The future belongs to China

Meanwhile in Lebanon

 It's getting much worse.

That's something OUR leaders won't say.

Aside from economic power, we now appear to be ceding moral authority to China, of all places.

Say what?

 

So, what? Can't they get Maduro to play along?

UPDATE 04:10 pm:

The uniter

 

In case you were wondering...

President Donald Trump said Monday that he authorized Nvidia to sell its powerful H200 artificial-intelligence chip in China in exchange for taking 25 percent of the revenue — a major win for the U.S. chipmaker that caps weeks of internal deliberations.

[...]

Clearing the H200 for sale in China gives Nvidia and its CEO, Jensen Huang, a major boost after Huang visited Capitol Hill and personally met with Trump.

A spokesperson for Nvidia confirmed the deal in a statement, calling it “a thoughtful balance that is great for America.”

[...]

Lawmakers have raised concerns that lifting curbs on the export of the chips will give Beijing a technological edge at U.S. expense.

[...]

The move also provoked unease among Washington technology and defense policy experts, who warned it may jeopardize America’s lead in the emerging area.

  Politico

 

Trump may have been too stupid to understand.  Or simply doesn't care.  Or more likely, is making some profit for himself off the deal.

Doing her best

 

And I guess MAGA believes that.

She's right about one thing, though: farmers (except for the large corporate farms) don't like taking aid, because it makes people claim, rightly, that they're on welfare.  In the end, they'll take it, though.

MAGA regrets

 

I'm surprised they haven't been bailed out yet.

The new Axis

 

Let me guess...he's mad because he wasn't invited.

Meanwhile

 

Your coffee is about to get truly expensive

 

All because Trump is a complete ignoramus.

China is displacing the US on all fronts

 

Also, bad news for America auto companies:

Trump 2.0 - Crash the U.S.

 

They just believe whatever their orange god tells them

 

Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) is one of the most gullible and idiotic members of Congress.  You may recall he voted yes on the Big Beautiful Bill after Trump said he looks good on TV and gave him a bunch of signed bullshit MAGA merch. "It's cool," according to Burchett.  It got his vote, even if one of the things he was given was a signed placard on which his name was misspelled.

UPDATE 07/06/2025:

Trump and Xi

President Donald Trump announced that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a “very positive” call on trade. The two leaders, he said, had resolved tensions over rare earth mineral exports, and their teams would meet again soon. Xi welcomed Trump to visit Beijing.

Invitations were exchanged. Smiles posted. Beneath the surface, almost nothing changed.

A 90-day tariff truce brokered in Geneva was already unraveling when Thursday’s call took place. Xi’s message was diplomatic but direct: Steer this “big ship” away from sabotage—or else. Trump, of course, heard what he wanted: a deal he could sell, regardless of whether one exists.

We’ve seen this play before. The handshakes. The headlines. The claim that he alone can fix it. The problem is that rational trade policy isn’t the goal. Performance is.

[...]

That’s what the floated China trip is about. If Xi Jinping offers him just enough symbolic respect, Trump might return to the U.S. proclaiming victory without ever touching the hard questions: IP theft, state subsidies, rare earth controls.

That’s why China’s posture isn’t just strategic. It’s psychological. Beijing knows Trump has no appetite for drawn-out talks or institutional give-and-take. They’re not offering structural reform or reciprocal liberalization. They’re offering the illusion of deal-making. Carefully stage-managed meetings. Polished communiqués. Soft words that can be twisted into triumph. It’s diplomacy as theater—because that’s all Trump’s capable of absorbing.

[...]

Trump isn’t averse to risk. He’s averse to blame. What looks like caution is often just delay—waiting for a scapegoat to emerge. He’s happy to escalate as long as someone else is holding the bag when it goes sideways. That’s why, even in areas of possible progress—like cracking down on fentanyl precursors or negotiating critical mineral access—he won’t anchor to a position. Anchoring means owning the outcome. And Trump only bets when he can rig the table.

[...]

America cannot negotiate coherently when its leader does not distinguish between national interest and personal standing. The Chinese side knows this. They know that Trump’s advisers, however competent or hardline, are window dressing. That the only briefing that matters is the one that reaches Trump’s sense of grievance.

[...]

Meanwhile, American industry remains paralyzed. The 90-day pause has not brought clarity. It has brought a holding pattern, which China is far better equipped to exploit. Xi can afford to wait.

[...]

This is why every theory used to describe Trump eventually breaks down. The madman theory? Trump doesn’t act erratic to induce strategic advantage—he’s just erratic.

The transactionalist theory? That presumes negotiation in good faith. Trump’s idea of a deal is one where the other side is locked into something unenforceable while he walks away.

