News: How Steel Tariffs Create Jobs

I find Economics fascinating, but it's no accident that it's called the dismal science. Behavioral sciences are all problematic because they deal with people's behavior, and people's behavior is, well... problematic. But I think Economics - inasmuch as it tries to predict how people's behavior affects society as a whole - is probably the most pesimistic behavioral science.

 

I find behavioral sciences fascinating, not because of the prediction element, but trying to understand why somebody does what they do, and how that differs from the next person, and how that can change when along, in small groups, or larger groups.

 

"People fail." ~~~ Luthen Rael.

 

That may be, but just because somebody was the first to say something, it doesn't mean that he is the only one, and that his reasons for saying it are the only ones. When I went to school, the economic teachers called it the dismal science, and so did we as students, and not for the reasons described in the above article.

Hardly. Plenty of smart people got rich by using economics to predict something.

 

Trade deal with UK announced. Cars imported from UK and Agri to the UK. 10% still on the books. Sort of listening to the press conference, but it is hard to listen to Trump.

And also pumped steel and "national security."

[edit - Starmer really doing a great job of praising Trump. He knows the game.]

 

Not a fan of unusual_whales social media posts as they don't link to anything other than their own site (if they link at all).

As for the trade deal...not much of one at this point:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/08/trump-uk-trade-deal-tariffs.html

“The final details are being written up,” Trump said. “In the coming weeks we’ll have it all very conclusive.”​

So, an announcement of something that might happen in the future.

What it seems is that the 10% tariffs will stay in place (what a relief to the consumers ). Info below from the BBC live feed.

• Cars and steel imported from the UK to the US will be exempt (cars to 10% from 27.5% and steel and aluminum to 0%)
• There is a 100k quota on UK cars imported to the US.
• There was some kind of agreement for the UK to accept beef and chicken, both which the have quotas.
• Trump said beef, ethanol and other agricultural products will be included in the deal, with final details to be written up in the coming weeks
• UK Ambassador saying this will also help "harness science and tech in order to create future industries and future jobs," as a joint endeavour.
• Rolls Royce engines will be tariff free (I assume this means the airplane engines).

 

Awesome! British cars and British food will make America great!

 

No more BS. Or as my high school senior English teacher would say, "don't but blue smoke in your paper."

 

What's his name?

 

Mostly that economics tends to be a pesimistic science. Among many other concepts, that economic principles can help navigate a society to attempt to minimize different bad outcomes, but each "solution" creates new problems; that economics will not enable a society to eliminate poverty; that economic growth is necessary to minimize poverty but is not sustainable without consequences that will negatively affect a society.

We are talking about economics as a behavioral science, which is much more than merely political, (although politics do corrupt economics), and of course we can name plenty of examples.

Off the top of my head, Benjamin Graham, John Keynes, more recently Karl Icahn, George Soros and Warren Buffett are examples of people who used their ability to make brilliant economic predictions in order to get filthy rich.

 

Crap! And I want to see whose taxes get cut.