In trumpworld, the Tariffs Will Increase Until Morale Improves

Update: thanks again to Steve in Manhattan for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Just a reminder, save your sanity by avoiding tonight's SOTU and rely on the poor souls who will annotate it on Bluesky for us.

For all the storm and fury over donald trump's obsession for raising tariffs, there was eventually a reckoning this week when the Supreme Court finally realized they needed to tell trump "No, you CAN'T raise tariffs without congressional approval." (via Scott Horsley at NPR):

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Trump overstepped his authority when he ordered tariffs on imports from nearly every country in the world, using a 1970s emergency statute...

The federal government has been collecting about $30 billion in tariffs every month — or about four times as much as it took in before Trump returned to the White House.

Trump has raised tariff rates to their highest level in nearly a century, but import taxes are still a small share of overall government revenue — just over 5% in January...

A working paper from Harvard University professor and former International Monetary Fund economist Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago estimates that nearly all the cost of Trump's tariffs are being paid by U.S. importers, not foreign suppliers as Trump has claimed.

In some cases, importers have absorbed that cost, settling for lower profits. In others, they've passed the additional cost on to customers in the form of higher prices...

Trump promised that imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression would spark a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. But factories have been in a slump for most of the last year, shedding 108,000 jobs in 2025.

No doubt Trump's taxes on foreign imports have allowed some U.S. factories to raise their prices. But the vast majority of factory managers, many of whom rely on foreign components, say tariffs have been a drag on their business.

"Morale is very low across manufacturing in general," one unnamed factory manager told the Institute for Supply Management in December...

So of course, trump being trump he decided to double down on his tariffs obsession (via Kristen Wright, also NPR): 

President Trump on Saturday said he plans to raise global tariffs from 10% to 15%.

"...I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been "ripping" the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level," the president posted on Truth Social.

The announcement was made a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the president's sweeping use of emergency powers to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The 6-3 ruling is a major blow to Trump's economic policy agenda.

Trump said his decision to raise taxes on imports to 15% is based on "a thorough, detailed, and complete review of the ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American decision on Tariffs issued yesterday."

trump is, of course, lying out of his ass about "thorough, detailed, and complete review" of a ruling within 24 hours of getting it dumped on his head. Given the ineptitude of trump's entire administration, there's rarely been ANYthing other than messy, disorganized, poorly reasoned responses.

trump is pushing ahead on his tariffs for - again - various reasons, mostly tied to his raging narcissism. Above all is how trump can never admit he is wrong, or losing in any way. he will double down on his mistakes and his flawed logic whenever possible, and blame the people who stopped him for being "crooked" or wrong (when they're not).

he's still convinced - and not through egotistical stubbornness, but genuine belief - that trade wars work, that tariffs are effective sources of revenue (when it's only five percent of total revenue, that can't be anywhere near correct), and that tariffs give him more control over everyone else. trump wants the power to wield tariffs and the threat of such over foreign nations and local businesses alike, as extortions and shakedowns. 

trump believes he doesn't need to work with Congress in any way - look at how he refused to coordinate with even his fellow Republicans during the first time - and his abuse of the laws regarding trade and tariffs is a big sign of that disregard.

The tariff trump is looking to impose now can well face more legal actions from businesses and groups threatened by how rash and destructive these decisions are. But that more dragging out in courts, meaning the costs of trump's tariffs are going to prolong the economic malaise building under his misrule.

trump doesn't care. he's going to keep lying and keep bullying about how great everything is, until he's convinced we adore him the way he wants.

Which is never going to happen. So the beatings tariffs will continue on...

The Folly of trump's Nativism and Me-First World-View as the Trade Wars Escalate

trump is still obsessed with tariffs, even after all the economic chaos he's inflicted over the last three months.

Unhinged

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 20, 2025 at 4:07 PM

trump remains convinced tariffs are a winning move, that the "billions in revenue" getting raised by him - by the by, none of the ports were taking in tariffs because their systems are still screwed up - will fill our coffers even as Elon Musk and his DOGE minions empty them to their own pockets, and that - as always - he's the big business genius while every other financial expert/banker/CEO are screaming how tariffs won't work and are gutting their profits.

trump is still crowing how his "trade deficit" announcements are forcing nations to deal with him, even as there's every evidence that our major trading partners are about to drop very big hammers on us (hat-tip to Comrade Misfit who shared this CNBC report from Lori Ann RaCocco):

U.S. importers are being notified of an increase in canceled sailings by freight ships out of China as ocean carriers try to balance the pullback in orders resulting from President Trump’s tariffs and the escalation of tensions in the trade war.

A total of 80 blank, or canceled, sailings out of China have been recorded by freight company HLS Group. It wrote in a recent note to clients that with the trade war between China and the U.S. leading to a demand plummet, carriers have started to suspend or adjust transpacific services...

The impact of the diminished freight container traffic to North America will be significant for many links in the economy and supply chain, including the ports and logistics companies moving the freight. If each sailing was carrying 8,000 to 10,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), that would equal a decline in freight traffic of between 640,000-800,000 containers, and lead to decreased crane operations at the ports, lower fees that could be collected, and declines in container pick-ups and transports by trucks, rails, and to warehouses for storage...

“We have no way of knowing how significant this drop in orders will be on vessel schedules,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. “There are no models to extrapolate this. What I can tell you is the majority of containers on the vessels servicing the Asia to U.S. trade routes is China. We won’t go to zero containers, but we will see a decrease in containers and as a result, in the future, we will see a massive raft of blank sailings announced...”

This is the first wave of a cascade effect, where the lack of shipments from China will disrupt our nation's supply chain from ports losing businesses to trucks / planes / trains / shipping companies losing money from dropped demand to deliver incoming materials across the nation. We won't see it now but in a month, maybe two months: fewer goods reaching our shelves at Wal-Mart or warehouses for Amazon. Fewer cars, and fewer car parts to manufacture here in the U.S. Fewer people working our supply chains, increasing unemployment and accelerating a growing economic recession. Among other losses to our nation's well-being.

And still trump thinks this is all glorious, that tariffs work.

I've written before why trump believes in tariffs, that he seems to think they generate revenues far greater than they really do. There are several other reasons he's obsessed: 

trump believes he's a world-class negotiator and that tariffs allow him to break and make deals to serve his whims. This is partly a vanity program; driven by pride and arrogance, blended with the stupidity and ignorance about how global economics really work (what the hell did he fail to learn at UPenn Wharton College of Business???).

trump really doesn't understand how trade deficits - which he based his blanket tariff orders a few weeks ago - work, and how little they affected our nation's economic strengths. Just because we were operating massive trade deficits with smaller (Third World) nations didn't mean those nations were defrauding the United States in any way: In a lot of cases it was because those nations didn't have enough revenues to buy things from our nation that would have meant any value to them. We traded with Madagascar for their vanilla but they had no reason to buy our soy or our motorcycles, not at the scale that would have balanced the books. And yet, the United States kept running one of the largest (based on GDP and sheer financial wealth) economies on the planet. Trade deficits didn't hurt us at all. Trade boycotts due to these tariffs, however, that will hurt...

But what's proving to be the biggest reason - other than trump's overall stupidity - is trump's Nativist / America-First world-view blinding him to how vital trade can be. trump wants to push his Narrative of "Make America Great Again" and to him that means cutting the United States off from the rest of the planet (with the exception of trump's BFFs Putin and Russia). Shutting down our foreign aid, closing off half of our State Department's foreign relations, pushing a harsh border enforcement to drive away foreign students AND tourists AND anybody else - and no lie, including penguins - all of this comes from trump's belief that America is a "superior" nation under attack by lesser mortals looking to defraud or destroy us.

