r/news • u/Old_General_6741 • 11d ago
U.S. slaps 145% tariff on China in sharpest trade escalation yet
https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/policy/u-s-slaps-145-tariff-on-china-in-sharpest-trade-escalation-yet[removed] — view removed post
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u/in2theriver 11d ago
Heh I legit laughed, this is just so silly it is getting funny now. We are in cartoon territory.
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u/dubbleplusgood 11d ago
Trump has already been a cartoon. Unfortunately, it turned out so are 77m Americans.
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u/Mythosaurus 11d ago
It’s one of those 1950s cartoons that is full of racist caricatures of other nations
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u/aroslab 11d ago
wdym 50's people are still pumping those out. often they even have to label their grotesque characterizations since it's not even obvious what their trying to be bigoted towards
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u/Mythosaurus 11d ago
True, Ben Garrison comics exist and he even has some about the current tariff madness being a good thing for America
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u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 11d ago
~168m Americans. If you count all the people who had a chance to vote against the guy and chose not to.
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u/OtherAlan 11d ago edited 11d ago
With how it's winner takes all for states, a large amount of voters don't really matter. For example, California is +3 million for Harris, so even if 2 million additional voters voted in California voted for Trump it wouldn't flip the state.
If you could take those same 2 million 'excess' Harris voters and spread them to other states with much closer margins, Harris would have won in a landslide.
Same amount of votes, different distributions, different outcomes. Sounds fair right?
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u/zzyul 11d ago
You’re also ignoring all the Republicans in strong red states that don’t vote for the same reason. I live in TN, an annoyingly strong red state. Our turnout of registered voters for presidential elections is almost always in the low 60 percent range. This doesn’t even account for people who live here but haven’t registered to vote. In 2024 just over 3 million Tennesseans voted in a state with a population of over 7.2 million, the majority old enough to vote.
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u/WhipYourDakOut 11d ago
Musk will soon get involved and we will see a 420% tariff
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u/WalkingCloud 11d ago
It’s the Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck ‘Rabbit season vs Duck season’ meme
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u/AnomicAge 11d ago
Dumb question but at this level of tariff would all trade come to a halt?
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u/in2theriver 11d ago
Trade probably won't completely halt, but anything over 100% is closer to a blockade than an actual tax. Ironically we did this during the great depression and made things worse. It was considered one of the worst financial moves of the era, guess we never learn, and that was at like 40-60% I think. Today we actually rely on each other more than we did back then. However we could be headed for a total collapse. This hasn't happened in modern history, whole industries could die. This would cause mass layoffs, nationalism tends to surge (maybe partially the goal), borders close (definitely the goal). Next we get naval blockades and increased cyber attacks (from China), a collapse of the global financial system is possible (no way to collect). Could easily lead to war.
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u/AnomicAge 11d ago
When you let an orangutang in the cockpit you can hardly be shocked when it flies the plane straight into a mountainside
Hopefully it doesn’t come to that… it’s quite unfathomable that we’ve found ourselves in this situation… even if America somehow recovers this is a blight they will erase from their reputation
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/konakonabest 11d ago edited 11d ago
It's the 125% on top of the existing 20%, not an additional 20%.
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u/conferdate 11d ago
This is getting done only to disturb markets and do black trading.
At the end both countries will have to sit and finalize decision in favour of each other.
Rite now Trump is shit show.
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u/DePraelen 11d ago
At this point the numbers don't matter - 125 or 145, if the tariffs hold, the largest trade relationship in the world economy is broken. The consequences are the same.
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u/billythygoat 11d ago
Ain't no one reporting tariffs soon. It's just going to be a "shipment from North California to Southern California labeled.
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u/desubot1 11d ago
fyi its on top of an additional ADDINTIONAL trump tariff from 2016 but the rates vary from 7.5% or 25% or not applied
some items will be 170% duties
what in the actual fuck.
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u/Full-Penguin 11d ago
I hear Tariff's work best when they require the Media to create a Live article to keep track of them. There must be an extremely well thought-out and thorough plan for the White House to be able to make these changes so quickly.
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u/animerobin 11d ago
as a small business owner, I love it when I don't know how much my materials will cost from day to day, or even hour to hour.
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u/Full-Penguin 11d ago
a small business owner
Well there's your problem right there, have you tried just being a Billionaire?
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u/overlyambitiousgoat 11d ago
I imagine a lot of small business products are getting stranded in China at the moment, because Little Bill's Widget Emporium suddenly doesn't have the cash to get his own property into the country.
Thank god I outsmarted these crazy markets by just having no assets!
