Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Trail of Destruction

Posted: April 12, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: China, Doge, El Salvador prison, FDA, federal grants, immigration, RFK Jr, Social Security, tariffs | 4 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Karen Lyons

Looking at the headlines today makes me want to just throw up my hands and give up. Events are moving so quickly that no one could possibly keep track of everything. Things that happened just days ago recede into the past as new horrors arise.

The global economic crisis that Trump has triggered with his insane tariffs is still going on, but the realization that he is going to keep sending innocent people to a torture prison in El Salvador has pushed that into the background for now.

Even though he has “paused” the worst of the tariffs, many still remain in effect and will continue to affect the global economy, as Dakinikat discussed in her post yesterday. Meanwhile, the trade war with China continues, and it’s clear that China won’t back down.

On the immigration front, Trump is involving the military in border enforcement, even though that is illegal, and he is trying to find a way to send American citizens to the El Salvador gulag.

And of course Social Security is being ravaged by DOGE, while RFK, Jr. lays waste to the FDA and the U.S. health care system, and DOGE plans to take over control of all government grants.

Before I get started with the latest news, I need to call attention to a surprising Wall Street Journal editorial. It’s behind the paywall, but Tom Boggioni has a summary at Raw Story: ‘It’s already in the cards’: Trump impeachment urged by WSJ editorial board member.

In a column published late Friday, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board claimed it would be “desirable” to subject Donald Trump to a third impeachment to make up for the damage he has done to the U.S. economy with his “ill-founded” trade war.

According to longtime columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats almost makes it appear he wants to be impeached, with Jenkins writing, “A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.”

As he sees it, the president’s last great achievement was being re-elected in 2024, and the damage he has been creating since then belies his promise of a “golden age,” so an impeachment is “already in the cards.”

“No consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American ‘golden age’ with tariffs, which anyway is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. He invented this mission out of his own confused intuition,” he accused.

Noting that conservative historian Niall Ferguson labeled Trump’s trade policy going “full retard,” he contributed, “I go with ‘neurotic’ for the word’s wider applicability to any leader who, lacking a clear bead on his times, fabricates a gratuitously ambitious mission to meet his misguided sense of importance.”

“Nobody in Mr. Trump’s orbit actually shares his belief in the magical efficacy of tariffs because it makes sense only in a world that doesn’t exist, where other countries don’t retaliate,” he pointed out before concluding, “The founders never anticipated today’s instantly responsive trillion-dollar financial markets. And yet these markets neatly adumbrate the founders’ scheme of checks and balances, also known as feedback. Mr. Trump, still sane enough to appreciate what’s good for Mr. Trump, listened this week to their feedback.”

Trump isn’t going to like that.

Trade war news:

The administration has come up with exceptions to some tariffs. CNBC: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from new tariffs.

Smartphones and computers are among many tech devices and components that will be exempted from reciprocal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, according to new guidance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The guidance, issued late Friday evening, comes after Trump earlier this month imposed 145% tariffs on products from China, a move that threatened to take a toll on tech giants like Apple, which makes iPhones and most of its other products in China.

The guidance also includes exclusions for other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells, flat panel TV displays, flash drives, and memory cards.

These products could eventually be subject to additional duties, but they are likely to be far lower than the 145% rate that Trump had imposed on goods from China.

The exemptions are a win for tech companies like Apple, which makes the majority of its products in China. The country manufactures 80% of iPads and more than half of Mac computers produced, according to Evercore ISI.

“This is the dream scenario for tech investors,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC. “Smartphones, chips being excluded is a game changer scenario when it comes to China tariffs.”

I wonder what Trump got from the tech companies in return for these exemptions?

Still, the big problem is the trade war with China. Trump has been begging for a phone call from Xi Jinping, but it’s not going to happen. Michael Schuman at The Atlantic (gift link): Why China Won’t Give In to Trump. Xi Jinping, like his American counterpart, needs to be the top dog.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump bragged that many foreign leaders were “kissing his ass” to avoid the steep tariffs he’d imposed on their countries. But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was not one of them. “We are waiting for their call,” Trump said of China’s leadership in a social-media post.

He might be waiting for a while. Xi became China’s most powerful political figure in half a century by promoting a new Chinese nationalism—not by kowtowing to anyone, least of all the president of the United States.

“Seeking to negotiate on U.S. terms would be deeply embarrassing for Xi and could potentially weaken his standing and even control over the Communist Party and the country,” Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told me. That’s because the party justifies Xi’s dictatorship by portraying him as the ultimate defender of the Chinese people—the man who will restore China’s past glory and attain the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation. He must be seen standing up to foreign oppressors who seek to humiliate China and thwart its rightful rise.

“The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us,” Xi said in a speech commemorating the centennial of the Communist Party in 2021. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel.

Little wonder, then, that Xi has been quick to retaliate against Trump while other leaders have held back. Trump slapped an additional 34 percent duty on Chinese imports on April 2, and Xi responded two days later with a 34 percent tariff on U.S. imports. Trump then retaliated by imposing another 50 percent duty, which Xi matched the next day. On Wednesday, Trump tried isolating Xi by pausing most tariffs on all countries for 90 days—except for China, on which he increased his duties yet again. On Friday, Beijing raised its duties on American imports once more….

The Chinese Communist Party is characterizing Trump’s trade war as an American effort to contain and suppress China’s economic success—one the government is fully prepared to thwart, according to one commentary in the People’s Daily. This framing commits Beijing to holding out, because the alternative is for a party that predicates its power on the projection of strength to appear to be capitulating to a hostile onslaught.

Trump and his team do not seem to understand Xi’s political realities. They seem to believe that if they keep turning up the pressure, Xi will eventually come to heel. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that Xi’s retaliation was “a big mistake.” Because China exports so much more to the U.S. than it imports, “they’re playing with a pair of twos,” he said.

This is going to really hurt small businesses who buy parts and inventory from China and farmers who sell soybeans to China.

Drawing in the afternoon light, by Thomas Little

As Dakinikat has written this week, the consequences of Trump’s tariffs are being reflected in the bond market. AP: Freak sell-off of ‘safe haven’ US bonds raises fear that confidence in America is fading.

The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.

Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a stable, predictable, good place to store their money.

“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”

That could be bad news for taxpayers paying interest on the ballooning U.S. debt, consumers taking out mortgages or car loans — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.

Immigration news:

Myah Ward at Politico: Trump grants military control over strip of federal land along US southern border.

A 60-foot wide strip of land along three southwestern border states will be placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. military to help deter illegal immigration, the White House said Friday.

President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the military to take temporary control over the Roosevelt Reservation, a corridor that runs along the border line in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

The order would empower troops to detain people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. within the stretch of land, which was established by President Theodore Roosevelt for border security in 1907. Trump authorized the military to operate in the same area during his first administration to aid construction of a wall to deter migrant crossings.

