https://www.yahoo.com/news/susan-rice-trump-reported-calls-163342449.html Susan Rice: Trump’s reported calls with Putin appear illegal
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/shouldnt-obama-brings-down-house-024944761.html 'I Shouldn't Say It': Obama Brings Down The House With 1 Loaded Question About Trump Ed Mazza Fri, October 11 Barack Obama mocked Donald Trump on Thursday night with a joke about diapers that almost went below the belt. The moment came during a campaign event in Pennsylvania as Obama praised Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to help ease the financial burden of raising young children with a $6,000 tax credit. “She wants to make it easier to afford stuff like a crib, or a car seat or diapers,” Obama said, then recalled his own shock at the price of diapers when his first daughter was born in 1998. “I remember changing diapers,” he said. “Do you think Donald Trump ever changed a diaper?” The audience laughed, and someone yelled an answer: “His own!” Obama pointed into the crowd. “I almost said that,” he said with a laugh. “But I decided I shouldn’t say it.” Obama’s original question has an answer, at least according to Trump himself. Asked in a 2005 radio interview if he had changed his kids’ diapers, Trump said, “No, I don’t do that” and that it’s “not my thing.” In a separate 2005 interview, Trump described his philosophy when it came to rearing his children. “I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids,” he said, referring to his new wife, Melania Trump. “It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.”
Markets have seen through Peter Navarro’s ‘tissue of lies’ The evidence against Donald Trump’s tariff adviser, and his “poorly designed and reckless” tariff hikes, is overwhelming. Peter Swan Economist Apr 9, 2025 https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/...-navarro-is-wrong-about-trade-20250409-p5lqcs Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s tariff advisor, opines: “For decades, under the biased rules of the World Trade Organisation, the US has faced systematically higher tariffs from its major trading partners and far more punitive non-tariff barriers.” But the evidence against Navarro is overwhelming. In the 2025 edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which compiles an annual “trade freedom” score for nearly 200 countries and political jurisdictions, the United States ranks in 69th place, putting the US lower than Singapore (1st), Australia (3rd), the United Kingdom (17th), Canada (18th), France (38th), and Germany (39th). While it is not unusual to project one’s weaknesses on your supposed opponents, bullying your own trading partners with a far better record than your own is unlikely to work. Since the US itself is one of the less open economies with many of its own tariff and non-tariff barriers, arbitrary levies imposed on the rest of the world may not have their desired effect in bringing the world to Trump’s heel. In contrast, both Australia and Singapore have very open borders, and Australia has a large trading deficit with the US, but this has not prevented Trump from imposing his baseline 10 per cent tariff on both nations. Navarro additionally attempted to put his personal stamp on the economics profession: “At the heart of this crisis is a trade deficit in goods that has ballooned to more than $US1 trillion ($1.6 trillion) annually. The economic models of free trade that predict chronic trade imbalances will always be eliminated through price adjustments via exchange rates are dead wrong.” But there are no such models, and rudimentary economic theory says the opposite. The huge annual budget deficit that Elon Musk’s DOGE is seeking to correct requires two things. Firstly, an obvious additional trillion-dollar borrowing and, secondly, a surplus of goods flowing into the country reflecting the $US1 trillion trade deficit. If the US no longer ran a budget deficit and had adequate savings, then the trade deficit would turn around to balance or become a surplus. Thus, the 20-year trade deficit is essentially an accounting requirement to match the shortfall in domestic tax contributions and has nothing to do with any supposed nastiness from the rest of the world. Since the arrival of the First Fleet, Australia has very rarely had a trade surplus, as we have always required foreign savings to fund economic growth. “Economics 101” applies equally to the USA and Australia. Australia does not condemn the rest of the world for supplying us with a capital inflow, which is foreign savings. When a country imposes a severe tariff increase, the currency must rise in value. This is because tariffs choke off imports and act as a tax on its exports. In other words, a tariff taxes both imports and exports. The mechanism by which exports fall is the rise in the relative value of a currency compared with the currencies whose exports have been hit. Hence, economics 101 demands that Trump’s poorly designed and reckless tariff hikes should have resulted in a rise in the US dollar relative to the euro, the Swiss franc and the yen. But no! The US dollar has fallen relative to other currencies by 1.181 per cent in the past week. Two irresistible forces have collided. Trump will never admit defeat and remove the tariffs even as the world moves towards another global financial crisis. The markets will not grant him victory by pushing up the dollar to curtail US exports. Trump will not prune his outlays by the necessary trillions to eliminate both the budget and trade deficit. The US has always been regarded as a haven in times of crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the US dollar exchange rate rose relative to other major currencies, and capital flowed into America, pushing down US Treasury yields. Trump’s unprecedented actions may mean that the US currency and the American government bond market are no longer regarded as a haven. This impasse between the market and the president’s intransigence does not bode well for the global economy. The collapse in the value of the Australian dollar to below US60¢ reflects the decline in commodity prices due to the outbreak of the trade war between the US and China. Australian travellers and consumers of imports are hit hard while the lower Australian dollar cushions the nation’s mineral exports to China and elsewhere from the worst effects of the trade war. The Australian dollar has fallen far more than the Singapore currency, despite Singapore being more trade-exposed. Markets are smart. They have seen through Navarro’s tissue of lies and have resisted Trump’s plan to blame the rest of the world for the inability of the US to balance its own budget.
