Trump Knows Trade – The Wrongologist

Start a Trade War. Now, Bail Out Your Adversely Effected Buddies

The Daily Escape:

Near Canon City, CO – 2018 photo by Debbie Chambers

Trump said on Tuesday that the administration would provide up to $12 billion in aid for US farmers to shield them from the economic repercussions of trade disputes with China and the European Union.

Those are the very trade disputes caused by the tariffs Trump imposed on our trading partners. It’s a bit like the arsonist showing up at the fire he started, just in time to help the firefighters put it out.

Reuters reports that the US has never before offered aid of this scale in a trade dispute. Large, short-term assistance programs are typically offered during times of recession or low prices for agriculture commodities. The government last offered farmers a comparable amount of emergency assistance in 1998 to address low hog, corn and soybean prices.

Here’s how Trump’s plan will work: An agency of the US Government, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) will borrow the $12 billion from the capital markets. It has broad authority to do so. Then it will offer proceeds of the loan(s) to domestic agriculture producers. So instead of farmers profiting from the sale of agricultural goods to China, Trump will borrow money from China, and then pay interest to China, so that American farmers can survive this period of not selling their goods to China.

That makes sense.

A decade ago, Republicans protested strenuously against economic stimulus during the Great Recession. But, where is the tea party? They are largely supporting the $12 billion in subsidies to farmers caused by Trump’s plan using 1920’s thinking to develop a trade policy.

When we had our First Black President™, the GOP said the US couldn’t spend anything without paying for it by reducing expense elsewhere. But this time is different, because farmers are in a protected demographic of corporate welfare recipients. Chan Lowe gets it:

Trump did this to help soften the negative impact his tariffs will cause in the “breadbasket” states that are critical to the GOP’s chances of holding the House in the mid-terms.

Surely, the hard-core fiscal conservatives in Congress who believe that government hand-outs are a slippery slope to socialism, will rise up and say that they can’t support Trump’s plan.

Surely, they’ll say that the free market is the American way. If farmers can’t hold out on their own, well, that’s just Mr. Market at work. No?

We’ll soon see that most Republicans supporting this bail-out include the same people who were totally against Obama’s bail-out of the automobile industry.

Some political definitions: First, there’s “welfare”. That’s what black and brown people get. Then, there’s “a leg up”. That’s for white folks down on their luck. Finally, there are “price supports”. That’s “welfare” for the white owners of corporate farms. It’s money that is sent to them when the president screws up a market, and still needs their votes.

Understanding Trump-o-nomics is easy. Welfare is: for group #1, a privilege; for #2, a right; and for #3, a necessity.

This is a $12 billion partial solution to a self-inflicted political problem. The tariffs are hitting people who voted for Trump in the first place, and this bail-out is really about protecting him, not them.

After all, as CNN let us hear on the Trump/Cohen tape, Trump is clearly willing to pay someone off to get himself out of a mess that he caused.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 8, 2018

The trade war has started. Bloomberg has an interesting map that shows how Chinese retaliation is directed at creating political damage for Republicans in the mid-term election this November. Soybeans are among the largest targets for the Chinese, and here is how Congressional districts most affected break down by political party:

From Bloomberg: (edit and emphasis by Wrongo)

Of the 30 districts most reliant on soybeans, Republicans represent 25 and Democrats 5; all [30 districts] voted for Trump in 2016.

Bloomberg thinks this could hurt farm state Republicans in the midterms. Maybe. Wrongo will become a believer if it actually happens. These are Trump voters, they aren’t economics voters. Unless he revives DACA or creates a pathway to permanent residence or citizenship for a whole lot of people, Wrongo believes Trump is fireproof in farm country.

On to cartoons. Last week, Justice Kennedy retired, EPA head Scott Pruitt quit, and Secretary of State Pompeo met with North Korea, and it didn’t go well. Next week, Trump heads to Europe to meet with our NATO partners. He’s also meeting the Queen while in London. Then it’s off to his annual performance review with Mr. Putin.

When Kennedy hung up the robe, a few other things also got hung up:

Pruitt climbed out of the swamp:

Trump’s trade war and its potential to hurt the economy doesn’t bother the GOP so much:

Trump can’t wait for his really cool meeting:

Trump says nobody can attend the first hour of his meeting with Putin:

Trump misunderstood that what happened in Singapore was supposed to stay in Singapore:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 24, 2018

We wake up each day and think: “There’s no way this could get any worse.” And every day, we’re proven wrong. Our reality is now anger and inhumanity. It is in most instances, instigated and promoted by the Trump administration.

What does all that anger and inhumanity say about America today? It says we must change for the better. It also means 63 million Americans are as morally deficient and as complicit as the president they voted for. Nice work.

Melania needs better jackets in her wardrobe:

ICE has cornered the market on huddled masses:

Science has determined how he does it:

Captain Bone Spur’s trade War is not off to a perfect start:

GOP doesn’t resemble its founder anymore:

Republicans prefer certainty for the midterms:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 10, 2018

Trump says Russia should return to the G-7, making it the G-8 the way it was before Crimea. He says that Obama let Crimea get taken by Russia instead of blaming Putin for invading, and it isn’t his problem. OTOH, the G-7 seem like it would prefer to be the G-6.

But we start this week with RFK:

Fifty years ago, RFK was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, his coffin carried by his sons and only surviving brother. He was a man of promise, of purpose. Someone who could have made a huge difference, but it was not to be. This puts Wrongo in mind of the last line of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Wrongo didn’t know what Fitzgerald meant when he first read this line in high school, more than 50 years ago. Now, he realizes that as we age, there is more of the past. It is a beacon, a lighthouse, both a warning and a welcome.

We can’t know what RFK’s future would have been, or how it would have shaped the future of America. We can be fairly sure he would have beaten Richard Nixon in 1968, but even that isn’t a certainty.

California’s blue wave may not hit the beach: