The Growing Trump Created Economic Slump

Troubles for congressional Republicans are growing and not just because of Donald Trump's diarrhea of the mouth and tweet storms as the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry gains speed.  Like Trump, they are lying and obfuscating to avoid admitting Trump has engaged in impeachable offenses, and soon they will being doing the same as signs of Trump's self-created economic slump - trade wars and erratic policies do have consequences - become more evident.  Yes, the 35%  of the public that blindly supports Trump in a cult like manner will likely be unmoved as the economic downturn picks up momentum, but sane and sentient voters are likely to connect the dots and realize there is an additional reason Trump needs to be driven from the White House.  As Newsweek reports, one GOP strategist said to fellow Republicans "Trump is a suicide bomber, and you've strapped yourselves to him so tightly that when he explodes, you're going out to meet the 72 porn stars of the Trumpian afterlife with him."   That remark did not even factor in the looming economic issues. A column in the New York Times by a prominent economist lays out the damage Trump has done and continues to do.  Here are excerpts:

When he isn’t raving about how the deep state is conspiring against him, Donald Trump loves to boast about the economy, claiming to have achieved unprecedented things. As it happens, none of his claims are true. While both G.D.P. and employment have registered solid growth, the Trump economy simply seems to have continued a long expansion that began under Barack Obama.

But now it’s starting to look as if Trump really will achieve something unique: He may well be the first president of modern times to preside over a slump that can be directly attributed to his own policies, rather than bad luck.

There has always been a deep unfairness about the relationship between economics and politics: Presidents get both credit and blame for events that usually have little to do with their actions.

Now the U.S. economy is going through another partial slump. Once again, manufacturing is contracting. Agriculture is also taking a severe hit, as is shipping. Overall output and employment are still growing, but around a fifth of the economy is effectively in recession.

But unlike previous presidents, who were just unlucky to preside over slumps, Trump has done this to himself, largely by choosing to wage a trade war he insisted would be “good, and easy to win.”

The link between the trade war and agriculture’s woes is obvious: America’s farmers are deeply dependent on export markets, China in particular. So they’re hurting badly, despite a huge financial bailout that is already more than twice as big as the Obama administration’s auto bailout.

Shipping may also seem an obvious victim when tariffs reduce international trade, although it’s not just an international issue; domestic trucking is also in recession.

The manufacturing slump is more surprising. After all, America runs a large trade deficit in manufactured goods, so you might expect that tariffs, by forcing buyers to turn to domestic suppliers, would be good for the sector. That’s surely what Trump and his advisers thought would happen.

But that’s not how it has worked out. Instead, the trade war has clearly hurt U.S. manufacturing. Indeed, it has done considerably more damage than even Trump critics like yours truly expected.

The Trumpist trade warriors, it turns out, missed two key points. First, many U.S. manufacturers depend heavily on imported parts and other inputs; the trade war is disrupting their supply chains. Second, Trump’s trade policy isn’t just protectionist, it’s erratic, creating vast uncertainty for businesses both here and abroad. And businesses are responding to that uncertainty by putting plans for investment and job creation on hold.

So the tweeter in chief has bungled his way into a Trump slump, even if it isn’t a full-blown recession, at least so far. . . . Also, the pain in manufacturing seems to be falling especially hard on those swing states Trump took by tiny margins in 2016, giving him the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. . . . . Trump is, as I said, unique in that he really did this to himself.

So what will come next? Trump being Trump, it’s a good bet that he’ll soon be denouncing troubling economic data as fake news; I wouldn’t be surprised to see political pressure on the statistical agencies to report better numbers.

The scary thing is that around 35 percent of Americans will probably believe whatever excuses Trump comes up with. But that won’t be enough to save him.

Trump is poised to utterly destroy the GOP, yet Republicans refuse to shout out that the emperor has no clothes.

Voodoo Economics May Be Catching Up with Trump/GOP

The stack market - actually the bond market - has been showing signs that the economy is slowing and that a recession might well begin in 2020 or before.  Recently job growth and GDP figures have been revised downward and manufacturers and consumers are feeling the adverse effects of Trump's insane trade wars with China and other nations.  And then there are America's farmers who have been dealt the double blow of Chinese tariffs and the impacts of climate change, particularly in the Mid-West, even as the GOP denies climate change is occurring.  To what ought to a shock to no one, the Trump/GOP tax cut for the wealthy and huge corporations - which only scattered crumbs for everyone else - has yet again proven that huge tax cuts for the top income brackets (i) do not pay for themselves, (ii) explode the deficit, and (iii) do not strengthen the economy overall. These three realities have been known since the days of Ronald Reagan, yet the GOP continues to live in a fantasy world.  A column in the New York Times looks at the slowing economy and the efforts of Trump and the GOP to shift blame from themselves.  Here are excerpts:

Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase “voodoo economic policy” to describe Ronald Reagan’s claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined.

For voodoo economics isn’t just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It’s the ultimate policy zombie, a belief that seemingly can’t be killed by evidence. It has failed every time its proponents have tried to put it into practice, but it just keeps shambling along.

