Sharper Republicans Realize What's Headed Their Way-- And They Are Begging Us To Help Save Them.

A NY Fed study shows what anyone with any sense has long known, namely that Trump was full of shit last year when he claimed China would be paying for his trade war tariffs by cutting the prices on Chinese goods to absorb import taxes (as much as 25%) when the goods hit U.S. shores. That isn't the way trade wars go and "the prices Chinese firms charge have barely budged, meaning U.S. companies and consumers are paying the tariff costs, estimated at around $40 billion annually. As a result of the U.S.-China trade war, the government adds as much as 25% to the import price as Chinese goods enter the country. If Chinese companies were absorbing that cost, they would have to cut their prices as much as 20%-- a level that would allow U.S. retailers, manufacturers, or wholesalers to keep their own prices and profits stable. That is not what is happening. Import data from June 2018 to September 2019 shows Chinese import prices fell only 2%, the Fed study found, in line with price declines seen in many other nations as global trade slowed."

As with everything-- yes, every little thing-- Trump says, that was a lie. Yesterday, for example, CNN reported that Mulvaney's "Office of Management and Budget's first official action to withhold $250 million in Pentagon aid to Ukraine came on the evening of July 25, the same day President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone.

Tim Miller, writing for The Bulwark Tuesday, wanted to make sure his readers are aware that Trump’s Turkey Corruption Is Way Worse Than You Realize. Remember-- John Bolton said that he believes there's a "personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey"-- meaning that, at the very least, Trump's hand-picked national security advisor believes "the commander-in-chief made life or death national security decisions because of an active conflict of interest related to his business." That seems heavy, even for a (literate) Trump supporter, and Miller asserts it "would amount to the biggest scandal in the American presidency in half a century: The most senior security staffer, a man with unparalleled access to the president, believes that Trump acted in a way that is indistinguishable from double-dealing despots the world over."

One more Bulwark post, this one from yesterday by Laura Field on how the alt-right fringe because the mainstream of the GOP: Dear Republicans: Welcome to the New Establishment. "The Trumpists," she wrote, "became the GOP establishment the moment Trump won the nomination, or at least when he won the presidency. But it’s worth remembering that in the early days of the Trump era, anyone who supported Trump was decidedly fringe. His nomination happened in large part because everyone assumed the centripetal power of the establishment would hold. Throughout the 2016 primaries, the more mainstream Republican candidates tiptoed around Trump, believing that inevitably one of them would take the lead... Bannon, Gorka, and Miller are... the face of today’s conservatism and today’s Republican party."

So all this is going on and independent voters-- who will decide the 2020 elections-- are getting a sense of it. The latest CNN poll (yesterday) finds half the country (50-43%) says Trump should be impeached and removed. That's up from 37% in favor of impeachment and 59% against it at the end of April. 53% of us say he used his office improperly-- up from 48% in September-- and 56% say Trump’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate Biden's son Hunter was more for personal benefit than to root out corruption. Only 36% of voters are buying the bullshit about fighting corruption.

If Democrats turn out and take the lion's share of independent voters next year, Trump will be a one-termer. Dems do not need even one Republican, or, more likely, Trump will win a conservative or racist Democrat for every Republican he loses. That's fine. It doesn't matter. One Republican he'll never get its Max Boot's who's Washington Post column yesterday is more anti-Republican than most Democrats sound, and not just anti-Trump... anti-Republican. He wrote that "Republicans have turned their back on conservative principles to become a cult of personality for an aspiring authoritarian. All voters with a conscience should now turn their back on the Republican Party. For aiding and abetting the president’s egregious abuses of power, the Republican Party deserves to be destroyed from top to bottom. We need a center-right party in this country. What we have instead is a party with no fixed principles that is willing to do anything-- no matter how vile-- to serve its maximum leader, a.k.a. 'the chosen one.'"

Over at The Progressive yesterday, Bill Lueders tracked a few other #NeverTrump Republicans, George Will and Charlie Sykes. Lueders noted that Will wrote that "'aside from some rhetorical bleats, Republicans are acquiescing' as Trump makes public display of his 'gross and comprehensive incompetence.' He argues that if Trump continues to get away with insisting that 'the Constitution’s impeachment provisions are unconstitutional,' the instrument of impeachment will be rendered useless as a check on all future Presidents. There may also be a political price to pay, as Will notes in issuing a warning that to Democrats surely sounds like a dream: 'If Congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe-- losing the House, the Senate, and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and even Texas-- that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw. That conservatives like Will are at the forefront of opposition to Trump creates opportunities for alliances that were once unthinkable. MSNBC commentator Charlie Sykes, a conservative from Wisconsin, says in an interview for this editorial that Trump’s unfitness has the potential to unite the citizenry."

“I would like to think there’s a coalition of the decent out there who are just horrified by watching Donald Trump, by watching what he’s doing, but also what he’s doing to us,” Sykes says. “I would love to see the emergence of a coalition that would set aside ideological differences, at least temporarily, to deal with the current emergency.”

... He believes Trump “poses an existential threat to a lot of the democratic norms that we have right now, and I do think those cross party and ideological lines.”

To this end, Sykes argues, “progressives ought to be willing to make common cause with Republicans and conservatives who are willing to break with Trump. That’s not a surrender of principle. It doesn’t mean that we don’t disagree about things, but it means that at this particular moment in time, it’s more important to be allies than to dwell on what we disagree about. We can go back to debating the tax rates later, but if we want to get past this moment in history, there’s going to have to be this alliance that recognizes the unique emergency that the country faces.”

It’s an intriguing possibility. While Trump’s impeachment now appears certain, it will result in his removal from office only if twenty Republican Senators join Democrats in voting for it. This is unlikely, given the devotion that most Republicans have shown thus far, but it’s not impossible.

The impeachment inquiry has churned up massive new evidence of Trump’s shocking and illegal conduct, as career civil servants reveal the extent to which he has sought to use the power of the presidency to his personal political advantage.

...As Sykes frames it, the question for Republicans is how much more pure humiliation they are willing to take.

“What Republicans right now have to be asking is: Do they really want to support five more years of this? We’re talking about five more years of Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief. Five more years of defending and enabling Donald Trump, particularly as he becomes more and more untethered, more and more unhinged, more and more contemptuous of the truth and of the law.”