Trump mocks world leaders as huge new tariffs take effect Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Akayla Gardner Updated Apr 9, 2025 – 2.28pm, first published at 3.39am Washington | President Donald Trump took a victory lap over his new round of aggressive tariffs on foreign products just as they took effect on Wednesday at 2pm (AEST), bragging that some countries would “do anything” to strike a new trade deal with the United States. Throughout his roughly hour-and-a-half speech, Trump mocked critics of his tariff policies, as well as the foreign countries facing the new import taxes that are tilting the world into a full-blown trade war. President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner. AP And he buoyantly spoke of impending economic pain for America’s trade partners, claiming that foreign diplomats were kissing up to him in the hopes of getting the tariffs removed. “They’ve ripped us off left and right,” Trump said. “But now it’s our turn to do the ripping.” “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They’re dying to make a deal,” he continued at a Republican Party black tie dinner in Washington. a new import tax regime of at least 104 per cent on goods from China. The US tariffs mark a profound reversal to decades of liberalisation in the world economy and will – if sustained – lead to a complete reshaping of global trade patterns. Australia was hit with a 10 per cent baseline tariff applied on $22 billion worth of annual exports to the US. "Today, it was announced that China is reducing it's currency!" - President Donald J. Trump The president also inched closer to imposing tariffs targeting imported pharmaceuticals, saying that he would announce the tariffs “very shortly” – a move that would hit $1.6 billion in annual Australian exports. “When they hear that, they will leave China,” Trump said of pharmaceutical companies. “They will leave other places,” he said at the National Building Museum in Washington, adding that “they are going to be opening up their plants all over the place in our country”. But even as Trump crowed that his policies had brought foreign countries begging to the negotiating table, he continued to give ambiguous signals on whether the tariffs were ultimately a negotiating tactic or intended as a permanent fixture of US trade policy. “We don’t necessarily want to make a deal with them,” Trump said. “We’re happy the way we are, taking our $US2 billion a day. But they want to make a deal with us, and they talk about it.” Trump defended his mercurial stance, at one point reassuring the audience by saying, “I know what the hell I’m doing.” Donald Trump also inched closer to imposing tariffs targeting imported pharmaceuticals. AP He also attacked a contingent of Republican lawmakers – spooked by the markets’ reaction to the tariffs – who have been pushing to rein in Trump’s ability to impose tariffs without consulting Congress. “I’ll see some rebel Republican,” Trump said, “you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, say, ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations’.” “That’s what I need,” Trump continued, with heavy sarcasm. “Some guy telling me how to negotiate.” Speaking about countries that are working to make a deal, Trump said South Korea’s prospects were “looking good” after a phone conversation with acting President Han Duck-soo, while Japanese officials were getting on a plane for talks. “We have the confines and probability of a great DEAL for both countries,” Trump posted on social media about the South Korea talks. South Korea and Japan are longstanding security allies of America and key partners in US efforts to push back against China’s growing power in Asia and beyond. They also have large trade surpluses with Washington, but have not escaped Trump’s global tariff program. Trump said that countries were offering concessions – including on issues beyond trade and tariffs – that far exceeded what would have been possible without the tariffs. “It was somewhat explosive, but if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be talking the way we’re talking right now.” ‘Threat and blackmail are not the way’ Still, the president acknowledged that it would take time to negotiate bespoke trade deals with the nearly 70 countries that had reached out in the past week seeking talks. Another risk for the president is if China’s retaliatory approach proves successful, particularly if Americans begin feeling the pinch of dramatically more expensive imports. Beijing officials made clear on Tuesday that they planned to go ahead with higher duties on American goods despite Trump’s posturing. “Trade and tariff wars have no winners, and protectionism leads nowhere. We Chinese are not troublemakers, but we will not flinch when trouble comes our way. Intimidation, threat and blackmail are not the right way to engage with China,” said a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The stand-off makes it hard to envision Chinese President Xi Jinping rushing to contact his US counterpart for immediate relief. WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY JUST SAID: - PRESIDENT TRUMP BELIEVES THE UNITED STATES HAS THE CAPABILITY TO MAKE IPHONES DOMESTICALLY White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Beijing had miscalculated, and said Trump would be happy if electronics such as the Apple iPhone were assembled in the US rather than China. “President Trump has a spine of steel, and he will not break,” she said, adding that “America does not need other countries as much as other countries need us”. Still, she said, Trump would be “gracious” if Chinese leaders reached out to negotiate. The S&P 500 Index jumped 3.4 per cent at the open and the Nasdaq 100 rose 3.5 per cent on optimism that trade deals could avert the harshest penalties. But those gains evaporated by the afternoon as the White House reiterated its plans to push forward on the threatened Chinese tariffs. Both indices closed in the red. Leavitt said deals would “only be made if they benefit American workers and address our nation’s crippling trade deficits”. Bloomberg
Speaking of going too far.. The Central Park five are cleared to sue Trump despite him being a sitting president, for repeated defamation. And they will win, bigly.