AndreasHG

Today's newspapers are all reporting on the front page that China refuses to open any negotiations with the USA until the unilateral tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration are withdrawn in a unilateral manner. China reserves the right to evaluate later whether or not to reciprocate by removing the tariffs imposed on American goods. Donald Trump has put himself in a truly difficult situation. Xi Jinping is not satisfied with winning the trade war. He wants to humiliate him and make him look like a fool. By doing this, Xi Jinping wants to send a direct message to the American voters "You elected a buffoon to the White House: you are now treated like buffoons". Trump has only himself to blame for the dire straits he finds himself in, just three months after Inauguration Day. Himself and the small group of sycophants posing as economists and international trade strategists he surrounds himself with. After threatening to fire Powell for weeks, Trump, under pressure from the markets, had to bite the bullet and backtrack, publicly stating that he never really had any intention of getting rid of him. I wonder if Donald Trump realizes how fortunate he is that Powell has a commendable sense of responsibility to the nation and its citizens. One can only imagine the drama that would have unfolded on Wall Street and beyond, had Powell resigned in contempt for Trump’s public behavior. The US dollar has already lost about 10% of its value against major currencies since Inauguration Day, and the yield on treasuries (the cost of government debt) has already risen even without the farce of Powell's (constitutionally dubious) firing. So here is Donald Trump, once again in the position of having to swallow a bitter pill. He can choose between dropping his pants and unilaterally withdrawing the tariffs imposed on China, or letting Americans be hit with the impossible 145% tariff that would cause immense economic damage in a matter of weeks. And once again I wonder if Donald Trump realizes how lucky he is. China has chosen to reciprocate by imposing its own tariffs on American imports and by penalizing the United States by introducing a ban on the sale of rare earths and metals. It will take some time for American citizens to feel the effects of these sanctions. Just imagine what would have happened if China decided to impose export tariffs on the goods (consumer electronics, shoes, clothing) that Americans need and want most—the very same goods that the Trump administration hastily excluded from tariffs. Not only inflation would have skyrocketed, but companies like Apple, Nike, Walmart and Target (who act both as exporters in China and importers in the USA) would have seen their profits evaporate in a matter of weeks. What would have been unimaginable only a short time ago is now unfolding under our own eyes: China is humiliating the American giant in the person of its (incompetent and reckless) president. And President Trump is about to learn that international relations are not like buying a property in Manhattan, or negotiating a loan with Deutsche Bank, or hammering out the supply of cement from the monopoly hold by the five families of the Italian-American mafia in New York. But make no mistake. After losing face with China, Donald Trump will make up for it by beating, hands down, America's long-time allies: Canada and Mexico are first in line, Europe, Japan and Korea to follow, not to mention the unfortunate penguins of Heard Island and McDonald Island, who will no longer be able to export their precious guano to the United States. Isn't this what true bullies do?

I would but the post is currently locked.

Here are two charts showing the average monthly exchange rate of the US dollar against some major currencies and our beloved Thai baht. The exchange rate is indexed, with 100 being the rate recorded on the day of the inauguration of both Trump's first and second presidencies. During his first term, Trump's obsession with the US trade deficit and his erratic behavior caused the dollar to collapse, losing 16.8% of its value against the Thai baht (THB), 12.3% against the Japanese yen (JPY), 10.7% against the euro (EUR), and 6.9% against the AUD. It did appreciate against the British pound (GBP), but that was due to the incompetence of the conservative governments of the time and Brexit. Four months into Trump's second term, here he is again. Only this time it's happening faster. The dollar has already depreciated by almost 10% against the Japanese yen (JPY) and the euro (EUR), 7% against the British pound (GBP), and 2% against the Thai baht (THB) and AUD. Only the Chinese yuan, thanks to the currency manipulations of the PBoC, has followed the depreciation of the US dollar. Hard times ahead for our American friends who live on income in US dollars and expenses in Thai baht. If you are wondering what happened during Biden's presidency, I add a third chart. Let's focus on the THB: the dollar appreciated by a healthy 13.8% against the Thai currency, evidence that doing nothing is always better than doing the wrong thing. But those good times are behind us now.

