Plenty going on in the world. Write about what tickles your fancy. I’m happy that Ovechkin is now four goals away from breaking Gretzky’s goal record. Predictions are now that he will do it on 13 April against the Columbus Blue Jackets. I’m amazed how politics is tarnishing Gretzky’s image right now. He’s “The Great One” for God’s sakes! And Ovi is being wildly cheered on across America. He’s Russian and a close acquaintance of Putin! You gotta love hockey.
Oh, by the way, happy Liberation Day to all you true believers.
TTG
An interesting and detailed video about an unusual application of remote viewing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaobh-a1UEA
JLD,
Good video!
Kind of funny that it opens with a story about RV locating the wreck of the Brig Leander (seems I’ve seen that name somewhere before).
Could someone make a list of what exactly we are being liberated from?
Barack, Bush, Comey, Covidiots, Dr. Jill, Dylan Mulvayney, Fauci, George Floyd, Hilary, Kamala, Karine Jean-Pierre, Mayorkas, MayorPete, Romney, Rosie O’Donnel, Pence, Schiff oh crap he’s still there and so is Schumer, Victoria Nuland, Zelensky.
How did I miss Antifa, BLM and Bud Light?
Laura Wilson –
Nothng yet, Punxatawny Trump hasn’t seen his shadow so far today. But if and when he does we’ll all be free of economic growth, free of any wealth we used to have in the stock markets; plus free of low food and auto prices. The good news is that the resale value of my ten year old Chevy Impala is going to increase dramatically. Unfortunately I won’t be able to take advantage of that as I intend to keep it and bequeath it to my great grandson.
Laura Wilson – the term “Liberation Day” doesn’t really say what it’s all about.
To the genuine horror of almost all economists you’re trying to reverse the deindustrialisation of the US by making imports more expensive and therefore reducing them.
You’re not doing this the usual way. All countries are protectionist – Free Trade’s a myth – but the usual way they do protectionism is by Non Tariff Barriers. Maybe Trump’s having a go at those too. I don’t know. But his intention is to do it mainly by straight tariffs. Imposed in the usual move fast and break things Trumpian way but hell, the slow lane’s for losers in Trump world.
Will it work? It worked for Russia. The difference in the Russian case was that imports were reduced by sanctions imposed from outside rather than tariffs imposed from inside. The effect was the same. Reduction of imports and a real shot in the arm for Russian industry. Trump’s hoping to get the same result.
Definitely worth a try. And tell the horrified economists to go jump in the lake. Not as if their own shopworn recipes have ever worked.
……………………………..
Examples of NTB’s:-
https://www.tradebarriers.org/ntb/non_tariff_barriers#:~:text=Non%2DTariff%20Barriers%20(NTBs),products%20difficult%20and%2For%20costly.
The last NTB on the list, making customs procedures difficult, is used very stylishly by the French:-
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/14/business/the-latest-battle-of-poitiers.html#
That was a while back but the French still employ variants of the technique today, especially if any Brit has the temerity to export goods to them. Old habits die hard.
Ok, I know I promised to ignore you…
But can’t help wondering what exactly was the British video format in the famous video format war at the time? I recall that my prof at the time felt that not necessarily the best format won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war
your NYT article via archive:
https://archive.ph/RKcaC
Alas the entirety of Germany ignores the realists, LeaNder. You can get into trouble in the Heimat if you point out that the country of nie wieder is backing wieder in Ukraine for all it’s worth.
“Nicolai Petro: Will the Nationalists Turn Against Zelensky?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LlIEWkeY7g&ab_channel=GlennDiesen
That Professor works in the States. They still have free speech there so he’s safe researching into how the ultras got to control a country. Ishchenko’s good at this sort of stuff as well but comes at it from a different angle. Try him, Sleboda and that link to the Professor and you’ll be wiser than your fellows.
I’ve been watching a lot of this young historian. He covers most periods in history in an hour or so. He also gives book recommendations at the end.
I know there are better historians out there but for an hour and change he gets most of it on target. I just watched the one on China. I knew most of this already but he throws in some curve balls now and then so it stays interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/@History102-qg5oj/videos
Great April Fool’s joke yesterday:
https://www.realcleardefense.com/2025/04/01/new_us_navy_aircraft_carrier_to_be_named_uss_musk_1101183.html
Got picked up as gospel in the foreign press and almost had me bamboozled for a minute or two.
USS Constellation to be retired at commissioning. FFG62.
not a joke.
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2025/03/uss-constellation-to-be-retired-early.html
Sickening:
“Israel announces expansion of military operation in Gaza to seize ‘large areas’ of land,
ordering residents to leave”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/middleeast/israel-expands-military-operations-gaza-intl-hnk/index.html
Enabled by the U.S.
James was absolutely right.
The U.S. is, in essence, a vassal state of Israel.
Keith Harbaugh,
The fact that Jewish people like Dave Smith (I was going to say “left wing Jews” but Dave Smith is hard libertarian so this is not a left-vs-right thing at all) speaking out about Israel’s undue influence in the US suggests to me that times may be a-changin’. Hopefully.
