Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that the administration’s decision Friday night to exempt a range of electronic devices from tariffs implemented earlier this month was only a temporary reprieve, with the secretary announcing that those items would be subject to “semiconductor tariffs” that will likely come in “a month or two.”
“All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. We need to have semiconductors, we need to have chips, and we need to have flat panels – we need to have these things made in America. We can’t be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us,” Lutnick told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
I caught that the instant he said it. So they are planning another round of Market Manipulation in a month or two, got it.
We’ve already had 3 rounds, in less than 90 days. It seemed like his 90 day pause on this last round was a bit longer because he wanted to let it cool down, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of dirty money at the expense of the poors.
I’m happy for the heads up. Unfortunately, I dont have the kind of money required to take full advantage of this, but at least Ill know to hang on.
I hate to say it, but Musk was right; this guy is a moron.
This makes sense. Give the companies like Apple and nvidia time to set up some local factories. How long could it take to acquire land, set up a chip foundry, and train up staff? 90 days?
90 days and 10 dollars.
that’s a matter of years, at best. Lutnick is just lying to appease the MAGA base.
I think you flll for sarcasm.
They definitely have to stop announcing tariffs effective in next few hours. Maybe a 2 year effective date announcement allows “progress” in US reindustrialization with CHIPS act type subsidies.
These people are all fucking idiots. No business can plan anything when costs are whipsawing and our trading partners are already tired of reacting to these near daily changes.
I just don’t have language strong enough to convey my utter exasperation and the depth of my contempt for these people.
They all work for Putin. What you see is by design.
We lost the Cold War.
They don’t even have a Steve Mnuchin type character this time who at least has a clue about how things work. This time Trump surrounded himself with all of the dumbest and most loyal kool-aid drinkers.
I mean probably? No one knows what this fat, dementia and cocaine addled geriatric will do after all. Might be a month, might be next Thursday.
Thank you American voters, who voted for Trump or sat out because the opposition wasn’t “good” enough.
Sincerely,
European resident
Okay. Then thank you to your grandparents who sat idly by while Poland was invaded?
We don’t control much here. We get presented shitty options, the electoral college makes a lot of our votes not matter, and a lot of people are just trying to live.
Why do you make it sound like showing up for half a day and casting a vote is some ultimate sacrifice. That is the minimum duty of a citizen.
The opposition that ‘wasn’t “good” enough’ was funding and supporting a genocide to the hilt. The USA is a fucked, evil state.
Ah yes because the genocide has stopped with the new administration.
My first presidential election was in 1980. I have voted in every election since, and I have NEVER voted for a candidate I liked. The best I could ever hope for was the lesser of two evils, and sometimes the difference wasn’t so wide.
But that wasn’t the case in 2024, where the difference between the two sides was far wider than I have ever experienced. I am very distressed at the situation in Haza, and I did not support Biden’s weak, cowardly approach at all, but I also knew that Trump’s approach was going to be far, far worse. And Harris’ approach was an an unknown, since she refused to say anything that signalled any difference in policy from Biden.
But all of it is just blathering because that didnt make any difference in this election. It was totally rigged, and we ALL know it.
Yeah, because Trump didn’t make it clear enough that he was going to hand over as many bombs as possible to speed the genocide up so he could build a hotel/resort there. What the hell did you think would happen with the “I’ll just buy stocks in defense contractors before I escalate a war” Republican party?
Gimme a break. I hate Biden but at least he was trying to talk Netanyahu down and setup a peace deal. Biden even held bombs back until the republicans threatened to impeach him. Do I think he should have stuck to his guns, absolutely, but it’s congress that makes those decisions, not the president. Either way, thanks for choosing the worst timeline, directly or indirectly it doesn’t matter at this point.
at least he was trying to talk Netanyahu down and setup a peace deal.
This is fiction, considering all the materiel and money the US sent over. Joe Biden saw 40 beheaded babies. He’s the only one who saw this. He also said, “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” directly downplaying the casualty numbers. Maybe you actually believed it every time Vedant Patel and Matt Miller lied about having difficult conversations with their Israeli counterparts?
thanks for choosing the worst timeline, directly or indirectly it doesn’t matter at this point.
Tell that to the DNC. I don’t make these decisions. My state went for Harris. Putting aside the genocide, if you can possibly do such a thing, people’s economic security got worse while Biden was president. Whether or not you can blame the president for this is beside the point, as we should all know by now that the president gets blamed regardless (particularly by well-funded reactionary media sources). That they couldn’t counter this is, again, not my choice.
The beheaded isreali babies was a lie never happened.Stop propagating this lie.
That’s my point. Joe Biden was “the only one” who saw it, because it didn’t happen.
