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The Trump Presidency Thread


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He misses me so he's trying to fill the void with a sugar substitute ( that's you suited )

I've had it.   He did not ****ing dispute the story   He made a statement about things that weren't in the ****ing story which means he confirmed the ****ing story.   Jesus Jumping Jimmeny Chris

he should throw a gay person off a building while he's there or kill someone for drawing a cartoon. really get into the spirit of being a muslim.

So much winning

 

On one hand it is impressive that Jones won in a deep red state on a very standard Democratic platform. And worth cheering.

 

But for it to come down to the wire, for a candidate who's only "redeeming quality" for voters is his anti-abortion stance, for a candidate who's allegations of pedophilia almost helped him as it buried stories of his "original interpretation of the Constitution" (tldr: slaves are fine), for a candidate who was fired (twice?) from the Alabama Supreme Court there's no way on earth that he should have garnered anywhere near 48% of the vote.

 

If we want more from our politicians then we absolutely need to move beyond voting for party lines.

 

And if Moore's politics are as abhorrent to Trump as they are to McConnell then the White House should have taken the high road and left Moore to his own devices. The GOP either sold out their principles for a meaningless Senate vote or revealed their true colours.

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I'm sure he's actively talking about it somewhere that has more than 4 people actively discussing it.

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I agree with everything in this article.

 

Trump's promised tariffs will start a trade war, not ensure national security

The president's new trade policy will do more harm to America than good.

 

 

President Trump’s apparent decision to ignite a preemptive trade war by imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel imports highlights several of his worst qualities as a leader: Zero-sum thinking, a nostalgia for a long-gone America, evidence-free beliefs and an inability or refusal to be educated about those beliefs. It’s that toxic cocktail of guttural impulses and instincts that has helped lead to him to push for a radical policy solution in search of an actual problem.

 

Now the purported reason why Trump is saying that he will announce these steep global tariffs next week is for national security — at least, that claim forms the legal basis of the action. And who knows, maybe Trump even kind of believes it himself. As the president said in February, “I want to keep [metal] prices down but I also want to make sure that we have a steel industry and an aluminum industry, and we do need that for national defense. If we ever have a conflict we don’t want to be buying steel [from] a country we are fighting.”

 

As rickety as the national security reasoning is, the economic argument is equally bad, if not worse.

 

That reasoning is pretty much ridiculous, unless the Pentagon has given Trump reason to think it’s possible that the 1st Armored Division might one day be racing toward Toronto, or Army Rangers parachuting into Rio de Janeiro. The top two suppliers of steel imports to the U.S. are Canada and Brazil. On the other hand, Russia and China — two countries with whom we might more realistically have a future military conflict — contribute just 9 percent and 2 percent of steel imports, respectively.

 

And, as trade expert Phil Levy has pointed out, the Commerce Department report that claimed metals imports had eroded the country’s ability to make its own weapons also noted that the Defense Department’s steel needs require a measly 3 percent of total U.S. steel production, which is a steady 70 percent of the U.S. market. So national security is a flimsy, even vaporous, justification for tariffs.

 

But as rickety as that reasoning is, the economic argument is equally bad if not worse. It’s doubtful even the administration’s own economists could stomach making the case that tariffs are good for the American economy. And that perhaps is especially true when what’s being taxed — and tariffs are a tax — are commodities used to make a vast array of products for business and consumers.

 

His argument really isn’t an economic one anyway: It’s all about respect.

 

Steel mills add $36 billion of value to the economy each year and employ some 140,000 workers, according to the Cato Institute’s Dan Pearson. The companies that buy steel as an input for further manufacturing produce output, however, add worth of just over $1 trillion and employ 6.5 million workers. Trump is potentially hurting the many to maybe help the few. What’s more, the decline in steel jobs since the 1950s and 1960s — you know, when America was really great in Trump’s view — is as much a result of technological innovation as international competition.

 

Many economists, both within and outside the Trump administration have tried to explain all this to the president. But Trump has been railing against free trade for 40 years (though, one would think that a man who brags about the building's he's constructed would be in favor of cheaper steel) and seems unpersuadable.

