Edit: incidentally, only mentioning SA as academics there developed the theory around it, to the best of my knowledge.

It's by value. And it's not just domestic only but USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada). And the tariffs are seemingly prorated by percent 'domestic' (their example math is nonsensical, but I think that was just a math fail on the writer's part) with numerous relief and rebate options available to help ease in the transition period for various auto manufacturers.

GM, Ford, and other companies have chimed in positively.

[1] - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/04/trump-eases-auto-tariffs-l...

This administration is governing by executive action congruent with the pacing of news cycles. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, which makes it futile to make long term plans. No?

* kogod American auto index: https://kogod.american.edu/autoindex/2024

What has changed here is that loyalty to the head of state is the primary determinant for all of the gray areas — and that guy can be as arbitrary and capricious as he wants. Context always matters; context is the difference between prerogative and corruption.

Won't be surprised if Stamos quietly "resigns" in a couple months as well.

And that was under the Biden admin, which was much less pushy. The Trump admin is much more vindictive, especially with a policy that appears to be backed personally by DJT.

Here are some interesting legal articles discussing this very thing in the Trump admin

https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2025/02/us-administration-t...

https://natlawreview.com/article/what-every-multinational-co...

Some manufacturing was replaced by automation, but most of it was not. The jobs still exist, just not in the US. Worldwide, a much larger number of people are making things.

In China, manufacturing jobs account for 29% of total employment, according to UN data reported by Our World in Data.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-of-to...

I had to use that source because China is hiding data now and the original source at the UN no longer lists any data for China.

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-une...

Nonetheless, the UN still reports that many countries have more manufacturing jobs (relative to total employment) than the US. China, if 29% is correct, has the most, but almost all European nations also have more than the US.

https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166

Speaking as a non-American, this is just not true. I have always been impressed by the very high quality of American engineers.

I cannot comment on manufactured goods though, but I think if the US rebuilds its mid-level industrial pipeline, quality would be amongst the best in the world since Americans generally hold themselves to a high standard. I don't think there is a need to be so negative.

That is the opposite of my experience with software engineers, and my observation of the work ethic of most Americans in a variety of professions makes me think the opposite is true in pretty much every industry.

I think "American labor is low quality and high cost" is one of those things people think must be true about some other industry besides the ones they've seen, kind of like they think the news is inaccurate when it reports things they know to be false, but accurate when it reports on other subjects.

This is in contrast to European designed products, which are expensive, but usually are high quality, work really well and last for much longer. (In exchange, the user experience does often feel like it was designed by someone who is way too technically minded/thinks that all UX innovations past the 80s or 90s should be treated with extreme prejudice, whether that's good or bad.)

International rates (or the system that runs it) were decided a long time ago. The international postal system was set up so that all developing countries (which still includes China) are subsidized by developed countries.

American Labor will never be cheaper than virtual slave labor.

It was also widely regarded to obviously not happen before it happened, despite Trump's explicit statements that it would happen and also his past tariffs from his first term.

Frankly, who gives a damn what's widely regarded?

Rules that favor a politically connected company over others is absolutely business as usual. It's the foundation of the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry.

Murder is an interesting example, because like corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it. Governments employ soldiers to do it on demand. Gang members and mafiosos use it as a tool. Sometimes people even celebrate it, such as equating body count with success in war.

The problem in politics is that everyone seems to choose a side, then apply that same kind of double standard. Rules for thee and not for me, as it were.

Edit: but of course, "war is the continuation of politics by other means." So it makes sense that the behavior would be similar.

> Warfare is entirely different.

Not so much. A lot of people are already talking about civil war. If political differences escalate to that point, how many will mourn the loss of lives from "the other side"?

I generally agree with Musk's politics but I wouldn't want all billionaires to share his politics because that would be dangerous. Unfortunately those on the left do not seem to understand this; they keep trying to force total consensus. Which is the biggest evil, total consensus is more evil than any idea you could come up with.

Most ideologies are distractions to get people upset over specific unimportant ideas so that they don't get upset over the massive evil, creeping ideology; the ideology of "total consensus over important ideas."

Full consensus is evil incarnate, no matter the specifics. Its stickiness; inability to adapt to reality is what makes it evil. Without opposition, there is no room for independent thought.

His wealth is what enabled SpaceX to exist.

Musk's Neuralink now has enabled a paralized man who could not communicate to operate a computer with his mind and thereby communicate with the world.

Exactly. Neither does the story.

That was the point of the top comment. The story doesn't explain that the tariff may be 1 cent and completely trivial. It should have.

It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots of tech bros are into it.

And it was inevitable that the more mainstream automakers would sell more evs then Tesla as EVs became a larger and larger share of cars sold. Granted it's taking longer than expected but Tesla is no longer the majority even if it's overall has a large plurality but falling pretty fast

Besides, apple are one of the decision makers in the usb c standard, the legislation mandated a standard, but not a specific one, just the same one for all, and this forum which includes apple decided to go with usb c https://www.usb.org/members

I suspect this divergence comes from people who have internalized the 1960s civil rights movement view, and whose chief concern is the government protecting minorities from the majority. Meanwhile, the more traditional Anglo-american view is chiefly concerned with protecting the majority from the government.

It's truly remarkable how much honest material there is to criticize Trump with, yet folks insist on repeating blatant lies.

>> One of Trump’s most audacious promises was that he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office — or even before.

“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,”

Although I'm more Georgist these days.

