Tariff-Slammed Rural Communities Now Battling Climate Change Flooding

A flooded Oklahoma farm - Oklahoma went for
Trump by 65.3% of the vote.

I have written about the plight - much self-inflicted - of Mid-West farmers who, in my view, (i) stupidly voted for Donald Trump  thanks to his appeals to racism and/or religious extremism, and (ii) jumped on the climate change denial bandwagon.  This year, both moves are coming back to haunt them in spades and, but for the children and youths suffering, it's hard not to want to pull out a tiny violin and play a funeral dirge for them.  Between Trump's tariffs which have sent China to other nations for its agricultural purchases and the rains and flooding that some experts say may be the new normal for large swaths of the nation, these Trump supporters may be looking at financial ruin.  That financial ruin also extends to the larger rural communities in which these farmers live. Some are even waking to the reality that perhaps climate change is, in fact real.  Embracing ignorance and embracing hate and bigotry are choices - or stated another way, actions do have consequences - and karma seemingly is repaying these folks in spades.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the ongoing tariff and flooding situation.  Here are highlights:

Panicked farmers throughout the Midwest are facing the increasing probability that vast tracts of fields will remain unplanted or crops will fail this year as much of their land remains under water or too sodden for farm equipment and plants.

The crushing weather conditions come on top of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China that has already triggered a record number of farm bankruptcies.

It’s been the wettest 12 months ever in the U.S., and scientists link it to the effects of climate change.  “The frequency of these disasters, I can’t say we’ve experienced anything like this since I’ve been working in agriculture,” John Newton, chief economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, told The Washington Post. 

It’s the slowest planting time in 39 years. 

Sodden fields lie fallow, and corn and soy crops that have been planted are stunted in the mud. Hard-hit states include Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Michigan. Waters began to recede in some areas in recent days but there’s more rain in the forecast.

“It’s going to be a train wreck,” Illinois corn farmer James McCune, whose family has been tilling the soil since 1857, told Crain’s Chicago Business. He could only plant 950 acres this year of the 6,000 acres he operates.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine(R)  is seeking a federal disaster declaration for more government funds. Just 50% of the state’s corn crop and 32% of its soybean crop had been planted as of a few days ago because of relentless rains and flooding. There’s already a state of emergency in every single county in Oklahoma.

The Trump administration is already spending a total of $27 billion in subsidies just to help farmers survive [Trump's] the president’s trade war.

Trump hasn’t acknowledged the flood toll on the group he refers to as his “patriot farmers,” who are credited with helping put him into the White House. Meanwhile, he continues to raise doubts about climate change exists. . . . . His policy changes — including his intention to ease vehicle emission standards — will predictably worsen climate change, according to scientists.

A new Purdue University study has found that farmers are becoming increasingly pessimistic about their futures, citing losses from both Trump’s trade war and the current weather conditions.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service estimated that farmers had planted just 67% of the acreage planned for corn by June 3. This time last year, the figure was at 96%.

It’s not only the farmers, but their communities that suffer.  “Everything comes from land and feeds our small towns, our elevators, fertilizer business, seed business, machinery business, all that,” said Illinois farmer Dan Koster. “There’s that ripple effect that’ll affect all those guys.”

It may sound heartless, but if these people continue to support Trump and his trade wars and denial of cliamte change, they basically deserve whatever misfortune befalls them.   If they want to see the cause of their problems, they need to look in a mirror. 

America’s Credibility Abroad Is Gone

Traveling to France and the United Kingdom last September, the husband and I found that Americans are still much liked.  The same cannot be said for the Trump/Pence regime which is pretty much widely loathed and for good reason.  The buffoon in the White House - who in his extreme narcissism thinks himself a genius - has made it very obvious that longstanding treaties and alliances mean nothing. And that's not even factoring the Trump initiated trade wars that are harming American consumers who pay the tariffs in the form of higher prices - even as Trump lies to his moronic base and tells them the foreign nations are paying the tariffs.  The long term damage to America's interests will last for years even after Trump is gone from the White House with America's trustworthiness being questioned.  A piece in Slate looks at the damage done to date and how all of us will pay a price.  Here are article highlights: 

Remember Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran? These days, you can bet that the leaders of Iran do.

The letter, sent in March 2015, was one of those events that seemed like a major outrage at the time but now feels like such ancient history that the letter might as well have been written on parchment. At the height of the debate over the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, the Arkansas senator organized a group of 47 Republican colleagues to send a letter to the “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” explaining “features of our Constitution … which you should consider seriously as negotiations progress.” Noting that any deal would be merely an “executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei” rather than a formal treaty ratified by Congress and that Barack Obama would be leaving office in January 2017, the letter warned that the next president would revoke it “with the stroke of a pen.”

[T]he thing is, Cotton was completely right: On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal the Obama administration had negotiated and re-imposed sanctions lifted as part of it. Tensions between the two countries have been rising ever since.

The five other countries that were party to the deal and the European Union are still committed to it, as is Iran, but just barely. This week, Iranian nuclear officials announced that they had quadrupled the country’s uranium enrichment production, putting them on a path to exceed limits set by the accord.

If the Iranian regime stays in compliance with the deal, it may be only because they know Trump won’t be in office forever, either. Most of the Democratic candidates running for president in 2020 have promised to rejoin the Iran deal, which would entail lifting the sanctions that Trump has re-imposed. 

