Category: Trade

War, Trade Or Otherwise

WE know that Donny is a one trick pony when it comes to global trade, tariffs and more tariffs….we are all well aware of the tariffs on Mexico and Canada which can be disastrous especially on food prices….but what about those tariffs against our ‘big’ enemy, China?

Donny the Man has doubled his tariffs on products from China (forget Temu)….and now China is firing back….

Some tough talk from China in response to President Trump’s tariffs: “If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Tuesday night after Trump doubled the 10% tariff he imposed last month on most Chinese imports. The remark—which was shared in a post on X by China’s embassy in Washington, DC—came as leaders gathered in Beijing for the annual National People’s Congress, the BBC reports. “Intimidation does not scare us,” Lin said. “Bullying does not work on us. Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China.” More:

  • Fentanyl: Lin rejected White House claims that China is responsible for fentanyl flooding into the US. “The US, not anyone else, is responsible for the fentanyl crisis inside the US,” he said. “In the spirit of humanity and goodwill towards the American people, we have taken robust steps to assist the US in dealing with the issue.” But instead of recognizing China’s efforts, he said, the US “has sought to vilify and shift the blame to China, and is seeking to pressure and blackmail China with tariff hikes.”
  • Retaliatory tariffs: China announced new tariffs of up to 15% on a range of American food and farm imports Tuesday. The retaliatory tariffs are “very specific and directly targeted at American farmers, who are mostly in red states and mostly voted for Trump,” Neil Thomas at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis tells ABC News. “So China is trying to create pain where it matters for Trump, and it’s hoping to get Trump to the negotiating table.”
  • Growth target unchanged: On Wednesday, leaders at the National People’s Congress announced a growth target of around 5%, the same as the previous two years, despite a slowing economy and the looming trade war, AP reports. Officials said military spending would rise 7.2%. The legislature’s meeting will run for several days. The BBC describes it as a “rubber-stamp parliament, which passes decisions already made behind closed doors.”

Slowly those morons in DC are destroying what is left of the world trade network….tit for tat tariffs will provide the engine for a global recession or worse, a depression.

We can only hope that idiots come to their senses and find a way to work together and keep a vivant world trade intact.

But will they?

Side note–I see that Donny has paused auto tariffs on Mexico and Canada for 30 days….maybe someone should make up his mind for him.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Tariff Retaliation

Tuesday Trump’s big scheme of tariffs went into effect and all the chest thumping during his speech about the tariffs and now a couple of targets will retaliate….

There was no last-minute reprieve this time in regard to President Trump’s tariffs as three new ones took effect at midnight Eastern. A look:

  • Canada: Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most imports. Canada responded by imposing 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods immediately, a total it plans to increase to $125 billion by month’s end. Details on which goods are affected are still to come, reports the New York Times.
  • China: Trump imposed an additional 10% tariff on products from China, on top of the 10% that went into effect last month. Beijing retaliated with tariffs ranging from 10% to 15% on a slew of American food and farm imports, including soybeans, meat, and grains, per the AP and the Washington Post. They take effect in a week. China also put new business restrictions in place against US companies, including the military-linked Leidos and General Dynamics Land Systems.
  • Mexico: Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most Mexican imports. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is expected to lay out her nation’s response later on Tuesday morning, reports NBC News.
  • Markets: US markets cratered Monday afternoon in anticipation of the news, and futures trading was “muted” ahead of Tuesday’s open, reports the Wall Street Journal. Europeans indexes dropped, as did Japan’s Nikkei, but China’s markets didn’t move much. Global auto stocks retreated, including Stellantis, Volkswagen, Volvo, Toyota, and Hyundai.

I remember just before the tariffs went into effect Trump told us the was no other option for there was ‘no room for negotiation’….and yet….

After two days of steep stock market drops, President Trump might be preparing to pull back on his 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday that Trump plans to “meet in the middle” with the two countries and an announcement will probably be made Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reports. Lutnick told Fox Business that he thinks Trump is “going to work something out with them,” but “it’s not going to be a pause.”

Lutnick and other officials have said the tariffs are linked to fentanyl coming across the border. “Both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they’ll do better, and the president’s listening, because you know he’s very, very fair and very reasonable,” Lutnick said. He cited the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact from Trump’s first term, Bloomberg reports. “If you live under those rules, then the president is considering giving you relief,” Lutnick said. “If you haven’t lived under those rules, well, then you have to pay the tariff.”

