In other words, they are a regressive tax --- pure and simple.
That works when those countries are selectively tariffed while others are let off. Blindly applying tariffs to whatever satisfies the mood is not the way.
> or alternatively to apply pressure to a sector to bring it on shore.
For this to work, the cost of onshore production must be lower than the tariffed price. The inputs must be made cheaper and not tariffed. Again the US administration is not doing any of these strategically.
> The inputs must be made cheaper and not tariffed.
Not necessarily. It's presumably not as efficient, but you'd still expect the entire chain to head in the desired direction eventually.
I have talked to some purchasing people at my company and it seems it's going exactly the other way. The company is moving as much production as possible away from the US to serve the international market without paying for tariffs.
What domestic behavior specifically?
If they're supposed to encourage industrial development at home, they've failed on that front. Building new factories requires years of commitment and billions of dollars, but the current administration has shown no interest in actually investing in that development. Meanwhile, the raw materials that would be necessary for a factory are more expensive precisely because of the tariffs, making new industry even less likely. Finally, the very dubious legal ground on which the tariffs are based means that no one is sure they'll be around to the end of this administration, much less into the next, so there's little interest in adapting long-term plans to a temporary state of affairs.
If they're supposed to encourage consumers to buy domestic, they've failed on that count too. Many goods simply are not available manufactured in the US (see above). If the tariffs were applied gradually and incrementally, maybe people would adapt, but from the consumer's mount of view, everything just gets more expensive, so what are they supposed to do? Again, applying tariffs to raw materials means that it's impossible for American businesses to undercut foreign imports even if they wanted to.
Like everything from this administration, the tariff are an impulsive decision based on poor economic understanding and incompetent execution.
The purpose of a thing is what is does. If a tariff can be used to stop a war, then tariffs are meant as a strategic bargaining chips.
Stupid is as stupid does.
You may chose not to buy any products or goods that requires you to pay tariffs.
Which is the primarily goal to begin with. Influence consumer behaviour.
I realize that for some products and goods there may not be a an alternative choice of products or goods that do have tariffs.
In theory, over time, these will be increasingly replaced by products and services that have the competitive advantage of not having to tariffs applied to them.
Once tariffs are in place for a year or two it is possible that, domestic producers have expand capacity, have created jobs have caused supply chains shift and new production is based on the tariff based price structure
This however takes time. And to what extent it happens is not easy to predict.
Some may think that the next president will remove all tariffs the moment he or she takes office, so it is a short term problem. The problem with removing them all, is if the above has happened, and removing them will destroy American jobs.
That's how tariffs would work if wielded for the right reasons. But now domestic producers have to pay tariffs on the very machines and inputs needed to expand capacity.
The problem with broad tarrifs by executive order under emergency powers to address longstanding issues are numerous.
Longevity and stability of the tarrifs is questionable because a new executive is likely to cancel them, the executive that issued them is likely to cancel them, and they may also be cancelled by the courts because their basis isn't solid. For some goods where production is easy to shift, it still makes sense to move it ... but then it's easy to shift out again when the winds change; goods where setting up production is a many years thing aren't likely to move with the winds.
The broad tarrifs mean that for goods that are manufactured from components of many origins, it may not make sense to pay tarrifs on the components in order to reduce tariffs on the finished goods. Or that it makes more sense to move manufacturing from one foreign country to another than to move to the US. I get it if you want to move both manufacturing and resource extraction to the US; but it would make more sense to do it one step at a time... first develop demand for the resources in the US, then push to onshore the resource extraction... OTOH a lot of americans prefer resource extraction to be out of sight, and some resources are simply not abundant here.
The other factor is that many countries respond to our broad tarrifs on their exports with their own tarrifs on our exports. This can easily hurt US producers more than it helps them. US products become more expensive in those countries due to their import tarrifs as well as US import tarrifs on the inputs and often there are many non-US suppliers to choose from; possible increases in US domestic demand may not materialize because costs will go up for US consumers as well due to tarrifs on input and potentially loss of economies of scale if the reduction in exports is significant.
