Trump's Tariff Gambit: Lots Of Problems

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Trump's Tariff Gambit: Lots Of Problems

  • While I have spent the past couple of weeks writing about conspiracy theories and the Kennedy assassination, the rest of the world has been consumed by the news of President Trump and his big tariff gambit.

  • After talking at length during the campaign about imposing a new and expansive tariff regime, Trump announced the details of his big move on April 2 — tariffs on everything, from all countries, of at least 10%, ranging up to 50% or more on some countries (e.g., China) and certain products. All of this is to be done by Executive Order, said to be based on a declaration of “emergency” under a collection of pre-existing statutes (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977; the National Emergencies Act; and the Trade Act of 1974).

  • The stock markets have reacted with turmoil. Various indices were down 10% or more over the past week, and, after initially gaining, have fallen further today. Liberal media outlets, including the New York Times gleefully foresee impending economic damage. (From today: “Investors overwhelmingly believe that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and retaliation from U.S. trading partners, will lead to higher prices, slower growth and possibly a global recession.”).

  • Regular readers here will not be surprised to learn that I am not a fan of what Trump is doing on the tariff front.

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A Self-Described Libertarian Wins In Argentina

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A Self-Described Libertarian Wins In Argentina

  • In an election held on Sunday, Argentina chose as its new President self-described libertarian Javier Milei. Milei won by a not-close margin of about 56/44 over Sergio Massa, who has been the economics minister under the incumbent President Alberto Fernandez. Milei is known for a bombastic style of speaking, and for using a chainsaw in his campaign appearances as a symbol of how he plans to hack away at the government. He is also known for having even worse hair than Donald Trump.

  • The Perónist model of economic policy basically tracks the Democratic Party/Paul Krugman/blue state model here in the U.S.

  • The last 100 years — and particularly the Perónist period from 1946 on — have seen Argentina decline from one of the richest countries in the world to a kind of perennial basket case.

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When Will They Figure Out That Reducing U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Is Pointless?

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When Will They Figure Out That Reducing U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Is Pointless?

  • The Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA decision a couple of weeks ago has brought forth a big wave of hand wringing in the precincts of the left. How oh how are we now going to save the planet, if our friends at the EPA can no longer order up a nation-wide energy system transformation on their own authority?

  • A couple of examples of the genre come from Ron Brownstein in the Atlantic, and from Coral Davenport in the New York Times, both from Friday July 15.

  • The funny thing about these pieces, and many others like them, is that the authors seem to have completely lost track of, or failed to follow, what has happened and continues to happen in the arena of international energy consumption.

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Pol Pot's Cambodia: Socialist Vision Carried To Its Logical Conclusion

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  • About two years ago I visited Cambodia. While there I wrote this January 2019 post, which focused on the “killing fields” genocide that swept Cambodia in 1975-79, during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot. In connection with my trip, I bought the Ben Kiernan history titled “The Pol Pot Regime,” which I have just now gotten around to reading.

  • Why my fascination with Cambodia in the day of the Khmer Rouge? It is one of the clearest modern instances of leftist/socialist ideology put into practice and then pushed to its logical conclusion.

  • Highly educated elitists got taught a utopian vision of a transformed society with perfect fairness and justice, and they determined to impose that vision upon the backward and unlearned masses in their country. Then they came to power, and got the opportunity to carry out their plans.

  • The circumstances in Cambodia were such that they could implement their plans with few to no constraints. We get to study the results. Any relevance to our current situation is for the reader to draw.

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Some Perspective On Iran

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Some Perspective On Iran

  • As you probably know, over the course of several weeks in December Iranian proxies known as the Kataib Hezbollah carried out multiple attacks against military installations in Iraq.

  • On January 3, the U.S. military, under orders from President Trump, conducted a retaliatory strike that killed the leader of Iran’s so-called Quds Forces, Qasem Soleimani. Subsequently, Iran has threatened further rounds of retaliation against the U.S., although those have not occurred as of this writing.

  • Before getting too caught up in the tensions of the current moment, perhaps we should step back and look at how things have been going lately for Iran. The answer is, not very well.

  • This is one of those things that you can figure out if you look around enough, but rarely is the information compiled in one place. So I’ll do it for you. As I have remarked before, the U.S. has been incredibly blessed over the years by the rank incompetence of its geopolitical adversaries. . . .

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Sense And Nonsense In Dealing With Russia

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With the Mueller Report now out, and having concluded that nothing remotely akin to “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia could be found, you would think that every prominent Democrat would only want to change the subject as quickly as possible. But weirdly, the Trump/Russia obsession persists even in the face of the Mueller Report.

Many examples could be cited, but one of the weirdest is the op-ed by Hillary Clinton published in the Washington Post on Wednesday, headlined “Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Here’s how to respond.” The gist is that Trump is somehow allowing Russian President Putin to continue to attack our country, and probably to steal the upcoming 2020 election. Excerpts:

[T]he president of the United States has proved himself unwilling to defend our nation from a clear and present danger. . . . This is . . . an administration that refuses to take even the most minimal, common-sense steps to prevent future attacks and counter ongoing threats to our nation. . . . [U]nless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda . . . .

“Redouble his efforts to advance Putin’s agenda”? It’s hard even to conceive of the level of nonsense to which this woman has descended — along with many of her Democratic colleagues who are advocating the same or similar themes.

If you try taking a look at the big picture with regard to Russia, it will take you only a moment or two to figure out that far and away the most important thing to Russia for advancing its interests in the world is high prices for oil and gas. . . .

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