Hacker News Reader

> if you agree to buy more American goods

What goods are you expecting foreigners will buy more of?

The points you've made make sense to me in a world where USA has a lot of domestic production of tangible goods. But it doesn't. USA primarily produces services - nearly 80% of GDP is service based.

And then, other countries don't want the chlorine chicken. How to sell?

The "calculations" of trade deficits not including services (which America became a services economy) is a bold choice. Ie, the iPhone might be buying from China, but if you purchase an iTunes or iCloud subscription.

It's completely possible that America produces luxury goods (ie John Deere tractors, Ford sprinter vans, airplanes) that can only have so much demand to smaller nations.

I live in the UK and I can't think of anything I buy from the US apart from Netflix for a month each year. Possibly stuff I buy indirectly but can't think of anything offhand.

Energy is probably a big one, Europe is importing a lot of LNG and oil from the US after Russia got sanctioned.

Aircraft are hardly niche products.

> Trump has been super loud for many years about his desire to get everyone to buy American. He's now gone as far as to put the largest tariffs on the countries that buy the least.

Do you expect Madagascans to buy more US goods with their $600 per capita GDP income? Because Madagascar's chief export to the US is vanilla, and it got hit with 47% tariff rate.

Or the Falkland Islands' 58% rate: is the US interested in growing its own Patagonian toothfish? Because thats what the Falklands sends to the US. What do you expect the 4000 inhabitants of those islands to buy from the US?

I read somewhere that part of the rationale is preventing countries from using other countries as a way to bypass import taxes, which does make sense if your goal is to force everyone to negotiate. Although why putting some of the largest rates on countries that almost don’t export while keeping some huge players at 10%, that I have no clue. It’d just make madagascans negotiate with some countries with lower rate, if they intended to keep the product flowing into the US..

The other theory is some of those smaller countries would accept becoming “vassal states” and house US military in exchange for more favorable terms. Madagascar and Falkland are strategically positioned, so maybe that’s the play?

> Although why putting some of the largest rates on countries that almost don’t export while keeping some huge players at 10%, that I have no clue.

Israel got 17% but Iran got 10%.

> Madagascar and Falkland are strategically positioned, so maybe that’s the play?

1. LOL: there is no "play" here. Trade deficit = bad, so must be stopped.

2. Falkland is under the UK—like Diego Garcia—and so there is no new alliance to be formed.

BTW, Diego Garcia also got hit with tariffs, even though the only inhabitants are UK and US military personnel. There's a bunch of B-2s there right now:

* https://www.twz.com/air/b-2-spirits-amassed-on-diego-garcia-...

* https://newrepublic.com/post/193523/donald-trump-tariffs-us-...

Iran can’t trade with the US, other than some pottery and crafts, which amount for a million/year tops. Same with Russia - it’s not on the tariffs list, but it doesn’t need to be anyway. It’s good shock value, gets everyone talking about that

I don’t think any of this will work favorably to the US, just trying to think what their internal logic might be. The econ guys (Bessent & the other one the name escapes me) wrote a lot about this “3 step plan” in the past few years. So far they’re playing the step 1 exactly as written…

> I don’t think any of this will work favorably to the US, just trying to think what their internal logic might be.

The "internal logic" is that Trump thinks trade deficits are bad. That's it. He's been going on about this since the 1980s:

* https://archive.is/https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-forged...

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/pol...

Every justification for that "logic" is rationalization for the decision Trump has already made.

This whole thing isn’t his idea. Trump is a hollow shell with an ill fitting suit - his entire policy is done by people like Bannon or Miller, and now Bessent, Musk and Miran

> This whole thing isn’t his idea.

There are many (forthcoming) policies that aren't his idea and he doesn't care about:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

I think tariffs are his thing.

> if they intended to keep the product flowing into the US.

At which point, the product costs much more to US consumers.

I'm not sure there's a single other example in nature where select members of a species get special rewards for making everything harder for everyone else in their communities.

