Pooter

My reading is just fine. Your argument is falling apart as the administration abandons it in real time..

Well that was quick.. tariffs paused now. All part of some genius plan I’m sure. I’m confused, 5 minutes ago weren’t tariffs here to stay, non negotiable, and we all needed to be patient as trump rebuilt the American economic bargain for the every-man? Finally we have someone trying something “different.” oh wait no never mind we got spooked and reversed our entire global trade policy after 4 DAYS. More mental gymnastics incoming in 3.. 2.. 1..

I keep hearing this line - "the world took advantage of us" "we are getting hosed by the whole world in trade" Who, exactly is hosing us? Is it South Korea who imports our goods at near as makes no difference 0% effective tariff rate? Is it Australia with whom we have a significant trade surplus? I was reliably informed that if you have a trade deficit with someone that must mean they're hosing you. So are we hosing Australia? Must be somehow.. And if so why are we slapping additional tariffs on them? Dude just take a step back and call a spade a spade here. None of this makes any f-ing sense. It's a nice graph though. The rich indeed are getting richer at a faster rate than the people with less money. That's exactly how compound interest works. Even for regular folks, it takes approximately the same amount of time to accumulate your first $100k as it does to go from $100k to $1M. Isn't it crazy how math works?! That's also exactly what I would expect growth curves to look like when comparing the 0.1% to the rest of the population. Turns out if youre in the 0.1% you're probably pretty freaking good at allocating money and making more of it. To pin wealth inequality in the US on "globalization" and the "myth of free trade" is definitely a new one. But ultimately the real issue here is your implication that trump's deranged and incoherent tariff plan is going to somehow rectify this wealth problem. What evidence do you have for that? Because so far all I've seen are normie financial dummies panic selling, while the savvy billionaires short the market and use their connections and insider info to capitalize on the insane volatility. The tariffs are also effectively a wildly regressive tax. When you jack up the price of normal goods across the board it's going to hurt regular people far far more, because us normal folks need the same amount of food and toilet paper as billionaires do.

That's the point of the analogy.. the problems are unrelated, and the proposed solution makes no sense. The sink leak is not related to the self induced house fire. So yes, in a way you're right.. there is nothing about our current problems that should make people want to torpedo the economy with blanket tariffs on the whole world. They are entirely unrelated.

This is like saying you have leaky sink in your house, and then decide to burn your house down. "See, my house is burning down! I knew there was a problem!" Yeah but you didn't diagnose the problem correctly or apply an appropriate corrective action, and ended up hurting yourself more.

This was literally the goal of the CHIPS act with respect to semiconductor manufacturing. We realized we needed to be less reliant on Taiwan-manufactured chips for advanced military hardware so we wanted to bring some of that capacity back to the US. Problem is the act was passed almost 3 years ago and the chip plants are still under construction. Turns out.. building a megafactory for the world's most advanced microchips takes a while and is a big gamble by companies sinking billions into manufacturing infrastructure, so they need some market stability and predictability from the administration. They had that from 2022-2025. But if trump's argument is he wants to bring back manufacturing across a variety of sectors, you should be able to see that we can't have the leader of the free world inventing new reasons for tariffs off the cuff and flip-flopping on international trade policy on an hourly basis and expect any company to take any level of risk building up their infrastructure. It's simply unrealistic. FWIW I don't actually disagree with some protectionist trade policies surrounding crucial defense capabilities. But I don't think clawing back T-shirt manufacturing from Vietnam or tariffing Madagascar for bananas fits that description. Oh and by the way Trump openly shat on the chips act less than a month ago so take that for what you will. source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/technology/trump-chips-act.html

This is the key assumption undergirding trump's entire tariff plan, and apparently also bill oreilly's argument. The only problem is for the most part it is completely false. The vast majority of countries are not "hosing" us in trade. China and a few others actually have predatory trade practices, but dozens of countries we have now pissed off were pretty solid allies that simply have a trade deficit with us. Many had free trade agreements with us and near zero tariff levels. And one more time for the folks in the back: A trade deficit is not a ripoff. But that is exactly what trump's tariffs were calculated from. Just as one example, we already had a free trade agreement with South Korea--a hugely important ally. Their effective tariff rate on imported US goods was 0.002%. But trump's make-believe math says they're tariffing us 50% based on his nonsense deficit formula, so now we're dunking on a close ally that has crucial chip technology and was (until now) very strongly aligned against China. We are literally punching ourselves in the dick and then doing mental gymnastics to try to frame it as a win. You guys can rail on the neocons and the globalist elites and whatever other boogeymen all you want, but I know one thing and it's this: until 5 minutes ago, stock market performance was the ultimate bellwether for a president's economic policies in right wing circles. But now that trump has tanked the market, suddenly a lot of people are doing 180 pivot and demanding patience while he enacts some 50-year grand plan to revitalize american manufacturing. GMAFB. The dude is an illiterate clown who thinks "trade deficit" means we are literally losing money to these countries as if we aren't getting goods and services in return. Deficit = bad word. Must fix bad word. It's as simple as that.

