Stupid or Evil? It’s Definitely Not Liberation
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
I don’t have the words for Donald Trump’s liberation-by-massive-tax-increase yesterday. I’ll let an academic handle it:
The “economically illiterate” bullshit it repeated was the percentage Trump claimed other countries assessed the US. The numbers are skewed.
One potential source for the inaccuracy: AI. Krishnan Rohit queried several AI platforms and received a freakishly uniform response which may explain Trump’s numbers.
The rest of the thread can be found here.
Somebody with more smarts about large language models (LLMs) and AI will have to validate this, but it sure looks fishy. Given Team Trump’s predilection for appointing/hiring individuals based on ideology and affinity with Trump, it’s not impossible AI was relied on during the tariff formulation and rollout process, versus the expertise and experience of qualified individuals.
Whatever the case, Trump just rolled out a massive tax increase on the American public. Oddly, CNN conveyed this succinctly in spite of its bent toward pro-Trump rhetoric:
Note the rollout using one of the stupidest Trump appointees across either of Trump’s terms — Peter Navarro. He’d parrot bullshit all day if a mic is shoved in his face.
Also note the phrase “repeated belief,” not a fact but a belief. Team Trump expects the public take what they are saying on faith and not on the basis of past experience.
And then the outright lies CNN’s Chris Isidore points out in that bit emphasized with a red underline: tariffs are NOT paid abroad but here in the US by the importer. The tariffs are added to the cost of goods sold, thereby increasing the likelihood prices to consumers will be higher very soon.
Another academic explains how tariffs — taxes on buyers of imported goods work. See Richard Wolff’s explanation at 5:17 to 6:20 in this video:
You like coffee and tea? It’s going to be more expensive, especially since we don’t grow tea here and our coffee industry is minuscule, consisting of Kona coffee beans. Even fabric for clothing made in the US will be more expensive because we don’t have a fabric industry here in the US any longer at any serious scale; it would take years to re-establish manufacturing here.
Re-establishing industries to replace products now so much more expensive will be challenging given the cost of materials and the competition for labor both to build facilities and staff them after completion.
It’ll take much longer than the 10 years over which this massive tax increase is supposed to generate $6 trillion dollars in revenue — that’s about $1800 per American citizen, $150 more a month.
This country has made this same stupid choice before, so stupid it became part of a movie’s economics teacher’s schtick:
This entire mess represents two facets of Trump his base haven’t accepted or ignored. He’s the kind of guy who likes to destroy stuff but can’t successfully build a better version afterward, as if he’s permanently stuck in the demolition phase of construction.
He’s also a plain old fashioned mafioso. All of this is a form of shakedown, borne by the American public as well as global trading partners. You know he’d lift tariffs on any country that offered him vigorish of some form. Quid pro quos are his thing.
He’s a made man — which may explain why tiny islands with US bases on them being assessed tariffs, but Russia isn’t.
Are we really supposed to believe that because trade with Russia is so low that Russia should escape tariffs altogether, while our most valuable trade partners haven’t?
Ah, a chance to Restate the Obvious (which was the name of the blog I had back when I was working):
If, as expected, US tariffs are met with reciprocal tariffs, then it doesn’t matter who ‘pays’ them.
All $12 trillion (or whatever the total will be), go out of private pockets and into gummint pockets.
Not something I would have predicted that Tea Partiers, Reagan Republicans. Bush neocons and MAGAts would be celebrating.
Harry, there are times when I swear you’re here just to be a resident PITA.
An existing trade imbalance combined with a dramatic decrease in consumption by the world’s largest economy means dick-all with regard to reciprocal tariffs. Not to mention the affected countries are already looking to each other to replace products they’ve been sourcing from the US.
Maybe it isn’t a obvious as I thought.
Whatever the value of trade that gets tariffed (and the EU has a gimmick to do it to services, too), all of it on each side comes out of private pockets and goes into some gummint pocket.
$12 trillion is Navarro’s number for 10 years. Nobody has any idea what the real number will be after recession, substitution, redirection but $12T is as good a number as any other.
“$12 trillion is Navarro’s number for 10 years. ”
Maybe it isn’t as obvious as I thought that Navarro is an idiot.
