Trump must be looking like a paper tiger to China

It seems to be the conventional wisdom that the tariff war between the US and China is not good for anybody, least of all the two countries concerned. And yet, here we are with China having tariffs of 125% on US goods and the US having tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods, rates that would have been thought utterly preposterous before this trade war started. Trump must have thought that China would quickly come to him seeking to make a deal, but they have not, even though the tariffs will undoubtedly hurt their economy and their long range plans, according to Yasheng Huang, an expert on China who teaches at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

I think it’s clear they [China] don’t want a trade war. Their economy is struggling, and the export sector has been one of its few bright spots. Last year, they had almost a trillion-dollar trade surplus. The property sector is not doing well. The technology sector is doing well, but it’s not really adding that much to G.D.P. growth. So this was purely a trade war that was initiated by the United States, and not by China.

I don’t think they want to cave in. That would make the Chinese leadership look very bad. And, moreover, I don’t think they trust the Trump Administration. Even if they were to give concessions this time around, I don’t think they believe that the concessions would hold. So there are multiple motivations on their part not to quickly come to an agreement if that agreement requires significant concessions.
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I think, if I had to place a bet, my bet is that they still want to continue with the current model. They don’t trust Trump. They don’t believe that his tariffs are credible. And I have to say I agree with them. And they think that he is going to make concessions. If he is going to make concessions, then I think they prefer to stay with the current model, which is a lot of investments, a lot of production, and then relying on the export markets. I think that’s their preferred option.

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Larry David skewers Bill Maher for normalizing Trump

Bill Maher was invited by Trump to have dinner with him at the White House and afterwards said that privately Trump was different from the way he presented himself in public, that he was ‘gracious and measured’ and had a sense of humor.

Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher praised President Trump after their late March meeting at the White House, describing him as “gracious and measured.” 
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The talk show host emphasized that he did not turn “MAGA” and “to the President’s credit, there was no pressure to” do so during their March 31 meeting.   

“Just for starters, he laughs. I’ve never seen him laugh in public, but he does, including to himself, and it’s not fake, believe me. As a comedian of 40 years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it,” Maher said.
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The longtime comedian said he felt like he did not need to walk on “eggshells” while speaking to Trump, something, in his view, would be unlikely around former Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton.

“I feel it’s emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days,” Maher said, later telling his viewers that Trump is different in public compared to his persona in a private setting.
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“Trump was gracious and measured. And why he isn’t that in other settings, I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer.”

Maher is of course one of those people who calls himself a liberal even as he increasingly moves rightward, claiming smugly that he is being sensible and has not changed but that it is liberals and Democrats who have moved too far to the left and are going crazy.

Larry David was having none of this. In a hilarious New York Times op-ed titled My Dinner With Adolf, he skewers Maher without mentioning him by name.

I will not quote from David’s piece because one should really read the whole thing.

Trump backtracking on boasts to end the war in Ukraine

During the presidential election campaign, one of the boldest promises that Trump made was that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine, not just on day one of his presidency, but even before because just the fact that was elected would bring both sides to the negotiating table. This is what he said in his debate with Kamala Harris on September 10, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump said if reelected he would end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration because he is respected by Ukraine and Russia’s leaders.

“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” the Republican said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”

“I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, O.K., they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”

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How the new pope will be elected

I have not yet seen the new thriller film Conclave (the word comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning “with key”) about the election of a pope but it looks like the filmmakers hit the jackpot in terms of timing since the death today of pope Francis means that we will have the process unfolding before us within the next few weeks when the cardinals gather in Rome to elect a new pope and the storm of publicity will make people even more curious about the film

Only 135 of the cardinals are eligible to vote, with the remaining 117 excluded from voting because they are over the age of 80. 108 of the voting cardinals were appointed by Francis so this election will very much bear his imprint. Although he was from Argentina, most of the voting cardinals are still from Europe, though now a quarter of the cardinals are from Asia. They meet in a locked room after excluding all but the voting cardinals and a handful of people such as doctors, confessors, masters of ceremonies, cooks, and cleaning staff, all of whom are also sworn to secrecy.
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Supreme Court stops deportations

It has become clear that the Trump gang’s plan is to summarily detain and deport people before they have had a chance to challenge their detention in the courts via a habeas corpus petition. Once the people have been deported, they then claim that there is nothing they can do to bring them back, even if the plane carrying them was still in the air. This practice so enraged a district court judge James Boasberg that he began criminal contempt proceedings against the government because of their earlier defiance of his order to turn around planes that had been transporting people to El Salvador prions and then stonewalling his attempts to get them to give him a clear timeline of their actions.

