بهمن شفیق
۱۶ فروردین ۱۴۰۴
۵ آوریل ۲۰۲۵
Michael Hudson – Richard Wolf
https://michael-hudson.com/2025/04/the-geopolitical-chessboard-trump-iran-and-the-shadow-of-war/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594yN8rxIJo&t=743s
The question is why aren’t the US corporate leader speaking up more verbally then they have?… Where is the power elite in all of this?
Michael Roberts
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/04/04/trumps-tariffs-some-facts-and-consequences-from-various-sources/
The overall impact of Trump’s tariff hikes is to raise the average tariff rate on US goods imports to 26%, the highest level in 130 years.
the 54% tariff on China could result in a drop of $507 billion in imports – and China only exports $510bn in the first place. Trump’s China tariffs would reduce American imports by roughly 20%. This would cause a ‘supply shock’ similar to the pandemic period, leading to a US recession and/or inflation.
Retaliation by other countries will lead to a fall in US exports. In the 1930s, after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were imposed, retaliation led to a 33% fall in US exports and spiralling down of international trade called the “Kindleberger Spiral”: a cycle where tariffs reduce trade, then retaliation reduces it further, then more retaliation, then first order effects on output, then second order effects, then more tariffs and retaliation, until global trade fell from $3 billion in January 1929 to $1 billion in March 1933.
A tariff trade war would hit the US economy harder than Smoot-Hawley, since trade is now three times as big a share of GDP as it was in 1929, and was 15% of GDP in 2024 versus roughly 6% in 1929.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/04/02/liberation-day/
One factor that is driving some continued growth in world trade is the rise of trade in services. Global trade hit a record $33 trillion in 2024, expanding 3.7% ($1.2 trillion), according to the latest Global Trade Update by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Services drove growth, rising 9% for the year and adding $700 billion – nearly 60% of the total growth. Trade in goods grew 2%, contributing $500 billion. None of Trump’s measures apply to services. Indeed, the US recorded the largest trade surplus for trade in services among the trading – some €257.5 billion in 2023 — while the UK had the 2nd largest surplus (€176.0 billion), followed by the EU (€163.9 billion) and India (€147.2 billion).
However, the caveat is that services trade still constitutes only 20% of total world trade. Moreover, world trade growth has fallen away since the end of the Great Recession, well before Trump’s tariff measures introduced in his first term in 2016, furthered under Biden from 2020, and now Trump again with Liberation Day. Globalisation is over and with it the possibility of overcoming domestic economic crises through exports and capital flows abroad.
And here is the crux of the reason for the likely failure of Trump’s tariff measures in restoring the US economy and ‘making America great again’: it does nothing to solve the underlying stagnation of the US domestic economy – on the contrary, it makes that worse.
Yanis Varoufakis
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/04/03/how-will-europe-britain-china-et-al-react-to-the-trump-shock-on-times-radio-unheards-undercurrents/
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/04/03/will-the-trump-shock-prove-as-momentous-as-the-nixon-shock-unherd-op-ed-on-bbc-tv/
But there are differences between the two shocks. While both aimed substantially to devalue the dollar, while also strengthening its status of being be the world’s reserve currency, the means were different. The Nixon Shock relied on letting money markets devalue the dollar’s exchange rates, adding further pain to America’s allies through the explosion in the price of oil – which damaged Europe and Japan significantly more than US producers. Trump might be taking a (small-ish) leaf out of Nixon’s book regarding oil prices, but he is trying to make his tariffs do for him what the Volcker-led Federal Reserve used interest rates for: as a weapon that inflicts more pain on European and Asian capitalists than it does on American ones.
Trade Unions, Shawn Fain
https://thehill.com/business/5231554-uaw-president-stresses-excess-capacity-in-us-amid-tariffs-auto-layoffs/
Fain joined CNN’s “The Source” on Thursday, just a day after the Trump administration’s import tariffs went into place and following the news that Stellantis was halting production at plants in Canada and Mexico and had plans to lay off 900 U.S. employees.
“There is excess capacity all over this country right now, and Stellantis has excess capacity right in Warren, Michigan, where they’re laying people off again, they can move Ram truck production there, in very short order, by producing Ram Trucks,” Fain said.
Stellantis produces Ram, Jeep, Chrysler and other cars. Fain noted that he took CNN’s interview from Chattanooga, Tenn., where a Volkswagen manufacturing plant is. Volkswagen produces 75 percent of their cars in Mexico, he said.
“There’s excess capacity right here at this plant,” he said, pointing to how Trump’s tariffs on other countries could help auto manufacturers domestically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgdmpJiFjHA
Mises Institute
https://mises.org/power-market/trump-tariffs-crash-markets
The stock market collapse began on Oct. 28, 1929, as news spread that the Smoot Hawley Tariff Bill would become law. The front-page New York Times article read: “Leaders Insist Tariff Will Pass.” Although the tariff bill didn’t become law until June 1930, its effects were felt eight months prior. Markets reacted immediately, as they discount future earnings.
