True dat!

 

Found on X.com:

Peter

The real impact of President Trump's tariffs

 

Jeff Childers points out that the tariffs on imports that President Trump imposed yesterday not only level the economic playing field, they overturn a decades-old system of trade that's become wildly warped and twisted in favor of others while being detrimental to the United States.

It would be easy to dismiss yesterday’s announcement as dry, economic arcana — tariffs, trade deficits, bilateral agreements, country-by-country charts, and economic reports. But don’t be fooled by all the paperwork. What Trump did wasn’t just a historic across-the-board trade action.

It was a once-in-a-century power shift.

To understand how truly historic it was, look back to Bretton Woods, 1944 — the postwar deal where America agreed to carry the world’s economic burdens in exchange for geopolitical dominance.

After the devastation of WWII, the United States promised to help rebuild Europe and Japan, by opening our previously protected markets to foreign goods, keeping our tariffs low to nonexistent, providing the world’s reserve currency, and underwriting global security with American military power.

In return, other countries were supposed to gradually liberalize their economies, buy American goods, and play by the rules. But they never did.

Instead, they took our postwar deal —designed to help them— and ran with it. They piled up tariffs, non-tariff barriers, VAT taxes, and trade cheats while the U.S. kept its markets wide open.

For decades, the American working class footed the bill while foreign economies fattened themselves, and American elites made billions facilitating and perpetuating the grift. That was globalism. It’s not an ideology— it is a business model. And Trump just crushed the model.

He didn’t just slap tariffs on a few industries, as has always been done before. Instead, he:

• Imposed the first across-the-board tariff on all imports in modern U.S. history (with certain exceptions).
• Reversed the postwar deal by demanding reciprocity rather than charity.
• Linked trade to national security, manufacturing independence, and economic sovereignty.
• Gave himself a live, adjustable tariff dashboard to pressure every foreign government, one-on-one.

In short, Trump didn’t “adjust policy” — he dismantled Bretton Woods.

For the first time since 1945, the United States is no longer offering up its consumer market as a global welfare program. Trump’s not playing the age-old game of whack-a-mole, with its endless unproductive diplomacy, swanky secret summits in Alpine resorts, and backroom G7 handshakes.

No, he’s negotiating right out in the open. Holding a sledgehammer of tariffs, leverage, and a crystal clear message: Open your markets to us, or pay dearly for access to ours.

That is why foreign governments, corporate media, and the parasite class are howling. The postwar free ride is over. The host finally vomited up the parasite. And the Bretton Woods era is finally finished.

There's more at the link.

Childers also points out that America's tariffs on our trading partners are not yet anywhere near their tariffs on our products.  If their corporations want to avoid the impact of these new tariffs, the solution is simple.

Trump made two main points. First, taking his critics head on, he insisted tariffs will ultimately lower prices for Americans: “We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”

In other words, he’s shaking off the ticks.

Next, Trump means to revitalize our infected body politic. He repeatedly explained how our once world-class manufacturing sector has been hollowed out, and our once vital industrial cities have been reduced to smoking ruins. It’s a valid point his critics mostly ignore, because they cannot argue the inarguable.

Trump intends to reverse America’s long, slow slide into industrial oblivion.

And he offered a simple solution to any foreign companies hurt by the tariffs: a generous invitation. “To any company that objects to our common sense reciprocal tariffs… my answer is very simple: If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America,” the President said.

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country… this will indeed be the golden age of America,” Trump said.

It’s already working. Late last night, for example, Israeli officials indignantly tweeted that it had immediatly deleted all its tariffs on American goods, and demanded why Trump’s new Israel tariffs weren’t canceled yet ... Expect a lot more of this.

Judging by the anguished screaming coming from many of our trading partners, they really thought they could blackmail President Trump into abandoning (or at least drastically scaling back) his tariff initiative.  Now that he's gone through with it (and isn't finished yet, because he has the power to adjust tariffs up or down in future against any trading partner that tries to play fast and loose with the new system of trade), they have a simple choice.

Effectively, it's an economic application of the time-honored Golden Rule:  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".  If they want the USA to charge lower tariffs on their exports, then they must charge lower tariffs on what the USA exports to them.  Quid pro quo.  Treat us the way you want to be treated.  If you insist on imposing an economic burden on us, we'll do the same to you.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain how that's unfair . . .

Peter

One can only salute her courage

 

A highly rated fencer "took a knee" in a Maryland tournament rather than face a transgender opponent.

Women’s fencer Stephanie Turner refused a match against a transgender opponent at the Cherry Blossom Open in Maryland this past weekend, opting to take a knee instead.

. . .

“I knew what I had to do because USA Fencing had not been listening to women’s objections regarding [its gender eligibility policy],” Turner said.  “I took a knee immediately at that point. Redmond was under the impression that I was going to start fencing. So when I took the knee, I looked at the ref and said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do this. I am a woman, and this is a man, and this is a women’s tournament. And I will not fence this individual.”