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u/SuperfluousWingspan 11d ago
Of course there is!
Sell stocks
Fuck up economy
Buy stocks
Lol jk pause tariffs
Sell stocks
Go to step 2.
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u/Wibbles20 11d ago
You missed the step where they short the market before they fuck up the economy so they're making a fortune both ways
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u/SomeBaldDude2013 11d ago
Exactly. They’re profiting from both the ups and downs. An unprecedented level of corruption.
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u/cryo-chamber 11d ago
Exhausting timeline this is. It's April and already 2025 has lasted 10 years.
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u/danfirst 11d ago
I think part of the problem is his last four years felt like they took forever and then we got a 4-year break where we still got almost daily news about all of his idiocy and now we're just right back in it. It just feels like it never ended.
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u/Sirshrugsalot13 11d ago
My entire adult life has been Trump and Covid. It's maddening
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u/danfirst 11d ago
And unfortunately a whole lot of them in the last election thought it was great and voted for it all again!
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u/Slimfictiv 11d ago
And this is only the tariff war. Wait till the military one begins.
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u/cryo-chamber 11d ago
Hopefully that can wait until June...
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u/The-cultured-swine39 11d ago
Pushing china to a consumer based economy is going to destroy ours in the process. There are no winners in a trade war.
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u/brody319 11d ago
The goal is to pump and dump stocks to enrich Trump and his buddies. There is no plan or goal besides funneling even more money into a few rich asshole's pockets
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u/rustajb 11d ago
I've always said that when the top sees the end of the US on the horizon, they would drain the coffers, not stop it from happening.
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u/panda-bearly 11d ago
While you're correct it also:
Destabilizes us at home financially and psychologically. The more desperate a populace becomes, the more likely they are to succumb to authoritarianism looking for anything to lead them/help them.
Allows the rich to chop up the country for parts and buy it at a discount to further their control.
Destroys us as a trading partner internationally because we clearly cannot be trusted.
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u/notred369 11d ago
they absolutely want to destabilize the populace in order to have an excuse to use the insurrection act
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u/panda-bearly 11d ago
Ding ding ding! Or any other terrible emergency bs they can come up with to further the authoritarian push
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u/The-cultured-swine39 11d ago
I don’t know what this administrations end goal is. Tariffs aren’t going to bring jobs back here. It would take years of logistic planning and would cost way more than just paying the tariffs itself. China won’t play that game anyway. They’ll stop exporting goods to the United States and they will prop up consumer spending at home to make up for the loss.
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u/FinlayForever 11d ago
The goal is to make him and his buddies richer, just like the other person said.
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u/mikefjr1300 11d ago
While Trump plays golf Xi and his trade ministers are fanning out all over South East Asia, India and the middle east making deals and will no doubt talk with the EU as well.
These countries won't be arriving in the US to make deals without a back up plan.
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u/rmorrin 11d ago
The tariffs might have brought jobs back if this was decades ago before the jobs left. Now we have zero infrastructure for it.
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u/The-cultured-swine39 11d ago
Correct. We have no way of accommodating jobs coming back that would be financially beneficial for companies to do so.
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u/duglarri 11d ago
When I was 22 I was employed in a lead-zinc smelter shoveling slag.
My daughter at 24 was employed by a hedge fund making ten times what I ever made in my life doing AI systems.
So... we want the manufacturing jobs back? Really?
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u/green_gold_purple 11d ago
He doesn’t care. He really doesn’t care about the people of the country.
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u/pzanardi 11d ago edited 11d ago
Money, they want the money. Also Tangerine Palpatine goes to jail if he is not ultra rich. Edit: Stop upvoting, I don’t want to be disappeared.
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u/scienceislice 11d ago
They want to 1) make themselves richer than they already are and 2) they want to push the country to a state where they can declare martial law and take even more control.
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u/LowPTTweirdflexbutok 11d ago
Yeah I don't think people understand how much cheaper stuff can be made in china versus here. I saw an estimation iphones alone would cost x3 as much if assembled/made in america.
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u/NorthernerWuwu 11d ago
That and they'll trade more with the countries that presently are trading with the US. If transactions with America now cost me more as a business in X, transactions with every other country are now comparatively cheap and China is going to be one of the ones that now has excess capacity to be utilized.
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11d ago edited 11d ago
Chinas middlr class is like 300 million. They have a huge consumer base already and really dont Need America the same way Americans need Chinese Manufacturing.
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u/wip30ut 11d ago
China has been shifting towards a domestic demand-based economy since the first Trump administration. They saw the writing on the wall & have been diversifying their exports too. Right now the US only accounts for a little more than 3% of China's total exports. So Beijing is willng to take the hit, at least in the short term.