Maybe we would know the reason behind the tariffs if the admin would pick one from their ever-growing laundry list of disjointed grievances and good idea fairies.. Tariffs are solely negotiating tool to get Canada and Mexico to crack down on border policy.. oh wait no it’s actually a negotiating tool to get other countries to reduce their tariffs on us.. oh wait no actually those countries don’t even have tariffs on us in many cases, it’s to remedy trade deficits which are a ripoff somehow.. oh wait no it’s actually that tariffs are a good thing and will literally make us rich.. oh wait no it’s actually to nerf trade so we bring back manufacturing.. oh wait no it’s actually to deliberately crash the economy to refinance our debt at a lower interest rate..

What's the issue exactly? @SurelySerious has been a contributor here for as long as I can remember and is clearly not a spammer. The posts are all on topic, and the only response you've been able to put together is downvoting all of them, which is even less value added than the admittedly large amount of twitter copypasta. If you disagree, maybe put together a coherent defense of this tariff clown show and a real conversation can be had. Until then, remember this isn't reddit so we don't go whining to the mods when someone has opinions we don't like.

Art of the deal. Thank goodness we have such a shrewd negotiator at the helm. In other news.. the rest of the indo pacific including two of our strongest allies in the region Japan and Korea have vowed to strengthen economic ties with China. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-china-japan-agree-promote-regional-trade-trump-tariffs-loom-2025-03-30/ Sick. But at least our shitty t-shirt prices won’t go up.

No. But you can change course without going full retard. If you want to attack the debt you cut spending in a meaningful way like they were *kindof* trying to do with the doge stuff.. and leave trade policy tf alone. We are not getting ripped off by Vietnam because we have a trade deficit with them. We are a rich country. They are a poor country. They make stuff for super cheap. We then buy that stuff for super cheap and have more money left over for other things. It is a win-win. Trump is under this insane misimpression that voluntary trade is a zero-sum game where there has to be a winner and a loser. And somehow since the word "deficit" sounds bad, we are the loser?? As others have pointed out, you have a trade deficit with your local grocery store, or your dry cleaner, or literally every service you pay for ever. So are you being ripped off when you voluntarily engage in a market transaction to buy something that someone else made? Not to mention we're tariffing countries who we have a trade surplus with... please make it make sense I think tariffs are almost always stupid, but I would be slightly more willing to take this ride if it seemed like there was any semblance of a coherent plan. The reason the market is tanking is because there is no plan and we've been in a constant state of will-he-won't-he for the the last two months. If we actually want to "bring manufacturing back to the US" businesses need some stability and predictability before they go sink millions and billions into new domestic production capacity. But they can't do that when the president is flip-flopping on his own policies and creating random new carve outs and exemptions on an hourly basis. Because who knows, trump could use these tariffs to get some concessions from a few countries and then dump the policy entirely in a few months.. well inside the turn circle of setting up a new production line. In summary: -you can address the debt without dumpstering world trade -trade deficits are not us being ripped off -blanket tariffs are bad and dumb -the market wants stability, not constant whiplash -if there is a plan, fucking communicate it

I just don’t see how starting a worldwide trade war that tanks our markets and makes virtually every product more expensive fixes our debt problem. And the republicans just passed a continuing resolution that failed to cut spending in any meaningful way so I have a hard time believing this is some all-aspect strategy to attack the national debt. I will grant that trumps tariff plan is at least different. But so is shooting yourself in the dick.

This is one of the most epic economic self-owns in history. I've never seen the right and left so united against anything, but when you propose possibly the most retarded economic plan ever, I guess that's what happens. I'm so glad we're tariffing Vietnam into oblivion to bring back all those quality t-shirt sweatshop manufacturing jobs. Just happy I'm a long way from retirement and can use it as an opportunity to buy the dip.

Denying it while knowing full well the journalist has the receipts might be the wildest part. Like how do your teams not come up with a better damage control strategy

Agreed, but I would like our deportations screening process to at least be rigorous enough not to detain american citizens, refuse green card holders entry into the country, or deport people with real madrid tattoos under the false assumption they're dangerous gang members. I get that our illegal immigrant problem demands urgency, but I want us to be sure when we take life-ruining actions against people. Each edge case mistake gives the left more ammunition to paint the right as evil racists, and honestly I want to live in a country where we at least follow our own processes well enough not to F*** the wrong people

I'm sure it was all 4d chess because trump is such a generational negotiating talent /s Definitely not him getting into a shouting match because he's an easily offended boob with no filter

Gen Brown banned Friday shirts which, while extremely unimportant, signaled the beginning of the asinine dress and appearance crackdown we are now in the midst of. I’m sure his firing has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the Trump admin’s anti-DEI posturing but I’m going to pretend it was causal as I crack another beer and laugh my ass off.

