Salem Political Snark

Expert on authoritarianism says Trump is moving closer to state terror

I remember well, because it was just a few months ago, when political commentators ridiculed Kamala Harris for placing so much emphasis on preserving democracy in the face of Trump when it was simply obvious that the main problem facing Americans was inflation.

Meaning, it was more important for the Harris campaign to talk about the price of eggs than the price of freedom. 

Now it is clear that Harris was correct and the pundits were wrong. For Trump is acting more like an authoritarian and wanna-be dictator than was expected by Trump critics like me -- and I expected things to be really bad if Trump won, just not as bad as they're turning out to be.

Here's a sampling of what Trump has been up to, dismantling democracy-wise, in the roughly three months since he took office.

-- Firing many thousands of federal workers in illegal ways that make a mockery of civil service rules.
-- Dismantling government agencies established by Congress.
-- Instructing the Justice Department without any evidence of wrongdoing to investigate people critical of Trump.
-- Extorting free legal work for his administration from large law firms whose attorneys represented causes Trump didn't like.
-- Demanding Harvard and other universities agree to government control of the institutions if they want to keep billions in federal grants that fund important research.
-- Imposing massive widespread tariffs that threaten the world's economy without authority to do this.
-- Disappearing immigrants with a right to be in this country to a prison in El Salvador without the due process required by law.

That last item is especially concerning, because Trump is ignoring an order by the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García from the El Salvador prison because administration officials acknowledged that he was mistakenly deported to the notoriously dangerous prison.

Any other president would have taken steps to remove Garcia from the prison, bring him back to the United States, and have his case reviewed by courts. But Trump is refusing to comply with the unanimous Supreme Court order, which sets the stage for a constitutional crisis.

Timothy Snyder is an expert on authoritarianism who has written books on this subject, including On Tyranny, which I enjoyed a lot. Today he published a substack essay, "State Terror: A Brief Guide for Americans." It is, well, terrifying for those of us who don't want to lose our hard-won democracy.

Here's an excerpt.

Yesterday the president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.

This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped.

So let’s begin with language, because language is very important. When the state carries out criminal terror against its own people, it calls them the “criminals” or the “terrorists.” During the 1930s, this was the normal practice. Looking back, we refer to Stalin’s “Great Terror,” but at the time it was the Stalinists who controlled the language.

Today in Berlin stands an important museum called "Topography of Terror"; during the era it documents, it was the Jews and the chosen enemies of the regime who were called "terrorists." Yesterday in the White House, the Salvadoran president showed the way, referring to Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a "terrorist" without any basis whatsoever. The Americans treated him as a criminal, even though he was charged with no crime.

The first part of controlling the language is inverting the meaning: whatever the government does is good, because by definition its victims are the "criminals" and the "terrorists." The second part is deterring the press, or anyone else, from challenging the perversion by associating anyone who objects with crime and terror. This was the role Stephen Miller played when he said yesterday in the White House that reporters "want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children."

The control of language is necessary to undermine a legal or constitutional order. Our rule of law begins with notions such as the people and their rights. If politicians shift the framework to "criminals" and "terrorism," then they are shifting the purpose of the state.

In the United States, we are governed by a Constitution. Basic to the Constitution is habeas corpus, the notion that the government cannot seize your body without a legal justification for doing so. If that does not hold, then nothing else does. If we have the law, then violence may not be committed by one person against another on the basis of namecalling or strong feelings. This applies to everyone, above all to the president, whose constitutional function is to enforce the laws.

Trump spoke of asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to find legal ways to abduct Americans and leave them in foreign concentration camps. But by "legal" what is meant are ways of escaping law, not applying it.

It is that anti-constitutional escapism that enables abuse. State terror involves not just the malignant development of state organs of oppression, such as masked men in black vans, but also the withdrawal of the state from its role as a guardian of law.

What aspiring tyrants present as "strength," the ability to terrorize innocent people, rests on what might be seen as a more fundamental weakness, which is the withdrawal of the state from the principle of the rule of law. When we have law, we are all stronger; when we lack law, everyone is weaker except for the very few who can direct the coercive power of the state against the rest of us.

In the history of state terror, the escape from law into coercion takes three forms, all of which were on display, incipiently, in the White House yesterday: the leader principle; the state of exception; and the zone of statelessness.

The leader principle, or in German Führerprinzip, is the idea that a single individual directly represents the people, and that therefore all of his actions are by definition legal and proper. In discussions in the White House and thereafter, we see this notion being advanced. Trump's advisors claim that what he is doing is popular.

The claim (as in legal filings) that the president is acting from a personal "mandate" from the people has the same problem. Asked on Fox News about the abduction of Americans and their transfer to foreign gulags, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “these are Americans he is saying who have committed the most heinous crimes in our country.” If it comes down to what “he is saying,” then he is a dictator and the U.S. is a dictatorship. Trump spoke of the need to deport people who "hate our country" or who are "stupid."

The second escape from law is the state of exception. In principle, the Soviet Union was governed by law. Before its greatest exercises of terror, however, the Soviet authorities declared for themselves states of exception. This meant that, on the territory of the Soviet Union itself, it was "legal" (in Bondi's and in Trump's sense) to abduct people and send them to concentration camps: authorities claimed that there was some sort of threat, and so protections could be withdrawn and procedures set aside.

