Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Second rate reporter says what?

This chaos was totally avoidable.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Petty moves from a petty man.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / [Facepalm] Adventures Open Thread: “Fair & Reciprocal Trade”

[Facepalm] Adventures Open Thread: “Fair & Reciprocal Trade”

by | 74 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

Of course, we know Trump doesn’t believe any transaction can be both “fair” and “reciprocal” — in Donny Dollhand’s tiny mind, either he’s winning or he’ll make everybody lose.

Right now, I’m 50/50 on whether the acronym was invented by some cultist minion who figured the most important thing was to Pwn Tha Libs… or by a shell-shocked intern who decided, At this point, getting fired by Trump can only improve my resume.

Eric Levitz, at NYMag:

Donald Trump hates the status quo system of global trade, multilateral institutions, and constraints on his authority.

Thus, the World Trade Organization (WTO) — a multilateral institution that structures global trade by constraining the authority of nation-states — is a natural nemesis for the economic-nationalist-in-chief.…

To be fair, the legislation would certainly create a big stink. The FART Act would give President Trump unilateral authority to impose tariffs (of unlimited size) on any foreign nation, for any earthly reason. The bill would not formally withdraw the United States from the WTO, but it would effectively do so, by nullifying two of the organization’s core rules:

(1) the “Most Favored Nation” principle, which bars WTO members from setting disparate tariff rates on different countries outside of formal trade agreements

(2) the ceiling on tariff rates that were established in previous WTO negotiations…

Fortunately, all signs suggest that the FART Act is just a bunch of hot air. There is an approximately zero percent change that Congress would ever pass such a measure. For all the talk of Trump “transforming” the Republican Party, it remains the case that his signature immigration legislation — which would have upset a variety of business interests, by cutting legal immigration in half — failed to garner more than 38 GOP votes in the Senate. And the WTO bill would, of course, threaten corporate America far more than Trump’s immigration ambitions ever did. Anyhow, according to Axios, the White House has done essentially nothing to advance the legislation since it was drafted in late May…

So much foul gassing, so little accomplished.

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    I think my favorite bit of the story was the statement, apparently made with a straight face, from Trump’s trade guy, that this bill was sure to find much support among Democrats in Congress.

    If the whole ‘destroy the world’s economy’ thing doesn’t work out for the, perhaps stand-up co Dey as a backup career?

  2. 2.

    efgoldman

    At least he (or more likely, a staffer) knew enough to say Congress had to pass it. Which they won’t, in an election or any other year.
    All a big FART.

  4. 4.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    If the name was meant to “pwn” the libs, it’s not doing a very good job. It’s actually making the WH look like juvenile fools.

  7. 7.

    MomSense

    @efgoldman:

    This is some crazy shit. I can’t believe this is real life. They come up with a big economic plan and the acronym is FART. Is it going to be stinky? More like a shart? Silent but deadly?

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    My belief if that the Trumpista who came up with the FART Act’s name was quite unaware of the ridiculous acronym. There really are people that clueless.

  13. 13.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:
    That graphic was amazing even without the bubbles. Trump looks like a giant monster rising out of the ocean to menace the cargo ships. However designed it is a genius.

  16. 16.

    gene108

    I am still trying to wrap my head around how colossally Trump is fucking up trade already. Bush, Jr. imposed a steel tariff in 2002, but it didn’t lead to a trade war and he eventually rolled back sometime in 2003. Obama imposed tariffs on China for dumping tires on our market, and Obama won that round and no trade war.

    I don’t get how Trump is fucking up something his predecessors did – impose retaliatory tariffs for what they perceived were unfair trade practices – so monumentally.

    His administration truly is amateur hour on everything but rounding up immigrants, driving them out of the country, and hearing the lamentation of the women. And also, using asylum seekers’ kids as hostages to discourage future immigration.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @Amir Khalid: I’m inclined to agree. Remember, these are the same group of people who originally gloried in calling themselves tea-baggers until the snickering grew too loud to be ignored and then they quickly pivoted to calling themselves the Tea Party and any mention of the previous name was doubleplusungood.

  19. 19.

    MattF

    ‘What’s the acronym?’ should be on a checklist of stuff to look at before sending any proposal down the chute. The fact that it wasn’t is evidence that Trump’s staff doesn’t know what they’re doing. But we knew that, right? What we have here is the usual incompetence, stupidity and malignant self-regard.

