Duffer in Chief

Whacko in the White House

Convicted felon Donald Trump's expansive new tariffs reverse a decades-long global trend of lower trade barriers and are likely, economists say, to raise prices for Americans by thousands of dollars each year while sharply slowing the U.S. economy.  The Yale Budget Lab estimates the Trump administration’s tariffs would cost the average household $3,800 in higher prices this year.

Like the proverbial senile old man sitting on the couch, Trump social media posts were strangely ignorant of reality.  The seemed upbeat when asked about the stock market drop. “I think it’s going very well,” he said. “We have an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, the economy is turning into a dumpster fire.  Investors turned thumbs-down on the new duties Thursday, with the S&P 500 index dropping 4.8% at the close of trading, its worst day since the pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 1,600 points. 

The average U.S. tariff could rise to nearly 25% when the tariffs are fully implemented April 9, economists estimate, higher than in more than a century, and higher than the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that are widely blamed for worsening the Great Depression.

72% of Americans (and 64% of Republicans) believe tariffs will raise prices in the short term, according to the CBS News/YouGov poll.

Trump claimed that sky-high new taxes on imported goods would be “reciprocal,” meaning they were payback for tariffs other countries have slapped on U.S. exports. But the reciprocal tariffs turned out not to be based on actual levies imposed by other countries. Instead, they’re based on a formula made up by the White House ― and widely mocked by experts. 

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called it “malpractice” in response to another conservative economist who called it “embarrassing.” 

Journalist James Surowiecki was one of the first to notice that the administration was lying about the so-called calculations touted by Trump.  “They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did,” Surowiecki wrote. “Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.”

The Nobel-Prize-winning liberal economist Paul Krugman called the crudity of the “reciprocal” tariffs formula shocking. “When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves,” Krugman wrote. “How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?”

 

Niall Horan - Nothing

Tariffs are Taxes, Stupid

The Wall Street Journal went on the record yesterday: "Tariffs are taxes . . . Car prices will rise by thousands of dollars, including those made in America."

Mike Pence said on social media: “The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. These tariffs are nearly 10 times the size of those imposed during the Trump-Pence administration and will cost American families over $3,500 per year.”

CNBC “Closing Bell” co-anchor Jon Fortt: “The market reaction after hours ― I’ve never seen anything like it.  This ― I think, fair to say ― is worse than the worst-case scenario of the tariffs that many in the market expected the president to impose.”

JPMorgan offered a grim outlook in its daily economic briefing following Trump's tariff announcement:  "These policies, if sustained, would likely push the U.S. and global economy into recession this year . . .  We view the full implementation of these policies as a substantial macro economic shock not currently incorporated in our forecasts."

In his rambling remarks lasting nearly an hour, Trump hailed his new tariffs as “Liberation Day” for the country and once again repeated his false claim that foreign countries, rather than Americans, would be paying the new tariffs. “We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China in tariffs,” Trump said. “I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term, hundreds of billions. They never paid ten cents to any other president, and yet they paid hundreds of billions.”  That is an outright LIE.

Trump was told repeatedly by his own economic experts during his first four years in office that U.S. tariffs are paid by American importers, meaning the tariffs on Chinese goods he boasted about were coming out of the pockets of American consumers. Whether he is intentionally lying or truly believes that he is correct and all his economic experts were wrong is unknown, but he has continued with that falsehood to this day.

But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, since the worst kept secret is that Trump is a fucking idiot.  Trump wrote social media posts in which he suggested that tariffs imposed on Canada would somehow raise the price of fentanyl being brought into the United States — even though drug smugglers are not known to declare their illegal contraband at customs in order to pay the duty.

Trump Administration Admits It Sent Man to Foreign Prison by Mistake

The Trump administration has admitted it mistakenly deported a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notorious El Salvador prison last month, but is arguing against returning him to the United States because they claim he has "gang ties" and the administration's claims that it lacks power over the Central American nation.

Lawyers for 29-year-old Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia maintain he is not affiliated with MS-13 or any other street gang and argue the U.S. government “has never produced an iota of evidence” that he does.

Abrego Garcia was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 after working a shift as a sheet metal apprentice in Baltimore and picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house, his lawyers’ complaint stated.

Abrego Garcia was then sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which activists say is rife with abuses and where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside. Abrego Garcia’s wife later saw him in photos and video from the prison, identifying her husband through his distinctive tattoos and two scars on his head.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials admitted in a court filing to an “administrative error” in deporting him. The government’s acknowledgment sparked immediate uproar from immigration advocates while prompting Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials to repeat their false claims that he’s a gang member.