this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:

China: 34%

European Union: 20%

South Korea: 25%

India: 26%

Vietnam: 46%

Taiwan: 32%

Japan: 24%

Thailand: 36%

Switzerland: 31%

Indonesia: 32%

Malaysia: 24%

Cambodia: 49%

United Kingdom: 10%

Rest of the world: 10%

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[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

"The corporations own the government" made sense for a while, but Trump has done enough to hurt said corporations lately that I'm actually starting to question that idea (it's definitely true for the majority of Democrats though). The only real reason I can think of where it would make sense to do stuff like this is to cause a crisis making it easier to abuse power later on.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The corporations thought they own the government. They bought Trump into the White House. They should have known that he is mad.

[–] zer0nix@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The owners of the corporations own the govt. They are loyal to no company and no country. They can take their money anywhere, but so long as they are in the us they would prefer that the tax burden be shifted onto the people and off of them, with as few restrictions as possible on their own behavior.

The owners are still quite happy with trump. It's all of the littler con voters who are hopefully now reconsidering their vote.

[–] uienia@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Yeah remember that the billionaires got richer during the economic cooling caused by covid

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

The corporate sponsors are only needed for elections. No elections, no sponsors...

[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Nope they should have realised that even though they "own" this government, the president is communicating with a foreign server they don't own.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The only real reason I can think of

It's mercantillism, a well studied subject.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe, but threatening your customers who are buying your exported goods doesn't seem like a good strategy, and US-based corporations already dominate in the US, so it's not like they're helping the US become more powerful unless they're preparing for WW3.

[–] lumony@lemmings.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

How is any of this "hurting said corporations?"

Tariffs are a tax on the working class. Corporations will use this as an excuse to raise prices beyond how much their costs increase due to tariffs.

If a tariff causes a product to cost 5% more to bring to market, you'd better believe they're going to charge 20% more to the customer.

The ruling class always gets theirs. We can thank the useful idiots among us for why things never change.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Domestically, this is what will happen, but those corporations are also multinationals and get a large amount of money from doing business outside the US. What Trump is doing with the sort of threats he's making to US allies is causing their reputation to plummet abroad along with their revenue. This can only go so far before competitors from EU and China take their spot and they lose all international relevance. Additionally, the tariffs will put them at a disadvantage in the global market compared to corporations outside the US which is further contributing to their loss in revenue. So if Trump's main interest was in helping those corporations, I doubt he would be doing this.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

It's not the corporations, it's the billionaires that run them. Every time Trump does something that makes the stock market drop, they get richer by scooping up more for less. Than sell them when Trump says "Just kidding" and the stock market rises again.

Not to mention that all of their companies get to raise prices and blame "tariffs" in order to increase their profit margin.

It's the entire reason they paid to get him into the white house.