrested by Blue Govenors in Blue States.
I used to be more hopeful but if they won't act now, in the direst of times, then they must actually be completely bought by corporate interests.
Parties don't change by the individuals within them changing their minds, they change by replacing the individuals. People are absolutely livid about the things you're mentioning, which is why their approval ratings are low, which is why they're going to be replaced.
> then they must actually be completely bought by corporate interests.
This is a non-sequitur. I know it's an easy out to avoid thinking through the actual mechanics at play here (one of which is certainly corporate interests), but it's worth being more curious about this stuff and the individuals' motivations.
I really hope you're right.
It seems like their plan is a repeat of 2016, 2020, and 2024- to hope that Trump will be so unpopular that they can get elected without changing anything.
Don't just hope! Find and back new candidates in your local area who will represent the change you want to see. Politics at the end of the day is just conversations like these.
I think tariffs are terrible and will harm the economy, but the stock market isn't the economy (re: dow sliding).
I didn't say that it is. You don't have to take my word for it, American independent voters believe he is doing very badly on the economy.
Other than the stock market what metric are you using to indicate that the economy is doing badly? A jobs report just came out today indicating good growth there.
The only leading indicators that really matter due to their self-fulfilling nature: people's confidence. The below is from before he started doing the thing "he's not stupid enough to do," these tariffs.
> A poll of more than 220 U.S. CEOs finds business confidence at lowest level since November 2012—and recession fears on the rise.
> Consumers’ expectations for the future at a 12-year low
https://chiefexecutive.net/ceo-optimism-plummets-in-march-am...
https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence
so in other words there are no actual indicators yet.
Well the most responsive "actual" indicator we have is flashing bright red, but you've already decided that doesn't matter to you
Consumer confidence isn’t actually a metric of the economy. At best it’s a correlate to an actual indicator, which can be something you can link if available.
Simplest way to make my point is to look at the confidence during covid vs January of this year.
Was this a response to my comment?
There’s no such thing as an “actual indicator.” The economy isn’t a real thing that exists. It’s all correlates, some leading, some trailing, some accurate, and some inaccurate.
The contents of the shopping cart of the person in front of you is an indicator.
> The contents of the shopping cart of the person in front of you is an indicator.
yes.
> It’s all correlates, some leading, some trailing, some accurate, and some inaccurate.
no. some things are actually measured, like employment rate.
sentiment also can be measured, but is meaningless, because it can contradict behavior, which actually affects the real world. sentiment certainly is correlated to behavior, which is why it's a good leading indicator, but is often wrong about what is happening (see the USA 2024 election, and covid).
> no. some things are actually measured, like employment rate.
Sure, employment rate is measured though uhh, via a survey just like consumer sentiment. The relationship between employment rate and "the economy?" A correlation.
The rest of your comment is umm... internally contradictory.
Ok
And we're supposed to trust any official economic reports that the administration releases...?
That has always been kind of questionable, and now it's laughable.
Trump will just say the economy is better than ever and MAGA will say ok. They don't care about truth.
Well, Putin claims to be saving western civilization, too - saving it from a corrupt America.
There's a distinct resemblance here between Putin's position, and Trump's.
He didn't do the brainwashing, 60 years of having only right wing, billionaire owned media did that.
Trump is supported by the people running Silicon Valley (Musk, Thiel, Andreessen - with Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos financing his inaugural), hedge fun titans like Robert Mercer, heartland industrialist like the Uihleins. Plus white, Christian, married families who don't live in large coastal cities support him in the majority.
So I take this in the dialectic sense - that it is not destructive but self-destructive.
Also the opposition's obsession with Russia points to their loss. The average American doesn't give a damn what Putin thinks. Trump is focused on the US (or maybe Canada or Greenland) while the opposition is focused on Russia. Liberal Denocrats disliked Russia when Khrushchev was in charge too, they just have some anti-Russian animus that you can read about in the New York Times back to 1925 and before.
In 2012 the Republican candidate for president said that Russia was our biggest geopolitical adversary in the debates and the left laughed at him. Obama said something flippant about the 80s
Mitch McConnell, arguably the most powerful Republican senator in a generation, has also recently issued a rare criticism of Trump and his alliance with Putin, deeply damaging his own standing in his party.
We can also add many other conservative leaders who are no longer in power to that list, because there is no space for dissent in a fascist party.
But please continue to try and strawman the left as having no good reason aside from loss to raise the alarm on an obvious Russian asset controlling the worlds largest superpower
it wasnt really so clean
But the price of eggs is going down, right? Right? Guys? Bueller? Bueller?
NYT has a front page article today about people painting potatoes for Easter to save money. I had to double check that I wasn't on The Onion.
Interesting! Potatoes are approaching $1/pound. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000712112
A medium to large potato weighs roughly 1/2 pound. https://lovingnaturefarm.com/how-much-does-a-potato-weigh/
Eggs are about $0.44 / egg average https://eggprices.org/national-data
So depending on where you live, your potato costs more than an egg! (But only because egg prices have gone back down a bit!)
found it https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/dining/easter-eggs-potato...
The price of eggs at my farmer's market hasn't changed in a year.
This was always caused by corporate middlemen--as much as I'd like to blame Trump/Republicans, the egg cartel is the real problem here, and Trump/Republicans are only to blame inasmuch as they don't have the will to break up the monopoly.
https://eggprices.org/national-data
I mean, yes. So, fair trade then? I mean who uses money from their stock market investments to buy eggs?
Though I suppose if you can preserve them, perhaps it's time to re-balance your portfolio and include them in your asset allocation?
In contrast, when Lizz Truss wrecked havoc in the UK, she lasted only more than a month. And that was in a place that has only a fraction of billionaires as US do.
Say whatever you want about the state of the UK, but at least there the politicians do something.
Problem with the US is that no one seems to care enough to act.
Obviously this will have enormous economic consequences if the "policy put" has a lower strike than the world needs, but I'm honestly more curious about the long-term political effects of this.
Trump has made the GOP more populist and in response the Dems have become more institutionalist. Long-term tariffs could lock in this trend, with finance and business resigning themselves to settle for the latter political camp. Basically, business would trade vicious efficiency for reliability/predictability, while the dems would trade Bernie bros for the business class.
my conspiracy hat tells me that this one is one of the biggest incidences of insider trading ever, where the government willfully tries to push down the markets because Participants might have secret put options.
WOOHOO!
Ahh, interesting times.
"it's gonna be wild"
I know people who had to retire (via IBM) last year. Their biggest worry when Biden was elected in 2020 was "Biden will destroy my 401k".
Now that their retirement account has fallen +10% thanks to Trump, I will have to find out what they think. Could be a risky question if I decide to ask them.
Also I am surprised Wall Street is not revolting against the GOP. My guess is they are praying for the big tax cuts first.
Between this and the tax cuts, Zimbabwean Dollar is looking good /s