Waiting out the Trump administration is a popular idea these days. Susan Thornton, the former acting assistant secretary of state, told a gathering in Shanghai earlier this month that China should be patient amid the ongoing trade war and not rush to resolve it, telling the audience, “If this skeptical attitude towards talking diplomacy continues in this administration, you might have to wait till another administration.” The parties to the Paris climate agreement may also be somewhat heartened that every major Democratic candidate has pledged to keep the U.S. in the agreement. (The U.S. will technically still be a party to the Paris agreement until November 2020 at the earliest, despite Trump’s withdrawal announcement in 2017.)
 This isn’t a very encouraging state of affairs, and not only because there’s a decent chance Trump will be reelected in 2020. If it becomes the norm that agreements struck by a U.S. president will be kept only so long as that president’s party is in power, why would any country ever sign a deal with the U.S. ever again? If the entire disposition of U.S. foreign policy transforms depending on whether a Democrat or a Republican occupies the White House, it will have a destabilizing impact on international relations long after Trump leaves office.
 But presidents of both parties have, at the very least, shared a disposition toward international alliances and broad policy objectives that contrasts with domestic political divides.
 In today’s U.S. political climate, all issues are becoming culture war issues, and more and more official U.S. policies abroad are coming to resemble the Mexico City Policy—switches to be flipped on or off depending on which domestic constituency the party in power wants to appeal to.
 This dynamic has only been getting more acute in recent years. The near impossibility of getting Republican support meant that Obama had to carry out most of his signature diplomatic achievements—the Iran deal, the Paris accord, the normalization of relations with Cuba—via executive action. That also meant those achievements could be undone by executive action.
 Meanwhile, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of negotiations for the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia. Even the Universal Postal Union hasn’t been safe.

Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates, to the extent they discuss foreign policy at all, emphasize the importance of rebuilding international alliances. If any of them becomes president, he or she would probably work to rejoin many of the deals and institutions that Trump has pulled out of and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to those, notably NATO, that Trump has simply trashed. But it will be immeasurably more difficult for the next Democratic president to replicate even the limited diplomatic achievements of the Obama years. Why would the leader of any U.S. adversary want to repeat the experience of Iran or Cuba by spending political capital on a rapprochement with the U.S., only to see the offer humiliatingly rescinded by the next president?

The problem isn’t just treaties and agreements. The way Americans view the world, and other countries, is increasingly polarized. Polls show increasing divergences between the parties in views on Mexico, Iran, Russia, Germany, Canada, and other countries. Iran may not be particularly popular on either side of the aisle, but prominent voices on Democratic foreign policy, including Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, have been arguing that Saudi Arabia is viewed as worse. Whether you think the Iranians or the Saudis are a bigger threat to human rights and regional stability may soon become an indicator of partisan loyalty.
 Countries may never be entirely neutral topics in each other’s partisan politics—the U.S. certainly hasn’t always been. But at least the ideal state of affairs is that they’re willing to conduct business with whatever party is in power. And that only works if there’s at least a certain level of continuity in foreign policy outlook and strategic goals as well as a baseline willingness to honor agreements signed by the previous administration, even if the new one doesn’t like them very much. If current trends continue, America’s partisan divide will continue to widen, and foreign policy questions will increasingly be treated as culture war fights between the parties.
 If future presidents share Trump’s disdain for international institutions and agreements, the credibility of U.S. foreign policy stances will suffer. And if these partisan swings become predicable—in other words, if countries know in advance that certain U.S. policies and agreements only apply when one party or another is in office—it will increase incentives for foreign powers to try to influence and meddle in U.S. elections. What’s a few cyberattacks or Facebook ad buys when the entire foreign policy outlook of the most powerful country is at stake?

Americans are increasingly living in two different countries at home. Soon we may be treated as two different countries abroad as well.

Will Housing and Deficits Be Trump's Downfall?

With political focus turning to the 2020 presidential election, three particular elements may make  Der Trumpenführer's re-election hopes much more shaky (yea!): The slowing housing market thanks to a combination of rising interest rates, the ballooning trade deficit and impact of Trump's tariffs, and the ballooning federal deficit  which itself will drive up interest rates. Should the housing market continue to slow, it could well drag the economy into recession just as attention on the 2020 election intensifies next year.  A piece in Politico looks at housing's threat to Trump's future - assuming he finishes his term and runs for re-election. Here are highlights:

The luxury real estate market in Manhattan is sagging. The GOP tax law is hitting real estate markets across the nation.

And signs of stress across the broader housing market suggest the industry — which made Donald Trump rich, helped thrust him into the White House and remains a constant obsession for him — could also be one that slows his economy and dents his chances at a second term.

The housing market may not cause the next recession like it did in 2008. But weakness in the construction of new homes, sales of existing homes and affordability for millennials looking to buy for the first time could contribute to a recession arriving as soon as next year or prolong any downturn. In addition to 2008, declines in the housing market were tied to recessions in 1974, 1980 and 1990-91, raising concerns that history is about to repeat.

One area where housing-market stress is obvious is the one Trump knows best: High-end apartments in Manhattan, where prices are now dropping as foreign buyers disappear and wealthy residents flee to lower-tax states.

“When you look at the New York metro area, we are moving from an extended period of stagnation to one of outright softening,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, U.S.

