Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/02/trump-imposes-metal-tariffs-on.html
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TRUMP: “…to the order of Brazilians and Brazilians of dollars!”
AIDE: “Sir, ‘Brazilian’ refers to nationality. And their monetary unit is the ‘real’.”
TRUMP: “That’s what I’m saying! We’re talking real money here!”
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In fact, the opposite is true: Both countries have actively been trying to strengthen their respective currencies against the dollar. The real and the peso have been buffeted by weakness partially linked to Drumpf’s trade battle with China.
Whether it’s domestic or international policy, cruelty and incompetence are the hallmarks of this regime.
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I suspect that in part, this is driven by the fact that they are smaller economies and therefore easier to bully than the Chinese have turned out to be. And Trump is a bully.
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Well, that should help the steel farmers anyway (harvests have remained suspiciously low, personally I blame gay marriage), although I heard they are solid Trump supporters anyway, so it’s a wash.
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Does he own anything selling steel or aluminum?
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His Russian friends do.
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Trump is blissfully unaware of global supply chains.
“The decision to tax Brazilian steel as a way of ‘compensating’ the American farmer is a retaliation against Brazil,” it said. “Such a decision ends up hurting the American steelmaking industry itself, which needs semi-finished products exported by Brazil in order to operate its mills.”
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Dear FSM, please let it be so…
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“Effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries,” Mister Brain Worms tweeted early today.
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I’m just hoping that when Trump drives the US economy, and with it the rest of the world, into a recession (at best), it will happen long enough before the 2020 elections for him and the Republicans to be crushed at the polls.
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Both Brazil and Argentina have been meeting with chinese and russian officers, looking to make deals to export stuff.
This is just the Orange Cheeto being a vindictive prick --and a bully, like @simonize said-- and the only thing he’ll accomplish will be more deals of Argentina and Brazil with China and Russia.
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Funny how all of his weird, off-the-wall, random actions always come back to this.
Or, I mean, the literal exact opposite of funny.
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Especially aluminum which isn’t exactly something that can be made cheaply from raw ore.
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Did anyone tell Trump that Brasil is run by another rightist loony?
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He knows. The loonie waited a couple of hours during the UN assembly event just to tell him “I love you”.
I am not joking.
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Loonie doesn’t even begin to define him.
Jair Bolsonaro has been linked to the murder of Marielle Franco, a progressive politician that defended poor and LGBT people.
He appointed Sergio Camargo to the Fundación Palmarés --which is devoted to preserve afro-brazilian culture-- and Camargo declared that “slavery was terrible, but also good because slaves lived better here than in Africa”.
He closed the Ministry of Culture.
Bolsonaro’s son, who is also a politician, has said that they need a dictatorship because “some changes cannot be made during a democracy”.
Bolivia has suffered a violent coup. Chile’s forces of security are willfully blinding people who protest. Trump is doing his best to make Latin America a horrible place, making the US push for dictatorships like they did in the '70s.
The collapse of USA as a global power cannot come any sooner! Latin America cannot tolerate such a bully of a country much longer.
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There is a simple solution to the weak currencies of these countries. Just forgive all their debt to American banks and their finances should become a lot better strengthening the currency.
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I’m not sure about Argentina, but IIRC the Brazilian government debt was converted to the local currency during the 2000s and I don’t think Brazil had to rely on external loaning since that time.
So, for Brazil at least there should not be a debt to wipe.
Of course, there is some private debt from Brazilian companies held in dollars, but the case for forgiving it is much weaker than a government’s debt.
And from what I understand, the real devaluation and a reduction of interest rates on the recent years and made it more advantageous to get debt locally, which reduced the demand for dollars, aggravating the problem.
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I don’t know who Steel and Aluminum are, but they must be awesome if the President feels the need to block them. Where would we be if we had done this to GB decades ago? No Iron Maiden. No Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, motorhead, or Led Zepplin.
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