They really, really do not want Trump to win. The thing is, if Trump wins, America wins. Too many countries have high tariffs on American goods, yet, America has low or no tariffs on imports. One would think the American news media might root for America
Why Trump May Get Away With His Tariff Trauma
As President Donald Trump announced historically high tariffs across the world this week, I expected a number of affected governments to rapidly and collectively fight back.
Instead, with the exception of China and a few scattered reprisals from allies, we’re seeing mainly cautious reactions. Foreign officials are talking about “calibrated” responses and keeping a “cool head.” Some are clearly hoping diplomacy will persuade Trump to back off some or many of his tariffs.
Or, they could remove the majority of their tariffs and have free trade with the US, allowing our goods into their nations with the same low, or no, tariffs we put on their goods coming into America
In conversations with diplomats, economists and former U.S. officials, I asked why. Weren’t they concerned this muddled, cautious global reaction would be too weak to persuade Trump to change course, or even embolden him to get tougher?
But these experts argued that there are compelling reasons many governments are not acting fast or in unison — not the least of which is that the world’s countries are not good at collective action, and many believe they have a better shot at accomplishing more, for themselves at least, if they avoid escalating the fight with Trump.
Besides, it’s not at all clear if any moves by other countries will deter Trump’s tariff mania.
One would think that Politico writer Nahal Toosi, who escaped from Iran with her family when she was 6, might root for America. But, she went to very liberal UNC Chapel Hill and has spent a lot of time working for very liberal outlets, and has seemed to criticize American policy, at least when Bush 43 and Trump were president. And, criticized Israel, of course. Is it really too much to ask for American news outlets to support America? Maybe American news outlets should be trying to convince foreign nations to change their course and axe their tariffs on American goods.
The European Union is a long-established exception on the trade front, obviously, and it is preparing at least two sets of retaliatory tariffs, though it’s spacing them out, reportedly in hopes of negotiations. But other groupings have yet to emerge to take on Trump’s tariffs.
They could negotiate for equitable tariffs. They could significantly reduce theirs.
Even if that day comes sooner than expected, one thing is for certain: One of the biggest costs of Trump’s trade war is the trust of other countries in America as a stable, reliable pillar of global trade.
In other words, Americans are just supposed to sit there and take the tariffs other countries place on the goods they make and ship from the US.
But, screw those penguins
????? BREAKING: Trump’s tariffs just declared war on PENGUINS. Yes, penguins. The internet retaliated with Star Wars scrolls, AI-generated polar bears in suits, and a viral plea: “If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry over $3,800 grocery bills.” Join the Antarctic Resistance. #MemeEconomy pic.twitter.com/pap8zWrDvw
— Zakir Kibria (@zakir_kibria) April 4, 2025
[…] post Politico Seems Upset That America May Win With Tariffs appeared first on Pirate’s […]
Our distinguished host began:
Which one of us would think that? Where is your evidence that our credentialed media would root for America?
It’s like a fable: “Once Upon A Time, the American news media rooted for America regardless of who was in office, realizing that what is good for America is good for them. But, then they were subsumed by the Evil forces of globalism, and decided America was a force of bad, and wanted to see the nation taken down.”
Mr Teach conflates “rooting for the US” with “rooting for Trump”.
Shouldn’t it be? After all, if the President of the United States succeeds, then America succeeds. Didn’t you make the same argument when it came to our 46th President?
President Trump’s goal is to strengthen the United States of America; you simply disagree with his methods. Do you hate the way he is going about it so much that you’d rather see him fail, and the United States be worse off? After all, it’s his final term as President, so he can’t run again.
If Biden had implemented tariffs I would have said the same thing I say for Trump “might want to wait on this, do some negotiating (and threatening), but, I’ll back you, because tariffs need to be equitable.”
Mr Dana asks if the President and America SHOULDN’T be conflated. Not necessarily. Obviously, it all depends on how one defines “succeeds”, doesn’t it?
America would most likely have been better off if George W. Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq. Or if LBJ hadn’t escalated the Viet Nam war. Or if Bush had paid more attention to the real estate market meltdown. If Trump One had taken Covid seriously. Time will tell how bad Trump’s tariff policy will be. Unfortunately, he’s claimed it’s long term. Fortunately, Trump rarely keeps his word.
The abduction and imprisonment/deportation of legal residents by masked agents is disturbing. Who’s next? Trump critics? Who will stop him? The courts, LOL?