The Manhattan declines are directly linked to the late-2017 tax law that capped the mortgage interest deduction and indirectly to the capping of the state and local tax deduction, Brusuelas said. “People joke that they should have called the tax bill the ‘Everybody Moves to Austin Act.’ This wasn’t virtuous tax policy. It was punitive tax policy.”

Trump’s New York home is not the only blue state where the housing market has taken a hit following the tax law changes. Markets are also suffering across the Northeast, where sales of new homes dropped 16.1 percent in December, according to brokerage firm Redfin.

The cap on the state and local tax deduction is already showing in migration rates, according to Laurie Goodman, vice president of housing finance policy at the Urban Institute. . . . New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey topping the states with the largest flows of people leaving between July 2017 and July 2018. The largest in-migration states over that period — Florida, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina — have lower taxes.

A recent decline in mortgage rates following the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause its campaign of interest-rate hikes has improved the demand for new and existing homes somewhat in the last couple of months. But overall, the numbers suggest a broad softening in the housing market. Homebuilding investment shrank 0.2 percent last year, the worst performance since 2010. . . . . the industry’s doldrums could make an already slowing 2019 even slower and make the next recession even worse when it arrives.

“Once the economy moves into recession, so maybe mid-2020, the significant decline in residential investment will exacerbate affordability problems,” said Brusuelas. “The home affordability index and first time buyer affordability index are both showing significant signs of stress.”

Taken together, the declines in high-end markets and across states hit by the tax law changes — coupled with affordability problems for new buyers and reduced construction of new homes — suggest that the market could contribute to the next recession and make life difficult for Trump.

“I see recession hitting before the 2020 election,” said McCabe. “And it’s going to play a part in that election.”

The other area that may threaten Trump is the failure of his tariffs and the further ballooning of the federal deficit thanks to the disastrous Trump/GOP 2017 tax cuts notwithstanding the GOP's disingenuous lies that "entitlements" are to blame.  A column in the New York Times looks at this other thorn in Trump's side.  Here are excerpts:

[O]ver two years of unified G.O.P. control of government, a funny thing happened: Both deficits surged. The budget deficit has hit a level unprecedented except during wars and in the immediate aftermath of major economic crises; the trade deficit in goods has set a record.

What’s the significance of this tide of red ink? . . . . Trump’s twin deficits tell us a lot about both the tweeter in chief and his party — namely, that they’re both dishonest and ignorant.

About the dishonesty: Is there anyone left who believes that Republicans ever really cared about debt and deficits? The truth is that the phoniness of their fiscal posturing should have been obvious all along. . . . . The moment they had a chance, the very politicians who grandstanded about the need for fiscal responsibility rammed through a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy — a tax cut that is the main reason for the exploding budget deficit.  Oh, and the tax cut has utterly failed to deliver the promised investment boom.

What about the ignorance? As many people have pointed out to no avail, Trump is all wrong about what trade deficits do. . . . . Trump is completely wrong about what causes trade deficits in the first place. In fact, his own policies have provided an object lesson in the falsity of his vision.

In the Trumpian universe, trade deficits happen because we made bad deals — we let foreigners sell their stuff here, but they won’t let us sell our stuff there. So the solution is to throw up barriers to foreign products. “I am a Tariff Man,” he proudly proclaimed.

The reason America runs persistent trade deficits isn’t that we’ve given away too much in trade deals, it’s that we have low savings compared with other countries.

Tariffs can, of course, reduce imports of the goods subject to the tariff, and hence reduce the trade deficit in that particular industry. But it’s like pushing on a balloon: You can squeeze it in one place, but it will just inflate by the same amount somewhere else. The process through which this conservation of deficits takes place can vary, although a stronger dollar, which hurts exports, is usually one major channel. But the basic result, that tariffs don’t actually reduce the overall trade deficit, is clear.

Sure enough, the Trump tariffs of 2018 did, in fact, lead to a sharp fall in imports of the goods subjected to tariffs. But imports of other goods rose, while exports performed poorly. And the overall trade deficit went up substantially, which is exactly what you should have expected. After all, that big tax cut for the wealthy reduced national savings.

And the supposed cause of the deficit isn’t the only thing Trump gets wrong about trade policy. He also keeps insisting that foreigners are paying his tariffs. In reality, prices received by foreign exporters haven’t gone down. Prices paid by U.S. consumers have gone up, instead.

A slowing housing market, a ballooning federal deficit that increases interest rates, and rising costs and decimated market sectors - think GM's closures - due to the Trump tariffs. The perverse side of me hopes things worsen if it will help ride the nation of Trump/Pence.

Shutdown Is Pushing Farm Country to Breaking Point

Rural areas predominantly voted for Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, and now the chickens are coming home to roost as farming communities find themselves reeling as the Trump forced government shutdown grinds on.  Not that Trump has the slightest empathy for those being harmed since his sole concern is to be viewed as "winning" by his despicable base.  Yes, in many cases these voters brought their misfortunes upon themselves by voting for an individual utterly unfit to occupy the White House, but I do worry about the children and youths bearing the cost of their elders' bigotry and racism.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the spreading financial pain being experienced in farm country where some are set to default on mortgages or not receive payments key to their financial survival.  Here are article highlights:

In Georgia, a pecan farmer lost out on his chance to buy his first orchard. The local Farm Service Agency office that would have processed his loan application was shut down.

