The TACO taunts are likely going to make Trump more intransigent with his tariff “policy,” but I’m joining in anyway. The only way to save our democracy might be for Trump to commit political suicide. I say we let him do it.
I agree in theory, but he has an entire media ecosystem, including social media in his corner; and he who controls the information, controls the country.
They will spin, deflect, and propagandize their way to retaining power and increasing their influence and control over our political system; confusing most Americans, especially the ones that want to be confused!
As Mark Twain famously said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than for that man to ever admit he’d been fooled!”
I agree about the Republican-controlled media propaganda. It's the answer to the question, how on earth did people vote for Republicans -- again. But we don't know how bad things will get. It's a lot harder to believe a lie when you're suffering the truth. If we enter an economic depression, propaganda will have a point of diminishing returns.
They'll find out for sure, but it won't change them. If they have to sleep under a bridge, that's OK, so long as immigrants have to sleep under cardboard.
We may find out. IMO it will change them. If things get really bad, it will change all of us. It's one thing to *believe* that sleeping under a bridge will be tolerable as long as T2.0 promises a better future and as long as he's deporting people and "owning the libs" -- it's another thing entirely to actually experience sleeping under that bridge.
It's one of the things that saddened me about the November election: It seemed clear that things might need to worsen considerably before people finally wake up. Not one of my cheeriest thoughts. On the other hand, if it does result in people waking up, there's hope in that.
I am not sure even severe hardship will change the minds of Trump supporters. During the pandemic, Trumpets dying of Covid refused to believe they had Covid. They are in a brainwashed cult.
We definitely don't want to be complacent, so it's good to be aware of what you describe. But there is a threshold for even the most indoctrinated cult members. People leave cults all the time, and it's usually because they're pushed beyond their personal threshold. Same with jobs, relationships, friendships, families, etc. So I have hope that enough people will reach their personal thresholds. I think you're just saying, I wouldn't count on that. And I'm not. But hope gives us courage. And as Aragorn said in one of the LOTR films, "There is always hope."
It was my response to a (now removed) link to an infomercial video about brain fog. You will see this posted under numerous names by a spam bot all over substack.
Why people don’t understand that you should only mock Trump about things you want him to stop doing is beyond me. We need Trump to back down on tariffs so he should be praised (ugh), not mocked when he does.
However he should be constantly ridiculed for being Putin’s puppet, something he definitely doesn’t want to be seen as and we don’t want him to be. Remember the damage to Tony Blair that the “Bush’s lapdog” label did?
This is the POTUS! We should not have to be playing silly psychological games to get desired behavior. (i.e. My two year old loved "I sure hope you don't eat all your veggies because if you do, I'll have to give you ice cream.")
We shouldn't have. But if we want to put AMERICA first, we should anyhow. Look how the US president speaks, thinks and behaves. This IS the behavior of a toddler in an old man's body.
Right... . This is where Trump's abusive father comes in, I presume, and the fact that he grew up in a time and place that was pretty mafia-like, so no one in his immediate environment to give him access to emotional intelligence tools...
Based on the reaction shots, my impression is that Trump was a lot more upset with the Seth Meyer’s jokes than with the Obama ones. Maybe it was because Seth Meyers spoke after Obama and the effect on Trump was cumulative. Maybe it was because Trump was a bit flattered that the President of the United States devoted a large portion of his speech to talking about Trump, whereas being targeted by Seth Meyers has no such upside.
Unfortunately, I can not see things getting better without getting a lot worse now. Meaning, Trump's tariffs will make this much worse, and that may be what is necessary.
As a side thought, the guy who thinks he is the smartest person in the world is going to pay any attention to what we write or say?
"he has an entire media ecosystem .. in his corner"
Apparently so. I just went near apoplectic after reading in the New York Times that "Britain was granted a carve-out from President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel while the rest of Europe fumed that it was now paying twice as much."
Europe fumed that IT, EUROPE, was now paying twice as much? That is most certainly a lie, while the NYT amplifies Trump's harebrained disinformation that EXPORTERS TO THE US PAY TRUMP'S TARIFFS. I don't even know what they think they're doing.
I read this; un-f-ing-believable! Whoever writes the biggest check gets the prize, and in Britain’s case, he has a love affair with the Royals; case closed!….:)
Let them spin it the way they want to spin it. What will come from all of this will be higher prices and higher unemployment from the TACO man. As was said, keep your eyes on the bond and currency market. The stock market itself is a racket now run like a middle school playground.
Agreed, but my point is that until these people feel true pain, nothing will change. So we 100% agree…:)
That said, I worked on WS most of my career, and I am already seeing the damage he’s doing to the our treasury markets, our status as the reserve currency of 70% of the world, and how inflation will ultimately lead to stagflation; higher interest rates and high unemployment.
Between this and what he’s doing to the CDC and NIH, the damage is already incalculable!…:)
It’s a shit show, but until people can see and feel it, nothing matters…:)
One factor is a lot of those who voted for him/Republicans didn't believe he would really do much of what he said .. and Trump did WORSE.
So even those who don't want to admit they made a mistake with Trump will eventually wake up. Maybe not the true MAGAs, but I doubt that it is more than about half the votes he got.
Some elected Republicans have spoken against some of Trump's promises when they start to be applied. Hopefully more join in.
TACO is another acronym for MM (market manipulation). In truth, we all want Trump to backdown from his disastrous policies. If we can get him to backdown on the abductions, attacks on education, attacks on media (NPR, etc ) and replace the frat house National Security team, we would let him have the corruption and free makeup.
It's not just MM (or even majority MM). It is more of a protection racket. He threatens great damage, trolling for bribes or other favors. When that doesn't work, he can't threaten more damage without reducing the threat first, so he "pauses" the threat.
The next nationwide rally is June 14, yes >that< June 14, be there or be square!
Let's ruin Chump's B'day. We need 3.5% or the population, or around 12,000,000 people to be present. So bring all your friends and families. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Let's all get out there with a Howard Beale spirit and yell "We're as mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!".
I agree he should be impeached, but my representative and my senators would not even talk to me about such a topic. They are on the Trump bandwagon full steam ahead. So are most other Republicans. They are afraid to stand up to him.
To say nothing of Citizens United, which led to much of the chaos we have now. No one should be able to put hundreds of millions of dollars into an election.
Sort of. Dumpy backs down on all sorts of things. There's the TACO narrative, of course. But he also threatens to do "terrible things, the likes of which have never been seen before!!!" like sue all the women who claimed he sexually abused them, or rain fire down on North Korea and Iran. Right now it's bad because he's got the governmental bit between his teeth and nobody in his administration to stop him, but he's still an insecure little PAB inside. I'm more worried about the Big Awful Bill that'll take away the power of judges to hold the administration in contempt - that's the only check we have left on him.
With respect, we have no check on him because we have zero political will to enforce any check on him. He has ignored courts before with no consequences. Sit back and watch the tragicomedy show and hope that you and your immediate family are not too badly impacted. It's far too late to do anything else.
Ian Bremmer (paraphrased from a Bloomberg interview yesterday). "The Chinese recognize a trade war will hurt them more economically than the US, but politically they can take the pain in a way the US cannot."
Trump on his social media last night, “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”
Unfortunately, Trump's political suicide will look a lot like Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate cult. Only with Trump, the rest of us are in jeopardy as well.
Sadly, a very powerful criminal conglomerate conspired to back Trump in order to repeal the New Deal, and rigged the election - mostly “legally” through 78 passed laws during Biden’s placeholder presidency.
Those laws will crush any future elections without proof of each person’s vote per county in order to challenge the results (ie, all of the ballots tossed cast by black voters, voter vigilantism that blocked the votes of tens of thousands of voters in the slave states, and the legalization of the right of any election official to throw out (shocker, democratic) ballots for “clerical” errors.
Nevermind Musk and Trump’s public, obvious hints of hacking machines, resulting in massive anomalies in swing state counties. When they rig an election and get away with it, they’ll just do it from then on.
It’s not that he didn’t pass great bills - it’s just that passing great bills you know will be overturned when you leave has been the playbook for a government that has been corrupt for ages. No dem president has made a single foundational change to stop the corruption that has destroyed our government because they are *corrupt* themselves- in fact, you don’t get to run for president in the US unless you will play ball. Obama could have passed election reform, campaign finance reform, SCOTUS reform- but he didn’t. He passed a healthcare bill that looked great but had no teeth, and of course could be gutted at any point afterwards. “Incremental change” or… controlled opposition?
