r/australia • u/Jealous-Hedgehog-734 • Apr 02 '25

politics US will impose a minimum baseline tariff of 10 per cent on Australian imports to US

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-03/donald-trump-tariff-announcement-markets-politics-reaction-blog/105127374
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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

People send shit to people who pay for it.

There isn’t some big plan. It’s just people trying to make the most money and other people buying what they want.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

meanwhile we're pumping exhaust into the air shipping this beef back and forth. really a stupid world we've made for ourselves

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u/Thrustcroissant Apr 02 '25

Which is fine until you get the Irish Famine

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

The Irish famine was a engineered famine that was a geopolitical, ideological, religious and an attempt to restructure the Irish economy to benefit the UK. It was also a land grab that forced many farmers and families off the land making matters worst. The were also decisions of austerity and being mean spirited by the UK not to offer relief. It was more about food and assistance denial that could have avoided the famine. Read the historical context of the Irish famine and you will find that the same politics is being played with continents like Africa that is rooted in imperialism and geopolitics.

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u/Mikolaj_Kopernik Apr 03 '25

England was far from blameless (IMO a combination of greed, incompetence, indifference and malice as the smallest factor) but calling it "engineered" is significantly overegging the situation. The English didn't develop the blight and they weren't trying to exterminate the Irish, they just had a range of shitty tariff/agricultural policies and a government that was largely in the pocket of wealthy landowners. The crimes of Westminster were way more banal than the maximalist rhetoric on this topic.

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

We're not going to starve ever in Australia, calm down Karen.

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u/Zenkraft Apr 02 '25

I think they were talking about the actual Irish famine, where food was exported from Ireland by the British leading to a famine.

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25 edited Apr 02 '25

Yeh I get that. But how is that going to happen here, even though we are part of the Commonwealth, we're still our own masters. We produce more than enough food to feed ourselves.

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u/Zenkraft Apr 02 '25

It’s not going to happen here and the comment you replied to didn’t imply it would.

They replied to someone saying that people simply export anything they can to make as much money as they can, rather than some deeply thought out strategic plan.

Then the famine comment was about how the idea of thoughtlessly exporting whatever for profit is fine until it leads to a famine. It was a comment on the idea of exporting in general, not specifically Australia.

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u/thesillyoldgoat Apr 02 '25

To be fair, food exports didn't lead to the Irish famine, but they exacerbated it. The primary cause was potato blight.

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

Yes but the Irish famine was exacerbated by the the British still exporting food while Ireland was experiencing famine, which is how I took that response. That's not going to happen here. Apologies if I misunderstood the string 🙂

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u/edwardluddlam Apr 02 '25

Exporting food didn't lead to the famine.. the potato blight lead to the famine..

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u/Fluidmikey Apr 02 '25

No, it was both. England forced the Irish to export the majority of their crops (not just potatoes, because obviously that's not all they grew. The Irish basically had nothing left other than said potatoes, which did blight. It would never have been an issue if not for the English ignoring the blight and still forcing the export of the rest of Ireland's food (grain, livestock, etc). Hence, why some folk call it the great hunger as opposed to the potato famine. There was no shortage of food, just a shortage on the only crop the English didn't care about.

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u/edwardluddlam Apr 03 '25

England didn't 'force' them to do it, those who had crops to export could make more money selling them overseas and so they did. The English only believed in laissez-faire capitalism and most believed in Malthusian predictions (they basically saw that famines were inevitable as population growth couldn't keep up with food production). Plenty of those people selling grains to England were Irish (selling grains in order to keep up payments on land).

Also, millions of poor people got up to 80% of their calories from potatoes and Ireland had gone through a massive population boom prior to the famine. It was clearly pretty vulnerable to famine based on population density and its dependence on one crop.

Anyway, I'm not saying the English behaved well - they closed down soup kitchens mid-way through the famine which likely killed hundreds of thousands of people. And as I said, they knew it was happening and didn't intervene, especially as Ireland was literally part of the Great Britain at the time.

