Can We Stop Saying There’s A Strategy Here?

 Or even dementia, and just admit it’s worse? It’s just rank incompetence.

Trump exempting computers & phones from the tariffs today means that Chinese-made laptops now have lower tariffs than European Cars, Mexican Steel, & Canadian Lumber.

Also means Vietnamese-made laptops have a lower tariff than Ethiopian coffee, Indian tea, & Guatemalan bananas

Import Chinese battery: 145% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff

Fuckin brilliant. A+ work here team. I am so glad there are such smart people working on our trade policy.

As Paul Krugman puts it:

“For electronics, at least, we’re now putting much higher tariffs on intermediate goods used in manufacturing than on final goods. This actually discourages manufacturing in the United States.”

My dreams of screwing in little screws comes crashing to an end. (Although why robots wouldn’t be doing that kind of thing to keep high school kids employed in robot maintenance was never fully explained.)

Hassett: "The whole point of the trade policy is to address the national emergency that we're too dependent on foreign products in the US, especially if we were in a time of conflict. And we're doing something about that." pic.twitter.com/dD45AyWIiX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 13, 2025

(“We were in a time of conflict” is desperately trying to justify Presidential “emergency powers.” Which works when you ship innocent people to the black hole of El Salvador. This is, after all, America. But you don’t fuck with the markets, because you don’t fuck with the money. This is, after all, America.))

(The whole concept of international trade was that international trade would ameliorate the need for international conflict. And China has used it to expand its soft power, as the U.S. did since WWII. But Trump is stuck in the 1970’s. He’s still, IOW, fighting the last war.: the war for American manufacturing dominance. We lost that war. But Trump wants to be Hitler leading Weimar Germany out of the disgrace of the punishment for WWI. Maybe Vonnegut was right, and the U.S. is going to end up Balkanized so it can no longer be a danger to the world.)