In an article published today by the Financial Times, Martin Wolf analyzes the unintended consequences for economic activities of arbitrary decisions imposed by an absolute ruler. Martin Wolf reviews the reasons why the English-speaking world began to do away with absolute rulers 800 years ago, in a long and bitter struggle, from the Magna Carta of 1215 to the exile of James II and the declaration of the Bill of Rights of 1689, through the civil war of the early 17th century, culminating in the execution of Charles I in 1649. Lessons that America should be particularly interested in today. Wolf writes: "What is happening today in the US is of historic and also global significance, because it is about whether constraints on the arbitrary exercise of power will endure." "The trade wars Trump has launched are a demonstration of the dangers. Astoundingly, the FT’s “tariff tracker” lists 25 significant policy announcements by the US and the countries it has been assailing in less than three months. It records seven big trade policy announcements between April 2 and 11 alone. These included “reciprocal” tariffs on all countries on April 2, the subsequent reduction of these, after market turmoil, to 10 per cent for 90 days, along with the retaliation cycle between the US and China, has led to prohibitive tariffs on both sides." "We have also seen falling stock prices, high market volatility and, even more disturbingly, the dollar’s fall even while yields on Treasuries rose. It appeared as though capital started to flee from the US itself. No wonder Trump blinked. While “tariffing” the world, he should have known that foreigners held $8.5tn of US Treasuries at the end of 2024, close to a quarter of total public debt." "Unpredictable despots generate waste, fear and pervasive uncertainty. These are enemies of prosperity. Trump’s constantly shifting trade wars and demolition of the global trading system are currently demonstrating this." "Business, after all, must think in years, not days. With its party bureaucracy, Xi Jinping’s China now provides more predictability for [local] business than the US. That is shocking." This article explains with statistics and clear arguments why the United States will pay a high economic price for choosing to elevate a madman to the highest office in the state. At the same time, we must candidly recognize that there is method in Trump's madness. By making the United States poorer, Trump solves at the root the two problems that America's wealth generates: unchecked immigration and trade deficit. An impoverished America is an America that attracts fewer immigrants but also an America that can no longer afford to import and consume the quantities of goods that it imports and consumes today. A poorer and more frugal America is also a more environmentally friendly America, a good thing for planet Earth, for living beings and for all humanity. Therefore, also the left has reasons to rejoice at Trump's election. The only ones destined to suffer are the true conservatives. Those who believe in the rule of law, reason, science and the material and spiritual progress of humanity.

Whatever is that you smoke, it's clearly bad for your health. Be careful.

Russia is full of energy, it's a willing seller and the EU will soon be a willing buyer, as soon as it gets rid of the American boots. I agree. It has taken over East Germany (former Communist Germans are voting en-mass for the AfD). And it's another example of US nefarious interference in European affairs (see picture below). I think Europeans will decide their future. And the sooner they will be free to do it without yankees interference, the better. Europeans can fend for themselves. It is the USA that is in deep sh*t. And the emergency measures introduced by the Trump administration are proof of that. Only a desperate nation on the brink of a precipice would attempt such drastic solutions. Open your eyes and stick to facts. The facts speak for themselves. .

Sorry: I assumed you knew where to find the data without hesitation. But I am always willing to help others, especially those who demonstrate a willingness to learn. https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/slt_table5.html

This time is different. There are no more empires fenced by high tariffs and Europe is one large free trade are, the world's largest. They will be fine.

I guess pretty well. Looking forward to getting rid of the useless American boots on the continent, a constant source of instability and an annoyance for Putin, who feels obliged to do everything possible to keep them away from the Russian borders, including imposing the Lukashenko regime on the poor Belarusians and staging a criminal war against Ukraine. No Americans in Europe will immediately translate in peace and freedom for the continent.

China. Which accounts for 13.7% of US total imports (does not include indirect imports of Chinese goods from Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.). By 2022 the U.S. relied on China for 532 key product categories – nearly four times the level in 2000 – while China's reliance on U.S. products was cut by half in the same period. But China holds 8.9% of the US Treasuries, a big card. Japan holds 12.7%. The UK 8.7%. The EU a staggering 22.7% and it will be on the negotiation table (the EU calls it "the bazooka on the table"). They don't have to sell. They just have to slow down their purchases and the yield will skyrocket (the cost of US debt). The US could respond by declaring (selective) default, as other countries have done in the past (Argentina, Venezuela, etc.). But the problem with default is that it prevents the country from accessing new credit. It would also destroy the U.S. dollar's status as a safe-haven currency. And it's a big issue when the government expenses are out of control: federal spending is $139 billion more in the first three months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, with borrowing over that period $41 billion higher. Without new borrowing, everything is at risk, including Social Security.

Actually, cars and automotive parts are all subject to a 25% tariff, independently from where they are manufactured, including therefore those made in UK. Exceptions are, for the time being, vehicles assembled in Mexico and Canada.

