No issue with tariff costs and demand changes? Using Bessent math, domestic source COGS and sales have to decline (because wages don’t go up because there is no money creation)

I would be really careful about making assumptions about the 30-40 curve differences between USD and JPY.

Implied marks are one thing. Trade-able levels are another.

Workboat project going slowly. Got some big planks of hardwood to do more repairs. Have had other stuff to take care of.

Done perfectly, there’s probably a non-public meme coin involved.

Vouchers = NADCoin.

Hand it out. Balk on details (Rug it). Elmo and friends buy it all. Then Trump reveals the rest of the plan.

Nads become huge.

LFG Nads!

The key is to crash the economy, raise unemployment, make everything expensive, blame it on Biden, then offer vouchers.

Offer to lower tariffs on countries who invest in American Dynamism SBA Bonds and establish Voluntary Export Restraints on VoucherCo Products.

Then Trump uses the rest of the tariff money to give New American Dynamism Grants to entrepreneurs (Elmo and oligarch voucher buyers) who support Trump (maybe a 20% stake for ‘advisory roles’).

Then USG makes the SBA go YUUGE (but non-recourse) for voucher owners.

He called automaker CEOs on the carpet to tell them not to raise prices. He thought he could bully them. Someone obviously told him differently. It’s a different tune 2 days later.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

He thinks exporters pay because it’s an import and it’s a cash payment at the border. He thinks of it as a payment - a royalty paid to the government - his government - to do business. The other guy pays in order to sell. So obviously, the foreigner pays. It’s that simple.

Why not production subsidies to spur a renaissance of manufacturing?

Ah, well… you see… that is cash out the door. That’s bad.

If he can get in and take a spread, why not. If it is another country selling cars, watches, whatever, ‘it’s very unfair and they are taking advantage of us.’

‘Negotiating’ with China to sell more ag products to them? That’s the salesman. ‘Buy more. I’ll get sales credit.’

Bully them into accepting less. If they take him to court, paper them to death then settle.

Money going out the door in return for service or goods is ‘very unfair and they are taking advantage of us.’ For everything. Anybody making something which Americans want to buy?

Tariffs are great! Look at the money coming in! It’s obviously great because if it weren’t there would be no money coming in. It would be going out. Others are complaining because they want to destroy America.

Historically he cheated contractors because it was money going out.

can’t do anything about it. There is no cost to tariffs. If imports come down so tariffs aren’t as big as 20% on 100% of old imports, that’s fine. 20% on 50% is still 10 of new money.

All the rest of what happens - business lost, jobs lost, costs higher, etc?

Fake news.

“Start a business”? Get someone else to put up equity. Someone else to put up debt. Someone else to run it. Take a royalty for the name. If it goes bankrupt, someone else’s problem. He got his royalty.

He likes tariffs because they are new money coming in where he thinks others

It helps to remember that he doesn’t ‘think like a businessman.’ He thinks like a grifter-rentier. Do a scam. It works. Do it until it doesn’t work. Try a new one.

But fundamentally, you advertise/market/bully someone into giving you cash. Get the cash. Move on.

cc @brokenbanker.bsky.social

Remember… Miran was chief strategist for a hedge fund too…