It's not even a week since Secretary of Commerce Lutnick was explaining how he wants to bring back millions of jobs 'screwing the little screws in iPhones' to Amercia ?
There is really a good chance that we will develop a deep understanding of how the French Revolution happened and why they went straight to guillotines.
Nothing about the tariffs make any sense. The want to use the tariffs to negotiate with countries but also say they want to use tariffs to bring back manufacturing. If you are using tariffs to negotiate then once the country gives you what you want, you have to lift the tariff thus the free market keeping manufacturing overseas. If you want to bring back manufacturing then you can't use the tariff to negotiate.
I am genuinely at a loss at how his supporters don't understand this.
> I am genuinely at a loss at how his supporters don't understand this.
His supporters value blind loyalty and obedience, not logic. They don’t stand for themselves, they stand against others. They’ll gladly suffer if they think the other side is getting it worse. They’re the perfect target to be exploited.
Do you have a source for that? I hear that sentiment expressed often by Americans I meet here, but I never saw anyone explicitly saying "yes, I/we value blind loyalty". Is blind loyalty something Trump followers officially identify with?
Can you provide any source in history where someone said they identified with being a blind follower?
The evidence comes in the form of continued support after each incident of hypocrisy, lying, etc
Why would someone say they blindly follow someone when that's bad?
> I hear that sentiment expressed often by Americans I meet here
I am not American.
> but I never saw anyone explicitly saying "yes, I/we value blind loyalty".
Not only do they show it through actions, they talk about it constantly. All you need are the keywords “Trump loyalty” and you get more examples than you know what to do with.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/06/donald-tr...
> “I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive and more than energy,” Trump once said. […]
> According to people who know him well, Trump’s definition of loyalty is blunt. “Support Donald Trump in anything he says and does,” […] “No matter what,” […] “Or else,” […] “I think he defines it as allegiance,” […] “And it’s not allegiance to the flag or allegiance to the country—it’s allegiance to Trump.”
The finer points don't matter. If it did, they'd be wondering why the nation is not awash in coal jobs and why Obamacare wasn't repealed. Both of those were supposed to have happened by 2020.
Tariffs are sold to them as "hitting back" against countries "exploiting America". They don't know what they are or how they work, and they definitely do not think of it as a tax, which is the definition you'd see in any AP Macroeconomics textbook.
All that matters is maintaining the illusion that "he's fighting for people like me".
> maintaining the illusion that "he's fighting for people like me"
There is no illusion - if Trump was a profesional working in any trade, the plebs wouldn't hire him, yet they elected him president.
It's just that the plebs think Trumps is the aristocrat most like them, and by electing him they somehow screw the arisrocrats over.
Not to mention no one is investing in manufacturing if the economic conditions to support it get changed every day or two.
Which is the biggest flaw in all this. If the goal was to bring consumer electronics manufacturing back to the US, adding a tariff that goes up every quarter would make sense. People could make plans and build factories. YC might even fund something.
Trump doesn't have the authority to set permanent tariffs. All this is being done as a temporary measure under the Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is for wars. These backdoor tariffs are being challenged in court, and there's a good chance of the plaintiffs winning.[1]
For tariffs to stick, Congress has to do it. The Constitution gives Congress sole power over tariffs. There's a long-term track on this, going through the US Trade Representative's office, with Federal Register notices and public comments. Last week Greer was up on Capitol Hill testifying before a congressional committee. That's the normal path by which tariff changes are made. Greer is so out of the loop that he hadn't been told about the big tariff on China. That change came out while he was in front of the committee. He was publicly humiliated. Which means he can't do his job of negotiating with other countries on behalf of the US. Greer may quit.
When you dig into this, you don't find "4D chess".
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/04/10/can-tru...
Typical cult leader stuff: say and do increasingly indefensible and nonsensical stuff to isolate your true believers even more.
That's what you get for electing a president with the intelectual and emotional maturity of a 5 year old.
Oh, oh, also, electing a felon, you get a lot of grifring, including, but not limited to the trump crypto scam, the insider trading Trump boasted about on video (about his friends making billions in the stock market).
This guy is not playing 5d chess guys, he's just a clown surrounded by yes men.
Maybe Trump genuienly wants to disrupt neoliberalism?
Now, a lot of people on the left use "neoliberalism" in the same way people on the right use "woke", or (Eu) football fans use the word "offside" i.e. it means "it's anything the other side do that I don't like". But neoliberalism actually has a definition used by more serious people - generally free trade and the reduction of government interference.
