Why do some people view President Trump as the villain in this tariff war?

[_act_]

Misdirection as his real goal is fucking China bigly. As to whether he succeeds a different story.

As to if he should even try fuck China that is hard to answer . I certainly do not have the info we need.

China caused it because only 10% was imposed on them before it was increased to 20%, 54%, 104%, 145% and now 245%. This is because China is retaliating. Why retaliating when the trade deficit for US is so huge. The world needs to be careful of China because I do not see any problem if 10% is imposed on them by United States with such huge trade deficit.

Chinese bonds in US is the second largest while Japan has the largest. But if compared to the rest of the world, China bonds is still not much of significant amount but which is enough to affect United States if China decide to sell them. This may decrease the price of dollar but also increase the price of yaun which will still further lead to the purpose of this tariff. If China reduced the price of yuan, this is making their economy more competitive and also encouraging exports but if the bonds is sold and cause increase in price of yaun, export in China to US will be discouraged with it.

US will also suffer this because they are planning what could lead to inflation in the country. But if smartphones, memory cards, semiconductor devices, solar cells, modems, routers and flat panel displays are exempted from the tariffs, let us see how it would be.

[NeuroticFish]

China caused it because only 10% was imposed on them before it was increased to

This doesn't really make sense, does it?

While I completely agree that the entire world has to be very careful about China, I do not agree on your stance on the tariff war.
China still produces so cheap the entire world would buy no matter what. Just the tariffs rise the price in USA for no good reason, making exactly those who cannot afford better quality (ie more expensive) products pay more.
If you expect this will make China lower their prices, you are wrong, since their margins were minimal.

-----
And to answer to the top question:

USA is a really big market. And this tariff war made everybody worry and reconsider their sales and growth perspectives.
But USA is not the only market and a lot of goods and services can be sold bypassing USA. It needs time, but it can be done.

Trump is the villain because he hurts the entire world with his amateurish gamble.
He will hurt the USA the most and China, Russia and N Korea already enjoy what they see. Of course, the Americans may need more time to understand that propaganda is not reality and to see that this indeed happens to them.

Sad times... good that Bitcoin offers somewhat a shield against all this, because the world is going down like Titanic, and Trump plays the role of the iceberg.

[DYING_S0UL]

But don't forget, Trump was the one who originally started it and took it to the point of ridicule, where it could have been resolved more sensibly. It's natural for people to view him as the villain because they are the ones suffering in this trade war, not him, not China, but the people. Honestly, nobody even asked for this to happen! But thanks to Trump, things escalated so quickly that the situation became much worse. This man already seemed out of his mind when he said, Harvard was a joke and it should be stripped of funds. Lol!

[indah rezqi]

But don't forget, Trump was the one who originally started it and took it to the point of ridicule, where it could have been resolved more sensibly. It's natural for people to view him as the villain because they are the ones suffering in this trade war, not him, not China, but the people. Honestly, nobody even asked for this to happen! But thanks to Trump, things escalated so quickly that the situation became much worse. This man already seemed out of his mind when he said, Harvard was a joke and it should be stripped of funds. Lol!

That's right, when a policy is implemented by the Government, the people suffer the most. Goods that were sold cheaply yesterday become very expensive today, it clearly increases spending. Sometimes we have to stand far away to be able to see the impact of a policy, no longer who wins and who loses, but who has to bear it all. Meanwhile, I tried to find out why Trump pressured Harvard and wanted to freeze funding, I found one thing that Trump wants all institutions to support his crazy idea.

[Agbe]

I think that you're been biased in your analysis if there is any country that restrict other countries goods is the United States of America and their so called standard it may interest you to know that many goods that are imported into the United States of America doesn't even make it through their borders especially the once from China and other targeted countries using different excuses, all of these are targeted at making so that the goods coming from China doesn't make it into the American market trump came and wanted to play super hero by imposing a tariffs on goods from China and other countries so China and the world will just have react back 

[DeathAngel]

Most normies have a retirement fund in a 401k or some exposure to stocks or crypto. Trump’s tariffs coincided with a lot of people getting whacked 20% or more on their net worth. People don’t care about China being unfair on trade but they do care when their portfolio is down big which is what happened to markets when Trump started his tariff war. Things have recovered a little, let’s hope that continues when/if he starts announcing trade deals soon.

