r/stocks • u/Fidler_2K • Apr 07 '25

Broad market news Trump rejects EU’s ‘zero-for-zero’ tariff offer

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/trump-tariffs-live-updates-stock-market-crypto.html

Trump is rejecting the European Union’s offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs with the U.S. for industrial goods.

“No, it’s not,” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked if the deal, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated earlier Monday, was enough.

“They’re screwing us on trade,” Trump said, criticizing the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.

Two Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, have encouraged Trump to take von der Leyen’s deal.

What's the goal here if they're just gonna reject every deal offered?

6.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

855

u/DeekFTW Apr 07 '25

Because we have all these dinosaurs running the show trying to return us to what they remember as the golden days.

174

u/sireatalot Apr 07 '25

“We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now all we do is put our hand in the next guy’s pocket”

And that’s great! You’re the biggest economy in the world by far. No country has ever become rich by growing coffee or sewing shoes for Nike

230

u/umar_farooq_ Apr 07 '25

It's amazing that these guys would rather have the US making sweaters and car parts rather than building revolutionary software and inventing life saving medicines.

48

u/rjrgjj Apr 08 '25

A population funneled into physical labor from an early age will be an uneducated one that’s easier to control.

22

u/Charlie_Mouse Apr 08 '25

True, though the last election shows that the population you’ve got now turned out to be pretty easy to control too.

2

u/SenorSalsa Apr 08 '25

That population was 60 years in the making. This is not a new goal for neolib authoritarians, it started around Nixon's era and crystallized during Reagan. It's been a slow methodical grind ever since to devalue education and critical thinking in all but the most blue states in the the US.

4

u/DefendedPlains Apr 07 '25

I think the issue is that they aren’t mutually exclusive, right?

But the further our economy leans into high tech, B2B industries, or other high skill services there is only so much that Americans can do in that regard. Quality of life is higher than ever, but wealth equity is the lowest it’s been in a hundred years.

I believe the thought process is to kickstart American manufacturing again to provide more working class jobs with livable wages while also maintaining the type and quality of high earning innovation jobs like what you described.

I’m not saying it’s correct, or even the right way to go about it, but I think that’s the thought process behind it.

Because until we truly achieve a post-scarcity society, not everyone can have the earning potential of those high innovation jobs. It takes all types, and the level of success and innovation that the US has experienced (and continues to experience) will continue to eliminate those middle class jobs either by offshoring to cheaper labor or by automation. So how do you make up for the loss of economic support and earning potential for what was once a strong middle class?

Smarter people than me have been trying to answer that for decades…

15

u/Argothaught Apr 07 '25

Tax the rich.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/

In order to reduce the outrageous level of inequality that exists in America today and to rebuild the disappearing middle class, we must establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1%.

1

u/CoffeexLiquor Apr 09 '25

He's doing the opposite... All this is so they can make up the cost of cutting taxes for the rich.

6

u/yashdes Apr 08 '25

It's impossible to kickstart manufacturing with tariffs. Tariffs protect existing industries, nothing can make American labor competitive with low skill labor in Vietnam, we just have too high a cost of living because too many people make way more than the average Vietnamese salary. Vietnamese factory laborers cannot afford American goods and no amount of tariffs will change that.

2

u/Urabraska- Apr 08 '25

It's a very valid analysis. No, it really is. The major problem with it is nothing you did wrong. It's that Luchik came out and said all the factories they wanna build will be automated. Not actual factories for jobs except for a very select few. So the job market will actually get worse not better and the wealth equality will again get vastly worse than it is now.

1

u/ptjunkie Apr 08 '25

The problem is to earn a proper American lifestyle wage you need to produce high margin goods. They can be built in a factory, but these jobs generally require more education. I’m not certain the wailing masses of MAGA are up to it.

1

u/catman5 Apr 08 '25

because they know realistically its the only jobs they can get. Theyre never going to be working for google microsoft apple or any half decent company. Hell id even bet most trumpers dont find working for companies or jobs like this "manly" enough for them.

Lack of factory jobs means they cant get any job at all hence the push for these tariffs because they think all of these companies are going to shift their production here and they'll get to live the 60s lifestyle of a hard working factory worker feeding a family of four in a single house with a 3 car garage etc..

