doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Tariff amount

I can certainly understand why you won't do the math Clapper Zapper.

First off, we know nothing about your hypothetical $ 1 million retirement portfolio. Unless the entire amount was invested in Tesla stock, your numbers sound fishy, if not totally dishonest.

Of course, Tesla stock was slammed by investors after uncivilized Liberal Left Democrats attacked Elon Musk, his company, and his cars... for the sin of exposing Democrat waste, fraud, and corruption.

But let's assume the money was conservatively invested and earning about a 4% dividend, which is easy without a financial advisor. The early retiree is taking a monthly distribution at a 4% annualized rate on the balance. So with a $ 1 million balance at the peak before the tariff induced correction, the annual distribution would be 4% of a million, or $40,000.

The monthly distribution before any correction would have been 1/12 of $40k or $3,333. And we'll assume the account would still continue to earn dividends of 4%, even though the March-April decline presumably began. If we assume the account value dropped 20%, then the statement balance might have temporarily fell to about $800k. That means the next couple monthly distributions would be a bit lower, at around $2,666 (keeping with our total annual distribution of an annualized 4% of the balance).

But then, lo and behold, the correction is short lived. The S&P 500 is soon back to where it was before Democrats claimed the world was ending. And the account balance is about back to the original amount by late June. Who in Hell took 15 months of of monthly distributions during that brief correction, and why? More importantly, why would you blame an event like that on Trump, his tariffs, or the short correction... unless you were creating another false narrative???

If our hypothetical retiree stayed the course, and kept right on taking a monthly distribution at a 4% annualized rate, he actually lost very little, and simply had a few months with a slightly lower stipend. If he kept right on taking $3,333 per month... then his balance now might be a couple grand less.

But that's a far cry from the $50,000 loss you tried to claim. Your shady math is something like the Biden Administration spending $42 billion on High Speed Internet... without connecting a single household.

Now for the next question... with the world ending, the sky falling, blood in the streets, Weimar Republic style hyperinflation causing lowly JABC doubles to sell for more than the British Crown Jewels... with all that... how did you get a new Audi Q7 out of it?

Are you perhaps being compensated by George Soros or the DNC for being a propagandist and disseminator of Democrat lies?

Greybeard is 100% correct , the dollar has lost 10% of its value so far this year, worst start since 1973. Piss poor policy....

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-triggers-dollar-worst-start-053000414.html

Nobody, will ever convince me otherwise, that, the Clinton administration did not know that Mexican farmers, who tended to be very small family operations that provided produce for markets very local to them would be devastated when forced to compete on a level playing field with Big Ag, Inc, here in the US, and, the world. THAT, had as much to do with illegal immigration as any devaluation of Mexican currency that occurred in the same era:

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordeba...ered-and-the-united-states-felt-its-pain

You are only providing a portion of the picture of what went sideways with the Mexican economy at that time. A rather sad development from that era is the fact that nobody today who is not corrupt and in bed with the cartels can be elected, much less allowed to run for office.

About the only thing positive that can be said about the Clintons dealings with Mexico, is that the Mexicans are very fortunate they weren’t Haiti.

Best,
Ted

I have a Mexican friend who has done general carpentry/construction for me and my son for going on 10 years. He and his brother are here legally and want to stay that way. He works with the gov't. agencies to stay legal. He doesn't want to become an American citizen because his dream is to make enough money here to take his family back home to Mexico, buy a small farm, and raise sugar cane for a big contractor there.

He told last week of growing up with his father and mother and 8 siblings. He said they were hungry all the time. His brother caught a tilapia in a river one day and took it home for his mom to cook. She made enough soup out of that one fish to feed the whole family a little soup. He said he used to daydream of being rich and being able to eat all day long.