Not firing Garland, who has functioned as nothing but protection for the corrupt since the beginning of his career was the most obvious sign. I suspected by early 2021 that the entire thing was a stitch up- not a single member of the admin had been indicted yet despite a plethora of cases lined up for Garland to prosecute thanks to Mueller, who gathered everything but like a good member of the Vichy. And most tellingly, a YEAR passed without a single action by the FBI against a man who planned a coup and incited an insurrection. To not hold a single person at the top accountable, immediately, made it perfectly clear that it was Trump’s backers who were in control of the US government, not Biden.
To quote Sarah Kendzior in 2023, who has like Ruth the best track record on predicting US politics,
“Under Biden, the United States became the first country to face an attempted coup and not only fail to punish the coup plotters but allow them to hold office and make laws. There is no parallel in world history. Even Hitler had a prison interlude between his putsch and his presidency. The only thing approaching an equivalent lies in the American past: the refusal to punish confederates and instead let them regroup under new names, leading to the decimation of Reconstruction and the birth of Jim Crow.”
This is the description of Biden’s presidency none of us want to hear because we love Obama, Biden, etc etc but they didn’t act for real. They did cool things that if you had a strong democracy would be wonderful - but without one, they are flashy appeasements. Meanwhile, besides obama’s drones, Biden provided the weaponry needed to commit genocide. We all paid for a genocide.
Let's start with your first lines. You claim that Democrats' big pieces of legislation are always overturned. Any concrete example? Because today, all of Obama's and Biden's big pieces of legislation still stand. So any evidence to back up your claim?
1) Public lands expanded by Obama sold off by Trump. 2) the ACA sabotaged and rolled back under Trump (and not restored by Biden) 3) the CFPB gutted 2016, and now almost entirely defunded. 4) the climate initiatives cancelled including grants already approved and the cessation of projects already underway such as windmills under construction, the nationwide Charging installation contracts already in progress on the eastern part of the US that had employed 7,000 people. 4)The cessation of all sustainable energy consumer rebates and tax breaks- for EV’s, solar, heat pumps, etc 5) repeal of child tax credits. Nevermind the gutting or outright elimination of massive programs created by presidents long ago such as Food banks & SNAP, HUD, USAID, Dept of Education… Need I go on?
All while campaign Finance reform and voting rights reform was a sitting time bomb for the very government itself. And they knew this very very well in 2008. Those should have been passed first, then the ACA. But the Dem party has been captured since Reagan- they’ve been the Vichy ever since.
Let's start with the ACA. 90% of it still stands, after more than 50 attempts to repeal it, and Biden hugely expanded it (insuring more than 3 million more people). How can you called "sabotaged and rolled back under Trump and not restored by Biden"?
As to the CFPB: Musk TRIED to gut it, after it refunded more than $20 billion to the American people under Biden. Thanks to fighting back hard in courts, they were forced to rehire a director already. It's clearly illegal to get rid of it, only Congress can do so, so for now... it still stands.
Also, I didn’t answer your question about the 78 bills suppressing minority votes and making it legal to toss out ballots for a myriad of reasons- see Greg Palast’s article, “Trump lost, voter suppression won” - it focuses on the number of ballots tossed out for “clerical errors” in swing states specifically. Also, the gov’t of TX’s comment on Bannon’s podcast that if they hadn’t made it so difficult for Houston to vote Kamela would have won Texas. (He actually said this, out loud!) but crickets in the media…
What is really a reliable tell is if Trump accuses anyone else of malfeasance, it’s actually an admission of what *he* actually did or will do. So the fact no one challenged or insisted on recounting certain county results after the election is how we know something bigger is in play.
So now we have a fascism based authoritarian regime. They operate like any other- which means a whole new set of management tactics as well as resistance strategies. Flattery is a requirement.
Trump still thinks his tariff madness will have other nations crawling to the Oval Office to "make a deal". There is an interesting recent article in The Atlantic about Trump and his obsessive personal phone use. This quote says it all about Trump and his compulsive need to be worshipped and/or feared. "Days later, when he won the presidency for the second time, his phone lit up, just as it had eight years earlier on Election Night 2016. “You won’t believe it,” Trump marveled in early-morning phone calls after the race was decided last year, according to an adviser. “I’ve already had 20 world leaders call me. They all want to kiss my ass.” Yes, that's what it's all about for Trump. Getting his derriere kissed. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/trump-private-cellphone-china-hackers/683006/ Unfortunately, the tariffs are going to cause very little derriere-kissing on the part of our (now former) trading partners.
That's cruel to the majority of fellow citizens who were barely scraping by in the post-pandemic recovery, and for what -- to feel smug and say "I told you so?"
Go film yourself with a Taco every Tuesday for your Telegram channel from now until Election day 2028 if that's your thing, but work constructively to defeat the Mad King and his greedy enterage of self-serving Fools in Congress.
I have no desire to say "I told you so," and I certainly don't wish unemployment or higher prices on anyone, least of all people who are just scraping by. But I believe America is at risk of slipping into an autocracy, and we must make hard choices to prevent that from happening. Allowing Trump to tank the economy is the only way I know to curb his power. If you have any better ideas, please share them.
I absolutely treasure your articles. Some take me back to EC 10 in 1988 and related studies thereafter, while others provide the clarity of truth now missing in nearly all mainstream news (i.e., both-siderism vitiates truth).
I am surprised you are not more persistent - like everyday - warning folks of the disaster to come from this horrid reconciliation bill. To me, it seems existential.
AMEN! Please see today's NYT OpEd by Tom Friedman. Trump is showing his true colors in this 2nd administration - undisciplined, dishonest, ahistorical, and vindictive. Always shooting from the hip, TACO just can't help himself. I mean, really, he neither cares or understands how ludicrous it is.
And yet, he is the leader of millions, and can and does hurt innocents daily. There is far too much talk in "America" these days and not even a sliver of the action required.
Exactly! We knew all this about him before he was elected the first time. A good many people just didn't care enough to either vote at all or to refuse to vote for him.
I'm sorry to say that it was in "economics for engineers" that I learned the valuable trick of holding my breath to wake myself up. That said, hopefully all this reasonable talk has an effect on folks who can make a difference.
I can report that my neighbors here in the EU have noticed the madness coming out of the White House and are adapting to it. Tesla sales have fallen off a cliff. No one, and I do mean no one, is talking about a summer trip with the family to the USA that they're looking forward to.
North American culture has been popular here for decades. It's rapidly losing its appeal. To the extent that it's obvious that a product or a service is manufactured in the US, there's real resistance to purchasing or marketing.
This is all grassroots stuff that doesn't have the empirical merit of Prof Krugman's data. But I can assure you that it's happening.
We just did a trip to Canada. I think most people underestimate the anger that people in countries that used to be our allies feel at the attacks coming from the White House. We can't get away from the fact that Trump was democratically elected. Disgusting but true. It's not like we were living under a repressive autocracy where dissent could be a death sentence. We are experiencing unprecedented and new levels of propaganda, but Americans are willfully ignorant. Thirty years ago I thought there would be consequences of our dumb and dumber culture. Here it is.
"We just did a trip to Canada. I think most people underestimate the anger that people in countries that used to be our allies feel at the attacks coming from the White House."
Yep. Just came back from the U.K. You should've seen the moment when the tour guide mistakenly asked two people in the group if they were Americans and they just went "NO!!! We're Canadian! We don't want to be American!"
I don't agree that our population is so dumb that they voted tRump in. I think he and Elon cheated (and said so in several videos).
Take a look at https://electiontruthalliance.org/ and request the audit, so we can get this cleared up. I think the silence from Harris and Biden on the many anomalies (bomb threats, burning ballot boxes, Elon buying votes, voter suppression) is either disgraceful timidity (her book said she knew he would pull tricks) or valiant sufferer (if it was under duress).
The US has a much lower education level than Europe, and the GOP has been putting them in an entirely fake alternative universe ever since it created Fox Entertainment. And they made these people believe that those who disagree are "evil", dividing countless families and turning family members into enemies who refuse to meet, only because, AS Americans, they support a different American political party... . And with no real debates among citizens, it becomes even easier to obtain a well-oiled neofascist propaganda machine.
And then there is the fact that this time, both the Heritage Foundation and Silicon Valley had been de facto taken over by neofascists even before Trump started running for president again. Musk was only the latest to join the choir (and the first to leave, not surprisingly).
As to the rumor that the election would have been stolen: it was based on massive lies by the GOP on the one hand, and a systematic silencing of Democrats and their huge legislative accomplishments by the mainstream media, so in that sense, it was definitely stolen. But all independent organizations that guarantee that the election itself runs smoothly have confirmed and proven that it did, so IMHO you better give up that vain hope...
