I leave at noon to check out what could become a new CatBox. I’ll have more info tomorrow. This is my only article today.
I just returned, and it’s much too small. ARGH!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:57 (average 5:09). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From NY Times: So, the trade war is on. And what a stupid trade war it is.
My regular column for tomorrow is about health care, but I felt I needed to weigh in on this idiocy, and not just on Twitter.
The official – and legal – justification for the steel and aluminum tariffs is national security. That’s an obviously fraudulent rationale, given that the main direct victims are democratic allies. But Trump and co. presumably don’t care about telling lies with regard to economic policy, since that’s what they do about everything. They would see it as all fair game if the policy delivered job gains Trump could trumpet. Will it?
OK, here’s the point where being a card-carrying economist gets me into a bit of trouble. The proper answer about the job-creation or -destruction effect of a trade policy – any trade policy, no matter how well or badly conceived – is basically zero.
Click through for a fascinating read. Paul Krugman is spot-on. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
Cartoon:
6 Responses to “Personal Update – 6/1/2018”
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4:41 Quite a realistic painting … though probably not quite realistic enough to taste like bird.
So sorry it’s too small. And even sorrier you had to get so tuckered out to find that out.
Oh, Nameless. I suspect I speak for all when I say that we are as with you as we can be Would that it could be more. Would that we could work miracles.
NY TImes – Not much gets by Krugman. I see in comments here and there that people are trying to smear him and Robert Reich by calling them “corporatist” or some such. That makes me both sad and fearful. If only we could all LISTEN to those two and proFit by it!
Cartoon – Getting by with a little help from their friends?
RESIST AND PERSIST !!!
Keep on raising hell! The blue wave is building, but we need to keep up the momentum through November and beyond if we are to have any chance of turning our country around – by nonviolent means.
NYT: Good read, thx.
Cartoon: Yea, ain’t that the truth!!
Sorry about your trip and apt being to small, I know you’re wiped out. Get some much needed rest, take care, and Thanks, Tom.
Sorry the proposed new CatBox was too small, TomCat. Now you’ll have to wait until a new one becomes available and go and view that for suitability, which i a nuisance. Let’s hope that with your feedback on this proposal, CCC will have become more in tune with your specific needs. Go and take the rest you deserve.
Krugman: The Champion of free trade declaring a trade war on its oldest and closes allies. That one sentence sums up the utterly bizarre game Drumpf is playing. For him its always about personally winning, never mind Americans losing, never mind allies becoming enemies. For example, TATA steel in IJmuiden, The Netherland, makes a special, very high quality steel on request for the American car industry, because American producers can’t cost effectively produce this high quality themselves. TATA exports 25% of their production to the US, and is already looking for new buyers and undoubtedly will find them. Soon the American car industry will have to use either lesser quality or pay for the 25% tariff (which will go to the government?). American cars don’t sell well in Europe now (on quality and size, I’m afraid) and sales will come to a standstill when prices go up or quality goes down even further. Only one “winner” here, and that’s Drumpf.
Krugman, as an economist, speaks of the trade war as a somewhat isolated phenomenon, exactly the way Drumpf approaches it. But Drumpf does that because his long term memory is significantly impaired by dementia and he’s never been able to see the bigger picture or that the total outcome is so much more than the simple sum of consequences. After Drumpf announced the US is stepping out of the Paris climate change agreement, announcing (and in fact) moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem en stepping out of the Iran deal, decisions which all kicked his EU and Commonwealth allies in the shins and higher, a one-sided tariff war based on more lies, was the last straw. They’ve had enough. America can no longer consider itself world power number one. Drumpfians will undoubtedly continue to do so, but for the rest of the world it stopped here.
Thanks all. Tired Hugs!
Puzzle — 4:15 I imagine this painting has you salivating Puddy Tat! Don’t try, it’s paper and paint!
NY Times — What a freaking mess this all is. “Canada is slapping tariffs on $12.8 billion of US goods.“
I have read in several articles that say according to Wilbur Ross, the US Commerce Secretary, as far as Canada and Mexico are concerned, the tariff imposition is to put pressure on the two countries to conclude the NAFTA negotiations with the US. This from CNBC:
This has absolutely nothing to do with “national security”. It is nothing more than a move from a petty tin-pot tyrant (Drumpf) to dictate his terms, or should I say, impose his terms on other countries. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was set to visit Washington this past week for NAFTA negotiations after he spoke with Pence about the tariffs, but that trip was cancelled. The US communicated with Canada that it (read as Drumpf)wanted to add a 5 year sunset clause, which would mean the deal gets renegotiated every 5 years, that had not been there before. Trudeau announced that Canada is lodging a complaint with the WTO. I do not know at this point if any other countries ie the EU are joining in on that complaint.
As Krugman states, the US did not learn its lesson from Baby Bush’s time in office.
IMO, Krugman is spot on.