The Fact that Hamas is now openly killing Palestinians and screwing around and killing hostages is what is sickening. Also sickening is Americans, Canadians and other westerners turning a blind eye to the evil that is Hamas and the masses of Gaza who are brainwashed to want to murder Jews, or worse, supporting such ideology and activity.
Israel has every right to go into Gaza and clean out the hateful scum that occupy it. Only suicidal fools would fail to do so.
That sets one thinking, James.
Gaza is the watershed issue of our time. Too blatant and too visible a mass crime to be ignored or talked away. That big.
After Gaza any pretence of moral credibility the West might have laid claim to vanishes. That much of a watershed. The West is now, to all outside the West and to many in it, the mad dog of the world and that has incalculable results.
In foreign policy the loss of western diplomatic and moral credibility after Gaza is already noticeable. In domestic politics as well this is a fork in the road for westerners. We split, not along the old conflict lines of left or right (as you say, “not a left-vs-right thing at all.”) Nor along the newer conflict lines of woke or the Colonel’s Little House on the Prairie. We split on the bedrock issue of right or wrong. Those who find argument or excuse for deliberately dropping bombs on refugee tents firmly in one camp. Those who do not in the other.
And those who hope to live in the no-man’s-land between the two camps must inevitably belong in the first camp: in this case, what is occurring in Gaza is so blatant and so visible that to look away is to condone.
Are we forced into one camp or the other? Is there a way of belonging to neither and living at ease that way? Il faut cultiver notre jardin, says Voltaire through one of his characters. Ignore politics, ignore what’s happening in the world outside, he was saying. You can do nothing about it. Just get on with your life and forget it all.
Very sensible advice, though these days the world outside tends to intrude on the garden more than is comfortable for most. That aside, Voltaire’s escape doesn’t work here. It would have been difficult, placidly gardening, had the garden happened to be next door to Auschwitz. Our screens ensure we live that close to Gaza. I do not therefore think there’s any way out of belonging to one camp or the other.
So what are the causes of the Gazan atrocities, if we may not look away from those atrocities and ignore them? Is it true that Israel has “undue influence in the US”. Since the US sets western foreign policy overall in the ME that’s a question for all westerners, not just for Americans.
The Colonel was of the view that US support for Israel would continue as long as it was in the interests of US foreign policy to maintain that support. So that’s one cause of Gaza. US foreign policy in the ME. A substantial number of US politicians and officials believe bombing Gaza furthers the pursuit of US interests in the ME. The Colonel called those politicians and officials “the Borg”. So we can partly blame the Borg.
Other causes, or reasons for that US support, are electoral. A substantial part of the US electorate – Evangelicals to Mormons and other varieties of Christian Zionists in between – are committed to Israel for faith reasons. You don’t argue with faith. Just recognise that it’s held and accept that as long as it is held, American politicians have to court that section of the electorate. A few politicians such as Massie seem to be immune from that electoral pressure. Most, from Trump down and right through both parties, must go with it because they cease to be politicians if they don’t. Just how democracy works.
Then pork barrel. The US supplies arms so the arms lobbyists will hope it supplies more. Also some of the money the US gives to Israel will return in the form of donations for US electoral expenses.
The Borg, some faith groups, pork barrel. Those are the main causes of the bombing and ethnic cleansing in the ME. The causes come together to result in an event, the bombing of Gaza, that is as unavoidable as, say, an earthquake. These are the causes, these are the results, one can only say in either case.
Doesn’t mean one has to like it. Just means it’ll inevitably happen whether one likes it or not. And if one doesn’t like it, just hope the mad dog runs out of steam sooner rather than later. As, when one hears of an earthquake, one hopes that it stops before it destroys too much.
That’s a nice bit of philosophy to keep one happy as one forgets about it all and tends to the garden.
Except that it’s not just the US government. It’s all governments in the West including mine. Is it desirable, the very survival of the garden depending on mad dogs? Depending on politicians and officials to whom fellow humans are just bits of flesh to be mashed out of existence ad lib?
Not for me. Not for very many in the West. “Not in our name” I hope the Gazans know, as the mad dogs of the West savage them. Nor to our benefit.
So Hilary’s biggest Oligarch backer (I think I wrote about that waaay back when) is still using Russians(!) on his team. Canada must be really upset with that.
Meanwhile in sunny FLA the snook are biting and the insurance companies are ‘claim, what claim’. Some things never change. Well, the fish are getting bigger, which is nice. Took the boy, all American chow-hound of (now) 6 happy years up to Seminole State Park (GA). Didn’t see any Seminoles. Or Gators. Did see the prettiest red head in years. (happily for me a woodpecker not hen-pecker). Saw a large American (!) Bald Eagle. First one of those I’ve seen this far South in a long time. Didn’t see too many other visitors as the park campsites/rv sites are under construction. Nice cabins though.
GA has some great parks in their system. Highly recommended if you are heading this way any time soon. Some good ones in FL too. Stopped at Fanning Springs SP on the drive home. Crystal clear water. Nice swimming hole near the river.
https://gastateparks.org/Map
Gretzky has shot himself in the foot by firmly nailing his pants to the Trump mast and basically ditching Canada for the US. He was always a Conservative and lived in the US, but had significant business ventures in Canada and at least paid lip service to Canadian patriotism. But his recent sucking up to Trump been outside the realm of politics and frankly has been demeaning (asking if he should be prime minister or governor). As you say, he is “The Great One”, why is he doing this? So now he is paying the price for it since Trump has tanked not only his personal popularity in Canada, but also the rating of anyone who associated themselves with him.