People could be abducted in black vans and executed or sent to a camp, "legally," in the sense that the law had been set aside. The notion of the state of exception, important to Soviet practice, was at the center of Nazi theory. As the leading Nazi thinker Carl Schmitt argued, the sovereign is the person who can make an exception. If we are living in normal times, then we think we should be governed by law. But if politicians can use words to make us think that these are exceptional times, then we might accept their lawlessness.

A simple way to escape from law is to move people bodily into a physical zone of exception in which the law (it is claimed) does not apply. Other methods take more time. It is possible to pass laws that deprive people of their rights in their own country. It is possible to carve out spaces on one's own territory where the law does not function. These spaces are concentration camps. In the end, authorities can choose, as in Nazi Germany, to physically remove their citizens into zones beyond their own countries in which they can simply declare that the law does not matter.

This exploitation of purported stateless zones was the main line of the history of the Holocaust. Under Hitler, the Germans did have concentration camps on their own territory, and they did reduce Jews to second-class citizenship, and they did live under a permanent state of exception. But, in the main, the mass murder of German Jews was achieved by their abduction and forced rendition to sites beyond prewar German territory where, German authorities claimed, there was no law.

A probing of this statelessness approach was on display yesterday, as Trump and his advisors claimed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the United States whom US authorities abducted by mistake and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador, was now beyond the reach of American law. This is state terror: the state is presented as "strong" in its oppression of a person, but as weak in its ability to respect or enforce law.

The idea that the United States can send you to places from which it cannot bring you back is the theoretical basis for a doctrine of statelessness. Call it the Rubio Doctrine: in the words of the secretary of state, "the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court." But what that implies is that people forcibly transported beyond the boundaries of the United States can be incarcerated or killed for no reason. That would be "foreign policy."

Hopefully Salem's Livability Levy isn't affected by drop in consumer sentiment

In normal times it would be surprising if a city's vote on a property tax increase to fund the library, parks, and senior center would be affected by tariffs imposed by the President on imports to the United States.

But these aren't normal times, thanks to our decidedly abnormal president, Donald Trump.

Even though Trump has put a 90-day pause for most countries on the high tariffs he imposed to allow time for negotiations, the overall U.S. tariff rate actually went up from his initial roll-out, because Trump increased the Chinese tariff to an eye-popping 145%, with no pause.

Here in Salem, the folks at City Hall have unveiled a budget for the next fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2025. The Salem Reporter summarized the budget in a recent story by Rachel Alexander. 

Total city budget: $764 million

Total general fund budget: $196 million, up from $191 million last year

City jobs cut: 51 full-time, including 20 Salem Public Library employees and 15 parks employees. 36 full-time jobs and 3 part-time jobs are filled; the rest are vacant.

Library hours if budget is adopted: 20 hours per week at main branch, a reduction from 38 currently; West Salem branch closure

Fire and police department positions cut: Zero.

That's pretty ghastly. Cutting main library hours in about half. Closing the library's West Salem branch. Reducing classes and outreach at Center 50+. Eliminating 30% of parks maintenance and recreation staff.

To avoid these cuts, a Five-Year Local Option Levy, a.k.a. the Livability Levy, will be voted on in the May 20 special election.

A while back polling showed that the Livability Levy was opposed by a majority of voters. However, backers of the Livability Levy have done a great job of communicating the importance of passing this property tax hike -- which would cost the average Salem homeowner about $18 a month, or $220 a year.

As a senior who wants the Library, parks, and Center 50+ to live long and prosper, I'm concerned about the Livability Levy being negatively affected by a very steep drop in consumer sentiment/confidence nationally. A CNN story published today says: 

Americans are rarely this pessimistic about the economy.

Consumer sentiment plunged 11% this month to a preliminary reading of 50.8, the University of Michigan said in its latest survey released Friday, the second-lowest reading on records going back to 1952. April’s reading was lower than anything seen during the Great Recession.

President Donald Trump’s volatile trade war, which threatens higher inflation, has significantly weighed on Americans’ moods these past few months. That malaise worsened leading up to Trump’s announcement last week of sweeping tariffs, according to the survey.

“This decline was, like the last month’s, pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region and political affiliation,” Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, said in a release.

“Sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year,” she added.

What's unclear is the extent to which a darkening national mood about the economy will impact spending patterns.

“Sometimes the surveys are very negative, but they keep spending,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week at an event near Washington, DC. “People spent right through the pandemic and they spent right through this time of higher inflation.”

Hopefully Salem voters will be motivated to spend some of their money on the Livability Levy. If there's an economic downturn, it sure seems like we'll need a functional public library, parks, and senior center even more than before. And if there isn't an economic downturn, the Livability Levy still makes great good sense.

It just would be shocking to have the Salem Public Library reduced to a pale shadow of its former self. When my wife and I moved to Salem in 1977 with our five-year-old daughter, the library was a shining jewel that helped make us happy with our new home. Let's keep that jewel something we're all proud of.

Trump gives in on tariffs after trying to wreck U.S. and world economy

MSNBC's Chris Hayes had a nice way of describing Trump's 90-day pause on his tariffs today: it was like an arsonist setting a building on fire, then returning to the scene of his crime and telling bystanders that  it was good only two-thirds of the structure was destroyed. (Not an exact quote, but I got the basics right.)