[W]henever tax cuts fail to produce the predicted miracle, their defenders come up with bizarre explanations for their failure.
 My favorite until now came from Art Laffer, the original voodoo economist and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why did George W. Bush’s tax-cutting presidency end not with a boom, but with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression? According to Laffer, blame rests with Barack Obama, even though the recession began more than a year before Obama took office. You see, according to Laffer, everyone lost confidence upon realizing that Obama might win the 2008 election.
 Trump has gone one better. As it has become increasingly clear that the results of his tax cut were disappointing — recent data revisions have marked down estimates of both G.D.P. and employment growth, to the point where it’s hard to see more than a brief sugar high from $2 trillion in borrowing — Trump has invented ever more creative ways to blame other people. In particular, he’s now claiming that the promised boom hasn’t arrived because his opponents are hexing the economy with bad thoughts: “The Democrats are trying to ‘will’ the Economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election.”
 [B]laming the Fed for the tax cut’s fizzle won’t wash. For one thing, the Fed has actually raised rates less than in previous economic recoveries. Even more to the point, the Trump economic team was expecting Fed rate hikes when it made its extravagantly optimistic forecasts.
 The Trump tax cut was supposed to create a boom so powerful that it would not only withstand modest Fed rate hikes, but actually require such hikes to prevent inflationary overheating. You don’t get to turn around and claim betrayal when the Fed does exactly what you expected it to do.
 Since the Fed is unlikely to oblige, what else might Trump do? Officials have floated, then retracted, the idea of a cut in payroll taxes — that is, a tax break for ordinary workers, rather than the corporations and wealthy individuals who mainly benefited from the 2017 tax cut. But such action seems unlikely, among other things because top administration officials denounced this policy idea when Obama proposed it.

Trump has also suggested using executive authority to reduce taxes on capital gains (which are overwhelmingly paid by the wealthy). This move would have the distinction of being both ineffectual and illegal.

What about calling off the trade war that has been depressing business investment? This seems unlikely, because protectionism is right up there with racism as a core Trump value. And merely postponing tariffs might not help, since it wouldn’t resolve the uncertainty that may be the trade war’s biggest cost.

The truth is that Trump doesn’t have a Plan B, and probably can’t come up with one. On the other hand, he might not have to. Who needs competent policy when you’re the chosen one and the king of Israel?

Funny how the last GOP administration engaged in massive tax cuts and George W. left the country with the largest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.  The GOP truly never learns. 

Trump and the Seemingly Faltering Economy

Donald Trump likes to claim he is responsible for the United States' economy and boasts about the stock market. The truth is that he merely inherited a growing economy from the Obama administration and that to date, his regime has done little to provide a basis for claiming responsibility for the economy which has grown, yet since much of the benefit go to the top 1% percent of taxpayers (especially due to the Trump/GOP tax break give away).  Now, with signs that the economy may be on the verge of faltering, Trump economic and trade policies may be a driving force towards a slow down and recession in 2020 - a recession (f not depression) already slamming American farmers thanks to Der Trumpenführer's tariffs and trade wars.  A column in the New York Times suggests that Trump's policies are a flop and, worse yet, his regime has no plan on how to deal with an economic slow down other than to blame "fake news" and the Federal Reserve.  Here are highlights:

Last year, after an earlier stock market swoon brought on by headlines about the U.S.-China trade conflict, I laid out three rules for thinking about such events. First, the stock market is not the economy. Second, the stock market is not the economy. Third, the stock market is not the economy.

But maybe I should add a fourth rule: The bond market sorta kinda is the economy.

An old economists’ joke says that the stock market predicted nine of the last five recessions. Well, an “inverted yield curve” — when interest rates on short-term bonds are higher than on long-term bonds — predicted six of the last six recessions. And a plunge in long-term yields, which are now less than half what they were last fall, has inverted the yield curve once again, with the short-versus-long spread down to roughly where it was in early 2007, on the eve of a disastrous financial crisis and the worst recession since the 1930s.

[T]he bond market is telling us that the smart money has become very gloomy about the economy’s prospects. Why? The Federal Reserve basically controls short-term rates, but not long-term rates; low long-term yields mean that investors expect a weak economy, which will force the Fed into repeated rate cuts.

So what accounts for this wave of gloom? Much though not all of it is a vote of no confidence in Donald Trump’s economic policies.

[L]ast year, after a couple of quarters of good economic news, Trump officials were boasting that the 2017 tax cut had laid the foundation for many years of high economic growth. Since then, however, the data have pretty much confirmed what critics had been saying all along. Yes, the tax cut gave the economy a boost — a “sugar high.” Running trillion-dollar deficits will do that. But the boost was temporary. In particular, the promised boom in business investment never materialized.

At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that Trump’s belligerence about foreign trade isn’t a pose; it reflects real conviction. Protectionism seems to be up there with racism as part of the essential Trump. And the realization that he really is a Tariff Man is having a serious dampening effect on business spending, partly because nobody knows just how far he’ll go. [T]hink of the dilemma facing many U.S. manufacturers. Some of them rely heavily on imported parts; they’re not going to invest in the face of actual or threatened tariffs on those imports. Others could potentially compete with imported goods if assured that those imports would face heavy tariffs; but they don’t know whether those tariffs are actually coming, or will endure. So everyone is sitting on piles of cash, waiting to see what an erratic president will do. Of course, Trump isn’t the only problem here. Other countries have their own troubles — a European recession and a Chinese slowdown look quite likely — and some of these troubles are spilling back to the United States. But even if Trump and company aren’t the source of all of our economic difficulties, you still want some assurance that they’ll deal effectively with problems as they arise. . . . reportedly, is that there is no policy discussion at all, which isn’t surprising when you bear in mind the fact that basically everyone who knows anything about economics left the Trump administration months or years ago.

[T]the administration’s only plan if things go wrong seems to be to blame the Fed, whose chairman was selected by … Donald Trump. To be fair, it’s now clear that the Fed was wrong to raise short-term rates last year.

But it’s important to realize that the Fed’s mistake was, essentially, that it placed too much faith in Trumpist economic policies. . . . the Trump boom wasn’t supposed to be so fragile that a small rise in rates would ruin it.

