If by "bluffing" you mean signed and going into effect in 15 days then you are spot on.

And now he'll use the exemption for Canada and Mexico as a threat in upcoming NAFTA negotiations.

More winning!!!!

"U.S. stocks rose after President Donald Trump announced tariffs that were narrower than some traders had anticipated. Treasuries and the dollar gained.

... investors found relief in the president’s decision to exclude Canada and Mexico while giving other countries wiggle room from levies on imports of steel and aluminum."

- Bloomberg

And? What's your point?

you seemed not to grasp Sanuk's point, so I was helping you understand.

If you think the threat of tariffs will help the US in NAFTA talks you severely underestimate Mexican and Canadian negotiators. They have already caused Trump to backtrack, so they are the ones "winning". There will likely be more winning from other countries too until Trump backs off the tariffs completely. Of course Trump being Trump he'll claim victory anyway and his base will spit some tobacco and give him a hell yeah!

Hell yeh!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile you can slink back away as he has again failed to ruin the world, but you can keep hoping. Don't worry, I'm more than certain he will tweet something stupid soon and you can start a new thread.

Ruining the world is an awfully high bar to get over here. I mean, shit, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler couldn't combine to do it.

Why don't we just go with "stupid economic decision". I think that suffices to describe Trump's tariff gambit. In fairness it pales in comparison to Obamacare and the Iraq War in terms of scale of stupid, but still. Standard accepted economics says when you reduce degrees of freedom within markets you lose efficiency.

If everyone else would take tariffs off of our stuff and work forces and markets were equal globally I would agree with you completely. But they're not.

You mean "reduce the degree of freedom?" Not sure the concept of degrees of freedom applies unless referring to a specific statistical model.

But in any case those "standard accepted economics" typically makes assumptions about the agents operating in the market, and don't account for the game theory injected by interventions in the market by some market agents. At some point it reduces to the prisoner's dilemma. Everyone knows that "no one talks, everyone walks." But if someone talks, then saying that "not talking is most efficient" kind of goes out the window, and it becomes smarter to angle for the 5-year sentence instead of the 30-year sentence.

Edit: Oh shit, did I just defend the Orange Cheeto?

Edit: Spiridon said it way shorter.

I thought we set up the WTO to look over that stuff. I'm betting dollars to donuts here that some total aggregation of US tariffs are just as high as most other countries' total aggregation of tariffs. So the idea that Trump is righting some wrong would not be viable. Don't make me go research this because I'll do it!

I wasn't necessarily using it as a three word term, so I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt. =) You understood what I was saying, right? Basically, I was referring to limiting the options that market participants have.

If I'm understanding you right, the answer would still be no. Even if the other side is a bunch of would-be, non-reciprocal cheaters it's still best to trade with people that offer you value. At the end they give us steel and we give them little green pieces of paper. There are some stories you can tell where, perhaps, you might not want the trading to result in the total destruction of domestic industries, but that's a different game than tariff equality. (Again, if I understood you correctly.)

I can't find it. I'd love to see that info. So please do research it and share.