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Phase 1: Impose Tariffs – Phase 2: ? – Phase 3: Profit
The underpants gnomes (vid) had a great plan:
1. Steal underpants, 2. …, 3. Profit
bigger
The Trump administration seems to think likewise:
1. Impose tariffs, 2. …, 3. Profit
There was already some struggle while implementing phase 1.
Phase 2 seems to create even more serious problems:
Charles Gasparino @CGasparino – 16:42 UTC · Apr 21, 2025
BREAKING: Japanese negotiators are complaining that the problem with the trade negotiations with the White House, what's delaying concrete progress and a real deal, is that US keeps changing its ask in terms of exactly what it wants, said one financial CEO who speaks regularly to country officials. Maybe it's a negotiating tactic. But the lack of publicly announced deal progress is depressing the dollar, spiking bond yields and leading to a flight to quality to gold and now Bitcoin. Developing
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Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom – 17:38 UTC · Apr 21, 2025
Not just Japan. Every diplomat I've asked about tariffs in the Middle East has told a similar story: they don't know how to engage with the Trump administration because everyone makes different demands
Also, we are really in trouble if Bitcoin is now a "flight to quality"
Every single person who works for the White House on trade seems to have a different idea of how to (ab)use the tariffs. There seems to be no big common plan to which they are all aligned to. This won't work.
Markets need rules and assurances that the rules will be adhered to. Any factor that increase insecurity will require additional security margins within each deal. When all this gets too expensive, unpredictable and complicate people will simply bail out. Money is leaving the U.S. dollar denominated markets. This creates the unusual case where share prices, treasuries and the dollar conjointly decline.
But "trust us" some pro tariff folks might say. "Phase 3 will soon come and its gonna be huge."
May be. I for one am not yet convinced.
I find your posts very informative indeed and therefore valuable. I don’t find the ‘ad hominems’ in them to quite fit, though, they’d be better without them.
Posted by: arthur brogard | Apr 20 2025 21:03 utc | 377
This is not the first time I’ve locked horns with the poster I’ve accused of being lazy. He previously tried to pass off ChatGPT-generated responses as words from the oracle of truth, demonstrating his lack of knowledge in both the inner workings of “AI” and in the subject matter being discussed.
Marxists practice criticism and self-criticism. Rather than treating my words as ad hominem, treat it as an exhortation for self-improvement.
On the other hand, some Westerners believe literacy and education to be a communist plot, so I understand if Westerners prefer to ignore my advice and remain ignorant.
https://x.com/akoz33/status/1232052025514496002
“Literacy” was always the most basic tool of totalitarian propaganda. If you are not literate you can’t be fed communist propaganda. The most steadfast anti-communist I knew in my childhood was my maternal grandfather who was illiterate. Communist propaganda did not reach him
As for the other poster I’ve criticized, his inconsistent position regarding Trump needs to be brought to light. He first sold Trump as being a potent force that will revolutionize American politics and accuse anyone who challenged his position as suffering from TDS. Then, when Trump has taken power and continued running the Empire as usual, except with a bit more theatrical flair, he shielded Trump from criticism by saying that Trump can never bring about a revolution because Trump is constrained by the system that Trump is a part of. This MoA poster did all this while promoting himself as a Marxist. I haven’t seen any authentic Marxist that believe in an omnipotent and omniscient being playing 5D chess and working in mysterious ways.
Now, onto the subject of cost of living in China.
Seen this guy?
Posted by: arthur brogard | Apr 20 2025 22:09 utc | 378
While I’m not aware of every influencer on TikTok, I’m well-informed about the living conditions in the various parts and socioeconomic strata of China. Since you shared some videos, I thought that I should introduce you to Xiaodai https://v.douyin.com/fzb_1aVjtxk/
Xiaodai’s videos are in Chinese, so I doubt they’ll appeal to you, but I just want to show you how migrant workers working in construction has economic mobility in China. Take note that most of his videos were filmed during the so-called “COVID lockdown” period of China where a bunch of outside observers were falsely claiming that Chinese economic activity came to a standstill. His earliest videos showed him, his wife and 2 kids living in cramped conditions (he himself sometimes lived in worker dorms) while saving up money to buy a proper modern apartment. This video, for example: https://v.douyin.com/HQS0hElDiZ4/ Now he has finally moved into the house he bought: https://v.douyin.com/rKxqONNpYZc/ Ever since his videos exploded in popularity, he has transitioned from being a migrant worker to selling food items (shipped online orders) back in his hometown. But even without gaining internet fame, he was well on his way to giving his children a better life than the one he experienced.
His rise in fame partially had to do with the Taiwanese people discovering his videos right when Taiwan experienced a bout of egg shortage (much like the one affecting America right now). Many in Taiwan live under the propagandized delusion that people in the Mainland are so poor that they cannot afford to eat tea eggs 茶叶蛋. Xiaodai smashed that propaganda. Xiaodai showed that the cost of living is low and even a migrant worker in a physical job can buy a house and support a family in the Mainland. This made many Taiwanese lament their own conditions as Taiwan is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis beyond just the egg shortage. This incident was significant enough that political commentators wrote articles about it, like this one: https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2023_03_29_686054.shtml (you can machine translate it)
Regarding America Against America,
I got the book. Now gotta get it translated.
Posted by: arthur brogard | Apr 20 2025 22:09 utc | 378
https://archive.org/search?query=america+against+america+wang+huning
https://ia801806.us.archive.org/12/items/america-against-america/America%20Against%20America.pdf
America Against America is available in English and can be freely downloaded. Unless you mean translating it to another language?
As an aside, you don’t need to split up your replies to me into multiple comments if you don’t want to. I only do that myself because my comments sometimes do not pass MoA’s filter, and trying to hunt down the offending paragraph is too time-consuming for me.
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 21 2025 21:10 utc | 49
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