I might add that blaming the Fed looks to me like a dubious political strategy. How many voters even know what the Fed is or what it does?

Investors were clearly far too optimistic last fall, but they may be too pessimistic now.  But pessimistic they are. The bond market, which is the best indicator we have, is declaring that Trumponomics was a flop.

The Damaging GOP Quest for a White Republic

A piece in Time Magazine looks at what has in many ways become the driving agenda of the Republican Party: restoring a mythic white republic.  Yes, empowering corporate greed and polluters are sub-agenda items, but increasingly a desire to restore racial superiority (at least in the minds of Republicans) is the most important issue of all.  Meanwhile, much of the wold looks on aghast at what has happened to America as noted by a piece at CNN:

What happens to a country that is an idea, when that idea turns ugly? Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the United States has been the leader of the free world economically, militarily, but also -- as communism and fascism fell by the wayside -- as an idea. . . . . But America was supposed to know better -- to lead us forward, not backward, to know the way.

Winston Churchill said you could always count on the Americans to do the right thing once they had tried everything else. Now, it's not clear who would know what the right thing is when it happens.

We watch the downward spiral helpless, trying not to be dragged in. America's ugly obsession with guns and mass shootings blended this month predictably with the far extremes of anti-immigrant sentiment.

The intense cruelty of US Customs and Border Protection facilities, separating children and parents, and of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, all fall foul of the rosy-eyed view outsiders have of America as a place where anyone can come and make it. The huddled masses were always the point of the United States, but now they seem to have become the enemy within.

What comes next? Does it lead the free world again, or allow China's alien authoritarianism to fill the vacuum? Has America peaked? Will it eventually do the right thing, and who will be left to know when it does?

Foreigners are not the only ones shocked by what is happening to America.  Equally shocking is the willingness of Republicans to weaken the nation in exchange for increased white privilege/political power.  Like some church denominations that prefer to shrink in size to maintain "purity," today's Republicans ignore the tearing of the social safety net, a weakened economy and military so that they can feel racially privileged.  Here are highlights from the Time piece that looks at the manner the Trump/GOP quest for a white republic is harming America: 

When in a recent tweetstorm Donald Trump suggested that four Congresswomen of color leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” social media exploded. Outrage. Even some news outlets finally let go of the euphemisms and called the tweets “racist.” The Republicans, on the other hand, were quiet. As well they would be. The ideological demographics of the party dictated it.

The GOP’s membership is nearly 90 percent white and can only envision carnage and extinction as it looks upon a rights-based, religious, racial and ideologically diverse America. Or, as Lindsey Graham had noted as early as 2012, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

In short, the United States of America is not really their America. They yearn for a white republic. That’s why they are fighting to recreate the days when, as Archie Bunker sang, “Guys like us, we had it made.” That’s why they’ve willingly gone along with and participated in a sustained attack on the country itself, allowing it to grow weaker so that they could feel stronger.

Already, Trump and the Republicans have severely harmed the institutional heft of checks-and-balances. But they’re not done. America’s international reputation and influence rest on enormous economic and military strength, as well as the intangible but all-important “soft power” brought on by a robust democracy. All three pillars are necessary to sustain America’s nearly global respect and position, yet — and this was the rub — all three are increasingly dependent on more than just whites in the United States to build and sustain. For white America to exist, America must die. And the Republicans have made their choice.

In their effort to restore a white America, the GOP had to wound the kind of multiracial democracy that not only elected Barack Obama to the presidency but enhanced America’s global reputation. Republicans, therefore, set out to create an electorate that was disproportionately white and conservative. In Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Alabama, North Carolina and more than 20 additional states GOP policies targeted African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, the young and the poor to keep them away from the ballot box. Republican governors and GOP-majority state legislatures deployed an array of voter-suppression tactics, including closing hundreds of polling stations in minority and low-income precincts, slashing early voting hours, reinstating poll taxes, mandating discriminatory voter ID laws and purging millions from the voter rolls. Meanwhile, before his death, Republican legislative mapmaker Thomas Hofeller set in place another key foundation for a white republic. He crafted extreme gerrymandered Congressional districts across the United States that violated the basic Constitutional concept of “one person, one vote.” His legislative maps diluted the electoral strength of large, racially diverse cities, and magnified the power of overwhelmingly white suburbs and sparsely populated rural areas. The dismantling of a robust, multiracial democracy requires not only acts of commission, such as the 5-4 Shelby County v. Holder decision by the conservatives on the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act, but sins of omission as well. Mitch McConnell’s flat-out refusal to even engage legislation that would protect the nation’s electoral infrastructure from hacking and foreign interference, despite solid evidence that it occurred in 2016, sends a clear signal that for his ilk this is not an American democracy worth protecting or saving. The dangerous quest for a white republic is also undermining the U.S. military. When Trump came to power, there were more than 40,000 immigrants in uniform willing to fight and die for the United States. About 5,000 joined every year. The Department of Defense under this Administration, however, has either proposed or implemented policies that renege on promises of citizenship for immigrants in the armed services, issued directives that ban immigrants, even those with special language and medical skills, from serving and threatened to deport the families of those who are currently in the armed forces. . . . . Not surprisingly, in 2018, the Army missed its recruiting goals and then had to lower its expectations for 2019, to avoid two consecutive years of failure. The economic might of the United States has not been spared either. While much of the discussion on the economy and immigration has focused on the impact on the agricultural sector, the GOP’s xenophobic policies are also taking a direct hit on higher education and the nation’s capacity for and leadership in technological and scientific innovation. A 2013 report notes that international students enrolled in American universities accounted for “70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63.2 percent in computer science, 60.4 percent in industrial engineering, and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials and mechanical engineering, as well as in economics (a non-STEM field).” Those students bring the brainpower to innovation, research and technology. . . . Yet, with the rise of Trump and his policies and rhetoric, U.S. higher education, which fuels this STEM growth, is simply not as attractive as it had been. The determination to build MAGA Land explains why what should be obvious tripwires – disrespecting military heroes; engaging in widespread corruption; cavorting with a communist dictator in North Korea and a journalist-killing authoritarian in Saudi Arabia; dodging multiple allegations of sexual assault, including rape; creating horrific scenes of White House-sponsored cruelty on the border; and believing Putin over our own intelligence agencies about Russian interference in the 2016 election – have all failed to dislodge one of the most unpopular presidents in recorded history. Put simply, because Trump promises Republicans a return to white dominance, he is more important to the GOP and its base than the country those in power took an oath to support and defend. The scurrilous attack on Representatives Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib was just part and parcel of a larger assault on America and the rich diversity and rights culture that are essential for true greatness.