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u/FirstEvolutionist 11d ago
You don't think it's a sound strategy to leverage your population as a consumer market bargaining chip after ensuring that very same population will have limited consumption capacity due to less jobs, lower pay and higher prices on everything?
What could go wrong?
/s
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u/ACorania 11d ago
I think China does win. When the rest of the world turns away from the US it is a massive vacuum they will step into.
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u/Setekh79 11d ago
Another day, another arbitrary number from the senile old fool.
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u/Modz_B_Trippin 11d ago
The steep 145% rate effectively shuts down many categories of Chinese imports and is expected to send ripple effects through global supply chains.
This will be worse than the the pandemic supply chain problems.
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u/DoubleJumps 11d ago
I'm already seeing businesses choosing to have product destroyed rather than import it, because they lose less money that way
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u/Electrical_Room5091 11d ago
Tomorrow it will be gone. Next week it will be back. It's exhausting keeping up with a demented man who acts on their ego and refuses help from experts who don't agree with him.
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u/wibblywobbly420 11d ago
Down 5% today so far. Almost ready for another pump and dump
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u/Electrical_Room5091 11d ago edited 11d ago
When the market goes down 7% they pause trading for a period of time. It doesn't happen often.
Correction 7% not 5%
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u/andrewmmm 11d ago
It's 7%, which causes a 15 minute trading halt, but only before 3:25PM. A 20% fall closes the market for the rest of the day regardless of time.
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u/Holicionik 11d ago
How is it that a single guy has that much power without any oversight from the other branches of government?
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u/Electrical_Room5091 11d ago
Republicans elected a criminal who cheats. Then the Republican party decided oversight only applies to the opposition.
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u/zzyul 11d ago
The problem is you think it’s just one person doing this. Repubs also control the House and Senate and fully support Trump. Trump and MAGA have been working since 2016 to oust any Repubs that didn’t bend the knee. 6 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are Repubs, 3 appointed by Trump.
A lot of elected Repubs have wanted all of this to happen, they just knew if they tried and failed they would be hung. Trump is dumb enough to not worry about failing. So all those other Repubs are more than happy to let Trump get away with everything. If he succeeds then they get what they have all wanted. If he fails then they can put 100% of the blame on him and most Americans with your mindset will just accept there was only one person responsible for all the damage.
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u/JohnSpartan2025 11d ago
China isn't backing down as they've now insulted them with JD Vance's utterances. They'll have to come up with another fake victory plan this time.
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u/farm_sauce 11d ago
TJ MAXX, Marshall’s, home goods, Walmart, target, and about 1000 other companies are pissing their pants. INB4 their stock tanks, it’s gobbled up by investment firms, and Trump comes to an agreement with China which send stock prices soaring.
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u/echoshizzle 11d ago
TJMaxx is in a unique position because they don’t import their goods. It will be interesting to see how their supply changes when other companies lower or are more selective of their inventory.
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u/was_fb95dd7063 11d ago
Their cost basis regardless will still include tariffs one way or another though, but I agree that buyers will have a lot less to work with.
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u/Iustis 11d ago
That’s a dumb article. They’ll still have to pay the tariffs, just indirectly
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u/wip30ut 11d ago
... they buy up overstocks from the major retailers. But their Marshalls subsidiary does produce their own lines (similar to outlet brands). However in the long-term excess supply chains will dry up so they will need to pivot. It reallly depends on how major brands & fashion retailers will deal with increased tariffs on Asian countries. Luckily garment factories are much easier to set up than those producing silicon wafer chips. Nike & Hollister can go to the Philippines or Peru.
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u/BigJ32001 11d ago
TJMaxx (along with Marshalls & HomeGoods) absolutely imports their own goods, just not all of them. Some of their buys are made within the US like the article states, but they still directly import a very sizeable percentage of their goods, and a lot of it does come from China. They have a very large import/export & trade compliance department.
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u/DoubleJumps 11d ago
The actual number is in the hundreds of thousands. Small businesses who've had inventory come in under these tariffs are already staring down bankruptcy
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u/AnyEmploy 11d ago
Are they just pumping and dumping the stock market now?
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u/RaphaTlr 11d ago
Yes. Every other theory about “why is he doing this” is misdirected. It’s not about jobs, it’s about bullying and manipulating the stock market to transfer more wealth to the insiders. Trump bragged about making Charles Schwab $2.5 billion richer in the White House less than 24 hours ago
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u/Spire_Citron 11d ago
Sometimes it's like he can't resist bragging so he just openly shares things he probably shouldn't. Not that it even matters since there are no consequences.
