Trump and Xi are locked in a standoff over direct trade negotiations

“He’s insisting on one-on-one talks with China’s leader, Xi Jinping — and this has stifled other diplomatic efforts to halt the worsening trade war between the two global powers.

The president won’t authorize White House delegates to engage with Chinese officials in Beijing about a detente, according to two former senior State Department officials and an industry official, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive ongoing discussions. The Senate has yet to confirm an ambassador to China; Trump has not appointed anyone else to lead talks with Beijing; and the White House isn’t reaching out to the Chinese embassy to begin discussions.

The absence of any substantial outreach has frozen meaningful communications between the two countries and threatened the likelihood of a near-term solution.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/19/trump-xi-china-trade-negotiations-00299645

Industries hit a wall on relief from Trump’s tariffs

“Car companies, toy manufacturers, farmers, retail groups and others who face significant cost increases from President Donald Trump’s steep new tariffs on China are all ramping up their lobbying of the administration to press for carve-outs and assistance.
But, with no formal process in place to submit their requests, and no direct line to the one decision-maker who matters, most businesses and industries are hitting a wall, so far. And those in the business world with connections to the White House figure it’s likely to stay that way until an industry can demonstrate to the president there’s a true crisis at hand.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/19/trump-is-signaling-hes-open-to-tariff-exemptions-securing-one-is-a-different-question-00298558

‘An Enormous Usurpation’: Inside the Case Against Trump’s Tariffs

“First, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to tax and impose tariffs. Congress has delegated that authority to the executive branch in a handful of trade laws passed over the course of the last century, but the president’s power in this area is a function of the particular language contained in those statutes. (The likely reason that Trump invoked IEEPA is that, unlike the more commonly invoked trade laws, IEEPA does not require administrative investigations or consultations with Congress.)
Second, the relevant provision of the IEEPA contains a bunch of words, but none of those words is “tariffs” or “taxes.”

Indeed, no president before Trump has ever used the IEEPA to impose tariffs. The law has typically been deployed to impose economic sanctions, such as prohibitions on transactions with designated foreign governments or businesses.

In theory, these facts should resonate with the Republican appointees on the court, who typically hold themselves out as committed textualists, eager to adhere only to the words on the page.

Third, even if the IEEPA granted the president the authority to impose tariffs, there are no actual “emergencies” here that would support them (though we will return to this notion).

The law authorizes the president to act when there is “an unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” and the Trump administration has claimed that there are several different emergencies. They include the opioid crisis and illegal immigration, which Trump has invoked to support tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China. To support other global tariffs, Trump has claimed that the country’s “trade deficits” constitute the emergency.

At least as a factual matter, credible independent analysts have generally rejected these claims. Take the country’s trade deficits. “They’re not actually harmful any more than it’s somehow harmful if I have a trade deficit with my local supermarket,” Somin said. “I buy a lot of things from them, but they virtually never buy anything from me.”

Fourth, as the California complaint correctly notes, IEEPA was passed as part of an effort in the 1970s to limit the president’s emergency economic powers. Congress did not intend to expand the president’s powers or to give him carte blanche to overhaul the global trading system.

That fact may not move the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court if the issue gets to them — they generally oppose the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation — but it is likely to prove relevant to the three Democratic appointees.”

” The Supreme Court might also side with the Trump administration given that the court is generally deferential to the president’s handling of foreign policy and his assessment of what constitutes a national emergency. We may not have had any national emergencies before Trump returned to office, but ironically, his tariffs may themselves have caused a global emergency — one that could give the justices reason to pause before coming in against the president in a way that could now severely constrain his powers on the global stage and diminish his international diplomatic standing.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/21/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-legal-arguments-00299467

USA Dollar Crash Continues

The fall of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies will make imports more expensive. This increases the costs of imports on top of the more direct effect of tariffs.

The dollar’s decrease will make U.S. exports cheaper overseas, however, this may be counteracted by foreign countries retaliating against U.S. exports in response to Trump tariffs, and by foreign customers boycotting U.S. companies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5iHKOOgg8

Trump’s Dramatic Crossroads Between Protectionism and Dynamism

“At the end of the day, protectionism is rooted in fear and pessimism: fear that we’ll be outcompeted, and pessimism about the idea that a growing, dynamic economy can make us all better off. Libertarians are fond of making just such claims—so fond that Cass coined a term to mock us for it. Instead of tussling over the size of different constituencies’ relative shares of the fixed economic pie, the libertarian view is that our goal should be to grow the pie so everyone’s share is bigger. Cass calls this “economic piety,” and he rejects it. For him, the goal is not to grow the economy; it’s to direct the economy for the benefit of deserving constituencies such as blue-collar workers.

This is pure zero-sum thinking. It cements in place a mindset where one group’s gains necessarily come at some other group’s expense. To libertarians, technological innovation is a boon because it makes the whole economy more productive and everyone richer in the long run. But some people usually are hurt in the short run—think of the proverbial buggy-whip salesmen when automobiles come along. Protectionists are inclined to be suspicious of the tech sector and sympathetic toward policies that would tamp down economic dynamism in the name of protecting the would-be losers. The result, inevitably, is stagnation.”

https://reason.com/2025/03/01/trumps-dramatic-crossroads/

Even on Pause, Trump’s Trade War Runs Up a Big Price Tag

“If you’re keeping track—and economists are making their best efforts—President Donald Trump’s trade war with the entire planet is running up quite a price tag. Even with a 90-day pause on some tariffs (except for China), the imposition or even just the threat of import taxes on goods from around the world and the inevitable retaliation by other countries is expected to take a bite out of the economy and people’s prosperity. Figuring out how much of a bite it will take is a trick, but there’s little doubt that it will be painful.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/14/even-on-pause-trumps-trade-war-runs-up-a-big-price-tag/

Tariff Uncertainty Is Stalling the Economy

“The New York Federal Reserve Bank’s monthly survey of manufacturers, published earlier this week, reported sharp drops in what it calls “forward-looking indicators”—that is, what businesses expect the next six months to look like. The manufacturers in the survey expect to see fewer orders, longer delivery times, declining inventories, and lower levels of employment. About the only lines in the survey that are pointed upward are the expectations about prices.”

https://reason.com/2025/04/16/tariff-uncertainty-is-stalling-the-economy/

The DOLLAR plunges 10% and the global financial ORDER is ALREADY changing | ‪@visualeconomiken‬

“Trump is achieving what neither 9/11, nor the 2008 crisis, nor Covid could achieve. He’s damaging the power and value of the dollar.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD_E4bMAiEg