Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

[JimC]

Canada is readying its Panzers for a sudden thrust into northern Minnesota...

[pErvinalia]

Canada is readying its Panzers and Lugers for a sudden thrust into northern Minnesota...

[Tero]

LOOKING back from the vantage point of 2025*, economic historians are starting to write their analyses of the Trump slump. It seemed to appear from nowhere with the economy growing at around the trend rate (2.3% in 2017) and the stockmarket booming. The abrupt change came in March 2018 when President Donald Trump decided to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. "Trade wars are good and easy to win" he said. Both China and the European Union (EU) retaliated in kind without trying to escalate the tensions. It might have ended there.

But unfortunately, the president's more mainstream advisers like Gary Cohn had been sidelined by a more aggressive group that saw the trade deficit as the key measure of economic progress. In this mercantilist view, any American deficit was proof of cheating. Unfortunately, the president had also enthusiastically passed a tax-cutting programme which resulted in demand sucking more imports into the country. The trade deficit widened rather than declined. So in late 2018, just before the mid-term Congressional elections, an enraged President passed a general tariff along the lines of the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. The other leading economies had no choice but to respond in kind, in the hope of dragging America back to the negotiating table. Business confidence—and the stockmarket—slumped.
The Economist

[Tero]

Jobs and then other jobs:
As the Wall Street Journal noted, U.S. steel mills employ 140,000 people. Companies that use steel employ 6.5 million.

"We're really hoping that the president will hear the concerns that the aerospace, soft drink and automobile manufacturers have raised and take a different course before next week," McGreevy said.

Beer first, America 2nd.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (a walking caricature of a plutocrat, who is in fact nothing but a plutocrat) explains to the peasants how this isn't a problem:

[L'Emmerdeur]

A rundown of the week's news--

'The News Has Finally Reduced Even Me to a Quivering Mess, Begging For Mercy'

Sweet Titty-Fucking Christ, how is there this much news in ONE WEEK? There wasn't this much news in some YEARS of the Obama administration. There wasn't this much news in the entire motherfucking Renaissance!

(As always, I invite you to check out the post on my humble site, at: showercapblog.com/...)

I apologize in advance for the sheer length of this. I even cut the part where Tom Bombadil bought a jet ski with government funds. Let's just dive into this septic tank we call...the news.

[Seabass]

[Tero]

....from Reuters: Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum would substantially raise costs and therefore prices of cars and trucks sold in America. "The (U.S.) Administration's decision to impose substantial steel and aluminum tariffs will adversely impact automakers, the automotive supplier community and consumers," the automaker told Reuters. Toyota added that more than 90 percent of the steel and aluminum purchased for cars built in the United States is sourced from the country.

[Brian Peacock]

‘Pure madness’: Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center.

These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. And he confides to friends that he is uncertain about whom to trust.

Trump’s closest West Wing confidante, Hope Hicks — the communications director who often acted as a de facto Oval Office therapist — announced her resignation last week, leaving behind a team the president views more as paid staff than surrogate family. So concerned are those around Trump that some of the president’s oldest friends have been urging one another to be in touch — the sort of familiar contacts that often lift his spirits.

In an unorthodox presidency in which emotion, impulse and ego often drive events, Trump’s ominous moods manifested themselves last week in his zigzagging positions on gun control; his shock trade war that jolted markets and was opposed by Republican leaders and many in his own administration; and his roiling feud of playground insults with Attorney General Jeff Sessions....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... e67a39a2fc

[pErvinalia]

And when he's "working" he sits around all day and watches Fox News.

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's a fake recording, because fake news CNN has it (they say, but we shouldn't believe them because Trump says they're fake news and he very rarely lies). And he was just joking anyway. Such a card.

"Trump on China's Xi consolidating power: 'Maybe we'll give that a shot some day'"

President Donald Trump bemoaned a decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton after the 2016 presidential election, decrying a "rigged system" that still doesn't have the "right people" in place to fix it, during a freewheeling speech to Republican donors in Florida on Saturday.

In the closed-door remarks, a recording of which was obtained by CNN, Trump also praised China's President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn't mind making such a maneuver himself.

"He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."

The remarks, delivered inside the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate during a lunch and fundraiser, were upbeat, lengthy, and peppered with jokes and laughter.

[JimC]

They laughed at Hitler in the early 30s...

[pErvinalia]

Trump definitely has a thing for dictators.

[Hermit]

They laughed at Hitler in the early 30s...

Who did?

Also, by then Hitler had a dozen years of experience as a politician under his belt. He took over a tiny splinter party, renamed it, reshaped it and turned it into the biggest party in the Weimar Republic with the most bums ( ) on parliamentary seats.

[Tero]

Trump could, and should, call the trade problems a mess. Not at all his making. They were there all along.

Under WTO treaties and a series of pacts modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement, prescription drugmakers in the U.S. and Europe are guaranteed long-term global monopolies on life-saving medication. This encourages predatory pricing, restricts access to medical care and burdens public budgets ― especially in poor countries.

The labor rules included in those same agreements have encouraged manufacturing jobs to flow from the U.S. to countries that suppress wages and workers’ rights with authoritarian tactics and outright violence. Meanwhile, multinational corporations are granted the right to challenge the laws and regulations produced by democratic governments before international courts.

These are all just examples. The core idea was to empower corporations to drive social progress that, globalization proponents believed, governments were incapable of delivering.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tr ... ec353a4c95

Blocking trade however will not work anymore.