Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Americans Want Immigrants To Get A Court Hearing Before Deportation
The "Great Dealmaker" Is Having Trouble Making Global Deals
Donald Trump brags that he is a great dealmaker, and he convinced his supporters that he would easily and quickly make deals once he started his second term. He even promised to get a peace deal in Ukraine on his first day! But it's easy to make ridiculous promises, and quite another to follow through on them. And he is having big problems on completing global deals he said would be easy. Axios.com lists five deals that are eluding Trump's magic touch:
On at least five fronts, Trump's ambitions for big international deals are hitting early hurdles:
1. On Ukraine, Trump campaigned on securing a deal to end the fighting within 24 hours — though now he claims that promise was "a little bit sarcastic."
- Trump did get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, and to agree to stop bombing each other's energy infrastructure. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast doubt on the possibility of a peace deal any time soon.
- Trump said Sunday he was "pissed off" at Putin for his recent comments, and threatened additional oil tariffs if Moscow continues to stand in the way of a full ceasefire.
- He also fired a warning shot at Ukraine, after President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that the minerals deal Kyiv negotiated with the U.S. is "constantly changing."
2. On Gaza, Trump helped deliver a breakthrough before even taking office when his team worked with the outgoing Biden administration to secure a ceasefire.
- That truce is now over, and Israel on Monday announced it would massively expand its renewed ground operation in Gaza.
- Trump isn't actively pursuing his own proposal for the U.S. to displace Gaza's population to construct a new "Riviera." Instead, he's focusing on restarting talks to restore the ceasefire and free the remaining 59 hostages, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. Israeli and U.S. officials believe 22 of them are still alive.
3. On Iran, Trump issued an ultimatum demanding Tehran agree to a new nuclear deal within two months or face potential military strikes. That's led to further threats from both sides.
- Iranian leaders have rejected the idea of direct negotiations with the Trump administration, but left open the possibility of indirect talks.
- "If they don't make a deal, there will be bombing," Trump told NBC on Sunday.
4. On Greenland, Trump continues to insist that the U.S. "needs" to obtain the autonomous Danish territory, perhaps by military force.
- Vice President Vance laid out one path to a deal last week: Greenland votes for independence from Denmark, then signs a security pact with the U.S.
- The island's new prime minister announced a new coalition last week in part to unite againstU.S. pressure.
5. On tariffs, it's unclear if Trump is actually using them as leverage to cut deals — as Wall Street once assumed — or if he wants the levies in place long-term.
- Blue chip companies have announced billions of dollars of investments in the U.S. to try to preempt the tariffs and get on Trump's good side — Exhibit A for why Republicans remain optimistic about his trade strategy.
- But countries uncertain of how to protect themselves from Trump's economic wrath are starting to look elsewhere.
In an extraordinary sign of how Trump's hardball tactics are reshaping the world, China, South Korea and Japan — three countries with deep historical grievances — agreed to respond jointly to U.S. tariffs, according to Chinese state media.
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
The Public Thinks "Signalgate" Was A Serious Matter
The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done on March 27th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 2,609 adults, with a 2.3 point margin of error.
The Public Is Unhappy With Trump's Handling Of The Economy
The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done on March 27th and 28th of a nationwide sample of 2,609 adults, with a 2.3 point margin of error.
Small Business Is Getting A Rude Awakening
The following is just a small part of a post by economist Paul Krugman:
One odd feature of U.S. politics is that businesspeople, especially small business owners, always seems to believe that they will do better under Republicans, even though history shows that business does better under Democrats. Small business owners supported Trump in the last election, despite ample evidence that he would be very bad for business.
And now they’re getting a rude awakening.
Trump to follow in Orban’s footsteps is that Trump, like Orban, clearly doesn’t have any fixed principles other than power and self-aggrandizement. Under Trump, policy won’t reflect any consistent ideology. It will, instead, change with his perception of personal advantage, his temper tantrums, his whims and his malignant narcisissim. If he doesn’t like rising prices, he’ll try to stop inflation through bullying.
In short, MAGA will be very bad for business.
This was, of course, predictable and predicted. Tariffs don’t just make foreign goods more expensive to consumers. In a world where many of the goods we import are productive inputs like screws — or auto parts — tariffs directly raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States. Yet Trump’s threats against automakers suggests that he thinks he can control inflation through intimidation.
Trump may impose further tariffs, or slash them as suddenly as he raised them, depending on who spoke to him last. L’Etat, c’est Trump.
This kind of uncertainty is paralyzing for businesses, who are realizing that any kind of long-term commitment can turn out to have been a disastrous mistake. Build a plant that depends on imported parts, and Trump may cut you off at the knees with new tariffs. Build a plant that’s only profitable if tariffs stay in place, and Trump may cut you off at the knees by backing down.
Again, the point is that there really isn’t a MAGA economic philosophy, just whatever suits Trump’s fragile ego.
All of this was predictable and predicted. Before the election many economists warned that Trump’s policies would be destructive, although the models didn’t really take the sheer craziness into account.
The remarkable thing is how many supposedly hard-headed businesspeople didn’t see the obvious. Small business owners, in particular, clearly favored Trump, and as the chart at the top shows, their optimism soared when he won. Now it’s crashing.
So business owners allowed themselves to be deluded, as usual, but with even less excuse than normal. What they should have realized is that Trump’s lack of concern for ordinary Americans’ lives doesn’t mean that he’s pro-business, and that the election wasn’t about left versus right — it was about rule of law versus autocracy. Now we’re getting a first taste of what life under autocracy is like, and it’s bad for everyone, including businesspeople.
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