Tag: Economy
Part 1: Is this what you voted for?
J. F. Carter, US Army (ret LTC) 1968-1992, United Nations (ret D-1) 1992-2009, and European Union (ret D-1) 2009-2011, writes:
Dear Fellow Americans,
It is time to wake up from your slumber and face the truth. Our nation is in peril. Trump’s selection of Hegseth as SecDef and Gabbard as DNI, as well as VP Vance’s statements in Munich in support of the Alternative für Deutschland neofacists, reflect a dramatic change of direction. The President is conceding to Putin’s expansionism and betraying basic American principles. The credibility, rules-based order, national sovereignty, and freedom that have brought prosperity for the past 80 years are at risk.
Putin’s savior
Trump has thrown President Putin a lifeline. The Russian economy and military are exhausted. Ukraine would have prevailed, but Trump blinked. He is the 21st century version of Neville Chamberlain, who surrendered the Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Hitler.
Likewise, Trump is yielding the national security of Ukraine and its citizens to Russia. Secretary of State Rubio will meet Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Saudi Arabia to negotiate a deal. This will be done without consulting Ukraine or the European Union. It will weaken NATO, which stands on the front line with Russia. That makes the US much more vulnerable.
The broader implications
Trump is signaling both Putin and President Xi. They now understand that they can do as they want, even if it means giving up Europe and Taiwan. Trump is also adding fuel to the fire in the Middle East. His pandering to Prime Minister Netanyahu will fuel Arab hatred of the US and inspire ISIS attacks on the US.
There are ongoing discussions of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. We can expect a catastrophic response. Trump is creating the conditions for igniting WWIII, or complete Western capitulation. We can only pray that a new Churchill or Roosevelt will sound the clarion call to reason and freedom.
Gutting American security and economy
To further undercut US security, Trump has gutted USAID and its soft power diplomacy. He and Musk are purging the FBI, CIA and the national intelligence community, as well as our world class military. He will install compliant loyalists. This is akin to Stalin’s purge of the military in the 1930s, which weakened the Soviet defense against Hitler’s army. Perhaps Trump thinks he can make a deal with Putin as Stalin did with Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. That effort to buy peace between the two totalitarian nations led to catastrophe for both.
Not content with undermining our national standing and security, Trump is also undermining the economy. Tariffs, mass deportations, budget cuts, and gutting of the regulatory and oversight bodies will kill the Biden expansion. The Trump-Musk team fired 300 National Nuclear Security Administration employees and had to hire them back. It has fired 350 EPA and 1000 Veteran Affairs staff, as well as threatening to fire 90,000 IRS staff. How will that help to collect the millions of dollars needed to address the national debt?
Farmers will be particularly hard hit with the loss of markets that will never return. Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and some Asian nations will seek other trading partners. The EU, Russia, and China will benefit. US exports of oil, gas, steel, autos, and agricultural products will be replaced by less mercurial sources.
The budget
Will the average citizen be more financially secure with the MAGA Project 2025 budget proposals? It promises 4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and austerity for the rest of us. To partly compensate, $2 trillion in budget cuts are anticipated. These include Social Security, Medicare, Veterans Affairs, supplementary nutrition and aid to 40 million low income families.
The result will be more interest to be paid on the national debt, something traditional Republicans decry. Also a weaker dollar, weaker purchasing power, and much higher inflation. Republican President Lincoln warned:
It is the same old serpent that says work and I will eat. You toil and I will enjoy the fruits thereof.
The rule of law
Trump’s vindictive attacks against our system of jurisprudence and rule of law will further undermine US security. He released the convicted January 6 insurrectionists into society. What example does that set for law enforcement?
Are we now ruled by a mafia oligarchy like Russia? Trump has unleashed an unelected and uncleared citizen, Elon Musk, to access private data in the name of efficiency. This is in exchange for his $225 million donation to the Trump campaign and free unlimited X endorsements. The Trump Administration also tried to award Tesla a $400 million contract for its armored Cybertruck. Only publicity undid the deal. The Age of the Robber Baron is back!
Minorities and opposition
Trump’s people attack minorities, immigrants, non binary peoples, females, free choice, and books not sanctioned by them. Anything other than what their orthodoxy declares legitimate is fair game. Anyone different becomes a target for hatred and vitriol. It is the same scenario that Hitler used against communists, socialists, Jews and non whites. Divide and Rule! Us Against Them! The Soviets, Khmer Rouge and ethnonationalists in Yugoslavia all used these tactics. I personally witnessed it in Cambodia and Yugoslavia.