So how often does Putin make you suck his cock? Does he pay you for the privilege, or do you pay him?
First off, I’m not here to defend anyone. Biden and the Democrats should have been further left, and told our supposed ally to pound sand when they wanted bombs for Gaza. But they are an ally, and these deals came from Congress, so the democrats have basically zero say in what actually happens there because the republicans hold enough power there to make it so.
Secondly, don’t gaslight me. There’s plenty of news sites, it was pretty well covered, and I lived through it. I know what I read and saw. I don’t think it went far enough, and I’m pissed off it went the way it did, but it happened. A quick Google/bing/kagi search reveals plenty of results.
Thirdly, it doesn’t really matter. If you have the choice between “we’re going to let them bomb the shit out of them” and “were probably going to let them bomb the shit out of them” you don’t really get a choice on that front. You can NEVER truly be a single issue voter anyway in the US, so the fact that you choose who you didn’t means you liked the rest of Trump’s Project 2025 platform as well. You choose who’s more closely aligned with what you think is best and then you petition your congressional representative with your position. And I know we’re all looking forward to see just how far down economic security can go.
Fuck off Russian shill.
Maybe you should blame yourselves for failing to convince the American people to vote for candidates who would cut off aid to Israel. Maybe, just maybe, camping in people’s public spaces, spraypainting people’s neighborhoods with “FUCK ISRAEL”, and oh yeah, helping get a fascist dictator elected wasn’t the best way to make those people want to side with you.
I mean I sympathize with actual Palestinians. Nobody should have to suffer what they’ve suffered. But let’s be honest - Israel gets away with it for a reason. And that reason is globally, no one wants to side with Hamas (which by the way, actually films themselves murdering children. Brilliant.), and in the US, no one wants to side with edgelord protesters who just piss everyone off.
Israel may kill kids, but they actually try not to get it on video, and they spend millions on PR that portrays them as the victim rather than the aggressor (as opposed to being as visibly aggressive as possible like Palestine protesters). Maybe that has something to do with why they keep winning and you keep losing.
Maybe it’s unfair for me to paint all Palestine protesters with a broad brush. I remember one had a sign listing all her dozens of family in Gaza who had been killed. That’s moving - you need more of that, less attacking the people you want to support you.
Quite sad the amount of downvotes you are getting, it’s like the dem supporters haven’t learned their lesson yet…
For people who aren’t American, I can understand it. They rightfully should be mad at us for allowing this to happen.
For people who are American, they need to start thinking fast about how it is even possible that the Democrats failed in their one job which was to ensure Trump would not win in 2024. It’s long past time to stop thinking about individual voters and start thinking about feckless party leadership. Examining this fully would be like a whole textbook’s worth of words, but I think the one microcosm example that’s really worth interrogating is why Nancy Pelosi pressed the lever in favor of Rep. Cuellar in Texas (the most Republican-voting Democrat in the House in one of the most solidly blue districts) over two-time challenger Jessica Cisneros, who came within a stone’s toss of beating him in a primary.
Yeah they’re directly responsible for the path we’ve been on for decades now. They pretend to be an opposition party but are really acting like controlled opposition. This is why even now as people are being illegally sent to El Salvadorian death camps, we get little more from Dems than “concern” and angry letters. Maybe if Harris hadn’t spent so much time courting Dick Cheney’s approval, she wouldn’t have lost.
To the people who saw my post and downvoted: it was not my choice that the Democrats ran the senile walking dead genocidal maniac in 2024. Then when it became too obvious how senile he was and they couldn’t lie about it anymore, they passed the torch directly to a woman who was so dogshit at campaigning that she had to drop out of the 2020 primaries before a single vote was even cast.
You could blame us for not putting up a more honest candidate there in the first place, but there isn’t a structure in place to even allow such a thing to happen. Consider what happened to Bernie 2020, for example.
It doesn’t matter. The choice was the status quo or something worse for everyone on earth, economically.
Everyone in the world knows the US election system is crap and has been getting more crap for decades. The world isn’t angry at you specifically. The world is angry at the apathy of the general American public and the sheer amount of influence America has over the global economy since WW2.
There were protests for George Floyd. There was the MeToo movement.
But when it comes to a convicted felon and known criminal taking the top seat? Crickets. Anything that isn’t US centric, such as the global economy, doesn’t seem to rustle any of your jimmies. Hence, we’re pissed because your apathy has brought in economic instability on all of us when it could have all been easily prevented.
Something as small as ‘not having the right candidate’ or even ‘sticking it to the libs’ means nothing to the rest of the world when what we have now it’s the alternative.
For a country with so much global power, the populace is so, so, so small minded.
If there was a viable non-genocide candidate, o wolf have voted for him.
