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2
Posted on 3/13/25 at 7:35 pm to Bard
quote:
The longer-term discussion is that our shite-tastic trade deals over the last few decades seem to have been done with the mindset of "any deal is better than no deal
Does this include USMCA? A lot of people were saying it was the greatest trade deal anyone had ever seen.
Posted on 3/13/25 at 7:36 pm to SulphursFinest
quote:
Tariffs were never smart. Anyone who thinks creating a trade war with your allies is smart, needs their brain examined
Tariffs directly led to WWII.
Posted on 3/13/25 at 8:08 pm to rickyb223
quote:
DOGE cuts
So far those verified cuts are 8B. The remaining amount(30B-100B) have to be rescinded by congress as cuts as they've been allocated and required to be spent.
Posted on 3/13/25 at 8:56 pm to SulphursFinest
quote:
Tariffs were never smart. Anyone who thinks creating a trade war with your allies is smart, needs their brain examined
Question:
Are our exports tariffed by countries?
If so, are those tariffs reciprocated by us?
Posted on 3/13/25 at 10:01 pm to BamaCoaster
quote:
Question:
Are our exports tariffed by countries?
If so, are those tariffs reciprocated by us?
We are america, we don't have do anything any other country does. We are superior to them.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 5:12 am to rickyb223
quote:
I think a bigger weapon in the anti-inflation arsenal is the DOGE cuts
Well, not having to print 200 billion for trans comic books, African circumcisions, Gaza condoms, and homo lizard porn, is just a good start.
I just saw this. frick you downvote queers and you flappy gashed mothers.
This post was edited on 5/4/25 at 4:17 pm
Posted on 3/14/25 at 9:49 am to CharlieTiger
quote:
Right or wrong, I think there's going to be significant blowback if we see scores of veterans losing jobs.
Case in point:
LINK
Posted on 3/14/25 at 12:11 pm to fareplay
There are a few natural factors at play here, or just good things the government is doing that have some shorter term negative consequences
-Mortgage interest rates too high
-Inflation too high
-The fed cutting jobs
-The fed cutting spending, which cuts the "private sector" (read: contractors employed by private companies working on government projects)
-P/E on this market has generally been insane anyway
They need to cut the tariff shite though. Or at least if you're doing it to negotiate.... ACTUALLY NEGOTIATE.
-Mortgage interest rates too high
-Inflation too high
-The fed cutting jobs
-The fed cutting spending, which cuts the "private sector" (read: contractors employed by private companies working on government projects)
-P/E on this market has generally been insane anyway
They need to cut the tariff shite though. Or at least if you're doing it to negotiate.... ACTUALLY NEGOTIATE.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 1:07 pm to rickyb223
quote:
Almost all govt jobs pay middle class wages.
That used to be the case but it's no longer true.
The average full-timer in the private sector in 2023 was just under $65K
The average full-timer working for fedgov in 2023 was $106K.
Government work is no longer the tradeoff - lower pay for great benefits and job security. Now it's 50% better pay than the private sector (on average), plus better benefits and job security (before DOGE, anyway).
Posted on 3/14/25 at 1:15 pm to Bard
quote:
I don't care about your TDS "gotcha" attempts.
I'm referring to any trade deal since the 1970s which allowed for countries to have outsized tariffs on our goods versus what we tariff on theirs. I wouldn't doubt many of those deals had some other sort of consideration (military, political, etc) but the cumulative effect of them all is likely hurting us far more than helping us now.
Not trying to play gotcha. My point is that the most recent and significantly consequential trade deal with our two closest trade allies was brokered by Trump in 5 years ago. He's now acting as though it's garbage and it was someone else's fault, but that's always been his M.O.
And I don't disagree that over time we've made it harder and harder for manufacturing here. Any company that is trying to maximize shareholder value is going to look for the lowest cost way to manufacture. That naturally led to looking at non-domestic sources.
