“From January through September, the most recent month for which U.S. Census Bureau trade data are available, the U.S. imported $1 trillion more in goods than it exported. This is a $118 billion jump compared to the goods trade deficit that the U.S. ran from January to September 2024. (Likewise, the overall trade deficit, which includes services, increased by $113 billion.)
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Recently published data from China’s General Administration of Customs show the Chinese goods trade surplus has increased since Trump took office. From January to September, China exported $875 billion more goods than it imported—a $185 billion jump vs. the same time period in 2024.
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Fortunately for consumers, these macroeconomic statistics are meaningless. You run a trade deficit with your grocery store, I run a trade deficit with McDonald’s, good little boys and girls run a trade deficit with Santa Claus, and we’re all better off for it. As as the economists Daniel Klein and Donald Boudreaux have put it, a trade deficit is equivalent to running a surplus on current stuff.
Likewise, as countries get richer, their labor markets transition from agriculture to industry and then to the service sector. Declining manufacturing employment as a share of overall employment is a sign that Americans are richer, not poorer, than our ancestors.
Trump’s targeted metrics are meaningless as proxies of prosperity. But the fact that his protectionist policies are failing to achieve their stated goals shows just how flawed they—and their justifications—always were.”
Huge difference between a terrorist killing people with a nuclear bomb and a person voluntarily taking a drug that he knows is risky and then dying from it.
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, giving the U.S. government additional legal firepower in its efforts to combat illegal trafficking of the synthetic drug.
The executive order cites the lethality of the drug, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, and the fact that transnational criminal groups the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations use the sale of fentanyl to fund activities that undermine U.S. national security.”
“Chile has become the latest country in Latin America to veer toward the right, electing a deeply conservative veteran politician who has long attracted comparisons to Donald Trump.
The president-elect, José Antonio Kast, has expressed nostalgia for the 17-year military dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet, opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage and advocated in recent years for a constitutional ban on abortion.
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Kast, 59, won a landslide victory by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in a country whiplashed by an unprecedented rise in organized crime and disappointed by the great expectations that President Gabriel Boric raised but will leave unfulfilled.
Experts say this reflects the pervasive anti-incumbent mood that has gripped South America and, significantly, boosted the radical right at time when Trump is seeking to influence the region’s political future.
It’s a dramatic turn from only two decades ago, when the commodities boom brought to power the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing leaders, like the late socialist icon Hugo Chávez, who whipped up voters by railing against U.S. imperialism and vowing to redistribute their nations’ wealth.
“The last decade, it’s been rough,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist. “And the people who get blamed for stagnant economies, rising crime — or, at least, rising perceptions of crime — and not insignificant corruption are those who’ve been in power, and that’s the left.””
“The administration’s tactics with U.S. attorneys — bypassing the Senate or sidestepping federal judges to keep unvetted prosecutors in place — are a crucial component of Trump’s effort to deploy the Justice Department against his perceived enemies. He has relied on loyalist U.S. attorneys to pursue what critics call baldly political investigations and prosecutions, including those against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.”
“Some $1.6 trillion in annual imports are subject to the tariffs, while at least $1.7 trillion are excluded, either because they are duty-free or subject to another tariff, according to a POLITICO analysis based on last year’s import data.
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In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, Trump said he was open to adding even more exemptions to tariffs. He downplayed the existing carve-outs as “very small” and “not a big deal,” and said he plans to pair them with tariff increases elsewhere.
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In addition to the exemptions from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, more than $300 billion of imports are also exempted as part of trade deals the administration has negotiated in recent months, including with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and more recently, Malaysia, Cambodia and Brazil. The deal with Brazil removed a range of products from a cumulative tariff of 50 percent, making two-thirds of imports from the country free from emergency tariffs.”
An unstrategic mishmash of tariffs is not good for the economy.
The reasons for current military action against Venezuela given by Trump and his allies are various. And the list of reasons to justify war sound a lot like Putin before and after invading Ukraine and W Bush before and after invading Iraq. Reasons for action in Venezuela include: drugs, terrorism, the influence of Russia and Iran, stolen land, stolen oil, opening up Venezuelan oil to American companies, and Maduro being the illegitimate ruler of Venezuela.
“Wiles told Vanity Fair that “there is no evidence” that the visits to the island took place.
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Clinton’s association with Epstein, including travel on his plane after the former president left office, is well-documented, Clinton has said he cut ties with Epstein before his 2019 arrest and had no knowledge of his wrongdoing.
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Wiles, who told the magazine that she read the files about the Epstein investigation, said she hadn’t seen anything indicating Trump had engaged in illegal activity with the convicted sex offender. Trump has also long denied having knowledge of — or participating in — Epstein’s crimes.”
“The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent in November, its highest level in more than four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The economy gained 64,000 jobs that month after losing 105,000 in October, mostly the result of federal government workers taking buyouts.”
In an interview, Trump’s chief of staff described Elon’s brash, illegal, incompetency, and Trump’s lack of basic knowledge about what he’s doing, and the damage that his and Elon’s policies are doing.
The current available evidence points toward Covid coming from an animal market, not a lab. There have been a lot of claims about it coming from a lab which have received a lot of coverage, but these have not proven out. All but very few of the experts in the field think it likely came from nature, not a lab. Many prominent people spreading the lab theory made a lot of money from it and some got jobs in the Trump administration. Republicans and activists have unfairly attacked people talking about the science and defunded their legitimate research, and used this as an excuse to defund a lot of other science.