In the first four business days after Trump revealed his totally screwy "reciprocal" tariffs on almost every country, including those that have zero tariffs on United States imports, our stock market graded his tariff policy with a big F for fail by sinking like a stone, eliminating over $6 trillion in wealth. Today the market gained around a third of that back.

The market was poised for a more dangerous decline to mark the tariffs going into effect. What freaked out investors, Trump's advisors, and eventually Trump himself was how the bond market was reacting to the tariffs.

Usually when stocks have had a large drop, the price of Treasury bonds increases due to investors seeking safety and a guaranteed return. But today the yield of the 10-year Treasury bond increased substantially due to a marked decline in the price of the bond. 

That's very unusual. Basically it meant that around the world, including here in the United States, investors were losing faith in our nation. Instead of being a safe haven, government bonds were being treated as if they had been issued by a Third World developing country.

A New York Times story describes how Trump realized that he needed to change course of tariffs, fast. 

For the past week, President Trump has been urging calm in the face of the financial chaos that he created and resisting calls for him to rethink his approach.

“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he told Republicans on Tuesday as the massive tariffs he had imposed sent global markets into a tailspin. “BE COOL!” he said in a social media post on Wednesday morning. “Everything is going to work out well.”

At 9:37 a.m. Wednesday, the president was still bullish on his policy, posting on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”

But in the end, it was the markets that got him to reverse course.

The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.

...Mr. Bessent played a significant role in steering the president toward the pause. But the real credit, Mr. Trump’s advisers admit privately, should go to the bond markets. Mr. Trump’s decision was driven by fear that his tariffs gamble could quickly turn into a financial crisis. And unlike the two previous crashes of the past 20 years — the global financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020 — this crisis would have been directly attributable to only one man.

...The tariffs had triggered a sharp sell-off in U.S. government bond markets and the dollar, which investors usually see as safe-haven assets in times of turmoil. After Mr. Trump announced the new tariffs last week, economists on Wall Street quickly raised their forecasts for inflation and lowered those for growth, with many warnings about a recession. Trillions of dollars of stock market value vanished in a matter of days.

At 1:18 p.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social that he would back off the “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days while increasing tariffs on China to 125 percent. The pause, along with leaving a 10 percent tariff rate in place for most countries, was a version of what a number of people had urged Mr. Trump to put in place for days.

Problem is, now the United States still has insanely high tariffs that will lead to higher inflation, job losses, supply chain problems, and diminished confidence in the United States as a reliable trading partner. 

Trump claimed that his tariffs were necessary to bring manufacturers back to the United States from overseas. But few corporations are going to be willing to spend big bucks on building a new plant when Trump clearly has no idea what he's doing. He could reinstate the original tariffs at any time, or he could do away with raising tariffs at any time.

Chaos isn't what American businesses were looking for from the Trump administration. They wanted a favorable business climate marked by long-term dependability. Instead, they got Trump's whims. He simply feels that other countries have been ripping us off through trade imbalances, even though there is little hard evidence of this.

The stock market probably will have lots of ups and downs as Trump's negotiations with other countries move forward over the next 90 days. I expect that there will increasing numbers of stories about disruptions caused by his 125% tariff on Chinese exports. 

Almost all of my clothes are made in China, Vietnam, or some other Asian country. They're high quality and reasonably priced. I don't want to pay more for clothes, or anything else, just because Trump has had an obsession with tariffs for many years.

Unfortunately, that obsession hasn't led to knowledge about how tariffs work. Trump is still spreading lies about tariffs imposed by the United States being paid by foreign countries. In truth, tariffs are paid by the importer, an American company, who almost always raises prices to compensate in whole or in part for the cost of the tariff.

Another New York Times story is called "An Experiment in Recklessness: Trump as Global Disrupter." It ends with:

All this suggests a failure to look around corners — which is hardly new in the American presidency. Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in June 1930, thinking they would help create jobs, then went fishing. They instead accelerated the Great Depression.

The White House insists this time the result will be the opposite. It is a huge bet, one on which not only Mr. Trump’s presidency but the fate of the global economy rests. And no one can predict where the bottom is for the markets, or where the top is for the escalation with China.

“The speed and chaos surrounding President Trump’s policy rollout have created extraordinary global economic disruption; nobody alive has ever witnessed self-induced volatility on this scale,” Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, wrote this week.

At the beginning of the year, the United States had the strongest economic position of any of the Group of 7 nations, he noted.

Now, he concluded, “President Trump has become the principal disrupter.”

Trump's tariffs are a loser for him no matter what he does

It's laughable when someone calls Trump a great dealmaker. Actually he's a terrible dealmaker. The only reason anyone claims this is that Trump paid someone to write a book for him called "Art of the Deal." 

His name is on the cover, even though he didn't write it, but that's a far cry from the reality: Trump is incapable of making deals because he isn't a strategic thinker and nobody trusts him to keep his word.

Look at the evidence. In his first term as president Trump failed to make any significant deals. His main claim to fame, or in this case infamy, was botching the United States response to the covid pandemic, which led to about 200,000 unnecessary deaths. 

Now, in his second term, Trump has failed to make a deal to end the Ukraine-Russia war. failed to make a deal to end the Israel-Hamas war, and is floundering in his attempt to use tariffs on other countries as a cudgel to make deals that reduce trade imbalances.

In each case, Trump has failed to stake out a consistent position that would lead to productive deals. Instead, he says one thing one day, then another thing another day, causing the leaders he's dealing with to recognize an obvious truth: Trump can't be trusted, which undermines his attempts to bend others to his will.

