Reduced Posting - European Travel Mode

The husband and I are traveling again - this time to Greece for a 10 night Mediterranean cruise that finishes in Rome, Italy.  We arrived in Athens today and will board our ship tomorrow afternoon after we visit the Acropolis and Parthenon and related museum in the morning.  Posting will be reduced or at different hours in light of the excursions we will be doing. Shortly, we will be meeting a niece who by coincidence is in Athens.  Unlike the May trip where it was just the husband and me, we have 16 friends on this trip.   I want to give a huge shout out to our friend Leah who will be house sitting for the next two weeks.  The photos are from the rooftop bar and restaurant of our hotel in Athens.

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Trump’s Tariff Plan Could Wreck America's Economy

One of the things I see most from Trump supporting Republican "friends" - it's hard to call people friends who support rolling back one's civil rights - and acquaintances is constant whining about how prices have risen since the Covid-19 pandemic.  These complaints (i)  ignore the fact that inflation was a GLOBAL phenomenon and, worse yet, (ii) utterly ignore Trump's economic proposals which in addition to slashing safety and clean air/clean water regulations and giving more huge tax cuts to the extremely wealthy would impose a 20% or more tariff on all imported goods. This would drive up consumer prices radically and could worsen the trade deficit and federal deficit.  In short, instead of bring lower consumer prices, Trump's proposed tariffs would increase pries significantly, especially for lower and middle income consumers. This is a main reason that I believe the true attraction of these "friends" and acquaintances to Trump is not about his economic proposals but instead his mainstreaming of open racism and to a lesser extent homophobia.  A column by a Nobel prize winning economist in the New York Times looks at the reality of what Trump's tariffs would unleash on the American economy and those least able to pay higher consumer prices.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump has flip-flopped on many issues: Today, he says he’s pro-life; in 1999, he said, “I’m very pro-choice.” Last year, he said Republicans should “never give up!” on trying to repeal Obamacare; during September’s presidential debate, he said, “I saved it.” Three years ago, he said Bitcoin “seems like a scam”; now he wants to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.”

But Trump’s desire for high tariffs has been consistent. In an interview on Tuesday at the Economic Club of Chicago, he said, “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff.’” As president, he called himself “a Tariff Man.” In fact, he imposed substantial tariffs when in office. Those actions were, however, mild compared with the tariffs he is proposing now. He initially suggested a 10 percent tariff on all imports, but now he talks about tariffs as high as 20 percent. (In Chicago, he even mused about 50 percent.) He wants a 60 percent tariff on imports from China.

Most economists believe that this would be a terrible idea, and I share that view. I’m not a free-trade purist; I opposed the Obama administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and have been generally supportive of the much tougher line the Biden-Harris administration has taken on trade.

But there’s a big difference between sophisticated, limited deviations from free trade and Trump’s desire to put what he called a “ring around the collar” of our economy.

It has never been entirely clear why Trump has a thing for tariffs. My guess is that he sees everything in terms of winners, losers and punishment: If we buy more from foreigners than they buy from us, that in his mind makes America a loser, and he wants to punish foreigners by making them pay for access to the U.S. market. Whatever he’s thinking, restoring the good old days of high tariffs is one of Trump’s key policy obsessions, and high tariffs are very likely to become a reality if he wins the election.

And when I say the good old days, I mean old. High tariffs were a consistent feature of American policy from the Civil War through 1933, but in 1934 we turned to a policy of reducing tariffs on other countries’ exports in return for lower tariffs on our exports.

This policy was spectacularly successful at overcoming opposition to tariff cuts. By the beginning of the 21st century, average U.S. tariff rates were down to the low single digits, with comparably low tariffs in other wealthy nations. Developing countries generally had much higher tariffs until the 1980s, but these became unfashionable with the rise of the so-called Washington Consensus, and many began slashing rates. By the time Trump took office in 2017, we were living in a world of relatively free trade.