I may be a free trade maximalist, but IMHO, the current admin's tariff policy is a recipie for economic slowdown. Which does help their goal of reducing immigration: the best way to reduce economic immigration is to have a deeper recession or depression than the world at large; it also helps with traffic. Big inflation numbers also push stock indexes up and reduce the cost of servicing old debt, but increase the cost of revolving and issuing new debt.
This is what a tariff is.
This is why the ”overregulated” EU got hit with a 30% tariff?
A factor in this that is not mentioned is that companies selling goods to the US may have made an effort to lower prices, altering production to lessen tariffs or in other way tried to offset the extra amount US consumers have to pay.
An estimate of that would be quite interesting.
Isn't that the 10% in the article? That's the mechanism by which "China pays the tariffs".
So this 10% might also simply represent de facto theft from foreign business.
The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is.
There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_Unit...
"Fighting" China with tariffs is like fighting your neighbor who's dog keeps peeing in your yard by lighting your own couch on fire.
Maybe it’s because of propaganda, mis information, social media, education or because they’re too busy and tired trying to make ends meet so they don’t have time to research issues for themselves.
It feels like it will be very difficult to course correct when so much money and power wants it this way.
If the tariffs were "an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce items now being imported," they wouldn't be levied on manufacturing inputs.
Then their understanding is incorrect but that isn't even the INTENTION.
But, that's (corporate) socialism, and that group of people (mostly) claim to hate socialism.
There's a time and place for tariffs. Protecting "all" domestic industries via global trade war is (IMO) not it. Nor is wielding tariffs as a punishment simply because a foreign leader wasn't docile and subservient enough for Trump.
Yet that's not what the administration says about the subject. They're either confused or they're lying (and the people who support them and regurgitate their talking points are confused).
The belief that they are confused is a generosity that we should really be disabused of at this point.
Like, even the propaganda by fascists claiming fascism makes for good policies is bad. Germany under the Reich, completely setting aside the human atrocities, was a fucking SHIT SHOW of a nation state.
That's not what we have here, and that's not what the Trump tarrifs are perceived as internationally.
These tariffs have a huge red flag because there's no objective. Onshoring? No, wait, we got a new deal the tariffs are removed. New trade deals? No, wait, somebody wrote a mean Tweet about Donald so the tariffs are back and the deal is off.
In the current political climate nothing is certain - but this will likely come to a resolution in the near term.
And if the cost if lives or dollars or reputation is enormous, he'll still sleep like a baby.
These tariffs are arbitrary and capricious and no business would rationally respond to them with any kind of long term investment. People just want to weather the storm of the mad king and international partners developing alternative relationships to seek more stability.
It could've passed on the tax to the consumer, but it didn't. It has ceased making its iconic beverage and now only sells a variant that tastes crap. No amount of money can bring the good stuff back. The sugar tax killed it. The world is now a slightly worse place, thanks to government interference.
(I'm sure there's a way to extrapolate this anecdote back to tariffs)
Alternatively: You don't need tariffs when you're the only industrial nation not bombed into oblivion.
>They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer.
Agreed
Tariffs in the legal sense are technically paid by the importer who sells a product. It's their responsibility to pay it... always.
The importer could technically eat that cost, and the consumer wouldn't see a difference on their price tag.
But what happens in practice, the vast majority of the time, is the importer passes that extra cost on to the consumer by raising the price they're selling it for. This is technically a business decision made by every importer individually, it is not a requirement.
The people saying tariffs are paid by the importer, or tariffs are paid by the consumer, are both right, but within different perspectives and depending on how each importer chooses to handle their tariffs.
Once the tariffs dropped, their cost of goods more than doubled.
Their business in that capacity, was gone overnight.
It's easy to think in some vacuum businesses can just "absorb" costs, but as many businesses know, this is rarely the case.
No, it becomes a non-existent item.
> Seems like a win all around?
If you burn your neighbor's house down, it's possible that what will get built in its place will be nicer. That doesn't make it a "win all around".
Genius, though. Just have them pay more for their "luxury" items! Why didn't they think of that! They would be glad to know helping kids with special needs is a "luxury."
It's interesting to see how little of that is going on, empirically, by looking at these kinds of quantitative studies.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/global-reta...
What we mean when we ask who is paying the tariff is this: when we increase tariffs, who becomes poorer?