If Navarro said it, you should have disregarded it as trash. It’s as if you didn’t read anything about Peter Navarro here at emptywheel over the last six years.
“Trump is making a deliberate decision to transfer wealth from consumers to businesses.”
– WSJ
Trump or Lutnick?
One of his enablers (Lutnick? It was just a passing clip among many I heard on radio as I was driving) actually repeated almost word for word ol’ J.D. Rockefeller’s reaction to Black Friday in ’29 as a good opportunity ‘to pick up attractively priced securities.’
Warren Buffet got his start by buying companies whose stock value was less than their cash on hand. We haven’t seen that for generations but I am keeping my eye on Apple.
Um – no, not really. You may be better versed in this stuff than I am (probably are, to be fair), but you seem to be missing Part B of this prescription. Income taxes, especially the marginal rates for high earners and all corporate taxes, will be lowered, fulfilling the campaign promise of a Big Tax Cut. This will be geared in such a way that someone earning a five-figure income will come out “ahead” to the tune of $50-$100 per year, while someone earning a seven-figure income will gain tens of thousands (at least). Of course, everyone (regardless of income) has to buy shirts, coffee, and the occasional toaster or TV set, so the increased cost (averaging around $1,800 per year) will fall equally on rich and poor alike.
Gee, $100 – $1,800 = ($1,500)
But $20,000 – $1,800 – $18,200
The relatively progressive income tax system, first implemented (IIRC) by Theodore Roosevelt, will be largely replaced with what amounts to a sales tax – the old system championed by, say, McKinley.
“Gummint” money stays the same or drops. Rich Dude’s money grows. Regular Joe’s money drops.
This is going to be bad. Remember 2008? Multiply the pain 1000%. One thing to keep an eye out for is the international community and if they decide to disconnect from the US. Don’t think it could happen? They may be forced to as matter of survival.
France’s Macron has called for a suspension of EU corporation investments in the US. https://www.reuters.com/markets/frances-macron-calls-suspension-investment-us-after-tariffs-2025-04-03/
It’s gonna be interesting to see how much solidarity the EU can muster. I RTed a real value of the tariffs thing on Bluesky which shows there’s real variation. Bc Ireland’s drug exports are currently exempted, our tariffs are actually lower than the UK’s.
If they take their cues from Doug Ford (of ALL people) that anti-Americanism has a strong constituency, and Mark Carney that determined confrontation with Trump pays immediate tangible political benefits, they’ll band together against us. If the Liberals blow out the Conservatives in Canada at the end of the month, Europe and Australia will fall all over themselves to confront us
I’ve been reading Paul Krugman’s newsletter. He was trying to figure out where Trump got the numbers for his chart purportedly showing the tariffs other countries charge us vs what we presently charge them. It is not remotely accurate. I’ve read others speculate that he (his aides or AI) took the trade deficit between us and each country and just divided it by half and turned it into a percentage.
With Trump’s history of inflating property valuations on his financials and pulling big numbers out of thin air for his rallies, we should have expected a glitzy but shoddy presentation. “All that glitters is not gold”.
The likelihood that the tariffs are going to accomplish his goals for them in the short or intermediate term are nil. And, if he had any doubt about the economic harm his tariffs are already causing, he need only look at the stock market.
So other than his desire to return to his vision of the Gilded Age, what is his game? I suspect that he will cave in to the tanking stock market and start cutting bad deals with other countries. He can then declare a victory a day or a week and watch as the market regains its footing. He does have a habit of breaking things, kind of repairing them and crowing about it. And if he and his friends make some $$ trading on insider information, who will say anything? He’s gutted the SEC.
That trade deficit line is not speculation. That’s exactly how they say they did it — and it’s nuts. There’s nothing reciprocal in these tariffs – it’s just pulling crap out of thin air.
The depth of the market fall today says two things. First, it says that “Wall Street” doesn’t believe Trump’s claims that these tariffs are a good strategic economic move that will benefit the US generally and Wall Street specifically. Second (as noted by IIRC Steve Liesman at CNBC, and others), the stock market declines in the past three weeks were Wall Street’s attempts to price in what they thought Trump’s tariffs would end up being. The fact that things crashed as bad as it did is a signal that Wall Street severely underestimated how bad/crazy/evil the actual tariff announcement would be.
