Sir, the tariff on china has just increased to 125%.

I don't know why he held off on the other countries, but choose to go to "war" with China.

I assume because of Peter Navarro (and of course Ron Vara).

They said they were going to war with China over the Panama Canal too, yesterday. Using the "most lethal fighting force", apparently.

14d chess of course.

The tariffs that he kept on would be nothing to sneeze at in more… civilized times. The market overreacted, as was priced in the vix at 50+. We are not out of the woods yet.

125% tariff rate on your biggest importer isn't something I'd say is "nothing to sneeze at" personally. Particularly when the expert economist used to justify it is made up.

Yeah I was wary of saying 'declaration of war' (even though I think it's kinda true), but at least those imports will route themselves through Vietnam or wherever now in a few months.

He didn't even know that the EU had put in tariffs until a journalist asked him at the press conference after he announced the pause.

The EU actually executed some strategy. First they said they would love 0/0 tariffs, which sounds fair to pretty much anyone. And when that didn't fly they put on selective reciprocal 25% tariffs. What Trump did looks even more like a clown show.

They floated 0/0 tariffs before the reciprocal tariffs (and again after), and their tariffs this morning was in retaliation for the steel and aluminum tariffs, not for the reciprocal tariffs.

Nah, no reciprocation. America calling things reciprocation is just America lying.

I am normally all in favor of metonymy, it's perfectly fine and well understood style.

In the case of Trump-as-Mad-King tariffs, it sure would be nice if the world didn't conflate America, the historical land of twisting other nation's arms to reduce tariffs, with Trump and his fake-emergency tariffs.

I can understand if you do, and if America has permanently lost a lot of good will by electing this buffoon for you, I can hardly argue with you.

But still. In my mind, these are Trump's tariffs, not America's.

And specifically the idea that Trump's tariffs are reciprocal, that is even more "Trump is just a liar" than something any honest American would argue.

Even if you call it “Trumps Tarrifs” that means we have a better than even chance of having to deal with this.

If you’ve never elected a buffoon like this it’s easy to believe it’ll never happen. If you’ve done it not once, but twice, it’s really hard to believe it won’t happen again.

Maybe I should write "an American" instead. As in, I assume the person I am responding to is an American and is calling it reciprocal tariffs to propagate the idea that it was reciprocation.