Listening to Trump's babbling at his big Tariffs press conference this afternoon, he was talking again about his yearning for the Belle Epoque -- those golden olden days at the end of the 19th Century, when the US government was small enough to be financed by the tariffs it collected, meaning that the poor and the middle class ended up paying a disproportionate share of their income for those tariffed goods, while the wealthy paid a relative pittance. In Trump's mind, that was just marvelous - noblesse oblige and all that.
So this afternoon, he again talked about what a mistake it was in 1913 that the US decided to collect income taxes instead of financing everything with tariffs.
Then he went on about how poorly the United States has been treated by the world -- yes, we're all been so mean to the poor poor United States, forcing them to pay for the best military in the world and to put up those bases all over, demanding to use the US dollar as the world currency, requiring them to fight wars everywhere, making them develop world-class universities and industries and lead the world in democratic governance -- have they ever had it rough!
Then he went on about how poorly the United States has been treated by the world -- yes, we're all been so mean to the poor poor United States, forcing them to pay for the best military in the world and to put up those bases all over, demanding to use the US dollar as the world currency, requiring them to fight wars everywhere, making them develop world-class universities and industries and lead the world in democratic governance -- have they ever had it rough!
Then he holds up a placard with a list of tariffs on it that nobody could read, and keeps on talking.
I expected a marching band and a juggling act too, but then CBC cut away so I didn't see them whenever they showed up.
As Alex Ballingall at the Toronto Star wrote in their live coverage piece:
Here is the series in the Toronto Star (gift link):
Trump tariffs: Trump escalates global trade war with new tariffs; Canada pledges countermeasures Trump’s punishing 25 per cent auto tariffs take effect at midnight. Meanwhile, tariffs remain on Canadian goods not covered by CUSMA.
and here is the series in the Globe and Mail (gift link):
Live updates: Canada will fight back against U.S. tariffs, Mark Carney says Countries across Asia wake up to news of economic disruption and potential devastation
Both are well worth reading.
Next, some interesting posts and comments:
Carney's reaction - Keep Calm and Carney On!
Paul Krugman
And of course that US tariff policy that Trump's team has had two months to work on, shows how it will be implemented with all the slapdash incompetence and nonsense ineptitude that we have come to expect from the Trump administration.
This feels very Trumpy to me: a global audience fraught with anxiety about how his actions will vapourize wealth and jobs, learning how hard they’re getting hit by squinting at a placard the president is clutching in the White House Rose garden.
I found two excellent groupings of short articles about the impact of the Trump tariffs:I see that Trump, as well as rambling like an idiot, is using state of the art (circa 1980) presenting techniques with his Eurovision style scoreboard to describe his new tariffs.#trumptariffs #trump pic.twitter.com/oxLNbZsyuC
— Marcy Jay (@wisebirdswords) April 2, 2025
Here is the series in the Toronto Star (gift link):
Trump tariffs: Trump escalates global trade war with new tariffs; Canada pledges countermeasures Trump’s punishing 25 per cent auto tariffs take effect at midnight. Meanwhile, tariffs remain on Canadian goods not covered by CUSMA.
and here is the series in the Globe and Mail (gift link):
Live updates: Canada will fight back against U.S. tariffs, Mark Carney says Countries across Asia wake up to news of economic disruption and potential devastation
Both are well worth reading.
Next, some interesting posts and comments:
Trump is apparently mad at Quebec's language laws and its supply management systems. Oh, cry me a river!View on Threads
Americans are going to be poorer:View on Threads
Congrats America! pic.twitter.com/3KWQg0NAhB
— Sam Riegel (@samriegel) April 2, 2025
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This is chilling:View on Threads
Shannon Proudfoot / The Globe and MailView on Threads
Opinion: Donald Trump’s tariff game show live from the Rose Garden
Has anyone considered just getting him another game show?
Think about it: guaranteed audience; breathless anticipation of the next plot twist; a stage on which he can play the smiting hand of God or magnanimous benefactor, depending on his whim; a teaser campaign in the week before the big reveal; even a team in charge of set dressing and extras casting.
I really think a game show might be what he wants, deep down.
On what he had dubbed Liberation Day – Wednesday to everyone with less imagination – U.S. President Donald Trump stood at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, with huge American flags fluttering from the portico behind him and an adoring audience of auto-parts assemblers, construction workers, union members and reflective-vest wearers, arrayed like a phalanx of Playmobil figurines before him.
Everyone was gathered for what Mr. Trump described modestly as “one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history.” Or, for the rest of the world – and certainly Canada and Mexico – the day they found out how many walls of their house the neighbour who’d lost his marbles was about to smash through with his car.
