This number seems wei tu lo

 

IMF Warns Trump Could Cost the World a Trillion Dollars

The Guardian

 

Is that all?

 

World GDP in 2023 was $106.2 trillion according to the World Bank, whose graph shows that the 2009 Great Recession contraction was $3.34 trillion. The Grauniad is worried that the Trump trade war will cost a third of the 2009 contraction, based on an analysis by the IMF, "the most sober of global institutions" lol.

 

Meanwhile there was a 2015 contraction in global GDP which was much larger, $4.55 trillion. That was much worse than the so-called Great Recession. And much worse than the global impact of COVID in 2020, which was $2.39 trillion according to the World Bank's data.

 

Why isn't this popularly discussed?

 

AI laughably tells me "global GDP did not actually contract in 2015".

 

 

 

 

 

But the World Bank itself traces the 2015 global GDP hit to a massive contraction in trade, at the heart of which was the forced restructuring of the Chinese economy under Xi Jinping, who is a communist reactionary.

 

The sizes of the tariffs of Donald Trump, which far exceed those of the Smoot-Hawley era, especially with trade hegemon China, seem uniquely poised to wreak havoc on a world whose experts today can't draw the obvious parallel to the right year.

Pyrex glass plant in Charleroi PA closes after 132 years because of Chinese imports, Trump powerless to stop it

The casualties of America’s loss of glassware manufacturing to China

... Anchor Hocking took over the Charleroi plant in March of 2024 and announced they would close it and move operations to their plant in Lancaster, Ohio — it too was a company founded at the turn of the century by Isaac Jacob in Lancaster, Ohio. ...

 ... the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.

As U.S. glass and glassware plants closed, Chinese manufacturers expanded. China now leads glass production globally, exporting 28.7% of the world’s glass and glassware compared to the United States’ 6.6%.

That is a hard pill to swallow if you are from Charleroi, once known as the “Glass City” where PPG once had one of its major glass factories. ...

More.

Trump's tariffs mean that the skies will be empty, along with the shelves

 Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China

... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China, with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world economy. ...

Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive

... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...

DOGE World's Elon Musk tries to escape universal opprobrium, calls Tariff World's Peter Navarro Peter Retarrdo, dumber than a sack of bricks

Might as well go out with guns a-blazin'.

Musk is a free-trader who is not down for the tariff struggle.

 

Trump's biggest tariff, 50%, was on tiny landlocked poverty-stricken Lesotho inside South Africa, over a minuscule trade imbalance of $234.5 MILLION in 2024, which is under a treaty for godsakes

 

Lesotho's exports to the US in 2024 were valued at $237.3 MILLION lol. Trump now wants 50% of that.

King George III, who also was nuts, was a benevolent king to America compared to this guy.

 Trump's biggest tariff was on tiny Lesotho. Here's what to know about the African kingdom.

... Mr. Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs included a whopping 50% levy on the small, impoverished nation's imports, and the Lesotho government quickly said it would send a delegation to Washington. ...

Lesotho's annual gross domestic product of $2 billion is highly reliant on exports, mostly of textiles, including jeans. ...

The White House claims, by way of [its] formula, that Lesotho imposes 99% tariffs and other barriers on U.S. imports. ...

With an annual gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, Lesotho is largely dependent on South Africa — it biggest trading partner — from which it imports most of its food, selling water in return.

The economy has been heavily reliant on textile exports bound for the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade deal, which provides duty-free access to the U.S. market for some African products. The Trump administration's imposition of tariffs on African nations has raised questions over how likely the White House is to renew the AGOA pact when it expires in September. ...

Trump's top trade advisor is nuts, 0% tariff offer from Vietnam isn't good enough

 They're making it impossible for the world, which will end up trading with everybody except us. 

Peter Navarro says Vietnam’s 0% tariff offer is not enough: ‘It’s the non-tariff cheating that matters’

... A value added tax is a system used by many countries around the world and is in some ways similar to sales taxes in the U.S. The Trump administration’s argument that the tax should count as a trade barrier is not widely accepted.

“We have tried at the World Trade Organization since the 1970s to get VAT-tax relief, and they’ve told us no every single time,” Navarro said Monday.

The trade adviser also said Monday that the value added tax would be an issue in any negotiations around tariffs with the European Union.

Normally you institute protectionist policies like tariffs when you already have something to protect, not before

But our Orwellian Republicans put the cart before the horse.

You can't return to something which no longer exists. The net trade deficit for 2024 is nearly $1 trillion, instead of flat like during the post-war up until Reagan, who first ran in 1976 against Ford, when tariffs still had something to protect but we listened to the siren song of free-trade instead.

That is why the Trump administration has had to cast about for at least six different reasons for instituting tariffs at the present time, none of which are at all convincing otherwise there wouldn't be six of them, not to mention that the math used for them is preposterous, or that they are the farthest thing from reciprocal.

The real reason for them, however, is that the tariffs, like the executive orders which now number over 100, are the immediate strings available to our Puppet Master, which he can pull this way one day and that way another, your ever present reminder of who is in charge around here. Suck up to him and he'll make a deal.

