Trump says he will introduce 25% tariffs on autos, pharmaceuticals and chips.
Trump has long railed against what he calls the unfair treatment of U.S. automotive exports in foreign markets.
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On the one hand, fostering local production of these goods is positive for national resilience, and also has a chance to reduce shipping around the world, which is bad for the environment.
On the other hand, good fucking luck, lol.
No way we're making chips stateside with the Department of Education on the chopping block.
So many schools will close and you sure as shit ain't training people who can make top of the line chips with no fucking schools.
They plan to import workers with visas and then hold those visas over their heads to force them to work for peanuts.
I mean, they do this small-scale already.
As the standard of living and pay in the USA quickly tanks and becomes less desirable than where they're from, those people will stop applying for those positions.
They can't force foreigners to sign up for H-1B visas. The whole point is the salary is currently and the USA is currently a desirable place to live. Won't stay that way long. They're literally tearing down all the things that made it desirable to begin with.
Someone commented here yesterday that just as NAFTA allowed manufacturers to export jobs and find reasoning to squeeze blue collar workers, creating a general shift to white-collar work in the U.S., this move is designed to squeeze those higher paying white-collar jobs, so that even more money goes into corporate and investor coffers.
My own addition to that thought is that it seems the natural end product is that the only way to make money once that system has done it’s evil deeds is to have money and be a member of the investor class.
Or, in other words - they aim to do to all of the U.S. what Walmart did to small towns across the U.S.
Without a care in the world, obviously. I think the people wealthy enough to not be impacted by this will thrive on exploitation until the U.S. economy is sucked dry to the point of unsustainability for their grift (or revolution occurs), then, like the parasites they are, will take their grotesque wealth and move onto other economies they can exploit.
I've been saying this for years now. The wealthy here are now international wealthy. They don't care about borders. Musk hops his private jet and goes wherever the fuck he wants whenever he wants and no governments seem to be in his way.
They are done with the high standard of living in the US. They think we're coddled and don't deserve it. They're done trying to bring up international living standards to match America and are all-in on bringing American living standards down to match the rest of the planet.
This is the strip-mining stage of American capitalism. They've turned all the economic tools that they used to subjugate South America (Chile for example), using Milton Friedman's Economic Shock Treatment here at home in the US.
They really don't give a damn, they're done with us. We're being dropped like a jilted lover.
Why would anyone want to come over here right now? I don’t even want to be here.
A lot of immigrants are paid more highly in the US than they are in their home countries.
The Indian Rupee, for example, has a poor exchange rate with the US dollar and they have higher salaries in the US.
So they take an H-1B job and they make enough to take care of themselves in the US and usually have US dollars they can send home to their family which can be exchanged for large amounts of rupees.
Current exchange is rougly $1 USD to about ₹80 rupees.
This will change as the US economy tanks and people stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency.
Especially as foreigners learn how much we seem to want to exploit them. Whether in agriculture, housekeeping, or nuclear physics, the common denominator is taking advantage of foreigners who we constantly profess our hatred for.
That’s how Twitter is run
The factory TSMC opened in the USA was mostly staffed with workers from Taiwan, because Americans won't work 996.
It also only makes dies (the functional part of the IC), that still have to be exported to Taiwan for packaging.
Do they have 996 in Taiwan? I thought that was just the PRC?
all of asia works stupid long hours
Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China are not all of Asia. All of East Asia perhaps.
correct that's what I meant to say thank you
India does too. Not sure about the rest of Asia.
996? PRC?
You mean 007?
Ohh computer chips.
Freedom fries.
How is the Department of Education relevant? It was created in 1980, and it's not like we didn't have good education before then. It doesn't run schools, and it does a whole bunch of stuff largely unrelated to running schools. Schools are largely funded and run locally, and there really wasn't any standardization of education until Obama's "Common Core," and a lot of states still don't implement it.
Cuts to the Department of Education will largely not impact schools, at least not K-12. Universities could be impacted if federal loans and grants are cut, but that could also be a good thing since it'll cut the cash cow that allowed universities to jack up tuition and dramatically expand administration.
That said, even if engineering departments at universities are gutted, it'll be many years before we see impacts in industry, and there's a very good chance companies like Intel will fund scholarships and whatnot to keep those programs alive.
