The idea of a 125% plus fee slapped on imports or exports to and from a couple of nations producing huge volumes of goods each other need is simply unsustainable.
At the same time? I don't really think even the MAGA crowd ever believed this was supposed to be some kind of long-term solution to anything? It was blatantly obvious to me from the start that Trump was throwing out these insane percentages to force real negotiations to happen. And here we are.
I mean, to use an ever-popular car analogy? Say you want to buy a guy's vintage Mustang. You've always wanted one but you're also sensible enough to know you're going to drive it regularly so it's going to be a constant drain on your finances keeping it running. The seller wants over twice the price you envision as sane/doable. If you go into things asking the seller to consider selling to you for $1000-2000 less than his asking price? You're still going to wind up paying FAR more than where you wanted to be on it, EVEN if he just accepts your offer at face value.
To have any hope of getting the car near your desired price point, you're going to have to completely "lowball" the guy, saying "Hey... if you get tired of trying to sell it and want to get rid of it? I'm willing to pay X price." A lot of people would tell you, "Well - you just can't afford a Mustang, my friend. He's going to ignore you and sell it to someone else paying his asking price!"
BUT ... maybe he lives in an area where there's not much demand for one? Maybe he needs the money and was only pricing it so high because he heard other people got that much at auto auctions before for similar ones and was just hoping he'd have the same luck? The point is, at least now, the buyer has his cards on the table and it's in the sellers' court to consider entertaining his much lower offer.
America has been screwing around for decades, complaining about China stealing our intellectual property every time we have them manufacture items for us, China polluting without any controls on it, Chinese government subsidizing the cost to make products just so they can flood the American market with them below cost to make it uneconomical for a US company to stay in business making the same things, etc. etc. Our negotiations have amounted to real specific complaints and relatively insignificant tariffs applied selectively. None of this moves the needle for substantial changes.
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