Yep got fired yesterday including most of the headquarter after 9 years with the company 😶🌫️ (in Germany) and they did it in such a Musk kind of way. I am still in shock.
I am so sorry for you! I hope you will find a new job. Personally I feel like employers are firing people quicker than they used to do, especially in Europe. You should take a lawyer or go to your union just to be sure they terminated your contract according to the German laws.
The craziest part of the cult Trump has created is how there's a faction of it that will defend ANYTHING he does.
...and he just keeps pushing further to see how far he can go... and he's still pushing.
And to think I used to wonder "how did Nazi Germany happen?"
It happened slowly, but systematically.
(no I'm not saying we are headed there specifically -- just trying to make sense of how mobs can be formed and moved)
I hope the history won't repeat itself. There should be peace and prosperity in the world.
My views entirely (and I've still got 100% on my 15PM battery health - god knows what I'm doing right 🙂)
Did you buy your iPhone 15 Pro Max on launch day? Are you using it a lot or below average?
We haven't been. But at the same time, we're currently VERY dependent on cheap labor and production from other countries, and the only value we bring to those countries (with regard to trade) is our ability to buy and consume like no other country in history. No quick and easy way out of that, and maybe no way out of it, but it's also not a great position to be in.
I think every country is dependent on cheap labor and production not just the US.
Well that didn't age well.
It didn't but it might make it into the history books about politics in the future.
I may not be smart, but I know B.S. when I hear it. Prices were all over the place since the summer. But when were they at their absolute highest? 2 months after Trump took office. Trump PROMISED lower egg prices on day 1. He lied. And 4 months later, they are still high. And you may say "oh come one, no one believed it could happen day 1". Then why promise it? So when Trump tells me this is just a little pain, for long time gain, when most economists disagree, why should I trust trump now? Trump only knows how to be a bully out of insecurity, and bullies often do really stupid things to keep the act up. Regardless of how this pans out, Trump being a bully has cost USA any claim to integrity and screwed over all its relationships except with Russia. The USA is the only country to drop an Atomic bomb in war, can you imagine how long and hard USA worked with true values to get most of the world to trust them again? And then we give them Trump. It's easy to blow things up. Or break eggs.
The problem is that it will take a long time to rebuild the trust that other countries had in the USA. To quote R. M. Williams "Trust is the easiest thing in the world to lose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back."
The USA is the only country in the world that used the atomic but I don't think any country wants to use an atomic bomb ever again because it would really mean the end of human civilization.
How do they cave? These are not reciprocal tariffs as claimed. In almost all cases it is nothing to do with taxes set by other countries. The clearest example is Australia having a free trade agreement with 0% tariffs either way. Trump has now imposed a 10% tariff on Australia, breaking that legal agreement.
The tariffs are based on trade defecits, not import taxes. This is based on people and companies in America buying more from a country than the people and companies from that country buying American stuff. And it only covers goods, not all imports/exports. It convieniently excludes services, the one area where America does well. Cars is the best example of why there is an imbalance. American cars are too big and too inefficient for most markets. Food is another example. American food standards are too low in multiple areas for the laws of many other countries, limiting what food and goods can be exported.
The economy most likely to crumble is USA.
American cars are too big for the europeans roads and also for the roads on other continents. In Europe the roads are narrower and it would be very difficult to drive an American car. The only workaround to this problem would be to have a manufacturing line tailored for exports.... adapted to each country, but I don't think it this will be profitable enough and it costs time and money.
Cool for the first time ever apple products may end up being cheaper in Europe than in the US. 😎
Knowing Apple I doubt this. Let'e not overthink things. We will see how things are going to unfold in the coming days and weeks to come and only then we can come to a conclusion.
Go European is a community-driven directory bringing you European products and services from across the continent.
www.goeuropean.org
This is what will limit Apple‘s ability from passing on U.S. tariffs to consumers in other markets:
Foreign media will be more alert than ever to catch and report on U.S. big tech companies increasing the price differential between the U.S. and their country (net of local taxes and tariffs).
I have never heard of this website before. I will take a look at it. Thank you!
It's not easy to setup a situation where you have high inflation and rising unemployment but I think we found the way.
These two (high inflation and unemployment) don't go well together. It's a disastrous recipe that doesn't benefit anyone.
When I was 12, I worked a summer job at my junior high school polishing the ringer bells for these phones for 4¢ apiece.
People today just don’t understand the satisfaction of slamming one of these handsets into the cradle when hanging up on someone you’re pissed at.
My parents had one when I was little and as a kid I was slamming the handset into the cradle and it was pure joy. I almost forgot how awesome the rotary dial was.
ALL goods and services. It's not favoring local goods over imported goods. Again, nothing like a tariff. I'm not even sure why local sales taxes are even part of this conversation.