“Redmond didn’t hear me, and he comes up to me, and he thinks that I may be hurt, or he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He asks, ‘Are you OK?’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry. I have much love and respect for you, but I will not fence you,” she added.

Even though Redmond warned Turner that she would likely be disqualified for refusing to compete, she accepted her fate anyway. Indeed, minutes after her refusal, the referees gave Turner the black card penalty, and she was expelled from the tournament.

. . .

USA Fencing defended its transgender and non-binary athlete policy as a means for inclusion.

“The policy was designed to expand access to the sport of fencing and create inclusive, safe spaces. The policy is based on the principle that everyone should have the ability to participate in sports and was based upon the research available of the day,” it said in a statement.

“We respect the viewpoints on all sides and encourage our members to continue sharing them with us as the matter evolves. It’s important for the fencing community to engage in this dialogue, but we expect this conversation to be conducted respectfully, whether at our tournaments or in online spaces. The way to progress is by respectful discussion based in evidence,” it added.

Turner acknowledged that she will face backlash for her decision ... “It will probably, at least for a moment, destroy my life. I don’t think that it’s going to be easy for me from now on going to fencing tournaments. I don’t think it’s going to be easy for me at practice,” Turner said. “It’s very hard for me to do this.”

There's more at the link.

Of course, I agree with her position, which is medically and biologically unassailable.  One's sex - and, yes, one's gender too, despite protests from the "woke" - is determined by one's chromosomes.  A man can undergo all the sex-change surgery he wants, and a woman likewise, but their chromosomes will remain as they were at birth.  Changing the outward appearance cannot and does not change the underlying person.  For anyone or any body (sports or otherwise) to argue otherwise is to defy science, to spit in the face of reality.

We're going to have to continue to confront this evil twisting of reality and denial of truth for years to come, because those behind it are diabolically persistent in trying to overturn science in favor of their own brand of pseudo-science.  Congratulations to Ms. Turner for upholding the truth and refusing to be cowed by falsehood.  May her example motivate many others to do likewise.

As Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out:

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

One may safely assume that Ms. Turner will not be "easy to control".  Excellent!

Peter

Lawdog voices an increasing concern

 

I'm sure most of my readers have read The Lawdog Files - either the old blog, or his books.  He's a personal friend of long standing.  Lawdog is now writing on Substack, and a lot more frequently, too.  Do yourself a favor and bookmark his new online home, and visit it frequently.

Here are excerpts from one of his recent essays, which I endorse completely.

There are a whole bunch of 50-70 year-olds in the United States who fought the Cold War in dark alleys, midnight ports, and moonlit rooftops with knives, brass knuckles, and silenced pistols.

There are a whole bunch of 30-50 year-olds in the United States who fought vicious CQC battles in places like Mogadishu, Tora Bora, Fallujah, Najaf, and Mazar E Sharif.

There are 20-somethings from places like Compton, El Paso, Chicago, Detroit, Tiajuana, “the barrio”, “the ghetto”, and “the heights” who have stainless-steel teeth and thousand yard stares.

There are uncounted numbers of immigrants who have come here from war-torn hell-holes — and brought the skills and attitudes that enabled them to survive along.

On top of all that — America is the only country that I know of where a man of good record can walk into a school, hand over cold hard cash, and get a weekend of training that Special Forces in the Third World are envious of.

This is what I’m worried about.

I’m worried that when Biff the Hygienically-Challenged and his Coterie of Fanatics decide that sucker-punching neo-nazis just isn’t enough — or torching electric cars doesn’t have that same rush — and mission creep themselves into Proper Fanatical Stupidity, that some truly scary people are going to start whacking and stacking in response.

I don’t want to find myself standing over what’s left of a coyote attack and suddenly realizing that unless coyotes are carrying knives, some unsettlingly well-trained monster has just decided that he has had enough, and has gone hunting.

Y’all should be worried about this, too.

There's more at the link.  Go read it all.  It's worth it.

I fit Lawdog's fourth paragraph quoted above.  The group of friends we've gathered here in north Texas includes representatives of his first and second paragraphs, too:  and most of us have added the training mentioned in his fifth paragraph to that we received from our respective armed forces during our previous lives, incarnations and careers.

We've all seen the growing propensity to anarchic, extremist violence among certain segments of our population.  We're all worried by it . . . and we've all taken steps to ensure that if said segments of our population attempt to get frisky in our general direction, we'll be ready, willing and (very) able to do something about it.  The same can be said for a fairly sizable proportion of the residents of the small town where we live.

 Therefore, around here, we don't have too many worries about squirrelly extremists.  However, where you live, can you say the same thing?  If not, go read the whole of Lawdog's article, and think about where you stand (or sit, or whatever).

Food for thought.

Peter

Will realism trump idealism in Ukraine?

 

James Howard Kunstler appears to think so.