Maybe Trump doesn't want globalisation, maybe Trump wants stuff to be made in the USA. Maybe he wants to roll trade back to before 1968, the Hakone Maru, and the TEU container, to when he was in his 20s (a lot of people think that their formative years were the best, since that's when they were made, and I doubt Trump is an exception). I'm not saying Trump isn't a hypocrite, but is it slightly possible that some of what he says is actually what he intends to do, e.g. "making America great again" meaning in part a disruption to the globalised world order that the online left always seems to think is evil?
Maybe maybe maybe. These excuses are a fantasy. Have you considered maybe he really likes money and himself and anything outside of that doesn't fire any neurons?
I'm not saying Trump isn't a hypocrite, but is it slightly possible that some of what he says is actually what he intends to do, as I said in my comment.
He's dumb, sure. He's out of his depth. He's greedy. But he also has strong opinions (some of which are consistent, some ... less so) on how the US should be run. The idea that he doesn't have some political agenda when he spends hours ranting about it and seems to be implementing bits of it is just pure fantasy land.
Have you heard the engineering adage "the purpose of a system is what it does"?
Second-guessing the motivations of the Trump administration is tiresome. Let's just judge it by what it does and its effects, both speak for themselves.
> Maybe Trump doesn't want globalisation, maybe Trump wants stuff to be made in the USA.
As I said, what he is doing is not going to get stuff made in the US. Even if we had all of the raw materials needed (we don't), the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub. That is the missing piece to all of these conversations. So we don't have the materials, we don't have the skills, and we seem to be attacking education so it doesn't look training people to do these things is in the cards? How is this plan meant to work?
The only lifeline I can throw your comment is that he wants to invade Canada and Greenland to steal their raw materials which at least lines up with the idea of getting raw materials to build up manufacturing.
> Even if we had all of the raw materials needed (we don't),
What is this brand of defeatist bullpucky? There is no raw material which is not contained within the borders of the US. Only some which are less expensive to extract elsewhere.
> the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub.
I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
> What is this brand of defeatist bullpucky? There is no raw material which is not contained within the borders of the US. Only some which are less expensive to extract elsewhere.
Let me rephrase this. We don't have the raw materials unless we destroy national parks and pollute our waterways. We also don't have the facilities to process these materials.
> I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
This link says 2026 not 2025.
> Let me rephrase this. We don't have the raw materials unless we destroy national parks and pollute our waterways.
I've got news for you, that ship sailed a hundred, two hundred years ago. Most of the eastern seaboard of the US was clearcut of old growth forest. What we have now on the east coast is new growth. Still, the number of acres of old growth remaining is staggering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests#Uni... And I see no problem with forestry when practiced sustainably.
If you're asking for no resource extraction, then you're asking either for negative economic growth or exploitation of someone else somewhere else. Far more responsible to regulate the industry here, where we have jurisdiction to ensure it is done sustainably, safely, and equitably. And far better for economic integrity in cases of pandemic or war.
> And I see no problem with forestry when practiced sustainably.
I don't have a problem with most things when done sustainably. What in the history of the US makes you believe it will be done sustainably? Gas companies still publicly deny or downplay climate change.
> What in the history of the US makes you believe it will be done sustainably?
Unions, labor law, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike in which the national guard and police used automatic weapons against striking workers, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster immortalized in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz7oguguIZE the winning of the work week, overtime pay, healthcare of any kind, holidays, payment in legal tender, existence of the country in the first place... so much more. I won't sugar coat it, no human endeavor is ever perfect, but I find the attitude that we can't do it, or we don't want to do it here as backwards and regressive. Worthy of rebuke. If our society depends on something, we should have no shame in doing it here. And if we can't figure out how to do it here safely, then we definitely shouldn't be doing it elsewhere.
These are all great accomplishments for labor law but they have nothing to do with sustainability. Maybe I'm not being clear, when I say sustainably, I mean for the environment. Most energy companies won't even admit climate change is real or severely downplay it. So no, I still don't think it will be done sustainably.
> These are all great accomplishments for labor law
You asked me about what inspired me. I told you. If you need environmental wins, there's:
- Erin Brockovich vs. Pacific Gas & Electric (1993 Settlement)
- Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto (2018)
- Robert Bilott vs. DuPont (PFOA Contamination Cases, 1990s–2017)
- Roundup Litigation Beyond Johnson (2019–2020s)
- Founding of the EPA
- Passage of the clean water act
Just for a start.
Feel free to snatch defeat from the jaws of success before ever trying, though. Much easier that way. And probably someone else's fault.
> Now, a lot of people on the left use "neoliberalism" in the same way people on the right use "woke", or (Eu) football fans use the word "offside" i.e. it means "it's anything the other side do that I don't like". But neoliberalism actually has a definition used by more serious people - generally free trade and the reduction of government interference.
