Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

“But what about the lurkers?”

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Books are my comfort food!

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

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

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

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / So Much Winning

So Much Winning

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Three flaming leftie, know-nothing, numbers-‘n’-stuff libtards are out with a new examination of the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

This paper, by Mary Amity of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia’s David E. Weinstein, and Stephen J. Redding of Princeton (AKA America’s northernmost southern school) concludes that once again, Donald Trump and his merry band of Republican scorched-earth economic terrorists have shat the bed:

Trade theory suggests that tariffs levied by a large country, such as the U.S., should cause foreign firms to lower prices. However, until the 2018 trade war, economists have not had the opportunity to study tariffs on large economies in recent history due to the reluctance of governments in these economies to apply substantial tariffs…The recent U.S. application of substantial tariffs on imports from major trading partners provides a natural experiment for understanding these effects. Quite surprisingly, we have found that in most sectors, these U.S. tariffs have been completely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers.

As in: Trump’s trade war is a tax on American workers and consumers.

So Much Winning

There is an oddity the authors note:

The data show that U.S. tariffs have caused foreign exporters of steel to substantially lower their prices into the U.S. market. Thus, foreign countries are bearing close to half the cost of the steel tariffs. Since China is only the tenth largest steel supplier to the U.S. market, these costs have largely been borne by regions like the EU, South Korea and Japan.2 This is likely good news for U.S. firms that demand steel, but bad news for workers hoping that steel tariffs will bring back jobs. Indeed, the fact that foreign steel producers have lowered their prices in response to U.S. tariffs may help explain why U.S. steel production only rose by 2 percent per year between the third quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2019 despite 25 percent steel tariffs.

So: we’re still paying half the cost of steel tariffs; workers are getting bupkis, and surely our heartland Real American™ Trump voters have discovered the eternal truth that Everything/one Trump Touches Dies.*

Trump has succeeded in his highest aim: his own taxes have been cut and he’s been able to grift on a grand scale. Those who hired it done have got theirs too, on their 1099s and in the judges that only the rubes think are there simply to enforce Christo-sharia law on the rest of us, but are really in place to ensure that big business never loses another court case, and labor never wins one.

And we pay more for the privilege.

On that happy note…this thread is open!

*Narrator: They won’t.  (Edit prompted by Redfish’s spot-on comment.)

Image: Roland Vivian Pitchforth, Snack time in a factory, 1941

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  1. 1.

    John Revolta

    Quite surprisingly, we have found that in most sectors, these U.S. tariffs have been completely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers.

    HOOOOCUDDAKNOOOOOWWWWEDDDDD?????

  2. 2.

    debbie

    What pisses me off even more is that farmers refuse to realize that Trump imposed  tariffs on their products to help his fellow greedy pigs, and that they never stood to benefit from any of it. All that pain was never going to result in any benefit to them.

  3. 3.

    Redshift

    and any heartland Real American™ Trump voters have discovered the eternal truth that Everything/one Trump Touches Dies.

    Hah. You make funny joke.

  4. 4.

    RSA

    This post reminded me of an HBR article from 1996: “A Country Is Not a Company,” by Paul Krugman.

    The habits of mind that make a great business leader are not, in general, those that make a great economic analyst; an executive who has made $1 billion is rarely the right person to turn to for advice about a $6 trillion economy… Yet many people (not least successful business executives themselves) believe that someone who has made a person fortune will know how to make an entire nation more prosperous. In fact, his or her advice is often disastrously misguided.

    We can draw our own conclusions about not-great, not-successful businessmen.

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray

    Having worked hard here for a few days, I am planning to support American agriculture tonight, in a big way. An expensive steak and some premium California pinot are in the near future.

  7. 7.

    Frankensteinbeck

    only the rubes think

    I don’t think the description ‘rubes’ applies.  The poor racists want judges that will tell those n-loving liberals to fuck off about everything, and the greedy rich are bigots as bad or worse than the poor.  The reason the alliance Reagan formed has held together for so long is that plutocrats and rednecks mostly want the same things.

