Trump 2.0 official thread

[Mt1701d]

The US believes it can get away with this strategy because it is a financial super power. Companies will be tempted to build their entire supply chains in the US because the US consumer and government subsidies can make it worth their while. Or so the logic goes, it remains to be seen whether there's any actual way this works, since if you don't get enough companies taking the bait, you'll just build a rent seeking industry that survives entirely off of subsidies and the captive market, and which never becomes globally competitive.

China was smart enough not to fall into this trap in most industries, because it strategically used subsidies to create globally competitive companies, and then forced them to compete globally via welcoming world class competitors like Tesla into the domestic market.

The exception is internet companies. Unfortunately, Baidu is a great example of what happens when you only have the first half of the strategy and not the second half. Not having to compete at all with Google, Baidu effectively became just a rent seeking company living off of a captive market and never became globally competitive.

The problem with the US strategy lays with its execution and lack of a defined goal. I will play devil advocate and say that the US actually had good leverage in the consumer and financial markets, but too many conflicting goals, lack of time, lack of a coherent plan of action and most importantly lack of any preparations, effectively kills any chance of achieving any of their stated objectives.



The problem with internet companies, I think was more an underestimation of just how large of a sector it turned out to be, as well as a the amount of control that needed to happen.

If you think about it there was actually a lot more than just Baidu, there was Tencent, Alibaba and some other smaller companies, but the others ended up focused on a section of the sector, Tencent with games, Alibaba with e-com, leaving only Baidu on the search engine side.

You also have to think back to those days, the coding was pretty bad at the beginning leading higher labour needs, the hardware was extremely expensive, therefore It was capital and labour intensive to build an internet companies. Having built up a few was already a pretty great run. Its just that they ended settling for different sections within the IT software space.

There was also an another factor to Baidu’s global competitiveness and that has nothing to do with whether it could actually compete. It has more to do with the negative views the US has fostered in the rest of the world has and the actual censorship that happens on Baidu, we might dismiss it but it’s one of those things that the west tends to twist their panties about, while they do their own censorship.

 

[GulfLander]

President Trump doubles down on China trade policy, saying they "probably will eat those tariffs."

 

[manqiangrexue]

Bezos offensive was a miserable failure. It would appear his forces got nuked from orbit.

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Honestly, it was just an idea being thrown around but in the end, it could never be approved. If Amazon honestly declared the cost of tariffs, it would reveal its profit margins on every item. The declared import fee is 145% of the amount that Amazon paid for an item. This transparency is never exercised by any company because it is bad for sales and bad for competition. It's bad for sales because pychologically, people don't want to know that people are making money off of them. The happiest deal is when you buy something at clearance prices where the store takes a loss or from someone else who paid retail but found that they can't use it. Then, people like to imagine that the margins are razor thin so the $100 item actually cost the store $90, but they make money from volume. People hate to see that they are paying $100 for an item that was $22 for Amazon with a $32 tariff on it. Secondly, it is bad for competition. Amazon's rivals will be able to cite Amazon's prices when dealing with the manufacturer saying they want those same prices when the fact is that prices are elastic and often maleable depending on the volume ordered and how good the buyer is at bargaining. This puts all of Amazon's hard negotiating work into a public resource for its competitors. So, it would have been fun, but Amazon was not going to give the final approval.

 

[lcloo]

This is a 24 pcs marker set COST SHEET (US Dollar) done by me more than 10 years ago, the second image shows a 10 pcs marker with current online price by our customer in US Dollar. Take note that it is a 10pcs marker on 2nd image vs 24 pcs marker in first image.

The old factory cost at more than 10 years ago was US$1.15 per set of 24 markers, I give it a high end 2025 cost at US$3.00 ex-factory price, i.e. the price of the product before leaving a seaport in Shenzhen, China.

The buyer would pay for the shipping cost, customs import cost i.e. TARIFF cost, overland transport cost by trucks and warehousing costs. The 2nd image is online EBay price for 10 pcs of markers. (comparing against My cost which was for 24 pcs of markers with 7% profit).

FYI, SHEIN has just increased their online prices of cloths by more than 300% just a few days ago, due to Tariff. That is how much damage Trump's Tariff done to the consumers' wallets.



Below is a screen shot of online price dated 30th April 2025.

 

[siegecrossbow]

There is an interesting phenomenon that has been well documented where western youth in general, and American in particular, are irrationally self confident. Where they would consistently score the highest in the world on surveys about how well they felt they did in tests despite the fact they score near the bottom when it comes to actual test results.

In many ways, the modern American economy is built upon the foundation of that irrationally strong sense of self confidence and invincibility in Americans. The financial markets lives and dies on investor confidence, that is how share prices can climb so ludicrously high in American stock markets so easily and so consistently, which in turn underpins high wages, real estate value, basically everything that the modern American way of life is built on despite America making less and less tangible, physical goods.

Physical good scarcity and even the outright lack thereof is one of the system shocks that could bring down the house of cards the entire US economy has become with vast amounts of paper only wealth.

People have collectively been willing to wilfully suspending their scepticism to accept that all those growing zeros on their portfolios and house prices are real and realisable just as soon as they decide to cash out, because they can’t even imagine it could be otherwise. Empty shelves is one of those things where people don’t need to imagine, it’s right in front of their eyes, unavoidable and inescapable. And it’s the kind of thing that starts to make people seriously question, probably for the first time in their lives for many, just how much value the paper and plastic in their wallets actually hold.

Once that sentiment become widespread, it can rapidly become a self feeding loop where people rush to cash out their paper wealth to convert into physical goods, emptying shelves even more and driving up prices and the growing sense of panic.

Looks like Jai Hinds were ahead of everyone by 3000 years!

 

[Xiongmao]

No doubt the US will lose the tariff war, when it does it will be the Suez Canal moment for the US and the end of the US hegemony. Many say the Suez Canal crisis was the effective end of the British Empire when it passed the baton to the US. This time, it will happen not in the military sphere but in the trade sphere.

 

[enroger]

No doubt the US will lose the tariff war, when it does it will be the Suez Canal moment for the US and the end of the US hegemony. Many say the Suez Canal crisis was the effective end of the British Empire when it passed the baton to the US. This time, it will happen not in the military sphere but in the trade sphere.

Funny thing is US could still have the resources and political will for a coherent national plan for re-industrialization aimed to compete with China. Yet Trump may have just used up that political will on a fool's charge.

一鼓作气，再而衰，三而竭

 

[siegecrossbow]

Funny thing is US could still have the resources and political will for a coherent national plan for re-industrialization aimed to compete with China. Yet Trump may have just used up that political will on a fool's charge.

一鼓作气，再而衰，三而竭

Time for the corporate elites to start hitting the books…

 

[Surpluswarrior]

Guys, it's okay. Things are going to be fine for the U.S.

A few videos dropped today with the latest Bessent interview and conference.

1:50 - 5:50

According to Bessent's wisdom:


1. U.S. retailers "I assume" pre-ordered a lot of goods, so they will continue to have a lot of stock


[never mind that any orders arriving now are at astronomical tariff rates]


2. There is a lot of elasticity in the U.S. supply chains. So if retailers can't get goods from China, they can just get the same goods from somewhere else.


3. China is going to have to come to the negotiating table soon - it sells 5 times as much to the U.S. as the U.S. sells to it, so it needs the American market back.


4. In trade wars, it's always the surplus country [China] that loses most.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

CIA during the Cold War: "We'll topple whichever governments and assassinate whichever country leaders we don't like!"

CIA today: