Trump Orders New 15% Tariff On Key Material For Solar Panels, Microchips (theguardian.com) 136
President Trump has ordered a 15% tariff on imported products made with polysilicon, a key material for semiconductors and solar panels. The new tariff will take effect on December 4th. The Guardian reports: The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: "The plan of action in this proclamation will, among other things, help ensure the commercial viability of United States production of polysilicon and its derivatives that is necessary to meet United States economic and national security requirements." Polysilicon, an ultra-pure form of silicon, is an important ingredient in making the semiconductors vital for AI processing power, datacentres and solar power generation. US solar factories have long accused Chinese rivals of dumping cheaper panels on the market, which they say have been enabled by excessive government subsidies and by moving manufacturing to other countries to dodge US tariffs.
[...] The US has two main polysilicon factories, including Hemlock Semiconductor, which operates a plant in Michigan and is a joint venture between the US tech company Corning and Japan's Shin-Etsu Handotai. The Munich-based Wacker Chemie runs a factory in Tennessee. Trump said in the order that he had accepted recommendations by the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to set minimum import prices of $21 a kilogram for polysilicon, $100 a kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers, $0.22 a watt for solar cells, and $0.38 a watt for solar modules or panels. The order also allows the commerce department to create an incentive program for companies that invest in factories to produce polysilicon or derivative products.
[...] The US has two main polysilicon factories, including Hemlock Semiconductor, which operates a plant in Michigan and is a joint venture between the US tech company Corning and Japan's Shin-Etsu Handotai. The Munich-based Wacker Chemie runs a factory in Tennessee. Trump said in the order that he had accepted recommendations by the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to set minimum import prices of $21 a kilogram for polysilicon, $100 a kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers, $0.22 a watt for solar cells, and $0.38 a watt for solar modules or panels. The order also allows the commerce department to create an incentive program for companies that invest in factories to produce polysilicon or derivative products.
We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
When you run a government like a business it's not there for you it's there for the owners. And if you're reading this you are not an owner.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a big club and you ain't in it. -- Carlin, 2010
Nothing new.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure that $600 million tariff refund that Amazon received will trickle down any day now.
https://finance.yahoo.com/econ... [yahoo.com]
Almost like this was orchestrated as a cash grab for mega donors and paid for by you and me.
But hey that woman laughed!
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
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Millions of people believed dear leader when he told them the incorrect definition of a tariff.
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4)
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:3)
China subsidizes its solar industry like crazy and has been doing that for a long time. A tariff can make sense here, at least (that doesn't necessarily mean that this one makes sense, I dunno).
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:2)
ok then why donâ(TM)t we subsidize our industry instead of tarriff?
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:3)
Afghan opium farmers have been using solar panels instead of Diesel generarors for close to a decade now. How many hints do you still need that solar is cheaper?
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Informative)
Better deals? You mean pay double and be happy. Tariffs don't ever make domestic goods cheaper and more available.
It's convenient to blame China of course. It's a lot more palatable than realizing that our own system has screwed us. Because we're the best in the world and if we can't do it cheaply and affordably, they must be cheating! Unfair trade! Unfair to the biggest power in the world.
But the simple fact is American companies put you in this situation. China didn't get ahead because they cheated. They got ahead because American companies deliberately gutted manufacturing and fired workers to improve their bottom line, and China responded to the demand, willing to take slightly lower short-term profits. Tariffs won't fix this (if it actually is broken). In fact they make it much, much worse. American companies aren't incentivized to ramp up production and drive down prices. In fact it's the opposite. With no competition, what capacity you do have will remain the same while prices double and triple. It's all about that sweet sweet shareholder profit (and CEO pay out). There will never be self sufficiency as long as the Harvard Business School mentality drives corporations. Meanwhile enjoy your massive tax increases that fund an ever-decreasing amount of social services.
That is why things were so bad during COVID.
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Given how much of modern manufacturing is fully automated, why couldn't US companies compete on a level playing field with Chinese ones?
Tariffs simply allow domestic manufacturers to reap higher profits and/or continue to use inefficient processes to create an equivalent product.
Perhaps the motto of the USA will eventually become: "Tariffed into mediocrity"
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Who says the Chinese are playing on a level playing field? See my entry above.