Just to give people an idea of the outrage, Conservative party has tanked in the polls over the last couple of months, going from 45% to 37%, while Liberals shot up from 22% to 44% (a lot of their support comes from left-wing NDP, which went from 18% to 8%). Trump single-handedly turned the Canadian elections from a certain Conservative victory into certain defeat. Trump is toxic in Canada and will be for a long time, even my Conservative buddies are railing against him and associating yourself with him is seen as basically treason. So that’s the context for Gretzky’s demise, it will take a lot for his reputation to recover from this, his actions were against the values of people who supported him the most, small-town and rural Canada.
voislav,
Who cares about being popular with a bunch of beer brained commies in an irrelevant country in the frozen great white north of the hemisphere?
voislav,
Ovi was an outspoken supporter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. With the 2022 invasion, he and other Russian NHL players decided the best course of action was to shut up and just play hockey. It was a wise choice.
Fred,,Hi Great Notes Good to See You. I Know about Your River Experience.. SWMBO,,and I Came Down out of Taho Over to California..Drove Up Past Elk herds into The Red Woods..Hot afternoon..We Parked..By The River I suited Up..Got in..Big But Shallow River..Best thing I Ever Did..At the Time..Refreshed Then Alk the Way up The Oregon Coast..To Lincoln City Stayed Seven days..Bought Tandem Kites..Great Shops..Good Food.,,Drove to Tillamook To The Cheese Factory For A Tour..
That Life..is Good For the Soul Miss It..
Jim,
Thanks for the kind words. First time I camped out West (Sequoia National Forest) I almost got run over in my sleep! From empty campground to LA parking lot all while I snoozed. Fortunately the neighbors had hot coffee at 7am as the new bride said “coffee?” Bacon and Eggs though….Yum!
Next trip out West was just in time to avoid Bike Week in SD. Most of CA being on fire I didn’t make it South in CA again. Next time. Looking into a trip to the Colonel’s old stomping grounds of the Shenandoah Valley again soon. And house hunting, too. Giving up the coast and 2 hurricanes a year for a little more space for me and the pup. Now a healthy 6 y.o. On April Fool’s day no less.
Picked up a book at the library by Paul ham called “the soul”
864 pages with substantial index
Nice paper quite heavy,used it to press a dog ear who remarked it had echoes of deep rhythm.
Anyone here read it.just looking for a short 10 word summary
mcohen –
No clue. The only Paul Ham that I’ve read is the one that wrote about the Battle of Passchendaele. Seems like it would be a long evolution between writing Mil History and then on to humanity’s psyche. Or maybe not?
Tell us what the dog thinks, were there any haikus in that deep rhythm?
Same guy.Looks like he is quite talented.
https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-soul-9780143781356
A haiku i wrote after reading about “zoning out” while sailing a boat
Stillness
The inner sea has no wave
Nor sound of calling gull
No lapping does it have
Against a wooden hull
great, mcohen. Very good.
Very peaceful, appreciated! But can you do one while zoning in on Trump’s Tariffs?
For years I posted my poetry on twitter for free but now you have to subscribe and get a blue tick.No more
What we are seeing is the end of the freebie.And the race to the bottom of great American paywall beyond the fairytale wonderland of the internet.
Musk is a good example.
He used his wonderland money to get into nuts and bolts and is finding the going hard so he decides it is time to play hardball.Tariffs will help but what exactly is he selling that is worth buying.Electric cars running on rare earth resource hungry batteries.
Why bother.
Bicycles and public transport are the way to go.even a horse with no name will do.
they say
the grass is greener on mars
and you may
drive electric cars
the red trees
grow so high
there glass leaves
glow brightly in the sky
the deer
are somewhat mechanical
they have shiny black hair
eyes that are atomical
a soulless substitution
for the garden of eden
where the tree of destitution
bears fruit that cannot be eaten
here on this moons barren plain
mankinds first stepping stone
a place of no rain
I atone
for the forgotten earth
a once blue now yellow sky
our place of birth
now bled dry.
mcohen –
As much as I appreciate seeing it here, you shouldn’t be giving your verse for free. If the East Coast rags won’t publish you, then try Poetry Northwest out here in the great state of Washington. I bet they’ll snap up this Mars poem in a heartbeat. And probably your prose on electric car batteries also.
Absolutely prolific writer, I wasn’t even aware of how much. Thanks, mcohen, interesting. Somewhere around here I have his “2014”. Didn’t even know his other books around that topic.
https://tinyurl.com/prolific-Paul-Ham
The soul was probably the most interesting detail in Swedish Lutheran theologian Anders Nygren’s masterwork on Eros & Agape, or Athens and Rome. 😉 I read ages ago. Wonder if he is aware of Nygren’s Greek excavations, so to speak.
New tarrifs just dropped for price-ins. Take our trade deficit, divide by 2 and viola, that’s the the tarrif % with a minimum of 10%. Oddly Russia didn’t make the list.
