Again, this is all just missing the forest for the trees. You’ve gotten so caught up in sophistry that you can’t begin to comprehend why you’re failing to express your ideas, and why your statements come off as completely detached from reality.

I’m not going to bother completing the coursework you so desparately want to assign me. I have better things to do with my time. If you don’t get it by now, I’m not the person to get you there.

This is why these “zero for zero” offers are going to go absolutely nowhere.

By their own admission, the administration is simply inventing these numbers for “tariffs applied against the US”. What they are, in actually, is the US trade deficit against that country as a percentage.

But the thing is, you’re never going see an even trade balance between the US and Vietnam while still having trade between those countries, because nothing made in the US is affordable to the average person living in Vietnam.

The only way to get that fictional “tariffs applied against the US” number down to zero is for Vietnam to stop all exports to the US. That means that a whole lot of clothes, electronics and other consumer goods will need to be made in the US instead of being made in Vietnam.

No version of this works out well for Vietnam, and even for the US it either involves prices increasing to reflect the higher average wages and cost of living in the US, or US wages decreasing to the point where you’ve basically got all these goods being made by utterly impoverished workers in American sweat shops.

I’m not going to say that American consumers exploiting poorer Vietnamese workers to subsidize their own cost of living is a morally good system, but it sure is one that was working pretty well for the average American consumer.

It’s also worth noting that even the administration’s own formula assumes a tariff pass through rate of 25%. Obviously this is much, much lower than the 95% Cavallo calculates, but even taking the administration’s numbers as being accurate, they’re still saying that prices will rise by 25% of the tariff rate.

The average weighted global tariff across all affected goods is now 40%. By Cavallo’s numbers that means a 38% average increase in the price of all imported goods. But even by the administration’s incredibly sunny numbers, they’re still saying that all prices on imported goods will rise by at least an average of 10%. That’s, effectively, a new 10% tax on most of what you buy.

(Also, because of how much of what the US buys comes from China, that 40% weighted average will go higher if Trump applies additional tariffs on China, as they apparently intend to, to the order of over 100%)

Trump: Wait, no, you can’t do that!

By almost any metric you want to pick other than “did a bunch of assholes on Wall Street get very rich”, it was a disaster. Wages, unemployment, federal budget deficit, domestic manufacturing

Yes. It’s almost like I said exactly that same thing in the comment you replied to. If you’d actually read it before firing off your reply you might have noticed that I am in fact aware of all those factors. In fact, it’s almost like the line immediately after the one you quoted reads:

They also resulted in the wholesale destruction of worker compensation, worker’s rights, consumer protections, and created a ticking time bomb that lead to almost every bad thing we’re seeing today.

You can’t debate or discuss anything effectively if your approach is to ignore 90% of what the other person says and then reply to something you made up in your head. In fact in your replies to me I’m starting to see a pattern that also explains how you got the intent of the original article so wrong. Reading comprehension is more than just understanding the words, it’s about disentangling your own perception of reality from that of the writer and correctly assessing how their worldview differs from yours, so that you can actually begin to understand their intent, and not just the intent that you read into the words in absentia.

In regard to my comment about Reagan, because it’s illustrative of the broader point, you’re not wrong when you define these things as failures by the standards that you’re setting. But you’re failing to see the forest for the trees. You are the one redefining terms. That’s not actually a bad thing; we do need a mass-scale redefinition of how we define economic success. But you can’t tear-ass away from the mainstream currents of a particular field of study, and then act like everyone else is the weirdo because they’re not speaking the very specific language that you just made up. When you’re working against the norms, you have to acknowledge that you’re working against the norms, and you have to understand what that means for your argument and how you need to express it. You cannot attack dogma without first learning to understand the dogma. These adjusted definitions seem rational and natural to you, so you’re assuming that they are rational and natural to everyone else, but that reflects a sharp divide between your perspective and the mainstream perspective.

