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tugofpeace

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To me this is a great buying opportunity coming early.. I already DCA a set amount every month so now every $10 drop on VTI I'm adding a month's worth of funds
 

Burnem Wizfyre

Log Wizard
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24,028
Shoes if you want just one example, they are almost 100% imported and the capability to manufacture them in numbers required to meet demand does not exist within the country. So a tariff is effectively a tax hike on shoes. Coffee and pepper are other examples.
A lot of it is indirect effects too. If you hire a guy to cut down a tree that job is not subject to a tariff but if the chainsaw and shoes he uses are imported, that's still going to drive up his cost of business.

The hope is that businesses will move factories to the US but (as rightly expressed by others in this thread) who wants to risk building a factory that costs tens of millions when it's dependent on tariffs to compete with Asian factories and those tariffs can be wiped away instantly by either this administration or the next?

The usual way to deal with that is for the government to sign a contract with the manufacturer that guarantees compensation if the tariffs are rescinded, or they guarantee to buy a certain number of products at price X for Y years. This moves the financial risk from the business to the taxpayer which has its own issues.

Even if it all pans out and 10 years from now all shoes are made in America, they will be made by American workers that command a higher wage so the shoes will be more expensive. Even if you like that from a political point of view, it's still costing you money that you can't spend on something else.

I suggest you ignore anyone that paints any of this as a straight win or loss. It's complicated and there are tons of second and third order effects that no one can fully predict.
Everyone in my household have multiple pairs of shoes around 10, I won’t be hiring a guy to cut down any trees and I have my own pole saw and yard equipment, I mowed and trimmed my trees as well as power washed my driveway sidewalk house and the windows, cleaned my gutters, had to get all my shit done, new league this weekend.

My coffee prices are going to go up, how much? More than what they already went up during the Biden administration? I already feel relief at the grocery store, my wife used to joke her weekly trip to the grocery store was like making a car payment(450) now it’s an insurance payment (300) one thing the Biden administration taught me was to be frugal and not spend on stupid stuff, nothing you said even remotely makes me blink.
 
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Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
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It's fucking over pools closed.

Screenshot_20250404-043309.png


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Dalren

Trakanon Raider
38
19
Nibbled some MSTR at 277 yesterday. I'm still green this morning in a sea of Red. Otherwise the outlook is dreary right now, i know they say buy when blood in the streets but damn i still don't want to touch this mess.

Update - Sold out of my MSTR position at open this morning for a small gain. Taking any wins right now.
 
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Flobee

Vyemm Raider
2,766
3,215
Well, China said "game on", so it's going to hurt. A lot.
In order to get domestic asset prices (houses specifically but stonks too) into a range that the younger generation and working class more generally can participate foreign capital needs to leave our system. Thats exactly what Trump is doing, we're getting what we ordered with him. Foreign capital is no longer welcome in US assets and this is part of getting from where we are to where we're trying to go.

IMO whole investment perspective for everyone in US at least needs to dramatically change. We're entering an entirely new system and hard assets are going to be the backbone of that system. Valuations will revert to something approaching a historical norm. Bubble poppin' and it seems like nobody* in the investment world is actually listening to what Bessent, Lutnik, Trump etc are trying to tell them.

EDIT: Personally expecting inflation to rip pretty hard next few years (asset prices too) but wages should rip harder domestically if they do this right. Will have to see how it plays our
 
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Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
41,494
141,739
Shoes if you want just one example, they are almost 100% imported and the capability to manufacture them in numbers required to meet demand does not exist within the country. So a tariff is effectively a tax hike on shoes. Coffee and pepper are other examples.
A lot of it is indirect effects too. If you hire a guy to cut down a tree that job is not subject to a tariff but if the chainsaw and shoes he uses are imported, that's still going to drive up his cost of business.

The hope is that businesses will move factories to the US but (as rightly expressed by others in this thread) who wants to risk building a factory that costs tens of millions when it's dependent on tariffs to compete with Asian factories and those tariffs can be wiped away instantly by either this administration or the next?

The usual way to deal with that is for the government to sign a contract with the manufacturer that guarantees compensation if the tariffs are rescinded, or they guarantee to buy a certain number of products at price X for Y years. This moves the financial risk from the business to the taxpayer which has its own issues.

Even if it all pans out and 10 years from now all shoes are made in America, they will be made by American workers that command a higher wage so the shoes will be more expensive. Even if you like that from a political point of view, it's still costing you money that you can't spend on something else.

I suggest you ignore anyone that paints any of this as a straight win or loss. It's complicated and there are tons of second and third order effects that no one can fully predict.
This is why it's all so complicated, and no one really knows the answer.

In absolute terms, yes, the shoes will be more expensive. But if you expand all of this out to the entire US economy and we're keeping extra billions (or trillions) within the country instead of outside of it, does everyone's income increase so much that now the relative price of those shoes is actually significantly cheaper, while the quality of them also goes up?

It's the tough question that globalism makes incredibly hard to answer. Right now every US worker is competing in a global economy. Yeah, you obviously can't win against some brown kid who's making pennies a day. But if we insulated ourselves, does that factory worker getting $30/hr to make socks now have a standard of living significantly above where they would be otherwise and everyone is better off (a rising tide lifts all boats)?

Edit: Post above in conjunction with this one. The Trump administration is attempting to make us truly independent. Yeah, we'll still participate in the global economy, but it's time we invested in ourselves.
 
