Derek Thompson
Nobody knows what’s going on. You’ve prominent Trumpsplainers saying the goal of the tariffs is to raise trillions in revenue and move us off income taxes. You’ve got folks who seem super plugged into the Trump-tech alliance like Palmer saying no no no, the goal is the opposite: a world of no tariffs and fully free trade . These are completely incompatible goals. You can’t raise govt revenue over a ten year horizon with a tax that is *designed to disappear*. There’s no playbook to see here. There’s no smoke filled room. Nobody knows what’s going on and the market knows that nobody knows and that—even beyond the specific tariff numbers — is why stocks are puking.
Palmer Luckey
"Unprecedented embrace of protectionism", they say. No, reciprocal tariffs are the opposite. The whole point is to encourage free trade rather than lopsided "free trade" we currently have with so many countries. "It's very simple. If they charge us, we charge them."