If you’d taken the time to read my previous comment properly you’d have seen that I defined Reagan’s policies as a success by traditional economic indicators. It’s literally right there in the quote at the top of your comment. If you have no idea what those traditional economic indicators are, you might not be equipped to be having this conversation yet. But yes, the Dow is one, as are GDP and employment. These are deeply flawed indicators that we should have abandoned a long time ago, but they none-the-less are the guiding lights or mainstream economic thought, and as a result anything that does well by those indicators becomes remarkably difficult to upend. That’s why it’s important to understand them, and to know how to gauge specific actions and effects against them. No matter how much damage Trump does to the average worker, to wages, to consumer protections, etc, if he can succeed by those traditional indicators he will be lauded for it, and he may well be able to hoodwink enough people into continuing to support his madness as a result. That’s the danger we’re discussing here, and that’s why we cannot simply dismiss those indicators just because we understand their flaws. They are fictions, but fictions that a powerful effect on reality.

And in the same way, we cannot dismiss the potential this tariff scheme has to succeed, because it does not have to succeed by what we define as success. It only has to succeed by the rules of a rigged game. That will be enough for these people to get what they want, at least in the short term.

Reagan’s policies did fuel an economic boom (when measured by traditional economic indicators - that’s its own can of worms). They also resulted in the wholesale destruction of worker compensation, worker’s rights, consumer protections, and created a ticking time bomb that lead to almost every bad thing we’re seeing today.

But you can’t just deny a fact because it comes bundled with a bunch of negatives. Reagan’s policies - measured solely by the metric of creating huge economic growth for the wealthiest in America - were extraordinarily successful.

This is important to understand because that success is exactly why those policies have proven so enduring. If they weren’t successful, their effects - including all the negative effects - wouldn’t have stuck around.

Nothing in this article is cheerleading for Trump. This “if we stay the course” angle is entirely in your head. The author’s tone is nothing but scornful towards the White House and Trump. But the worst thing we can do is assume that Trump’s plans (or at least, the plans of the people doing their best to steer him in a particular direction) have no chance of succeeding. Presuming victory is a great way to ensure defeat.

It is important to understand that there really is a chance that Trump might succeed in creating a new world economic order. I don’t think he will, because I think Trump’s personal goals are not as well aligned with those of his advisors as the author of this article assumes. But just because I disagree on the odds, doesn’t mean I have to disagree on the possible outcomes, and acknowledging those possible outcomes is really, really important.

As the author concludes:

There is no guarantee this extraordinary gamble will work, not even for those in the clique around Trump. But it would be a mistake to assume it cannot work – and however the pieces now land, they will not return to their old places.

(emphasis mine)

Know your enemy. If you don’t you are doomed to failure.

By treating anything that tries to understand that strategies of this administration as propaganda for the administration all you’re doing is damaging our ability to respond effectively to their strategies. You’re trading reality for comforting lies.

There’s no disinformation here. The article is a pretty decent (though flawed) explainer of what is generally agreed to be the most likely rationale behind the tariffs.

The author is not adopting a pro-Trump position in doing so, anymore than a doctor explaining what’s happening in your body is “pro-cancer.” It’s important to understand the actions of terrible people so we can better counter them.

OP’s objections - and their mistaken belief that the article is adopting a pro-Trump stance - seem to centre on the fact that the author ascribes some kind of plan to the actions of the Trump administration, but this is not the same thing as suggesting that Trump himself is making some kind of masterful play. There’s two flaws in OP’s assumptions; first, that ascribing rationale to the actions of the administration is the same thing as ascribing rationale to the actions of Trump. Second, that describing how a plan can be broadly coherent and have some potential to succeed (on its own specific terms) is the same thing as saying that a plan is good or well thought out.

The article’s chief failing is in not doing enough to u highlight both the obvious flaws in how this plan is being executed, and the obvious downsides it carries even if it succeeds.

I would recommend that OP, in particular, read this article from TPM; https://archive.is/Z164V

In addition to addressing the flaws I mentioned above with the Guardian article, it also does a very good job of addressing the dichotomy between Trump’s obvious idiocy and the fact that his insane actions often do have the elements of some kind of strategy to them.

