May 07, 2025

Update On Trump's Tariff Gambit

May 07, 2025/ Francis Menton

It was back at the beginning of February that President Trump launched what I have called his “tariff gambit” — sequential edicts of flat-rate, economy-wide tariffs imposed against various of our trading partner countries.
The process began with February 1 announcements of blanket 10% tariffs on all goods from China, and 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada. Since then, in a blizzard of activity, there have been multiple rounds of announcements on this subject: new countries added to the tariff edicts, increases or decreases in the blanket rates applicable to various countries or products, granting of exceptions and exemptions, postponements of announced effective dates, and more. It’s more than just about anybody can keep track of. Here is an April 10 chronology from PBS compiling all the various tariff actions issued by the administration up to that time. The sheer speed of the announcements, and lack of direction toward any discernible purpose, are astonishing.
In a post about a month ago on April 8, I expressed extreme skepticism about this gambit.

December 26, 2024

End Of Year World Socialism Round-Up: Cuba, China, Venezuela

December 26, 2024/ Francis Menton

For obvious reasons, our legacy media have very limited interest in reporting regularly on economic news from the various socialist/communist paradises around the world. So if you want to learn the latest, best to turn to the Manhattan Contrarian.
Needless to say, all the economic news from these places is bad.
If you think that Bidenomics has been bad for America, you really need to look at the destruction that serious socialism can bring to a country when given a chance.

August 07, 2024

August 07, 2024/ Francis Menton

As the saying goes, Socialists: You can vote them in, but you have to shoot them out. We’re watching an extreme example of that saying play out right now in Venezuela.
The U.S. press seems remarkably uninterested in events in Venezuela following its presidential election held July 28. Likely that’s because those events show just how much a determined election fixer can get away with when he controls all the levers of power in a country and is in a position to block and stymie any investigation into election fraud.
There are clear lessons from that for the upcoming U.S. election, lessons that the press would prefer not be learned.
First, a review of where we are.

April 29, 2024

April 29, 2024/ Francis Menton

Around the U.S., and particularly at the most elite college campuses, seemingly smart and well-educated young people keep up their passionate protests in support of the Hamas rapists and murderers and against Israel and Jews generally.
The claimed reason for the protests is that Israel is engaged in “apartheid” or “genocide,” or even the ultimate evil, “settler colonialism.” Yet meanwhile, the world is filled with state actors treating their own or neighboring populations in the most appalling ways, far worse than anything that Israel could remotely be accused of, without attracting anything like the passion and vitriol directed at Jews and Israel.
Think North Korea, keeping its own population in permanent prison conditions, and often starving; or China, cracking down on all dissent and even confining large sub-populations (e.g., Uyghurs) in slave labor camps; or Azerbaijan, which expelled an entire Christian community of about 150,000 people just a few months ago. These examples, let alone the human rights abuses in places like Iran or Cuba or Venezuela, attract almost no interest from our passionate student demonstrators, not to mention even slight notice from the press or anyone else.
How to explain this discrepancy?

March 28, 2024

March 28, 2024/ Francis Menton

Around the world today, lots of countries claim to be “democracies”; but then the state thugs use various ploys to assure that no opposition can ever prevail. Among such ploys, the tactic currently in vogue is to gin up some collection of flimsy criminal charges to get the opposition leader and/or his/her supporters arrested or otherwise sidelined.

If you haven’t been following the subject closely in recent months, you may not realize how pervasive the use of this tactic has become.
Sure, imprisoning the opposition leaders has long been part of the playbook of the worst thugocracies. It’s what you would expect of a small-time African dictatorship or of a Central American banana republic, not to mention the likes of Russia or China.
But recently the tactic has been spreading like a case of poison ivy to countries otherwise pretending to grown-up, or semi-grown-up, status. Countries like India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. And, did I mention, the United States — once known for claiming to be the shining exemplar for the world of good governance, and for seeking to use its moral authority to induce others to follow its lead. Today, governing cliques in other countries are greatly emboldened by the brazen abuse of power orchestrated by Biden and the gaggle of Democratic prosecutors pursuing Trump. Hey, we’re just conducting business the same way you Americans do in your own country! You have no standing to criticize us!

March 20, 2024

March 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates.
Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?

No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.
A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14.