America's Future: Getting Rid of Trump Will Help

Increased racial hatred, increased gun violence, trade wars damaging American farmers and perhaps moving the country toward a recession, and frayed relations with long time allies.  All trace back in varying degrees to a single individual:  Donald Trump.  The main is a boil (if not a cancer) on nation and conservative columnist and former Republican Jennifer Rubin makes the case that almost anyone else would be better in the White House and would set the stage where serious, sane progress to address pressing problems could begin.   If Trump cannot be removed by impeachment, then he needs to be removed at the ballot box in November 2020.  The cancer that he embodies must be removed and not allowed to further metastasize.  True, we will still have to contend with his dangerous supporters, but his removal from office will be a much needed beginning.  Here are column excerpts:

Even if we get a Democratic president Americans don’t like all that much, or whose limitations are obvious, we’ll be in a better spot than we would be with President Trump. That’s an unsurprising assumption by Democrats. But, increasingly, independents and disaffected Republicans — as seen from their praise of former president Barack Obama’s remarks on the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio — know this to be true. “Anyone but Trump” should be the goal for all Americans, even Republicans.

For one thing, Republicans won’t have to observe the debasement of other Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who lamely tried to create some moral equivalence between Trump, who incites white nationalism of the type motivating the El Paso terrorist, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who incites no one to hatred and whose ideology — progressive capitalism — hasn’t driven anyone to kill.

Whatever the problem, things would be better without Trump even with a president whose ideology and/or performance might not thrill most Americans.

Combating domestic terrorism? Just getting rid of the instigator of white nationalism would be a plus. The Post reports:

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right. . . . this presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

We could curtail Trump’s presidency and rebuke the white nationalist ideology, or we could reelect the man who stoked their grievance. It’s pretty easy to figure out the best option from a national security standpoint.

The trade war with China? Trump now has seized “control” of policy, . . . And how’s that working out? Not well:

Business executives, economists, and former government officials have said the worsening conflict between the White House and China was damaging the U.S. economy. Business investment contracted in the second quarter of 2019, and a number of White House officials are worried that the economy is beginning to slow.

Get rid of Trump and you would, at the very least, have a less chaotic, less impulse-driven policy from someone who understands U.S. consumers and not China pay the tariffs.

Relations with allies? They’ll immediately improve without Trump. Human rights policy? Once Trump is gone, we wouldn’t be in the business of praising mass murderers (e.g., Kim Jong Un). Environmental policy? Even some Republicans are dumping their climate change denial, but as long as Trump is in office, any hope of progress is illusory. Russia? No Democrat or Republican likely to be elected will kowtow to Vladimir Putin.

I don’t mean to suggest that all our problems will go away if Trump does, nor do I mean to suggest it doesn’t matter who succeeds him. However, we would eliminate a slew of Trump-created problems and inanities and make it possible rationally to address issues.

It’s not hyperbole to say Trump is a threat to our democracy, to national security and to progress on virtually any issue. We want the best possible president, but we will settle for anyone who isn’t Trump.

If you care about America and the future, vote Democrat in 2020 and in Virginia's 2019 elections.

Trump's Trade Wars Continue to Decimate Farmers

Many farmers, especially in the Mid-West voted for Donald Trump whose appeals to racism and xenophobia won them over despite the false narrative than it was financial insecurity rather than bigotry that won their votes.  Now, many are paying - in my view - a much deserved price as Trump's trade wars continue to wipe out markets for American agricultural products and leave many farmers dependent on government bailouts (something they condemn when benefiting others) to stave off bankruptcy. A piece in Yahoo News looks at this self-inflicted harm and notes how farmers want a return to "more normal times" - something that will only be achieved by voting Trump and Mike Pence out of office.  While my heart goes out to children and youths in struggling farm families, I find it hard to dredge up any sympathy for their parents who voted for Trump. Here are article excerpts:

The White House recently announced that it would be providing an additional $16 billion in aid to American farmers affected by the trade war between the U.S. and China.

But the problem for American farmers has becomes bigger than something a bailout can fix.

“This trade thing is what’s brought on by [Trump] the president and it’s really frustrating because he took away all of our markets,” Bob Nuylen, a farmer from North Dakota who grows spring wheat and sunflowers, told Yahoo Finance. “We live in an area where we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. It costs us a lot of money — over $1 a bushel to get our grain to markets.”

Since trade tensions began in 2018, farmers have faced major financial challenges, since China was once a major U.S. agriculture buyer.

And losing customers has become a major issue. Soybean farmers have been dealing with this, as China has turned to other countries like Brazil for soybeans. Nuylen said this is also happening for wheat farmers, as China has begun importing wheat from Russian regions.