In addition to that, it always had a strong southern "state rights" dog whistle. Personally I never liked Murray Rothbard. And the Rothbardian full on appropriation of Mises. Plus they often welcomed 'libertarians' that had very bad ideas, like Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

In terms of Austrian economics, I always much prefer the George Mason people. I think the economics fundamentals of Austrianism were very forward thinking and they produced a lot of great stuff and people, both directly and in the larger bubble of associated researchers.

> I realized over the years that while I’m still very skeptical of government power, I don’t hate the state, and I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal institutions and feel they should be defended.

I think American Libertarianism basically went way to far into hyper-individualism and total freedom of action and defense of historical privileges and laws. While different classical liberal philosophies would focus way more on the cost of those actions and negotiation a balance between individual freedom and society.

Classical liberal philosophy was never supposed to mean that you can park your car anywhere and throw garbage out of the window or that you can carry your gun everywhere.

Also I think there is a huge difference between restricting government on a federal level and on a local level. I don't think any philosophical school has really figured out this issue. Both centralizing and localizing have lots of problems.

I'm at the point where I am not really have a clear 'movement' that I can point to. I still agree with much of the criticism of communism, socialism and many typically left ideas. I disagree even more strongly with the far-right.

In Europe we have central parties, but those often are socially conservative and have sub-optimal economic policy and bad local politics. So like many others I have to end up voting center-left even if I don't agree in principle with their philosophy.

On thing that helped me is not to think of absolutes and end-states, and only think of incrementalism. Even if I disagree with the something in principle. As current laws exist I might support things I wouldn't in a different situation.

In Swizterland where I life, at least we can often vote on specific issues. And that can cut across parties. And the consensus based federal government is globally unique and works pretty well for stability and consistency.

When I was younger I'd do online political tests and invariably come back with left-libertarian. Then the detour into cpunks, ancap, and the "two axis political chart" made me see myself unaligned and see a lot of utility in rightism. But that started to fall apart when it became clear that fundamentalism doesn't address the big picture of emergent layers of complexity. Ironically it was Moldbug's writing that nudged my transition back to seeing myself as latently left-aligned. No matter how much you'd like to, you can't fight thermodynamics!

To me it is logically impossible to reconcile the two positions. You simply can’t be a pro-authoritarian libertarian.

You can’t really espouse libertarian values while being what is coded as “culturally conservative”, because that worldview demands conformity and the mechanisms to enforce same, which are inherently anti-liberty.

A good rule of thumb is that anyone who had any issue whatsoever with other people wearing masks during the pandemic are pretty obviously not pro-individual-liberty and just factional culture brawlers.

There seems to be a lot of definiton drift in the term “libertarian”, and that seems wrong to me. (The same thing happened to my other primary identifying social group, “techno”. I spend a lot of time yelling at clouds now.)

Which is the relevant part. I’m not really concerned with historical positions of the party itself so much as the politicians themselves, none of whom were alive a century ago.

  > reflect what voters want.

It's much in the same vein that Putin allows a few token 'opposition' politicians to exist.

We can learn a lot from the policies, both free market and otherwise. And we shouldn't learn from others.

No free market person thinks of Singapore as some prefect example. As that doesn't exist. So you have to take example from different places. And Singapore has more good examples then most.

He didn't pull it but that's a seperate issue and actually exactly my point, why not? Or for that matter, maybe he did pull it, maybe he caused the story to even appear in the first place, or maybe they will do it regardless what he just said. Maybe he has something less obvious he's working on, or maybe he's somehow fine with the tarriff.

https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...

Even buying one locally that is already registered doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to continue registering it.

Right?

Plus I thought one of trump's things was "no more BS". Is that not a thing anymore?

Ashley Babbitt died because she broken through the last barrier between the mob and congress. Had this mob been armed (and there were plans of being armed that were ultimately scuttled), it could have been a blood bath. There was only a handful of LEO between the mob and congress.

This wasn't a "mosquito bite".

Now, what would have changed if the mob had their way with congress or the supreme court? Who knows. For the SC, it'd have given trump the ability to put in more yes men to rubber stamp his election loss narrative.

For congress, the plan was literally to have congressional collaborators challenge the validity of the election (which still happened) to take power. If many democrat reps lost their life, then yes, congress could have rubberstamped a trump victory. Very few republicans stood up to trump or his plans.

"What could they have done", the answer is kill a bunch of congress people in the opposing party to empower their party.

This was a big deal.

Threats of fascism and authoritarianism aren’t baseless fear mongering, it’s all already happening. While fascism might be too strong of a word the amount of hate administration creating against particular group of people (immigrants, especially undocumented) is huge; just take a look at this wall https://www.borderreport.com/regions/washington-d-c/white-ho...

How you can consider following not to be signs of authoritarianism?:

– sending people into foreign prison without (criminal) due process

– attacking law firms which used to represent opposing parties to yours

– attacking universities representing views different from yours

– attacking media through FTC to exhibit control over their reporting

– attacking platform for donations for opposing party

– routinely abusing power by issuing lawless executive orders every day

– literally dismantling federal government and international position of the country

– turning the state into police state, with ICE being modern day gestapo

If you read constitution you know we’re land of the people and laws. President isn’t a king. President is a person elected for faithful execution of the laws, and it’s hard to underestimate how deep in the woods we’re towards authoritarianism. Calling it baseless fear mongering is nothing but being truly delusional.

This is some wild revisionist history. Democrats have been sounding off about Musk for years. He endorsed Trump way back in 2020. Nobody is learning anything new about him. On the contrary, everyone is dug in with how they feel about him because it's too late to do anything about it, so they might as well pretend everything is fine.