Just like the tariffs would not be paused. Cannot trust a thing that comes out of their mouths. Even if they think it is the truth and the current plan, the plan can change on the whim of agent orange.
Yep. Trump’s going to contradict this statement within 24hrs, guaranteed.
You’re correct, he just announced that there is no pause on electronic device tariffs.
Lmao of fucking course… God damn do I hate this timeline.
It’s frankly embarrassing that I don’t see more people pointing out that his name very easily becomes NutLick.
Lol. Now this is the content I’m here for.
I still don’t get the point of tariffs. Here’s a Reason TV interview w/ Danial Hannan, a Conservative politician in the UK (bias: Reason TV is a “libertarian” publication), and he says there are three arguments the Trump administration is making in favor of tariffs:
- They bring in revenue and can reduce income tax
- Bringing jobs back to America
- Negotiating tactic
The interviewee argues all three are wrong, and argues that they’re incompatible:
- if they’re bringing in revenue, then they’re not bringing in jobs because the imports are still coming in
- if they’re bring back jobs, they’re not bringing in much revenue, because local products don’t pay the tariffs
- if they’re a negotiating tool they’re doing neither of the other two
Here are some other fun arguments:
Show me a country that wholly relies on manufacturing and I will show you a poor, developing country. You move from agriculture, then to manufacturing, then to services. And with each of those moves, you get richer, you work shorter hours, and you live better.
So why would we want to move manufacturing here? It’s just going to shift jobs away from services to manufacturing, which would be a net reduction in total value.
The better solution is to train the workforce to develop services, which are more lucrative. There’s an argument that we need some amount of local production for national security reasons (i.e. if supply lines get disrupted, we need some minimum level of production capacity in wartime), but we don’t need to make everything.
Most of us are not getting richer, nor working shorter hours, nor living better than our parents. We’re past “services” and on into “parasites.”
In principal, tariffs can prop up domestic industry that is having trouble competing with cheaper imported products. In practice, this winds up being really complicated, because the world is a lot more interdependent than it was 80 years ago.
Is that actually true though? You have access to technology that was science fiction when your parents were kids, and at least in the US (I don’t know where you live), median inflation adjusted earnings are higher than they were 45 years ago.
Statistics obviously don’t matter to individuals at the fringes, but they are helpful in understanding trends. Maybe you are worse off than your parents were at your age, idk, but the statistics show that more people are better off than worse off (that’s what medians show).
tariffs can prop up domestic industry
In theory, yes. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated. There’s good evidence that Hoover’s tariffs, which were intended to revitalize American industry, turned a recession into a depression.
Tariffs make things more expensive, which means people buy less. If people buy less, companies produce less, which means they need fewer employees. This can become a terrible cycle where demand craters, jobs vanish, and inflation skyrockets. Tariffs can maybe work if targeting a specific industry, broad tariffs just make everything more expensive.
Economists tend to prefer stimulating the economy with lower borrowing rates, which reduces the cost to expand business, which can lead to more employment, which can lead to more money circulation, etc. It can also lead to more inflation, since there’s more dollars chasing the same number of goods, so it needs to be used with care (i.e. only when production/employment is lagging).
I personally think that, largely speaking, if imports are cheaper than local production, that’s a good thing! You’re getting more value for your money, so people can live a better life with the same amount of money. Since local production is no longer valuable, people can take more lucrative jobs, like services. Cheaper imports should be embraced, not tariffed, and people should be trained properly to qualify for those better jobs.
Look at the top 10 exports:
- Mineral fuels including oil: US$320.1 billion (15.5% of total exports)
- Machinery including computers: $252.4 billion (12.2%)
- Electrical machinery, equipment: $213.9 billion (10.4%)
- Vehicles: $143.8 billion (7%)
- Aircraft, spacecraft: $134.2 billion (6.5%)
- Optical, technical, medical apparatus: $106.3 billion (5.1%)
- Pharmaceuticals: $94.4 billion (4.6%)
- Plastics, plastic articles: $80.1 billion (3.9%)
- Gems, precious metals: $73.8 billion (3.6%)
- Organic chemicals: $51.9 billion (2.5%)
Those require a lot of expertise to produce, and they’re largely complex, finished goods. That means there’s a lot of non-factory type work that goes into them, unlike iPhones and plastic crap, which are mostly labor (the technical bits are already largely designed by Americans).
We should be looking to outsource more (anything we can’t automate), not less, and use the savings to improve education. If you want better jobs, more access to advanced tech, and generally a better life, this is how you get it.
I have nifty tech, yes, but I also have vaccination deniers, Nazis, and my fourth “once in a lifetime” economic crises. I’m never going to buy a house. I’m never going to retire. I’ll probably never even pay off my student loans.
