JustinT

When Trump starts off with such an obvious and ridiculous lie as completely making up the tariff rate, it has to be the worst possible negotiating tactic. Every country knows he can't be trusted and there is no reason to bother negotiating with a crazy person. The smart countries are just ignoring him.

You are just believing another obvious Trump lie. Ask yourself, why those particular islands were included. They are territories of Australia, so why not include all territories of Australia such as the Coral Sea islands and the Ashmore and Cartier islands? Makes no sense at all.

That was just a lie. The list is missing dozens of other territories that could be used as loopholes. There is no logical reason the particular uninhabited islands were included. The particular uninhabited islands that were included are mistakenly in a database of territories with a trade deficit to the US, thats the only reason.

AI is usually wrong. I never use it. The Einsteins working for Trump used AI to get their list of countries with a trade deficit to the US. The AI list mistakenly included the uninhabited Heard and McDonald islands. Thats how Trump ended up taxing penguins.

Oil, coal, and natural gas.

You have fallen for the orange lunatic's lie that the tariff rate Thailand charges the US is 72%. They have now admitted that is false, and the tariffs Trump is imposing have nothing to do with the tariff rate Thailand charges the US. In the white house's own words: "Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners." https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

Absolutely true, but the one thing he has always been fairly consistent about is he hates free trade and loves tariffs. His goal here is to bring manufacturing back to the US and eliminate the trade deficit. Thailand reducing their import taxes isn't going to help with that, because not many Thai consumers can afford US manufactured products anyway.

Not really. The reason for Trump's tariffs had nothing to do with import taxes. The tariffs are entirely based on the trade deficit. Even if Thailand had zero import taxes on the US, there would still be a huge trade deficit, so still huge tariffs on Thailand.

The US could have been part of that free trade agreement. All the countries in that trans pacific trade agreement tried to convince the US to join it. Trump in his first term rejected it and didn't want free trade.

I'm sure Trump will pardon this guy soon. He's Republican, so he must be innocent.

But that 1 million doesn't include pre-existing conditions, and they can just end your insurance after a year if you are costing too much, so it's nearly worthless to me.

Ours won't go lower than 18. My wife would probably set it to 16 if it went that low.

At night, my wife likes it colder than I do. Our bedroom AC is always set to the lowest possible, 18C.

US stock futures are way down again. If there was any truth to these negotiations, the market obviously wouldn't be reacting so badly. It appears nobody wants to negotiate with an orange lunatic who completely made up the tariff rates countries are charging the US.