So much winning.  Trump’s idiotic tariffs have now claimed another victim – the US lobster industry.  As we all know, China has been retaliating against US tariffs.  One of China’s targets? US lobsters.  They’ve slapped a 40% tariff on live lobsters and 35% on processed.  Overnight, lobster prices plunged over 30% and are still falling.  China is buying all of it’s lobster now from Canadian lobstermen.  What was going to be a great year for this industry has now been destroyed.  For nothing but Trump’s narcissism.

You can bet that most of the people who work on lobster boats are Trumpists.  Over 44% of Maine’s 2016 vote went to Trump and he received 1 of the state’s 4 electoral votes. Now these Trumpists are paying the price for their vote.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

Yesterday, in Forbes, the bastion of politics only for the benefit of business, Larry Kotlikoff, financial analyst and retirement planner, called Trump an “economic traitor”.  Yes, he used the word traitor.  In the piece, he lays out how Trump is INTENTIONALLY wrecking our economy, just because he can.  He calls for his removal from office before he does any more damage.  When writers for Forbes start ringing the alarm bells, the house is on fire and it’s time to start running.  Read the piece here.

There is a time for anger, and THIS is it.

I just watched a breathtaking exchange on Meet the Press Daily where Mike Rounds, conservative Republican Senator from South Dakota cried uncle to Trump’s trade war.  He said that farmers and ranchers in his state are getting killed by backing out of the TPP and the escalating trade war with China and (former) friends of the US.  US Soybean prices have plummeted and Russia has stepped into US farmers’ shoes exporting to China.  That’s right, kids…the winner so far of the trade war with China is RUSSIA.  What a coinkydink! Oh, BTW, we’ve designed a new MAGA hat for South Dakota farmers:

Anyway, I digress.  Rounds roundly (no pun intended) condemned Trump’s trade war, saying his constituents are loudly complaining.  Is this finally a crack in Trump’s wall?  Are the GOP invertebrates in congress finally growing spines?  We’re a long way from that, but at least we know that Repubs are not all in a coma.

Today, the US Chamber of Commerce, who actively worked to get Donald Trump elected in 2016, turned on him after he did EXACTLY what he said he was going to do – start a trade war.  So many business people, including the Chamber, hated Hillary Clinton so much that they were willing to roll the bones on Trump, and EVERYONE is losing.  His erratic behavior, shooting from the hip, and idiotic neocon economic and defense policy has turned our world on its ear.  When it started hitting Chamber members in the wallet, they woke up.

The business community’s support of Trump was idiotic, and everyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention knew that.  But since most business people watch Trump News Network, they believed his bullshit and have now followed him right over the cliff without a second thought; that is, until they hit the ground.

The result is that the stock market is now in negative territory FOR THE YEAR, manufacturers are fleeing the US for foreign shores (taking the jobs with them), debt to GDP has now exceeded our debt level at the end of WWII, the dollar is being displaced by the Renminbi for global trading, Trump has pissed off all of our trading partners and handed our export markets over to both former allies and competitors, and all this has been done while french kissing Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un to our political and economic disadvantage.

I’m personally staggered by how much damage to our country one lunatic can do.  When we finally rid ourselves of this infestation, (and have cleaned out Congress) we’ll have to develop an entire set of new statutes that will prevent this kind of tragedy from ever happening again.  More on that at a future date.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

UPDATE: The Cato Institute, founded and funded by the Koch Brothers, is now opposing Trump’s trade wars, calling them “incoherent, angry and misguided”.  Cato is well known for its libertarian approach to policy and politics, and the Kochs often use it as a blunt force weapon to attack everything from regulations to climate change.  If you’re not familiar with how global trade works, this is actually a pretty good primer; because of that, it’s a very effective argument against the irrationality of Trump’s trade policies tweets.  This article explains the idiocy and inconsistency of Trump’s America First policy where he and his moronic trade staff have fabricated policy based on the “I win, you lose” myth of trade.  No actual trade expert promotes this zero sum game.  Win-win is the only policy that leads to economic growth and stability.

Since the beginning of this dumpster fire, I’ve been amazed how Trump’s cabinet and advisors have sold their souls for their titles.  Some, like Betsy DeVos, you would expect to be incompetent.  But others, like billionaire Wilbur Ross, are shocking.  Ross is well known in business circles as a smart turn-around guy and shrewd businessman.  As Commerce Secretary, he has backed Trump’s idiocy, defending his trade war even to rejecting a market crash as enough reason to stop it.  These statements can only communicate one of two things about Ross:  Either he is a dumbass and just been lucky in business all these years, or he’s pandering to Trump for some unknown reason (which could be some legal entanglement in one of his “deals”).  I’ll take Door Number Two, Alex.

In a Commerce Department filing, General Motors said that if the new Trump tariffs take effect, the company will have to scale back operations and cut US jobs to survive. Whatever idiot is filling Trump’s orange head full of tariff bullshit needs to be run out of DC.  I’m not sure how much more “winning” we can stand.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

No one, except for Trump and his billionaire Commerce Secretary, believe trade wars are a good idea.  For those in business, trade wars are often catastrophic.  Cue Harley Davidson, the largest US manufacturer of motorcycles, who just announced that THEY ARE MOVING MANUFACTURING OUT OF THE US due to Trump’s import tariffs on steel and Europe’s retaliatory tariffs against American motorcycles..  The tariffs are adding an additional cost of $2,200 PER MOTORCYCLE, or about $100 million per year.  This is why trade wars are stupid.

In general, companies are rational (when it comes to math, anyway).  If an outside force adds a cost, companies will look to immediately neutralize that cost.  The problem with motorcycles, as in other manufacturing, is that net margins are relatively thin.  Adding $2,200 in cost to a motorcycle puts the price of that motorcycle outside of the ability of many customers to buy, and Harley can’t afford to absorb.  Result?  Trump is accomplishing precisely the opposite of his stated goal of increasing manufacturing jobs in the US.  His stupidity is destroying jobs by the thousands.

And the invertebrates in Congress just lie there, doing nothing.