Salem Political Snark

Here's three "accomplishments" by Trump that make this Democrat happy

We've now endured 100 days of Trump's second term in office. Those three-plus months have been a disaster for the United States and the world.

Trump has damaged economies by his insanely high and poorly thought out tariffs. Trump has failed to stop the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars. Trump has decimated vital government services through mindless budget and personnel cuts. Trump has been chastised by federal judges and the Supreme Court for failing to obey the rule of law.

But the news isn't all bad. Here's three "accomplishments" (the quotation marks point to irony) by Trump that make me happy as a progressive Democrat. 

(1) Trump single-handedly kept Canada's Liberal Party in power. Before Trump started to call the Prime Minister of Canada "Governor," a reference to his repeated threats to make Canada the 51st state, that country's Conservative Party was heavily favored to regain power through parliamentary elections.

However, yesterday Canadians voted to keep the Liberal Party in power under Prime Minister Mark Carney because the Conservatives were seen as being too close to Trumpism, being a sort of maple leaf MAGA, or MCGA. Here's an excerpt from a BBC story, "Trump made Carney's turnaround victory possible."

Mark Carney and the Liberal Party have claimed a remarkable victory in the Canadian election – and it appears to have come with a big assist from Donald Trump.

The US president's constant badgering of America's northern neighbour and taunts about making it the 51st US state since his return to office in January coincided with a dramatic reversal in fortune for the centre-left party.

Carney has been almost singularly focused on his neighbour, and this was reflected in his victory speech. After warning that the US wanted Canada's land and resources, Carney declared: "President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen."

Until Trump's return to power, Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party had held what looked like high and insurmountable ground in voter preference polls amidst general dissatisfaction with the state of the Canadian economy and almost a decade of Liberal government under then leader Justin Trudeau.

(2) Trump has erased $150 billion of Elon Musk's net worth. Before Musk bought Twitter and turned it into a right-wing shadow of its former self, I thought Musk was an appealing visionary and businessman. 

But seeing Musk steadily descend into sharing Trumpian conspiracy theories, along with blatant lies, soured me on Musk. My distaste deepened after Trump made Musk the head of DOGE, giving him free rein to fire federal employees for no good reason, take over confidential computer systems in Social Security and the IRS, and generally act like an annoying asshole.

At first Tesla's stock price rose after Trump was elected, as investors believed the company would benefit from Musk's close association with Trump.

It's been a pleasure to watch the stock price of Tesla sink as Musk's popularity with the public declined. Gosh, who could have predicted that if the CEO of Tesla starts trashing the values of Democrats, who are big fans of electric cars, they'd look elsewhere for an electric car purchase. (Lots of people predicted this, actually.)

So since so much of Musk's net worth is tied up in Tesla stock, Musk has lost around $150 billion since mid-December.

The steep decline in Tesla stock has contributed to Musk's net worth falling sharply over the past few months. Despite rising valuations for Musk's private ventures, the steady decline in the stock of his publicly traded car company has wiped about $150 billion off his net worth since mid-December. Still the world's richest person with a net worth of $335 billion, that's down sharply from a peak of almost $480 billion just a few months ago.

(3) Fireworks may be in short supply for the nation's 250 year anniversary of our independence in 2026. Our dog doesn't like fireworks. I'm OK with them, but since we live in a rural area where every year idiots set off illegal fireworks despite the high wildfire danger around July 4, I'd be happier with fewer fireworks.

Which Trump is well on the way to accomplishing through his tariffs on Chinese exports. Here's excerpts from a Washington Post story, "Trump is softening his tariff talk. But the damage may already be done."

With 14 months remaining before the United States’ 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, Stacy Blake should be placing big orders with the Chinese factories that supply her fireworks company in St. Joseph, Missouri. But she’s not. And she blames President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The same president who’s making plans for a “grand celebration” of this national milestone has imposed sky-high import duties that will make that star-spangled festival tough to pull off.

With the trade war causing U.S. orders to dry up, Chinese fireworks factories have begun shutting down. That threatens to disrupt the industry’s production schedule, leading to serious shortages, said Blake, co-owner of Schneitter Fireworks & Importing.

“We’ve got a huge problem ahead of us going into next year,” said Blake, who is also president of the National Fireworks Association. “This season is when Chinese manufacturers would be manufacturing our products right now for 2026, for the 250th. Very little production is happening. They have halted it.”

...Almost all of the fireworks that Americans purchase for personal use are made in China; three-quarters of the pyrotechnics featured in more elaborate community celebrations are Chinese.

In 2019, recognizing the lack of domestic production, Trump exempted the industry from his first China tariffs.

This time, however, he has not granted a similar waiver, leaving scores of small businesses facing crippling extra costs. Importers who cannot afford 145 percent taxes have told their Chinese suppliers to freeze shipments, which could mean some consumer favorites for celebrating the July Fourth holiday this year will be hard to find, said Blake, Schneitter Fireworks’ co-owner.

Without immediate relief from Trump’s tariffs, American importers will miss their turn in the Chinese production line for 2026. Fireworks factories will soon enter their annual summer shutdown. And when they reopen, they are scheduled to fill European orders before producing what Chinese consumers demand.

