Are We Feeling Liberated Yet? - Trump thread #141

[Spandauer]

King Donald has bigly new tariffs, First Lady Elmo turns out to be ballot box poison and 'Pick Me Girl' Vance is a meanie to the EU.

(But at least the penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands are wearing suits)

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5297058-trumpmusk-the-doge-and-pony-show-continues-trump-thread-140

Every time he gets on Air Force One I hope it will keep going and going and going. It can stop in Russia to refuel and then take off again. Just fly this garbage pile of cells around for four years.

...as a French minister put it, “We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every four years.”

And plenty of those Trump voters in WI who are approaching retirement age are now going to see where their vote has taken them. Personal Pension values have plummeted and setting up state retirement payments with Social Security will become even more difficult than it already is. Offices closed, staff cut, phones/emails not answered and arranging the (mandatory, I think) interview pre-retirement will take weeks if not months now. And during all that time there will be no SS cheques incoming. That is, if social security survives at all!

Twenty eight of the 30 stocks on the Dow Jones industrial average are down in early trading.
The top fallers are companies who would suffer badly from an economic slowdown triggered by the US trade war.
Caterpillar, the maker of construction equipment such as diggers and bulldozers, are the top faller on the Dow, shedding 6.7% of value.
They’re followed by aeroplane maker Boeing (-5.9%), Goldman Sachs (-5.6%) and JP Morgan (-5.5%).

Shares in the US bank sector are down almost 6%, reflecting fears that the trade war could trigger a recession.
It may also indicate investors are expecting faster interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve, to prop up growth.

Bad. Very bad.

Which is exactly why Scrotus has replaced a lot of the Top Brass at the Pentagon with 'loyalists'.

Chances of a military coup are practically nil.

This would be a terrible, terrible development. Much more harmful in the long run than absorbing some tariffs. I very much hope it doesn't happen.

This would be awful.

I truly wish Starmer would find a fucking backbone (he could look to Mark Carney as a role model for this) and pick a side.
There was a moment for staying with diplomacy. That moment has passed, surely?

@heldinadream

I truly wish Starmer would find a fucking backbone (he could look to Mark Carney as a role model for this) and pick a side.
There was a moment for staying with diplomacy. That moment has passed, surely

I don’t agree. I think Starmer has played a blinder. Very measured, very calm.

I don’t think he can stop it all turning into a shit-show, but that’ll be because of other folk, not him.

I feel like he's walking a very fine line. He's got precarious support in a country that's teetering on an economic brink as it is, with some pretty dangerous factions looking to move in. Where he really needs to stiffen his spine, I think, is by telling the truth on the need to get back into the common market/Europe, which could go a long way to alleviating some of the problems he's inherited.

Until now, they've clearly seen that as political dynamite, but this might be a moment where some honesty around that could meet a warmer reception.

I do agree with @HeddaGarbled, though, that in his dealings with this insane administration he's handled himself admirably. But I don't want him to cave on social media!

I was defending him myself until about half an hour ago, so I concede your points.
I'm just feeling a bit broken with it all.

Starmer's position is not in the least bit precarious.

He has a HUGE majority and over 4 years till the next election.

He needs to 'be more brave'

"polling data" is absolutely irrelevant as only Starmer can call an election
and he won't

I disagree with that. He has a relatively short time to dig the country out of a very deep hole in a country with really massive problems, many self-inflicted. The discontent is very real and it won't take much to capitalise on that. I think he's quite right to step carefully.

I do wonder what would happen if Trump went full Hitler and actually did try to send the military into Greenland or Canada, started rounding up dissidents into concentration camps and introduced conscription to make it all happen. Is there a point at which someone influential would say "OK, this is now beyond a joke" and the army would simply refuse to follow orders, or even where civil war is possible? There is, after all, a very sizeable body of entirely decent Americans who simply would not be able to countenance outright illegality and persecution in their names.

Starmer's invite to T to see Charlie in his big house has led to a 10% tariff for Britain, whereas the hated EU (by T) have 20%. What's bad about that for the price of afternoon tea with His Maj. 😊

Might cause some shenanigans in NI since they have a foot in both camps now.

Trump calls on Fed's Jerome Powell to cut interest rates

Donald Trump has called on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, saying it was the “perfect time” to do so.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president wrote:

This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always ‘late,’ but he could now change his image, and quickly.
CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!

The people who need to stop playing politics are the current US administration.

I don't think it's made any difference. The tariff on UK products appears to have been set on the basis of trade balance, same as a bunch of other countries. EU goods are subject to a higher tariff because the US runs a trade deficit with the EU.

Though I did read that pharmaceuticals are exempt from that tariff so there may be a few details not communicated by Trump's big sign.

.

I've been watching the situation in the UK for the last few years with dismay. I think Starmer is a good man on the whole but I see people expecting him to fix everything now and make it like it used to be. This is though the UK has had 14 years of poor government, which later on tipped over into outright misgovernment, and what made the UK wealthy in the past isn't as profitable now. What worries me mostly is that even after witnessing the efforts of a clown like Bojo, Farage is seen a serious politician by many.

He's not that popular as far as I can tell - he may have a big majority in parliament but on low voter turnout - the hard truth is that even though having a fight with Trump may be counterproductive, the public need to be convinced that he isn't a pushover - and the UK has let itself get pushed around a lot by the US and the EU in the last few years.

It hasn’t the U.S. has a small surplus in goods trade with the U.K. so it got the flat 10% rate that everybody else who had a surplus or small deficit did. The whole thing was done on a random maths calculation with no preference shown to anyone except Russia and N Korea who didn’t get any tariffs.

The comparisons between Trump and Hitler only go so far.

Hitler rose to power because Germany was a basket case having been absolutely hammered by the treaty of Versailles. He was able to ride a complex alliance of people who felt Germany had been "stabbed in the back" along with Germans who felt Germany should be doing better and Germans who were terrified of Bolshevism.

Trump rose to power in a country that was one of the best places in the world to live, and where any poverty was self inflicted and self persisted. There really is no comparison with inter war Germany.

When things fall apart - as they will. MAGA central will not turn on Trump. They will turn on whoever he blames for not believing hard enough. Immigrants. Democrats. The woke. And he will provide them will the bandwidth to punch down further onto minorities and the undesirables.

Some more details are coming out: imports of fossil fuels (from Canada at least) are exempt. Trump has basically admitted that he lied and the foreign 'tariffs' were actually trade deficits. And he says Vietnam has approached the US for a deal.

Chlorinated chicken and penis-extension cars for the masses!!

Modern Repblicans' mission is truly to prove there is no bottom

https://bsky.app/profile/taniel.bsky.social/post/3llyvcusfnk2k

I agree wholly with your first paragraph. And I think there's a lot that's right in your second, but anything that causes more economic hardship here right now puts Labour in an exceedingly difficult position. So many people are struggling, traditional safety nets are being pulled out from under them, I worry that makes fertile ground for populists. I've been amazed by how many people seem shocked, possibly disingenuously, that he hasn't fixed things already.

Dow now down 4.6% and still going.

Reliably informed on Twitter by MAGAs that this is a rubbish indicator and we should be looking at the NASDAQ which is currently down 5.5% and still going so obviously that’s much better. 🤔