[FRIAM] Tariff blowback

Wed Apr 9 13:45:32 EDT 2025

Gil =

I'm with you bro!   Sortof.  Mostly. Somewhat.

We are definitely entering a "long dark night of the soul", probably a 
notch beyond the events after 9/11/2001 and during the height of COVID, 
but maybe not (quite) the scale of the Great Depression or the Black 
Plague era or that of the Golden Horde sweeping into Europe.

A previous fearless leader (GW Bush) who was mandated into his office in 
2000 by the Supreme Court (or a handful of hanging chads) put a fine 
point on it when he gave us all $500 (plus or minus) and told us that 
the "best think you can do is go out and spend it!"... making it clear 
that our most important quality as a US Citizen (or resident) is being 
an over-eager consumer.

Most of us will have to delay the refresh of our personal automobile of 
choice, gaming computer or full-featured mobile device for a year or 
three and that will suck in various ways. Others will watch their 
farm/ranch/sawmill that was in their family for decades go bust 
(possibly after a ridiculous boom for a very few?).  Others are already 
trying to find a new job in a job-market which was just scarred badly by 
the arbitrary firings in the Federal Government, and the cascade effects 
of that haven't even set in.  The tarriffing spree hasn't had a chance 
to "come home to roost" beyond the stock market slump (crash), but it 
seems unavoidable that retail markets will churn violently.  I'm 
personally glad to see consumer products being challenged, but I'm a 
grumpy old man shaking his fence telling the kids with that newfangled 
frisbee thing to "get off my lawn!".

I hope many can (gently) tighten their belts, be more thoughtful of how 
they spend their discretionary  funds (e.g. buy local) where they can 
and take some of the harsh hedges off of the ringing in the system that 
all of this harsh/arbitrary elbow-swinging is causing.

I'm mostly looking for ways to support my friends, neighbors and 
acquaintances as best I can to mitigate the harshest of the consequences 
of their bad decisions (in spite of NM being technically blue, nearly 
1/2 of the people I meet on the street must have voted for the Felon in 
2024)?

Our (refreshed since COVID) small flock of chickens are producing 
roughly twice as many eggs as we consume... gifting them to neighbors 
has stimulated a tiny local gift economy with folks who don't wear their 
MAGA hats too tight BUT do look askance at our Bernie and Harris bumper 
stickers when they come to exchange a loaf of homemade sourdough bread 
or tureen of soup for a dozen fresh eggs.   A small thing but something 
I think?

Most if not all of my age-peers are moderately dependent on Medicare and 
Social Security and a few entirely.  I also have at least 3 friends who 
are very vulnerable to the loss of public programs and in one case to 
immigration over-enforcement (recently achieved permanent resident 
status).  I'm listening carefully for where I can help them in any way, 
even tiny.

On the other hand, there are several people (including my only sister) 
who I avoid speaking to almost entirely because they continue to 
apologize/lie for their Orange Jesus and his cohort of Billionaire 
Robber-Barons.   Oh well,  I know their (oversized) 401k's are 
plummeting and can't even gloat!

- Steve

On 4/9/25 9:59 AM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> That's just the start!
> America, imports a huge amount of things: normally this is perfectly 
> ok. Because: Friendly country gets an economy boost, and we get stuff 
> the US can't make. Yet, or even at all. In the gaming and somewhat 
> greater tech comunities the running joke is: america is bad at turning 
> sand into GPU's and motherboards but is great at being Mr.Wallet.
> And honestly that's not bad...per-se. But does meen:be super congenial 
> and even out right friendly to literally every sanely run country. 
> Generally (from what I understand) in return they'll send people over: 
> from students, to engineers, to marketers etc to pick up the slack 
> where companies can't and again we don't know how to do companies make 
> money and etc etc.Ie We by you beer, you fix my food truck, food truck 
> offers jobs to your company first, and discounts we both end up with 
> win/win.
> In the gaming area: Nvidia and AMD are already charging ridiculously 
> hi prices for there stuff both for gamers, and for backgones of 
> companies: I didn't know some types of GPU's are mad good at helping 
> network switches something about to do with the GPU core propper being 
> Asynchrinous and mad good at math dead useful  I have no idea how LOL.
> And then there's uh basic buyers: might need or want a new GPU those 
> 700-800 and at the top end 2k GPU's very likely doubling in costs and 
> the eh well butterfly effect being: How to body America's way of life: 
> brought to you buy a pouty old dude.
>
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2025 at 1:14 PM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
>     The new tariffs of the Trump administration could blow up Apple.
>     It is a little bit ironic that the administration in an attempt to
>     "make america great again" destroys its most valuable company,
>     isn't it? As everyone knows the supply chains of Apple end in China.
>     https://www.reuters.com/technology/will-trump-tariffs-make-apple-iphones-more-expensive-2025-04-03/
>
>     I knew that the 2nd term would be catastrophic but I wasn't sure
>     which sort of catastrophe would happen. Apparently it starts with
>     a worldwide economic crisis - which in turn will lead to massive
>     unemployment and inflation.
>
>     -J.
>
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