Art Of The Asinine

Art of the deal! Or art of the bluff. Or art of the farce. Or art of the asinine. (All four.) Less than 48 hours after threatening to torpedo Mexico's economy with 25% tariffs (which had the potential to reduce Mexican exports by more than a quarter, imperiling some 15% of the country’s overall economic output), Donald Trump "paused" tariffs on America's southern neighbor. Later, he granted Canada the same clemency. Do note: The tariffs hadn't even gone into effect yet, so "pause" really isn

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12 thoughts on “Art Of The Asinine

  1. DT of the tiny hands doesn’t really care about the drugs. He only cares about enhancing the image that he is the world’s leading “deal maker,” as in, so who are you? What did you do today? At my boarding school back in the late 50s we were always short of spending cash so we students did some small maintenance chores after class and we had this crew of Hispanic laborers from Chicago who would come in in three old Chrysler limos we gave them (they came with the property) and these guys would roar around campus “fixing” stuff all day. At the end of the day they would sit around with their Jefe and one of our teachers, drink a couple cervsas and brag as in: “Hey, man I broke a hammer today, what did you do?” “I broke a pipe wrench.” “That’s nothing, I broke a truck.” Sound familiar? djt of tth said “I’m going to break a whole country…. “

  2. Most of the folks who voted for the trump only heard tariffs will create US jobs. The rest who actually understood the implications never believed he would actually do it. Ignorance and arrogance. The WSJ article today asserting tariffs are dumb should have been published during the election cycle. The damage is done. The US is a bully.

  3. Do illicit drug prices weigh into the Fed’s inflation measures?

    As you say, nothing Trump does is going to stop the flow of drugs, but Trump is always and forever about optics. He’ll claim victory, his base will buy it, and he’ll flail from one manufactured crisis to the next. In the meantime, other nations that are run by more serious people will look for alternatives to the US knowing we are no longer a reliable ally.

    I see Tesla took a bit of a hit today. I do wonder if Musk’s antics will start to impact his personal wealth. Glad to see Ontario rip up their starlink contract. Hopefully, many others follow suit. I can’t even begin to imagine what Musk is doing inside the Treasury Department with his cadre of recent college grads. I will not be surprised to see either the Musk squad or hackers steal and/or delete sensitive information and take down key payment systems. That chaos might be even more damaging than tariff man’s antics.

  4. Obviously I am not privy to their true motivations but if you were designing media cover for doge this would be a good plan. Reuters briefly had it above the fold over the weekend but a scan of all major outlets this afternoon reveals only traces of their dismantling.

  5. 10,000 troops is a lot of physical deterrence, even given slippage from cartel influence. But take credit Walt, you guessed these tariffs would be temporary. One down, Canada next, which may be resolved with the next election, possibly as early as March, with the more likely than not election of conservative Poilievre.

    And without a tariff but a threat of military force, I read that Panama has told Rubio it will not renew its belt and road agreement with China which should remove China’s commercial (and potentially military) ports from both ends of the canal and also their influence over the use of tugs and pricing.

    And I read that his tariff on China has closed the $800 de minimus exception that allows drugs and their chemicals to be shipped by mail and enter without declarations, customs duties or inspections.

    Early innings, but if you’re keeping score ….

    1. The operation of the ports at both ends have been operated by a subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings since 1997. The company is a subsidiary of the publicly listed CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. That was long before the Belt & Road initiative was even launched in 2013.

      There have been questions raised about how the government awarded and subsequently renewed the contracts in 2021.

      BTW, Hutchison also runs major ports around the world, including in the UK, Rotterdam and Mexico.

      So I’m not sure how the termination of Belt & Road agreements has an impact on the operation of the Panama canal. But it is early innings so keep your scorecard open!

  6. One of Google’s answers to the “percent of fentanyl smugglers that are us citizens?” query is “86.4% were United States citizens” as noted at https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Fentanyl_FY23.pdf The other interesting fact in this PDF is the “Number of Fentanyl Trafficking Offenses” chart that illustrates the enforcement efforts of Trump’s first administration vs the Biden’s administration record. Is it possible that the US is a ‘Narco state’ and Donald wants to be the Western Hemisphere Don?

  7. Only 10,000 troops? Her predecessor appeased Trump with 15,000 last time. Assuming they ever even showed up, not that he’s going to be able to or care about confirming. He got the soundbite he wanted.

  8. I’d put the chances of US military personnel occupying parts of Mexico in the next 2 years at 50/50. As others have said, Trump couldn’t care less about the human impact of the drug trafficking. The deciding factor is of Trump needs a big show to distract from his serial string of failures and how bad the prevailing narrative gets. Essentially if the impish manchild gets biggly embarrassed for one reason or another, he would look to distract with a huge (and moronic) stunt, whether the Mexican government agrees or not.

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