With the tariffs on almost every country in the world he announced last Wednesday -- Russia and North Korea escaped tariffs, which shows how much Trump loves authoritarians like himself -- it's impossible to know what goal Trump is pursuing.

It isn't fairness, because Trump imposed tariffs on countries that have zero tariffs on United States imports. It isn't reducing trade imbalances, because that's impossible to achieve (we buy lots of vanilla from Madagascar, as it isn't grown here, but Madagascar can't buy much from us, being such a poor country). It isn't bringing factory jobs back to the United States, because this would require keeping high tariffs in place for years to reassure corporations of a long-term change in tariff policy, but Trump has already begun negotiations to reduce or eliminate the tariffs he imposed five days ago.

The big problem for Trump is that regardless what he does with tariffs, he's going to be a loser.

That's what happens when a pathetically poor dealmaker tries to use blunt force to get their way without being clear about what they're trying to achieve, and without establishing a negotiating approach that could result in a win-win for both parties.

Currently China, Canada, and the European Union are threatening to impose counter-tariffs on United States goods in response to Trump's heavy-handed imposition of tariffs on goods exported from their countries. Given Trump's childish approach to disputes -- if you hit me after I hit you, I'll hit you even harder -- an international trade war seems likely.

That's why economic forecasting experts have raised the risk of a recession here in the United States up to about 50-50. Worse, this probably would be a recession with dreaded "stagflation."

Meaning, higher inflation caused by tariff-induced price increases as imported goods become more expensive, and higher unemployment caused by supply chain disruptions along with a weakening of both business and consumer confidence -- totally understandable given the trillions of dollars of wealth erased in the stock market after Trump announced his tariffs.

Exacerbating Trump's tariff problem is the absolutely screwy way the so-called "reciprocal" tariffs were calculated, as I laid out in "Not a surprise: Trump's tariffs are based on lies." 

Given Trump's notorious disregard for the truth, it isn't surprising that yesterday when he revealed his so-called "reciprocal tariffs" on goods imported to the United States from other countries, massive lies were used to support his massive and economically destructive tariffs -- which amount to a gigantic tax increase on the American people. 

Noted economist Lawrence Summers has said that Trump's tariff policies are the economic equivalent of creationism: a crackpot idea that has no evidence backing it up. This makes it much more difficult for leaders of other countries to take Trump seriously when they engage in tariff negotiations with him. He basically has no good arguments to use, other than his habitual mob boss approach: "Do what I say or I'll break your kneecaps with a baseball bat."

That may work with some small powerless countries. It won't work with larger countries, whose citizens and leaders don't like to be pushed around by the United States. 

Thus we're probably in for a very bumpy road, economically. Get used to high stock market volatility with big price drops mixed in with periods of optimism, only to be followed by more declines. This is good news for Democratic chances in the 2026 midterm election. However, it's bad news for both Americans and the world.

All we can hope for is that Trump changes his mind about tariffs and realizes this is a losing proposition for him. But betting on Trump being reasonable rarely pays off, unfortunately. 

My daughter is more optimistic about Trump's tariffs than I am. Hope she's right.

My daughter is the vice-president for sales of a designer eyewear company whose products are made in a European Union country. So she's got a vested interest in how Trump's tariffs turn out, since the European Union has been slammed with a 20% tariff on exports to the United States.

There's no difference politically between my daughter and me.

We're both avid progressives who couldn't stand Trump before his rollout of an incredibly misguided attempt to undo international trade through so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that actually aren't that at all -- since Trump's deeply flawed simplistic formula used to come up with his new tariffs has nothing to do with the tariffs other countries are charging the United States, so it isn't possible to call what Trump has done "reciprocal."

We talked by phone tonight.

My daughter, who lives in southern California, went to a Hands Off! rally in Santa Ana today, while my wife attended a Salem rally. (Me, I spent the afternoon mowing the fields on our rural property, since it was a nice day and rain is coming tomorrow.) Both of the women in my life came away energized by the protests against Trump's policies, all of which suffer from the not-so-minor defect of being totally crazy.

Where my daughter and I differ is how long Trump will persist with his insane tariffs. We agree that they make no sense. The United States has been doing just fine under the current system of international trade. We're a rich country with a low unemployment rate and a declining rate of inflation. 

It isn't as if Americans are pleading to be able to work in a factory making clothes or shoes. China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries can produce these things more efficiently and less expensively than we can. So this is an example of why Trump's desire to have everything Americans need or want made in the United States is such a stupid notion.

Which gets me to how my daughter has a different view of Trump's tariffs than I do. She thinks that Trump will do away with the tariffs in a few months. I believe that Trump will be more stubborn, keeping them for considerably longer, maybe well into until 2026.

But I hope my daughter is correct. And she may well be. I can see business executives deluging Trump with complaints about what his tariffs are costing them. The only way corporations would spend large amounts of money on building plants that build what currently is being produced in other countries is if they can be sure that the tariffs will remain in place permanently, or at least for many years.

However, Trump is notoriously mercurial. He changes his mind on a whim. So it's unlikely that many corporations are going to move their production to the United States when they know that the reason for doing this -- Trump's massive tariffs on imports -- could disappear at any time.

