I hope the EU reacts with something non-tariffy. Like forbidding US online platforms to serve ads and collect personal data, with severe punishments if they still do.

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, the British government said the United States remains the U.K.’s “closest ally.”

I'm sorry TERF island, that's not gonna keep Trump from stabbing you in the back too.

If I was Prime Minister, I'd impose a retaliatory tariff of 9000% just because it's all just this stupid.
Call it the Goku tariffs, but drag it out over an hour or two with a lot of screaming.

1. Order tariffs
2. Make everything more expensive for everyone everywhere
3. Piss off the entire world and invite countermeasures
4. ??????????????
5. MAGA

Putting tariffs on Norfolk Island and Heard and McDonald Islands are particularly funny considering Heard and McDonald Islands only has penguins living there lol.

Have we forgotten that he has done this each month since he was Inaugurated?

Today the stock market will crash on this news. The wealthy will buy on this massive dip, and in a few days, HitlerPig will announce that the countries on his list have responded to his tariff threats, so he is postponing them for a month or so.

The stock market will recover a bit, and the wealthy will make a fortune. In a month, he'll do it all over again.

It's deliberate market manipulation.

"No basis in logic"

No shit, this whole administration has no basis in logic. Just look at Project 2025 and the progress they've made on it in a little over 2 months.

and the price of bitcoin dropped 4.4%.

I cannot express how much I hate that this appears in a serious economic article.

They’re AI generated tariffs. He asked Grok and these are the numbers it spat out.

All the goods that Trump excempts from tarrifs is tipping his hand. If I were one of these countries like Taiwan where semiconductors are exempted, I would apply an export duty equal to the tarrif on other goods. If you want to tarrif me fine but you're going to have to commit.

no tariffs on russia, only sanctions?

Trump's government has made the US a village idiot - and if the idiot gets into a fight with the whole village, the idiot will have more bruises.

Why he does that - I don't pretend to understand.

What about Israel? Aren't they sucking you dry? Perhaps add some tariffs there?

No basis in logic if he were actually trying to do what he says he is. He's not. They make perfect sense if the goal is to destabilize the country. We elected a fucking Manchurian candidate twice, and the in-between term was spent on a bunch of business as usual and not setting up protections in case it happened again. This country is fucking done.

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.

Oh, do you guys think he might be a stupid maniac gosh

None of Trump's policies have any basis in reality

No basis in logic is a nice summary of the Trump administration in general.

Dead horse economics:

Wake up you lazy horse!

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?"

Someone asked chatGPT how to apply tariffs to give America an equal playing field and it spit it a formula that looks shockingly similar to how trump calculated the tariffs

Norfolk Island was baffled by a 29% duty despite having no exports.

Ahahaha. For a day, I want to be inside his head and see the world through his eyes. It would be the most valuable insight for humanity... If only to learn exactly what not to do.

You know what's fun? Cancelling stuff and citing the reason as 'tariff-related inflation'. It's too new and there is no response script yet, so customer service doesn't really argue.

Is the plan to isolate us?

I don't buy that Trump has anything to do with the logic behind this world-destabalizing shock and awe spectacle.

The conversation would be different if people stopped attributing authorship to him and acknowledged the massive decades-old machine using him as a mouthpiece.

But it sure makes people feel smart though. Gives them something to meme about while the people who planned this get the real dirt done. Maybe he'll misspell a country name next... Do another ad for Leon's dinkeys, Israeli beans or something. Stoopid Donald got poopy pance. lol.

He's got that dementia infused vindictiveness against the people who want him dead

I saw someone say it seems that the tariffs were calculated by dividing our trade deficit by their exports to us and cutting that number in half. Another person analyzed his charts and concluded they look a lot like they were generated by AI.

So, there is, literally no basis in logic. Either one of Trump's minions calculated what it would take to recoup the difference in the trade deficit and just wrote it down and he announced that as the new basis for international trade, which has never, ever been done, for the reason that it is fucking idiotic, or he asked Gemini how to execute his already objectively stupid policy and wrote an Executive Order making it the law.

And the fact that we are forced to accept people on the Internet's guesses about how he calculated these numbers may actually be worse than the fact that just about every product on the market more complex than a stapler just jumped about 30% in price.