But “said” is just another word for “lied” in the context of Trump. Who knows what the actual reality is. In many cases we haven’t heard from the countries involved in these “deals” yet, nor seen anything signed (or even written down), which is a series of red flags. In this case we have some confirmation from Japan, at least, but nothing in writing.
The only thing that seems certain is that the trade deal is leaving everyone worse off than before. Elements that Trump is touting - e.g. Japan being open to US vehicles and agriculture. It already was - they had some agricultural tariffs, but everything else was pretty much nonexistant; they just never wanted what America has to offer, in those regards. American car companies are designing and building giant vehicles purely for the domestic market, with no consideration for what works elsewhere; as a result many other countries don’t want them (they don’t even fit on the roads, for one). Japan buys California rice, but is, for understandable reasons, big on domestic food production. Only when demand exceeds the supply of domestic rice do they buy significant quantities from the US.
American consumers are in for a shock - up until now we haven’t felt the impact of the tariffs, because importers mass-purchased before they went into effect, and assuming the tariffs would be temporary, have been eating any excess costs. The Trump administration claims exporters are eating the cost, but it’s a very obvious lie - the data shows that, discounting tariffs, import prices have actually gone up. As soon as importers come to terms with the fact that the tariffs are here to stay, prices are going up to match them.
Well, yes, they’re right, they certainly aren’t achievable.
It’s increasingly shocking to me that the press continues to sane-wash Trump, even as he says crazier and crazier things. We get headlines along the lines of, “Trump promises drug costs will go down” when he says something that’s completely insane and which would be embarrassing even if a small child said it.
This is a huge problem - Trump is always speaking gibberish, even when he says words that appear to make sense, he actually means something else by them. And what he thinks they mean is usually based on whatever delusion exists only inside his head, so there’s no connection to reality. Which means any pronouncement is worthless, in terms of information conveyed.
In this case, even if Japan isn’t imposing a reciprocal tariff, Japanese consumers, like everyone else in the world, are turned off by Trump’s nonsense and are far less likely to buy US goods. (Though in Japan’s case, Trump is making the biggest deal about products they traditionally have not and still won’t be buying from the US.)
@sqlrob
Yeah, pretty much universally the impact of these tariffs is to increase costs to American consumers and damage domestic production, because even in the cases where there are US-made alternatives, they’re going to be equally or even more expensive. I know Trump is impervious to being educated, and he’s very fixated on “winning” via tariffs, but he’s surrounded by people who know better. It sure seems like their goal is to destroy the American economy.
Supposedly only 1% of the population are psychopaths, but it’s pretty clearly more like 25%, at least selectively. “Selectively” in the sense that some people are effectively only psychopaths towards members of “out groups.” I suppose the good news, if they’re not “really” psychopaths, is that education can (theoretically) fix that. (The bad news is that we’re moving in the opposite direction, which means even more people are going to be like this.)