It's a world-view no different than the one shared with trump's idol, the person he's admired for years. Yeah, that guy, he loved inflicting tariffs as soon as he came to power in Germany (via Timothy W. Ryback at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

Hitler had what one might call a diffident, occasionally felonious disregard for financial matters. He owed 400,000 reichsmarks in back taxes. His understanding of economics was primitive. “You have inflation only if you want it,” Hitler once said. “Inflation is a lack of discipline. I will see to it that prices remain stable. I have my S.A. for that.” (The S.A., or Brownshirts, were the original paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party.) Hitler held Jews responsible for most of Germany’s financial woes.

Hitler relied on Gottfried Feder, the National Socialist Party’s long-serving chief economist, to develop the specifics of an economic program. Feder had helped concoct the strange brew of socialism and fanatical nationalism in the original 25-point program of this putative “workers’ party.” In May 1932, Feder outlined what would become the first Nazi economic plan, in a 32-page position paper designed for ready implementation were Hitler to suddenly find himself in power. High on Feder’s agenda for a Hitler economy were tariffs.

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition...”

Any of that anti-foreigner rhetoric sound familiar?

The crash of 1929 had plunged Germany, along with much of the rest of the world, into an abyss. Markets collapsed. Factories were idled. Unemployment soared. In the early 1930s, one out of three German workers was unemployed. But Hitler had inherited a recovering economy: In December 1932, the German Institute for Economic Research reported that the crisis had been “significantly overcome”; by the time Hitler was appointed chancellor, in January 1933, the economy was on the mend.

You could say the same about Biden's economic recovery post-pandemic, which the mainstream media underplayed while obsessing over the price of eggs. trump's chaotic decision-making undid a lot of that, much like what happened in Germany:

But Hitler made no effort to reassure the markets, insisting that the tariffs were necessary and that he needed time to fix the ruined country his predecessors had left him. “Within four years the German farmer must be saved from destitution,” Hitler said in his first national radio address as chancellor. “Within four years unemployment must be completely overcome.” Hitler provided scant details as to how this was to be accomplished. By this point, he had broken even with the tariff cheerleader Feder, and had abandoned most of the action items for developing a nationalist and socialist economy. These items had included increased taxation of the wealthy; state supervision of large corporations; and the prohibition of “new department stores, low-priced shops, and chain stores.”

As chancellor, Hitler left his own plans for the German economy intentionally vague. His chief priority, as he told his ministers, was to secure an outright majority in the March 5 Reichstag elections. Hitler calculated that he needed between 18 million and 19 million votes. “There is no economic program that could meet with the approval of such a large mass of voters,” Hitler told party leaders.

But although the average voter may not have cared about the details of the Hitler economy, the markets did. The initial surge in stocks that greeted Hitler’s appointment halted then dipped and flattened amid the political and economic uncertainty of Hitler’s chaotic first weeks as chancellor...

The Hitler tariffs, announced on Friday, February 10, 1933, stunned observers. “The dimension of the tariff increases have in fact exceeded all expectations,” the Vossische Zeitung wrote disapprovingly, proclaiming the moment a “fork in the road” for the German economy. It appeared that Europe’s largest and most industrialized nation would suddenly be returning “to the furrow and the plow.” The New York Times saw this for what it was: “a trade war” against its European neighbors...

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch, who warned the Germans that the countermeasures would be felt as “palpable blows” to German industrial exports. That proved to be true.

“Our exports have shrunk significantly,” Foreign Minister Neurath informed Hitler in one cabinet meeting, “and our relations to our neighboring countries are threatening to deteriorate.” Neurath noted that informal contacts with Dutch interlocutors had been “bruskly broken off.” Trade relations with Sweden and Denmark were similarly strained, as were those with France and Yugoslavia. Finance Minister Krosigk anticipated that the agricultural sector would require an additional 100 million reichsmarks in deficit spending...

The costs of those tariffs arrived in the form of harsher sanctions and cutoffs, forcing the government to spend more than expected to aid farmers (and likely other industries). But none of that mattered to Hitler, who pushed forward on his agenda to seize authoritarian control of Germany outright, and basically building up a war machine with the armies to begin annexation and invasion of neighboring countries, triggering a world war by 1939.

If anyone else can notice the trends here - the tariffs leading to trade wars leading to military aggression and straight-up wars of blood and carnage - you can see where trump is taking the United States. We're not going back to some glorious isolationist nativist homeland that never existed outside of the fevered fantasies of a white patriarchal class: We're turning ourselves into a pariah state no different than Iran or North Korea, and about to escalate matters with our neighboring trade partners in Mexico and Canada with our unjustified version of an Anschluss. 

"This is NOT going to end well" is a fcking understatement tonight.

Begun, the 2025 Trade Wars Have

If anybody had Colombia on their trump Tariff Bingo card, you can cash in your winnings with Vegas tonight (via Regina Garcia Cano and Astrid Suarez at AP News):

The United States and Colombia, long close partners in anti-narcotics efforts, clashed Sunday over the deportation of migrants and imposed tariffs on each other’s goods in a show of what countries could face if they intervene in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Presidents Donald Trump and Gustavo Petro, in a series of social media posts, defended their views on migration, with the latter accusing Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation and announcing a retaliatory 25% increase in Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods.

Earlier, the U.S. president had ordered visa restrictions, 25% tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which would be raised to 50% in one week, and other retaliatory measures sparked by Petro’s decision to reject two Colombia-bound U.S. military aircraft carrying migrants.

At issue are the methods of how trump is sending the deportees. We have long-standing agreements in place with various Central and South American nations about returning illegals to their place of origin, but there's supposed to be procedure and protocols and trump reportedly rejects all that. Instead of standard air transport, he's ordered the use of military planes. Instead of going through a evaluation - which takes time - he's deporting people without due process and without informing the other nations of when and where.

Enraging the Colombian government - as well as other nations - is how the deportees are treated: chained up like prisoners instead of people:

Earlier in the day, Petro said his government would not accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity.” Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet.

“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants... In civilian planes, without being treated like criminals, we will receive our fellow citizens.”

While other nations like Honduras and Guatemala are accepting trump's use of military planes to return deportees, having Central/South American countries reject these attempts are going to create humanitarian dilemmas for the United States.

In the meantime, trump's swift use of tariffs as a stick to beat nations like Colombia into doing his bidding is going to hurt Americans who are relying on that nation's various imported goods... like coffee. While Colombian coffee only makes up 20 percent of our intake, any increase in costs is going to cripple the amount of what we get. With Brazil's market hit by lowered production due to natural disasters, there's already a shortage to where coffee prices have gone up. Are Americans - seriously addicted to coffee - ready to pay $20 a latte at Starbucks?

trump is looking to make an example of Colombia, hoping to bully them with weaponized tariffs into accepting his mass deportation scheme the way he wants it: cruel and clumsy. But all he's doing is signaling to the world that he has no care or concern about what tariffs and trade wars actually do (don't forget, trump thinks trade wars are good, and easy to win). And he's pushing our major trade partners in this hemisphere into shopping for other markets, likely with a China that is eager to supplant the United States in economic dominance... the very thing that's triggering trump's demands to take back the Panama Canal.

In the meantime, trump is ramping up the "mass deportation" plan here at home, with orders getting sent down to ICE departments to reach daily quotas of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day. We're talking about pressure on immigration officers to round up at least 50 people an hour, as though locating and targeting undocumented migrants is easy. What's going to happen is that ICE agents will grab anybody who looks Latino and claim they're illegals, even if they have genuine IDs proving they are American citizens. 

This is like Stop And Frisk - a shameful and failed practice that's still deployed by police - on steroids, with the horrifying implications that thousands of Americans are going to have their rights and their freedoms denied.

