Liberation Day Delay
By 
Turns out punitive tariffs are a lot harder than they sound. Especially when targeted countries can and do say “No. Fuck you.“
A White House official told CNN that no final decision have been made, and tariffs on various sectors and industries may or may not be announced April 2.
Reciprocal tariffs will go into effect – perhaps as soon as April – but they will be limited to a dozen or so countries, Bloomberg and the Journal reported. The countries that first face the reciprocal tariffs will perhaps be the 15% of nations that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking on Fox Business last week, labeled “the Dirty 15” – countries that he says persistently treat the United States unfairly in their trading practices.
Unfairly in this case means expecting payment in a timely fashion. And what’s with not sending Glump stacks of cash as tribute?
Those trading partners could include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia and Vietnam, according to the Journal.
You know they aren’t going to do anything to Russia. And I doubt being called PATHETIC free-loaders who need to pay for some bomb dropping theatrics will make EU nations feel cooperative.
You can read summaries of U.S. imports and exports to other nations here. At least until someone decides the mention of all those African, Central and South American and Asian nations is too diverse. Tl;Dr: more comes in than goes out.
Although tariffs on those partners could cover the majority of goods coming into the United States, the more targeted approach nevertheless represents a significant pullback from some of the harshest tariffs Trump had promised.
However, Trump signaled that if tariffs on various products are delayed, they won’t be delayed for very long.
“We need steel, we need pharmaceuticals, we need aluminum, we need a lot of these things that we sort of don’t make anymore, and yet we’re equipped to do it all,”
We are not so equipped. We never were so equipped and Republicans have spent decades making sure we’re even less equipped. However, it was inevitable that the Republicans would produce a president so dense that he appears to believe that U.S. industry circa The Goode Olde Dayes will return if dudes who look like Marlboro men on the verge of a HGH overdose throw knife switches in some abandoned factories. To say nothing of the multi-front War on Knowledge that further reduces our ability to do shit.
At any rate. Look for more gibberish in the not long future.
Trump said Monday at the conclusion of a Cabinet meeting. “So we’ll be announcing some of these things in the very near future – not the long future. The very near future.”
I’m sure someone, somewhere thinks this mumbling and fumbling is sign of Dumps genius rather than more signs that drug abuse and the early stages of dementia just don’t mix.
