US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24 *AND* Beyond

[5thhorseman]

Then you have a number of college students (including Khalil and Öztürk) who are detained and threatened with deportation for having exercised their right to free speech. The main problem with this group seems to be that they have expressed political views that the current administration frowns upon.

Yet how many on this board lauded Vance for his speech in Munich as he criticised Europe's record on free speech?

For the Trump admin it's only free speech if they agree with it. Which is not free speech at all.

The idea that it is to protect Jewish students is dismissed by Jewish students at these colleges, who are demanding that their fellow students be released:

https://youtu.be/eRqnKIc5pHw?si=t-29bkp0Q1BErAZH

There was never any "imminent harm" posed to Jewish students by Khalil and Öztürk, not even close. The administration's arguments about suppressing their free speech would have been thrown out of court. Which is why they're avoiding the courts.

[donlever]

Yet how many on this board lauded Vance for his speech in Munich as he criticised Europe's record on free speech?

How many 5th?

One?

Two?

More generalizations for dramatic effect?

It's beneath you bro.

...and you call me jaded.

[Per]

In all fairness, the level of free speech is high both in North America and Western Europe.
There are restrictions everywhere, but what you restrict differs from country to country.
I don't think any country in Europe bleeps words on TV, for instance. That is so annoying!

Here is a recent rating of it country by country: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/free ... sion-index

Their definition:

Best estimate of the extent to which people can discuss political matters at home and in the public sphere, the press, and media are free and can present different political perspectives, and the freedom of academic and cultural expression.

Now, this does give a slight disadvantage to the US as it includes freedom of media and their freedom of press sucks (journalists can eg be jailed for not revealing a source, the AP have been barred from white house press conferences for the silly reason that they refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its traditional name, etc ). I would also say that the current administration are at present undercutting the freedom of academic and cultural expression (banning certain words in application for grants, banning books in school libraries, etc) but I think at least some of that development is too recent to show up in the charts for 2024.

Either way they still come out with a respectable 89, which albeit lower than the rates of eg Canada, Germany, France or Britain is higher than those of Spain, Italy and all the Balkan countries.

[Per]

When it comes to the banning of books in school libraries, I'm 100% behind Stephen King.

[5thhorseman]

Yet how many on this board lauded Vance for his speech in Munich as he criticised Europe's record on free speech?

How many 5th?

One?

Two?

More generalizations for dramatic effect?

It's beneath you bro.

...and you call me jaded.

Honestly I don't remember who apart from UW specifically commented on his Munich speech, but yeah fair point. Guess I'm just reacting to the hypocrisy of this regime.

[Per]

The fact that Shady Vance compared Trump to Hitler and then signed up to work for him, tells you everything you need to know about his character.

[Strangelove]

.
SCOTUS smacks down leftist Judge Boasberg, rules Trump & Co. can continue with deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

[Megaterio Llamas]

https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/19 ... 9714857126

[BCExpat]

104% tariffs on China coming today or tomorrow.

[Megaterio Llamas]

https://youtube.com/shorts/uCYyh5OJTZA? ... _oOOfLs4kY

[Cousin Strawberry]

I'd tariff the fuck out of that Karoline Levitt. I bet she's a naughty little minx when the mics are off

[5thhorseman]

Great rant that hits the nail on the head. Dropped on X a.few days ago:

MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table -- picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.

Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable -- financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.

But that’s not what this is.

What you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.

You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination -- especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now -- after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training -- you’ve made the labor gap even wider.

Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.

That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb -- seemingly designed more to shock than to build.

And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating -- not realigning.

I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.

What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.

And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.

You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.

This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.

And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked -- not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.

You could’ve gone after China -- hard -- and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us -- and our policy should reflect that.

With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning.

That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out -- not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.

Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it -- even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.

But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad -- but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.

That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones.

So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.

But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly -- not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.

I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.

It’s about understanding that when you're the United States -- when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine -- every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain -- or progress.

And I hope -- for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into -- that it’s not too late to recalibrate.

Because we don’t need more noise.

We need a plan.

[BCExpat]

Great rant that hits the nail on the head. Dropped on X a.few days ago:

MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table -- picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.

Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable -- financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.

But that’s not what this is.

What you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.

You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination -- especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now -- after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training -- you’ve made the labor gap even wider.

Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.

That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb -- seemingly designed more to shock than to build.

And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating -- not realigning.

I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.

What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.

And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.

You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.