Dumpy did make odd comments like "Wait till you see what we've got planned" after talking qbout how he was going to win, and it wasn't in the context of what he had planned, like tariffs and stuff. I'm probably not making sense, but he did have some strange toss-away statements about how he was going to win that puzzled me at the time. But I really don't want to sound like a conspiracy MAGA nutcase.
Makes sense to me, but then I've seen a compilation video of the comments from Musk and tRump: not needing votes, you won't have to vote again, Elon is real smart about those vote counting computers, son X saying They'll never find out, Elon saying he would go to prison if Trump didn't win, and more.
I think they had 4 years to study the voting machines (there were court cases in which they were able to get that as discovery), one of the DOGE boys wrote software that reads ballot images, The machines do have a network connection (despite the lie that they don't) and a Starlink satellite was crashed just after the election. But the psychological ploy was that they intimidated the Democrats into not saying anything so they "don't want to sound like a conspiracy MAGA nutcase" ! And it worked...
The world's richest man and the biggest criminal narcissist both had very big incentives to do anything they could to stay out of jail. And you think the election was fair?
The ballot scanners that SC uses do not connect to the internet at all. Neither do the BMD (ballot marking devices). They also produce a paper trail. IOW, I don't believe that votes were changed or boxes were stuffed.
Agree! And remember there was a lot of gerrymandering and purging of voter rolls too. One % here, one % there, pretty soon you're talking about an election.
Yep. He made a lot of comments- some so telling and alarming they should have been above the fold in major papers across the country but crickets… his mental decline was also quite obvious but instead, and STILL, the media only reports Biden’s. At least he could still ride a bike and walk straight- and make coherent sentences- he was far better off than Trump was, let alone how he is now. What it always signaled to me was complicity by the Dem party so the capture of the media went unchecked.
I think propaganda, money, and possibly cheating were responsible. The anomalies in the election data shown by Smart Elections should be investigated to ensure that we have safe and secure elections going forward. It should have been challenged by Harris’ campaign, but the campaign consultants preferred to blame Biden. I think many of us are confused about the behavior of the Democrats.
That they were not indicated something much bigger is in play. Further, Garland’s role in the first place was to be sure Trump was not ever prosecuted. No country would allow an insurrectionist to stay out of jail and run again unless they don’t want to stop him.
I'm very happy to endorse these observations, which are squarely in line with my own.
The only person I know personally who's contemplating a US trip for anything other than unavoidable business reasons is doing so because of the very real possibility that she may not see the elderly person that she's visiting again - and she's been astonished by the rock-bottom air fares on offer compared with the usual cost of that trip. Even over the Thanksgiving period, they're barely fluctuating.
The question is, why aren’t the hotel’s in the US lowering their prices given their occupancy rates!? One would think we should be able actually travel domestically at a much more affordable cost but I’m not seeing it yet…
Even before the TACO thing, the problem trade negotiators faced was that their American counterparts couldn't say what America actually wanted. And that's because Trump has no idea what he wants out of any of this beyond his name in the headlines. It's impossible to make a deal when America shows up to the table naked, drooling, and gibbering.
And, as always, are the tariffs supposed to be negotiating chips? Or are they supposed to encourage industrial investment in America? Or are they supposed to take the place of income taxes? These three things are mutually exclusive, yet all three have been floated by Trump as being the purpose of the tariffs.
There's also the leverage to "encourage" gifts, donations, investment in Trump enterprises. If you can "invest" $300 million to get favorable tariff treatment, it makes good sense. Graft, corruption, bribery are no longer crimes or something to be ashamed of...its good business.
Someone said instead of TACO retweets Dems should keep repeating Tariffs are Taxes so people grasp that in addition to the Big ugly Bill tax increase, middle and low income people are paying more because of Trump’s policies.
Remember, trump thinks “tariffs” is the best word ever created. He loves it. Other countries will pay us billions. We will be able to eliminate the IRS and replace it with the External Revenue Service. We will be so rich we won’t know what to do with our money.
Is this the type of warped and bizarre thinking we want in a president? Apparently the republicans in congress think so.
Professor Krugman: i admit that i am confused as to why agent orange believes that tariffs are in anyone's best interests. they are damaging the US (and world) economy, harming working people in the USA, often irrevocably, and they make him look like a mouth-foaming lunatic, so they harm his standing globally. it's like he -- and his entire regime -- drank brain-rotting paranoia-inducing kool-aid and no one sane is able to break through the clouds of rage and hatred. so yeah, this illogical scenario completely confuses me, and for the reason that its motives escape me, i cannot envision an end game.
I think the key to understanding what motivates Trump's choices is to not overthink it. Since his early tutelage under Roy Cohn what passes for Trump's sense of strategy is just the bullying and extortion scheming of a mid-level mob boss. He threatens people, then if you pay him off he promises to remove the threat.
To him putting heavy tariffs on different industries or countries is the equivalent of threatening to burn your restaurant or bodega down. He's a thug, but also a blustering coward, a combination that never works on the mean streets if your mark is smarter than you are.
The first thing you need to remember is that Republicans don't operate in "everyone's best interests" in the first place. They exist for one reason, to serve the oligarchs that all but dump bags of cash on their desks like it's the Gilded Age. Those oligarchs *really* don't like paying any taxes on their income at all. (Yes, most of them already avoid paying much, but their aim is $0.)
When Ronald Reagan arrived in DC in 1980, he and his economic advisors began conning Americans into believing two things: One, cutting taxes on the rich is a good thing because they will create jobs with that additional money, and therefore the tax cut will pay for itself. Two, middle class Americans were "temporarily dispossessed millionaires" and if government would just cut taxes and get out of the way, we'd all get rich. These two things were nonsense then, they were nonsense when Vice President George H.W. Bush called Reagan's economic policies "voodoo economics" in 1984, and they're nonsense now. But after 40 years, this nonsense has devolved from economic policy into an article of faith among Republicans and their voters. If somebody wrote "The Tax Cut Gospel" (by Jesus Christ, of course) Trump would insert it into the version of the Bible he's been selling.
The problem for Republicans is they really do love government spending, especially on the military. (Which has essentially been the largest "jobs program" in US history, going on for more than 80 years now.) So they obviously have to find a way to pay for it.
So, voila, somebody eventually comes up with "Let's get the money from tarriffs! Most Americans don't know how they work in the first place, and most Americans who lived through Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression are dead. It'll be easy to convince voters they're not paying for any of this!"
Naaah. Putin recognized Trump was just inherently destructive, and because of that existing character, aided and supported him. It isn't 'Putin is commanding Trump to be destructive, and he's obeying.'
Context is everything. Watch the hand, not the distraction. These are power grabs.
He will carve out exceptions for companies that "please" him, and for industries that put up enough cash to move the needle. He will lower them when it suits him, which gives him a general kind of leverage over other countries thatbwant anything at all from the U.S.
He cares not at all about the impact on U.S. companies and citizens, except that he prefers to harm people so he can later remove the harm and be seen as a savior.
The Republican base wants to maintain and even improve their current standard of living, and also get all the shiny new toys like border walls and concentration camps that mean a lot to them, but without having to pay anything for it.
From their point of view, "tariffs" are a brilliant idea, because they mean the bill for all that is footed by foreigners. It's about shifting the burden from themselves to what they consider "Others," which is what literally all of their economic thinking comes down to.
Of course, it's bullshit. That's not how tariffs work. But it's ATTRACTIVE bullshit, because it's exactly how they WANT economics to work. And that's why I also think that this issue isn't going away. We're going to see more and more Republican politicians run on the promise that they can somehow make foreigners pay for our gravy train.
As a currency economist who writes for professional investors and traders, I can tell you my research is aligned with what Dr Krugman is saying. I see no reason for investors to hold long duration US debt at this point in time, and the USD is horribly expensive, with the US reliant on global capital to fund its deficit, and holding colossal liabikities to foreign investors.
99.9% of the time the discussion revolves around the return on credit, but at the end of the day what matters is the return of credit.
If investors perceive that US credit is being impaired, due to ballooning deficits, an unwillingness and inability to address the deficits appropriately (ie rolling over TCJA is lunacy), and threats of financial repression and/or capital controls, then they will demand a risk premium. That risk premium will be directly proportionate to the risk faced and will be observed in higher long term sovereign bond yields and a weaker currency. The former will transmit to every loan made in the US, home loans, auto loans, credit card loans, business borrowing... And a weaker US dollar will reduce the direct purchasing power of the consumer, pushing up the cost of imported items.
Uncertainty is his weapon - the only economics he cares about is himself and the self aggrandizement and economic growth of his own portfolio. He is a fool, but his foolishness is harming the nation not his family.