Thus Trump is in a bind. The only way to achieve his Make Everything in America dream is to keep the tariffs in place for quite a few years. Yet if he does this, a recession (or even depression) is likely, not only in this country, but internationally. That will lead to a big Democratic victory in the 2026 midterms and deepen Trump's reputation as one of the worst presidents ever. 

My argument for Trump sticking with his tariffs was pretty simple: he's motivated largely by a desire for revenge and retribution. Tump may sincerely believe that other countries have been ripping us off economically, though there's little evidence of this. So I can see him keeping the tariffs in place to punish our trading partners, even if the United States is hurt just as badly.

Soon we'll see who was right. I hope my daughter is, because the tariffs are a self-imposed attack on a key foundation of our nation's economic success: international trade.

Not a surprise: Trump's tariffs are based on lies

Given Trump's notorious disregard for the truth, it isn't surprising that yesterday when he revealed his so-called "reciprocal tariffs" on goods imported to the United States from other countries, massive lies were used to support his massive and economically destructive tariffs -- which amount to a gigantic tax increase on the American people. 

Trump used the charts below to illustrate his tariff plan. The column just to the right of a country's name is titled "Tariffs Charged to the U.S.A. Including Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers." That's a total lie, as I'll describe below. That column has nothing to do with tariffs charged to the United States, nor does it have anything to do with currency manipulation and trade barriers.

The column in yellow is titled "U.S.A. Discounted Reciprocal Tariffs." That's another lie, since the discount is from the figure in the other column, which as I just said has nothing to do with tariffs, so there's no way the yellow column can contain discounted reciprocal tariffs.

Today CNN had a segment about how the Trump tariffs were actually calculated, using Vietnam as an example. The calculation is absurdly simple. Indeed, childishly simple, given the tremendous economic pain these falsely calculated reciprocal tariffs will cause the world. 

(1) In 2024 Vietnam exported $136.6 billion in goods to the United States, and Vietnam imported $13.1 billion in goods from the United States.
(2) So the trade deficit between Vietnam and the United States was $123.5 billion, the difference between the $136.6 billion of Vietnamese goods bought by the United States and the $13.1 billion of United States goods bought by Vietnam.
(3) The Trump administration divided $123.5 billion (the trade deficit) by $136.6 billion (the value of Vietnamese goods bought by the United States). That figure is .90, or 90%. 

I first learned of this absurdly simple calculation from a post on X last night.

This proves that what Trump was saying at yesterday's Rose Garden reveal of the tariff amounts was a lie. Using Vietnam as an example, it is completely false that this country has a 90% tariff on United Stats imports.

Actually, Vietnam's tariff rate was 9.4% in 2023. So the Trump administration was off by a factor of almost 10. Instead of charging Vietnam the "discounted" rate of 46% on its exports to the United States, a truly reciprocal rate would have been 9.4%, or 10% to round up.

Trump kept saying that the existence of a trade deficit with another country means that the United States is being ripped off. That's ridiculous. International trade generally benefits both countries, the exporter and the importer. 

We Americans benefit from goods (like shoes and clothing) made in Vietnam and sold here. Because Vietnamese workers are paid a low wage by our standards, we are able to save money on our purchases. Vietnam benefits by being able to employ their citizens at factory jobs that pay a decent wage by their standards. It's a win-win.

The main reason Vietnam imports few goods from the United States is that their citizens can't afford the expensive stuff that we make here. So the trade deficit isn't a conspiracy by Vietnam to rip us off. It's a result of Vietnam and the United States having very different economies, with the U.S. being much richer.

Trump is completely wrong in basing his tariffs on an assumption that the United States should have an equal value of imports and exports with another country, or there's something wrong. Today I heard an economist liken this false assumption to a store owner being upset that they are paying more money to their hair stylist than the hair stylist is buying from their store.

That isn't the way an economy works. Money circulates in complex fashions. Trade deficits arise for all sorts of reasons. It may well be that some countries should reduce their tariffs on imports from the United States. But like I've said, the way the Trump administration calculates the tariffs they're imposing on other countries has nothing to do with how large the tariffs those countries have.

A Washington Post story, "Economists say the way Trump calculated tariffs makes no sense," says:

Economists say the crude formula the White House used to calculate what it’s calling “reciprocal tariffs” is too simplistic to achieve its goal of wiping out U.S. trade deficits — and, for that matter, they say that goal doesn’t make sense, either.

...President Donald Trump’s tariff plan, announced Wednesday, would impose a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports from virtually all countries — plus an additional punitive import tax tailored for each of about 60 countries.

The math used to come up with those rates is what experts are lampooning.

A formula released by the U.S. trade representative ties those punitive taxes to the United States’ bilateral trade deficit in goods with each country — in other words, how much more the U.S. imports from those countries than it exports to them. The calculation finds the ratio between the U.S. trade deficit with a country and that country’s total exports to the U.S. It then divides the ratio in half to produce what the administration called a “discounted reciprocal tariff.”

Economists criticized the formula for its assumption that persistent trade deficits are a reflection of allegedly unfair trade practices by U.S. trading partners. They point out that the math apparently leaves out services — which make up the bulk of the U.S. economy and an important proportion of its exports — from calculations of trade deficits, which has the effect of making U.S. trade relationships look more one-sided.

They also say there’s nothing “reciprocal” about the punitive tax rates because they’re disconnected from any actual barriers countries impose on U.S. imports.

“They’ve got an indefensible foundation to an indefensible policy,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum.