Hungarian PM Orban, Turkish PM Erdogan, Slovak PM Fico, the German AfD party, and Putin are all in with Trump! They suppress the media and fee speech. They call any opposition the “enemy of the people.” The White House even denied access to the Associated Press because it refused to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Education and religion
Trump is trying to re-educate and dumb down the public by abolishing the Education Department. His followers are instituting their own curriculum, banning books, and endorsing the Bible in public schools. This violates the First Amendment provision of separation of church and state. The new Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., symbolizes the current anti-science trend.
Are these people Christians as exemplified in the New Testament? Where is their compassion, love of fellow man or even sense of humor?
Questions we need to answer
What can explain Trump/MAGA actions that weaken the US and our allies? Why are they empowering Russia, China and other authoritarians? Have we become so ill educated that we elect inept clowns to entertain us? Where are the competent leaders to set the example of pride, dignity, courage, real strength, and placing country before self?
A small time bully and wanna be mafioso who bends to Al Capone-Putin is leading us to destruction. Are we Rome under Caligula or Nero, awaiting the fall of the Empire? What dirt does Putin have on Trump? Or is he and his ilk fascist at heart? Do they support the German AfD, Orban, and Putin to bring on chaos from which they will profit?
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The America Trump wants is not democratic
NPR broadcast a piece this morning on the dismantling of US democratization efforts abroad.
The Trumpkins/Muskites are cutting the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NPR doesn’t say, but I assume the International Republican Institute (IRI) is also bleeding out. It gets much of its funding through NED, as does NDI. State Department and USAID funding for democratization is also frozen.
Trump is an authoritarian
This is not surprising. Trump has made it clear he thinks he is above the law:
Vice President Vance in Munich this week lectured the Europeans for their alleged intolerance of authoritarian politics. He also preferred meeting with the head of the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland(AfD) rather than Germany’s chancellor.
They are not hiding their own identity or their preferences.
It is not just a preference
At home, Trump is doing authoritarian as well as talking it. The Trump-backed Musk cuts are hitting institutions and programs Congress has authorized and to which it has appropriated funds. The President has a sworn obligation to execute those instructions. The House impeached Trump in 2019 for failing to do so with Ukraine assistance. But that can’t happen again so long as Republicans have the majority. Trump is unleashed.
Some Federal courts have begun to order unfreezing of funds and halts or reversal of firings. Trump is not complying. He is defying and pushing back to force escalation of the cases to the Supreme Court. There he hopes the 6-3 majority he created will back his moves. Even if he loses there, the delay will have destroyed most of what Trump and Musk wanted destroyed.
What’s next?
I expect Trump to go after the courts. He will order up impeachments in Congress of a few Federal judges. If he picks weak and vulnerable ones, they will resign to protect themselves. This will precipitate many more resignations, giving him the possibility of filling them with his own, young, yes-people.
I suppose at some point there will be massive demonstrations around the country to object to the authoritarian drift. Trump will order violent police action in response. That’s what he wanted to do in his first term. This time around, he won’t hesitate.
He also won’t hesitate to cut taxes for the rich, as he did in his first term. Some of those big cuts expire at the end of 2025. The Republicans in Congress are lining up to do the deed. They’ll give the working class voters who backed Trump a pittance.
The economy is headed into stagflation. Inflation is already up a tad. The new tariffs and shortage of labor due to deportations will contribute more pressure on prices. Meanwhile the government firings and the added costs of the tariffs to consumers will slow the economy. The stock market, which has experienced a glorious 16 years of rise, will implode. That’s not really a prediction, as I haven’t attached a date to it. But I find it hard to believe we’ll get through the next four years without a bust.
Stopping the craziness
I see little immediate prospect for stopping this craziness. A few Republican defections in the House and Senate would help. But Trump’s threat to primary defectors has worked so far. The only real dissenters among Republicans have been people who aren’t running again.
The first big opportunity will be the November 2026 Congressional elections. All of the House and one third of the Senate will then be up for grabs. But only a handful of seats will be competitive. Winning enough of those to gain a majority in one of the Houses will be existential for the Democrats. And for democracy in America and the world.