“Worse than our worst-case scenario” is a phrase I recall hearing, but don’t remember who the speaker was.
Wall Street has some very good people – really! – working there. Mostly. Certainly better than the people advising The Felon Guy on economics and politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists
People misunderstand the name “liberation day”. It is named this way because you have to be liberated from your brain to support it
I was liberated from my stock portfolio.
Our 401ks are in the toilet but at least our Social Security is safe. Oh wait.
The GOP has long wanted our Social Security to be invested in the market. I can’t with this much stupidity.
Stupid with olympic gold medal incompetence to go with it. A hallmark of all actions since Trump took office. I laughed when Navarro quoted his absurd revenue numbers the other day.
Navarro claims to be an economist, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about it.
Competence—let alone expertise—is literally the enemy of the administration. Likewise with science and social science. They’re platforming charlatans; ‘photo-operatives;’ and people able to say insane stuff with a straight face.
The administration’s friends are magical thinking; fantasy; self-aggrandizement; and idiocracy.
Is Laura “loony” Loomer trump’s Rasputin?
But doesn’t he get all his ideas from renowned economist Ron Vara?
I’m going with STUPID and EVIL. Stupid as in @ JamesSurowiecki:
“Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.”
https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942
And Evil as in what Rayne says about mafioso and what @ ChrisMurphyCT says about destroying democracy:
“Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A to explain his plan and how we fight back.”
https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1907630514493681847
I think Sen. Murphy is right. His objectives are not economic. He will play Caesar, bestowing waivers on his special “friends”. What Trump may not have realized is that foreign countries may tire of Trump’s games.
Russia, China. NK…
The only meaningful country in your comment is China. And I’d throw in the Arab countries. But all of those countries can play Trump like a bad fiddle.
Oh, Russia isn’t tired of the games at all! Especially since they didn’t get any new tariffs, but also because it’s popcorn time watching us alienate our erstwhile friends, allies, and trading partners.
To really drive home to Americans that American importers, and not the foreign countries, are paying the tariffs the media should post monthly how much specific American companies are paying in these import taxes. For example, report that company A paid X amount of money in April, company B paid Y amount, etc. That will drive it home in black and white that Americans are paying these tariffs. Not China, not Mexico, not …. Americans!
You sure that will work?
Many don’t realize that manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers have been jacking up prices to record profits and business executive paydays.
They only see that it’s inflation with no idea who’s creating that inflation.
Yes, it would help. You make a good but separate point. I have encouraged the legacy media to report recent research that found that in past inflationary periods about 11% of the inflation on average could be attributed to corporate greed, while slightly more than 50% of inflation could be attributed to corporate greed in this latest period. The media never reported that.
More than ever, I’m thinking that The Felon Guy played hooky as much as possible when he was a kid. He certainly missed out on a lot of learning that most of us got.
That, and having other people take exams for him…
He learned to be a street hustler, bully and ability to recognize suckers..
Until yesterday, I would have described trump as a mercantilist. But mercantilists sought to have positive trade balances everywhere.
This notion of trade equality with the penguins is sui generis.
I wonder where he got it. I feel sure that somewhere in the fever swamps of American economic ‘common sense’ there is a guru, though this is a new one on me.
Also, when is Wharton going to withdraw his degree?
To clarify, Trump spent his first two years at Fordham, then transferred to Penn where he got an undergraduate degree of some unspecified major from Wharton. Many confuse this with a highly esteemed MBA from Wharton, which Trump certainly does not have. He has two years of general business courses of which he either clearly skipped or slept through
You don’t always have to be a good student or student at all to be successful.
If you have street smarts, you can make it.
Criminal gang leaders don’t learn the trade in school.
Trump learned how to be an ass hole, crook, liar from his father, Cohn, Capone, Hitler, Putin.
I doubt in school and it’s paid off.
And surrounded himself with similarly skilled people; his lawyers don’t seem to be able and/or smart but they figured out how to beat the system.
trump is driving the wrong way down the expressway…
welding glasses obscuring dim headlights hurtling tons of machinery approaching 140 miles an hour….
Bobbing to the tunes of ‘Rack n’ Ruin, the White House house band….wheezin’ horns to a slurry of booze and god knows what.. all the while…cars whizzing by as they lean on their horns. ‘hey! assshole! pull over!
