trump puts 25% tariffs on Aussie steel and aluminium
I hope we respond by putting tariffs on American pickups. Democratic nations need to cut the US out of the global economy entirely until they learn how to act right.
Apologies if there's any weirdness in this post, it's my first one.
"Omg! Australia is attacking the US!" <- How our (US) media covers this, probably.
What is our dumbfuck president claiming for an excuse to tariff another one of our Five Eyes allies? What is the perceived slight that has set off this unstable man-baby POTUS?
(Did not read the article.. assuming answers can be found there.)
(Edit: have now read the article)
President Trump's announcement was made a day after Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles met with American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
'That this advice has been given the day after our Deputy Prime Minister was in Washington to hand over billions of dollars to secure the AUKUS submarine deal is particularly troubling,' Mr Willox said.
This is all they said about the potential motivations. They had a meeting with our Christian Nationalist unqualified news commentator defense secretary, made a deal where Australia is paying the US for submarines. Now you all are getting Art-of -the-Deal'd. I would call it extortion and an act of war.
Aight boys, time to start putting it back in the ground.
So the question is: what is he trying to distract from now.
I suspect these announcements by Trump are nothing but stock market scams with a whole bunch of insider trading going on.
Trump removed tariffs from Mexico and Canada after a few days. We'll see what happens with this
He's put back the 25% tariffs on Canadian steel
Yeah but that's all we have lol
He removed them for nothing. He was tricked. Both Canada and Mexico agreed to do things they were already going to do and Trump folded.
USian here. It really didn't matter - his friendly media repeated the lie that he forced those bad old countries to beef up drug and immigration enforcement via his big strong negotiation style. The fact that it's nonsense has no bearing on the political reality here, sadly.
they were not removed, they were paused for 30 days, let's check back in 3 weeks, eh?
there were stock market movements based on what Trump said
people who have insider knowledge would be able to make a lot of money on that
Heyyyyyy welcome to the "being threatened by the USA because Trump felt like it" club!
-EU + Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Panama.
To be fair, US companies also are included in this. Literally anyone who goes against Trump gets threatened.
It's an honour to be part of this prestigious and exclusive group! ☺️
I think we can all do something. I know our economy is tiny, but Australia buys way more from the US than they buy from us... and you know what a big chunk of that is? Services. Some of those are hard to shift but others are easier.
I've hosted all my websites and registered all my domains in the US for over 20 years.
That changed yesterday and I'm transferring everything over to Australia.
For Fedi, look at Australian servers where you can. Subscriptions? Fuck off Netflix et al. Get out of Google as much as you can. If you're here you are probably already out of FB and Reddit, but leave anything else you can that is US based and try to support AU or EU.
Don't buy US foods, cars, or technology where possible (let's face it, most of those are crap anyway).
And you know what, most of the US based internet is shit now too. It was fun 20 years ago, but consistent enshittification has been the worst in the US. At least the EU is trying to fight it.
Yes our economy is tiny, but we can change more than you might think, and as the rest of the world probably will do similar, the US won't be quite as well off as it thinks it is.
A lot of US brands are just relabeled Chinese stuff with a markup. They get us badly on financial, services and IP. I am down to one streaming service and I only have one US based hosting service left which I will be moving to Australian owned hosting soon. My PCs run open source except for games. I will probably keep buying Steam games but it isn't realistic to totally cut out US business. Things like PayPal and Netflix are easy to do without.
Canadian here. This is exactky what we are doing. Everything we can not to support anything "America". Welcome to the fuck them club.
Never been on Facebook, just got a lifetime ban from Reddit for being mean to magats. 🤣
I got one over the weekend for making an off the cuff joke about punching members of a hate group for 'inciting violence'. Context and nuance is too hard for them, I guess. I spent too much time there anyway. Happily deleted my entire account, as I have also done for Facebook. This place seems ok, if a little underpopulated right now.
Wise beyond your years @kudra@sh.itjust.works
If anyone wants advice on how to ditch Netflix VERY painlessly look into stremio+torrentio addon. Optionally pay a minuscule amount (<$5/month) to real Debrid to make it faster and more private (if you're worried about torrenting) but I find it perfectly fine as is myself.
Oh please Albanese, put a 50% tariff on American cars.
I guess trump doesn't want our rare earths. Us and China hold a duopoly so good luck.
Unless China gets control of our mining companies and then we lose that strategic advantage.
I hope we respond by putting tariffs on American pickups.