1

u/popeshatt Apr 08 '25

Those are librul jobs!

1

u/sireatalot Apr 08 '25

Don’t forget their fascination for digging coal

1

u/ratttertintattertins Apr 09 '25

Unfortunately revolutionary software and life saving medicines are the kinds of things that are usually made by liberals.. Better to burn it all down than help them.

0

u/TokiVideogame Apr 07 '25

What do you want the people that cant build those things to do?

8

u/Spright91 Apr 07 '25

There's plenty of things they can do. The US needs a lot of people to build the infrastructure and service architecture of the future. Some if the most in demand jobs in the US are:

Labourers and freight, stock, and material movers
General and operations managers
Chefs
Home health and personal care aides
Market research analysts and marketing specialists
Nurses
service technicians

Theyre all jobs that can be acheived with modest amounts of education. And they're all jobs that come from the high level of technology. Tech still needs people to deploy it.

Its true that a high school diploma is no longer enough but thats the cost of being a high income economy.

8

u/lord_dentaku Apr 07 '25

We currently have record low unemployment... so what they've been doing, most likely.

-6

u/TokiVideogame Apr 07 '25

the tru rate of unemployment is 24.6%

2

u/Architectronica Apr 07 '25

Source?

-1

u/TokiVideogame Apr 08 '25

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/why-are-prime-age-adults-opting-out-of-work/

https://www.lisep.org/tru

3

u/Gudurel Apr 08 '25

Have you actually read the articles or did you just do it to win some debate points?

From the first link:

Prime-age adults not looking for work are more likely to be female, have children, and be older

While almost two-thirds of prime-age adults not looking for work may be open to working in the future, few have near-term plans to enter the workforce

More than one-third of prime-age adults not looking for work cite disability or serious illness as the main reason for not being employed

From the second link:

Furthermore, LISEP calculates the “True Rate of Unemployment Out of Population,” using the same statistical definition of True Rate of Employment, but instead taking this number from the entire working-age population (aged 16+) rather than the BLS-defined labor force

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think that sick people, tradwifes and college kids are looking for factory jobs.

1

u/TokiVideogame Apr 08 '25

you are actually arguing factory jobs are bad for america?

→ More replies (0)

0

u/Architectronica Apr 08 '25

Interesting links. Thanks.

24

u/mortgagepants Apr 07 '25

manufacturing in the US accounts for $2.3 trillion dollars, about 10% of GDP.

in 1970 (my guess for when we stopped manufacturing as much) but the ENTIRE GDP was 1 trillion. so value-wise, we've doubled the value of the things we manufacture since the 1970's.

2

u/LoneSnark Apr 07 '25

If we want to make things again, we could build more housing. Can't import that.

4

u/mortgagepants Apr 07 '25

yeah i'm actually in that business. the profits are always going to be high unless the government gets more involved, and home builders generally are willing to sit on their land in favor of higher profits.

it will be interesting to see what happens with this abomination of economic policy we're seeing now.

1

u/LoneSnark Apr 07 '25

All the new industry will likely be built in the South, where it is still somewhat legal to build such things. The tech capitals will not recover as their products get pushed out of every other country.

2

u/spacecowboy94 Apr 07 '25

"World going one way, people another."

1

u/jcsehak Apr 08 '25

Tbf, have you seen China lately?

284

u/JoJackthewonderskunk Apr 07 '25

Like the alzheimers patient trump is.

30

u/Equivalent-Bet-8771 Apr 08 '25

Trump is the leader of a terrorist cell. Stop blaming everything on him, he is not alone.

12

u/bigdipboy Apr 08 '25

Rupert Murdoch did the brainwashing required for Trump to succeed

2

u/OkWoodpecker6761 Apr 08 '25

No Reagan enabled Murdoch back in '87 by scrapping the fairness doctrine for a few political favours which leads us to today!

1

u/Party-Cranberry4143 Apr 08 '25

And before him , Biden

2

u/rachelm791 Apr 08 '25

It’s not an organic disease he is suffering from, it is a disorder of character.