The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms. You can tell because The New York Times published a gigantic piece Sunday detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA actually ran all of Ukraine’s tactical operations out of a base in Wiesbaden, Germany — after building a colossal Ukraine war machine post our 2014 color revolution in Kiev. Since the very start of the hot war in 2022, we did all the targeting for the weapons we gave them and planned their every move. What a surprise! (Not.)

The motive behind all that, as conceived by US neo-cons and NATO neo-morons, was to “weaken” Russia, bust it up, and seize its resources. All the sanctions piled on only induced Russia into an import-replacement campaign that actually strengthened its economy, while the war led to a revolution in Russian war-fighting tactics and advanced weaponry. Now, the whole thing is ending in Ukraine’s defeat and the West’s humiliation.

The Times could have published this in 2023-24, but it would have been a major embarrassment for “Joe Biden” and his shadow managers moving into the election. They put it out just now because the jig is up and the paper desperately needs to pretend that it’s ahead of events to preserve the last shreds of its credibility.

Mr. Trump, the uber-realist, knows that the Russians are going to roll up in Ukraine this spring and there is increasingly not much that can be done about that, except to try to put the best face on it — which is, that it wasn’t his war. As long as the coke freak Zelensky remains in charge, Ukraine will be negotiation-unworthy, as the Russian phrase goes. So, US-Russia peace talks were largely diplomatic showbiz. Both Putin and Mr. Trump were painfully aware of this, and hence, Mr. Trump’s latest performative bluster about “more sanctions” will probably not amount to anything.

And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.

There's more at the link.

I like Mr. Kunstler's description of President Trump as an "uber-realist".  I hope and pray he's right.  Heaven knows, we need a realist in the Oval Office, rather than the cloud-cuckoo-land flights of political and ideological fantasy that have polluted it for the past four years!

It's time for cold, hard realism to prevail in considering options in and for Ukraine.  Without it, this will degenerate into a never-ending slogging match that will poison Europe for generations to come.  We need to cut the Gordian knot of foreign policy fantasy that's been created by idiots over the past decade or more, and get back to realpolitik.

Peter

Thank God Putin was less aggressive and war-minded than the Biden administration

 

If you haven't yet read the two New York Times reports from last weekend about how deeply embroiled the US was in the Ukraine war, you really should find a way to do so.  If their claims are correct, there was ample justification under the laws of war for Russia to bombard NATO bases in Europe, and target senior US and allied officers for assassination as active belligerents.  It boggles the mind to realize that under President Biden - who, to be fair, may not have known just how militant his subordinates had become - the United States became literally an active co-belligerent with Ukraine in the war against Russia.  There's no other way to describe it.

The two articles (behind a paywall) are:

The Secret History of America's Involvement in the Ukraine War

Key Takeaways From America’s Secret Military Partnership With Ukraine

If you can't find non-paywalled versions of the articles, you'll find detailed summaries at these sources:

New York Times Publishes Explosive Investigation Article

Showing U.S. Military Boots on Ground in Ukraine,

and CIA Operation to Target Russian Federation with Drones and Missiles

Key Takeaways From NYT's Secret History

 Detailing US 'Shocking' Involvement In Ukraine War

Here are a few out of many points made in the articles:

• ... a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.

• Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself. In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.

•  Ultimately, the U.S. military and C.I.A. were allowed to help with strikes into Russia.

As Zero Hedge concludes:

Notably, this is essentially US officials and the NY Times also admitting that the Kremlin has all along been right when it insisted this was never really simply about Moscow vs. Kiev - but that NATO countries have militarized Ukraine and weaponized it against Russia. President Putin and Kremlin officials have been fiercely complaining about US intervention all along, but this was dismissed in the West as merely 'propaganda'.

Tell me, dear readers:  how do you feel about our government, our President, committing us to fighting a war - one which might have escalated to the use of nuclear weapons - about which we were never fully informed?  If Americans had been killed by Russian retaliation, we would unhesitatingly have blamed Russia for "aggression" - without knowing that the aggression had first been committed by US forces in, and supporting, Ukraine, including chemical and biological weapon research facilities and other destabilizing activities set up by the CIA long before Russia lost patience and invaded Ukraine?

If the New York Times is correct, America is the primary aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine war, and was from the very beginning.  Without American involvement in the years prior to the Russian invasion, the war might never have happened.  This reality requires a complete reassessment of the current situation, and certainly of America's role in the war.

As Sundance points out:

On one hand, the NYT article spills the beans and informs the public. On the other hand, their reason for purposefully spilling the beans is to create a problem for Trump and Rubio, and possibly between Trump and Rubio.

It makes sense now why Secretary of State Rubio was the first Trump official to publicly say the United States was in a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as the justification.

On the upside, this creates an opportunity for President Trump to distance himself from the prior administration and withdraw all CIA operatives and admitted/revealed U.S. military boots on the ground in Ukraine.

President Trump could use this revelation, now public and widespread, to reset the U.S-Ukraine dynamic and withdraw all elements of prior Biden authorization from the conflict.

Will he?

Good question!

Peter