This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.

And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked -- not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.

You could’ve gone after China -- hard -- and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us -- and our policy should reflect that.

With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning.

That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out -- not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.

Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it -- even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.

But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad -- but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.

That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones.

So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.

But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly -- not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.

I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.

It’s about understanding that when you're the United States -- when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine -- every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain -- or progress.

And I hope -- for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into -- that it’s not too late to recalibrate.

Because we don’t need more noise.

We need a plan.

That pretty much sums up the situation. I'm sure a lot of people who supported him in the election, now feel this way also.

[Per]

Great rant that hits the nail on the head. Dropped on X a.few days ago:

MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

* * * really good points made * * *

Excellent summary of the situation.

I especially like these parts:

What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.

The economy likes certainty and stability. By eliminating both, you make all investors pull back.
And without investment, the economy will grind to a halt.

And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.

The idea that trade imbalances mean something is wrong is ludicrous. We all have a trade deficit with our local grocery store. We buy more from them than they buy from us. But simultanously we have a trade surplus with our employer (or if you are self employed with your clients) who pays us for our services while we rarely pay them.

Having a trade deficit with another country simply means you buy more from them then they buy from you, and there could be a thousand reasons for this. In general rich countries tend to buy more than poor countries do - for obvious reasons - and the USA is a very rich country. The case with Lesotho is very illustrating. They are an extremely poor country with diamond mines and a few jeans factories (Levi's and Wranglers). Hardly anyone in Lesotho could afford buying American goods, and there would be little profit in trying to import American made stuff there as it would be very hard to find customers. At the same time Americans want cheap clothing and diamonds, which Lesotho can provide. Should they be punished for this?

With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning

Average tariffs on US products in the EU is roughly 2.59% and on EU products in the US (before Trump went nuclear) was 2.49%, so roughly the same. If you look at it product for product, there are some things the US has tariffs on and some that the EU has tariffs on. Often to protect weak domestic industries, which from an economic point of view is madness, but sometimes is warranted for political or strategic reasons. From the economy side of it it is better you let inefficient companies go bankrupt and move the capital and workforce to profitable entities instead. That is what is better for the country in the long run. But politicians often want to gain votes by "standing up" for certain industries, and for strategic reasons you want to keep certain sectors, eg food and arms production, within your borders in case there is a war or some other major disturbance.

The EU sells more goods to the US than vice versa, but the US is totally dominant in services; tech, movies, social media, e-commerce, whatnot.

If the US had locked arms with the EU and gone after China for unfair trade practices, we would probably have tagged along quite happily.
We are also worried about government subsidies helping Chinese companies gain marketshare in strategic sectors.

Instead it's a vicious attack on our industrial base. Sandvik steel, Absolut vodka and Volvo cars will lose sales and may have to make lay-offs if they cannot relocate exports to other markets. But the EU is floating a threat of a counterattack on American services instead of goods. Going after the tech and entertainment giants like Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Disney, HBO, Amazon, etc by passing and enforcing antitrust legislation, demanding local content, etc, and of course taxing, taxing, taxing.

The odd result is that this unnecessary trade war could actually push us into the arms of China.
If we can't export to the USA, maybe the Chinese will buy our products instead?

The preferred solution, that is best for everyone, would be to continue striving for free trade.
Tariffs are ultimately paid by the consumer and lead to job destruction as prices are pushed up and stifle demand.
Nothing good has ever come from tariffs. They just force people to buy inferior products at higher prices while increasing unemployment.

But if the USA insists on a trade war - which basically means the opponents stare menacingly at each other while repeatedly punching themselves in the face - I'm sure the EU will respond in kind, because no politician wants to look weak. And if you make us hurt, we will make you hurt too, even if the evidence shows that tariffs typically hurt those imposing them more than those they are imposed on, as it lowers the competitiveness of the industries they are supposed to protect, which leads to costly and sometimes devastating long term consequences.

The one thing that I would like to add is that the international goodwill the USA has invested in since WW2, that has lead to them being mainly seen as a source for good and a country that leads by example, is now going down the toilet really fast. It takes decades to build trust, but you can lose it in a matter of seconds. It will take a very long time before anyone trusts the USA again.

[Megaterio Llamas]

So Trump has paused his tariff war for 90 days. This affects all countries that did not retaliate. In the case of China, tariffs remain at 125 percent. The other country that retaliated is Canada...

The chaos is wearing on me at this point.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/econom ... rcna200463