[takuma sato]

Most normies have a retirement fund in a 401k or some exposure to stocks or crypto. Trump’s tariffs coincided with a lot of people getting whacked 20% or more on their net worth. People don’t care about China being unfair on trade but they do care when their portfolio is down big which is what happened to markets when Trump started his tariff war. Things have recovered a little, let’s hope that continues when/if he starts announcing trade deals soon.

A lot of people outside of the US where there is not a culture of investing forget that a lot of literal grandpas and grandmas have their retirement on some SP500 ETF like VOO and whatnot, so they are screwing up their dividend paymenrs (or manual withdraw if they use this method) and thus they are basically ruining people's retirements and life quality. This is why the US cannot afford seeing a bear market and will do anything it takes to keep a bullish perspective. In fact I would argue Powell probably has that as the number one goal and not inflation.

[philipma1957]

Most normies have a retirement fund in a 401k or some exposure to stocks or crypto. Trump’s tariffs coincided with a lot of people getting whacked 20% or more on their net worth. People don’t care about China being unfair on trade but they do care when their portfolio is down big which is what happened to markets when Trump started his tariff war. Things have recovered a little, let’s hope that continues when/if he starts announcing trade deals soon.

A lot of people outside of the US where there is not a culture of investing forget that a lot of literal grandpas and grandmas have their retirement on some SP500 ETF like VOO and whatnot, so they are screwing up their dividend paymenrs (or manual withdraw if they use this method) and thus they are basically ruining people's retirements and life quality. This is why the US cannot afford seeing a bear market and will do anything it takes to keep a bullish perspective. In fact I would argue Powell probably has that as the number one goal and not inflation.

Or fuck the 401k people they did not choose to switch to safer funds when they reached the retirement age.

If you were 100% mirror the dow jones for decades.

Retired and Trump wins in nov you had nov dec and Jan to switch 50% of your dow fund bonds.

Many ultra rich simply say fuck the guy with a 1million 401k

So I could see the market dropping a ton over the next year.


Or not as Trump is very unpredictable.

[aylabadia05]

I struggle to understand why some people paint President Trump as the villain in this tariff war. Let’s not forget that China has long banned or restricted many U.S. products and services. Trump’s tariffs are a response to China’s unfair trade practices, which have persisted for over a decade. Beyond tariffs, China blocks major U.S. companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from operating in its market. In my view, China hasn’t been playing fair. They restrict foreign goods and services in their country while expecting open access for their own products abroad. That’s hardly equitable. I’m surprised the U.S. didn’t act sooner. If China wants tariff-free trade, they should remove their own tariffs and restrictions on U.S. products and services. If they refuse, they have no right to complain about U.S. retaliation.

There is a logical reason why China is unfair. Trump is saying that some countries are unfair and that is true if we look at it with simple logic so when Trump sets different tariff percentages for different countries and those countries should not be upset about the decision even if Trump eventually announces a delay.

Why some people see Trump as a villain in setting this tariff percentage, I think it depends on which side they are judging it from. I don't have that opinion for Trump because Trump according to him has done his best as a big and influential country if the main reason is as he said to the public about the unfairness of other countries.

[Oluwa-btc]

The tariff placed by US government is not only on China but why the media is now talking is because Trump has relaxed the tariff for other countries for 90 days and instead of reducing that of China, it was increased to about 120 percent. What I can say to that is that US have always seen China as a very strong competitor in every area like trade and industrial manufacturing, technology, warfare etc. So they will put more effort to discourage Chinese products in the US and allies of US.

Again, Trump made it clear that he is going to focus on the American people and so many orders have been made in that direction including the child birth right which is aiming to discourage migrants to see US as a safe heaven for child bearing and citizenship status.

Trump's tariffs developments didn't just affect China alone afterwards, people hated Trump because of the negatives influence and how it affected several economical factors like the price and other international related projects and affairs.
Trump's tariffs was meant to punish certain businesses and workforce,but ended up affecting USA industries with crazy economical outcomes

[philipma1957]

The tariff placed by US government is not only on China but why the media is now talking is because Trump has relaxed the tariff for other countries for 90 days and instead of reducing that of China, it was increased to about 120 percent. What I can say to that is that US have always seen China as a very strong competitor in every area like trade and industrial manufacturing, technology, warfare etc. So they will put more effort to discourage Chinese products in the US and allies of US.

Again, Trump made it clear that he is going to focus on the American people and so many orders have been made in that direction including the child birth right which is aiming to discourage migrants to see US as a safe heaven for child bearing and citizenship status.