What will be funny is when iPhones suddenly end up cheaper in the EU, than the US, even after VAT.
I wouldn't mind cheaper iPhones and other Apple products in the EU and in other countries. The US may have the cheapest iPhones in the world if I am not mistaken.
Yes, we can see the stupidity playing out.
I wish politicians would think more throughly before making a decision that can have a negative impact on the economy.
think you will when prices go through the roof and affect you.
everyone, everywhere, is facing uncertainty and pain.
you might stop buying imported goods in protest, but the big companies that rely on imported parts or assembled in China goods are going to be hit hard. and that means their stock value is hit hard. and that flows onto investment companies being hit hard so any retirement funds you have could be worth less. interest rates could go either way due to uncertainty which affects housing...
everything is intertwined.
there is no simple way to avoid the outfall.
It's true!
Never underestimate the stupidity of an idiot. Unfortunately we just have to let this play out.
In the end, tariffs will not bring manufacturing to the US in a big way, US exports will become less competitive, imports more expensive, consumers will pay the price, economy will suffer.
The world economy will suffer not just the US economy. All I can hope for is that the economy won't shrink too much.
I'm not going to argue with you, it's absolutely no secret Trump and the rest of the Republican Party is in Putin's pocket. That's not opinion, that's not speculation, it's known fact. Anyone paying any ounce of attention to politics knows this.
I suggest you follow politics before commenting any further.
A lot of things happen behind closed doors. I hate politics and politicians are never Fair Play. They are sharks!
My 14 Pro’s battery health is at 87% so it’s possible I could wait until next year, but there’s no guarantee. A new battery is a possibility as well, but I would prefer to upgrade this year at a normal (for Apple) price.
I would prefer to upgrade this year too but I can also keep my Apple devices until Trump's second term is over. I am not in a rush. I can postpone my purchases for 3-4 years. It's cheaper for me to make an appointment at an Apple Store to replace the batteries of my MacBook Pro and iPhone than it is to buy new devices. I think I will go this route depending on how this situation plays out by September.
False. Trump’s tariff “solution” would’ve made sense 40 years ago, when most manufacturing jobs hadn’t yet gone overseas. You can’t undo four decades of bad policy that has decimated American manufacturing in just one, two, or even four years. It took decades to dismantle that capacity, and it will take a long time to rebuild it—either here or in nations that negotiate good, fair agreements with us.
So, dropping a tariff bomb on the American people now—rather than imposing them slowly over time to give manufacturers a chance to rebuild capacity domestically—means that all of Donald’s blue-collar, or formerly blue-collar and now outright low-income voters, will be unnecessarily hurt in the pocketbook. These are the very people who went to the polls to protest against inflation. Trump’s new taxes mean an economic slowdown and more inflation—exactly what his voters thought they were voting against.
His intentions and actions, while appropriate 40 years ago, are too much, too soon for an economy that voters are already unhappy with. Most Americans are against this, even more will be when prices rise, and most Trump voters had no intention of voting for tax increases or pro-inflation policies like this.
As soon as voters start feeling this in their wallets over the coming weeks, they’ll express their outrage and displeasure at the polls and no amount of blaming Democrats will change the fact that these new tariffs supported by Trump and MAGA Republicans in Congress are why it’s happening now that they are in office and have imposed them.
If it gets bad enough, there could even be a veto-proof majority in Congress to stop these tariffs and reverse or severely limit them while Donald is still in office.
It’s Congress—not the President—that holds the power of the purse. If MAGA politicians had any foresight, they would’ve passed legislation to prevent these tariffs and instead negotiated smart trade agreements with a sliding scale of tariffs. These could have been designed to financially reward companies that start bringing jobs back—with a goal of moving as many as possible over the short, medium, and long term—without devastating consequences for the economy.
At this point, with this move, when Democrats retake the White House, the House, and the Senate (as they did during Obama’s first two years in office after the Great Recession), they’ll undo all of it at voters’ insistence. Then nothing will be done in the medium or long term to undo the 40 years of damage—and the four years of higher taxes on nearly everything will have been for nothing.
It’s the right idea long term, but absolutely the most foolish thing you can do in the short term. The wave of voter opposition, and the impulse to flush all tariffs down the toilet or lower them back to levels that encourage unfair trade, will ensure that we miss the chance to adopt sustainable policies. The result? No real change—just more pain for lower- and middle-class Americans, who will see their pocketbooks squeezed and be forced to pay higher prices for everyday goods they rely on, goods that still aren’t made here and won’t be even a few years from now when all this is repealed.
In my opinion the tariffs are not the solution. It just fuels the fire more. We already live in a world where there are constant tensions between countries. If the tensions will continue to rise, it might get worse. There are enough idiots that have too much power and influence in many countries and it feels like the cold ward but economically. I feel like we sit on a ticking bomb that is about to explode. I want cool heads should prevail.
