Flowersignup
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User ID: 3556
They specifically said this was from the tariffs
In a letter sent to employees on Thursday morning, Antonio Filosa, Stellantis' chief operating officer for the Americas, said the company is "continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects of these tariffs on our operations, but also have decided to take some immediate actions, including temporarily pausing production at some of our Canadian and Mexican assembly plants. Those actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations."
And this is only in their immediate actions just with pausing and temporary layoffs since no one even knows if Trump will even stick to the tariffs.
Flowersignup
17hr ago
I think MattyY has a pretty decently evidenced take on this. https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1907764231484686635#m
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-tariffs-mean-big-opportunities
Tariffs are bad for many industries due to increasing their import costs and trade, so you can use the exemption process to pick economic Winners and Losers which even assuming there's no corruption whatsoever is still prone to mishap. And assuming no corruption in the Trump admin is a pretty hard sell.
This policy essentially forces the Commerce Department to turn itself into a little central planning office for the American economy. And even if you assume perfect good faith on the part of all the political appointees and career staff,2 it’s not reasonable to expect them to do a good job making all of these technical decisions.
One good example goes to Apple in the previous admin.
But it’s a high-profile company, and as Republicans know, middle class people don’t like to pay higher taxes. During Trump’s first term, he initially vowed that Apple would get no exemptions in the spring of 2019, but then in the fall, there were a lot of stories about how prices on Apple products might go up. By September, Apple was winning limited exemptions. Then, in December, Trump reached a “Phase 1” trade deal with China, which was used as a pretext to exempt iPhones, and in March 2020, Apple won an exemption for Apple Watches, too.
Any highly discretionary process becomes political.
Theoretically, the waivers are granted on a technical basis. But there’s only so much capacity to do technical and legal analysis from scratch. In practice, agencies are relying in part on the strength of the cases that are submitted to them by the people making the requests. Some of that is the actual strength on the merits, but some of it is the quality of the lawyers and lobbyists these companies can afford to hire. And, of course, if your company is in a swing state or has close ties to a member of Congress the White House cares about or (like Apple) is salient in the media, other people start getting involved in the meetings to decide what should happen. You can be optimistic that a well-run administration won’t let political considerations run roughshod over everything else. But realistically, you can’t take the politics out of politics. In a discretionary process, the interests of companies with political clout will be weighted more heavily than those of outsiders or startups. And companies will need, at the margin, to shift their time and attention to the process of getting waivers and away from making good products.
Essentially risks standardizing widespread corruption, and becomes what is essentially a planned economy based off personal favors and ties to powerful politicians. Something that already happens to some degree but on overdrive like what happened to ruin Argentina.
Flowersignup
19hr ago
Like seriously we can’t restore because there’s no one to work the factories because our blue collar male population has a job if they want one.
Good news about that, the tariffs have already led to at least one major automation company laying off some employees. If more follow then we'll have lots of jobless men to go around.
Yeah exactly. The US economy by freeing our labor up from much of the basic work other countries can do cheaper has allowed for so much room into high value manufacturing and services.
I often see a complaint about "bullshit jobs" where people don't feel like they're productive, and there certainly is some that exist because of regulations that aren't necessary (like the people who need to make five hundred pages of environmental reviews instead of just a concise 2-5 page paper) or because their employers are not perfectly optimized machines who never make mistakes but in general American wages are so absurdly high on average because our jobs are actually doing a lot of productive work in ways we might not be able to directly appreciate.
The average American office worker gets paid a shit ton of money to file paperwork or do accounting or whatever because the company believes it is worth the expense whether that be direct gains like manufacturing or indirect like optimizations, PR relations, advertising, HR, lobbyists, R&D, IT, etc etc.
And the companies keep succeeding so clearly they must be somewhat right.
Flowersignup
21hr ago
So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label
American manufacturing is actually really strong https://www.cato.org/blog/united-states-remains-manufacturing-powerhouse
Simply put, the United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. In 2020 it was the world’s fourth‐largest steel producer and in 2021 was the second-largest automaker and largest aerospace exporter. Accounting for nearly 16 percent of global manufacturing output in 2021—second only to China, which has four times the population of the United States—the US had a greater share than Japan, Germany, and South Korea combined. By itself, the US manufacturing sector would constitute the world’s eighth‐largest economy.
There's not as many jobs in manufacturing because automation. There's absolutely no reason to cuck ourselves employing people to do things that machines have been able to do for decades, and it's freed up labor into other goods and services. And again this has made the US into the economic marvel that it is too.
and why is the local agribusiness periodically shiitting bricks at the prospect of dropping tariffs on food?