Trump's tariffs developments didn't just affect China alone afterwards, people hated Trump because of the negatives influence and how it affected several economical factors like the price and other international related projects and affairs.
Trump's tariffs was meant to punish certain businesses and workforce,but ended up affecting USA industries with crazy economical outcomes

it is the uncertainty that makes it hard for business. I want to buy this


https://altairtech.io/product/bitmain-antminer-s21-xp/  today it is 7,000

it has moved up and down from 6900 to 7900 now 7000.

Makes it hard for me to go and get 3 of them.

So this in turn hurts altairtech and my host.

So 3 companies hurt in this case alone.

bitmain
altairtech
my host

also my mine

all would have moved the 3 x 7 = 21k

around

and USA gov  do not get the lower 25% tariff or about 4k

A ton of wealth is not allowed  to flow freely


that example above can be 1,000x maybe 100,000x more wealth frozen by uncertainty


 

[Findingnemo]

I struggle to understand why some people paint President Trump as the villain in this tariff war. Let’s not forget that China has long banned or restricted many U.S. products and services. Trump’s tariffs are a response to China’s unfair trade practices, which have persisted for over a decade. Beyond tariffs, China blocks major U.S. companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from operating in its market. In my view, China hasn’t been playing fair. They restrict foreign goods and services in their country while expecting open access for their own products abroad. That’s hardly equitable. I’m surprised the U.S. didn’t act sooner. If China wants tariff-free trade, they should remove their own tariffs and restrictions on U.S. products and services. If they refuse, they have no right to complain about U.S. retaliation.

China isn't a democracy, Xi Jinping can do whatever the fuck he wants and there will be no one to ask questions about his decisions. And what is stopping US from banning Chinese imports instead of a tariff? US can't afford to, because US will lose more if that happens than China and even now many products from China are manufactured by US companies, so there's your answer.

And this tariff war already backfired that is why we saw 90 days pause and it will likely to be paused indefinitely. The US missed their Train and China is too big to threaten.

[Smartprofit]

Misdirection as his real goal is fucking China bigly. As to whether he succeeds a different story.

As to if he should even try fuck China that is hard to answer . I certainly do not have the info we need.

China caused it because only 10% was imposed on them before it was increased to 20%, 54%, 104%, 145% and now 245%. This is because China is retaliating. Why retaliating when the trade deficit for US is so huge. The world needs to be careful of China because I do not see any problem if 10% is imposed on them by United States with such huge trade deficit.

Chinese bonds in US is the second largest while Japan has the largest. But if compared to the rest of the world, China bonds is still not much of significant amount but which is enough to affect United States if China decide to sell them. This may decrease the price of dollar but also increase the price of yaun which will still further lead to the purpose of this tariff. If China reduced the price of yuan, this is making their economy more competitive and also encouraging exports but if the bonds is sold and cause increase in price of yaun, export in China to US will be discouraged with it.

US will also suffer this because they are planning what could lead to inflation in the country. But if smartphones, memory cards, semiconductor devices, solar cells, modems, routers and flat panel displays are exempted from the tariffs, let us see how it would be.

And who will China be able to sell American treasuries bonds to? It seems to me that it has so many of them that it simply will not find buyers for them.

It is unlikely that such buyers will be European investors, or, for example, investors from India. At the same time, for example, the United States itself may refuse to buy treasury bonds from China, citing political reasons. Of course, China can sell some of the American government bonds little by little, but it will not be able to sell them all at once...

In general, in this situation, both the United States and China are positioning themselves as countries not interested in free trade and fair competition. At the same time, China demonstratively refuses to make concessions, which shows the whole world the weakness of the US president and his team. And this is surprising.

Firstly, it is unclear why Donald Trump declared a trade war without calculating all the consequences of this war. It seems that the reaction of China and other countries came as a surprise to him and he does not have a backup plan for this case.

It is also not very clear what China will do if it loses such a large market as the US. China has production capacities that can only be used to produce goods for export. The situation will be even more complicated for it if the European Union (which is also interested in protecting its producers) introduces protective duties following the US.

As a result, there is much less trust and much less stability in the world.

[shinratensei_]

Honestly, the reciprocal tariff makes a lot of sense.
It stopped making sense when he started giving tariff to any country that exists in this planet therefore caused outrage around the world.

As other said, I think trump is trying to make china less relevant with his tariff and also making up for the trade deficit, the only way plausible is tariff but if trump didn't give tariff to every country I think the outrage will be less.

[NotATether]

I struggle to understand why some people paint President Trump as the villain in this tariff war.