That’s a good thing for corporations, which has always been the key party line for the republicans. As long as the public is good paying higher prices, profits will grow

I mean the topic of the article here is Tariffs Can Help America, and my comment was in relation to that idea. The topic was not "Trump's Ideas Are Always Smart," or "Trump is Good at Execution," or "The World Will Benefit from Donald Trump." I have not taken and therefore don't have to defend any of those positions. The tariff on the Falkland Islands may have some point or it may indeed be super dumb, but this is immaterial to my point.

The position I have taken is, I have already seen reports of countries that are willing to negotiate, and it's a good guess that Trump will ask them to buy more American stuff, and some of them will be able to. This will lead to improved earnings at US companies. Moreover, many of those companies are trading at a discount to their usual valuations right now. That's all.

> The position I have taken is, I have already seen reports of countries that are willing to negotiate, and it's a good guess that Trump will ask them to buy more American stuff, and some of them will be able to.

And those that cannot? That are too poor to 'correct' the 'problem' of trade imbalances? Sucks to be them?

Why does every single discussion online have to be about affirming moral outrage? Why aren't we allowed to talk about other things, like how tariffs may affect the stock market?

>Why does every single discussion online have to be about affirming moral outrage? Why aren't we allowed to talk about other things, like how tariffs may affect the stock market?

Well, given that my mother just retired, how the stock market is doing affects her quality of life since it may determine how much money she has. So I'm quite upset that one moron can mess with people's life savings through utter stupidity.

And though one has to prepare for downturns with regards to returns and such (having a fixed income component, cash wedge, etc), there is a level of negligence that borders on the criminal:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter#Criminally_neglig...

There's also the fact that, as a Canadian, my country was slandered with regards to an alleged drug problem on the border and was the target of earlier tariff attacks:

* http://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/world/c...

There are bigger markets than the USA in the world. Some that are even more prepared in the face of rising costs of petrol and gas, and that have seen this "Trump" hypothesis coming for several months, if not years.

USA is 17% of worldwide importations. Other growing markets (China, further integrating Europe, Africa, South America, India; even Russia, that's coming from far down) can take that cut, even if it's a temporary hard blowback. How long can the USA take a 50% cut of their importations? How long can the USA take a shift of the international exchange going to another currency than the dollar?

American exceptionalism used to be a thing. It still is, in very specific market segments, but that are now going to be heavily challenged, for sovereignty reasons rather than economic ones.

So I am not sure where is this going? Likely not in the appreciation of US stock market. Or maybe you have some factories, and factory workers, and raw materials hidden somewhere?

This is all very fuzzy. Are you saying that China and India, which have big domestic markets but are historically very protectionist, are suddenly going to reverse course, open up their domestic markets, and make their domestic companies compete with international firms? Because if you understand the domestic political situation in those countries you will know that this absolutely is not going to happen.

The thing a lot of these criticisms of the tariffs always come back to is "everyone's now going to hate the US and sell to someone else instead." But this analysis ignores the fact that the US before April 2 was radically less protective of its domestic markets than pretty much all the other major economic powers. This is a discussion I was having with people long before Trump was elected and you can always tell who has actually looked at the trade relationships of these major economies over the years and who hasn't. China for example is notorious for essentially doing what Trump is doing now, whenever it becomes a political hot button internally, they just cut off trade with some country or other. Every country is shopping around for new trade partners all the time, regardless of what the latest POTUS is up to, and there just is no magic untapped market that's going to materialize and fill the gap.

A lot of countries are simply going to lose their #1 or #2 export market with no replacement if they don't deal. Sure we can make an argument that given 20 years something magic will happen and BRICS will all become free market liberals and sing kumbaya to each other. But this year, countries will deal.

What is not fuzzy is the depth of disappointment and distrust the US has gained across the Atlantic Ocean. Which has long-term economical, cultural and political consequences.

Dealing with a friend is certainly different than dealing with a foe. The USA look nothing like a friend anymore. How do they expect this to turn out in the next 10 years?

“Never catch a falling knife”