We are in a new era in the history of these United States, ladies and gentlemen. For the duration of the entire Trump saga we have had dual narratives running in this country; the mainstream press which reports facts but is too terrified to put them into the context needed to prove up what a fraud Trump is. And then there’s the right-wing fantasy narrative, which is bereft of facts and makes everything the Mango Messiah does seem wonderful.
This has been the norm since 2015. Now, ten years later, we find the norm escaltating to a pitch which is simply untenable. Trump has far too much riding on his fantasies right now. He is pitching a plan for American “wealth” which simply is not grounded in fact. And nobody in his own party is stopping him — although, miraculously, a few voices are being heard in opposition. And who is writing this ahistorical and unreal blather for him?
That is inane rambling. That doesn’t mean anything. And we did have the Smoot Hawley tariff in effect in 1930 and all it did was worsen the Great Depression. The Smoot Hawley Act raised import duties on a range of agricultural and industrial goods by about 20%, increasing the average tariff on dutiable imports to almost 60%. Other countries responded to the Smoot Hawley tariffs with their own retaliatory measures, leading to a significant decline in international trade. The net effect was to contribute to global instability and worsen the Great Depression.
The markets are already tumbling. Is this by design?
The president’s new tariffs, which come after aggressive further rounds of trade barriers on a number of other countries including allied nations the U.S. has trade deals with, include 34 percent new tariffs on China, 24 percent new tariffs on Japan, and 26 percent new tariffs on India; worldwide, tariffs on products from other countries are going up anywhere from 10 percent to 49 percent.
According to MarketWatch, “S&P 500 futures were off by 58 points, or 1.1%, at 5,618; Nasdaq-100 futures were down 267 points, or 1.4%, at 19,341; [and] Dow futures were down by 163 points, or 0.4%, at 42,119.”
Former Justice Department head of public affairs and communications strategist Xochitl Hinojosa called the plunge in stock futures a “warning sign” for the economy on CNN as Trump delivered his speech touting his trade restrictions.
This was all foreseen and predicted. But still Trump plunges ahead like it is somehow remotely possible that some other result, a positive result, is a possible result of his ludicrous actions. That’s the scary part of all this.
And it gets worse. When fact checked, Trump’s tirade “isn’t even close to accurate.”
The key point, according to Dale, was that the United States “is not exporting even close to that tariff-free quota maximum, so none of those hefty Canadian tariffs above the quota level are actually being applied.”
“And that was just one of the false claims he made,” Dale said as he next took on Trump’s claim that the U.S. was “proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been” when it was a “tariff-backed nation” from 1789 to 1913.
“He also offered what I think is some pretty, pretty brazen alternative history,” Dale, a senior reporter, said. “The U.S. is way wealthier today by any reasonable measure, including per capita income living standards.”
The CNN fact-checker closed by quickly squashing Trump’s claim that the country would not have endured the Great Depression had it continued imposing tariffs and his repeated assertions that the U.S. had the highest inflation in history under President Joe Biden.
“Yes, of course it was high, it was troubling, not even close to a record,” Dale concluded.
Trump’s tariff madness may end up being stonewalled in the Senate. Right now Trump is furious at Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. Thom Tillis is also making noise about how farmers in his state will be affected. Maybe the way this is going is that:
- Trump really is trying to inflict another Great Depression on this country;
- Some Republicans are going to band together to stop him;
- The rest of the GOP (or a sizeable margin) may follow because they don’t want to be voted out by an angry mob. Political fantasy is all well and fine until it loses you votes. We saw that last night in Wisconsin.
It’s good that Daniel Dale fact checked this but what really needs to happen is that the steps that Trump is taking towards an actual Depression, not a recession but a full blown Depression, need to be documented and presented as such. Because he is not playing with a full deck. And there is no way his irrational trade war is going to result in a “golden age” or will “make America wealthy.” That is sheer fantasy pablum.
