I skipped some writing days, ignoring the inner voice last night that said I really needed to write something. But here I am now, writing, so.
I suppose I should compose another letter to my GOP senators. The SAVE act, which threatens to add enormous hurdles to voting in this country, has narrowly passed the House. The Senate is likely to pass it. It's depressing.
The stock market rallied yesterday in reaction to Trump's "pause" on tariffs (which really wasn't a complete pause, just a reduction of all of them to 10%--still an unimaginable high). Today's stock market erased those gains as people realized, variously, (1) the US/China trade war is still very much on; (2) Trump appears to decide day-to-day or moment-to-moment about tariff policy; (3) the US is unreliable as a trade partner since it seems happy to elect Trump and allow him his whimsy; and (4) there is no plan.
That was Isaac Saul's takeaway from Trump's backing down on tariffs:
I wanted to understand the Trump administration’s grand plan, and it turns out they didn’t have one. When they said they were rolling out global tariffs to negotiate new trade deals but also said the tariff rates weren’t a negotiation tactic, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan. When they said the plan was to end up with zero tariffs and total free trade and also said they wanted to raise tax revenue, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan. When they warned about the need to be “tough” and “take our medicine” and promised that under no circumstances would they back down, and then backed down, that wasn’t 4D chess. It was a lack of a plan.
There is no plan, no master strategy, no "art of the deal" genius. There's only Trump's ego, according to Jamelle Bouie:
The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.
Other countries must pay us tariffs (as Bouie notes, Trump "genuinely seems to think of tariffs as fees that foreign countries pay to the United States") because that proves we're dominating them. Anything else is us being dominated, which is inconceivable. That his take on tariffs--and international trade--is so ludicrously, maladaptively wrong is, well, just our problem to deal with. I cannot blame the rest of the world for giving up on us.
It is disappointing that so many Republican voters seem ardently to believe exactly what Trump, Fox, and rightwing radio/web tell them: that these tariffs are a tax cut for Americans, that they'll bring back good times (i.e., times good for stable bluecollar jobs and secure retirements for white, straight, cis, conservative Christian, patriarchal people).
It's especially disappointing that so many politicians and justices who could check Trump seem completely unwilling to do so. The House just passed a measure preventing its members from challenging Trump's expansive tariff prerogatives. House and Senate majorities seem committed to passing Trump's budget, which adds to the debt via tax cuts for billionaires while repealing the ACA. There is no replacement, of course. That's been the M.O. for most Trump II "reforms"--get rid of vital services. Replace with nothing, or at best "concepts of a plan."
Sigh.
I'm just not sure what comes next.
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