Jaguar Land Rover HALTS US car exports just hours after Donald Trump's trade war kicks in Already on shaky financial footing, "JLR suspends vehicle shipments to the US after Trump's 25% tariff on car imports, placing 9000 British jobs at risk as Solihull braces for economic fallout". "Exports to the US account for almost a quarter of those sales and JLR is at the centre of Britain’s car industry, accounting for £1 in every £8 of the country’s exports." "The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank has said more than 25,000 direct jobs in the car manufacturing industry could be at risk as exports to the US are predicted to fall."

In fact, the UK was never part of (continental) Europe to begin with. It is a piece of alien land that happens to be parked next to Europe, without belonging to it. We can start by saying that in the British Isles it is customary to drive on the wrong side of the road. In continental Europe people pride themselves on keeping to the right side. We can go on to note that the Britons insist on using imperial measurements, while continentals switched to the metric system after the Napoleonic campaigns that popularized them across the Continent. Furthermore, Britons still weigh their body mass in stones, something continentals stopped doing at the end of the Stone Age, due to its impracticality (in the Continent, the art of picking stones of exactly equal or multiple weights for accurate measurement was lost in the Bronze Age). And we can finish with food: as a great French chef observed in the eighteenth century, "Britain is an island where people are busy roasting, boiling, frying, baking, steaming a little of everything without actually cooking anything."

Working for multinational companies (and yes, they are American) I have learned that the perception of inappropriate behavior is already unacceptable, even when there is no evidence that anything inappropriate actually happened. There is no evidence that Elon Musk is a racist, Nazi, anti-Semite, misogynist, homophobic, malignant narcissist, sociopath or worse. Just the perception of it shared by hundreds of millions of people in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Is this enough to see him convicted in a court of law? No. Is that enough to sink a company he's CEO of? Not, if he can convince rednecks to buy the Cybertruck instead of the F-150. But so far he's had no luck.

Private for-profit universities who can secure student VISAs and endorse student loans. What could possibly go wrong? In Thailand, at least, private schools can only help you get a student visa (just ask the guys selling fake watches in Nana how they got here), but then the "student" has to fend for himself to survive.

I appreciate your sense of humor. With regards to Trump's yet to come wins, the future is uncertain. With 10,000 Optimus being employed by the end of this year in Tesla factories around the world and up for sales starting in 2026 (according to Elon Musk who probably forgot to inform Trump about what the future has in store), nothing is more uncertain today than the future of blue-collar workers, while white-collar jobs are already endangered by AI. It takes years to relocate the production of high-value products which rely on complex supply chains and expensive assets (I am not talking about toys here). That means companies shall invest now to start reaping the first profits from their investments under a new administration. American consumers are required to start paying higher prices now, with the prospect of perhaps being able to access better jobs, Optimus and AI permitting, under a new administration. And the Trump administration will be plagued by inflation, tumbling stock prices and recession for its entire duration, to the uncertain benefit of the next one. In the meanwhile, Musk's Optimus will progress and there is a chance it will render manual labor a thing of the past, while AI will put an end to white-collar jobs. The future is uncertain, but of one thing I am absolutely certain: if Trump continues like this, the future of MAGA and of the GOP looks extremely bleak. -

Hamas is designated a terrorist organization. So no, it is not discriminatory to kick out its supporters. It is just plain stupid to let them in.

Just published by a number of news outlets... "Trump threatens large scale sanctions to stop Russia ‘pounding Ukraine’" It's a win-win: head America wins, tail Russia loses. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/07/copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-copy-of-russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news528/ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-threatens-russia-sanctions-tariffs-ceasefire-peace-deal/story?id=119551657 https://flvoicenews-com.webpkgcache.com/doc/-/s/flvoicenews.com/trump-threatens-russia-with-sanctions-and-tariffs-over-pounding-ukraine-in-war/

LOL 4 days old news, superseded by Trump's speech to the Congress. And just for you to know... ..."Germany to Block U.S.-Russia Nord Stream 2 Deal" (just google it). To whom are you going to sell your oil and gas? To the USA which is already the world largest producer and Russia main competitor? Or do you seriously think that Europe is going to buy Russian oil and gas again to spite Trump? You can shag your Russian oil & gas where the sun never shines. That's the best use you can make of it.

Keep on dreaming... This is what Trump said in his Speech to Congress: "Meanwhile, Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian oil and gas than they’ve spent on defending Ukraine, by far." This sentence has been conveniently ignored by the Russian news outlets (which ignore any news which may be bad for Putin) but we are fortunate to live in democratic countries and have access to a free press. Therefore, this statement was not lost on us. Trump is saddened that Europe spent money on Russian oil and gas which ooze Ukrainian blood. Russia's better be ready to endure sanctions for the foreseeable future, and at least till its murderous president will stay in power. Слава Україні.