“Does this sound to you like a situation in Trump makes big boasts but effectively climbs down? That’s not how I see it. Instead, I think we’re in for a prolonged period of chaotic Trump lashing out through whatever trade weapon he can get his hands on.”
Agreed Professor, he won’t back down this time; especially while the world is laughing at him. Trump is as petty, and reckless, as he is vindictive and vengeful; which equates to more pain and zero gain for America and its allies.
And this pales in comparison to the brain drain this country is experiencing or about to be experiencing; taking time for it to register on the American economy and people.
Moreover, while MAGA is fighting social issues like DEI, and renaming military fleets and bases, China is pumping out millions of scientists and technicians. Our scientific community is also being forced to find funding and grants overseas; this damage is incalculable, and will last decades, regardless of we rid ourselves of the orange menace. In fact, we may never fully recover.
Personally, I think Trump has lost his mind, if he ever had a mind to begin with. And when that happens (he’s 79 in a week), who will be running the show? Vought? Miller? A combination of both?
If people were frightened to learn that Biden was incapacitated, wait till it’s Trump’s turn, they will hide his cognitive decline in ways that Biden could never get away with. And of course, Trump’s team will be able to deflect once again, thanks to a compliant and corrupt MSM.
and Biden was at worst slow on the uptake but not stupid or malign, and he had competent Cabinet members and others whom he could count on for good advice. Result: good government.
If 40% or more of the country did not have a terminal case of Fox poisoning, that would be obvious to everybody.
Agreed. Fox and their imitation networks across the globe are poisoning and infecting the minds of everyone they touch. They are the greatest threat to democracy I’ve ever seen.
We’re becoming Hungary on a grander scale, and in record time; which would make Orban’s accomplishments pale in comparison, and to the detriment of the health of this nation.
They'll have to forcefully take away his phone and block his Lies Social feed. Joe Biden wasn't up all night demonstrating his cognitive issues by proudly posting evidence thereof to the world. Anyone who dares to stifle him will be shown to the door of the flying imperial palace without a parachute.
Love reading this right after seeing my local NBC TV news station running "STOCKS OPEN HIGHER TODAY" while showing the opening of one the the exchanges
I didn't coin this myself (and I wish I could credit who did) but, "The Stock market is a mood ring for rich people." And considering how many of them are excitedly waiting for their tax cuts, I think it tracks. That said, moods do swing. Often wildly.
I don't think it's a mood ring for the real rich. They're either cashing in on the crypto/financial scams or crapping themselves over financial ruin. It's a mood ring for the affluent retail investors who don't see the rot.
The Trump Administration is forging ahead with a plan to "streamline" data collection in the Commerce Department and has already stopped publishing economic data that customarily is publicly available. Jobs reports, inflation indexes -- all these will be centralized and subject to ideological approval before release. And you can be sure that getting accurate data on the US and world economies will be harder for us. Given that most Americans idea of measuring inflation starts and ends with food and gasoline prices, Trump will probably succeed in these efforts. So Trump will claim that the data supports his tariffs, and enough people will believe him that he can continue.
That's the worst-case scenario for Trump Tariffs 2.0, I think. I'd like someone to show why it won't happen.
Article from Matt Grossman in the WSJ today about inflation numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some excerpts:
"Some economists are beginning to question the accuracy of recent U.S. inflation data after the federal government said staffing shortages hampered its ability to conduct a massive monthly survey."
"Economists say the staffing shortage raises questions about the quality of recent and coming inflation reports. There is no sign of an intentional effort to publish false or misleading statistics. But any problems with the data could have major implications for the economy."
" ... said Omair Sharif, an economist at advisory firm Inflation Insights. He said he has been busy with calls from professional traders who make bets on inflation in financial markets and are anxious about the data’s accuracy."
What stood out for me is the
"There is no sign of an intentional effort to publish false or misleading statistics."
A bit like Bessent saying the US will not default on its debt, as mentioned yesterday by PK. The mere fact this is a newsworthy remark is itself worrying.
This administration has been caught time and again publishing false or misleading statistics... from DOGE false savings claims to editing of environmental reports to children's health, to false election fraud claims, and so on. Never mind the firing of people responsible for gathering economic data... with all the other false claims, why in the world would we even be the tiniest bit credulous that economic statistics won't be messed with?
I'm sure there will be data manipulation. That can only go so far. For most Americans the data doesn't mean anything. Losing health care, unemployment and higher prices can't be hidden. Only when people directly know people losing jobs and directly see prices going up will they notice. If it happens slowly, like the destruction of unions, they'll get away with it. But if it crashes down, they won't.
It think the crypto party has a lot of potential to implode.
Agree, especially about crypto. The use of crypto for criminal activity is an albatross I'd dearly love to see hung around the neck of the GOP, but right now, it seems, crypto has enough support among many Democrats that it's unlikely.
It’s pretty clear that while trump is dumb as a stick, he does have a hideous shrewdness about him. He appears to have used the tariffs shtick to manipulate the markets to make money. Apply the tariffs to send the markets down and buy low. Suspend them, then when he markets go up and sell. Notice he only suspends them so he can do it again. He really is a twisted sociopathic asshole.
I note more and more people coming to the realisation that the only way you are going to rid yourselves of this Trumpist CANCER is to let it eat away enough of your economy to really scare the MAGA horses.
The TACO taunts are likely going to make Trump more intransigent with his tariff “policy,” but I’m joining in anyway. The only way to save our democracy might be for Trump to commit political suicide. I say we let him do it.
I agree in theory, but he has an entire media ecosystem, including social media in his corner; and he who controls the information, controls the country.
They will spin, deflect, and propagandize their way to retaining power and increasing their influence and control over our political system; confusing most Americans, especially the ones that want to be confused!
As Mark Twain famously said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than for that man to ever admit he’d been fooled!”
I agree about the Republican-controlled media propaganda. It's the answer to the question, how on earth did people vote for Republicans -- again. But we don't know how bad things will get. It's a lot harder to believe a lie when you're suffering the truth. If we enter an economic depression, propaganda will have a point of diminishing returns.
FAFO is coming for the masses who voted against their best interests
They'll find out for sure, but it won't change them. If they have to sleep under a bridge, that's OK, so long as immigrants have to sleep under cardboard.
The middle class resents the poor,
The poor curse those with even less.
The middle sneer at penthouse floors,
While idolizing how they dress.
The wealthy grumble up the chain,
Their yachts too small, their taxes cruel.
Yet all still bow, as if ordained,
To those who bought and wrote the rules.
You may like my stack: JosephZeigler.substack.com
We may find out. IMO it will change them. If things get really bad, it will change all of us. It's one thing to *believe* that sleeping under a bridge will be tolerable as long as T2.0 promises a better future and as long as he's deporting people and "owning the libs" -- it's another thing entirely to actually experience sleeping under that bridge.
FAFO? YHTMAAAIYP
It needs to be FAFO otherwise people will be offended by the use of “Fuck”
Upon Googling, the first word could also be "Fool". My point still stands.
LOL. No, it's just faster to type "FAFO." And at this point, it's virtually
universally understood. Most folks are far far away from being offended by "fuck."
Agreed, but if it gets that bad, then we’ve already lost…:)
It's one of the things that saddened me about the November election: It seemed clear that things might need to worsen considerably before people finally wake up. Not one of my cheeriest thoughts. On the other hand, if it does result in people waking up, there's hope in that.
As Lenin is said to have said, "The worse, the better."
I am not sure even severe hardship will change the minds of Trump supporters. During the pandemic, Trumpets dying of Covid refused to believe they had Covid. They are in a brainwashed cult.
@JennSH from NC
We definitely don't want to be complacent, so it's good to be aware of what you describe. But there is a threshold for even the most indoctrinated cult members. People leave cults all the time, and it's usually because they're pushed beyond their personal threshold. Same with jobs, relationships, friendships, families, etc. So I have hope that enough people will reach their personal thresholds. I think you're just saying, I wouldn't count on that. And I'm not. But hope gives us courage. And as Aragorn said in one of the LOTR films, "There is always hope."
Shameless Infomercial. I've seen this identical post all over substack. Reported.
Identical post to Krugman’s? Word for word? Where? If you are talking about the same conclusions- it’s because they seem the most likely.
It was my response to a (now removed) link to an infomercial video about brain fog. You will see this posted under numerous names by a spam bot all over substack.
Why people don’t understand that you should only mock Trump about things you want him to stop doing is beyond me. We need Trump to back down on tariffs so he should be praised (ugh), not mocked when he does.
