The term is “F*ck Around and Find Out”. Usually means you act in a way that ends up getting you slapped around (or otherwise made to regret your actions) because you acted wrong in the wrong company.
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The fact that the context in which I’m learning of this acronym is international geopolitics . . . well, it’s sobering.
I had been wondering about this possibility for years. Yes, it would hurt China incredibly but self-inflicted wounds to the economy is something which past Chinese leaders have done with little hesitation. Chairman Mao comes to mind. Yes, it is a very different China (and world) today—but who would have predicted that the USA would find itself run by such destructive people? (Well, yeah, in the past ten years or so that prediction became less far-fetched.)
Just saw this from Trump on Tuesday:
“We’re going to win the midterm elections and we’re going to have a tremendous, thundering landslide, I really believe that . . . and I really think we’re helped a lot by the tariff situation that’s going on,” Trump said. “Which is a good situation, not a bad, it’s great. It’s going to be legendary, you watch. Legendary in a positive way.”
Pharmaceuticals were exempt from tariffs previously but Trump now says that that is about to change. His major target is China, obviously, but my first thought was the very popular GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs from Danish Novo Nordisk: Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy. (I’m aware that the company has some manufacturing plants in the USA but it is my understanding that important components/supplies still come from the Denmark factories.)
But it is a very different China, I would put much more money on China operating in terms of informed self-interest than I would on the US doing the same. Well, if that were an actual bet I think I would already be collecting on that.
The other option is for China to just sit back and watch the US self-destruct, then reap the rewards. We met with our financial advisor for our annual review just around the time Trump announced his first wave of tariffs against Canada and Mexico. The estimated effect on China of similar tariffs was almost negiligible in comparison, though even for us in Canada he thought would be something that could be managed.
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Hi Faizal
I asked the question of AI here is the response.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_8039f233-6b00-4d34-9788-92348f19796f
This part stuck out for me (my bold):
The U.S. might have a slight edge in negotiations due to its consumer market size, financial dominance, and ability to rally allies, which give it more immediate leverage.
Trump has pretty much squandered that one particular advantage, so it should be taken off the list.
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He’s picking random numbers now.
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Maybe he recovers them with 90 day pause just announced.
LOL… LMAO
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My country is not inclined to act like an abused spouse who just goes back to their abuser like nothing happened. I doubt we are the only one.
I don’t know how widely this is known outside of Canada, but for the past couple years it looked like a foregone conclusion that the ruling Liberal Party would be soundly defeated by the Conservatives who, under Peter Poilievre, had tacked to the right and were aping much of Trump’s rhetoric if not his actual policies.
Then the Liberals elected a new leader, Mark Carney and, most importantly, Trump took power and started enacting his chaotic and destructive economic policy. Here’s what happened:
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Americans who actually follow the news from reliable sources know it—while the rest of Americans (the majority) have no idea.
I will admit that when I saw that reversal take place in Canada, I was astonished. It made sense—yet I was still astonished.
I would explain to the man who was shocked at the $77 tariff surcharge not to worry. After all, just as Mexico most certainly paid for the wall, the source country will reimburse him for the tariff surcharge.
He just needs to send the source country a copy of the original invoice with the tariff surcharge circled—and include his Bank routing number and his account number so that they can electronically reimburse him.
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Priceless!
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Meanwhile, today the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) experienced its largest one-day point gain ever, jumping by nearly 3,000 points (2,962.86).
We all know that Orange Man is going to brag about being the President who engineered the biggest record-rise stock market day in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.
“A stable genius” indeed.
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Hopefully they are people planning such a scam at this very moment. These gormless losers deserve no better.
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Wow. I have not heard the word gormless in many years, always in British contexts. But “gormless loser” is so wonderfully appropriate. And so timely that millions of Americans decided to put one in the White House.
As a regular importer of Taiwanese goods, I am partially relieved – 10% is still ridiculously high, of course, but it is not as stratospheric as 32. And my next pallet should arrive before the 90 days are up.
Part of what I think the White House doesn’t get here is that this kind of thing embarrasses and discredits us before the whole world in ways that may take generations to repair. Yes, you can undo particular policy choices; but you can’t undo people’s memory that you did them.