“All these countries went to different countries to get their grain,” Nuylen said. “How are we going to get the relations back with them to buy our grain again and be our customers?”

“Our prices are probably as low as I’ve seen them in a long time,” he told Yahoo Finance. “We were losing just about $70 an acre just by putting our crop in [the ground] this spring.” The Trump administration pledged two installments of a farmer bailout program. The first round of payments totaling $4.7 billion was paid in September 2018, while the second round was distributed in December. By February 2019, the total aid payments reached $7.7 billion.

“Payments are a welcome help for the bottom line of Missouri farmers,” Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Yahoo Finance in an email statement. “Although the trade payments vary widely from county to county, they’ll keep more than a few farmers in business for another year. ...

“Having said all that,” the statement added, “farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war, embarrassed that ad hoc government subsidies are all that stands between many of us and financial ruin, and ready for the return of more normal times.”

If these farmers continue to support Trump, they deserve any and every misfortune that befalls them. Hate, racism and bigotry need to carry a very heavy price.

Trump's Trade War Leaves Mid-West Farmers Reeling

The unkind part of me struggles to have much sympathy for Mid_West farmers who helped put Trump in the White House as they watch their führer pushing trade tariff policies that are wreaking havoc on their financial survival. They are, after all reaping what they sowed, motivated by racism and a war against modernity itself. The kinder side of me, feels sympathy for the children and youth who are suffering as a result of their parents' bigotry and overall idiocy.  Frighteningly, rather than admit his tariffs have been a failure, Trump wants to give a bailout to farmers and shift the costs of his failure to the rest of the American taxpayers.  One can only hope that the Democrat controlled House of Representatives rejects any such handout to farmers and that they are left to live with the consequences of their voting for an unfit candidate.  Actions do need to have consequences. NBC News looks at the growing plight of Trump supporting farmers.  Here are article highlights:

WATERLOO, Ill. — As Tim Bardole surveyed his farmland, the soil too wet to plant corn or soybeans because of a recent downpour, he remarked that there are few rays of hope for most American farmers these days. While the weather continues to hamper the planting season, the news over the weekend that the United States and China had only moved further away from a trade deal was seen by the farmers as another blow.

Bardole runs a 2,400-acre farm near Rippey, Iowa, with his father, brother and son. This time last year, they figured the trade dispute between China and the U.S., which had already created an economic nightmare for farmers, would be over by harvest time in the fall. Now, it appears there is no end in sight.

"We just keep hunkering down and doing what we can to reduce costs as much as possible, and digging into reserves, and borrowing more money and using up equity," Bardole said over the phone, adding that the entire industry is doing the same.

China announced Monday that, beginning June 1, it would impose tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods. That caused stock markets in the U.S. to tumble, and left farmers to face a future that looks financially bleaker than the historically tough years they have recently faced.

Because of the Trump administration’s trade tactics, the Congressional Research Service concluded in a report published in December that national net farm income dropped by more than $9 billion, or 12 percent, in 2018.

Things looks like they could get much worse as the trade dispute continues.

With the most recent news of the intensifying tensions between the U.S. and China, the price of soybeans has dropped below $8 a bushel for the first time since 2008, which comes as many Midwest farmers are facing rampant flooding on their land during the planting season.

Despite the financial strain that farmers have been enduring while the White House’s trade war continues, many had remained committed to the president and his negotiating tactics. Most farmers tend to agree that China is not an equal trading partner, so the common refrain is that they are willing to suffer short-term pain for long-term benefits.

But after years of hardship, confidence in Trump’s negotiating tactics has begun to waver among some of his most ardent supporters.

Kenneth Hartman, a fifth-generation farmer in Waterloo, Illinois, said he’s long been a Trump supporter . . . But, he added, farmers also need free trade and open markets or else the agriculture community will continue to erode. More than 160,000 farms in the U.S. disappeared from 2007 to 2017, according to the USDA Agriculture Census released in April.

Whether falling confidence in this particular trade negotiation will diminish Trump’s very solid backing among farmers overall, however, remains unclear.

Trump Is Terrible for Rural America

For at least the last quarter century, Republicans have shown genius in how they have been able to convince segments of the American public to vote for GOP candidates and in the process vote against their own economic interests. The main tools have been racial bigotry/fears, religion, and homophobia, which ties in with the latter.   More recently, the GOP has used cultural resentment on the part of rural residents by attacking the "liberal elites." This last approach has transformed the GOP from a party that embraced science, knowledge and education into a party that embraces ignorance and almost celebrates stupidity.   Donald Trump has shrewdly taken the old GOP formula to new heights with his open racism, fanning the myth of Christian persecution in America, and stoking the myth of American exceptionalism.  Other than its powerful military, compared to European nations, America is exceptional only in its failure to count its citizens as assets and to put in place policies that save lives.  There is a reason American life expectancy is falling while it continue to rise in  other developed nations.  Hardest hit by these wrongheaded Trump/GOP policies are rural areas which have become key to the Trump/GOP base.  A column in the New York Times looks at the damage being done to Trump voters and raises the issue of when will they open their eyes to the fact that they have been played for fools and are their own worse enemies.  Here are column excerpts:

Economists, reports Politico, are fleeing the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. Six of them resigned on a single day last month. The reason? They are feeling persecuted for publishing reports that shed an unflattering light on Trump policies.

But these reports are just reflecting reality (which has a well-known anti-Trump bias). Rural America is a key part of Donald Trump’s base. In fact, rural areas are the only parts of the country in which Trump has a net positive approval rating. But they’re also the biggest losers under his policies.