And the answer to that is obvious.
No "importer" is going to eat the cost of the tariffs, and it is ridiculous that anyone would think that.
That's how the US won the first trade war under trump 1 (and continued by Biden). Now Trump 2 tried to ramp it up and this time its backfired because other countries have refused to go along. Many have even been pushed to collaborate more closely with China. China's exports have only grown to record highs
Trump failed to convince other countries to go along because he's a simplistic zero-sum bully who barks orders, expects others to fall in line, and then throws a tantrum when they don't - rather than a tactful leader capable of maintaining the trust of a voluntary positive-sum coalition. That he's also been overtly attacking allies at the same time doesn't help convince anyone either - the new regime was attacking Canada straight out of the gate, and it's hard to explain attacking Greenland any other way than a Putin-favored plan to drive a wedge between us and our traditional allies.
> is like fighting your neighbor who's dog keeps peeing in your yard by lighting your own couch on fire.
it's more like buying your own dog to pee in your yard, and keep out the neighbor's
What is missing from the convo is where the tarriffs go - they go to fund the federal gov't, which spends on Goods and Services for the American People (you hope).
What you would want to see is a reduction on income taxes concomitant with the increased tarriff revenue. US Gov gets the same amount of money, US consumers pay the same in taxes + tarriffs, but American industries get protection from overseas competition, strengthening key sectors of the US economy.
I guess you could argue that we’re so far behind in some sector like manufacturing that we need developing-nation-like trade barriers to nurture embryonic growth, but a look at real numbers would, I think, demonstrate that’s rubbish.
Yes, that's historically been the argument used to pry open foreign markets
Everyone? No, only the willfully ignorant.
This would seem to be an admission that the domestic product is inferior, otherwise why would it be necessary to burden the import with tariffs?
In any case, if that's the intent, it's not working out for fairly predictable reasons. Lots of imported goods have no domestic equivalent. The factories required to make them require years of investment, which is not forthcoming, because the longevity of these tariffs is highly dubious and the government is doing nothing to encourage business development. And even if there were new factories, they would have to import machines and raw materials, which are of course tariffed, driving up the cost of domestic goods, and defeating the alleged purpose of the tariffs.
There's no just explanation that can make the tariffs look useful to anyone. Like everything from this administration, it's about the appearance of action.
Actually people are being murdered for real, lots of other real stuff as well
They are. My point is not that the administration isn't having a real impact, but rather that they the administration doesn't care about the real impact, positive or negative. They care only that they get the headline.
They’re just an easy cudgel to use against an entire country at whim, at least until the rest of the government delegitimizes the “emergency” excuse being used to impose them.
Essentially the President regards everything as either a zero-sum no-holds-barred negotiation with him as the primary beneficiary, or as some kind of real-estate deal (see his Davos speech about how we’re “leasing” Greenland). Tariffs are just a great general-purpose stick he found a way to wield.
And at least 60 other countries
"The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete."
Who is the 'we' in that sentence? If it's US citizens, then how is making US citizens pay more money helping US citizens compete?
The reason is, the whole world's manufacturing base had been destroyed in the War and the USA was the only man left standing!
We didnt need tarriffs because we were already winning the trade balance. Tarriffs made it harder to repatriate overseas gains.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/may/historica...
Will this bring manufacturing back? It seems to be working to some extent, but its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election.
> its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election.
It's a risk to manufacturers when Trump might wildly change tariffs for a country / set of goods / whatever, up or down, at any time, because someone said something he didn't like somewhere, or some other non-economic rationalization.
The instability and lack of cohesive direction mean it's impossible for manufacturers to respond to tariffs with investment even within Trump's term.
We just bought a million sq ft building (that was an old RCA plant) and millions in new machinery to keep up.
We are only a regional player, too.
Perhaps some of that has been replaced by "Made in USA".
(Day-to-day, I generally don't buy things not made in the EU — packaging, for example, will typically be from Sweden, France or Poland.)
This is the other side of tariffs that few discuss. It may put import prices up, but it also increases the domestic flow of income.
Which means that those who rely solely on imports pay the cost and those who make the domestic supply get an increase in income as an offset.