Trump’s initial round of tariffs made only a small dent in this system, but the tariffs he’s proposing now would turn the clock back 90 years, raising overall tariffs to Smoot-Hawley levels. . . . . Trump sees tariffs as a way to reduce U.S. trade deficits and boost domestic manufacturing. Again, economists widely believe his tariffs wouldn’t achieve these goals. But before we get into the pros and cons, let’s start with some basics about tariffs and what they do.

A tariff is a tax paid on foreign goods when they cross our border. In a direct sense, the tax is usually paid by the shipping company, but neither supporters nor opponents of tariffs believe that the shippers actually bear the burden of the tax — just as nobody believes that your local grocer, who must collect sales tax, pays that tax out of his or her own pocket. In fact, the easiest way to think about a tariff is that it is a selective sales tax, imposed only on goods produced abroad.

As with any sales tax, the burden of the tax falls either on consumers, who pay higher prices, or on producers, who receive lower prices.

Economists, and, I believe, most people would agree that sales taxes are usually passed on to consumers. Take, for example, the high tax rate — $5.35 per pack — that New York imposes on cigarette sales. . . . . New York’s tax simply makes cigarettes here much more expensive than they are in North Carolina, where the tax is just 45 cents per pack.

Why, then, imagine that the story is different when a sales tax is imposed on goods produced in China? For that is what a tariff on imports from China amounts to — there’s nothing magical about collecting a sales tax at the border rather than at the cash register.

[W]hile thinking of a tariff as a sales tax is basically right, there are two complicating factors.

First, because domestically produced goods aren’t subject to a tariff, tariffs can encourage American production that competes with imports. This may sound like a good thing, but the reason some domestic producers benefit is that a tariff lets them raise prices, which in turn means that the burden on consumers can be considerably bigger than the taxes collected on imports.

The second factor is subtler: If a tariff reduces imports, it reduces U.S. demand for foreign currencies to pay for these imports, and hence reduces the dollar value of those currencies. . . . a stronger dollar hurts American exporters. Furthermore, the dollar might not rise if other countries retaliate by imposing their own tariffs — which would also hurt American exporters.

We began systematically using tariffs to protect industries from foreign competition during the Civil War. However, Franklin D. Roosevelt made a fundamental break with previous tariff policy. It was widely agreed that extremely high tariffs had become counterproductive.. . . So in 1934, Roosevelt signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, under which Congress gave the president authority to negotiate tariff deals with other countries — cutting U.S. tariffs in return for lower tariffs on U.S. exports. This American system then became the template for a global trading system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

[I]n a world in which Russia invaded Ukraine and China might invade Taiwan, there’s a good case for using tariffs to retain domestic capacity in strategically important industries. But this is an argument for highly selective protection, not for Trump’s notion of a 20 percent tariff on basically everything.

So what would Trump’s tariffs do?  You don’t want to take the numbers Trump has thrown out on tariffs too literally — they’re more like concepts of a plan. Still, it’s a useful exercise to estimate the effects if he were, in fact, to go with those numbers.

The simplest, clearest effect of a tariff hike would be higher prices. . . . . Tariffs would mainly hit the prices of goods rather than services, and the share of a family’s expenditures that go to goods is inversely correlated with that family’s income. For example, lower-income families spend most of their food dollars on groceries, while high-income families eat out a lot — and much of the cost of eating at a restaurant comes from the services provided by cooks, servers and so on.

As a result, tariffs would raise the cost of living more for middle- and lower-income families than the average. An estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which assumes a 20 percent tariff, finds that it would reduce the real income of families in the bottom fifth of earners by 5.7 percent, of middle-income families by 4.6 percent, but of the top 1 percent by only 1.4 percent. . . . . Trump’s 2.0 tariffs would in effect be a strongly regressive tax increase, imposing a serious burden on most families.

Trump — who denies that tariffs would raise prices — also believes that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit and boost American manufacturing. Is he right? Probably not. Among economists recently surveyed by The Wall Street Journal, 59 percent said that Trump’s tariffs would reduce domestic manufacturing employment, while only 16 percent said the reverse.