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China has the supply chains. Anything you need, from raw materials to completed OEM goods, you can get in a few days max. You can innovate and iterate so fast, and it's all competitively priced because they do capitalism better than capitalist countries.
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:3)
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Low cost healthcare and cheap renewable power too.
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Given how much of modern manufacturing is fully automated, why couldn't US companies compete on a level playing field with Chinese ones?
Because they have to buy the robots from China or Germany.
Or restart the whole supply chain from mining raw materials to producing advanced parts (like electric engines with exotic magnets) to CPUs, parts for robots, and so on ...
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Informative)
"China set anti-dumping import tariffs of up to 57% on U.S. polysilicon producers (such as REC Silicon and Hemlock Semiconductor) beginning on July 24, 2013 (following initial anti-dumping investigations and rulings announced in July 2013 and extended/reviewed in subsequent years)"
I worked for REC Silicon at the time and yes the Chinese did indeed do that. At first there were work-arounds but those were gradually closed down.
The REC polysilicon plant in Moses Lake WA (20,000 tons/year) is still there and has been shut down since 2019. They tried to restart it in 2024 but it supposedly couldn't meet the current quality standards. There was reportedly some skullduggery about the testing procedure but I can't speak to that as I retired in 2018.
Note that REC was not dumping polysilicon, I am well aware of their cost of production and their sales price. The fluidbed reactors were vastly more power efficient that the Siemens reactors. REC shut those down in 2013 if I remember right. The Butte plant ran them longer producing float-zone grade material until high power costs shut them down too.
The Chinese intend to be the monopoly supplier of PV panels, or at least 90% of them. They will and have done whatever is needed to achieve that.
It's the same policy as they have with rare earths, and EVs. Yes, "It's so cheap!" now, but eventually they will be yanking that supply chain.
So now the TDS victims talk about deals? (Score:3, Insightful)
So now it's no longer about jobs I guess it's about making a deal! I feel like that's a shift we didn't notice the TDS crowd make.
It would be hilarious that manufacturing jobs have gone down thanks to Trump'
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The problem is that Trump and his cronies think that USA is the "only market".
Supposed the market is not saturated, like for example the RAM and CPU market, as in: there is lots of demand, but not enough production capacity.
Then the one who puts tariffs on an import loses. As the producer simply sells elsewhere.
Then comes the silly part: I have a factory in China. It does not bother me at all, if my product costs more in your country. It only bothers me, what my contractor in your country pays me. Which wil
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"For example in a few years Germany will probably have high taxes for the owner of a gasoline car,"
Too late, they already do.
Below a few US models and what they would cost in Germany:
US CARS - ANNUAL GERMAN VEHICLE TAX
Large SUVs/Trucks:
Cadillac Escalade (6.2L) - 393 g/km: €1,167
Ford Expedition (3.5L) - ~360 g/km: €1,040
Chevrolet Tahoe (5.3L) - ~355 g/km: €1,014
GMC Yukon (6.2L) - ~380 g/km: €1,128
Ford Super Duty (6.7L diesel) - ~385 g/km: €1,144
Dodge Durango SRT (6.4L) - ~385 g/km:
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No, we already have current taxes, I speak about even higher taxes in particular tariffs in the future.
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Honestly less than I expected. For comparison what does something like a Camry or a Golf or more standard cars cost?
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Domestic manufacturing isn't coming back and even if it did you can't spin up a phone charger factory overnight. Who is going to staff this factory job that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?
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the new factories are already being deployed, i mean we call them ICE camps for now but the label will change soon.
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They don't staff them in China anyway, robots make a lot of stuff now. Don't even need the lights on in the factory.
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Insightful)
And how are we going to domestically manufacture solar panels if you also tariff the inputs to solar panel manufacturing?
Do you expect a completely vertically integrated manufacturing operation to wink into existence where sand and copper ore go in one side, and completed solar panels come out the other? And even if that did exist, where would the copper ore be coming from, and what tariffs are on that?
This is why the tariffs do not fucking work.