Presidents are not above criticism. You can’t be serious that the critics of President Trump are hurting America. Review the First Amendment. Trump is not above using the power of the State to silence critics. As advised by then Senatorial candidate JD Vance, a conservative government needs to attack universities and media.
I will not ignore, nor lie about what his policies are doing to Americans.
During the State of the Union Address, President Trump said:
Should Americans support President Trump’s threat to “getting” Greenland “One way or the other”?
Or is criticizing him “UnAmerican”?
Actually he says he plans to run again for President. Do you oppose him for that???
It is near impossible to sell anything inside Korea or Japan, which are staunch allies. It’s not forbidden; they just have 90 percent tariffs on everything.
In the EU, prices of American goods are 25-40 percent higher than the competition because of heavy tariffs on American goods.
Our beloved Canada has high tariffs on American goods while they get 1/2 their economy off the US backs if you consider their military could not defend themselves from an army of angry moms.
Vietnam does not allow the USA to sell anything with 90 percent tariffs in place. Meanwhile, inside the United States, Vietnam sends Chinese goods to America nearly duty-free.
India has very high tariffs against the USA. All over the fuking world Tariffs have FORCED THE USA TO SEND THEIR JOBS OVERSEAS and then repurchase our products at inflated prices from these so called ALLIES.
All these countries are lining up to make deals with Trump because, in the end, he is a deal-maker rather than a king. He doesn’t want to run the world; he wants the world to run better.
FREE TRADE>? Many Wall Street know-it-alls talk about free trade as the lynch pin to America’s power. NO. 1913 the federal income tax came into effect, and tariffs were hemmed in. As a result, America went to financing the government via income taxes vs tariffs. This opened up a world of greater products available to be purchased, and as a result, the USA went on a mini run through the 50s of significant expansion that everyone attributed to larger government and income taxes.
No, it was America selling herself to the cheapest bidder. The removal of trade barriers and the establishment of income taxes powered a short-lived economic boom that has since turned into a boom in driving jobs overseas in order to afford cheap products.
I have nothing to add to that except “Exactly!”
You can check import and export tariffs by country here (prior to Trump’s ‘thing’):
https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/tariff_profiles_list_e.htm
Mr Teach wants the credible media to support Trump. Note that Trump calls the media the “enemy of the people”. Leave “rooting” for Trump to FOX and Friends. Surprise! The freedom of the press to criticize the government is enshrined in the !st Amendment! In case Mr Teach forgot:
Trump has claimed his massive sales tax on US consumers is intended to repatriate manufacturing to the US, NOT as a negotiation tool to get other nations to reduce their tariffs.
Trump, once again, is gaslighting the American people. He claimed that Vietnam has a 90% tariff on incoming US goods (it’s 9.4%). Trump and his gaslighting buddies posted a complex, impressive formula that they did NOT use for calculating new US tariffs on incoming foreign goods.
The formula they actually used was simpler and was not related to tariffs but to trade deficits. ((Exports from US – imports to US)/imports x 100)/2. For example, if we imported $4 billion goods from Brazil but only exported $1 billion to them : (1-4)/4 = -0.75 x 100 = -75%. Ignore the minus sign and divide by 2 to get a “new” tariff rate on Brazilian goods: 37.5%.
The flaw in Trump’s “reasoning” is that tariffs are NOT the only reason for trade imbalances.
There are many reasons that we import more from Madagascar than we export, e.g., vanilla, rare Earth minerals. For some nations, the US REQUIRES more products from them than they need from us. We don’t grow enough coffee in the US. China, India and other nations outside the EU have cheaper labor and US businesses take advantage of that fact.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is ‘crowing’ about a drop in crude oil prices, ignoring that the reason is a fear of a global recession – therefore, lower demand! OPEC+ (after the Saudis leave Mar-a-Largo – Fore!!) can increase global crude prices by reducing output.
Ya know Rimjob’s losing when he gets extra cranky and starts his copy&paste routine.
Bwaha! Lolgf Loser!
