Summary
Trump warned automakers not to raise prices after announcing a 25% tariff on imported vehicles starting April 3, claiming the tariffs would be “great” and benefit U.S. manufacturing.
Industry leaders, including GM, Ford, and Stellantis CEOs, expressed concerns about inevitable price increases, with experts warning tariffs could add thousands to car costs.
Auto suppliers stated that absorbing tariffs is impossible, and dealers fear affordability challenges for consumers.
While the United Auto Workers union support the move as a job creator, trade groups predict higher prices and fewer manufacturing jobs.
trump has had 6 companies go bankrupt he is not a good business man.
No, no, no. Don’t you see, making 6 companies go bankrupt makes Trumpy a very a good business man. /s
Holy shit everyone was right and he doesn’t understand how tariffs work
Is he so stupid he doesn’t understand how to fascism?
Yes, and at this point it’s the United States’ only hope.
Can’t count on the people, better hope the regime kills itself.
So he’s basically telling the other billionaires to eat the cost of the tariff themselves and NOT pass them on to the consumer.
Trump really is stupid enough to start biting the hands that gave him his current position, all because Musk tells him to.
If it actually worked it’s a funny way to say, let’s tax corporations. It would never happen though because it makes line go down.
it makes line go down.
You often see the question asked online “What radicalized you?”
For me, I was working for a telecommunications provider as a manager and was told that neither myself nor my staff would see any raises or bonuses that year because “the company didn’t make any money.”
The kicker being that the company made 6 billion that year. But because the money counters had projected them to make 7 Billion, and they didn’t hit it, giving out raises would make the stock price drop even more than it was already going to. Essentially, not enough profit, is the same as NO profit.
But you better believe the CEO and executives got their bonus that year.
it makes line go down.
“Projected profit” versus “actual profit”. Thank you, cause I’ve always wondered how a company can make a profit and high up people in that business can say that the actual workers don’t deserve a pay rise.
The really stupid part is a well paid and well educated work force will create more money than the alternative.
Problem is that a well paid and well educated workforce will make more money ‘sometime after the next quarter’ and in a diffuser way spread evenly across the board.
Stiffing people and withholding raises will show a profit within a quarter someone’s bonus is based on.
Guess which option the people who get the bonuses will pick.
Honestly the ‘fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value’ might be the phrase we’ll look back on as the downfall of the human race.
How great would it be if he somehow accidentally killed car dealerships
Fuckcars is delighted
It will kill more than just dealerships. Imagine being any company operating in the US and the president threatening other companies for not paying the tariffs he is imposing. Imagine the investor confidence imploding and companies refusing to operate and close doors because they are not willing to pay for a stupid president destroying their profits. Companies have a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders, and this won’t be tolerated.
I thought China was paying the tariffs?
/s
Sneaky carbon tax lol
Ugh, I hate this timeline, where a whole lot of people, countries, and organizations are trying to avoid incurring the wrath of a complete dipshit and total baby named donvict.
At this point, I am surprised he hasn’t ordered the treasury department to just mint more cash.
That will come. He’ll also stop payments on Treasury Bonds. Not paying agreed upon obligations is his MO in business.
I think that’s what happened to Nazi Germany, so just wait a little while.
Meanwhile, prepare to barter.
I hope the car makers said ‘thank you’
So basically government price fixing. Isn’t USA supposed to be the pillar of libertarian capitalism?
So basically government price fixing.
Not even. He’s not doing anything to prevent prices from going up. He’s just whining at businesses for refusing to cut their margins to fund his government.
Isn’t USA supposed to be the pillar of libertarian capitalism?
It’s funny. There’s a couple of think thanks - the Fraiser Institute, the Hoover Institute, in collaboration with the CATO Institute - that are constantly putting out papers saying how America hasn’t gone Libertarian Capitalist enough. Historically, the two places in the world they consider “Most Libertarian” have been Hong Kong and Singapore.
However, over the last decade, they’ve been forced to delist both of these locations as Chinese business investment flooded in and American financial interests were shoved out. So now their new favorite spots are Switzerland, New Zealand, Luxembourger, and Ireland. Incidentally, these institutes are filling up with White Nationalists and other ultra-orthodox Christian Conservatives who refuse to acknowledge any country with brown people in it might have civil or economic liberties. The current issue of their annual newsletter blames a great deal of this shift on pandemic response and subsequent economic relief during the downturn. But there’s plenty of ink spilled denouncing any country that’s breaking away from the MAGA mindset, particularly Canada, China, and Mexico.
As our relationships with the BRICS and the various Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian states have deteriorated, our ability to recognize them as free and liberal have decayed alongside them. And the criticisms internally ebb and flow with the state of domestic politics - Obama ushering in a low-watermark for American liberty, for instance.