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Rescue USAID and refugee assistance now!
I signed on to this letter addressed to the Senate and House leadership with dozens of former colleagues and friends:
The Honorable John R. Thune, Senate Majority Leader
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer, Senate Minority Leader
The Honorable Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House
The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader
United States Capitol, Washington, DC
Dear Senators Thune and Schumer, and Representatives Johnson and Jeffries:
As former U.S. government officials who served in national security and humanitarian positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations, we write to ask you to take all steps in your power to urge rescission of the Trump administration executive orders and directives aimed at freezing U.S. foreign assistance and dismantling USAID. These directives inflict irreparable damage on hundreds of millions of people around the world, harm Americans by crippling our ability to protect U.S. citizens from disease and other harms, and invite China and other competitors to fill the gap we have created, thereby increasing their power and influence at our expense.
In the some 200 countries where hundreds of millions of people have benefited from U.S. aid, the bulk of such support has been economic and humanitarian assistance. When Presidents, Cabinet Secretaries, and Members of Congress are welcomed in countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia, and Europe, the concrete manifestations of U.S. government support have been the humanitarian and development programs supported by USAID and the State Department’s humanitarian operations.
These operations represent less than one percent of the federal budget. At the same time, U.S. aid has amounted to between a quarter and a third of global assistance, roughly the same as the U.S. share of GDP among wealthy countries. It has given the United States enormous capacity for influence, while making our country the global leader in efforts to reduce human suffering and abject poverty.
These are the programs that President Trump and Elon Musk are decimating, as we write, while depriving the U.S. Congress of its constitutional and legislative roles.
It is difficult to capture in one letter the scope of what the Financial Times has accurately called the “willful sabotage of U.S. soft power.” But the human suffering that these cut-offs have caused is catastrophic and heartbreaking. Elon Musk’s measures have halted critical and highly effective life-saving initiatives, including programs that provide clean water to infants; healthcare to mothers who are expecting; food, shelter, and refuge for those fleeing persecution and disaster; and life-saving support to those suffering from disease.
In Kenya, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere, aid to survivors of torture was stopped in its tracks. Children and adult victims of war and terror who have relied on the United States have been left without care. And in poorer countries around the world, thousands of women and girls will die in the next 90 days due to complications of childbirth that might otherwise have been avoided through interventions funded by Congress and administered by USAID.
Even the highly visible PEPFAR program to combat AIDS, started by President George W. Bush and responsible for saving some 25 million lives, was frozen. Clinics were closed and HIV sufferers were denied access to antiretrovirals. While some services were resumed, crucial programs remained suspended and millions are affected.
In our own country, the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has led to tragic stories of thousands who were ready to travel to the United States, including Afghans who helped to support U.S. goals in their country. This modest and carefully managed program has revitalized declining communities and strengthened the U.S. economy, and persuaded other countries to do their fair share.
The tragic stories go on and on and on, from the curtailing of remarkable U.S. efforts to limit the spread of tuberculosis and eradicate polio, to the ending of programs that have built local economies and have thereby discouraged migration to the United States, to the abrupt halt of the USAID-supported Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), the gold standard for anticipating and monitoring famines worldwide.
Due to horror stories shared with Members of Congress about the impact of the funding freeze, Trump administration officials have added some exemptions to the ban. But this piecemeal effort is a wholly inefficient, inadequate, and cynical way to proceed with reform. It has merely left hundreds of millions around the world in disbelief at how the United States could act in such an arbitrary and cavalier manner.
History will not look kindly on this avoidable tragedy – for the hundreds of millions in need, for U.S. leadership and moral authority around the world, and for U.S. national security, as global competitors like China and Russia rush to fill the gap we have created. It will be part of the legacy of this Congress if not reversed.
We implore you to urge President Trump to rescind the freeze, which curtails U.S. efforts to provide critical humanitarian aid and development support around the world, and undermines the Constitutional authority of Congress. In particular, we ask that you urge the President to resume the funding and operations of USAID and its overseas offices, as well as the humanitarian programs of the Department of State.
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Disgrace everywhere you look
Less than two weeks in, the Trump Administration is proving more malicious, less competent, and more destructive than we imagined. The President can’t even pretend to mourn the victims of a plane crash. He needed to parade his racism in front of the cameras as well by blaming the crash on diversity. It turns out the Federal Aviation Administration initiated its diversity program during his own first term. His tariffs on Mexico and Canada will jack up prices and deflate the stock market by Monday.