I personally think that, largely speaking, if imports are cheaper than local production, that’s a good thing!
I’m hardly an economist, right? But I agree with you, broadly speaking. But first covid, and now Trump round two is showing is the weakness of global integration. As long as everything goes smoothly, it’s jam for everyone. But let something screw up the logistics, or someone duck up the balance of trade, and everything can go to shit really fast. There are lots of things we can’t make here, but we rely on them. That is less than ideal.
I don’t know that tariffs are the way to address that issue, or even if it needs to be addressed at all. O do know that the way Trump is doing it is all wrong.
One of my sons is an accelerationist, and his argument has been that Trump is a piece of shit, but in the course of exploiting it for his own gain, he has ripped the mask off a lot of evil that’s already in the system. So now we know that we’ll have to undo all of Trump’s damage, but also that we can’t just return to status quo ante.
My view is that this is a problem statement, not a proposed solution. And it is clear that, consistent with the law of entropy, the clean-up process always takes more energy than making the mess did.
Agreed. With the added bonus that we have too live in the system while we burn it down. I’m not a huge fan of the idea, but then, I’m a maintainer by nature.
my fourth “once in a lifetime” economic crises
That’s because they aren’t “once in a lifetime,” they happen about every 8 years or so, historically speaking. The news sensationalizes everything.
You probably will buy a house, given that >60% of Americans are home owners. It may not feel like it, but incomes have a habit of going up, relative to inflation, so if you stay diligent in keeping lifestyle inflation under control, improve your skillset, and keep an eye out for better employment opportunities, wealth is pretty much inevitable.
Then again, I don’t know you, and statistics have a habit of not applying to individuals.
Trump round two is showing is the weakness of global integration
I think it’s the opposite.
We had shortages of some things in COVID, sure, but a couple years later, everything was largely back to normal, but with a bunch of extra inflation and some housing debt. That’s pretty good for a worldwide medical crisis! If we look at the current situation with eggs, which are largely locally produced, we can see that it’s not a problem unique to global supply chains.
What Trump is showing us is how important global supply chains are. His tariffs are completely wrecking the stock market, and if he commits, it’ll trickle down to increased unemployment and loss of good jobs, especially if other countries retaliate with tariffs of their own. Prices will go up, so you’ll just get less for your money.
There are lots of things we can’t make here, but we rely on them. That is less than ideal.
Why is it less than ideal? As long as you have multiple options for suppliers, you’re not at risk of any one country screwing you over.
Do you grow your own food? Weave your own cloth? Build your own house? No, you pay others to do that so you can focus on whatever you’re good at. A ideational professional farmer is a lot more efficient than I at growing food, and the same goes for other jobs.
We can expand that to countries and it still largely applies. China is good at producing stuff, and the US is good at designing stuff, so we offload the less desirable production work and keep the design work in house. We don’t want to rely exclusively on China, so we also offload work to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and others. If relations worsen with China like they are now, we can shift production to other countries.
How is that a bad thing? I’m failing to see how the pre-Trump situation is bad.
This guy doesn’t even know what semiconductors are.
Nutlick is not a smart man
Probably thinks conductor like for a symphony driving a semi truck
Everyone learned about those in grammar, don’t insult the man’s intelligence.
These power tripping motherfuckers get off on purposefully stepping on rakes.
I wish it was that. No, this is actual evil, not incompetence. Trump has turned the US economy into the largest pump and dump scheme ever. Worse, he’s bragging about how his friends made billions. I can’t even believe this is happening. I’m in utter shock. I knew Trump would be bad, but straight up flaunting corruption like it’s a joke and even bringing the SCOTUS on board with this. I’m just gob smacked.
No, this is actual evil, not incompetence.
It’s both. You may have heard of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the dictatorship of the subnormal bullies.
I get it, I really do. It is malevolent, but I also think they have the stupidity to think that it will work. It won’t. They are dumb, power-vaccuming, racketeering, embezzling white supremacists who think they really are rebuilding manufacturing in the US.
Your right. It could be both. I mean, my wife said to me the other day that she heard Trump was doing the tariffs to lower the bond interest rates. I said while in some types of recessions that’s true, that wouldn’t work in this case and you’d have to be an idiot to think it would. Sure enough the next day Trump puts a stay on tariffs to most of the world because the bond market got rocked. All I could think of is omg, are they really that fucking stupid?
Tbf the bond market getting rocked was in large part due to Canada, Europe, and Japan doing coordinated but relatively minor sales of the bonds they hold as part of the tariff response. Carney probably understands global finances more than any other world leader for getting that done the way he did.
Howard, you ignorant slut.
Is this a Gov’t version of surge pricing? Fluctuate as they see fit to manipulate the markets. They get rich, we get screwed.
Yay more chaos.