I just don't agree with the way he's going about this. I think it's much better done in a slower fashion. If he wants to use tariffs, start off small and put incentives in place to move manufacturing back here. Put a plan in place that says the tariffs will increase 5% a year until they his 25%(or whatever level) or something along those lines. That way you don't crash the economy and hurt American consumers and you give corporations time to plan and invest. Big companies can't just turn on a dime and start building factories. There's a way to not make this painful.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 1:28 pm to David_DJS
quote:
Government work is no longer the tradeoff - lower pay for great benefits and job security. Now it's 50% better pay than the private sector (on average), plus better benefits and job security (before DOGE, anyway).
Then they need to start focusing on those higher paying jobs if they want to cut them. It seems to me like their going after the lower paying sectors right now though that don't make any sense to me.
I'm partial to the national parks. I've visited quite a few and have started taking my family to them to enjoy. They're an incredible asset to this country and I think they should be protected and invested in more.
Roughly 1000 new national park employees were let go due to the cuts from DOGE.LINK
In 2023, the NP budget was roughly $3.5 billion, but they generated $55.6 billion in economic benefit for the country. LINK That's a phenomenal return. They're already considered understaffed and are seeing more and more visitors a year and we want to cut jobs there? That makes zero sense to me.
I think it's pretty clear that this was a "look how fast we're going and how many jobs we're cutting" thing for DOGE. It's a shame because some parks are already seeing issues with not enough staff for simple things like garbage removal and it's not the summer high season yet.
This post was edited on 3/14/25 at 1:33 pm
Posted on 3/14/25 at 1:57 pm to CharlieTiger
quote:
Roughly 1000 new national park employees were let go due to the cuts from DOGE
I am big on the national parks as well, having visited most of them. But your quote, although "technically" accurate, fails to mention that every one of those employees were specifically DEI employees.
I have absolutely zero problem with DEI employees being cut en-masse. DEI has been a cancer in our society and throughout the world.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 2:05 pm to eatpie
quote:
But your quote, although "technically" accurate, fails to mention that every one of those employees were specifically DEI employees.
In this situation, I couldn't care less what kind of employees they are. Just cutting jobs to cut jobs is a poor decision, imo. It's not doing anything to cut waste, imo. Go after what is truly not efficient and wasteful.
It will cost more to go through the process of finding and hiring replacements, if they end up doing that, then just keeping them on the payroll. That is the definition of wasteful and inefficient regardless of how you feel about those hires.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 2:14 pm to fareplay
The plan is to create volatility in equities via chaotic tariff policy (on/off) in order to lower treasury yields before Bessent has to refi 7T plus fund this year's deficit. That plan looks to have already failed with yields bottoming a few days ago before creeping back up.
With DXY still over 100 it's not going to work, not with a net international investment position of minus 70% or whatever it is, especially now that he's told the G7 to take their money out of US assets and reinvest it at home in their defense sector. In addition to all the US equity they own they also have piles of USTs to sell which will send yields up.
They have to get the dollar and yields down to reshore without blowing up the system. My guess is a gold write up is coming later this year to accomplish that if Powell won't play ball by capping yields, aka, by QEing Trump's agenda.
With DXY still over 100 it's not going to work, not with a net international investment position of minus 70% or whatever it is, especially now that he's told the G7 to take their money out of US assets and reinvest it at home in their defense sector. In addition to all the US equity they own they also have piles of USTs to sell which will send yields up.
They have to get the dollar and yields down to reshore without blowing up the system. My guess is a gold write up is coming later this year to accomplish that if Powell won't play ball by capping yields, aka, by QEing Trump's agenda.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 2:19 pm to Art Blakey
quote:
Art Blakey
Interesting comment-What are your thoughts on the short, medium and long term? Additionally, how are you positioning?
This post was edited on 3/14/25 at 2:20 pm
Posted on 3/14/25 at 2:32 pm to David_DJS
quote:
The average full-timer in the private sector in 2023 was just under $65K
The average full-timer working for fedgov in 2023 was $106K.
If you use a cost of living calculator and plug in $106k in Arlington, Virginia, and compare it to most cities around the country, you'll see the accompanying comparison salary be in the $65k range. That is very much a middle class salary in this area filled with lawyers and defense contractors, which is where most of the 'salary'-related federal $$ is going... not to the actual federal employees
Posted on 3/14/25 at 3:56 pm to Uhtred
quote:
If you use a cost of living calculator and plug in $106k in Arlington, Virginia, and compare it to most cities around the country, you'll see the accompanying comparison salary be in the $65k range
Less than 20% of fedgov workforce is based in the DC area.