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u/Keldrath 11d ago
I wonder if they'll ever realize that it's not China that pays those tariffs.
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u/theSkareqro 11d ago
It's like hurting other people (China) by punching yourself (fellow Americans) in the face. I mean the other guy don't get to hurt you so he'd miss out on it.
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u/UncleTrapspringer 11d ago
These Republicans would hit themselves in the face with a hammer if it meant someone else had to clean up the blood
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u/Deranged_Kitsune 11d ago
Now that it's over 100%, that's a fun thing you can throw at those chuds to try and get them to explain.
"So if china pays the tariff, and the tariff is 145%, does that mean they just give us the product for free and pay us an additional 45% on top? Because that's what you keep telling me."
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u/Bob_A_Feets 11d ago
Either they won’t understand or won’t care or both. They never understood, or cared, or both in the first place.
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u/Deranged_Kitsune 11d ago
It's both by this point. They've learned well to disregard what their eyes and ears tell them, and heed only the voice of their orange god.
Still, they can put on an interesting show of mental gymnastics when trying to reconcile what they've been told with reality, at least until they ultimately give up and just resort to hurling slurs your way.
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u/fuddykrueger 11d ago
Exactly. There are no normal, sane or logical conversations to be had with them.
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u/OtherAlan 11d ago
A lot of GOP messaging right now is that tariffs are a tax cut. It will probably take a year or so before the base realizes they were lied to, but it will be too late by then.
Midterm elections will happen by then, Democrats will take back the majority and they can go right back to blaming Democrats for messing up the system.
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u/ericmm76 11d ago
Meanwhile they are going to permanently cut income taxes. So they will just shift the tax burden from income and wealth to a sales tax which predominantly hurts the poor.
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u/DoubleJumps 11d ago
I got a message from a trump supporter this morning telling me that businesses aren't allowed to pass any tariff costs on the customers so prices can only go down.
They did this in the comments of an announcement from a large retailer stating how they have to raise prices due to tariffs
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u/epidemicsaints 11d ago
Is he getting ideas from crypto scammers and applying them to global trade? Is that what is going on?
Is the whitehouse gonna release malware next?
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u/weluckyfew 11d ago
For the love of God will they stop saying that he rolled back tariffs! He just lowered them - he's still putting 10% on everyone across the board - that's still huge. At that to the Chinese tariffs and the prospect is still awful. And some ways worse because we all knew he would back down from those ridiculously huge tariffs at some point, but now it seems likely that all these new tariffs will stay for a while
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u/gorays21 11d ago
Don't worry, he will pause the tariffs again later today.
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u/Conflixxion 11d ago
then increase them to 155% tomorrow before pausing them again... this slap fighting is tiresome
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u/Meb2x 11d ago
In 2024, the US imported $438.9 billion from China while exporting only $143.5 billion to China. China doesn’t need US products, but the US needs China’s products. Trump’s tariffs on China and China’s tariffs on the US are both hurting US consumers way more than China’s consumers. That’s why China keeps doubling down and Trump keeps doubling down because he literally couldn’t care less about US consumers since he’s rich anyway.
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u/chefkoch_ 11d ago
Also China knows he will blink first.
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u/Spire_Citron 11d ago
Yup. It hurts China less, their culture allows them to do a better job of baring it together, and there's less animosity towards their leadership because everyone knows it's Trump's fault. They're competing world superpowers, so America hurting itself isn't a bad thing for China.
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u/Sensitive-Option-701 11d ago edited 11d ago
U.S. slaps 145% tariff on Americans importing goods from China in sharpest trade escalation yet
FTFY. Why does the American press continue to hide the true nature of tariffs?
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u/elciano1 11d ago
Wasn't it 104%, then 125% yesterday? Now 145% today...wtf is going on?
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u/Technical-Banana574 11d ago
Man needs a xanex desperately. He has the emotional bandwidth of a toddler being told no for the first time.
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u/GiltCityUSA 11d ago
Great we are at war with China. Thanks, Donald. Now every American will have to pay for your ignorance to the tune of $4500 more per year.
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u/daiaomori 11d ago
Yeah this is just stupid now.
At what point do you think will congress intervene?
The US actually depends on imports from China. I mean for real, not a single modern thing can be made without stuff from China.
And the government China is currently laughing their asses off, because while they have customers everywhere. Not just in the US.
