Thoughts on DOGE?

[Gmoney4WW]

At this point he has gone off the reservation

I think you misunderstood Trump's intentions with tariffs if you thought he just went off the reservation recently. He wanted to remake the global market from the start and thought tariffs were the way. He wanted to set tariffs as the tax we imposed like before WWII. He always thought we could reset the market to pre WWII and immediately post WWII levels, and erase China's place in the world market. He wanted to do the same to Latin America.

He just doesn't realize the impossibility of it. He doesn't comprehend that the logistics of what he wants is not possible today. But he is a bull in a china closet, and he's going to try anyway. He doesn't listen to anybody when he's made up his mind. And he gets advice from idiots while trying to make up his mind.

 

[drboobay]

Where did your braggadocio insistence that Trump's threats of tariffs would be nothing more than that. This gamble that we can turn the global market back and change it to a national market is bs that will fail. We aren't going to bring our production costs down to compete with costs of land & labor in china or latin America. It's just going to cost us in the cost of goods and taxation on those goods. And these tax cuts that favor the wealthy aren't going to equal the taxation we are paying in tariffs. So the general populace will be paying as much in taxes as before, but also be paying this grand federal sales tax that tariffs will cause. This country will not be able to afford this grand experiment of the blazing idiot of a president that we have. Tariffs are a mechanism for inflation. I don't know how you can say that inflation has more of an effect on the poor than tariffs. Tariffs have levels, just like inflation. Trumps tariff levels are going to be way higher than inflation levels that we just suffered.

I don't know how you think this recession will be short. It will be long(end of term and later) unless Trump backs off this tariff war.

Trump/Musk/Doge will come nowhere near the cuts they have estimated. They touch SS and Medicare with the machete they have been using and the people will scream bloody murder. They need to use a scalpel, & they don't have any idea how to use it.

No respect for expertise. Trump has weird and fantastical thinking.

 

[astonmartin708]

No argument from me. The ten year is in free fall. Current yield is now below 4%. Very good news for home buyers and home construction. Hopefully renters as well but rates would need to stay down for awhile to see an effect there

You know, if you ignore the fact that the cost of the raw materials to build the home went up tremendously yesterday that’s good.

 

[lawpoke87]

You know, if you ignore the fact that the cost of the raw materials to build the home went up tremendously yesterday that’s good.

What raw materials went up “tremendously” yesterday ?

 

[Gmoney4WW]

What raw materials went up “tremendously” yesterday ?

If I were guessing, I would say lumber, with Canada's tariffs.

 

[lawpoke87]

If I were guessing, I would say lumber, with Canada's tariffs.

There are no additional tariffs on Canadian lumber

The 30 year was in the 5s today

 

[Gmoney4WW]

No respect for expertise. Trump has weird and fantastical thinking.

If I were to describe his thinking there would be a lot more cusswords and corrosive slang involved.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

There are no additional tariffs on Canadian lumber

Haven't checked on the specifics lately. Well if he excepted that, then he is acting with half a brain cell, but not much more.

 

[astonmartin708]

There are no additional tariffs on Canadian lumber

The 30 year was in the 5s today

As we all know… houses are built purely out of sticks…just don’t look at the price of your kitchen sinks.

 

[lawpoke87]

As we all know… houses are built purely out of sticks…just don’t look at the price of your kitchen sinks.

lol Plenty of US sink manufactures not subject to any tariffs. Almost all materials for housing are either manufactured stateside or imported from Canada as far as lumber.

Care to list all these raw materials which have gone up “tremendously” in the construction of housing?

I might also suggest you look up the definition of “raw materials”. Sinks ain’t one of them.

 

[astonmartin708]

lol Plenty of US sink manufactures not subject to any tariffs. Almost all materials for housing are either manufactured stateside or imported from Canada as far as lumber.

Care to list all these raw materials which have gone up “tremendously” in the construction of housing?

I might also suggest you look up the definition of “raw materials”. Sinks ain’t one of them.

Shingles (and the high viscosity Canadian oil oil that makes them), composite products, gypsum / lime, wood, lumber, siding (wood, vinyl, etc…) concrete and cement. Glass and windows, doors, granite countertops, appliances, steel, nails screws and fasteners, insulation etc….

Now, you’re going to say a bunch of that was excluded from tariffs, didn’t have tariffs set upon it ‘yesterday’, or that it’s made in America generally. What you ignore is that raising the duties on thousands of other goods inherently raises the costs of manufacturing and producing those goods as manufacturers have to pay for things like work trucks, excavators, computers and IT equipment, company phones, office furniture. They have to pay their employees a wage that will allow them to survive in an inflationary marketplace and the contractors who install them (and the real estate agents who sell the houses and broker the titles) will have similar problems. Domestic manufacturers will also have trouble keeping up with increased demand and will begin to raise prices in response.

If we’ve learned anything from Covid it’s that small disruptions in specific parts of supply chains can have massive downstream impacts.

 

[drboobay]

Trump is using magical thinking. He finds a few rogue economists he can point to that will defend his crazy ideas but otherwise he is trying to wish something into existence.

Not much different than the antivax and 'holistic' vudu that Kennedy is espousing. Birds of a feather.

As of now the main chance we have is popular rebellion.

 

[lawpoke87]

Shingles (and the high viscosity Canadian oil oil that makes them), composite products, gypsum / lime, wood, lumber, siding (wood, vinyl, etc…) concrete and cement. Glass and windows, doors, granite countertops, appliances, steel, nails screws and fasteners, insulation etc….