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Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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In order to get domestic asset prices (houses specifically but stonks too) into a range that the younger generation and working class more generally can participate foreign capital needs to leave our system. Thats exactly what Trump is doing, we're getting what we ordered with him. Foreign capital is no longer welcome in US assets and this is part of getting from where we are to where we're trying to go.

IMO whole investment perspective for everyone in US at least needs to dramatically change. We're entering an entirely new system and hard assets are going to be the backbone of that system. Valuations will revert to something approaching a historical norm. Bubble poppin' and it seems like nobody* in the investment world is actually listening to what Bessent, Lutnik, Trump etc are trying to tell them.

EDIT: Personally expecting inflation to rip pretty hard next few years (asset prices too) but wages should rip harder domestically if they do this right. Will have to see how it plays our

This is why it's all so complicated, and no one really knows the answer.

In absolute terms, yes, the shoes will be more expensive. But if you expand all of this out to the entire US economy and we're keeping extra billions (or trillions) within the country instead of outside of it, does everyone's income increase so much that now the relative price of those shoes is actually significantly cheaper, while the quality of them also goes up?

It's the tough question that globalism makes incredibly hard to answer. Right now every US worker is competing in a global economy. Yeah, you obviously can't win against some brown kid who's making pennies a day. But if we insulated ourselves, does that factory worker getting $30/hr to make socks now have a standard of living significantly above where they would be otherwise and everyone is better off (a rising tide lifts all boats)?

Edit: Post above in conjunction with this one. The Trump administration is attempting to make us truly independent. Yeah, we'll still participate in the global economy, but it's time we invested in ourselves.

It's a result of having a trade deficit. You buy stuff from other countries and give them US dollars in return. The only thing they can do with those dollars is buy oil from other countries (ask Ghadaffi what happens when you want to start trading oil in something other than USD) and buy up things in the US. Mostly treasuries, keeping up the demand for them and letting the US government fund its deficits relatively cheaply. This is what people mean when they talk about the US exporting its debt.

Can this be turned around? Perhaps, but it's going to be a long and arduous battle and it remains to be seen who can hold their breath longest here. If Vietnam can't sell shoes to 350 million Americans, it can still sell them to 7,650 million other people around the world. Can the US muster the political will to stick to a painful process that is going to take years and years? I don't claim to know.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Grabbed some more NVDA at $97
Missed a fill on JPM at $213, but the day is sill young.

Edit: Even though I am already overweight, I am a buyer of AAPL at $190 if my order hits.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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Unsolicited advice for those experiencing this type of event for the first time. Go back and read this thread in the mid Feb - end of Mar 2020 timeframe. It might give you an insight as to what we saw, and how we were thinking in terms of a serious market downturn.

1743775381337.png
 
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Falstaff

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Everyone in my household have multiple pairs of shoes around 10, I won’t be hiring a guy to cut down any trees and I have my own pole saw and yard equipment, I mowed and trimmed my trees as well as power washed my driveway sidewalk house and the windows, cleaned my gutters, had to get all my shit done, new league this weekend.

My coffee prices are going to go up, how much? More than what they already went up during the Biden administration? I already feel relief at the grocery store, my wife used to joke her weekly trip to the grocery store was like making a car payment(450) now it’s an insurance payment (300) one thing the Biden administration taught me was to be frugal and not spend on stupid stuff, nothing you said even remotely makes me blink.
Congrats, you are the one person who isn’t going to be effected by global tariffs on consumer goods and services.
 
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Jackie Treehorn

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Isn’t the fear here assuming these aren’t removed next week -

Trump does his tariff thing. And maybe after 5-10 (plus?) years it actually does what it intended to do and improves the US economy.

But in the interim it causes various pains, and the average citizen can’t (and obviously this is hyper complex) understand or see the big zoomed out picture

New President comes in 2028 and unravels them back to where they were. 4 years of damage without the possible eventual gains. News media simply blasts this for the next 10 years to get the far left elected.

I dunno. Can’t let fear of the future stop things but eh. I’ve been waiting and hoping for a market downturn anyway.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
20,828
14,619
I'm keeping an eye on DG. Exactly the type of understaffed dump that can keep costs and thus prices down, that most people don't want to shop at when things are going well but see a big uptick in traffic and sales when shit starts to go sideways.
 

Burnem Wizfyre

Log Wizard
13,023
24,028
Congrats, you are the one person who isn’t going to be effected by global tariffs on consumer goods and services.
How’s it going to be worse than what we just experienced with Biden, the world is burning and falling all around me but my prices are coming down, the only thing that sucks right now is my investments.
 

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
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It's the tough question that globalism makes incredibly hard to answer. Right now every US worker is competing in a global economy. Yeah, you obviously can't win against some brown kid who's making pennies a day. But if we insulated ourselves, does that factory worker getting $30/hr to make socks now have a standard of living significantly above where they would be otherwise and everyone is better off (a rising tide lifts all boats)?
This has a lot broader implications too. Like the tech industry and many white collar positions. I, an American in America, have to compete with the third world for jobs in my local vicinity.

When people apply to jobs today half the applicants are in India looking for H1B visas to do them. Even if the company outright states they aren't supporting visas the effects of globalism still clog up the recruitment pipelines by wasting time. We opened a junior analyst role two weeks ago. We got 500 applicants in a few hours for a job in Austin, Texas.

Of that 500?
1. ~200 Indians in India looking for H1B.
2. ~200 Indians in USA on H1B.
3. ~100 US Citizens in the US.
 
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