The Trump Presidency, Season 2

Bartholomew Gallacher

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JD Vance traveled to Greenland. Since no Greenlander wanted to meet him, he only visited the US Army base. The states have the right to visit it anytime, they have just to inform Denmark and Greenland upfront. So instead having a planned 3 day stay it were about 3 hours.

And as JD Vance found out: "It's cold as shit here!"


Maybe Mexico should openly send politicians to California, trying to break California out of the Union. I wonder how the states would like that...
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Warning, the White House has been occupied by a communist as President! Stable genius Donald Dumb warned the American car makers in a call earlier this month to not raise car prices because of his tariffs! Typical communist behaviour, how dare he!

The White House would look unfavorably on such a move, Trump told, leaving some car executives rattled and worried they would face punishment if they increases prices.

Instead, so Trump, they should be grateful for his elimination of what he called Biden's electric-vehicle mandate. I wonder what White House Tech Support Elon Musk has to say about that.

And then Trump made a lengthy pitch about how the car makers would actually benefit from tariffs, that he was bringing back manufacturing to the US and is better for their industries than previous presidents.

“You’re going to see prices going down, but going to go down specifically because they’re going to buy what we’re doing, incentivizing companies to—and even countries—companies to come into America,” he said at the event.

Detroit’s automakers and industry suppliers in particular have made clear there is little they can do but raise prices in the face of tariffs. Bringing more factories back to the U. S.—a tenet of Trump’s tariff strategy—can take years for car companies to make happen.

“Tariffs, at any level, cannot be offset or absorbed,” Ray Scott, chief executive of parts supplier Lear, wrote in an email Tuesday to employees that was viewed by
The Wall Street Journal. “A holistic, industrywide approach will be necessary to mitigate the impact.”

For now, dealers have stockpiled a two- to three-month supply of new cars, meaning the impact of the tariffs might not start to be felt until May. At that point, vehicle prices could rise 11% to 12% to offset the tariffs, Morgan Stanley analysts said Thursday in a note.

An executive at one of the automakers said they were baffled by the desire to both impose tariffs—but also tell car companies they couldn’t raise prices.
“The math would tell you, that’s going to cost us multibillions of dollars,” the executive said. “So who pays for that?”

Automakers have signaled to their retailers the enormous pressure they were under. Stellantis earlier this month said the 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico favor Asian and European rivals and sent U.S. dealers an email with talking points to share with lawmakers.

“We encourage you to contact your federal and state representatives to share your opinion on a matter that threatens to disrupt our business,” read the email, which was viewed by the Journal.

 

Lexxi

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“I have asked the @FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation into Disney & ABC,” he wrote in a post on X Friday. “While Disney started as an iconic American company, it recently went all in on DEI. I am concerned that their DEI practices may violate FCC prohibitions on invidious forms of discrimination.”
 

Lexxi

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Jopsy Pendragon

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Honestly, ABC/Disney/etc should just roll over on DEI. "Okay, we've abolished *all* DEI guidelines/rules/practice. 100% compliance, here we go..."

and then never hire another straight white guy again. "Sorry, we hire on merit. They don't have it. Fuck you. We don't need to include you because you said we couldn't hire on the basis of diversity, equity or inclusiveness. Sucks to be you."
 

Casey Pelous

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So, the Tangerine Turd not only doesn't know how tariffs work, he doesn't even know what they're supposed to do.

He seems to think carmakers will onshore production so they can keep prices the same and, thus, make much less money. Because, sure, that's how business works. JFC.

(I'm ignoring the other facts such as US car factories and car parts factories are mostly closed, leveled, and written off and the fact that even if the mfgrs did onshore, it would involve many more robots than people.)
 

Veritable Quandry

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We actually have some pretty big car plants in the US. Honda's plant in Ohio makes a lot of cars here. But they don't make all the parts. A lot of specialty manufacturers in Mexico and Canada make pieces that go into US made cars.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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We actually have some pretty big car plants in the US. Honda's plant in Ohio makes a lot of cars here. But they don't make all the parts. A lot of specialty manufacturers in Mexico and Canada make pieces that go into US made cars.
As economists keep on pointing out, you can impose tariffs to raise revenue or you can impose tariffs to protect industries from foreign competition, but you can't do both, because either people continue to buy imported goods despite the tariffs, thus raising revenue but failing to protect local industry, or the tariffs deter them from buying imports and they buy locally produced goods, in which case there's no tariff for the government to collect.

Furthermore, if you artificially raise the price of imported goods to the extent customers are unwilling to buy them you have an increased demand for domestically produced goods, which, without a corresponding increase in supply, would normally be expected to lead to an increase in prices, at least until domestic producers can increase their production to meet the increased demand.
 

Noodles

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Honestly, ABC/Disney/etc should just roll over on DEI. "Okay, we've abolished *all* DEI guidelines/rules/practice. 100% compliance, here we go..."

and then never hire another straight white guy again. "Sorry, we hire on merit. They don't have it. Fuck you. We don't need to include you because you said we couldn't hire on the basis of diversity, equity or inclusiveness. Sucks to be you."
Make the new policy Divesting, Excluding, Idiots

Basically, the same policy as it is now, but it is just, not hiring these fucking assholes.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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We actually have some pretty big car plants in the US. Honda's plant in Ohio makes a lot of cars here. But they don't make all the parts. A lot of specialty manufacturers in Mexico and Canada make pieces that go into US made cars.
Well this week was an interview about car tariffs on one tv network, where the female host talked to an expert. She was amazed to hear when he said that Ford, Stellantis and GM are not really American car companies any longer, and that Honda is more American in terms of American car parts used in the vehicle than all the ones mentioned before.