The memorandum marks an escalation in the president’s use of the military to facilitate his sweeping crackdown on immigration. And while unclear how far the administration will go, it could be an additional step to militarizing the nation’s southwestern border….

Immigration, military and legal experts have said that Trump’s move to militarize the border could raise legal questions about potential violations to the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that generally prohibits active-duty troops from being used in domestic law enforcement.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it appeared the administration was trying to find a way around restrictions on the use of the U.S. military for civilian border enforcement.

Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng, and Andrew Perez at Rolling Stone: Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador.

Donald Trump and his White House have moved to deport green-card holders for espousing pro-Palestinian views, shipped hundreds of migrants to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison without due process (in defiance of a judge’s order), and are now publicly musing about sending United States citizens to prison in El Salvador.

Trump said last weekend he would “love” to send American criminals there — and would even be “honored” to, depending on “what the law says.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this week that the president has discussed this idea privately, too, adding he would only do this “if it’s legal.” El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has for months been offering to hold U.S. citizens in his country’s prison system, which he has turned into “a judicial black hole” rife with “systematic torture,” as one human rights advocate recently told Rolling Stone.

Consuelo by Olga Sacharoff, 1924

Legal experts agree that sending American citizens to prison in El Salvador would be flagrantly illegal under both U.S. and international law — and that the idea itself is shockingly authoritarian, with few parallels in our nation’s history.

The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador.

“You can’t deport U.S. citizens. There’s no emergency exception, there’s no special wartime authority, there’s no secret clause. You just can’t deport citizens,” says Steve Vladeck, a legal commentator and law professor at Georgetown. “Whatever grounds they try to come up with for denaturalization or expatriation, the one thing that is absolutely undeniable is that people are entitled to individualized processes, before that process can be effectuated.”

In the United States, the grounds to strip a naturalized individual of their citizenship encompass serious material offenses. They include: committing treason or terrorism, enlisting in a foreign military engaged in opposition to the United States, or lying in applications for citizenship or as part of the naturalization process.

They obviously don’t care whether it’s legal or not, based on how they are treating Kilmar Garcia, an innocent man who is currently languishing in prison in El Salvador. Alan Feuer and Aishvarya Kavi at The New York Times: White House Continues Defiant Stance on Seeking Return of Deported Man.

The Trump administration on Friday continued to pursue its stubborn fight against securing the freedom of a Maryland man it inadvertently deported to a Salvadoran prison last month despite a court order that expressly said he could remain in the United States.

Taking an increasingly combative stance, the administration defied a federal judge’s order to provide a written road map of its plans to free the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Trump officials then repeatedly stonewalled her efforts to get the most basic information about him at a court hearing.

During the hearing, in Federal District Court in Maryland, the judge, Paula Xinis, called the administration’s evasions “extremely troubling” and demanded that the Justice Department provide her with daily updates on the White House’s progress in getting Mr. Abrego Garcia back on U.S. soil.

“The court finds that the defendants have failed to comply with this court’s order,” Judge Xinis wrote in a ruling Friday afternoon.

The conflict between the judge and the White House arose just one day after the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and only a few days before President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador was set to arrive in Washington for an official visit.

Asked about the case on Friday, President Trump appeared in no hurry to take steps to ensure Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return, despite repeated court orders and a Supreme Court intervention.

“If the Supreme Court said, ‘Bring somebody back,’ I would do that,” he said, seeming to ignore the court’s order. “I respect the Supreme Court.”

By Hedda Oppenheim

Of course the Supreme Court has already said that.

The public recalcitrance on the part of Mr. Trump and his officials highlighted questions about why they have been so reluctant to follow the orders or leverage the president’s relationship with Mr. Bukele to simply ask for Mr. Abrego Garcia to be freed.

Judge Xinis, by ordering the government to detail its progress in getting Mr. Abrego Garcia out of El Salvador, managed to avoid an immediate showdown with the White House. But the fiery clashes left open the possibility of a future standoff.

The administration has already had friction with judges in other cases — particularly those involving Mr. Trump’s deportation policies — but the conflict with Judge Xinis was one of the most contentious yet. Last week, a federal judge in Washington said there was a “fair likelihood” that the administration had violated one of his rulings ordering the White House to stop using a powerful wartime statute to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

The dispute involving Judge Xinis emerged after the Supreme Court late Thursday told Trump officials to take steps to free Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant, from the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.

Now DOGE is getting involved in immigration battles. Sophia Cai at Politico: Inside the DOGE immigration task force.

DOGE’s bread and butter has been slashing headcounts but it is now wielding its influence deep inside the nation’s immigration system — an initiative led by one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, three Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics told POLITICO.

Antonio Gracias, a Musk confidante whose history with the billionaire goes back more than 20 years, is quietly heading up a specialized DOGE immigration task force that’s embedded engineers and staffers across nearly every nook of the Department of Homeland Security, two of the people said. The task force is also working with DOGE operatives stationed at other agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which house sensitive data on undocumented immigrants.

With Musk’s trusted friend and fixer at the helm, the task force marks a significant expansion of DOGE’s portfolio — from primarily working on agency-wide layoffs to executing the president’s most hardline immigration policies. It’s also a test for how far DOGE’s reach can extend.

Key DOGE engineers now embedded at DHS include Kyle Schutt, Edward Coristine, (aka “Big Balls”) and Mark Elez, according to their government email addresses. At least two others, Aram Moghaddassi and Payton Rehling also have access to DHS data, as DOGE fingerprints are spread throughout DHS, including Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency.

They are providing the technical infrastructure for a sweeping set of actions aimed at revoking parole, terminating visas, and later on, reengineering the asylum adjudication process, according to the officials.

Their first mission: implement parole terminations for 6,300 undocumented immigrants who either have criminal records or are on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist. That effort required coordinating with the Social Security Administration to have their Social Security numbers effectively canceled by adding them to a database that tracks dead people, the New York Times and the Washington Post first reported. Their theory is that without effective Social Security numbers – needed for bank accounts and loans, among other things – these people would “self deport.”

There’s more at the Politico link.

Social Security news:

Zoe Schiffer at Wired: The Social Security Administration Is Gutting Regional Staff and Shifting All Public Communications to X.

The Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases and “dear colleague” letters, as it shifts its public communication exclusively to X, sources tell WIRED. The news comes amid major staffing cuts at the agency.

“We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” said SSA regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis in a meeting with managers earlier this week. “Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public … so this will become our communication mechanism.”