None of this is doing our economy or our citizenry any favors. Both the war on trade and the war on Latinos are going to turn into disasters, and a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt (or even killed).

Welcome back to the trumpian chaos that makes America even worse. Thanks a lot, 77 million trump voters, for fucking us all over.

Update: the next morning the news reports are that cooler heads prevailed and that Colombia's insistence on better treatment for deportees will get handled. trump of course is crowing that it's a victory because "he fixed it" and got a nation to admit to taking back "criminals". It's more likely some of his people warned him a large tariff on coffee would be a very bad idea. Either way, this incident demonstrates what we'll expect - again - out of the Eternal Shitgibbon: political acts no different from bullying, designed to cause controversy and disrupt things until trump can profit from it. And he's going to keep doing this until somebody - maybe Mexico, maybe Canada, hopefully most of Europe and Asia - punches back and keeps punching.

The Problems with trump's Tariffs

This week's trumpian chaos focused a lot on his threat to impose broad and heavy tariffs on three of our major trade partners of Canada, Mexico, and China, something that the economic experts warn would trigger more inflation than U.S. voters realize and escalate retaliation and trade wars across the globe.

In the days following, there had been a good amount of punditry and pushback on the matter, during which trump's people walked back the comments or tried to reframe the topic. There are think pieces about how trump might be "bluffing," that he's trying to force the likes of Mexico and Canada to the negotiation table - much like how trump shredded the existing NAFTA deal to force a new USMCA agreement that barely changed anything - to gain more concessions he didn't get then.

My view on all this is to consider taking trump at face value when it comes to tariffs. he's had a long history of loving the concept of them, and he had spoken - early and often - that trade wars are "good and easy to win". And it's not even a trade war trump seems focused on: he talked during the 2024 campaign about the McKinley Tariffs of 1890 and how such tariffs could replace income tax as the government's main source of revenue.

There's no chess game here: trump genuinely wants to increase tariffs because he views them as win-win.

trump - and his pro-tariff allies in his transition team - refuse to see the larger historical trends surrounding tariffs, trade wars, and their impacts on economic stability. The non-profit Tax Foundation published Erica York's report looking into how other factors in the 1890s countered the negative economic impacts of the McKinley Tariffs... factors that were NOT in play during the later tariffs of the 1930s:

As a review, tariffs are a type of excise tax (a narrowly targeted consumption tax) applied to domestic consumption of foreign-produced goods. Since the depths of the Great Depression and the collapse in global trade after the 1930 Hawley-Smoot tariffs, US policy shifted away from restrictive tariffs in favor of multilateral cooperation to reduce tariffs (as economist Douglas Irwin explains in his book Clashing Over Commerce).

That shift in policy sent the average tariff rate on a downward path, from highs of 59.1 percent on tariffed goods and 19.8 percent on all imported goods during the Great Depression to an average of 4.7 percent on tariffed goods and 1.4 percent on all imported goods in 2017...

As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, McKinley shepherded the Tariff Act of 1890 into law. At the time, the federal government was running a budget surplus of nearly 50 percent, and tariff revenues substantially outpaced government spending. The McKinley tariff was designed to fix that problem, moving sugar (which accounted for a large share of revenues) to the “duty free” list, providing direct subsidies to sugar producers (to replace the benefit of tariffs and increase spending), and raising tariffs on a variety of other imports.

The McKinley tariff and higher government spending brought a swift backlash, earning the Republican-controlled Congress the nickname of “Billion Dollar Congress,” and leading to Republican defeats in the 1890 midterm elections (McKinley himself lost his reelection). In 1892, while monetary and banking policies were larger issues, Democrats ran heavily against the protectionist tariffs and the “Billion Dollar Congress,” and won unified control of government.

Democrats did not get to make good on their promises to address protectionist tariffs immediately, because the nation fell into a deep recession (caused by monetary policies). In late 1893 and early 1894, Democrats took up the tariff issue, but as the bill worked its way through Congress, it strayed from its original goals: a House amendment added an income tax, Senate amendments added back many protectionist tariffs, and ultimately, President Cleveland allowed the law to take effect without his signature.

Dissatisfaction with the broader state of the economy, still in a monetary-policy-related downturn, led to a Republican sweep in the 1894 midterm elections and the election of Republican President McKinley in 1896. Just four months after convening, Republicans sent a new tariff bill, the Dingley Act of 1897, to McKinley, raising protective tariffs even higher than the Tariff Act of 1890.

Many at the time credited tariffs for the economic recovery that soon took shape. Likewise, Trump often credits these high tariffs with the industrial growth of the US during the period.

But as economist Doug Irwin explains, around the same time as the new tariffs were enacted, the global supply of gold began to increase, easing the monetary conditions responsible for the economic downturn and bringing about a recovery.

Further, many economic historians have cautioned that impressive growth in the late 1800s and early 1900s cannot be explained by high tariffs. Instead, labor force growth and capital accumulation—neither of which have strong links to tariffs—are responsible for America’s fast growth during this period. If anything, it is possible that the high protective tariffs of the late 19th century somewhat hindered America’s economic growth.

Ironically that period saw a massive increase in immigration, which fueled that labor force growth. Something that trump and his anti-immigrant allies are going to undermine the same time they'll push their tariffs plans. York and Irwin both point out how our gold reserves expanded - that Klondike Gold Rush by the by - back in a time when the gold standard established our currency's value. We won't have those resources today to balance out the economic chaos that trump's tariffs will unleash.

trump's agenda to replace our current income tax system - which would be a massive boon to the uber-rich - with tariffs would be a disaster all its own. Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld at the Peterson Institute for International Economics - a nonprofit think tank - looks at the numbers on that:

To be sure, when Trump vents before friendly audiences, one has to take it with a large grain of salt. But a partial substitution of tariffs for income tax revenues is nearly inevitable under a Trump presidency. He has repeatedly proposed increased tariffs, including a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all trading partners as well as 60 percent or higher tariffs on goods from China. He has also called for extending the tax cuts enacted in 2017, which are due to expire next year, a step that could easily cost as much $5 trillion over ten years. And Trump has suggested further cuts, particularly on the corporate side...

Can tariffs replace the income tax?

Simply put, NO. Tariffs are levied on imported goods, which totaled $3.1 trillion in 2023. The income tax is levied on incomes, which exceed $20 trillion; the US government raises about $2 trillion in individual and corporate income taxes at present. It is literally impossible for tariffs to fully replace income taxes. Tariff rates would have to be implausibly high on such a small base of imports to replace the income tax, and as tax rates rose, the base itself would shrink as imports fall, making Trump’s $2 trillion goal unattainable.

A recent Peterson Institute policy brief calculated that revenues from Trump’s 10 percent/60 percent tariff proposals would total about $225 billion per year in current dollars. This figure is certainly an overestimate because it does not account for lower economic growth due to the inevitable economic shocks caused by retaliation against US exporters and the losses suffered by the import-dependent manufacturing sector. Exporters would also be hit by an appreciating dollar...

Another consideration that comes into play is that the United States already raises about $50 billion from tariffs on imports. That amount reduces the revenue potential of new tariffs relative to figure 1. In addition, a tariff as large as 50 percent would create very large distortions in Americans’ economic activity (moving resources away from sectors where the United States has a comparative advantage and toward sectors where it is less efficient), while increasing tax avoidance and evasion (including shopping abroad, smuggling, lobbying government officials for exemptions, etc.)...

trump is looking to replace an established - and deep - means of revenues for our federal government and installing a revenue source that's neither deep nor reliable. If we want to talk about "running government like a business," this is akin to price-hiking your goods or services to where you lose your customers who refuse to pay even if you're the only business in town.

