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Trump number 2 specials – politicalbetting.com
Trump number 2 specials – politicalbetting.com
A golden rule of betting is not to get involved in markets when the bookie doesn’t offer both sides of the market however I am attracted by the 5/1 on Trump to take the USA out of NATO.
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But a moral victory.
Everyone keeps telling me there are no winners with tariffs.
https://x.com/SprinterObserve/status/1909857984189956587
Divvie approves this message.
Trump 2: Shitting All Over You Harder
Just the same old shit.
And I love it.
He has more fun subverting it from within.
https://stratechery.com/2025/trade-tariffs-and-tech/
Trump's economic chief just revealed plans to TAX foreign holdings of US financial assets. Hidden in plain sight.
Miran outlined 5 forms of "burden sharing" for countries benefiting from the US dollar reserve system:
Four of these deal with reducing trade surpluses (more US exports, less US imports, etc.) - essentially reducing their net accumulation of US financial assets.
But the 5th proposal is the bombshell: Countries "could simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods."
Translation: You can keep holding US Treasuries and dollar financial assets, but you'll now pay a tax for the privilege.
It's now almost a slam dunk that the administration's upcoming tax bill (likely in May) will include a provision bringing back the 30% foreign withholding tax on interest income that was eliminated in 1984.
We predicted exactly this move in our ‘Dollar’s Dilemma’ and ‘Sovereign Wealth Effect’ reports published in Dec and Feb...
https://x.com/michaeljmcnair/status/1909632751306780765
On paper, Trump doesn't have the power to take the USA out of NATO, without the approval of the Senate or an Act of Congress. This is because of an Act of Congress which was passed in 2023 & which was spearheaded, ironically enough, by Marco Rubio.
https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-president-withdrawing-nato/
In practice, of course, Trump can just declare that he won't defend any NATO country that is being attacked. The USA will then be, de facto, out of NATO, but on paper, still a member of NATO.
Without any Rwanda stuff, it would be a huge disincentive to toughen the acceptance criteria, beyond that of France and Germany in the short term to get control of the situation. It would upset no-one except some lazy, politicised Home Office staff, and I find it difficult to imagine why Starmer and Cooper haven't done it. Either they have zero control over the department, or it's active malice.
Boston has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever
@planetoffinks.bsky.social
we get 60m dollars worth of tea from China every year. baby, they are literally doing a 104% tax on tea in the United States
https://bsky.app/profile/planetoffinks.bsky.social/post/3lmcyuyjn5k2z
One of my colleagues has a brother who has spent 13 years in this limbo in Germany.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-temporarily-halts-resettlement-un-refugees-dpa-reports-2025-04-08/
IIRC we participate in something similar but far smaller.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations
The Tariff of 1828 was a very high protective tariff that became law in the United States on May 19, 1828. It was a bill designed to fail in Congress because it was seen by free trade supporters as hurting both industry and farming, but it passed anyway. The bill was vehemently denounced in the South and escalated to a threat of civil war in the Nullification Crisis of 1832–33. The tariff was replaced in 1833, and the crisis ended. It was called the "Tariff of Abominations" by its Southern detractors because of the effects it had on the Southern economy. It set a 38% tax on some imported goods and a 45% tax on certain imported raw materials.
The manufacturing-based economy in the Northeastern states was suffering from low-priced imported manufactured items from Britain. The major goal of the tariff was to protect the factories by taxing imports from Europe. Southerners from the Cotton Belt, particularly those from South Carolina, felt they were harmed directly by having to pay more for imports from Europe. Allegedly, the South was also harmed indirectly because reducing exports of British goods to the U.S would make it difficult for the British to pay for Southern cotton. The reaction in the South, particularly in South Carolina, led to the Nullification Crisis...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz95n2837vgo
Trump voters interviewed in Braddock outside Pittsburgh on R4 this am; they mostly seemed to be still on board, though with concerns. I get the impression that inextricably linked to the return to manufacturing hegemony is a desire to get their Norman Rockwell USA back. I fear they’ll be disappointed however it pans out.
Need somewhere for all the central bank reserve money fleeing the US treasury market to go.
The mystery is why so many — from Ackman’s fellow billionaires to Florida-based Venezuelans — have bent over backwards to miss who Trump is. A trillion comments have been wasted accusing the wrong people of Trump derangement syndrome. The real TDS afflicts those who keep seeing a rational actor, or an economic chess game, where none exists. The whole market arguably suffers from this syndrome. Shortly after plummeting on Monday morning, a fake news release surfaced that said Trump would announce a pause on his tariffs this week. The markets more than erased their opening losses. All those gains, in turn, were wiped out when the White House issued a denial.
....while Trump is in charge, stay short on America.
Are you tempted at the moment ?
Of course, this may soon change...
The obvious consequence is that they might sell, which doesn't help the US much.
Trump seems fixated on bringing in cash without worrying about the consequences. I reckon he has some grand goal in mind, like returning the cash directly to Americans, or even trying to abolish income tax, returning the US to living off tariffs like it did during the time of his hero presidents of the 19th century.
China slapped with 104% tariffs on stuff it imports to the US. America is 16% of Chinese exports. China is a much higher percentage of US imports in a whole list of consumer product categories.
Much easier for China to increase trade with the remaining 84% and let America stew.
BBC News - Beijing calls Vance 'ignorant' over 'Chinese peasants' remark
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20zd4k6d36o
It seems as if Vance actually wants them to stop buying US Treasuries.
I also assume that Trump ensured larger shipments of MAGA hats arrived from China before the tariffs kicked in...
Today is conducting its regular Morning sanewashing of the Trump administration. In the usual pattern, a Trump supporter is given a chummy and softballing interview. In instances like these, Radio 4 almost seems to be the public face of the foreign office
Sounds like it will finally blow up the world economy to me but I'm not a central bank finance expert.
PHASE 1: Collect underpants
PHASE 2: Tariffs
PHASE 3: Profit
More to the point, they expect 8 million customers a year and to employ tens of thousands. Which is good too. This expectation does not suggest that capitalism believes we are a nation impoverished, unemployable, bed bound, shoeless, homeless, on the sick, childless or travelling only on foot accompanied by a stick and a spotted handkerchief.
Apparently things are happening that are quite bad
There'll be blue colloar jobs servicing robots.
But Norman Rockwell it 'aint gonna be.
The problem, aside from pure politics per se, is that reductions in trade barriers create winners and losers within individual countries, and once everybody starts looking out for their national interests, the whole thing becomes complicated, difficult and time-consuming.
The US president said: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up kissing my ass.” "
Guardian business blog
Don't try and catch a falling knife.
Always the same pattern.
He later apologised
.......to the bricks.
Maybe he's not all bad
It's so important to judge oneself exactly the right size.
Chinese manufacturing labor isn’t just cheaper. It’s better.
In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.
Chinese workers much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.
And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.
Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has.
https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-difficulty-of-bringing-manufacturing-back
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0037
The company did not give a reason for stopping the projects, only saying the decision was made “after careful consideration”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1909695744681914703
* i.e. the immediate effect, which is often the opposite of the long run effect. But hey! In the long run we're all dead as the guru said.
FUNDSTRAT tonight:
“.. in the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers. .. A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.”
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lmdxgibcbk2l