There can be little doubt that Republicans are driven largely by political self-interest, as are many Democrats. But that means some of them might still be persuaded to abandon Trump. Sykes, while “immensely disappointed at the degree to which [Republicans] have rationalized and enabled Donald Trump,” has not given up hope that they will turn against him. If a few Republicans do so, a few more will likely follow.

And progressives can be a part of this, as long as they can get beyond blaming their fellow citizens for having the bad judgment to support Trump and instead encourage them to honestly ask: “Do you really want to be part of this anymore?”

The answer, for a broad and growing swath of the American public, is no.

No, we do not want a President who constantly embarrasses us on the global stage.

No, we do not want a foul-mouthed bigot to be America’s face to the world.

No, we are not OK with separating children from their families and locking them in cages.

No, we don’t want a President who doesn’t know the name of his own Defense Secretary, refers to members of his party as “Rupublicans,” and thinks Colorado is on the Mexican border.

No, we will not normalize Donald Trump, his ignorance, his crudeness, his impulsiveness, his meanness of spirit, his contempt for the very notion of Constitutional checks and balances, his open corruption and gross incompetence.

Yet Republican politicians will never abandon Trump as long as they perceive that this will cost them politically. As of midautumn, nine in ten Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents opposed impeachment. But that may change.

To secure the deserved ouster of this President, we need to win over a critical mass of ordinary Trump supporters. That may happen just from the open Congressional debate over impeachment and the weight of daily mounting evidence as to the President’s criminality.

To date, the President’s every response to the possibility of impeachment underscores its necessity. He has set out to obstruct the process, even ordering public officials to refuse to testify about his misbehavior. It is getting clearer that anyone who stands with him stands in opposition to the rule of law.

In the end, there will be some Republicans who will support impeachment-- perhaps not enough to oust Trump from office but enough to more plausibly put the lie to the notion that the push for impeachment is a Democratic plot. There will be more defections of principled conservatives and constituencies that realize, however belatedly, that Trump has been conning them. And the majority of Americans who oppose this President will continue to grow.

What a delightful irony it would be if, in the end, this most determinedly divisive of Presidents ended up bringing the people of this country together.

Damage Control by Nancy Ohanian

How Badly Is Trump Treating Rural America?

It surprised me to see Trump's coalition in the Midwest falling apart. In the most recent Morning Consult state-by-state Trump tracker, it doesn't look like rural America will be coming to his rescue in 2020. His net approval in state after state he won in 2016 in underwater:

• Iowa- minus 14
• Wisconsin- minus 11
• Michigan- minus 10
• Ohio- minus 5
• Nebraska- minus 2

And even in the states he's still ahead in, his numbers have collapsed. Indiana is just +2. North Dakota and South Dakota, states Trump took in landslides in 2016, are each +1. Kansas is +4 and Missouri is his only safe seat in the region: +5. Trump's numbers in Iowa are seriously endangering freshman Senator Joni Ernst. Michael Franken is the non-Schumer candidate for Ernst's seat. This morning he told me that "The ample amounts of unsold ethanol in storage, the lag in recovering in the China marketplace, and the contracts already let for this year's crop will offer no salvation to Midwest farmers if Trump and Xi cut a deal. A promise of better markets next year won't help Ernst since her Iowa farmers have been betrayed before, repeatedly."

And J.D. Scholten is running for the last Iowa House seat occupied by a Republican-- and in this case, that Republican is neo-fascist lunatic Steve King who even the GOP was so disgusted by that they kicked him off the Agriculture Committee-- which is exactly where J.D. will be serving once he wins the seat next year. "IA-04," he said this morning, "is the 2nd most ag-producing district in America. Farmers are being hit with a trade war that has cost this district $558 million alone. Also, this administration’s abuse of the Renewable Fuel Standard which is directly depressing corn prices, closed or idled plants and lost good rural jobs. All the while, Ag monopolies are squeezing farmers on both the input and output sides. Farmers are looking for solutions, giving Democrats a huge opportunity in November 2020 but we have to go out there and earn it."

Last week, the Council on Foreign Relations published a blog post by Benn Steil and Ben Della Rocca, China’s “Massive” Trade Offer Leaves U.S. Farmers $7 Billion Worse Off. Does Trump know what the word "massive means? He's been "talking up the “massive” trade deal he expects to sign with President Xi in November," wrote Steil and Della Rocca. 'China,' he said, will soon be 'buying much more farm products than anybody thought possible.' But is this true?" Trump said it, so you would be pretty safe betting the farm that it isn't true; after all, virtually nothing he ever says is.

The latest news from China indicates that it will “aim” to buy $20 billion in U.S. farm goods in the first year of an initial deal. It also says that such purchases “could” eventually rise as high as $40-50 billion. Trump is hailing the latter suggestion as an “incredible deal for farmers,” though he fails to note that the numbers have no empirical or analytical basis and are premised on his repealing all his punitive tariffs-- that is, ending the trade war.

So is the U.S. now really “winning,” as Trump likes to say?

Let us focus first on what China actually has on the table: an offer to buy $20 billion in ag goods in return for Trump killing his planned October tariff increase, from 25% to 30%, on $250 billion in imports, as well as abandoning new 15% tariffs on a further $112 billion in imports scheduled for December. Is this a good deal?

The right way to evaluate China’s offer is to ask how much U.S. farmers would have exported to China in 2020 had Trump never started his trade war. In the graphic above, the dotted blue line projects such sales by assuming that, after 2017, China’s purchase volumes of each type of agricultural good would, absent Trump’s trade war, have continued growing at the rates seen since 2010. As the yellow marker highlights, China’s 2020 purchases would have exceeded $27 billion. That is, China would have bought over $7 billion more than what it is now offering. And this is a conservative estimate, given that the projections assume prices stay fixed at last year’s trade-war-depressed levels.

As regards China’s tease that a complete end to the trade war could push its U.S. ag purchases up to $40-50 billion, this is wholly implausible. As the dashed line above shows, Chinese ag imports before the trade war had barely been on pace to reach $30 billion by 2022.