Free trade actually benefits a lot of agriculture too. Even the Trump admin knows this given they subsidized farmers during the first trade war and are planning more now https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/us/politics/farmers-bailouts-trump-tariffs.html
Flowersignup
21hr ago
Nearly every country on the face of the earth has tariffs against US goods. It's working out fantastic for them.
That's both not true in a meaningful sense, most of our meaningful trade partners have only limited tariffs on a small number of industries or businesses which is not anywhere near equal to large tariffs on everything and not true because the US economy is substantially stronger and better than most other countries in the world.
Maybe we were the ones pouring gasoline all over our body and lighting the match because the experts told us we have to.
Lots of countries have tried autarky before, somehow despite it being incredibly effective apparently, none of them ended up doing well. If we're pouring gas on ourselves, it's strange how rich and powerful America has become doing so.
Also important, free trade is historically the revolutionary idea. Free trade economists like Smith and Ricardo were the ones who pushed back on the mercentalist mindset that dominated the elite class of the time, and the countries that adopted trade grew up strong.
Smash away and let's see what happens. If for no other reason to prove that you can do something different, alternatives are possible, even if you may indeed get burned.
Pouring gasoline all over my body and lighting a match because the experts told me not to (and how dare they tell me what to do?) is a completely different type of thing than nuanced risk taking and experimentation.
We can do things differently, improve on our flaws and take healthy risks. We can challenge the orthodox opinions of professionals. We don't need to light ourselves on fire to do this.
They could give steelmans sure, but there's always been one issue with steelmanning as a concept and that it's sometimes equivalent to just making up ideas that don't actually exist in the person's head.
There's a lot of different reasons given by the Trump admin. From fentanyl, to trade deficits, to immigration, to bringing back American manufacturing, to replacing domestic tax with it, to take revenge on other countries with tariffs, to fight China, etc etc.
Some of these are even contradictory. Raising a significant amount of money to fund government with tariffs doesn't work if people stop buying foreign and start buying only those made in America from the ground up. And neither of those work as well if the goal is for them to lower their trade barriers for a bilateral drop in tariffs and protectionism on both sides.
Steelmanning just a single point (like if tariffs can help american manufacturers or if they could be used to punish foreign protectionist policy) has to just straight up ignore everything else being said. It has to be unaware of the rhetoric and reasons given in order to substitute with some "Well imagine if it wasn't actually that?" fanfiction.
The American dream is still alive and quite strong, and we can see this by the large number of immigrants risking life and limb still trying to get into the country to this day. But for the average American it's a bit more faded and one big reason is pretty simple.
What is it? Life is simply better to begin with. Even the poorer end of rural Americans still tend to have somewhat reliable food, clean water, safe shelter, entertainment that even the kings of old could only dream of (who needs a royal jester when there's millions of them on your TV and computer), good looking comfortable clothing, and medical treatment among many many other things. That's not to say there aren't still problems but the lives of most citizens are substantially better than even many upper class of the 1800s.
You don't have to go to the big city living next to horse manure filled streets with one arm from a factory accident anymore because the alternative is somehow even worse. Despite the gap in wealth increasing substantially the actual life experience has narrowed. Even the average home is getting larger, putting them closer and closer to mansions despite smaller household sizes. There's simply less to aspire towards, and the American dream has always been one of aspiration.
Some of this really just boils down to my personal job security. Where do I go to start making money?
But the the rest boils down to where do my kids go to start making money?
It takes a somewhat adaptive and entrepreneurial mindset to really make major money from nowhere. Any simple answer is liable to go the same way they've always gone, a flood of new workers over time chasing the simple money.
But the good news is, if things go well, we might even need to worry about it too much. Perhaps AI and automation are so incredible that even the poorest of rurals will now benefit from the personal maids and private chefs with very little work done in exchange. The American Dream may dry up completely for citizens because we'll have reached the peak of the mountain and find ourselves nowhere else to climb. (And hopefully not some sort of great war over resources wiping out most humans or some other doomsday scenario).
Philosophically that scares me, how will we find meaning in this life where no jobs are even needed anymore? Can humans handle Paradise? But if we disregard that sort of concern for a second, then the life is better and you will have no need for an American dream any longer because that dream will be the default.
Flowersignup
7d ago
And there are other medical organizations and groups that reached a different finding. Clearly there's a disagreement and we need more high quality research to settle things. And if people are going to be doing something anyway, why not study them?
Flowersignup
7d ago
Do you think the science of treating autists with Lupron just needed reform, or is it better that it was axed?
Was there a bunch of consenting autistic people begging to be given lupron? I think there are different standards between "studies of medicine forced on someone without their permission" and "studies of medicine done with the consent of both child and parent"
Funny you say that, because this is exactly what trans medicine has been so far.