Funny story.
A while back someone posed a question online. They wanted to know why all Socialist countries fail? I answered that they don’t; look at Canada. They told me that I was a fool, because the Heritage Foundation had showed that Canada was freer than the USA. I asked why we shouldn’t have Canadian style health care? They never got back to me.
Reminded because of the folks you cited.
Removed by mod
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Still one of the absolutely best things I’ve ever read; always reread in full.
Trading through coercion.
Aka the mafia … backed by muscle and violence
Do as we say … or you’re going to have some trouble with your knees … you don’t want trouble with your knees do you? … wouldn’t want to have an accident with your knees
backed by muscle and violence
Also every existing state.
Awful nice automotive industry you got here. Be a damn shame if a training accident dropped some bombs on your factory. A real shame, it’d be.
Extortion.
It never has been. US capitalism has always been the kind that actually exists in the wild: corrupt, subsidy-consuming, protected by regulatory capture, and inextricably entangled with the workings of the government.
Libertarians’ ideas of what capitlalism is fail to reflect any historical situation anywhere, since their simplistic models fail to consider second-order effects, non-linearities and human nature. But coupling with other systems is inevitable, and there is no economics that exists independently of politics. Karl Marx got a lot of things wrong, but he knew that key fact.
Let’s do some overly simplistic bad economics just for fun. Let’s suppose that the American car companies are not hurt by the tariffs because those only target foreign car companies. Now all the foreign cars are 25% more expensive. This raises the demand for domestic cars. If the domestic car companies are trying to make money, they will jack up their prices 24%. And what are we told? Something about how they have duty to their shareholders? … Donald is having fun living in his dream world.
Yup that’s literarily what happened last time he did this shit with washing machines.
Now washing machines are more expensive across the board.
Trump is a moron, and his voters are even bigger morons.
If nothing else, I look forward to the history books and a tragicomedy documentary about…everything, really.
I want to be there when the students ask “”why didn’t the ones with the guns to protect against tyranny use them”.
I’m starting to think that this guy might not understand how economies work.
The guy owned casinos that went bankrupt. It takes a special kind of person to do that
But he had the best bankruptcies, beautiful bankruptcies, everbody said say, many woman said “no more bankruptcies, they are too great”, believe me!
He doesn’t have to. The goal of Trump is simple: exert power. He doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process so long as his base sees him as their God (intentionally using the capital G here).
And if his decrees don’t have the expected results, it’s someone else’s fault.
Who was the ex member of his team that said he was in the room when people tried to explain tariffs to Trump and he clearly didn’t understand them, he just likes them based on his misunderstanding of them…
I’m sure he believes that other countries are paying the tariffs and it’s money going to the US federal coffers…
He seems to consider them in a vacuum.
“Prices rise, but that’s only a temporary problem for plebs refusing to buy American. Once US manufacturing catches up, they will buy American and all is well.”
That is of course incomplete and ignores the very real problem of manufacturing PARTS and raw resources also being affected. If not by Trumps tariffs, then by retaliatory ones from other countries. It also squashes your own export market. All of that together will leave prospective American factory bosses with a choice: Will they build a factory in the US and deal with higher prices and less customers, or will they build a factory in India, where they can export to every country on this planet (except the US but who cares) and have quick and cheap access to Chinese and Russian raw resources and a cheap labor pool?
There are too many steps in that chain of reasoning (more than one) to resemble anything that goes through Trump’s so-called mind. He doesn’t understand comparative advantage, he doesn’t understand global trade, he doesn’t understand what happens when tariffs are imposed. Although he probably doesn’t know the word, he probably thinks autarky works.
His handlers want him to impose tariffs because they damage world trade and put stress on economic alliances like the EU. And whose bloodthirsty imperialist plans would benefit from a weaker EU?
I learned a new word today because of you, thanks!
Or will they simply wait four years because they figure that it won’t keep going on…
Yeah and the worst part? People will probably still will vote overwhelmingly republican. If you’re gonna be dumb you gotta be tough i guess…
Trump: worship me
Auto makers: you literally fucked us all over.
Trump: and I expect you to thank me for it.
At least they’re wearing suits, am I right?
Can you say “economic collapse”.
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
100% agree, this is a coordinated attack on the US by bad faith actors willing to sell a society into bondage for personal gain. They want to make themselves techno-pharoes, in my opinion.
This is something people forget a lot because everyone gets consumed by latest bullshit drama pop political news.
yup he is helping russia make US go bankrupt. Trump has talent in bankrupting his companies.
Absolute clown administration
Absolute clown country
administration
Regime*
Youre right mb