    @debbie:

    farmers refuse to realize that Trump imposed  tariffs on their products to help his fellow greedy pigs

    Trump’s fellow greedy pigs do not particularly benefit from the tariffs.  The tariffs benefit no one.  They’re a decision based on ideology that America is the big kid and will win by bullying everyone else.  Trump’s farmers believe it wholeheartedly, and are exactly as confused as Trump that it’s not working: “obviously this will work if we make one little exception for me and hit everyone else even harder.”

  8. 8.

    Kent

    Every single Trump tariff is a tax.  By definition that’s what tariffs are.  And they hit the middle class squarely.

    Democrats should be running ad after fucking ad about every single damn Trump Middle Class Tax Increase.   That they aren’t doing so is negligence.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Trump’s fellow greedy pigs do not particularly benefit from the tariffs.

    In terms of stopping the theft of intellectual property (the main reason Trump is doing this), they sure do benefit.

  11. 11.

    debbie

    At long last!

    In a letter sent this week to the majority and minority leaders of the U.S. House and Senate, the leaders of the New York City group described public statements by the attorney general as troubling for an official whose job is to enforce the law without bias.

    “The duties to act impartially, to avoid even the appearance of partiality and impropriety, and to avoid manifesting bias, prejudice or partisanship in the exercise of official responsibilities are bedrock obligations for government lawyers,” according to the letter, which was posted Thursday on the website of the voluntary membership association, whose ranks include defense and plaintiffs’ lawyers and those with experience as federal prosecutors.

    “Mr. Barr has disregarded these fundamental obligations in several public statements during the past few months,” the letter continued.

    In an October speech at the University of Notre Dame, the letter said, “Mr. Barr launched a partisan attack against ‘so-called progressives’ for supposedly waging a ‘campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.’” The letter added that in the same speech, “Mr. Barr vowed to place the Department of Justice ‘at the forefront’ of efforts to resist ‘forces of secularization.’”

    At a gathering of police officials in New Orleans in December, Barr criticized district attorneys from large cities “who style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law,” the letter said.

  13. 13.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @debbie:

    In terms of stopping the theft of intellectual property (the main reason Trump is doing this), they sure do benefit.

    That is a downright tortured reasoning.  They were doing better under Obama for stopping intellectual property theft, and Trump’s tariffs are kicking everyone.  They’re a terrible and unnecessary way to go after that goal, but are something Trump has loudly publicly believed in for at least 40 years.  This one isn’t about greed.  It’s about assholes who think hurting someone fixes every problem.

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: How many times have we been hopeful that maybe the spell has been broken?

    It seems that I am willing to be hopeful one more time.

    Is it possible that Trump can shoot a person in plain sight on 5th avenue and get away with it, but an assassination of another government’s leader and possible war with Iran is a bridge too far?

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    @RSA:

    Because you brought up Krugman, WTF is up with this whole apparent attempt to frame him for downloading child porn? It sounds like someone was able to get access to his IP address?

    People are mocking him for saying it wasn’t him but, let’s face it, the guy has a lot of very unscrupulous enemies who would love to take him out with a nasty scandal like that. Especially since it would “prove” that Democrats are the “real” pedophiles.

  18. 18.

    MaryLou

    @debbie:  But haven’t the farmers gotten their billion-dollar payoff in the form of subsidies? Nothing like a little cash money to dull the pain…

  21. 21.

    surfk9

    @MaryLou: The corporate farmers maybe, but small farmers are eating shit. Here in the wine country of Lodi, the market for grapes has crashed due to the Chinese targeting California wines in retaliation for the tariffs. Driving around the area, you can see many hundreds of acres of unharvested grapes. A sight that was very rare last year.

  23. 23.

    Kent

    @MaryLou: Just the rich ones with clout.  The poor ones are going bankrupt in record numbers.  But they are selling out their farms to the big operators so it’s all good.  More winning.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    @Mnemosyne: IP address isn’t something you work to access. We spread them all over the place. That said, with some cleverness (not much, actually), you can spoof someones address to make it look like you are doing naughty things. What’s more, you can spoof random addresses and stumble upon one that some important person is using.

