OFFICIAL LRC President Donald Trump SECOND TERM Thread

Not so fast, Baghdad.

White House says rumor claiming Trump is considering a 90-day pause on tariffs is "fake news"

yeah it's looking false, agreed.

which is more to my bigger point: the tariffs ARE the goal. Full stop.

When will you idiots learn not to post until the trading day is over .

You have an event (the 90 day pause) occurring with the possibility that it arose from whatever cause(s). So when that event occurs, it does not “prove” any one of the causes, nor that the cause must be singular.

In addition, although some people in this thread may have decided to argue a point that divides roughly along the lines of “the tariffs are the end goal” vs. “the tariffs are a means to negotiation and not the end goal,” that is unlikely to be the important point.

It’s still a matter of whether the tariff policy is a good policy. It could be good or bad overall as an end goal, or good or bad overall as a negotiation, and there’s room for a lot more subtlety than just outright disastrous or outstanding.

If further significant trade wars (apart from targeted sectors with China and perhaps some other nations) continue to develop, I believe the short-, mid-, and long-term consequences of this policy will be bad and that the damage will take a great deal of time and effort to counteract. Of course, it won’t be possible to draw a straight line from every bad outcome back to the policy.

And if that were to happen, I fully expect people who support the president to say, “Well, look at all the problems in the US economy in 2025. He had to do something!” And they’ll say that with a straight face as though this was the “something” he had to choose, the sole or best option available to him.

Nasdaq up 0.002% at this moment (32 cents). At least it's not down

0.99% now. Beautiful.

And S&P up 0.12%

Wait--"subtlety"? Nuance? What site do you think you're on?

You need to pick a position; hold fast to it; cling more tightly to it, if presented with contradictory evidence (which perforce cannot be true or validly sourced, because how could someone as special as you be wrong about something so important?); and call the people on the other side hard names, for having the temerity to disagree with you.

He didn't. You fell for fake news.

Yes. That is indeed sick. It is incredibly troubling. And people carrying zip ties into the Capitol and chanting “hang Mike Pence” were exhibiting sick behavior. Those who were crying out for civil war were largely exhibiting sick behavior.

It’s possible that online culture is creating a swell on the Left that will meaningfully outweigh support for political violence on the right.

Note that the attitudes may possibly reflect opposition to who currently holds more power in the US rather than merely a political group, though.

Psychology Today, from less than a year ago:

***In recent years, a partisan divide over SPV has emerged from the polls. In 2015, SPV wasn’t much different between Republicans and Democrats. But by 2022, 40% of Republican respondents supported political violence compared to 23% of Democrats. Another 2023 poll found that 33% of Republicans and only 13% of Democrats agreed with the statement, “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”2
And yet, there’s good reason to be skeptical about claims that SPV is a predominantly conservative phenomenon. Recent findings of greater SPV among Republicans may be more a reflection of the Democrats holding the presidency, as well as what exactly is being asked in a given poll.*** (SPV - “support for political violence”)

Regardless, there’s no excuse for anyone who expresses such violent attitudes.

I wouldn’t be all that surprised if there are those still waiting to see how low it goes.

My bet is that both Winston and Warren Buffett are still sitting on a lot of cash.

One country alone doesn't move the needle. However, 50 more countries will.

The times we live in. Tyler Durden of Zerohedge causes the stock market to shoot up 2,000 points only to drop again when everyone realizes that Tyler Durden is the guy in Fight Club and the blog is full of right wing BS.

And the spin from the White House is probably the definition of gaslighting. Oil prices are down! No inflation! This was like a running joke in my training group when someone was injured. We would see them at races and say "but you are saving so much money on entry fees."

But the best worst news of the day is the realization that Peter Navarro has been citing a trade expert named Ron Vara in all his briefing to Trump about trade. Ron Vara does not exist. It is just an anagram for Navarro.

And back to those oil prices. While Trump has whipped up his base with the great replacement theory as being the reason why rural America has gotten the short end of the economic stick, there is a big problem with that narrative. In rural areas where there is fracking for oil and gas, things are really good (albeit in an industry prone to booms and busts depending on the whims of the Saudis). In the Eagle Ford, Barnett, Bakken and Marcellus shale formations, rural communities that were all but dried up and left for dead have surged back to life with economic activity and high paying oil field jobs and related services. Oil has dropped $10 a barrel with some expecting it to level out at around $50 if Trump holds his ground on tariffs. Frackers have become much more efficient over the past twenty years, but $50 a barrel is a price that will have frackers shutting down production en masse to try and constrict supply to support a higher price. When fracking shuts down in these rural areas, there are no other jobs to do. In addition to the crashing of the farming economy due to reciprocal tariffs from other countries, this will be a one two punch that will devastate rural communities across the US. No one in the US will be hit harder by Trump's manufactured trade war than the rural communities who are his strongest supporters.

Trumpers saying the tariffs are not the end goal are believers in the Trump is playing 4-D chess theory that regularly gets obliterated.

so trumpies gary, adult, others...

are you free traders or are you protectionists? Do you think fair trade is possible if there's a trade deficit?

is your goal to use the tariffs for negotiating lower global tariffs or do you like the idea of using them to protect the US from all those foreign nasties?

How do you feel about using them to replace the income tax?

Have any ideas yourselves or are you just putting your beliefs in the hands of the felon con man who enriched himself while bankrupting a casino? Just opening wide?

Yeah I hoped I wouldn’t lose more $$.

If he says they're just a negotiating tactic from the get go why would anyone negotiate?

His position is the exact same it's been since he was on Oprah's couch.

The 180 here is coming from the left. If Bernie Sanders was doing the exact same thing you'd be here singing his praises.

How about waiting until, say, 1pm EDT before regaling us with the markets' comeback?

Gotta love the irony of a simpleton who quotes Trump lies whinging about fake news.

In mean, Trump claimed that soros paid 5 million people 100,000,000 each to protest