For the ten largest metro areas not including DC/Alexandria, the cost of living difference on average as +21%, not +100%. Two metros were more spendy than DC/Alexandria and 8 were cheaper. The top 10 didn't include more expensive (than DC/Alexandria) regions like the bay area and Seattle.
It doesn't matter how it's labeled = "middle class" or whatever - the fact is the fedgov workers are paid substantially more than their private sector counterparts. This is true even after adjusting for the cost of living for the 20% of the workforce living in the DC/Alexandria metro area.
And the point of my post is this relatively new. It wasn't that long ago that it government work was less lucrative than the private sector.
Posted on 3/14/25 at 4:06 pm to CharlieTiger
quote:
Then they need to start focusing on those higher paying jobs if they want to cut them. It seems to me like their going after the lower paying sectors right now though that don't make any sense to me.
I'm partial to the national parks. I've visited quite a few and have started taking my family to them to enjoy. They're an incredible asset to this country and I think they should be protected and invested in more.
Roughly 1000 new national park employees were let go due to the cuts from DOGE.LINK
In 2023, the NP budget was roughly $3.5 billion, but they generated $55.6 billion in economic benefit for the country. LINK That's a phenomenal return. They're already considered understaffed and are seeing more and more visitors a year and we want to cut jobs there? That makes zero sense to me.
I think it's pretty clear that this was a "look how fast we're going and how many jobs we're cutting" thing for DOGE. It's a shame because some parks are already seeing issues with not enough staff for simple things like garbage removal and it's not the summer high season yet.
We're not going to be able to fix this with surgical/strategic cost savings. We lost that option when we allowed the federal government to become the uncontrollable behemoth it is now. We're going to have to accept cutting a lot of meat away if we hope to get rid of the fat.
Politicians take advantage of everybody's pet spending. For you it's the national parks. Farmers have their favorite spending. So do teachers, the chamber of commerce, the military industrial complex, retirees, and don't forget about the climate, race and gender industries.
It all gets burned down or none of it does.
Posted on 3/15/25 at 6:18 am to SoLaSMB
quote:
Interesting comment-What are your thoughts on the short, medium and long term? Additionally, how are you positioning?
It's important to understand the implications of what the admin is trying to accomplish, namely balancing trade. Right now we pretty much only export tech, some airplanes, some medical equipment, weapons and dollars, tons of dollars.
Our massive trade deficit is balanced with dollar exports, most of which are recycled back into the US in treasuries, equities (mag 7), and some trophy R/E. We have been compensating our goods deficit with usd. This is basic balance of payments math. It all has to zero out one way or another. If imports>exports the gap gets printed.
Our fiscal deficit is roughly congruent with our trade deficit. You can't really shrink one without shrinking the other. In the most simplistic terms, they're not really separate things.
The TLDR is tons of foreign money has been told in so uncertain terms, cash out, take your money home and provide for your own defense, we can't afford to provide it for you anymore. When interest>defense the empire stage is over. As we attempt to reduce twin deficits capital will necessarily migrate out, especially from obvious places, mag 7>bag 7.
US treasuries have been the global reserve asset since 1971. That's over if Trump is successful. It has to be. This is an attempted reversal of the Triffin Dilemma. Eventually reshoring will have to be subsidised. That will be very inflationary.
Re: positioning, I think neutral reserve assets will continue to rip, mainly gold and btc (if you can stomach the vol). Industrials, anything grid related, commodities tied to electrical infrastructure like copper etc... I think the names that has been way overpriced will continue to get cheaper. Expensive multiples contract, cheap industrial/electrical multiples expand. We need to invest heavily in real stuff. Pull up a chart of electricity consumption per capita from the last couple decades, China is up and to the right, we're flatlined. Start there.
Caveat: this has never been attempted before. There is no guidebook. They're feeling their way as they go. Mistakes will be made and it will be volatile.
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