Trump paused the tariffs for a month after they were unveiled in February, but he said Monday, before the tariffs kicked in at midnight, that was “no room left” for negotiations. Canada and Mexico announced retaliatory tariffs on Tuesday, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling Trump’s tariffs “a very dumb thing to do.” Trump also doubled his earlier 10% tariff on imports from China, and Beijing responded with tariffs of up to 15% on American food imports. Lutnick, pointing to the country’s role in fentanyl production, said he didn’t expect immediate tariff relief for China, Politico reports.

The whole fentanyl is pure BS….tariffs are the only trick Trump has in his bag of whimsy….it is his excuse to use the only tool he has…..

When President Donald Trump imposed his long-threatened 25 percent tariffs on most goods from Canada and Mexico last night, the White House declared the trade barriers are necessary “to combat the extraordinary threat to U.S. national security, including our public health,” caused by “the flow of contraband drugs like fentanyl into the United States.”

The stock market promptly plummeted. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada would respond with 25 percent tariffs of its own on $155 billion worth of goods from the U.S. (In a post on Truth Social, Trump fired back: “our Reciprocal Tariff will immediately increase by a like amount!”) China declared that it would impose tariffs of up to 15 percent on U.S. agricultural imports, and President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said her country would impose retaliatory tariffs as well.

Trump originally announced the new tariffs last month, but he agreed to pause their implementation when Canada and Mexico agreed to step up their border enforcement. (That order also imposed tariffs on China, which were not paused.) The White House noted in this week’s announcement, “While President Trump gave both Canada and Mexico ample opportunity to curb the dangerous cartel activity and influx of lethal drugs flowing into our country, they have failed to adequately address the situation.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/04/trump-loves-tariffs-fentanyl-is-just-an-excuse/

Fun times, huh?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Watch Your Wallet!

Today is one of those ‘big days’….today the much anticipated tariffs will go into effect on Canada and Mexico and China…..we will see just how successful they are at keeping America great…..

President Trump has said that the US will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Tuesday, saying there’s “no room left” for the two countries to avoid the measures.

Trump signed an executive order on February 1 to impose the 25% tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada with a carve-out for Canadian oil, which will be hit with a 10% tariff.

Trump paused the tariffs for 30 days after speaking with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, who both pledged to work to stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants entering the US. But Trump said on Monday that drugs were still “pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels.”

Trump also wants to use the tariffs to pressure companies to manufacture in the US and to reduce the trade deficits between the US and its trading partners. He has previously acknowledged the tariffs will cause “pain” for Americans since they will increase domestic prices.

Canada has said it’s ready to hit the US with retaliatory tariffs right away, and Mexico is vowing it will respond as well. Last month, Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on China and said that it would increase by another 10% on Tuesday.

(antiwar.com)

The news that the tariffs would begin and W#all Street had a sell-off in anticipation….

A sell-off hit Wall Street on Monday after President Trump said tariffs he had announced earlier on Canada and Mexico would take effect within hours.

  • The S&P 500 fell 104.78 points, or 1.8%, to 5,849.72.
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 649.67 points, or 1.5%, to 43,191.24.
  • The Nasdaq composite fell 497.09 points, or 2.6%, to 18,350.19.

Trump said there was no room left for negotiations that could lower tariffs set to begin Tuesday on Canadian and Mexican imports. That dashed Wall Street’s hopes that Trump would choose a less painful path for global trade, and it followed the latest warning signal on the US economy’s strength, the AP reports. The hope on Wall Street had been that Trump was using the threat of tariffs as a tool for negotiations and that he would ultimately go through with less damaging policies for the global economy and trade.

Canada has made it clear of their one option….

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday he is prepared to cut off electricity exports to the U.S. if President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods go through.

“If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face,” Ford told reporters at a mining convention in downtown Toronto, the Toronto Sun reported.

Consumers are already seeing and feeling the Trump effect….in a month of the Trump coronation the confidence is sliding….

 

And so it begins.

Things are about to get more expensive….I have noticed a rise is food prices even before the tariffs went into effect.

Now we have even more problems to look forward to in the near future.

So again….watch your wallet.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Finally An Answer To Rising Egg Prices!

Most everyone has been hit by the high cost of eggs in the past year and the question has been…..when will something be done about the high prices?