Lesly,
Oddly all those countries have been waging a trade war against the US and the only president to do something about it is Drumpf. Even odder is someone on this blog not knowing Russia is still sanctioned by the nation and thus there is no trade to tariff. Maybe Orange Man will open up trade in caviar and fur coats.
Fred and Lesly,
The worldwide trade/tariff system is extremely complicated. It’s not near as simple as Trump lays out. For instance, Viet Nam does not have a 90% tariff rate on US goods. Rates on certain goods vary from 5% to 20% A lot of the goods that are tariffed are just not exported to Viet Nam. Footwear from Viet Nam is tariffed at more than 10% by the US. We import a hell of a lot more from Viet Nam than we export to Viet Nam. Makes sense. The Vietnamese can’t afford a lot of what the US exports.
I find it hard to believe that we are applying these tariffs so broadly rather than tailoring them to certain products. Seems to me that Trump is pissed about the trade deficits more than the tariffs. The simple solution would be to stop importing all that stuff, but American consumers wouldn’t stand for that. Blocking imports would force us to either produce the goods ourselves or do without.
It’s true that applying tariffs to Russia would be useless. The tariffs he mentioned for Russia would be applied to countries that still import sanctioned goods from Russia. It’s a totally different regime than reciprocal tariffs and has nothing to do with what Trump discussed today.
TTG,
The simple solution was to do nothing, which is what all Trump’s predecessors did. It is why we have a rust belt instead of a manufacturing heartland. Those screaming loudest are the ones whose oxygen 8s being gored.
Fred,
Doing nothing would have been better than these tariffs. Truly reciprocal and/or targeted tariffs would have been better. This tariff list looks like it was compiled by a pack of drunken imbeciles. All one has to do is take a close look at the list and see what the trade between those countries and the US to see the absurdity. Whatever industries Trump wants to bring back to the US should be targeted with investments and incentives. Tariffs used to support those investments and incentives would make sense.
If these tariffs stand, I think there’s going to be a big uptick in smuggling and the black market. Americans will not just bite the bullet and refuse to buy foreign goods across the board. CPB is going to be too busy dealing with that to concentrate on deporting aliens.
TTG,
1. Every country gets to tariff us and that’s aok because tariffs bad and they’ll suffer all those bad affects from imposing tariffs. Some day, not yet in all these years.
2. It’s been what, one day? Boo hoo to the market place.
Black market? You mean Canada and Mexico will once again (or still) help China dump commodities and semifinished goods on us via some method? Just like they were doing while GWB was in office, and Obama too? A bunch of MI democrats, including a couple I campaigned for, made careers out of complaining about that.
Customs will be going after the fraud and counterfeiting just like they’ve been doing. Maybe even more effectively. Most major firms, especially with product liability risk, will be going after the same, as well as branding violations, as they have done for years.
Fred,
We have been applying tariffs to a lot of other countries just as they’ve been applying tariffs to our goods. The average across the board is around 3%.
I do agree with you about the market. No need to panic now. That thing is built on little more than hopes and fears. We haven’t seen any concrete effects from this trade war yet. It’ll take months, but I doubt we’ll see legions of tool and die makers suddenly pop out of the woodwork or factories sprouting in those months. We’ll just have to either suck up the inflation and higher prices or just do without those foreign goods. At least Michelin tires are made in the Carolinas. That’s the only expense I’m looking at this year.
TTG,
Take a look at the 10 year treasury and decline in interest. That’s a huge savings given our debt load. Issue the new, retire the old. Save the cash flow.
Fred,
If this is really about a trade war and not the bond market / national debt you should know Russia sold $3b more in goods last year than we sold them — in spite of sanctions. Just like Europe. Why not sanction a country like Russia? Pick a lane.
https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia-and-eurasia/russia
“U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024. U.S. goods exports to Russia in 2024 were $526.1 million, down 12.3 percent ($73.5 million) from 2023.”
Tariff a country like Russia, rather.
Sanctions drove their exports here to essentially zero. There’s nothing to tariff.
Fred, I can’t reply to you directly.
“Sanctions drove their exports here to essentially zero. There’s nothing to tariff.”
There’s $3 BILLION to tariff. That’s a lot more than an island inhabited by penguins that made Trump’s naughty list. Assuming Trump’s team did what the bots suggested, at a minimum we could’ve tacked a 10% tariff on Russia. Maybe Russia is special.
Fred –
There’s plenty of Russkii vodka, Russkii uranium and russkii gasoline to tariff. But there is nothing to tariff in those unihabited islands.
https://bsky.app/profile/nothoodlum.bsky.social
Lesly –
The bozo-in-chief did include Diego Garcia on the list. A critical US airfield, nobody lives there but US and British military. Also included, another major military base in Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. And several uninhabited islands: Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Indian Ocean, and Jan Mayen Island in the Arctic Ocean.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is taking a big dive. Say Sayonara to your 401K or your IRA. But don’t worry about Don the Con, he and his oligarch pals bet on hedge funds and made big bucks while investments by the average American are shrinking.
leith,
“On 3 October 2024, the UK and Mauritius issued a joint statement, affirming Mauritius’ sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago while granting the UK continued control over Diego Garcia for 99 years.”