    ETA: I remember someone telling me that they manage to propose something they called BATFART– they even designed a logo of a bat with a little black cloud coming out the back end. But Trump et. al. aren’t that clever.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    It’s like a greatest hits album featuring that dreadful band Jackson, McKinley, Harding and Hoover.

    Coolidge and Buchanan sat in on many of their sets to provide backup.

  21. 21.

    efgoldman

    @gene108:

    I don’t get how Trump is fucking up something his predecessors did

    Your answer is in your question: Anything that Obama did, more or less successfully, has to be undone to feed Weasel Face’s narcissism and racism.

  22. 22.

    Brachiator

    I run across people and blog authors who are … bemused by Trump, and think it great that he is disrupting the status quo and upsetting conventional Establishment experts about the economy.

    Oddly enough, most of these people lead fairly comfortable lives, and presume that they will still be OK if chaos erupts. For them, politics is entirely disconnected from “real life,” and politicians at best just interfere with all the cool shit that would be happening if we didn’t have silly things like laws and regulations getting in the way.

    Sometimes I think that nothing short of total economic collapse would get these fools’ attention. And Trump may just accommodate them with his ignorant bullheadedness.

  25. 25.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Brachiator:
    Those people are the absolute worst and I hate them more than Trump worshippers and other assorted fascists.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    Yea, Alain has the recent comments and recent posts up, at least in test form.

    Also “Most Popular.”

    I saw “Tunch, RIP” and thought, oh no, not again, until I caught myself.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @NotMax:

    Smoot-Hawley.

    It’s not just for dusty history tomes anymore.

    There are two big things here, though:

    1) Part of the damage of Hoot-Smalley Smoot-Hawley was that it came at a time when things were already bad and going down hill. The economy right now can afford to take a hit without throwing us into a depression.

    2) The worst thing about Smoot-Hawley was that it triggered a whole series of retaliatory tariffs that affected the whole world. The FART Act is likely to result only in damage to the US, without triggering a global trade war.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    I run across people and blog authors who are … bemused by Trump, and think it great that he is disrupting the status quo and upsetting conventional Establishment experts about the economy.

    I am sometimes bemused by Shitgibbon’s vileness or his word-salad tweets, but I am never amused by him.*

    *Yes, I am aware that “bemused” has, of late, added the variant-of-amused meaning, in much the same way that the meaning of “sketchy” has transmogrified into something different from what it was 30 years ago. Doesn’t make it right.**
    ** Just trying to wrest the “Curmudgeon-of-the-Day” award from … someone

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @gene108:

    I don’t get how Trump is fucking up something his predecessors did – impose retaliatory tariffs for what they perceived were unfair trade practices – so monumentally.

    The big difference is that Trump is imposing “retaliatory” tariffs in response to things the countries he’s “retaliating” against haven’t actually done, and being transparent that they are really just there to give him negotiating leverage rather than based on any realistic notion of fairness. It turns out bad faith hostage taking is ineffective at convincing people to negotiate.

  37. 37.

    Calouste

    @SFAW: Everything day at one past midnight, the “curmudgeon-of-the-day” award is assigned to efg oldman. You’ll have to beat him to claim it :)

  39. 39.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Adam L Silverman: Not much there. Wonder if this is like Maddow’s Tax Return scoop – planted by Trump or his minions so the reveal makes them look good.

  41. 41.

    maya

    More properly, it shall henceforth be historically known simply as The MAGA FARTA.

  42. 42.

    Dev Null

    @dmsilev: My prepper relative was incensed that I kept referring to TeaBaggers long after the rebranding.

    They have no sense of humor.

  43. 43.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: sooo, I would be skeptical about any documents obtained from Mueller’s investigation, unless they were attached to an indictment. Mueller’s team has been leak proof from the beginning. How did they obtain the documents? It wasn’t FOIA.

    This smells more like GWB’s National Guard records that were used to discredit Rather.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @SFAW:

    *Yes, I am aware that “bemused” has, of late, added the variant-of-amused meaning, in much the same way that the meaning of “sketchy” has transmogrified into something different from what it was 30 years ago. Doesn’t make it right.**

    bemused is more:

    mildly amused, especially in a detached way.

    It implies that the person thinks that he or she is slightly above what is being observed, removed from it, and sightly superior.

