Here’s the reasons stated why Trump started the trade war using high tariffs on penguins and US military bases as a weapon:
1. Trade balances were unfair.
2. Tariffs on US good hurt US manufacturers.
3. High tariffs on imports are good because now manufactures will come back to the US and make products here.
4. High tariffs will generate much more income for the United States, so much so that we will be able to cut taxes to our own people, thus the line “tariffs are tax cuts”.
So Team Trump raised tariffs on all sorts of countries.
We won’t get into the bizarre formula they used to calculate the amounts of the tariffs here. If you’re looking at the list of reasons for the Trump tariffs and feel like you’re seeing conflicting goals, you are. There are three main uses of tariffs:
- To help domestic made goods compete against the same cheaper imported good in their home market by raising the price of the cheaper imported good.
- To punish countries that deemed to be behaving badly in the world.
- To spur domestic growth of the manufacture of a product.
On the first use: Wood and steel have had multiple tariffs place on them over the last 20 years. In both cases, domestic production has ticked up a bit. The trade-off though is that the price of both have gone up, not only on the imported product, but on the domestic product as well.
Why would that happen?
Tariffs are inflationary tools. The price of the imported product goes up. Often the price on domestic products are lower than potential market value in order to compete as much as possible with the imported good. Once the cheaper competition is eliminated, the purchase price of the domestic good goes up as well. This happened with domestic steel, which saw a 20% increase in price after the tariff took effect.
On the second use: This is long excepted practice, and historically, if you look at the lack of results, they seem to be pointless in the goal to achieve some kind of reform. But they are definitely a political necessity. Punitive tariffs are a go-to – they are easy to implement, and a quick way to wag the finger at a country, even if they don’t work.
So. Now we have the Trump tariffs. They have two stated goals – to balance the trade deficits, and to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. I won’t bother covering how his tariffs, as laid out, were not well thought through and have no connection to actual trade relations with other penguins… I mean nations. I do want to point out the insane flaw in the second goal. Tariffs by their nature are transitory policies; they change. Building factories is a massive expense compared to business as usual. And it takes time to build a new one. Add to that the cost of US labor, and now there’s a new problem. To cover all these expenses, the product sold may be more expensive when made here vs if the factory just stayed where it is.
Here’s a bigger problem. As the tariffs are getting blasted in all corners, except the right-wing lapdog press, Team Trump is arm-waiving, yelling “HEY!!! 50 COUNTRIES ARE MAKING DEALS TO DO AWAY WITH THE TARIFFS!!!!
OK. Except, isn’t that the OPPOSITE of the stated goals? 0 tariffs don’t get rid of trade deficits on either side. More important, getting rid of these tariffs undermines the stated goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US. And is this administration even serious about making deals? When asked about a possible 0 trade deal with Vietnam, Trump economic Peter Navarro adviser stated yesterday:
“Let’s take Vietnam. When they come to us and say ‘we’ll go to zero tariffs,’ that means nothing to us because it’s the non-tariff cheating that matters”.
What? Vietnam had very low tariffs on American goods before all this came down the pike.
One might actually think they have no idea what the actual goal of all this is, except to show how mighty and powerful Donald Trump is.
Is it true? Sonicfrog is back?
Back in October, trying to create a website for my restructured business – Frog’s Pool Service And Spa Repair LLC – I screwed up the files on my blog.
This blog disappeared.
Now, I’m not exactly sure what I did, but I was tinkering around the files, and now, somehow, Sonicfrog.net is BACK!!!! Which is great, because I have a LOT on my mind that I need to vent about.
So lets see if this works.
Political campaigns have NEVER been about truthfulness.
EVER.
It’s about energy. Trump has it. Biden does not.
Biden has done a respectable job bringing the country our of the Covid recession. But that’s not enough. The red flag has been waiving for a year, and many have tried to ignore it, hoping it would majically disappear.
It hasn’t.
All my life, there has been talk of a brokered convention, where the party chooses someone other than the candidate who won the primaries. It was a pipe-dream for challengers who were interesting, but never made enough of a mark to gain any momentum to make it happen. The problem now is that the Democrats were so successful at keeping everyone in line and not challenging Biden, that at this point in tim, there is no one to challenge Biden and take his place.
I wonder if Stacy Abrahm’s phone is ringing off the hook.
My fellow oldies complaining about the TV / NFL love affair with Traylor Swelce is like complaining that the Superbowl halftime show has rappers now…
It’s not for us.