Woman holding cat, by Liang Yi Er

Previously, the agency used dear colleague letters to engage with advocacy groups and third-party organizations that help people access social security benefits. Recent letters covered everything from the agency’s new identity verification procedures to updates on the accuracy of SSA death records (“less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected,” the agency wrote, in contrast to what Elon Musk claims).

The letters and press releases were also a crucial communications tool for SSA employees, who used them to stay up on agency news. Since SSA staff cannot sign up for social media on government computers without submitting a special security request, the change could have negative consequences on the ability for employees to do their jobs.

It could also impact people receiving social security benefits who rely on the letters for information about access benefits. “Do they really expect senior citizens will join this platform?” asked one current employee. “Most managers aren’t even on it. How isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Another staffer added: “This will ensure that the public does not get the information they need to stay up-to-date.”

The White House response to the Wired story:

“This reporting is misleading. The Social Security Administration is actively communicating with beneficiaries and stakeholders,” says Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson. “There has not been a reduction in workforce. Rather, to improve the delivery of services, staff are being reassigned from regional offices to front-line help – allocating finite resources where they are most needed. President Trump will continue to always protect Social Security.”

I guess we’ll find out eventually. Social security advocates are warning that the system is going to collapse and the 73 million recipients could go months with out payments.

Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein, and Meryl Kornfield at The Washington Post (gift article): Trump administration overrode Social Security staff to list immigrants as dead.

Two days after the Social Security Administration purposely and falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters.

Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country. In particular, Pearre had clashed with Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk. Pearre told Coulter that the plan was illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead, according to three people familiar with the events.

But his objections did not go over well with Trump political appointees. And so on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave.

They walked Pearre out of the building, capping a momentous internal battle over the novel strategy — pushed by Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service and the Department of Homeland Security — to add thousands of immigrants ranging in age from teenagers to octogenarians to the agency’s Death Master File. The dataset is used by government agencies, employers, banks and landlords to check the status of employees, residents, clients and others.

The episode also followed earlier warnings from senior Social Security officials that the database was insecure and could be easily edited without proof of death — a vulnerability, staffers say, that the Trump administration has now exploited….

Experts in government, consumer rights and immigration law said the administration’s action is illegal. Labeling people dead strips them of the privacy protections granted to living individuals — and knowingly classifying living people as dead counts as falsifying government records, they said. This is in addition to the harm inflicted on those suddenly declared dead, who become unable to legally earn a living wage or draw benefits they may be eligible for. Social Security itself has acknowledged that an incorrect death declaration is a “devastating” blow….

“This is an unprecedented step,” said Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow on the federal fiscal policy team for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. “The administration seems to basically be saying they have the right to essentially declare people equivalent to dead who have not died. That’s a hard concept to believe, but it brings enormous risks and consequences.”

There’s much more at the above gift link.

Crazy RFK Jr. news:

Adam Cancryn, Lauren Gardner and David Lim at Politico: RFK Jr. says Deep State ‘is real,’ called FDA employees ‘sock puppet’ of industry.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but.

Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate.

Little Girl with Cat, by Pierre Bonnard

“Because of my family’s commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours at Wassaic Home for the Retarded when I was in high school,” Kennedy said, in a reference to the Wassaic State School for the Mentally Retarded in Wassaic, New York. “So I was seeing people with intellectual disabilities all the time. I never saw anybody with autism.”

By the end of the event, billed as a welcome from the new commissioner, Marty Makary, several FDA staffers had walked out of the rooms where the speech was being broadcast at the agency’s headquarters in White Oak, Maryland, according to two employees granted anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“President Trump always talks about the Deep State, and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said, according to a transcript and audio of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”

He said “every institution that’s created by human beings” is inevitably captured by powerful interests, and urged FDA employees to take advantage of a four-year period under his leadership where he vowed that the Department of Health and Human Services would not be subjected to undue influence and would listen to “dissidents.”

DOGE and federal grants

Dan Diamond, Hannah Natanson and Carolyn Y. Johnson at The Washington Post: DOGE takes over federal grants website, wresting control of billions.

U.S. DOGE Service employees have inserted themselves into the government’s long-established process to alert the public about potential federal grants and allow organizations to apply for funds, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive situation.

The changes to the process — which will allow DOGE to review and approve proposed grant opportunities across the federal government — threaten to further delay or even halt billions of dollars that agencies usually make in federal awards, the people said. The moves come amid the Trump administration’s broader push to cut federal spending and crack down on grants that DOGE and other officials say conflict with White House priorities.

DOGE employees have made changes to grants.gov, a federal website that has traditionally served as a clearinghouse for more than $500 billion in annual awards and is used by thousands of outside organizations, the people said. Federal agencies including the Defense, State and Interior departments have historically posted their grant opportunities directly to the site. Nonprofits, universities and local governments respond to these grant opportunities with applications to receive federal funding for activities that include cancer research, cybersecurity, highway construction and wastewater management.

But a DOGE engineer recently deleted many federal officials’ permissions to post grant opportunities, without informing them that their permissions had been removed, the people said. Now the responsibility of posting these grant opportunities is poised to rest with DOGE — and if its employees delay those postings or stop them altogether, “it could effectively shut down federal-grant making,” said one federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal operations.

Agency officials have been told that the grants.gov site has been under systems maintenance. They have been instructed to email their planned grant notices to grantreview@hhs.gov, an inbox at the Department of Health and Human Services that is being monitored by DOGE, the people said.

About 5,000 notices of funding opportunities are typically posted on grants.gov each year, with more than 10 million visitors to the site, according to people with knowledge of its operations. Some federal agencies have been able to post grant opportunities, known as Notice of Funding Opportunities or NOFOs, but the vast majority rely on grants.gov, the people said.

Unbelievable.

I’ll end there. I know this is way too long. Take care, everyone!

Wednesday Reads: Clown Prince Trump

Posted: April 9, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: bond market crash, China, Elon Musk, EU, Financial Crisis, global safe haven, Stock Market, UK | 13 Comments

By Eric Fischl

Hello Sky Dancers!!

Dakinikat should be writing this post, but you’re stuck with me. I stayed up till about 2:30 last night doom scrolling and trying to understand what Trump’s tariff madness has done to us. The latest disaster last night was that the bond market is collapsing.

I’ll do my best to post relevant stories, and perhaps Dakinikat will chime in later. Thanks to Trump’s insanity, we could end up in another financial crisis comparable to the one in 2008.

What’s happening with tariffs:

There’s even more insane news this morning: China responded to Trump’s 104 percent tariff threat with another 84% tariff on the U.S.

CNBC: China slaps 84% retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods in response to Trump.

China has pushed back again on U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies by hiking its levies on U.S. imports to more than 80%.