Now you can see how trump kept driving his own casinos into bankruptcy.

If there's any good news about all this tariffs speculation is that for anything tariff increase on a large scale, trump could be stymied by the existing USMCA agreement as well as a Congress - even one that's Republican-controlled - that's not about to commit political suicide like this.

However, we exist in a new reality where the Supreme Court expanded presidential powers to where trump could get away with ANYthing without Congressional approval under the umbrella of "official acts." And given how he'd unilaterally forced tariffs during his first term, he's going to want to do that again, this time with more devastating results.

Thanks again, 75 million voters. You unleashed this economic chaos on us. I only hope the Tariff Leopards eat you first.

Time to Conduct Some Semiconductor Business At Home

If anybody's waiting on an order for a new Atari VCS microconsole, you might have to wait awhile. There seems to be a massive shortage of semiconductors required for... practically every electronic device we have. Per David Atkins at Washington Monthly:

But there’s increasingly an argument to be made that a just-in-time lowest-cost supply system may not just be bad for the climate or for domestic employment. It may also in many cases be bad for business. The semiconductor crisis tells an exemplary tale. As information technology becomes essential to daily life in developed countries, semiconductors are essential for making the world go round. Phones, computers, gaming consoles and automobiles all require increasingly sophisticated semiconductors. And most of them are made by a single company: Taiwan Semiconductor. Indeed, Taiwan Semiconductor is so dominant in the field that few competitors can match them, and they’re falling farther behind...

We've got a hundred different manufacturers putting together a 1001 different electronic devices, and NOBODY seemed to notice they ALL relied on ONE supplier for a required component to their devices???

The semiconductor shortage is harming vehicle production lines. It’s why the next generation gaming consoles that were supposed to be available last Christmas are still in vanishingly short supply. It is starting to impact smartphones and personal computers as well.

There are many correlated aspects to this problem. It’s partly a matter of national security: what does the global economy do when it relies so heavily on a single actor in a location of geopolitical instability? It’s partly a problem of monopoly: is the market truly free or stable if so many essential products depend on the fate of a single company? How can there be genuine competition if the cost of entry makes establishing new competition prohibitive? It’s partly a matter of the pandemic: Taiwan Semiconductor and other manufacturers have been struggling to meet production targets due to reduced capacity from COVID restrictions.

An over-reliance on global trade and shipping, combined by corporate eagerness to find the cheapest labor instead of reliability and location, have led us to this bloody mess. The Pandemic merely highlighted our vulnerabilities.

At no time in the past 20 years it seems - as the Internet revolution exploded the computer tech industry into the behemoth it is today - anyone planned far enough ahead to plan for possible shortages or cuts to supply lines. It never occurred to anybody relying on tech parts like semiconductors that it would help to establish their own manufacturing to compete for that key part in more than one country/continent so that they didn't rely on Taiwan Semiconductor Inc itself. That company could have branched itself out, using its expertise in its manufacturing techniques to build more factories in other places to maintain a stranglehold on its monopoly of semiconductors while improving its supply chain to ensure availability. Apparently nobody - even the company aware of its own situation - wanted to spend the money to do that.

I'm not a businessman, don't have a degree in economics, but even *I* know it's foolish to rely on one provider of one product from one location that just happens to be so needed for almost everything out there.

But monopolizing practices don't seem to breed expansion or competition, only complacency. Nobody wants to spend profits on improving service or supply. Until it's too late.

If the United States wants to respond properly to this crisis, our own government ought to push for business start-up funds to get semiconductor manufacturers up and running here (and to hell with the local CEO mindset against hiring workers in the U.S. because they might ask for living wages). We've got manufacturing towns dying out because they've been abandoned: This could be a good time to reinvest in those places that can handle the semiconductor industry.

Sort of what Atkins says at the end of his article:

The world has a mutually invested interest in distributing production of goods like semiconductors–and it’s not clear that the private sector should be wholly responsible for taking on the burden. (To say nothing of the leftist critique that the benefits of successfully adding semiconductor production should not redound merely to the shareholders.)

The governments of the world have both a competitive and cooperative interest in ensuring that resources like semiconductors are not at the mercy of geopolitical conflict, and that production can be ramped up as needed even if problems should arise in one company, country or corner of the globe.

What say ye, President Biden? Care to invest America in much-needed semiconductors to generate much-needed jobs?

You're Just Like Suez Traffic, So Hard To Float Through to You

(Update 3/28/21: Thanks to Infidel753 for adding this article to his Sunday blog round-up!) 

Me boots and clothes is all in pawn,
G'down ye blood red roses, g'down!

It's flamin' drafty round Cape Horn,
G'down ye blood red roses, g'down
Oh ye pinks and poses,
G'down ye blood red roses, g'down! 

- Blood Red Roses, old sea shanty

You're just like crosstown traffic, so hard to get through to you.
Crosstown traffic, I don't need to run over you.
Crosstown traffic, all you do is slow me down.
And I'm trying to get on the other side of town.

- Crosstown Traffic, Jimi Hendrix

I know I'm technically still on hiatus, I know there's about five other major news stories and political BS I need to rage against, but this is so funny a disaster I can't pass it up (via Amanda Mull at The Atlantic (paywall likely)):

...The boat, of course, is the Ever Given, a massive container ship operated by the Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen, which probably now wishes its name wasn’t painted on the boat’s sides in such enormous letters. On its way from China to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, the boat accidentally Tokyo drifted to a stop in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Tuesday, where it has been stuck sideways ever since. Efforts to refloat the Ever Given so far have been futile; the heavy construction equipment and fleet of industrial-strength tugboats assigned to that job have been successful not at dislodging the ship’s bow from the canal’s sandy shore, but at demonstrating this big-ass boat’s stupendous girth in photos. The ship, which is longer than the Empire State Building is tall, looms over literally everything—construction equipment, palm trees, nearby buildings. The Ever Given is Manute Bol to the human world’s Muggsy Bogues...

I’m obsessed with the dang boat because people like me and you are not really supposed to be aware of what boats like her are up to. You’re not supposed to think about, or even notice, global freight, but the Ever Given has made cartoonishly noticeable some of the crucial infrastructure of global capital, which is usually invisible in most people’s daily life. She has done so with an absolutely sublime visual gag, improved by every new detail about the problems the ship is causing and every new photo of the impotent human measures being undertaken to fix them. Peruse the surrounding waterways on any of the internet’s maritime trackers, and you’ll find the beginnings of a far more significant problem: More than 150 other absolutely huge shipping vessels, transporting everything from live animals to crude oil, are waiting on either side; the barge ran aground at a point where the Suez has only one lane, which means that traffic is blocked in both directions.

Every time I add some new morsel to my stash of stuck-boat information, I’m reminded of those clips I used to love as a kid on America’s Funniest Home Videos, in which some guy gets nailed in the groin by his overly enthusiastic golden retriever. In this case, the guy is a complex web of financiers and shipping magnates and insurance companies, whom the sideways boat will cost approximately one zillion dollars. The Ever Given is standing athwart one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, yelling “Oops!” She is ruining everything, and at least for the moment, she cannot be (un)stopped...

METAPHORS! Metaphors everywhere!

I begged on Twitter for someone to design a website dedicated to updates on Ever Given's status and HERE IT IS!

https://istheshipstillstuck.com/

Yes, it is

I promised a donut but the guy who designed it doesn't want donuts and so he's encouraging us to donate to this charity instead.

In the meantime, we're looking at the reality that a lot of global trade is stymied by this disaster, so it's not all fun and games. Most traffic that needs to keep moving - stuff that can't wait, like livestock or perishable goods - may have to take the longer route around the African Cape, which isn't entirely safe (was notified there is an emergency canal nearby but it's smaller and slower so still time-consuming).

