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politics and economics
First, a little news squib: one of our cis-het-white-able-US-born acquaintances reports that he is now considered a "DEI hire" because he got a few points' bonus on a civil-service exam once for being a military veteran. So now are they going to fire all the veterans currently working for the Federal government?
A somewhat more-widely-known news squib: the Trump Justice Department a few days ago effectively-fired about a dozen high-level, experienced prosecutors because they had been involved in Jack Smith's investigations and prosecutions of Trump. Yesterday it became clear that it's not just high-level, experienced prosecutors; the same goes for dozens or hundreds of lower-level employees who probably had no say in which cases they were assigned to. But because they were assigned to investigate and prosecute an alleged criminal, they did their jobs as assigned, and that alleged criminal subsequently became President, they're all losing their jobs. This looks like nothing more than pure, personal revenge. Although it also serves the purpose of removing a lot of qualified, non-partisan employees from the Justice Department, so they can be replaced with Trump loyalists. (In today's news, the number of Justice Department firings is now estimated in the thousands, most of whom probably weren't involved in investigating or prosecuting Donald Trump but rather Jan. 6 rioters. This makes the latter explanation look even more likely. We already knew there would be a need for lots of lawyers to challenge Trump administration law-breaking, and now there will be lots of them on the market.)
And today's the day DJT's long-promised import tariffs are supposed to kick in: 25% on everything coming from Canada or Mexico, and 10% on everything coming from China. DJT has sold these tariffs as serving three purposes: support for domestic jobs (in the industries that compete with these imports), revenge (those countries have been taking advantage of the US's generosity by selling us more goods and services than they bought from us) and fund-raising (those countries will now pay gazillions of dollars straight into the US treasury, which will enable us to cut taxes on hard-working American billionaires). I'm not sure whether he honestly believes either of these, but then I'm not sure the words "honestly believes" are particularly important in Trump's psychology: he says what he thinks will benefit him, regardless of whether it's true or whether he even thinks it's true.
Selling us more goods and services than they buy from us means that they're accumulating US dollars, which are either piling up uselessly in bank accounts abroad or being used to buy something in the US that doesn't cross borders, like stocks and real estate; it's not clear that either of those outcomes hurts the US. And import tariffs are paid by importers, which means either US consumers pay more for the goods (and thus buy less of them) or foreign producers cut their prices in order to preserve their US market share; most economists believe the former is more likely.
If DJT has thought through this at all, he probably thinks the US market is so overwhelmingly valuable, and he's such a dominant alpha-male, that the latter will happen rather than the former. There is perhaps an argument that he can squeeze price cuts out of Canadian producers: much of what the US buys from Canada are heavy, bulky commodities (steel, aluminum, lumber, crude oil) that are cheaper to ship to the US than to any other country. On the other hand, that's been true for many years, so one would expect it to already be factored into the prices US companies are paying their Canadian counterparts. Mexico has other land borders, but not with nations nearly as large, developed, or wealthy as the US, so you could argue that they have to sell most of their exports (including oil) to the US; OTOH, that's again all been true for many years, so we've probably already gotten the price concessions Trump hopes to get. And the mere fact that he's doing this so loudly and conspicuously, with such an obviously bullying attitude, means that other countries' own nationalism will kick in and they'll be even less likely to give him what he demands.
Some economists in Trump's circle claim that the tariffs won't actually raise domestic prices much, because as soon as they start to, domestic demand for imports will drop and the dollar will rise relative to other currencies enough to cancel out the tariffs. Which has several problems: first, it's very unlikely that the dollar would rise enough to completely cancel out the tariffs' inflationary effects. And if somehow it did, the rising dollar would also decrease US exports (measured in tons, not measured in dollars), which costs jobs domestically, which defeats one of Trump's alleged reasons for the tariffs. And even those economists say that such tariffs should be applied gradually, to give exchange rates time to adjust; DJT didn't listen to them except in the sense that he's threatening to raise tariffs even higher in the future if other countries don't do whatever he says.
More likely, he'll get insignificant price cuts, US companies will have to pay a lot more for their raw materials, and they'll raise consumer prices and/or cut jobs in the US. And that's before foreign countries slap retaliatory tariffs on the US, probably mostly farm products (as happened the last time, when Trump reimbursed American farmers with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars per year, with minimal oversight, for their lost sales to China; see this article). It's not clear whether Trump would agree to the same sort of bailout this time, since he officially isn't running for re-election this time; if he does, it will again eat up most of the tariff proceeds, and if he doesn't, lots of Trump-voting American farmers will go bankrupt.