The firing of dozens of experience prosecutors will hamper the Justice Department for years. The consequent lawsuits will cost more than the money saved by reducing the payroll. And the incompetents he’ll hire as replacements will be mostly white sycophantic males with little experience and no integrity.
The disgrace in the Senate
Some of the worst of Trump’s minions have been testifying this week in the Senate. RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel lied and insulted their ways through hours of painful fraud and bluster. The results were embarrassing.
RFK Jr. demonstrated no knowledge and no aptitude for Health and Human Services Secretary. Gabbard couldn’t call Edward Snowden a traitor because she had defended his theft and publication of top secret documents. I wouldn’t call him a traitor either until a court tries and convicts him. But she could have just that: he should come home for trial. Kash Patel just denied saying things he has said. The FBI will be Trump’s personal police force by the time he is through with it.
The disgrace at the borders
Trump is having a hard time on immigration. Not many people are crowding the border, because Biden already fixed that. Trump is flying a few immigrants to their home countries at high cost, without demonstrating they are criminals. And to get some more attention he promises to store 30,000 of them at Guantanamo. The US Government found it difficult to imprison 800 there, most of whom turned out not to be terrorists. The GTMO military commission has convicted only eight. The yearly cost of incarceration was $10 million per detainee.
Meanwhile, the Administration has canceled permission for fully cleared refugees from Afghanistan and other war zones to enter the US. It continues to lump asylum seekers with criminals. And it has canceled temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
The disgrace in the budget
Trump initially stopped all Federal grants and contracts, including for major programs like Medicaid and for foreign assistance. That it turned out upset Republicans, as a lot of the money goes to red states:
So now they have lifted the general stop order but are slow walking specific programs through approval. The result is enormous confusion inside the government and the organizations that receive money from it. Everyone is working feverishly to get exceptions. That is a tremendous waste of resources.
Trump tried once before to stop foreign assistance, to Ukraine in 2019. The House of Representatives impeached him for that. Congress appropriates money. It is the President’s responsibility to execute what the Congress says it is for. He has no power to divert the money without at least informing Congress, which of course Trump has not done.
What he wants to do with the money is worse than his effort to slow its disbursement. He wants to extend the tax cuts for the rich approved in 2017. He also wants to pay for prestige projects his billionaire friends have been advocating. Those include sending people to Mars and buying Greenland. No doubt they will also convince him to provide cheap energy for the Artificial Intelligence projects.
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Havoc is no way to run a country
President Trump’s freeze on government grants and contracts is already wrecking havoc in my world. I’m not, even indirectly, the intended recipient of any frozen funds. But organizations I know and appreciate are laying off personnel, stiffing suppliers, and disrupting their programs.
This is loony. If this lasts 90 days, it will create economic havoc and even cause serious health problems, since Medicaid is affected. Longer will generate recession. Trump inherited a thriving economy. He is now imploding it.
A Federal judge yesterday afternoon froze the freeze, but only temporarily. No doubt this lawless Administration will continue to not make good on many disbursements. Then it will wait for the courts to rule and appeal each decision that goes against Trump.
Why?
The Administration has several reasons for this churlish behavior. It say it wants expenditure aligned with Trump’s priorities. Things don’t work that way. Congress gets to appropriate funds. It is the President’s responsibility to execute what the Congress wants. Trump’s effort to freeze appropriated funds for Ukraine was the cause of his first impeachment. It’s not a lesson he wants to learn.
What are Trump’s priorities? Cutting expenditure is one of them. That will make room for extension of the tax cuts he got approved in a Republican Congress in 2017. They helped mainly the wealthy, including people like himself. But they did not deliver economic benefits.
The idea behind this debacle is not only to cut government expenditure. It’s to shift whatever remains. Trump has already spoken warmly about funding manned flight to Mars and a missile defense shield for the US. He wants to buy Greenland. His “drill baby drill” motto is aimed at providing energy to satisfy the voracious appetite of artificial intelligence software. Trump is a sucker for high-profile national prestige projects that will put money in his billionaire friends’ pockets. He figures they will also bring him attention and adulation.