Yer goin’ the wrong way you blind fuuuucker!
Geeezus, he’s gonna get us all killed!
Meanwhile, on the noise over to faux…. “another glorious achievement by the hair furor!”
Oblivious to sirens and flashing strobe lights on the cop cars….
My pappy said, “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Trade Likin’ ”
Pulled out of San Pedro late one night
The moon and the stars was shinin’ bright
We was drivin’ up to Capitol Hill
Passing cars like they was standing still
All of a sudden in a wink of an eye
A foreign sedan passed us by
I said, “Boys, that’s a mark for me”
By then the taillight was all you could see
Now the fellas was ribbin’ me for bein’ behind
So I thought I’d make the Linkin’ unwind
Took my foot off the gas and man alive
I shoved it on down into overdrive
Wound it up to a 110
My speedometer said that I hit top end
My foot was glued like lead to the floor
That’s all there is and there ain’t no more
Now the boys all thought I’d lost my sense
And telephone poles looked like a picket fence
They said, “Slow down, I see spots
The lines on the road just look like dots”
Took a corner, sideswiped a truck
Crossed my fingers just for luck
My fenders was clickin’ the guardrail posts
The guy beside me was white as a ghost
Smoke was comin’ from out of the back
When I started to gain on that Kia hatchback
Knew I could catch him, I thought I could pass
Don’t you know by then we’d be low on gas?
We had flames comin’ from out of the side
Feel the tension, man, what a ride
I said, “Look out, boys, I’ve got a license to fly”
And that Kia pulled over and let us by
Now all of a sudden she started to knockin’
And down in the dips, she started to rockin’
I looked in my mirror, a red light was blinkin’
The cops was after my Hot Rod Linkin’
They arrested me and they put me in jail
And called my pappy to throw my bail
And he said, “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln”
Ah… Commander Coty and the Lost Planet Airmen!
well done.
classic
Frank Zappa’s pithier lyrics (from the song “Bowtie Daddy”) along the same line:
Don’t try to do no thinkin’
Just go on with your drinkin’
Just have your fun, you old son of a gun
Then drive home in your Lincoln
Dow Jones top 20 worst drops in history.
1 2020-03-16 20,188.52 −2,997.10 Trump did that!
2 2020-03-12 21,200.62 −2,352.60 Trump did that!
3 2020-03-09 23,851.02 −2,013.76 Trump did that!
4 2020-06-11 25,128.17 −1,861.82 Trump did that!
5 2025-04-03 40,545.93 −1,679.39 Trump did that!
6 2020-03-11 23,553.22 −1,464.94 Trump did that!
7 2020-03-18 19,898.92 −1,338.46 Trump did that!
8 2022-09-13 31,104.97 −1,276.37
9 2020-02-27 25,766.64 −1,190.95 Trump did that!
10 2018-02-05 24,345.75 −1,175.21 Trump did that!
11 2022-05-18 31,490.07 −1,164.52
12 2024-12-18 42,326.87 −1,123.03
13 2022-05-05 32,997.97 −1,063.09
14 2024-08-05 38,703.27 −1,033.99
15 2018-02-08 23,860.46 −1,032.89 Trump did that!
16 2020-02-24 27,960.80 −1,031.61 Trump did that!
17 2022-08-26 32,283.40 −1,008.38
18 2022-04-22 33,811.40 −981.36
19 2020-04-01 20,943.51 −973.65 Trump did that!
20 2020-03-05 26,121.28 −969.58 Trump did that!
Oouch’mon… as they say in Scotland…
And numbers never lie… I handle money for a living…
You can try and make them lie, but in the end, they never do.
