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This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!
Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.
With lightning speed, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just shot down an appeal by the Department of Justice which tried to block a judge from moving forward on a path that may end with finding the administration guilty of contempt of court. It's just another episode in the continuing drama: "As The Constitutional Crisis Unfolds," really, and the next step will almost certainly be the administration appealing today's ruling back to the Supreme Court.
Last time around, of course, the administration lost at the Supreme Court, with a stunning 9-to-0 ruling. However, they couched their ruling in some legalistic language that the administration has clung to in their continuing efforts to essentially strip away any constitutional right to due process for anybody they feel like whisking away to a hellhole of a foreign prison -- which could (if the administration gets its way) also eventually include American citizens. Donald Trump and his minions want the power to "disappear" people -- just like tyrannical and dictatorial regimes have always used to get rid of people they don't like. This (more than a struggle between the executive and judicial branches) is the true constitutional crisis here. Does anyone Trump doesn't like have any legal rights, or don't they? That is the fundamental question underlying the power struggle.
American politics, for better or worse, is built on a two-party system that is occasionally challenged by independent third parties, who never have much in the way of notable successes. How many members of Congress are there from the Green Party? How many did H. Ross Perot get elected when he launched the most successful third-party bid for the White House in a generation? The answer to both is, of course, "zero." Third parties can change the political conversation in major ways (and occasionally even move the "Overton Window" in a big way), but so far none of them has built up enough success to truly challenge the dominance of the Republican/Democratic dichotomy. Instead, what is much more common is one (or both) of the two major parties being dramatically changed from within.
I begin today for an unusual (for me) foray into the Bible. Because there are two passages that seem particularly apt for the moment of crisis we find ourselves in. There are many translations of these verses available, but I decided on a traditionalist approach and used the King James Version for both.
The first is Galatians 6:7, which proclaims:
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
And the second is Hosea 8:7, which states the same case with a warning:
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
Put in more modern vernacular, both verses warn that whatever seeds you plant, the fruit of those seeds is precisely what you will harvest as a direct result. These days, the thought is usually shortened to: "You reap what you sow."
As the Trump Trade War lurches onward, with another heaping amount of uncertainty added over the weekend, China just made a move that could have drastic worldwide consequences. They haven't fully committed to playing hardball, but they are certainly signalling that it might be their next step. And (to mix game-playing metaphors), in this particular game, China holds all the cards. They've got a royal flush, and we don't even have a pair of twos to work with.
James Carville's famous political maxim ("It's the economy, stupid") needs updating. As we all ride out the Trump Slump in various ways, what we've got now is: "It's the stupid economy." The people running things are stupid. They are making stupid decisions. They have no clue whatsoever what they are doing, and it shows. Stupid is as stupid does. Welcome to The Stupid Economy, folks.
Economist (and Nobel Prize laureate) Paul Krugman went a slightly different direction (in an article titled "Trump Is Stupid, Erratic and Weak"), preferring: "It's the uncertainty, stupid," but either way it works out the same. Krugman prefaced his article with a video clip of a guy bouncing on a pogo stick, titled: "Live shot of Donald Trump setting tariffs." This was followed by: "Here's what happened yesterday," his lead-in to the "Run away!" clip from Monty Python And The Holy Grail. He might just as easily have chosen the "It's just a flesh wound" clip, but we won't quibble with his choice.
Senator Ted Cruz is attempting to tackle a problem, but I for one don't expect to see the problem solved any time soon. That "any time" was a joke, actually, because the intractable problem is none other than time itself. The Senate Commerce Committee (which Cruz chairs) just held a hearing on whether they should (as they're now calling it) "lock the clock" and finally be done with the twice-yearly hour shift in the clock to either start or end Daylight Saving Time.
This is somewhat of a unique problem, for a number of reasons. First, it's not really a partisan issue at all. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are solidly behind any one plan. Second, it is one of those problems where just about everyone agrees that something needs to change, but they can't all agree on what should be done. This means that no matter what change is implemented, some people are going to be unhappy about it. Which is why I am predicting that what will happen is what always seems to happen (time after time, you might say), which is nothing at all.
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.
What exactly is the point of the Trump trade war? Asking this question to different people in the White House gets you different answers, and Trump himself (as usual) contradicts himself almost daily, attempting to have things both ways. The clueless nature of the entire exercise is becoming more and more apparent as the first week of the Trump trade war draws to a close.
Is the whole thing a bargaining ploy to get other countries to agree to more favorable terms? Or is it a longer-term policy designed to bring all those factories back to America? It really can't be both at the same time, since these are kind of mutually exclusive.
If the whole point is to get better trade deals, then once those trade deals are struck then the tariffs go away -- which removes the incentive to bring the factories home. If the tariffs are designed to be permanent, then it won't matter what other countries offer, because the tariffs will remain no matter what deal they try to strike with us.
Well, not really, not yet -- not enough to justify that particular word, but hey, we couldn't resist....
While it doesn't rise to the level of a "revolt" quite yet, there is already a significant pushback on the Trump tariff war coming from within the ranks of his own party. One Senate bill to rein in the tariffs already passed with four Republican votes, and that number has now grown to seven GOP senators who are cosponsoring an even wider clawback of the constitutional power of levying taxes from the White House. Significantly, now a House Republican has said he's going to introduce a companion bill in the House.
This isn't enough -- not yet, at any rate. But it is rather surprising to see happen so quickly. But then this whole self-inflicted economic crisis has been moving rather swiftly all around, so perhaps it's not that surprising to see.
