5Apr2025
The march from Philadelphia City Hall to the Liberty Bell.
On April 2nd, President Trump applied a series of tariffs to most of our trading partners. Cambodia gets hit with 49% while China pays 34% (This was later raised to 145%). Taiwan, allegedly an ally of the US, pays 32%. As Trump is a good buddy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Russia of course, pays nothing. Russia’s trade with the US is only 10% of what it was in 2021, but it’s still $3.5 billion. Myanmar (Burma) only imported $77 million from the US while exporting $656.5 million to the US. Myanmar is to pay a 44% tariff. Ukraine was hit with a 10% tariff while the European Union got 20%. Oh, and Heard and McDonald Islands are listed as being hit with the 10% tariff. Those islands are inhabited only by penguins. When asked about this, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins replied: “I mean, come on, whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic.”
Family poses with signs.
What’s the point of Trump’s tariffs? What’s the endgame? How do we know whether he thinks he’s winning or getting closer to his goal? We have no idea. A piece examine several possible motives and finds that none of them truly esplains Trump’s tariff policy. The S&P has plunged by about 10% in just two days. Apparently, 50 countries have contacted the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (Lutnick refuses to identify the countries). He did his best to suggest they were all coming to surrender to the US, but it’s clearly in their interest to see if there’s any way they can shape Trump’s policy through talks. It’s a good first response on their part.
Trump sorta, kinda backs down on tariffs, I guess.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that the pullback had been the plan all along to bring countries to the bargaining table. Trump, though, later indicated that the near-panic in markets that had unfolded since his April 2 announcements had factored in to his thinking.
But as CNN makes clear:
It had also become plain after a sharp sell-off in US government bond markets — usually a safe corner for investors — that the economic ramifications of the president’s strategy were potentially catastrophic and worse than his advisers had previously predicted.
Essentially, the strength of US bonds separates us from all other countries and Trump’s tariffs policies were challenging that. He abruptly realized that his was a foolish and suicidal policy and he then backed down.
Hmm, might have been a bit premature in saying that the US bond market has escaped the consequences of Trump’s economic policy. A retired economist reads what active economists are saying and fears damage to the bond market may have more extensive and longer-lasting than we thought.
My own theory as to why Trump is applying tariffs, and thereby ruining the economy, is based on the acronym WWDDD, What Would Doctor Doom Do? No one knows who set the Reichstag Fire, which occurred in early 1933, but Adolf Hitler quickly took advantage of the trauma suffered by the German people to change himself from Chancellor to dictator. Conspiracy theories on 9-11 have largely traveled from the left wing to the right wing. But again, the younger George Bush took advantage of a traumatized American public to launch his war on Iraq. What Trump is doing now is to traumatize the American people with nothing more than his own policies. Check out the “parade of horribles” in this lengthy piece by TPM. Trump is very deliberately trampling all over our standard of living and everything that is good and decent in our laws and institutions, traumatizing the American people without any need for an outside event.
It looked for a moment as though, for a moment, that the Trump Administration would face some real accoutability. They admit that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was improperly among many alleged Venezuelan gang members (90% of them have no criminal records). The Supreme Court unanimoudly agreed that Garcia had to have at least some sort of due process, but as the Trump Administration was not instructed to return him or any of the alleged Venezuelan gang members, it’s unclear exactly what the ruling means.
Dissenters on the Supreme Court in the case of the people deported under the Alien Enemies Act were concerned about “the grave harm Plaintiffs will face if they are erroneously removed to El Salvador” Justices Sotomayor and Brown-Jackson expressed serious concerns about the ruling.
The Supreme Court has now weighed in with a unanimous order that’s very fuzzy and vague, but can be interpreted to say that at least one of alleged Venezuelan gang members, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, must be returned immediately! The Trump Administration is now defying a court order to provide it with relevant information. The judge, US District Judge Paula Xinis, had a very simple question about Albrego Garcia: “Where is he?” The Trump Administration is hiding behind the Supreme Court’s fuzziness to claim that they need to time to interpret it. So essentially the Roberts Court has enabled Trump’s stonewalling.
Trump’s attempt to make peace between Ukraine and Russia has now officially crashed and burned. The idea was to have a truce on aerial attacks. Aerial attacks continued, but Ukraine agreed to stop attacking “energy targets.” Russia has escalated aerial attacks by adding small explosive devices to drones that crash into buildings:
These pose a high risk across all regions, as the timing of explosions is unpredictable.
The final abandonment of Ukraine’s agreement apparently occurred when a Russian refinery “suddenly caught fire.” It’s hard to definitely say Ukraine did it as it occurred over 4,200 miles away from the front line, well beyond drone range. My own suspicion is that Ukraine said that Trump’s “truce” was utterly worthless and wasn’t worth keeping.
Tatarigami is the founder of Frontelligence and assesses that while Russia came out a bit ahead on the war over the past Winter, that Ukraine overall did pretty well. Their current position is by no means desperate.
Apparently, the Trump Administration is very unhappy with how the US Ambassador has been dealing with Ukraine (She’s been there for three years now) and has sent her packing. Doesn’t sound like good news for Ukraine.
Bit of progress to report on Georgia. Citizens have been marching for 134 days straight, blocking off Rustaveli Avenue, a major street in Tbilisi. In 1989, on April 9th, the Soviet Union massacred 21 pro-democracy demonstrators in Tbilisi while 4k were wounded. Two years later, Georgia declared they were no longer part of the Soviet Union. Protesters refused to permit* regime people to comemorate that event! *Blog post is very lengthy, go to Zelenskyy’s nightly address, the section under that is all about Georgia.
What’s the role of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Trump Administration besides just being the head of Health and Human Services? My suspicion is that he’s part of Trump’s weaponization of the US Government against the American people. It’s hard to believe such a complete and utter quack could have been appointed unless Trump had an ulterior motive beyond just being skeptical of science.
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