Macy's Closing 68 Stores, KMart/Sears Closing 150 - Trump?

[Underverse]

These major American brands are closing stores all across the country. The timing of these closures brings to question the perceived effect of a Trump presidency on the stability of American consumerism.

But let's stop there. The purpose of this thread is to expose the extensive confirmation bias from self-identified Trump supporters that has plagued just about every news story about a business succeeding in the past few weeks.

If Trump is responsible for those successes, then he must also be responsible for these failures. Now, any rational person would reject both of these arguments - Trump isn't in office yet, and businesses don't plan colossal changes to their strategies on the basis of a few words from an incurable liar; the most they would do is use his election as an excuse for their already-laid plans in order to sway national opinion or gain publicity. But for some reason, select individuals feel the need to justify their support for a candidate by irrational means, as if their own reputation were at stake.

An almost hypothetical question to discuss: Do you think the team mentality that has infiltrated American politics is beneficial to the political decisionmaking process?


Sources:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...Y7K/story.html

http://www.syracuse.com/business-new...sing_list.html

[unfilteredJW]

Trump should get credit for this.

[alexw]

Come on Trump supporters!! All of you that gave him credit for Ford's hiring plans, the time to speak up and give Trump credit for this is now!!!

[Deleted]

Funny that Macy's was doing pretty well and hitting highs, up until they decided to openly diss Trump, essentially picking a political side, something a company should never openly do anyway, for the most part.

Their stocks are down 50% since then, merely 3 months ago.

I'm not really picking a side here, but when you commit public suicide like that, you should kind of expect it to bite you in the ass soon enough. And it did.

[iperson]

Exactly. It's like Obama can't take credit for the economic recovery with taking credit for Chicago's crime rate and ISIS...

[triplesdsu]

This has been a long time coming and can only be attributed to Trump if you're stupid and grasping for causation out of some weak correlation. Sears has been mentioned as possibly going out of business completely the last few years. This has very little to do with Trump and more with online shopping such as Amazon cutting into the market. The overheard of a physical location and paying employees to be on site in all these locations isnt as cost effective as just maintaining a few warehouses and shipping products, especially as you can get things the next day. It makes sense to close stores after the holiday rush, not before hand.

[Xandrigity]

Major retailers Macy's, gap, sears, jcpennys ect ect have been closing consistently for about 5 years, try again it has nothing to do with trump. The economy has been in the shitter for some time now.

Here is an article from CNBC from 2014
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/22/a-tsu...it-retail.html


If I had more time I would dig you up some earlier ones.

[Dug]

The K-mart in my own closed down a couple of months ago. Was a long time coming too. Wal-Mart and Target conquered the area

[Belize]

It's only fair to balance positive things Trump didn't do, with negatives ones too!

[ItachiZaku]

If they are closing, it means they are currently shitting the bed. They should market their shit better and not piss in the wind like Macy's did.

[Molis]

Any sane person knows Trump did not cause this just like he didnt cause Ford or Carrier.

Gen-OT is not known to be a sane place.

These large department stores have been in trouble for many years since Amazon stopped selling books.
They did not pivot and will go the way of Blockbuster.

[Kathandira]

These major American brands are closing stores all across the country. The timing of these closures brings to question the perceived effect of a Trump presidency on the stability of American consumerism.

But let's stop there. The purpose of this thread is to expose the extensive confirmation bias from self-identified Trump supporters that has plagued just about every news story about a business succeeding in the past few weeks.

If Trump is responsible for those successes, then he must also be responsible for these failures. Now, any rational person would reject both of these arguments - Trump isn't in office yet, and businesses don't plan colossal changes to their strategies on the basis of a few words from an incurable liar; the most they would do is use his election as an excuse for their already-laid plans in order to sway national opinion or gain publicity. But for some reason, select individuals feel the need to justify their support for a candidate by irrational means, as if their own reputation were at stake.

An almost hypothetical question to discuss: Do you think the team mentality that has infiltrated American politics is beneficial to the political decisionmaking process?


Sources:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...Y7K/story.html

http://www.syracuse.com/business-new...sing_list.html

When it comes to crediting Trump, you have to first ask if the event is positive or negative. If positive, you can thank Trump as he is our new president. If negative, Trump isn't president yet so it can't be his fault.

And after the 20th, If positive, you can thank Trump as he is our new president. If negative, it was obviously Obama's fault for leaving him such a mess to clean up.

[oppressorbb]

In Palm Beach County, we started losing 11 of our 13 K-marts in 2003. Sears was in 4 out of the 5 malls, now 1 mall is completely gone and only 1 Sears is opened. There's alot of money here, so Macy's will continue to do well. The question isn't "Wheres Trump", but, when is the last time you shopped at Kmart or Sears?

But, with the same mindset, can't we blame Trump for Blockbuster, Circuit City and Sports Authority?

[Dextroden]

Nah, man, this is the fault of globalization. Stores like Walmart have more resources to make better use of cheap Chinese imports. We need Trump to save these jobs!

Trump didn't have anything to do with Ford, but this is his doing.

Anti-Trump people are deliciously hypocritical.

[Belize]

Nah, man, this is the fault of globalization. Stores like Walmart have more resources to make better use of cheap Chinese imports. We need Trump to save these jobs!

Don't worry. I'm on the case: https://twitter.com/WrldofNixxcraft/...59703574429696

Now this is shitposting!

[Dug]

Trump didn't have anything to do with Ford, but this is his doing.

Anti-Trump people are deliciously hypocritical.

Oh cmon Dex you're smarter than this.

[Mad_Murdock]

An almost hypothetical question to discuss: Do you think the team mentality that has infiltrated American politics is beneficial to the political decision making process?

The team mentality has been and will continue to be pretty terrible for everyone involved, but mainly those that don't even care about the teams. I'm fine with assessing results and placing proper blame at the feet of whoever made certain decisions to go left, right or continue straight. At the same time, assessing the results should include a very large top down and then a bottom up review to see what other factors may have played a role. Right now it's all about spin and Blame storming.

[Independent voter]

He aint president yet.

[bowchikabow]

We gave Trump credit because Analysts said The Stock Market would suffer greatly as soon as Trump was elected. Within 72 of the election, the Market hit record highs. The retail chains that are closing have been closing FOR YEARS... well before Trump was looking at the white house... however, they did appear to increase after Obama's supposed stimulus! If Obama cured the jobs problem (he didn't, 200k jobs.. of which less than half were even full-time, let alone career jobs.. is worse than any President since the end of the Depression), then why have so many established businesses closed shop? Sure, capitalism happens. Some stores go-away. But highly established brick and mortar brands like Sears-Kmart, Macy's, shouldn't be in a free-fall to fail just because of Amazon. There were things happening for years.

[alexw]

Any sane person knows Trump did not cause this just like he didnt cause Ford or Carrier.

Gen-OT is not known to be a sane place.

These large department stores have been in trouble for many years since Amazon stopped selling books.
They did not pivot and will go the way of Blockbuster.

Yes all sane people know this. But its sooo entertaining to watch the Trumpists blame non-Trump factors when in other threads the Trumpists were giving all credit for job creation to Trump.