I agree with what Trump said: Europeans still buy too much cheap oil & gas from Russia. We bought more Russian O&G in dollars, than the value of the whole support we gave to Ukraine. We should stop buying from Russia and buy American oil & gas instead, despite it being more expensive, to keep the world free and screw murderous Putin and his criminal acolytes.

First, this was before COVID, when North Korea was coming off decades of relative openness. Secondly, this was in the capital Pyongyang, which is famously built and maintained to a completely different and much better standard than any other North Korean city and is less likely to embarrass the regime. Thirdly, the North Koreans living in the capital, far from being "normal" people, are notoriously the most reliable and loyal to the regime. At the slightest hint of infidelity, they are immediately deported with their families away from Pyongyang, where a life of hardship and misery awaits them. In Pyongyang the regime runs no risk of being embarrassed by the population. Lastly, in the world there is no lack of idiots who, even when faced with the evidence that a regime represents the absolute evil, believe they are dealing with an absolutely normal regime. Names of people who fall into this category and who come to mind right now are the Scottish academic and Marxist, and Khmer Rouge apologist, James Alexander Malcolm Caldwell (who deserves the Nobel Prize for Idiocy, should one ever be awarded) and Eric Hobsbawm, a British Marxist historian and lifelong apologist for the Soviet Union, whom Putin would surely appreciate.

I'm eager to see how the announced 25% tariff on goods imported to the US from the European Union plays out. Why? Well, there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the EU, and many of them caused by the fact that facts and figures related to the EU are often reported only by individual country. Let's try to have a holistic and more realistic vision of the economic relationship between the EU and the USA. First, the truth is that EU has a negative current account balance with the United States. The EU imports more from the United States than it exports. A lot of its imports are services generated by the like of Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Airbnb, Amazon, X, etc.. Services are the "new economy" and are an area in which American companies excel. But the US current account surplus with the EU is something that the Trump administration loves to ignore, because it does not resound with its electoral base composed mainly of blue-collar and poorly educated people, who are not typically employed by Tech companies. If the EU imposed tariffs on these services in retaliation to the US tariff, it would spell trouble for the US and especially for Trump's big donors, those who queued up to donate large sums for his inauguration day. Second, a significant part of the EU trade surplus is fictitious. Little Ireland is the EU's second-largest exporter to the United States not far behind Germany and well ahead of Italy, and pharmaceuticals represent one of its two largest export (the other is Airbus). However, the fact is that most of these “EU” exports are shipments of pharmaceutical drugs manufactured in India. American pharmaceutical companies set up manufacturing plants in the subcontinent and export their drugs to the United States through their Irish subsidiaries, which act as convenient, tax-advantaged intermediaries. The drugs don't even set foot in European ports, as they are uprooted directly from India to the US West Coast to save costs. Introducing a 25% import tax on these drugs would cost Irish taxpayers almost nothing and would heavily penalize American pharmaceutical companies, their Indian subsidiaries, their employees and those who invested in these companies. Furthermore, the EU as a whole is by far the largest creditor of the US Treasury and the largest holder of US dollar-denominated assets. The EU is a market economy and there is no Chinese Communist Party that can whisper to local financial institutions to boycott American securities in retaliation for a tariff, trusting that the suggestion will be implemented in a disciplined way. However, the EU has a central financial regulator (the ECB - European Central Bank) on which the national central banks depend, and which has a certain regulatory power. I therefore can't imagine what would happen to the interest rates paid by the US Treasury if the EU slowed down its purchases, which are currently running at a pace of just under $100 billion a month. And let me conclude with one final consideration: Trump is right when he says that the EU is a tough nut to crack. The EU has no sense of urgency. Threatening to impose a 25% tariff on its products does not ignite the rush to close a deal that we saw with Mexico and Canada a month ago. Any agreement requires the approval of the 27 member countries and their parliaments. A process that takes months or even years to complete. It is built-in stonewalling by design. And for Trump, accustomed to putting pressure on his partners to bend them to his will, in the belief that, by urging them to act in a rush, he can obtain more favorable concessions, this is like being 'screwed'. And being 'screwed' is exactly as he described the situation in which he finds himself.

This is leadership!

Anyone who has rationally studied Geo-politics from even a marginally neutral vantage knows exactly that are Russians those who killed by far the highest number of Russians. None killed Russians like the Russian despots. Not Napoleon, not Hitler, and not even the Taliban. None inflicted pain, misery and suffering to Russians like your own leaders did to your people. And forgive the Ukrainians if they are tired of being dragged into the sewer, into which you happily and willingly slip at least once every generation. Putin himself is a criminal worthy of the gallows. But he deserves credit: he caused the death of more Russians than anyone else in his and my generation.