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 plays dominance games with the world economy

In discussing Trump’s presidency, I though that one of the few things that he cared about, other than his own business interests, was the stock market. It looks like I was wrong. His imposition of drastic tariffs on pretty much all countries have tanked stock markets worldwide and led to fears of a recession. Even he must have known that this would happen and yet he went ahead anyway, raising the question: Why?

One answer is that he thinks that the tariffs will raise enormous amounts of new revenue, enough to pay for the tax cuts for the rich. Of course, since the costs of the tariffs will be borne by the importers of goods who will pass it on to consumers in the form of higher prices, this is just another typical reverse Robin Hood plan by Republicans, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, a policy much favored by the oligarchy. The higher costs paid by most people will be more than what they will receive in the form of small tax cuts, but that inconvenient fact will be omitted while Trump brags about the tax cuts.

But I have to think that there is more at play here, that the tariffs are really a power play. A clue to what might be going on can be seen in some comments he made.
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Musk family values

(Doonesbury)

Even cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who is usually up-do-date on his references, cannot keep up. Musk just announced the birth of his 14th child.

But even that might be understating the number. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes:

He has sired, at least in a technical sense, thirteenish known children, and has reportedly offered the dispensation of his sperm to friends, employees, and people he met once at a dinner party. (Musk denies this. Skeptics of the strategy, though, might recall that Genghis Khan, according to legend, had more than a thousand offspring.)