Thursday, April 3, 2025

Go boom is more like it

 Trump: Tariff Rollout "Going Very Well," "Our Country Is Going To Boom"



Stocks tank to inaugurate Trump's golden age of tariffs

 


The actual WTO China tariffs are 7.3%, not 67% as maintained by Trump

 


Trump tariff math is about trade imbalances and is not about a reciprocal response to a rate, requiring a trading partner to buy more from the United States rather than just eliminating its tariff rate

In other words Trump's calculations of foreign countries' tariffs on the United States result in fictional rates.

From the story here:

... For instance, the U.S. claims that China charges a tariff of 67%. The U.S. ran a deficit of $295.4 billion with China in 2024, while imported goods were worth $438.9 billion, according to official data. When you divide $295.4 billion by $438.9 billion, the result is 67%! The same math checks out for Vietnam.

“The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.

The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus. ...       

Futures at 7:00 AM EST:


 

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

The GOP US House was so proud of passing its budget framework at the end of February, too, but Trump just threw them under the bus for the Senate plan, which will put the country $50 trillion in debt by 2034

 ROFLMAO.

 




 

Ron Klain says Biden's brain was applesauce, but still believed Biden should have stayed in the race after the bad debate with Trump

 Well, that doesn't make any sense.

From the story here:

... Even after the disastrous debate, by his own telling to Whipple, Klain believed Biden should have stayed in the race – a statement that jars with Klain’s account of debate prep at Camp David. ...



 

Mad King Ludwig says pigs will fly


 

You're going to see billions of dollars, even trillions of dollars coming into our country very soon in the form of tariffs.

-- here, 3/25/25, and here

Venezuelan gangs in America are an invasion like January 6th riots were an insurrection

 Brought to you courtesy of the UniParty, the Red, White, and Blue.

 Count me out.


 

 

Mad King Ludwig will never get the Nobel Peace Prize now, even if he does end the Russian war in Ukraine


 

US cancels visa of Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias

The former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, says his US visa has been revoked.

Arias, a Nobel laureate, said he was informed of the decision weeks after he had publicly criticised Donald Trump, comparing the behaviour of the US president to that of a Roman emperor.

The 84-year-old, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering an end to conflicts in Central America, said US authorities had given no explanation. ...

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

The New York Times has called the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the candidate endorsed by Democrats

 Elon Musk had invested heavily in electing the candidate endorsed by Republicans in the race.

 


The New York Times shows FL-1 and FL-6 staying Republican with each GOP candidate garnering about 57% of the vote in tonight's special elections to replace Gaetz and Waltz

 US HOUSE:

GOP 220

DEM 213 (two vacancies due to deaths; seats expected to stay Democrat yielding 215) 

 




US imports came to $4.11 trillion in 2024: You'd have to tariff this out of existence to pay for the nearly $7 trillion in federal outlays in fiscal 2024

The tariff rate would have to be 170%, not 20% or 25% or even 50%.

Those are not serious proposals.

Humoring Mad King Ludwig about this is an errand worthy only of fools.

Spot gold hit an all-time high of $3,148.88 today

 -- CNBC

 

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -3.7 percent on April 1, down from -2.8 percent on March 28

Reported here.

 

GOP in both House and Senate seem to agree that re-upping the 2017 Trump tax cuts won't cost anything even though it did the first time lol, $1.9 trillion over ten years according to the CBO

The Party now says ignore the evidence of your memory.

Reported here:

 ... At this point, senior House Republicans privately say they think House Republicans will accept the Senate’s push to use the “current policy baseline” accounting tactic to extend the 2017 tax cuts and claim it costs nothing. The biggest hurdle now is the vast discrepancy between the Senate’s targeted spending cut minimums and the House’s $1.5 trillion spending cut target. ...

I sense a lot of dissension in Mad King Ludwig's palace: Lutnik attacked over crazy tariffs, Lutnick counterattacks over crazy vaccine skepticism fallout from RFK Jr

 

RFK Jr. is a ‘conspiracy theorist’ endangering lives, say analysts at Howard Lutnick’s former firm

 

Judge Boasberg was correct to order the flights to El Salvador to turn around, Trump administration now admits it made a mistake deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

-- Fifth Amendment

Due process exists to prevent such mistakes. Dictator Trump didn't care about following it.

Who will be his next victim?

From the story here:

 ...  The Trump administration acknowledged late Monday that it had inadvertently deported a man to El Salvador last month despite a court’s determination that he had a legitimate fear of persecution in his home country.

“This removal was an error,” a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official wrote in a statement to a federal judge.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran, was on one of three deportation flights to his home country on March 15 amid a frantic legal fight over President Donald Trump’s decision to invoke war powers to hasten the deportation of more than 100 Venezuela nationals to El Salvador. In addition to the Venezuelans subject to Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act were other deportees with purported gang ties. ...

He was arrested by ICE on March 12 and sent to El Salvador on March 15, where his wife recognized him in a video showing the shackled and shaven prisoners being arrayed by Salvadoran authorities.

The Trump administration now says there’s nothing it can do to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to U.S. custody. ...