A federal judge found probable cause Wednesday to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for willfully disobeying his order to immediately halt deportations under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and turn around any airborne planes.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order gives the administration a final opportunity to come into compliance but says he otherwise will take steps to identify the specific people who flouted his March 15 ruling, which was later lifted by the Supreme Court, and refer them for prosecution.
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In dispute is whether the government violated an oral order from Boasberg given around 6:45 p.m. that day to halt or turn around any flights carrying migrants. 

The White House has sought to sidestep that question, saying it complied with a 7:27 p.m. written order. In court, however, they have declined to provide Boasberg with flight details and have asserted the ability to do so under the state secrets privilege.

Boasberg on Thursday raised the specter that the administration’s delay in publicizing the proclamation could have been “trying to put measures in place to get people subject to the proclamation removed from the country before it’s possible to challenge” their deportation and before it could be blocked by a court.

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Appeals Court slaps down Trump

After the US Supreme Court said that the Trump administration needed to facilitate Kilmar Ábrego García’s release from a prison in El Salvador, they started, as predicted, playing word games to not do anything, arguing that ‘facilitate’ only meant that if he should turn up at the US border, they would let him in but that they need do nothing more. They had earlier admitted that sending him had been a mistake but said that since he was now in the custody of El Salvador there was nothing that they could do.

The president of El Salvador came to the White House and he and Trump gave a joint press conference where they yucked it up and seemed to find it highly amusing that an innocent man is now in a foreign prison separated from his family here, and has been reportedly traumatized by the experience. It was disgusting to see how little regard they had for the fate of an innocent man.

The case went before a three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and they blasted this line of reasoning in a unanimous opinion, saying that the word ‘facilitate’ did not allow the government to do nothing
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Affirmative action for US students

It is clear that the Trump gang is going after foreign students by revoking their student visas willy-nilly for the most trivial of reasons, while pretending that it is about fighting anti-Semitism.

“The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was crystal clear in his condemnation of antisemitism during his 2023 “60 Minutes” interview. “To be antisemitic is unjust,” the student activist plainly stated, denouncing anyone who uses antisemitic rhetoric when protesting Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Monday, Donald Trump’s administration arrested Mahdawi after sadistically luring him to an immigration office by implying his citizenship application process was complete. The excuse offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that Mahdawi needs to be deported to halt the spread of antisemitism. But Rubio’s team offered no evidence that Mahdawi is antisemitic, and did not bother to acknowledge his very public denunciation of antisemitism. 

Similar accusations have been leveled at Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested for participating in the Gaza protests, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student on a visa from Turkey, arrested for signing an op-ed opposing the war. There has been no evidence produced of antisemitism from either, however. On the contrary, the Washington Post reports that an internal State Department memo written before Ozturk’s arrest found no evidence to support the accusation. Mikey Barat, Mahdawi’s Israeli friend, told The Intercept that while they “do not agree on everything,” Mahdawi “has denounced violence” and seeks “coexistence.” 

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Trump’s China obsession will hurt him and the US

One of the features of Trump is how he seems to view China as not merely a trade rival to be competed with but as an arch enemy to be vanquished, while viewing Russia as a friend. There are many pieces of evidence for this but perhaps the most significant is how he he has imposed massive tariffs on just China (while backing off on most of his tariffs on the rest of the world) while Russia was excluded from all the tariffs. It is a curious reversal of long standing US foreign policy that viewed Russia (as the successor to the Soviet Union) as the enemy symbolizing the evil empire of Communism while Richard Nixon began the policy of engaging with China.

The contrast between China’s and Trump’s policy-making cannot be starker. China is big on long-term planning with its five-year plans, ten-year plans, and even longer-term strategic planning while Trump careens from one policy to another as the whim seems to strike him, reversing himself sometimes within a few days. He wants to somehow hurt China and thinks that high tariffs will damage their economy and cause them to grovel before him.
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What’s happening in Canada

One of the most inexplicable things that Trump has done (and he has done so many that it is hard to keep score) is him going out of his way to insult and demean Canada, America’s long-time friend, ally, and neighbor. One can understand Trump doing that to another long-time friend and neighbor Mexico because that country is full of, well, Mexicans, and thus in MAGA eyes an inferior people. But Canada is largely affluent, white, English-speaking, and (at least nominally) Christian, just the kind of people Trump likes. So why go after Canada, claiming that they will become the 51st state and referring to their then prime minister Justin Trudeau as ‘governor’? Does he think that speaking of them as potentially the 51st state is some kind of compliment to them, of their desirability?

If so, he has badly miscalculated. Canada goes to the polls on April 28 and at the beginning of the year it looked like like the Conservatives would cruise to an easy victory, crushing the incumbent Liberals. But since Trump took office, things have changed dramatically, and now it looks like the new leader of the Liberals Mark Carney, by taking a defiant line in response to Trump’s threats, might well lead his party to victory over the Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre.
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