We're also talking about the canal workers stuck in overtime struggling with this. Already hailed as a hero is the sole excavator working on digging out the Ever Given's bow to help get it unstuck from the sand. I am currently seeing about sending a shipment of donuts to him.

This isn't entirely schadenfreude, because it is a serious matter and we do need to consider how global trade relies too much on overwhelmed transportation systems. But on the other hand, you think back to how you and your college buddies got that sofa stuck in an apartment stairwell and just laugh and laugh and...

Update 3/29/21: This morning, the Ever Given was FREED from its sandy prison and sailed onward! ONWARD! LET US SING SONGS NOW OF THIS DAY! (listens to various parody versions of "Wellerman") NO DAMMIT A REAL SONG!

The Spiral of Madness Speeds Up

Christ, this day (via Fred Imbert at CNBC):

Stocks plunged on Friday after President Donald Trump ordered that U.S. manufacturers find alternatives to their operations in China. Apple led the way lower.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 623.34 points lower, or 2.4% at 25,628.90. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% to close at 2,847.11. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3% to end the day at 7,751.77. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.

The major indexes also posted weekly losses for the fourth straight time. The Dow dropped about 1% this week while the S&P 500 pulled back 1.4%. The Nasdaq lost 1.8%.

Trump tweeted on Friday: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” However, it is not clear how much authority the president has on this front...

trump doesn't really have any authority to tell companies what to do. A President can hold companies accountable through the law, to prevent fraud and monopolistic practices, to keep the industries honest, but dictate actual corporate policies? If anyone else ever did this - especially Obama, but also Dubya or Clinton or Bush the Elder or Reagan or any other in the White House - the media outrage would have been immediate and Congress reacting with fury. If it was a Democratic President doing this, Congressional Republicans would have filed impeachment proceedings within an hour.

Here? Not a goddamn peep. Even as trump delves into behavior and statements that rational people would think ought to trigger 25th Amendment shutdowns, the rest of the government is just treading water while the ship of state sinks faster.

The madness of trump - his obsessions, his failure to comprehend basic rules of trade (hint: trade wars ARE NOT GOOD AND EASY TO WIN), his blinkered belief he's beloved and worshiped - is getting worse... and the signs are growing daily.

James Fallows at the Atlantic documented this yesterday, before the economic disasters of today:

But now we’ve had something we didn’t see so clearly during the campaign. These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S. would “buy Greenland.” Trump’s self-description as “the Chosen One,” and his embrace of a supporter’s description of him as the “second coming of God” and the “King of Israel.” His logorrhea, drift, and fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flashes of belligerence at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.

Obviously I have no standing to say what medical pattern we are seeing, and where exactly it might lead. But just from life I know this:

If an airline learned that a pilot was talking publicly about being “the Chosen One” or “the King of Israel” (or Scotland or whatever), the airline would be looking carefully into whether this person should be in the cockpit...

If Donald Trump were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role. The board at a public company would have replaced him outright or arranged a discreet shift out of power. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far in a large public corporation.) The chain-of-command in the Navy or at an airline or in the hospital would at least call a time-out, and check his fitness, before putting him back on the bridge, or in the cockpit, or in the operating room. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far as a military officer, or a pilot, or a doctor.)

There are two exceptions. One is a purely family-run business, like the firm in which Trump spent his entire previous career. And the other is the U.S. presidency, where he will remain, despite more and more-manifest Queeg-like unfitness, as long as the GOP Senate stands with him...

And the Senate are cowards. They already sold out their self-respect for self-interest, they've already sold off this nation to every crook able to put them on payroll.

This was me, early on before the rest of the day just into the rubber-padded walls of trumpland:

I wrote this later on Facebook, recognizing the madness of trump for a darker, twisted version of a man's madness from the 19th Century:

trump goes onto Twitter and rants about China, then issues a "I Hereby Order" to U.S. companies to stop doing business with China. Which immediately triggers YET ANOTHER stock market meltdown (there have been FIVE this year caused by trump tweets already).

Other than the reality that Presidents do not directly control what businesses do - outside of enforcing laws to prevent acts of fraud and other such duties - these statements by trump reflect an imperial mindset that you do not want to see in elected officials. I cannot recall any President in my lifetime - not Obama (Fox would have thrown the most epic conniption of all time if he had), not Dubya (MSNBC would have dedicated an hour each night to it), not Clinton (see Fox), not Bush the Elder, not Reagan, not Carter (I would have been too young to have noticed Ford or Nixon).

The only historical figure I ever saw who even wrote/talked like that was Joshua Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, who issued decrees from San Francisco in the 1860s through 1880s dealing with everything from the then Civil War to overseas trade, religious freedom, investing in railroad patents, and building bridges (one of them actually got built).

Thing is, nearly every decree Norton I issued as emperor was rational, at least within reason, and were grounded in practical necessities. Even his edict barring political parties make sense.

In short, Norton I Emperor of the United States was *sane* compared to the current rantings and decision-making of donald trump.

The biggest difference between Emperor Norton and Emperor Shitgibbon is that Norton's decrees were sane. trump's decrees are about feeding his ego, destroying his enemies, ruling over an empire of ash.

This disaster of a theme park ride is spiraling faster. It won't stop until the rails collapse from the stress.

We are so very royally fucking screwed.

Just Say "Inverted Yield Curve" To a Financier And Watch Them Scream

There's been growing reports over the past three months of red flags regarding the U.S. economy. 

The ongoing damage of trump's tariff wars starting to rattle the major banks.

The Gross Domestic Product has been underperforming, mostly due to trump's tariff demands.

And then, just yesterday we get the news that the short-term (two year) bonds are getting higher interest rates than the long-term (ten year) bonds. It's something called an "Inverted Yield Curve," meaning bond investors believe in getting their money now instead of later, suggesting a recession is unavoidable. 

The last time there was an Inverted Yield Curve? 2007, and all the fun THAT led to.

The stock markets pretty much tanked today in one of their worst performances in modern memory. Funny enough, today only ranked 4th worst. The other top five? All happened under trump as well.

The investors get it. They have to, it's how they keep their wallets full. There's a recession coming and it's no longer a question When it's a question of How Soon and How Painful.

A replay of the 2007 global economic collapse - only this time thanks to tariffs and Brexit - is quite likely.

The Trade Bully (w/Update)

How the hell is our national economy even keeping its head above water when trump is intentionally trying to drown everybody???

This past week he made the decision to expand his tariff wars - no longer content to smash against the Chinese market and the Euro market and the Canadian market - by interrupting an ongoing trade deal with Mexico with a plan to up tariffs with Mexico by five percent every month until Mexico "stops sending illegals across the border."

trump is pretty much rolling two of his signature issues into one big mess: Convinced Mexico is intentionally sending families and asylum seekers into the United States, trump wants to punish them for it by nuking the multi-billion dollar business we've got going with our closest trading partner. As David A. Graham notes at the Atlantic:

Now comes Trump’s latest move, the 5 percent tariff, which could rise over time if Mexico doesn’t comply. It’s a more modest version of an earlier threat to levy a 25 percent tariff on all Mexican goods, but it has still created chaos. U.S. companies are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the tariff, Republican lawmakers are critical, and Mexico is responding with anger and defiance...

There is the chance that the tariff (or some other trick) will actually succeed, but the prospects seem dim. Agreeing to Trump’s demands would likely be politically untenable for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Even if it were not, it’s unclear how much ability López Obrador has to stop illegal immigration through Mexico. After all, the American experience shows that border security is not so easy—especially without resorting to violence or inhumane tactics. It’s not even clear what would count as success in Trump’s view; his declaration says that Mexico must “dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing its territory into the United States,” without naming quantitative targets...