With the caveat that Trump’s economic policy is and always has been, to use a term of art, hot dog shit, I feel like the analytical lens you’ve employed is less than ideal. Given inflation and the effects of economic growth, markets have, on balance, risen over time. So when looking at something like “how bad is a given day on the stock market,” percentage drop is a better metric than gross drop — something that’s demonstrated by the fact that there’s nothing from before 2018 on that list, and it can’t be the case that ALL of the 20 worst days on the stock market have occurred in the last 7-ish years. (See, e.g., the crash of ’29, Great Recession, etc.). Maybe with Trump’s genius policies, they will be soon. /s
But of the top 20 drops as a percentage (link below), only three from your list appear there — all from within a single week in March 2020. Importantly, I don’t think (reiterating my caveat from above) saying that “Trump did those” is in any real sense accurate. Certainly, his response to Covid was horrific — in all regards, economic included. However, that was so early in the pandemic that those drops had to have turned more on global uncertainty and the concomitant fear about what Covid might wreak rather than Trump’s response in particular.
tl;dr: Trump is terrible generally and almost certainly inducing a needless recession with this tariff bullshit. But I think it’s important to frame the critique of him and his policies appropriately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_daily_changes_in_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
Please. Trump talks about points all the time when it suits him. Are you one of those “Covid has high survival rate” people?
I suspect that, surely, substantive comments on and/or responses to what anyone has said are always welcome at emptywheel. But the fact that, apparently, “Trump talks about points all the time” only proves my point (i.e., that it’s a bad metric), not that we should use his logic.
Pat Neomi,
Thanks but I have no illusions about Trump; I see exactly what he is and what he does.
The stock market is not the economy.
Right now Trump is fucking with both. The market reflects its perception that Trump is fucking with the economy.
The scary thing is that the market had already factored in some tariffs over the last couple of weeks, so this drop is really an OMFG reaction.
Reply to Rayne. Yes.
True dat. October 1987 isn’t on that list. Down 25%. I reported that and will not forget it.
An equivalent today would have been a drop of 10,000.
I think Matt Foley’s list is a fine pattern to look at and highlights well Trump’s totally incompetent handling of COVID as it hit the US. But as with that disaster, so many of us have been watching this one unfold & preparing for it. Hope you have been too. It’s only Day 1.
The 20 biggest drops all occurred in that time frame because the market is so much bigger than it used to be. It would be more accurate to cite results in terms of percentage. The Dow didn’t reach 10,000 until 1999 or 5,000 before 1995. Before 1995, then, a 1,000 point drop in a day would have meant over 20% of the value of everything.
Is that a better batting average than Ohtani?
Changes in stocks, grocery bills, car prices, etc. can be measured in dollars or %. The point of “Trump did that!” is to highlight that Trump and MAGAs always take credit when things are good but never take blame when things are bad. Remember MAGAs putting “Biden did that!” stickers on gas pumps? Remember Trump bragging whenever the Dow hit a milestone (25,000, 30,000)? Remember Trump blaming Biden for more Covid deaths?
MAGAs might want to know that Lincoln–not Biden, not Obama–had the largest % increase in the national debt.
Here’s the fair and balanced version.
Dow Jones top 20 worst drops in history.
1 2020-03-16 20,188.52 −2,997.10 No comment
2 2020-03-12 21,200.62 −2,352.60 No comment
3 2020-03-09 23,851.02 −2,013.76 No comment
4 2020-06-11 25,128.17 −1,861.82 No comment
5 2025-04-03 40,545.93 −1,679.39 No comment
6 2020-03-11 23,553.22 −1,464.94 No comment
7 2020-03-18 19,898.92 −1,338.46 No comment
8 2022-09-13 31,104.97 −1,276.37 BIDEN DID THAT!
9 2020-02-27 25,766.64 −1,190.95 No comment
10 2018-02-05 24,345.75 −1,175.21 No comment
11 2022-05-18 31,490.07 −1,164.52 BIDEN DID THAT!
12 2024-12-18 42,326.87 −1,123.03 BIDEN DID THAT!
13 2022-05-05 32,997.97 −1,063.09 BIDEN DID THAT!
14 2024-08-05 38,703.27 −1,033.99 BIDEN DID THAT!
15 2018-02-08 23,860.46 −1,032.89 No comment
16 2020-02-24 27,960.80 −1,031.61 No comment
17 2022-08-26 32,283.40 −1,008.38 BIDEN DID THAT!
18 2022-04-22 33,811.40 −981.36 BIDEN DID THAT!
19 2020-04-01 20,943.51 −973.65 No comment
20 2020-03-05 26,121.28 −969.58 No comment
“They’re raping us so we’re gonna rape them.”