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And how are we going to domestically manufacture solar panels if you also tariff the inputs to solar panel manufacturing?
it's in the abstract, with inputs from michigan and tennessee. they even set the price they want to sell them at.
recommendations by the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to set minimum import prices of $21 a kilogram for polysilicon, $100 a kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers
china apparently produces the stufff at $4 per kg (local price equivalent), but there were currently no direct imports from china at all anyway. us imports chinese polysilicon through other countries at around $15 per kg which is the reason for this new minimum and the new tariff: around $25 per kg. tl;dr: michigan and tennessee can sell the stuff and you'll still get panels, made with genuine am
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
This. ^^
Tariffs work when they level-out the prices for foreign goods that are being dumped at too-low cost into the US market. They are intended to protect domestic suppliers of those same goods from unfair foreign competition. (That said, they should not be a crutch to support non-viable industries.)
But tariffs do not work when they drive up the cost of materials that US companies need to grow in the first place.
Trump sees most non-military problems as a nail, and tariffs are his hammer. Aimed at the US economy's thumb.
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And how are we going to domestically manufacture solar panels if you also tariff the inputs to solar panel manufacturing?
Do you expect a completely vertically integrated manufacturing operation to wink into existence where sand and copper ore go in one side, and completed solar panels come out the other? And even if that did exist, where would the copper ore be coming from, and what tariffs are on that?
This is why the tariffs do not fucking work.
You appear to be looking for logic in the decision making.
Think of it more like cheering for a sports team. It's full of emotion - passion and anger, and on-the-fly theories, but has little to do with logic.
Re: We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:2)
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It's no capitalism -- it's corporatism and mercantilism. A tariff makes the market non-free.
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Domestic panels will get more expensive, too, as they are made from polysilicon.
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Domestic panels will get more expensive, too, as they are made from polysilicon.
Yes, and this is exactly what this is about. As with paying companies to NOT build offshore wind farms to create cheap electricity, the Orange is also trying to limit solar electricity, so that his friends in the Oil & Gas industry would profit more. https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
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When you run a government like a business it's not there for you it's there for the owners. And if you're reading this you are not an owner.
Even worse? Running a business like Trump runs a business - or a casino (six filed for bankruptcy).
Businesses of Donald Trump that went bankrupt [wikipedia.org] (24)
D - Donald J. Trump Foundation
G - Golden Nugget Atlantic City, GoTrump.com
H - Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City
N - New Jersey Generals
P - Paradox Hotel Vancouver, Plaza Hotel
T - TD Trump Deutschland, Trump Entertainment Resorts, Trump Ice, Trump Institute, Trump magazines, Trump Mortgage, The Trump Network, Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Productions, Trump Shuttle, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Vodka, Trump World's Fair, Trump: The Game, Trumped!
Collapse of the monopoly metric on price (Score:2)
Interesting discussion off the FP. I looked at most of it. About 80% of the large discussion. Main disappointment is that it didn't appear to produce much in the way of humor, though that may be the usual moderation failures combined with my bad luck in what and who I focused on. Or maybe it's my limited sense of humor? I might have seen a hilarious post and not gotten the joke because no one modded it funny?
What I was looking for on the insight side (but couldn't find) involved situations where higher pric
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Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how you gave zero fucks about birds being killed or the ability of materials to be recycled until wind farms appeared and dear leader told you they were bad.
So put up or shut up. Let's see the numbers for your claims of pollution and costs for wind farms.
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Sad thing is if we had spent all the money the billionaires are going to spend on this election on jobs we wouldn't have lost 23,000 of them last month
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The bird rubric is also a red herring.
This about protecting the all-important petrochemical industry, just as removal of EV emphasis and the 100% Chinese EV tax and ban protects Texas votes.
Those votes tip the balance of power in DC fundamentally and directly.
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It's almost like firing all the people responsible for compiling exactly this data and replacing them with political shills (if at all) was a bad idea. Whodathunkit?
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Do you think the democrats would actually limit Trump in any meaningful way? Last time Biden didn't do much to reverse what Trump did, even carried on doing some of it.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Informative)
I love how you gave zero fucks about birds being killed ...
Cats followed by glass buildings kill orders of magnitude more birds than wind turbines, which are about 9th on the list.
