Trump Blinks
I've always thought that Donald Trump picked the wrong 1970s gay anthem as his favorite tune for his rallies. Instead of the Village People's "YMCA," he really should have gone with "Macho Man." Because that's his secret dream -- to be seen as a real tough guy. But more on that in a moment....
Today, as the markets continued their confusion, Trump finally blinked -- on all countries except China, it appears. I say "it appears" since nobody's entirely sure of the details, since there was no formal announcement or well-thought-out policy revealed, instead it was just another knee-jerk social media post with few actual details about how things are going to work now.
With investors spooked, the markets down roughly 20 percent since he took office, and the panic spreading to the bond market, Trump finally gave in and announced what he calls his "reciprocal tariffs" (they aren't, they were arbitrarily chosen with no regard to actual tariffs other countries levy on U.S. products) will be "paused" for 90 days, to give countries a chance to negotiate trade deals to avoid them. This was after insisting as early as this morning that there would be no pause, it bears mentioning. They're making it up as they go along, since (as mentioned) they have no coherent plan.
Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai'i, summed up this hair-on-fire strategy in truly Trumpian (all-caps) fashion:
OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH
Which is actually more coherent than what Trump and his advisors have been saying all week long. Going from "the tariffs are permanent, they're not a negotiating tool" to "we're going to pause the tariffs for 90 days, to allow for negotiation" is a pretty stunning turnaround, you've got to admit. But Trump was finally forced into it by forces beyond his control. Which could wind up being monumentally bad news, since it might foreshadow the end of the United States being seen as the safest, most stable government in the world -- one so safe and stable that other countries gladly invest in our debt. Here's the best inside look at what actually happened today:
President Donald Trump is pushing the economy into a recession. The early signs are already apparent with autoworker layoffs in Indiana and Michigan, a stock market sell-off in recent days and Americans pulling back on spending. But as Trump's tariffs took effect in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, something even more alarming occurred: panic in the bond markets.
Investors started dumping U.S. government bonds. They sold and sold and sold. This is not normal. Typically, U.S. government bonds are a safe haven. Whenever stocks tank or there's turmoil around the world, investors rush to buy plain vanilla bonds from the U.S. Treasury. It's the equivalent of chicken soup for unhealthy markets. But suddenly, those bonds turned bitter.
Ultimately, Trump caved to the bond markets. He admitted to reporters that "people were getting a little queasy" in the bond market. He didn't want to follow the fate of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned in humiliation in 2022 after a similar bond market fiasco in reaction to her policies.
. . .
It's relief at last, but the potential for more tariffs remains. And the bond market freak-out demonstrates how much damage has occurred already.
There are a lot of reasons investors (likely including some foreign governments) wanted to sell. Some wanted to invest elsewhere in the world; others needed to exit bonds to have more cash on hand. But, at heart, it all came down to the same belief: The United States is no longer looking rock solid. It's impossible to make sense of what Trump is doing -- and it's not worth the risk of finding out just how much will break because of his actions.
In the face of such serious consequences, Trump blinked. He backed down. On the brink of economic disaster, he decided to scrap his stated goal for all these tariffs -- the revival of U.S. manufacturing -- and instead redefine it to "whatever concessions I can get," which will mean all his talk of factories reopening here has been abandoned. It also means his wild predictions of mountains of cash raised by tariffs is also no longer going to happen.
Perhaps this was also fueled by new polling coming out which shows how intensely negatively the public feels about tariffs and what Trump is doing to the economy. Trump's own job approval rating is sinking as well, down to 43 percent in one recent poll. Even Trump supporters are figuring out that while they thought they had voted for Trump because he was going to lower prices, he's doing exactly the opposite. Which they most certainly did not vote for.
Trump is still playing "tough guy" with China, though. The tariff levels between the two countries are now changing on an hour-by-hour basis, as this playground pissing match continues. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods went up to 104 percent at midnight, then China announced new tariffs on U.S. products so now Trump is upping our tariffs to 125 percent. Neither Trump nor the Chinese leader Xi seems ready to back down, at least so far. This death spiral could get a whole lot worse if this continues -- we could see 200 or 300 percent tariffs before too long, as things escalate wildly.
