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l33tminion) wrote2025-04-04 02:55 pm
l33tminion) wrote2025-04-04 02:55 pm
April Comes In
This week is the week that the President decided to crash the economy intentionally, and it worked! Trump's new tariff policy seems to be totally bonkers, and predicated on the belief that trade deficits are the real de facto tariffs (he's described the US as "subsidizing" its trading partners before, so that's the other side of the same coin). The fact that the allegedly "reciprocal" tariffs are not reciprocal of other actual tariffs makes it hard to use as negotiating leverage, and the administration seems to believe several mutually-contradictory things about them (e.g. dropping tariffs will be negotiating leverage that will get other countries to make concessions and the tariffs will generate huge amounts of long-term revenue; the tariffs will cause a huge amount of import substitution and expand domestic production and the tariffs won't substantially raise prices).
There seems to be an assumption that trade deficits are the real in-and-of-themselves bad thing, equivalent to giving money away. But of course trade deficits are not giving money away, it's trade: You get goods and services in return! If there's one inclination of Trump's so deep that it seems like ideological consistency, it's that he's deeply skeptical of the idea of anything being positive-sum. He also seems to think have a Peronist or Maoist view that the country would be better off producing everything itself, and furthermore that domestic production will rise up automatically if imports are crushed. Crashing the economy will in fact reduce imports, but it could be short-term pain now for long-term pain later.
Meanwhile, people whose perception of economic reality seems to have become truly deranged under the Biden administration are jubilant. Crashing the economy is just revealing the hidden truth that the economy has been bad all along. That elation will last until... well, we'll see.
What else, let's talk something more local, more pastoral. Spring weather has finally arrived. It's nice to see all the birds singing in the neighborhood again. We've seen a woodpecker working insects out of some of the nearby trees, a variety of eagles. There have been some owls sighted nearby, I haven't seen one but I think I've heard one a few times.
Erica's friend George's grandpa visited her class a few weeks back. Meant to write about that but didn't. He's currently the poet laureate of the town of Arlington. The class had a good time reading some poetry and writing poems together. Meant to mention that earlier, but missed it.
I read The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine to Erica, and to continue the theme (sort of), we're now reading Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. Both recommendations/gifts from my sister.
There seems to be an assumption that trade deficits are the real in-and-of-themselves bad thing, equivalent to giving money away. But of course trade deficits are not giving money away, it's trade: You get goods and services in return! If there's one inclination of Trump's so deep that it seems like ideological consistency, it's that he's deeply skeptical of the idea of anything being positive-sum. He also seems to think have a Peronist or Maoist view that the country would be better off producing everything itself, and furthermore that domestic production will rise up automatically if imports are crushed. Crashing the economy will in fact reduce imports, but it could be short-term pain now for long-term pain later.
Meanwhile, people whose perception of economic reality seems to have become truly deranged under the Biden administration are jubilant. Crashing the economy is just revealing the hidden truth that the economy has been bad all along. That elation will last until... well, we'll see.
What else, let's talk something more local, more pastoral. Spring weather has finally arrived. It's nice to see all the birds singing in the neighborhood again. We've seen a woodpecker working insects out of some of the nearby trees, a variety of eagles. There have been some owls sighted nearby, I haven't seen one but I think I've heard one a few times.
Erica's friend George's grandpa visited her class a few weeks back. Meant to write about that but didn't. He's currently the poet laureate of the town of Arlington. The class had a good time reading some poetry and writing poems together. Meant to mention that earlier, but missed it.
I read The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine to Erica, and to continue the theme (sort of), we're now reading Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. Both recommendations/gifts from my sister.