No, President Trump: Wind turbines aren't killing 'all the birds.' Cats are. [businessinsider.com]
Wind Turbines & Birds: Myths & Facts Uncovered [climateadvocacylab.org]
Cats, cars, buildings and vehicles kill about 6,000 times more birds than wind turbines do. The biggest killer of birds in the U.S. by a long shot is domestic cats. After cats, building collisions due to glass (599 million bird deaths annually, on average) and vehicle collisions (214.5 million annually) pose the second and third biggest threats to birds. Poison kills an estimated 72 million birds each year, and collisions with electrical lines result in 25 million deaths annually. Then, way down at No. 9 on the list of threats to birds is wind turbines, which caused an average of 234,012 bird deaths annually.
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Everything we do on this planet has an impact. That means having an honest discussion about the cost of society and not sticking your head in the sand and pretending these things don't happen. You're going to try and claim that a wind farm does more harm than burning hydrocarbons?
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"The modern left exists to funnel billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers to billionaire oligarchs. "
What a crock. You have nothing with which to back that up. Repeating FOX talking points is rather lame. Hell, I can just listen to a White House press conference for those.
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The right surely loves projecting.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Funny)
The right: "I want to dump poisons into the air and water because I want society to pay for the mess I make while I keep the profits."
Also the right: "Remember that 'invisible hand of the free market'? Let's handcuff that fucker and make it more expensive to produce competing clean energy, so we can make even more money on more expensive, dirtier energy sources that cause wars. And while we are at it, let's cut healthcare for the poors that live downwind of the poison I'm pumping out - if they want health care, they can join up and go fight in the oil wars!"
This is what you are defending with your nonsense. Anti-competitive behavior from the administration that will cause higher energy costs, more pollution, and more health care spending that people cannot afford because they don't have insurance any more, and more forever wars where it's the working class kids dying.
But hey, you do you.
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You merely reiterate why no-one tales the left seriously any more.
The left: "Industry kills wildlife and creates waste! We must destroy it!"
Also the left: "So what if windmills kill birds and create waste? When did you ever complain about that before?"
The modern left exists to funnel billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers to billionaire oligarchs. If the left didn't exist, oligarchs would have had to create it.
Oh, wait...
You are against hypocricy and corruption, and yet you defend Trump?
You'll find these vices in the left, but they seem quaint in comparison.
Trump doesn't lie to hide the truth, he simply doesn't see any virtue in one over the other. And he despises anyone who does.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Informative)
- Except for solar every power generation system requires concrete. Coal and gas plants aren't built on soil and nuclear takes ungodly amounts of concrete. This is a nonissue bad faith talking point.
- Metal is recyclable and turbine blades last the life of the unit, 20-30 years. Link a source for the 7-10 claim. Also landfills are fine, do you think your cities trash ends up as fairy dust?
- If you think 300 gallons of oil is a big deal you don't know anything about industrial machines. Look up KT3406E on Youtube, he refurbs CAT engines and I was surprised many of them are filled with drums of oil instead of quarts. Also you do think a gas turbine takes no lubrication? Nonissue bad faith talking point.
- Notice the tricky bad faith language here, It takes 3~5 years to install a wind farm. A "farm", that means dozens or hundreds of turbines, he's trying to make you think a single turbine takes that long. Meanwhile there's a decade long waitlist to get gas turbines.
Your entire post is a worthless racket.
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Actually, I believe that there *is* a problem with the life-span and recyclabilty of wind turbine blades. It's something that needs work. But every source of energy, and nearly every product, has something that needs work.
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:4, Informative)
Turbine blade recycling is a thing now. Perhaps there is still room to scale, but it exists.
Oddly, one of the most cost effective methods is to grind the blades up and feed them into rotary kilns used in cement processing. The resin burns clean providing supplemental heat reducing fuel use offsetting emissions, the glass fiber melts and becomes part of the silica for the final product, and any metals are fully recoverable.
=Smidge=
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Well, my source was a few years ago, but there was a real problem transporting them anywhere for processing. Still, that sounds like something that could readily be solved (it just hadn't been), and ISTR that I did read something about plans to grind them up...though not for the later steps you mention.
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It is always only a matter of scale and momentum.
