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Trump’s Tariff War - “Ruination Day”

“Ruination Day”: The new Economist cover amid Trump’s tariff war. Trump has launched a global trade war, calling it a “Liberation Day.” As an economist, I know a thing or two about tariffs. So here are some predictions of what we should expect if this tariff war continues. 2/ First, let’s clarify what tariffs will not do: - Tariffs will not fix the U.S. trade deficit. That’s simply wishful thinking. Tariffs will reduce both exports and imports, leaving the overall balance of trade largely unchanged 3/ - Tariffs will not rebuild U.S. manufacturing. First, tariffs will make American exports less competitive in global markets. Second, tariffs will put upward pressure on the U.S. dollar, making U.S. goods more expensive to foreign buyers. 4/ As a result, it will become costly to produce “American products” — and nobody will want to buy them. 5/ Now, what will likely happen if tariffs persist: - Americans will pay higher prices. Tariffs are a tax on domestic consumers. They raise...
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Trump announces 10% tariff on all imports, ratcheting up pressure in global trade war

WASHINGTON —   President Donald Trump   announced sweeping 10% tariffs on imports from all countries Wednesday and additional duties targeting about 60 nations, fulfilling a pledge   to retaliate against   countries he said have treated the U.S. unfairly. The nations hit with the additional reciprocal tariffs are those the White House said are the "worst offenders" as the largest contributors to the U.S. trade deficit and with the most significant barriers against U.S. products. Rates of the targeted tariffs will be set at half what these countries charge on U.S. exports,  Trump  said from the White House while holding up a list of dozens of countries that included Japan, China, India and other entities such as the European Union that will be targeted. The toll of tariffs: See the impact of Trump's escalating trade war with Canada and Mexico See the impact of President Donald Trump's economic policies for Canada and Mexico amid an escalating trade war. Tru...
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Trump is rolling out more tariffs this month. Where does the tariff money go?

  President   Donald Trump   has said his new tariffs, which start rolling out Saturday, will bring in enough money to "make America wealthy again." "We're going to start being smart and we're going to start being very wealthy again,"  Trump  said Wednesday at a  ceremony in the Rose Garden , shortly before signing an executive order that will enact a baseline 10% tariff on all trading partners outside of Canada and Mexico, plus additional  "reciprocal" tariffs  on select countries. "They've taken so much of our wealth away from us. We're not going to let that happen." So, where is that money going? "Trump has painted tariffs as  a tool to raise revenue  and offset costs associated with proposed tax cuts, going so far as to float the idea of  replacing income tax with tariffs . You're going to see billions of dollars, even trillions of dollars, coming into our country very soon in the form of tariffs," Trump said  la...
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Rubio announces that 83% of USAID contracts will be canceled

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  The Trump administration officially canceled 83% of U.S. foreign aid contracts on Monday. "The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States," Secretary of State Marco Rubio  wrote  on X early Monday morning. The total number of contracts is about 6,200, representing programs that were appropriated by Congress in the last budget approval. Rubio said that the remaining 1,000 or so contracts would be administered by the State Department, which absorbed the U.S. Agency for international Development (USAID) last month. In his post, Rubio thanked DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk — for implementing "overdue and historic reform. A review that beat its deadline Trump ordered a review of all foreign aid programs on his first day in office. Rubio then announced a temporary pause on these programs beginning Jan. ...
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Woke is dead — let’s make sure it never comes back

Across the non-left media world, it’s now an article of faith that Donald Trump’s emphatic victory is a woke watershed. After asking petulantly for year upon year, “Now have we hit peak woke?” like children on the back seat nagging daddy “are we there yet?” we learn repeatedly from conservative outlets that the progressive lunacy that has tormented us since about 2014 (if not since 1965) has been roundly defeated. A decisive death knell for identity politics dangles the blessed possibility of no longer squandering our brief duration on this Earth on stupid conversations and debates over whether: women can have penises; racial discrimination cures racism; advancement in employment and education should be determined by skin color; the western civilization that gave us penicillin, Rembrandt, Bach and the Hubble space telescope is a disgrace; being grotesquely fat is healthy; and wearing a sombrero that you bought yourself on Amazon is theft. Friends, the folks who’ve really been stealing ...
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