–3D Chess rapist
MAGAs then: “I can’t take another minute of Bidenflation! I have to work 3 jobs to afford groceries!”
MAGAs now: “Take all the time you need, daddy. I’ll just get a 4th job. You know what’s best!”
One wonders if/when magas start to wake up to this. I’m not optimistic.
I’m avoiding my MAGA next door neighbors. I don’t know if I can control my free speech around them.
Ben Stein used to be funny before he went off the deep end.
How’s your 401KKK?
Stupid?
Or evil?
Why not both?
Stupid AND evil…
No one’s saying the two aren’t possible at the same time…
Actually, that’s a good title for a book about Trump…
‘Stupid AND Evil – the Second Trump Presidency’
You beat me to it – or Everything Everywhere All at Once 2: End Times. You find the money, I’ll write a treatment.
The Trump regime is definitely evil, but they’re also so overwhelmingly stupid that it seems like a lot of the time, their evil has difficulty breaking through the suffocating layers of stupid.
The United States is a titanic scraping along the iceberg of Donald Trump. I hope heroic Americans can find some way to keep it afloat.
It is partly all of Trump’s DEI hires. Skills and qualifications are frowned upon. Sycophancy seems like the ticket to advancement.
Tiny island tariffs. Rachel Maddow had a piece last night on some specific islands that Trump is tariffing. At least a couple have no inhabitants at all. That’ll show them.
It could be funny if it all wasn’t so mind-bogglingly stupid and destructive. Is he really as mentally incoherent as his speeches show, or is he still smart enough to know that he is deliberately tanking America while acting insane? I can’t tell.
To add, while talking about his beautiful tariffs, he went into his understanding of “groceries” again.
As he wrapped up his discussion of the numbers, Trump zeroed in on the word “groceries” and provided his own definition.
“It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries,” he mused. “It sort of says a bag with different things in it.”
Mush-brained.
I think it was the Daily Show which did a bit on his playing with this word. What they didn’t say (probably because it’s obvious) is that he’s clearly never gone shopping in his life. The little people do that for him.
Same as “laundry”. A word from the ancient regimes.
“I don’t understand this word laundry, rather quaint. When I ask my staff about my next change of underwear (and I have the best staff and the best underwear), they are all ready with a brand new set.”
(Nobody tell him that his earlier set used for 3-4 hours has been bagged and sent to the Westminster landfill. Treasure trove for future generations — if there are any.)
I watched the market off and on for most of the day today. Very unusual, as I have a gubbmint job and I’m waiting for the axe to fall at DoD (probably after our re-org charts are submitted on 11 April), so I’m sort of “fuck it”, I’ll watch the world get the shaft. I was almost happy that some “irrational exuberance” was shat upon at the Dow and NASDAQ. If tomorrow has no capitalist re-bound, watch the regime ass-clowns on Sunday’s circle-jerk pundit shows try to spin it so Wall Street will be mesmerized to bounce back.
I’ve said this before, the voters who just wanted to “hate on the brown people” and “own the libs” MUST feel extreme economic pain to understand how they voted against their own interest. My opinion is that it will take a major recession or depression to do that. “A tide-less sea scuttles all boats”.
As an aside, who the hell is selling all the MAGA hats to the tourists in D.C.? I see too many young boys (all boys) wearing them on the Metro as they jump-off with their white families to visit Arlington National Cemetery. Irony is dead.
And weirdly, the Pakistan stock market did well today. I never saw that coming.
Seems to me they did vote for their own interests. They just have different interests than the likes of us.
Were UAW President Shawn Fain’s comments in your video misdirection or lack of understanding?
He talks about the auto industry bringing jobs back to the U.S. — but that’s not their job. Industry’s top priority is always to make a profit. If it looks like bringing production back to the U.S. will do that — that will happen. But the point is that the auto industry will bring back production, using the smallest labor force possible. That means fewer workers per unit of production. And to do that, it will still take years for that production to get online — and that means the chronic uncertainty has to go away, because uncertainty = risk.
Meanwhile today; Amazon down 8.98% and Tesla down 5.47%
I pointed to a specific range of time in the video at Democracy Now, when Richard Wolff was speaking. Not Fein’s comments. I don’t know what’s going on with UAW but I think their leadership needs to get a grip on the likelihood part of this tariff operation is intended to destroy organized labor, even across borders.