Democrats win Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and did well in Florida House races

It was a good day for Democrats.

In addition to Senator Cory Booker setting the all-time record for the longest talking filibuster of over 25 hours, pleasingly surpassing Strom Thurmond's 1957 filibuster against civil rights, a liberal was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thereby guaranteeing liberals maintain a 4-3 majority on the court -- which bodes well for an upcoming redistricting case that could give Democrats one or two additional House seats in Wisconsin.

I was thrilled when CNN called the Supreme Court race for Susan Crawford at the surprisingly early time of 7:08 Pacific Time, which is 9:08 Wisconsin time.

Because Wisconsin is such an evenly divided swing state, with statewide races usually being decided by just a few percentage points, leading to it being late night or early morning before a winner is known, Crawford's 10 point margin of victory (55-45) was a blowout by Wisconsin standards.

Even more pleasing was the fact that Elon Musk nationalized this race by dumping about $25 million into support for Crawford's conservative opponent. Musk was his usual obnoxious self, prattling on about how the future of civilization depended on defeating Crawford and handing out $1 million checks to people who supported his Trumpcentric political philosophy.

So the Wisconsin Supreme Court race was the first real test of how satisfied the American public is with all the crap being carried out by the Trump administration, which prominently features Musk as the guy who is taking a chainsaw to important government programs that only deserve a scalpel being used to reduce supposed waste, fraud, and abuse.

A New York Times story, "Democrats Show a Pulse: 6 Takeaways from Tuesday's Elections," says:

Nobody expended more political capital in the Wisconsin Supreme Court contest than Mr. Musk, with the possible exception of the candidates. He invested at least $25 million to elect Judge Schimel, posted about it seemingly nonstop on his social media platform, gave money to voters who signed a petition or posted photos in front of polling places and came to the state for a rally where he handed out a pair of $1 million checks.

And in the end, Judge Schimel lost by just a little bit less than the last conservative candidate for the court, who was all but abandoned by Republican donors two years ago.

Even more than Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk emerged in Wisconsin as the primary boogeyman for Democrats. His involvement altered the terms of the election. Instead of making the race an early referendum on Mr. Trump’s White House and abortion rights, Wisconsin Democrats pivoted to make Mr. Musk their entire focus, while Republicans rode the wave of his largess.

As expected, Republicans won two special elections in Florida that were needed to replace a couple of House members: Matt Gaetz, who resigned, and Michael Waltz, who became Trump's National Security Advisor. 

But there was reason for Democrats to celebrate the outcome of those races also. Each were in districts that Trump won by at least 30 points. The New York times story says:

Both seats were widely favored to remain in Republican control. But Mr. Fine faced criticism from Republicans in the final days of the campaign, as private polls showed a tighter race than expected in a district Mr. Trump had easily won.

An energized Democratic base did appear to have cut into the margins of victory on Tuesday: Mr. Fine’s 14-point margin with 95 percent of the vote counted was less than half of Mr. Waltz’s 33-point victory. (Josh Weil, the Democratic candidate, called his performance “an incredible gain” in his concession.)

In the other Florida race, the margin of victory for the Republican was just 15 points, less than half of Gaetz's 32 point margin in 2024. So there's reason for hope that Democrats will retake the House in 2026, given that today's Florida elections indicate that any Republican who won their seat by less than 15 points is in danger of losing to a Democrat.

And likely voters are going to be in an even worse mood toward Republicans in November 2026 than they are now, since Trump's upcoming tariffs stand a good chance of pushing the American economy into a recession, or at least a serious downturn.

We found Trump's auto tariffs causing panic buying at Salem dealership

Yesterday was quite an interesting day for my wife and me. We were able to buy a 2025 RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid XSE at Capitol Toyota, but it was a close call -- because of Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars and auto parts that goes into effect next Thursday.

The saga started last Tuesday when Laurel and I were picking up her 2019 RAV4 Hybrid (which isn't a plug-in) after service on it was completed, and she asked a Toyota salesperson if there were any 2025 RAV4 Plug-In's that she could take a look at.

Laurel has liked her car a lot, but would like the plug-in feature. A while back she leased three Chevy Volts in a row before the Volt was discontinued and found that the all-electric range, which was about the same as the RAV4 Plug-In, around 45 miles, meant that she rarely used the gas engine when driving locally. And she's been longing for wireless Apple CarPlay to make it easier to listen to podcasts and audio books.

The salesperson said they had a couple of used RAV4 Plug-In's on the lot but no 2025 models. He told us that typically every new RAV4 Plug-In they get is pre-sold, the demand is s0 high for them. 

During the next few days Laurel researched the 2025 RAV4 Plug-In. She wanted the one pictured above, the XSE trim in Wind Chill Pearl with a Midnight Black roof. On Saturday she called Capitol Toyota to ask whether a matching RAV4 she'd seen on their web site was available, or if it had already been sold. After Laurel was told that it was available, she made a 3:30 pm appointment for a test drive. 

Since Laurel wasn't planning to buy a car yesterday, I decided to stay home and do some yard work on a pleasingly rainless day. But I contributed to a possible future purchase by getting a CarMax estimate of what our 2019 RAV4 Hybrid was worth, $27,000, and gave a printout to Laurel.

Then the real "fun" began. Laurel texted me at 3:58 pm. 