Now, you’re going to say a bunch of that was excluded from tariffs, didn’t have tariffs set upon it ‘yesterday’, or that it’s made in America generally. What you ignore is that raising the duties on thousands of other goods inherently raises the costs of manufacturing and producing those goods as manufacturers have to pay for things like work trucks, excavators, computers and IT equipment, company phones, office furniture. They have to pay their employees a wage that will allow them to survive in an inflationary marketplace and the contractors who install them (and the real estate agents who sell the houses and broker the titles) will have similar problems. Domestic manufacturers will also have trouble keeping up with increased demand and will begin to raise prices in response.

If we’ve learned anything from Covid it’s that small disruptions in specific parts of supply chains can have massive downstream impacts.

You’re all over the place. Yesterday you were predicting another Great Depression with millions and millions out of work. Now you’re predicting increases on the demand side and employers being forced to up wages due to upward wage pressures. You’re also predicting an inflationary marketplace during a depression. These are all contradictory to basic economic theory. You might want to glance at the bond market for a lesson where we’re headed should we enter a recession. Hint…it won’t be rising wages and increases in demand.

What we learned from Covid (well some of us) is what happens when you inject trillions of dollars into a marketplace already experiencing shortages of goods and services. We are looking at the exact opposite here.

As far as housing. The forecast cost to build a 2500 square foot home today is approximately the same as it was last week. At least here in Tulsa. Lumber packages, windows, roofing, electric, plumbing, hvac, concrete, and finishes. Basically the vast majority of the cost of construction. Carrying costs have of course decreased

 

[Gmoney4WW]

You’re all over the place. Yesterday you were predicting another Great Depression with millions and millions out of work. Now you’re predicting increases on the demand side and employers being forced to up wages due to upward wage pressures. You’re also predicting an inflationary marketplace during a depression. These are all contradictory to basic economic theory. You might want to glance at the bond market for a lesson where we’re headed should we enter a recession. Hint…it won’t be rising wages and increases in demand.

What we learned from Covid (well some of us) is what happens when you inject trillions of dollars into a marketplace already experiencing shortages of goods and services. We are looking at the exact opposite here.

As far as housing. The forecast cost to build a 2500 square foot home today is approximately the same as it was last week. At least here in Tulsa. Lumber packages, windows, roofing, electric, plumbing, hvac, concrete, and finishes. Basically the vast majority of the cost of construction. Carrying costs have of course decreased

I seriously doubt prices are going to go down, quite the opposite on something like a house. This will be a major disruptor like we've never had in the marketplace before. This onslaught of major tariff increases has never happened in the history of the world. The increases happened in a different time when the world was not so connected, and the increases were much more gradual.

No matter whether there is a recession or not I'm betting housing prices increase. The demand may decrease, but the cost of making and harvesting materials while paying tariffs will increase. So wages decrease, unemployment increases, and housing costs will at least maintain but likely increase. That leads to a major problem. The new construction industry will shrink massively IMO. Everything will cost more. The supply chain & tariffs will demand that happens.


Whether he carries through or not is yet to be seen, but Trump is threatening raising the lumber tariffs, and raising the tariffs overall on Canada. Overall means ON TOP of the individual lumber tariffs. At this point those threats amount to more than 50%. We'll see if Trump wants to commit suicide in the next few months. Im betting he backs down or congress forces him to.

If the pressure gets too much, he might try to quietly supplement industries with the 'taxes' he collected to ease the burden on the public. Which will defeat what he was trying to do with tariffs in the first place. I'm sure he would claim an alternate truth, and say he didn't do that. But it would be massive egg on his face, and he would begin to be viewed as the joke that he is.

 

[astonmartin708]

You’re all over the place. Yesterday you were predicting another Great Depression with millions and millions out of work. Now you’re predicting increases on the demand side and employers being forced to up wages due to upward wage pressures. You’re also predicting an inflationary marketplace during a depression. These are all contradictory to basic economic theory. You might want to glance at the bond market for a lesson where we’re headed should we enter a recession. Hint…it won’t be rising wages and increases in demand.

What we learned from Covid (well some of us) is what happens when you inject trillions of dollars into a marketplace already experiencing shortages of goods and services. We are looking at the exact opposite here.

As far as housing. The forecast cost to build a 2500 square foot home today is approximately the same as it was last week. At least here in Tulsa. Lumber packages, windows, roofing, electric, plumbing, hvac, concrete, and finishes. Basically the vast majority of the cost of construction. Carrying costs have of course decreased

You will see a temporary spike in domestic manufacturing (either until Trump slinks out of office or he repeals his tariffs) as buyers try to adjust to US based supply chains to save money, but US supply won’t be able to keep up with demand which will raise prices.

And every business will suffer from the increased prices on opex of the ancillary things I talked about (trucks, phones, computers, routers, toilet paper in the bathroom, etc…)

 

[lawpoke87]

You will see a temporary spike in domestic manufacturing (either until Trump slinks out of office or he repeals his tariffs) as buyers try to adjust to US based supply chains to save money, but US supply won’t be able to keep up with demand which will raise prices.

And every business will suffer from the increased prices on opex of the ancillary things I talked about (trucks, phones, computers, routers, toilet paper in the bathroom, etc…)

If we have a repeat of the Great Depression with millions and millions unable to find work like you’re talking about demand will plummet across the board. New housing construction which we are talking about would be no different. Unemployed people can’t qualify for loans and thus are unable to buy houses. Go back and see what happened to demand during the depression. The basic economics haven’t changed.