I wish him well, and success in fulfilling his dream. He and his brother are very good people and contribute much to this area. They would be fine citizens were they to decide that's what they wanted.

i would add a few comments in response to ted's;
international finance is an incredibly complicated, and increasingly intertwined story to follow - anyone who would claim to understand it, is either a liar or a fool - the only person in our government in whom i have any confidence at the present is jerome powell. and he is being hounded for trying to give wise counsel to folks who have no interest in what he says....he has a bit more than 1 year remaining in his term, and i fear he will be replaced by someone whose expertise is on the level of that of r.f.kennedy jr., christy noem, pete hegseth, et al.

go back to the mid 90's, and focus on mexico, it offers many useful examples. ted's mention of small farmers - in southern talk - truck farmers, growing food for sustenance, but also enough to sell/trade/barter in local markets. also occuring in that time frame was the overhaul of the general agreement on taxes and tariffs (GATT). the major players (G8) leveraged liberalizing agricultural trade barriers....over the votes of two very dissimilar countries, who had resisted those changes for years. the two were japan and france, whose trade representatives had managed to keep fairly strong barriers against agricultural imports. france had/has a cultural history of small family farms, and many small local markets - and japan did not allow rice to be freely imported...because there were thousands of rice farmers (most with only 2-3 acres under cultivation) who supplied that nation with an intrinsically cultural commodity. both countries understood that free trade of agricultural products would have profound effects - that echo what ted mentioned. think for a moment about the fruits and vegetables that we now consume, things that were once governed by seasons, that can now be bought almost year-round - this fact connects very much with those changes in the mid 90's.

and then consider the results from the north american free trade agreement (NAFTA), that affected mexico in very specific ways: the maquiladora's - factories built along the us/mexican border, principally in texas & california, to access the cheap labor available in the depressed economic situation there. (and in part, a result of ill conceived loans by the international monetary fund (IMF) during the 80's) dozens of large assembly/subassembly factories were built, and acted as economic magnets for the impoverished, and under-educated rural population. the result? the colonias, masses of people lured to the border by the promise of gainful employment. 10 years later, the factories all closed - low-balled by even cheaper labor in china and pacific rim.
where do you think the cartels got their manpower to take control of mexico?

GATT changes, NAFTA, monetary manipulation, poor people leading poor lives, cartels, investments that take advantage of every possible angle - these all play into things that happen....if you're looking for simple answers this is not a good area.

i have a simple structural outline to help understand how we get into these sort of messes: 1) good intentions, 2) unintended consequences, 3) slippery slopes.
and the always useful advice - follow. the. money. nothing happens, anywhere, any time; no matter how awful, that someone doesn't profit from it.

You have always said Pp policy provides your customers with huge discretionary spending ability. So, this must be just another opportune rant, lol? Your customers do not have to go to the international market, all they had to was stick some pocket change in your collapsed stock market a couple of months ago, and wa lah, you get another sale or commission, unless the Audi saleman is quicker on the draw.

buy merican...

I never said that Craig....are you joining Karen and now needing lies to try to make a point?

Piss poor policy, driving the cost of servicing our debt up and devaluing the dollar. Add the 10% tariffs and it is just salt in a wound.

There is always opportunity, I have found other revenue streams to replace the loss of income from the collapse of my import business. I still don't like seeing a business that I spent 20 years building destroyed through foolish executive actions.

Piss Poor policy is exactly what we are seeing from Trump 2.0

Kieth, I used the SP500 for all of my careful calculations.

I knew you would enter the thread and act as normal.
1mil used to be an attainable, tidy retirement account balance. A measure of hard work, good fortune, diligence, dedication, and stewardship.
It's a number that used to represent a positive thing to people.

Most folks that got there through hard work have diversified portfolio's professionally managed for the most part, so that they can withdraw 4% annually.
4% being a figure that is generally accepted as a sustainable withdrawal rate. (Bengen, et al)

I even gave the benefit of good timing to the Imaginary retiree. Starting the calculations on the 1 st of the month (maximizing SP500 value for the retiree) and letting them take their REQUIRED monthly distribution at whatever date within the month they chose.

You see, most retirees cannot just decide to cut their monthly expenses because somebody decided to start a pyrrhic trade war out of the blue.
They need their draw. None of their bills go down just because their retirement account did.

As far as the Audi, my wife liked the detents on the drivers door.

Sequence of returns risk is real. It is one of the reasons that many financial planners advise keeping a year or two of expenses in investments that are not tied to the stock market. Something like a CD ladder, for example. With the right kind of risk management you should be able to ride out market corrections without selling when the market is down.