But back to Faisal Islam. “President says tariffs will raise ‘trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and national debt’… which rather suggests a somewhat universal character to these ‘reciprocal’ tariff”. It also suggests that Trump is more stupid than had previously been thought. Meanwhile, the “tariff” against which Trump was reciprocating had been figured out.
One Tweeter put it directly. “The supposed ‘tariffs charged to the US’ are just the total trade deficit as a % of US imports by country, with a floor of 10%. Just laughably stupid”. So all those countries he has singled out are not necessarily imposing tariffs. Worse, some of those who might have been expected to side with Trump were horrified by the whole exercise.
Like Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, who denounced the move. “The policies just announced are batshit crazy. They will cause a recession. And, when they do, the people who backed them will blame foreigners or globalists or some such, and double down”. Or blame something Joe Biden did or didn’t do. Or Hillary Clinton’s emails. Or perhaps the Fake News Media will have done it.
As for the UK only being hit for 10%, while the EU gets slapped with twice that percentage, Jim Cornelius had a caution. “The reason why Trump's UK tariff is 10% and not like EU's 20% has absolutely NOTHING to do with Keir Starmer being a brilliant negotiator, or Trump loving an invite from the King. It's because we're not as good at selling stuff to the USA as the EU is”.
But they weren’t important enough to tempt any of Reform UK’s MPs, and certainly not self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, to turn up to the Commons for a statement on UK-US trade and tariffs. Maybe the great Farage will be able to explain Trump’s reasoning to us all.
Like “the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon made it onto [Trump’s] tariff hit list… but [not] Russia". Another Tweeter expanded on that finding: “Neither Russia nor North Korea got even Donald Trump's 10% minimum tariff. But he did tax [two] islands that have only penguins, and another one that contains ONLY a US military base”. Well, well.
And in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar recently, Dara Ó Briain mused “These is something particularly crass and callous about announcing a 44% trade tariff against Myanmar, this week, of all weeks”. Meanwhile, the idea that sanctions mean no US-Russia trade was debunked: the USA imported around $3 billion of Russian goods last year.
This move is down to Trump, and Trump alone. He has not sought the approval of Congress. He will blame others when it fails, as it will with the certainty of night following day. He should not be allowed to get away with any move to deflect or deny: he had ample opportunity to take advice from those who understand these things. He chose not to. His actions are about to screw over the lives of many who were foolish enough to vote for him.
Sadly, many of the rest may also be casualties. Donald Trump is not a serious politician. As Cloughie might have put it, “he’s a clown, young man”.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
Where's the beef?
ReplyDeleteCapitalist "free trade" in tariffs and international competition in action.
Even though the object of competition is to, er, eliminate competition.
Gosh, matters are so COMPLICATED these days........
The more idiotic end of the British press was crowing yesterday about a 10% tariff being imposed on the UK was yet another Brexit bonus when compared with the 20% tariff imposed on EU members states.
ReplyDeleteWhat their guide dogs failed to point out them was the higher rate for EU countries denotes they are more successful at flogging tat to the US than the Brits.
Exactly. We only got 10% as we buy more worthless crap from across the pond, than we sell them. Indeed, the bulk of our 'exports' to the USA, is from the City.
DeleteOnly our press could find some sort of 'logic' in the UK being hit with tariffs, whereas Russia, and, um, North Korea, were not. Seems Starmers arse kissing wasn't enough to get us in that exclusive club of evil scumbags.
There's a certain twisted logic. A punch in the face is less painful than two.
Delete2022 Trussterfuck. 2025 Trumperfuck.
ReplyDeleteAfter hearing that they’ve been slapped with 10% the penguins who are the sole inhabitants of Heard Island are said to be absolutely FUMMIN…
ReplyDeleteYup. Apparently they've already retaliated by cancelling a contract with the USA to supply freshly beak caught salmon.
DeleteMeanwhile, Starmer is shuttling around the Coalition Of The Killing begging for more help in something or other. It's a hard life for a lying racist toady.
ReplyDeleteProbably needs more suits and a different speech writer.
Oo look..... Even some Yanks are beginning, just beginning, to understand how corrupt and rotten is the entire system. Not much, but it's a start.
ReplyDeletehttps://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/i-went-to-the-anti-trump-protest?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2j9682
The American Empire is rotting away, dying from corruption as did the British Empire and others before it.
ReplyDeleteBeware the dying animal. See how the British turned on their own population.
It's fascinating how the same Brexiters who scream about the EU being "unfair" for not giving special preferential treatment to the UK, will cheerfully accept being kicked in the nuts by the US and even thank them for it.
ReplyDeleteThese are people so dumb, they would happily accept barely edible, chlorine washed poultry, and other foodstuffs equally unsafe (the USA has a Western World food poisoning record second to none - and not in a good way) as part of a US preferential trade deal, rather than safe food from Europe.
DeleteAt the same time these 'Britain first' merchants are also quite happy to see British farmers go to the wall as they cannot compete with the price of literal junk food from across the pond.
Yet, these same flag waving buffoons, are the first to back farmers shutting down London, whereas they cheer on the establishment cracking down on climate change protestors doing the same thing!
Good job Brexiters don't wear irony meters, or they be constantly covered in burnt plastic...
Craig Murray, historian-former ambassador-humanitarian activist, explains how Britain has slunk into warmongering line behind genocidal neonazism, apartheid and Zionism-without-qualification.
ReplyDeleteTariffs, shmariffs. Far right apologists never change.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/04/is-this-the-world-we-created/
Why are people like Craig still asking the question? The reason Western govts support genocide in Gaza is obvious.
DeleteThe Palestinian cause is 'the' last great cause celebre of the Left. Once the Palestinians are gone, so is that cause.
The right believes, with good cause, with no great causes remaining the left will finally splinter, and splintered, forever cease to be a force. Neoliberalisms greatest dream will become a reality.
As for the support for Russia, sorry, but 'presidents' that rig elections, that toss their opponents out of 5th floor windows, that imprison their opponents, that persecute the LGBT community, are not a cause celebre.
22:57.
Delete"People like Craig" are asking the questions because people like you don't ask them and run away from available truthful answers.
But you'll never understand that.
So, I agree with Craig, ask a metaphorical question, and you made that post in response?
DeleteI was wrong. You aren't just a sad fanatic, you're just a sad attention seeker.
Berties right, it is a waste of time engaging with someone who's simply cuts and pastes responses without giving a moments thought to what they mean.
Come on now, Bertie is never right. He did at least sign a petition, but he acts like that is the height of activism.
Delete20:36.
DeleteTremendous fun when you ranting righties lose it so obviously and temporarily ditch your "metaphorical" weasel words.
Meanwhile, Craig Murray and other honest men and women will continue to ask the questions you and other Quislings continue to run away from. "Metaphorically" speaking of course.
Also meanwhile, here's an excellent article from another of your targets, The Canary, exposing the extent of fuel poverty. It even includes a link to your favourite ranting rightie propaganda rag the Rothermere Daily Heil.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/04/08/fuel-poverty-rates-england/
So, in keeping with the fun element, henceforth you are ol' Micawber2 with the same ol' fruitloop troll agenda.
Have a "nice" Quisling day.
Yes, Anonymous @ 20.38, that's a conclusion I came to some time ago. It's just attention-seeking bhaviour.
DeleteHe does none of the various things I recently suggested as rather more useful in opposing Israeli slaughter and genocide than shouting at the clouds (and himself), seeming content rather to spend all his time browsing the Canary or watching Youtube and then composing lurid crap to post on here with links that no one ever uses.
And anyone who can state, among all the other guff, that, since last summer, the political system in the UK amounts to 'outright fascism' clearly wants simply to be noticed rather than taken seriously. In the words of G.H.Lewes that i read just yesterday, no one who writes only for effect can ever expect to be effective.
Still, it works on some people; it's noticeable that some of the, shall we say, more timid boys in the playground derive some sort of gratification from hiding behind him as he stalks about the place honking and bellowing at people in a manner they don't have it in them to do.
15:17.
DeleteYet another spectacular own goal by me ol' Micawber1. Great stuff.
See, your insoluble problem is that Starmer is on public record as stating he is a Zionist-without-qualification. Which makes him a racist apartheid militarised supporter of the psychotic outright fascist Netanyahu. Small wonder Starmer's domestic policies are an echo of that paranoid mentality.
