The orange bastard thinks Junior is one and the same, except Junior is more of a Marcos family nerd of sorts, while his sister Imee is now also his archenemy and allied to Duterte, and happens to inherit much more of her father’s egomania.

Nonetheless, they are both successful beneficiaries of mass disinformation and hatred. The thing is, however, in terms of political stability the Philippines now seems a lot milder compared to the mounting ongoing oppression in the US.

source: https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3luob4ojgr22n

  • @[email protected]English
    27•3 days ago

    Yeah, but that’s just him saying the Philippines pays for the Tariffs, which is false. He set a 19% Tariff on goods bought by U.S. companies for products coming from the Philippines.

    Hypothetical: So if McDonald’s buys potatoes from the Philippines for $1.

    They pay $1.19. 19 cents to the treasury of the U.S., $1 to the Philippines company they bought from.

    So then McDonald’s sells those products and recooperates the cost, by selling the fries to us for more, to make up the 19 cents lost.

    It hurts the Philippines by making it more expensive to buy from them, it hurts us by our costs going up. The idea is that maybe it will be cheaper to get the potatos here in the U.S. instead… but it would still cost higher than $1.19 to get them here, so they would still buy them from there…and pay more

    • @[email protected]English
      4•3 days ago

      Thanks for explaining it. Makes sense now. This is what Trump has been advocating previously, in hopes to increase domestic production.

      • @[email protected]English
        10•3 days ago

        Yeah unfortunately it only works if the wages in the country you are buying from are close enough to the U.S. that 19% would offset the difference.

        As an example the largest export of the Philippines is Coconut oil.

        Phillipines production cost - $1.65-$2.14/kg

        U.S. production cost- $3.04-6.70/kg

        So we would have to have at minimum 84% tariffs for the costs to break even, then we would need large areas of land (able to grow them) to dedicate to the $2 billion dollars worth of coconut oil we import from there, and a labor group who would produce it … which would require the workers we are currently deporting.

        So the numbers show, he just taxed companies 19% in the U.S. in coconut oil, which they will pass on to U.S. citizens in the sales price. Because it is still way cheaper than us making it here, so no new jobs will be created