However he should be constantly ridiculed for being Putin’s puppet, something he definitely doesn’t want to be seen as and we don’t want him to be. Remember the damage to Tony Blair that the “Bush’s lapdog” label did?
This is the POTUS! We should not have to be playing silly psychological games to get desired behavior. (i.e. My two year old loved "I sure hope you don't eat all your veggies because if you do, I'll have to give you ice cream.")
We shouldn't have. But if we want to put AMERICA first, we should anyhow. Look how the US president speaks, thinks and behaves. This IS the behavior of a toddler in an old man's body.
Except my toddler knew better than to throw ketchup at the wall. That would have gotten a reaction that was less than charming.
Right... . This is where Trump's abusive father comes in, I presume, and the fact that he grew up in a time and place that was pretty mafia-like, so no one in his immediate environment to give him access to emotional intelligence tools...
Painfully true. We got into this mess with Trump being mocked by Obama.
Opinions about this seem divided. The rumor I know is that it was actually Seth Meyers' fault, because of this:
https://youtu.be/7YGITlxfT6s?t=722
Based on the reaction shots, my impression is that Trump was a lot more upset with the Seth Meyer’s jokes than with the Obama ones. Maybe it was because Seth Meyers spoke after Obama and the effect on Trump was cumulative. Maybe it was because Trump was a bit flattered that the President of the United States devoted a large portion of his speech to talking about Trump, whereas being targeted by Seth Meyers has no such upside.
100% agree, but we live in the Bizarro world!…:)
Unfortunately, I can not see things getting better without getting a lot worse now. Meaning, Trump's tariffs will make this much worse, and that may be what is necessary.
As a side thought, the guy who thinks he is the smartest person in the world is going to pay any attention to what we write or say?
Yeah, but Twain said, "man," a word we can apply only loosely to drumpf.
"he has an entire media ecosystem .. in his corner"
Apparently so. I just went near apoplectic after reading in the New York Times that "Britain was granted a carve-out from President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel while the rest of Europe fumed that it was now paying twice as much."
Europe fumed that IT, EUROPE, was now paying twice as much? That is most certainly a lie, while the NYT amplifies Trump's harebrained disinformation that EXPORTERS TO THE US PAY TRUMP'S TARIFFS. I don't even know what they think they're doing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/business/uk-trump-tariffs-steel.html
I read this; un-f-ing-believable! Whoever writes the biggest check gets the prize, and in Britain’s case, he has a love affair with the Royals; case closed!….:)
Let them spin it the way they want to spin it. What will come from all of this will be higher prices and higher unemployment from the TACO man. As was said, keep your eyes on the bond and currency market. The stock market itself is a racket now run like a middle school playground.
Agreed, but my point is that until these people feel true pain, nothing will change. So we 100% agree…:)
That said, I worked on WS most of my career, and I am already seeing the damage he’s doing to the our treasury markets, our status as the reserve currency of 70% of the world, and how inflation will ultimately lead to stagflation; higher interest rates and high unemployment.
Between this and what he’s doing to the CDC and NIH, the damage is already incalculable!…:)
It’s a shit show, but until people can see and feel it, nothing matters…:)
One factor is a lot of those who voted for him/Republicans didn't believe he would really do much of what he said .. and Trump did WORSE.
So even those who don't want to admit they made a mistake with Trump will eventually wake up. Maybe not the true MAGAs, but I doubt that it is more than about half the votes he got.
Some elected Republicans have spoken against some of Trump's promises when they start to be applied. Hopefully more join in.
He’s also completed capturing the state, so there is no way to vote him out now.
Begone brain fog spam bot. For the zillionth time.
I postulate that this guy changes his name with every post so you can't find out who he is. To test this out, I just changed mine.
So much for that idea. As soon as I changed it back, it changed here as well.
Worse than that, it's a bot, it's automated.
But it must have an account. And the account must have been paid for. So at least it's supporting Substack.
Report the spammer
Done.
Yes, I did as well a few days ago.
It's a bot. It will keep coming back. All we can do is keep reporting it.
And ignore it.
Well, yes, that's true. There's always that option.
We have to make his insanity obvious to everyone and taunting him is one way to do it. We can't let this go on for 4 years.
TACO is another acronym for MM (market manipulation). In truth, we all want Trump to backdown from his disastrous policies. If we can get him to backdown on the abductions, attacks on education, attacks on media (NPR, etc ) and replace the frat house National Security team, we would let him have the corruption and free makeup.
No way, the corruption's got to go too. Trumpkopf's got to go, along with the entire P2025 Klown Kar Krew.
It's not just MM (or even majority MM). It is more of a protection racket. He threatens great damage, trolling for bribes or other favors. When that doesn't work, he can't threaten more damage without reducing the threat first, so he "pauses" the threat.
Exactly!
How do you propose we get rid of the corruption? Impeachment and removal from office?
https://www.impeachtrumpagain.org/ for talking points to use when you call your representative, which you can easily find at https://5calls.org/
Meanwhile, take a look at https://electiontruthalliance.org/ and request the audit, so we can get rid of the entire criminal administration.
And don't forget to get out there and rally!
The next nationwide rally is June 14, yes >that< June 14, be there or be square!
Let's ruin Chump's B'day. We need 3.5% or the population, or around 12,000,000 people to be present. So bring all your friends and families. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Let's all get out there with a Howard Beale spirit and yell "We're as mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!".
https://www.nokings.org/
P.S. Stay the hell away from D.C.! Don't give him an excuse to declare martial law!
I agree he should be impeached, but my representative and my senators would not even talk to me about such a topic. They are on the Trump bandwagon full steam ahead. So are most other Republicans. They are afraid to stand up to him.
They are, without a doubt, the biggest bunch of cowards and political opportunists we've ever had in Congress.
That's the most likely approach. Followed by criminal prosecution. Obviously, we'll need an overwhelming majority to take 2026. A blue tsunami.
It ain't gonna happen. Wish it would, but no.
Well, we'll see either way, won't we?
Leaving him free to reap what New MAYHEM??? Careful what u wish for......
No, no, no. Once he's removed from the Oval Office, then we can look into the sentencing - he already has 34 felony convictions.
Then we have to do something about the corrupt SCOTUS and that patently ridiculous, outrageous immunity "decision".
To say nothing of Citizens United, which led to much of the chaos we have now. No one should be able to put hundreds of millions of dollars into an election.
Definitely. A most appalling "decision" if ever there was one.
"Won't Back Down" is Donnie's theme song. He learned it at the feet of Roy Cohn.
Sort of. Dumpy backs down on all sorts of things. There's the TACO narrative, of course. But he also threatens to do "terrible things, the likes of which have never been seen before!!!" like sue all the women who claimed he sexually abused them, or rain fire down on North Korea and Iran. Right now it's bad because he's got the governmental bit between his teeth and nobody in his administration to stop him, but he's still an insecure little PAB inside. I'm more worried about the Big Awful Bill that'll take away the power of judges to hold the administration in contempt - that's the only check we have left on him.
Call & write &/or call all senators to “Kill the Bill.”
With respect, we have no check on him because we have zero political will to enforce any check on him. He has ignored courts before with no consequences. Sit back and watch the tragicomedy show and hope that you and your immediate family are not too badly impacted. It's far too late to do anything else.
Ian Bremmer (paraphrased from a Bloomberg interview yesterday). "The Chinese recognize a trade war will hurt them more economically than the US, but politically they can take the pain in a way the US cannot."
Trump on his social media last night, “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”
Well, duh...
Unfortunately, Trump's political suicide will look a lot like Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate cult. Only with Trump, the rest of us are in jeopardy as well.
Sadly, a very powerful criminal conglomerate conspired to back Trump in order to repeal the New Deal, and rigged the election - mostly “legally” through 78 passed laws during Biden’s placeholder presidency.
Those laws will crush any future elections without proof of each person’s vote per county in order to challenge the results (ie, all of the ballots tossed cast by black voters, voter vigilantism that blocked the votes of tens of thousands of voters in the slave states, and the legalization of the right of any election official to throw out (shocker, democratic) ballots for “clerical” errors.
Nevermind Musk and Trump’s public, obvious hints of hacking machines, resulting in massive anomalies in swing state counties. When they rig an election and get away with it, they’ll just do it from then on.
Placeholder presidency? All nonpartisan studies have proven that Biden ranks near the top of all US presidents in terms of accomplishments.
As to those 78 laws: any concrete example?
It’s not that he didn’t pass great bills - it’s just that passing great bills you know will be overturned when you leave has been the playbook for a government that has been corrupt for ages. No dem president has made a single foundational change to stop the corruption that has destroyed our government because they are *corrupt* themselves- in fact, you don’t get to run for president in the US unless you will play ball. Obama could have passed election reform, campaign finance reform, SCOTUS reform- but he didn’t. He passed a healthcare bill that looked great but had no teeth, and of course could be gutted at any point afterwards. “Incremental change” or… controlled opposition?
