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This Is the Moment We Find Out if Trump Is for Real

This is an interesting NYT article claiming that there is or could be some actual long term economic policy behind trumps great acts of destruction.

I am interested to know what you think.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/opinion/trump-congress-term-president.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk8.u7yw.rgp5GUTzwZ-1&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare



Comments

  • edited September 5
    They want onshoring of factories/jobs but that means higher prices for products produced here due to cost of labor. Automation is probably the only way to keep prices down to compete globally. Until they find a way to really raise average American workers pay all the other stuff will not work. Who's going to buy the inflated made in America products if the minimum wage is $7.25. PS: Union busting is not going to raise workers pay. National healthcare would actually have a huge impact on the above but money talks and current insurance companies are not going to give up their golden egg easily. rambling thoughts....
  • Onshoring of manufacturing, in my opinion, would take a generation: a "lost" generation of feeble statistical economic growth, inflation, and with young people's expectations for a better life hammered into the ground. The reversal into domestic manufacturing via more automation will reduce job prospects. Union busting is a tool used by uber-wealthy slimebags with no heart or soul. I see in the news that Boeing is just lately hiring scabs.
  • Is Trump for real? Gonna die laughing here. Is he still breathing?
  • The onshoring of manufacturing requires huge investments of capital and it will it take considerable time.
    If onshoring does indeed occur, it likely will not lead to an appreciable increase in jobs.
    Automation will be widespread in these factories/plants.
  • edited September 5
    It will take a long time to pan out, certainly ... if it ever does. What is the incentive for the massive corporate investments required, given long planning and construction time, with all the complete unknowns of several years in the future? With some of those years being a likely Great Recession II, or worse? With the U.S. being an untrusted quantity in the rest of the world? With so little room for public investment given the extraordinary debt piled on from the tax cuts for the superwealthy (Reagan, Bush, Trump twice)?
  • What trump is about is enriching trump and exercising power for his feeble sense of self. And to think there might be a grand design is the ultimate act of self delusion.
  • It is not the end of WWII, there are alternative markets now. America's wealth is still advantageous, but not critical, to the emerging economies worldwide.
  • edited September 6
    @Crash - "Is Trump for real? Gonna die laughing here. Is he still breathing?"

    Yeah there's no real there. Less than phony baloney.
  • larryB said:

    What trump is about is enriching trump and exercising power for his feeble sense of self. And to think there might be a grand design is the ultimate act of self delusion.

    The kompromat that Putin has on the Orange Fake goes a long way toward explaining a great deal of what's been happening.
  • Anna said:

    It is not the end of WWII, there are alternative markets now. America's wealth is still advantageous, but not critical, to the emerging economies worldwide.

    Exactly. And Trump has just managed to unite India, China and Russia. Two manufacturing and economic powerhouse, with excess labor slack. And the third an energy powerhouse. They have everything they need to compete, far more cheaply, against a U.S. with zero labor slack and much higher production costs. Internationally, they will eat our lunch.

    Iran and North Korea are examples of nations that were forced to build their own isolated economies. And we are doing it to ourselves. It will not be pretty.

    As to all the comments about how long it will take, and the costs involved in on-shoring, it will be staggeringly destructive. Tariffs, the cost of automating and the maintaining all that equipment, along with the energy requirements, and rising labor costs for the jobs that cannot be automated will be very high.

    Who really believes that TACO Trump can withstand that sort of economic pressure for the long haul? Or that swing voters will remain on board for years, to see if it works? The fact that Trump jumped right into this right after taking office, may be one of the factors that is his undoing. The full ramifications should be quite evident before mid-terms.

    By year's end, will inflation be higher, jobs weaker and the stock market correcting bigly?
    We will know soon.



  • @DrVenture The full ramifications should be quite evident before mid-terms. Opinion Polls? They were massively wrong before Nov, 2024.
  • a2z
    edited September 9
    (me in wrong thread)
  • Automation will be widespread in these factories/plants.
    No doubt it will be very costly over many years. Do we have enough talents to program and maintain these robotic manufacturing ? It took several decades to retrain the entire auto industry.
  • @Sven- an excellent question. With the recent reports of bright young college/university graduates in various fields finding employment to be very difficult right now I've been wondering if those minds are flexible enough to transfer into the new technological fields that are opening up.
  • edited September 9
    @crash

    I am not referring to polls. If quality of life (inflation) for swing voters, and buyers remorse, and anger at diminished opportunity (jobs), and inflation doesn't alter the voting landscape, then they can surely state "Thank you sir, may I have another". Swing voters do not usually act so generously.