I agree with you in observing where the real economy has shifted in recent decades, and the fact that conservatives in particular were concerned about this was good.
However, the West (i.e. Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, all of whom recognized the US as the world's policeman) cannot understand that this task has now been cowardly handed over by the Republicans to an unpredictable and confused-looking puppet master.
A world power needs a level-headed tactician to strive for your described goal or this direction, it needs neither nationalistic muddleheads nor unpredictable puffery.
In Germany, during the state and economic crisis at the end of the 1920s, there was the National Socialist movement, which bundled reparations payments that were perceived as unjust (which damaged the economy as a disease and caused unemployment and inflation) and channeled them into a leader. Undoubtedly a wrong person, because he created a war economy miracle, and then immediately covered people and the world with threats and later war.
No era is comparable to another, and yet individuals and social movements always function in a similar way.
The utopia of a sensibly rational economy through self-sufficiency efforts and populist national recollection is actually always a game with fire. Trump is currently celebrating this in orgasmic fashion. The rest of the world (especially Europe) is speechless and horrified, America has never been so uncultivated and crude.
Of course, chaos is also an instrument of strength, it awakens fears of unpredictability. But if you take chaos too far, you lose. It's like laughter. The message gets lost if you laugh too long, and if you don't stop, everyone turns away affected. So Trump appears to the world as somewhat confused, not like Biden, but in his own way. And he has been set free and can no longer be contained.
America now seems loud and self-confident again (like Germany did back then), but has no culture of staging this to its advantage on the world stage.
In the past, economic issues such as tariffs were negotiated by appointed economic experts and politicians in the back room; there was no need for the public stage, which is hardly receptive to them. Today, of course, such structures have been replaced by the Internet, which can freely distribute opinions (including mine) without an editor-in-chief or political affiliation, and can therefore generate much more tension and popular opinion. But from the point of view of growth, the old compromise system and its operational mode of action had never really harmed America as a whole.
Increasing national debt is almost everywhere, and of course it's a problem, but America is not alone in having this problem.
But if you use this problem (like the price of eggs) to sweep the stock market clean, destabilize the entire financial industry, set institutions on fire, sweep “lazy people” out of government agencies, and produce powerful effects, then in earlier decades you were considered a demagogue (Hitler), charlatan, or anti-Christ (as I sometimes read here).
Europe is not speechless because it has been on America's back and is now expected to bear the costs of armaments and war preparations itself. We have long since accepted this and we are actively working to implement it. Also we continue buying expensive equipment in the US. But the fact that billionaires don't care what happens to NATO shows how perversely the Republicans are currently dealing with values, infected by their icons.
As a European, I saw and respected America as a friend and in many ways as a role model, until the recent decline in Republican values.
When I was a child, I remember sitting across from my father one evening as the news hummed softly in the background. With the quiet authority he always carried, he said to me:
"America sets the rules of the world. But the way it is—it's not a disadvantage for the world. In fact, it's probably the best possible compromise."
I was young, but not too young to question things. So I looked up at him and asked, “And what if one day America becomes like Hitler's Germany? Then who will be the ‘Allies’ who save the world?”
He didn’t answer right away. For a moment, he just looked at me, and the silence felt heavier than any words. Then, in a voice quieter than before, he said: "Let’s hope it never comes to that."
Now we have to wait and see. Anyone who isn't nervous at the moment is dump and stupid.
With Trump's at the helm of the USA. I think the USA will lose its status of a superpower and world dominance. The country that was once admired and considered a role model will soon be ignored and neglected if it won't change its stance towards the rest of the world soon.
You can read what happened in the 1930s when the US raised tariffs with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the other countries responded with counter-tariffs.
Trump and his boys have reopened the game. The popcorn will get ruin our throats.
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I really hope history won't repeat itself because it would have disastrous effects for the world's economy that could be many times worse compared to 1930. I really don't want to think about what could happen.
The historical progression is that tariffs increase inflation and that increased inflation causes interest rates to go up, so interest rates seem more likely to go up for 2025. Hopefully they don’t, but the current policy seems unlikely to make rates go down, unless they take it further to the point of causing enough businesses to fail to cause enough unemployment that few people can pay the higher prices, at which point inflation should drop off substantially. That would be brutal, but is traditionally very effective, if one is willing to disregard the human cost, and that seems more and more common these days.
Everything will go up. It's not going to be pretty at all in the short and long term. The only people who will feel this are the middle class and below. It's a sad year.
How do you reverse the trust lost?
It's a good question. America has a long way to go to regain the trust of its allies, current and former. It's going to take years and it's no guarantee that it will be like before this happened. Only time will tell what is going to happen in the future. I wouldn't get my hopes up about regaining the lost trust.
Free like a penguin? 😂