Or maybe Trump is a sociopath felon with a penchant for young girls who is acting solely in his own self-interest

Given his history of failed businesses and association with a known pedophile, what seems more likely?

▲ ethbr1 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

How are the tariffs even in his own self-interest? Insider trading?

▲ GLjEI4YbnGD27LB a day ago | parent | next [-]

I had thought that tariff revenue goes directly to the executive branch for the president to spend without congressional oversight, but actually this is not correct.

In reality, all federal revenue - whether from income taxes, tariffs, or any other source - flows into the U.S. Treasury and becomes part of the general fund. Tariff money doesn't create a separate pool of funds that the president can spend at will. Just like with tax revenue, any spending of tariff proceeds requires congressional appropriation through the normal budget process. The executive branch cannot spend money that Congress hasn't specifically authorized, regardless of the revenue source.

▲ vesinisa a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The goal of tariffs is to strengthen your own domestic manufacturing economy. Under high tariff regime, domestic manufacturing gets a pricing advantage over imported goods. The best scenario is if you can get other countries to not place reciprocal tariffs on your goods - meaning foreign companies are disadvantaged in your home market but your companies have uninhibited access to the consumers abroad.

▲ SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They're in his self-interest because he can, and did, turn around and convince people to bribe him for exemptions and reductions. I recognize this sounds crazy when I say it, but you can literally look up the video - Tim Cook gave him a big block of gold on public TV to get iPhones exempted from tariffs on India.

▲ ethbr1 2 days ago | parent [-]

On the magnitude being insinuated, that doesn't even blip. 50 lbs of solid gold is what, $2.5M?

▲ SpicyLemonZest 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know what you mean by "blip". Business leaders shouldn't gift government officials any amount of solid gold.

▲

9dev 2 days ago | parent [-]

Let alone a jet plane.

That this even needs saying is mindbogging

▲

ethbr1 a day ago | parent [-]

Indeed. On the list of things to worry about, a Qatari $400M 747 is a lot higher than some gold.

▲

ModernMech a day ago | parent [-]

Why are you fixated on the relative amounts, as if that's relevent? A bribe is a bribe is a bribe.

It's a gesture that says "I understand I need to give you this because you are in charge, and I need to go through you to get anything done". That's not how America works, and the fact anyone is giving any amount to get favors through Trump rather than maintaining a level playing field is the problem.

The first instance of this came in the form of tech companies renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America." It was a small thing, but it was a gesture that showed they knew what they had to do to play ball in Trump's economy was to live in his constructed reality where it's the Gulf of America.

Then came the legal bribes where companies paid millions to settle the lawsuits he filed against them. Then came the tech bribes where they are literally giving him bars of gold for favored status.

Next will be him directing internal company culture and policy. Watch out to see which companies stop celebrating pride, it will likely be those who paid him bribes first. Then he will ask them to stop selling to certain "undesirable" customers, and they will oblige.

▲

ethbr1 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Because an explicit and stated method of this administration is to flood their opponents with things to fight, in the interest of pushing through big things that are important to them while their opponents are busy fighting everything and overwhelmed with the minutiae.

An effective response to that is calibrating ones outrage and asking "Out of all the things I could be fighting, what is the most impactful and important?"

Hence, I think it's a waste of time causing others to think about a token symbolic bribe.

Focus on the $250M+ bribes that are also happening.

	▲	SpicyLemonZest 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What’s impactful to fight isn’t necessarily the same as what’s the highest dollar amount of bribe. I can’t demand that the Qatari government go to prison for giving Trump a plane, but I can (and do) demand that domestic businesspeople who give Trump gold bars should be arrested the day a Democratic president takes office. Tim Cook needs to spend some time in prison, and more importantly other executives need to know they’ll join him if they try to bribe or otherwise assist Trump.
	▲	ModernMech 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Apple bribe isn't less problematic because the dollar amount is lower though. The magnitude of the damage is not measured in dollars, it's measured by the reach of corruption. Apple's bribe is the crack in the door that lets fascism in to American businesses. Apple, for its part, carries a certain amount of weight in the marketplace. What they do sets a tone, and the tone they've set is they are not above giving obvious bribes to a felonious racist wannabe dictator. If Apple is willing to play ball, most other corporations will as well. Imagine if things were the other way around and they told POTUS to shove it. Maybe other corporations would do so as well.

▲ ModernMech a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

$2.5M is not a blip, it's a bribe by any measure. We need to call things what they are. Trump has done worse for less.

Anyway, the $2.5M isn't the point, it's bending someone like Tim Cook to your will so that they would just give it to you and thank you while bending over. To some degree, he's now directing Apple Inc, since he can get Tim Cook to act according to his will.

How much is that worth to Trump?

▲

ethbr1 20 hours ago | parent [-]

The opposite is also true.

Does $2.5M matter to Apple?

No. They probably lose that much between rows in their spreadsheets.

So, if it's not material to Apple's finances, what does giving it to Trump mean? Symbolic gestures are symbolic, but you haven't bent someone to your will until you've made them give you something that hurts.

	▲	acdha 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They gave him what he most desires: respect. Every news watcher saw one of the most powerful CEOs, a genuinely accomplished person, treating him as the more powerful party. His whole career was spent playing at being a successful business man but being known as a lightweight – his dad gave him a billion dollars give or take and he managed not to quite lose it all several times until finding some breathing room in the 2000s when Russian oligarchs started using NYC real estate for money laundering and then the video editors at The Apprentice made him a star cosplaying as a brilliant businessman. He was never in Tim Cook’s league before, or even within a couple levels, but now he’s able to demand favors from almost anyone. For someone with the raging insecurity complex he’s demonstrated for so many years, that recognition of sheer power is the best high of all.
	▲	ModernMech 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Tim Cook gave $2.5M, control of his company, and his dignity. He stood there and handed a gold award to a convicted felon, rapist, insurrectionist, and likely pedophile. That's now Cook's legacy. It was grotesque, and an embarrassment of epic proportions. If that didn't hurt him, he must have lost his soul long ago.

▲ defrost 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Consider that a mere act of public theatre in which a token is exchanged.

Getting a grip on the magnitude of the Trump family profiteering through all the obfuscation and destruction of record keeping practices is an ongoing challenge in reporting.

* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number

( Summary of the long form article above:

  At the end of Trump’s first term, CREW calculated that Trump made more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as president. Recently, however, The New Yorker staff writer David D. Kirkpatrick tallied up a new number, encompassing ventures from both Trump’s first and second terms: $3.4 billion.

~ https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-family-thr... )

	▲	ethbr1 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Great links! I expect post-presidency investigations will turn up a lot more favorable trades from his web of associates. Even if Trump doesn't need to put his hand in the cookie jar so obviously, many around him aren't as disciplined or experienced in obsfuscating policy-based trading.

▲ deanishe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He collected a literal bar of gold (with some glass stuck in it) from Tim Cook a couple of weeks ago.

▲

cutemonster 2 days ago | parent [-]

He likes flattery too, and this helps him get more of that.

Although I don't think that's the direct reason. But feeling powerful by using his power maybe can be a direct reason for this behavior?

	▲	ZeroGravitas a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, he gets full power to do this without Congress meddling as long as there is an emergency. Or he lies, in an inconsistent and unconvincing manner, about there being an emergency and everyone just accepts it.

▲ AlecSchueler a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Well too be fair he has a history now of posting when to buy and sell on his social media website before he makes the tariff announcements so it certainly seems that way.

▲ anon_reaction 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]