I get what the founders were talking about now. A lot of people really shouldn’t be able to vote if you want a functioning society. They just chose the wrong metric.

If you run a market and take a cut of every sale, you will make infinitely more profit than selling items yourself. This is exactly the position the U.S. was in - which is why it became the richest country in human history.

You also argue that the U.S. is getting “exploited” because they aren’t the ones doing the selling. But who cares? I’ll tell you who, people who don’t know wtf they are talking about.

In your infinite wisdom, the better choice is saddling yourself with more risk and less rewards because “the vibe” feels better.

A trade deficit is never exploitation. Lets pretend it is!

All of the stats Trump put up weren’t tariffs, they were a percentage of much less they would have to import in Goods from a certain country to make for the trade deficit with said country in Goods.

Not a single stat on that sheet looked at the trade in services. America always had a service trade surplus.

If we combine the two, a lot of countries that seem to “”““exploit””" the US are suddenly exploited by the US.

But lets go even further: The countries receiving the highest tariffs are Vietnam and Lesotho, becuase the US has the highest deficit in Goods with these countries. Because both countries are too fucking poor to buy american products. A worker in Lesotho, providing diamonds for the US market, would have to invest about 20 years of wagest to buy the cheapest american import car. How the fuck should these countries reduce their deficit?

Okay, but still, we assume that a deficit is somehow exploitation. Trump has said that the tariffs are going to do two things, namely bringing back American Industry and forcing trade partner to drop “barriers and tariffs” (i.e. safety regulations).

For a tariff to do the former, it has to stay until the relevant factories have been built in America and have also paid themselves off. For a tariff to the latter, the possibility of it being removed once the partner comploes has to be on the table. A tariff can’t do both.

But hey, don’t believe me. Read the paper the White House cited in their Announcement of the Tariffs.

Free trade isn’t exploitation.

In fact tariffs are just costing you more.

There is zero chance the USA will have anything to replace the amount you import in the term trump serves let alone a decade from now.

The USA will never compete with child slave labour in China and Mexico etc either.

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This is what we’re dealing with here in the States, folks.

Gawd help us.

Welcome to Lemmy. It sounds like you either come from a place of extreme privilege or you’re not actually sure how the tariffs will affect the people.

The idea behind the tariffs is fine. They want to drive union Members (fun fact, did you know that that’s how the founding fathers referred to citizens?) to buy and trade locally. However, many of the products we use in our day to day life come from industries that don’t exist in the US yet, and it will take years to create the required infrastructure and factories and farm land in order to create those industries.

Effectively, the tariffs would have been fine. If the US had actually been prepared to take care of itself. But it’s not, and it won’t be for a long time. So, the tariffs only exist as an extra tax right now.

Exploit the US less? How is the US being exploited exactly?