In short, if Trump accepts what he is calling a “massive” deal with China, he will actually be leaving American farmers at least $7 billion worse off than they would have been without his policies. As for China’s hints of a far-off bonanza for U.S. farmers, these should be taken with a grain of soybean.

According To Señor Trumpanzee, "We Are Leading In Everything"

Remember the '80s hit by The Nails, 88 Lines About 44 Women? (There was a Kamala in the song. She "couldn't sing but she kept the beat and kept it strong." Kamala Harris was still a teenager when it was first recorded. When it became a hit, that was the first time I ever heard the name.) That whole parenthesis doesn't matter. I'm bringing up the song because Chris Cillizza should try a rendition based on his 27 most dubious lines from Trump's CNBC phone interview. A stretch, I know.

The topic of Trump's sudden decision to call in and kvetch to CNBC's Squawk Box was how the media is exposing his bullshit on the Mexican tariffs. It drives him crazy. He followed Myron Brilliant, the head of international affairs at the Chamber of Commerce, who had mildly criticized Señor Trumpanzee's "weaponized tariffs." Trump thought this was witty:

• "Well, I guess he's not so brilliant. Look, without tariffs, we would be captive to every country, and we have been for many years."

• "I'm a member of the US Chamber-- maybe I'll have to rethink that, because when you look at it, the chamber is probably more for the companies and the people that are members than they are for our country."

• "Because without tariffs, we would be absolutely, outside of something that I won't even mention, we would be absolutely in a competitive disadvantage, the likes of which you've never seen."

• "Now, people haven't used tariffs, but tariffs are a beautiful thing when you're the piggy bank, when you have all the money."

• "And China will, in my opinion, based on a lot of facts and a lot of knowledge, China's going to make a deal because they're going to have to make a deal."

• "I'm going to tell you that most people understand that the people having to do with borders and illegal immigration and immigration of any kind, they understand exactly what that is."

• "But this is something the US has been trying to get for over 20 years with Mexico. They've never been able to do it. As soon as I put tariffs on the table, it was done. It took two days."

• "You know, we've picked up trillions of dollars in worth since I've been elected."

[CNN did a little fact check here: "It's true the nation's net worth has grown by about that amount, according to the Federal Reserve. It rose to $101 trillion in the first quarter, up from $94 trillion in the same period a year earlier, when Trump took office. (The gain shrinks to just under $5 trillion if you adjust the figures for inflation.) However, the country was getting wealthier long before Trump's presidency. After taking a beating during the Great Recession, net worth rocketed back. It rose by nearly $40 trillion during the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency, or $31 trillion when adjusted for inflation."]

• "Had a Democrat gotten in, namely, the one we're talking about, China would have caught us by the end of her term."

• "They'll never catch us. Not with what I'm doing. They'll never catch us."

• "He [Kudlow] put some of it on, but they didn't put it on the way that they should have. So, you know, that was a little bit of the media."

• "We have a Fed that raises interest rates the day before a bond issue goes out, so we have to pay more money. You tell me about that thinking, OK."

• "We should be entitled to have a fair playing field, but even without a fair playing field-- because our Fed is very, very destructive to us."

• "I'm winning, but I'm not winning on a level table. If I had a table -- don't forget, the head of the Fed in China is President Xi."

• "We're doing-- but I just want to say to the United States Chamber of Commerce, if we didn't have tariffs, we wouldn't have made a deal with Mexico."

[The NY Times report that is driving Trump up the wall: "The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations."]

• "Nobody's going to be able to get through. And then they're also going to protect our southern border."

• "It's a very simple-- it is a simple stat. [President Xi is] for China, I am for the US, so we are going to have our differences."

• "I can tell you they [Big Tech] discriminate against me."

• "You know, people talk about collusion. The real conclusion is between the Democrats and these companies."

• "We are not fools anymore. We are not the foolish country that does so badly."




• "I'm a budget cutter and I have cut the budget."

• "I am very much of a cost cutter. I want to have a great budget."

• "I got the plane cost down a lot."

• "Well, there's something going on."

[regarding anti-trust problems with Google and Facebook]

• "This country is allowing this French wine which is great, we have great wine, too, allowing it to come in for nothing. It is not fair. And you know what, it's not fair. We'll do something about it."

• "We are leading in everything."

• "We are-- if you look at China, China, as great as they are and they are great, they are near the capability of our geniuses in Silicon Valley that walk around in undershirts and they were not $2 billion a piece."

PolitiFact hasn't done this bunch yet but the fact check they did May 20th should be helpful in a meta kind of way.

Beating Trump... Anyone But Biden

A USA Today OpEd Saturday morning gets to the heart of the Biden problem Democrats serious about denying Trump a second term are facing: within the Democratic Party, Biden is the candidate of the oligarchy. Status Quo Joe "is a consummate, long-time Washington insider, who has demonstrated in his long career that he often dances with the ones who brought him: wealthy donors and special interests." He's polling well because many Democrats "figure the centrist Biden is a better bet to attract independent voters than the more progressive Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. But have you actually listened closely to Biden lately? Not to be ageist, but the more charitable way to put it is that he isn’t currently at the top of his game. He can stumble and fumble for words and thoughts." This isn't a subject media is comfortable discussing. But it isn't really ageist, since it describes Biden and Trump, but not Bernie, all of whom are around the same age.

When you listen to Biden on the campaign trail, you see a candidate trafficking in platitudes galore, about defeating Trump and “mak(ing) America moral again."

...[R]ight there is the problem: Biden and many Democrats fundamentally misread what happened in 2016. To them, Trump is a temporary aberration, before the usual status-quo politics can be restored.

But Trump was more a symptom, rather than the cause of extreme political dysfunction. Electing Trump was a kind of primal scream by millions of voters fed up with a broken political system with out-of-touch Washington political elites of both parties.

And Trump will, of course, go away, but Trumpism will likely stay.

...[T]he quote of the 2020 race came recently from Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: “What does it matter if we beat Donald Trump if we end up with someone who will perpetuate the very same crony capitalist policies, corporate policies and waging more of these costly wars?”

Candidates like Joe Biden come to mind.

The problem with Biden is that he looks good in soft focus but his candidacy reveals glaring deficiencies that, in these populist times, won’t survive hard scrutiny.

