timelets

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:56:23 GMT

In court on Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer asked for Eaton to pause his order while the government appeals, but the judge denied that request.

The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the government hadn’t yet formalized its position on refunding the tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old law. “Your position is clear,” the judge said. “The Supreme Court told you what your position is.”

The Justice Department lawyer, Claudia Burke, said that any refund process would be time-consuming for the tariff collector, CBP. The government agency would have to manually go through millions of import entries, she added.

“We live in the age of computers,” Eaton said. “It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn’t need a manual review."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-to-begin-refunding-more-than-130-billion-in-tariffs-fdc1e62c.

Actually, we live in the age of AI and it should be even easier to calculate and issue refunds. In any case, the US is likely to see an increase in budget deficit this year because of the refunds, war expenses, and tax cuts. The increase will run the next year too because Trump will not dare to propose spending cuts in an election year.

comments

Costco is calling Trump's BS

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 04:03:52 GMT

Costco Wholesale Corp. joined a fast-growing list of businesses suing the Trump administration to ensure eligibility for refunds if the US Supreme Court strikes down the president’s signature global tariffs policy.

The nation’s biggest warehouse club chain is among dozens of companies to file lawsuits in a US trade court since late October challenging President Donald Trump’s use of an economic emergency powers law to impose the levies, according to court records. It’s one of the biggest corporate players to jump into a fight largely driven this year by small businesses and Democratic state officials.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that, “The economic consequences of the failure to uphold President Trump’s lawful tariffs are enormous and this suit highlights that fact. The White House looks forward to the Supreme Court’s speedy and proper resolution of this matter.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-01/costco-joins-companies-suing-for-refunds-if-trump-s-tariffs-fall

Attention Costco shoppers: the US Supreme Court is about to decide on prices you pay in your favorite warehouse.

comments

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 16:56:09 GMT

Словно граждане, независимо от политической ориентации, инстинктивно воспринимают Трампа как глупого вредного ребенка: не похвалишь Трампа за то, что он покакал — в следующий раз он обмажет говном всю комнату.

https://rsokolov.dreamwidth.org/56019.html

Trump threw the economic relationship with Canada into a tailspin late Thursday, saying he was terminating trade negotiations with America’s second-largest trading partner over a television advertisement by the Ontario government. The ad included audio of former Republican President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs.

The Ontario ad uses audio from a 1987 radio address delivered by Reagan, in which he explains that despite putting tariffs on Japanese semiconductors in that year, he was committed to free-trade policies. While tariffs can look patriotic, Reagan said, “over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer,” lead to “fierce trade wars” and result in lost jobs.

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/how-one-ad-sent-u-s-canada-trade-talks-into-a-tailspin-15b10384

comments

TACO du jour

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:29:15 GMT

Yesterday, the fucking moron paraded a trade deal with China and markets reacted - eh.. Today, the WSJ Editorial Board states the obvious in the headline: Trump Has No China Trade Strategy

President Trump on Wednesday hailed the result of the latest trade talks with China as a great victory, but the best we can say is that it’s a truce that tilts in China’s direction.
...
This gets to the larger problem with Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy—that is, he doesn’t have one. His latest walk-back shows he can’t bully China as he tried to do in his first term. China has leverage of its own.

A smarter trade strategy would be to work with allies as a united front to counter China’s predatory trade practices. Instead, Mr. Trump has used tariffs as an economic scatter-gun against friends as well as foes. This increases China’s leverage, and, like this week’s trade truce, that’s nothing to cheer about.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-trade-talks-donald-trump-tariffs-f730f437

comments

Quote of the Day

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 05:46:12 GMT

Сказка вообще не знает сострадания. Если герой отпускает животное, то он делает это не из сострадания, а на некоторых договорных началах.
...
Можно показать, что рыба или другие животные, пощаженные, а не съеденные Иваном, не что иное, как животные-предки, животные, которых нельзя есть и которые потому и помогают, что они тотемные предки.

-- В. Пропп. Исторические корни волшебной сказки.

comments

US direct investments in China 2000 to 2020

Thu, 05 May 2022 21:28:52 GMT

https://www.statista.com/statistics/188629/united-states-direct-investments-in-china-since-2000/

comments

Putin delenda est

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 05:52:38 GMT

An oil and gas embargo would be the only way to defeat decisively Russia in Ukraine. Given that, Germany is the only country in a position to end this war, by undoing the mistakes Merkel made during her reign.

comments

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 02:34:25 GMT

I wonder if this embedding works.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-55592161

comments

Sea people vs land people

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:24:38 GMT

..he[Themistocles] fastened the city to the Piraeus, and the land to the sea. 4 And so it was that he increased the privileges of the common people as against the nobles, and filled them with boldness, since the controlling power came now into the hands of skippers and boatswains and pilots. Therefore it was, too, that the bema in Pnyx, which had stood so as to look off toward the sea, was afterwards turned by the thirty tyrants so as to look inland, because they thought that maritime empire was the mother of democracy, and that oligarchy was less distasteful to tillers of the soil.