I kinda don't want this. Because I want those yank tanks taxed and/or regulated regardless, because it's the right thing to do, and I don't want progress towards that to be undermined by being seen to get caught up in a bullshit trade war.
I remember reading that the government was hoping that because we run a trade deficit with the yanks they wouldn't do this. Look forward to that just being the assumption and the government having done 0 planning.
@spiffmeister
Didn't we just hand over $800,000,000 for those used submarines we bought on gumtree? I'm sure the yanks are good for it, they said they were our mates, right?
@TheCriticalMember
The United states can't be trusted as a trading partner anymore. trump doesn't even honour his own deals.
there was absolutely no planning any country can do to survive an insane trade war with the united states. nothing. there's no other trading partners that can take the exports in the volume every country trades with the US, without taking devastating hits to their own economies, which would see recession and depressions on a scale never experienced before in the modern world.
What can you really do to prepare for something like this? Specifically against the US which is:
Iron Ore to China: China was the dominant market for Australian iron ore, accounting for around 85% of exports. This amounted to approximately AU$115 billion in value in 2023, with over 736 million tonnes shipped in 2022
vs
Steel to America: United States: Exports of steel to the U.S. were much higher, totaling US$237.51 million in 2023. Key products included flat-rolled and semi-finished steel2.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-much-iron-ore-and-steel-do-5bWZvTZeRqSNQSlFbu1MBg
I'd like to know more about just how big our steel industry is apart of the exports pie especially compared to iron ore but I suspect we may be blowing this tariff out of proportion
It might be small biccies compared to iron ore to China, but the optics are really bad, and when Australia is included in the tariffs, then psychologically we are siding with Everyone Else in this new US vs Democracy fight. Because that's what the US (tech bros, who are now in charge) are orchestrating: a direct attack on democracy.
So yes, the numbers are small compared to other countries, but the attack is ideological, and real.
You know that despite how everything panned out out in Canada. Albo is going to immediately fold and spend his final days in office grovelling.
Dutton will suck the orange right off Trumps cock.
Of course but in the meantime he will hypocritically anyone who’ll listen how pisspoor Albo is
I'd actually request more weirdness in future, please.
I'll see what I can do! 😉
The only problem is you used MSN which is using the Daily Mail as a source? An American source using a UK (garbage dump of a) source to report on Australia? :\
They'll just beg, and then roll over and ask for more when that doesn't work
ummmmm, there's a reason people, companies, and nations want to trade with the united states, it's because they have the largest economy, with the richest per capital spending power of any place in the world, with 342 million people. no one is "cutting the us out of the global economy" not even countries that trump is about to punish with economy wrecking tariffs, he'll just tariff you more. this sounds like a good plan, until you run the numbers, and "Cutting the US our of the global economy" reduces every nations ability to trade by 20% - 50%, and that my friends, leads to hundreds of millions of people into destitution and poverty on a scale no one has ever seen before. I mean with one fell swoop Trump did away with USAID and it's $40 billion dollar foreign aid budget, which in turn cut off tens/hundreds of millions of real live human beings, all across the world, from foreign aid consisting of life sustaining food, clean water, & medication, the death toll will be astronomical. soverign nations like saying they can do without the us, but if you watch closely people are going to start dying from just $40 billion being taken away. that's a fraction or a fraction of a fraction of the trade monies exchanged with the us.
The US is a failed state. We're going to have to learn to live without it sooner or later. The only reason it has so much influence is because we all made it the centre of the global economy. That's what needs to change.
ok, but realize what that's going to cost in the near term, and it's going to be more painful than any war you've ever fought, any fire you've ever put out, and any economic downturn your country has ever experienced, up front, and i don't believe most modern economies want to shoot themselves in the head quite yet, they'll have to endure humilating trade concessions which will shrink their economies gradually, but they're not gonna want to pull that rip cord just because they're a bit miffed
"Cutting the US our of the global economy" reduces every nations ability to trade by 20% - 50%
Yes, while cutting US ability to trade by 100%. Who's the most impacted then?
Uh, look at how quickly the EU began giving Russia the finger after decades of energy dependence. The US is mighty, but everybody and everything is replaceable in 2025
yes, because it had the united states to fall back on, and russia only controlled 3% of their trade centered almost solely in energy and luxury goods
and it's all done so the richest in the US can swoop in and buy up the crumbs that are left of US households & the citizens become beholden to them...it's all a financial coup and it's going very well so far.
We have to shoot our own feet untill they learn how to walk.