Trump's White House laughably brags about these things.

New taxes, which is what these tariffs are, are liberating don't you see!

Our mad King Ludwig needs this constant adulation. The tyrant has desires which he can never fulfill, Plato warned us.

But of course all this can be undone by the next president, which is no way to run a country. It makes for deep institutional instability and distrust throughout the global economy, for which few can reasonably plan.

The message remains the same: Expect Kaos. 

 

The US depression in road travel from COVID-19 ended in 2024 and lasted five years

 The 3.257 trillion miles of 2019 was exceeded in 2024 by 5 billion miles, on an average annual basis.

The depression in road travel from the Great Financial Crisis lasted eight years, from 2007 to 2015.

Previous to that we had similar, but smaller contractions in US road travel, from 1979 to 1982, three years, and from 1973 to 1975, two years, precipitated by the oil trade shocks of the Iranian Revolution and the Yom Kippur War respectively.

You are now free to move about the country.

 

Kamala Harris' dad was way ahead of 2006 Paul Krugman warning in 1988 that immigration hurt native born black Americans

 

“Trends in international trade have moved against U.S. workers,” [Harris] wrote. “U.S. immigration laws have been modified in ways that increase the influx of low-skilled workers, who compete with native-born youths and low-skilled adult workers for low-skilled jobs.

“This shift has been a particularly serious problem for blacks, who constitute a high proportion of the low-skilled adult workers,” according to the book.

More. 

The New York Post's Jon Levine laughably tars this as merely a point of view "typical of far-left economic thinking on immigration".

But Marx viewed free-trade as an accelerant of social revolution precisely because it destroyed national identities.

The real revolutionaries who would destroy America are the enthusiasts for mass immigration, which dilutes and replaces the native born patriot population. Paul Krugman joined them in February, infamously flip-flopping to "immigrants make America stronger". 

The free-trade libertarians of the Republican Party at The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal and the open borders Democrats are the same party.

 

Who needs FreedomWorks 1984-2024, its mission accomplished by BIDEN letting in 10 million illegals ha ha ha ha ha

The libertarian political action organization FreedomWorks is calling it quits effective immediately as funding evaporates and it is no longer able to sell its pro-immigration and free-trade message to Republicans now transformed into populists by Trump.

Politico reports here.

President Clinton signed permanent normal trade relations with China in October 2000: Any questions?

 

Titans of American business pay to have dinner with genocidal dictator Xi Jinping

Elon Musk was there, too, but this story never mentions it:

Xi’s 10 years as president are marked by a genocide against China’s Muslim minority, attempts to wipe out Tibetan culture, and persecution of Christians and followers of Falun Gong – not to mention a crackdown on democracy, religious freedom, and civil rights in Hong Kong. 

Yet, during official and unofficial meetings this week, there was no mention of the long list of atrocities. Instead, Xi received an unusually warm reception. 

On Wednesday night in the confines of San Francisco’s Hyatt Regency ballroom, America’s corporate chieftains gathered to fete Xi as a “guest of honor” at a banquet drawing nearly 400 attendees. The gala took place on the sidelines of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of 21 member countries to support free trade and business ties. 

The executives were so excited to share the room with the Chinese president that they gave him two standing ovations before Xi uttered a word. American titans of business, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, Black Rock’s Larry Fink, Boeing’s Stanley Deal, and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla, joined Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to rub shoulders with Xi and a cohort of Chinese officials. 

Tickets for the banquet started at $2,000 each, with several companies shelling out $40,000 to buy eight seats at a table in the ballroom and one at Xi’s table. After Xi’s remarks, attendees provided yet another standing ovation, according to Reuters. 

Some executives made no attempt to hide their gushing. On the way into the Hyatt, Bridgewater Associates hedge fund founder Ray Dalio told the Financial Times that he was “excited to have this relationship [with Xi].”

If Dalio entered the hotel from the main lobby, he couldn’t have avoided the polar opposite scene and messaging. A Tibetan student activist named Tsela had strapped herself to a flagpole and was waving the Tibetan flag when Xi and his entourage arrived. Other activists from Students for a Free Tibet chanted “Murderer” at the Chinese leader, “Down with the CCP,” and “Human Rights in Tibet.”

Joel Kotkin: The capitalist elite undermines our economic security

 He means libertarians.

Here:

Free-market dogmatists have played a part in the deindustrialisation of the West as well. Consultants and investors pushed businesses to look offshore for virtually every critical production input. Between 2004 and 2017, the US share of world manufacturing shrank from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. Our reliance on Chinese inputs doubled. The trade deficit with China, according to the Economic Policy Institute, has cost as many as 3.7million American jobs since 2000. Overall, the US and the EU have seen their share of value-added manufacturing drop from 65 per cent in the 1960s to barely half that today.