Not firing Garland, who has functioned as nothing but protection for the corrupt since the beginning of his career was the most obvious sign. I suspected by early 2021 that the entire thing was a stitch up- not a single member of the admin had been indicted yet despite a plethora of cases lined up for Garland to prosecute thanks to Mueller, who gathered everything but like a good member of the Vichy. And most tellingly, a YEAR passed without a single action by the FBI against a man who planned a coup and incited an insurrection. To not hold a single person at the top accountable, immediately, made it perfectly clear that it was Trump’s backers who were in control of the US government, not Biden.
To quote Sarah Kendzior in 2023, who has like Ruth the best track record on predicting US politics,
“Under Biden, the United States became the first country to face an attempted coup and not only fail to punish the coup plotters but allow them to hold office and make laws. There is no parallel in world history. Even Hitler had a prison interlude between his putsch and his presidency. The only thing approaching an equivalent lies in the American past: the refusal to punish confederates and instead let them regroup under new names, leading to the decimation of Reconstruction and the birth of Jim Crow.”
This is the description of Biden’s presidency none of us want to hear because we love Obama, Biden, etc etc but they didn’t act for real. They did cool things that if you had a strong democracy would be wonderful - but without one, they are flashy appeasements. Meanwhile, besides obama’s drones, Biden provided the weaponry needed to commit genocide. We all paid for a genocide.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahkendzior/p/behold-a-pale-horse-race?r=56gih&utm_medium=ios
Let's start with your first lines. You claim that Democrats' big pieces of legislation are always overturned. Any concrete example? Because today, all of Obama's and Biden's big pieces of legislation still stand. So any evidence to back up your claim?
1) Public lands expanded by Obama sold off by Trump. 2) the ACA sabotaged and rolled back under Trump (and not restored by Biden) 3) the CFPB gutted 2016, and now almost entirely defunded. 4) the climate initiatives cancelled including grants already approved and the cessation of projects already underway such as windmills under construction, the nationwide Charging installation contracts already in progress on the eastern part of the US that had employed 7,000 people. 4)The cessation of all sustainable energy consumer rebates and tax breaks- for EV’s, solar, heat pumps, etc 5) repeal of child tax credits. Nevermind the gutting or outright elimination of massive programs created by presidents long ago such as Food banks & SNAP, HUD, USAID, Dept of Education… Need I go on?
All while campaign Finance reform and voting rights reform was a sitting time bomb for the very government itself. And they knew this very very well in 2008. Those should have been passed first, then the ACA. But the Dem party has been captured since Reagan- they’ve been the Vichy ever since.
We, the citizens, are the ones who failed.
Let's start with the ACA. 90% of it still stands, after more than 50 attempts to repeal it, and Biden hugely expanded it (insuring more than 3 million more people). How can you called "sabotaged and rolled back under Trump and not restored by Biden"?
As to the CFPB: Musk TRIED to gut it, after it refunded more than $20 billion to the American people under Biden. Thanks to fighting back hard in courts, they were forced to rehire a director already. It's clearly illegal to get rid of it, only Congress can do so, so for now... it still stands.
Also, I didn’t answer your question about the 78 bills suppressing minority votes and making it legal to toss out ballots for a myriad of reasons- see Greg Palast’s article, “Trump lost, voter suppression won” - it focuses on the number of ballots tossed out for “clerical errors” in swing states specifically. Also, the gov’t of TX’s comment on Bannon’s podcast that if they hadn’t made it so difficult for Houston to vote Kamela would have won Texas. (He actually said this, out loud!) but crickets in the media…
What is really a reliable tell is if Trump accuses anyone else of malfeasance, it’s actually an admission of what *he* actually did or will do. So the fact no one challenged or insisted on recounting certain county results after the election is how we know something bigger is in play.
So now we have a fascism based authoritarian regime. They operate like any other- which means a whole new set of management tactics as well as resistance strategies. Flattery is a requirement.
Trump still thinks his tariff madness will have other nations crawling to the Oval Office to "make a deal". There is an interesting recent article in The Atlantic about Trump and his obsessive personal phone use. This quote says it all about Trump and his compulsive need to be worshipped and/or feared. "Days later, when he won the presidency for the second time, his phone lit up, just as it had eight years earlier on Election Night 2016. “You won’t believe it,” Trump marveled in early-morning phone calls after the race was decided last year, according to an adviser. “I’ve already had 20 world leaders call me. They all want to kiss my ass.” Yes, that's what it's all about for Trump. Getting his derriere kissed. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/trump-private-cellphone-china-hackers/683006/ Unfortunately, the tariffs are going to cause very little derriere-kissing on the part of our (now former) trading partners.
I understand that the DNC is renting a taco truck to sit outside the RNC's offices. Now, that's sharp.
Maybe we can goad him into an aneurysm.
That's cruel to the majority of fellow citizens who were barely scraping by in the post-pandemic recovery, and for what -- to feel smug and say "I told you so?"
Go film yourself with a Taco every Tuesday for your Telegram channel from now until Election day 2028 if that's your thing, but work constructively to defeat the Mad King and his greedy enterage of self-serving Fools in Congress.
I have no desire to say "I told you so," and I certainly don't wish unemployment or higher prices on anyone, least of all people who are just scraping by. But I believe America is at risk of slipping into an autocracy, and we must make hard choices to prevent that from happening. Allowing Trump to tank the economy is the only way I know to curb his power. If you have any better ideas, please share them.
I absolutely treasure your articles. Some take me back to EC 10 in 1988 and related studies thereafter, while others provide the clarity of truth now missing in nearly all mainstream news (i.e., both-siderism vitiates truth).
I am surprised you are not more persistent - like everyday - warning folks of the disaster to come from this horrid reconciliation bill. To me, it seems existential.
Thanks again for your wonderful writings.
AMEN! Please see today's NYT OpEd by Tom Friedman. Trump is showing his true colors in this 2nd administration - undisciplined, dishonest, ahistorical, and vindictive. Always shooting from the hip, TACO just can't help himself. I mean, really, he neither cares or understands how ludicrous it is.
And yet, he is the leader of millions, and can and does hurt innocents daily. There is far too much talk in "America" these days and not even a sliver of the action required.
"This aint no disco", as the man said.
I think he showed all that quite clearly by the time he was 25
Exactly! We knew all this about him before he was elected the first time. A good many people just didn't care enough to either vote at all or to refuse to vote for him.
I'm sorry to say that it was in "economics for engineers" that I learned the valuable trick of holding my breath to wake myself up. That said, hopefully all this reasonable talk has an effect on folks who can make a difference.
I can report that my neighbors here in the EU have noticed the madness coming out of the White House and are adapting to it. Tesla sales have fallen off a cliff. No one, and I do mean no one, is talking about a summer trip with the family to the USA that they're looking forward to.
North American culture has been popular here for decades. It's rapidly losing its appeal. To the extent that it's obvious that a product or a service is manufactured in the US, there's real resistance to purchasing or marketing.
This is all grassroots stuff that doesn't have the empirical merit of Prof Krugman's data. But I can assure you that it's happening.
We just did a trip to Canada. I think most people underestimate the anger that people in countries that used to be our allies feel at the attacks coming from the White House. We can't get away from the fact that Trump was democratically elected. Disgusting but true. It's not like we were living under a repressive autocracy where dissent could be a death sentence. We are experiencing unprecedented and new levels of propaganda, but Americans are willfully ignorant. Thirty years ago I thought there would be consequences of our dumb and dumber culture. Here it is.
"We just did a trip to Canada. I think most people underestimate the anger that people in countries that used to be our allies feel at the attacks coming from the White House."
Yep. Just came back from the U.K. You should've seen the moment when the tour guide mistakenly asked two people in the group if they were Americans and they just went "NO!!! We're Canadian! We don't want to be American!"
I don't agree that our population is so dumb that they voted tRump in. I think he and Elon cheated (and said so in several videos).
Take a look at https://electiontruthalliance.org/ and request the audit, so we can get this cleared up. I think the silence from Harris and Biden on the many anomalies (bomb threats, burning ballot boxes, Elon buying votes, voter suppression) is either disgraceful timidity (her book said she knew he would pull tricks) or valiant sufferer (if it was under duress).