* Nuclear fuel is not reprocessed, as it does not solve the waste problem, and same time: making new fuel fram raw materials is simply cheaper than reusing the old fuel.
* Lithium batteries are not recycled (that changed recently), for the same reason: despite the absurd amount of waste, it is cheaper to make new ones from fresh lithium than extracting it from dead ones. That changes now - right now - as the the total amount of wasted batteries is so huge, the
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> 300 gallons PER TURBINE! That's a lot.
It really isn't. That's roughly one full tank of diesel for one semi truck.
> so little fuel most plants still keep all their spent rods on-site
They keep the spent rods on site because they are FORCED to. it takes a few years before the self-heating from radioactive decay lowers enough for them to be handled without active cooling. Until then, they are kept first in water pools (which also shields the radiation) for 3-5 years and then moved to air cooled steel ca
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nuclear also has a turbine with oil in it.....
Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score:5, Interesting)
300 gallons PER TURBINE! That's a lot.
That's so little that it is completely lost in the statistical noise.
First, a natural gas turbine *also* requires hundreds to thousands of gallons of oil for lubrication every year. All turbines do. So with the exception of solar, no matter how you produce your power, you're going to use about that much oil.
An average onshore wind turbine produces 6 million kWh per year. (Offshore turbines produce more.) Petroleum-based generators use about 0.08 gallons per kWh. So if you used oil to actually produce the power, that generator would use 480,000 gallons of oil. By comparison, even if the fossil-fuel-based turbines somehow magically used a tenth as much oil, that would just mean the oil-based generator uses 479,730 extra gallons instead of 480,000.
In other words, the *tiny* amount of oil changes the greenness of wind farms relative to fossil fuels by about 0.06%, well within any reasonable margin of error.
It's noise.
For a fraction of the amount of concrete, you get a building that can hold a nuclear pressure vessel that lasts DECADES and uses so little fuel most plants still keep all their spent rods on-site.
A nuclear power plant uses 200,000 to 500,000 tons of concrete and produces a gigawatt of electricity. A utility-scale wind turbine might use 1,500 tons to produce 5 MW. So it's about the same amount of concrete per megawatt, to within a single-digit factor, depending on the duty cycle of the wind turbine.
And the foundation can usually be reused for the next turbine, so that concrete also lasts many, many decades, typically. They don't remove the entire structure when they replace the turbine.
Also, you didn't factor in all the extra concrete for building long-term offsite storage facilities for the nuclear fuel, or the concrete for the sarcophagus if things go sufficiently wrong. :-)
Your 20~30 year claim seems to be the first result and also in AI-generated answers. It goes against what I've heard from farmers and ranchers. There's a lot of advertisement/propaganda scrubbing going on there. The Lonesome Lands podcast is run by ranchers in Colorado and Iowa and they've covered the real cost of Wind Turbines before.
If blades are failing after a decade, then either A. something was wrong with them to begin with or B. the company that owns them stopped servicing them after a decade because of expiring tax credits. And that second one actually is plausible, but that's not a failure of the technology; it's a failure of U.S. energy policy. Why spend money repairing it when they can wait for it to completely fail and then replace it and then get the tax credit again?
I'm not for gas or oil turbines, nor am I for solar or wind. Nuclear is really the best option and it's sad all of the plant production was halted decades ago or is being phased out in places like Germany.
I would argue that nuclear power stinks on ice. The cost per kWh is considerably higher than wind, and it requires continuous staffing and oversight to prevent things from going horribly wrong, whereas wind farms are almost entirely passive other than minor routine maintenance until something breaks and has to be replaced. Nuclear also requires transporting dangerous materials by truck or rail to storage sites, requires building storage that can safely contain the spent material for millennia, etc.
Also, every 40 to 80 years, the nuclear plant's equipment has to be replaced, and all of the removed material is contaminated, which means long-term storage of the reactor, pipes, concrete containment vessel, etc. You can't even recycle the raw materials like you can with wind, because nobody wants radioactive metal or concrete. And even if your blades are made of a material that can't be recycled easily, you can still landfill it instead of basically burying the entire plant in a no man's land for tens of thousands of years. If you think the waste from wind farms is bad, it pales in comparison with the cost and storage requirements for shutting down a nuclear plant.