Tariffs on U.S. goods entering China will rise to 84% from 34% starting April 10, according to a translation of a Office of the Tariff Commission of the State Council announcement. The hike comes in response to the latest U.S. tariff increase on Chinese goods to more than 100% that began at midnight.

The tit-for-tat escalation of tariffs threatens to crush trade between the world’s two largest economies. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. exported $143.5 billion of goods to China in 2024, while importing products worth $438.9 billion.

The Trump administration announced a sweeping new tariff policy last week, warning other countries not to retaliate. Some nations, including Japan, have seemed willing to negotiate on tariffs, but China appears to be taking a more hard-line stance and quickly announced a countertariff.

After China’s initial response to the April 2 tariff rollout, Trump announced an additional 50% hike, putting the total level for import taxes on Chinese goods at 104%….

The trade war has spooked investors around the world by increasing the odds of slower economic growth, higher inflation and lower corporate profits, sparking a sharp sell-off in April.

The S&P 500 finished Tuesday down nearly 20% from its peak, putting the U.S. large-cap stock index in a bear market. South Korea’s Kospi Index fell into a bear market of its own on Wednesday. Stocks in Shanghai and Hong Kong are also down sharply since the U.S. tariff announcement on April 2.

David Pierson and Barry Wang at The New York Times: For U.S. and China, a Risky Game of Chicken With No Off-Ramp in Sight.

A whopping increase in tariffs, followed by a whopping retaliation. Nationalist Chinese bloggers comparing President Trump’s levies to a declaration of war. China’s Foreign Ministry vowing that Beijing will “fight to the end.”

For years, the world’s two biggest powers have flirted with the idea of an economic decoupling as tensions between them have risen. The acceleration this week of their trade relationship’s deterioration has made the prospect of such a divorce seem closer than ever.

That was underscored on Wednesday when China announced an additional 50 percent tariff on U.S. goods, matching new American levies that had taken effect hours earlier. China also struck at American companies, imposing export controls on a dozen of them and adding six others to a list of “unreliable entities,” preventing them from doing business in China.

China’s new tariffs, which will take effect on Thursday, mean all American goods shipped to China will face an additional 85 percent import tax. The minimum U.S. tax on Chinese imports is now 104 percent. Both figures would have been unimaginable a few weeks ago.

With China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Mr. Trump locked in a game of chicken — each unwilling to risk looking weak by making a concession — the trade fight could spiral even further out of control, inflaming tensions over other areas of competition like technology and the fate of Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by Beijing.

Mr. Trump’s bare-knuckle tactics make him a singular force in U.S. politics. But in Mr. Xi, he faces a hardened opponent who survived the turmoil of China’s late-20th-century political purges, and who views the United States’ competitive tactics as ultimately aimed at subverting the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy.

“Trump has never gone into a back-alley brawl where the other side is willing to brawl and use the same kind of tactics as him,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “For China, this is about their sovereignty. This is about the Communist Party’s hold on power. For Trump, it might just be a political campaign.”

From what I’m hearing and reading, this is going to hit U.S. small businesses hard, drive many of them into bankruptcy, and send their employees to the unemployment lines.

China isn’t the only country that’s retaliating.

Politico: EU takes revenge on Trump’s tariffs as countries approve €20B+ retaliation.

BRUSSELS — The EU can apply retaliatory tariffs on nearly €21 billion of U.S. products like soybeans, motorcycles and orange juice after the bloc’s 27 countries assented to the measures on Wednesday, the European Commission announced.

“The EU considers U.S. tariffs unjustified and damaging, causing economic harm to both sides, as well as the global economy. The EU has stated its clear preference to find negotiated outcomes with the U.S., which would be balanced and mutually beneficial,” the EU executive said in a statement.

Hitting back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, the European Union’s countermeasures will apply in three rounds. Measures covering €3.9 billion in trade will go into force next week, with a further €13.5 billion from mid-May and a final round of €3.5 billion following in December.

Only Hungary opposed the package, according to four EU diplomats with direct knowledge of the vote, while all other 26 countries voted in favor….

The retaliation does not yet respond to Trump’s imposition of 20 percent “reciprocal” tariffs on all EU exports, which came into force on Wednesday, and his latest 25 percent tariff on cars. Trump has also said tariffs on pharmaceuticals are coming soon.

The European Commission is considering putting forward its countermeasures on those tariffs as early as next week. “It will for sure be soon. I expect it could be as early as next week,” trade spokesperson Olof Gill said Tuesday.

What’s happening with the bond markets:

Felix Salmon at Axios: The bond market plunges as crisis brews.

The price of U.S. Treasury bonds is plunging, in what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday called “deleveraging convulsions.” The effect is to raise borrowing costs just as recession fears spike.

Why it matters: The last thing America needed in the midst of a global trade war and a stock-market meltdown was a debt crisis too. But that now seems to be a real possibility.

What they’re saying: “This is the script for a truly existential financial crisis,” writes Columbia economic historian Adam Tooze, who wrote a whole book on the very similar dynamics that overtook the Treasury market in March 2020.

Driving the news: Bond yields — which move in the opposite direction to prices — are soaring in the wake of protectionist U.S. tariffs.

The amount that the U.S. government needs to pay to borrow money for a decade rose briefly to more than 4.5% Wednesday morning. For a 30-year bond, the yield rose to more than 5%.

Those moves are truly enormous by bond market standards. As recently as Friday, the 10-year yield was less than 4%, and the 30-year was below 4.4%.

The intrigue: In normal times, the most consistent buyer of Treasury bonds is a group of hedge funds that participate in something called the “basis trade.”

They buy the bonds in order to hedge their derivatives exposure to institutional investors, who can lock in slightly higher yields in the futures market.

The profit on any given trade is minuscule, but it’s also very close to risk-free, so the hedge funds can apply as much as 50x or even 100x leverage.

By many accounts, the basis trade is now unwinding, which means the hedge funds are selling their bonds — or, at the very least, not buying new ones.

The big picture: In a move reminiscent of the bond-market tantrum that swept U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss from office in 2022, the technical factors in the bond market were precipitated by — and also exacerbated — fundamental issues with the country’s finances.

More from Philip Inman and Jasper Jolly at The Guardian: Dramatic sell-off of US government bonds as tariff war panic deepens.

US government bonds, traditionally seen as one of the world’s safest financial assets, are undergoing a dramatic sell-off as Donald Trump’s escalation of his tariff war with China sends panic through all sectors of the financial markets.

The falls suggest that as Trump’s fresh wave of tariffs on dozens of economies came into force, including 104% levies against Chinese goods, investors are beginning to lose confidence in the US as a cornerstone of the global economy.

The yield – or interest rate – on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond rose by 0.16 percentage points on Wednesday to 4.42%, its highest since late February – and this week has undergone the three biggest intraday moves since Trump was elected in November. Yields move inversely to prices, so surging yields mean falling prices as demand drops.