This is merely trump at his most basic: An ignorant bully who thinks all he has to do is humiliate his opponents to achieve his success. But he keeps exposing his ignorance when it comes to immigration, and he's showing no understanding of the economic realities of trade and tariff that he's supposed to be good at.

For starters, look back at the first paragraph I quote from Graham. The thing about tariffs is that they are fees (taxes) imposed by companies here in the United States. The foreign countries at the other end are not taxed, they are merely hampered from dealing more openly with U.S. businesses. They'll lose some business and profits... but they can - and have - move on to trading partners in other countries (Hi, Brazil!).

What trump is doing is punishing US, people here at home, which shows up in higher costs for goods that go towards agriculture and manufacturing. Our auto industry in particular is getting killed by trump's tariffs. Like I said, I'm amazed our economy hasn't collapsed yet in the year since trump started his trade wars.

And as always, trump is doing this purely on impulse (or with Stephen Miller whispering his racist agenda into trump's ear) (via CNBC's Kayla Tausche and Tusker Higgins):

President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary and top trade advisor opposed his surprise plan to impose new tariffs on Mexican imports, according to a source close to the White House who said the idea was pushed by immigration hawk Stephen Miller.

The announcement came as Trump was “riled up” by conservative radio commentary about the recent surge in border crossings, according to the source...

trump is not doing this based on research or the recommendation of informed advisors and experts: he's doing this out of pure rage stoked by those who know how to - and enjoy - pushing trump's buttons.

There is no thought into the consequences. There is no long-term assessment of damages done by these moves. Only the satisfaction of trying to hurt other people.

Problem is, trump and his lackeys are hurting more people than they realize. The impact of many of the border states - on a lot of Red States, period - is pretty severe. Via Andy Kiersz at Business Insider:

Friday morning, stocks were falling in industries like auto manufacturing, which has supply chains distributed across North America that could be seriously interrupted by increased trade barriers between the US and Mexico. Chipotle, which relies on imports of avocados and other produce from Mexico, also saw a drop in its stock price...

If the proposed tariffs come into effect, certain states where trade with Mexico makes up a big part of the economy could be hardest hit.

Big state economies that border Mexico exported a large volume of goods to that country in 2017. Texas had nearly $98 billion in exports, and California had nearly $27 billion. While it doesn't border Mexico, auto-industry supply chains contribute to Michigan's $12.5 billion in exports in that year...

Kiersz' article has two maps showing the imports and exports between Mexico and the states. Texas is the biggest partner on both maps, with other Red States Arizona, Louisiana, and Florida as the next hardest hit (with Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky in that grouping). The Blue state hit the hardest would be California... which is still not good for the nation overall because that state is one of our biggest money-makers. Hurting Cali's economy hurts us all no matter what.

But does trump truly care?

No.

All trump wants is political wins, in order to back up - even if he lies about it all, he still wants to show off - his ongoing rally cries to his angry racist base.

It doesn't matter if a trade war with Mexico will hit seven or eight Red States. It doesn't matter if none of this stops illegal immigration the way trump wants (Jesus. He's been caging babies in jails for two years, and families are still THAT desperate to get here).

All that matters is that trump wants to think he's winning, wants to force a fight he can't win on the hopes the other side - Mexico again - will flinch. Even when Mexico's smartest move is to let trump self-immolate and try to wait this storm out for a new saner President in 2021.

Gods help us. The way trump is managing things, the illusion of a strong economy is going to end soon. Farmers are still going bankrupt, auto makers are cutting jobs, the stimulus of job creation will dry up, the tax cuts aren't going into families' bank accounts like the GOP promised, personal debts are still scaling upward... something's going to collapse soon and take this all down.

And 62 million trump voters will cheer as they drown in the ashes.

We are so very royally extravagantly fucked.

Update 6/8/19: So at the last minute trump was able to wrangle out a deal with Mexico to avert his threat to issue tariffs. Thing is, it seems the agreed-to deal was settled months ago, and trump's claim that he is forcing Mexico to buy more American grain from farmers is a goddamn lie. So of course trump is going to run with this for another month as a "victory" until he causes another goddamn controversy.

The Wreck in Quebec Falls Mainly On trump's Dreck.

To the seven people who follow this blog, you've no doubt realized I express only the greatest DISDAIN and HATRED towards Loser of the Popular Vote donald trump.

That I view trump as a con artist, a thief, a bankrupt businessman who doesn't know thing one about actual business/finance, a racist douchenozzle, ignorant, ill-read, ill-informed, just plain ill.

That I knew trump would be a train wreck in the White House, that he would shred every norm, break any law, betray every ally, if it meant filling his own pockets and satisfying his own Id (his Ego too subsumed by narcissism to be of any value anymore).

This weekend trump went to the G7 meeting, a gathering of the top economic powerhouses - U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada (with UK/France/Germany/Italy as part of the EU) - to coordinate current trade and finance issues and plan for long-term economic stability.

With trump already issuing tariffs aimed at Canada and Europe, the threat of escalating a trade war was a major topic. With trump going to these meetings with open disdain for certain discussions and a refusal to respect anyone else's opinions, this was looking like a bad weekend for the global economy.

Well, yeah. It may have actually gotten worse.

Let us refer over to this other Paul, fellow by the name of Krugman with a noted reputation for knowing economics. Hey, Paul, this is Paul here, alright if I quote you right now from your New York Times piece? Thanks, Paul:

...Still, there has never been a disaster like the G7 meeting that just took place. It could herald the beginning of a trade war, maybe even the collapse of the Western alliance. At the very least it will damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally for decades to come; even if Trump eventually departs the scene in disgrace, the fact that someone like him could come to power in the first place will always be in the back of everyone’s mind.

What went down in Quebec? I’m already seeing headlines to the effect that Trump took a belligerent “America first” position, demanding big concessions from our allies, which would have been bad. But the reality was much worse.

He didn’t put America First; Russia First would be a better description. And he didn’t demand drastic policy changes from our allies; he demanded that they stop doing bad things they aren’t doing. This wasn’t a tough stance on behalf of American interests, it was a declaration of ignorance and policy insanity.

Trump started with a call for readmitting Russia to the group, which makes no sense at all. The truth is that Russia, whose GDP is about the same size as Spain’s and quite a bit smaller than Brazil’s, was always a ringer in what was meant to be a group of major economies. It was brought in for strategic reasons, and kicked out when it invaded Ukraine. There is no possible justification for bringing it back, other than whatever hold Putin has on Trump personally.

Then Trump demanded that the other G7 members remove their “ridiculous and unacceptable” tariffs on U.S. goods – which would be hard for them to do, because their actual tariff rates are very low. The European Union, for example, levies an average tariff of only three percent on US goods. Who says so? The U.S. government’s own guide to exporters...

Was there any strategy behind Trump’s behavior? Well, it was pretty much exactly what he would have done if he really is Putin’s puppet: yelling at friendly nations about sins they aren’t committing won’t bring back American jobs, but it’s exactly what someone who does want to break up the Western alliance would like to see...

I doubt our own economic leaders - business CEOs, Wall Street, major investors - are going to be thrilled that the economic system they've known for the past 50 years or more is about to go into the dumpster fire. Any advantages trump and his handlers think they have trying to bully other nations into serving their (not ours) whims aren't there. Yes, the U.S. economy is too massive to wage war against. Yes, a trade war would hurt the other G7 members more than it would hurt America.

