Originally Posted by John Voorpostel
Fair dinkum. Then no slinging TDS around.

Remember, in the end, price has nothing to do with cost.
It is set at a level the provider believes the customer will buy at.
Tariffs are added costs but how much of it to pass on is another question

That over the cliff scenario with the TDS smelling name is a definite possibility.
Cutting government salaries and payments removes money from the economy and its multiplier effect and ultimate taxation again
Gotta think waste exists in such a large budget and is good to cut, but there are problems where DOGE hits the road as the proverbial rubber.interface

25% on all cars coming in to the USA

I dunno John. Your apparent obsession with the TDS label may indicate the underlying disease. I'll try to refrain.

With regard to increased downward pressure on a sagging economy;
At the moment, car and housing are largely locked up because people cannot afford the trucks and houses that are produced and the car mfg and homebuilders cannot get the prices down because of what they have in it. Nissan and Stellantis are particularly problematic. Every time FORD sells a Mach E, they take a bath.
"In the end" the liquidation of some of these things may be bloody to live through. Other than additional downward pressure, the main problem there is not added tariffs, but bad strategic decisions.

During covid there was also sorts of M2 pumped into the system, and Stellantis, for instance, built a business model around 85k+ trucks, easy money and easy credit. That money and those buyers and that credit scheme are gone now and repos are climbing. Nobody is around to buy all the 85k+ Trucks, even if all the tariffs in the world stopped a month ago. 25% Tariffs on foreign cars MAY help our domestics.

As for the govt payrolls and DOGE, I designed and did some construction on a microbrewery last year. Because I was there so much I got drafted into a regular's group that contained Oil company employees. They bragged about the work that they did not do at home. One guy had a device that clicked his keyboard now and then, until his company defeated it with software. I promise you these govt employees largely werent getting sh+t done. Methodically interviewing them is just gonna be BS and drag everything out until the effort is abandoned AS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE. So, Trump cut the jobs before they can dig in. Carrying that much dead weight is never a good idea.

As for Musk, he raised a huge and bizarre profile betting money heavily on the Wisconsin judge. So I think that the loss cost him the DOGE seat. Dont know what happens to all that now.

As for 25% on cars coming into the US, I'm fine with that. Parts are exempt until May 03. May have to move up my truck purchase.

It's very early in all this John.

With regard to Canada,
Blaming the the American tariff placed on Canadian steel and aluminum... on fentanyl doesnt make sense to me at a glance.
US Steel tariffs make sense for National security reasons but the sudden-ness of it is difficult to understand, given that Steel was fairly close to reciprocal when Trump placed the tariffs. That seems to be the opening volley in all of this.

Yet a 63 billion dollar deficit remains to be looked at.
I looked at a list of tariffs on American goods published by the Canadian govt and it was 3 miles long.
Per the WH, about 20% of the US economy is export dependent. About 67% of the Canadian economy is export dependent and 70+% of that goes to the US.
Bargaining position matters to Trump.

This situation is complex.
I don't know what is fair, because there are two many things to try to comprehend and they are evolving.
But people such as me think that it is worth a look.

For you, the bogeyman is Donald Trump and his tariffs.
For the US, every major producer in the world is a trade war threat, so we have a lot more to think about than just the frozen land. wink

Marty

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