Here's a member of a Jewish family who survived the Holocaust describing the outright fascism of Netanyahu/Starmer. I'll take his opinion over your apologist weasel words any day. Put that in your war pipe and smoke it while reading the Rothermere Daily Hei.
https://youtu.be/1gIEqQ3R8AU?feature=shared
Something I think has been largely overlooked in the current tariff discussion is how it seems to make little or no allowances for the types of trade between the US and the various tariffed nations.
ReplyDeleteMatt Parker of Standup Maths did a video about the mathematical side (or lack thereof) of the announcements and he did look into it. Using New Zealand as his example, their exports to the US are mainly things like meat and eggs. Their imports from the US are things like aircraft. If, as is almost certain, Don's Tariffs reduce the amount of New Zealand lamb the yanks buy, it would be entirely reasonable for the Kiwis to look elsewhere for those aircraft. That would be a bad thing for US manufacturing, yet bringing manufacturing jobs 'back' to the US is frequently cited as one of the (often contradictory) rationales for the tariffs.
Not just New Zealand either. The reason the USA imports so much is that US citizens realised as long ago as the mid 70's, that the majority of stuff made in the USA was crap.
DeleteLets face it, they can't even deliver decent farm produce with drowning it in chlorine to avoid offing half the population with food poisoning.
As such every nation that buys stuff from the usa 'is' buying military hardware. It's an exggaeration to say all US products are crap, but sadly, thanks to successive US govts (Trump is by no means furrowing a new row, modern 'america first' goes back to Bush junior) its hard to import US goods.
Unfortunately for Americans though, 'America first' is pie in the sky. The level of investment to re open foundries, factories, yards, would be enormous, and would require govt intervention.
But Trump and co are opposed to federal intervention. At the same time, modern industrial plants are not the placebo for dealing with rust belt unemployment.
Modern heavy industry simply doesn't need thousands of workers any more. Robotics and AI mean a handful of workers can do the work of hundreds.
So, the maga hard hat wearers are in for a big disappointment.
In the meantime, unless retailers soak up the massive increase in costs caused by tariffs on Chinese goods, people from all classes are going to find much of that products they need for work and want for leisure are now massively expensive.
To quote lord farquhard, in Trumps voice, 'some of you may suffer, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make'.
A lot of brinkmanship going on. Apparently Trump told a dinner with fellow Republicans on Tuesday night that countries were “dying” to make a deal. The US president said: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up kissing my ass.”
ReplyDeleteI think the world should call his bluff. Match the US tariffs and use money raised to ease the effect of tariffs on exporting companies and potential losses for those importing.
Also, it's time to start cancelling as many US connected government contracts, particularly Musk related, just as Canada has done and the rich fella in Mexico, and to create pacts between nation groups to ensure some form of security for those more vulnerable countries.
He's using tariffs to help pay toward the $4.5trillion tax cut for the rich, as well as crashing the market for financial gain. US companies will start going out of business, or at the very least, will tumble in value. That sort of approach only has a limited time frame.
The remaining 95% of the world either folds like a cheap suit, leaving him with the ability to play God with tariff rates against any nation(s) in the future, or we make a stand against the USA.
Further tremendous news from the US version of fascism! All opponents of Führer Trump are terrorists! More news from the Downing Street Gau and the Malibar front as it comes in!
ReplyDeletehttps://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-team-prepping-new-strategy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2j9682
Superb war tourism deals available in Ukraine. Similar to the upcoming Gaza seaside property boom. Capitalism at its finest.
ReplyDeletehttps://balkaninsight.com/2025/03/19/war-tourism-in-ukraine-a-controversial-industry-booms/
The Canary brilliantly exposes yet another result of Trump-type "entrepreneur free trade". This time a billions property scam on the NHS endorsed by the Essex spiv Weasel Streeting and the Quiff Quisling. Watch the Quisling apologists disappear up their own arse "explaining" the latest thieving organised by the "Labour" Party.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/04/11/nhs-private-equity-sale/
Waaalll lookee here....as well as tariffs we also get the paranoid Pentagon nooclear bombs. Quisling "Labour" sure knows how to cut a deal with the Orange Meff.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/04/11/lakenheath-us-nuclear-weapons/
Great stuff yet again on this issue from Craig Murray. Voices the facts ignored by corporate media or couched in weasel words by Quislings and other toadies.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/04/trump-tariffs-and-trade/