But don't forget Machiavelli's maxim about Fear and Love: The real trick for a Prince is to avoid being HATED, because once your opponents and underlings reach that stage they will pay any price driven by that hate to destroy you.

Our staunchest and longest-serving allies neither fear nor love trump at this moment: They Hate him now. If they fear anything, it's the likelihood of kleptocrat/dictator/real victor of the trade wars - Putin - getting everything he wants including the dissolution of a united Europe.

Getting into a trade war with the United States is one thing: All of Europe has to be wary now that Russia will escalate their manipulations of local "populist" movements to disrupt their elections and destabilize their governments. Any of which is possible when economic downturns caused by the trade war make most nations turn on each other in rage and confusion.

Still, for all Putin is getting out of this chaos, the one truly enjoying all of this has to be trump. This fulfills his sociopathy. Convinced that the world is his to own and destroy, he will now take his pleasure in burning it all down.

trump: "Everything burns."

We as a planet are so royally fucked.

trump Is Destroying Everything? Must Be Thursday

Oh lord, this was a crazy day.

Trump started the day off with a trade war, not with China not with Iran not with Russia not with North Korea, a trade war with Canada, Mexico, and much of Europe. Basically, pissing off our allies. Via Business Insider:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Thursday said steel and aluminum tariff exemptions for the European Union, Canada, and Mexico would expire at the end of the day. Starting Friday, he said, steel imports from those countries will be subject to a 25% tariff, and aluminum imports will be hit with a 10% tariff.

The US put in place exemptions for key allies after first announcing the tariffs in March. But the exemptions were designed only to be temporary reprieves.

With negotiations going nowhere, Trump decided to go forward with the tariffs...

trump apparently wasn't getting the kickbacks or Quid Pro Quos he wanted, so BOOM goes the economy. Canada is bound to retaliate, Mexico is in no mood to play nice with trump already, and Europe? Well:

The EU is expected to respond with tariffs on a little more than $3 billion worth of American goods including motorcycles, bourbon, and blue jeans.

Considering how our economy has NOT gotten the promised boosts from Paul Ryan's godless Tax Cuts For the Rich - the 2.2 percent GDP this quarter is middling - the hit we're about to receive is gonna sting. Combine that with the fact that these tariffs are raising prices on ourselves on these imports, this is essentially the nation as a person punching ourselves in the face. Back to the Insider:

By increasing the cost of imported steel and aluminum, companies that rely on the metals will be forced to either accept the higher costs and lower profits or pass on the price increase to consumers.

For instance, the Beer Institute — an industry group that represents US brewers — warned that aluminum tariffs would drive up the price of beer cans. The Beer Institute estimated that the increased costs would in turn force brewers to save money in other areas, such as by laying off workers or raises the prices paid by consumers.

Again. We're punching ourselves in the face here.

The stock market - which didn't respond too well to trump's earlier plans to tariff the United States into Third World status - took a noticeable nosedive today much like they did they last couple of tariff announcements. You'd think Congress would notice these things and send up panic flares to their deep pocket SuperPACs to, you know, serve their own economic interests and cut trump's base off at the knees...

And that was just before 10 AM.

trump followed that up with making plans to pardon the likes of Dinesh D'Souza. I dunno if I mention him much here, but D'Souza is a failed academic who keeps selling himself as a conservative intellectual who spends far too much time insulting the ever-loving hell out of liberals like it's his only mission in life, using that reputation to shill himself to the Far Right media outlets needing an ethnic person to deflect accusations of racism that D'Souza himself revels in.

trump's pardoning is not out of any actual injustice - D'Souza was caught and plead guilty on campaign finance fraud - but because D'Souza is a political hack on trump's side of the fence. It's also rubbing this in the face of prominent trump critic Preet Bharara, the federal prosecutor who sent D'Souza to the big house (D'Souza is actually taunting Bharara about this).

But this is more than just trump giving out pardons like candy at Halloween. This is trump sending a clear message to the nation and to his political and business cronies. Via Slate.com:

First and most obviously, by pardoning D’Souza, the president is signaling—and frankly, let’s just call it shouting aloud—to the Michael Flynns and the Paul Manaforts and the Michael Cohens in his world that Everyone in America Who Helps Donald Trump will eventually get a pardon. This is how he has previously deployed his pardon power, and it is not a complicated message when there are several people around you who are contemplating plea deals versus lengthy prison sentences.

And as Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall was quick to point out, by pardoning someone as usefully racist and homophobic as D’Souza, Trump is also winkingly letting America know that this sprawling tribe of conspiracy theorists and racists and provocateurs and misogynists and performers of casual hate will always have a champion in the White House. Solid...

...While Trump’s pardon of D’Souza grows, in part, out of Republicans’ broader war on the fundamental legitimacy of campaign finance law, now is an opportune moment for the president to explicitly hop on that bandwagon. Investigations into his close allies keep centering around possible campaign finance violations in which Trump may have been complicit. By dismissing the prosecution of D’Souza’s illegal straw-donor scheme as somehow unfair and ideological, Trump is pardon-signaling, setting the table for a next round of campaign finance pardons...

The crook in the White House is letting the crooks on his team know they can get away with robbing the liquor stores and banks and pension plans of the nation.

This is all on top of how trump is abusing executive powers on immigration - #WhereAreTheChildren - and failures of leadership - we are now getting estimates that the actual death toll in Puerto Rico is over 4,600 - which have been news stories deserving far more attention than the mainstream media is giving them.

We are so very extremely royally fucked going into June.

Things That Should Worry You: April 2018 Edition

Lessee:

The trump trade war against China is escalating, and while Wall Street is doing what it can to send up the red flags - by sliding into the red ink for most of last week - it looks like trump is going to keep pushing this agenda as far as he can take because he genuinely believes "trade wars are good and easy to win".

Try telling that to the farmers who export billions to China (via CNBC):

If China follows through on its plan to impose a 25 percent tariff on soybeans, it would make global suppliers like Brazil even more attractive to Chinese buyers. It also would encourage those suppliers to add more acres of soybeans, and then negatively impact the price American farmers can get for their crop...

The lion's share of the U.S. agribusiness trade to China involves soybeans, which are grown in many farm states where Trump received strong support during the 2016 presidential election. Top soybean growing states include Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and the Dakotas...

Experts say that if China cuts agricultural exports, it could impact a wide swath of the farm economy — from small to large farmers. It could reduce profits for farmers and make them more willing to delay large purchases, such as new machinery, and encourage them to cut back in other places...

This isn't three-dimensional chess, people: it's TEN-dimensional chess, and trump can't even figure out how the horsey pieces move.

Let's look at the other foreign policy nightmare that trump can't handle: Syria.

President Donald Trump is sounding off about an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Syria, according to multiple news reports published on Thursday (via Business Insider).

But the president reportedly faced some strong opposition from top military officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford, who warned Trump of the consequences of a rapid withdrawal, during a meeting on Tuesday...

During the meeting, Dunford reportedly said Trump's plan was not productive and asked the president for clear instructions on what to do, The Associated Press reported.

Mattis chimed in and argued that a quick pull-out would not only be detrimental to the US, but doing so in a responsible manner would be logistically impossible. Mattis reportedly suggested a one-year withdrawal timeframe instead.

Trump then countered and gave officials five to six months to destroy the Islamic State and then withdraw, officials told The Associated Press.

Trump also indicated that he expects the military to succeed in destroying ISIS by October...

Cadet Bone Spurs seems to think this is a World War II video game where the targets are easy to spot, the bad guys are all in one contained area, and all we have to do is use the God cheat code to reach the final cutscene.

trump shows no sign of understanding logistics - even our military with all its experience has to pace itself - and post-war rebuilding. One of the reasons why our military stayed so long in Iraq - and why we're still in Afghanistan - is because we had to commit to nation-building efforts to give the country an infrastructure to live off of. Without those reconstruction efforts, you leave the region to stew in its own rage and allow the bad guys like the Taliban and ISIL to seep back into the mess and start over.

