Trump claims his tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. But you can’t create manufacturing jobs if no one wants to buy what you make. How’s that going? “Euro zone consumers are happy to ditch U.S. products if they are hit by tariffs in the course of a tit-for-tat trade war with U.S. […]
A bit of recent history for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Each week we send more than 50,000 complaints about financial products and services to companies for response. If another agency would be better able to assist, we’ll send it to them and let you (the consumer) know. Most companies respond within 15 days. […]
“Behind closed doors, some Republicans are irked that their leaders are not doing enough explaining: One Republican with direct knowledge of the matter told POLITICO “there’s frustration for not laying out the rationale behind Medicaid cuts.” Not to worry. Here’s Duncan Black: “ . . . the rich want more money and they want you […]
Look, tariffs are just consumption taxes. American consumers pay for tariffs on Chinese goods, not the Chinese government, businesses or people. Trump pretends that exporting countries pay our tariffs. If he really believed that, he’d be happy to see Amazon post how much China is paying to get their goods into our market. But when […]
Apparently, MAGA means empty shelves and fewer jobs: “Trump’s tariffs on goods from China have disrupted trans-Pacific supply chains. U.S. officials are alarmed by companies’ dwindling inventories of critical raw-earth metals necessary for a range of economic activity; Beijing restricted the metals this month. In the three weeks since the tariffs took effect, ocean-container bookings […]
As usual, Trump is doing what he accuses others of. In this case, bleating about “waste, fraud and abuse” while removing all the safeguards against waste, fraud and abuse. “The Trump White House this month announced two new executive orders radically changing procurement procedures, especially defense procurement procedures, in ways that will unleash waste, fraud […]
On Harvard: “The White House (yes, technically the GSA guy and the two lawyers) sent that letter to Harvard, demanding de facto control of the university’s hiring, admissions and various elements of its curriculum. Harvard replied with a flat rejection ten days ago. The White House immediately responded by freezing $2.3 billion in grants to […]
It seems fitting to post this resurrection story on Easter Sunday. The reanimated corpse of Reagan’s Star Wars program walks among us again. As a national security program, it was stupid then and it’s stupid now. It’s back because billionaires have figured out how to repurpose it to shovel more of your tax dollars into […]
And the billionaire grift goes on and on. “One of the most important stories in some time came out two days ago. But with so much else going it didn’t get quite as much attention as it should have. It’s from ProPublica. And it’s about a Peter Thiel-backed start up called Ramp. It’s a corporate […]
The Trump Administration is weaponizing tax-exempt status to punish its political enemies and enforce viewpoint discrimination. It’s illegal, but can it work? Here’s Josh Marshall over at TPM: “It seems unlikely that these moves would hold up in court. And the organizations are highly likely to sue. But this gets at a critical dimension of […]