Not to mention the incoherence that one day its a tool to bring jobs back, the next day its just a negotiation tactic so they get reduced/dropped on a country by country basis over and over.
I thought it was retaliation for Canada not doing enough to stop their 20-odd kilogram contribution to the 4 tons of fentanyl smuggled in every year? [0]
(Which is to say I agree with you. Just trying to support your point that the reasoning has been so completely all over the map that anybody trying to assign any real meaning seems delusional. At this point I think most people have entirely forgotten half the reasons that have been made up along the way.)
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-pr...
[1] https://www.koco.com/article/manufacturing-jobs-us-tariffs/7...
Because factory machines and raw materials are being tariffed. Also because a source of cheap labor (immigrants) is being excised.
> Actually increasing manufacturing capacity first requires construction and capital expenditure.
It certainly does. And companies are rightfully hesitant to invest, because the legally dubious basis for the tariffs may not survive this month, much less into the next administration.
The trade deficit is shrinking, and which necessarily means there is more domestic flow as foreign hoards of dollars are liquidated. That flow has to go somewhere.
Could be straight to the tax cuts of course.
You are correct. Of course, if new output is automated, then the purported goal of the tariffs (more manufacturing jobs!) is defeated.
The fact that any new manufacturing will of course be automated shows how little thought went into designing these tariffs and how transparently false the administration's promises are.
> The trade deficit is shrinking
This is totally irrelevant. The size of the trade deficit does is a red herring.
1. It isn't now, nor has it ever been, the role of the federal government to dictate what types of jobs exist in the private sector. 2. Even if this was the end goal, making it easier and more affordable to manufacture in the US would be far better for all parties involved rather than brute forcing it through arbitrary taxes.
To what specific extent is it working? Not that I don't believe you, just curious how much it's changed already and in what way.
Nikon (for one) had to raise US prices on their digital cameras handle tariffs:
* https://www.dpreview.com/news/7688376775/tariff-watch-nikon-...
Is the US administration hoping to increase (digital) camera production in the US?
During Trump 1.0 he raised tariffs on steel and got 1k job in steel manufacturing… but lost 75k jobs in manufacturing that used steel as an input:
* https://www.investopedia.com/metal-tariffs-cost-at-least-75-...
> It seems to be working to some extent […]
US manufacturing job numbers are down:
* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-factory-headcount-fallin...
* https://www.wsj.com/economy/u-s-manufacturing-is-in-retreat-...
1. The tariffs are too broad, they don't target a single or a few industries.
2. Trump has gone back and forth many times on them, using them as negotiating leverage, not as long term incentives.
3. They are on very shaky legal grounds and will likely end up getting reversed by either the Supreme Court or the next president.
If you want to use tariffs to encourage on-shoring you make them targeted and pass them with bipartisan support through congress. Companies need stability and long term guarantees for the kind of capital expenditure that is needed. Even better if you use a mix of carrot and stick, rather than all stick
And with China a key target in the Trump Tariff debacle, China is punching holes in these punitive tariffs. Besides shipping goods to intermediary countries that are not as heavily tariffed then exporting to the U.S., China is taking ownership stakes in American businesses, thus circumventing the whole tariff thing. And the beauty of this is, they can take advantage of U.S. taxpayer benefits, such as an R&D tax credit, to sweeten the deal.
There’s an argument that some sort of tariffs are actually necessary. The world is changing and the US has become reliant on countries who increasingly have divergent interests from the US. Additionally, some countries have aging populations that will make them more and more unreliable places to manufacture stuff in the next couple decades. It’s entirely reasonable to believe that it’s pretty critical for the US to begin the process of re-industrializing as soon as possible and tariffs are a crucial lever to make that happen.
But…how you do that matters. Re-industrialization is a process that will take decades and the businesses doing that need to be fairly sure of the government’s policy for most of that period. If Trump had built a broad consensus with Democrats for the tariff policy so that businesses could have understood that a future Democratic president or congressional majority would continue the tariff policy, then businesses would be able to plan accordingly and begin the massive capital outlays that come with re-shoring manufacturing. And the tariffs would strategically exclude certain items like the steel that would be necessary to build factories. And, lastly, you wouldn’t pick now to go on a deportation spree when a sizable chunk of the nations construction workers are undocumented immigrants, since all those factories will need to be built by someone and there aren’t enough Americans to do it.
