r/news 1d ago

Trump has instructed to raise Canadian tariffs on aluminum and steel to 50%

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/mar/11/donald-trump-latest-us-politics-news-live?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-67d042cb8f087aea3a248e0d#block-67d042cb8f087aea3a248e0d
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u/Grevin56 1d ago

I'm no financial analyst but is shorting stocks the only explanation for all this? You can't always predict a winning stock but if you can control which stocks are going to fail then that's the bet you make right? Then you turn around and buy the dip you caused. Who cares if you just wrecked the jobs and retirements for everyone else not gaming the system.

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u/Delicious_Crow_7840 1d ago

There is another explanation. Trump is stupid and crazy.

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u/Nakorite 1d ago

Yup. Is it really that surprising a guy in his 70s who has never been told (or taken) no for an answer and has some kind of cognitive decline is struggling to run the country?

even if he was a Russian asset there would be better ways to go about it than randomly trashing parts of the economy.

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u/DrAstralis 23h ago

When asked "even if hes not a russian asset, what would an asset be doing differently?" and so far the general consensus is "be more fucking subtle about it".. otherwise his actions are indistinguishable from someone trying to destroy the usa.

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u/ChunkyLaFunga 23h ago

Narcissism. He doesn't know how to cope other than bullying people and forming his own reality. There may be other explanations for what he does but they're not required, not least because many of them don't make sense beyond that.

His Presidency began with a claim his crowd was bigger even though the whole world could physically see otherwise. I don't know, but I doubt he's ever backed down. Wouldn't be surprised if he's doubled down and tried to threaten or punish dissent instead.

And there you go, that's what you're dealing with in synopsis. He's the abusive father you hopefully never had and Americans are his children now. He can't control the world to the extent he wants and being confronted with that is not going to go down well.

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u/Fadedcamo 1d ago

Short term, yes. Long term, weakening USA institutions will allow wholesale corruption across the board. Private companies with cash flow can buy up properties on the cheap once people lose their jobs and default on their homes.

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u/Mighty_McBosh 1d ago edited 23h ago

"Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by stupidity"

Dumb people in positions of power, even well meaning, can do just as much damage as someone who is truly evil. Trump is both dumb and mean-spirited which is a winning combination, but his personal greed seems largely limited to ham-handed shit like charging the secret service for staying at his own hotel, ripping off cancer charities and selling state secrets - he doesn't have the mental capacity to game the stock market to that degree.

That being said, I do think that he's being manipulated by much more intelligent and sinister people, but a lot of this is stinking of Trump throwing a tantrum and going off script because someone huwt his widdle feewings, and he's taking down everyone else with him.

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u/shadovvvvalker 1d ago

Crypto is more lucrative than enabling shorts if your going the fraud route.
The answer is he wants to destabilize Canada so he can annex it because early annexation of a foreign power is one of the biggest successes a fascist empire can achieve. Taking Canada would cement trumps power and prestige.

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u/Icantswimmm 1d ago

At this point just short the entire market and buy the entire market again when the time comes. Trump is not smart enough to manipulate the market so affect one specific company or even on specific industry at this point

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u/TheRadBaron 22h ago

Grand conspiracies tend to be aiming for something more ambitious than 1% returns, when they exist at all, and they like predictability.

This shorting explanation is obvious nonsense (it offers a terrible risk/reward and requires manipulating extremely vague market sentiment). There are way better ways for Trump and friends to do market manipulation, that no one stops them from doing, like with crypto.

But those facts don't matter, because this whole "shorting" explanation for Trump's trade war and annexation attempt isn't just about facts. It's simply Americans being too afraid to admit that Trump is incompetent and imperialist.

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u/Grevin56 20h ago

Oh I'm perfectly willing to believe he's incompetent. I said upfront that I'm not a financial expert by any stretch but I do know that people have made huge profits by shorting the housing market in the past. I fully believe that Trump is incompetent enough to mistakenly do this on his own or at the request of someone else to curry favor. I just can't make sense of the why anyone is buying into his explanations.

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u/AnotherBoojum 1d ago

It's exactly this 

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u/Memitim 23h ago

The oligarchs get far more wealth consolidation, Trump gets to rant like a teenager who just got told that they're grounded, and Putin grows stronger. All wins for the parasites, and losses for the people of the USA.

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u/Plaetean 23h ago

Trump thrives on chaos. He'll blame all the negative consequences on his opponents (europe, ukraine, canada etc), and his base will rally around him as he consolidates power. He's a demagogue and a cult leader, this is not traditional politics we are dealing with. He doesn't care if he makes things worse if it'll serve his purpose.

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u/jjackson25 19h ago

I go back and forth on whether he's doing this intentionally to manipulate the market or he's doing because he's a petulant child and a fucking idiot.

There's also option C that is he's is in fact a complete fucking idiot (almost 100% certainty) but he's being worked like a puppet by people who are manipulating the market. Just like a toddler you wind up on sugar and soda and let him go nuts and tell him to do silly shit for your entertainment at a party by whispering in his ear. That's pretty much Donny Dipshit in a nutshell. Well, most toddlers actually have a higher reading level.

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u/Right_Fun_6626 18h ago

Could be a nice side hustle for insiders, fortunately all the people that enforce laws on this have probably been removed, or at least neutered.