“the way we think about how China would overrun Taiwan may well be wrong. Rather than an all-out invasion, it could attempt to capture the island without firing a single shot through “gray zone” tactics. Such tactics might combine maritime blockades and advanced cyberwarfare capable of cutting off Taiwan from the lines of seaborne trade and the digital access it needs to survive. And Beijing could do so in a way that might be just far enough below the threshold of conflict that would drive Washington and its allies to come to Taiwan’s aid.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/390895/china-taiwan-conflict
“More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/21-federal-technology-staffers-resign-160229566.html
“trade wars that don’t happen have costs.”
“The economic uncertainty created by Trump’s tariff threats has already warped markets and harmed the economy in ways large and small.”
…
“Uncertainty created by Trump’s trade policies reduced aggregate U.S. investment by as much as $47 billion in 2018, according to a 2020 study in the Journal of Monetary Economics.
The authors of that paper wrote that “all measures suggest that uncertainty about trade policy has recently shot up to levels not seen since the 1970s.” They concluded that “both higher expected tariffs and increased uncertainty about future tariffs deters investment.””
https://reason.com/2025/02/10/trade-wars-that-never-happen-still-have-costs/
“These tariffs will protect American steelmakers and aluminum manufacturers from competition but at the expense of other American manufacturers that buy steel and aluminum to produce finished goods.
Unfortunately, there are a lot more jobs in the latter camp than in the former.”
…
“The Peterson Institute for International Economics calculated that the costs of Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs totaled about $650,000 per job created. If this is an economic development scheme for American manufacturing, it’s a pretty terrible one.
Farther downstream, consumers will be hurt too. When Trump hiked tariffs on steel and aluminum imports during his first term, those import duties translated into price increases of 2.4 percent for steel and 1.6 percent for aluminum, according to a 2023 study by the U.S. International Trade Commission.
That might not sound like a lot, but there are several reasons to expect a more significant hit this time around.
For one, Trump is now raising tariffs on both metals to 25 percent. His first-term tariffs were 25 percent on steel but only 10 percent on aluminum.
The impact of the steel and aluminum tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term was also blunted by the wide variety of carve-outs and loopholes that the administration created. Companies affected by the tariffs could apply for exemptions—and the process for deciding who got those breaks was, unsurprisingly, opaque and political.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/11/trumps-new-tariffs-on-steel-aluminum-wont-help-american-manufacturing/
“The U.S. is the second-largest steel importer in the world, according to the International Trade Administration. In 2023, the U.S. imported 25.6 million metric tons of steel and exported a little more than 8.2 million metric tons. About half of the aluminum used domestically is imported and by global standards, the U.S. has a very small aluminum smelting industry. Steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. were valued at nearly $50 billion in 2024, per Bloomberg.”
…
“Imposing levies on steel and aluminum will increase costs for domestic energy projects (which will be passed on to consumers) while hamstringing America’s energy dominance. In recent years, high material costs (and burdensome regulations) have led to cancellations or price tag hikes for offshore wind energy, advanced nuclear power, and transmission line projects. Instead of building oil pipelines to the U.S., these trade barriers could also incentivize Canadian energy companies to invest in other markets, such as Japan, says Wayne Winegarden, an economist at the Pacific Research Institute, a free market think tank. “This really is one of the dumbest things we could be doing,” Winegarden tells Reason.
Importantly, these tariffs won’t accomplish Trump’s stated goal of “making America rich again.”
A study from the International Trade Commission found tariffs on steel (25 percent) and aluminum (10 percent) implemented during the first Trump administration decreased production and increased costs in downstream industries that use these materials by 0.6 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively. Total production in downstream industries was $3.5 billion less in 2021 because of these tariffs. The Tax Foundation estimates that repealing tariffs and their quotas would increase long-run gross domestic product by $3.5 billion and create thousands of jobs.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/11/trumps-tariffs-on-steel-and-aluminum-are-bad-news-for-american-energy/
““Victory” cologne and perfume. “Crypto President” watches. Limited-edition “American Eagle” guitars. T-branded golf shoes and “Fight Fight Fight” high-top sneakers.
These are just a sample of the many products licensed to bear President-elect Donald Trump’s brand, including some that he has promoted on his social media site Truth Social just weeks before his inauguration. If he continues to hawk his merchandise after returning to the White House, that could raise ethical concerns.
Consumer goods may be the least of Trump’s issues, however. He has a number of business ventures — including his social media platform, a nascent crypto firm, and the Trump Organization’s partnerships in the Middle East — that could present conflicts of interest, make the presidency vulnerable to foreign influence, and violate federal law.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/391338/trump-business-truth-social-crypto-liv-hotel-conflicts
Republicans in Congress are not acting like a co-equal branch designed to be a check on power grabs from the president. They are acting like a non-person character, or a non-person Congress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lckYPwQj_NM
“The sort of lawsuits Trump is filing against media companies are “the latest workaround that wealthy and powerful people who want to bully the press have found to attempt to circumvent the well-established safeguards for the press under the First Amendment against
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We need to maintain and grow connections between the U.S. and China. Chinese immigrants and students are not just a nice thing, they improve relations and the immigrants make America stronger diplomatically and economically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYrhdTvwMY
“The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act stands as the single largest piece of legislation to address climate change in United States history.
The IRA contains nearly $370 billion for programs like tax credits for more efficient appliances, building new battery plants, and subsidies for renewable energy. And it triggered a boom in new construction and manufacturing for things like solar panels. It also created hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
But two years later, much of that money remains unspent.
The largest investment — ever — for the clean energy transition has yet to materialize into actual hardware like heat pumps or wind turbines. Despite more than $7.5 billion allocated to building electric vehicle chargers, for example, only a handful have been built. About 40 percent of big IRA projects hit delays, according to the Financial Times.”
…
“Now President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to claw back the unspent money and congressional Democrats are getting antsy. In a recent letter, dozens of senators and representatives wrote to the White House asking Biden to get more money out the door, from the IRA as well as other legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”
…
“One of the big challenges with spending most federal funds in programs like the IRA is that the money doesn’t go straight to suppliers for construction materials, EV chargers, batteries, or home insulation. Rather, the funds are sent to state and local authorities who then distribute the money.
That added step creates a lot of complications. First, a lot of local officials simply are not set up to receive a lot of cash all at once. It requires rigorous accounting and record-keeping, so before they can use the money, recipients have to invest in the personnel and tools to track it. Then when money hits bank accounts, local officials have to decide where to spend it. That means seeking out proposals, soliciting competitive bids, and giving enough time for communities to weigh in. Even for “shovel-ready” projects, they often have to contend with last-minute hurdles like rising financing costs from inflation, supply chain snarls, and litigation that can halt ground-breaking.
Local governments also have their own incentives. While Biden’s White House wanted to juice the clean energy economy as fast as possible, often state and local governments want to stretch out the funds. “There’s always a sense that if money is spent too quickly, people might get used to the money, maybe even addicted to it, and then officials would have to raise taxes to make up the difference” when it runs out, said Donald Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy who studies government spending.
Delays also result from how the funding is leveraged, whether it’s a grant, a loan, a loan guarantee, or a tax credit. Tax credits add an inherent lag because you don’t receive the cash benefit until you file your taxes.”
…
“There are also factors beyond Biden’s direct control at play. Changes in global demand and uncertainty about the outcome of the presidential election led some companies to hold off on executing IRA-funded projects. And those that do want to get rolling often have to go through a tedious, sometimes years-long permitting process before they can break ground.”
https://www.vox.com/climate/391681/inflation-reduction-act-biden-ev-credit-trump-musk