Replying To Ryanteam:  "About time those penguins paid their way. Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic have no human habitation but face 10% tariffs!"

Replying To yew_tree:  "That's capitalism though. The rich get richer. The middle class has been eroded. A house in Dublin in the 1970s adjusted for inflation should cost you today around 100-150k…instead that same modest house is costing 500-600k. For the first time in history my generation won't be better off than our parents. This is not down to something as simple as manufacturing jobs gone overseas and tariffs wont fix it."

Replying To Doylerwex:  "For the most part I agree with you but there's a misguided supposition that manufactures have to maintain current levels of profit.

Look at the decline of average wages and benefits compared to CEO pay and corporate profits since the Reagan era.

It's not that it's too expensive to manufacture in the US, it's that corporations aren't willing to sacrifice limitless profit growth.

It wasn't globalisation that killed American manufacturing, it was the destruction of their unions."

Replying To Ryanteam:  "People expect a 50% correction in American stock market. It's completely bloated, and has attracted speculation from overseas investors. Tariffs will adjust this. Real Estate, especially in tristate area is primed for a correction, in fact it's gone up by about 70% in last 2 years, despite mortgage rates going from 3% to 7%. The American worker hasn't benefited from this "boom", and 60% of Americans do not own stocks. I see a similar scenario all over Europe, house prices in Irish cities are way inflated, and the wealth gap generated by globalization and speculation, as well as over printing money during pandemic and the Great Recession of 2008, is now in my mind what has fueled Brexit and Trumpism. Young people may be the main beneficiaries of the imminent downturn, asset prices should diminish, and they may enjoy the life their parents had!"

Replying To yew_tree:  "60% of Americans don't own stocks…that percentage is even higher in Ireland but many people's pensions are tied up in the stock market. I've seen Americans online the last few days cheering the stock market fall…"The stock market only affects rich people" - well that's an idiotic claim. The fact is what happens on Wall Street affects us all."

Replying To Trump2020:  "It took decades of both Parties abusing the taxpayers to accumulate this National Debt so of course I don't expect it to be solved anytime soon but I believe DOGE is a step in the right direction."

Replying To Ryanteam:  "You misunderstand… 60% of Americans do not own stocks in any way. They don't have pensions as those have been phased out. The middle class is being obliterated. When you see 80 year olds working in Walmart, you see a major problem. The American stock market has more than doubled since 2016, it's due for a correction. There's a doozy at the helm of the country, who has bankrupted himself several times, and yet people who would have been better off voting for Bernie Sanders voted for the great orange TV star. You couldn't make it up!"

Replying To zinny:  "Almost two thirds of the annual budget spend goes on Defense and Military - the US Military Industrial complex is huge and has been build up ever since the first world war and after the second in particular once the US adapted to its new place in world order and realized that to project their economic colonization around the world they needed to match that with a military force. It suited the US for Europe to remain dependent on them during the cold war, they perhaps did not anticipate the economic success of the EU and now think its unfair that the EU doesn't spend the same as them on defense despite its economic success. Now Europe will move away from reliance on the US but the US is not happy if this includes building up their own Military Complex. The point here is that to cut the deficit the US had to reign in Military spending however if your uses the money to build their own then the US is worse off.
By the way Taxpayers did not pay for the national debt, they fund the interest payments. About 35% of the debt is held internationally. What the US is currently doing is creating a real risk to the US$ as the global reserve CCY, if that happens finding buyers for their debt will become a problem. All this while the lunatics think that they should have a crypto reserve.
Trump and the people he has gathered around him have reduced everything to simple one liners, there is nothing new with this in the US and it is not confined to Republicans, it was not Republicans who coined the phrase - its the economy stupid - it was not too long ago that Republicans were the Globalists and the Democrats the America first party.
There really has never been independent media in the US, as a result the media has been used by all sides to emphasis that one sided view as being right. Whats happening today however is the extreme where any action can be justified with a one liner - lie. It was something that has been coming and the only hope for the world is that republicans will begin to see through this and Democrats start to put forward credible candidates and policies that the majority can get behind."

Replying To yew_tree:  "I understood what you said. My point what happens on the stock market absolutely effected middle and poor income people. We and they are always the ones to suffer most. A multi billionaire looses 2-3 billion…won't put him or her on the breadline."

Replying To Ryanteam:  "Trump and Wall Street are trying to pressurize Powell to lower interest rates. He can't as tariffs will raise inflation. Americans voted this guy in, he promised tariffs, and they'll have to shoulder the consequences. Trump could very well back down, but he's so unpredictable, nobody knows. The harm he's doing to the auto business and Canada is unimaginable! Wall Street and corporate America is largely at fault, as Bernie Sanders has been screaming for decades. The pharmaceutical industry has outsourced all manufacturing, mostly to Ireland, and research to companies like WuXi in Shanghai. Well qualified PhD scientists in US are unemployed or under employed, and RFK is absolutely not the right guy to head the FDA!"