[T]wo reasons tariffs might backfire: They could lead to a stronger dollar, making our goods less competitive on world markets, so any fall in imports would be offset by declining exports, and they’d also provoke retaliation by our trading partners. A third reason, emphasized in a 2018 study published on a blog of the New York Fed, is that American manufacturing relies heavily on imported components, so tariffs would substantially raise manufacturing costs.

A 2019 International Monetary Fund working paper on tariff hikes around the world found that they generally led to higher unemployment, while having “only small effects on the trade balance.”

A simulation analysis published by the Peterson Institute suggests that Trump’s tariffs would actually increase the trade deficit.

What the tariffs would do is shrink our economy. They would cause us to sell less of the goods we currently export — that is, stuff we’re relatively good at producing — and more stuff we aren’t that good at producing. The effect would be to make the economy less efficient and poorer.

Furthermore, the Trump tariffs would rip up the agreements that keep worldwide tariffs relatively low, inspiring both retaliation and emulation that would fragment world markets.

So, what’s the bottom line on the pros and cons of Trump’s tariff proposals?

Cons: The tariffs would impose large burdens on middle- and lower-income families. They probably wouldn’t significantly reduce the trade deficit and might actually hurt American manufacturing. And unilateral U.S. tariff action would wreak havoc by fracturing the world trading system.

Pros: I can’t think of any.

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This Election Challenges the Fundamental Decency of America

As noted numerous times in this blog, I cannot comprehend and/or wrap my head around how people I thought were moral and decent can support Donald Trump, a man utterly devoid of any shred of morality or decency.  One hears blather about how these Trump loyalist prefer his "policies" over those offered by Kamala Harris and Democrats, but in essence Trump's only policies are open racism, mass deportation of non-whites, support for inflation exploding tariffs, and shredding the world order that has for the most part kept America safe, despite some ill advised military debacles (e.g., Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), since the end of WWII.  Economists say another  Trump regime compared to Harris' proposals, would explode the federal deficit, add to the national debt, and be harmful to American consumers, so one can only conclude that Trump's so-called policies are not what attracts these supporters.  My only conclusion is that it is Trump's immorality, racism and cruelty are what attracts MAGA world and one-time country club Republicans.   Thus, the ultimate outcome of the 2024 presidential election will be whether America still embraces decency and morality as represented by Harris or instead embraces a likely fascist hell scape under a second Trump regime where misogyny and hatred of others are the hallmarks.  I sincerely hope Harris and American decency prevail. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the choice before American voters.  Here are highlights:

When I was a young boy, my father adorned the back of our Dodge Coronet 440 station wagon with bumper stickers. Proud to Be An American, one read, a manifestation of a simple truth: Both of my parents deeply loved America, and they transmitted that love to their four children.

In high school, I defended America in my social-studies classes. I wrote a paper defending America’s support for the South Vietnamese in the war that had recently ended in defeat. My teacher, a critic of the war, wasn’t impressed.

At the University of Washington, I applied for a scholarship or award of some kind. I don’t recall the specifics, but I do recall meeting with two professors who were not happy that, in a paper I’d written, I had taken the side of the United States in the Cold War. Their view was that the United States and the Soviet Union were much closer to moral equivalents than I believed then, or now. It was a contentious meeting.

As a young conservative who worked in the Reagan administration, I was inspired by President Ronald Reagan’s portrayal of America—borrowed from the Puritan John Winthrop—as shining “city upon a hill.” Reagan mythologized America, but the myth was built on what we believed was a core truth.

I find this moment particularly painful and disorienting. I have had strong rooting interests in Republican presidential candidates who have won and those who have lost, including some for whom I have great personal admiration and on whose campaigns I worked. But no election prior to the Trump era, regardless of the outcome, ever caused me to question the fundamental decency of America. I have felt that my fellow citizens have made flawed judgements at certain times. Those moments left me disappointed, but no choice they made was remotely inexplicable or morally indefensible.

