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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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BIARRITZ, France — President Trump asserted on Saturday that he has the authority to make good on his threat to force all American businesses to leave China, citing a national security law that has been used mainly to target terrorists, drug traffickers and outlier states like Iran, Syria and Libya.
As he arrived in France for the annual meeting of the Group of 7 powers, Mr. Trump posted a message on Twitter citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, a law originally passed as part of a congressional effort to define and restrain presidential assertions of power not to enable a president to cut off economic ties with a trading partner because of a disagreement over tariffs.
“For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Case closed!”
China on Saturday said it would continue fighting the trade war with the US “until the end” after the two sides slapped further tariffs on each other’s goods.
The commerce ministry issued a statement calling on Washington not to “misjudge the situation and underestimate the determination of Chinese people” after US President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on Chinese imports. “The US should immediately stop its wrong action, or it will have to bear all consequences,” the statement said.
A sharply worded commentary by official mouthpiece People’s Daily meanwhile said China had the strength to continue the dispute and accused Washington of sacrificing the interests of its own people.
Obviously, there has often been market turmoil related to the president’s trade policies. But today feels different. For the last couple of years, there had been a pattern: The president escalates, the markets hate it, then the president finds a way to back off, and stocks go back up. For a long time it looked like the president’s China policy was a negative factor for economy, but its effects were manageable, in significant part because Trump faced political incentives to limit the damage.
Now, as the economy shows signs of weakening (in part for reasons unrelated to the president’s actions) he seems panicked. He wants the Fed to clean up his mess but — despite public perception — his public jawboning of the Fed appears to be having little effect on monetary policy. The main way the president has been affecting monetary policy has been by taking concrete policy actions that hurt the economic outlook, which changes the parameters the Fed considers as it decides how to set interest rates. The bigger a mess Trump makes, the more rate cuts he can get, but not enough rate cuts to actually offset the mess. And this is making him angry.
It’s also worth considering the possibility that we have gotten too far down the trade-war road for the president to unwind the problems he’s caused. To the extent there are signs of weakness in the domestic economy, they are largely on the producer side. The consumer sector still looks decent. But tariffs and uncertainty over future tariffs have already discouraged businesses from producing and investing. And China has less reason to participate in a de-escalation than they did a year ago, since they can just ride out the next year and hope to be facing a new, less-hostile president. As Jonathan Chait notes, Xi Jinping doesn’t have to worry about reelection like Trump does.
With a China less willing to back down and a trade war maybe too far along to stop, the president is backed into a corner. He may feel he can’t save the economy by folding. And so he may follow his instinct — one of the few consistent policy views he has expressed for decades — that protectionism is good for the economy, and that despite what the markets and his advisers are telling him, trade wars are good and easy to win and more tariffs and more disruption will only mean more winning for the U.S.
What the president showed us today is he’s prepared to hit the gas as he approaches the cliff. That should make us all worried about the economic outlook — and it should make Republicans very worried about the political outlook.
1 trump is cratering on the world stage. There are no surprises. This is his ongoing transformation into a helpless vegetable. That’s what Frontotemporal Dementia (most likely PSP) does. This leg down will be even more graphic- especially if it continues to play out in public
2 As trump’s enablers scurry to get through the day, they lack foresight to know his condition looks nothing like the train wreck that's coming. Is it lack of knowledge? Denial? Wishful thinking? Maybe it's a Machiavellian approach- they will let him run himself in to the ground
3 We are new territory w/ enablers like Sarah Sanders or Hogan Gidley attacking the few doctors who have sounded the alarm a/b trump- “These ‘doctors’ are disgusting & they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to use their titles to push their own personal political views.”
4 Keep in mind, it doesn’t matter what any of these enablers say, what Parscale does or what Barr does. Dementia is controlling the situation & trump’s steady decay is now front & center in the news. Some MSM have put 2 & 2 together & realize it’s not a condition- It’s worsening
Thread by @TomJChicago: "1 trump is cratering on the world stage. There are no surprises. This is his ongoing transformation into a helpless vegetable. That’s what F […]"
...
2 As trump’s enablers scurry to get through the day, they lack foresight to know his condition looks nothing like the train wreck that's coming. Is it lack of knowledge? Denial? Wishful thinking? Maybe it's a Machiavellian approach- they will let him run himself in to the ground
3 We are new territory w/ enablers like Sarah Sanders or Hogan Gidley attacking the few doctors who have sounded the alarm a/b trump- “These ‘doctors’ are disgusting & they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to use their titles to push their own personal political views.”
4 Keep in mind, it doesn’t matter what any of these enablers say, what Parscale does or what Barr does. Dementia is controlling the situation & trump’s steady decay is now front & center in the news. Some MSM have put 2 & 2 together & realize it’s not a condition- It’s worsening
Thread by @TomJChicago: "1 trump is cratering on the world stage. There are no surprises. This is his ongoing transformation into a helpless vegetable. That’s what F […]"
...
With President Trump set to attend the Group of Seven this weekend, it’s already emerging that he has “https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/france-tries-to-orchestrate-a-no-drama-g-7-summit-but-trump-is-the-x-factor/2019/08/22/342ab388-c4f6-11e9-b72f-b31dfaa77212_story.html (shaken up)” the schedule. Trump has https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/france-tries-to-orchestrate-a-no-drama-g-7-summit-but-trump-is-the-x-factor/2019/08/22/342ab388-c4f6-11e9-b72f-b31dfaa77212_story.html (called for) a special meeting focused on the global economy, where he’ll tout his message about jobs and trade, while contrasting the stupendous Trump economy with Europe’s economic struggles.
In other words, Trump will proclaim his “America First” agenda a smashing success, and throw that in the faces of our European allies.
Yet behind the scenes, such bravado is a lot harder to find. ...
But the reality is that Trump’s “America First” agenda, particularly the trade war with China, is a key reason the U.S. economy is now at greater risk of tipping into recession. Even Trump’s GOP allies https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/22/trump-economy-month-chaotic-response/ (admit this). And Trump constituencies are bearing the brunt of those trade hostilities.
What’s more, the tax cuts that Trump will boast about are not providing the economic rocket fuel Trump proclaimed. In pursuing them, Trump sold out on the economic populism he promised his supporters in 2016, embracing conventional GOP plutocracy in a way that benefited those hated elites far more than workers.
...
Meanwhile, the Amazon is on fire, and French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the G-7 to treat this as a galvanizing moment. But Trump’s only play is to flaunt his contempt for international cooperation in the face of the severely worsening climate threat. What exactly has this done for U.S. workers?
And if our economy continues to slow, what’s Trump’s plan? Trump has resorted to all manner of lies and conspiracy theories to mask the slowdown. And https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/22/trump-economy-month-chaotic-response/ (as The Post reports), this is what Trump is truly counting on:
He has told aides that he thinks he can convince Americans that the economy is vibrant and unrattled through a public messaging campaign.
You can bet Trump’s routine at the G-7 will be key to this “public messaging campaign.” Trump will distract his supporters from all this failure by publicly putting on a show of “disruption” that, once again, has nothing but lies, empty boasts and megalomania at its core.