Other countries will now approach Washington on bended knee, to try to offer up some form of tribute to Trump, in the hopes that it will stroke his ego enough for him to relent. But Trump's biggest obsession is with trade deficits -- not tariffs from other countries -- so it is impossible to say what form of tribute it will take to achieve this. The way for a trade deficit to be erased is for the other country to buy more American goods, so promises to do so may be the key thing Trump is looking for.
But there's an instructive example on this front, which is pretty revealing. Trump gets obsessed, but Trump also has an incredibly short attention span. In his first term, he leaned on China and they offered up various promises -- to build giant factories here, and to buy lots of U.S. goods (mostly farm products). Then when Trump was assuaged (and forgot all about his obsession), they simply didn't fulfill their promises. Those promised factories were never built. That promise to buy an extra $200 billion of U.S. goods resulted in China buying (wait for it...) zero dollars in extra U.S. goods.
This seems to be a perfect model for all other countries to now follow. Promise Trump the moon, the sun, and the stars... and then just quietly not do any of it, after Trump loses interest. Voila! Problem solved!
This is why I started by questioning Trump's choice of his favorite Village People gay anthem. Because he really does just want to be seen as a "macho, macho man," and has such a fundamental misunderstanding of all economic matters that he really doesn't care about the outcome -- it's all performative, with him.
He's not going to admit that he's backing down, of course. He never does. He's going to instead spin it as some sort of historic victory. Trump the tough, tough guy ("Macho, macho man!") forced the rest of the planet to bend to his will, and everything turned out wonderfully. Him crashing the markets for a week was all some sort of three-dimensional chess that worked out precisely as planned.
This, of course, is not what happened. Trump will utterly fail at his stated goal of bringing all those manufacturing jobs back to American shores, because even with a 10 percent tariff, most companies will still find it cheaper to build stuff elsewhere. Trump's not going to solve the deficit with zillions of dollars of tariff money. This all probably won't erase trade deficits anywhere, in the long run. And the trade war will still go on, but at a more subdued level. It will still be inflationary and it still has a strong possibility of leading to a recession here at home.
Trump won't care. He'll find something or someone to blame for anything bad that happens, as usual. He'll never admit that this has all been a self-inflicted economic wound. And prices will still continue to go up for consumers.
But Trump will have gotten exactly what he wanted: world leaders begging him not to be so insane. They all think he's a tough guy now, which makes Trump happy. He will even admit it, which seems like a good place to end today:
"I'm telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass," Trump bragged at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner in Washington, D.C.
"They are," he continued. "They are dying to make a deal."
Trump then mimicked someone saying, "Please, please, sir, make a deal. I'll do anything. I'll do anything, sir."
Because he's such a macho, macho man. He's got to be a macho man.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
FPC
Chris, thanks for the “that was sweet” feedback. It is objectively fortunate that I kind of fell into my unanticipated Weigantia Covid family. Unmentionable persons had bailed when (fucking thank) Joe Biden won.
(fucking thanks FOR NOTHING) Joe won.
I am curious about your conclusion, about the world's leaders' thoughts about Trump: "They all think he's a tough guy now."
Really? They do? When one sentence earlier you have them "begging him not to be so insane."
So now he's, I guess, "less insane" because he just now blinked and postponed/cancelled/forgot about his radical tariff rates, etc.
I don't see how "less insane" = "tough". It means insane, but less than before. It doesn't mean tough, it means weak, as in, "I have a weakness: I'm insane". Now, you might deal with such a person in the same way you deal with a genuinely tough person: by trying to find out what will make him go away or stop doing that or act normal or not destroy your country's economy on a whim.
But you don't do it because tough guys need to be bowed down to and given what they want - because you respect and fear their toughness. You do it because the insane guy is insane and nevertheless has a machine gun in a crowded room that you happen to be in, and you have to do what you have to do to survive.
No one thinks Trump is tough. No one.
@JMfCt
it was sarcasm.
JL
but..but Trump is wining the war on showerheads.
No longer will you be oppressed by slightly under pressured water. It's the important things...
winning, wining, or whining?
Winning...
Aspiring to be the Elon Musk of grammar Nazis?
I could think of worse fates. nonetheless, any of the three could be true.
John M from Ct. [3] -
I debated using "scare quotes" around "tough guy" for the whole article, to reinforce every time I used it was ironic, but then decided it would be too distracting.
Read it again, and add the scare quotes. I don't think Trump's a "tough guy" at all... I think he's pretending to be one, and the rubes are lapping it up.
