JaxPolitix

POST 1168

Tariffs

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Start with what we know.

Tariffs are a tax on goods imported to this country. They are paid by the importers. That money goes to the U.S. government. The importers raise prices to their customers, like retailers, to cover their extra costs. Those retailers then raise the selling price of the imported goods to cover their increased cost. When we consumers buy the imported goods we do so at significantly inflated prices.

Turning that explanation around, we consumers pay a higher price to the retailer, who passes that along to the importer who pays it to the government. The only thing needed to complete the explanation is what government does with that extra money that came from you and me.

What we know is that Trump intends to extend his massive tax cut program for rich people that began in his first administration. He may tack on even more tax reductions, almost exclusively to the benefit of very rich people and corporations. The money they no longer will pay to fund the government has to come from somewhere and we are that somewhere.

In other words, it is yet another massive transfer of wealth – in the trillions of dollars – from us to rich people. Trump is crashing our government and fleecing you and me.

From Michael de Adder:

3-D Chess

As we watch the most clueless man ever to occupy the Oval Office — and that’s really saying something — his supporters still insist that, when it comes to tariffs, Donald J. Trump is playing 3-D chess. The phrase “playing three-dimensional chess” implies a level of strategic genius so advanced that the rest of us, mere mortals stuck on the regular chessboard, just can’t grasp it. But Trump doesn’t even seem to know that a tariff is a tax — something most people learn in ninth-grade social studies. It’s a fee on goods entering the country, paid by the citizen, not the government. How can someone be playing upper-level trade strategy when they don’t even know what a tariff is?

From Lawrence O’Donnell, April 9, 2025, referring to the Trump administration’s boundless idiocies, cruelties and cluelessness:

It’s the bonfires of the stupidities.

Stock Prediction of the Week

Tesla stock price has been hammered by Trump’s tariffpocolypse, slipping from $428 per share to as low as $222. UBS cut its TSLA price target to $190 and has a sell rating on the shares. In other words, in just 2 months the value of Elon Musk’s Tesla stock has been cut in half. But that isn’t the big story.

If/when the stock drops as predicted by UBS to $190 Musk will have an enormous opportunity to regain ownership of an even greater percentage of the company and do so on the cheap. And when Trump further plotz-potchkies with market forces, the price may drop still further. Plus, as Musk continues to rampage through the government, ruining the lives of workers and abandoning all Americans, he’s sure to become even more reviled, killing sales of his vehicles, with a resultant further drop in stock price. Then he can buy back his company – how is it said? – on the really cheap.

And that’s the basic mechanics of last week’s market manipulation and likely insider trading stimulated by Trump’ post. From CNBC:

At 9:37 a.m. ET [April 9], just minutes after the opening bell, Trump posted on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” That post ended with the letters “DJT,” which is both the president’s initials and the ticker symbol for Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology, in which he holds a majority stake.

Theoretically, anyone who bought into the market that minute on Trump’s urging netted a big return. Stocks shot up in a historic reversal in afternoon trading after Trump announced a walkback on some tariffs, a stark turn after his April 2 announcement of new import taxes torpedoed the market.

Too bad you didn’t have billions of dollars to gamble like that, courtesy of Trump’s market manipulation.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

(Tip of the hat to David Corn of Mother Jones for the borrowed title.)

So many contestants, so few awards .  .  .

This week’s winner is King Dumbass himself from his spewing on April 11, insisting that his trade war with much of the world is great – like nothing anybody has ever seen.

“We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly. DJT.” *

Policy? Seriously?

Righteous Deportations – At Last You’re Safe From Frogs

From Masha Gessen, New York Times, April 6 in America’s Police State Has Arrived:

The Russian scientist was bringing in frog embryos that the Department of Homeland Security says she did not declare properly.

She was arrested and perhaps deported. Gessen went on to say,

.  .  .  we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and [ICE will] find the infraction.”

This was not just another ICE raid by masked, unidentified thugs, aimed at people holding valid visas.

Said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, just back from playing dress-up for a photo-op of her brandishing an automatic rifle pointed at an ICE agent’s head, “This was the righteous protection of the homeland from an invasion by a stealthy Venezuelan gang of frogs trying to bring this great nation to its knees. Our excellent ICE Swamp Stingers caught ’em in the embryo stage, immediately revoked their work permits and put them on the next C-130 rendition plane bound for El Salvador. They were lucky they weren’t treated like I treated my puppy.” Then she flashed a smile, showing her excellent new teeth and once again thanked her dentists by name.

She went on to say that the frogs have now hatched and have been incarcerated in El Salvador’s maximum security gulag. It was unnecessary to shave their heads, because, she said, “Neither tadpoles nor frogs have hair, but we confirmed that President Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez of El Salvador made sure that every one of those undocumented amphibians was perp-hopped, heads down, into the darkest, dampest corner of the basement of that torture prison.”

Then Noem squinted menacingly, saying, “Now let’s see if some activist, woke, frog hugging judge tries to return them to our homeland. We’ll just ignore him. He can croak, for all we care.”

Meanwhile, reports Gessen,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has bragged to reporters about revoking the legal status of upward of 300 people [and an unknown number of frogs] and promised there would be more: “We’re looking every day for these lunatics,” said Rubio.

Rubio proudly announced that the visa revocations of students, biomedical scientists, Canadians in Canada, amphibians and other “lunatics” were not announced in advance of incarcerations and that he didn’t know if the frogs were Venezuelan gang frogs. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said, “because they had gang tattoos. and none of them was wearing a MAGA hat.”

When asked for a comment on these deportations without due process, Kermit the frog merely ribbited sadly, saying, “This isn’t the American pond I grew up in.”

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* Actually, there was more dumbass to Trump’s dumbass quote, but you get the picture.

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