Intertube research. That was a nice FU from our noble allies in Europe and the Republic of Mauritius
The Heard Island and McDonald Islands are owned by Australia. Who is busy selling climate change coal to China while whining about losing their USAID funding to their universities. Which we never should have funded to begin with.
“Oddly Russia didn’t make the list.”
Not so odd, actually. Russia/USA trade is insignificant due to the heavy sanctions already imposed upon Russia by USA.
But it isn’t zero because there are some things that the Russians can export to the USA that Washington would find very difficult to source from anywhere else.
Well, if it’s indispensable then its indispensable, and Trump isn’t about to cut off his nose to spite his face by slapping tariffs on goods from Russia that it absolutely can’t do without and can’t get from anywhere else.
That, plus the obvious fact that the Russians don’t apply a tariff on any USA goods going into Russia (why bother, it is next to nothing anyway), means that Trump not only doesn’t have a reason to apply tariffs on Russia, he actually has a powerful incentive not to.
Yeah, Right,
Trade with the islands of Heard and McDonald is truly nonexistent yet those uninhabited islands are singled out to be tariffed. The same with the island of Diego Garcia (BIOT). The French overseas territory St. Pierre et Miquelon (population 5,800) now has the highest tariff rates in the world at 99%. Their exports are valued at just $3.5 million dollars a year, far below Russian exports to the US.
This whole tariff regime is the result of a half-assed use of an LLM AI that relied on internet domains rather than countries with economies. That’s why Reunion (.re) and Gibraltar (.gi) are listed separately from France and the UK. The only human input was to leave Russia and North Korea off the list.
TTG, it’s not about the VALUE of the goods that the USA imports from Russia, but about how VALUABLE those good are.
That the value of goods from Miquelon is $3.5million doesn’t matter. What matters is whether – or not, as the case may be – the USA is capable of “import-substitution”.
If it is then apply tariffs, which will encourage the consumer to “buy American” rather than to “buy the imported stuff”.
If it isn’t then tariffs make no sense, because all that tariff will achieve will be to raise prices for the consumer without any real possibility of boosting American production.
Seems a pretty simple concept, so I’m not sure why it eludes you.
Yeah, Right,
Our biggest import from Russia is fertilizer (< $1 billion). We get most of our fertilizer from Canada (90%) from Canada. We also get some from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. Russian fertilizer is not that valuable or irreplaceable. We imported $3.5 million of seafood from Miquelon in July 2024. It was a one shot deal. We got nothing for over 10 years before that and nothing after that. Tariffs on that island are meaningless, just as meaningless as that penguin island and Diego Garcia. Don't waste your time trying to make sense of this LLM AI derived list of tariffs.
Me: “What matters is whether – or not, as the case may be – the USA is capable of “import-substitution” ”
TTG: “We get most of our fertilizer from Canada (90%) from Canada. We also get some from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.”
Something tells me that you don’t understand the meaning of “import substitution”.
It doesn’t mean “we stop importing from Country A and import instead from Country B”
It means “we stop importing that stuff and instead make it ourselves”.
Your retort is the former, not the latter.
That there are alternative sources of fertilizer on the world stage is not something I dispute, but it is also something that is irrelevant to Trump.
What matters is whether 0r not a tariff can stimulate a resurgence in America’s own industries.
If the answer is “Yes” then do it, and if the answer is “No” then don’t do it.
You last post admits that the answer is “No”.
TTG: “That’s why Reunion (.re) and Gibraltar (.gi) are listed separately from France and the UK. ”
You might want to refer to the list of proposed tariffs, because you will see that “France” isn’t in there.
There is a single tariff applied uniformly over the EU and, last time I looked, please correct me, France was still a member state of the EU.
Reunion (and French Guiana, French Polynesia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, etc) get their own entry because they lie outside the EU region and therefore can – and do – apply their own tariffs on US goods that are separate from the tariffs imposed by Brussels.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon – just to give one example – imposes a 99% tariff on USA goods, which is why Trump slapped it with a 50% tariff.
But France itself is part of the EU, which means it is complicit on a 39% tariff on USA goods, leading to Trump hitting the EU (including France) with a 20% tariff.
Yeah, Right
Saint Pierre and Miquelon imports near nothing from the US. The island exported a one time shipment of probably lobsters in July 2024. They import around $100K of US goods. Trump’s imbecilic algorithm assigned a theoretical 99% tariff to the island when there was none before. No Trump economic whiz kid took an in depth look at any of this stuff.
Yes, I can use Copilot just as well as you can.
But, honestly, if I wanted to explain why your claim is incorrect I’d go straight to Drew Pavlou’s X account and argue the point with him.
After all, why argue with the chattering monkey when I can argue with the organ-grinder?
Yeah, Right,
Where do you think i got most of that info on Saint Pierre and Miquelon?
At a first guess, I’d say from here:
https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/world/story/99-trade-tariff-trumps-tariff-algorithm-triggers-heaviest-duty-on-this-french-island-critics-call-it-insane-470645-2025-04-04
Dicier than previously reported:
“Starliner’s flight to the space station
was far wilder than most of us thought”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/
Trump’s tariffs will “liberate” quite a bit money from US households.
https://asiatimes.com/2025/04/trumps-liberation-day-tariffs-will-hit-us-hardest/
“Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs will hit US hardest
Equilibrium modeling shows the US will be the big trade war loser of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ reciprocal tariffs”
“The tariffs decrease US GDP by US$438.4 billion (1.45%). Divided among the nation’s 126 million households, GDP per household decreases by $3,487 per year. That is larger than the corresponding decreases in any other country.”