@nsplayr I’ve seen the plans as well and I will tell you at least as they pertain to my community and our readiness, the assumptions going into those plans are pipedreams. China is a peer. Not near peer. A near peer doesn’t debut weapons you don’t have and then you scramble to catch up. I like the attempt to use WW2 lore to justify yet another foreign boondoggle but this is not Germany or Japan. This is a country the same size as us. With a far larger population, and a far larger industrial base, who is already out producing us. And we will be fighting in their back yard. We have another thread on this site about how we can’t train new pilots properly or field a single engine trainer aircraft in a reasonable timeframe. If we can’t do those things I think we need to have a real look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we actually can fight WW3 on the opposite side of the world, on our enemy’s turf. We don’t have to fully abandon Taiwan and we can funnel weapons to them to make the invasion as difficult as possible. But if China really wants it we aren’t stopping them and the faster we realize that the faster we can stop wasting money a hypothetical WW3 we’ll either lose quickly or never fight to begin with.

I don't know if it's turning our backs as much as recognizing these realities: a. it isn't our fight b. even if you can do the mental gymnastics to say it is our fight, we can't project power enough to have a reasonable chance of success c. China gets to decide when it starts, and you can bet they won't pick a time convenient for us d. The longer China waits, the more their production of combat assets outstrips our own. Taking all these into account I don't see how anyone could come to any conclusion other than: China is going to wait until a time that is advantageous to them, and with their military's trajectory plotted against ours, eventually they will have amassed overwhelming force. So we get to decide do we want to fight a losing battle or not fight at all. My point is, why sink more money and resources into a boondoggle that's debatably already out of our control and trending worse?

Not to mention all the civilians we hired to alleviate additional duties now all being offered paid separation.. and their positions will not be able to be backfilled. I'm sure that will be a boon for morale. But I will say, I think we can find some room in the budget if we can be honest with ourselves about our biggest, dumbest, and most expensive mission: the collective delusion that we would actually fight WW3 against China over control of Taiwan.

The VR and pilot training next stuff wasn't originally a problem in and of itself. If you added VR sims to the legacy UPT syllabus us old hats are familiar with, you would end up with a better product. Full stop. I'm all for trying to modernize sims/chairflying and I'm all for auditing the syllabus to make sure we aren't wasting time on things that don't matter operationally, like fingertip takeoffs and landings or serially hooking kids on ELPs. The problem arose when the brass started using the VR and PTN/UPT 2.5 syllabus cuts to mask the fact that they can't generate aircraft. That's when all the newfangled VR and syllabi basically became a trojan horse to cut hours while keeping slides green.

Caveat up front: there are good/bad/disciplined/undisciplined pilots in every community and this is not geared toward any individual. But I'm gonna be the asshole here. In my experience, the army rotary wing community ranges anywhere from lackadaisical to outright dangerous WRT instrument procedures, airspace and traffic awareness, and flight discipline. I've witnessed a 5-ship Army Apache mission brief take place in the lobby of the San Angelo FBO that was basically: "Alright dudes, we're gonna take off, head east, 200A, everybody fall in. Questions?" "Sick. Step complete." I've been in control of a T-6 pattern full of solo students and had to send them all breakpoint straight through (half of them didn't even know what to do) because we had a 4 ship of army black hawks blast perpendicular through our pattern while talking to precisely no one on the radio. The second I saw the news out of DCA my first reaction was "goddammit some army rw clowns got everyone killed." Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and not waiting for the report. But after a few weeks, each new piece of data points right back to them and I'm back to being pissed. Why were they off altitude? Why are they dicking around at night in the approach corridor of a major airport? Why are they not on VHF? Why was this even an approved routing for them in the first place? Why were 28 different agencies permitted to fly helos in close proximity to DCA? These were not one-off, swiss-cheese-holes-aligning, mistakes. This was business as usual, proven by the fact there had been multiple near misses at DCA in the recent past including a helo-caused airliner go-around the day before. Obviously an airspace/procedure re-design is warranted, but I think we need to take a look at community-wide culture that was comfortable operating like this in the first place. @busdriver said it best that these procedures are "no-step stupid." The problem with that is if you've been raised in a community of hot dogging and "we'll do it live" you're probably not equipped to make a good risk assessment.

I have zero issues whatsoever with the army response. There wouldn't have been the need for the Army to withhold the name to give the family time for damage control if Trump hadn't painted them into a corner with his completely out of line comments. Everyone else is still trying to get the facts straight and pull bodies out of the Potomac, and we have the leader of the free world talking out of his ass in the least possible productive way during a crisis. DEI is toxic, but even more toxic than that is blaming a crash on DEI less than 24 hours from the accident when you have zero facts to support it.

The O-6's I interact will fully agree all this uniform revamp BS is dumb and a waste of time.. behind closed doors. They just can't publicly say that, so they have to fall back on the tired "get the basics right" refrain

I think it's actually really simple. The GOs see that the air force is falling apart and they know real solutions will be painful and risky to their career advancement/political ambitions. So they focus on things they can easily control like uniform nonsense, and pretend that's the "real" root cause of our issues. Same thing happens in politics. Can't solve any of our real problems.. just do some dumb shit that makes it look like you're addressing problems, like re-naming Fort Bragg or the Gulf of Mexico