Looks like I will be at the Toyota place for quite a while. They are very busy. The guy came out and said that the White XSE, he claims is still available, is out being test driven right now by someone. So I am waiting for him to get the key for it and now he’s disappeared for a while. A blue XSE RAV4 is being sold at the moment didn’t want that one anyway it looks like I will be here a long time either way.

Now he stopped by with an associate who is going to check to see whether the white one has been sold. If it isn’t sold and it looks like what I want we have to pay for it today. We can’t hold it because they’re going so quickly.

Not long after I got a phone call from Laurel. She said that the person who had driven the white RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid hadn't bought it, so I needed to come to Capitol Toyota ASAP with our Schwab checkbook so we could buy the car ourselves before 8 pm.

I put aside the lawn fertilizer spreader I'd been using, changed my clothes, put the dog in my Subaru Crosstrek (also bought from Capitol), and hurried off to the dealership. When I got there, I learned that the woman who had driven the car we were going to buy had returned to Capitol Toyota and told the salesperson that she wanted to buy "our" car.

After several managers got involved in this controversy, the decision was that whichever customer is holding the keys to a vehicle after a test drive is over has the first right to buy it. That was Laurel, and she wanted to buy the white RAV4. So we lucked out. Barely. 

During the rest of our time at the dealership as we discussed accessories (Laurel picked some), extended warranties and such (we declined all of them), our trade-in (Capitol Toyota agreed to match the CarMax offer), and how we'd pay for the car, we learned what a crazy day it had been at Capitol Toyota.

Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars and auto parts had led to a near-panic by people who wanted to buy a Toyota that was on the lot and not subject to the tariff -- which is expected to add thousands of dollars to the price of a new car. A PBS story, "How Trump's steep tariffs on imported vehicles may affect car prices and the auto industry," says:

Some car buyers have been rushing to showrooms across the country this weekend, as automakers brace for Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on vehicles and auto parts made outside the United States. The tariffs kick in on Thursday and could raise some car prices by thousands of dollars.

Walking around the Capitol Toyota showroom with our dog, who had gotten three biscuits from the canine-friendly dealership to tide her over until we could give Mooka her dinner, I could see that most desks were filled with salespeople working with customers. It had been a very busy day at Capitol Toyota.

Ordinarily that'd be good, but in this case it was caused by people like us who desired a new Toyota but didn't want to pay $5,000, or whatever, more for a car after the Trump tariffs go into effect. Trump has said that he "couldn't care less" in automakers raise prices because of the 25% tariff they will have to start paying next Thursday on imported cars and parts, since Trump thinks this will lead people to buy American cars.

He's wrong, as Trump so often is. A CBS News story says:

General Motors, one of the so-called Big Three automakers, along with Stellantis and Ford, is widely expected to be the most exposed to the forthcoming auto tariffs. Headquartered in Detroit, the U.S. car company makes just 45% of vehicles it sells to U.S. customers domestically, leaving 55% of its lineup exposed to tariffs, according to Cox Automotive. 

GM, which makes Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles, is heavily invested in Mexico and Canada, where it builds heavy-duty vehicles, according to Cornell's Wheaton. 

So General Motors, an American auto company, will be hugely affected by the tariffs, because so many of their vehicles are assembled in Canada and Mexico and include imported parts. The RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid is made in Japan, by the way. A story in The Hill says:

Last month, the average transaction price for a new vehicle was $47,373, up more than 20 percent from just before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Edmunds.

If the tariffs are fully passed onto consumers, the average auto price on an imported vehicle could jump by $12,500, a sum that could feed into overall inflation, The Associated Press reported.

Cox Automotive, a research firm, estimates that the tariffs will add $6,000 or more to the cost of a typical vehicle assembled in Canada or Mexico.

Public records show only one city official did right thing in Stahley debacle

Yesterday the Salem Reporter, our city's excellent online publication, ran a great story based on documents received from the City of Salem via a public records request concerning the forced resignation of City Manager Keith Stahley last month.

Journalist Joe Siess wrote "Records reveal Nishioka wanted to sue Hoy after Stahley resigned." The story starts off with a bang.

Salem Council President Linda Nishioka felt so misled by Mayor Julie Hoy over the city manager’s exit that she considered suing her, newly-released public records show.

Nishioka sought advice from some of her fellow councilors on how to do that, according to the documents.

The startling possibility emerged as councilors reacted to learning in February that then-City Manager Keith Stahley was resigning.

City officials have issued varying accounts of what triggered his departure, which cost the city $256,000 in severance pay, close to a full year of Stahley’s $270,000 salary. 

A fuller account of what led to his resignation and the ensuing turmoil among city leaders emerges from the emails, text messages and other records from the time released to Salem Reporter. They were provided in response to a public records request.

The documents provide an unprecedented look behind the scenes of city politics. They show councilors confused about why Stahley was quitting – and whether he had been pressured to do so.

Hoy has never commented publicly about her role in that departure, but records indicate the council’s president put the blame squarely at her feet.

Hoy did not respond to an emailed request for comment from Salem Reporter.

I'm familiar with previously known details about Stahley's resignation because I've filed a complaint against Mayor Julie Hoy with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, arguing that Hoy engaged in prohibited private serial communications with members of the City Council about whether Stahley should consider resigning instead of having these deliberations occur in accordance with Oregon's public meetings law.