The network and NFL execs have one job – to get as many eyes watching as possible to justify the huge amounts of money shoveled out to pay for the product. Now football fans are going to watch regardless of whether the camera constantly shows Swift and Kelce or not. The constant fawning over the power couple is for one reason – to get those young viewers who may not care much about football to watch.
AND, to promote endless discussion on social media. Yeah. You may not be talking about the action on the field, but you’re still making the game and the NFL a trending topic. Even though you’re complaining, you’re still helping the NFL accomplish its objective.
My advice?
If you are annoyed with Tayvis Keft, ignore it. Life is too short to worry about innoquous marketing campaigns.
We will be seeing the Trump fraud case coming to a close in the next few weeks. Team Trump has made a big deal about one single aspect of the fraud case, the valuation of Mar-a-Lago, to try and sow doubt on the entire case. It’s a smart move, as that one property evaluation has the most wiggle room when considering the difference between property tax evaluation and asset valuation. Team Trump wants the public to believe the whole case centers on the value of this one Trumps asset.
It is not.
That is only one of the many examples of fraud listed in the case. I’m bookmarking this PDF file listing all the proven instances of fraud committed by Trump for future use.
PS: When I created the tag for Politics / Law, I had no idea at the time that putting the two together would be so useful and accurate.
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/tto_release_properties_addendum_-_final.pdf
My “outing” was pretty hilarious really.
It’s 1994, and I’m working for a regional pool supply wholesaler. Work had recently hired this guy who was a bit odd. He was a health nut. Now being health conscious is great, but this guy was extreme, going out of his way to extol the greatness of his all-veggie smoothie diet. He was obnoxious about it and never stopped talking about it and showing us his liquid food pouches. We quickly gave him the superhero moniker OrganicMan. Oh, he also bragged that he never sat on a toilet. Because your intestines are not “aligned properly” when you sit, he bragged that he stood on the rim and squatted. Soon enough confirmation emerged in the form of shoe prints on the rim of the employee toilet seat.
OrganicMan was in very good shape. He went to the gym, and in case you haven’t guessed… Yes, he bragged about it every day. Shoehorned into that boast was another; all the gay guys at the gym were always hitting on him.
“All gays just want me”.
Yes. He proclaimed it often.
So one day, as OrganicMan was boasting about this, Tommy, the young jokester employee hired at about the same time, turns and says “Well Mike is gay, and he said he’s not attracted to you”. Now Tommy has no idea that I’m gay, nor does anyone else, but the shocked reaction of OrganicMan upon hearing this made my response perfectly obvious. He was shocked, dumbfounded. I HAD to run with this. OM would constantly ask me why I’m not attracted to to him. I just told him I don’t know, I’m just not. At some point during the week he asked if it was because his arm were too hairy. Even though I had said that was not the reason, he came to work the next day and proudly showed everyone that he trimmed his arm hair.
In today’s world this would be flagged as harassment. I’m not sure if management was aware of how much this guy was getting on everyone’s nerves, but they might have, because I know a number of employees were really getting sick of his schtick, and he soon he ended up pulling delivery driver duties, which got him away from us.
Meanwhile, one of the fellow not-weird employees ask if I was actually gay, and I answered honestly. A couple of the guys would give me the “I’m not gay, but it’s no problem” nod, while a couple of others made their negative view of such things known. All in all, it wasn’t the bad experience it could have been.
While I was in Washington over Christmas break, I had some very interesting convo with my sister and her husband, both former journalists, about the continuing low polling numbers for Joe Biden vs Trump. Before I get to that conversation, I’ll share my opinion…
Right now, polls are meaningless. There are a couple of factors why. In the name of “balance”, major media outlets consolidate polling output from several different services. Some of those services, taken individually, have been pretty reliable. But others have not. The latter skew right. This was why polls in the last few elections have predicted the vaunted “Red Wave” that never materialized.
Second: we’re nine months out. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, GW , and even Barrak Obama were all behind in polling at this point. Granted, the margins weren’t as wide, but they were behind. Part of that is due to the propensity of media to again try to be “balanced” and include negatives in every story about the current state of the union. Half a year ago, we were seeing headlines like “Economic Data Is Strong, BUT A Recession Is On The Way”. Now, the headlines are starting to read “Economic Data Is Strong, BUT Inflation May Return”. Those negatives are gonna increase dissatisfaction with Biden in general.