In Wisconsin’s dairy country, a 55-year-old woman sat inside her new dream home, worried she would not be able to pay her mortgage. Her loan had come from an Agriculture Department program for low-income residents in rural areas, but all of the account information she needed to make her first payment was locked away in an empty government office.

And in upstate New York, Pam Moore was feeding hay to her black-and-white cows at a small dairy that tottered on the brink of ruin . . . .  their last lifeline was an emergency federal farm loan. But the money had been derailed by the government shutdown.

Farm country has stood by President Trump, even as farmers have strained under two years of slumping incomes and billions in losses from his trade wars. But as the government shutdown now drags into a third week, some farmers say the loss of crucial loans, payments and other services has pushed them — and their support — to a breaking point.

While many rural conservatives may loathe the idea of Big Government, farmers and the federal government are welded together by dozens of programs and billions of dollars in spending.

Now, farmers and farm groups say that federal crop payments have stopped flowing. Farmers cannot get federally backed operating loans to buy seed for their spring planting, or feed for their livestock.

“This is real,” said Jeff Witte, president of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and New Mexico’s agriculture secretary. “You had farmers who were in the process of closing a loan or getting an operating loan. Now there’s nobody there to service those.”

All week, Joe Schroeder has been listening to shutdown stories pouring into Farm Aid’s hotline. There was the cotton farmer who could not get disaster assistance to help him recover from Hurricane Michael. The woman in her 90s facing foreclosure on her family farm. The dairy farmer trying to make one last attempt to renegotiate her loan with the Farm Service Agency.  “You cannot reach anybody,” Mr. Schroeder said.

Many farmers, including David Nunnery, 59, of Pike County, Miss., have stayed unflinchingly loyal to Mr. Trump and his demands for $5.7 billion for a border wall, even as the shutdown threatens their livelihood.  “I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.

But Davinder Singh, 41, the Georgia pecan farmer, said the border wall was not worth the price he had already paid — losing out on the chance to finally buy his own orchard instead of working other people’s land.

States like Wisconsin, which lost at least 638 dairy farms last year, are particularly vulnerable.  The new farm bill passed in December contained programs to help dairy farmers weather swings in the market, and to help farmers struggling with stress and depression get mental health services. But those programs cannot be put in effect during the shutdown, said Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“We’re being played the stooge,” he said.

In New York’s farming communities, the shutdown is heaping additional pain onto farmers after a year of tariff losses, destructive weather and labor shortages because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns.

In Ovid, N.Y., it has left John Myer seething at Mr. Trump as he waits for at least $15,000 owed to him under the trade bailout. . . . “You could hardly call it a political stunt,” said Mr. Myer, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “It’s a personal power stance because he doesn’t really care about anything, I don’t think, besides himself.”

This week, as Ms. Moore, the struggling dairy farmer, sipped coffee at Sallie’s Country Kitchen on Main Street in the 2,500-person town of Nichols, she said it felt like her financial problems were closing in. . . . . With little money left for food, she went to a food pantry on Thursday afternoon, picking out frozen fruits and vegetables, pasta, bread, dried beans and some onions to cook when her 9-year-old grandson visited later in the week.

For those who voted for Trump and continue to support him, I will pull out my tiny violin.  For others who oppose Trump's toxic regime and are suffering harm, especially children, I do feel great sympathy, even as Trump cares nothing about their pain.  All that matters is "winning" to satiate his foul ego.  Not my president.

Trump Tariffs Slam Pence's Hometown

Karma can seemingly be a bitch.  A case in point is Mike Pence's shameless self-prostitution to Donald Trump and hypocrisy-filled pretense of being a godly Christian while serving a man who is the antithesis of the Gospel message.  Now, the Trump tariffs - put in place in a fit of bullying rage and effort to appear the "tough guy" - are slamming Pence's hometown in Indiana. One can feel only so much pity for the residents since their state supported Pence for governor (although many believe he could not have won re-election, hence his prostitution to Trump) and voted for the Trump/Pence ticket. Embracing racism and religious extremism do, in my view, need to carry a severe price.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the economic pain occurring in Pence's hometown - pain that will likely worsen if Der Trumpenführer puts additional tariffs in place.  Here are excerpts:

COLUMBUS, Ind. — One company and one family loom large over this city, intertwined for decades. Cummins Inc. is the biggest employer in Columbus, built into a $20 billon heavy equipment manufacturer with the help of Mike Pence, who as governor passed pro-business tax cuts and made trade visits to China on its behalf.
 Pence’s older brother Edward joined Cummins after graduating from college and worked there for four decades, running one of its most lucrative engine plants before retiring last December. A second brother, Greg, is running for the 6th congressional district seat and visited Cummins during a recent campaign stop.

But the alliance of the past is being threatened by the administration Mike Pence now serves, as President Trump’s trade war with multiple nations clobbers Cummins and other local companies.

According to the Brookings Institution, the Columbus area is the most export-reliant region in the country, with just over half of its economic output linked to foreign purchases. “I’m very worried,” said Tom Linebarger, the chief executive of Cummins, who met with President Trump over dinner at the White House in January in a bid to dissuade him from introducing steel and aluminum tariffs or tearing up free trade agreements. Linebarger, 55, warns of job losses ahead because thousands of jobs at Cummins and elsewhere in the area depend on trade. “We will do everything we can to mitigate . . . the impact to jobs,” he said. “It’s very clear, though, that we’re not going to be able to mitigate everything.”