The Smoot-Hawley tariffs ushered in the Great Depression, the Trump tariffs may be history repeating, or at least rhyming.
Wolf Richter, March 14
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/03/14/will-economic-detox-lead-to-a-recession-maybe-not-but-a-long-deep-stock-market-rout-will-see-dotcom-bust/
One issue is, how do you get an economy addicted to government deficit spending off this drug?
Another issue is, how do you get Corporate America addicted to cheap labor overseas off this drug?
The US has two huge structural deficits: The fiscal deficit and the trade deficit in manufactured goods – the “twin deficits.” Both are massive long-term problems and need to be addressed by sending the economy and Corporate America into “detox,” as this is now called, but it’s going to ruffle some feathers, especially of stocks.
Scott Bessent
“The market and the economy have become hooked, become addicted, to excessive government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period,”
“We’re focused on the real economy,” Bessent told CNBC on Thursday. They want to “create an environment where there are long-term gains in the market and long-term gains for the American people,” he said. “I’m not concerned about a little bit of volatility over three weeks.”
“The reason stocks are a safe and great investment is because you’re looking over the long term. If you start looking at micro horizons, stocks become very risky. So we are focused over the medium-, long-term,” he said.
Yield Drop
https://x.com/CharlieShrem/status/1907785903877087578
Tariffs are not the story!
Since Trump took office in Jan 2025, the 10-year yield has dropped from 4.79% to 4.17%. Look how much it’s dropped today!
That 0.62% drop may not sound like much—until you realize the U.S. has $36.5 trillion in debt.
This is stealth refinancing on a historic scale.
Lower yields = trillions in interest savings.
More breathing room. Less inflationary pressure.
And the market is front-running it.
Everyone’s watching tariffs.
But this yield curve shift?
It’s the real game.
Trump isn’t just cutting spending—
he’s restructuring America’s balance sheet in real time.
$6.6 Trillion
https://ria.ru/20250405/tramp-2009466373.html
https://www.patreon.com/posts/125795323?utm_campaign=postshare_creator
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/03/14/will-economic-detox-lead-to-a-recession-maybe-not-but-a-long-deep-stock-market-rout-will-see-dotcom-bust/
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331436.shtml
https://jackrasmus.com/2025/03/16/understanding-trumponomics-as-core-of-the-american-empires-4th-global-restructuring/
Liberals
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/reaktion-auf-trumps-zoelle-china-schwingt-das-kantholz-110400363.html
Je nach Machtposition und Interessenlage existieren zwei Möglichkeiten, auf das amerikanische Zollpaket zu reagieren. Die der Europäischen Union gut anstehende Option bleibt der Verzicht auf eine sichtbare Eskalation jenseits ein paar eher symbolischer Strafzölle, verbunden mit dem Versuch, eine einvernehmliche Lösung mit Washington zu finden. Wer Amerika trotz Trump immer noch als Partner versteht und die Amerikaner zudem in der Sicherheitspolitik weiterhin brauchen wird, sollte kein Kantholz schwingen.
Die andere denkbare Möglichkeit ist das „Wie-du-mir-so-ich-dir“ – eine durchaus erprobte Strategie, die sich gegenüber Washington aber nur eine andere wirtschaftliche, politische und militärische Weltmacht wie China erlauben kann. Ein Duell zwischen Washington und Peking macht die Europäer zu Zuschauern. Das ist keine angenehme Situation für eine große Wirtschaftsmacht, die aber keine beeindruckende politische oder militärische Macht darstellt.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/legendary-economist-says-trumps-tariffs-could-replay-devastating-history
Legendary economist Thomas Sowell weighed in on President Donald Trump's tariffs in an interview released Wednesday, saying that sweeping tariffs risk triggering a trade war and repeating the "devastating history" of trade policies that worsened the Great Depression.
The Hoover Institution on Wednesday released an excerpt of an interview recorded Tuesday with Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution, from the think tank's "Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson" series. In the interview, the acclaimed conservative economist said it's "painful to see" the administration follow in the footsteps of a "ruinous decision from back in the 1920s."
Sowell referenced the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were broad tariffs debated and implemented in 1929 and 1930, respectively, in an effort to protect American industries from overseas competition in the early stages of the Great Depression. Foreign countries retaliated, causing a decline in global trade that economists now widely believe deepened the Depression.
Cato Institute
https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-tariffs-arent-reciprocal-are-massive-tax-increase-americans
https://donya-e-eqtesad.com/بخش-بازار-پول-ارز-116/4167536-حمله-تعرفه-ای-ترامپ-به-تجارت-جهانی