 

But his argument really isn’t an economic one anyway: It’s all about respect. As Trump sees it, U.S. trade negotiations have been getting suckered — perhaps willfully — for years by their craftier foreign counterparts. His proof is decades of persistent U.S. trade deficits, which he interprets as the U.S "losing" at trade.

 

Trade hawks in the Trump White House such as economist Peter Navarro may well want to undermine the entire global trading system — including the World Trade Organization and global supply chains — that has led to postwar peace and prosperity.

 

America’s chronic trade deficits, however, stem from Americans’ decisions not to save much of their money, not from dumb trade deals. And, if you compare trade deficits to jobs growth, they are positively correlated: In other words, when jobs are plentiful, Americans buy lots of stuff, including imports. (The irony here is that, if Trump’s tax plan actually stimulates the economy, it is likely to lead to even wider trade deficits, perhaps giving Trump even more reason for further tariffs.)

 

Now if these tariffs stick, the direct impact might be slightly lower economic growth over the near term. In America’s increasingly digital economy, aluminum and steel imports together account for only about 2 percent of total goods imports, according to Barclays — though the economic damage could increase if and when other nations retaliate.

 

None of that is really the most serious concern of many economists, policymakers, or market players. As Goldman Sachs explained in a research note this week, “This could lead to other trading partners taking similar actions and could ultimately weaken the international trade conventions, like WTO rules, more generally.” Other countries, they suggest, may be tempted to use the "national security" excuse to justify their own protectionist measures now that Trump is setting a precedent.

 

Then again, trade hawks in the Trump White House such as economist Peter Navarro may well want to undermine the entire global trading system — including the World Trade Organization and global supply chains — that has led to postwar peace and prosperity, and brought hundreds of millions of our fellow humans out of deep poverty. They are nationalists who may be willing to tolerate a poorer, more insular America in the name of greater sovereignty and less economic disruption.

 

As former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has put it, “A country is more than just an economy.” Well, we might just see if this country will like the sort of less dynamic economy and less stable world that Trump’s trade war might just bring.

 

James Pethokoukis is an economic policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also an official CNBC contributor.

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I mean, if he strongly condemned a powerful foreign nation without talking to the president, he should be fired. I have no idea if that happened, but it seems really likely.

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Fired for being a Secretary of State and actually voicing what pretty much every western nation (except for Trump) is doing?

 

So let's review the last 24-48 hrs:

 

Tillerson fired and within a day another anti-Putin businessman in the UK is killed by the Russians. 20+ Russians expelled.

Yet another "adult in the room" fired just after https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/15/hr-mcmaster-russia-syria-crime-punishment-465841

Bragged that he "bluffed" Trudeau about the CAN/US trade balance when in reality he doesn't know

 

Notes:

1. During the campaign Trump bragged he knew people in the highest circles and he would assemble the dream team cabinet. Meanwhile it's shaping up to be shit show of cronism, yes-men, and people trying to line their own pockets.

2. Whole f'ing basis of Trump's campaign was that the US get getting screwed in trade deals and yet he doesn't understand a single basic thing about trade

 

I thought "change" was needed but I certainly didn't think Trump would be the guy for the job. And he has managed far exceed the incompetence and corruption I was expecting out of him.

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ian bremmer

‏@ianbremmer

Following Following @ianbremmer

Probably the worst/biggest single day for geopolitical risk since I started @EurasiaGroup in 1998.

 

 

1. China tariffs push markets down 3%

 

and

 

2. Trump hires most hawkish neocon for NSC...

 

in midst of G-Zero.

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Chris Murphy

‏@ChrisMurphyCT

41m41 minutes

The person who will be first in/first out of the Oval Office on national security matters passionately believes the U.S. should launch preemptive war against both Iran and North Korea w no authorization from Congress.

 

My god.

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Even though it's a historically low approval rating, it still shocks me that 35-40% of people actually think he is doing a good job.

 

Not when you consider the gaslighting done by Fox for the past decade

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Rick Santorum: Students should stop asking people to fix their problems (getting murdered in schools is apparently a "niche issue") and should spend their time learning CPR instead.

 

Meanwhile:

 

DZItl1HUQAAWQx8.jpg

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