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Economist | History nut | Web3 and Tech enthusiast | Lover of emergent order |

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Freerider4Pow @GrahamG22047543 @Krommsan A lot of crazy responses here. The basic point is straightforward: Alberta has a strong economy and relatively affordable housing.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Acyn Yes, the issue is that so much of this damage is invisible. One of the U.S.’s biggest advantages has been places like Silicon Valley and Wall Street — hubs of innovation emerged there. But I doubt the next major hub will appear in the U.S. It will form somewhere else.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@nfergus This is another "Trump is actually playing 4 dimensional chess" argument that won't age well. He isn't. He's actually just a self obsessed moron. End of story. He is losing credibility and it would be nice if you weren't along with him.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@JustinWolfers The funny part is that price dip almost certainly vastly underestimates the cost of the actual tariffs and most believe he will not do them --TACO -- so it just beleaguers one to image how any one could imagine they could be good for the American economy.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Inevitablewest If globalization failed, then why is the United States—one of the most globally integrated economies and the issuer of the world’s reserve currency—so wealthy? It’s a real head-scratcher.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@rcubed2003 @howardlutnick Just a bizarre twisting of ideas. If you listened only to the first part of this clip, you could easily mistake him for a communist (Marx would give him a standing ovation). The second part is more reasonable—yes, security considerations matter in trade—but that’s hardly new.

[Chris D. Jackson @ChrisDJackson]

This is impeachable.

The guy is simply too unstable to be president.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@justinstorrey @penguins Funny people make such a big deal about this. 1. Jarry has been way better this year than last. 2. Even if they picked him up for nothing, they would have to shed salary, which probably means giving away Kulak for nothing.... So same thing in the end.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@sbmeunier @ArmandDoma It's also worth noting that the tariffs target goods specifically. While a logical analysis would account for both goods and services in the trade balance, Trump has explicitly focused on balancing trade in goods alone—so stating simply why services matter seems to fit.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@sbmeunier @ArmandDoma Ok, very simple. A trade deficit corresponds to a capital account surplus—meaning you effectively printed money, exchanged it for goods, and then foreign holders reinvested that money back into your government, often for a modest return.

[Tom Elliott @tomselliott]

Sen. @RandPaul: "The whole debate is so fundamentally backwards & upside down. It’s based on a fallacy, & the fallacy is this: that somehow, in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow, when you trade with someone, there’s a loser & someone’s taking advantage of you, & China is ripping you off, or Japan is ripping you off. It’s absolutely a fallacy. Every trade that occurs in the marketplace is mutually beneficial."

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Naxela2 @danton3wuzhere @ArmandDoma In Trump's world the only real value comes from people who produce things that if you drop on your foot will hurt.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@JamesSurowiecki Italy would make more physical stuff, and this is more important to a strong economy than services.

Basically, it's some version of the physical fallacy. At heart, I think to MAGA folks, you really need to explain why making physical things does not equal strength.

[Erik Voorhees @ErikVoorhees]

There is a foolish conception that tariffs help the nation that implements them, and hurts the nation on which they're targetted.

Under this premise, threatening tariffs on others plausibly makes sense, because it encourages both sides to potentially "disarm".

But the premise is flawed. Tariffs hurt both the nation on which they're targetted (obviously), but also the nation that implements them (less obvious).

Yes, it may help certain special interests (uncompetitive domestic producers), but harms great numbers of less vocal victims (every consumer in the nation + any producer with constituent inputs from abroad).

The number of producers which *only* have constituent inputs from within their country is suprisingly small, especially in America where our advanced economy has moved up the value chain to produce items of increasing complexity... rarely is such accomplished from within any single jurisdiction.

But tariffs are cheered on with vigor by those uncompetitive domestic producers, and by the sycophants who would just as quickly decry them had the other team proposed the same.

America is supposed to be a capitalist, free-market nation. As such, any government price control or tax
should be viewed with disdain by principled Americans.

If other nations, being more socialist, want to hamstring themselves with the sophistry of protectionist tariffs, so be it. They can find their own way through the darkness of economic ignorance. Casting such shadows on ourselves to "teach them a lesson" is decel.

We are supposed to be leaders toward the path of liberty, not followers toward the path of ruin.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@TheDavidMaser @milesAKAmillz @CoffeyTimeNews And importantly—this is the key point—it’s not just about price increases from tariffs. Even if higher-quality American products remain cheaper, they will still face reduced demand. The best American exporters will suffer and lose market share.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@TheDavidMaser @milesAKAmillz @CoffeyTimeNews It's an important point that the Trump administration hasn't considered and no one has modelled much. The goal isn’t isolationism but balancing the trade deficit, which requires foreigners to buy more, not less, American goods. We will see a large-scale boycott of U.S. products.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

If some kind of DOGE arrived from outer space with no understanding of the current context and was tasked with reducing government influence along with waste, fraud, and abuse, the very first thing they'd do is eliminate all tariffs.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Boodro79 @EdKrassen I guess I just mean it has been framed in terms of US lives lost from fentynol from Canada. But almost certainly, Canadians have died from drugs that came from the US up. Acknowledging that fact would be nice.

[🎶 @ScottAuriat]

@Boodro79 @EdKrassen I just mean minor compared to what's going across the Mexican border. Not downplaying fentynol as an issue