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Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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nycfan said:
Continued

“… All WTO members are required to offer the same tariff rates to all other members, with a few exceptions such as in cases of national security. Switching to a reciprocal system would mean scores of different tariff rates for different trading partners.

Individual nations generally choose tariffs to protect industries or products of special importance.

The United States, for example, maintains a 35 percent import tax on pickup trucks made overseas, essentially closing the market to foreign-made models to protect domestic automakers’ most profitable business.

Matching other nations’ tariffs would cause the United States to erect high protective tariffs to defend products that it may not even produce, resulting in higher costs for consumers, according to trade analysts. …”
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Dozens of countries, including Germany, South Africa and Mexico, said Friday that President Donald Trump’s decision to sanction the International Criminal Court would “erode the international rule of law.”

The joint statement by 79 countries came hours after Trump signed an executive order slapping financial sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC staff and their family members, alleging the court has improperly targeted the United States and Israel.


“Such measures increase the risk of impunity for the most serious crimes and threaten to erode the international rule of law, which is crucial for promoting global order and security,” the 79 countries, including Canada and France, said in a statement publicly released by numerous governments.

The statement added that “sanctions could jeopardize the confidentiality of sensitive information and the safety of those involved—including victims, witnesses, and court officials, many of whom are our nationals.”

www.nbcnews.com

Dozens of countries reject Trump administration sanctions on ICC

Trump on Thursday signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing it of improperly targeting the United States and Israel.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
nycfan said:


Elon may be a bit misguided by how easy it was to take down USAID — a valuable but heretofore obscure program without a large domestic constituency to rally to the defense of cultural support of democracy and helping the poor and displaced across the globe via a series of relatively small local interventions.

He may find much more organized and powerful resistance if he goes after the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. Will Hegseth be willing to give Musk access to the national security mainframe and spending apparatus? Will the GOP still defer then?
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Welp, I guess we shall see if the DOGE treatment works at the Pentagon …
 
Meanwhile



Musk’s DOGE Teen Was Fired By Cybersecurity Firm for Leaking Company Secrets​

Edward Coristine posted online that he had retained access to the firm’s servers. Now he has access to sensitive government information.

“… Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of Elon Musk’s squad that’s criss-crossing US government agencies, was fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing information with a competitor.

“Edward has been terminated for leaking internal information to the competitors,” said a June 2022 message from an executive of the firm, Path Network, which was seen by Bloomberg News. “This is unacceptable and there is zero tolerance for this.”

A spokesperson for the Arizona-based hosting and data-security firm said Thursday: “I can confirm that Edward Coristine's brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure.”

Afterward, Coristine wrote that he’d retained access to the cybersecurity company’s computers, though he said he hadn’t taken advantage of it.

“I had access to every single machine,” he wrote on Discord in late 2022, weeks after he was dismissed from Path Network, according to messages seen by Bloomberg.

Posting under the name “Rivage,” which six people who know him said was his alias, Coristine said he could have wiped Path’s customer-supporting servers if he’d wished. He added, "I never exploited it because it's just not me." …”
 
open.substack.com

Let's Get Real

I'm going to use the F-word and the C-word
open.substack.com open.substack.com

“Fascism is associated in the public mind with great endeavors of state planning, nationalization, war industrialism, and mimicry of socialism, but Mussolini’s regime began with a ‘liberal’ economic program, overseen by Alberto de' Stefani. De Stefani favored tax cuts, bureaucratic reductions and reforms, and extensive privatization. As the historian Germa Bél writes: ‘The government privatised the State monopoly of match sale, eliminated the State monopoly on life insurances, sold most of the State-owned telephone networks and services to private firms, reprivatised the largest metal machinery producer, and awarded concessions to private firms to build and operate motorways. These interventions represent one of the earliest and most decisive privatisation episodes in the Western world.’ De’ Stefani. also pursued and achieved a balanced budget. Bucking the 1930s trend towards nationalization, the Nazis also pursued an initial privatization policy for political reasons.”
 
lawtig02 said:
The utter silence of the board’s Republicans today on every topic other than the irrelevant EO attacking trans athletes is quite telling. And pathetic.
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Need to stay away for a while since y'all are angry at this point and not really in the mood to discuss anything with Republicans/MAGA - I get it. No need to further stoke the fire. I'm content following the news for all the positive developments. I realize you see it differently.
 
Ramrouser said:
Need to stay away for a while since y'all are angry at this point and not really in the mood to discuss anything with Republicans/MAGA - I get it. No need to further stoke the fire. I'm content following the news for all the positive developments. I realize you see it differently.
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Good point. You're well known here for engaging in nuanced policy discussions.
 
Racist DOGE staffer that resigned over the uncovering of several racist social media posts, rehired and welcomed back with open arms by Musk, Vance, and Trump. Musk even had a poll on his X account and of course 78% of the MAGAts agreed he should be re-hired.

Among the ignorant posts, paraphrasing, "normalize Indian hate" no problem for Vance with Indian wife and kids, "I would not mind at all if Israel and Gaza both wiped off the face of the Earth" Musk likes that one, and "I was racist before racist was cool."

This article sums up MAGA and it's supporters here, to be honest.

 
BlueSmoke said:
I kinda think in the "all things Trump" world that scores of separate tariffs for different countries and different goods is exactly the point.
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We already have that. What Trump wants to do would actually simplify things from a user perspective (well, these days computers do it all so it doesn't matter). From an economic and consumer perspective, it's utter madness.

For instance, Bangladesh has something like 150% tariffs on apparel goods. Those don't really matter because nobody actually wants to export into Bangladesh. They don't have money. But now we would get 150% tariffs on Bangladeshi apparel. Prices of clothes will skyrocket. What will we get? Jack shit, because there's no American firm anywhere that exports substantial amounts of apparel to Bangladesh and no firm that wants to.

This is the stupidest possible way to do tariffs. I thought the Canada approach was the stupidest but again, I just don't have the imagination to keep up with these mooks.
 
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