This is the Trump Administration’s answer to solving the ever rising egg prices here in the US….

President Trump’s agriculture secretary announced Wednesday that her department is working with the Department of Government Efficiency “to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending” that will be used to help bring down the retail price of eggs. “We will repurpose some of those dollars by investing in long-term solutions to avian flu,” a major driver of the egg shortage, Brooke Rollins wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. In January, the average price for large, Grade A eggs in American cities hit a record $4.95 per dozen.

Agriculture Department will spend as much as $1 billion on the campaign, Rollins said in laying out the plan’s five steps. The first $500 million is allocated to help with biosecurity measures at poultry farms—steps to stop the flu’s spread. In addition, $400 million is set aside for relief to farmers whose flocks have been hit the flu, the Washington Post reports. Another $100 million will go toward developing vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens. “This should help reduce the need to ‘depopulate’ flocks, which means killing chickens on a farm where there’s an outbreak,” Rollins wrote.

The fourth step, she said, is reducing the regulation of producers, including facilitating the raising of backyard chickens. The last move Rollins listed is temporarily increasing the number of imported eggs, possibly raising purchases from Turkey from the current 70 million a year to as many as 420 million this year, per the Post. A farmers group, United Egg Producers, welcomed Rollins’ plan. The secretary wrote that while the shortage won’t disappear overnight, “we’re confident that it will restore stability to the egg market.”

Just how will this bring down prices?

Trump is considering a 25% tariff on products from the EU so where will we import eggs from that is not effected by these tariffs?

To remind everyone tariffs are paid by the importer and passed onto the consumer in price increases….so again how will this idea bring down prices?

So just how will this lower the price for we will be dealing with the same middlemen that are raping huge profits on the backs of consumers

How can we as consumers be guaranteed that the eggs we import will be safe for they may come from countries with little to no oversight?

And another question why has bird flu hit the US the hardest?….I have not seen a report that it is crisis level elsewhere in the world.

Let me say here that while I do not like this proposal to end high egg prices it is a damn sight better than what the Dems have offered…..an investigation into egg producers….the investigation is needed but it will take a year or better to complete and what will happen to prices in that lag time?

Please share your thoughts on this hair brain idea.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

TARIFFS? What Tariffs?

During the campaigns there was some mention about bringing jobs back to the US and tariffs would be that vehicle.

Many promises were made on the trail to his many screaming angry mobs and tariffs were the major jest of those promises….

After the election which he won he threatened China, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and others with the imposition of tariffs on there exports to the US….all of which will raise prices on the working class it would be like a tax on stupid.

But recently there has been possible cracks in his stand…..

Trump is caving on tariffs, and he isn’t even president yet. I’ve argued previously that the interests of the business lobby and the rich would likely take greater precedence in Trump’s second term than they did in the first. But even I didn’t anticipate that Trump would surrender on the policy dearest to his heart before Inauguration Day.

The Washington Post headline was comically euphemistic: “Trump Aides Ready ‘Universal’ Tariff Plans—With One Key Change.” Such soft-pedaling didn’t fool the markets. News of Trump’s retreat prompted a favorable response Monday morning on Wall Street, with the struggling bond market rallying briefly and the overvalued dollar falling against other currencies. These moves reflected fleeting optimism that Trump’s economic policies would not be as disastrous as feared.

But that favorable response quickly reversed after Trump stated on Truth Social that the Post story “incorrectly states that my tariff policy will be pared back. That is wrong.” For good measure, Trump labeled the story, by the Post’s excellent Jeff Stein, “Fake News.” This well-worn phrase is, typically, Trump’s “tell” that a news story that irritates him is quite accurate, but the markets weren’t subtle enough to register that.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to impose across-the-board tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imports. Everybody except Trump, including his economic team, recognizes that this would be ruinous for the economy, raising prices (Kamala Harris was quite right to call the tariff proposal a national sales tax) and provoking retaliation from the roughly 200 countries with whom the United States trades.

https://newrepublic.com/article/189896/trump-already-caving-tariffs

Interesting, yes?

If he actually caves on the tariffs thing how many of his other horrible ideas will he do so as well?

Will any of his masses actually notice that he is waffling?

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is The World United Behind Sanctions?

Good question and the best answer is….NO they are not.

Biden has tried to whip up the world’s nations into action against Russia for its part in the invasion of Ukraine…..Europe appears to be on-board….but not the rest of the world.