TonyL,
So every household is buying every item being tariffed, according to AsiaTimes Woke Math. GDP times (100%+tariff%) divided by households is rather an asinine calculation, except when used for clickbait.
Fred,
When you have no argument against something, it’s “woke”?
As quoted above, the estimated GDP reduction is US$438.4 billion (1.45%). Per household is just the average number that makes it easy for individual to visualize how much the impact is. If you don’t like that then use “US$438.4 billion for the whole country”. Is that less “woke” for you?
TonyL,
“Just a visualization” is copium for folks who don’t want to look at what is important, like the 10year Treasuries interest rate that just went down. Meaning we spend less financing our debt. That’s a win.
TonyL,
It’s some hostile (to Trump) economist’s opinion, at least I hope it was at least some hostile economist and not some even bigger class of idiot, like a reporter.
As someone who is an economist by training, there is a reason why it is called, “The Dismal Science”. Economists are often wrong, biased and ideological.
So no one with a half a brain is going to get excited over any figure you toss out there that disparages Trump’s plans. The fairest assessment is that no one really knows what effect the tariffs will have on the economy as a whole. There are arguments to be in all directions as to short term impacts. Long term, there is a solid case to be made for strengthening the US economy, by a lot.
One problem here is that the US has allowed itself to become so out of shape, that it is going to take some pain getting back to where we should be/need to be. We can face that pain now, or face greater pain in the future, or die. No pain/no gain. Anyone who tells you that life is going to be easy street and you can have everything with no effort or pain is a liar, a foreign agent from a competing country, or a democrat (redundancy alert)
Canada with nuclear weapons?
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/international/2025/03/29/should-canada-explore-developing-a-nuclear-weapons-program/
“Should Canada explore developing a nuclear weapons program?
…
In the current geopolitical environment, Canadians need to start thinking about “difficult questions” around national security, Jean-François Bélanger, assistant professor of Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College, said in a Tuesday interview with BNN Bloomberg.
…
Bélanger argued that there may come a time when Canada can no longer rely on more powerful military allies for protection, and that creating a nuclear weapons program of its own may be a necessary deterrent against the threat of foreign aggression.”
He said developing nuclear capability does not necessarily need to happen now, but Canada should be thinking about “shoring up” its nuclear latency “to the point where if we are in need and if we decide (to) as a nation… we’ll be ready to go.”
A lot of what the US exports are services and trading partners can curtail that easily with their own tariffs and that will hurt a lot of large US companies. The world nowadays is very interconnected and these Trumpian brain farts will cause problems. I also think that the only reason Trump is doing this is because he can, even on dubious grounds. It is an ego trip for him and he will love getting calls from other countries asking for exemptions, which he will grant for a fee. The problem thought is that once you start to unravel this global system, you have no idea how it will impact the global economy, but there are large risks and even the intended consequences will be damaging. And then there are the unintended ones. Once all those 401K’s take a haircut, the politics will change and already has. One of the most odious politicians in Florida, Randy Fine, won his election with half the margin that Trump got. There is a big message there.
Lars,
What is the difference between paper losses and realized losses?
What is the average turnout in a special election in FL?
Why has the US put up with our allies imposing tariffs on our products while our border was wide open to theirs? Which ally lost massively because they imposed tariffs? Or is the US the only country to which that happens.
TTG, wow! Your comment about Liberation Day, right on. Dow at this moment down 1426 and oil down $5 a barrel.
Look out below!
Oh will you look at that those #s changed. Follow the advice of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic.
Could be interesting when it comes to Northern Ireland. An arrangement called the Windsor Framework was arrived at for Northern Ireland after Brexit.
“At the same time it (the Framework) fully preserves access for Northern Ireland businesses to the EU market, alongside their full unfettered access to the whole UK market, ensuring a unique set of opportunities for businesses and citizens in Northern Ireland.”
And a unique set of opportunities it will be. I don’t even want to have to start thinking about what will happen in Northern Ireland if the EU goes in for retaliatory tariffs and we in the UK don’t. The border isn’t a policed customs border. The Irish shopping sprees in Belfast will be biglier than ever before. The smuggling too. There’ll not be a trader in the Six Counties who doesn’t bless the day.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63fccf07e90e0740d3cd6ed6/The_Windsor_Framework_a_new_way_forward.pdf
The comparative of bigly used in deference to the US President who will have arranged the bonanza if this trade war comes to anything. But apart from that this looks like an unequal contest:-
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=USA-EU_-_international_trade_in_goods_statistics#
The US share of world trade is only some 10%. It’s a continent that could fuel and feed itself entirely if put to it. They might have to go steady on bananas.
Even were the tariff rounds to lead to a global trade war the US would therefore not be hard hit. Its internal conflicts are spectacular but are unlikely to lead to its fragmentation.
The opposition?
