Tariff Man and his tariff plan cause market plunges

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsl...trading-system

Only 5 deals done at this point. That's embarrassing asf

Another good read, but not really telling us anything we don't already know.

MAGA needs to read that, but MAGA lives in an alternate universe where higher prices, thanks to tariffs, are a good thing. Same place where insulting your neighbors is a good idea, too. Originally Posted by jayzee43

an excellent article here's the cliff notes








greed is good. American greed is better. anyone here not see how greedy China and Russia are? America needs to out-greed the World.


MAGA Make America Greedy Again



BAHHAHAA

I knew you'd go back to 1053, been waiting. You're trying to pick a nit you feel is material between real GDP and measured GDP and that's why it's adorable.

Ponder X-M more and consider the impact and timing of front-loaded inventory

The rest of the fluff with you trying to assert dominance and save face isn't relevant. Eyes on the ball. Command of the facts. Originally Posted by HDGristle

More gibberish from you, as usual. You're like a fly on my coffee table. I don't swat flies to "assert dominance". Or to "save face" lol. I swat flies because they are annoying.

Wtf are you talking when you say "measured GDP"? Do you mean... oh wait, I'm not here to put words in your mouth. It's not my job to bail you out from your own incoherence.

Let's try again. You said a drop in imports helps GDP "look rosier". How does that work exactly? If you can't explain it, just say so. Don't tell us to "ponder" something else for edification. It's your hypothesis, not mine. By not answering, you demonstrate to everyone that you have no eye on the ball or command of the facts.

Yeah, we all know importers will speed up (or "front-load", to use your term) their foreign orders if they fear tariffs are imminent. No surprise there, totally predictable. So how does that impact GDP, or does it? Explain, please. Ponder the "D" in GDP - then ask yourself why this measure of national income is adjusted for (X - M).

It's all relevant, Gristle. Don't try to be "adorable" and weasel out of explaining yourself. Real GDP is growing rapidly. Last year it expanded at a 3.8% annual rate in Q2 and a 4.4% pace in Q3. We're still waiting for the Q4 data, but the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model estimates a 4.2% gain. Looks pretty "rosy" to me! Is it all because of a drop in imports?

Show us how to "focus on the totality" lol.

Told you to ponder it... and you missed the point entirely. It was germane to Q1 vs Q2. Operative word was looks. You'll figure it out. Maybe

Thanks for "trying" though

It took you 2 minutes to come up with a non-response.

More proof of what a deep thinker you are!

Thanks for not trying.

You're being quite generous with the 2 min. It was far less, but all the was needed to determine you were off track

In other news, BYD has entered the fray
https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/10...trump-tariffs/

They're in some good company on that suit.

As for the AP article, good, you finally picked that nit. You've shown that there's multiple means of framing the data. Sadly, you learned the wrong lesson but I know you can do better. Originally Posted by HDGristle

And you've shown how to be a biased, one-sided polemicist. You only focus on/exaggerate the negative effects of tariffs and ignore the positive ones. I acknowledge and try to quantify BOTH. When someone points out to you that the impacts are varied and complex, you lamely claim they "learned the wrong lesson" by not focusing solely on the negative. As I said before, you're a polemicist, not an economist.

It's kind of like this opinion piece
https://community.triblive.com/news/3976013

You and the writer have some framing issues in your tariff takes because of extreme rationalization to justify them as positive. He's a much more effective messenger, though. So feel free to crib from it. Originally Posted by HDGristle

Lol. I'm sure you can cite examples of my "extreme rationalization". Fyi - I have over 20,000 eccie posts and I've never once "cribbed" from anyone. I am always careful to properly attribute the words of others and put them in quotemarks.

But you're right about one thing - Steve Cortes is a pretty effective messenger, much better than I am. I would have a beer with him any time.

The impacts being varied and complex aren't in question. If you think they are on my side, it confirms my point that you missed the mark.

And be careful with those absolutes.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5...e-republicans/

Only 2 defections are possible, so if there's 3 it will be interesting to see what comes next as far as Congress and its role in this mess. Of course, they van try to stall and shore up the defense

It's kind of like this opinion piece
https://community.triblive.com/news/3976013 Originally Posted by HDGristle

Thanks for sharing, Mr. Gristle.