If we get fusion working at an industrial scale, then we'll talk, but fission just isn't worth the hassle when there are other, much cleaner solutions.
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Great post. I'd add that the oil "used" by wind turbines is not burned. It just gets dirty and needs to be replaced with fresh oil. The used oil can be collected, reclaimed(*), and used once again. I'm not sure whether any wind-farm operators do that, but it is feasible.
(*) Reclaiming oil involves cleaning, drying, and filtering it to restore it to like-new condition.
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Just wait until you see how many gallons of diesel fuel gets burned in generators.
Just wait until you see how many gallons of oil are used to lubricate gas and hydro turbines. What, do you think those somehow defy physics and have magic zero-friction moving parts?
It's not like the lubricant is a once-through thing. It's a damn sealed system, and when the lubricant needs replacing, it's responsibly disposed of unlike the gigatons of carbon being blown into the atmosphere by combustion-based power generatio
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There's a lot of advertisement/propaganda scrubbing going on there.
It goes against what I've heard from farmers and ranchers.
The Lonesome Lands podcast
Irony really is dead.
You can always tell when it's close to November (Score:2, Troll)
But when 90% of your news media is billionaire owned and they have literally trillions of dollars because we gave it to them I suppose it doesn't matter how much money gets spent on propaganda and Big bro
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next time you should try using data instead of your feeling
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It is like some of the lame arguments related ICEV vs BEV which look at the energy in a gas tank compared with a battery but ignore the fact the gas is burnt but we don't burn batteries, we recharge them.
45% turn around (Score:3)
if you wanted solar... minimum 45% cost increase plus labor increase on top of it.
the utilities are enjoying their profits jump on a captive market, not just big oil. everyone gets to screw the consumer.
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Only because we do not cost in the damage to environment for carbon based fuels. A lot of good all that energy does for us if the U.S. turns into an arid desert. The American West is well on its way.
Interesting (Score:2)
We're fans of Juche now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Juche posits that a country will prosper once it has become independent by achieving political, economic, and military self-reliance.
Love it. (Score:2)
I only needed the first five words to get the dopamine hit. We're long past the point where it matters if purpose of the tariff is reasonable or valid. Even if this tariff is defensible. - and maybe it is - it's still like the blindfolded kid speared the donkey. Because even then, he'll try again and miss. And it's just entertainment now. Damaging... but still entertaining.
Re: Love it. (Score:2)
Way to bust that stereotype. :)
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Ironic Donnie (Score:3)
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to be fair, when you say chips, he understands that they taste good with ketchup.
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Re:Ironic Donnie (Score:4, Informative)
They establish a floor under the price of the imported sources. Domestic producers can charge the same but are exempt from the tariff, so they can keep the difference as additional profit. Or use it to compensate for higher domestic costs (labor, environmental compliance, etc).
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that is completely unrelated to the way trump uses them.
Tariffs can be used successfully for revenue generation or to re-balance trade and monetary inequalities. They (as are all taxes) are a disaster when applied for social control or behavior modification.
Far left wing "conservative" tax increases (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird how Trump keeps raising taxes on Americans, while also expanding the debt faster than all other presidents in history, combined.
A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money!
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Weird how Trump keeps raising taxes on Americans, while also expanding the debt faster than all other presidents in history, combined.
Trump still hasn't figured out what a tariff actually is. And he has surrounded himself with ass-kissing yes-men, so he never will. He's raking in billions, so he's happy.
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1. trump doesn't actually understand what a tariff really is. This implies he is really dumb and unfit for any role involving money.
2. trump does actually understand what a tariff really is but lies about it so he can use them as a tool to abuse everyone.
Personally I think it is the second case, but sometimes he says things so stupid I do wonder if it the first case.
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Who paid for the tariffs?
We did. It was money that went directly to the government. I.E. a tax.
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My bad for not being specific. I was talking about the debt, no taxes. And obviously the moderators didn't read any of my other posts or they'd know I was not defending trump.
US created the modern rules based order (Score:5, Informative)
The rest of the world accepted American leadership because in 1945 the USA was the world leader in trade, in promoting free trade, protecting trade, in trade and relations expertise. The USA was also paying to rebuild Europe and parts of Asia.