The focus goes beyond his support for the 1994 crime bill which helped lead to mass incarceration, and his, in hindsight, retrograde conduct during the Clarence Thomas hearings.

More harmful to his candidacy are his actions that’ve benefited his wealthy benefactors but stick it to the Average Joe and Jane: his support for global trade deals that have decimated the American manufacturing base, his support for financial deregulation, and his support for bankruptcy reform that prevents people from being able to discharge their consumer debt.

And it hasn’t escaped sharp-eyed observers that he started his current campaign by holding a fundraiser attended by corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors.

Not to mention Biden’s support for costly Middle Eastern military interventions that benefit our military industrial complex but have harmed Middle America’s sons and daughters.

The list goes on. Just consider the conflict-of-interest questions raised by his actions in Ukraine and China that involved his son, Hunter.

But hey, if you aren’t paying close attention, Biden is your guy. He is the perfect tool of the oligarchy-- affable and decent while sometimes effecting cut-throat policies detrimental to ordinary Americans.

Is Biden starting to catch up with the times and with the way the Democratic Party has moved since the 1970s and '80s (his time, the time his political ideas became set in concrete in his mind)? Not at all. Take that much ballyhooed Climate Plan someone wrote for him. It's another middle of the road approach that won't actually solve the most important problem we're facing as a society, a problem that will laugh in the face of any halfway measures. As Dayton Martindale explained for In These Times readers, "once you look beneath the puff, it becomes clear the plan is not grounded in robust proposals, and the substance is remarkably flimsy. His good ideas (like ending subsidies) are mostly shared by the rest of the Democratic field; he puts undue faith in new technologies, hoping they can save us without having to directly confront the fossil fuel industry; and the regulations he suggests are generally either mild or toothless-- likely not enough to achieve his stated goals, themselves insufficient to stem the crisis... Biden’s plan doesn’t actually endorse the Green New Deal. While praising its spirit, he sets a goal that is notably less ambitious: net-zero emissions by 2050, a goal shared by Beto O’Rourke. (The Green New Deal calls for a '10-year mobilization' to achieve zero-emissions electricity, and to get as close to zero in other sectors as 'technologically feasible.') He also steers clear of some of the Green New Deal’s more ambitious components, such as a jobs guarantee... As Inslee put it on Tuesday, 'My plan puts up stop signs, and I’m afraid that the vice president’s plan does not.'

"...In the end, Joe Biden’s plan takes a few good ideas from other campaigns but advances few new specifics, showing little interest in taking on the fossil fuel industry... In the two areas where he most distinguishes himself from other candidates-- his emphasis on technological research and international relations-- he shows himself to be living in a fantasy world, where future innovations allow us to avoid drastic action and the United States is some sort of global climate hero. As a statement from Food and Water Watch’s executive director put it, 'Joe Biden’s climate plan is a cobbled-together assortment of weak emissions targets and unproven technological schemes that fail to adequately address the depth and urgency of the climate crisis we face. This plan cannot be considered a serious proposal to tackle climate change.'"

Even without having to depend on a recession, Trump can be beaten, but, likely, not by someone incapable of taking on the oligarchs and plutocrats-- the way Bernie and Elizabeth Warren do and the way State Quo Joe doesn't and won't. In his NY Times column yesterday, Neil Irwin noted that Trump's trade agenda is a giant achilles heal, one waiting to be taken advantage of. But don't look at Biden as the man to be able or even willing to. Trump's love of tariffs leaves him open to attacks "from the right, as being anti-business, and from the left, as being bad for workers."

In battleground states mostly in the Rust Belt-- Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin-- 39 percent of registered voters said they thought Mr. Trump’s trade policies were good for the economy, versus 47 percent who thought they were bad, according to a May Quinnipiac poll.

You can imagine a trade pitch from the 2020 Democratic nominee that goes something like this: “I’ll work with allies to keep pressure on China over its unfair practices-- but not with open-ended tariffs on thousands of goods that are a tax on American consumers and invite retaliation against American farmers. I won’t use tariffs against countries that are our close partners. And I’ll use trade policy to try to boost well-being for American workers, rather than using it as a cudgel on unrelated issues.”

It could prove a potent way to knit together a Democratic coalition that depends on both traditional labor-left voters in the industrial Midwest and college-educated suburbanites who are more comfortable with globalization.

“I think Trump is hugely vulnerable on trade, but Democrats haven’t quite figured out how to attack that vulnerability yet,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Trump’s approach has made things worse for both key Democratic and Republican constituents.”

Rather than focusing on a few discrete areas where international competitors have treated American companies unfairly and applying temporary tariffs to try to exert pressure, the Trump administration has applied open-ended tariffs on imports of nearly 7,000 different items.

The administration has also placed tariffs on “intermediate goods,” so that efforts to create jobs in one sector can mean higher costs and fewer jobs in another. The taxes on many steel and aluminum imports, for example, may be creating some jobs in those sectors while increasing costs for automakers and other American companies that use the metals.

And trading partners have been savvy about using retaliatory tariffs to punish Mr. Trump’s base, most notably on American farm products.

Combine those factors, and the trade war so far has offered more pain than it has a clear pathway to better deals for American companies and workers. Especially with China, it has often seemed that rather than seeking to achieve attainable goals, the conflict is the whole point.

...Trump took advantage of that flexibility to persuade many Republicans to embrace a protectionist approach in 2016, and was able to appeal to a key segment of Democrats as well. The premium on retaining so-called Obama-Trump vote switchers in 2020 may help explain Mr. Trump’s recent moves-- he may view it as keeping a promise of being tough on trade.

The challenge for the Democratic nominee will be to offer a persuasive vision for a trade policy that makes both workers and businesses better off than they are under the status quo, to stand up for American interests while removing the erratic approach of the Trump administration.

Bernie was on CNN yesterday explaining that "it's not good enough just to attack Trump. You need to bring forth an agenda that increases voter turnout, that is a campaign of excitement and energy. Not the old status quo. You have to talk to working people, and to young people. You have to bring millions of new people into the political process, to demand finally that we have a government and a political process in this country that works for all of us and not just the 1%. If you are timid and middle of the road, I don't think you create that kind of excitement and energy to defeat Trump and given the fact that in my view Trump is the most dangerous president in the history of this country, it is imperative that we do that."

