Trump-Bashing Is Good For Your Health, Chinese Call It ‘Stress Relief’

Donald Trump is mocked and reviled worldwide. During the 2016 election, Mexicans were smashing Trump pinatas, and playing a Trump video game, which gave the player a choice of throwing a soccer ball, a cactus or a Tequila bottle at a moving Trump, to score points. (My favorite was the Tequila bottle.) Now, the Chinese, ever an inventive people, have come up with their own version of Trump-bashing, designed to relieve stress. Space Daily:

A kiosk at the centre of the Consumer Electronics Show Asia (CES Asia) bills itself as a “stress-relief” station where you can smash a life-sized bobble-head likeness of the US president with a hammer.

“It would be better if I could use my hands and feet. I think the hammer isn’t satisfying enough,” attendee Wang Dongyue, 31, said after sending the presidential noggin lurching back and forth.

At one point, a young Chinese girl began crying after coming face-to-face with the pouty-faced bobble-head.

“They should have a boxing glove. That would feel better,” show attendee Liu Di said after watching visitors take their licks.

Trump keeps ranting about the “billions coming in from Chinese tariffs,” while manufacturers are blue in the face contemplating more problems. Washington Post:

Starting on Monday, hundreds of companies are scheduled to testify before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) over seven days of hearings on the president’s proposal to expand tariffs to an additional $300 billion in Chinese imports. After a year-long trade war, those are the only Chinese imports that remain duty-free.

USTR has received more than 1,600 written comments on the plan, with the overwhelming majority warning that additional tariffs would raise prices for consumers, cost American jobs and disrupt production at companies across the nation.

“If we are forced to move production from China, it will take a long time to make sure that new factories will make the garment correctly and can get the proper materials. The costs may be too great too, as we are barely profitable now,” wrote Mark Corrado, president of Leading Lady, a bra maker in Beachwood, Ohio, who is scheduled to be among the first witnesses.

The avalanche of complaints suggests that industry patience with the president’s tariff-heavy trade policy is evaporating. His sudden threat last month to impose tariffs on Mexican imports in a dispute over border security coupled with fading prospects for a comprehensive trade deal with China explain the increasingly vocal opposition, according to trade analysts and executives.

If you’re expecting insight form the Secretary of Commerce, disabuse yourself of that silly notion forthwith. Wilbur Ross is basically shining this entire tariff episode on, because he has no idea where it’s going either. He spoke to CNBC in Paris, “We will eventually make a deal, but if we don’t, the president is perfectly happy with continuing the tariff movements that we’ve already announced, as well as imposing the new ones that he has temporarily suspended.” Trump might be happy, but how about the WalMart patriots when they can’t buy flip flops or moo moos? This is going to end badly.