    For most of us, our address changes regularly, being reassigned by your ISP at random. That my current IP visited a naughty place yesterday just means the person who used it yesterday visited that place, or not. Maybe the person who had it before just spoofed it in after it had cycled onto someone else. Maybe someone just picked a random IP to spoof in.

    That Krugman is a name means that it’s more likely to be targeted, but this is usually just a ‘why yes, I do use the internet’ grade of maliciousness.

  25. 25.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mnemosyne:

    Because you brought up Krugman, WTF is up with this whole apparent attempt to frame him for downloading child porn? It sounds like someone was able to get access to his IP address?

    Guessing that it was a spear phishing scam (or mass phishing attack) saying that child porn had been detected on the computer, and Krugman fell for it. If it was targeted at him, it could have been customized to e.g. appear to be from whatever he uses for malware protection.
    Don’t know though.

  26. 26.

    Bill Arnold

    @Martin:

    For most of us, our address changes regularly, being reassigned by your ISP at random. T

    FWIW, my ISP, formerly Time Warner Cable now Spectrum, keeps IPs constant unless there is a long power outage. Yay them!

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    @debbie:

    What pisses me off even more is that farmers refuse to realize that Trump imposed  tariffs on their products to help his fellow greedy pigs, and that they never stood to benefit from any of it. All that pain was never going to result in any benefit to them.

    The billions in corporate welfare that Trump is shoveling to farmers helps to ease their suffering, and keeps them loyal.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    Meanwhile I stepped in a whole pile of climate denialists who hate-post on Ed Markey’s Facebook feed. It’s remarkable how persistent they are at repeating the equivalent of “nuh-uh.”

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Sadly, right-wing assholes have already started posting Twitter memes about it calling Krugman a pedophile. That’s what makes me wonder if it was a targeted attack rather than a phishing attempt.

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    @Kent:

    Democrats should be running ad after fucking ad about every single damn Trump Middle Class Tax Increase. That they aren’t doing so is negligence.

    Yep. Yep. Yep. Robert Reich explained the problems of tariffs very clearly, with good visuals, in a short video .

     

    The Democrats should be nailing the GOP and Trump to the wall on health care, taxes, and tariffs.

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, I got an email a few months ago that spooked me – even though I was 99% sure it was bullshit, I had read just enough of the ransomware note to get spooked and turn my computer off.  Just like when I would get a creepy phone call when we used land lines back in the day.

    Then I was telling  someone about it and pulled out the message and started reading – I knew it was bullshit when I got to the part where they said they had videos of me masturbating at my computer while I was watching porn and they were going to send copies of the video to everyone on my email list, which they also said they had.

    I was thrilled to get to that part about the video because they couldn’t have video of something that never happened.

    So many evil people out there.

  40. 40.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: Same thing happened to me.  They made all kinds of threats based on having a password, which they spelled out.  So, basically, they hacked a database — maybe  Zappos, which had a major breach –‘ and sent thousands of threatening emails.  My tech staff told me to ignore it.

  42. 42.

    Barbara

    @Mike J: I read one just like it in the WaPo by a woman who runs a factory that assembles finished goods from imported parts.  True exponents of the IGMFY political philosophy.

  44. 44.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @WaterGirl: The email service on my primary domain has an over-aggressive spam filter. (Friends don’t let friends use Vade.) I cannot convince them to set my account to put things into the spam folder instead of deleting them outright.

    But one thing that idiot spam filter has never caught and deleted was those “masturbating in front of the computer” emails. The last time I dealt with their support about it, I had someone try to reassure me that I shouldn’t send them money. “I know it’s a scam. I want you to tweak that filter to keep them out. If I have to put up with you deleting legitimate emails, the least you could do is delete the REAL spam, too.”