Our socialist from St Louis wrote:
It’s true enough that the First Amendment guarantees Freedom of the Press, but we’ve pretty much reached the point, reached it back in the 1990s, though it has grown ever worse since then, that the credentialed media, with very few exceptions, are solidly in support of the Democrat Party and the political left. We saw it in 2004, when most of the media were solidly in support of Senator John François Kerry, to the point at which The Philadelphia Inquirer ran 21 straight days of editorials, calling it their “twenty-one gun salute” for him, and CBS News deliberately used forged documents to try an unseat the younger President Bush. We’ve seen it now, as everyone except Fox News and the New York Post were slamming Donald Trump as hard as they could, and deliberately concealed President Biden’s descent into dementia. We’ve gone from a nominally responsible press to the 21st century of Yellow Journalism.
Given that the majority of serious voters — and those who voted third party were not truly serious — supported President Trump, it’s accurate to say that yes, the majority of the media have proven to be the enemy of the people.
What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal has been all-in for Democrats. Just yesterday, columnist Linda Blackford covered a rally in Lexington where “more than a thousand people” had a rally against Mr Trump. In 2024, Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump 83,387 (57.93%) to 57,347 (39.84%) in Fayette County, but Fayette and Jefferson counties are the only ones she carried; the other 118 counties were carried by President Trump, who won the Bluegrass State 1,337,494 (64.47%) to 704,043 (33.94%).
The late Malcolm Jewell, one of my professors at UK, once said that both the Democrat and Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed 40% of the vote, and the battle was only for the middle 20%, but the now former Vice President couldn’t even reach that threshold. So, “more than 1,000 people” were protesting President Trump. If the election were held again today, Mr Trump would still carry the Bluegrass State by a landslide margin.
Even in very conservative Kentucky, the credentialed media are all in for the Democrats. The Herald-Leader has not endorsed a Republican for President, the Senate, or House of Representatives since at least 2012.
There are ample opportunities for the Republicans to get their biased viewpoints out. FOX “News” is the most popular of the cable news channels. Sinclair is gobbling up local news outlets.
College-educated tend to be slightly more ‘progressive’ than those less educated. It’s just a fact. Yes, yes, we understand the ‘regressive’ party believes there exists a conspiracy in universities to indoctrinate students with ‘progressiveness’, although it’s more likely that the more information you’re exposed to, the more rational and empathetic you become. I assume I had both progressive and regressive instructors and professors in college and graduate school although politics rarely came up, but maybe the pernicious indoctrination is just too subtle – evolution, racism, sexism etc. It is true that wokeness/pronouns/’magical politeness’ where no one should ever be ever be offended has gone too far, but that is largely self correcting without government intervention. Anyway, fortunately or unfortunately, most media members are educated. Back in olden times Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Morrow, Harry Reasoner, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, etc reflected the times of American culture but did offer opinions and point out systemic racism, problems with the Vietnam War, government suppression, the Red Scare, McCarthyism… were these newsmen liberal?
White voters without a college degree now favor Republicks 63% to 37%! Whites WITH a college degree slightly favor the Dems 51% to 47%. No wonder the Republicks want to get rid of all the non-whites!!
Mr Dana has made clear that to him the 1950s or even earlier was the American heyday. He believes in absolute self-reliance – letting the ill die without any gov’t intervention – limit voting to white, straight men of means like back when America was Great!!
The seriously beautiful neighboring state of Kentucky (I was there a couple weeks ago!) often elects Democratic governors, and like several southern states, even voted for southern Democratic candidates (Carter, Clinton twice). Kentucky is 83% caucasian, with 17% of population 65 and over.
Anyway, based largely on resentment and fear (trannies, illegals, Muslims, Blacks, women), The People did not listen to the intelligentsia, preferring Mr Trump by a narrow margin. And we are stuck with him! Republick presidents typically bring us economic downturns, wars and pandemics. There is no reason to believe that Mr Trump is not up to the task of being a Republick President! An added bonus is his looting of America! (LOL, if not so serious a threat, LOL)
“No wonder the Republicans want to get rid of all the non-whites..”
However, it’s no wonder at all that you have no evidence of that..
DEI = your new word for nigger, spic, fag, trannie, illegals from shitholes, Muslims etc
The Republicks are also suppressing the votes of non-whites.
You’re denials are fooling no one. At least Mr Dana admits it.
Save the Penguin.
What’s wronng with drowningpuppies? He just posted a very funny joke!!
The Walrus took his car to the Pep Boys shop. He had stopped at the local McDonald’s for a Filet-o-Fish sandwich and was enjoying it in the waiting room.
The mechanic came out and said, “Looks like you blew a seal”, the Walrus, wiping his chin said, “Nope, just tartar sauce.”