What, after all, is Trumpism? In 2016 Trump pretended to be a different kind of Republican, but in practice almost all of his economic agenda has been G.O.P. standard: big tax cuts for corporations and the rich while hacking away at the social safety net. The one big break from orthodoxy has been his protectionism, his eagerness to start trade wars.

And all of these policies disproportionately hurt farm country.

The Trump tax cut largely passes farmers by, because they aren’t corporations and few of them are rich. . . . to the extent that farmers saw tax reductions, most of the benefits went to the richest 10 percent, while poor farmers actually saw a slight tax increase. At the same time, the assault on the safety net is especially harmful to rural America, which relies heavily on safety-net programs. Of the 100 counties with the highest percentage of their population receiving food stamps, 85 are rural, and most of the rest are in small metropolitan areas. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which Trump keeps trying to kill, had its biggest positive impact on rural areas.

And these programs are crucial to rural Americans even if they don’t personally receive government aid. Safety-net programs bring purchasing power, which helps create rural jobs. Medicaid is also a key factor keeping rural hospitals alive; without it, access to health care would be severely curtailed for rural Americans in general.

The U.S. farm sector is hugely dependent on access to world markets, much more so than the economy as a whole.  American soybean growers export half of what they produce; wheat farmers export 46 percent of their crop. . . . Trump’s recent rage-tweeting over trade, which raised the prospect of an expanded trade war, sent grain markets to a 42-year low. If the world descends into trade war, U.S. imports and exports will both shrink — and farmers, among our most important exporters, will be the biggest losers.

Why, then, do rural areas support Trump? A lot of it has to do with cultural factors. In particular, rural voters are far more hostile to immigrants than urban voters — especially in communities where there are few immigrants to be found. Lack of familiarity apparently breeds contempt.

Rural voters also feel disrespected by coastal elites, and Trump has managed to channel their anger. No doubt many rural voters, if they happened to read this column, would react with rage, not at Trump, but at me: “So you think we’re stupid!”

But support for Trump might nonetheless start to crack if rural voters realized how much they are being hurt by his policies. What’s a Trumpist to do?

One answer is to repeat zombie lies. A few weeks ago Trump told a cheering rally that his cuts in the estate tax have helped farmers. This claim is, however, totally false; PolitiFact rated it “pants on fire.” . . . . Tales of family farms broken up to pay estate tax are pure fiction.

Another answer is to try to suppress the truth. Hence the persecution of Agriculture Department economists who were just trying to do their jobs.

The thing is, the assault on truth will have consequences that go beyond politics. Agriculture’s Economic Research Service isn’t supposed to be a cheering section for whoever is in power. . . . Now, however, the service’s ability to do its job is being rapidly degraded, because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in fact-based policy. Basically, it doesn’t believe in facts, period. Everything is political.

And who will pay the price for this degradation? Rural Americans. Trump’s biggest supporters are his biggest victims.

To the extent "coastal elites" look down on Trump supporters, it is because they ARE stupid, at least in the sense that they cannot see that they are being played for fools.  Add to that their inability to see that their own racism and religious extremism make their home regions look unattractive to the new, progressive businesses they so desperately need. 

Setting the Stage for a Possible Global Recession.

Racism and greed were, in my view, the main motivations for those who voted for Trump in 2016.  The racists were the angry whites fearful of lost white privilege while never looking in the mirror to see their own role in the plight.  The other group was comprised of the very wealthy and others of a similar mindset who want to horde their money and never contribute to the best interests of the nation.  Now, thanks to the actions of Der Trumpenführer - trade wars, tax cuts ballooning the federal deficit, and the government shutdown - , actions  of like minded anti-immigrant racists in the UK and other parts of Europe, and China's structural economic problems, these same people may be about to see the start of a recession that will worsen their plights.  A column in the New York Times looks at the potentially coming Trump/GOP recession.  Here are highlights: 

The last global economic crisis, for all its complex detail, had one big, simple cause: A huge housing and debt bubble had emerged in both the United States and Europe, and it took the world economy down when it deflated. 

[The slump] in 1990-91, was a messier story. It was a smorgasbord recession — a downturn with multiple causes, . . . . The best guess is that the next downturn will similarly involve a mix of troubles, rather than one big thing. And over the past few months we’ve started to see how it could happen. It’s by no means certain that a recession is looming, but some of our fears are beginning to come true. Right now, I see four distinct threats to the world economy. (I may be missing others.)

China: Many people, myself included, have been predicting a Chinese crisis for a long time — but it has kept not happening. China’s economy is deeply unbalanced, with too much investment and too little consumer spending; but time and again the government has been able to steer away from the cliff by ramping up construction and ordering banks to make credit ultra-easy.

But has the day of reckoning finally arrived? Given China’s past resilience, it’s hard to feel confident. Still, recent data on Chinese manufacturing look grim.

And trouble in China would have worldwide repercussions. We tend to think of China only as an export juggernaut, but it’s also a huge buyer of goods, especially commodities like soybeans and oil; U.S. farmers and energy producers will be very unhappy if the Chinese economy stalls.

Europe: For some years Europe’s underlying economic weakness, due to an aging population and Germany’s obsession with running budget surpluses, was masked by recovery from the euro crisis. But the run of good luck seems to be coming to an end, with the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and Italy’s slow-motion crisis undermining confidence; as with China, recent data are ugly.

