How Will the Economy Improve?

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I am just going to put this out there...

Perhaps the purpose of the tariffs isn't to put pressure on other countries but instead to put pressure on the US. In much the same way that Trump magnified an immigration problem in order to "save" it, he might be doing the same with the economy. He can improve the economy and then blame Biden for the chaotic mess we just went through.

BUT, how will he improve things? What is the plan? The Plan is and always has been to END SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA. Americans, Republicans, and oligarchs are going to be crying at economic losses and just begging for an end to the sanctions to improve energy costs. He's getting popular support.

Trump can additionally de-escalate trade wars against countries that also end sanctions against Russia. His popularity will rise again and it will all be swept under the rug or at least that is what I think the plan is...

 

[Jarhyn]

The economy will improve only if we nuke the Republicans and usher in an unbridled progressive government.

That means that the Democrats need to be replaced by yes, the Bernies rather than the Hillarys.

It means recognizing that "moderates" have been being led as controlled opposition towards a right-shifting Overton window.

The problem is that this will not happen, because the media is as much controlled opposition as the "moderates".

The only way to break out of this is really the disruption of the power of the news media industry in favor of a more democratic form of information sharing and vetting that is resistant to gaming.

 

[KCFlyer]

The problem is that this will not happen, because the media is as much controlled opposition as the "moderates".

"The media" theses days is Aunt Millie on Twitter and Facebook

 

[Jarhyn]

The problem is that this will not happen, because the media is as much controlled opposition as the "moderates".

"The media" theses days is Aunt Millie on Twitter and Facebook

No, the media these days is still CNN, Fox, Breitbart, etc.

It just gets filtered on through Aunt Millie sometimes.

The point here being painfully visible through the fact that nobody in the media is still discussing Luigi. All my friends love Luigi. He was all the buzz, but somehow Aunt Millie doesn't even know who that is.

If the media were not controlled by such interests, the media wouldn't have quit reporting abruptly on the shooting of a CEO who murdered untold thousands through his death panels.

"The revolution will not be televised."

 

[Swammerdami]

"Plan" ?? You over-estimate the cognition of this oafish brute. His loyal underlings must read entrails to derive a plan from their Chief's babblings.

It is the job of White House Chief of Staff to keep the "team" focused on POTUS's "plans." But Susie Wiles is just a lobbyist and campaign director. Her B.A. is in English. By contrast, her predecessor Jeff Zients was an ex-CEO who had headed OMB and NEC and the PMAB, and salvaged healthcare.gov. His B.A. in poli sci was summa cum laude.

Elon Musk and other billionaires have a big role in feeding policy words into the Oaf's mouth. While most millionaires don't like economic downturns, downturns are good for billionaires! They like to buy assets when "there is blood on the streets"; and the $2000-per-trick girls will be cutting their prices.

Billionaires have great opportunities if they can guess the Clown's timing. The German stock market has plunged 11% since mid-March; Japan has lost 15% since January; Canada has lost 10% since January; UK's FTSE-100 is down 10% since early March; Australia's index down over 10% since February. Shanghai is the one major stock market that is holding up. Gold -- the "safe haven" -- fell a bit today but is still $98 per gram, up 16% on the year to date.

 

[RVonse]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

 

[Patooka]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

Your "finding out" moment is going to be epic, bro.

 

[ImGod]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

25 million people have 401ks tied to the stock market. Holding $6.7 trillion in assets. Not to mention pension funds.

"Stock market speculators" taking a hit are more likely little guys in the labor class who just wanted to retire.

 

[RVonse]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

25 million people have 401ks tied to the stock market. Holding $6.7 trillion in assets. Not to mention pension funds.

"Stock market speculators" taking a hit are more likely little guys in the labor class who just wanted to retire.

If lower 401k values cause people not to spend as much that will also cause prices and "inflation" lower.

In the meantime, the tariffs bring more local jobs to people who can and want to produce. It might be your individual goal to retire at an early age, but that should not be the national policy to encourage everyone young and old to retire and not produce. Someone actually has to produce the stuff we consume.

 

[ImGod]

Trump is talking interest rate cuts to help ease the markets some. But if they lower rates with this tax hike, inflation could get entirely out of control.

He really wants the rates lowered because US debt is rolling over to higher rates soon. So the interest on the debt will interfere with other tax cuts and increase deficit spending. Hence the $5 Trillion debt limit increase.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-jerome-powell.html

 

[ImGod]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

25 million people have 401ks tied to the stock market. Holding $6.7 trillion in assets. Not to mention pension funds.

"Stock market speculators" taking a hit are more likely little guys in the labor class who just wanted to retire.

If lower 401k values cause people not to spend as much that will also cause prices and "inflation" lower.

In the meantime, the tariffs bring more local jobs to people who can and want to produce. It might be your individual goal to retire at an early age, but that should not be the national policy to encourage everyone young and old to retire and not produce. Someone actually has to produce the stuff we consume.

