It’s like his frustration with the way Congress, the courts and the law keep thwarting his best efforts to precipitate a category 1 catastrophic shitstorm keep driving him to to pursue new,ever greater heights of folly. Just a matter of time before he nukes someone.
Dow is tanking as we write.
Remember way back in February when Trump was just going to tweak NAFTA? Good times, good times.
China will be so pleased.
The reason so many Chinese are ascending to the middle class is that wages have tripled over the past decade. The average hourly wage in Chinese manufacturing is now $3.60. Over that same period of time, hourly manufacturing wages in Mexico have fallen to $2.10. Even taking into account the extraordinary productivity of Chinese factories—not to mention the expense that comes with Mexico’s far greater fidelity to the rules of international trade—Mexico increasingly looks like a sensible place for Chinese firms to set up shop, particularly given its proximity to China’s biggest export market.
In October, China’s state-run media promised that the two countries “would elevate military ties to [a] new high” and described the possibility of joint operations, training, and logistical support. A month and a half later, Mexico sold a Chinese oil company access to two massive patches of deepwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. And in February, the billionaire Carlos Slim, a near-perfect barometer of the Mexican business elite’s mood, partnered with Anhui Jianghuai Automobile to produce SUVs in Hidalgo, a deal that will ultimately result in the production of 40,000 vehicles a year. These were not desultory developments. As Beijing’s ambassador to Mexico City put it in December, with the American election clearly on the brain: “We are sure that cooperation is going to be much strengthened.”
I’m torn, too, but I’m leaning towards “fuck 'em, if they want this guy in power, if they want total GOP rule, then let them see what the nation is like without Dems around to give a shit about them”.
Yes, innocent people will get hurt. Yes, the economy will go off another cliff. Yes, it’s gonna suck for everyone for awhile but that’s the price paid for allowing a fool’s errand to run its course.
What the HOLY FK are they doing NOW? Lower taxes for rich people, screw trade, no immigration, threaten AMERICAN CITIZENS…and somehow they think this MAKES AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???
Actually, I think you’re referring to Mexican agronomic policies initiated in the 1950s and 60s, that were subsistence + modest income-based. They were patterned, in part, on U.S. agricultural extension services that allowed farmers to organize (eeck!) and collectively bargain for access to credit markets, along with education about new methods and technology. Think President Bartlett (The West Wing) nominating Norman Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize 1970) as most significant human of the 20th century.
The downsides you cite were very real, when U.S. agribusiness swept in starting in the 1970s and began transforming the Plan Puebla communities into bulk strawberry producers for the U.S. jam, jelly, and ice cream industries, and whatnot. Captain Queeg was so proud. But his methods saved, conservatively, a billion humans from dying of starvation.
But then, no good deed goes unpunished, given the wolverines of that and our current time.
Reedited to add: Back in the day I could actually tell you how many grams of potash to add to your fertilizer to increase maize (aka corn) yields by X% per hectare…and why “peasants” (now aka women in most developing countries, since they mostly do subsistence agriculture) are among the most entrepreneurial people on the planet.
And now the markets are recovering because the stupid wankers who think their understanding of obscure derivatives makes them experts on politics are transfixed by his idiot tax plan which they can’t grasp will never pass, as opposed to the economic chaos he can unleash with the stroke of a pen.
Though I must admit, the tax plan is very exciting. Ordinarily, Republican upward wealth redistribution masterbatory fantasy Penthouse letter tax plans pay for all of the lost revenue with magic asterisk elimination of popular deductions to be named at a later time, not just part of them. Kinky.
Indeed. He appears to be setting up failure after failure after failure so that he can go out to “his people” and tell them that he tried but congress, and the courts, stopped him from fulfilling his campaign promises each and every time.
I’m afraid we must allow him, and his congressional drones, to do real damage so that people can see what life without sanity in government really looks like.
The mechanics of actually withdrawing are simple and spelled out in the agreement itself (see my link above). The problem, is who has legal authority to formally withdraw on behalf of the unIted States when it was passed agreed to as a congressional-executive agreement and further into law by Congress?
My feelings exactly
Step 1: Form a circle
Step 2: Fire!
Step 3: Aim
Step 4: Find someone to blame
My place is paid off in June but we’re in the process of buying a place in Kansas City with the intention of selling this place to pay for the new house. Just in time for Comrade President to spark a world wide financial crisis.
Go to the Appalachians and they are as happy as clams with what they are seeing, they do not see any real benefit in the horizon, but everyone will be as ruined as they are and they won’t feel bad. Maybe it will stop them coastal elites from making jokes about their snake worshiping and sister screwing.
All of this “white man’s burden” and angst has been going on since the dawn of the industrial revolution when farm equipment began to automate previously manual jobs. And, just as now, the people whose jobs were eliminated fought back by sabotaging the equipment and threatening the farmers, machinists, the whatever who were one or more rungs above them on the ladder.
But the generation who believed the “rising tide lifts all boats” bullshit of the 80’s now have children or grandchildren who, if at all possible, are even dumber than they were and who have faith in this pig-eyed sack of shit conman in the WH. Sometimes the defiant child must actually burn her/his hand to learn the dangers of touching the hot stove.
Mine too, but I still think that picture and caption are hilarious!
Is anyone else getting a bit tired of all these silly balloons they keep floating, that the media all treat as 100% for sure policy decision?
Again, no. Barring a revolution, of course.
OT but good news:
Not to mention environmental.
And yet the factory that produces much of Ivanka’s clothing line is under fire for paying their workers approx $1 per hour and demanding upwards of 60 hours per week.
But hey, Buy American/Hire American just sounds so damn good comin’ outta daddy’s little princess’s mouth…