cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29381241

Donald Trump has threatened to place a 100 percent tariff on Barbie maker Mattel, after the company’s CEO said it would continue to manufacture outside the U.S. but would be reducing its reliance on Chinese imports.

“I’ve heard [Mattel] said: ‘Well we’re going to go counter, we’re going to try going someplace else,’” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday. “That’s OK, let him go, and we’ll put a 100 percent tariff on his toys, and he won’t sell one toy in the United States, and that’s their biggest market.”

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz was asked whether it would be cheaper to relocate some manufacturing to the U.S. due to the tariffs, but responded: “We don’t see that happening.”

    • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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      51 minutes ago

      The mattel CEO said they won’t be moving production to the USA, but they might move it outside China if the tariffs becomes a big issue.

      What this would be, is punishment for protected speech, given corporations are people.

      So, although I don’t really care about mattel, as a multi billion dollar corporation, it matters as it is further erosion of people’s rights with little pushback while the constitution becomes more meaningless.

  • RandoMcRanderton@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Math books are going to get so complicated. “If Suzy, an 11 year old baby girl had enough money to buy 30 dolls, but then the price doubled due to tariffs, how many dolls can she buy now? Two, but they are a few dollars more.”

    • hazypenguin@feddit.nl
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      8 hours ago

      If she could buy 30 and the price doubled, she can now but 15. Where did two come from?

      • RandoMcRanderton@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        It’s a Trump quote. He said that little kids may only get two dolls instead of 30, and those two may cost a few dollars more.

      • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        She COULD afford 30, price doubles and she loses her job. She can now afford 2. And in 6 months she’ll be the #2 black market importer of Barbies and #1 in arms smuggling.

  • EvilFonzy@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I can’t even read quotes from this pompous rambling fuck without getting too angry and giving up after a couple words.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Then you’ve let him win. He’s a narcissist Ava wants your attention. Disconnect.

  • Archangel@lemm.ee
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    12 hours ago

    Once again, Donny-Dumbfuck doesn’t understand how the business world works. Expecting someone to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to move their manufacturing to the US…just so that they can lose money on their product…is insane.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      12 hours ago

      Once again, Donny-Dumbfuck doesn’t understand how the business world works.

      He knows how this works.

      However, some of his audience in the US does not, and he’s exploiting that ignorance.

      What he’s doing is just creating this fictional narrative where he’s always being seen as fighting against some enemy that’s keeping the US from being exactly the way his target audience wants it to be. It’s not Trump’s fault. He’s pushing as hard as possible to make everything perfect. It’s <some other figure>.

      A couple of years back, when Venezuela didn’t pay some Portuguese company for ham, they stopped shipping ham until they got paid. Maduro went out and accused Portugal of attacking Venezuela.

      https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/28/americas/venezuela-portugal-christmas-sabotage/index.html

      President Nicolas Maduro has accused Portugal of being behind a pork shortage that left thousands of Venezuela’s poor without their traditional Christmas dinner and sparked a fresh round of angry street protests.

      On Wednesday Maduro announced he had been unable to distribute thousands of pork hind legs to the poorest neighborhoods in the country – as he had promised earlier in the month. And he put the blame squarely on Portugal.

      “What happened to the pork?” Maduro asked during a Wednesday televised address. “They sabotaged us. I can name a country: Portugal.”

      Like many in Latin America, Venezuelans typically eat pork legs, known locally as pernil de cerdo, during the Christmas holidays. Maduro had promised to distribute the pork as part of the monthly subsidized food ration for low-income families.

      “It was all set, because we had bought all the pork there was in Venezuela, we bought it all. So we had to import, and so I gave the order and I signed the payments. But they went after the bank accounts, they went after the two giant ships that were coming. They have sabotaged us,” said Maduro.

      It’s not unusual for the Venezuelan government to blame other countries, including the United States, for its crippling economic woes.

      Every problem is someone else’s fault, not Maduro’s, who is fighting his very hardest for the public. Maybe it’s the CIA. Maybe it’s reactionaries. But it most certainly is someone else. Every problem just requires a new story about how someone is countering the Supreme Leader’s effort, else everything would be perfect.

      We just aren’t used to seeing this kind of stuff from a US President. Trump, however, is doing the same sort of nonsense.

      Consider some of the following recent Trump stuff:

      • Trump is considering suspending habeas corpus. The Trump administration is intentionally exploiting confusion over the metaphorical word “invasion” and the legal term. So then he’s going to probably go declare suspension of habeas corpus, which he can’t do short of someone invading, and then a judge is going to shoot it down, and the Trump will go tell his base that the judges are chaining him down, even though he had every right to do this, and if it weren’t for radical leftist judges, there would be no illegal immigrants.

      • Trump warns U.S. carmakers not to take advantage of tariffs by hiking prices on consumers. Trump knows perfectly well that companies hit by tariffs are going to pass that on into price increases for consumers. But some people in the US don’t, so by publicly standing up and demanding this, he can exploit that ignorance, show himself as standing up for consumers and random companies being the bad guy.

      The political strategy is to always pass the buck off to someone else, and try to get as many people as possible to burn their own credibility supporting his false claims so that he doesn’t run out of credibility.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I thought a week ago everyone was at least getting 2 dolls

    Seems like he can’t even deliver on that

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Genocides happening, tariffs are fucking over the global economy, Ukraine and Pakistan are getting attacked by fascists, yeah Barbie top of the triage list.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      11 hours ago

      The sheer number of executive orders is in the ten thousands now I believe. Journalists reliably pick the scandalous and dumb shit while democracy is being dismantled.

      • jason@discuss.online
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        6 hours ago

        Did you hear… the leader of the world’s largest pedophile club died. Then, the subordinate members sent smoke signals, and there is a new leader. Holy shit, he’s American! Let’s interview a guy who visited an ice cream shop 2 towns away from where he went to school.

        • the news for the next 3 weeks
  • kbal@fedia.io
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    12 hours ago

    Imagine spending four years plotting and scheming about how you’ll do everything better next time, and this is what you come up with.

    • Zanathos@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      I’m convinced he just has a vendetta against the American system. He’s been raised with the connotation that America is out to get him. Failed businesses, failed casinos, failed non-profits. NO! It’s the system that’s fucked up, not ME! A tyrannical dumbass that can’t accept failure and realize his own issues. He instead blames it on everyone else. Well guess what, he’s in charge and going to game the system in his favor now, or take it down trying.

  • DropThePot@lemy.lol
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    12 hours ago

    My friends are going to get so tired of me saying “Can you imagine if Obama tried that?”

  • brezel@piefed.social
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    12 hours ago

    I don’t think changing the rules like your adult diapers will make many companies want to produce there you orange retard.

    • CoolMatt@lemmy.ca
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      8 hours ago

      See this is a good example of when that word should be acceptible to use