President Trump 2.0

[1andrew1]

Interesting analysis in the FT comments section from JRibeiro which is derived from Michael Pettis, Trade Wars Are Class Wars

The US has significant a public deficit and an equally relevant trade deficit (the two usually go together). As a consequence, public debt is reaching worrying levels. In fact, the biggest risk to the world economy, some years down the line, is another GFC due to a collapse in confidence in US Treasuries and in the US Dollar.

The usual way to solve the deficits would be to increase taxes domestically. This would directly reduce the public deficit, and would also reduce the trade deficit, via reduced consumption.

But this approach is not politically feasible in the US, and the best example of that is the Biden Administration - they left a 6% public deficit when the economy was booming.

The Trump Administration is instead applying tariffs. It’s a form of consumption tax, the US consumers will pay some of that, but foreign producers will share the burden as well, if nothing else, through reduced quantities sold.

The countries that have been running trade surpluses with the US should be taking a constructive approach to the problem - the US deficits are not a problem just for the US, they are a significant risk for the stability of the world economy. This is the attitude that the EU is taking right now.

However, the aggressive approach taken by the US, and the size of the tariffs applied is worrying and may create excessive dislocation in the world economy.

https://www.ft.com/content/5a262286-...f-5dd26c1fb1e3

https://www.usaid.gov/about-us/organization



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/e...b2690812.html#

The Trump administration has placed two top security chiefs at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Elon Musk's government-inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Members of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, eventually did gain access Saturday to the aid agency's classified information, which includes intelligence reports, the former official said.

Musk's DOGE crew lacked high-enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID security officials — John Vorhees and deputy Brian McGill — were legally obligated to deny access.

[Stephen]

Dismantling the US piece by piece.

The forgein aid agency set up by the US Government by JFK and accounts for about 50% of foreign aid and assistance and whose motto is 'from the American people' has essentially been shut down by Trump and his goons.

Says it all really.

I thought his motto was supposed to be Make America Great Again, not Make America A Laughing Stock.

The way hes going he'll end up joining that select list of ex presidents : Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley & Kennedy.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Hugh

https://www.usaid.gov/about-us/organization



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/e...b2690812.html#

Putin and Jinping must be loving this!

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Paul

I thought his motto was supposed to be Make America Great Again, not Make America A Laughing Stock.

The way hes going he'll end up joining that select list of ex presidents : Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley & Kennedy.

Do ya think he will make it 4 years this time??

[Itshim]

On hold now for Mexico

If anyone knew that the White House would announce, then suspend, tariffs within one day, they would have made a killing…

[1andrew1]

Interestingly, Mexico and Canada just re-announce initiatives from last year and all is well. Was this to distract from Musk seizing the home of US soft power, USAid? Or was there another reason behind it? Or a bit of both?

Either way, I don't think this has improved the US's standing internationally, though I doubt that's one of Trump's KPIs. China will doubtless fill any gaps left by the US.

What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-mus...ayment-system/

A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.

Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog...ents-code-base

I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of “read only” access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance, which the staff appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible — “damage” in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government.

Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changes are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., a not-live environment) but have already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to be mainly the work of Elez, who was first introduced to the system probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second Trump inauguration. The most recent information I have is that no payments have as yet been blocked and that the incumbent engineering team was able to convince Elez to push the code live to impact only a subset of the universe of payments the system controls.

Promoting changes to a Production/Live Environment that controls payments to the value of a fifth of the US economy, without undertaking Unit Testing, Integration Testing, System Testing, Performance Testing, and Acceptance Testing in Dev and Test Environments is, in the words of Yes Minister, "courageous"…

This could be the beginning of a rapid unscheduled disassembly of US government services.

[Pierre]

This is what strength looks like.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02.../trump-tariffs

Originally Posted by Pierre

This is what strength looks like.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02.../trump-tariffs

That’s what smoke and mirrors looks like.

Much of what Mexico and Canada have supposedly conceded was already under discussion; some of it had already been agreed with Biden; all of it could have been worked out via the usual diplomatic means.

Trump has burned a whole lot of diplomatic goodwill in order to toss some red meat to the MAGA fools who think he’s the messiah.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Pierre

This is what strength looks like.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02.../trump-tariffs

See post #984. This is what reannouncements look like.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Chris

That’s what smoke and mirrors looks like.

Much of what Mexico and Canada have supposedly conceded was already under discussion; some of it had already been agreed with Biden; all of it could have been worked out via the usual diplomatic means.

Trump has burned a whole lot of diplomatic goodwill in order to toss some red meat to the MAGA fools who think he’s the messiah.

Of course, if you think Mexico would’ve sent 10,000 troops to the border, at this time, if Harris was in power……….

That’s just delusional.

---------- Post added at 20:12 ---------- Previous post was at 20:11 ----------

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

See post #984. This is what reannouncements look like.

Link to the announcements please.

Originally Posted by Pierre

Of course, if you think Mexico would’ve sent 10,000 troops to the border, at this time, if Harris was in power………..

What Harris would have done is immaterial - what Biden had already discussed and agreed with both parties is the point. Trump has made a lot of noise and threats in order to get Mexico and Canada to agree to do stuff they had already agreed to do.

Trump isn’t strong, he is as thick as two short planks and is being blown along by whichever ideologue has his ear on any particular day of the week.