Pence’s hometown oozes internationalism: 40 foreign companies have a presence, more than half of them Japanese engines and auto-parts plants, employing almost 10,000 people. The area’s schools collectively speak 51 languages. The city ranks second in the nation in the per capita percentage of H-1B visas for foreign workers.

Now the aggressive pursuit of foreign trade that made this city a recession-busting economic miracle has made it decidedly vulnerable, with businesses already canceling projects and mulling the depth of job losses. . . . Cummins alone has 25,000 different suppliers and also its own chain of distribution, both of them largely international. Its U.S. base is bolstered by operations in the United Kingdom, China and India.

Linebarger said the president’s trade war hits the company in two ways, affecting both its incoming parts, which will be subject to tariffs, and its own products, on which retaliatory penalties will be assessed by countries targeted by Trump.

[T]he most vulnerable of the company’s factories: the high-horsepower engine plant in Seymour, outside Columbus, which employs 1,000 people. Its biggest export is a 95-liter engine, which is the size of a car and can power hospitals, tanks and football stadiums. It is so specialized that only 10 can be made per day. Of these, eight will be sold abroad.

“We almost put the factory in India. We evaluated the U.K. and China too. If we’d seen trade barriers at that point, we’d definitely have made a different decision,” says Linebarger.

Other local businesses are seeing the effects as well. Harold Force, 67, has run a construction company founded by his father since 1980, which currently employs 250 people. Now he is coping with rising prices on items he needs for contracts signed in less expensive days before the trade war. Already, he said, he has had to cancel plans to expand his workforce.

“I think this is a much bigger deal than people think. When it started, it was shock. I thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ Then one of our biggest projects in recent times was canceled because of steel prices,” he said.

The city’s foreign companies are likewise worried. Jon Volz of Sunright America Inc., a Japanese-owned company in Columbus which supplies U.S. Toyota plants with millions of bolts and fasteners, said the materials required to make their parts are only available in Japan.

The Democrat running against Greg Pence has sought to make trade an issue in the campaign. Jeannine Lake, 51, a Christian newspaper publisher, said the economy was the only issue that mattered. “Tariffs are not just hitting people in places like Columbus, it’s also farms which make soy beans and corn,” she said. Pence has run a muted campaign, refusing to attend candidate debates and declining to release a public schedule. His most public comments so far came when he defended himself after it was revealed that his gas station company’s bankruptcy had cost taxpayers $20 million in contamination costs.

Across Columbus, workers are expecting the worst. “I’m very Republican, but I feel the current strategy is opinion-based, not data-based,” said Chris Tiemeier, 38, whose grandfather was also a proud Cummins employee and whose wife works at the plant. “The company has changed our town, it’s doubled in size. I’m worried about tariffs.”

Jason Hester of the Greater Columbus Economic Development Corporation has traveled to China for the last nine years to whip up investment. This year, he’s canceled his travel plans.

At the risk of sounding cruel, I hope the pain coming to Columbus is replicated all across the Mid-west, especially in districts that threw the Electoral College vote to Trump/Pence.

Will the Trade War Trump Started Take Down the GOP?

So far there has been little limit as to how far Republicans will go in prostituting themselves to Donald Trump.  Indeed, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell make real life tawdry prostitutes look somewhat virtuous in comparison.  But there are signs that among some Republicans perhaps the desire for self-preservation at the polls may be beginning to make them realize that Trump's completely self-initiated trade war could be very bad news.  Already, the Chinese, European Union and Canadian responses to Trump's unhinged tariffs against them are causing economic pain in the Mid-West and Trump voting counties.  And this is before China responds to Trump's new $200 billion tariff increase on China.  With luck, the economic pain in states like Iowa that threw America principles on the trash heap and supported Trump will be truly horrific (I believe embracing hate and bigotry need to have very severe consequences).  A piece in Politico looks at growing GOP angst over Trump's possible total destruction of the party.  Here are excerpts:

While President Donald Trump was in Europe speaking for America’s interest in the world, Vice President Mike Pence was in the heartland speaking to its anxieties.

On Wednesday, as Trump excoriated America’s allies for taking advantage of his nation’s largesse, Pence was gliding through the greater Midwest, seeking to calm the nerves of farmers and political foot soldiers worried that the administration’s policies will irrevocably hit their pocketbooks and set back the party before the midterm elections.

The split screen . . . underscores the administration’s high-risk, high-reward approach to global diplomacy and domestic policy that helped it claim the White House and keep its base energized and loyal, yet could plunge the GOP into peril if things go off the rails.

Republicans are growing nervous about the latter possibility. . . . there’s a real fear among our members that a trade war will squander the economic gains we made with tax reform,” a senior GOP official on Capitol Hill told POLITICO on Wednesday.

Trump’s tough talk with allies, coming ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, is adding to their discomfort. . . . the Republican-led U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a motion supporting NATO, a move viewed as reflecting Congress’ concerns over [Trump's] the president’s menacing talk about the alliance.

