The title of this post is a line from Dune. The young hero (or is he?) Paul is about to undergo a test meant, "To determine if you're human," if he can deal rationally with fear. What's in the box is pain.
America's economy -- the global economy -- has been handed a box, too. We don't know what's in it. The President and his advisors who devised our new tariffs say it's full of wonders. Many highly-qualified economists say it's full of pain. The history of tariffs is, at best, alarming; the Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn't cause the Great Depression, but the general consensus is they made it worse.
What's in the box? We'll find out -- and you can bet none of the higher-ups in Washington will feel any pain, including the spineless Congress that has, once again, dodged responsibility by handing the Executive a power, in this case taxation, normally reserved to the Legislative branch. The power to declare war, they abrogated that long ago; the power to make laws is ebbing, what with Executive Orders now being treated as if they were laws; impoundment of allocated funds and the imposition of "emergency" tariffs cede the power of the purse.
Anyone with an eye to Classical history can tell you that the Emperor of Rome didn't spring forth full-fledged, but by the gradual accretion of powers and responsibilities once held by the Senate and people of Rome and their various Executives to the office of Emperor. The framers of the U. S. Constitution were wary of such a thing happening in their new republic, and did their best to hedge against it. Did they do enough?
What's in the box?
Update
3 months ago
7 comments:
More negligent manslaughter by a deranged ill man listening to the voices in his head. The whispers that led America to jump off the fiscal cliff to another recession and the misery that comes with it.
The soup line forms to your right.
Farmers are going to take it in the shorts again. Tariffs make their inputs go up (fertilizer, equipment) while destroying their markets (China, Mexico) and prices for their crops will fall. Last time Trump did this in his first term he ended up partially compensating farmers which defeats his stated purpose that tariff will bring in extra money to help the budget. People will say farmers should buy American which they do when possible however the US doesn't produce enough potash to meet fertilizer needs and you can't wait years for production to increase when you have to plant in month or so.
Where this admin is concerned, the line "what's in the box" is less Dune and more Se7en.
And there's the uuuugggeeee hit our defense contractors are about to take when our allies decide that F-16's, F-35's, subs, and other systems just aren't worth the drama of dealing with a blustering flake.
The regime's puppets have already said the farmers will be bought off...er... get relief payments to make up for market losses. I don't know where the money will come from for that, and I would wager the regime doesn't know either. And they probably forgot they fired all of the people that would have processed those payouts.
The speed of implementation is idiotic. Companies that placed orders months ago and have product inbound on ships are going to have to pay the tariffs to get their containers. How are businesses supposed to plan for that?
Soybeans dropped 35 cents per bushel today. Farmers are losing $3500 per 10,000 bushels in one day. Disaster!
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