The Real timschochet

Thankfully the number of folks that adore him is shrinking. In 10 years you’ll be hard put to find anyone to say it a good word for him. It will be a little like Italy in the decade after Mussolini.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/04/10/politics/supreme-court-abrego-garcia Damn. 9-0.

Well no it was also about Christians slaughtering a lot of Jews too. (And Muslims slaughtering Christians. And Muslims slaughtering Jews. And Muslims slaughtering fellow Muslims, and Christians slaughtering fellow Christians and.. well you get the general idea.)

Well they don’t trust the USA either. After all we chose as a people to elect him again, knowing what he is. What are the other nations to conclude other than this is exactly what we want?

If Trump isn’t stupid then he’s deliberately damaging our economy, both short and long term. Simply in order to satisfy his own ego. I don’t think that’s better.

Pretty good article explaining why, no matter what happens now, the last two disastrous weeks have screwed our economy for a long time to come: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-tariff-chaos-unfixable/682419/ Simply put nobody trusts our word anymore: New supply chains are going to be developed and the world will trade without us.

I meant around New Orleans in general.

I was little surprised, when I was there, to see more LSU signs and regalia than Saints stuff.

Update: Trump has now announced that smartphones and computers are exempt from the tariffs. This is a good thing; the consumer will be hurt just a little less. But I have to say that once again these decisions appear to be arbitrary and improvised, How anyone could still believe that this is part of a grand strategy is a mystery to me.

So now you’re changing the discussion from economic concerns to strategic concerns. Nobody has been able to demonstrate why trade deficits are bad for us in terms of economics. But you make the argument that they are bad for us in this case with China, due to long term strategic and moral issues. Putting aside the obvious fact that these sort of issues do not motivate President Trump ( and therefore if the final outcome, whatever it is, turns out in your opinion to be a positive one it will at best be accidental) you raise good points. This is an issue that really frustrates me. I am a believer in free trade and capitalism. Like so many others I thought that Nixon’s decision was a good one and that eventually our trade would cause the Chinese communist system to self-destruct. Back when Tiammenen square happened I figured this is it, won’t be long now. But damn that was nearly 40’years ago and somehow China kept itself a dictatorship. It’s an odd country. And yet…what is the alternative to still hoping for trade leading to a freer China? War with them is unthinkable. We can’t isolate them economically but even if we could that wouldn’t guarantee success (look how long Fidel Castro’s Cuba survived our embargo). Trying to make them suffer, as these tariffs will no doubt do, will make them more nationalist, hostile, and perhaps threatening to invade Taiwan. In short it makes the world a more dangerous place. Conclusion: despite your valid arguments, every alternative to continuing to trade with China would IMO be a worse outcome. Our policy since 1973 has been trade with China and hope they eventually become a free nation. I think we should continue that policy.

I still don’t understand how a trade deficit is a loss.

But I don’t accept your math. It doesn’t apply because we are not one entity. Thousands of American companies trade with China. Some make a lot of money. Some have lost money. On the whole it’s a net benefit according to the statistics discussed in the article I linked. Statistics and facts, not feelings.

My understanding is that China is already suffering economically and cannot afford not trading with the USA. i think your point about the government there being unmoved by suffering is a valid one though. How many millions died during the Great Leap Forward? But I really don’t look at this trade war in terms of winners and losers. I don’t see any winners. I think both sides lose.

Look I get the arguments you have made in your last two posts. And yet there are plenty of positives as well and I think they far outweigh the negatives, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/contentious-us-china-trade-relationship Here is a lengthy and thoughtful article on our trade relationship with China. I think it honestly portrays both the positives and negatives. But it also makes the same argument I am making: that the positives outweigh the negatives. Am I 100% sure about this? I am not sure. But this is the way I lean.

I may have written this too soon. The ACLU is complaining that the feds went looking for a judge and a jurisdiction inclined to favor them. Maybe there’s something to this. It will no doubt be appealed.

Classy as always

If so I’m satisfied. All I want is a hearing in each case.

Yes the rust belt has lost money. But you can’t deny that overall the USA profited. It’s been a net gain.

It’s like you didn’t comprehend anything I just wrote. So let me make it simple for you: 1. Yes China is screwing us around. 2. We’re making a lot of money anyhow, too much money to blow it all up even though they’re screwing us around. Is that simple enough for you?

I’m not surprised to read this crap from the usual trolls but I am surprised to read it from you. There’s not a single person here who is “siding with China”. That’s a lot of crap. Many of us just don’t think a trade war is the right way to deal with China; it’s not to our benefit.

But you’re still ignoring the fact that they DO buy a lot of our goods. Sure, it’s not nearly as much as we buy of theirs. But it’s enough to make us a whole lot of money. Our relationship with them has been quite prosperous. I just don’t see the logic in blowing it up.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna200722 This surprised me given his rhetoric on the campaign but it really shouldn’t; he’s always been more reasonable on this subject when not talking to the hysterical MAGA crowd. It seems like a waste of time to deport people and then return them. Why not just change their status to legal? But despite that question I could be in favor of this plan.

Thank you President Trump for securing the release of the ballerina held prisoner by Russia. No criticism here, and no sarcasm. Seriously this was a job well done.

Bullsh!t. I don’t misrepresent anything. I know exactly where you’re going with this. You’ve read the right wing spin on this decision, the parsing of words, and you like that so you’ve adopted it as gospel and suddenly I’m unintelligent. This is your shtick; you’re full of crap as usual. What I wrote was accurate. This was a repudiation for Trump, a defeat. You don’t get to deport people without due process. That’s the way it is in a free country. If you don’t like it move to a dictatorship already.

You’re such a good example of “mindless member of the mob”.