Mai Vang is best choice for Ward 6 city council seat in May 20 election

There are three candidates running in the May 20 special election to fill the remaining term in the Ward 6 city council seat that was vacated by Julie Hoy when she was elected Mayor of Salem last year. 

Mai Vang, Deanna Garcia, and Logan Lor all deserve credit for stepping up to the citizen activism plate and taking a swing at being elected to this time-consuming zero-pay volunteer position.

I believe Mai Vang is most deserving of Ward 6 votes, and I say this only partly because she is endorsed by Progressive Salem, which happens to be my political "tribe." She also appears to be the best qualified candidate.

Today the Statesman Journal had a good story by Whitney Wordworth about the Ward 6 city council race. It pointed out that usually in city council races the contest is between a progressive and a conservative, mirroring our national political scene. 

The mayor and Salem City Council are nonpartisan, unpaid positions but typically fall between "progressive candidates" and "business candidates," with the latter tending to draw large donations from developers and political action committees. 

That explains the reference to "monied interests" pushing forward their candidate in the Progressive Salem endorsement above -- the business candidate being Deanna Garcia.

Here's the About Mai Vang statement on her campaign web site. She has a background that seems to make her a good fit for the ethnically diverse Ward 6 neighborhood that she hopes to represent on the Salem City Council.

Hi there!

I am a first generation Hmong-American. My parents were refugees of the Vietnam War and were resettled in Missoula, Montana in the early 1990s. I am the oldest of 6 kids. I grew up in a family oriented culture and lived in a multigeneration household. So I have always had one foot in the traditional expectations of my culture and one foot in the American culture, where anything is possible.

Hmong is my first language so I didn’t learn English until I went to school. And from that moment, I was given the role of translator for parents, grandparents, other family members.

Growing up, money was always tight, so I spent summers out in my parents’ garden growing and harvesting vegetables to then sell at my family’s booth at the Missoula Farmer’s Market. I spent many early Saturday mornings getting to know my local community.

During these times, my community also showed up and helped us in every way they could. They helped my family and me build a strong foundation to stand on and make the U.S. feel like home. This is something that I carry with me wherever I go– to give back and help build my community stronger so everyone can feel like they’re home.

I came to Oregon to attend Willamette University College of Law (go Bearcats!). I have always been interested in politics, especially in local government because it was where I could see the impact on my everyday life, my neighbors, and my city.

My husband and I were attracted to Ward 6 by all the new housing development. We found a beautiful place that was in our rent budget. One of the best things we discovered about Ward 6 was that we were right in the middle of everything! Just a few minutes’ drive to Fred Meyer and all the restaurants and shops on Lancaster but also just a few minutes to downtown Salem.  I can proudly say I can navigate around Salem without getting lost about 95% of the time!

With all the great things about Ward 6, I also noticed some things that concerned me—particularly pedestrian safety and traffic. So I went to my neighborhood association to voice my concerns and seek solutions. It was here where I got to know my neighbors and learned that they also shared the same concerns I did. They also brought other concerns to my attention and I have been active ever since.

Right now Ward 6 doesn’t have someone to listen to their concerns and, most importantly, show up for them. I am committed to doing that. That’s why I’m running to represent Ward 6.

Outrageous: Trump wants to give Russia everything and Ukraine nothing

Trump has to be the worst dealmaker of any president. He's utterly incapable of making deals, both in his first administration and now. 

No deal to limit North Korea's nuclear threat. No deal to replace the effective Iran nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of. No deal to end the Israel-Hamas war. No deals with any of the countries he's imposed tariffs on. And no deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

All of these failures concern me. But Trump's abject failure to make any progress on ending the Russia-Ukraine war is particularly outrageous, because there's an extremely clear distinction here between the bad guy, Russia, and the good guy, Ukraine.

Every reasonable person understands that Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason other than a desire to reconstitute the former Soviet Union. That invasion was preceded by Russia taking over Crimea, which is part of Ukraine, along with about 20% of Ukraine's territory on its border with Russia.

Trump made a campaign promise that he'd end the Ukraine war before he even was inaugurated. It's now been about three months since Inauguration Day. Trump has made essentially zero progress toward brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine.

The main reason is the same one that makes Trump such a horrible dealmaker. He can't be trusted, and he doesn't understand that a deal requires opposing parties to each feel that they're gaining something, while not getting everything each party wanted.

Trump, though, wants to give Putin, the Russian dictator who invaded Ukraine, everything he desires, while giving Zelensky, the democratically-elected Ukrainian president who has valiantly defended his country, nothing he desires. 

The headline of a New York Times story today pretty much says it all. But I'll also share some excerpts from the story.

President Trump and his top aides demanded on Wednesday that Ukraine accede to an American-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained in the war, while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances.

The American plan, which would also explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was rejected by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, whose long-running dispute with Mr. Trump broke into the open two months ago in the Oval Office. The proposal also appears to call for the United States to recognize Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea, a region of Ukraine.

“There is nothing to talk about,” Mr. Zelensky said. “This violated our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of Ukraine.”

...It was not clear whether the U.S. announcements were part of a pressure campaign to force Mr. Zelensky to make territorial concessions or whether they were designed to create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine.