A somewhat more-widely-known news squib: the Trump Justice Department a few days ago effectively-fired about a dozen high-level, experienced prosecutors because they had been involved in Jack Smith's investigations and prosecutions of Trump. Yesterday it became clear that it's not just high-level, experienced prosecutors; the same goes for dozens or hundreds of lower-level employees who probably had no say in which cases they were assigned to. But because they were assigned to investigate and prosecute an alleged criminal, they did their jobs as assigned, and that alleged criminal subsequently became President, they're all losing their jobs. This looks like nothing more than pure, personal revenge. Although it also serves the purpose of removing a lot of qualified, non-partisan employees from the Justice Department, so they can be replaced with Trump loyalists. (In today's news, the number of Justice Department firings is now estimated in the thousands, most of whom probably weren't involved in investigating or prosecuting Donald Trump but rather Jan. 6 rioters. This makes the latter explanation look even more likely. We already knew there would be a need for lots of lawyers to challenge Trump administration law-breaking, and now there will be lots of them on the market.)
And today's the day DJT's long-promised import tariffs are supposed to kick in: 25% on everything coming from Canada or Mexico, and 10% on everything coming from China. DJT has sold these tariffs as serving three purposes: support for domestic jobs (in the industries that compete with these imports), revenge (those countries have been taking advantage of the US's generosity by selling us more goods and services than they bought from us) and fund-raising (those countries will now pay gazillions of dollars straight into the US treasury, which will enable us to cut taxes on hard-working American billionaires). I'm not sure whether he honestly believes either of these, but then I'm not sure the words "honestly believes" are particularly important in Trump's psychology: he says what he thinks will benefit him, regardless of whether it's true or whether he even thinks it's true.
Selling us more goods and services than they buy from us means that they're accumulating US dollars, which are either piling up uselessly in bank accounts abroad or being used to buy something in the US that doesn't cross borders, like stocks and real estate; it's not clear that either of those outcomes hurts the US. And import tariffs are paid by importers, which means either US consumers pay more for the goods (and thus buy less of them) or foreign producers cut their prices in order to preserve their US market share; most economists believe the former is more likely.
If DJT has thought through this at all, he probably thinks the US market is so overwhelmingly valuable, and he's such a dominant alpha-male, that the latter will happen rather than the former. There is perhaps an argument that he can squeeze price cuts out of Canadian producers: much of what the US buys from Canada are heavy, bulky commodities (steel, aluminum, lumber, crude oil) that are cheaper to ship to the US than to any other country. On the other hand, that's been true for many years, so one would expect it to already be factored into the prices US companies are paying their Canadian counterparts. Mexico has other land borders, but not with nations nearly as large, developed, or wealthy as the US, so you could argue that they have to sell most of their exports (including oil) to the US; OTOH, that's again all been true for many years, so we've probably already gotten the price concessions Trump hopes to get. And the mere fact that he's doing this so loudly and conspicuously, with such an obviously bullying attitude, means that other countries' own nationalism will kick in and they'll be even less likely to give him what he demands.
Some economists in Trump's circle claim that the tariffs won't actually raise domestic prices much, because as soon as they start to, domestic demand for imports will drop and the dollar will rise relative to other currencies enough to cancel out the tariffs. Which has several problems: first, it's very unlikely that the dollar would rise enough to completely cancel out the tariffs' inflationary effects. And if somehow it did, the rising dollar would also decrease US exports (measured in tons, not measured in dollars), which costs jobs domestically, which defeats one of Trump's alleged reasons for the tariffs. And even those economists say that such tariffs should be applied gradually, to give exchange rates time to adjust; DJT didn't listen to them except in the sense that he's threatening to raise tariffs even higher in the future if other countries don't do whatever he says.
More likely, he'll get insignificant price cuts, US companies will have to pay a lot more for their raw materials, and they'll raise consumer prices and/or cut jobs in the US. And that's before foreign countries slap retaliatory tariffs on the US, probably mostly farm products (as happened the last time, when Trump reimbursed American farmers with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars per year, with minimal oversight, for their lost sales to China; see this article). It's not clear whether Trump would agree to the same sort of bailout this time, since he officially isn't running for re-election this time; if he does, it will again eat up most of the tariff proceeds, and if he doesn't, lots of Trump-voting American farmers will go bankrupt.