  46. 46.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mike J: @Barbara:

    I Support Trump’s Tariffs but Need an Exemption

    That’s pretty funny.
    Of course, people in his position can’t afford to not “Support Trump’s Tariffs” because DJT is vindictive and never forgives a slight.
    Take one “for the team”, you unpatriotic, America-hating wimps!

  55. 55.

    Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray

    @Eric S.: I’m alone, so a full bottle would be ambitious. There’s a decent half-bottle selection, but no St Emilion. Besides, I’m trying to buy American tonight.

  56. 56.

    opiejeanne

    @WaterGirl: I got an email that pretended to be from my Apple account that someone had joined Tinder using my info from that account which would have been interesting since I don’t have sensitive information stored there. Like an idiot I was curious andclicked on a link and immediately realized it was a phishing attempt or something, panicked and turned everything off. I went back in and changed all of my passwords for banking& credit cards. When I went back to report the issue I had to fish it out of the spam mailbox, because Yahoo had decided it was BS and dumped it.

    Nothing happened.

    Then today I noticed the breach of my debit card, with purchases at a grocery store two states away and a shiny new membership with a seniors dating service.  I don’t believe the two attempts are related at all, just lots of crooks out there.

  57. 57.

    Eric S.

    @Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray: I grew up with a family where steaks were cooked medium well to well done. I’ve progressed but still can’t to rare. I ordered my filet at RPM medium rare plus. They knew what I meant and nailed it!

    ETA: I would have got American wine when there but saw the St. Emilion, remembered my French wine county/biking vacation and had to get it.

    ENJOY!

  59. 59.

    Ken

    I think everyone’s missing the real story here.  Trump obviously isn’t going to get that Nobel Peace Prize.  But this makes him a shoo-in for the (not-really-a) Nobel Prize in Economics.

    Look at the article’s lead:  “We had theories about the effects of huge tariffs, but no world leader was ever stupid enough to impose them at those levels. Now thanks to Trump we have experimental evidence that they do not in fact have the claimed effects”.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray:

    I’m alone, so a full bottle would be ambitious. There’s a decent half-bottle selection, but no St Emilion. Besides, I’m trying to buy American tonight.

    Just wanted to jump in to say that I hope you are enjoying your meal.  It sounds delightful.

    And making me hungry.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray: Years ago, I worked at the University’s vet school.  One of the vets always had cartoons up on his office door.

    I remember two of them.

    One was a list of various horse maladies and their treatments.  In one column you would have  colic, arthritis, throwing a shoe, etc. and in the next column you would have the remedy, which was always “shoot the horse”.

    The other cartoon was a bit more on topic.

    It showed a man seated in a restaurant, pointing to his steak. The indignant waiter was saying “What do you mean ‘it’s not rare enough’?  A good vet could still do something for that animal!”

  65. 65.

    sdhays

    @danielx: If he wants to mount your spouse, let him. You let him screw your reputation, honor, dignity, principles, and political priors. Why not your wife?

    So nice of Rick Wilson to let us know that Republicans (like him?) consider women to be the property of their husbands, who can whore them out as they please and whether another man fucks them or not is something done to the husband, not the wife who is actually getting fucked.

    Of course, that is almost literally what Paul Manafort apparently did, so…

    Even mocking Republicans gets disgusting quickly.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    @Aleta: I might, if I actually liked gin.  But i would happily accept a description of the lovely bottle the drink was no doubt poured from.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @Ken:

    Look at the article’s lead:  “We had theories about the effects of huge tariffs, but no world leader was ever stupid enough to impose them at those levels. Now thanks to Trump we have experimental evidence that they do not in fact have the claimed effects”.

    Well, Trump certainly may win an Ig-Nobel prize. And well deserved.

  71. 71.

    mrmoshpotato

    @danielx:

    Stipulate that Rick Wilson is a (somewhat) recovering Republican prick. 

    Nope.  Sorry.  You don’t recover from a lifetime of Rethuglican ratfucking.  He’s a “recovering” Rethuglican because the money is good.