But we both know few readers open your links. So why don't we copy-paste the entire article? That way everyone who is open-minded and interested in hearing BOTH sides of the issue will see Steve Cortes' excellent piece:


Point: Why Trump’s tariffs work

TribLive
By Steve Cortes
Sat, Feb 7, 2026 • 11:00 AM

The debate over President Trump's tariffs was never really about economics; it was about framing.

Instead of asking whether tariffs generated leverage, revenue or strategic correction, many observers chose a different path: emotional labeling. Tariffs were routinely described as “tantrums,” “outbursts” or “chaos.” Policy was treated as psychology. Outcomes were secondary to impressions.

That choice matters because tariffs did work, and the framing was designed to obscure why.

Strip away the narrative, and tariffs delivered several concrete outcomes that critics said were impossible.

They generated substantial revenue, largely paid by foreign producers seeking access to the U.S. market. They altered negotiating dynamics, a Trump specialty, forcing counterparties to the table long-resisted reform. They encouraged supply-chain diversification and domestic investment. And they demonstrated that the United States was willing to enforce reciprocity rather than merely request it.

Those effects are not theoretical. They are observable, especially in the trade agreement frameworks Trump made with Japan and South Korea, which not only set tariff rates and rules of the road on various goods and services. It also became the impetus for companies from both countries to make investment commitments in the United States to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, set to supercharge U.S. growth and create good-paying jobs.


Yet, rather than engaging those results, coverage focused obsessively on tone. That is a tell. When policy opponents avoid debating mechanisms and outcomes, it often signals that the results are inconvenient to their case.

Tariffs worked because they addressed a structural reality that polite trade discourse often ignores: The United States is the world’s indispensable market, and Trump demanded that American consumers and workers be treated with respect.

Access to American consumers is not a shared asset — it is leverage. For decades, the U.S. largely refrained from using it, even as trading partners deployed subsidies, barriers and nontariff restrictions. The result was a system where imbalance became normalized.

Tariffs changed incentives.

They raised the cost of asymmetry. They forced exporters and foreign governments to internalize behaviors that had previously been externalized onto American workers and producers. In practical terms, they transformed trade discussions from abstract principles into concrete negotiations.

In a trade agreement framework with the European Union, bureaucrats in Brussels were compelled to reconsider economically harmful regulations that harmed U.S. and European companies. Similar trade agreement frameworks that Trump reached with Southeast Asian countries led these nations to reconsider their relationship with China and the economic coercion they used to secure leverage.

That is why tariffs provoked such an intense reaction. They didn’t merely alter flows of goods; they altered power dynamics.

From a persuasion standpoint, labeling Trump’s tariffs as “chaos” was more effective than arguing they were wrong. Emotional framing short-circuits analysis. If a policy can be made to feel reckless, it never has to be evaluated on its merits.

This explains the fixation on metaphors like “tantrum” or “bull in a china shop.” Those phrases do not describe outcomes; they cue emotional judgment against a president they oppose. They invite audiences to recoil rather than assess.

Persuasion tactics have a shelf life. When predicted disasters fail to materialize — when markets adjust, negotiations occur and revenues accrue — the emotional frame weakens. Repetition stops persuading and starts revealing intent.


That shift is now visible.

One reason tariffs were so easy to mischaracterize is that they were treated as a break from normalcy, rather than a correction of it.

For years, the U.S. tolerated chronic trade deficits, intellectual property leakage, and industrial hollowing while being told this was the price of leadership. Resistance to that arrangement was portrayed as hostility to trade itself.

Tariffs were not antitrade. They were anti-imbalance. Executives from different parts of the U.S. economy — from the automotive industry to the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry — have readily acknowledged that tariffs, along with tax and regulator reform, changed their behavior and incentivized them to invest more in the U.S.

They did not close markets; they conditioned access to them. They did not reject globalization; they rejected one-sided globalization. And they did not create instability so much as reveal how dependent stability had become on American restraint.

From that perspective, tariffs were less a disruption than an awakening. Public opinion shifted not because of rhetoric, but because experience contradicted the warnings.

