Here Meadway draws parallels between Trumps tarrifs and Volcker’s interest rate shock in the 1970ies. Is this justified considering the world economy has a totally different structure today?
There is another argument that what Trump actually wants is a reactionary economic policy more similar to the 19th century where interests of small, wealthy, powerful groups were dominant over the well-being of normal people. For how much of a difference that can make, Germanys rapid economic development which was then to a large part attributed to Ludwig Erhard, Germanys minister for economic affairs from 1949 to 1963.
This is one of the weirdest goddamned articles I have ever read.
The US dollar being devalued so people could accept our exports more readily would make some sense if we had manufacturing capacity to make some exports people will buy. We don’t. What will happen is we’ll lose the ability to buy everyone else’s stuff, and the history of where global capital chooses to site factories argues strongly against them moving them back to the US even with a cheaper dollar. It’s just suffering with no upside, short term or long term.
Other insane things he says, like that defaulting on T-bills would be sort of a good thing or that Reagan’s people made “the economy” boom in the 1980s, are sort of side notes. And the idea that Trump is competently executing on plans that can be laid out coherently is also laughable. The whole thing is just insane in multiple overlapping respects. Why are they putting this in the newspaper? This is not the first totally insane pro-Trump story I have seen in The Guardian.
You are right at the beginning, but wrong in several aspects towards the end of your comment.
the idea that Trump is competently executing on plans that can be laid out coherently is also laughable.
For example, think about the sheer amount of executive orders he has put out in his first few days of his second term. This must have been planned and prepared. It was not just some random sh*t. You may be underestimating him a lot if you only think of “insane” etc. It was for a purpose.
Why are they putting this in the newspaper? This is not the first totally insane pro-Trump story I have seen in The Guardian.
The world is much more than “pro or against trump”. They want diversity and they are doing well.
For example, think about the sheer amount of executive orders he has put out in his first few days of his second term. This must have been planned and prepared.
Absolutely true.
It was not just some random sh*t.
Also true. They put together a detailed plan about it, it was published. Some of it was his own ideas but there was also a lot that was coordinated and coherent, put together by smarter people.
You may be underestimating him a lot if you only think of “insane” etc. It was for a purpose.
Now you’re switching back to talking about tariffs. Those were not for a purpose. He literally thinks (or thought, at one point, I don’t know if he still does) that the country doing the exporting pays the tariff. He put 50% tariffs on Lethoso. That’s not underestimating, that’s just facts.
Other more coherent people have written about his motivations, the source of his tariff ideas, all kinds of stuff. You can do analysis of any of his ideas and the goals (if any) behind them without agreeing with any of it. But this article’s thesis is more or less “he’s trying to devalue the dollar to set right the balance of trade, and it might work” and that is a bunch of sanewashing and horseshit with some additional fantasies about how well Reagan’s stuff worked out thrown in for good measure.
The world is much more than “pro or against trump”. They want diversity and they are doing well.
You don’t need to have diversity between horseshit and non-horseshit. I’m fine with many many points of view, including pro-Trump ones if they make sense (one random example from recently being that he seems genuinely surprised and angry that Russia broke the cease-fire instantly). My complaint with this article is not that it’s pro-Trump, it’s that it is horseshit.
Now you’re […]talking about tariffs.
Not at all.
You don’t need to have diversity between horseshit and non-horseshit.
That is only true in a very general way.
In this specific case it does not help you with critisizing the guardian, because then you would first require them to know (and to give a damn about) your personal estimation of what is “horseshit and non-horseshit” ;-)
I mean, if I am more qualified at recognizing horseshit than The Guardian is, that’s a problem. It’s weird to me that you are classifying this view of how Trump operates with respect to things like tariffs and whether or not he is a total moron as a matter of opinion.
I’ve seen them get other things about him wrong before, too. They were super happy about how Trump was finally going to lay the hammer down on the Israelis and create peace in Gaza:
https://ponder.cat/post/1323549
There were a bunch of Lemmy commentators in there, too, saying more or less that it was super easy, Trump had made progress with his tough negotiating, and this was just evidence that Biden hadn’t been trying to do it. Since that happened, Isarel’s occupied roughly half of Gaza and resumed killing at scale, and also starting doing the same a little bit in the West Bank. They’re also not letting any food in.
Now you are trying to distract with so many other topics that do not belong here.
EOD for me.
There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%.
Back then the problem was rampaging inflation and the (by-the-book) cure was raising interest rates to drive it down.
Nowadays US inflation is not an issue (IIRC it’s like 2% or 3%) and tariffs are gonna bring it up in a confused effort to… rebuild a manufacturing industry? (I’m not sure that’s the goal - it’s hard to say what “great again” means precisely).
In what way would 1979 be a precedent?
Anyway… yes, assuming Trump’s goal is to have more manufacturing in the US, tariffs will “work” - the point is how much that’s gonna cost (in quality of life, not dollars) and who’s gonna pay that price.
yes, assuming Trump’s goal is to have more manufacturing in the US, tariffs will
Destroy domestic manufacturing by enacting insane tariffs on the raw materials it depends on, without any nontrivial increase in manufacturing to counterbalance the pain, even in the long run.
This type of command economy “might makes right” stuff can fail catastrophically. As recently as the 1990s, there were people starving in North Korea by the hundreds of thousands (at least) because someone decided that enforcing his will was more important than listening to people who even on the most rudimentary level knew what they were doing.