Disaster awaits
Quite the contrary. Trump’s tax cuts and prestige projects are on the road to national ruin. Trump has no idea what the government does and how it enables the economy to grow. Trillion-dollar cuts, which is what he promised, are nowhere to be found without causing serious economic pain.
The prestige projects are not so hot either.
The Israeli missile defense he wants for the US has an effective range of less than 50 miles.
Denmark isn’t selling Greenland, though it is willing to talk about security as well as development of its resources.
Renewable sources of electricity are now competitive with fossil fuels.
It will be hard to find investors to expand drilling dramatically, especially as the US is already net energy independent. Courtesy of Joe Biden.
Manned flight to Mars is a boondoggle for Elon Musk. There is nothing that robots can’t do better than human beings on Mars. They also don’t get bored on a 9 month voyage (one way).
Kamala Harris had it right:
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Four more years is four too many
It’s a sad day for America. Not only has Donald Trump re-entered the White House. His wealthy buddies are no longer hiding their allegiances. Elon Musk is not only supporting Alternative für Deutschland. He is copying a salute most Germans still remember with shame.
Off to the expected scams
Trump’s first moves are against immigrants and in favor of the fossil fuel industry. Ignoring the 14th amendment, he is trying to deprive people born in the US of citizenship it provides. He has also blocked asylum seekers. Raids that will round up legal as well as illegal immigrants are imminent. Trump wants to get rid of Biden’s efforts to slow global warming and accelerate oil, gas, and coal production. He is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which allows Washington to define its own measures to prevent climate change. He has also ordered withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
Trump is also promising Tik Tok relief from a law that provides for no possibility of relief from the president. He is pardoning 1500 criminals, most of whom attacked the Capitol violently on January 6, 2021. The Trump family has launched a crypto “memecoin” that has already put billions in his pockets. It will implode, like other such frauds, plundering late-comer investors. Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico February 1 will cause a major trade war. That will jack up inflation and impoverish many people in the Western Hemisphere.
Don’t lose sight of the baseline
Biden is leaving office with an extraordinary record of achievement. Federal and state prosecutors, including in deep red states, have found no reason to prosecute any Biden Administration political appointees. None have resigned in scandal. Biden pardoned his family not because they had done something wrong but because he rightfully feared Trumped-up charges against them. Trump’s nominee for FBI Director has promised such revenge. Note he did not pardon himself.
The economic stats at the end of 2024 are these:
- Unemployment 4.1% (12/24)
- GDP growth 3.0% (IV 24)
- Inflation 2.9% (2024)
- Budget deficit $2T (2024)
- Stock market (DJ) 43k, more or less
What are the odds that Trump will beat all these benchmarks? Close to zero. Three of them? Not much higher. We’ll have to wait and see.
Here are just a few other Biden claims:
—Strongest economy in the world —Nearly 16 million new jobs, a record —Wages up —Inflation coming down —Racial wealth gap lowest in 20 years —Historic infrastructure investments —Lower prescription drug costs —Record health insurance coverage —Most significant climate law ever —First major gun safety law in 30 years —First Black woman on Supreme Court —Help for 1 million veterans exposed to toxins —Violent crime rate at 50-year low —Border crossings lower than when Trump left office
Foreign policy
I fault Biden for his sloppy handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and his failure to rein in Israel in Gaza. That undermined his claim that America stands up for democracy. He responded reasonably well and quickly to the fall of Assad in Syria. With Iran, Biden failed to revive the nuclear agreement. That has left a big challenge for Trump. But if Biden had succeeded, Trump would have withdrawn again.
Biden was great reunifying and rallying NATO to support for Ukraine. Fearful of provoking war between the US and Russia, however, Biden was too hesitant in providing long-range weapons. I hope Trump will give Kyiv all it needs to win. In the Balkans, Biden’s knowledgeable minions were miserably unsuccessful.
Biden was good on China, Taiwan, India, and Asia in general. But he couldn’t refocus more attention there due to events in the Middle East. We’ll have to see if Trump does better.
Next four years
Half the country did not think this was enough. They disliked Kamala Harris, an articulate, experienced, competent, Black and Indian woman. She had been a successful prosecutor and a senator. They thought they would do better with a convicted felon, womanizer, racist, and flim-flam man. I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say after four more years of his bombast.
PS: Let me be clear: four more yours is four too many. But the last thing I would want is to see the Vice President in the Oval Office. He is arguably worse.
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