tariffs

Clueless In DC

Apr 13

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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Pretending Not To Know

Jul 15

Reading time – 1:31; Viewing time – 2:19 . . .

Do you remember when Republicans held themselves out as the solid bulwark against the Russians? When Republicans represented that they were the true defenders and stiff backbone of our country? When Republicans made it clear that anything remotely less than hostile to the Russians was unpatriotic? I do, too.

I remember Richard Nixon, the “commie-baiter,” and Ronald “Tear down this wall!” Reagan. Those were the days when Republicans had spine. They were all about tough talk and standing up to the Russians.

Now, though, we have an enemy of our country, those same Russians, attacking us with cyber warfare and undermining our most cherished values and rights. Our president steadfastly refuses to stop them and most Congressional Republicans are silent about that.

Trump continues to attack and embarrass our allies. He imposes tariffs on our best friends to no economic benefit to us and, in fact, to our detriment. He attacks NATO, the alliance that has kept the west strong for seven decades.

He receives ongoing, concrete proof that Vladimir Putin has directed his henchmen to undermine America. They’ve gone about it with electronic guns blazing and Trump sits on his hands. Trump continues to treat Putin like his Godfather, as in: Corleone. He meets with Putin when there are no other Americans present, leaving us to wonder about the harm he allows to be done to our country. Who are the Republicans speaking out against that? What are they doing to protect us? What happened to their spine?

Buy this book and read it.

Yeah, Republicans, I get that Trump will tweet mean, untrue things about you if you don’t support him. We all know that you’ll get primaried from the right if you don’t suck up to Trump or at least keep quiet. But this isn’t about Trump’s constant lying or his disgracing of the Presidency. This is about confronting and stopping threats to our very democracy. This is the time to stand up and be counted. If we don’t stop this now, there may not be a second chance.

So, tell me, Republicans in Congress, what is it that you’re pretending not to know?

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Tariffs, Afghanistan and Republicans

Aug 05

Reading time – 3:45; Viewing time – 5:00 . . .

Frequent reader, insightful commenter and friend John Calia directed me to a blog by John Mauldin discussing the issue of tariffs and trade wars. Mauldin is comprehensive and clear in his work and I urge you to link through and read his offering.

I was at one time an undergraduate econ major and I recall clearly a lecture by my professor, Dr. George Thatcher at Miami University. He talked about tariffs in great detail and showed how counter-productive they are. He was far too much the gentleman to use the word “idiotic” to describe them, but that word comes to mind as I conjure his clarity of description. He convinced me then of the certain backfire of tariffs and I have seen nothing in the intervening decades to change my mind.

Mauldin is spot on, especially as he invokes the obvious, now called “game theory,” in which other countries will not sit idle as we attempt to stack the deck in favor of the U.S. Other countries will adjust and act in their own best interests. Tariffs will backfire and hurt us greatly.

The Trump administration is focused on two – and only two – objectives. The first and most important is that everything is entirely about Trump getting continuous applause and accolades in his reality-TV-show administration. Declaring us victims of unfair trade deals and promising protective tariffs stokes his “base” and delivers a thundering applause line that feeds his narcissism. And there is a complete absence of people who actually know something about tariffs. What those experts say doesn’t trigger applause, so they’re of no use to Trump.

The second objective is driven by Stephen Bannon, who proudly proclaims that he wants to bring the establishment crashing down. If destroying the established order in its entirety is what is most important to Bannon and, by extension, is important to Trump, tariffs will be a huge aid in the effort. The result will not be pretty for the rest of us, but Bannon will be smiling and thumping his chest and congratulating Trump on how brilliant he is. I’m not sure, though, that even the America Firsters will be thumping their chests when we see hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear and former international friends being not at all friendly to us.

For now, pity General Kelly, who has taken a job where internecine warfare in the White House is the norm. Sadly, I think the likelihood of his success at establishing order and, in the present context, preventing worldwide disorder by means of tariffs, is next to nonexistent. Kelly and the nation deserve better.

And another thing . . .

Our war in Afghanistan began with President George W. Bush declaring that we were going after the al Qaeda bad guys who attacked us on 9/11, this following his pulling our CIA people out of Tora Bora and allowing Osama bin Laden to escape. One would think, then, that once al Qaeda had been essentially eliminated that we’d bring our troops home. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the mission morphed to ensuring that future al Qaeda bad guys wouldn’t have safe haven in Afghanistan. Did you ever see a statement defining that? What would a “no safe haven” Afghanistan look like to our troops slogging through the Afghan desert and mountains? How would we know that we had achieved that goal?

Then the mission morphed again, this time to fighting the Taliban. I don’t recall the stated goal, nor a justification for warring against them. Note that the Taliban was composed of Afghans – they were religious fundamentalists waging a civil war in that most uncivil country. Why were we involved in that?

Then the mission changed again to supporting the Afghan military, this with no specifically stated end goal other than, “until they can stand on their own,” something that has never happened in recorded history. How will we know when that has happened?

The goal posts keep getting moved and this is by far the longest war in American history, continued now through three American presidencies. Somebody please tell me why we are making war in Afghanistan and how we’ll know we’ve accomplished our goals so that we can bring our people home.

And finally . . .

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) published a stunning article in Politico entitled My Party Is In Denial About Donald Trump. It is a call to courage and action and I urge you to read it, keeping in mind that this was penned by a Republican from a very red state,

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

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Disambiguation from the political and social musings of Jack Altschuler