Someone is clearly lacking their dried frog pills

Probably struggling to import them.

Wait 'til he sees what his powdered rhino horn refill is going to cost.

The pink, lavender or mauve colored one?

I would ask: "Did Trump not think China would retaliate?"

And then I realised 50% of that sentence is superfluous.

I'll see your 50%, and raise you 34%.

... with the fanciful notion that America had stopped bitching about its own idiocy & finally acted on righting itself. Nope - must have been a dream.

That would require the supposedly sane "blue team"/dems stop allowing their lives to be dictated by people who think pi = 3.

What I am afraid of is what's coming next when this Great (Value) Leap Forward fails. The armed civilian populace+police/military is 8:2 "red team"/MAGA, conservatively.

If it goes to shit and they will never admit Trump was at fault but they can blame the unarmed city dwellers who thumbed their nose at the Anointed Orange.

the maga crowd gonna be pissed when they find out all the maga gear they buy doubles in price overnight.

Who put Homer Simpson in charge?

I didn't do it. No one saw me do it. You can't prove anything.

Biden, this is all on Genocide Joe - he single handedly made Donnie Boy a nailed on winner, I remind you

We're gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you'll say please please it's too much winning we can't take it anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puRU3UkD9H8

The presidential system is much easier to game into autocracy than parliamentary governments that do not have presidents - Turkey and Russia also spring to mind for this sort of thing, ruling by decree etc. So there is an inherent flaw in the US system of government that was quite easy to exploit. The two US political parties are not really parties and not really managed. Just a motley assortment of like minds with no coherence or official policies. There seems to be no leader of the opposition or shadow cabinet. But the Democrats have to take their share of the blame for this. They spent three point nine years not making any real preparation for a successor. They kept Trump in the public eye by prosecuting him when he should have been put out to grass. And then they gave him the choice of winning or going to jail. None of this yelled competence. The American people have been let down by all of their politicians, and as with the UK and Brexit, they are really going to suffer for it.

Make America Weak Again! But only until I bought some stock at record low, then he can pretend what great plan and play he made.

Make America Gormless Again, more like.

With neither side able to back down because it will be deemed to show weakness I'm hoping the popcorn supply doesn't dry up.

It's not going to dry up, just cost a lot more.

As a right-pondian, albeit an appalled one at the current situation, I find myself in a 'Mr Spock' situation. The fact is that neither Donald Trump nor Xhi Jin Ping are of the mentality to back down. Neither tolerates being treated as a 'naughty boy', and neither (AFAIK) is in a politically precarious situation regarding their present status as the leader of their respective country.

In this current brinksmanship, it is not about which one has the lesser determination, but more whose economy can withstand the tariff war the longest. It is not about whose economy is the biggest (the USA's I believe) but whose is the most robust, which may not necessarily be the same thing. And Trump has just picked a fight with literally the entire world.

So, yup, this will be fascinating to watch, from the relatively safe haven of the UK (10% on most things, but 25% on cars). I can only give my best wishes to those actually involved in this struggle and hope that you somehow come out of it ok.

I think Xi Jinping has the advantage — unlike Trump, he only needs to handle high tariffs with one country, not all of them. The very stable genius thinks it's so easy to win trade wars, he's declared war with the whole world.

Interesting analysis in the Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/07/donald-trump-world-economy-shock-us

Not sympathetic to Trump, of course

"After decades winning in an international trading game it wrote and refereed the rules for, the US is now facing serious competition – primarily from China, but with Europe as an expensive irritant. The response of this administration is to kick over the table, and demand everyone starts again. What it ultimately wants is a cheaper dollar to revive US manufacturing and Chinese competition held off, all the while keeping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And the rest of the world will pay the price.

There are precedents. In October 1979, Paul Volcker, newly appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve, drove up interest rates to a remarkable 13% in a bid to tackle inflation, later raising them to 17%. Soon the US was in recession. Millions lost their jobs over the next two years, notably in manufacturing, where soaring interest rates had driven up the value of the dollar, making US exports less affordable on the world market. After a light easing of interest rate hell by the Fed, Volcker applied a second dose of the medicine, driving interest rates up to 19% and forcing the economy back into a double-dip recession. Unemployment peaked at around 10% in late 1982.

But by mid-1983, inflation had come down to 2.5%. For the rest of the 1980s, the US economy boomed. The “Volcker shock” appeared to have worked. Volcker is today a folk hero among central bankers: Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 crisis, praised Volcker’s “independence” and willingness to brazen out the political storm."

> by mid-1983, inflation had come down to 2.5%. For the rest of the 1980s, the US economy boomed. The “Volcker shock” appeared to have worked.

Wasn't the largest market crash the one of 1989? but the Fed pumped so much money into it that people didn't notice. Just more rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer.

So from 1983-1988 the market boomed. Then it utterly collapsed in 1989. This came at a cost of the entire manufacturing industry, which the US has been trying it's damndest to get back for the past 15-20 years, once it started to realize what was lost, and it doesn't seem like that will happen in the next 10-30 years.

So short-term profits, for the mid-1980's, at, we now see, significant (reprehensible) long-term cost. The bankers loved it.

from the relatively safe haven of the UK

Nice invitation for a 2nd state visit you have there. Shame if it were to be withdrawn

> Trump has just picked a fight with literally the entire world.

Well, except uninhabited sub-Antarctic islands, of course. That would be nuts, it would be something that would happen if you pasted some dumb formula down all the rows of a spreadsheet full of trade figures; that wouldn't get past this team of stable geniuses, would it?

Is there a mechanism for removing an insane president from office and moving him to a secure facility where he can play golf with the golf pixies in his remaining dotage?

Yes there is. Unfortunately it requires congress to do it and I hear they will get right on it after they return from vacation, sorry holiday, for at least a couple of days before they go back on holiday for a month and when they return wait for hell to freeze over (or hopefully just until midterm elections).

First, a minor fix: echo "deal-maker-in-chief" | sed s'/maker/breaker/'. Just ask Canada who made their trade deal. Hahahah.

Amongst the really 'free' countries of the world, that is countries which are not under the yoke of misnamed 'American security', trust has long been ebbing away. The USA is a weak competitor in global trade. So it has to resort to coercion to achieve its goals.

People say that Trump is a bully. But Trump is only the mouthpiece. Do not forget all the MAGA fools who chow down on their chlorinated chicken and highly processed gloop who voted for him. Trump complains that Japan does not buy American cars (in any significant quantity). Any reasonable company would ask "why not?", and see that there is not much demand for their over-priced sub-par veeeeehickles outside its home market. And even that home market is problematic.

The MAGA people who think that manufacturing jobs are going to move back on mass to the USA are deluded. They may support turning women into breeder cattle and restricting voters from registering and finding justifications for slavery in their bibles and scriptures, but a lot of these obese people will not want to work in factories doing manual work. China's factory automation and robots makes Amazon warehouses look like they were built using hobby kits.

Many years ago the steel works at Gary, Indiana went through one of its downsizing episodes. It chopped 3,000 workers. A year later, with automation, it was producing more steel than before. Those jobs disappeared forever. That is an example of what can be done. I can't imagine that Rudy Huckleberry will want to work in a field picking fruit. So what is he going to do?

We are watching the American empire collapse. It is collapsing under the weight of its national debt, greed, and laziness. I expect it will get more messy soon. Any sensible country would be looking for new friends, cos the USA is not one.

I hope China doesn't back down, they sure AF need us less than we need them. I want to see the peasants here in pain, thanking their yawhe akbar for their sodomite leader.

Please Mr President we can't take it anymore, laughing at the deluded masses. Have mercy.