The move in the 30-year bond was more dramatic. The 30-year yield briefly jumped above 5% to its highest since late 2023 and was last trading at 4.9157%, or 0.2 percentage points higher than Tuesday.

“This is a fire sale of Treasuries,” said Calvin Yeoh, portfolio manager at the hedge fund Blue Edge Advisors. “I haven’t seen moves or volatility of this size since the chaos of the pandemic in 2020,” he told Bloomberg.

Analysts believe the US Federal Reserve may need to step in. Jim Reid, at Deutsche Bank, said: “Markets are pricing a growing probability of an emergency [interest rate] cut, just as we saw during the Covid turmoil and the height of the GFC [global financial crisis] in 2008.” [….]

UK bonds were also under severe pressure after the US moves. The yield on a 30-year UK gilt hit 5.518% on Wednesday morning, up 16 basis points and surpassing a previous 27-year high of 5.472% set in January.

Shorter-dated 10-year gilt yields were slightly higher at 4.69% while two-year yields ticked down at 3.92%.

Higher yields on gilts – UK government bonds – will make things even more difficult for Downing Street, as it will raise the cost of borrowing to fund investment.

Colby Smith at The New York Times (gift link): U.S. Bond Sell-Off Raises Questions About ‘Safe Haven’ Status.

A sharp sell-off in U.S. government bond markets has sparked fears about the growing fallout from President Trump’s sweeping tariffs and retaliation by China, the European Union and others, raising questions about what is typically seen as the safest corner for investors to take cover during times of turmoil.

Yields on 10-year Treasuries — the benchmark for a wide variety of debt — shot 0.2 percentage points higher on Wednesday, to 4.45 percent, a big move in that market. Just a few days ago, it had traded below 4 percent. Yields on the 30-year bond rose significantly as well, at one point on Wednesday topping 5 percent. Borrowing costs globally have also shot higher.

The sell-off comes as investors have fled riskier assets globally in what some fear has parallels to what became known as the “dash for cash” episode during the pandemic, when the Treasury market broke down. The recent moves have upended a longstanding relationship in which the U.S. government bond market serves as a safe harbor during times of stress.

Volatility has surged as stock markets have plummeted amid fears that the U.S. economy is hurtling toward stagflation, in which economic growth contracts while inflation surges. The S&P 500 is now on the verge of entering a bear market, meaning it has dropped 20 percent from its recent high.

The global safe-haven:

“The global safe-haven status is in question,” said Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management. “Disorderly moves have happened this week because there is no safe place to hide.”

Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, sought to tamp down concerns on Wednesday, brushing off the sell-off as nothing more than investors who bought assets with borrowed money having to cover their losses.

“I believe that there is nothing systemic about this — I think that it is an uncomfortable but normal deleveraging that’s going on in the bond market,” he said in an interview with Fox Business.

But the moves have been significant enough to raise broader concerns about how foreign investors now perceive the United States, after Mr. Trump decided to slap onerous tariffs on nearly all of its trading partners. Some countries have sought to strike deals with the administration to lower their tariff rates. But China retaliated on Wednesday, announcing an 84 percent levy on U.S. goods after Mr. Trump raised the tariff rate on Chinese goods to 104 percent.

In a social media post on Wednesday, the former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers said the broader sell-off suggested a “generalized aversion to US assets in global financial markets” and warned about the possibility of a “serious financial crisis wholly induced by US government tariff policy.”

Some analysis and commentary on what’s happening:

Heather Cox Richardson at Letters from an American: April 8, 2025.

Stocks were up early today as traders put their hopes in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion that the Trump administration was open to negotiations for lowering Trump’s proposed tariffs. But then U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there would not be exemptions from the tariffs for individual products or companies, and President Donald J. Trump said he was going forward with 104% tariffs on China, effective at 12:01 am on Wednesday.

Markets fell again. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen by another 320 points, or 0.8%, a 52-week low. The S&P 500 fell 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2%.

Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell, and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported today that over the weekend, Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the “stupidity” of the new measures. These industry leaders, the reporters write, did not expect Trump to place such high tariffs on so many products and are shocked to find themselves outside the corridors of power where the tariff decisions have been made.

Elon Musk is one of the people Trump is ignoring to side with Peter Navarro, his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Navarro went to prison for refusing to answer a congressional subpoena for information regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Since Musk poured $290 million into getting Trump elected in 2024 and then burst into the news with his “Department of Government Efficiency,” he has seemed to be in control of the administration. But he has stolen the limelight from Trump, and it appears Trump’s patience with him might be wearing thin.

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui, Pranshu Verma, and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported today that Musk was among those who worked over the weekend to get Trump to end his new tariffs. When Musk failed to change the president’s mind, he took to social media to attack Navarro personally, saying the trade advisor is “truly a moron,” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Read the rest at the Substack link above.

David E. Sanger at The New York Times (gift link): An Experiment in Recklessness: Trump as Global Disrupter.

As the breadth of the Trump revolution has spread across Washington in recent weeks, its most defining feature is a burn-it-down-first, figure-out-the-consequences-later recklessness. The costs of that approach are now becoming clear.

Administration officials knew the markets would dive and other nations would retaliate when President Trump announced his long-promised “reciprocal” tariffs. But when pressed, several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.

Trump clown mask

And officials have yet to describe the strategy for managing a global system of astounding complexity after the initial shock wears off, other than endless threats and negotiations between the leader of the world’s largest economy and everyone else.

Take the seemingly unmanaged escalation with China, the world’s second largest economy, and the only superpower capable of challenging the United States economically, technologically and militarily. By American and Chinese accounts, there was no substantive conversation between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, or engagement among their senior aides, before the countries plunged toward a trade war.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s hastily devised formula for figuring out country-by-country tariffs came up with a 34 percent tax on all Chinese goods, everything from car parts to iPhones to much of what is on the shelves at Walmart and on Amazon’s app.

When Mr. Xi, predictably, matched that figure, Mr. Trump issued an ultimatum for him to reverse the decision in 24 hours — waving a red flag in front of a leader who would never want to appear to be backing down to Washington. On Wednesday, the tariff went to 104 percent, with no visible strategy for de-escalation.

If Mr. Trump does get into a trade war with China, he shouldn’t look for much help from America’s traditional allies — Japan, South Korea or the European Union — who together with the United States account for nearly half of the world economy. All of them were equally shocked, and while each is negotiating with Mr. Trump, they seem in no mood to help him manage China.

“Donald Trump has launched a global economic war without any allies,” the economist Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council wrote on Tuesday. “That is why — unlike previous economic crises in this century — there is no one coming to save the global economy if the situation starts to unravel.”

