Trump Seeks to Dictate the Economy with Tariff Scheme

BONUS: San Diego Activist Calendar

Totally ripped off (yay!) from Rep Sara Jacob’s feed.

In a universe where truth hasn’t been trampled and observable facts still matter, here’s the upshot of the White House presentation on tariffs on April 2–almost everything President Trump said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly false.

The man who reportedly told 30,573 lies during his first presidency put on a gameshow-like presentation. There were charts to see and parables told. Much coverage was focused on the economic impact of near-universal tariffs, and political prognosticators circled around possible electoral impacts.

Thursday morning legacy network shows featured cabinet secretaries bubbling about how fantastic this new approach was… alongside on-screen market tickers showing the Dow Industrial Average falling by more than a thousand points in its opening hour.

For all the ‘informed analysis’ laid out, media outlets are continuing to use the administration’s framing, calling the new fees “reciprocal,” when they have no connection to the real figures derived from international trade. And every one of the historical justifications made by the administration are simply not true.

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The numbers in Trump’s charts only calculate the trade deficit in goods, not services. The US runs a trade surplus in services with the world, but it got ignored.

(If the European countries want to really clap back, they will impose fees on services sold by the US. And the nuclear option would be to simply cancel the agreements made on digital products promoted by US companies, allowing for competitors in every part of the business, from on-line software and app stores to non-factory authorized tweaks providing relief from the post-sale fees charged on hardware. h/t Cory Doctorow)

Bottom line? The numbers Trump is throwing around are not really about tariffs by foreign countries at all, but rather only about our trade deficits in goods with them. These tariffs will hobble the world economy and enable transfer of $6 trillion from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.

More than the voodoo economic justifications presented by the administration, the what’s in it for me, Donald J Trump?, effects will concern power.

It’s true, the new tariffs will have profound effects on domestic and foreign economies and relationships. They also give the President a whip to keep industries in line.

At a minimum Americans will have to put off retirement for a few years to make up for the losses to their 401(k) savings, and that’s before knowing what damage will be inflicted on Social Security.

But the biggest deal for the Trump administration with these taxes is the weaponizing of an economic hammer.

Democratic Senator Senator Chris Murphy (via Heather Cox Richardson*) got it right:

• “[t]hey aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.” Murphy suggests they are a way to make private industry dependent on the president the same way he has tried to make law firms and universities dependent on him. Industries and companies “will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief.”

• Murphy warns that “[t]he tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship…[s]o that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.”

Personal savings tied to the marketplace will crash, but not burn. The private sector will adjust to obeying the whims of Dear Leader, and when they do, they will be granted relief.

As for the public…Via Politico Playbook:

• But Trump is untroubled: The president has already dismissed the doom-mongering he knew was coming from “globalists” who believe in free trade. For Trump, this is simply the enactment of a long and deeply-held belief about how America’s economy should operate, and another “promises made, promises kept” moment from a president who — very clearly now — must be taken at his word. He told us what he was going to do. And once again, he did it.

Remember what the first rule of fighting fascism is? The stampede to comply by corporate America will be deafening. Mark Zuckerberg visited the White House on Wednesday with a list of issues he wanted resolved. *I don’t think it’s an accident that Heather Cox Richardson’s writings are vanishing quickly on Facebook.*

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It only took a short period of time for analysts with an inkling of math aptitude to realize that the charts shown at the White House as the basis for calculating tariffs were based on fabricated data.

The administration released a math formula they said was the basis of calculating the new tariffs, except that the mechanism was wrong on its face.

Here’s economic wonk Brendan Duke,

• Incredible stuff--they wanted to make the thing seem more sophisticated than it is so they threw in two Greek letters but selected values that cancel out so it's still just trade deficit divided by imports.

The list of countries supposedly being affected by these new tariffs was likely drawn up by an intern using Grok (Musk’s AI) as a source for an inadequately phrased question. We’re supposedly slapping tariffs on penguins on uninhabited islands, and a 10% minimum tariff on exports from the “British Indian Ocean Territory,” whose only occupants work at the base on Diego Garcia. Yup, we’re punishing a U.S. military base for past sins.

There are lies upon lies being told, and if those lies are seemingly disproved, the bearer of those inconvenient facts will be smeared in a variety of ways.

From the “I told ya” files:

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It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress, which holds the power of the purse, delegated tariff authority to the White House and has the power to take it back.

Sadly, the President spent the first seventy odd days of his administration using Pavlovian methods to train the GOP side of Congress, making them eat shit and praise it. Now they’re going to sit meekly and refuse to take back the “emergency” powers they delegated.

Which brings me to what should be everybody’s first reaction to this move: attending the April 5 National Protests. In San Diego that means finding your way downtown to the Civic Center at Noon on Saturday.

It’s going to have to be loud, because, if you think about it, Trump’s newly found power over corporate America means change on their end ain’t going to happen. The 47th President of the US needs to be neutered, and for the time being that means waking the (mostly) old men on Capitol Hill up to do their jobs.