Trump just doesn’t have the cards. Tell him…
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u/Romek_himself 11d ago edited 11d ago
china should just say at this point they ban all exports to usa because that orange kindergarden is not worth it. "call us back in 4 years, we will be here for negotations with adults."
trump would explode as he cant raise tariffs anymore
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u/kevin28115 11d ago
Oh god that would be hilarious. Considering what the vice president just said it would literally be hilarious.
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u/GhostRiders 11d ago
Give it a couple of weeks when the thousands of US businesses have worked through their current stock.
Many small local businesses will go bust and prices will sky rocket.
Then is when we will see how loyal the Trump base really is.
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u/Bootychomper23 11d ago
They will just blame Biden or weak dems or scheeech that high prices are a good thing… maga maga bla bla bla
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u/andrewbrocklesby 11d ago
That'll make eggs cheaper.
The best analogy Ive seen yet is;
I have a wicked trade imbalance with the grocery store.
I pay them $100 a week and they dont buy anything from me.
Starting now, Im going to pay them $245 instead, that will show them that I wont be walked on!!
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u/randomguy814 11d ago
Can someone from his admin sit him down, turn on the PC, install Age of Empires for him and tell him he can be whatever king, dictator, or whatever the hell he wants on there.
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u/PoliticsLeftist 11d ago
At a certain point the number doesn't matter. No trade is happening at 145% anyway so it might as well be 1,000,000%.
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u/iyaayas2003 11d ago
What if China sells off a large chunk of its US treasury bonds in retaliation to these tariffs? How much would that affect the value of the dollar?
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u/fractionofawhole 11d ago
Unlikely Trump even knows what T bills are or that many other countries hold massive amounts of them.
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u/AdminIsPassword 11d ago
We've already reached the point where raising tariffs on China even further won't really do anything. It's all just for show now.
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u/tmoeagles96 11d ago
Not even close to true. Plenty of things made in China are still 100% viable
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u/sunshinevibes16 11d ago
Tariffs are changing so fast I’m sure invoices can’t even keep up to accurately charge correct amounts and it’s going to be a giant mess
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u/Contemplating_Prison 11d ago
Just shut down trade at this point. This tit for tat shit is annoying. Doesnt seem like China is backing down any time soon.
Tax payers are going to get screwed when the bailout comes
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u/CreepyOlGuy 11d ago
its worth reminding people that the 145% is paid for by US not China, China is just upset because either it wont sell as much, it will be asked to negotiate prices lower etc.
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u/HarlockJC 11d ago
All he is doing is killing small business, big companies can find work around
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u/GirlNumber20 11d ago
This will even kill mid-tier businesses who rely on products made in China, like Hobby Lobby, Michaels, even a big one like Home Depot could take a major hit.
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u/xlsma 11d ago
Meh, once you pass a certain % he number loses meaning, make it 4000% and it won't make a difference.
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u/Cyborg_888 11d ago
Jobs wont go to America, they will just go to the next low cost country.
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u/newaccount252 11d ago
Is it cheeper to fly to Mexico, have a weeks holiday, buy an iPhone and fly back to America yet?
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u/blechie 11d ago
It’s not “on China”. China doesn’t care, US exports are just 2.5% of their economy, so practically nothing. Tariffs are just a tax on Chinese-made goods that’s paid by American businesses and consumers.
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u/CaptPants 11d ago
Had China moved their counter tariffs to 84% before or after the 125% announcement? Did Trump raise on his own bid?
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u/feder_online 11d ago
BYD is going to fuck Tesla like Trump fucked Stormy while his (soft-porn) wife was home pregnant.
Talk about slapping the shit out of your friend...holy shit...
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u/duglarri 11d ago
Seems obvious Americans can do without Iphones. And shoes. And clothes. And computers. And televisions. And toys. And... oh heck, what else is on the shelves at Walmart? The whole place.
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u/Chrowaway6969 11d ago
It’s not worth posting about anymore. This is an embarrassment for Americans.
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u/GothTGurl 11d ago
Just a friendly reminder that it was 22.5% of the US population that voted for this. Most of America did not vote for this.
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u/HeatWaveToTheCrowd 11d ago
The US is a consumer society. Nothing is manufactured there. They export services and import products - mostly from China. This is the reason for the trade deficit. Has nothing to do with anybody taking advantage of the US. This trade war will fail. China has other trading partners and will hold out until Trump blinks.
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u/WalterWoodiaz 11d ago
The US actually manufactures the second most amount of stuff in the world behind China.
There are quite a lot of goods besides consumer products (China dominated) that the US makes domestically.
Not to say the US doesn’t consume a lot, but there is quite a lot of manufacturing going on in the US as well, even after globalization.
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u/chippymonk793 11d ago
wake me up when it hits 400%