On Wednesday, he's going to be speaking at George Washington University to go over how "democratic socialism is the only way to defeat oligarchy and authoritarianism." His campaign announced that he plans to "make the case that a strong grassroots campaign based on these progressive values is the only way to confront oligarchy and authoritarianism and defeat Donald Trump."

Can Congressional Republicans Talk Trump Down From Starting A Trade War With Mexico?

McConnell and Child by Nancy Ohanian

With Señor Trumpanzee away making a fool of himself in Europe, Senate Republicans are hissing and snarling in a way they would never do if he were in town. Even the queen of toadies, Mitch McTurtle, warned that Senate Republicans-- he believes he, rather than Trump-- speaks for them oppose his threats to levy a massive tax on the American people via a system of economically unjustifiable tariffs against Mexico. On Tuesday, McTurtle was unimpressed by a couple of random White House left-behinds-- deputy counsel Pat Philbin and Assistant Attorney General Steve Engel-- who laid out the case for tariffs. John Kennedy (R-LA), basically said the two schlemiels were a joke. "Both bright guys, but they don’t have decision-making authority. What I’m hoping we can do is when the president gets back from the U.K. we can all sit down and try to figure out how to move forward together." McTurtle's #2, John Cornyn (R-TX), agreed: "The problem is we didn’t have the decision makers there. The president and half his Cabinet [are] over in Europe, and obviously the clock is ticking. Time’s wasting. What we need to do is get in front of the president and have that conversation."

When McTurtle left, he told reporters "there is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that's for sure." One of his cronies from Oklahoma add that Trumpanzee "is trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change." (I would love to hear Pelosi or Chuck recycle that one some time.) Ron Johnson (R-WI) warned that this time the Senate will override his veto, boasting that Trump "ought to be concerned about another vote of disapproval on another national emergency act, this time trying to implement tariffs. Tariffs are not real popular in the Republican Conference. This would be a different vote… This would certainly give me great pause."

Romney went even further: "When it comes to applying a tariff to Mexico, I for one would not support that. I do not favor tariffs being applied to friends like Mexico. If there’s a vote I think it’s a very difficult vote for those of us who oppose tariffs. I would not be inclined to vote [for] a tariff against a friend."

Over in London, Trumpanzee, claimed the tariffs will go into effect on Monday and that he has "tremendous Republican support." Ted Cruz told the two Trump messenger boys that the tariffs have virtually no support. This was also when he was claiming massive crowds turned out to cheer his arrival in London:

Bloomberg News' two Jennies reported that McTurtle told the two goof balls at the White House that Trump must hold off on the tariffs until Senate Republicans can sit him down face to face and educate him on what they would mean politically and economically. Trump claims this is a quote from poor Kevin McCarthy, who never said any such thing. But now McCarthy doesn't have the cajones to stand up for himself and publicly say what he's already saying privately-- that Trump made up the quote out of the blue and didn't even run it by him!

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a far worse toadie than even McTurtle and he urged his conference to stop criticizing the Trumpanzee trade wars in a blur of convoluted reasoning: "At the end of the day we should support the president so we can get an agreement so we don't have tariffs. Them talking about not supporting him undercuts his ability to do that." In other words: just let join do whatever he wants; he's much smarter than we are. Ironically, McCarthy's own state would be hurt far worse than most states in the trade war with Mexico gets rolling-- hundreds of dollars annually in extra costs to families and at least 50,000 lost jobs.

At one time-- way back in 2015/16-- it might have been Larry Kudlow who could talk Trump down. At the time, he was taped saying Trump's trade policies would lead to a depression and cause "incalculable damage" to the economy. "Donald Trump, he is a protectionist. He will jack up tariffs and those are higher tax rates and they will pose incalculable damage on our economy. He will destroy the dollar. That's basically been his message, if anybody cares to look at it... "You slap a 25%, 35% tariff on our leading trading partners like Mexico and China. We may not like them, sir, but tariffs and protectionism is not the answer... It will do incalculable damage to the American economy. Okay? We will cut off our nose to spite our face and that is not the right policy... We don't need this. This will backfire on America and the rest of the world... "He wants to stop trading with China. He wants to stop trading with Mexico. Lord knows who else he wants to stop trading with. These are huge trading partners of ours. There are political issues that need to be resolved, but you never cut off your nose to spite your face, do you? That's what Trump is doing. Too many Republicans are flirting with protectionism. Protectionism is anti-growth, protectionism, protectionism led to the depression of the 1930s. Lower tariffs equals lower taxes equals growth. In the 1930s high tariffs, Smoot-Hawley tariffs, equals high taxes, equals depression. It's that simple. Too many Republicans on the campaign trail are flirting with protectionism. Trump is the worst, but he's not the only one... This anti-immigration thing has gone way too far. For example, Donald Trump is blaming the government of Mexico several times for sending us these terrible people. First of all, the government of Mexico has nothing to do with sending us anybody. It's not the government of Mexico, let's remember this before we get so protectionist, the United States and Mexico have very close relations. They're an important partner. They are our second biggest export market, right? Our third biggest trading market after Canada and Japan and China rather. And literally, literally millions of Americans go to Mexico for tourism and vacation and millions of American retirees live in Mexico because it's cheaper and rather pleasant. How's this guy going to negotiate with anybody, whether it's China, whether it's Vladimir Putin, whether it's the mullahs. He can't even get the story right on Mexico. He can't even distinguish between the good and bads on Mexico." 

Kudlow, now Trumpanzee's chief economic advisor, is singing from a very different hymnal these days.