The global trading system is only one example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, only to reveal it has no plan for how to replace it.

Read the rest at the NYT.

Andrew Egger at The Bulwark: A Microwaved Mind.

There’s a paradox to covering Donald Trump these days. On the one hand, he’s never out of the news—a wannabe dictator busy remaking the government and the economy so that more and more decisions about our futures answer only to his whim. On the other hand, there’s so much news about what he’s doing that it’s easy to reduce our thinking about Trump to the sum of his actions. There’s Trump the bundle of bad policy ideas, Trump the destroyer of institutions, Trump the fountain of post-truth grievance. It’s hard to take the time to dwell on the man himself—to focus our attention on Donald Trump the clown.

Yesterday afternoon, as markets continued crashing and with the further implementation of backbreaking tariffs just hours away, the clown was on full display. Trump participated in the ceremonial signing of an executive order on “unleashing American energy.” In the East Room event, he was in his element: coal miners in hard hats behind him, an audience crammed with his political flunkies in front. He ended up riffing for about 45 minutes. Let’s listen in, shall we? [….]

The topic du jour, of course, was energy, specifically the “beautiful clean coal” that Trump loves so much. Trump riffed at length on the supposed stupidity of proposals to retrain miners for skilled labor in other industries, reminiscing his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton:

“One thing I learned about the coal miners . . . You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. Coal mining is what they love to do,” Trump said. “And she was gonna put them in a high-tech industry, to make little cell phones, I don’t know. Do you think you’d be good at that? I don’t know.”

Anyway, no need for any of that now, the president exulted: “We’re gonna be crushing Biden-era environmental restrictions. . . . And we have clean air and clean water and now we have clean coal. And at the same time we’re gonna do other things and forms of technology and also energy, like our country has never seen before.”

On his tariffs:

Trump didn’t totally avoid talk of the market crash he kicked off last week—a “whole situation,” he noted, that “was somewhat explosive.”

But, Trump added, you should see the response we’re getting! “We have had talks with many, many countries. . . . And our problem is, we can’t see that many that fast. But we don’t have to because, you know, the tariffs are on, and money is pouring in at a level that we’ve never seen before.”

How much money are we talking? “We’re taking in almost $2 billion a day in tariffs,” Trump said. “America is gonna be very rich again very soon.”

Got all that? Yes, markets are tanking because of the tariffs. But not to worry: We’re going to strike great deals to replace them soon. But not too soon, because we don’t have time to deal with all these countries at once. But that’s okay, because look at how much money these tariffs are making us!

That’s it for me. I’ve learned a lot and I plan to continue studying this stuff. I expect Daknikat with have a lot to say on Friday. For now, hang in there everyone and take care of yourselves.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: August 19, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2020 Elections, 2021 Insurrection, Afternoon Reads, Cats, caturday | Tags: China, Christopher Worrell, Enrique Tarrio, fake electors, FBI, foreign policy, Georgia election interference case, January 6 insurrection, January 6 prosecutions, Japan, Joe Biden, Joe Biggs, Kenneth Chesebro, Proud Boys, South Korea, Vietnam | 5 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

It’s difficult for me to focus on anything except the legal news about Trump’s crimes; but before I get to the latest on that, I want to call attention to Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy efforts. I admit I really that I originally was not at all enthused about a Biden presidency, but he has turned out to be very good at his job. His age and experience have prepared him for this moment in history.

Reuters: US, South Korea and Japan condemn China, agree to deepen military ties.

CAMP DAVID, Maryland, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David on Friday to deepen military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by China in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.

In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests.

They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.

While the political commitments fall short of a formal three-way alliance, they represent a bold move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony stemming from Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.

The summit at the Maryland presidential retreat was the first standalone meeting between the U.S. and Japan and South Korea and came about thanks to a rapprochement launched by Yoon and driven by shared perceptions of threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

The leaders’ language on China stood out as stronger than expected, and is likely to provoke a response from Beijing, which is a vital trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.

“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.

Next Biden plans to build closer ties with Vietnam. Politico: Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region.

President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.

Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about the agreement.

The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam’s efforts to develop its high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence….

The deal adds to Biden’s string of successful diplomatic initiatives aimed to reassert U.S. influence in Asia in the face of China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the region. They include a historic Camp David summit Friday with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — aimed at addressing regional threats from North Korea and China.

The Vietnam agreement coincides with an uptick in tension between Hanoi and Beijing over long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam — along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — has long protested Beijing’s claim of authority over parts of the South China Sea that extend 1,200 miles from China’s coastline. Hanoi banned the Barbie movie last month due to a scene that appeared to reference the nine-dash line Beijing says marks its territorial waters. Satellite imagery released this week indicates China is building an airfield on an island that Hanoi says is Vietnamese territory.

But the agreement doesn’t necessarily signal that Vietnam is moving away from its giant neighbor China in favor of better ties with Washington.

“Vietnam is not aligning with the U.S. against China. … They’re happy to improve relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t mean they’re moving against China — they’re going to continue to calibrate very carefully,” said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department who opened the first State Department office in Hanoi in 1993.

Now some legal news.

In the January 6th prosecutions, the DOJ has asked for 33 years in prison for Proud Boy leaders Enrique Tarrio and Joe Biggs. Kyle Cheney at Politico: Prosecutors seek 30-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders in Jan. 6 case.

Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.

The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.

“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”

Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.

A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.

Tuesday Reads: Republicans Fight the Law; Will the Law Win?

Posted: July 11, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: China, Fani Willis, Fort Pierce division FLA, Fulton County grand juries, Gal Luft, Georgia election interference, House Oversight Committee, House Republicans, iran, James Comer, Judge Aileen Cannon, Ruby Freeman, Rudy Giuliani, Wadrea "Shaye" Moss, Walt Nauta | 11 Comments

Hans Thoma (1839–1924) Goldene Zeit, 1876.

Good Afternoon!!

Remember that so-called “whistleblower” that House Republicans were so excited about? They claimed to have a witness who would blow their “Biden family corruption” case wide open. Then the witness supposedly disappeared and they had no idea where he was. Well, yesterday the DOJ indicted the guy. It turns out he’s an agent for China.

The Daily Beast: GOP’s ‘Missing’ Biden Probe Witness Faces Laundry List of Federal Charges.

The “missing” witness long-touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption was accused Monday of being an unregistered foreign agent for China and an international arms trafficker while violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges.

Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Gal Luft had already skipped out on his bail while in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the U.S. for a separate case in March—though he alleges that the sprawling case against him represents political persecution and retaliation by the Biden administration against a potential witness.