Even when the office is no longer populated by a orange gibbering fool on Adderall, our reputation will still be suffering. We will still be living this down. And our allies will know that we are so blithering stupid that there is every risk that some similar creature will get elected in the future, so there’s no trusting us. There’s no relying on us.
He started to suggest that we should negotiate with some of these countries on how much of the treasury debt in their hands we feel like paying back, as though we were a bankrupt state and it’s time to start compromising. That particular move is especially damaging. He’s blathered about how he doesn’t want other nations to succeed in creating an alternative to the dollar as a world reserve currency. But the USA telling other governments that we’ll give them sixty cents on the dollar? That, if continued, will undermine confidence in the credit of the United States to the point that we can no longer remain the preeminent currency of the world.
In my company’s social media postings I’ve talked about the horrendous impact of these tariffs on a small manufacturer with global supply chains. Idiots seem to believe that a manufacturer like me will BENEFIT from huge tariffs. They don’t realize that (1) a significant portion of my sales are international, and will go away if we keep offending the world and other countries impose retaliatory tariffs; (2) my cost of imported parts is often higher than the cost of finished el-cheapo competing goods from overseas, so that when you place huge tariffs on my parts inputs, my prices rise FASTER than the foreign competition, favoring them over me; and, of course, (3) a recession, which these measures will surely trigger (and may already have triggered, even with the announced delay), will hurt us, big time.
And when I do talk about those things in those places, I get so much blowback from stupid trolls. They tell me I shouldn’t be buying goods from overseas, even though there are no comparable goods made in the USA that I could use. They think I’m on an ideological crusade against Trump here. While I do despise Trump, this particular issue is one on which I would despise ANYONE – I would have despised Barack Obama if he’d done it, for example. But the last time we did something this stupid in foreign trade is almost beyond the reach of living memory. Nobody could be this stupid; and yet, somehow, the man is transcendently dim.
I have yet to hear of a single manufacturer of goods in the USA who thinks this is a good idea. The only clowns I’ve heard say such things are people who have those few rare domestic-only businesses: fishermen and the like. But while this policy is said to be meant for the purpose of bringing manufacturing jobs home, people like me who employ those manufacturing workers are the ones who are most alarmed at how screwed we will be if these things happen.
In truth, the USA was never everything it thought it was. Too many people look at a small business success story like mine and say, “oooonly in America,” not realizing that entrepreneurship is alive and well throughout, and even beyond, the free world. Canada, for chrissakes! Do you think it’s impossible for a person to start a business in Canada? If you do, I would like to know whether you would be interested in buying a bridge I happen to own…
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On Canada, I recently watched a Youtube video on Canadian efforts to find alternate routes for their oil and gas (east and west, rather than south). It seems likely that a large number of American refineries will be sitting idle in the next year or two.
On China, I don’t think they’ll do anything precipitous, but do think that they’ll be looking carefully at whether they should reduce their US Treasury bond holdings – both due to a likely decoupling (if Trump eventually goes ahead with his tariffs) and because under Trump the US is a more risky store of wealth. (Stricken parts of that, as it seems the pause excludes China – at least for now – who knows what will happen tomorrow.)
Addendum: on the above risk issue, see Sharp US bond selloff revives flashbacks of COVID-era ‘dash-for-cash’.
On the pause, I think many (most?) countries will take the three months to look for alternatives to the US.
As Puck alluded to, these tariffs put any supply chains that flow through the US to foreign markets at risk. Taking my home country New Zealand as an example, the largest categories of US exports were:
- Aircraft, spacecraft: US$1.51B
- Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers: $475M
It seems likely that, particularly with US tariffs on aluminium and steel, the prices of these products from the US will rise, and make them less competitive than East Asian and European competitors. It seems entirely possible that US tariffs will worsen the US’s trade deficit with NZ.
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We may hope that somehow enough Republicans in Congress will grow spines and take away Trump’s emergency tariff powers. More likely if they get enough complaints from constituents. It’s conceivable that Trump’s 90 day freeze was a result of Elon’s complaint, at least a little bit. The bond market collapse too, of course.