  73. 73.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: “Burn it to a crisp!” I like to think a downtown Chicago steakhouse would refuse that request.  “Medium you say?  Excellent choice.”

  76. 76.

    WaterGirl

    @mrmoshpotato:  My friend and I would go to lunch at the bar that served great ribeye sandwiches for lunch.  You ordered at the counter where they cooked the steaks, and the guy would look up,  see us, nod to me and say “medium rare” and then look at my friend and say “cook the shit out of it”.

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    @mrmoshpotato: Oh my god, that’s what we had for dinner on Christmas Day.  All these absolutely gorgeous new york strips.  On the grill.

    All of a sudden the host said “Oh shit!” and ran out of the kitchen to the back yard where he was grilling the steaks.

    Oh my god, It’s been decades since I had a steak like that.  Nearly inedible.  So sad.  Of course we all said they were delicious!

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @WaterGirl: 

    Many moons ago, I worked at Six Flags in Illinois. One day I was having lunch at the employee cafeteria with a group that included my supervisor. He unwrapped his burger, took one bite, and took it back up to the cashier, saying, “Excuse me, but I think this is still mooing.”

  90. 90.

    opiejeanne

    @sdhays: Yes, this leaves open the question of whether Wilson believes that about women, or he is a keen observer of Republican attitudes toward women.

  91. 91.

    Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray

    OK, I have to ask. The parking structures of those two ugly cylindrical buildings on the north side of the river were used in some dumb action movie, no? I’m not good with the pop culture references.

  92. 92.

    opiejeanne

    @mrmoshpotato: Yes. I get that. I’ve never spent time in Chicago other than the airport and a quick drive away to the West to visit Downers Grove with my dad, to visit a first cousin.

  93. 93.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: I”m that way with ground beef. Who knows how the grinder was cleaned, or if, but I like a steak done just barely past being “blue”.

  101. 101.

    hitchhiker

    2 trump tariff stories from our house:

    1. mr h likes to find and buy stereo components online. he has speakers in all our rooms now, and subwoofers and all manner of gizmos that only he understands. recently he went to purchase something or other and found that the seller was making plain how much of the price went to TRUMP TARIFF, clearly pissed that his product was now harder to sell.

    2. we’ve been slowly working our way thru the process of building a house, with the help of a local modular company. last summer we picked a bunch of the interior finishes — floors, countertops, lighting, stuff like that. on Monday we had a production meeting with the builder, who reminded us we still had to choose a corian product for the shower walls. we went to the dealer, got some samples for color, and drove over to the place where we’d already picked floor tiles.

    guess what? the ones we wanted aren’t available anymore, because, as the saleswoman explained, they got hit randomly with this big TRUMP TARIFF, and it was both expensive and a ridiculous paperwork burden, so they don’t have ’em. sorry!

     

    i could deal with this bullshit, and all the other bullshit, if i thought there was any sort of rhyme or reason to it. but there never is! it’s all just this vulgar fool trying to swing his dick around.

    bananaland.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: Reverse sear steak Restarting my browser fixed it.  I’d hit the link button, and it would go into a loop of playing disappearing reappearing keyboard.  (I’m on my handheld supercomputer that can make phone calls.)

  103. 103.

    WaterGirl

    @mrmoshpotato: I wondered if it was that.  BillinGlendale described that during testing, and I couldn’t understand what he was talking about.  He was kind enough to make me a video, and wow!  It was crazy.  It would be there, flash, then be gone.  Then come back, be there, and flash, it was gone.

    I asked the developers at the time and they said “link” was straight up WordPress and he had no control over how it behaved.  So it was some weird browser thing.  Glad restarting it fixed that for you.

    Will check out the reverse sear thing again

    edit: I still get the same Youtube error.

  106. 106.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WaterGirl: Weird.  Search YouTube for ‘reverse sear steak sam the cooking guy’.  Short 4 minute video, and no, you don’t need a probe thermometer.  I’ve taken temps after about 20-25 minutes.

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