The House Oversight Committee has for months touted a secret “informant” who could provide evidence of an alleged “quid pro quo” deal for foreign aid between an Obama-era Biden and an unnamed country—though details of the arrangement remain murky and unverified at best.

Those claims partially unraveled when Rep. James Comer (R-KY) in May held a much-hyped press conference in which he promised to expose the preliminary findings of four months’ worth of scrutiny into the Biden family’s business dealings—while failing to air any real evidence of corruption. He then offered a partial excuse for the failure: their star witness had up and disappeared….

Luft then came forward days later in an interview with New York Post opinion columnist Miranda Devine, alleging that he was hiding out in an undisclosed location after being arrested on five charges, including arms dealing across the Third World, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other charges.

“The chances of me getting a fair trial in Washington are virtually zero,” he told Devine as the reason he skipped out on his bail. “I had to do what I had to do.”

Comer and other Republican House members continued to tout Luft as a credible witness right up until Friday, the day before charges were announced by the SDNY.

Rolf Nesch (Germany 1893-1975 Norway), Swans, from Esslingen

More information on Luft from The Independent: ‘Whistleblower’ who accused Bidens of corruption is charged with arms trafficking and violating Iran sanctions.

A “whistleblower” who has repeatedly accused the Bidens of corruption has been charged by the Justice Department with arms trafficking, acting as a foreign agent for China and violating Iran sanctions.

Gal Luft, who is a citizen of both the United States and Israel, is accused of paying a former adviser to Donald Trump on behalf of principals in China in 2016 without registering as a foreign agent.

Prosecutors say that Mr Luft pushed the former government employee, who is not named, to push policies that were favourable to China.

They also allege that he set up meetings between officials of Iran and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals, which would violate US sanctions.

They also alleged that Mr Luft “conspired with others and attempted to broker illicit arms transactions with, among others, certain Chinese individuals and entities” by working as a middleman to find both buyers and sellers for “certain weapons and other materials” in violation of the US Arms Control Act.

Specifically, prosecutors say he attempted to broker a sale of anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers and mortar rounds to Libya by Chinese companies, and also pushed to arrange for the United Arab Emirates to purchase bombs and rockets, and for Kenya to acquire unmanned aerial vehicles capable of striking targets on the ground.

He sounds like a great witness for the Republican “investigations.”

Mr Luft, 57, was arrested in Cyprus in February on US charges but fled after being released on bail while awaiting extradition and is not currently in US custody.

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement that Mr Luft “engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes”.

“He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” Mr Williams said.

“As the charges unsealed today reflect, our Office will continue to work vigorously with our law enforcement partners to detect and hold accountable those who surreptitiously attempt to perpetrate malign foreign influence campaigns here in the United States”.

Comer was still defending this guy as a credible witness last night on NewsMax.

Frits Thaulow, Norwegian, Summer Day in the Garden, 1880

Yesterday Judge Cannon granted a short delay in for Walt Nauta to appear in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case.

Raw Story: Judge Aileen Cannon grants ‘unnecessary’ delay in Trump documents case.

Controversial U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a delay for Donald Trump’s aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta in a classified documents case. Prosecutors have called the delay “unnecessary.”

In a filing on Monday, Nauta’s team asked to delay Friday’s hearing, which was set to determine how some materials would be handled in the trial. The attorneys did not propose a date for the new hearing.

“An indefinite continuance is unnecessary, will inject additional delay in this case, and is contrary to the public interest,” special counsel Jack Smith said in a subsequent filing on Monday.

On Tuesday, Cannon granted a 4-day delay, setting the new hearing for July 18 at 2:00 P.M. A court filing said Trump and Smith had agreed to the new date.

This is obviously part of Trump’s usual strategy of delaying court cases as long as possible. Now the Trump lawyers are trying to get Cannon to delay the case until after the 2024 election!

The New York Times: Trump Lawyers Seek Indefinite Postponement of Documents Trial.

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided.

The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election.

While timing is important in any criminal matter, it could be hugely consequential in Mr. Trump’s case, in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim them.

There could be complications of a sort never before presented to a court if Mr. Trump is a candidate in the last legs of a presidential campaign and a federal criminal defendant on trial at the same time. If the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely….

Judges have wide latitude to set schedules for trials, and scheduling orders are typically not subject to appeal to higher courts. That said, given the extraordinary nature of Mr. Trump’s case and the potential implications of a delay, prosecutors under Mr. Smith could in theory try to come up with a rationale to challenge a scheduling decision made by Judge Cannon to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

This really is a test for Cannon. If she grants such a delay, she should be replaced.

Albert Marquet (1875-1947), Baigneurs à Carqueiranne (1938)

Here are some details on the Trump filing, from the TPM Morning Memo, by David Kurtz.

Some of the filing is the usual defense counsel performative moaning and groaning and sighing heavily about all the work involved and the inherent advantages prosecutors have over them because they’ve long had access to the evidence, blah blah blah. To that end, Trump wants U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to:

withdraw her order for an August 2023 trial;

reject DOJ’s proposal for a December 2023 trial; and

postpone indefinitely even setting a trial date.

But there’s more than the usual slow-rolling going on here. And it matters to the big question of whether Cannon can and will keep the Mar-a-Lago case on track for a trial before the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s claims in this regard are remarkable:

He’s too busy running for president to be put on trial.

He’s too busy with other criminal and civil trials to add this one to the calendar.

He’s still trying to make the case about the Presidential Records Act (it’s not).

“There is no ongoing threat to national security interests nor any concern regarding continued criminal activity.”

You can’t find an impartial jury in the midst of a presidential election.

The overall thrust of the filing by Trump is that a trial before the election is not advisable, though it stops short of saying so explicitly.

One more on the documents case from Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Mar-a-Lago Jury Selection Will Be a MAGA Country Minefield.

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial is taking steps that could stock the jury box with the former president’s supporters.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has set the upcoming trial to open on Aug. 14 at her tiny satellite courthouse in the northern reaches of her district, which stretches from the tropical Florida Keys to the citrus groves halfway up the state.

That decision means Trump’s jurors are set to be drawn from the most brightly red corner of a vast court district, plucked from a community that leans heavily Republican—instead of the highly populous and more Democratic urban areas further south….

Park View, Aksel Jørgensen, Danish, 1909

Several Miami lawyers, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they have active cases before Cannon, noted that Trump’s chances to win what otherwise appears to be an insurmountable criminal case increase the further north he goes.

“You drive around, and you’ll see ‘Trump’ flags and ‘Make America Great Again’ flying in front of houses,” said Paul Bernard, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Pierce. “With Trump’s trial down this way, he’s going to have a bunch of supporters—and they’re going to make their way onto the jury panel.”

According to local court rules, federal trials in the Fort Pierce division draw jurors from five counties: Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie.

