In an excellent column about how incredibly dumb Trump is about tariffs, Michael Tomasky makes this excellent point. Trump has said many times that he thinks we can replace the income tax with tariffs, you know, like it was before 1913. But it’s not just about the insanity of that, he’s also, as usual, completely making up numbers:
Read this, from CBS.com: “In a recent news conference, White House staff secretary Will Sharf estimated that Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles and auto parts imported into the U.S. could raise ‘roughly $100 billion in new revenue.’ At the same news conference, Mr. Trump claimed moments later ‘anywhere from $600 billion to $1 trillion will be taken in over the relatively short-term period, meaning a year from now.’”
The aide says $100 billion. Trump casually ups it to a trillion. Billion, trillion; who knows. Well, even I know: A trillion is a thousand billions. That’s like the difference between 10 and 10,000. Pretty vast, in other words. But Trump knows that nobody really thinks about the difference between a billion and a trillion, so just say a trillion.
Finally, before I let you go: How much do tariffs bring in now? Around $80 billion. Sounds like a lot, and it is. But take a guess as to how much total revenue the federal government takes in, from (1) income taxes, which is half of all revenue, (2) payroll taxes, (3) excise taxes, and (4) corporate taxes.It’s around $4.7 trillion. Know what percentage of $4.7 trillion $80 billion is? About 1.7 percent. That’s how much of our current federal revenue comes from tariffs.
Going from 1.7 percent to 100 percent sounds, um, like something that will cause vast, unknowable dislocations; and more to the point, like the fantasy of a stupid man who’s never read a book and has no effing idea what he’s talking about.
I guess it’s tiresome and futile to keep saying this but I will anyway. How in the hell did this country get so stupid that we would elect this imbecile twice? I will never be able to wrap my mind around it.
Over the weekend, as Elon Musk launched into a barrage of social media posts criticizing one of the lead White House advisers for President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff plan, Musk was going over that same official’s head — and making personal appeals to Trump.
The attempted intervention, confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks, has not brought success so far; Trump threatened Monday to add new 50 percent tariffs on imports from China to go along with the 34 percent taxes he announced last week. (The president did signal he was open to negotiations on some aspects of his policy.) Musk, meanwhile,posted a video to X in which the late conservative economist Milton Friedman touted the benefits of international trade cooperation — “the impersonal operation of prices,” as he put it — breaking down the sources of the materials that go into a simple wooden pencil.
This is Trump’s one big idea. Even immigration was something he adopted when he decided to run for president not a personal crusade like tariffs. Elon’s playing with fire by disagreeing with Trump on this one, especially this:
In an interview with Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini over the weekend, Musk also said he would like to see a “free trade zone” between Europe and the United States: “At the end of the day, I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation.”
Whoa. Doesn’t he understand that the EU was formed to rip off America? Is he unaware that they owe us BIGLY and will have to not only pay YUGE tariffs but will have to pay us back for all the years they failed to pay us what we deserve? He needs to have a chat with Dear Leader about all this.
I suspect that Musk’s stock price has him spooked particularly since it was already tanking even before this tariff debacle. But he’d better be careful. After screwing the pooch badly in Wisconsin last week Trump may not be in any mood to put up with him and his rude kid anymore. And if Musk knows anything by now, he should know that Trump will have no compunction about cancelling his SpaceX contracts in a New York minute. Who’s going to stop him?
“What we were hearing throughout the day,” Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible told MSNBC’s Ari Melber, “was the biggest problem … that organizers of these marches were having around the country, was that too many people were showing up, too many more people than they had planned on.” Five to seven times more than had signed up in advance, she said.
That was Saturday, April 5.
Bookmark this clip. You’ll want to come back to it.
View on Threads
Saturday was just the beginning. The next events are scheduled for Saturday, April 19 (details coming). Newsweek:
50501 is again calling for protests in all 50 states against the Trump administration on April 19.
In social media posts, the group stated that they want 3.5 percent of the U.S. population—more than 11 million people—to participate. They cite this figure as the threshold for “sustained resistance in order to make a difference.”
50501 said the April 19 demonstration will be to protest against what they describe as a “hostile government takeover” overseen by the Trump administration.
