Emily Jashinsky, RCP/SiriusXM
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Monday, April 7, 2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia will have to wait in an El Salvador prison for the US Supreme Court to decide what to do with him
... Roberts issued a terse administrative order indefinitely lifting the deadline of 11:59 EDT to return Abrego Garcia set by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. The Trump administration had said that deadline was “impossible” to meet. ...
More.
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.
... 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.
Gold hit another new record high on Thursday April 3, 2025 at $3,167.57
... Gold prices fell to a
more-than-three-week low on Monday amid a wider market sell-off,
continuing their retreat as investors dumped bullion to cover their
losses in other trades on fears of a global recession due to an
escalating global trade war. ...
More.
Car manufacturing jobs, so-called good jobs, already don't pay enough to enable these Detroit auto workers to buy their own homes and have families, and they fear layoffs because of the tariffs
The Wall Street Journal doesn't mention it here.
This guy's been working for the company for 10 years and he's still renting.
... Daniel Campbell, who maneuvers steel auto parts around a Stellantis factory north of Detroit, says he and many of his colleagues are worried about layoffs.
“I’m scared,” he said from his brick bungalow on the west side of Detroit, which he rents with two roommates. “We’re complaining about gas and eggs now. Who is going to be able to buy these cars that are already $80,000, and then you make it $90,000?”
The 46-year-old UAW member, who makes about $30 an hour, and one of his roommates have talked about trimming their spending, including eating out less and cutting clothing and electronics purchases.
“There’s going to come a time where we’re not going to be able to go and spend,” he said.
At work, the assembly lines have been running faster in recent weeks as Stellantis has tried to stockpile parts ahead of the tariffs, Campbell said. He and his co-workers are running out of room to store the parts. ...
Sunday, April 6, 2025
The economy under Biden was a catastrophe now requiring draconian tariffs, just like we're being invaded by Venezuelan gangs everywhere requiring extraordinary measures which violate due process of law
Everything is either awesome or awful, Republican or Democrat, white or black in our hysterical country.
The economy went from being enviable by others in the world in October to a catastrophe just like that in January.
And now it really might become a catastrophe but you'll hear only that it's AWESOME.
Can wage and price controls be far behind?
Elon Musk forgets that Peter Navarro built license plates for four months last year lol
... “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem,” Musk wrote in one post. (Navarro earned a PhD in economics from Harvard in the 1980s.)
The Department of Government Efficiency head replied to another user’s comment on the video lauding Navarro’s explanation, writing of the economist: “He ain’t built shit.” ...
More.
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| this was subsequently deleted by Musk |
Trump says Hang Tough because we have $5 trillion of new investment after $11 trillion in stocks wiped out lol
What, $5 trillion in crypto? Ukraine?
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.
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Federal judge orders US authorities to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador by April 7
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States after he was accidentally sent to a notorious megajail in El Salvador.
U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, Judge Paula Xinis ruled that the government must return Garcia by April 7 at 11:59 pm.
Garcia, a protected legal resident who has been living in Maryland since 2011 and is originally from El Salvador, was sent back to El Salvador on March 15 because of what the Trump administration called an “administrative error” in court filings Monday. ...
More.
Friday, April 4, 2025
Trump nukes $6.6 trillion from the stock market in the last two days with tariff announcement, the biggest 2-day wipeout in history, $11.1 trillion since the inauguration
Reported here:
Roughly $11.1 trillion has been wiped away from the U.S. stock market since Jan. 17, the Friday before President Donald Trump took the oath of office and began his second term, according to data from Dow Jones Market Data.
Some $6.6 trillion of that figure was lost on Thursday and Friday alone — the largest two-day wipeout of shareholder value on record, Dow Jones data showed. ...
Investors sell gold to cover stock losses, but price remains above moving average of $3,023
Reported here:
... Spot gold was down 2.9% at $3,024.2 an ounce, after hitting a session low of $3,015.29 earlier in the session.
It hit a record high of $3,167.57 on Thursday. For the week, gold was down 1.9%.
U.S. gold futures settled 2.8% lower at $3,035.40.
On the technical front, spot gold price managed to hold above its 21-day moving average of $3,023. ...
Thursday, April 3, 2025
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
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.
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.
The tax base is much too small.
Humoring Mad King Ludwig about this is an errand worthy only of fools.
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. ...
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. ...
Monday, March 31, 2025
Kremlin Karoline admits she doesn't spend very much time with her eight-month-old son
In God She Trusts: Karoline Leavitt's Journey to the White House Podium
... "I spend every second that I possibly can with my son when I'm home on weekends and evenings. I try to make it home for bedtime as much as I can throughout the week."
Which doesn't leave too much time for sleep.
"Actually, it's usually about five to six hours a night is what I'm doing, which is all we need. As President Trump says, when you love your job and you love your life, you don't need to sleep much." ...
I wouldn't say Greenland's PM exploded at Trump, he issued a calm but strongly worded statement
"We must listen when others talk about us. But we must not be shaken. President Trump says the United States is 'getting Greenland.'
"Let me make this clear: The U.S. is not getting that. We don't belong to anyone else. We decide our own future. We must not act out of fear. We must respond with peace, dignity and unity.
"And it is through these values that we must clearly, clearly and calmly show the American president that Greenland is ours. It was like that yesterday. That's how it is today. And that's how it will be in the future."
Marine Le Pen's jail sentence will be an electronic tag lol, which lends credence to the charge that this is merely political and unserious
Reported here:
... Le Pen was also given a four-year prison sentence — two years
suspended and two wearing an electronic tag — and fined 100,000 euros,
although these will not be implemented while any appeals processes are
under way. The ban from public office is immediate, however. ...