The US has a much lower education level than Europe, and the GOP has been putting them in an entirely fake alternative universe ever since it created Fox Entertainment. And they made these people believe that those who disagree are "evil", dividing countless families and turning family members into enemies who refuse to meet, only because, AS Americans, they support a different American political party... . And with no real debates among citizens, it becomes even easier to obtain a well-oiled neofascist propaganda machine.
And then there is the fact that this time, both the Heritage Foundation and Silicon Valley had been de facto taken over by neofascists even before Trump started running for president again. Musk was only the latest to join the choir (and the first to leave, not surprisingly).
As to the rumor that the election would have been stolen: it was based on massive lies by the GOP on the one hand, and a systematic silencing of Democrats and their huge legislative accomplishments by the mainstream media, so in that sense, it was definitely stolen. But all independent organizations that guarantee that the election itself runs smoothly have confirmed and proven that it did, so IMHO you better give up that vain hope...
Also read Greg Palast’s article, “Trump lost, voter suppression won.”
Take a look at
"The Machines Were Changed Before the 2024 Election. No One Was Told."
https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/the-machines-were-changed-before
Dumpy did make odd comments like "Wait till you see what we've got planned" after talking qbout how he was going to win, and it wasn't in the context of what he had planned, like tariffs and stuff. I'm probably not making sense, but he did have some strange toss-away statements about how he was going to win that puzzled me at the time. But I really don't want to sound like a conspiracy MAGA nutcase.
Makes sense to me, but then I've seen a compilation video of the comments from Musk and tRump: not needing votes, you won't have to vote again, Elon is real smart about those vote counting computers, son X saying They'll never find out, Elon saying he would go to prison if Trump didn't win, and more.
I think they had 4 years to study the voting machines (there were court cases in which they were able to get that as discovery), one of the DOGE boys wrote software that reads ballot images, The machines do have a network connection (despite the lie that they don't) and a Starlink satellite was crashed just after the election. But the psychological ploy was that they intimidated the Democrats into not saying anything so they "don't want to sound like a conspiracy MAGA nutcase" ! And it worked...
The world's richest man and the biggest criminal narcissist both had very big incentives to do anything they could to stay out of jail. And you think the election was fair?
The ballot scanners that SC uses do not connect to the internet at all. Neither do the BMD (ballot marking devices). They also produce a paper trail. IOW, I don't believe that votes were changed or boxes were stuffed.
See the Smart Election lawsuit over rockland county in NY, which will be the first of many.
Take a look at
"The Machines Were Changed Before the 2024 Election. No One Was Told."
https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/the-machines-were-changed-before
Agree! And remember there was a lot of gerrymandering and purging of voter rolls too. One % here, one % there, pretty soon you're talking about an election.
Yep. He made a lot of comments- some so telling and alarming they should have been above the fold in major papers across the country but crickets… his mental decline was also quite obvious but instead, and STILL, the media only reports Biden’s. At least he could still ride a bike and walk straight- and make coherent sentences- he was far better off than Trump was, let alone how he is now. What it always signaled to me was complicity by the Dem party so the capture of the media went unchecked.
I think propaganda, money, and possibly cheating were responsible. The anomalies in the election data shown by Smart Elections should be investigated to ensure that we have safe and secure elections going forward. It should have been challenged by Harris’ campaign, but the campaign consultants preferred to blame Biden. I think many of us are confused about the behavior of the Democrats.
That they were not indicated something much bigger is in play. Further, Garland’s role in the first place was to be sure Trump was not ever prosecuted. No country would allow an insurrectionist to stay out of jail and run again unless they don’t want to stop him.
I'm very happy to endorse these observations, which are squarely in line with my own.
The only person I know personally who's contemplating a US trip for anything other than unavoidable business reasons is doing so because of the very real possibility that she may not see the elderly person that she's visiting again - and she's been astonished by the rock-bottom air fares on offer compared with the usual cost of that trip. Even over the Thanksgiving period, they're barely fluctuating.
Now why would that be, I wonder?
It’s happening in Canada too. People are avoiding US products and not vacationing south of the border.
The question is, why aren’t the hotel’s in the US lowering their prices given their occupancy rates!? One would think we should be able actually travel domestically at a much more affordable cost but I’m not seeing it yet…
I don’t know. It’s still pretty recent.
Even before the TACO thing, the problem trade negotiators faced was that their American counterparts couldn't say what America actually wanted. And that's because Trump has no idea what he wants out of any of this beyond his name in the headlines. It's impossible to make a deal when America shows up to the table naked, drooling, and gibbering.
And, as always, are the tariffs supposed to be negotiating chips? Or are they supposed to encourage industrial investment in America? Or are they supposed to take the place of income taxes? These three things are mutually exclusive, yet all three have been floated by Trump as being the purpose of the tariffs.
He's an imbecile, and he's the president. Damn.
There's also the leverage to "encourage" gifts, donations, investment in Trump enterprises. If you can "invest" $300 million to get favorable tariff treatment, it makes good sense. Graft, corruption, bribery are no longer crimes or something to be ashamed of...its good business.
Someone said instead of TACO retweets Dems should keep repeating Tariffs are Taxes so people grasp that in addition to the Big ugly Bill tax increase, middle and low income people are paying more because of Trump’s policies.
Remember, trump thinks “tariffs” is the best word ever created. He loves it. Other countries will pay us billions. We will be able to eliminate the IRS and replace it with the External Revenue Service. We will be so rich we won’t know what to do with our money.
Is this the type of warped and bizarre thinking we want in a president? Apparently the republicans in congress think so.
What a self inflicted mess 🤯
Tariffs are just another way to bully others. When the mark fights back, the cowardice of the retreating bully is revealed.
Don't discount corruption. Trump will want a piece of any deal.
The end-game is the same it's always been... The aggrandisement and enrichment of Trump and his hangers-on.
Trying to see them as "economic tools" as part of a coherent "economic strategy" designed to "rebalance" real iniquities in global trade is pointless.
"You can't polish a turd", as the saying goes...
Professor Krugman: i admit that i am confused as to why agent orange believes that tariffs are in anyone's best interests. they are damaging the US (and world) economy, harming working people in the USA, often irrevocably, and they make him look like a mouth-foaming lunatic, so they harm his standing globally. it's like he -- and his entire regime -- drank brain-rotting paranoia-inducing kool-aid and no one sane is able to break through the clouds of rage and hatred. so yeah, this illogical scenario completely confuses me, and for the reason that its motives escape me, i cannot envision an end game.
I think the key to understanding what motivates Trump's choices is to not overthink it. Since his early tutelage under Roy Cohn what passes for Trump's sense of strategy is just the bullying and extortion scheming of a mid-level mob boss. He threatens people, then if you pay him off he promises to remove the threat.
To him putting heavy tariffs on different industries or countries is the equivalent of threatening to burn your restaurant or bodega down. He's a thug, but also a blustering coward, a combination that never works on the mean streets if your mark is smarter than you are.
Now let's go play golf.
The first thing you need to remember is that Republicans don't operate in "everyone's best interests" in the first place. They exist for one reason, to serve the oligarchs that all but dump bags of cash on their desks like it's the Gilded Age. Those oligarchs *really* don't like paying any taxes on their income at all. (Yes, most of them already avoid paying much, but their aim is $0.)
When Ronald Reagan arrived in DC in 1980, he and his economic advisors began conning Americans into believing two things: One, cutting taxes on the rich is a good thing because they will create jobs with that additional money, and therefore the tax cut will pay for itself. Two, middle class Americans were "temporarily dispossessed millionaires" and if government would just cut taxes and get out of the way, we'd all get rich. These two things were nonsense then, they were nonsense when Vice President George H.W. Bush called Reagan's economic policies "voodoo economics" in 1984, and they're nonsense now. But after 40 years, this nonsense has devolved from economic policy into an article of faith among Republicans and their voters. If somebody wrote "The Tax Cut Gospel" (by Jesus Christ, of course) Trump would insert it into the version of the Bible he's been selling.
The problem for Republicans is they really do love government spending, especially on the military. (Which has essentially been the largest "jobs program" in US history, going on for more than 80 years now.) So they obviously have to find a way to pay for it.
So, voila, somebody eventually comes up with "Let's get the money from tarriffs! Most Americans don't know how they work in the first place, and most Americans who lived through Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression are dead. It'll be easy to convince voters they're not paying for any of this!"
He doesn't believe it. The real reasons are:
1. He thinks it makes him look tough, at least to his Schlitz and Kool-Aid swilling cretin base.
2. It creates insider trading opportunities for him and his cronies - think Marjorie Taylor Greenbacks.
Destruction of America. And who benefits from that? Putin. It’s pretty simple actually
Naaah. Putin recognized Trump was just inherently destructive, and because of that existing character, aided and supported him. It isn't 'Putin is commanding Trump to be destructive, and he's obeying.'