Now, to the convo.
My stated beef with the Biden effort to secure reelection is that… There doesn’t seem to be any effort. Every single day, Trump is out campaigning for the Presidency.
Every
Single
Fucking
Day!!!
He not only wants it, he NEEDS it to stay out of jail. And, as is the case with most ALL fascist, he has an extreme talent for turning negatives into positives. He’s turned his legal troubles into a net positive by yelling at the top of his lungs that the ONLY reason he has legal troubles is because the Guvment is out to get him.
It’s amazing to watch. And frightening, because like Mussolini and Hitler, right wing political party has aligned itself with him, consequences be damned.
What is Biden doing to counter this???
He did have a press conference a couple of days ago, but there hasn’t been much of a counterattack to tout his record and go against the threat. My sister and brother-in-law support this. They think it would be better for Biden to hold his powder, wait a few more months, and then go hard.
Why waste the political energy.
In normal times, I would agree. But these are not normal times, and Trump is not a normal candidate. It not only cedes ground to Trump, but it also reinforces the right-wing message that Biden is too old and can’t do this job because he’s not up to the challenge.
We parted company disagreeing. The Biden strategy feels like the same one Hillary followed. And look where that got us.
Many years ago, 1993, a friend of mine was taken from this world. Murdered because of who he was, who he loved. I wrote a song for him and promised I would play it for him on the beach in San Diego near where he lived. It took many years, but I fulfilled my promise in 2015. Now I’ve recorded the song and released it into the world. To say it means a lot to have it recorded is an understatement.
My post explaining how Rob Johnson became my friend and his loss is here.
As Mark Twain never said, but should have:
“History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme a lot”.
When people think of Adolf Hitler in the court room, the usually go to the Beer Hall Putsch trial, where Hitler tried to incite an insurrection against the government, It failed and he got convicted of high treason, but gotta lenient sentence. Hitler famously wrote Mein Kempf while serving his sentence. There is a second trial many are not as familiar with. Two workers in Berlin were stabbed by four Nazi party SA officers – the SA would later evolve into the SS – and during their trial, the prosecution called Hitler to the stand to try and establish the intent of the attack, to eliminate enemies of the growing Nazi movement. In the years after Hitler had been released from prison, he had built the Nazi party into a viable political force. He did so by trying to put a moderate veneer on the darker philosophy and goals of the party. During this new trial, in an effort to show that the four men did not simply just get in a fight with the two victims, but had motive, the the prosecution called Hitler to the stand. The young Jewish lawyer Hans Achim Litten soon enough got Hitler to anger on the witness stand, and expose the true intentions of the SA. Though Hitler did not incriminate himself directly, he did say more than enough to land convictions on the defendants.
I write this because today the Trump business fraud trial starts, and all indications point to Trump taking the stand at some point in his defense.
Now is the part where I have to state the obvious:
Donald Trump is NOT Adolf Hitler. Hitler was smarter, and that’s about the only time I can say anything nice about him. But their temperament is the same, as is their desire for political destruction, chaos, and lust for power at all costs. As with Hitler in 1931, Trump will not be able to contain himself and, unlike Hitler, will likely incriminate himself and expose who he really is.
Of course, for the MAGA cult members, it won’t matter.
Though I’m a bass player, I also play guitar. Bass is home, I’ve been playing bass for 30 plus years. It’s almost second nature. I have some skill on guitar, but it’s not on the same level as the other. Shiva Umesh, a drummer I’ve played with in the past, recently invited me to join the Indigo Girls inspired Close To Fine band he’s in, but as a guitar player instead of bass.
I am always trying to push boundaries, play and do things in music that I haven’t done before. It’s one of the reasons I’ve not been in a ton of cover bands. I could be like many of my musician friends and gig every weekend playing in three bands that play the same basic set list, but that’s not my way, at least, not at the moment.
I know a couple of the songs in the two sets we are working on, but most are new to me. And as I delved into those songs I realized had set myself up with a much greater challenge than I knew. The songwriting and musicianship of “The Girls” is amazing!!! Again, I’ve never been a guitarist in a band before. I’m not gonna lie, there are times when I was tempted to say, “hey, I’ll move back to bass”, because I hear what to play evertime we’re playing / practicing, but I won’t give in to taking that easier route.
I really REALLY am gonna have to up my game here. I wanted a challenge… I got it.