-CW
BashiBazouk [5] -
I read one commentary on this that said "I think they left out the word 'golden'"
Heh.
-CW
Oh, sorry, thought it was in there, the whole:
"Making showers great again"
line... that's what it referred to...
-CW
OK, folks... listen up.
Major announcement to follow.
To all of Weigantia (as it has been called), with one major exception (for obvious reasons... it's easier to just ignore his responses for now)
================================================
So what should I do about Michale?
I know, I know...
Look, I remember when he was a fun-loving sort of guy who would argue cogently and make his points and disagree without being totally obnoxious and offensive and repetitive. He and I would admit when we realized we had been wrong about something, and we actually influenced each other's thinking. I really do remember that guy... fondly, even...
We became what I would call friends -- which is incredibly rare online, I should mention. Not to mention between two people with divergent politics...
But then at some point (post-Trump) he became afflicted with a disease I am (totally tongue-in-cheek) going to call "TDS" -- Trump Deification Syndrome. That is so self-descriptive I don't even feel the need to explain the term.
Once he fully entered the cult, he became an entirely different person, at least here in the comments.
We all know this. I am just reviewing it for the record.
So my question to everyone is what should I do now? The longtimers here (most of you) know that I have only ever banned one commenter, in an almost 20-year run. And he was, like, EXTRA-obnoxious. In many different ways. I banned him and didn't regret it for a minute, then or now.
Michale is now just as obnoxious, if the complaints I get and the reactions here and what I see are any indications. I fully admit, I haven't been reading the comments for a while, mostly because he has made it so toxic to do so.
So what do I do?
Ban him? Lay down rules that he will spend every minute trying to weasel out of? Or maybe just upgrade the site and include the option for every logged-in reader to block him?
I am kind of torn.
If he provided any sort of benefit to this site, I would feel differently, but he just doesn't seem to, anymore. At least, that's what I see.
So I am asking you all for your recommendations. I *cannot* police the site every hour to see if he's said something too offensive. I just don't have the energy and bandwidth, after watching the daily shitshow from Washington.
But I just wanted to hear if there is a group consensus on what to do.
If the decision is banishment, I will (of course) refund him any donations he made last December, because not to do so would feel wrong. But that's a truly minor point.
I miss the old Michale, but I doubt he's coming back any time soon. So what should I do about the one that exists now?
Think hard, because your opinions are going to mean a lot to me.
Let me know.
Can't sleep again ... I'm ready for the big announcement!
I'll have to sleep on it. :-)
LizM -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDH7oD_AQW8
:-)
-CW
Very nice - thanks Chris! That, on repeat for a few minutes, while slowly sipping a hot cup of Nighty-night tea should do the trick.
We aim to please.
-CW
Funnily enough, this favourite YT video of another fully live performance came up after U2 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ceiyHuW-JQ
G'nite.
LizM -
I like the lead keyboardist.
What popped up in my YT feed when I brought that up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO4t4MRWYSM
But what song I thought of was from a local band where I grew up. Nobody knows them outside of Baltimore (and West Virginia), but here you go, best song Crack The Sky ever did (there are live versions, search "Nuclear Apathy", but none I've seen are better than the studio version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PciUSpHJMcA
enjoy...
-CW
Chris, on [9],
Thanks for the clarification. Missed the sarcasm!
on [13],
As I have written several times, I skip past Michale's posts automatically; I haven't read anything he wrote in many, many years now. But his overwhelming presence is toxic, and I find too many people feed his trolldom because he takes up so much space that they feel that his comments must somehow be responded to. And I do read those comments because the writers are intelligent people who I generally respect. I usually wish I hadn't. Frankly, there's precious little discussion of Chris Weigant's ideas and posts on this forum once Michale has spewn out 30 or 40 full-screen posts about ... well, I don't know what, because I don't read them, but they seem to send everyone over the edge.
That gets us to today. I admit I did not know that you remember and liked Michale at an earlier, pre-Trump, time. That certainly explains your hesitation to commit to the obvious course of action. Obvious? Yes: you wrote this yourself,
"I fully admit, I haven't been reading the comments for a while, mostly because he has made it so toxic to do so."
Huh? It's your blog, the comments are from people responding to your blog, and you find the atmosphere so toxic that you can't bear to read what your readers think of your daily writing?