Organic is better
Our protest here on Saturday was coordinated by 50501, Indivisible, and several other groups. (I actually don’t know how it came together.) Although a local Democratic elected official was the first speaker, someone noted that lack of Democratic Party presence. One reason is that these activist groups are better at this kind of organizing on the fly, and their contact lists cover a wider regional swath than a county party’s. Another is that branding it a Democratic Party event would be less likely to draw a crowd to what people, a majority registered independents, would rightly expect would be a party rally (not what they’re looking for).
What I hope we are seeing is a movement building of the sort that ousts authoritarian leaders in other countries. If ours was a parliamentary system, a no-confidence vote could do it. As is, we in the U.S. are sailing uncharted waters that may give a whole new meaning to “haul in your sheets.”
Remains of a rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in the sand along the John Day River at Service Creek, Wheeler County, Oregon, United States. Photo by Jsayre64 via Wkimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Has anyone tried treating Trumpism with cod liver oil and steroids? Because it seems contagious. At least for anyone in close proximity to the patient in the Oval Office.
True, Donald Trump selected his team largely on the basis that they look good on television. So, he’s selected in many cases for attractive and vacuous. And fiercely loyal. That’s a given.
Trump’s chief economic adviser addressed the Hudson Institute on Monday and presented a set of steps/demands that other countries might take for addressing “unfair barriers to trade” and “unsustainable trade deficits” that have Boss Trump hot and bothered.
Miran said that these factors had led to a “decline of our manufacturing workforce by over a third since its peak and a reduction in our share of world manufacturing production of 40 percent.”
It’s worth noting that while manufacturing employment has gone down, U.S. manufacturing output is up and nearing its all-time high of December 2007. Who exactly will actually work all of these hypothetical manufacturing jobs? No one seems to know! Trump’s own secretary of commerce said earlier this month that he planned to use automation to replace cheap labor, and the treasury secretary suggested Monday that maybe ousted federal workers could pick up some shifts.
Miran suggested that to appeaase the Boss, other nations might simply cave to his demands. Accept the tarifffs without retaliating.
Miran said that countries could “stop unfair and harmful trading practices” by buying more American products, specifically noting that countries could boost defense spending and procurement from the U.S. by “taking strain off our servicemembers and creating jobs here.”
(Don’t ask me to explain the logic there.)
Hey, here’s an idea, Miran offered. Y’all countries can just make your products in the U.S. to avoid tariffs. Or you might “simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods.” This from an administration that doesn’t believe in the public good anyway. So infer Trump’s attempt at a global protection racket. Nice country ya got there.
Trump said Sunday that he’d told global leaders that he wanted to erase the U.S. trade deficit because he viewed any deficit as a “loss,” though that’s not quite how economics works.
In Trump’s zero-sum world, the U.S. is a loser if it has a trade deficit with any country. And we know what Trump thinks about being a loser.
He wants that Tom Sawyer economy I’ve written about. One where people pay us to work for us or they send us their goods in tribute. It’s like kissing his feet without bending over.
Trump: "I said to [the former hostages], was there any sign of love? Did Hamas show any signs of, like, help or liking you? Did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side? Like what happened in Germany." pic.twitter.com/PsLttlmEke
Transcript if you didn’t listen. But you should listen You won’t believe what you’re hearing:
The stories they [former hostages] told me, as an example, I said to them, “was there any sign of love?” You were there. Ten people, it was only ten but it’s pretty representative.
Did the Hamas show any signs of like help or liking you? Did they wink at you or give you a piece of bread extra?
Did they give you a meal on the side like you think of doing, like what happened in Germany, like what happened elsewhere, people would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress.
They said no. I said all of ’em? I said, “did they ever wink at you like you’ll be ok, you’re gonna be ok? They said “they’d slap us.” The hatred is unbelievable.
You know, the lives, they live in a pipe, not really a tunnel, it was a pipe. And they always thought they were suffocating, they were gonna suffocate.
Apparently this illiterate piece of shit thinks the Germans were kind and generous to the Jews? They tried to help the people who were in distress … on the trains, in the camps, in the gas chambers. This is monumentally stupid even for him.
He said this to Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who sat there like a fucking trained seal because he’s as much of a criminal as this garbage human even if he isn’t as demented.
This is the person who is shaking down Universities ostensibly because of antisemitism.
I have been reliably informed many times that “it’s the economy stupid” and that nothing really matters but kitchen table issues to American voters. If that’s so, these polls should give some of us pause.