Yeah, that too.
Context is everything. Watch the hand, not the distraction. These are power grabs.
He will carve out exceptions for companies that "please" him, and for industries that put up enough cash to move the needle. He will lower them when it suits him, which gives him a general kind of leverage over other countries thatbwant anything at all from the U.S.
He cares not at all about the impact on U.S. companies and citizens, except that he prefers to harm people so he can later remove the harm and be seen as a savior.
The Republican base wants to maintain and even improve their current standard of living, and also get all the shiny new toys like border walls and concentration camps that mean a lot to them, but without having to pay anything for it.
From their point of view, "tariffs" are a brilliant idea, because they mean the bill for all that is footed by foreigners. It's about shifting the burden from themselves to what they consider "Others," which is what literally all of their economic thinking comes down to.
Of course, it's bullshit. That's not how tariffs work. But it's ATTRACTIVE bullshit, because it's exactly how they WANT economics to work. And that's why I also think that this issue isn't going away. We're going to see more and more Republican politicians run on the promise that they can somehow make foreigners pay for our gravy train.
I think Dumpy's only endgame is the thrill it gives him when he sees how his tweets and EOs make the world convulse. One man = all that power.
Trump is stupid. This explains a lot.
As a currency economist who writes for professional investors and traders, I can tell you my research is aligned with what Dr Krugman is saying. I see no reason for investors to hold long duration US debt at this point in time, and the USD is horribly expensive, with the US reliant on global capital to fund its deficit, and holding colossal liabikities to foreign investors.
Upset your creditors at your peril Mr Trump.
Especially with him threatening to "convert" them into "century" bonds.
And not his peril, >our< peril.
Americans are also threatening to supertax foreign investments in the US (whenever there is a foreign tax they don't like)
What happens when the world withdraws their money from the US (along with their trade and tourist visits)?
Exactly.
99.9% of the time the discussion revolves around the return on credit, but at the end of the day what matters is the return of credit.
If investors perceive that US credit is being impaired, due to ballooning deficits, an unwillingness and inability to address the deficits appropriately (ie rolling over TCJA is lunacy), and threats of financial repression and/or capital controls, then they will demand a risk premium. That risk premium will be directly proportionate to the risk faced and will be observed in higher long term sovereign bond yields and a weaker currency. The former will transmit to every loan made in the US, home loans, auto loans, credit card loans, business borrowing... And a weaker US dollar will reduce the direct purchasing power of the consumer, pushing up the cost of imported items.
There is a price to be paid for stupid.
Uncertainty is his weapon - the only economics he cares about is himself and the self aggrandizement and economic growth of his own portfolio. He is a fool, but his foolishness is harming the nation not his family.
Check out my Substack https://mikelink45.substack.com/
“Does this sound to you like a situation in Trump makes big boasts but effectively climbs down? That’s not how I see it. Instead, I think we’re in for a prolonged period of chaotic Trump lashing out through whatever trade weapon he can get his hands on.”
Agreed Professor, he won’t back down this time; especially while the world is laughing at him. Trump is as petty, and reckless, as he is vindictive and vengeful; which equates to more pain and zero gain for America and its allies.
And this pales in comparison to the brain drain this country is experiencing or about to be experiencing; taking time for it to register on the American economy and people.
Moreover, while MAGA is fighting social issues like DEI, and renaming military fleets and bases, China is pumping out millions of scientists and technicians. Our scientific community is also being forced to find funding and grants overseas; this damage is incalculable, and will last decades, regardless of we rid ourselves of the orange menace. In fact, we may never fully recover.
Personally, I think Trump has lost his mind, if he ever had a mind to begin with. And when that happens (he’s 79 in a week), who will be running the show? Vought? Miller? A combination of both?
If people were frightened to learn that Biden was incapacitated, wait till it’s Trump’s turn, they will hide his cognitive decline in ways that Biden could never get away with. And of course, Trump’s team will be able to deflect once again, thanks to a compliant and corrupt MSM.
and Biden was at worst slow on the uptake but not stupid or malign, and he had competent Cabinet members and others whom he could count on for good advice. Result: good government.
If 40% or more of the country did not have a terminal case of Fox poisoning, that would be obvious to everybody.
Agreed. Fox and their imitation networks across the globe are poisoning and infecting the minds of everyone they touch. They are the greatest threat to democracy I’ve ever seen.
We’re becoming Hungary on a grander scale, and in record time; which would make Orban’s accomplishments pale in comparison, and to the detriment of the health of this nation.
“they will hide his cognitive decline in ways that Biden could never get away with.”
They already have been for the past 10 years.
Fair enough, and great point!..:)
They'll have to forcefully take away his phone and block his Lies Social feed. Joe Biden wasn't up all night demonstrating his cognitive issues by proudly posting evidence thereof to the world. Anyone who dares to stifle him will be shown to the door of the flying imperial palace without a parachute.
Fair enough, and possibly true..:)
Love reading this right after seeing my local NBC TV news station running "STOCKS OPEN HIGHER TODAY" while showing the opening of one the the exchanges
I didn't coin this myself (and I wish I could credit who did) but, "The Stock market is a mood ring for rich people." And considering how many of them are excitedly waiting for their tax cuts, I think it tracks. That said, moods do swing. Often wildly.
It’s also a drug test for some.
I don't think it's a mood ring for the real rich. They're either cashing in on the crypto/financial scams or crapping themselves over financial ruin. It's a mood ring for the affluent retail investors who don't see the rot.
The Trump Administration is forging ahead with a plan to "streamline" data collection in the Commerce Department and has already stopped publishing economic data that customarily is publicly available. Jobs reports, inflation indexes -- all these will be centralized and subject to ideological approval before release. And you can be sure that getting accurate data on the US and world economies will be harder for us. Given that most Americans idea of measuring inflation starts and ends with food and gasoline prices, Trump will probably succeed in these efforts. So Trump will claim that the data supports his tariffs, and enough people will believe him that he can continue.
That's the worst-case scenario for Trump Tariffs 2.0, I think. I'd like someone to show why it won't happen.
Article from Matt Grossman in the WSJ today about inflation numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some excerpts:
"Some economists are beginning to question the accuracy of recent U.S. inflation data after the federal government said staffing shortages hampered its ability to conduct a massive monthly survey."
"Economists say the staffing shortage raises questions about the quality of recent and coming inflation reports. There is no sign of an intentional effort to publish false or misleading statistics. But any problems with the data could have major implications for the economy."
" ... said Omair Sharif, an economist at advisory firm Inflation Insights. He said he has been busy with calls from professional traders who make bets on inflation in financial markets and are anxious about the data’s accuracy."
What stood out for me is the
"There is no sign of an intentional effort to publish false or misleading statistics."
A bit like Bessent saying the US will not default on its debt, as mentioned yesterday by PK. The mere fact this is a newsworthy remark is itself worrying.
This administration has been caught time and again publishing false or misleading statistics... from DOGE false savings claims to editing of environmental reports to children's health, to false election fraud claims, and so on. Never mind the firing of people responsible for gathering economic data... with all the other false claims, why in the world would we even be the tiniest bit credulous that economic statistics won't be messed with?
I'm sure there will be data manipulation. That can only go so far. For most Americans the data doesn't mean anything. Losing health care, unemployment and higher prices can't be hidden. Only when people directly know people losing jobs and directly see prices going up will they notice. If it happens slowly, like the destruction of unions, they'll get away with it. But if it crashes down, they won't.
It think the crypto party has a lot of potential to implode.
Agree, especially about crypto. The use of crypto for criminal activity is an albatross I'd dearly love to see hung around the neck of the GOP, but right now, it seems, crypto has enough support among many Democrats that it's unlikely.
It’s pretty clear that while trump is dumb as a stick, he does have a hideous shrewdness about him. He appears to have used the tariffs shtick to manipulate the markets to make money. Apply the tariffs to send the markets down and buy low. Suspend them, then when he markets go up and sell. Notice he only suspends them so he can do it again. He really is a twisted sociopathic asshole.
Well, the brokers seem to have caught on, hence the term TACO. That doesn't invalidate your last sentence, of course.
And short them before they go down.
I note more and more people coming to the realisation that the only way you are going to rid yourselves of this Trumpist CANCER is to let it eat away enough of your economy to really scare the MAGA horses.
And only the ones on the outermost edges of the main MAGAnut herd.
The exchange between Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now comes to mind:
- Did they say why, Willard? Why they wanted to terminate my command?
. . .
- They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
- Are my methods unsound?
- I don't see any method at all, sir.