Totally Tuesday Reads: Shock and Awe

“Trouble in paradise.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yes, it’s me today! Thankfully, JJ stepped in for me yesterday when a huge truck taking something out of the Navy Base project took down my entire cable line. I was without it and was looking at student time during the first week of class at 5 p.m.  So, I called Cox and was given a time for later on today, after another class started up. Needless to say, I was pretty panicked.

Since Cox was so unhelpful, I went over to the construction site, which was even more insulting, as I was shown a map indicating that trucks were allowed on my avenue. It was a truck route. Tell it to the City Council, which drew the maps. Needless to say, these trucks are far bigger than what I’ve ever seen coming and going the 25 years I’ve lived here, which includes when the Navy base was open and military equipment for the shock and awe attack on Iraq was being taken off the railroad line there and driven by trucks to the merchant marine ships waiting on the Mississippi River to take them to the Middle East.

So, with two strikes out with Big Corporations, I headed to my neighbor’s house across the street to talk to the couple who live there. Luckily, one of them works at home, like I do, and the other was at City Hall, working for the City Council. I’m like, good to see you, but I really need your husband. He called hubby immediately for me and explained my situation. So, guess what, New Orleans City Hall worked. I called my Councilman’s office, and my neighbor contacted the regional Cox bigwigs. About three o’clock, a Cox bucket truck pulled up with the most skilled technician I’ve ever seen, who got it done right before some severe weather kicked in.  All of the guys really went to work to help me, while I’m thinking that if I miss the first two days of a fall semester, I’ll never teach again.

So, again, JJ came to my rescue while I spent the enter afternoon chasing all these folks down.  I did my thing and went to bed early. It’s nice to know my local government works when everything else is MAGA chaos.  So, since I was raised in the Beef state and the Corn state, and I’m an economist with all degrees in agriculture states, riddle me this. How does importing more beef to this country help American ranchers and farmers who are in financial trouble right now? And if every import is subject to tariffs, how does this help households? Trumps been giving all the tariff revenue to big businesses and my guess is they don’t pass the cash forward. This keeps making me glad I’m mostly doing finance things these days although it blows my mind that a sitting president and his family might get a bank just for having crypto which is a risky asset and not real money. Trying to teach econ during this regime is like reading fairy tales while trying to teach about data-based reality.

So, I’m going to dive right in with the economic mess we’re in and the policies making it worse. He must be so secure in the idea that he can rig elections that he’s not even concerned about his own base. This is from the New York Times. “G.O.P. Lawmakers Rebuke Trump on Plan to Increase Beef Imports. Republicans who have mostly refrained from criticizing the president’s actions have been vocal in opposition to the move, which they say will harm their constituents.” Catie Edmondson has the story.

Congressional Republicans are leveling some rare and uncharacteristically harsh criticism of President Trump for his decision to increase imports of ground beef at a lower tariff rate, warning that the move will hurt American ranchers.

The decision, announced late last week, appeared to be a bid to lower costs across the country before the midterm elections in which Republicans are fighting to preserve their narrow majorities. But it has drawn dissent from even reliable allies of Mr. Trump, many of them from states and districts with large cattle-raising areas, who fear that the move could harm another important constituency: the producers they represent.

“Americans want U.S. beef on the table — not foreign imports,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican, said in a statement on Monday. “Wyoming ranchers produce the highest-quality beef in the world. Our ranchers don’t ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace.”

Senator Tim Sheehy, Republican of Montana, said in a lengthy statement that he had “advised President Trump against this course of action for a year because American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them.”

“Most of whom are MAGA Republicans,” he added.

The cascade of statements — including from Senators Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Steve Daines of Montana and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi — amounted to an unusual chorus of protest from Republicans who have otherwise routinely deferred to Mr. Trump on nearly every major issue, from the war with Iran to his trade wars.

This major Trade War with Canada is equally stupid.  This is from Greg Sargent writing for The New Republic. “How Trump’s Crazed Fury at Canada Is Already Backfiring Badly for Him. The escalating trade war with Canada will hit hard in the Midwest—right where some of the most important contests in the midterms will be decided.”  Pack the West Wing and the Oval office with idiots and this is what you get.

Here’s a bit of poetic justice for you: The Democratic bid for control of Congress just might end up running right through the very heart of Trump country. We’re talking about parts of the Midwest that helped drive Donald Trump’s two successful presidential bids—states like Iowa and Ohio, which he drove deeper into the red column, and states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which Trump flipped outright twice.

That reality explains why Trump’s extended eruption of fury at Canada—he has now redoubled trade hostilities with our longtime ally—is very bad news for the GOP. Trump’s new trade war with Canada threatens fresh harms to local economies in the Midwest—and it’s handing Democrats a weapon in the homestretch of these contests to win over rural Americans and others who are experiencing all this endless derangement in very concrete ways.

“It’s a really dangerous time to be a farmer in the Midwest,” Josh Turek, the Democrat who is challenging Representative Ashley Hinson for the open Senate seat in Iowa, told me.

On Monday, Trump exploded wildly at Canada over the implosion of trade negotiations between the two countries. That collapse in talks over the weekend unleashed 50 percent tariffs by the United States on a large range of Canadian goods, and Canada will now retaliate with tariffs on targeted American exports. Talks are reportedly suspended until after the midterms.