We all know there is a persistent desire, need, insistence on figuring out the plans behind Donald Trump’s seeming chaos. But that whole enterprise is flawed. There is no more plan here than a giant worm consuming everything in its path has. It eats and it moves forward. That’s all there is… … Now, given Trump’s great political power, he attracts to him people either who have ideas that seem similar to these impulses or for whom these impulses fit well into their theories or strategies… People like Bessent and Miran sidle up to Trump. And in the process of sidling up to him and gaining influence with him, his goals and actions do take on more shape and coherence, on the surface. So there is sort of a plan. Miran and Bessent have one. It has some impact on Trump. But really it’s just the same guy with the same impulses, with a desire for domination and who’s super hung up about trade deficits.

It’s also worth checking out the video cited in the article, which breaks down the actual theory about Miran and Bessent’s plan (which, to be clear they have openly described in essays and interviews; this isn’t some 9/11 truther nonsense, it’s just relaying their actual words); https://youtu.be/1ts5wJ6OfzA

In short, yes, it’s possible for Trump to be an impulsive, idiot child who is still acting out grand schemes that, broadly, could have some chance at succeeding, at least in the short term, because that idiot child is surrounded by people who see him as a means to set their own long thought out schemes into motion. He is vessel for other people’s projects, albeit a deeply unreliable one because his own stupidity, impulsiveness and mental decline make it very difficult for him to actually understand the plan or stick to the script.

This guy gets it. Maybe one of the only Democrats that does, sadly.

Insanely bad idea. You should not be honebrewing anything with the capacity to kill people.

Not that Tesla’s solution is any safer, but that’s a separate discussion.

In Soviet Canuckistan, moose rides you

Actually this is hitting Russian markets too. And Putin is apparently not happy about this talk of annexing Greenland either.

This is the selfhosted community; Who are you training? In most cases there’s literally only one person who would ever need SSH access to this server. Maybe two or three in a tiny handful of cases, but anyone who can’t figure out Netbird in 30 seconds absolutely should not be accessing anything via SSH.

And you’ve clearly never used Netbird, Tailscale, or any similar service, if you think that update, maintenance and config constitute any kind of meaningful burden, especially for something as simple as remote access to a VPS.

We’re in selfhosted. If you have to bring up use cases that are in no way relevant to 99% of self hosters to justify your argument, you don’t have an argument.

A lot of things are “fine”, but the cost of adding Netbird to your VPS is effectively zero, whether counted in dollars, time, or convenience.

Given the massive security benefits of using a VPN, and the lack of any meaningful downside to doing so, you’d be an idiot not to.

And mine. Clearly one of us is better at it.

You seem like a fan of the “pull out” method.

I know we all get by now that it’s always projection, but this really is getting ridiculous.

This is the correct answer. Never expose your SSH port on the public web, always use a VPN. Tailscale, Netmaker or Netbird make it piss easy to connect to your VPS securely, and because they all use NAT traversal you don’t have to open any ports in your firewall.

Combine this with configuring UFW on the server (in addition to the firewall from the VPS provider - layered defence is king) and Fail2Ban. SSH keys are also a good idea. And of course disable root SSH just in case.

With a multi-layered defence like this you will be functionally impervious to brute force attacks. And while each layer of protection may have an undiscovered exploit, it will be unlikely that there are exploits to bypass every layer simultaneously (Note for the pendants; I said “unlikely”, not “impossible”. No defence is perfect).

IIRC, Apple moved most of their manufacturing back to the US. If not, substitute some other US made product, it’s really not essential to my point.

And yes, Trump’s idea is to force it to happen, but that just doesn’t work. You can’t magically create a market for America trucks in Vietnam, because they simply do not have the money to buy those trucks. The only way to change that is to make Vietnamese people much wealthier, or American trucks much, much cheaper. No amount of “gunpoint” will change that fact. It’s like expecting to make a million dollars by mugging a stranger in the poorest part of town; no amount of threat or force can make people hand over money they don’t have.

Which is generally very good evidence that it’s an effective strategy. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t be complaining.