Americans are fervently cheering for Ukraine in a war that many believe is a decisive struggle for human freedom. The intensity of our infatuation makes it easy to assume that everyone in the world shares it. They don’t. 

The impassioned American reaction is matched only in Europe, Canada, and the handful of U.S. allies in East Asia. For many people in the rest of the world, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is just another pointless Western war in which they have no stake.

The two biggest countries in Latin America, Mexico and Brazil, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia or to curtail trade. South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, has done the same. Asia, though, is where the resistance to joining the pro-Ukraine bloc appears most deliberate and widespread. This has alarmed Washington. To fight back, the United States is cracking its whip over several Asian nations.

China and India, where more than one-third of the world’s people live, are the most potent dissenters. Both abstained from the recent United Nations vote condemning Russia, and both reject U.S.-backed sanctions. There isn’t much more we can do to punish China, but India might seem more vulnerable. Soon after the UN vote, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States had begun “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses.” Then President Biden’s chief economic advisor, Brian Deese, warned India that it would face “significant and long-term consequences” if it does not reconsider its “strategic alignment.”

Pakistan, a nuclear power with 200 million people, did more than simply abstain from the UN vote. When the United States asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to join the anti-Russia coalition, he scoffed, “Are we your slaves…that whatever you say, we will do?”  This came not long after he told the Pentagon: “Any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan, absolutely not.”  On the day President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, Khan was with him in the Kremlin.

These countries are willing to risk US ire over Russia-Ukraine

So to answer my question….NO the world is not united against Russia on the sanctions proposals.

Any thoughts?

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Winner-Take-All Economy

We are told almost daily of the attributes of the “free market” economy….but those markets are far from free….for many years I have written numerous times about this lie….this illusion…..

https://lobotero.com/2008/09/20/free-markets-truth-not-spoken/

https://lobotero.com/2020/05/25/that-free-market-illusion/

Then there is the economic inequality….where 1% of the population owns more than the bottom 80%…..but how bad can it possibly be?

Well as you might imagine I have also written numerous posts on this as well…..

https://lobotero.com/2014/02/25/the-increasingly-unequal-states-of-america-income-inequality-by-state-1917-to-2011-economic-policy-institute/

https://lobotero.com/2018/03/17/inequality-how-bad-can-it-be/

After WW2 the economic growth ranged across all levels of society but that equality was to be short lived……our economy has become winner take all….and each passing year the inequality spreads.

In the three decades following World War II, the US saw economic growth that was shared across all levels of income, from the working class to the richest 1 percent. But that changed after the mid-1970s as income inequality increased exponentially during the next four decades.

A new study by nonprofit research organization RAND nails down what really happened. It shows that this rising inequality took a substantial bite out of the earnings of up to 90 percent of American households.

In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, we talk with the authors of the RAND study, mathematician Carter Price and labor economist Kathryn Edwards.

Price and Edwards detail the unique approach they took in putting this report together. Up until now, they explain, nobody had devised a formula to show just how individuals and their families were affected by the rising inequality across the entire income spectrum. 

Proof Positive of the Winner-Take-All Economy

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scriblo”

Trump’s Trade Wars

Are you a Trump supporter? If so, how do you think his numerous trade wars are faring for the country?

I have written numerous posts on what I think of this sanity that is nothing more than a political stunt.

But let’s look at the results of the so-called trade war with China just weeks before the vote.

trade warAs the curtain falls on the first Trump presidency, it is timely to reflect on what has been achieved – or not. And nothing could be more at the heart of US President Donald Trump’s mission to “Make America great again” than an audit of his
on China.
costly claim….It is more than two years since his crassest, most significant and most
: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.” The shocking naivety of that statement still makes me shudder. But having declared war, he has fought it, and continues to fight it, unflinching in his conviction that one way or another he will eventually succeed, and that the United States will have been made stronger in the process.
Whether Trump wins another term in office or not, he can take comfort that his good fight will continue. His opponent in the presidential election, former US vice-president Joe Biden, has given
every indication
that Trump’s trade war on China will rage on.
tariff wars. 
But how well served have the US economy, American companies and workers been by the, and unprecedented efforts to roll back seven decades of globalisation and trade liberalisation?
 
I have listened to his drooling slobbering supporters applaud and scream when he mentions what is war is doing to China…..it is nothing but make believe and wishful thinking…..
 
