U.S. Doesn’t Need Canada After All
Another change of mind and also in a direction by the US as led by the Donald. Testin other countries or a lack of concentration and direction. Kind of embarrassing as we have a leader who can not stay focused.
President Donald Trump appears to have had a change of heart about the United States taking over Canada, claiming that Americans “don’t need anything” from their northern neighbor. Despite his repeated assertions that the sprawling, resource-rich country should become America’s 51st state, the president told reporters on Air Force One Sunday that the “golden age” is coming, sans Canada. “We have our own lumber and energy,” he said, referencing slated plans for levies on wood from north of the border. “We don’t need energy from Canada. We don’t need lumber from Canada. We don’t need anything from Canada. I believe this will be the golden age of America,” he added.
Last week, Trump spoke over the phone with the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney. Despite the ongoing trade war, the call was “very constructive,” Carney said. He added that Trump “respected Canada’s sovereignty” during the chat. However, despite the apparent softening of hostilities, Trump launched the latest salvo in his trade war Wednesday, announcing a 25 percent tariff on auto imports beginning April. “Trump Says U.S. Doesn’t Need Canada After All,” Daily Beast
Digsby @ Hullabaloo . . . “We are Gonna Go Boom“
Reporter: Are you worried about stagflation?
Trump: I haven’t heard that term in years. I don’t know anything about it.. this country is going to boom. We’re going to have boomtown. We’re going to boom pic.twitter.com/Ajo5RUOoaa— Acyn (@Acyn) March 31, 2025
I don’t think it’s going to be a boom. It’s going to go boom. Like a bomb. A big one.
Trump is so addled that he’s out of the loop on anything that’s actually happening in the world. So, he probably hasn’t heard about this:
Economic growth has flatlined so far this year. Inflation has picked up. And consumers expect both to get worse in the months ahead.
Why it matters: For the moment, it adds up to Wall Street’s least-favorite “s-word,” stagflation — stagnant growth mixed with elevated inflation.
- That pattern, most vividly seen in the 1970s, is particularly painful because it means people experience pain from both lack of job opportunities and higher prices.
- It also leaves the Fed and other economic policymakers with less ability to cushion the blow because a move that might address one side of the problem could worsen the other.
The big picture: The takeaway, from a slew of recent data, is that President Trump inherited a shakier economy than it seemed and is risking something worse with aggressive policy moves.
State of play: The backward-looking data lately has been distinctly stagflationary. Consumer spending in the first two months of 2025 has been soft, coming in 0.6% below its December rate (when adjusted for inflation).
- A real-time estimate of GDP published by the Atlanta Fed is now pointing to economic activity shrinking at an 0.5% rate in Q1, which ends Monday (after adjusting for gold inflows that distort economic data).
- Meanwhile, the inflation measure favored by the Fed has risen at a 4.1% annual rate in the first two months of 2025, the highest in a year.
- That all helps explain why, following a steep selloff Friday, the S&P 500 is now 9% below its Feb. 19 high.
Reality check: The GDP number appears to be depressed by a one-time surge of imports as companies try to get ahead of tariffs. Inflation has been on a bumpy path for years
Gosh I wonder what happened about four months ago that collapsed the American economic trajectory? I can’t think of anything.
Trump truly believes that the tariffs are going to change everything “and it’ll happen so fast it’ll make our heads spin.” He’s right. But not in a good way. His nutty “adviser” who’s feeding his fantasy says that the tariffs are going to raise 6 trillion for the government, replacing something like a third of the budget. If that’s true then most of that 6 trillion is going to be borne by American consumers making it the biggest tax hike in world history.
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to suggest that Biden economy was shakier than all of the statistics indicate. I know I made some investment decisions in late summer anticipating that Harris would continue and perhaps improve on Biden’s policies and I–along with most individual investors–am paying the price now. That means things I was going to spend money on over the next 9 months are being scaled back or eliminated. I do not see tariffs helping.
THE MADMAN SPEAKS: “We don’t need anything from Canada. I believe this will be the golden age of America.”
It might be the golden age of Presidential fantasies.
The Golden Rule is: Don’t ever believe anything that is uttered from his twisted lips.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-says-us-doesnt-need-canada-after-all/