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Friends, if you can spare a few dollars to keep us trekking through cyberspace on our seemingly endless mission to see the country rid of Donald Trump, we could use it. We are now entering month six of Trump Depression Syndrome, a scenario in which a lot of Democrats tune out. I don’t blame them. I just know that we have to stay in the fight and the political blogs are on the front line. Whatever you can do will be appreciated. Thank you. Ursula
‘Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through Hell’. William Carlos Williams in his introduction to Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL. Written by the ‘angel headed hipster’ as a member of the 50s rebellion against our materialistic culture…they were called the Beats. Their lifestyles and literature led to the peace and love of the hippie movement and the era of psychedelics. HOWL was originally banned but that was later overturned. Anyone who hasn’t read HOWL…should, or just admit your knowledge of American culture’s seminal movements is lacking. We have become a country of no memory and no vision. That being said, the Beats had the courage to push the boundaries of experiences. In this ever changing kaleidoscope we call life…no one can say what the future holds. What we can do is work to be authentic and genuine. That’s a rebellion in the plastic land of lies where a tv/computer/phone screen replaces fresh air, and the natural world, and conversation is quickly becoming extinct. When you know nothing…you have nothing to talk about. Trump is the King of Empty. His heart, mind, and soul seem as barren as Death Valley. Since he knows nothing…having studied nothing but grifting, he has learned the art of invention, i.e., lying. I guess half of America would rather live emotionally, driven by the rush of chemicals we get with fight or flight. The complexities are too much for them…as they are for their King. Unfortunately no matter how much cotton candy they spin…the rest of us starve.
Having Rand Paul come in criticizing his tariffs surely must have some in the Republican party thinking this guy has got to go.
Canada is trying to reverse course, but reasoning with a lunatic is impossible. It’s worth remembering that Canada and Mexico both have standing trade agreements with the US that were negotiated with the previous trump administration and ratified by Congress. Everything trump is doing now is outside that agreement. He’s using ridiculous national security loopholes to justify his actions.
In the future, no country will even bother negotiating with him. It’s a waste of time. He will change his mind the next day.
Trump is doing way worse than a Hoover. The crash of October 124, Black Friday 1929, occurred almost nine months into Hoover’s presidency. He did not do anything special to cause the crash, he just continued the policies of his Republcan predecessors Harding and Coolidge, and then reacted to the crash as they would have done, in a totally unimaginative and ineffective way. He refused to understand the gravity what had happened, and the remedies he suggested were just to continue with the same policies. Hoover remained in office until March 4, 1933, and things just got worse and worse. Prosperity was not “just around the corner.” FDR was elected and the result was the New Deal.
The economic indicators coming into Trump’s second term were all good. Whatever happens to the economy from here on are due to his own policies. Essentially nobody, not even the people that voted for him, asked for this. If they had been paying attention, enough of them would not have voted for him and Kamala Harris would be president now, and the economic outlook would be fine. This is TOTALLY on Trump and the idiots that he has chosen to advise him, or better said, on those who chose this idiot Trump to carry out their programs, Project 2025 and anybody else on board.
My first comment was meant to be for the OP.
I got mixed up because I originally meant to comment on your statement that “In the future, no country will even bother negotiating with him. It’s a waste of time. He will change his mind the next day.” It’s not that I disagree with you, I think you are right, except we don’t have to wait for the future. What immediately came to mind was Zelensky and the so-called minerals deal. Trump is “negotiating” because he thinks it will make him untold amounts of money. Of course he’s not actually negotiating, although he seems to think he is; to negotiate you have to offer some benefits to the other gu — Trump is doing just the opposite, he’s taken all his cards off the table. Zelensky and Putin are not really negotiating either. they are just stringing Trump along, in different ways and for totally different reasons.
Actually, my friend just explained to me what he thinks is going on. Lutnick, Musk et al explained to Trump that he could make a billion dollars over night through MASSIVE shorts on the S&P if he did this. My guess is all of them made several hundred million already this morning. Sure, millions of people around the world my die from Trump’s no-reason global recession or depression, but what do they care if it makes the lot of them billionnaires AGAIN??!! Also, they can just blame it on Israel and the world will go along with them. No matter what happens on earth, if it’s bad, just blame my people and the world WILL ALWAYS go along with that.
You’re welcome.