Ban.
Good points!
Chris,
I think we should give everyone one more chance to improve the way we interact with each other.
Yes, Michale may be the worst offender here but he is certainly NOT the only one who does not abide by the rules you have set out in the Comment Policy.
So, let us all start fresh and see if we can't make this these the greatest comments sections ever that will attract rather than repel new members.
I suggest reprinting in its entirety your comment policy guidelines, with a few additions to make things crystal clear for Michale, who has asked for clarity on a few key points. You could do so in place of one of your columns and turn the comments off so that we can all focus on the house rules without distraction.
Considering everything, I think this would be the best course of action. If we can't control our urges to diverge from those rules, then you have not only the right but the duty to give us the bum's rush. :-)
Chris,
Thanks for those links - will check out Crack the Sky in more depth as soon as I find the time.
(Lawrence) Gowan is a great Canadian singer/songwriter/keyboardist and entertainer extraordinaire. Check out his Strange Animal and Moonlight Desires but do so BEFORE watching Wolfcop and Another Wolfcop as those songs will never be the same again. Heh. Don't even ask.
Moonlight Desires
(You're A) Strange Animal
Now, he is also a member of Styx since 1999 when he replaced Dennis Deyoung. Styx hasn't been the same since!
[13] Red card.
How Felcher behaved 20 years ago is not relevant.
I don't read any of it, but once again, I don't understand why you would want to allow more lies and hate speech on your site than there is of your own writing. Let it create its own site to post its AI puke. That's what we all told DH.
@cw
I like my own idea best - big surprise, right?
anyhow, I think it's a reasonable compromise for the time being, to enforce the yellow card as issued, and in a week when the suspension ends, if the behavior occurs again even once, go straight to permanent pre-moderation of only those posts you approve. and as Liz has pointed out, perhaps be stricter with the rest of us too. at this point, no more warning or discussion ought to be necessary.
JL
Red card. Why fuck around with a yellow card when you know we’ll end up back in the same place? The guy can’t help himself and offers nothing positive whatsoever.
Weigantia! Would you rather CW spend time on making content or monitoring our troll? I say fuck the troll.
Get the poison out and you might even attract new Weigantians.
whatever you think will make you happiest in the long term, that's the only metric that really matters.
Oh, and since we’ve had to put up with his crap for a hundred days now I say prorate his refund. Don’t forget he still owes you $150 for losing that 2020 election wager with me.
anyhow, I think in Peter Navarro we have an early contender for this year's "most stagnant thinker"
In most cases, I'd say 'yellow card'. In this case, it feels as though there have been lots of yellow cards already and I agree with John M that the responses often add to the unpleasantness. (I'm not blaming those who have been personally attacked.)
If you, Chris, feel a final chance is warranted, it's your column and your decision, or if you opt for suspension. But I'd just as soon never see M's blethering or some of the responses to him again.
Ax his ass or we’ll be in the same position in a month. And another month…Trolls gotta troll, after all.
I read someone’s Substack post that Ever since Trump, America is less friendly.
Michale has repeatedly shown that the poor bastard cannot help himself.
Which country is in a better position since Trump took office?
Why, it so happens to be Mother Russia! Maybe North Korea as well, but no matter.
Reddest card you have please. No reason to allow him to poison your very fine site, let him create his own place to spew hate, those that want to follow him can still do so.
Chris Weigant
13
So what do I do?
I will answer your question with a question. Annoying, I fully realize; apologies in advance:
You've posted the board rules now multiple times and for multiple years and explained the consequences for ignoring them. Where would he be if you'd enforced your rules?
Whatever you decide, remember this: It was his decision whether or not he'd follow your rules, and now it's your decision to decide whether or not you'll follow them. :)
Yeah, nypoet22 and Elizabeth y’all can follow cho’mo to your heart’s delight! No one else needs his crap polluting Weigantia so let the motherfucker go — and follow his ass of his views are so useful. Sheesh — get a clue, Guys!
to CW, I reiterate:
https://youtu.be/bFSFs436oP0?si=yAwuswBH0INmyHzJ
seriously, a decade or two back i was a doctor of psychology, and technically still am. i think we all function better when we are able to enjoy what we do, and that ought to be most people's guiding light when it comes to changing any environment in which we work. since you've already stated that as a goal, you're halfway there.