Ah I wasn't aware two wrongs made a right. I guess the Whataboutists had the best idea after all.
around minors that have gone through the unethical transgender science grinder.
It's not a wonder you don't care about reforming the science to have evidence based results on if trans healthcare for minors has positive or negative results for patients if you've already made up your mind that it's unethical off other grounds.
Science should not be
Step 1: Have a view established off something else Step 2: Only accept evidence, research, and experts that agrees with the pre-established view and not the ones that disagree. Step 3: Declare the issue done with and stop further research.
Flowersignup
8d ago
What stands out to me is that twice in the thread they mention OPSEC
But we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC
And
We are currently clean on OPSEC
I don't know outside of them straight up texting "This topic is sensitive and shouldn't be available to the outside" if you could get any closer to expressing that very idea. They literally say it's something they're taking OPSEC measures on, it's a hard sell to me that it's not a security breach then.
Flowersignup
9d ago
Just saw this article about the British intelligence community in response to the Signal leaks https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-spies-intelligence-leaks-trump-blunder-3604544
I think that's an interesting way to gauge how serious (or not serious) this is by observing how allied nations in Five Eyes/Israel/Japan/etc react, especially given they've already been concerned about Intel leaking from the Trump admin
For the UK we have
“There is some deep-rooted fear in the rank and file of intelligence community at the moment,” a UK intelligence source said.
Another security official said trusting the US will be a “challenge”, adding: “This will make the UK more nervous about the conversations they are having and how they are being discussed across groups.”
But it's not just anonymous names, there are some former British officials too
John Foreman, the UK’s defence attache to Moscow until 2022, said the leak could have led to a compromise of US sources, but “worse still the compromise of allied sources”.
And from "Nicholas Williams, a former senior official at Nato and the Ministry of Defence"
“There must be doubts among the UK that the Trump administration can protect the intelligence and its UK source.”
It seems even some US intelligence officials are concerned about this, although no names attached..
A US intelligence official said the leak of US war plans over Signal showed that distrust in the administration is justified. “Why would allies trust the US with their critical intelligence?” they said.
New Zealand Government's declined to comment, but we do have this https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/trump-signal-leak-reaction-canada-five-eyes.
Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.
Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.
I can't find anything specific for Australia at the high level but this article from an Australian "Military Operations Expert" says it's concerning and gives their reasoning for it https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-us-group-chat-on-houthi-attack-plans-so-concerning-a-military-operations-expert-explains-253029 with one bit I find rather interesting
If high-level conversations do need to happen on an unclassified platform like Signal, the participants would normally use a code word that doesn’t give away what they’re talking about. This keeps a conversation encrypted to a degree until a secure device can be accessed.
But they come to the conclusion that this is definitely concerning and they're going to be having a bunch of back channel discussions but most likely it's not an immediate deal breaker for intelligence sharing.
Mark Carney has talked about it himself a little but he also has incentive to distance from Trump already what with the trade war and comments on making Canada a state.
US war plans leak shows allied nations must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney
I haven't seen or found anything about other nations responses yet. I imagine they're probably going to be along the same lines of "This isn't a deal breaker but it is serious and adding more fear when we're already feeling wary"
Flowersignup
9d ago
No, I'm saying that these people exist in response to a comment that said
"Assuming one grants that a thing such as
trans adult
meaningfully exists"
But they do exist. Whether or not we accept their claimed identity as "valid" categorically has no bearing on whether or not a group called "trans adults" exists.
If a news article writes a story about groups in America and it says "Black adults, Asian adults, gay adults, trans adults" you're able to understand this as a group that exists.
Flowersignup
9d ago
Again you can disagree with them from a categorical perspective. But the fact still remains that people are doing it.
There are human males who currently live their life taking estrogen, wearing clothes typically associated with women, being referred to as she/her by their associates along with a corresponding female associated name and other things like that. Vice versa with human females doing testesterone and social changes.
That's just observable reality. Whether or not you think that includes a human male as a "woman" is a categorical dispute, that these people exist and are doing such things is just plain fact.
You can not like them and still acknowledge the very obvious objective reality that there are adult humans who are living their life in modern society as the other gender through medical treatment and social changes.
Whether or not you accept the identity from a categorical perspective doesn't change that there are people doing that.
Edit: to be clear since there is confusion, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing on the merits of whether or not trans people actually fall into the category they wish, I'm saying that "trans adults" is meaningfully a group. It refers to a category of people that we all understand is meant when said. It means people like Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner or Ellen/Elliot Page. This is a group that does indeed meaningfully exist.