In Brussels, Trump accused Germany of being “totally controlled” by Russia and lashed out at a controversial gas pipeline project. Trump also reiterated his calls for NATO leaders to increase military spending.

Even as he softened somewhat in meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, his remarks from earlier in the day continued to serve as the basis for questioning from reporters, who asked Macron whether he agreed with Trump that Germany is captive to Russia.

“No,” Macron said, bluntly, after Trump, perhaps flippantly, told reporters he was glad the press was asking the French president the question.  Back at home, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told reporters he didn’t agree with Trump’s accusation.

[T]he uncomfortable reaction domestically to Trump’s renewed haranguing of European allies from members of his own party — and his dispatching of Pence to the Midwest to palliate mounting concerns about a trade war — may begin to foretell an acknowledgment that Republicans could pay a political cost for rocking the boat.

Democratic leaders, sharpening their campaign message head of the midterms, indicated they intend to exploit the issue by depicting the president’s behavior on the world stage as “an embarrassment.” They contend that he’s more interested in cozying up to Putin, who Trump recently suggested is easier to deal with.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a joint statement Wednesday: “His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the President is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies.”

Meanwhile, Democrats up and down the ballot are warning that the trade war will devastate the economy — and they are making their Republican opponents answer to whether they agree with Trump.

Democratic messaging has largely focused on the party's candidates doing what’s best for constituents while arguing Republicans will serve as a rubber stamp for Trump.

And so far, Republicans are keeping a stiff upper lip about the political risk of Trump’s trade war. The Pence team framed his visit through the Midwest as part of the vice president’s packed campaign schedule — not a move of tariff damage control.

Pence, of course, is as big a liar as Trump, so anything coming from his lips should be considered untrue until proven otherwise.  

The Trump/Pence Regime’s Potemkin Economy

Despite Trump lies, U.S. Steel is not opening plants.

Canada has announced a new round of tariffs on American products in further retaliation for the ill-conceived Trump tariffs.  The Trump/Pence regime's response to growing evidence of harm to American jobs is to lire - the regime's main approach to anything and everything.  Trump even claimed that U.S. Steel would be opening six new plants - the announcement came as a surprise to the corporation which had had NO communications with Trump.  Yet, the lie is typical of what the white Christian extremist/nationalist base eats up and is too stupid to confirm independently. A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's "wake economy" which brings to mind the myth of "Potemkin villages" in Russia. The difference, of course, was no fool while the same cannot be said of Trump's base which is too happy to embrace lies.  One can only hope harsh reality hits this base very, very hard.  Here are column highlights:

According to legend, Grigory Potemkin, one of Catherine the Great’s ministers (and her lover), created a false impression of prosperity when the empress toured Ukraine. He supposedly did this by setting up fake villages, or possibly just facades, along her route, then dismantling them after she passed, and setting them up again further down the road.  

There probably isn’t much if any truth to the story — among other things, Catherine was too smart and tough-minded to be that easily deceived — but never mind: the legend has become a byword for the general idea of prettifying reality to please a tyrannical ruler.

And it seems highly relevant to some of the economic “news” coming out of the Trump administration the past few days. Just to be clear, the U.S. economy is still doing quite well overall, continuing the long expansion that began during Obama’s first term. . . . But Trump’s actual policy initiatives aren’t doing so well. His tax cut isn’t producing the promised surge in business investment, let alone the promised wage gains; all it has really done is lead to a lot of stock buybacks.

Reflecting this reality, the tax cut is becoming less popular over time. And the early phase of the trade war that was supposed to be “good, and easy to win” isn’t generating the kinds of headlines Trump wanted. Instead, we’re hearing about production shifting overseas to escape both U.S. tariffs on imported inputs and foreign retaliation against U.S. products. It’s really worth reading the submission by General Motors to the Commerce Department, . . . . In other words, “Don’t you understand global supply chains, you idiot?”

But meanwhile, how is the administration responding? By making stuff up. Now, making stuff up is actually standard operating procedure for these guys. We’re talking about an administration that’s taking children away from their parents and putting them in cages in response to a wave of violent immigrant crime that doesn’t, you know, actually exist. Trade policy itself is being driven by claims about the massive tariffs U.S. products face from, say, the European Union — tariffs that, like the immigrant crime wave, don’t actually exist.

But these are negative fictions, tales of wrongdoing by others. When it comes to Trump’s own economic policies, by contrast, it’s all puppies and rainbows — happy stories with no basis in reality.

Some of these come from Trump himself. For example, he declared that the head of U.S. Steel called him to say that the company was opening six new plants. It isn’t, and as far as we can tell the phone call never happened.

Meanwhile, reports say that the Council of Economic Advisers did an internal report concluding that Trump trade policy will cost jobs, not create them; Kevin Hassett, the chairman, pressed on these reports, said that he could neither confirm nor deny them; in other words, they’re true.

But the most Potemkinesque story of the past week was the declaration by Larry Kudlow, the administration’s top economic official, that the budget deficit is “coming down rapidly” as “those revenues come rolling in.”  Actually, the deficit is rising fast, mainly because of a plunge in corporate tax receipts — the direct result of the tax cut . . . .

Trump and company are making claims about the results of their policies that bear no relationship to reality. But reality has a well-known liberal bias. Will Trump’s habit of making things up, and his advisors’ willingness to celebrate imaginary policy triumphs, make any difference?

