Are We Great Again, Yet?

    This was last Friday, when the Dow Jones lost 2231 points in one day. Note that was 5.5% of the Dow Jones's value, or over $6 trillion. This was the day after Trump announced his 10% baseline tariffs on every land mass that wasn't named Russia, Israel or Saudi Arabia. Part of this panic on Wall Street was driven by the news that China was going to hit us with a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods effective today.

     It's impossible for anyone to divine what's going through Trump's Adderall-addled brain or what passes for one. No matter how completely insane his actions are, he can always find idiots in his administration or right wing circles who will obediently bend themselves into pretzels to justify or rationalize it.

      Apparently, wiping over $10 trillion dollars off Wall Street's value in order to wage needless and unjustified tariff wars on our allies and other nations are one of those things that makes perfect sense in Trump's Bizarro World.

      And it's equally impossible for me to divine why exactly he's doing this when he should know that higher tariffs on goods coming into the US will simply mean higher prices for Americans. This will surely lead to a recession, if not a depression the likes of which we haven't seen since the last Depression of the 30s.

      Granted, you would be hard-pressed to find a rank and file American who has any sympathy for Wall Street and its heartless, avaricious oligarchs. But if this trend continues, it'll only be a matter of time before Wall Street's sinking financial fortunes begin to be felt on Main Street, just like in 1929.

      And, except for deliberately tanking our economy to somehow strengthen Russia's, one is at a loss to see what Trump's end game is. Maybe, as David Brooks wrote nine years ago, it could merely be that Trump's brain is just an empty jar containing a few fireflies that intermittently light up.

Merch of the Penguins

 

     At this point, it's as if Donald Trump is daring us to call him out on his obvious dementia. His laughable Independence Day was him unveiling his sweeping 10% tariff on every nation on earth, including the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are populated solely by penguins. It's resulted in China imposing a 34% retaliatory tariff on all US goods starting this Tuesday. (Trump hit China with a 54% tariff). 

     Yes, Trump and his idiot advisors have declared a trade war on penguins.

     As if that isn't a rationale for putting Trump's pudgy limbs in four point restraints, there's the not-so-funny effect of how this is affecting not just our economy but the global economy. First off, Wall Street, again, went into a free fall, losing 1400 points in one day, or 3.5% of its value. If that doesn't sound like much of a drop to you, just consider the palmier days of last month when the Dow Jones lost just 1000 points and lost two trillion dollars.

     This is happening because either the morons surrounding him are either True Believers in this Heaven's Gate style of economics or are too afraid to call him out as the financially illiterate shit for brains he truly is.

     There are precious few people on the Beltway who are willing to take him aside and make him understand that tariffs on other countries result in higher prices for the American consumer, of whom Trump simply doesn't give a shit. It will result in revenge tariffs and some of these countries will simply choose not to trade with us in order to avoid the unnecessary tariffs being imposed on them.

     Donne Dumbo has never realized you can't use tariffs as a mob boss tactic because when you unfairly raise them on other countries, they will retaliate, they will restrict or terminate any trade agreements with us and, on a large enough scale, it will result in a recession or even a depression. You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that international trade, as with everything else on the world stage, is a delicate balancing act that has to be handled by trained professionals, policy makers and competent statesmen.

     Donald Trump, obviously, is none of those things. In fact, we're talking about a guy who'd filed for bankruptcy six times, including bankrupting all of his Jersey casinos, a business model that's predicated on getting people to give you vast sums of money and expecting little to nothing in return.

     And putting Trump in charge of anything is like being strapped to a chair while being in the same room as a chimp with a machine gun.