What came to mind listening to Fein’s comments was that he is sucking up to Trump. But Trump is so mercurial that his policies regarding unions could change in a micro-second.
Bezos and Musk most both be sweating possible actions by Trump’s labor-focused (“focus” being a generous term) team members that might be interpreted as pro-union. A problem is to be one of the people in Trump’s orbit that “last person who spoke”.
[BTW — I wasn’t alluding to misdirection on your part, rather it was entirely intent of Fein’s words.]
What all these people (like some BigLaw firms) seem not to understand is that you can’t make a deal with Trump because you can’t ever believe a word he says. You can get all the deals you like, even in writing, but it won’t stop him from turning around and extorting more and humiliating you in the process. He gets off on that.
“…once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane.”
I watched Fain on CNN last night, and I think he may believe that tariffs are popular among the rank and file, and he needs to keep his job. I thought he looked like a ye olde interview of a 50’s vintage Russian class criminal professing his new love of the Party. The “Ross Perot was right” t-shirt was a bonus
Brookfield “invested” in Kushner’s loser building in Manhattan during the Trump 1.0.
Well lookie here, new PM of Canada, Carney, replacing Trudeau and an election coming up on the 25th has kind of a large, I mean big, conflict of interest with interest in Brookfield and its investments.
According to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gofj3v5Rs_s, among other things he’s being green so no new pipelines will be built in Canada to compete with Brookfield’s pipelines.
So is Trump being nice to Carney, a fellow crook, after maybe Carney gave him the inside scoop when they spoke a few weeks ago of the Colonial pipeline purchase announced a day or two ago, etc.?
Wut?
So yet another quid pro quo. There’s no daylight between Brookfield and Kushner, meaning the vig stays in the family.
Using math to dress up a dumb ass to look smart only to make “The U. S. Trade Representative”” and the dumbass look dumber.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/trump-tariffs-formula-calculated
Note the post by Felix Salmon: How to read the White House’s tariff formula
What do people expect from a “C” student at Wharton Business School?
Jonathan Valania states the spent a lot of time researching Trump’s stint at Wharton and presents his findings:
* professor William T. Kelley stated: “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!’”
* The program for the commencement ceremony lists the names of students who graduated from Wharton with honors — cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude — and Donald Trump isn’t among them. Nor is his name included on the Dean’s List published in 1968 by the Daily Pennsylvanian.
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-at-wharton-university-of-pennsylvania/
A “gentleman’s C” is what I think he got. It would be a failing grade at most schools. But then, I think he spent a lot of time playing hooky, and his father spent a lot of time paying school officials to look the other way.
Exactly. A gentleman’s C is not a C. It’s a failing grade dressed up to look like a donor.
Trump went to Whartons only as an undergrad. And never earned an MBA from the business school program hosted by the university. He only graduated after his father donated 2 million to the school.
And he only got in because someone knew his brother.
WTF is a “repeated belief”?
Its when they’ve told themselves the same lie so many times, that they’ve come to believe it.
So ‘they’ are now an organized religion and therefore exempt from taxes? What a scam…
/s/
It’s the theocracy, stupid.~
Rhetorical question but curious nonetheless. Out of all the chaos created on April 2, who profited and what is their connection to Trump?
Trump, no relationship.
Lutnick and Cantor Fitzgerald, probably shorted everything they could get their hands on.
I’d start with the list of members at Mar-a-Lago. Recall the triumvirate of members who were the shadow directors of the VA during Trump 1.0? Folks like them.
“Are we really supposed to believe that because trade with Russia is so low that Russia should escape tariffs altogether, while our most valuable trade partners haven’t?” – MAGA morons have an explanation for that, too; it’s because Donald’s team let a Biden exception allowing certain Russian companies an exception from the sanctions lapse, so “Donald’s cracking down on Russia! He doesn’t need to tariff them!”
Uh-huh. Doing absolutely nothing is “cracking down.” Ditto for Belarus and North Korea. *smh*
I take comfort in knowing Trump is feeling our pain while he spends the afternoons golfing.
Monday we will hear about all the big strong men who are walking up to Trump right now with tears in their eyes calling him Sir and thanking him for tariffs.