Trump Willing To Sacrifice American Rural Communities As Part Of His Trade Wars

There are a lot of farmers losing a lot because of Trump's pig-headed, badly-handled trade wars. Including, presumably, a lot of sleep. Family farms are particularly badly hit and farmers have been losing their land; many more are on the verge of bankruptcy. Soybean farmers have been hit worse than anyone else. There are 11 states that each produce over 100 million bushels of soybeans annually-- Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Missouri, South Dakota, Arkansas, North Dakota and Kansas. Most of them are red states, but even in the two blue states with massive soybean production, the counties with the soybean farms are red counties. Illinois and Minnesota are the first and second-biggest soybean states. The big 3 soybean counties in Illinois are Trump bastions. Trump's victory margin over Hillary in each:

• Iroquois- 75.3% to 19.3%
• Livingston- 67.5% to 26.5%
• McLean- 46.9% to 45.5%

The big 5 Minnesota soybean counties and their Trump over Hillary wins:

• Redwood- 67.5% to 24.8%
• Renville- 64.3% to 27.8%
• Faribault- 62.9% to 29.0%
• Polk- 60.7% to 31.8%
• Lac Qui Parle- 59.4% to 33.81%

These counties are too red to flip blue. But there are farmers who will not vote for Trump and will not vote for Republicans. Last year, in fact, McLean County in Illinois-- the least red of the big Illinois soybean counties-- went strongly for Democratic challenger Betsy Dirksen Londrigan in her bid to replace GOP incumbent Rodney Davis. It was a tight race, Davis' reelected by around 2,000 votes of over 270,000 cast-- 50.4% to 49.6%. McLean county broke blue-- D+25. Next year Davis could well lose his seat because of underperformance in rural areas that are being devastated by Trump's trade wars. Yesterday, Vox asserted that farmers are losing patience with Trump. And not just soybean farmers.

Trump insists that his trade war will benefit farmers, but it’s actually crushing them. It seems unlikely that China will scrap the 25 percent tariff on American soybeans anytime soon, and now it’s adding higher taxes on American apples, oranges, pork, and almonds, too.

That’s why farmers are freaking out. Some are facing financial ruin now that millions of Chinese consumers, who once bought about 60 percent of American agriculture exports, have stopped buying their products. Exports to China from Minnesota dropped about 25 percent after the first round of tariffs went into effect last year, said Paap, who is president of the Minnesota Farm Bureau.

“The patience of American farmers has worn very thin,” Shayne Isane, who is borrowing money to keep his pork and soybean farm running in northern Minnesota, told me. “If a trade deal can be reached then it was all worth it, but if it doesn’t getting settled soon, it will be disastrous for American farmers.”

Isane, who voted for Trump, told me that the president may lose political support from farmers if the trade dispute continues. “Rural Americans were some of his biggest supporters,” he said. “Now that support is a little tenuous.”

Trump seems to be acutely aware of this, and has taken steps to help farmers who have been hurt by the trade war-- and shore up their support going into the 2020 election campaign. Last year, Trump created a $12 billion bailout program for farmers, and on Monday, he outlined another plan to give them an additional $15 billion.

But it’s not clear if those bailouts will be enough to keep farmers happy. “We don’t want another check from the government,” Isane said. “People don’t realize that once you lose a market, it’s hard to get it back.”

Every year before planting season, US farmers take out loans to cover operating costs. But lately, farmers have been defaulting on their loan payments, and many went out of business last year.

A total of 84 farms in the upper Midwest filed for bankruptcy between July 2017 and June 2018, according to the Federal Reserve of Minneapolis. That’s more than double the number of Chapter 12 filings during the same period in 2013 and 2014 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.

Farms that produce corn, soybeans, milk, and beef were already suffering due to low global demand and low prices, according to economists, but Trump’s trade war is ruining them. The problem got so bad that the Trump administration launched a $12 billion aid package for US farmers coping with retaliatory tariffs that foreign countries have imposed on their products.

But that bailout has not been enough to keep farms open. Paap, one of the Minnesota farmers I spoke to, said the money they got from the government last year was barely enough for his family to get by on.

Another bad harvest season would send farmers over the edge. Not to mention the other industries that are getting hit too.

Over the past year, the US has placed about $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, in part to make Chinese products more expensive so Americans don’t buy them. The administration has also placed steep tariffs on all imported steel, angering other major U.S. trade partners.

The idea was to level out the trade deficit and make China buy more U.S. goods, but, as expected, China responded by slapping its own tariffs on American imports. And Trump’s steep tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum, which went into effect in March 2018, have led other US trading partners to add their own retaliatory duties on American goods, including dairy, pork, apples, and potatoes.

Auto manufacturers and appliance makers in the U.S. are fuming about the cost of paying more for steel. A few sectors, like the American steel industry, are thrilled about the new taxes on steel from foreign competitors.

But the impact of tariffs on the U.S. agricultural industry is no joke. Prices for agricultural products like soybeans have dropped to a 10-year low since Trump imposed sweeping tariffs. And farmers across different markets have grown increasingly nervous about how their businesses will fare if the trade war continues.

That’s why Trump in July proposed the idea of a government program to stabilize the agriculture industry in three ways: by giving farmers direct cash assistance, buying surplus crops and giving them to food banks, and a vague trade promotion program.

The administration used a Depression-era program to borrow up to $30 billion from the Treasury without congressional approval, according to the Washington Post. In September, the Agriculture Department sent farmers about $12 million in aid.

On Monday, he announced plans for another round of aid-- $15 billion this time. But Trump was either badly mistaken or lied when he said China would pay for the bailout with money from the tariffs. It’s actually businesses and consumers who will end up paying.

But even if these bailouts do keep some farms open, they don’t address the fact that Trump’s trade policies just aren’t working.

...In 2018, America’s trade deficit with China reached an all-time high: $419 billion. That’s a 13 percent increase compared to the previous year. Ford, America’s second-largest car company, said in August that Trump’s tariffs cost the company $1 billion, and the company now expects massive layoffs. GM made a similar announcement a few months later.

This impact of Trump’s trade policies is striking, considering how often he repeated that his goal is to boost US manufacturing. His trade war might help the small US steel industry, but it’s hurting nearly every other sector of the US economy. And now taxpayers are stuck with the bill of Trump’s latest $15 billion bailout.

Still, Trump insists that somehow this is all good for rural America. “Our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now,” Trump announced on Twitter Monday.

So far, though, they’re the biggest losers.

And by targeting apples, almonds, oranges and pork, the Chinese were being very politically strategic. Apples will hurt Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Republican congressmen who could be hurt because of the apple retaliation include Dan Newhouse (WA-04) Chris Collins (NY-27), Elise Stefanik (NY-21), Tom Reed (NY-23), John Katko (NY-24), Fred Upton (MI-06), Justin Amash (MI-03) and Bill Huizenga (MI-02), Lloyd Smucker (PA-11), John Joyce (PA-13), and Duncan Hunter CA-50).

