Trump Literally Becomes "The Don", and Teaches Columbia About FAFO.
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It's quite bizarre how fast his trade wars end.
As soon as we actually start getting effected by tariffs... oooh boy I'll probably complain on the internet about it, rest assured!... but so far it's been too successful of a negotiating strategy to need to complain.
Maybe he can fight with Japan and we can get the Toyota Hilux...
The Left and basically the entire rest of the planet have only gotten by because they receive very little resistance when they talk shit. Its been decades of the US basically cucking out to everyone, even when we are at war with a country.
So the moment they don't get that quick cucking, they get scared fast. Like a woman who realizes that you aren't gonna take that phone smashed into your head lightly and might hit her back.
There are going to be a lot of "oh fuck, he was serious?" moments over the next few months from people who've spent their entire adult life dealing with an America that never backed up the finger wagging and "red lines" in a meaningful way.
It is why I argued that, regardless of what you thought about Syria itself, him doing that mass Tomahawk strike on it early in his first term was one of the most important things he did. Because he said "If anyone uses chemical weapons, Imma shank them." Someone laughed it off and used chemical weapons. Trump flattened their biggest air base, and then walked away saying "That'll learn ya."
Then from that point on, all he had to do was say "HEY! Do you want me to take you outside?!" And everyone responded "DO WHAT HE SAYS! HE'S CRAZY!"
You have to have mutual respect in any negotiation or else it's not going to have a good outcome for anybody involved.
This is one of the things that sold me on Trump and what I point out to people all the time. He's Speak Loudly and Beat the Shit out of you with a Tree. Which is what we need after all this time of America being subservient
I'd think of it more like the day after 9/11 when the US population was calling for war and the use of nuclear weapons.
Every nation on Earth started calling the White House going "Yo, it wasn't us bro. We're cool."
I think Japan would GLADLY sell the Hilux in America, even set up a factory in the US too. But aren't they getting cockblocked by US government types that favour the, being honest, more shit Ford and GM trucks?
I know they stop the import of small pickups from Japan for 'safety reasons' when they'd be perfect shuttles for farmers on their properties.
That and probably they get PTSD of technicals being available..
That's the chicken tax.
It was set up to protect the American trucks from being out competed by the Japanese trucks.
While in principle I agree with protecting American companies more than foreign companies, the chicken tax has led to the American trucks becoming huge pieces of shit rather than reliable work vehicles. You can't get something like a Honda Acty or even something as small as the old Ford Ranger anymore due to CAFE laws on one end and the chicken tax on the other. This is why 25+ year old kei trucks are becoming very popular for farmers. They are very cheap, small, and work great on a farm. The only real problem is that there isn't really an existent support network for kei trucks in the USA, so repairing them is kind of a pain if you don't know what you are doing.
CAFE?
Corporate Average Fuel Economy.
The feds keep raising the target on how fuel efficient cars have to be, so manufacturers come up with stupid gimmicks like engine start-stop, cylinder deactivation, 3-cylinder engines with turbochargers, etc. All just to squeeze some extra miles-per-gallon in a lab.
Meanwhile, in the real world, you're stuck with an anemic piece of shit that has a heart attack just trying to merge onto the highway while burning more gas than if you had a regular V6.
And I would argue the reason you have seen things like the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Fe eating up the sales charts is because they were able to make a small truck that isnt actually classified as a truck (because it is unibody and on a car chassis), so they could make it smaller.
"WE'RE TRYING TO BAN GUNS TO PREVENT AN INSURRECTION, AND NOW YOU WANT TO GIVE THEM TOYOTAS? ARE YOU INSANE?!!"
You'd basically have to take a lobotomy pick to the various regulations the EPA has enacted when it comes to car/truck emissions.
There's a reason most trucks nowadays are shapeless blobs and fuckoff huge in terms of width.
But the experts on reddit told me tarrifs dont work REEEEEEE.
As one of the official lolberts of the site, I can't tell you how much I hate "bad faith, argument-specific, libertarians" where Communists explain to me how the Free Market works. The one that they don't believe in and want to abolish at the point of a gun.
At least Trump is on friendly terms with a lot of the Japanese business community and governments. So he might not even have to go all "Art of the Deal" to get that one.
I'll pay a 100% markup on every damn thing I buy from overseas if it means manufacturing moves back to the US and we get illegal invaders out of the country.
Nearly all of my food is local so any tariffs I paid would be entirely voluntary "luxury" spending; mostly cheaply made Chinese crap from places like Amazon.
Tariffs won't, by themselves, bring manufacturing back to the US. It's a larger argument about incentivization, but I get your complaint.