The Department of Education is one of the areas I think we should make cuts. End the federal student loan program but keep grants (should help cut university costs), end whatever created Common Core (should be an independent nonprofit that states and private schools fund for education research), and keep most of the rest (and probably rename it since it doesn't touch education much anymore). Oh, and investigate university costs to see what else is pushing prices up.
I think you're underestimating the Department of Education's role in preventing red states from destroying public education. They can now do whatever they want with their education system and there is absolutely zero federal oversight coming their way. And you better believe Republican state legislatures are chomping at the bit for this one.
Edit: "champing at the bit" per u/slumberlust
It's kind of fascinating. In Germany recently the idea of a federal education ministry has been floated and the general answer was "no". Other states don't want to have to deal with CSU politicians trying to get "the purpose of the school is to instil fear of god" into law applicable on their turf, that BS can stay in Bavaria. The federation is co-responsible for tertiary education (university etc) because they have responsibility when it comes to research so they can set, in practice, some standards regarding secondary graduation but that's it.
The phrase is champing at the bit. I was 35 years old before I learned that, so thought I'd pass it on. Thanks for posting!
I love learning new things, thank you for helping update my phrasing! Also 35, maybe this is just when we're supposed to learn this phrase?
I think you're overstating how effective the DoEd is at coordinating curriculum, as well as how effective state governments are at the same.
I'm in a red state (Utah), and we're pretty competitive in terms of scholastic attainment (top 15 in most metrics), above many blue states that spend way more on education. Higher spending does not seem correlated with higher achievement. Also, from non-rigorous comparison of some state lists of academic achievement (like this wiki page), I don't see a clear relationship between how states vote and academic performance that can't more convincingly be explained by rural vs urban/suburban demographics.
So while it's a popular talking point, I'm not convinced the DoEd is actually helping here. Schools will do better in areas with more parental engagement, and curriculum choice, funding, and rigor in testing don't seem have much of an impact. We're spending more than ever, have strict education standards, etc, yet test scores continue to drop across the country.
So no, I don't think the DoEd is effective, and in fact I think they're largely to blame for tuition outpacing inflation, because student loans are easier to get, so sold m schools can get away with raising prices.
What we should have are laws that states must maintain a secular education, and if religion is taught, all major religions are given equal treatment. That, and that states must provide a free K-12 education for all residents, and that public universities must be affordable for all residents who qualify (with grants as appropriate). That's it, no common standard, no loans, etc. Education is better handled locally.
That said, I don't trust Trump or Musk to handle this properly.
When a quarter of the most qualified engineers to make the stuff and a lot of the cheap manual labor are immigrants and you do a campaign against immigrants so they leave, maybe you don't have enough people left to to create local production.
That's covered in "lol"
Illegal immigrants went to America because their home countries are fucking miserable. They're not going back because they don't feel welcome. And they're definitely not engineers, much less the "most qualified" engineers.
I said immigrants, not illegal immigrants. But in the end, legal immigrants get deported too.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states
As of 2019, immigrants made up almost one-fourth, or 23.1 percent, of all STEM workers in the entire country.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/migrants-legal-status-trump-biden/index.html
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke legal status for many migrants who entered the United States under a Biden-era program, according to a source familiar with the planning, expanding the pool of people who could be deported.
legal immigrants get deported
You have evidence of this?
A search turns up some hits legal migrants are put in detention centers. But you can also wait a few weeks and evidence should be on the news.
Ah yes, the classic "look into it" argument. When evidence finds itself in the news I will consider this a threat. Until then, your claims are unfounded.