What an odd take.

Your policy is old people should keep working until death because saving for retirement was greedy? What do you consider early retirement?

Local jobs will not return here to offset the economic downturn. There are no incentive to move a factory here for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars while this administration is in charge. He could pull the tariffs or change the rates tomorrow and upset the economics of moving. They have no set policy and turn on a dime. It's cheaper short term to reduce production, layoff workers, pay the tariffs, raise prices, and wait for the next election.

In the mean time we are handing out $10 billion to farmers so they can maybe weather this https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-retaliation-us-farm-goods-130116146.html

You know those welfare queens driving tractors.

 

[Elixir]

I nominate “the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now” as the stupidest trumpsucking economic claptrap ever put forth on these pages.
Recessions are great for people sitting on piles of cash and liquid assets. When Joe Plumber defaults on his home loan, they can pick it up for pennies on the dollar.
WHY Vonse wants to see further concentrations of wealth at the top, is a mystery. He shows no sign of being in the top 0.1% of wealth holders, but he’s either that, or in the bottom 1% of economic idiots.

 

[TomC]

In the meantime, the tariffs bring more local jobs to people who can and want to produce.

What could possibly make you think that?

When ordinary people's buying power declines the first thing to go is local jobs.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

25 million people have 401ks tied to the stock market. Holding $6.7 trillion in assets. Not to mention pension funds.

"Stock market speculators" taking a hit are more likely little guys in the labor class who just wanted to retire.

If lower 401k values cause people not to spend as much that will also cause prices and "inflation" lower.

In the meantime, the tariffs bring more local jobs to people who can and want to produce. It might be your individual goal to retire at an early age, but that should not be the national policy to encourage everyone young and old to retire and not produce. Someone actually has to produce the stuff we consume.

I admire your optimism, even if it is a "glass one tenth" full kind of optimism.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Republican congress critters do not have to worry too much about their seats until serious elections in Nov 2026 and a little bit before then to change economic forecasts. So Trump basically has a full year to end Russian sanctions, give tax cuts, get some other countries to bend the knee to Putin as well. In the meantime, expect chaotic shit flung at the wall like "inflation and recessions are actually good" to mitigate the risk of people getting thrown out of office before elections even happen.

 

[robnisch]

With asset prices like home pricing so high, the economy actually needs some kind of recession right now. The only way to get asset prices to go lower is for people to stop bidding them up.

With the boomers retiring and the tariffs bringing in local jobs, middle class employment should remain good even though the stock market for the speculators will take a hit. If the stock speculators do worse but the labor class does better that sounds fine to me.

Tariffs encourage local productive work and discourage consumption by taxing it. That also sounds great.

25 million people have 401ks tied to the stock market. Holding $6.7 trillion in assets. Not to mention pension funds.

"Stock market speculators" taking a hit are more likely little guys in the labor class who just wanted to retire.

If lower 401k values cause people not to spend as much that will also cause prices and "inflation" lower.

In the meantime, the tariffs bring more local jobs to people who can and want to produce. It might be your individual goal to retire at an early age, but that should not be the national policy to encourage everyone young and old to retire and not produce. Someone actually has to produce the stuff we consume.

What an odd take.

Your policy is old people should keep working until death because saving for retirement was greedy? What do you consider early retirement?

Local jobs will not return here to offset the economic downturn. There are no incentive to move a factory here for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars while this administration is in charge. He could pull the tariffs or change the rates tomorrow and upset the economics of moving. They have no set policy and turn on a dime. It's cheaper short term to reduce production, layoff workers, pay the tariffs, raise prices, and wait for the next election.

In the mean time we are handing out $10 billion to farmers so they can maybe weather this https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-retaliation-us-farm-goods-130116146.html

You know those welfare queens driving tractors.

Yes. It takes 3 to 5 years to build a new plant in the US. They will just not do that in an unstable market. They will cut back and wait it out.

 

[bilby]

The only way to break out of this is really the disruption of the power of the news media industry in favor of a more democratic form of information sharing and vetting that is resistant to gaming.

Or to capture a unicorn, or invent a perpetual motion machine, or to switch to using rocking-horse shit for fertilizer.

 

[bilby]

The problem is that this will not happen, because the media is as much controlled opposition as the "moderates".

"The media" theses days is Aunt Millie on Twitter and Facebook

Indeed it is. But her real name is Sergei, and she works in St Petersburg.

 

[scombrid]

The problem is that this will not happen, because the media is as much controlled opposition as the "moderates".

"The media" theses days is Aunt Millie on Twitter and Facebook

Facebook and Twitter are whatever the algorithm feeds people. They are also curated media.

 

[TomC]

Yes. It takes 3 to 5 years to build a new plant in the US. They will just not do that in an unstable market. They will cut back and wait it out.

Who the hell would be dumb enough to invest in a big manufacturing plant in a place teetering on the brink of major recession?

Maybe RVonse, but nobody smarter than that.
Tom