Here we have the WSJ with questions about the economy:
By 52 -44% people disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.
How about the tariffs?
They don’t like them. But Trump still has an approval rating in the high 40s. Why?
A majority really likes the way Trump is treating immigrants. In fact, it makes them so happy they are willing to lose their retirement funds and pay twice as much for everything in order to enjoy the experience.
Maybe these numbers will change. But right now, Trump’s approval rating is being held up by his draconian immigration policies. It’s the cruelty, stupid.
Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with theagency online.
The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.
The problems come as the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, led by Elon Musk, has imposed a downsizing that’s led to7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees at an agency that serves 73 million Americans. The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology divisionresponsible for the website and other electronic access.
Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.
I guess BigBalls and his pals weren’t prepared for the fact that 70+ million people are active users and that practically the entire population of the country is in the system. (Yes, even non-citizens pay into it without any hope of receiving any benefits.)
I guess we’re just going to have to live with this from now on. The US Government is collapsing. Oh well.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said Monday that an offer by Vietnam to eliminate tariffs on U.S. imports would not be enough for the administration to lift its new levies announced last week.
“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 nontariff cheating that matters,” Navarro said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The examples of nontariff “cheating” cited by Navarro included Chinese products being routed through Vietnam, intellectual property theft and a value-added tax.
Trump said just the other day that before “liberation day” countries wouldn’t do him the favors he seeks but now they’re coming on bended knee. Trade might be part of it. But who knows what he wants? He could demand that they outlaw windmills outside his golf courses and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.
This morning a false rumor went around that Trump was pausing the tariffs for 90 days and the markets went crazy, spiking way into positive territory until the White House called it fake news. If that doesn’t prove what the markets are telling Trump and his minions I don’t know what will. But they just don’t care. Trump is committed to his Tariff Holy Grail and I don’t expect that he’s going to change his mind any day soon.
The NY Times reports that Bobby Jr is closing down research into sexually transmitted diseases. Is it supposed to be some sort of woke, deep state, waste, fraud and abuse? Do they think that there are companies out there just dying to get into the highly profitable clap tracking business?
Drug-resistant gonorrhea, a form of the widespread sexually transmitted infection, is considered an urgent health threat worldwide. The United States has just lost its ability to detect it.
Among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees fired on Tuesday were 77 scientists who, among other work, gathered samples of gonorrhea and other S.T.I.s from labs nationwide, analyzed the genetic information for signs of drug resistance, and readied the samples for storage at a secure facility.
No other researchers at the agency have the expertise, or the software, to continue this work. The abrupt halt has stranded about 1,000 samples of gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted pathogens that had not yet been processed, and perhaps dozens more headed to the agency.
There are as many as 30 freezers full of samples that now have no custodians, said one senior C.D.C. official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
I honestly don’t get this. I have to assume they just don’t think it matters if we study diseases or maybe that if it’s important some drug company will pick up the slack. But they won’t. That’s not what they do. In fact, nobody will do it except government and they’ve decided it’s not even important enough to phase out over time, to at least preserve the work that’s being done currently. It is just abruptly shuttered, everything ruined, no more science for you! I guess Bobby Jr thinks if we all stop eating processed food and seed oils we won’t get gonorrhea.
On Friday I wrote about President Trump’s motivation for this daft tariff scheme. It has almost nothing to do with trade which he doesn’t understand. He’s running a protection racket, shaking down other countries (as well as universities, law firms, corporations) to force them to do his bidding. If you want more proof of that, listen to him on Sunday night talking about holding up Europe for “a lot of money on a yearly basis but also for past.”
Trump calls for Europe to pay reparations to the US: "We put a big tariff on Europe. They are coming to the table. They want to talk, but there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis number one for present but also for past." pic.twitter.com/q1f3N5ebMz
The overwhelming resentment he feels toward Europe came through strongly in his tone. As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir deftly illustrates in this piece it’s not business, it’s personal.
He was inappropriately buoyant during that impromptu press conference, apparently because he “won” the championship at his golf course as he does every year (because he’s one of the best golfers the world has ever known, of course) and obviously didn’t care that at that very moment the futures markets were in freefall in anticipation of a very bad day on Wall St. today. He is unconcerned about that or any other negative consequence of his senseless tariff policy, telling the assembled reporters that everyone will just have to “take our medicine” but reassuring them that there won’t be inflation because his tariffs on China didn’t cause inflation when he was president the first time.