What triggered Trump is that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had refused to be cowed by the American threat of tariffs. So Trump threatened yet more tariffs on still more Canadian goods next year, raging: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”

Whether we “need” Canada or not, the fact remains that a lot of trade currently takes place between the two countries. You know who actually can’t afford for all this to be upended right now? Republican incumbents and candidates in the Midwest, that’s who. So “we” may not “need” Canada, but Republicans in the region really “need” Trump to not rupture trade relations with our ally for the next two months.

Here’s why: Control of the House will turn in no small part on three very competitive House races in Iowa, one in Wisconsin, and three or four in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Turek is locked in a dead heat in the Iowa Senate race, and winning there could be pivotal to a Democratic Senate takeover. So could a win by Sherrod Brown, who leads slightly in Ohio. And anything that helps Abdul El-Sayed keep the highly contested Michigan Senate seat blue will also be critical.

These areas will very likely feel the political impact of Trump’s new trade war. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs are expected to hit American exports of agricultural machinery, and that could hit Iowa manufacturers. The state’s very competitive 2nd congressional district, for instance, includes facilities run by John Deere, Altorfer (which deals in Caterpillar products), and other farm equipment concerns.

“Tariffs don’t just hurt our farmers, they hurt our manufacturers, as well,” Lindsay James, the Democratic candidate in that district, told me. She added that her GOP opponent, businessman Joe Mitchell, will be a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s trade wars, which she labeled “impulsive.”

Such messages could land disproportionately in Iowa because Trump’s trade wars have already given the state’s agricultural economy a thorough pounding.

Turek, meanwhile, also singled out the coming impact of trade hostilities on farm equipment manufacturers. He noted that tariffs are contributing to a perfect storm in Iowa, which also includes Trump’s war on Iran, which is driving up fertilizer and diesel prices, and his effort to reduce beef prices by importing huge amounts of it, which will undercut American producers.

“You talk to farmers, and they’ll tell you it’s one gut punch after another,” Turek told me, adding that he constantly hears Iowans tell him: “This is betrayal.”

I can only imagine what kind of hit to the owner of what once was my Dad’s small town Iowa Ford Dealership would be. I like to remind everyone that the sale of Ford F-150s basically funded my school and young life.  Those trucks were all over eastern Iowa doing farm and ranch work all the time. My youngest daughter’s son-in-law was the grandson of the biggest Pig Ranch in the area. Guess who he used to buy his trucks from?  This will really go straight to the heart of every small midwestern town. Most John Deere Tractors are built in this country. I’m sure most of you have never heard of Waterloo, Iowa but you can crush a small town like that when you ruin business for the factory that keeps the town on the map.

So, this is some real nonsense in a situation where trade really defines countries ability to survive. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump says U.S. could rename Lake Ontario as Lake America amid Canada trade war. The president cited his tariff fight in a social media post, saying the United States doesn’t expect to be “doing much business with Ontario any longer.” How petty and stupid is that? Who actually thinks this is funny? You may see how consequential renaming the Gulf of Mexico was to map makers and everyone else. This is another middle finger fight rather than real policy. Sammy Westfall has the lede.

President Donald Trump said he is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario, the easternmost of the Great Lakes spanning the U.S.-Canada border, to Lake America, as the U.S.-Canada trade fight escalates.

The threat adds to a long list of things — bodies of water, mountains, cultural centers, battleships, transit hubs, federal agencies — the Trump administration has renamed or proposed to rebrand.

Lisa Needham of Public Notice puts it this way. “John Roberts sticks two more knives in democracy’s back. The mail voting and ballroom decisions are a travesty.”

President Trump is catastrophically, comprehensively, wrecking our democratic order, but he couldn’t do it without the Worst Chief Justice of All Time, John Roberts, and the rest of the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority.

Trump should probably send the nation’s highest jurists a fruit basket or something as a wee bit of thanks for their latest gifts: the right to wreck the midterm elections and the right to keep building the bribe-funded ballroom.

The former is courtesy of the Court’s six conservatives, but the latter is a solo Roberts joint. Put another way, the mail-in ballots case is a shadow docket travesty, while the ballroom is an administrative stay travesty. Both are corrosive to democracy.

Up first: teeing up letting Trump screw with the midterms in an extremely unconstitutional fashion, because of course Trump will suffer immense harm if he can’t get his way.

First, let’s be clear about a smallish silver lining here: the mail-in ballots decision is both reprehensible and a mess, but it doesn’t quite do what some of the reporting says it does. It doesn’t mean that the US Postal Service Final Rule, promulgated last Friday, goes into effect. A different case, brought by the League of Women Voters, still enjoins the administration from implementing that rule, and as Steve Vladeck notes, the litigation on that is yet to come.

But that doesn’t really make things better, at least as far as the whole constitutional crisis part goes. That’s because the Court’s right-wingers continue to swallow the Trump administration’s laughable lies about what they are doing, lies that contradict both their own public statements and the dictates of logic.

Okay, this is certainly way too long but the chaos continues in so many places. It’s important we know the where, when, and how of it all.

Have a good week! I hope the weather is being better to you than us. I’ve never seen such heat except when I visited Arizona in August.  Plus, the humidity down here is beyond description. Even Temple, who loves her walkies, wants to cut them short these days.  So, be safe out there!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?