--- Plutarch, The Life of Themistocles.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Themistocles*.html

Even when a new highly beneficial technology-business space emerges, government power is not transferred by itself. Rather, it requires a conscious effort to redistribute it toward the new industry.

comments

Fucking Moron (tm)

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 01:38:46 GMT

WSJ shows how Putin takes advantage of the incompetence of the Trump administration:

...the U.S. campaign spiraled into a foreign-policy debacle, thwarted by familiar adversaries, Russia and Cuba, as well as allies, Turkey and India—all countries that one way or another helped Venezuela sidestep U.S. sanctions, according to current and former U.S. officials and Venezuelan opposition activists. The European Union watched from the sidelines.
...
Almost half of the $1.5 billion in Venezuelan crude exported to India in the nine months after the U.S. sanctions was purchased by an Indian joint venture with Russia’s oil giant, Rosneft, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data compiled by trade database Import Genius.
...
The United Arab Emirates has imported around $1 billion in gold from Venezuela since gold sanctions were imposed in late 2018, according to Venezuela trade records. U.S. intelligence officials say the actual amounts are far higher, based on evidence that Venezuelan gold is leaving the country masked as originating from Colombia, Uganda and elsewhere. The exports land in Turkey, the U.A.E. and other gold-trade hubs.

The Trump administration, confident Mr. Maduro would fall, didn’t foresee Russia leading the way for other countries to eclipse the sanctions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-u-s-bid-for-regime-change-in-venezuela-faltered-11580138560

I wonder whether Iran is working around US sanctions using the same scheme.

comments

International minimal wage

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 03:59:22 GMT

Trump acts like a typical communist because he imposes workers' rights requirements in a treaty with the government of Mexico:

...a new rule mandating that 40% of an auto qualifying for tariff-free trade in the region has to be produced by workers earning $16 an hour. Mandating wage rates ignores the relationship between productivity and output and sets a bad precedent for future trade deals. Mr. Trump is using the mandate to make Mexico less competitive for car production.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-american-damage-control-11576444915

comments

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 08:25:36 GMT

comments

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 06:18:33 GMT

This is textbook corporate corruption that arises out of government regulations:

With the threat of tariffs on iPhones approaching in August, Apple Inc. stood to lose billions of dollars in profit. Chief Executive Tim Cook reached out to one of his most important contacts in Washington, Jared Kushner.

Mr. Kushner arranged a call between Mr. Cook and his father-in-law, President Trump, people familiar with the call said, giving the Apple chief a chance to explain how tariffs would increase iPhone prices and impair Apple’s ability to compete against rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co.

Within days, the Trump administration scaled back its tariff plan to exempt a swath of electronics products, including iPhones, saying it wanted to protect consumers ahead of the holiday shopping season. The call from Mr. Cook influenced the decision, a person close to the administration said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tim-cook-won-donald-trumps-ear-11570248040

As a side note, despite public declarations that China pays for the tariffs, the bullshitter-in-chief knows perfectly well that tariffs are paid by American companies. The only constituency he is fooling is his own political base, aka трамповата. What a bunch of gullible idiots.

comments

"Trade wars are good and easy to win!" - the Orange Swan

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 22:02:49 GMT

“It’s a crisis the likes of which we just never had to deal with before,” said Matthew Gutchess, president of Gutchess Lumber Co. in Cortland, N.Y. “The demand elsewhere is just not absorbing what China is dropping.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-lumber-mills-slash-jobs-as-trade-war-cuts-deep-11569490206

Maybe the impeachment will force the Orange Swan to wrap up his stupid trade war. Or maybe not. Because China (and not Ukraine) might still be hiding Hillary Clinton's email server. Remember Crowdstrike! :)

comments

Оранжевый лебедь

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 15:52:46 GMT

Патриотические фермеры, потерявшие Китайский рынок, получают субсидии от американского государства. Получат ли субсидии инвесторы, потерявшие деньги на торговой войне с Китаем?

comments

Japan First!

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 02:08:29 GMT

In what Seoul views as economic retaliation over a previous dispute over wartime forced labour, Tokyo from July 4 started imposing export restrictions on three chemicals crucial to South Korea's booming semiconductor industry - fluorine polyimide, resists and etching gas.