The world continued to accept these slightly skewed trade rules because negotiating new rules is hard and the USA, was in large part a reliable, trust worthy and intelligent leader in world trade that had spent 80 years building good will and making everyone rich.
Trump has blown up all that good will, he has destroyed the trustworthiness of the USA and no one thinks of American policy as intelligent. The USA still has by far the most vibrant economy in the world, they are the leaders or are second in almost every market that matters, farming, mining, AI, software... However, the rest of the world will slowly reconfigure trade away from the US. It will take a while. Countries will suck up to Trump during this transition but they will move away. It took 80 years (or 150 depending on who you are) for the current global system to be created. It will take a while to realign it but it will happen.
We will all be poorer when the existing system is replaced. No one else can fill the role the old, reliable, intelligent USA used to hold.
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All of that is 100% objectively true, though you're missing the part where the good 'ol US of A has increasingly (since '45 and especially since '91) used military dominance, economic warfare and other covert operations as a tool to (wildly successfully) advance US interests, much like the other empires that came before it. It wasn't only good-will, trade, diplomacy and making the denizens of the "first world" rich, though that certainly all happened. Until fairly recently, virtually all citizens of the "
Re:US created the modern rules based order (Score:4, Interesting)
The answer does not look good for the USA. If the USA was successful in closing itself of the world what would the world lose? Move your email away from gmail and find a new search engine? Well if it happened overnight we would find there are other things we do actually need from the USA today, but given the process of isolating itself from the world will take the USA a while we have time shift to getting what we need from more trustworthy countries.
The thing that people in the USA often overlook is how much debt they have. Look at what is happening to US bonds, other countries are backing away from them. trump is right that the trade imbalance is an issue, but wrong to blame it on abuse of other countries instead of the real reason, the growing debt the USA is taking on. I guess after trump has bankrupted so many companies it seems fitting that his legacy will be to be the person who finally bankrupted the USA.
Am I rooting for the downfall of the USA? No, but I had been hoping that once things got bad enough the people of the USA would take a cold hard look at their place in the world and up their game. Kind of like that low point that some people have to reach before they turn their life around. The sad part is there is no sign that the majority people in the USA have been able to see the big picture yet. They still live in an information bubble that feeds them American exceptionalism so the spiral downwards continues and the rest of the world is pulled down with it as we work to isolate ourselves from it.
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Oh yeah Iran is so much better off now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Back in the middle age (Score:2)
That look like the USA will go down and down.
There no plan, no benefice, but his own one.
Haha. Everything sucks now. (Score:2)
What a "brilliant" plan (Score:3)
Let's see how fast this hits US sales, and if it helps the coming economic collapse come faster...
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Ironic, as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me break the mood by being an actual geek for a second.
It's weird to hear polysilicon being described as an "ultra-pure" form of silicon, because it's formed on a silicon wafer without a pure crystal structure. That's why is high a high level of electrical resistance. It's actually one of the least pure forms of silicon used in chip production.
But, hey, most of my knowledge of chip production is ancient and dates back to 0.5 micron processes.
Taxes, Tarrifs, Fees, and Fines (Score:2)
Businesses will always attempt to profit. To profit, all costs of doing business must be handed off to the customer.
The half of the country that is below average intelligence is really fucking the rest of us over.
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Explain how lithium is mined.
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Explain how lithium is mined.
If it doesn't involve a roller coaster with whimsical singing dwarfs swinging pick axes, I'm not interested.
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Are you mixing up Mithril with Lithium?
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Explain how lithium is mined.
Like this [mit.edu]: "Today, there are two main ways to pull lithium from the ground. Until recently, most lithium mining occurred in Chile, where lithium is extracted from brines: salty liquid found at the Earth’s surface or underground. To extract lithium, that liquid is pumped from the earth and then placed in pools where the water can evaporate, leaving behind lithium and other elements.
"Elsewhere, lithium mining looks more traditional. In 2017, Australia overtook Chile as the dominant lithium producer. C
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Moronic and damaging.
I don't really mind the moronic part. Lots of people, even fairly brilliant people, sometimes do something stupid. As long as they only injure themselves, I think that's their privilege.
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not damaging to him, which is all that matters