His belief that other nations have been “ripping off” America for decades and that global leaders are laughing at us is sincere and he’s been pounding that drum for 40 years. But he’s wrong. Of course, the world has not been ripping “us” off or laughing at “us.” America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and has been since at least the turn of the 20th century. We created the rules under which the world economy operated, the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency and we are the world’s only military superpower.
We have problems, naturally, not the least of which is the massive wealth inequality that distorts our economy our culture and our politics so much that we are now perilously close to full-on oligarchy. But to characterize America as a poor downtrodden nation exploited by the rest of the world is insane.
Trump clearly isn’t bothered at all by the massive backlash his policy has caused, even among many of his strongest supporters on Wall Street and in the business community. But then his bubble has become almost impermeable, with people around him terrified that he’s going to go off half cocked and do something crazy, so he probably isn’t hearing half of what people are saying. If what his cabinet members are telling the press is an accurate reflection of his views, it’s pretty clear that he’s deeply deluded.
On Sunday his economic and trade team hit the morning shows and were hardly reassuring. Treasury Secretary did his best Baghdad Bob impression saying that people can take comfort that things are running smoothly despite record volume in the markets and then claimed that people nearing or in retirement who’ve saved money don’t check their accounts “day to day.” (Billionaires don’t sweat a market drop of 10% so why should anyone else?) This was reminiscent of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying a couple of weeks ago that only a fraudster would complain if they didn’t get their Social Security check. They can’t be more out of touch if they tried.
Lutnick showed up on Face the Nation and babbled so incoherently about robots and manufacturing and “tiny screws” that you had to wonder if someone put something in his morning coffee. Trade Representative Peter Navarro told Fox News that you can’t lose money unless you sell and that we are going to have the greatest boom in the stock market in history and Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins appeared on CNN and reassured America that these are the smartest people she’s ever worked with.
No doubt Trump was very pleased with all their performances. They told him exactly what he wanted to hear.Unfortunately for him, these people sounded to the rest of America like they had just flown in on a spaceship and virtually no one but the most die hard MAGA cultist or a member of the Trump administration is buying any of that. Anyone with eyes to see knows that the world economy is in a serious crisis precipitated by Trump and Trump alone.
The Financial Times published a very sharp editorial that featured this observation that should send chills down the spines of Republicans who will be facing the voters next year:
Those hoping for prosperity under Trump have had an unpleasant shock. Wednesday’s so-called liberation day was the culmination of a 10-week long bonfire of conservative economic convention in America. The standard fare of growth-seeking deregulation and tax cuts gave way to an act of amateurish economic vandalism that betrays both the “us vs them” ideology at the heart of everything Trump does, and the lack of any clear framework to his actions.
They note that the public is rejecting Trump’s economic agenda: “this week, just before the tariff chaos, 63 per cent of Americans had a negative view of the government’s economic policy, comfortably the highest figure since records began almost 50 years ago.” Only 25% said they think they’ll be better off in five years, a lower number than at the low point of the financial crisis.
IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.
It’s not just the financial press in high dudgeon over his policies. Over the weekend millions of Americans and people around the world hit the streets in mass demonstrations in everything from big cities to small rural towns in deep red states. The Trump resistance has been gathering steam for some time but this tariff debacle is taking it to the next level.
Nate Cohn of the NY Times speculates that people were already upset about the DOGE debacle and the lawless deportations and the reckless foreign policy team but purposefully wrecking the economy may just penetrate into the GOP:
If the economic fallout is bad enough, the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration could combine with the longstanding Democratic turnout advantage to make seemingly safe Republican states in 2026 — think Kansas, Iowa and Texas — look plausibly competitive, perhaps even along with control of the Senate. Congressional Republicans’ continued support of (or acquiescence to) Mr. Trump — whether on tariffs or his other excesses — could be in jeopardy.
In a normal world there would be no question that tanking the economy would be political suicide. But Donald Trump believes he is impervious to the political laws of gravity and in some ways you can’t blame him. He has survived more scandal than any politician in American history. But at some point you have to wonder if self-preservation may start to look a little different to the other Republicans if the country is mired in recession and the federal government has been so devastated that it can’t respond. If not, they may be in for a very big surprise in 2026.
