A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below says: “Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist.

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.

"The man below says, “You must be a manager.”

“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”

Companies are going to lay off loads of people and close any department that costs too much just to increase the stock price again. For investors stock price is everything and they don’t care much about consequences.

USA stock market crashing means the dollar is getting less worth compared to other currencies, so anything imported gets more expensive in the USA, what is most items. Things getting more expensive means less people buying stuff, less economic activity so more layoffs.

All those layoffs means people can’t pay back there debt. Trump doesn’t care about people in debt and somehow makes it worse. Banks get in trouble. Trump cares about banks and big businesses so they get bailed out. Taxes on everybody else increases to pay for bailouts.

To distract from all this, Trump starts challenging China and it leads to war. Marshall law is called and Trump starts funneling more money to the military making things even worse.

Then next Trump would just threaten with tariffs again until the labeling had been removed. Then he’ll threaten again for their oversized cars. There won’t be an end to this.

This Is Extremely Dangerous To Our Democracy

It’s why we have monuments everywhere, memorials and a few national holidays to reminds us.

Inviting his friends from Russia no doubt.

The rest of the world starts building a new world order and economic system, one that will be a lot less advantageous to the USA than the one they just trashed.

In points, but not in percentage. At least not yet. But it sure seems to want to measure up to all major crisis and leave its mark.

“He was just being hyperbolic.” they told themselves.

Nope, turns out he was “saying it like it is” about what he was going to do and the “I don’t care about you” was the truth.

Rumour goes the idea is to force others to peg their currency to the dollar in fixed exchange rates so they can stay the reserve currency and still re-industrialize. Tariffs are used to force others into that arrangement. With how trustworthy USA has been the last few months, countries are not going to be enthousiast about this.

There is simple logic in it. Punish everyone, and then let them come to you asking for exemptions. Then he can demand things in exchange. After that it’s “Pray I don’t alter the deal any further.”

UK already asked for an exemption and he said they should buy chlorinated chicken first. If every country responds in the same way and gives in he’s making bank. If they respond with a boycott on anything American, especially digital services, things get bad.

Then they’ll still think it was a good idea, it just went wrong in the execution.

Yeah, that’s just Trump. He likes to be vengeful and a bully, using tariffs like a stick to beat others info submission. But he doesn’t seem to know when enough is enough.

Project 2025 is split on the issue of foreign trade.[109] Mandate author Peter Navarro advocates what he calls a fair trade policy of reciprocal, higher tariffs on the European Union, China, and India, to achieve a balance of trade, though not all U.S. levies are lower than those of its major trading partners.[126] On the other hand, Mandate author Kent Lassman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute promotes a free trade policy of lowering or eliminating tariffs to cut costs for consumers, and calls for more free trade agreements.[126] He argues that Trump’s and Biden’s tariffs have undermined not just the American economy, but also the nation’s international alliances.[117]

The first guy won apparently.

Trump will be remembered as the spark that caused the old world order to blow up, causing a lot of changes in the way things are done. China becomes the manufacturer of clean energy and uses their new status as having the reserve currency to stamp out all fossil fuels.

The amount of mixed signals coming from this administration is insane.

No, seems pretty straightforward. It’s simply “we’ll tariff-whip you into submission and make you buy our shit”

Musk is the guy that says he wants to burn society to the ground and rebuild it better. Then he’s shocked people are focusing on and strongly disliking the burning part. Also people have seen the cyber truck and the yearly promises to have self driving next year for sure and don’t trust his rebuilding abilities.

Of course there is logic, but not the logic most politicians want to admit. This is simply:

“Nice global economy. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Maybe we can come to an understanding, and this whole tariff thing goes away. You do want free trade, don’t you?”

That’s why Tesla’s full self driving is officially still a level 2 cruise control. But of course they promise to jump directly to level 4 soon™.

Nah. What he wants is bossing others around and taking revenge on people and things that bothered him, or going after things he thinks give him an advantage. That’s usually by bullying people until they give up and do what he wants. His voters like DEI? Bully and force things until it’s stamped out. Justice convicted him, so break justice. Consequences for jobs and the economy, or even the law, don’t matter to him.