... That's how it's used on the left
>Maybe Trump doesn't want globalisation,
Strange of him to renegotiate NAFTA in his first term then
economics is a lot of made up theory and not hard science. you won't get any of his smarter supporters replying because even if they did you're showing an inability to model best-case. i mean you're personally at a loss?
if you took the average supporter of both sides neither seem smart. the clips they have of both sides is shameful. but those aren't the people implementing the policy, but they both support their tribes.
if you really are interested in understanding how they think you couldn't do worse than this:
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
The French Revolution didn’t go “straight to guillotines”, not even close.
Had to lynch a lot of people first!
I cannot tell what point you're making here. Why is this important to say?
The original comment was based on a popular but wildly inaccurate summary of the French Revolution, where the average Joes got increasingly fed up with their rich oppressors and eventually decided to execute them. The revolutionaries never adopted a general policy that rich oppressors should face death, and most people who got guillotined were average Joes who ended up on the wrong side of some political dispute or another.
I cannot tell either. It seems to be a potentially well-intended remark about correcting an inaccurate historical analogy to the current U.S. national leadership. It may be important to remark upon potentially inaccurate information, even if in the comments section of an Internet forum, because otherwise more people will have a wrong impression of the French Revolution and the role of guillotines. When they go to watch Les Miserables they will also be surprised. This last remark was unimportant and for that, I deeply apologize.
Sorry for being vague. I was trying to point out that the first phase of the revolution (“the Revolution of 1789”) was basically a liberal aristocratic revolution not unlike the American Revolution. The radical egalitarians that orchestrated the Terror didn’t seize power until a few years later.
I stand corrected - thanks to pointing this out. Got to go back to some history books ! While I was aware that the Terror took some years to seize power, I always thought that guillotine usage started much sooner.
There were indeed quite a few informal lynchings in the early days, but not the organized mass executions of 1793-94 (which were largely provoked by war hysteria).
It’s the looting of America while they use the same old racial ideologies so their supporters don’t break rank even under abuse.
Racism is a tool wielded by the owner class to divide workers as they wage class warfare against them.
The grassroots development of class consciousness and a united working class is our only way out of this.
if you were in Russia in the late XIX century then yes
but history learns (this is also why we cannot ever have another revolutionary hero, nor another french revolution) so no.
class consciousness and a united "working class" will not help us anymore. a lot has changed since those ideas made sense
They gave every strong indication of their incompetence possible - over years. A bunch of people said "yay for incompetence" and here we are.
These are the people who score in the bottom 20% and make up conspiracy theories on how they were right and it's the establishment who's wrong.
Any random person waiting at a bus stop would likely have managed things better.
It's not that they are managing it badly that I'm talking about.
It's that they manage it in a way to maximize their personal profits, with an absolute disregard of the ordinary folks.
Tariffs are one example - none of it makes sense, but companies still pay millions for a 'dinner at Mar-a-Lago' to get a favorable treatment.
What's hapening with law firms is even more disgusting.
I get the feeling that a lot of Democrats and 'real' Republicans thinks that he will get what he wants and then they just wait out 4 years. It's an almost 80 years narcissist, who doesn't care about people nor law, and who dreams about becoming a King. It only gets worse from here, not better.
If that was the case there'd be more coherency. There's these days where multiple people are asked a question, each answer is a shocking departure from policy and they all contradict and then an administrator comes out and is like "you're going to bring mining the global supply for rare earth minerals to Ohio?! Geology does not support you my good man".
So not even cynicism is supported by the evidence.
I mean they're also pillaging of course. Incompetent And malice. Both are possible
They just spouted two different justifications, jobs will come back to America, and robots will do the jobs. I guess the most generous explanation is jobs for people making robots in America by combining the two separate statements, but that's not even close to what they said.
they're manoeuvring to win the vote of American manufacturing robots for 2028. suffrage for manufacturing robots is something the far left & far right could both support, although there may be some disagreement over if the robots themselves or their owners should be allocated the votes.
The idea that you could "bring industry back" into the US with blanket tariffs is delusional and demonstrates a complete ignorance of the complexity of economic ecosystems and industrial culture. It takes a long time for sustained expertise and the needed supply chains to grow and form and mature in an economy.
You could argue that perhaps a selective application of tariffs might help the formation of such domestic industry, but tariffs are not something to wield lightly.
“I don’t know how you can be that stupid. How do you get to be president and then you’re stupid?”
- Donald Trump (actual quote)The French Revolution was against the establishment.
I wouldn’t argue Trump represents the establishment.