Meanwhile, abandoning Syria like this reconfirms the hold Assad (and Russia) will keep on whatever is left standing of Syria while the terrorist factions claim all the broken parts. America (and the Middle East) loses in the short term and we will pay the price again in the long term.

This is what you voted for, 62 million Americans. You voted for the guy with NO foreign policy experience and TERRIBLE business history to manage this nation.

We are so very fucking screwed.

Trade War 2018 All In Red Ink

Lemme see if I can show you how today's stock markets are looking right about now (1 PM EDT):

Granted, the markets can still rebound towards the end of the day, but we're already 500 points in the hole on the Dow Jones, the S&P is in the red, Nasdaq is in the red, and I have no idea what that fourth one is but it's in the red too.

This is what it looks like, donald trump, when you start a trade war with China (via Business Insider):

US stocks tumbled Monday as President Donald Trump doubled down on his criticism of Amazon, sending technology and consumer discretionary stocks lower.

The selling also comes ahead of the Trump administration's plan to unveil this week the list of Chinese imports targeted for US tariffs. The list of $50-60 billion worth of annual imports is expected to target "largely high-technology" products.

The more tech-heavy Nasdaq 100— which has been a lightning rod for market volatility in recent weeks — plummeted as much as 3.3% to lead all major US indexes. Meanwhile, the benchmark S&P 500 dropped as much as 2%, and the 30-company Dow Jones industrial average slid more than 2.1% at one point.

Among the technology firms worst hit were chipmakers, including Lam Research, Micron Technology, Nvidia, Intel, and Cisco, which all dropped at least 3.7%. Note that due to their position in supply chain, these firms are more vulnerable to geopolitical turmoil, particularly as it pertains to China...

If you remember the last time the stock market nose-dived like this about a month ago, that related to trump's announcement to place tariffs on steel and aluminum. This is merely Phase Two, where the other nations start responding to trump's stupidity on trade, meaning we're about to see a lot more red on the stock tickers. To CNN for this part:

The Chinese government said that tariffs on about $3 billion worth of US imports are going into effect Monday, hitting 128 products ranging from pork, meat and fruit to steel pipes...

...China's commerce and finance ministries said in statements late Sunday that authorities are imposing tariffs of 15% on 120 American products — such as fruits, nuts, wine and steel pipes — and 25% on eight other products, including pork and recycled aluminum.

Those products make up just a tiny portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars of goods shipped between the two countries each year. But the tariffs are alarming news for the affected industries.

The US National Pork Producers Council warned last month that the measures would "have a significant negative impact on rural America." It said the US pork industry sold $1.1 billion worth of products to China last year, making it the third largest export market...

I think a lot of pork-related farming communities are about to regret voting for trump in the next thirty days...

Also, trump's war against Amazon - because CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post - isn't doing the stock market any favors, adding onto the growing economic imbalance that is going to affect the national (and global) economy for the worse.

Don't forget how much of a "genius" this trump guy is: "Trade wars are good, and easy to win."

All that red on the spreadsheets. Even a C-student in Econ 1101 from UF can tell you that's not winning.

Right about now, I would encourage the Wharton School of Business to revoke trump's degree in Economics, because he has clearly not earned it.

Welcome to the Trade Wars.

One Two trump Four Let's Have Ourselves a Trade War

I wrote what felt like ages ago a What If scenario of what trump's first year of a presidency would look like. Actually it was in February 2016. What happened was two months later the Boston Globe went and did their own predictions, and I kinda felt like bragging that I had gotten there first.

But the Globe beat me at considering one disaster that I had overlooked: the likelihood that trump would start some kind of trade war - especially with China - as part of trump's nationalist-populist agenda to take America back to an age of protectionism and high tariffs.

Well, it didn't happen in trump's first year - although there were moments he threatened to roll something out - but hey, now that trump is at a stage where his entire administration is falling apart, why not go the extra mile and wreck the economy by boosting tariffs on steel and aluminum?

Via CNBC:

President Donald Trump's plan to slap tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel could help U.S. producers, but it could also fuel inflation, slow the economy and trigger other retaliatory actions against U.S. industries, analysts said.

These fears weighed on stocks, and the market sold off sharply after initially flip-flopping amid confusion over whether there would be an announcement or not. But stocks sold off sharply when Trump surprised the markets and announced a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum.

"One of the largest fears we have is we've got tariffs. We could have trade wars, and it could blow up NAFTA negotiations, and nobody wins a trade war," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR.

The Dow closed down 420 points to 24,608, and the S&P 500 slid 1.3 percent to 2,677. The move was viewed as one of the most protectionist actions from the Trump administration, and it is one of his policies that has most worried markets, even as stocks have rallied on tax reform and his other pro-growth policies.

"Tariffs would probably have the unfortunate effect of both slowing growth and accelerating inflation, and that's not a good thing," said Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies. "For this economy, this is the worst possible time to be doing that."

The effects of what trump proposes won't just have a negative effect on the stock market.

I could link you to other economic pundits - say Anne Lowry at the Atlantic or David Lynch at the Washington Post - but let me have a go at it. Me, a barely-competent person at finances who got a C in Economics 1101 back at Gainesville (GO GATORS) in 1990 or so.

How trump's tariffs proposal are gonna suck:

• The tariffs are like a tax on the items in question, meaning the costs on these items will go up. While the steel mills may see more profits out of it, all of the other industries that build using steel will have to pay more and will pass those costs onto the consumers, namely us. I'm seeing reports of how this will affect the automakers, especially the ones here in the U.S. I just spotted a report from Coors about how this will affect their beer canning. These tariffs do not happen in a vacuum: Every other industry that relies on cheap materials for cheap products will have to make those products more expensive to us consumers. And those industries will see their profits decline, leading to lost jobs and a downward cycle.
• The tariffs will spark a trade war, and not just against countries who compete against us but also our allies. Other countries will not like having access to a solid market like ours curtailed with a tax on steel as steep as a 25 percent increase. The early observations was that trump wants this trade war as a way of attacking China, but on steel I'm finding out the nation getting hit hardest is going to be CANADA: Canada ships us about 11 percent of imported steel while China ships less than Germany (3 percent). Canada just happens to be one of our biggest trading partners, and also our sole neighboring nation to the North. PISSING THEM OFF IS NOT A GOOD IDEA, EH?
• Tariffs make economies worse, not better. And this one I learned from watching Ben Stein in that Ferris Bueller movie:

While Smoot-Hawley wasn't the prime cause of the Great Depression, it did make things worse.

Just on those three points alone that I can think up off the top of my head - coming from a C-grade economics student - I've made salient arguments why tariffs need to be treated with more subtlety and finesse (say, very minimal increases on a tariff while pursuing connected policies that would alleviate any negative responses). Instead, here comes the ole Shitgibbon with a sledgehammer looking to start a fight with some of the largest economic powerhouses on the planet.

This is a fight that by all accounts a lot of trump's own people were counseling against. I can't link to anything yet, but I thought I saw something online from experts noting that these particular tariffs will wreck whatever economic gains were to be coming out of Congress' massive tax-cut boondoggle.

Here it comes, America, the train wreck Boston Globe and a lot of other experts warned you was coming if trump got into the White House on his protectionist, isolationist platform.

62 million of you voted for this. And now you're going to find out that economics is a lot harder than simple "buy low sell high." And that the guy you backed isn't a financial genius, just the grandest biggest con artist of all time.

Gods help us.