It's because of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

Let’s not forget that China has long banned or restricted many U.S. products and services. Trump’s tariffs are a response to China’s unfair trade practices, which have persisted for over a decade. Beyond tariffs, China blocks major U.S. companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from operating in its market. In my view, China hasn’t been playing fair. They restrict foreign goods and services in their country while expecting open access for their own products abroad. That’s hardly equitable.

Yeah, China's market has been *very* hard to enter because they are trying really hard to kick out global competitors to prop up their domestic counterparts in the hopes that those companies can compete with Silicon Valley (e.g. Temu, Deepseek).

Unfortunately I don't see those restrictions being lifted any time soon. These also include censorship measures against entire companies which they don't like (i.e. which don't delete content the CCP doesn't like at will), so what you have is this "solar system" where half of the stars and moons were pulled into the nearby black hole.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Beyond tariffs, China blocks major U.S. companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from operating in its market. In my view, China hasn’t been playing fair.

So how  do you explain the US banning Huawei and accusing them without providing any evidence? Or they want to ban TikTok and make the same accusations but then they want to own it. Is the US playing fair with China?

Huawei and TikTok can survive and even thrive without the US market, but can Apple and Tesla do the same ?
Also, if they feel China is not playing fair, they can stop all business there. China does not beg nor has the right to ban them from leaving the country if they are not satisfied with its policies and regulations .

If they refuse, they have no right to complain about U.S. retaliation.

China does not complain, is not afraid, and is ready to fight to the end with the United States if it wants to.

[philipma1957]

Beyond tariffs, China blocks major U.S. companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google from operating in its market. In my view, China hasn’t been playing fair.

So how  do you explain the US banning Huawei and accusing them without providing any evidence? Or they want to ban TikTok and make the same accusations but then they want to own it. Is the US playing fair with China?

Huawei and TikTok can survive and even thrive without the US market, but can Apple and Tesla do the same ?
Also, if they feel China is not playing fair, they can stop all business there. China does not beg nor has the right to ban them from leaving the country if they are not satisfied with its policies and regulations .

If they refuse, they have no right to complain about U.S. retaliation.

China does not complain, is not afraid, and is ready to fight to the end with the United States if it wants to.

Just what is needed a piece of shit leader for China that overstayed his eight years and a piece of shit president for USA that is a convicted felon.

And followers with zero understanding of how they are being played.

[dezoel]

Nobody says China is a good guy, I mean at least I don't, and I know many who dislike Trump and China at the same time. The point is, China prevents American companies to work and get money from Chinese, whereas Trump is preventing China from manufacturing cheap stuff FOR American companies.

This means, when you ban facebook, so they don't get money from Chinese, that is good for Chinese, and bad for USA, that is true, and if USA did something similar, like ban BYD to be sold to Americans, that would be understandable, totally fair. But what he did, was put tariff, which means, he is going to prevent American small business owners (or even big ones) to order cheap millions of items there, and sell it all over the world and make money on that.

So he is literally making Americans lose, sure it would benefit Chinese to make products for American companies too, but it is also helping Americans. Ban BYD cars, ban Tiktok if you want (if it is still Chinese) ban any Chinese company you want, but do not ban American companies making profit via Chinese help, that is still valid.

[sana54210]

China's market has been *very* hard to enter because they are trying really hard to kick out global competitors to prop up their domestic counterparts in the hopes that those companies can compete with Silicon Valley (e.g. Temu, Deepseek).

Unfortunately I don't see those restrictions being lifted any time soon. These also include censorship measures against entire companies which they don't like (i.e. which don't delete content the CCP doesn't like at will), so what you have is this "solar system" where half of the stars and moons were pulled into the nearby black hole.

But in that case, what USA should have done, is to prevent Chinese companies to enter USA market? If they are preventing you to enter China, then you prevent them to enter USA and then you are doing both the same thing. So why people are mad at Trump? Because he didn't do tic for tac, he didn't go eye for an eye, he did something totally brand new, giving them a chance to totally change things and make China look like they are right.

Because while China did prevented American companies to enter (or at least make it very very difficult) they did not increase tariffs out of nowhere, whereas Trump did. What he did was like if China did helped the Chinese, thanks to what China did, Americans can't enter and Chinese make more money this way. What Trump did hurts Americans probably more than Chinese, but even if Chinese are hurt a lot, that doesn't mean Americans are not hurt by this, and that is why it's the Americans that are mad. They are saying if Trump wants to do something, then do it, but do something that hurts the Chinese alone, not the Americans.