A hero of the right, Ronald Reagan, actually gave a speech condemning tariffs. Yup, I'm actually on Reagan's side here.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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I think there's room for reasonable tariff policy, but unfortunately the US is a nuance-free land full of extremists so Trump's terrible implementation will make tariffs radioactive for another generation if there's a large public backlash.
It doesn't need to be absolutely free trade with slavers or tariff man hell. We could raise the standard of living by allowing free trade but imposing tariffs -- or even outright bans on imports -- from places legalizing slave labor and other close to slave labor conditions. But obviously none of that fits into Trump's dumbass worldview.
Tariffs in my opinion can be a way to protect a given national industry against price dumping, especially when subsidies are involved, or if you have a specific capability in mind that you want to build nationally, but then I think subsidies are a better way, maybe in combination. But putting blanket tariffs against countries is in most cases not the best idea
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There is some nuance here. Smoot-Hawley didn't cause the great depression, and there a lot of economists who say it didn't have that much of an effect at all.
Tarriffs can have some useful effects when used for protectionism, diplomatic coercion, or trade barrier reduction coercion. However, Trump's tariffs are way dumber than anything that came before, because he's trying to do all three of these at once. All of these have conflicting effects on each other, and it is literally impossible to design a tariff strategy that can accomplish all three, since raising a tariff for one purpose means that you need to lower tariffs for other purposes. All he's doing by raising across the board is causing instability in the economy and convincing all partners to ditch the US.
All he's doing is exactly what Putin wants. Systematically isolating and weakening America while weakening the West at large and any other competing countries to his power and new accumulation of wealth.
There is good economic theory that Smoot Hawley actually was responsible for the initial bank failures that led to the Great Depression.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvWS_xzRbc
Can skip to about 15 minutes into if ya want.
and there a lot of economists who say it didn’t have that much of an effect at all.
Source? To my knowledge Smoot-Hawley is pretty widely regarded as the worst possible move at the worst possible time. Protectionism doesn't work when domestic purchasing power is already collapsing. Agreed on the rest though.
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Someone has either never seen “Ferris Buller’s Day Off,” can’t remember it very well, or didn’t pay attention. This was covered in class!
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. Voodoo economics.
I watched this movie 3-4 times and even when reading this, I'm still spaced out.
Ben Stein just has a voice that makes me tune him out.
Such a great voice for comedy. Shame he's anti-abortion, pretty racist, pro-Regan and Trump, weirdly against evolution... So many awful perspectives.
weirdly against evolution
You can see his point. Look where it got us, we should have stayed in the sea.
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We can't afford to waste this chance....
There is zero reason to settle for "not trump" we need to use Republican Inaptitude to get a decent progressive in power , there's zero reason to compromise with Republicans after this shit.
They are already trying to setup Kamala for 2028. I have zero faith that the Democrats are going to learn anything from their failure
They don't want to win. At least not with someone who would bring change. Why would they, they are all multimillionaires.
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If we don't get these paid actors out of Congress we're going to lose in ways most people really don't want to believe
People came for the Smoot but they stayed for the Hawley.
Maybe it is a good idea to get rid of senate seats with new people. 50 years the same people might be a bit too long
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Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
I have a feeling they learned, and then said “what a great idea to crash the economy. It’s so easy, let’s do it.”
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This time when we stomp down the corporatists we need to make it illegal for corporate interests to be considered when making policy.
And collective ownership
They also didn't have fox news at that time :/
They had newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who pretty much invented the "yellow press". And whose story is eerily similar to Musk's, including a sudden swing from progressivism to far right nationalism.
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