Further Reading…..If you dare…..
 
 
To be honest I am not thrilled with the trade policies of the Dem candidate, Joe Biden, either…..on which I wrote recently….read those thoughts as well…..https://lobotero.com/2020/05/27/biden-on-trade/
 
Learn Stuff!
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Sino-Iranian Agreement

While the US is playing silly games with Iran like our newest attempt….

the Trump administration announced new sanctions on Iran under the guise of enforcing stipulations of the 2015 nuclear deal, an agreement the US withdrew from in 2018. The US is taking these measures unilaterally, with virtually no international support. The move is not only rejected by the UN Security Council but also by key European allies like the UK, Germany, and France.

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday that is meant to replace a UN arms embargo on Iran that will expire in October. The executive order allows the US to impose sanctions on any individual or entity that sells weapons to Iran.

Announcing the new measures, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted on calling the new sanctions “UN sanctions,” even though a US bid to extend the embargo failed miserably in the UN Security Council. “The President’s executive order announced today gives us a new and powerful tool to enforce the UN arms embargo and hold those who seek to evade UN sanctions accountable,” Pompeo said.

(antiwar.com)

Like I said silly games……

While the idiots in our foreign policy machine are thumping their chests like sex crazed primates the Chinese have entered into an agreement with the government of Iran…..

Rouhani government must show some achievements after more than seven years of office and the Sino-Iranian agreement might be a way for them to say to its people to just wait a little bit more because things will get better. And things in Iran may indeed be better, as the leaked information reveals that one of the terms of the agreement stipulates a Chinese investment of almost $ 400 billion in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries in Iran. Despite this, the deal is so controversial that even some of Iran’s politicians and government media have criticized it. For example, a headline in the newspaper Arman Melli claims that Iran is not Sri Lanka, while an article in the newspaper Hamdeli daily asked whether Iran will become a Chinese colony.

The agreement would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects in Iran. In exchange, China would receive a regular and heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years. Furthermore, it will deepen the military cooperation, and even potentially giving China a foothold in a region that has been a strategic preoccupation of the US for the last decades, which holds a major naval basis there. It is not a new phenomenon and, for example, in December 2019 the two sides together with Russia conducted a four-day joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman. And almost 10 years ago the Major General Zhang Zhaozhong commented that China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war.

Opinion – The Sino-Iran 25 Years Agreement: Why, and Why Now?

So while the US is strutting around like a dickless rooster ….China is expanding its economic base….something Trump has been promising since 2016 and as of yet we have NOT seen any success.

The US needs to learn the fine art of diplomacy again….in the last 3 years it has been replaced with mindless promises and lies.

Maybe the next generation can learn from our mistakes because we are not learning a goddamn thing.

Why do I say the “next generation”? 

This agreement is a 25 year plan…..maybe by then the idotsi will no longer be in control.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are We Winning The Trade War?

Trump came into office promising all sorts of stuff but mostly that he was an expert at trade policies and he would return the US to its rightful place as the world leader in trade.

I have written about this experts consequences of his trade wars…..

https://lobotero.com/2019/03/29/trade-war-consequences/

https://lobotero.com/2019/09/16/trumps-trade-war/

Let’s be honest his policies have been disastrous to this country….only a handful of extremely rich people have benefited from these failed policies….

Some have asked just why has these policies failed other than a total impotent approach to trade…….

Before Donald Trump took office, he promised he was going to stick it to China on trade. When he assumed power, he indeed did so — threatening and then levying tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports. China responded in kind, before agreeing to a largely symbolic trade agreement in January only to have it disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The problem the Trump administration was ostensibly trying to solve was America’s enormous trade deficit, which Trump has portrayed as the U.S. being ripped off by foreign countries. This was also the motivation behind the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and a threatened trade war on Europe that is also now on hold.

Yet all these actions did not shrink the trade deficit. On the contrary, the deficit widened for the first few years of Trump’s presidency, shrank back to about what it was before he took office in late 2019, and now has widened once again. What gives?

https://theweek.com/articles/923813/why-trumps-trade-war-failed

My thought is if we are to trade with other nations that maybe a more inclusive talks and a mutual beneficial agreements would help everybody.

Instead we are “going it alone”…..and the results are noticeable to all….jobs loss…..factors closing……lack of confidence in the US.

Time that we stop acting like the sole nation on this planet and start working with others for common goals.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”