I’ll be doing my best to alert readers to events as fast as I learn of them. Let me know at dougporter506@yahoo.com

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4/5 - Remove - Reverse - Reclaim / Hands-OFF Nationwide Day of Protest Noon-3pm Civic Center Plaza, Downtown San Diego. Be there or be square!

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4/6 - Peaceful Protest - At the Kook Statue, Encinitas - Noon-2pm
4/6 - Support Ukraine Rally at Balboa Park 2-4pm El Cid Statue
4/6 - Ramona Resist Protest 11-am-1pm, 10th and Main streets.

GREAT NEWS: Target just posted their eighth consecutive week of declining store traffic. There are consequences for caving to the racists waving DEI around like it’s something bad.

4/07-4/14 – Walmart Boycott April 19 economic blackout Nationwide, 24/7
4/8 -Protest Llnda McMahon, Trump's Secretary of Education 8am-noon - Picketing at Manchester Grand Hyatt
4/8 - Escondido weekly protest, Nordal Road at SR 78 Overpass - 11:30am - 1pm
4/8 - Weekly Save Social Security protests, La Mesa office, 7961 University Ave. 11:30am - 12:30pm
4/9 - Miramar College Earth Day 12-2pm Miramar Quad
4/10 - Issa Hold a Town Hall: 11am-Noon- Weekly in El Cajon
4/10 - Tesla Sign Waving - Encinitas 4pm - 5:30pm
4/10 - What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders. Noon.
Virtual event, Registration
4/11 - Issa Hold a Town Hall Escondido, 10:30 - 11:30
4/13 - Peaceful Protest - At the Kook Statue, Encinitas - Noon-2pm
4/13 - Support Ukraine Rally at Balboa Park 2-4pm El Cid Statue
4/13 - Ramona Resist Protest 11-am-1pm, 10th and Main streets.
4/15 - Demonstrate for Democracy ,4:30-6:30pm, Mira Mesa Blvd & Westview Pkwy
4/15 - Weekly Save Social Security protests, La Mesa office, 7961 University Ave. 11:30am - 12:30pm
4/16 - State of the (SD) County, hosted by Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, 5:15 - 7:45pm. Natural History Museum - RSVP, limited space
4/17 - What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders. Noon.
Virtual event, Registration
4/17 - Issa Hold a Town Hall: 11am-Noon- Weekly in El Cajon
4/17 Support Public Power Zoom Mtg 6pm RSVP for Link
4/18 - Issa Hold a Town Hall Escondido, 10:30 - 11:30am
4/19 - Earth Day Celebration - Mt. Hope Community Garden, 9am – 1pm

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Fight for our future at the Unite for Climate March on May 3rd, 2025 at Waterfront Park. Organized by San Diego 350 and over 40 community organizations.

WHEN: Saturday, May 3, 2025 @ 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
WHERE: Waterfront Park - 1600 Pacific Hwy San Diego, California 92101

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***Click HERE for more upcoming events.

Move the United Nations to Montreal by Taylor C Noakes at CultMtl:

• Trump may destroy America, and he threatens Canada in a way we never could have previously imagined, but he is also demonstrating on a daily basis why Canada needs to sever its once special relationship with the United States, and move on. This is a unique situation that provides us with an opportunity to completely reimagine who we are and set ourselves on a new course towards greater sovereignty and a more important role to play on the international stage. I don’t think we should waste it.

• In threatening our very existence, Donald Trump has ironically given us every reason to imagine how great we might become.

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Massacre of the American Dream by Brad Willis at Perspectives

• An unelected immigrant and his minions are now dismantling the New Deal and Great Society with mass firings, closures, and the defunding of critical departments and agencies that serve our seniors, veterans, workers, and school children.

• On its October 2024 magazine cover, The Economist proclaimed the U.S. economy “The Envy of the World.” This is what the Trump administration inherited.

• As I write this, President Trump has just announced a slew of widespread tariffs against our neighbors and allies (Putin’s Russia was excluded). Trump claims he inherited a ruined economy and that his tariffs will create “the golden age of America.” In response, the stock market plunged, and there is concern over a global economic recession.

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From the temple to the garden - Participating in the birth of a new media system by Hamish McKenzie at The Substack Post (yes, that’s an actual publication)

• The chaos of our current media moment cannot last, but no one knows exactly what the new landscape will look like when it stabilizes. That’s precisely why your choices today matter so much. Every subscription, every share, every minute of your attention is a vote for the culture you want to see flourish.

• You can choose to invest in a system that values deep relationships over the flimsy validation that chaos media offers. You can reclaim your attention from the doomscroll feeds and pour it like water onto the seedlings of a better future.

• These actions aren’t just about getting better content or contributing to a healthier media economy—they cultivate a richer, more thoughtful culture capable of addressing the complex challenges of our time. It’s a culture worth subscribing to.