The “three-dimensional chess” metaphor? Please. This isn’t chess. It’s Calvinball.

Trump is a prestige actor. Not in the sense of dignity or tradition, but in the theatrical sense. He craves dominance and praise. He needs to be seen “winning.” That’s the outcome every move is calibrated to support.

[...]

Trump’s advantage isn’t unpredictability. It’s that too many still treat him like a conventional negotiator, knowing full well he isn’t—because it’s easier, safer, or more profitable than calling it what it is.

He doesn’t need success. He needs spotlight. That makes real policy impossible—even for his own team. They’re not crafting strategy. They’re staging scenes and then managing the fallout.

  Contrarian

UPDATE 06/19/2025:

We are allowing Trump and GOP to destroy our country

 

Thanks to the art of the deal

 

Don't think about it

It's just more ignorant blather. At least Baier pointed it out.

President Trump said Friday that he thinks that China would have suffered more harm than the U.S. in a prolonged trade war because America “has spirit again” after electing him to a second term.

“If I didn’t do that deal with China, I think China would have broken apart. We are not going to break,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Special Report.”

[...]

Media outlets have also reported that Trump backed off his initial sweeping tariff agenda because the impact hit hardest on his supporters.

“The key argument was that this was beginning to hurt Trump’s supporters — Trump’s people,” a person briefed on the talks told The Washington Post.

  The Hill

There may be a pattern

 

Same story out of the UK last week.

No, tariff pause with China isn't a win for Trump

Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a [partial] win for economic reality, and for American prosperity.

[...]

The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to China’s role in the fentanyl trade, for a total rate of 30%. In exchange, Beijing will reduce its retaliatory tariff to 10% from 125%. The deal is good for 90 days to start, as negotiations continue.

The 30% tariff is still exceptionally high for a major trading partner, but the 90-day rollback spares both sides from what looked like an impending economic crackup. U.S. consumers were facing widespread shortages, while China feared growing unemployment.
  WSJ

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs faced their most significant legal scrutiny yet Tuesday as a group of small businesses asserted to a three-judge panel that Trump exceeded his authority.

The New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade spent most of Tuesday’s two-hour argument questioning how it could draw a manageable legal standard in adjudicating Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement, which has disrupted financial markets and reshaped global trade flows.

Trump imposed the sweeping tariffs without congressional approval by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

A group of five small businesses, represented by the libertarian public-interest firm Liberty Justice Center and George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin, sued by arguing IEEPA does not allow tariffs. Even if it does, Trump’s trade deficit justification is far from an emergency, they assert.

  The Hill

Law professor Ilya Sominspoke with Greg Sargent, late of the Washington Post, now at the New Republic.

The White House has been boasting that President Trump’s partial pause in the trade war with China is a historic breakthrough. But two new reports, one from The New York Times and the other from the nonliberal Wall Street Journal editorial page, neatly expose what a monstrous scam this notion truly is, in and of itself. As they detail, Trump has put the global economy through major turmoil and uncertainty, but without winning any serious concessions from China. This will get worse for Trump: In addition to being terrible policy, the tariffs are a massive abuse of power. And once the lawsuits against them get going, this too will be fully aired out.

Ilya Somin: I would note it’s not a complete repudiation of [Trump's] underlying policy ideas given there’s still a 30-percent tariff on China, which is still much higher than before he started this trade war. So it’s in accordance with his philosophy that tariffs are somehow good for us—but in reality they cause enormous harm. So it would be better if he really did just repudiate that philosophy because it’s a bad one.

[...]

[]ll the Chinese did is gave up some of the retaliatory measures that they had against U.S. products in response to his measures. So he hasn’t actually gained anything that the United States didn’t already have before this trade war started.

Indeed, we are in a worse situation now than we were before because both Chinese and American tariffs are higher than they used to be even under this deal. And of course, this deal, as I understand it, is only supposed to last for 90 days. So after that, it might go back up to 145 again.

[...]

It’s not just the China tariffs; it’s the tariffs that is imposed on almost every other nation in the world. China is just one part of this. And businesses—like our clients in the case and others across the U.S.—in order to function effectively, need to be able to have long-term relationships with suppliers, with customers. They need to make investments in factories and other kinds of facilities. And all of that is difficult, or impossible, to do if you don’t know what the tariff rate is going to be tomorrow—especially if those tariffs can be of whatever amount the president wants them to be, can target any country he wants them to target, and can last for however long he wants, which is the massive power that the president is claiming here.

[...]