But instead of the sane and well-reasoned way to do it, we’ve got Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip chaos version. The tariff policy changes weekly, so businesses can’t predict it, let alone rely on it in the way they would need to to spend the collective trillions of dollars on manufacturing infrastructure that need to be spent. And he’s antagonizing Democrats to such and extent that any future Democratic administration will drop the tariffs on day one. The result of which is that businesses, understandably, are hunkering down until he’s out of office. Instead of spurring the massive investment we need, his policies have chilled spending on manufacturing. The only thing we’re really building at the moment are data centers.
So there’s this narrative that tariffs are awful now that’s really the result of someone incompetently deploying them. Some sort of tariff policy would actually be a necessary medicine for the country to help heal the damage from an over reliance on a globalized system that is going to crumble in the coming decades. It won’t be easy, but the earlier the country starts to address it, the better the outcome will be. But it needs to be done intentionally, in a bi-partisan way and through acts of Congress, not in a scattershot fashion where Congress is a bystander and a single deranged lunatic pulls tariff percentages out of ass whenever the mood strikes him.
Just like Mexico will pay for the wall?
> The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is.
Nope! It's a politician talk! People fall for lies whenever they are sold wrapped in a label of "cheap prices".
US Tariffs only hurt US citizens. Anything else is simply the stuttering of a simpleton.
And if the tariffs are ruled invalid you're free to speculate whether target is going to send you a check for what you effectively paid or just pocket the difference.
The runaway deficit is a massive problem now given the age of 0 interest rates is over.
So what's astonishing is, whether you like him or not, the Orange man actually got the American public to accept what is defacto the largest tax increase in decades.
Unfortunately, they immediately spent that money too on the promise of persistently high growth in the world's richest economy. I find that unlikely over time, but time will tell.
Seems every large Western country is currently hell bent on finding out what level of deficit spending results in societal collapse.
What does it mean "got the public to accept it?" The public had no say and these are probably illegal. On top of that, he probably literally does not know that these are effectively taxes on consumers (i.e. he believe his own bullshit).
No credit is due here whatsoever.
Yes, I'm sure he believes his own bullshit, but ironically, its bullshit that the US actually needed to pull (tax increases). Modern democracy has proven totally incapable of not stealing the future from its children.
Did you forget that the Big Beautiful Bill included a massive tax cut?
...for the wealthy. Tariffs are use taxes and overwhelmingly affect the 99%.
If the Dems pick up on some of the issues the Republicans are neglecting, while maintaining principles* about healthcare access and reproductive rights I expect they'd be the dominant political force in America for some time...if they just had somebody who could man the helm.
* Hah. What principles?
I disagree with this both-sideism. Democrats are much more in following with norms, where MAGA-era FKA-republicans will through anything aside for their benefit (e.g. Merrick Garland).
American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
That is to say there is no 200% tariff on cups.
[1] - https://www.fedex.com/en-us/ancillary-clearance-service.html
So in this case an American is still paying for the misguided close-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-ran-out policy, just with most going directly to the corporate interests that helped install this corrupt administration.
(but the joke is on them - Aliexpress Choice doesn't charge brokerage fees)
Tariff can hardly to connected to tax
In Chinese , tariff = 关 税 = port tax
But tariffs have been used in the car industry for decades. If you got rid of them completely within 5 years the American car companies would be closing plants.
The whole reason Japanese auto manufacturers build plants in the US was to avoid tariffs. Shipping costs are actually incredibly minimal for a vehicle.
So in my opinion, we've seen where they can work. If you value American jobs anyways. It does get hard to math out when you have to weigh the money the average consumer would save over the 10 million auto jobs in the US.
Not that hard to math out, the deadweight loss of tariffs is always non-zero. IIRC there was a pretty good paper that mathed out the impact of Obamas tire tariffs and concluded that it cost the economy significantly more jobs than it saved.
The thousand of hours labor, the material to source the widget, the real estate for the factory, the transportation now all occurs overseas.
At the very least, you can't spew something like that then not even bother to link a source.
