Trump's Stupidity Hurts Us All
Here are some of the UPDATES from the NYT which kept me spellbound all afternoon. I asked myself repeatedly: How can one man be so stupid? But Trump showed us who he was in three runs for office. We knew he was a six time bankrupt con man, a fool, an habitual liar, an idiot, and proud sexist pig and yet he was reelected. That left me wondering: How fucking stupid and gullible are Americans? I know. I know. These idiot MAGAts think that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and Trump is God's Chosen One.
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President Trump on Wednesday ordered the closure of a loophole that allows retailers to send clothes and other goods from China directly to American shoppers without paying tariffs.
But the order could raise prices for consumers and create delays as delivery companies and the United States Postal Service are forced to verify the value of many more packages than they do now, trade and logistics experts said.
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Stellantis, which produces vehicles under the brands Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler, said it was temporarily halting production at a plant in Mexico and another in Canada in response to the tariffs. A factory in Windsor, Ontario, that makes the Chrysler Pacifica minivan will shut down for two weeks and one that makes Jeeps in Toluca, Mexico, will be idled on April 7 for the rest of the month.
In a sign of how integrated North American auto production has become, Stellantis said that the production stoppages in Canada and Mexico would force it to lay off of about 900 workers in Indiana and Michigan.
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A left-leaning Italian political alliance introduced an app on Thursday to help Italians make informed choices and buy local when shopping, as part of a campaign to defend Italian and European products against American tariffs.
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I hope they shit a brick...
Many of Trump’s wealthiest backers are losing a fortune in the market today. Stephen Schwarzman is down more than $3 billion on shares of Blackstone, the asset manager that he runs, while Elon Musk’s Tesla shares have shed more than $6 billion.
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The U.S. dollar is weaker today against every currency of the Group of 10 nations, which includes the Euro, the British Pound and the Australian Dollar.
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How poorly thought out were these tariffs?
Among the countries and territories listed on sheets of paper that were distributed to reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday were Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Australian territories near Antarctica where many penguins but no people live. Also listed were the British Indian Ocean Territory, a collection of islands that are mostly uninhabited aside from U.S. and British soldiers stationed at the joint military bases on Diego Garcia.
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Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, compared President Trump’s tariff policy to “what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.”
He added, “If any administration of which I was a part had launched an economic policy so totally ungrounded in serious analysis or so dangerous and damaging, I would have resigned in protest.”
Mr. Summers, long a prominent economist, was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s and was the chief economist of the World Bank in the early 1990s. He served as the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.
He is now a professor at Harvard, and has spoken out against how the university has responded to Mr. Trump’s threats.
“Institutions such as Harvard, the administration’s most recent target, have vast financial resources, great prestige and broad networks of influential alumni,” he wrote in the Opinion pages of The New York Times. “If they do not or cannot resist the arbitrary application of government power, who else can?”
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On a personal note: Curiosity prompted me to check the prices of imported goods we order on rotation. HALF of the items were unavailable. All the sales pages linked to our previous purchases resulted in a 404 result. It made me question if they have pulled the items to because the tariffs have caused uncertainty about import fees and are awaiting news from their suppliers. These were UK, French, and Indian items produced abroad. I suspect they pulled the products bought at pre-tariffs prices and sell them later adding the tariffs fees on and raking in the profits. Even more likely they will hold on to these items until they reach scarcity levels and offer them at twice or thrice the previous price.
