But on the whole, I don't actually disagree with bringing US tariffs into alignment with the general level of tariffs that US goods are subjected to by other countries - and we've been extraordinarily low for a long time.
That has been true, but is
true no longer. The average tariff rate for imports into the US has been around 3.3% for a long time, but is now bouncing around 20% or more, changing from week to week and sometimes from day to day. For comparison, here are the
average tariff rates for some of the United States' major trading partners:
- Canada: 3.8%
- Mexico: 6.8%
- China: 7.5%
- Japan: 3.7%
- UK: 3.8%
- Germany, Ireland, Italy, France: 5%
- Taiwan: 6.5%
- South Korea: 13.4%
- India: 17%
- Brazil: 11.2%
Some of those tariff rates are now going up in retaliation for increases in US tariffs.
I don't disagree with backing away from NAFTA and enforcing the penalties stipulated therein, because it hasn't accomplished what it was intended to do [....]
NAFTA was proposed by Ronald Reagan in 1980, (mostly) negotiated by George H W Bush, and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993. At the start of his first term, Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from NAFTA, which he said was "
perhaps the worst trade deal ever made." NAFTA ceased to be a thing in July 2020, when
a similar agreement, which Trump described as "a terrific deal for all of us", took effect.
That new agreement (USMCA) was scheduled for review in 2026. Trump jumped the gun, abrogating some provisions of USMCA soon after his second term began. In a February 2025 press conference, referring to the USMCA, Trump asked "
Who would ever sign a thing like this?" (No one present dared tell him he was the one who signed it.) A couple of weeks ago, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump administration would renegotiate the USMCA in 2026.
The US is facing increasing poverty...
For the past 60 years,
the US Official Poverty Measure (OPM) has fluctuated between 10% and 15%. The poverty rate was going down before the COVID-19 pandemic, rose due to the pandemic, and is currently believed to be going down again. There is of course considerable controversy concerning the best ways to measure poverty, but by the government's official definitions, the prevalence of poverty in the United States has been largely stable for a long time. I am not saying that is a good thing, but there is no evidence that the US is facing markedly increasing poverty.
An unconscionable amount of pharmaceuticals are manufactured in India.
India manufactures about $50 billion of pharmaceuticals, of which
it exports about half. There are half a dozen US drug companies that each match India's output all by themselves.
US pharmaceutical exports are four times India's, despite having less than a quarter of India's population. If one's conscience were to demand equal per-capita output of pharmaceuticals by all countries, then it would be the United States that manufactures an unconscionable amount of pharmaceuticals.
My conscience is not that well-developed. I do not insist that the US reduce its per-capita manufacturing output to match India's.
If the discussions about Trump's actions were a bit more reasonable, I'd likely take a larger part in at least some of them. But there's no incentive for me to do so.
No one is forcing you to do so.
Nobody ever actually considers the points I'm making or where I'm coming from, it just evolves into accusations of bigotry or racism or ignorance or stupidity or all of them at once. And I have no interest in being the target of uninformed hatred and vitriol. Furthermore, there's a fairly large portion of the rhetoric around Trump coming from members of this forum that is just straight up not true, exaggerated beyond any semblance of reality, and steeped in extremely partisan talking points.
I have considered the points you were trying to make. What I found is that, while some of your points were valid and supported by evidence, several of the things you have said are just straight up not true, exaggerated beyond any semblance of reality, and/or steeped in extremely partisan talking points.
3) Both sides of the political spectrum are bastards. Neither party actually cares about the citizens and the long-term well being of the country. Both have their own hobby-horses, designed to appeal to their own partisans. You can certainly hold the view that one party is less evil than the other - that's fine. But to me, they're still evil.
Bless your heart.
babylonbee.com
