By Finance Editor Samuel Insull with Meta-content Generator A.J. Liebling
By now, we are all aware that the actions of one corrupt depraved demented Russian-owned stooge have destroyed the global economy, sent the United States spiraling downwards into the first period of stagflation since the oil shocks of the 1970’s, and wiped out trillions of dollars of shareholder value.
Gripped by a strange vindictive lust to tank an economy that was on January 20, 2025 the envy of the world, the Tangerine-Faced Fascist decided to impose ridiculously random punitive tariffs on the entire civilized world, and even some places where civilization hasn’t reached, like the Heard Islands, which are inhabited only by penguins who apparently are living huge from ripping off US workers, and catching fish in the chilly waters of the sub-Antarctic ocean.
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The penguin enemies will not replace us |
It’s hard to find anyone who supports this insane self-immolation other than the usual gang of Republican grifters, plug-uglies and otherwise unemployable shills, hacks and weirdos.
And even supposedly stalwart Republicans are having trouble swallowing the s*** smorgasbord. The insanely reactionary, pro-greed anti-worker Wall Street Journal Editorial Page on Wednesday issued a scathing critique of President Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day announcement vowing sweeping new tariffs on countries worldwide:
In a sharply worded editorial headlined “Trump’s New Protectionist Age,” the newspaper’s conservative board warned of multiple ways the tariffs could backfire on Trump that the president “isn’t advertising.”
The board pointed to a range of possible repercussions, including potential retaliation from foreign governments, higher prices for American consumers, economic pain for U.S. exporters, and “the end of U.S. economic leadership.”
The Petersen Institute, founded by reactionary plutocrat Pete Petersen to advocate fearlessly for tax cuts for the rich and starvation for the poor said:
The always wrong and always screaming stock tout and former Crimson Editor Jim Cramer ‘77 admitted for once he was played for a schmuck:
If you feel like a sucker Jim, imagine how all those people who ever took you seriously feel? All 28 of them.
The Atlantic, run by well known chat room participant Jeffrey Goldberg, has editorialized against tariffs, noting:
Michael Cembalest, the widely read analyst at JP Morgan Wealth Management, wrote that the White House announcement “borders on twilight zone territory.”
Former Republican White House functionary David Frum slammed the tariffs (in Goldberg's esteemed pubulication) and invited his fellow Canadians to take up smuggling.
And our Wonderful Republican Ally Billy Kristol said:
Source: The BulwarkWe'll get back to destruction in the name of liberation shortly.
It turns out that the basis for these inflationary and job-killing tariffs was even stupider than the most severe critic could have imagined. The tariff rates were calculated by an AI bot that divided the US trade deficit with say the Falkland Islands by the total exports to the US from that territory. This of course principally disadvantaged poor countries who export to the US but are too poor to buy our iPhones and remakes of “Snow White,” like Madagascar. That’s not a rip-off; that’s global inequality on parade.
Let Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on global trade, explain it:
So what do we know about how the Trumpists arrived at their tariff plan? Trump claimed that the tariff rates imposed on different countries reflected their policies, but James Surowiecki soon noted that the tariffs applied to each country appeared to be derived from a crude formula based on the U.S. trade deficit with that country. Trump officials denied this, while at the same time the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a note confirming Surowiecki’s guess.
The stupidity is one point but the real point is the fecklessness. The Tangerine-Faced Grifter and his spineless Republican toadies don't care how tariffs are calculated. They only care about flaunting the power to impose them and their corrupt desire to trade exemptions for personal gain.
But perhaps the most absurd complaints are from those who claim they never saw this coming:
following Trump's unveiling of what some said were larger-than-anticipated tariffs - and in the midst of the market selloff that followed - many of the same individuals said their main takeaway was a sense of heightened risk and plenty of unanswered questions.
"This is bigger than I expected; bigger than anyone really expected," said Mark Spindel, chief investment officer of Potomac River Capital. "And the market is reacting accordingly."
These Masters of the Universe sure surprise easily.
Some have pointed out correctly that the Tangerine-Faced Destroyer had repeatedly promised tariffs during the campaign, so his decision to do what he promised should hardly have come as a surprise.
But there's another reason not to be gobsmacked by Republican efforts to blow up the world for vanity and sadism gratification.
We'd remind you that the previously Republican President, an alcohol-demented ne'er-do-well and nepo baby named George W. Bush did the same thing just over twenty years ago.
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Idiot Republican going to war for no reason? Who saw that coming? |
Without any credible justification and accompanied by lies and smears of anyone who dared question his idiotic decision, he took his country into a pointless and bloody war of choice against a country that posed no threat to the United States. Unlike the Heard Islands, it was full of people, 400,000 of whom subsequently died to appease the vanity of George Bush and his band of bros.
Like the Tariff War of 2025, the Iraq War alienated our allies, emboldened our enemies, cost our country over $2 trillion and accomplished nothing. And that's even before getting to the torture and war crimes which the Bush Administration claimed it had the authority to impose under its theory of an all-powerful Executive.
Sound familiar?
Funny how those inveighing against the insanity and futility of the Tariff War supported the equally stupid and futile misadventure in Iraq.
Frum, Goldberg, Kristol: all Iraq warmongers.
Now they are supposedly our friends, having failed to reckon with or apologize for their previous embrace of imperial Republican sanity (Frum being an exception).
We're beginning to wonder if the Republican playbook – heavy on grandiose and violent conceptions of an all-powerful Executive unchained by petty things like law and morality – hasn't changed much since the invasion of Cambodia (R. Nixon, 1970).
In fact, both the Iraq and Tariff Wars suggest that the long-standing Republican conception of tyrannical unchecked Executive power is fatally flawed.
Which is why the only ones surprised were the Republican flacks and plutocrats who bought into it until it bit them in the face.