The EU share of world trade is some 30%, down from 34% recently but still leaving it vulnerable to trade disruption. It’s a continent that cannot fuel itself unless the Energiewende takes off more than it looks like doing. It can’t feed itself without fertiliser and that needs fossil fuel to produce. It’s not very well off for raw materials and it now has less control than before over the sources of some of its raw materials.
It’s now paying more for its oil than most countries because sanctions workarounds are expensive. It pays three or four times more for its natural gas than many of its competitors. Its internal conflicts might or might not lead to its fragmentation but they do mean it is politically frail.
No contest. The European Union is in no state to take on the United States in a trade war. I seldom listen to BBC radio now but in the old days they used to chant the football scores like this:-
Europoodles, 0: The Donald, 1.
Are we having fun yet?
TTG and Friends..I Got The News Today ,,My Wife Heidi ..Is being Transferred
From The Hospital To Hospice care at The Gardens,,,Monday..I am So Happy..
Thank You..
JIM
Jim,
Happy for you, too. Wishing Heidi the best of health!
TonyL Thank you fo the Thought Best Regards..
JIM
be strong, be well Jim.
I visit our central graveyard a lot again lately. It’s close, and it is quite beautiful. Here is the sculpture of a very old but forgotten grave that found a sponsor, who buried their son there.
https://tinyurl.com/La-Faucheuse
Our Sensenmann or your Grim Reaper are male, La Faucheuse is female.
This is what sponsorship of a grave means from Wikipedia’s site of the graveyard:
Initiated by the city conservator Hiltrud Kier in 1981 and now adopted by many cities, the institute of grave sponsorship has been established. A sponsor chooses a listed grave whose right of use has expired and then maintains and preserves it. In return, the sponsor has the right to be buried in this grave. Usage fees are only incurred after a new burial. …
A sponsored grave and one of the most famous gravestones on Melaten is the Grim Reaper created by the sculptor August Schmiemann for the merchant Johann Müllemeister. He holds an hourglass in his right hand and a scythe in his left. The godparents of this grave, the Steinnus family of stonemasons, had their young son Martin buried there. They decorated the grave with a frog, in reference to his nickname “Fröschlein” (little frog).
It’s a big graveyard, and I keep discovering its more hidden corners, collecting signs/symbols of the transitoriness of us of.
LeaNder…..Thank You For Your Words of Encouragement
And Support….Be Strong ,,Is a Logo I often Use..
We all Know..We Could Not Have Survived..This Long…
Without Being Strong..In Body..Mind..Soul..And Spirit,
,THE
Encouragement and Prayers of Others…and Faith in a Living God..For Me…Personally…..
I Read an Found your Article Very Iteresting..Thanks for The
Photo..Impressive Setting…
It Reminded Me That in All Our Long Trips..Up or Down The West Coast..Or Locally..That Heidi And I Have Stopped In many
Tows or Areas..To xplore he Cemeterys..See The ames,,Dates..History..Often The Little Churchs Are Open..For Choir Pratice.And We Have Been Blessed…Many Times..
Finally..Locally..Here ..I Our Nieghborhood..Close By..A few blocks,,Is the Very Large Military Cemetery. Beautifully ,,
Mowed.and Maintained…
e Have Often Walked There..To Explore.From The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier..To Civil War Veterans..To Memorials to
The Dead Servicemen and Women..Whose Remains..Have Come into the Shipyard..Aboard Damaged Ships..During WW 2
Sadly There Are Few Visitors..Now..
So..Thank You LeaNder..For Inspiring Good Memorys,,
May You and Yours>>Be Safe..Be Strong..And Covered by
Grace,,
JIM
Jim –
Hope you can visit her there once your DIFF is cured.
Gee….
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/trump-administration-fires-director-national-security-agency/index.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/04/03/nsa-director-gen-timothy-haugh-fired-along-with-top-civilian-deputy/
Wonder what the issue(s) were.
Politics, technology, or management?
Of course, historically NSA has been both apolitical and closed-mouth (“Never Say Anything”).
I am sure NSA is in shock.
One wonders if the NSA sex chat scandal had anything to do with this.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/national-security-agency-internal-chatroom-transgender-surgeries-polyamory
https://www.city-journal.org/article/nsa-whistleblower-trans-gender-ideology-dei
Concerning the NSA firings,
Senator Mark Warner criticized them, which produced this response:
https://x.com/dogeai_gov/status/1907990347768008997
The Economist magazine calls it “Ruination Day”. Saying “Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded” econ.st/3YbbFjq
Although their cover art was too kind to Trump. Did not show his shoe lifts, nor his tiny hand,s nor his hair weave toupee, nor his tangerine-colored bronzer.
Leith,
The Economist is often wrong. What they are really bitching about is that the Left’s colonialism/mercantilism is coming is being brought to an end by Trump.
What is the Left’s colonialism/mercantilism (aka “globalism”)? Send US manufacturing jobs overseas so dogs working in sweatshops and other low wage/low benefit/low regulated/low safety environments do the production and then send the products to the states for lower priced sale.
Just like you guys want an open border so peons can pick your produce and clean your hotel rooms, you want to exploit the labor of foreign countries so you can have cheap stuff and US corporations practicing globalism can make bigger profits – and here’s the kicker, all the while you pat yourself on the back for being a moral caring person.
