Turning the page
Ok this is funny. I was reading Kevin Liptak at CNN on the tanking morale in the White House, enriched by this gem of a sentence –
Inside the White House, aides identify the scandal involving Rob Porter, the staff secretary who departed after being accused of domestic abuse allegations, as the impetus for the latest devolvement in esteem.
There’s the goodbye of Hope Hicks, the brawl with Sessions, the hot blushing shame of Ben Carson’s taste in dining room furniture, the plan to “turn the page”…
Trump is encouraging his team to develop policy announcements that could help distract from the ongoing ruckus. On Thursday he was eager to announce protectionist measures to buffer the US steel and aluminum industries from foreign imports — fulfilling a key campaign promise on which he’s fixated over the past year.
Seconds before I reached that paragraph a red banner breaking news headline popped up at the top of the page – saying the Dow has dropped 500 points after Trump’s announcement of tariffs on steel.
Oops.
Pictures. I need pictures!
Yeah, that news about the tariffs certainly splashed here. Not that we really care about the Dow, more that one of our significant exporters is one of only a handful of aluminium smelters that makes aircraft grade aluminium, so the US is a major market. Plus this looks likely to set of a multinational trade war. Tiny countries like NZ that survive by reasonably free and fair trade tend to become collateral damage in trade wars.
The shame is in the price rather than the appearance – a somewhat strained use of “taste” perhaps, but I meant his exigent standard cost $31,000 at a time when his department is slashing programs for the poor as hard as it can.
Fuck metal protections, that’ll cost a lot of people their jobs… probably a lot of people I know (many of whom are also Trump voters and thus should have bad things happen to them, but still…).
US$31K for a dining suite? In a government department that’s supposed to be helping the worst off in society in an administration that proclaimed it would drain the swamp? Right.
BKiSA, yes it likely will. The weird thing is that in the short/medium term it may appear to lift parts of the US economy. It’s possible that US based makers of steel and aluminium will invest in new, more economic production facilities, rather than just bumping the price and doing nothing. On he other hand, long term there will be a global drift to manufacture goods previously made in the USA elsewhere where they are not harmed by tariffs. Such changes are seldom undone later and are much more insidious. You still feel like your economy is doing ok, but in reality it slowly slips behind.
We know this from experience. Our economy peaked post Korean War. While we still get new models of cars and TVs etc, the reality is that as a nation we are poorer now than we were then in a relative sense. Protectionism in the 60’s and 70’s produced inefficient industries that perished wholesale in the deregulation of the 80’s and 90’s. Even once adjustment is made, lost industries just don’t come back.
re. Carson, he’s not getting his furniture.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/01/ben-carson-cancels-order-for-31000-dining-set-amid-ethics-controversy
But not before somebody lost her job for actually trying to stick to the rules…