And like China, Europe is a big player in the world economy, so its stumbles will spill over to everyone, the U.S. very much included. Trade war: Over the past few decades, businesses around the world invested vast sums based on the belief that old-fashioned protectionism was a thing of the past. But Donald Trump hasn’t just imposed high tariffs, he’s demonstrated a willingness to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of existing trade agreements. . . . . For now, corporate leaders reportedly believe that things won’t get out of hand, that the U.S. and China in particular will reach a deal. But this sentiment could turn suddenly if and when business realizes that the hard-liners still seem to be calling the shots.
 The shutdown: It’s not just the federal workers not getting paid. It’s also the contractors, who will never get reimbursed for their losses, the food stamp recipients who will be cut off if the stalemate goes on, and more. Conventional estimates of the cost of the shutdown are almost surely too low, because they don’t take account of the disruption a non-functioning government will impose on every aspect of life.

As in the case of a trade war, business leaders reportedly believe that the shutdown will soon be resolved. But what will happen to investment and hiring if and when corporate America concludes that Trump has boxed himself in, and that this could go on for many months?

So there are multiple things going wrong, all of which threaten the economy. How bad will it be?

The good news is that even taking all these negatives together, they don’t come close to the body blow the world economy took from the 2008 financial crisis. The bad news is that it’s not clear what policymakers can or will do to respond when things go wrong.

Monetary policy ­— that is, interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and its counterparts abroad — is normally the first line of defense against recession. But the Fed has very limited room to cut, because interest rates are already low, and in Europe, where rates are negative, there’s no room at all.

Fiscal policy — temporary hikes in government spending and aid to vulnerable workers — is the usual backup to monetary easing. But would a president who’s holding federal workers hostage in pursuit of a pointless wall be willing to enact a sensible stimulus?

Finally, dealing effectively with any kind of global slump requires a lot of international cooperation. How plausible is that given who’s currently in charge?

Again, I’m not saying that a global recession is necessarily about to happen. But the risks are clearly rising: The conditions for such a slump are now in place, in a way they weren’t even a few months ago.

America: Tyranny of the Minority, and Rogue Nation Status

Watching Donald Trump - in my view, the most morally bankrupt and dangerous narcissist to ever occupy the White House - wreak havoc on the world order, igniting a trade war that will cost American consumers dearly, shredding long standing alliances, and even seeking to over through the current government in the United Kingdom (all of which likely thrills Vladimir Putin) makes it hard to reach any conclusion other than America is a rogue nation.  Disturbingly, many of Trump's tactics both domestically and internationally mirror the conduct of Adolph Hitler in the early 1930's.  Meanwhile, Trump's rural base cheers as the destruction takes place and the eunuchs in the Congressional GOP do nothing to rein in or remove an unfit occupant of the White House.  How did we reach this point where ignorance and racial hate and bigotry are celebrated by the party controlling the federal government?  A piece in The Economist - one of the few things currently stable in the UK - blames a design flaw in the United States Constitution which now allows a tyrannical and toxic minority of rural voters/states to negate the wishes of the majority of citizens. Even with massive Democrat turnout, it will prove difficult to alter the downward spiral of American politics and, I would argue, morality.   Here are article highlights:

EVERY system for converting votes into power has its flaws. Britain suffers from an over-mighty executive; Italy from chronically weak government; Israel from small, domineering factions. America, however, is plagued by the only democratic vice more troubling than the tyranny of the majority: tyranny of the minority.

This has come about because of a growing division between rural and urban voters. The electoral system the Founders devised, and which their successors elaborated, gives rural voters more clout than urban ones. When the parties stood for both city and country that bias affected them both. But the Republican Party has become disproportionately rural and the Democratic Party disproportionately urban. That means a red vote is worth more than a blue one.

The consequences are dramatic. Republicans hold both the houses of Congress and the White House. But in the three elections in 2012-16 their candidates got just 46% of the two-party vote for the Senate, and they won the presidential vote in 2016 with 49%. Our voting model predicts that, for Democrats to have a better than 50% chance of winning control of the House in November’s mid-term elections, they will need to win the popular vote by around seven percentage points. To put that another way, we think the Republicans have a 0.01% chance of winning the popular vote for the House. But we estimate their chance of securing a majority of congressmen is about a third.

This imbalance is partly by design. The greatest and the smallest states each have two senators, in order that Congress should represent territory as well as people. Yet the over-representation of rural America was not supposed to affect the House and the presidency. . . . America has one party built on territory and another built on people.

By having elected politicians appoint federal judges, the American system embeds this rural bias in the courts as well. If Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump nominated this week, joins the Supreme Court, a conservative court established by a president and Senate who were elected with less than half the two-party vote may end up litigating the fairness of the voting system.

[T]he built-in bias is obviously bad for Democrats. But in the long run it is bad for America as a whole, including Republicans. When lawmaking is paralysed, important work, such as immigration and entitlement reform, is too hard. The few big laws that are approved, like Barack Obama’s health-care reform or Mr Trump’s corporate-tax cuts, pass on party-line votes. That emboldens the opposition to reverse or neuter them when they take power. Meanwhile, the task of resolving the most divisive political issues often falls to the courts. The battle over Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation will be a proxy war over issues, like abortion and health insurance, better suited to the legislature.

[R]ancorous political disputes—over guns, abortion and climate change—split so neatly along urban-rural lines that parties and voters increasingly sort themselves into urban-rural tribes. Gerrymandering and party primaries reward extremists, and ensure that, once elected, they seldom need fear for their jobs. The incentives to take extreme positions are very powerful.

Bitter partisanship, ineffective federal government and electoral bias poison politics and are hard to fix. Changing the constitution is hard—and rightly so. Yet the voting system for Congress is easier to reform than most people realise, because the constitution does not stipulate what it should be. Congress last voted to change the rules in 1967.

Voting reform is not the whole answer to partisanship and built-in bias, but it would help. It is hard, but not outlandish. To maintain the trust of all Americans, the world’s oldest constitutional democracy needs to reform itself.