Almond farmers in California aren't going to do Trump and damage but the almond vote is important for Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, Doug LaMalfa and Tom McClintock and votes in almond growing counties could easily cost Nunes and LaMalfa their seats.

Tariffs on oranges are going to sting in Florida, California, Texas and Arizona. The 4 biggest orange-growing counties in Florida all went for Trump in 2016:

• Polk- 55.4% to 41.3%
• Hendry- 55.8% to 41.5%
• Highlands- 64.7% to 32.7%
• DeSoto- 62.7% to 35.0%

Two Republican congressmen could be especially hurt by the tariffs-- Tom Rooney (R-17) and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25). And Trump's 49.1% to 47.8% win in Florida won't withstand a soybean-sized disaster to the orange industry. In Arizona, the orange industry is now gigantic and it is primarily in Yuma county. Trump won the county nattily-- with just 50.5%. The GOP is extremely worried about losing Arizona. Chinese retaliatory tariffs could do the trick. Last year, Martha McSally lost statewide in her Senate run but won Yuma County with 51.5%. When McCain died she was appointed to his seat and will face the voters again next year. Voters employed by Yuma's orange industry, may not feel well-disposed towards her.

There are 5 states that have pork-producing industries that bring in over a billion annually: Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina and Indiana. It's not just that tariffs on pork could swing Iowa and North Carolina, but it's also which Republican members of Congress are most likely to be hurt by the pork tariffs. These are the 10 biggest pork-producing counties in America, along with their member of Congres:

• Sampson, NC- David Rouzer (R)
• Duplin, NC- David Rouzer (R)
• Texas, OK- Frank Lucas (R)
• Sioux, IA- Steve King (R)
• Washington, IA- (open seat in 2020)
• Martin, MN- Jim Hagedorn (R)
• Plymouth, IA- Steve King (R)
• Lyon, IA- Steve King (R)
• Hardin, IA- Steve King (R)
• Beaver, UT- Chris Stewart (R)

King, Rouzer and Hagedorn could all be vulnerable. Salt-pork? No, but Trump has some salt to rub on the wounds of farmers his tariffs are putting out of business. Chris Sommerfeldt broke the story for the New York Daily News: Trump Administration Showers Brazilian Crooks With $62M Bailout Money Meant For Struggling U.S. Farmers.

The Trump administration has forked over more than $62 million-- taxpayer cash that was supposed to be earmarked for struggling American farmers-- to a massive meatpacking company owned by a couple of corrupt Brazilian brothers.

The Department of Agriculture cut a contract in January to purchase $22.3 million worth of pork from plants operated by JBS USA, a Colorado-based subsidiary of Brazil’s JBS SA, which ranks as the largest meatpacker in the world.

The bailout raised eyebrows from industry insiders at the time, as it was sourced from a $12 billion program meant for American farmers harmed by President Trump’s escalating trade war with China and other countries.

But previously undisclosed purchase reports obtained by the Daily News this week reveal the administration has since issued at least two more bailouts to JBS, even as Trump’s own Justice Department began investigating the meatpacker, whose owners are Joesley and Wesley Batista-- two wealthy brothers who have confessed to bribing hundreds of top officials in Brazil.

Both brothers have spent time in jail over the sweeping corruption scandal.

Local prosecutors rescinded the Batistas’ plea deals last year after accusing them of withholding evidence. The seedy brothers aren’t allowed to leave Brazil as their complex cases go to court.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, is probing JBS for possible violations in the U.S. of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to filings in an unrelated court case reviewed by The News. Reuters reported in December that Justice Department investigators interviewed the Batistas in Brazil late last year as part of that investigation.

Nonetheless, Trump’s Agriculture Department issued $14.5 million in bailout cash for pork products from JBS in February and another $25.6 million earlier this month, totaling more than $62.4 million, according to the purchase reports.

The sheer size of the payouts stoked outrage from industry watchdogs, who question how subsidizing a deep-pocketed, Brazilian-owned company would help farmers in the American heartland.

“Why is the USDA bailing out plants operated by JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world, with a program designed to help domestic companies and producers under economic duress?” said Tony Corbo, a lobbyist at Food & Water Watch, noting that the meat giant reported a net income of $273 million for the first quarter of 2019.

Moreover, JBS appears to have benefited from the trade tensions between Beijing and Washington that the bailouts are supposed to mitigate.

The company’s exports to China ballooned to more than 24% in 2018, compared to less than 21% the previous year, according to public records, raising questions about the need for the Trump subsidy.

“This company does not seem to be hurting,” Corbo said.

By comparison, a similar Trump bailout to Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, which is owned by a Chinese firm, was cancelled last year amid pushback from members of Congress that money meant for American farmers was ending up in the hands of foreigners.

...“It is clear the president is not the least bit knowledgeable about trade policy, nor aware of the chaos his failed approach has caused‚” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who introduced a bill earlier this year restricting the administration’s bailouts to American-owned companies.

“We now know that tens of millions of these dollars went to large, multinational corporations-- including Brazilian-owned JBS-- who are racking up profits while family farmers face collapse. That is outrageous.”

In addition to payment restrictions, DeLauro’s bill would require the Agriculture Department release explanations for its bailouts.

“Their incompetence and lack of transparency has shown that they cannot be trusted to get this right,” she said.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Once again, we, the citizens of the United States of America, will pay because of the incompetence and mental illness of Putin's big orange fist puppet. Every thing Trump is doing to America, from his $enate-approved appointees to his destructive policies which they devilishly implement is obviously designed to hurt as many Americans as possible. This isn't just a madman who is incapable of caring about others, this is a lunatic who is taking out his inferiority and his insecurities on humanity. The damage his tariffs are causing is only the latest manifestation of his madness. Meanwhile, his supporters in the voting public mouth inanities like "We need Trump because socialism never works," while they cheer $25 Billion of our tax dollars going to farmers as socialistic subsidies to offset the damage he has deliberately caused to their livelihoods. And that, folks, is just the tip of the iceberg of what will amount to at least a $200 Billion tax on Americans:



We're just seconds away from this headcase decreeing that all firefighters douse fires with gasoline hoses to make the fires burn bigger and faster so there will quickly be nothing left to burn, while typical republicans like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell cheer the fires on and Democrats meekly refuse to say the word treason, let alone even seriously get behind impeachment. It's time to rename Washington after the Titanic. You can almost hear the applause coming from the Capitol building as America implodes.