Le Pen and 24 other members of her political party, Rassemblement National, were accused of diverting over 3 million euros ($3.3 million) of European Parliament funds to pay staff based in France instead.
Le Pen and her co-accused had denied the charges, while the party describes the trial as a politically-motivated witch hunt. ...
Marine Le Pen sentenced to jail in France, barred from running for office in 2027
Marine Le Pen Sentenced to Prison, Banned From Next Elections Over Embezzlement
... Judges handed down a sentence Monday that bars Le Pen from seeking public office for the next five years, upending France’s political order and thrusting her far-right party into limbo. Le Pen also received a four-year prison sentence, half of which was suspended. The ruling takes Le Pen out of contention for the 2027 race, when President Emmanuel Macron finishes his second and final term and she was expected to be the front-runner. ...
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Ukrainian-American Republican Victoria Spartz (IN-5), born in the former Soviet Union in 1978, thinks you are not entitled to due process if you violated the law
She didn't become a U.S. citizen until she was 28, but somehow she gets to decide important matters about spending my money and taxing my wallet without knowing that everyone within the United States is entitled to due process of law, whether here lawfully or not, under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
You cannot just scoop people up and disappear them without a hearing before a judge in a court of law.
That points up the gravity of the crimes Biden committed by letting in so many people so lawlessly. The burden of removing all these people under our laws is heavy. The blame is all his.
But the law is the law.
Start violating due process for some people, and eventually you'll violate it for others, maybe even for ignorant immigrants such as Victoria Spartz who don't know what the hell they are talking about.
As presidential mandates go, Trump's is very small, smaller than Bush 43's second term and smaller than Carter's
The top mandates go to Nixon II at 1.61, Johnson at 1.58, Reagan II at 1.44, IKE II at 1.36, and IKE I at 1.24.
The top combined term mandates go to Reagan at 1.34, Nixon at 1.31, IKE at 1.30, Clinton at 1.17, and Obama at 1.12.
Bush 43 I and Trump I have the dubious distinction of sub-one mandates, meaning they failed to win the popular vote. JFK and Nixon I barely squeaked above 1.000.
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| click to enlarge |
Some of what Dark Brandon said in 2022 is what some Democrats still want their leader to say today in 2025
... Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic. ... there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven
and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a
threat to this country. ... MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. ... They promote authoritarian leaders. ... They thrive on chaos. ... American
democracy only works only if we choose to respect the rule of law and
the institutions that were set up in this chamber behind me. ...
-- Joe Biden, 1 September 2022, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA
The voters' response to this in 2022 was to flip the Democrats' House 222 majority to a 222 Republican one.
In 2024, the Republican lead narrowed to 220-215. Special elections in Florida this week will either ratify that lead or narrow it some more.
All I can think of when I read about Democrats wanting a more angry, a more centrist candidate, a more combative leader who meets the moment, is that they had all that in Joe Biden and they dumped him
The outright treason against their own president is the Democrats' real problem with their own voters, who lost faith in them and voted for Trump instead.
Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.
“I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: “Get angry, man,” punctuating the message with a profanity.
The anger roiling the party, slow to build, is now a forceful current coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified that the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury. ...
Of course, we all know that that Joe Biden, especially the centrist Joe Biden, didn't really have control of his own White House, covering up which until it couldn't be covered up anymore just shows that the incumbent wasn't really trustworthy either.
Trump & Co. already know they're going to lose in the mid-terms
It's going to be a wait that seems like an eternity.
Reported here:
... The same person added that Trump sees little downside politically: 'No. 1, the president is not running for reelection. And No. 2, we're probably gonna lose the House in the midterms.' ...
Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) was blunt in his warning: 'If tariffs did have an inflationary impact - or an impact on interest rates that caused inflation and the economy moved toward a recession - that would be a very bad thing… It would turn the Trump presidency from a four year term into a two year term, because we'd lose in the midterms.' ...
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is the Trump administration sycophant who tells Trump whatever he wants to hear
Reported here:
... On the other side are Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and senior adviser Peter Navarro, the latter a long-time tariff evangelist.
Navarro has described the administration as operating in harmony, quoting the 2002 film Drumline: 'One band, one sound.'
'We are the greatest economic team and April 2nd will be a historic day for American workers,' Lutnick said.
But others inside the administration are less certain of Lutnick's motivations.
'He goes into the Oval and tells the president whatever he wants to hear,' said one Trump ally, calling Lutnick a 'f***ing nightmare' who backs Trump's instincts without considering broader consequences.
Lutnick's influence appears to be growing, even as concerns mount that his approach is untethered from policy grounding.
As the April 2 deadline looms, inflation continues to rise, according to new Commerce Department data released on Friday - even before the new tariffs take effect. ...
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Earthquake in Myanmar, aka Burma, kills over 1,000
The death toll from a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar jumped to more than 1,000 on Saturday as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the scores of buildings that collapsed when it struck near the country’s second-largest city. ...
In neighboring Thailand, the quake rocked the greater Bangkok area, home
to some 17 million people, and other parts of the country.
Bangkok city authorities said so far six people have been found dead, 26 injured and 47 are still missing, most from a construction site near the capital’s popular Chatuchak market. ...
Earthquakes are rare in Bangkok, but relatively common in Myanmar. The country sits on the Sagaing Fault, a major north-south fault that separates the India plate and the Sunda plate. ...
Friday, March 28, 2025
Elon Musk hasn't saved the taxpayers anything, year-to-date spending is actually 7.4% higher in 2025 than in 2024
Reported here:
... The Hamilton Project, an economic policy think tank, tracks federal spending using daily treasury statements published by the government.
These data show that the federal government had spent $1.893 trillion in 2025 as of March 26, compared to $1.763 trillion at the same date last year. In other words, federal spending in on pace to come in 7.4% higher this year than last. ...
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