Japan, which controls up to 90 per cent of the global supply of these materials, cited a breach of trust and national security concerns for the measures.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korea-japan-trade-spat-us-will-do-what-it-can-to-help-but-hopes-both-sides-can

Trade wars are becoming contagious. Few nations hate each other more than Japan and Korea. Once, I was in a high-rank business meeting between the two sides and this hatred was palpable in every word they said and every look they took.

comments

"Great negotiator"

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 22:18:23 GMT

Mr. Trump and senior administration officials have said publicly that China agreed to purchase large amounts of American agricultural products in the near future, a move that would partly compensate for China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. farm goods.

The Chinese side hasn’t confirmed any such commitment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-talks-stuck-in-rut-over-huawei-11563393280

comments

Fucking Moron (tm), the soybean edition

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 17:48:13 GMT

It's not about manufacturing any more:

Brazil, which overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest soybean exporter several years ago, stands to gain ground. The U.S. share of world soybean exports is expected to drop to 31% this season, the lowest on record, while Brazil’s portion is forecast to swell to 52%, which would be its largest ever.

At an agricultural forum in Beijing last fall, according to Mr. Schickler, China’s deputy agriculture minister said China would not easily forget the current standoff, and China is building alternatives for soybean imports so it will never again be so dependent on a single source.

According to Mr. Sutter, the CEO of the Soybean Export Council, Chinese companies are working to develop soybean production in Russia, where soybeans haven’t yet become a major crop.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/farmers-built-a-soybean-export-empire-around-china-now-theyre-fighting-to-save-it-11562260248

Instead of US farmers making money by selling their goods abroad, the US government gives them a subsidy of $28B to offset its protectionist trade policies.

comments

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 19:48:00 GMT

The US tariffs on China have been really good for Bitcoin and the correlation might not be accidental because small importers are looking for non-dollar denominated payment methods. Also, in a recent private conversation somebody mentioned to me that Malaysian intermediaries are booming. A proxy firm buys a newly taxed product from a supplier in China and sells it to the existing customer in the US. Since shipping routes don't change and everything is done electronically, transaction costs are minimal. I bet the same trick is behind a sudden rise of Vietnamese exports to the US.

BTW, this statement by the so-called-president is pure gibberish, not standard bullshit. He can't even articulate coherently the garbage economics Navarro is feeding him.

comments

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 20:11:05 GMT

comments

Fucking Moron (tm) & "a profit making operation"

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 07:52:18 GMT

The probability of finding an international trade idiot among trampists is 80%.

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/hy07ddq1w0/tabs_Trump_Tweets_20181228.pdf

comments

Fucking moron(tm), the international trade edition

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 20:43:56 GMT

The лживое хуйло imposed metal tariffs on Canada, using Section 232 (National security emergency!) pretext:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-broken-nafta-promise-11545870369

When President Trump signed his new Nafta accord last month with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau almost didn’t show up. The reason: Mr. Trump still hasn’t lifted the steel and aluminum tariffs as he promised he’d do if America’s two neighbors signed a revised trade deal.

A month later they’re still waiting. The delay is damaging the U.S. economy and America’s credibility as a trading partner. Though Mr. Trump likes to use tariff threats as a negotiating tactic, his Administration also promised relief from the levies he imposed under Section 232 of U.S. trade law.

In July U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told a Senate hearing that “resolving the NAFTA issue—we would expect, or hope, that we would resolve the steel and the aluminum issues with both Mexico and Canada.”

Last March no less than the President himself tweeted that “tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed.”

comments

Incredible meh, ака Выведите козу

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 18:55:52 GMT

Consumers will pay more for cars sold in the US.

The two countries have agreed that 75% of a product must be made in the US and Mexico to receive tax-free treatment, which is more than in the existing deal, the US said.

On cars, the two sides also settled on rules that will require 40%-45% of each vehicle to be made by workers earning at least $16 an hour.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45323634

In the current NAFTA agreement, the share of NA parts is 62.5%.

upd; https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2018/august/united-states%E2%80%93mexico-trade-fact-1

comments

May you live in interesting times

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 21:20:57 GMT

The trade war can have a ripple effect across SEA, with yuan depreciation being the main channel.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-09/vietnamese-dong-feels-the-ripples-of-china-s-yuan-rout

Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s most open economy on some measures, with imports accounting for almost 100 percent of GDP. As a result, it’s more vulnerable to price pressures. A 1 percentage point fall in the dong could lead to a 0.25 percentage point increase in headline inflation, HSBC Holdings Plc estimates.

If the market pressure persists, Vietnam will be forced into grudging rate increases, like its Southeast Asian peers Indonesia and the Philippines.

comments

TIL: 1% of world's GDP

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 19:36:02 GMT

I'm surprised airline profit margins are so thin.

https://www.iata.org/publications/economics/Reports/Industry-Econ-Performance/IATA-Economic-Performance-of-the-Industry-mid-year-2018-report-final-v1.pdf

comments