Chris,
I think you should give Michale his walking papers. I was leaning toward suggesting that you give him one last chance to heed your warnings and change his posting practices on here, but then I realized that it would be pointless to do so. Michale is NOT going to change! He’s a Trump-chump! And just like his hero, he’s not gonna accept any responsibility for any of his bad behavior. It is never HIS fault! I wish he could tone it down, but he won’t. That is HIS choice!
Chris,
Late entry here. I waffled on this a bit, because I've been reasonably happy since I gained access to the blocking utility. It's still annoying to see how much of the comments section Michale monopolizes, but I felt I could live with that.
Why, though, should any blog need a blocking utility, but particularly for one person? I admit I've never understood his "charm," but it's been at least a very long time since he's made a positive contribution to the discourse here.
He's got his own agenda and this has been a fruitful place to get the attention and anger he craves. Typical bully; he likes to inflame and then bask in the attention. Negative attention is better than none, apparently. A goodly number of us, including you, consider this toxic. Do we need toxic?
I'm voting for you to exercise your second ban. He's more than earned it.
Chris,
It is mildly amusing to see how many of us would like to see an outright ban of one commenter here while ignoring the fact that there are many others who also do not follow the rules set out in your Comment Policy.
It will be interesting to see how the rest of this community behaves when another one of us is red card banned if that is your decision. Which does indeed seem to be the majority view if not the consensus you wish for.
the other issue is that a full red card means erasing everything a person has ever written. considering the length of time and prolific posting in michale's case, that's practically half the content of the website.
Yeah, it so screws up the numbering system! :-)
And, I always harken back to the tortuous/torturous discussion that Michale and I had on the issue of the efficacy of the use of torture as US policy a very, very long time ago. It would be a bit of a shame for all of that to disappear.
[42] Just FYI, my issue with the mall-cop chatbot-troll is not rules-based.
CW can be completely arbitrary about who gets to comment as far as I'm concerned. It's just way past time to be done with a boring, repetitive, malignant troll whose explicit motivation is to drive off other interesting commenters. I can think of several who gave up because of Felcher.
If there is another consideration that might ameliorate the obvious supermajority in favor of the hard red and permanent deletion, it's that we don't have many other conservatives at the moment. CRS seems to have disappeared for the time being; I hope he's okay. one of the things that makes this place great is that it's NOT an echo chamber for just one side of the political debate.
Michale doesn't really bug me too much. For the first decade he was kind of the forum embodiment of the Monty Python skit: Argument clinic. Which I found valuable. Beyond the military/police/guns he had no strong convictions. I once accused him and he agreed before he disagreed that he matched one of the co-creators of South Park political quotes: I hate conservatives but I really fucking hate liberals. Not too surprising that that led to Trumpism. I find arguing in an echo chamber not particularly fun. Everyone gets all pissy about it as I have seen and experienced here a few times.
Moderation is a pain in the ass. It's either a ton of work for Chris or with community moderation it becomes a tyranny of the moderator(s) as many subreddits prove. The exception is the slashdot model which worked really well but required a fairly large user base to really function as intended.
I think a subtler approach would work: either limit the word count per post or use a system I have seen in quite a few forums, where the first sentence or two shows and if you want to read more you can expand the post. Bonus points for threaded replies. That way the discussion/argument stays contained. This is common enough that there is likely a plethora of plugins for wordpress or whatever system the blog is moved to. Add to this the banning of certain words, which I think Chris has said he already does and Michale would be acceptably contained for the most part. His ideas and political stand are not the problem or at least shouldn't be but the insults and the ridiculous length of his posts definitely are...
[43] nypoet22:
It would seem that there are alternatives to deleting Michale's account that would retain his posts, though I wouldn't mind some judicious pruning of some of the most toxic waste. Chris, or his database person, could easily change Michale's password and email. Done. The "Forgot password?" option sends a link to one's email, so that door needs to be closed.
There are probably other simple ways to achieve this, but the suggestion above would take only a minute or two.
nypoet22 [43] -
There's a technical way I could ban him and still keep his comments (I think... it's been awhile...)
just wanted to toss that out there.
thanks to everyone for responding! I am taking it all under advisement... haven't made up my mind yet, but it's all food for thought.
-CW
BashiBazouk [48] -
nice SP quote.
just had to say that...
-CW