Meanwhile, the globalism only goes one way. The foreign countries slap tariffs on our stuff and it isn’t purchased over there. But yeah, just keep repeating the mantra, “Orange Man bad”.
Eric –
Hoover got us into a depression. FDR got us out.
Papa Bush got us mired in recession. Clinton got us out.
Junior Bush also got us stuck in recession. Obama got us out.
Trump 45 got us into recession. Biden got us out. Sleepy Joe had nine straight quarters of record stock market gains and job growth.
It took your genius businessman Trump 47 less than two months to blow that up and usher us into a new recession.
Starting to notice a trend? Orange Man ain’t bad, he’s just a moron. Cunning yes, but still a moron.
Leith,
You really do believe in fairy tales, don’t you?
I now relegate your opinions on economic topics to what they are, and perhaps, even intended to be, jokes. As such, they are actually mildly amusing.
Eric –
Trump’s historical forgetfulness, and your endorsement of it, is a liability. Not just for MAGA, but for our entire beloved country.
Leith – the new Administration is restricted by law on what it can do with tariffs. Trump can only impose reciprocal tariffs and those, it seems, only by making use of emergency powers. Only Congress has the right to impose blanket tariffs – which would be far more suitable – and Congress is very unlikely to do that.
Also, he has to move fast. It would be far better if tariffs were introduced slowly, with notification well in advance. That gives the tariffed country time to redirect its trade. It gives American industry time to gear up for production.
But that slow and orderly imposition of tariffs is not possible for the Trump administration. For internal political reasons he has to move fast. So this crash programme of what are the wrong sort of tariffs anyway is the best he can do.
That leaves out of the discussion the question of whether the tariff lever is the right lever to pull in the first place.
Hudson reckons tariffs are wrong in principle and I believe he takes most orthodox economists along with him for once. Me, I believe that’s incorrect and that tariffs, or NTB’s of various sorts, are essential if a country is to maintain or recover a stable industrial base.
Shan’t argue the case here but if one does believe that tariffs or other impedances to imports are a sensible lever to pull, then the way Trump’s pulling that lever is the only way he can. Congress won’t let him pull it any other way.
It might just work you know. It it doesn’t then the United States will gradually slide down into the same condition the UK has been in for a while. Broke.
EO,
Trump has great leeway in applying tariffs. He could have chosen much lower rates and more targeted tariffs. Maybe he wanted to create as much world turmoil as possible and just see what happens. Maybe he wants countries to come to him one at a time to seek some kind of bargain. Maybe this is American Sakoku. America first. America alone.
Congress should control the tariffs, but they won’t. That would mean crossing Trump and getting primaried out in the next election. No Republican (or not enough) is going to risk losing their cushy elected job to do that.
Look who got a Covidian choice today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14571559/Fauci-wife-Grady-Alaska-Kennedy.html
TTG,
“This tariff list looks like it was compiled by a pack of drunken imbeciles. All one has to do is take a close look at the list and see what the trade between those countries and the US to see the absurdity”
That sums it up.
Does Trump want a trade war or is he bluffing now and hoping to negotiate later? China has responded with 34% tariffs on imports of US goods. So now he got the trade war going.
A very thorough, almost exhaustive, essay by Christopher Mellon on over classification of imagery regarding UAP.
Mellon has deep understanding of the issues at play here.
I don’t know who is right, but I think his essay is worth some consideration.
https://thedebrief.org/will-the-declassification-task-force-or-president-trump-compel-dod-to-release-its-trove-of-unclassified-uap-videos/
As if a great deal of this stuff wasn’t, if not exactly foreseen, at least forecast or imagined:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io68bndTR6c
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/how-nafta-lost-democrats-the-south
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-election-working-class-trade-tpp-trade-democrats-214219/
Forgive me please for not engaging sooner but I’ve been somewhat preoccupied:
https://www.weather.gov/lzk/svr0325.htm
https://idrivearkansas.com/
https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/lsr/#AR/202504020500/202504060459/010110
Media of course isn’t reporting any of this piddling stuff as there’s a Trump “Tie to the Stake & Immolate!” show to be attended to.
Now yeah, yeah TTG and Likemindeds I realize y’all are thinking me probably hollering hypocritically for FEMA but as we in the know, know:
https://areaocho.com/fema-refresher/
And then there’s the little bit of sanguine -ness came in the genes from way back – at least those’ve us who’ve made it thus far:
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/derechos-squall-lines-downburstsmicrobursts-and-rogue-winds-7731/
Don’t worry any o’you unnecessarily, you’ll not be bothered by any of it on this here blog most especially but neither will the US Media Boys & Girls & Boygirls or Girlboys be either. It’ll all continue to be unceasingly, Destroy Trump!
JK/AR,
The weather down south has been the lead story on nationwide broadcast news every night. You haven’t been forgotten, even with the self-induced tariffs of retribution going on.
Anyway, I hope you, your family and neighbors are safe. Don’t know why that weather is sticking around down there.
U.S. drone strikes against drug cartels in Mexico?
This is clearly a hot issue.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/04/09/mexico-warns-against-potential-us-drone-strikes-cartels.html