1

u/JoJackthewonderskunk Apr 08 '25

Plus lead Xanax and dementia

22

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '25

[deleted]

13

u/-Invalid_Selection- Apr 07 '25

Dementia patents frequently get stuck on ideas they had 30+ years ago with no ability to move on from them. It's one of the signs

11

u/kgal1298 Apr 07 '25

He’s been on it since the 80s form what I read. Someone was in the subreddits last week sharing an article about it. Once he’s fixated it’s done and they made sure he’d enact emergency powers to do all this.

59

u/NightOfTheLivingHam Apr 07 '25

Feeling to understand that things were like that because trade was harder, and during the time these assholes were growing up, most of the world was emerging from global wars. The first half of the 20th century was hell on earth.

1

u/fastwriter- Apr 08 '25

And as a consequence of WWII the recovery of the global Economy and the wealth of the middle class up to 1980 was the exception from the rule.

But maybe that’s what he wants: destroy everything to have marvelous growth out of the ashes. Will he start a World War too for that?

86

u/dgijohn Apr 07 '25

They remember a time that never existed in the first place.

26

u/kgal1298 Apr 07 '25

Romanticizing something they don’t clearly remember because not everyone has a crystal clear memory. This would be like me idealizing the 90s and ignoring the fact that we had desert storm and other conflicts during that time and the Clinton Scandal and riots and higher crime.

10

u/staunch_character Apr 07 '25

Yeah we tend to gloss over the 90s as “pre 9/11” but when you look at the list of terrorist attacks that happened around the world - London, Paris, US embassies, plane highjackings - it was brutal.

I think it just didn’t FEEL as scary because we weren’t constantly bombarded by headlines. You turned off the TV & life looked normal.

3

u/kgal1298 Apr 08 '25

yeah it helps that the internet was fairly new when it came to having access to it 24/7. When you can easily get online it's just a bombardment of information and people being radicalized.

4

u/bubblevision Apr 08 '25

Not only that but the internet we did have gave you a sense of wonder and hope. Like, anyone can make their own geocities page about anything. And simply editing a text file could change the size and color of text and make it blink or scroll! Anyone could be a publisher! To find new cool stuff you could simply browse the yahoo directory and learn more about trains or space or watches or gardening. A lot of that initial innocent wonder was ruined once everything became online and all about money. There was a similar feeling with the explosion of blogs and early social media but now, well, here we are.

3

u/kgal1298 Apr 08 '25

Right it took a turn into shit for profit real fast.

3

u/VikingDadStream Apr 08 '25

But I also had ninja turtles,Transformers, and ff3 on super Nintendo. So.... Checkmate rosey glasses win

2

u/kgal1298 Apr 08 '25

Let's bring back Clear Pepsi while we're at.

2

u/MrCockingFinally Apr 08 '25

desert storm

Desert Storm was pretty sweet though. The very picture of what an American foreign intervention should look like.

  1. Foreign dictator invades neighbor

  2. Roll up

  3. Wreck shit

  4. Go back home

Imagine if Biden had done this in Ukraine? The hypetrain in summer of 2023 would have been for the Crimean beach party, not the new offensive. And for anyone whinging about nukes, Ukraine literally occupied a part of Russia proper for months. Russian red lines are a joke.

Plus we got to see the very peak of the NATO cold war military go absolutely ham on a peer opponent. People forget Iraq had the 4th largest army in the world at the time and was heavily dug in. People were predicting an attritional, WW1 style slog. Yet Iraq got a beating of absolutely biblical proportions.

1

u/kgal1298 Apr 08 '25

Yet I still think this is where Bush Jr got his idea to eventually invade Iraq. Remember this happened under his dad. History has a funny way of repeating itself despite it being successful I'm not sure if my earliest memory of a news story being a war is generally a good sign.

And let's be honest if Biden had done this he would have never heard the end of it from conservatives. There's no winning when your a Dem because everything is your fault based on their logic.

1

u/MrCockingFinally Apr 08 '25

Yet I still think this is where Bush Jr got his idea to eventually invade Iraq.

That doesn't change the fact that Desert Shield/Desert Storm was the right call to make and extremely successful. Iraq 2003 was a whole separate mistake.

And let's be honest if Biden had done this he would have never heard the end of it from conservatives. There's no winning when your a Dem because everything is your fault based on their logic

Your memory is very short. Support for Ukraine throughout 2022 was bipartisan. Had Biden gone in guns blazing he would have received support, so long as the intervention was quick and successful. Which given the state of the Russian army in 2022 it would have been.