  • Sven said:

    Automation will be widespread in these factories/plants.
    No doubt it will be very costly over many years. Do we have enough talents to program and maintain these robotic manufacturing ? It took several decades to retrain the entire auto industry.
    And reports keep showing U.S. students STEM skills falling. Meanwhile we are telling the best and the brightest from the rest of the world (95% of the population) that they are not welcome here.

    My thinking is that the U.S. is on a downward slide to mediocrity.



  • edited September 9
    The U.S. has declined under the second Trump regime.
    Many U.S. residents are rightfully concerned about Trump's policies and executive overreach.
    Our country's competitive advantages have been diminished in many important ways.
    It will take some time to fix what Trump has broken—not everything will be easily fixable.
    The current situation does not mean we are on an inevitable slide to mediocrity which can not be reversed.
    Thoughout history, those who have counted out the U.S. have been proven wrong!
  • >> the U.S. is on a downward slide to mediocrity.

    already there, by a number of measures

    I have 4.5 grandchildren, and, privileged, they all will do fine ultimately.

    The older are already concerned about their future. I'll be dead and their parents are all employed and solvent and healthy, but no one of this group is as promisingly situated in almost any respect (other than health advances) as my own middle-class generation or even my Greatest Generation parents. All because of this guy and his cult.
  • TPM today

    \\ One [SCotUS] plaintiff, for example, an American citizen and Latino man named Jason Gavidia, was accosted by masked men with guns as he was working on his car in a tow yard. The agents demanded to know if he was a citizen, and Gavidia told them at least three times that he was. Then the agents asked him what hospital he was born in. When he didn’t immediately remember, Justice Sotomayor recounts in her dissent, “the agents racked a rifle, took Gavidia’s phone, pushed him up against the metal gated fence, put his hands behind his back, and twisted his arm.” The agents released Gavidia only after he handed over his ID card.
    “The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote. For Gavidia, that ID card can’t even protect him any longer — the agents never gave it back to him.
  • This "cult" (Hooray for us / Screw "them") has been around since the advent of homo sapiens. It's not going away any time soon.
  • I wouldn't say we are "counted out" or can never recover. Just that the damage is not over and our adversaries are marshaling their forces and winning over our allies. Making the repair more difficult and further away.
  • For Gavidia, that ID card can’t even protect him any longer — the agents never gave it back to him.

    Slime-hole criminal suck-pigs, like their very Orange boss.
  • If the latino community doesn't rebel against this and vote Democrat, they will be enabling this behavior against their own children, families and friends.

    In fact, all at-risk populations should be taking notice of all of this behavior. From LGBT to blacks to woman to native Americans. Liberal or conservative leaning, it is time to step up. Even Jews, who may think that Trump is their pal, need to wake up and consider where this is heading.
  • We know Trump isn't for real. And we know that SCOTUS is not for real, as it's controlled by 6 conservative MAGA lovers.

    SCOTUS will soon confirm that Trump's tariffs are legal, reshaping the global trade system.

    Meanwhile, Amy Coney Barrett is hawking her book and making me wonder why in the hell we allow SCOTUS judges to serve for life. Why...would...we...ever...do....that.
  • SCOTUS = Supine Court of Trump's United States
  • edited September 9
    And the Michigan fake "electors" have been let off the hook. The country is circling the drain into ethical and moral vapidity. Mafia-don Putin is partying. Orange Pus is SO owned by the Russian doink.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/us/politics/michigan-electors-ruling.html
  • By definition the Supreme Court IS the deep state. Unaccountable to the electorate.
  • edited September 10
    DrVenture said:

    By definition the Supreme Court IS the deep state. Unaccountable to the electorate.

    Disagree. SCOTUS has a history of adhering to non-partisan LAW. Upholding the Constitution. No more. Orange Putz and his tong have hijacked it and infiltrated it, planting sycophants. And not just SCOTUS, but judgeships all over the place. (Aillen Cannon in FL, ya.) The courts are now the tool of the Orange Executive. Rule of Law is dead. Lower courts are constantly being overruled by higher courts. It's a (Orange) recent pattern.

    This is where Repugnant majority "Advise and Consent" has brought us. (That was a great novel, by the way.) But regrettably, what we're dealing with today is not fiction.

    image

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