Smartphones, computers, and other electronics will be exempt from President Donald Trump’s steep China tariffs, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed late on Friday night.

  • weew@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    The real reason?

    Apple, Intel, and other execs bribed him during an overpriced dinner.

    This whole tariff thing has nothing to do with the country or international relations or manufacturing or whatever.

    It’s just his latest personal grift. He just now has the power to say “every CEO in the world must personally give me a bribe or I’ll continue doing some really stupid shit.”

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    So he’s fucking over american manufacturing of industrial machinery by tarifing raw goods but not end results? It gets dumber all the time.

    • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I may legitimately lose my supposedly magical and highly important American manufacturing job because of this shit and these dumbasses think that this is all a genius move that will finally Make America Great Again. Everyone else I know who works in manufacturing is feeling the same way. One of my coworkers is mildly Trumpy and was talking about how he thinks it’s a negotiation tactic and was shocked when I said I think the people in charge are just legit stupid and think tariffs will magically make things better in their own right. He didn’t have anything to offer as a rebuttal he just seemed surprised that anyone would think Trump isn’t a turbo genius who is secretly making 5000 IQ negotiation moves.

    • sircac@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      For him that’s OK, he serves for the big corpos manufacturing in China, just realised how much was screwing them and fixed it… the rest can be boguht with a MAGA cap… made in China too

  • ikt@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    this is the most dumbest fucking idiot leader of any country in the world right now i swear

          • kautau@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Crypto probably since it seems they’re keen on setting up a federal crypto system or some nonsense

            • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Might as well if the bond market crashes. They basically have to control the entire market and demand payments in crypto. Declare victory in monopoly with USD and then invent a new currency off its death? I just honestly don’t see how you scam the world out of trillions and benefit from all the money. Especially if you completely devalue all the money and investment assets permanently.

            • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              Do you have any idea how much money the wealthy actually have? The sum of all crypto-currencies put together is a drop in the bucket compared to that. Not to mention that the money is basically useless in that form without someone willing and able to buy it for some sort of actually usable currency.

              • kautau@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Sure but how is it any different than hiding gold in Switzerland or art in a vault somewhere? Until it no longer has potential wealth in the hyper capitalist market it’s still valuable. Wealthy people at that level are already so rich they don’t spend money, they borrow against their assets, which in this case could be real estate, gold, stocks, bonds, or because of all the amazing new crypto (not fiat btw) technology built around making crypto currency have all the same financial systems as fiat currencies and other investments, crypto. They only need to hoard the wealth. They don’t need to spend it

      • Wanpieserino@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        Most of the money came from other rich people because 93% of stock is owned by top 10% of USA.

        Well, it’s your own responsibility to read politics.

        I lump summed into his crash and made good money. No insider trading or anything. Just going against fear.

        Let that sink in though, 90% of your people own 7% of the stocks.

        Trump just invited the ones gambling correctly, it makes him look better. According to him.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Let that sink in though, 90% of your people own 7% of the stocks.

          You forgot to take into account the large percentage that doesn’t own any stock.

      • ag10n@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        He was manipulated into doing so. If this was at all his idea please show me the proof.

    • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      What do you mean this is all brilliant insider trading. It’s going to cost us our economy and destroy our world order, but they are making crazy money right now!

  • SolidShake@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    and MAGA was like, “HOORAY TRUMP IS SO AWESOME! see. i told you tariffs would only be temporary”

    fuck joke of stock manipulation

  • perestroika@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    In short, Trump admitted defeat without admitting it. The goods that matter will be allowed to pass. China will probably also reduce something on their side.

    To save face, Trump will continue to hinder trade of bamboo mats and sex toys until they work out a formal way of de-escalating.

  • thejml@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    I guess he bought enough shares of Apple now that he drove the stock price down. Way to manipulate the market for your buddies.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Yes, the supreme court ruled that any “official act” of the president is legal, so unless the supreme court wants to either

      1. Undo that ruling, or
      2. Rule that this isn’t an official act,

      Then Trump is 100% in the clear.

      • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        And even if the Supreme Court does rule it to be illegal, the only way to remove him is through impeachment.

        That ain’t gonna happen.

        And if it miraculously did happen, then J.D. Vance would pardon him and continue the grift, just in a little bit less obvious way.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think the ruling could deem it not an official act if the intent was to insider trade as facilitating inside trading isn’t an official duty. But you’d need proof that was the intention.

    • Snowstorm@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I wonder… if your buddies went long on stock this week, do you push it just a bit higher before the next storm, so they exit?

      It would be hilarious for the Truth Social early warning to be true-true-false. At some point he will do the opposite and only the closest insiders will profit.