–Ron Filipkowski
This is, once again, showing the failure of “objective” journalism. If you feel obligated to parrot the “repeated belief” that someone else will pay for tariffs, then you’re just perpetuating misinformation. It’s like saying, “but they keep saying the earth is flat, so we have to report it.”
The larger problem is that even if Trump backs down as the economy craters, it may be too late. There is so much mistrust now with our neighbors that they’re going to start building other trade networks (Canada is Exhibit A). Even if Trump approaches them with an olive branch – which is itself highly unlikely – they may have already concluded that he’s too unreliable to ever be trusted. They’ll keep working with other leaders who are less fickle. The U.S. will be off the invite list.
I guess the good news for we Canadians may be that, as we haven’t boosted our tariffs on China, all the surplus goods they can no longer sell to the USA will be available to us at ultra cheap prices as the Chinese try to unload all their unpurchased merchandise. For awhile…
Laugh or cry?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-shares-video-purposely-crashing-154115681.html
my capitalization.
“In February, Warren Buffett took pains in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders to explain why the conglomerate had a cash pile of $334 billion at the end of 2024….
Now, with Berkshire’s annual meeting just a month away, Buffett may not feel quite the same pull to further explain his decision.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-defended-his-massive-300-billion-cash-pile-in-february-now-he-doesnt-have-to-174312496.html
In one of the comments to the article, “He has a 1.2T asset worth. 30% cash in an overvalued market is not uncommon for him.”
Trump is absolutely convinced, by past experience, that he can force the leader of every country in the world to come groveling, and that they will do exactly what he wants in order to ‘get something’, instead of receiving nothing.
He’s forcing universities and premier law firms to do his bidding in the exact same way. It’s ‘the art of the deal’, and it’s working, more often than not. He’s treating the world as his kingdom, by decree, and, so far, nobody has a way to stop him.
We are also discovering that what has been taught to prospective JD’s, for the past 100 years, isn’t the actual ‘law’. The ‘real’ law is something else.
Not doing what he wants might be painful, but it seems to be the only way to get his attention. He’s a toddler having tantrums because the world isn’t run to suit *him*. And President Musk is the same thing, but a little older.
IMO, Trump is using the one and only playbook he’s ever used. When he was still doing his real estate business, it was the contractors, now it’s the countries of the world: not paying the invoices vs. imposing tariffs in order to get a deal for paying only half the amount what was due vs. giving something not owed at all.
I see this pattern also in his illegal EOs against universities, big law firms, big media companies … you name it.
He acts on the assumption that other people try to avoid conflicts and give in, and, unfortunately, more often than is healthy for the society, the economy, the well-being of the people he gets his way. It’s time to build up countervailing power.
Rayne, stock mkt. tanked 10% in 48 hours. Mephistophelese is hell bent on wrecking our country and destroying the free world. But he’s taking a break and is busy golfing right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enMgBvQThiA
My grandma came here Ellis Island 1906.
Paul Simon had this terrible vision of
“the statue of liberty
sailing away to sea..”
I so love driving this country. Three weeks back was in an old truckstop catching some sleep in Jackson, TN. 6 AM getting coffee and trying to wake up, will try my best to quote this 60 year old rail thin chain smoker lady running the TA,”tin min and I gotta get my white ass outa here.”
Three fat black black men are in the aisle behind me and she says, “what r you guys doin back ther .. 30 finger discount?” They all start laughing and I get my 22oz black, “thit’ll be two seventy nine, sir” The black guys, probably truckers (America runs on trucks), they all get their coffees and donuts. The last guy pays seven something, but leaves his donuts on the counter and is walking away. She said “kind of unuzhal fer you folks, never seen that befer, pay fer it n leave”
We all could just not stop laughing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxP8NTxQL54
Airbus will not criticize Trump’s moves. Boeing will lose jobs after losing orders when other nations reciprocate.
To whom it may concern: I am NOT approving an overlong comment which veered off topic and used dog whistles including an offensive one making a veiled reference to a person’s sexual orientation.
Be concise; 466 words is not.
Be specific; using dog whistles is not.
Be inclusive; using bigoted language is not.
Finally, be on topic; if you’re going to choose to be a dick anyhow, at least address the topic, which in this case is tariffs.