Microblog Memes

Or vampires.

?????????

In case you are seriously asking this is from Wikipedia.

Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates.

Soooo much much worse.

Yup, a fire sale for oligarchs.

Yeah that comment is wildly ignorant of Japan's actions and aspirations pre1930. Fuck Trump and these tariffs, mind you.

There's a lot of oversimplification. But the US embargo on Japan in 1940 led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The US embargoed all oil to Japan. Japan calculated it had less than 2 years worth of oil before it ran out, so it needed to capture the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia, more or less) because they were a major source of oil. The American puppet state of the Philippines was between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, so they had to deal with that somehow. Their decision was to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor and hope that they could consolidate their gains in the Pacific by the time the US was able to counter-attack.

Japan's actions in WWII weren't directly about tariffs, but they were about spheres of influence, like the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

A lot of Trump's posturing seems to be about bringing back these spheres of influence. The US wants to control North America, taking over Greenland and Canada, and leave Europe to become part of the Russian sphere.

Haha yeah, but I could do even better:

Tariffs bad because history

Nor does the US need to make everything.

The US is a service economy. It makes money through capital and intellectual property. Being the first to innovate means also having the opportunity to wedge yourself as a permanent middle man and charge people around the world to pass go.

Think Uber eats for example. If I order food in Toronto from a Toronto based restaurant fulfilled by a courier in Toronto, 30% of my payment is going to them in silicon valley for managing that order.

Similarly, when you purchase an app on Google or Apple store, they are collecting 30%.

If I am in Norway purchasing a game on Steam from a Norwegian developer, you guessed it, 30% is going to Steam.

This is America's strength now, not making t shirts, shoes or cars entirely domesticallty.

Most of the world was ok with paying the markup for convenience.

Since the US have gone rogue, many are calling for an end for respect to US intellectual property. Perhaps each country should have its own Uber, app store etc so that the cut can stay within our borders.

One case: Uber was charging 30% commission for managing rickshaw rides in India (a country with relatively low purchasing power per capita).

It was only after domestic options like Rapido or Namma Yatri undercut them that they moved to a subscription based model, charging drivers 20 to 40 rupees daily, rather than taking an exorbitant commission of 30% per ride. To India's credit, it has a robust IT sector located in one of its major cities (Bangalore) which helps promote competition in this case.

we're at less than 5% unemployment

So far