I agree with the piece.  Wyoming with slightly less than 600,000 residents should not have two U.S. Senators. Ditto for other small, least educated, mot reactionary states.   The Electoral College - which utterly failed its purpose in 2016 - likewise needs to go.

Trump, Putin's Dream Come True, Is Destroying the World Order

Trudeau, Macron and America's cretin/saboteur/bully in chief.

After WWI the United States largely withdrew from world affairs and returned to a self-center, isolationist agenda.  The move set the stage for World War II which ultimately cost America dearly.  At the end of WWII, America decided that it would not repeat the mistake made after the end of WWI and the United Nations and NATO were formed and important military and economic alliances were formed and maintained. The result has been peace on the larger world scene despite ill conceived and ultimately disastrous American military adventures in Vietnam and the Iraq and Afghanistan.  The main force trying to destroy this system of alliances?  The Soviet Union and its principal successor, Russia. Now, Donald Trump is out to destroy what Russia could not succeed on its own: destroying NATO, America's alliances with Europe and even Canada.  One can only imagine the laughter and high fives around the Kremlin.  Meanwhile Trump's base applauds since its main motivation is hatred of anyone different from themselves, be the difference racial, religious, one of education and refinement, and even mere open mindedness to science and knowledge. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the wrecking ball that Der Trumpenführer has become.  Personally, if he persists in his madness, I hope America's allies hit back with severe retaliatory tariffs which devastate the economies of Trump supporting states, especially in Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin where voters should have known better.  Another excellent piece on how Trump is fulfilling Putin's dreams is here. Here are article highlights from the Post:

When does a feud become a separation? A separation a divorce? When do arguments, sharp-tongued put-downs and perceived betrayal among allies become the collapse of the Western-dominated order that has ruled the world, under U.S. leadership, for the past seven decades?

As each day brings a new series of punches and counterpunches between President Trump and longtime U.S. partners, the question appears to be moving beyond the realm of the academic.The most recent episode began with Friday’s Group of Seven summit in Quebec, the annual chat-fest with the United States and the world’s other self-described economic leaders, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. It followed Trump’s decision not to exempt any of them from new U.S. “national security” tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

That ruling came on the heels of nearly 18 months of clashes over climate change, trade, NATO, Iran and other issues on a list so long it is hard to remember everything on it.

“What worries me most . . . is the fact that the rules-based international order is being challenged,” European Council President Donald Tusk said as the G-7 summit got underway. What is surprising, Tusk said, is that the challenge is driven not by the “usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.”Trump’s actions, he said, “play into the hands of those who seek a new post-West order where liberal democracy and fundamental freedoms would cease to exist.”

Tusk’s usual suspects certainly include China and Russia, the latter suspended from the group after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. As Trump left Washington early Friday, he said Russia should be invited “back in” to the club. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron held a news conference in Quebec on Thursday to hail their own close relations and said they would continue, politely, to try to convince Trump that his actions are “unacceptable” and counterproductive, even for American workers.

“We don’t know” if the confrontations will have any lasting effect, said Stephen J. Hadley, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser. “First, does the accumulation of these incidents over time begin to erode trust and confidence?” Hadley said. “Secondly, what is it doing to public opinion and public views of the United States. That’s the thing the Trump people don’t sufficiently take into account.” Trump’s attitude is often as irritating to allied leaders as are his policies, according to numerous European officials, who consistently address such issues only on the condition of anonymity to avoid making the situation worse.

Two administration officials acknowledged that Trump simply does not see allies and adversaries in the traditional way, nor any reason to couch his views in diplomatic niceties. He often describes countries that have been historically aligned with the United States, including Germany, France and Canada, as “so-called allies” who take advantage of the nation.

Trump cares very little about the traditional world order, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about what the president has said in private. . . . .“where I’m wringing my hands is the 2020 presidential election,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, which advises investors about the impact of politics on risks and opportunities in foreign markets.

“If President Trump is reelected, and it will be very close, then during his second term, we have to worry about the end of the liberal world order,” Kupchan said. “A second term would allow him enough time to do irreparable damage to liberal institutions, to the WTO [World Trade Organization] and Bretton Woods,” the 1944 conference where the current international financial system was created, which was quickly followed by the establishment of the United Nations.

“With the petrification of a new normal involving tariffs and protectionism,” he said, “that’s the definition of the end of the world order.”

Americans have long had a love-hate relationship with Europe and foreigners in general, along with a strong current of belief that others have taken advantage of U.S. beneficence, sentiments that Trump has been more than willing to exploit. To the extent that his supporters see a lean toward isolationism as advancing their own lives and pocketbooks, Trump has reason to think he is doing something right.

But the promised benefits from tariffs and canceled trade and climate deals have yet to arrive, and many of the supposed beneficiaries, including farmers and leaders of industry and business, have expressed concern that Trump’s policies will end up hurting them.

Just as Trump’s tough talk is often directed toward his political base, U.S. allies have to answer to their own parliaments and publics, where Trump is highly unpopular.

“The American President may not mind being isolated,” Macron tweeted Thursday from Quebec, “but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be.” The other G-7 members, he said pointedly, “represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force.” . . . “I welcome the friendship between our peoples.” Whatever the context, he said, he would “try to maintain these links.” Macron said he had “constantly tried to convince President Trump about climate, about Iran or about trade.

As scary as the idea of a president Pence may be, America might be safer than with the continued misrule of a malignant narcissistic madman. If Trump doesn't come to his senses, I truly hope it leads to the financial ruin of much of his base - Trump's efforts to destroy healthcare will leave them even more economically vulnerable. I for one will have zero sympathy for these people who allowed hatred and bigotry to matter more than anything else.