It was argued that tariffs would destroy growth. Growth continued. They were told prices would spiral uncontrollably. They didn’t. They were told allies would flee. Instead, negotiations intensified.

Over time, voters began to notice a pattern: The confidence of the predictions did not match their accuracy. That gap eroded trust in the framing itself.

In persuasion terms, audiences recalibrated. They began to distinguish between emotional anti-Trump storytelling and empirical reality. Once that happens, narratives lose force quickly.

None of this requires sentimentality about leadership or personalities. Policies should be judged by function, not flair.

Tariffs are neither universally appropriate nor cost-free. The blanket claim that they are inherently irrational has been disproven by their effects. Used selectively and strategically, they restored leverage that had been voluntarily surrendered.

That lesson matters going forward, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. Indeed, more can be done by using tariffs to change behaviors in other countries.


Europe is moving forward with so-called “corporate sustainability due diligence” regulations, and environmental, social and governance laws designed to hurt U.S. companies operating on their continent. Europe, along with Australia, Brazil, South Korea and others, is considering harmful digital market laws designed to hurt U.S. tech companies. This is why the administration should consider imposing tariffs if U.S. companies are required to bear harmful regulatory burdens.

A nation that refuses to use its economic tools will eventually find others are happy to use theirs. A nation that mistakes passivity for stability will discover stability was borrowed, not earned.

The most revealing aspect of the tariff debate was not the policy, but the effort to delegitimize it through emotion rather than evidence. Calling tariffs “tantrums” was never analysis; it was persuasion — designed to make people feel before they thought.

Tariffs worked because they changed incentives, restored leverage and corrected imbalances that polite language had allowed to harden into norms.

The narrative said chaos. The data said leverage.

Increasingly, the public noticed the difference. It gives Trump the political capital he needs at home to change behaviors abroad. Once people start judging policy by outcomes instead of adjectives, the frame collapses.


Steve Cortes, president of the League of American Workers, a populist right, pro-laborer advocacy group, wrote this for InsideSources.com.

There you go. I did give it to you for a reason.

Go ask a farmer (any farmer) if the tariffs are working. I'll wait.

More gibberish from you, as usual. You're like a fly on my coffee table. I don't swat flies to "assert dominance". Or to "save face" lol. I swat flies because they are annoying.

Wtf are you talking when you say "measured GDP"? Do you mean... oh wait, I'm not here to put words in your mouth. It's not my job to bail you out from your own incoherence.

Let's try again. You said a drop in imports helps GDP "look rosier". How does that work exactly? If you can't explain it, just say so. Don't tell us to "ponder" something else for edification. It's your hypothesis, not mine. By not answering, you demonstrate to everyone that you have no eye on the ball or command of the facts.

Yeah, we all know importers will speed up (or "front-load", to use your term) their foreign orders if they fear tariffs are imminent. No surprise there, totally predictable. So how does that impact GDP, or does it? Explain, please. Ponder the "D" in GDP - then ask yourself why this measure of national income is adjusted for (X - M).

It's all relevant, Gristle. Don't try to be "adorable" and weasel out of explaining yourself. Real GDP is growing rapidly. Last year it expanded at a 3.8% annual rate in Q2 and a 4.4% pace in Q3. We're still waiting for the Q4 data, but the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model estimates a 4.2% gain. Looks pretty "rosy" to me! Is it all because of a drop in imports?

Show us how to "focus on the totality" lol. Originally Posted by lustylad

OOOOF!!!!!!

Not sure why Gristle gets so excited about this thread getting bumped. He gets shredded routinely. He's reduced to moving the goal posts. But, but, but, the market would’ve got to 50k sooner if not for the tariffs!!! Eggs and gas prices would have dropped sooner if it wasn’t for tariffs!!! He’ll complain when he gets his tariff check that it would’ve come sooner and would be larger if it wasn’t for tariffs!! That’s his “logic”.

Go ask a farmer (any farmer) if the tariffs are working. I'll wait. Originally Posted by jayzee43

“ Experts and farmers alike are in agreement that tariffs can be beneficial in certain scenarios when used strategically. For example, they can be used to protect consumers (as in with meat produced by countries that have lower food safety standards), to protect domestic labor, or to protect emergent industries or industries that are important to national security.”

You can stop waiting. Run along now.