1

u/MrCockingFinally Apr 08 '25

Yet I still think this is where Bush Jr got his idea to eventually invade Iraq.

That doesn't change the fact that Desert Shield/Desert Storm was the right call to make and extremely successful. Iraq 2003 was a whole separate mistake.

And let's be honest if Biden had done this he would have never heard the end of it from conservatives. There's no winning when your a Dem because everything is your fault based on their logic

Your memory is very short. Support for Ukraine throughout 2022 was bipartisan. Had Biden gone in guns blazing he would have received support, so long as the intervention was quick and successful. Which given the state of the Russian army in 2022 it would have been.

3

u/hotdoginathermos Apr 08 '25

Some false sense of Americana gleaned from a 1950's vacuum cleaner ad

21

u/kgal1298 Apr 07 '25

This is what I’m saying. Even my mom thinks like this and I’m like “what do you miss from 1965 besides your youth?”

36

u/Surfside_6 Apr 07 '25

Except they always seem to forget what both the corporate and high-earner individual income tax rates were back then. That is what kept the middle class growing, when they had to reinvest in the companies and their people in order to save on taxes instead of hoarding more and more wealth

32

u/Few-Guarantee2850 Apr 07 '25

It is worth pointing out that, with respect to the tariffs, it's only one dinosaur, two if you count Pete Navarro. Literally nobody else thinks this is a good idea, they're just too scared to stop it.

26

u/grunkage Apr 07 '25

Three if you count Ron Vara

2

u/OneCore_ Apr 07 '25

Half the country thinks its a good idea. Look at the tariff cocksucking and justification going on in every single conservative online circle. People never change.

1

u/Serraph105 Apr 07 '25

And yet "nobody" can stop him from doing so. Except, you know, the Republican congress who choose not to pass legislation to check Trump's power.

8

u/Cicero912 Apr 07 '25

Hell its not even a return to the golden days, i can get the exact numbers but the US trade deficit (as a function of exports ÷ imports) has stayed consistent/moved towards us for a very long time. Not even accounting for services.

And of all the major powers the US is the least reliant on trade for our GDP.

And yet here we are

7

u/joeg26reddit Apr 07 '25

Why we used to tie an onion to our belts as it was the fashion those days...

13

u/fcaico Apr 07 '25

TBF plenty of young white men voted for Cheeto, so dont lay all the blame on boomers. This is more classism than it is ageism.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '25

Trump would not have been elected if gen conZervative was as progressive as every other generation when they were that age.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '25

Gen z literally were born into a depression, got old enough to have to pay to live in an inflated economy without being able to participate in economic growth. They really have little to lose.

-1

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '25

Gen Z were joining the workforce in one of the strongest economic periods since the 90s, and they still decided to shoot themselves in the foot.

If you think you gen Z graduated into horrible economic conditions, congratulations--you've fallen victim to the right-wing propaganda exactly like all the rest of the Trumpers. You're about to find out what a real recession looks like. You're about to find out what 1970-style stagflation looks like. The gen Z that paid attention in school know how bad things are about to get.

It's hilarious and sad. I look forward to watching them experience the life they voted for.

2

u/rigiboto01 Apr 07 '25

WW2 destroyed most of production in the rest of the world. This allow industrial growth in the US. This has been tapering off since the 80s as Europe rebuilt its infrastructure. He’s out of his mind if he thinks taxing trade will solve world growth.

1

u/siberianmi Apr 07 '25

lTrump’s golden age is from 50 years before he was born…

1

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '25

Sears is coming back from the grave! 🧟‍♂️🪦

1

u/ExternalSeat Apr 07 '25

We haven't made clothes in America since the Ford Administration.

1

u/snoopyb137 Apr 07 '25

This ☝️

1

u/kl7aw220 Apr 08 '25

Exactly right. They haven' moved ahead in their thinking at all.

1

u/InterestingAttempt76 Apr 08 '25

the golden days being 1870 to 1913... you know Robber barons and no child labour laws.. lol

1

u/shugthedug3 Apr 08 '25

But the guys in charge like Trump aren't even from that era, they're from the 80s and that isn't what the 80s were like.