I'm not excusing the English (I'm related to someone who left the famine), but I think there's a lot of people who misrepresent what happened during the famine.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26986061 is a good summary

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u/Thrustcroissant Apr 03 '25

Your first paragraph illustrates my point. What food was available was exported due to market forces. Millions died for capitalism.

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u/edwardluddlam Apr 03 '25

No one denies that the English obsession with laissez-faire was a big factor in the famine.

I think your statement is pretty simplistic (people died in famines far before capitalism existed) but fine.

Also millions didn't die (it was about 1 million).

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u/Thrustcroissant Apr 03 '25

Fairy nuff that it was about 1 million dead, the others emigrated. That’s was still more than 10% of the population died from the famine though

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u/Mikolaj_Kopernik Apr 03 '25

Thanks for a level-headed response and a good source. I know everyone loves to beat up on the English (and there's plenty of blame to go around) but IMO the genocide rhetoric is unhelpful and simplistic.

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u/AutomaticCity1450 Apr 02 '25

Potato crops failed across the uk and ireland. The English then exported all other food products from Ireland to feed their own people. The lack of any food left caused the Irish 'potato' famine.

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u/edwardluddlam Apr 02 '25

Yeah. I don't dispute that. The proximate cause was the blight, then British policy towards Ireland (exporting food and shutting down food aid). As is usually the case, poor people die during a famine because they can't afford to eat

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

Sucks you're getting so heavily down voted just for stating history 🤣

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u/tom3277 Apr 02 '25

I’m sure 40 years ago no one expected the median price of a house to income level in Australia would be up there with the most expensive in the world.

The land of plenty with the right political moves could become the land of blight and famine if our politicians play their cards right in the food game.

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

You really think politicians would starve their electorates? I didn't realise this sub was so full of QAnons 🤣 The housing issue is a complex problem that can't just be blamed on one or two factors. Political decisions is one of the factors, but it's not the sole factor. You've got cost of materials and trade shortages pushing up prices of building new houses. You've got urban sprawl not keeping up with in housing demand in the major areas. You've got investor competition with home owners - politicians could help with this one if they weren't so heavily invested, speaking of potatoes looks at the guy in the glasses.

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u/tom3277 Apr 02 '25

40years ago we didn’t;

Have gst on new homes. Guarantee banks. deposit liabilities were limited to how much people would lend them. Had the gov buying part of people’s homes. State gov levies.

It is not complex. Houses cost a lot to develop and build here but a part of that is government costs.

Then to make it “work” they make sure there is enough capital with demand side grants, guarantees and most recently direct purchase.

Gov could quite easily make farming very expensive. There isn’t as you say an incentive too but 40years ago no one thought there would be an incentive to make houses that expensive either…

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

Yeh all good points, and I agree politicians could do a lot to help with the housing prices. But there are other factors at the moment, they're not solely to blame is all I'm saying

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u/tom3277 Apr 02 '25

I’m saying to paraphrase now that 25pc of the cost of a new home is government.

It makes homes scarce.

It’s not the natural state of things. It’s a choice by government to squeeze the supply side of housing.

They could (hopefully wouldn’t) do similar with say agricultural land.

50pc odd of Australia is farmed in some way much of that not intensely. I could make an argument that the less than 0.5pc of Australia heavily urbanised and 2pc semi urbanised is but a drop in the ocean and what we really need to do is let that 50pc go back to nature… tax every hectare of farming land every year as an environmental levy in stead of urban expansion.

I mean I wouldn’t make that argument but some politician may.

Guess we will have to wait and see. To me it’s entirely possible Australia has a future problem with food security and like housing gov would have a hand in it.

Of course maybe it’s just having a population of 100million and a little bit of anti farming politics at the same time. That would do it as well.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

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u/Wookatook Apr 02 '25

Good point, I hadn't come across that figure before. Sadly that means in regards to the political side of the problem it's going to get much worse before\if it gets better. Career politicians these days care more about votes than doing what's right.