A tariff on penguin crap?
Today the results of Donny’s “Liberation Day” has taken full effect….
The stock market opened on Thursday exactly as predicted—with a thud. Investors seemed rattled as they continued to digest the implications of President Trump’s bigger-than-expected tariffs, reports the Street.
- The Dow fell more than 1,100 points, or 2.7%.
- The S&P 500 fell 187 points, or 3.3%. The benchmark index is on track to have its worst day since September 2022, notes CNBC.
- The Nasdaq, focused on tech stocks, plunged 790 points, or 4.3%.
- Global markets also sank, and the US dollar fell to its lowest level of the year, per the Wall Street Journal. The dollar weakened more than 2% against the euro, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen, among others. Part of the reason is that “foreign investors are losing confidence in US investments that have come to dominate global portfolios,” per the story.
The ‘stable genius’ has done it again…screwed everything up.
Then when looking at his new round of tariffs we find a bizarre turn…..the McDonald Islands.
The unveiling of President Trump’s tariffs on Wednesday had White House journalists reaching for their atlases—or at least Google. On the list of penalized nations is one that’s actually an Australian territory in the Antarctic called Heard Island and McDonald Islands. Its inclusion is a bit of a puzzler:
- Remote: The islands are about as remote as you can get, explains Wired. No humans live there, with the main inhabitants being penguins. It takes about two weeks to get there by boat from the Australian mainland. Combined, the islands are about the size of Philadelphia.
- Zero trade: The islands were hit with the baseline tariff of 10%, the same as mainland Australia. Their trade with the US is $0, thus making the new penalty “somewhat moot,” notes the Washington Post.
- Another island: The US imposed an even bigger tariff, 29%, on another remote Antarctic territory managed by Australia—Norfolk Island, per the Guardian. It has about 2,000 people and does conduct some trade with the US, with the big export being about $400,000 worth of leather footwear, according to stats from the Observatory of Economic Complexity. However, officials from the territory and Australia dispute those figures and voiced disbelief.
- Leader vents: “Norfolk Island has got a 29% tariff,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States, but that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is safe from this.”
There is a possibility of making a case against Norfolk Island….but what do the penguins on McDonald Islands produce that we import?
Penguin crap.
Have you ever considered where Donny got his idea for all these tariffs?
Here it is.
The formula shown uses a country’s trade surplus as the numerator — with “x” representing total exports for a given nation and “m” representing total imports.
That was then divided by total exports. In the below formula “ε” represents price elasticity for import demand and was set at 4. Meanwhile, “φ” represents the elasticity of import prices and was set to 0.25 — effectively canceling each other out.
At what point do Americans start seeing the utter stupidity of this group of thugs in DC?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
We are at economic war. They have made economic war on us for decades. What else is he supposed to do ? Nuke them ? We have to tax the penquins. How else are we to “keep all our ducks in a row” ?
Sanctions are a punishment…..instead of sitting down to negotiate they throw sanctions….not the way to do good business. That is the dumbest BS he could have done blindly sanction an island with no people…..and people smile….stable genius…HA chuq
I feel for those who are at or near retirement age…the 20%+ drop in the value of their life savings is going to take time to come back, if ever…remember that all of the markets were at all time highs on Election Day…even the right wing press is turning as they see their fortunes dwindle for NO reason.
These moves will hurt the near retirement age Americans….but that is okay as long he appears to have it all together….all he has an addiction to golf and Big Macs…..chuq
How bad people got hammered by this is going to depend on what they’re invested in and how greedy they were. I got hit too, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. My money manager I both saw this coming as soon as the that poor, demented, senile old fool got elected and we started shifting things around back in November already. I just checked this morning and I only lost a little over $2K, about 0.08% all together. Of course that could change tomorrow or next week. Rumor is that the GOP’s owners, the 1%, are putting a lot of pressure on the senate to shut this down. Section 4 of the 25th amendment has been mentioned, as has the “I” word.
I will say again that the idea of trimming our government spending of waste is a great idea…when done right. This “trade war” is self-inflicted insanity…you were wise to see the tsunami coming…good for you!
The tariff calculations were done by Musk using AI, and they have made the USA a worldwide laughing stock. But it is only about ‘shorting’ the stock market, so Don and his gang can buy at rock bottom, amend the tariffs later, then sell the shares when they bounce back. The billionaires will be laughing when it is all over.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree his idiocy is a game of billions chuq
I was going to add that but you beat me to it. Yeah, analysis of the statements put out by the White House along with those bizarre calculations all indicate that the whole thing was conjured up by ChatGPT, right down to the syntax of the statement itself.