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    We are putting tarrifs on stuff we buy from you, because you make too much money on us. But we are going to remove tarrifs from the stuff that we buy from you, because we need them.

    • weew@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      We are putting tarrifs on stuff we buy from you, because you make too much money on us. But we are going to remove tarrifs from the stuff that we buy from you, because we need them.

      Because their CEOs attended his dinner and bribed him.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Jesus fucking Christ. At this point I want him to go all in on tariffs and actually hold on so at least I know what’s coming. The fucking indecisiveness and Randomness is literally driving me insane.

    • bampop@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The funny thing is that it’s supposed to stimulate US manufacturing. Like companies are going to invest years of time and billions of dollars building factories and moving production to the US, because of a tariff system that changes every 2 days.

      • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        He doesn’t care about American manufacturing. That has always been a flimsy cover.

        • bampop@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          Sure, it’s just a way to raise taxes on the public without calling it that. Upside is they bring in a lot of money quickly. Downside is they do a fuckton of irreparable damage to the US economy, the standard of living of people in the USA, and a fair bit of collateral damage to the rest of the world. But at least Elon gets his tax breaks for another couple of years so yay!

        • Azzu@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          With all the interdependence we built up that’s hard to remove and would take decades, it’s kinda sensible to hope it can weather a few years of stupidity. It’s not entirely unreasonable to hope that after people seeing the first shitshow, it wouldn’t happen again.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Welcome to government brought to you by fascism, chaos is how they consolidate power. You create enough chaos to exhaust and scare people, blaming the chaos on a scapegoat. You then say, well I could totally get rid of all this chaos if you give me the power to do so. The courts, and the legislators are obviously not equipped to stop this mess, we just need one person with supreme power to cut through the bureaucracy…

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The randomness is the point. He wants the markets to yo-yo so those with insider knowledge can make a bunch of money.

      Expect this to continue until Trump gets bored of it.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Inside a car, Silly. He wrote “literally”, and he’s not an idiot, so it’s got to be a car or truck or abattoir he’s being driven inside.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      There will be a steep increase in demand in China for the $5 highly integrated 2G modules that were becoming useless because of 2G phase-out, due to everything being exported to the US having one attached to be classified as a mobile phone for Tariff purposes.

  • tane@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Nintendo ninjas got to him. This man is completely compromised by the Mushroom Kingdom.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    I would love to see China put an export tax on those products equal to Trump’s dropped tariffs.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    Even when he happens to make a correct decision, the decision-making process is pure chaos.

    Just think about how chaotic things were during COVID. People weren’t allowed to leave their homes. Restaurants were laying off all their staff. Many tourist attractions were completely shut down. Airlines were flying empty planes around just so they didn’t lose their airport slots. People switched from spending locally to buying things online, but China was also dealing with COVID, so that made manufacturing and shipping chaotic too. The ports were completely screwed, with completely full ships sitting in the port waiting weeks to unload.

    Despite all that, economic uncertainty in Trump’s 2nd term is twice as bad. It’s literally off the charts.

    Graph of US Economic Uncertainty showing it's off the charts under Trump

    Nobody can make any reasonable long-term plans because everything might change depending on the mad king’s whims.

    And, last time things went back to normal because this was a worldwide pandemic and there wasn’t anybody to blame for it. This time, everyone knows that this is Trump’s fault, and that he was elected with widespread support from the American people. I don’t think things are going back to normal after this.

    • Henson@feddit.dk
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      2 days ago

      He destroyed the trust we had in th USA. Europa countryand business are looking for alternatives, and sure something will go back. But fx in IT USA will lose bigtime, once turned away from Microsoft and Google, they are not going back.

  • Libra00@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Ahh, so that’s how this is going to go.

    First you tell the world how big your dick is, then you realize you might not be all that competitive in the dick-size arena so you start walking that shit back. Pretty soon here we’ll be hearing about lil’ Donny’s third thumb in tariff form before he finally admits he was dickless all along and puts forth only the most token of efforts to attempt to retain some sense of dignity.

    • mimavox@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I think he’s trying to play 5D-chess but has no fucking clue about what he’s doing. Like when you start a new, complicated 4x-game and just click random shit to see what happens.

      In bet that in his mind, these back-and-forth moves are master negotiation tactics.

      • Libra00@lemmy.world
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        He’s trying to play checkers when everyone else is playing chess. Somebody walks by occasionally, snickers, and says ‘You should go there, you’ll definitely win if you do’ because they benefit from the chaos said ‘advice’ produces, and goes on about their business. Tariffs were his attempt to shout ‘King me!’, and he’s only now realizing that his own king is vulnerable.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        He looks like the kind of person trying to play 5D-chess without even knowing any of the rules of regular chess.