But who will tell him how things are really going? Given what we’ve seen the past few days, they’ll respond to plant closings and economic disruption with fantasies of triumph, while Trump will dismiss reports of problems as fake news. Reality will take a long time to break through, if it ever does. And by then the world trading system may be broken beyond repair.

Again, I wish every economic misfortune possible on states like Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin that should have know better than to embraces racism and lies.  They deserve immense economic pain. 

General Motors: Trump Tariffs Could Lead to GM Downsizing in USA

More Trump supporters may be losing their jobs or facing vastly higher auto prices if the narcissistic cretin-in-chief in the White House proceeds with his ill-conceived tariffs.  Instead of increasing American jobs, the tariffs seem headed toward forcing U.S. manufacturers to move operations out of the USA as Harley-Davidson has announced it is doing.  Now, General Motors is warning that it will take a similar path if Der Trumpenführer continues his push for tariffs.  The good news, of course, is that the job losses will be concentrated in states that went for Trump.  If this happens, karma will certainly bite those who allowed racism and bigotry to dupe them into voting against their own economic best interests (as you can tell, I have a very hard time feeling even a shred of sympathy for these people).  Bloomberg looks at what Trump voters may have rain down on them if GM proceeds with moving operations out of the USA.  Here are highlights:

General Motors Co. issued a stern warning to the Trump administration that it could shrink U.S. operations and cut jobs if tariffs are broadly applied to imported vehicles and auto parts. “Increased import tariffs could lead to a smaller GM, a reduced presence at home and risk less -- not more -- U.S. jobs,” the nation’s largest automaker said in comments submitted Friday to the Commerce Department.

That such a blunt statement came from GM -- a company run by a CEO, Mary Barra, whose normal tack is to avoid the political fray and let trade groups address the president’s policies -- was surprising to industry observers. And it underscored how high she, and many industrial leaders, believe the stakes are as [Trump] the president sinks the U.S. into tit-for-tat trade squabbles across the globe. GM’s public pronouncement follows similar moves by Harley-Davidson Inc., Toyota Motor Corp. and Daimler AG.

The “comment suggests how severe the impact would be to GM, its employees and consumers," said Michelle Krebs, analyst with AutoTrader.com. "There is a lot at stake for GM, the auto industry and the overall economy."

The probe has raised alarm among manufacturers, parts suppliers and auto retailers because all major carmakers -- including GM and Ford Motor Co. -- import a substantial share of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. from other countries. Levies on parts also would have major implications for top models like the Ford F-150 pickup and Toyota Camry sedan by boosting prices by thousands of dollars.

Barra had earlier tried to stay on good terms with Trump. She continued to serve on his Strategic and Policy Forum even after many other CEOs, such as Walt Disney’s Bob Iger and Tesla’s Elon Musk, quit to protest Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement last year. The forum was disbanded in August following Trump’s tepid response to attacks by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Now, the Detroit-based maker of Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC vehicles is warning that additional tariffs -- on top of those recently slapped on steel, aluminum and Chinese products -- could hurt GM and ultimately its customers. Higher prices would crimp sales, particularly to less-affluent consumers, and reduce the number of factory workers needed, it said.

“The threat of steep tariffs on vehicle and auto component imports risks undermining GM’s competitiveness against foreign auto producers by erecting broad brush trade barriers that increase our global costs, remove a key means of competing with manufacturers in lower-wage countries, and promote a trade environment in which we could be retaliated against in other markets,” the company said.

GM’s Chevrolet Silverado pickup was the top-selling model imported from Mexico last year, while the Chevrolet Equinox crossover was the leading vehicle sourced from Canada, according to LMC Automotive.

“GM imports a lot of pickup trucks from Mexico, so it’s a huge issue,” Alan Baum, an auto analyst in West Bloomfield, Michigan, said. “And for parts, it’s not just GM. Everyone imports a lot of electronics from Asia. Those are are high-value parts.”

Hate and bigotry often carry a high economic price - look no further than economically depressed Southwest Virginia for a case in point. 

Job Losses from Trump's Trade War Likely Just Beginning

Much like Mussolini (for whom things did not end well), Donald Trump likes to strut around and act the tough guy. Part of this tough guy/bully routine is Trump's self-created trade war which is already beginning to kill American jobs.  But worse days are likely to come for both American workers more of whom will lose jobs and American consumers who will find themselves paying higher prices for numerous goods.  All so a foul narcissist can feed his insatiable ego and play to the knuckle dragging base of the Republican Party. A column by a former U.S. Trade Representative looks at America's increasingly alienated allies working to form new trading alliances that exclude America.  Here are highlights:

Diversification is the polite way of saying that America’s friends and allies believe we have become an unreliable partner, and they are now looking elsewhere. From Ottawa to Brussels to Seoul, our trading partners are fed up with the Trump administration’s tariffs, and they have given up on trying to charm President Trump or persuade him that free trade is good. To reduce their economic dependence on the United States and their exposure to a potential global trade war, they are forging trade deals that leave us out of the picture altogether. On June 14, Canada’s government asked Parliament to ratify a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the United States backed out of last year. On June 18, the European Union trade commissioner visited Australia and three days later, New Zealand to begin negotiations for free-trade agreements; and on June 22, South Korea announced plans to pursue negotiations for its first free-trade agreement with Russia.