Same old story: The Freedom Conservatives are godless, pro-immigration, free-trade libertarians

 Discussed here by John Fonte:

Unlike in both the Sharon Statement and the National Conservatism Statement of Principles, “transcendent values” and “God” are nowhere to be found in the Freedom Conservatism Statement . . ..

It is no accident that Grover Norquist, Jeb Bush, and mass immigration enthusiasts associated with Koch-funded organizations such as the Niskanen Center and The Bulwark readily signed on to the FreeCon statement. ...

Overall, the share of American imports covered by trade restrictions increased under Reagan from 8 percent in 1975 to 21 percent by 1984.

Michigan House, Senate, Governor's mansion, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Supreme Court all under Democrat control for first time since 1980s

This is what happens when you get 1.8 million votes by mail: a record turnout to surpass the 2018 record turnout.

For the first time in four decades, Democrats are waking up to a state in which their party controls the House and Senate – a feat not done since the early 1980s.

More.

It takes a special kind of stupid Republicanism to screw things up this bad: libertarian Republicanism, for which Michigan is famous.

The key: legislation by referendum of the people instead of by representative government; which yielded 1) easy voting by mail, instead of on election day, for which libertarians are all-in, as they are for abortion, immigration, and free-trade, same as Democrats; and 2) "nonpartisan" redistricting.

Michigan was never a conservative state, and is finished as a Republican state.

Michigan has been irretrievably Californicated in the span of four years.

The free-trade, open borders, pro-China Michigan Chamber of Commerce endorses Republicans Meijer, Moolenaar, and Huizenga, among others

In Michigan, your choices come down to progressive lunatics who think men can become pregnant, or libertarian lunatics who piss down your back and tell you it's rainin'.

 

 

The open borders lunatics at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce are backing Jeremiah Keeler over Right to Life endorsed Angela Rigas for 79th District State Representative

 On Drudge, of course.

 

Russell Kirk's "shop and till conservatives", a bunch of cheats

"But all these are trifles, if we consider the fraud and cozenage of trading men and shopkeepers."

-- Jonathan Swift

In January 2021 just 47.4% of the civilian population had full-time jobs, compared with 2020's average of 47.3%

Biden reportedly said in response to the employment situation summary today:

"At that rate it's going to take ten years to get back to full employment. That's not hyperbole that's a fact."

The fact is employment has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and Biden is as little likely to fix that as were Obama and Trump.

The Reagan era tax reforms hollowed out the labor economy. 

Before Reagan, high marginal tax rates on ordinary income steered that income into capital investment, gains from which received preferential tax treatment if held long enough. The investment grew the economy, providing good jobs for Americans and tax revenues for government at all levels. The arrangement distrusted rich people to do the right thing with their money, but rewarded them if they did.

Reagan libertarianism changed all that.

We were sold the idea that lower taxes on high ordinary incomes would still result in capital investment because we could trust people to do the right thing with their own money.

Guess what? Libertarian trust of human nature turned out to be as false as liberal trust of human nature. 

Under the influence of libertarian free trade dogma and growing globalization, that investment went abroad where there was far cheaper labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Profits soared for the few, bringing the number of billionaires from less than fifty in the 1980s to nearly 800 today. Meanwhile the good jobs gradually disappeared and income inequality soared.

Ordinary people today cannot afford cars, educations, health care, and houses as a result.

Add in cheap labor competition from immigration at a clip of 1 million a year and you can understand how Trump was so popular, however incompetent and narcissistic he was.

Trump may be gone, but the people remain screwed by these problems and by the time serving politicians and 2.8 million federal bureaucrats working for pensions who stand in the way.

Returning to the status quo ante might fix it, but it would take a generation to start feeling it. And who among us has the vision and the cojones to pull it off?

Certainly not the women and snowflakes who cry crocodile tears of fear on the House floor. Certainly not the sailors on board the Chafee who are in a panic because the cooks are infected with COVID.

The country is rotting from the inside out. All it will take to bring it down is . . . a series of unfortunate events.

Berman and Milanovic show increased "intersection between the top decile of capital-income recipients and labor-income earners" since Reagan 1986 tax reform has led to higher income inequality

Regrettably the study does not mention another factor, how free-trade, particularly with China and East Asia generally, helped drive wages in the US at the bottom ever lower. The Reagan era produced a perfect storm of screwed for the bottom half in America.

Here:

Where does homoploutia come from? The data do not allow us to determine that with certainty, but they allow to investigate what is consistent with individual hypotheses. There is strong evidence that increased wage-stretching that began around 1980 is associated with the rising homoploutia (the other alternatives that do not perform as well are rising inequality of capital incomes and rising capital share).

The link between higher inequality of labor incomes and homoploutia might have occurred in two ways. The first is that many high-earning individuals saved a large share of their wages, invested it, and after some years began receiving large capital incomes. The second is that many capital-rich people decided, perhaps because of changed social norms, or because top jobs became more lucrative as marginal tax rates were reduced, not to treat university education as “luxury consumption” but rather to use it to secure good jobs. It could be, of course, that both mechanisms were at work.