It’s solidly MAGA country: all five counties voted heavily in favor of Trump in the 2020 election he ultimately lost, with Okeechobee topping out at 72 percent. Across the board, the former president nabbed 62 percent of the vote on average.

Read the whole thing at The Daily Beast link.

There is also news in the Georgia election interference case.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Grand jurors who will consider Trump charges to be selected Tuesday.

The selection of two Fulton County grand juries will be made Tuesday, with one of the panels expected to decide whether to hand up an indictment for alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election.

One set of jurors is likely to be asked to bring formal charges against former President Donald Trump and other well-known political and legal figures. In a letter to county officials almost two months ago, District Attorney Fani Willis indicated the indictment could be obtained at some point between July 31 and Aug. 18.

Willis began her investigation shortly after hearing the leaked Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to defeat Joe Biden in Georgia. She later convened a special purpose grand jury which examined evidence and heard testimony over an almost eight-month period. Its final report, only part of which has been made public, recommended multiple people be indicted for alleged crimes.

Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court.

Each panel will have 23 grand jurors, plus three alternates. One panel will meet Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays. Both will work in secret and are expected to decide whether to hand up indictments in hundreds of cases. It is unclear which one will consider the much-anticipated election-meddling case.

When a grand jury meets, at least 16 members must be present to conduct business. At least 12 grand jurors must vote to bring an indictment. The burden of proof is much lower for a grand jury to indict someone than it is for a jury to convict or acquit someone and grand jurors typically hear only from the prosecution.

It sounds like indictments could be coming soon.

One more story out of Georgia, from Kaitlyn Polantz at CNN: Rudy Giuliani is negotiating possible resolution to lawsuit brought by 2 Georgia election workers.

Rudy Giuliani is negotiating a possible resolution in his ongoing court dispute with former Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman, after they accused him of defaming them following the 2020 election and already won nearly $90,000 from him for attorneys’ fees.

The lawsuit from Moss and her mother, Freeman, presents a significant risk to Giuliani financially. It also comes at a time when the former New York mayor and Manhattan prosecutor is attempting to fend off two disbarment proceedings, as well as interest from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is criminally investigating Donald Trump’s response to the 2020 vote, of which Giuliani was a central player.

In a court filing late Friday, Moss and Freeman’s legal team disclosed that Giuliani’s lawyer approached them on Thursday “to discuss a potential negotiated resolution of issues that would resolve large portions of this litigation and otherwise give rise to Plaintiffs’ anticipated request for sanctions.”

“Counsel for both parties have worked diligently to negotiate a resolution and believe they are close,” Moss and Freeman’s lawyer wrote.

The negotiation is over “certain factual issues regarding Defendant Giuliani’s liability,” the court filing also said.

Another update on the negotiations is expected in court on Tuesday….

Moss and Freeman accuse Giuliani of scapegoating them in a fabricated effort to undermine how votes were counted in Georgia in 2020.

That’s all I have for you today–lots of legal news involving corrupt Republicans. What else is new?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: August 2, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Afghanistan, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Build Back Better, burn pits, China, Donald Trump, drone strikes, immigration, January 6 investigations, Joe Manchin, Nancy Pelosi, Taiwan, Trump family separations, veterans bill protests | 11 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’m very pleased to report that today’s top story isn’t about Trump or his Republican enablers. That’s a very good thing for me because I’ve reached peak Trump exhaustion once again. Today Nancy Pelosi leads the politics news.

Pelosi defends Taiwan visit amid China tensions: ‘Never give in to autocrats’ https://t.co/7uLBfEgk7V
— Guardian US (@GuardianUS) August 2, 2022

Reuters: Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, voicing U.S. ‘solidarity’ as China fumes.

TAIPEI, Aug 2 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan late on Tuesday on a trip she said was intended to express American solidarity with the Chinese-claimed island, the first such visit in 25 years and one that risks pushing relations between Washington and Beijing to a new low.

Pelosi and her delegation disembarked from a U.S. Air Force transport plan at Songshan Airport in downtown Taipei and were greeted by Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu and Sandra Oudkirk, the top U.S. representative in Taiwan.

“Our congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement shortly after landing. “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.” read more

China immediately condemned Pelosi’s visit, with the foreign ministry saying it seriously damages peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, “has a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, and seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The ministry said it had lodged a strong protest with the United States.

Chinese warplanes buzzed the line dividing the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday before her arrival, and Chinese state media said People’s Liberation Army would hold exercises near Taiwan from Thursday through Sunday.

More info from CNN:

Pelosi and the congressional delegation that accompanied her said in a statement on Tuesday that the visit “honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.”

“Our discussions with Taiwan leadership will focus on reaffirming our support for our partner and on promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said. “America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.”

Pelosi is traveling with House Foreign Affairs Chairman Gregory Meeks of New York, Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mark Takano of California and Reps. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and Andy Kim of New Jersey.

The House speaker is expected to visit Taiwan’s presidential office and parliament on Wednesday morning (local time), a senior Taiwanese official told CNN. She will first visit the parliament before heading to the presidential office for a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, the official said….

The American Institute in Taiwan said Pelosi’s delegation will meet with senior Taiwanese leaders “to discuss US-Taiwan relations, peace and security, economic growth and trade, the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, human rights, democratic governance, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” the institute said in a statement.

Pelosi also wrote an op-ed explaining why she chose to go to Taiwan, despite criticism. You can read it at The Washington Post: Nancy Pelosi: Why I’m leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan.

Ayman al-Zawahiri

Yesterday the White House announced the death of the leader of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan: U.S. kills al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in drone strike in Kabul.

The United States has killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, who, alongside the group’s founder, Osama bin Laden, oversaw the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Biden announced Monday evening.

Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Kabul over the weekend, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

When U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last August, Biden administration officials said they would retain capability for “over-the-horizon” attacks from elsewhere on terrorist forces inside Afghanistan. The attack against Zawahiri is the first known counterterrorism strike there since the withdrawal.

Speaking in a live television address from a balcony at the White House, Biden announced that days ago he had authorized a strike to kill Zawahiri. “Justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said.

The strike occurred at 9:48 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation. A drone fired two Hellfire missiles at Zawahiri as he stepped onto the balcony of a safe house in Kabul, where he had been living with members of his family, the official said.

	dakinikat on Thursday Cartoons: Jaws
	bostonboomer on Thursday Cartoons: Jaws
	Mama Lopez on Thursday Cartoons: Jaws
	dakinikat on Wednesday Reads: Is Trump…
	dakinikat on Wednesday Reads: Is Trump…
	dakinikat on Tuesday Cartoon Overload
	FactualFactCheckAfte… on Wednesday Reads: Is Trump…

Sky Dancing