Ratio of 3 jobs lost per tire job saved.
> The thousand of hours labor, the material to source the widget, the real estate for the factory, the transportation now all occurs overseas.
This frees up massive amounts of capital that is more effectively spent playing to Americas strengths, this isn’t a zero sum game.
https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...
There is a LOT of other work we could be doing if we stopped trying to uphold existing uncompetitive industries
I’m with you though. If humans could just get along we could build an amazing world.
China only became an auto industry power house in the 00s.
I'm not super educated on all the happenings in the car industry globally, but I've seen a few videos of Chinese EVs that put anything Ford, GM or other US brands have put out to absolute shame.
You start off with
> I think blanket tariffs are dumb don't get me wrong.
Then add a conjunction and use a single example to just make a point opposite to what you started with.
> So in my opinion, we've seen where they can work.
I can't help but think that you don't believe blanket tariffs are dumb because it worked for one industry and helps American jobs. Just start with that please.
That's an easy question. The answer is "they don't."
USMCA/NAFTA guaranteed free trade with Mexico and Canada.
Pre-2025, there was no blanket tariff on US goods in Europe. They tariffed some agricultural goods at 11%. Industrial goods were in single digits.
The tariff numbers that Trump purports (e.g. blanket 30% tariffs on Switzerland) are in no way proportional to their tariffs on US goods. It's just false.
The lie that other countries had massive blanket tariffs on all US goods is being sold to the American public to justify massive so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that (a) violate existing trade agreements, (b) make things expense for the American consumer, (c) don't necessary encourage new businesses in the US.
I just want to point out that this "reciprocal" nonsense was in no way calculated or strategic. The chart/table they showed was literally LLM-generated and no one could explain how they got those numbers. It's a complete circus and we're sitting here refuting bullshit everyday.
All Trump's policies assume he's playing a single-move game where his is the only move. It turns out it's an infinite game and the other side actually has free will and competent decision makers. He can't just wish people into the cornfield as he promised.
Even if there were massive tariffs towards the US, these are clearly politically motivated economic attacks, not motivated by economics. And that's not a thing an ally would do, regardless.
In most free trade agreements many products are without tariffs, some have quotas and others yet have tariff. For example, under CUSMA Canada have no tariffs on US made apparel and footwear, diary is under quota and steel has 25-50% tariffs. But then if you hear someone who lies a lot and has an agenda they will only tell you about steel tariffs and make you think that all US made products are under tariff.
It might shock you to ask around your social circle and discover how many people would read a hypothetical headline like, "Tax Rate for Top Income Bracket Increases to 55%", and interpret it as, "Wow, so if my income was as high as that, more than half of what I made would go to the government. Crazy!"
See FedEx for instance:
14.6 Regardless of any payment instructions to the contrary, the Sender is ultimately responsible for payment of duties and taxes and all fees and surcharges related to FedEx’s disbursement of duties and taxes if payment is not received. If a Recipient or a third party from which reimbursement confirmation is required refuses to pay the duties and taxes upon request, FedEx may contact the Sender, for the same. If the Sender refuses to make satisfactory arrangements to reimburse FedEx, the Shipment may be returned to the Sender (in which case, Sender will be responsible both for original and return charges) or placed into a temporary storage, general order warehouse or a customs-bonded warehouse or considered undeliverable. If Transportation Charges for a Shipment are billed to a credit card, FedEx reserves the right to also settle uncollected duties and taxes charges associated with that Shipment to the credit card account.
Typical. 1) No, tariffs are not always paid by the end consumer, producer margins collapse also. 2) If the end consumer can pay increased prices then the previous price wasn't properly efficient. 3) Short term vs Long term matters most in the actual outcome of prices as domestic competition takes time to build. 4) Interest rates are being kept high to produce a reportable outcome.
End the Fed, then lets see where we are. Otherwise, stop trusting banks because you hate the used car salesman.
I don’t support tariff but it being used as a negotiating technique is the only choice here to reduce trade deficit.
US can’t keep up the trade surplus it currently has. It requires endless fiscal deficit and sell paper money to others that sends their cheap stuff to US. With growing deficit, the interest payment now is soon to be higher than defence budget. Something has to give.
mraniki•2h ago