    And language always evolved. The first usage of “bemused” was recorded between 1695 t0 1705. The word has seen a lot of mileage, and how it was used 30 years ago is a mere twinkle in the history of the word.

    I can curmudgeon with the best of them.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    @Dev Null: still highly appropriate , if you ask the vast majority of Mason faculty and students…

    …the abbreviation, that is ?

  52. 52.

    Dev Null

    @Brachiator: Next you’ll be saying that split infinitives are the fruit of some batty British cleric’s obsession with Latin.

    Please, I don’t think I can take such heresy.

  56. 56.

    Kathleen

    @dmsilev: Actually Sherrod Brown tweeted his support for Trump’s tariff policies. I don’t know where he stands on this proposed “bill”.

  58. 58.

    Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.

    They’re such hypocrites on trade, and everything else. Every accusation is a confession with these guys. Truly, those who smelt it …

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @Dev Null:

    Next you’ll be saying that split infinitives are the fruit of some batty British cleric’s obsession with Latin

    I always wanted a t-shirt that read “I Survived the Great Vowel Shift”

  61. 61.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    Yes, I can read Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com as well. The “amused” variant is relatively new (tacked on to the two “proper” meanings (depending on how curmudgeonly one is). Not only-in-the-last-coupla-years new, but still relatively new.

    And I’m not sure it has “evolved,” so much as “acquired a ‘new’ meaning because people can’t talk English gud, and so they repeat a word they heard someone else use (but didn’t know themselves), thinking it means the same as another word that they DO know” and it goes from there. I expect someone will start using “obviate” when they mean “obvious,” and in 20 years, well …

    As I said, I understand things sometimes change, but it doesn’t make the change right.

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    @SFAW:

    I expect someone will start using “obviate” when they mean “obvious,” and in 20 years, well …

    People have been using “enormity” to mean “big” for a long time, and its original meaning will soon disappear.

    Language is usage over time. And that includes all the distortions and incorrect usage. That is certainly the way that English works, which has always included collisions with other languages and cultures, misunderstandings, and absorptions of errors.

    Sometimes things change, and that definitely makes it right.

  64. 64.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    Sometimes things change, and that definitely makes it right.

    No, it makes them different. Whether they’re “right” is a different story.

    Changes brung about because some “Early Adopters” are fucking morons, and they’re moronitude spreads, aren’t right. Except in the eyes of said morons. [No, I’m not including you in that category.]

    ETA

    People have been using “enormity” to mean “big” for a long time, and its original meaning will soon disappear.

    I have never heard it used that way. Perhaps you need to upgrade your circle of acquaintances?

    PPS: In case you were thinking of pointing it out: the second “they’re” was intended, etc.

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    @SFAW:

    Changes brung about because some “Early Adopters” are fucking morons, and they’re moronitude spreads, aren’t right. Except in the eyes of said morons.

    You obviously know that it’s more complicated than that. But even so, those who insist on what is “right” in usage get pushed aside and life, and language, goes on. And I’m not saying that this is right, but that’s how it is and ever shall be.

  67. 67.

    Dev Null

    @Brachiator: You win all the InterToobz.

    I’d never even so much as heard of the Great Vowel Shift, hard as that no doubt is to believe.

    Yet The Great Vowel Shift is a Thing™ … so sez Teh InterToobz, anyway.

    And here I thought I knew All Internet Traditions™.

    I will never live this down. :-(

  70. 70.

    Dev Null

    @Brachiator: Read a great book by a linguist along these lines a few decades ago, which I would be happy to pimp (hi, efgoldman!) if I could remember the title or author.

    Sadly, the bits have long since rotted, although – were anyone interested – I could probably find it on my bookshelves.

    Were I able to find my spectacles, that is.

    Incidentally, the subjunctive.

  71. 71.

    Dev Null

    @SFAW: More seriously (as seriously as I can be, anyway), I once thought almost exactly what you are arguing.

    Other than the linguist who convinced me to the contrary, there’s the question “what do you mean by ‘right’?”

    Usage defines meaning. How could that not be true?

  72. 72.

    Dev Null

    @SFAW:

    In case you were thinking of pointing it out: the second “they’re” was intended, etc.

    You forgot to mention “brung”.

    Yeah, yeah, I know: “so’s your grammah.”

Comments are closed.