Nothing in the Salem Reporter story altered my view that Mayor Hoy behaved badly, and that my complaint has merit. In fact, I learned from the story that Councilor Deanna Gwyn acknowledged that she talked with Hoy about Stahley. That confirms my conclusion that Hoy had private serial communications with a majority of the members of the City Council, which currently numbers eight because of a vacancy: Councilors Gwyn, Varney, Matthews, Nishioka, and, of course, Hoy herself.

The other three members, Councilors Nordyke, Tigan, and Brown, haven't made any public statements about whether they spoke with Hoy concerning Stahley -- which isn't exactly a profile in courage. I suspect each of them did indeed speak with Hoy. Apparently they just don't want to be further embroiled in this debacle, failing to realize that a cover-up can look just as bad as the "crime" itself.

Not that Mayor Hoy committed a crime. According to the Salem Reporter story, Councilor Nishioka "advised some of her colleagues on council and in the city over email and text message that she felt 'pushed,' 'used,' 'misguided,' and 'gaslit' by Hoy." Unfortunately, these are common strategies used by politicians. They're harmful to democracy, but not illegal.

It turns out that only one city official comes to the fore as being ethical, responsible, and appropriately outraged at how Mayor Hoy, with the assistance of Councilor Nishioka, forced Keith Stahley out of his City Manager job by informing him -- correctly or incorrectly -- that a majority of the City Council wanted him to consider resigning.

I said "correctly or incorrectly" because Stahley said in his resignation letter that Nishioka represented herself as speaking for a majority of the council who wanted him to consider resigning, but Nishioka denies that she told Stahley this. I discuss this difference of opinion in my ethics complaint. My view is that Stahley is correct. The Salem Reporter story supports this:

Nishioka explained in her Feb. 16 statement that she met privately with Stahley on Friday, Feb. 7 to alert him that Hoy and a majority of city councilors wanted him to resign. It was after that meeting that Stahley decided to step down from his post.

So while Nishioka was upset enough with Hoy to want to sue the Mayor, Nishioka went along with Hoy's request to meet with Stahley and convey to him what Hoy supposedly learned from her improper talks with city councilors -- a majority wanted Stahley gone.

Dan Atchison, the City Attorney, comes off looking bad.

According to Nishioka's text messages, Atchison told her that any efforts she undertook to confirm with her colleagues what Hoy led her to believe would be unethical, the records show.

Wow. That was horrible legal advice, given that Atchison had told Mayor Hoy that it was perfectly fine for her to talk privately with members of the City Council about Stahley's employment status. So the City Attorney first told Hoy that it was ethical for her to engage in private conversations with councilors about whether Stahley should resign, then told Nishioka that if she did the same thing, that was unethical.

The only city official who comes out looking great in the Salem Reporter story, and previously known information about the circumstances of Stahley's resignation, is Councilor Micki Varney. I included her public statement about this affair in my Oregon Government Ethics Commission complaint, because it was so well written, compelling, and honest. 

While most of her City Council colleagues were either hoping this whole mess would go away, pursuing a head-in-the-sand approach, or blaming each other for the debacle, Councilor Varney tried to take some positive steps. The Salem Reporter story says:

Varney subsequently circulated a draft of a statement she proposed would represent all the councilors. She sent it to Nishioka and City Councilor Paul Tigan in the morning on Feb. 12 – three days after the resignation.

In her draft, Varney challenged media accounts of the resignation and saw the statement as a way to set the record straight.

“We are all confused about what really happened over the past few days,” Varney wrote in the letter. “What we do not believe is that removing a competent, if not visionary, chief administrator during the beginning of the budget process was a rational, reasonable, or responsible action. We do not believe this resignation was harmonious; we have grave concerns over the methodology and the reasons behind this leadership change.” 

In the letter, Varney proposed that the council call for a third-party investigation into the matter. 

“The media reported a version of what happened that may not be the entire story. Media reports suggest the city manager was asked for his resignation by a city councilor. It is apparent the city manager accepted that request from a representative of the whole (or at least a majority) of the council,” Varney wrote. Tigan opposed the letter. 

“This is too much,” he said in a text message. “It will only dig us in a deeper hole. Also, if we undercut the premise of Keith’s resignation (that he was informed that a majority of the council sought his resignation), I’m afraid we could undercut his ability to receive his severance. As I stated at the council meeting, that is important to me to ensure Keith is kept whole under his employment contract.”

Varney’s letter never advanced. 

John F. Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage, which, according to Wikipedia, described acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States senators. Aside from Councilor Varney, no city official demonstrated such courage during or after the successful attempt to force the Salem City Manager to resign.

Trump administration sends war plans via text to journalist

If there was any doubt about the incompetence of the Trump administration, this story in The Atlantic today should squash it.

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic. I'm a subscriber. This gift link to Goldberg's story should enable anybody to read it. 

Remember the uproar over Hillary Clinton using her own email server when she was Obama's Secretary of State? Trump and other Republicans thought she should be go to jail for engaging in a breach of security protocols.

Well, the debacle described by Goldberg is way worse than Clinton's emails. Hopefully there will be investigations of what happened. Here's some excerpts from Goldberg's story to whet your appetite to read the whole thing.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

...On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering.

I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically.

It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them.

I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

...The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”

...After receiving the Waltz text related to the “Houthi PC small group,” I consulted a number of colleagues. We discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds.

I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

...It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.

What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

...According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.

...I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story.

Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose.

If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said.

Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.