“I think you’re going to remember today. It’s going to be a free nation that we’re dealing with,” he said. “We’re going to have a very free and beautiful nation. It’s going to be Liberation Day in America, and it’s going to be a day that hopefully you’re going to look back in years to come and you’re going to say, ‘You know, he was right.‘”
The trade doctrine he laid out goes like this: The United States does not merely sell its products to other countries and buy goods it needs in turn; rather, it is being taken advantage of by all the free-loading countries it subsidizes. Or, as Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, his country has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered.”
You may need to squint a little to see the gobbling, galloping colossus of the United States as the wan little match girl exploited and cast aside by a rapacious world, but please give it a try.
But as of Wednesday, with the flourish of a Sharpie on an executive order executing a signature that really is not normal, all of this would stop. Tariff fences would keep other countries from flooding the American market and, thanks to the gentle coercive power of a switchblade pressed to the tender flesh at the base of a pinky finger, companies all over the world would see the wisdom in relocating to the United States. A new industrial and commercial “golden age” would bloom, Mr. Trump promised.
“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already,” he said. “We will supercharge our domestic industrial base. We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers.”
...Most economists agree that Mr. Trump’s tariffs are going to make all of those things – old-fashioned or not – more expensive for the very people who voted for him so they could buy things and live again. But for the President and his retinue, opposing facts are not merely neutral truths that exist in the world whether you like them or not, they are enemies begging to be punched in the face.
The closest he got to offering even a halfway useful answer to the many screaming questions of the day was contained in a janky chart he hoisted like a novelty cheque at a telethon. Mr. Trump stood there cradling the poster board – half of it hidden by the podium – as he lumbered through a live table read of the tariff damage he was dishing out, nation by nation.
As the President explained, he and his trade advisers arrived at the reciprocal tariffs by adding up the total tariffs other counties imposed on American goods and then – because the U.S. is “so kind” – cutting that number in half to arrive at the reciprocal tariffs the U.S. was enacting on these global tormenters and rip-off artists.
China, you get 34-per-cent tariffs; European Union, you’re at 20 per cent; Taiwan, 32 per cent for you. It was like an infinitely stupider version of Oprah’s favourite things giveaways.
This time, Canada was relatively spared, though the 25-per-cent tariffs on automobiles will be plenty punishing.
And tomorrow or next week or three months from now, he could change his mind and lob something even worse than that.
If someone doesn’t give this sad, hungry man with a hole right through the middle of him a game show, none of us are getting off the spinning wheel of insanity to which we’ve all been strapped.
Paul Krugman
Trump Goes Crazy on TradeKrugman discusses the example of Trump claiming that Europe charges 39% in tariffs when it is actually about 3%. He continues:
“Liberation Day” is even worse than expected
I guess it’s just possible that when we get details about the Trump tariffs they will be lower than what he just announced, but based on what he said, he’s gone full-on crazy. It’s not just that he appears to be imposing much higher tariffs than almost anyone expected. He’s also making false claims about our trading partners — not sure in this case whether they’re lies, because he may be truly ignorant — that will both enrage them and make it very hard to back down.
Basically, he’s claiming that the rest of the world is placing very high tariffs on U.S. products, and that he’s imposing “reciprocal” tariffs that are only half what they impose on us.
But you know that having once claimed that Europe charges tariffs more than 10 times as high as reality, Trump will never drop that claim. I don’t know how many people noticed, but he’s still claiming that we’re subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year. Aside from the basic mistake of claiming that a Canadian trade surplus means that we’re somehow subsidizing Canada, he’s inflating the actual trade surplus by a factor of three. Many, many people have pointed out the error, but Trump is sticking with it, the same way Musk is sticking with the millions of dead Social Security beneficiaries thing.Here's one suggestion for how Trump ended up with those crazy figures:
If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them.
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#ETTD - Everything Trump Touches Dies
Social media is rocking with laughter about those penguins:View on Threads
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4 comments:
Are the money nerds playing the fanboy?
I think the game is to put merca into such crisis that the oligarchy can break out the military unopposed. All intelligent positions in merca being systematically replaced with drump reich 4.7 loyalists.
It's world war that ever made merica great.
"We aren't ruling out the military" is foreshadowing and a promise
Orngmar Tarrif pushing for american desperation to unleash the hounds.
Simple plan with elaborate cover.
It's impressive how many of these places are not countries. As most Canadians know, St. Pierre and Miquelon are part of France. St. Maarten is half part of France AND half part of Holland! But they get their own tariffs. It's like if you were to put tariffs on Canada, but then separate tariffs on Timmins, Ontario because you've heard the place has something to do with Charlie Angus. Maybe I better not give him ideas . . .
This is what happens when the thirty or more percent of eligible voters decide not to vote!
My vote doesn't count! BULLSHIT,
TB
Apparently SP&M only export a few lobsters to the US. The tariff is ridiculous
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