The nominee for the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is a squalid figure, and the squalor is not subtle. His vileness, his lawlessness, and his malevolence are undisguised. At this point, it is reasonable to conclude that those qualities are a central part of Trump’s appeal to many of the roughly 75 million people who will vote for him in three weeks. They revel in his vices; they are vivified by them.

Trump may lose the election, and by that loss America may escape the horrifying fate of another term. But we have to acknowledge this, too: The man whom the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” is in a razor-thin contest against Kamala Harris, a woman who, whether you agree with her or not, is well within the normal boundaries of American politics. If he loses, he will not concede. Trump will instead attempt to tear the country apart. He can count on the near-total support of his party, and the majority of the white evangelical world. They will once again rally to his side, in the name of Jesus.

This should leave the rest of us shaken. Not because America, despite being an exceptional nation, has ever been perfect, or close to perfect. Americans have experienced slavery and segregation, the Trail of Tears and the internment of Japanese Americans, McCarthyism and My Lai, the Johnson-Reed Act and the beating and torture of the suffragists, the Lavender Scare, and the horrors of child labor. But what makes this moment different, and unusually dangerous, is that we have never before had a president who is sociopathic; who relishes cruelty and encourages political violence; who refers to his political opponents as “vermin,” echoing the rhetoric of 20th-century fascists; who resorts to crimes to overturn elections, who admires dictators and thrives on stoking hate. Trump has never been well, but he has never been this unwell. The prospect of his again possessing the enormous power of the presidency, this time with far fewer restraints, is frightening.

Jonathan Rauch, a contributor to The Atlantic, recently reminded me that the Founders warned us about such a scenario. They knew this could happen, he said, and they gave us multiple safeguards. Those safeguards are in danger of failing. “My faith in democracy is breaking,” he told me. “Part of me is breaking with it.” Americans have three weeks to keep the break from happening.

Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, in his annual message to Congress, told Americans that “we here hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” What was at stake was emancipation, of course, but also “honor or dishonor.”

“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth” is how Lincoln concluded his remarks.

If Donald Trump wins the election, those of us who grew up loving America won’t stop loving her. But it will be a love tinged with profound disappointment and concern, almost to the point of disbelief. It is one thing, and quite a disturbing thing, for Trump’s soul to represent the soul of his party. It is quite another, given all we know, for him to represent, as president, the soul of his country. It would be an act of self-desecration.

We’re not there yet. Ours is still a republic, if we can keep it.

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Trump Has Become Unmoored in His Mind and Time

After Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, much of the media went into near orgasms over Biden's age and apparent mental decline.  Now, with growing signs that Donald Trump is in pronounced mental decline and is voicing all kinds of threats and, of course lies, the same media for the most part continues the pretense that Trump is a "normal politician" despite the mounting evidence that Trump is drifting into la la land. Never mind Trump's bizarre behavior at his recent town hall in Pennsylvania that was supposed to be a question and answer format.  Instead Trump played music for nearly 40 minutes and weirdly swayed on stage to the music with an occasional outburst.  This episode and others are anything but normal.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the bizarre event in Pennsylvania:

Donald Trump’s rallies and public appearances have never been resounding examples of coherence and policy know-how. But even by his standards, things have gone off the rails a lot recently.

Perhaps most striking was a bizarre town hall Monday night in Pennsylvania where Trump, after two people in the crowd had brief medical emergencies, suddenly decided to forgo further questions. He then stood onstage for 39 minutes swaying and dancing while a series of songs played.

The scene came as Trump’s increasingly rambling performances and failure to summon and pronounce words have highlighted questions about his age and mental acuity — the same issues that effectively ended President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign just three months ago. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign quickly seized on the events Monday, quipping of Trump, “Hope he’s okay.” It has also pushed for the release of more Trump medical records.