These moves are a direct response to the Trump administration’s unreliability and unpredictability, and they are a clear sign that the administration’s trade policy priorities — renegotiating deals and punishing violations — are not working out as expected.

[Trump] The president may want better deals to replace the old, “terrible” deals he doesn’t like, but so far, the rest of the world has been reluctant to negotiate new agreements with the United States. The long and growing list of tariffs, particularly those based on dubious national security grounds, has weakened the administration’s ability to form coalitions with other countries to tackle legitimate concerns, especially China’s unfair trade practices.

Instead, our closest trading partners are scrambling to find new markets for exports subject to tariff increases by the United States, and to secure new suppliers for the American products that their own countries are planning to hit with retaliatory tariffs.

Japan is thus accelerating negotiations with other countries. Japan and the European Union plan to sign their free-trade agreement in July. Moreover, it was Japan who stepped up to fill the leadership void left by the American exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Japanese Diet approved a bill to ratify the revised pact this month.

The tone and policies of the Trump administration have even managed to bring two longtime rivals, China and Mexico, closer together. The two countries once competed head-to-head as low-cost manufacturers, with the United States as the most important market. After Mr. Trump began beating the drum for tariffs and a possible withdrawal from Nafta, Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, called a visit last year to China “strategic leverage,” saying it “sends the signal that we have alternatives” to the United States.

Regrettably, this leaves the United States on the margins as the rest of the world builds a new trading structure without us. Our workers, farmers and companies will be locked out of important markets. We will lose our chance to help write the rules and set standards for trade in advanced technology, such as alternative-fuel vehicles, 3-D printing and artificial intelligence. Global and regional supply chains will increasingly bypass the United States. And years of efforts by the United States to curb China’s unfair trade practices will lose critical international support. To be sure, as the world’s largest economy, the United States will remain a major player in international commerce. . . . There is a danger, however, in overestimating our negotiating leverage. Trade patterns will shift as our partners look elsewhere. We have spent decades building trust with our allies. We are now squandering it.

Trump Cannot Grasp German Car Exports, But Wants to Negotiate Nuclear Weapons

One of the most dangerous things one (or a nation) can is encounter is someone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else, yet in reality is a dim wit and too stupid/narcissistic to recognize their own limitations. Such is the case of Der Trumpenführer, who is about to negotiate on nuclear weapons and North Korean disarmament yet is too stupid and uninformed to even  accurately talk about German car imports/exports figures and trade balance relating thereto. Trump has ranted about the presence of too many Mercedes Benz vehicles in the USA, yet doesn't grasp that nowadays a majority of such vehicles are manufactured in America in red states and that exports of such vehicles exceed imports.  Kim Jong-un is likely having a hard time not laughing out loud to himself as he prepares to meet with a most likely utterly unprepared Der Trumpenführer (Hitler though he knew more than his generals and we all know how that turned out).  A piece in CNN Money looks at how shockingly little Trump knows about German car exports.  Here are story excerpts:

"Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or enemies, take advantage of us on Trade anymore," Trump said on Twitter. "We must put the American worker first!" His complaints about foreign tariffs and trade surpluses are by now familiar. A frequent target is Germany and its car exports. Here are the facts.
 Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron during a recent meeting in Washington that there are too many German cars in the United States. He's also raised the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the past, and threatened to tax German car imports at 35%.

Economists say Trump is missing two key points: German automakers have opened big factories in the United States, dramatically reducing their need to import cars. Plus, targeting German carmakers would hurt American workers and the US economy.
 German automakers sold 1.35 million vehicles in the United States in 2017, about 8% of total US car sales. Of those, only 494,000 were exported from Germany to the United States — 25% less than in 2013, according to the German carmakers association.

Most of the remainder were made in the United States and in Mexico, . . . Then there are those German car factories in the United States.

BMW (BMWYY), Volkswagen (VLKAF) and Mercedes, which is owned by Daimler (DDAIF), all have major manufacturing plants in the United States and employ nearly 50,000 American workers.

The largest BMW assembly plant in the world is located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Last year, it posted a new production record of more than 400,000 vehicles — 70% of which were exported to other countries.

Volkswagen has a large factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that produced 112,000 vehicles last year. And Mercedes makes 300,000 cars and SUVs a year in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.

It's a booming business: The total number of cars produced by German automakers in the United States has increased by 180,000 since 2013 to 804,000, according to the German carmakers association. Half are exported to markets including Europe and Asia.

German automakers would most likely scale back investment in the United States if their products were targeted with increased tariffs. And the European Union would almost certainly respond by increasing tariffs on US autos.  Economists say that the focus on tariffs is misplaced.

New trade barriers would mean major problems for the industry at large, which relies on parts supply chains that cross multiple national borders.

"To make a clear cut distinction between what is an American car and what is a German car is in my opinion nonsense," Jacob Kirkegaard, a European trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNNMoney last month.

If Trump persists in this idiocy, I would hope Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen would announce plant closures in Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee and cite Trump and his Republican enablers as the cause of the closures.  Three red states could theoretically swing blue if this happened. Facts do matter to sane Americans and most of the world.  Not so today's Republicans and their idiot base.

As for the North Korea talks, take anything Trump and/or Kim Jong-un says in the aftermath, take it all with many grains of salt.  My money has Kim Jong-un playing Trump for a fool.