Stock markets in free fall - thanks Trump!

Yeah the "arithmetic" the white house used to calculate the tariffs allegedly charged against the US is sketchy. The methods by which the "currency manipulation" component of these numbers are determined aren't really disclosed anywhere. These are basically just made up numbers

How many of you just got liberated from the notion of retirement?

trumpers are pretty quiet on this thread now...

TuckFrump ?

Get your popcorn ready. We're in for a wild ride.

Global markets closed sharply down Thursday and the dollar wiped out all gains since President Donald Trump’s reelection in November.

The Dow fell 1,679 points, or 3.98%. The broader S&P 500 was down by 4.84% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 5.97%. All three major indexes posted their biggest single-day drop since 2020.

Compared to when Trump took office in January, the S&P is down 10.8%, the Dow is down 7.9% and the Nasdaq is down 16.2% in Trump's second term.

The markets will recover one day. But the other shoe to drop in this will be employment. Companies are going to start slashing jobs to try to stay profitable as the tariffs kill off consumer demand. I remember what it was like in the 1970s and 80s when 7-8% under Carter and hit 10% under Reagan. People would go months and months without a job. And I also remember the farm crisis in the 1980s when thousands of family farms got foreclosed on. That is where we are headed. Farmers are going to take a beating when other countries slap tariffs on our ag exports. And unemployment will surge. This will all happen while prices for just about everything go up.

Orangeman is a moron.

But if it makes a single lib cry, it's all worth it!

JP Morgan: trump tariffs will represent a 22% increase in prices.

You mean that you don't know that the column in Trump's chart purporting to state the rate of tariff imposed on US goods by the foreign country was BS? Trump just based that number on the trade deficit number and called it a tariff. Trump has always foolishly believed that a trade deficit means the US is losing money.

Moreover, it is stupid to punish a country based on that metric because the country hasn't imposed a trade barrier, so they have nothing to negotiate. All Trump is doing is increasing the price of that country's goods for the US consumers,

And some will cut jobs fast. Our law firm already has been contacted by clients who want help in preparing documents for mass layoffs, COBRA notices and other tasks associated with cutting employees. Some industries relying on imports (whether for finished goods or components) don't have the financial margins to wait and see what happens. That especially is true if the products/components cannot be sourced in the US or cannot be sourced in the US at a price consumers will pay.

Using Trump's logic I'm running a trade deficit at the grocery store, so I should put a tariff on the groceries and make them even more expensive. This will incentivize me to make my own groceries. Or something.

The top 10% control 90% of stocks...screw em, they can afford to loose a little money...

So you don’t think other countries have protectionist policies? Just because they don’t specifically call it a tariff doesn’t mean that isn’t an impediment to selling goods and services in their country.

China’s entire economic strategy has been mercantilist, export as much as you can, while making their markets hard to enter.

Did I say that? No. Did I hint that? No. You are dealing with strawmen.

I pointed out two things: 1. The left hand set of numbers was duplicitously labeled; and (2) Punishing a country just because they sell more goods to us than we buy from them is dumb, and creates a non-negotiable problem that hits US taxpayers. I wrote nothing to excuse currency manipulators.

As for government subsidies, the US subsidizes goods as well. Subsidies in effect are domestic tax breaks for the businesses and/or the domestic consumers.

And why did Trump impose tariffs on uninhabited islands? And just what currency manipulation is Ecuador engaged it -- their currency has been the US dollar for 25 years?

Because you’re not applying context. How do you know that the reason they sell more goods to us than we sell to them is not because of their protection policies? I don’t claim to know every trade policy of every country on that list but I don’t think anybody else does either and as a result they shouldn’t assume that the trade deficit might not have any other underlying causes.

The whole argument is kind of silly because this is just a negotiation tactic akin to buying a used car. The seller wants his original price. You want it for free and you try to meet somewhere in the middle.

The big question today is: everyone knew this was going to happen. Big Tariff Drop coming. They knew it months ago and knew it was about to happen.

So, who are all these people who figured they better dump their stocks, but waited until the last minute to do it? Until it was too late, that is?

Seems to me this is a feature of mass-formation human behavior that savvy buyers marked as bargain day, when they could hold out for way lower prices than usual. But that won't last