Indeed, over 200 doctors have joined together to call for the release of Donald Trump's medical records as they grow concerned by Trump's signs of mental decline and further regression into his own alternate reality.  While Trump calls his rambling and disjointed campaign speeches as "the weave" they are in truth incoherent ramblings that confuse people and events. Moreover, at times it seems that Trump doesn't know what year it is and his rambling verbal diarrhea seems stuck in the 1980's or 1990's - just like one sees in the elderly undergoing mental decline.  The MAGA base, of course, could care less about Trump's seemingly worsening dementia - all that matters is that he attacks and belittles those hated by the MAGA base  and that he continues to stroke the base's sense of never ending grievance and normalizes racism and other forms of bigotry.  A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's worrisome Behavior:

Do you remember the California electricity crisis of 2000 and ’01? I do, because I wrote about it a lot at the time and stuck my neck out by arguing, based on circumstantial evidence, that market manipulation was probably an important factor. One economist colleague accused me of “going Naderite,” but we eventually got direct evidence of market manipulation: tapes of Enron traders conspiring with power company officials to create artificial shortages to drive up prices.

At this point, however, it’s all old history; aside from some blackouts during a 2020 heat wave, California hasn’t had major electricity shortages in decades.

But don’t tell Donald Trump. On Thursday, in the course of a rambling, at times incoherent speech to the Detroit Economic Club, he declared, “We don’t have electricity. In California, you have brownouts or blackouts every week. . . . . This isn’t true, it wasn’t true when he made similar assertions last year, and 39 million Californians can tell you that it isn’t true. But in Trump’s mind, apparently, that long-ago electricity crisis never ended.

There’s an obvious parallel with Trump’s language on crime. In big cities, he has asserted, “You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped. You get whatever it may be.”

Now, there was a time when America’s big cities were quite dangerous. . . . . But that was long ago. There was a huge decline in the national murder rate between the early 1990s and the mid-2010s; a surge during Trump’s last year in office seems to be fading away. New York’s transformation into one of the safest places in America has been especially spectacular: The city had 83 percent fewer murders last year than it did in 1990 . . . .

No doubt much of what Trump says about crime is a cynical attempt to stir up fear for political gain. That’s certainly true of some of his other untrue assertions, like his false claims that the Biden administration is refusing to aid Republican regions devastated by hurricanes and has diverted disaster funding to migrants. . . . . I’m fairly sure that he doesn’t care whether what he’s saying is true.

But it’s hard to escape the sense that there’s more than cynical calculation going on in some of Trump’s whoppers, that he may actually believe some of what he’s saying because he has become unmoored in time.

Electricity supply and urban crime aren’t the only issues on which Trump’s image of America seems stuck in the past. During his Detroit speech, the former president did something unusual for a candidate one might have expected to flatter the voters in an important swing state: He insulted the city that was hosting him, declaring that if Kamala Harris wins, “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit.” . . . . Actually, that would be great if true: Detroit has been experiencing a major economic revival, so much so that it has become a role model for struggling cities around the world and has been praised for its startup ecosystem. But I doubt that Trump knows or cares about any of that . . . .

The point is that there’s a pattern here. As many observers have noted, Trump routinely peddles a grim picture of America that has little to do with reality. What I haven’t seen noted as much is that his imaginary dystopia seems to be, in large part, a pastiche assembled from past episodes of dysfunction. These episodes apparently became lodged in his brain, and perhaps because he’s someone who is not known for being interested in the details and who lives in a bubble of wealth and privilege, they never left.

The thing is, Trump is fond of denigrating his opponents’ cognitive capacity. He has called Harris “mentally disabled” and a “dummy.” He has called for CBS to lose its broadcasting rights over a “60 Minutes” interview with her — one that was edited in a routine way — in which Harris, a former prosecutor, came across as, well, pretty smart, whatever you may think of her policies.

But what would Trump say about an opponent who, like him, seems stuck in the past, who routinely describes America in ways that suggest that he doesn’t know what year it is?