I think more people could understand the depths of this debate better by steelmanning the pro puberty blocker/pro HRT side a little and seeing that allowing people to go though puberty normally is also not reversible. And a lot of transgender adults (and teens off the very basis that they are seeking out hormones) openly express that they wish they didn't have to go through their natural puberty.
So from their perspective what bans can end up doing is that instead of the person getting to decide which irreversible thing they go through based off their own desires, it's the government choosing for them.
There is no simple choice here, someone will be upset by permanent changes. A teenager who makes a mistake and gets on hormones without consideration, or a teenager who is forced to go without care and ends up as a sad trans adult who just wishes they had the autonomy given to make choices about their own body when they were younger.
And blockers came up as the compromise solution and promoting them as the free space where everything can be reversed seems just like wishful thinking from everyone. Because if it's true then it's a very easy solution that won't cause any harm.
Flowersignup
9d ago
It doesn't necessarily matter how it happened so much as that it happened and speaks to a wider failing in OPSEC procedures. They're sending sensitive information across the internet without even verifying who the recipients are.
Even if there wasn't anything classified on its own (despite the reporting certainly suggesting there is), a lot of information can still be sensitive if you gather it in one place because it can allow foreign agents to build up and intuit the classified info from context. Known as classification by compilation Likewise insight into how they make plans and act on them can be useful tools for our enemies.
The more little bits of information you can gather and the more context you can put them in the more dangerous a piece of information becomes, even if on its own it might be public knowledge.
And you'd be surprised how many seemingly unimportant details get tracked by journalists and foreign agents, pizza deliveries going up during big news (people were staying later than normal or celebrating or whatever else was a trend noticed back in the 90s. All because it's just one tiny little hint helping to build up context.
This seems like too big of a fuckup to put in just "whoopsie we made a mistake" territory. If a journalist can just get accidentally added onto it without them constantly doing security checks then what about all the highly motivated and talented bad actors from foreign nations?
China or Russia isn't going to tell us "Oh yeah we have eyes on X and Y private conversations because they're incompetent and don't actually check things." They're gonna sit there and eat their free lunch and just like seeing one cockroach means you need to be ready for more hiding around, one basic security mistake is a strong reason to worry about others that haven't been revealed.
And it apparently being done through improper channels is even worse because it incentivizes people who fuck up to keep silent about it cause they just don't have the fuck up to contend with but their own improper choice they have to answer for as well. It's also the complete opposite of any smart Cover Your Ass strategy because now any failure is on you because you went around the proper and official path.
Flowersignup
10d ago
Vacuuming and babysitting are both things that people often hire workers to do. It might be ok if it's incidental, but if you had a routine where he did these things, it could easily be seen that you are accepting the labor in kind in exchange for the room.
Remember that your friend is a guest and you are the host. You are not roommates from the perspective of the law, as he is simply on holiday and staying over at your house instead of a hotel. Personally, I would never ask a guest to do something like vacuum the house
I get the logic but I still believe that to be way too broad. We split basic home living tasks because he was occupying the space for the duration. When I went to visit him a few years ago I did the same there and we split the chores because I was occupying a space and leaving behind the typical household mess of dirt on a rug or dishes needing to be cleaned. This is what we see as polite, we're best friends and we don't want to impose as a guest just as much as we want to be a good host for each other.
Other activities such as driving a car and making meals are likely fine as they are acceptable leisure activities to do under the visa, and the fact that you benefited from them is incidental.
Doesn't that apply to other tasks like vacuuming or dishes? You benefit from cleaning up the space you live in so you don't have to be in a dirty space. I don't see how driving a car or making meals is any different when those are both also potential jobs people pay for.
Flowersignup
10d ago
Illegal: Clean up, do the dishes, tend to the garden
Agent: You're about to have a real bad day
If that would actually count as work when caught then I think we have an issue with the definitions being used. I had a friend over from the UK myself last year for about 2-3 weeks, he stayed in my spare bedroom and I made him clean up after himself (obviously) and he helped me with a few chores like doing dishes and vacuuming throughout because he was temporarily living there and when you're living with someone you help do the things. I made meals sometimes, he did sometimes. Sometimes I did the driving, sometimes he would. And hell I left the house at one point to get groceries and left him in charge of my niece when she was spending the night over. Because again that's all just part of being with a person living in their space.
I don't think any reasonable person would hear "you can't work on this visa" and understand it to cover basic chores like that.
Flowersignup
11d ago
A hacked website can just as easily display false data as real data. It seems real from a common sense angle but the court system can't just take "Well this random guy on the internet who edited the webpage says it's legit" so realistically someone has to try to sue for discrimination and get it to the courts so they can subpoena things properly.
Sure, they could be lying but if the tariffs were something they felt were beneficial it would be strange behavior to badmouth it.
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