Physically removed Americans from the United States
A number of Americans have been placed in immigration detention centers to be deported but were later released.[15][16] Up to one percent of all those detained in immigration detention centers are nationals of the United States according to research by Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science at Northwestern University.[21]
The following is an incomplete list of Americans who have actually experienced deportation from the United States:
Pedro Guzman, born in the State of California, was forcefully removed to Mexico in 2007 but returned several months later by crossing the Mexico–United States border. He was finally compensated in 2010 by receiving $350,000 from the government.[22] Mark Daniel Lyttle, born in the State of North Carolina, was forcefully removed to Mexico but later returned to the United States from Guatemala and filed a damages lawsuit in federal court,[13] which he ultimately won.[2] Andres Robles Gonzalez derived U.S. citizenship through his U.S. citizen father before being forcefully removed to Mexico. He was returned to the United States and filed a damages lawsuit in federal court, which he ultimately won.[3][23] Roberto Dominquez was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was deported to the Dominican Republic. The government is unconvinced in this case as it claims that there are two people by the same name, both born during the same month and year. According to the government, both children were born to parents with the same addresses, and that one child was born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.[24] Esteban Tiznado-Reyna was born in Mexico to a father who had an Arizona birth certificate, which was found unreliable in an immigration court.[25] Tiznado was found not guilty of illegal reentry into the United States in 2008, but ICE still deported him despite the verdict. Documents were uncovered that the USCIS withheld in the 1980s, showing his proof of citizenship.[24]
https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/07/30/ice-deport-us-citizens/
and this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Americans_from_the_United_States
I want to point out that this list is INCOMPLETE and you should go to the bottom of the Wikipedia page you will see numerous articles depicting the stories of the people above.
I see a handful of mistakes that are not indicative of any policies of deporting legal immigrants. This is most certainly not indicative of any sort of national economic impact.
You asked for evidence of legal immigrants being deported. I gave you evidence of AMERICAN CITIZENS being deported.
You: Moved the goalposts.
If that's the goal, you announce tariffs are coming in a few years so that people scale up local production to avoid the higher costs.
In this case, there was like 4 months notice where all of it was undefined, so of course nobody did anything and now we still don't have local production. Now, prices will go up and local producers (if they even build up) will match the new prices instead of keeping them low.
Congrats, worst of both worlds! We still have no local production and prices have gone up! Yay!
Even then, as a democracy, you can only do really mild tariffs as companies won't trust the tariffs to stay high come the next government. You instead subsidise, in whatever form, including things like long-term supply contracts. If you want to push domestic ball point pen production, just order your administration to prefer buying domestic ball point pens if they're within what 20% of the import price, then slowly reduce that rate but keep the preference to make sure your ballpoint pen industry is productive, efficient, and competitive. Make it a 10-year supply contracts the next government can't just cancel. If you're the US, give them to teachers to give children.
We don't manufacture cars in the United States we assemble them. Most of the parts for cars are made outside of the states. Mainly in China.
No country manufactures cars 100% locally. We live in a global economy. All cars are made from components sourced from countries all over the world, in varying degrees.
Shipping over water is actually pretty green, since they have huge ships carrying a bunch of containers with relatively little energy.
Building new factories in the States will create a lot more pollution. Concrete is the opposite of green.
Yet he supports oil.. Which accounts for a sizeable share of international shipping. This is while the US doesn't have enough refining capacity for the type of oil we produce.
I agree, tariffs will be a net positive for the country. Problem is, the people taking the brunt of that impact will, as always, be the poorest and most vulnerable. There are many ways we could solve that problem but of course authoritarians have no interest in that.
That being said, anyone who voted for Trump thinking he would fix the economy is a fucking moron. Tariffs make shit worse before they get better. It will probably be a decade before we start to see any positive impact from them.
Tariffs are a net negative. Always. The things produced will not be competitive on the global market, if they were, we'd already be making them. The higher prices always destroy more jobs than they create. Retaliatory tariffs destroy even more jobs. The higher prices drive down demand and make the working class consumer poorer. Always.
There's no economic upside to tariffs, over any time horizon. They create a small number of jobs in a specific sector at a very expensive cost. Some politicians might decide that the enormous economic cost is worth it for other reasons, but a net positive they are not.
[citation needed]
Wikipedia has a whole list of citations on this very sentence lol.
There is near unanimous consensus among economists that tariffs are self-defeating and have a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare
Oh well, you have a single sentence from a Wikipedia article, I guess I was wrong!
The citations are all concerning the concept of "free trade" which is an incredibly generic phrase.
Shipping is incredibly efficient, only a tiny fraction of emissions of products and foods.
First of all, that's not correct.
Second: emissions aren't the only form of pollution.
Third: the word "shipping", despite the name, includes air transportation;
Fourth: assuming, disingenuously of course, that the factors of the local production process are the same as the remote one, NOT shipping is always going to be more environmentally friendly.
Unless, of course, you need to build new production facilities. That's not going to be as green as using the ones that already exist