But the United States is essentially settling on a deal that favors the aggressor in the war, one that forces Ukraine to accept the forcible rewriting of its border and give up its hope of eventually joining NATO, as other former Soviet republics have.

European allies, who in recent weeks have been promising more military and economic support for Mr. Zelensky, have charged that Mr. Trump is essentially switching sides in the war, and that his real goal is to cast Ukraine aside and to find a way to normalize American relations with Moscow. Mr. Trump and his top aides have already begun discussing the prospect of lifting sanctions on Russia, and striking energy and mineral deals with Mr. Putin.

Whatever Mr. Trump’s motives, what happened on Wednesday signaled the possible abandonment of the American commitment to Mr. Zelensky that the United States would never engage in talks that excluded the country from determining its own fate.

Putin can't be trusted. A BBC story describes all the agreements and truces related to Ukraine that Russia has broken, starting all the way back in 1997. 

By invading Ukraine in 2014, Russia violated the Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the two countries signed in 1997. Article 2 said the sides "respect each other's territorial integrity and confirm the inviolability of existing borders between them".

Given that long history of Russian deception, it's completely understandable why Ukraine is demanding that a security guarantee be part of any agreement to end the current war. Otherwise Putin will reconstitute his depleted army and invade Ukraine again when he feels the time is right. 

However, Trump is demanding that Ukraine give up on ever becoming a member of NATO and refuses to have the United States guarantee Ukraine's security. No wonder Zelensky has rejected the Trump administration's proposal to end the war by giving Putin everything he wants.

Hopefully European countries will step up and do their best to replace United States support for Ukraine if Trump and Vance follow through on their threat to withdraw from peace talks if Ukraine doesn't go along with surrendering territory to Russia with no security guarantee.

China must be watching what's going on with glee, since if the United States gives a green light to Russia to annex the Ukrainian territory it now controls, this will send a clear sign to China that if it invades Taiwan, the United States won't stand in China's way. 

Bill Maher manipulated by Trump during dinner at the White House

I've watched Bill Maher for many years, beginning with his Politically Incorrect show and continuing through his Real Time show on HBO. It seems clear that Maher has gotten more conservative, or at least, is considerably more critical of Democrats than he used to be.

I still enjoy Maher's show.

I just find myself frequently getting irritated with him when Maher does his false equivalence thing: taking some isolated incident of progressive "wokeness" and making it sound like this is more serious than, say, Trump wrecking the economy, trashing the constitution, and behaving as a wanna-be dictator.

The past few weeks, my Irritation Button has gotten pushed when Maher talks on Real Time about his recent dinner with Trump, Kid Rock, and Dana White at the White House. The invitation came at the request of Kid Rock. Trump didn't sound thrilled about it in a pre-dinner post on Truth Social.

You can read a transcript of Maher's report on his show of how the White House dinner went. It's obvious that Trump manipulated Maher, but Maher apparently was so awestruck at meeting Trump he left his critical thinking on the White House steps.

I'm just reporting exactly what I saw over two and a half hours. I went into the mine, and that's what's down there. A crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there, which I know is (expletive) up. It's just not as (expletive) up as I thought it was.

So somehow Maher concludes from his two and a half hour dinner at the White House that the "measured and gracious" Trump on display during those 150 minutes proves that Trump actually isn't the crazy, hateful, lying, vindictive, ignorant, authoritarian that Americans have come to know (and hate) for over ten years, ever since Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential run.

Nope, Bill Maher saw the real Trump, and it isn't the public Trump. Astonishingly, Maher doesn't consider that it is much more likely that the opposite is true: the side of Trump shown to Maher during the private White House dinner was the play-acting Trump, and the real Trump is who we see in his public appearances.

This Reddit post is right on.

From the Epstein tapes and Trumps autobiography this is actually pretty normal behavior for Trump at the beginning of his relationships with people.

Epstein describes Trump as an excellent manipulator that could make the ugliest girl at the party feel beautiful. This is his preferred method of networking.

Much like how an abusive sexual partner will love bomb someone at the beginning of the relationship, then go on to demand more and more concessions from them as the relationship develops.

This is how his ex-wives and former friends describe him as well.

As is another Reddit post:

I watched the video. He basically says "Trump wasn't a crazy person when I met him in person, he just seems to play one on TV. That surprised me and I'm happy about that."

In what way should I take that statement, exactly? Should I be happy that Trump is only pretending to be a crazy person whenever he makes public statements? Should I be happy that Trump is privately more of a slightly normal person, but not publicly? Should I be happy that Trump treats some people better than most people?

Because none of those things make me happy or make me feel good about any of this.

We have to judge someone by their actions, not by how they privately treat you behind closed doors. Especially the president. "But he was nice to me in private" just isn't an argument for anything here, regardless of whether it is even true.

And if that wasn't the point of Maher, what was his point?

Not to mention, all of this feels like a setup for him to slowly become more of a Trump guy. Let's see if the becomes less critical of Trump in the coming months. Let's see if he uses the usual "I know he sounds crazy here but he's just acting for his base so it's not that bad!" argument going forward.

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.