No. of Recommendations: 19
One thing we have learned is that when a new hot topic comes up, newly minted experts propound on it, from their exhaustive scholarly background of 10 minutes of google research.
I am sure you have been an expert on tariffs for many, many, many years.
Nonetheless, don't knock Google research. Gemini output in particular, that the search results now show, is pretty good. Even years of one puny human's expertise cannot match AI now. At least in the knowledge domains that have a large corpus on the Internet.
Christine Grady, the wife of Dr. Anthony Fauci,” the Washington Times reported, “was among several top officials who were notified they were being reassigned from the National Institutes of Health to regional offices of the Indian Health Service.” Well thank goodness. It’s about time the Indians got some decent medical care from the government. And the Eskimos, too.
More fun than any laws allow. LOL ;-)
I mean, we all enjoy schadenfreude. Some more than others, evidently.
Nepotism transcends all political boundaries (at least in US).
Anyway, back to topic at hand:
"Treasury Secretary and economics professor Scott Bessent explained (1:04) in an interview that in trade wars, the surplus countries always be defeated, because the deficit country (here, the US) has the least to lose."
That is the point. It is a war. Bloodless so far unless a few Wall Street guys defenestrate themselves.
US started this very unnecessary war. We could have gradually pressured NATO countries to spend more on defense, negotiated (/strong-armed) trade deals to reduce deficits, any number of sane sensible measures putting America First, without a sudden war.
Cutting your nose to spite others, even if they lose an arm and a leg, still leaves you without a nose. Or as Gandhi allegedly put it, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
The pain is here. For US middle class, working class, and poor. The rich will no doubt scoop up financial and real assets on the cheap once the massive recession takes hold. That's the aim of every oligarchy.
Long-term, the hope seems to be that companies will in-source manufacturing (and mining? And grow more avocados and rice? And substitute clean Canadian energy with coal-fired plants?)
But that is inefficient and wasteful. As Jim has explained previously, free and fair trade is good. It's hard to see what unfair practices Canada, Mexico, UK or most of EU were following. 50% of S&P revenues came from abroad. Does that sound like US was being taken advantage of?