Trump's Trade War With China Might Be Justifiable-- But Can Trump Be Trusted To Lead It?

At The Hill this morning, Alexis Simendinger referred to Trump's style of negotiating trade with China as "reality TV" trade discussions. Yesterday's comments by Trumpanzee, he wrote, "veered between hope that a deal was still possible and enthusiasm for what he called a U.S. 'alternative,' amounting to a period of tit-for-tat trade levies. The president said he might speak by phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping, after receiving what he called 'a beautiful letter' from him."

By dawn here in California, the NY Times was reporting that Trump had "escalated his trade war with China on Friday morning, raising tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods and taking steps to tax nearly all of China’s imports as punishment for what he said was Beijing’s attempt to 'renegotiate' a trade deal." Does his bullying and gaslighting work on China? "Trump’s decision to proceed with the tariff increase came after a pivotal round of trade talks in Washington on Thursday night failed to produce an agreement to forestall the higher levies."

Also this morning, Nutcase woke up and started tweeting his bullshit again, this time some nonsense straight from the reality show world inside his own jumbled head. An adult supervisor, immediately saw what he had done and deleted the tweet-- as well as another, which was then reposted with some changes-- and sent him to his room. Trump is roiling the stock markets and there are some worries-- worldwide-- that he is giving advance information to cronies to buy and sell stocks based on his tweeting.

Anna Fifield, reporting for the Washington Post wrote that it's mostly about Trump and China trying to "save face."

China is digging in for a new battle in its trade war with the United States, declaring Friday that it has no choice but to “take necessary countermeasures” against increased tariffs on its goods.

The declaration was posted on the Chinese Commerce Ministry’s website at 12:03 p.m. Beijing time-- exactly two minutes after the United States raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent as President Trump had threatened. The two sides will meet again Friday morning in Washington, but many economists and other experts see little prospect of a breakthrough any time soon.

“The level of antagonism and distrust between the U.S. and China, which has culminated in an all-out trade war, makes it difficult to envision a path out of the quagmire the two sides are now in,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

The escalation could hardly have come at a worse time for President Xi Jinping and his ruling Communist Party.

He will now have to find a way to forge a deal with the United States that he can sell as a victory at home-- at the same time as the party steels itself for June 4, the 30th anniversary of the protests that began in Tiananmen Square and left thousands dead across the country.

“The weeks ahead of us are very crucial. We have to pass that sensitive date,” said one Chinese observer with close links to decision-makers in the party. “Nothing can go wrong, there can be no bad news,” he said on condition of anonymity to discuss delicate internal deliberations.

Nerves are running so high that party organs are constantly being told to “guard against color revolutions,” the observer said, referring to the popular uprisings that toppled leaders in former Soviet states including Georgia and Ukraine. “Everything is related to China’s internal politics,” he said.

In the middle of this tense environment comes the surprise escalation in the trade war-- one that Trump has blamed on the Chinese side for seeking to revise key parts of their 150-page agreement at what was supposed to be the 11th hour.

In all seven chapters of the draft deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to address U.S. concerns, Reuters reported. These included the theft of U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets, forced technology transfers, competition policy, access to financial services, and currency manipulation.

That prompted Trump to publicly threaten on Twitter on Sunday to raise the tariffs.

“What I’m seeing is a couple blinded by anger, fighting and pouring toxic words on one another: One side is threatening tariff hikes and the other talks about countermeasures,” said Chen Fengying, a senior researcher at the China National Association for International Studies. “After what Trump has said, it would be unlikely for China to sit back and accept the humiliation,” she said.

Trump’s tweets caused China’s leaders to gather at Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing, on Monday to discuss whether Liu He, the vice president and lead negotiator, should still go to Washington this week. He did, having dinner with his counterparts just hours before the tariffs went up to 25 percent.

Liu would not have made the trip if China didn’t want to find a way to reach a deal, Chen said.

The two sides are scheduled to resume talks Friday morning, but there is little optimism about them.

“I don’t see a short term resolution in the making,” said Paul Haenle, a former China director on the National Security Council who now runs the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing.

“It’s now become much more complicated to cut a deal because Trump has put a spotlight on all the things that the Chinese are most reluctant to give up,” he said, citing intellectual property rights and forcing companies that operate in China to hand over their technology secrets.

The higher tariffs apply only to goods that leave China from Friday onward, not to shipments already on their way to the United States. That gives the two sides a couple of weeks to work out a deal before tariffs actually take effect-- although that puts the agreement even closer to the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 protests.

China’s Commerce Ministry said China “deeply regrets” the U.S. decision to increase the tariffs. But it did not go into details about the countermeasures it would impose, triggering speculation that it was not ready.

Chinese stock markets, after suffering big losses earlier in the week, actually gained on Friday. The Shanghai Composite Index rose 3.1 percent and the Shenzhen Component Index gained 4 percent.

The prospect of higher tariffs is already concerning some exporters. “Although sales to the U.S. make up only 10 percent of the total, I am worried,” said July Lee, the owner of a factory in Shenzhen that makes LED-illuminated makeup mirrors. “We will still suffer some losses,” she said.

Analysts are now waiting to see if Trump slaps duties on the remaining $325 billion worth of “untaxed” goods that China sends to the United States. That could make the trade war sufficiently painful to China to trigger compromise-- or to the United States, where consumers would face higher prices for goods like electronics.

Some experts are concerned that the trade war will inflict significant direct and collateral damage on both sides, although this may not immediately be apparent given that the U.S. economy is performing well and the Chinese economy has not slowed down as quickly as expected.

“A deeper concern is that the trade war could morph into broader open economic warfare, affecting all aspects of the economic relationship between the two countries,” said Prasad, who now teaches at Cornell University. “Investment flows, business relationships, and even flows of tourists and students between the two countries could be adversely affected.”

Terrible negotiator and untrustworthy partner