He’s trying to use a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. And he claims that law gives him the power to impose pretty much any tariffs he wants on any country at any time for any amount, when in reality it does nothing of the kind. Start with the fact that the word “tariff” is not even mentioned in this law at all, nor is there a synonym like “duty” or “imposed” or something like that. He’s trying to use vague language which says that there’s a power here to regulate international trade but regulate and tax are distinct powers. Then in addition, even if you assume the tariffs can sometimes be authorized under this law, it can only be used when there is a national emergency, and that emergency has to involve an extraordinary and unusual threat to American security.

  New Republic

Actually, that emergency DOES exist. It's Trump in the oval office. Somebody should be filing a lawsuit about THAT.

Under the administration’s interpretation of this law, they can declare an emergency over anything they want—including a peanut butter shortage if they so choose—and they can impose any tariffs they want against any country in the world as a result of that so-called emergency. Even in the hypothetical, it could be even against countries that have nothing to do with the peanut trade here, even though the supposed emergency is trade deficits. He’s even imposed tariffs on numerous countries which we don’t have deficits with, even some we have surpluses with, and also on countries like Switzerland and Israel that have no tariffs whatsoever imposed on American goods. And yet he still started a trade war with them.

[...]

Within the next few weeks or possibly sooner, we expect a decision from the trial court, the Court of International Trade, where the hearing was held [...] . At that point, it is very likely that whoever loses will appeal the case to the Federal Circuit, which is the specialized appellate court that, among other things, hears cases involving trade. They will make a decision probably within the next few weeks or months. And at that point, whoever loses there might try to appeal to the Supreme Court.

[...]

[T]he text of the statute does not give Trump the kind of authority that he claims. Many of the judges are textualists and say you should carefully consider the text of the statute.

Second, there is this doctrine, which has been developed more fully in recent years, called the major questions doctrine. [It] essentially says that if the executive claims that Congress has delegated to it some power of vast economic or political significance, then at the very least, the executive has to show that there is a clear delegation here. And here it’s anything but clear. It’s not at all clear that there is tariff authority in the statute at all. [...] And if something is unclear under the major questions doctrine, the Supreme Court says courts have to rule against the executive when they claim the power has been delegated to them.

[...]

[I]f this is not a major question, I do not know what is. He’s starting the biggest trade war since the Great Depression. He is imposing what is essentially a tax increase of close to $2 trillion on Americans over the next decade. Before this, I had thought that the biggest major question the Supreme Court had considered and said was a major question was President Biden’s massive student loan forgiveness program, which the Supreme Court rightly struck down. And that had about $400 billion, which to me at least seemed like a lot of money. But this trade power grab makes even what Biden did in that case seem like small potatoes by comparison.

[...]

A very simple ruling would be IEEPA doesn’t authorize tariffs. Secondly, even if it does, there is no national emergency here. Then third, even if there is a national emergency, there is no extraordinary or unusual threat. And then fourth, assuming they rule against us on each of those three issues or they find that those issues are ambiguous, they can rule in favor of us on the major questions doctrine.

[...]

Lastly, there’s a technical legal doctrine called the constitutional avoidance doctrine, which says that if there is an interpretation of federal law that raises constitutional problems, then courts should do whatever they can to avoid adopting that interpretation. As long as there’s a reasonably possible alternative interpretation, they should pick that one.

Just a doctrine. Not a law. And if SCOTUS can interpret a law, they surely can dismiss a doctrine.  We can no longer be confident about anything that goes to SCOTUS.

Trump has so far gotten nothing from the tariffs against China that he didn’t already have before. Moreover, there’s contradictory rationales here. On the one hand, they’re saying, Well, the point of these tariffs are to get these other countries to make concessions. On the other hand, they’re saying, These tariffs should be a permanent policy so as to protect American manufacturing from competition. And obviously, it has to be one or the other; it can’t be both. If the plan is to give up these tariffs as a bargaining chip, then they can’t be maintained as a way of protecting American domestic industry. If, on the other hand, the goal is to maintain them, then you can’t really successfully use them to gain concessions from these other countries.

[...]

I already mentioned how it’s important that for the economy to have stable expectations about what the legal rules are going to be, what the tariff rates are going to be, and so on—and that’s just not possible if one man can impose tariffs anytime he wants. On top of that, you have the risk that has been born out now that you get an economic illiterate in the White House who does not seem to understand Basic Econ 101 and therefore thinks trade deficits are some horrible problem, even though basic mainstream economics suggest that they’re not.

You can listen to the podcast from which these excerpts are taken here.

LOL Bullshit

 

The Chinese delegation walked out.

UPDATE 02:41 pm:

And, delusional Donnie Two Dolls bleats...