Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Zaydin]

And now at Trumps latest public masturbation session, Trump boasted to his cult 'Is there anywhere on a Saturday night more fun than a Trump rally?'.

I can think of quite a few places more fun than a Trump rally. A funeral, for example. Or an execution. Or a crime scene. Forest fires.

Basically anywhere you don't have to listen to Trump as he masturbates to pictures of himself and his cult cheers him on.

[Blade Wolf]

In other news, Trump continues to defend SA and their genocide because apparently money is more important than human lives. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/...094048617.html

[Breccia]

You choose to ignore the historic unemployment, wage growth, and GDP gain. There were no record gains in Obamas first term.

As everyone here is aware, even you, Obama was handed a crashing economy due to Bush's economic policies. He reversed that in his first term. He had record-breaking results in his second term. Trump ran against Obama's second term, and he is losing.

Obama had a better unemployment drop than Trump has so far, averaged over their terms. In years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 in order, Obama saw unemployment drop 1.2%, 1.3%, 0.6% and 0.3%. Trump in 2017 and 2018 saw 0.6% and 0.2%. 2019 isn't looking like much of a drop, but even if we use Trump's highest result ever, Obama's average has that beat 0.85% drop/year to Trump's 0.4% drop/year. Obama is doing twice as well.

https://www.thebalance.com/unemploym...y-year-3305506

Obama saw better real wage growth. As I'm going to keep using over and over because some people respond better to frowny face emoji than actual cited evidence



Did it start dropping under Obama? Yes. Did Trump turn it around? No. Trump watched it get worse.

Trump has done worse every day in office than Obama did in his last two years (plus or minus a couple months, tops). Trump has spent most of his tenure with worse results than Obama's worst ever result.

To be fair, wage growth has not been great for some time. If you subtract the top 10% of earners, it paints a much worse picture, and even more distorted recently: Trump saw a high rate of 90th percentile income growth, but flat everywhere else.



Trump has also seen a significantly higher rise in the cost of benefits, such as health insurance, which he personally and directly caused by kicking out one of the pillars of the ACA without waiting for Congress, or a replacement plan.

GDP gain, if you go by real GDP without inflation, Trump has an edge but not a big one. In years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 Obama saw 1.8%, 2.5%, 2.9% and 1.6%. Trump saw 2.2% and 2.9% in 2017 and 2018. As such, Obama's second term saw 2.2% and Trump so far 2.55% on average. Is that better? Yes. Is that enough to cheer about? Only if your breath reeks of turnips. Trump's result is 0.35 percentage points, or 15%, better.

Worth noting: Obama saw inflation of 0, 0, 0.25% and 0.75% while Trump has seen 1.5% and 2.5% so far. The US economy will have to do significantly better to see that 3.2% number sticking around -- and, as we've discussed earlier, because some of that was due to one-shot intellectual property purchases and others due to stockpiled goods (the sale of which does not help GDP), that's going to be a very tall order.

Oh, and to drive the point home: Trump still isn't giving the 4% he promised.

"But everyone said Trump's 2017 numbers are really Obama's fault! You're being disingenuous!"

Fine. Redo the above, only Obama adds 2017 and Trump loses it.
-- Obama hammers Trump on unemployment rate drop, as Trump now has 0.2% and nothing else and Obama's average slips to 0.8% per year. Obama is now doing four times better.
-- Trump spent every single day of 2018 with under 0.5% real wage growth, which in turn, is the worst Obama ever did.
-- Real GDP growth, Trump comes out slightly further ahead with 2.9% only and Obama keeps 2.2%. Trump's result is 31% better than Obama's.
In other words, Trump's only victory improves from "winning by 15%" to "winning by 30%", while in the other cases, "being doubled up" becomes "being quadrupled up" and "did worse on average" becomes "did worse on his best day than the winner did on his worst day".

Trump decried all of Obama's numbers as terrible. He said he could do better. He has not. He took Obama's upwards economic trends and chose to break more of them badly, than those he slightly improved.

[D Luniz]

*snip*
Worth noting: Obama saw inflation of 0, 0, 0.25% and 0.75% while Trump has seen 1.5% and 2.5% so far. The US economy will have to do significantly better to see that 3.2% number sticking around -- and, as we've discussed earlier, because some of that was due to one-shot intellectual property purchases and others due to stockpiled goods (the sale of which does not help GDP), that's going to be a very tall order.

*snip*

Id like to add something to this bolded part in your post

from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th..._theo_homepage

This stockpiling of goods boosted first-quarter GDP growth by about 70 basis points and helped propel growth to a 3.2% annual rate, well above forecasts.
The problem is that it is not at all obvious where these inventories came from. Goods have to come from somewhere, either produced by domestic firms or imported from abroad.
The mystery is that both production and imports fell in the first three months of the year, according to government data.

[Breccia]

The mystery is that both production and imports fell in the first three months of the year, according to government data.

Without evidence, I say "stored agriculture". It might not count as production, and we know we had a lot of it stored away this year.

Then the Midwest flooded and we lost a chunk of that. It wasn't insured. That means, while selling stockpiled assets is +0 GDP, stockpiling something and then losing it entirely is -GDP.

[Rasulis]

Without evidence, I say "stored agriculture". It might not count as production, and we know we had a lot of it stored away this year.

Then the Midwest flooded and we lost a chunk of that. It wasn't insured. That means, while selling stockpiled assets is +0 GDP, stockpiling something and then losing it entirely is -GDP.

That's why people farm in the middle of the desert.

You don't have to worry about flooding.

You don't have to worry about when the rain is going to stop, or start for that matter.

You don't have worry about errant summer storms wiping our your crops.

You don't have to deal with all kind of weird pathogens in your soil.

Year round planting season.

Accelerated growth due to abundant sun.

You just have to worry about getting enough water.

[Breccia]

That's why people farm in the middle of the desert.

Yeah, except Texas is running out of groundwater and etc etc covered before. Anyhow, the stockpiled Midwest crops could have been part of those GDP numbers. A quick search and I don't see any kind of breakdown of the stockpiled goods by category, but I see three ideas tossed around by blogs and the like which are sources I won't vouch for:
A) cars (but not SUV's) a trend since 2014 getting worse now
B) wholesale merchant goods, aka "retail is dying", and
C) like one dude backed me up on crops. One. Jeez, internet, thanks for nothing.

[Rasulis]

Yeah, except Texas is running out of groundwater and etc etc covered before. Anyhow, the stockpiled Midwest crops could have been part of those GDP numbers. A quick search and I don't see any kind of breakdown of the stockpiled goods by category, but I see three ideas tossed around by blogs and the like which are sources I won't vouch for:
A) cars (but not SUV's) a trend since 2014 getting worse now
B) wholesale merchant goods, aka "retail is dying", and
C) like one dude backed me up on crops. One. Jeez, internet, thanks for nothing.

There are no official numbers yet. The water is going back up again, so they have not been able to assess the stored grain losses. So I don't think the losses are included in the current GDP calculations. Farmers have been hoarding grains last year (due to reduced price from the trade war) so the losses are estimated to be on the order of 1.3B.

Farmers are in a tough spot. In the past they have two options - soy or corn. Soy is generally better in a short season. However, the price of soy is crap right now, so they only have one option - corn. We can expect an overabundance of feed corn next year, and the price will go down.

[Breccia]

So I don't think the losses are included in the current GDP calculations.

I agree. The floods started mid-March. There's little to no chance those losses were squeezed into Q1 numbers. Farmers had WAY more important things to do than talk to the government -- after all, those losses were uninsured, so there wasn't going to be a lot of help coming.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, remember when Congress and Trump ratified NAFTA 1.0.0.2 (the USMCA), replacing NAFTA with a slightly modified version?

"Uh, I remember the negotiations but -- "

PSYCH! It hasn't been signed yet. And the GOP has just dropped a bombshell on the topic: They're not going to. Unless Trump removes the steel and aluminium "national security lol" tariffs he unilaterally applied.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said over the weekend that Congress will not approve the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) unless President Trump lifts tariffs on steel and aluminum, paving the way for the two other countries to nix their retaliatory tariffs.

"If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead. There is no appetite in Congress to debate USMCA with these tariffs in place," Grassley wrote Sunday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Link to WSJ here but they have an aggressive paywall.

"Many Americans have been harmed by retaliatory tariffs. Mexican tariffs on U.S. pork, to take one example, have lowered the value of live hogs by $12 an animal," Grassley wrote, noting the impact on his home state.

"That means jobs, wages and communities are hurt every day these tariffs continue — as I hear directly from Iowans. It’s time for the tariffs to go," he wrote.

While blasting the steel and aluminum tariffs, Grassley gave a nod to Trump's tariffs against China, saying that he'd been a skeptic at first, "But I admit Mr. Trump was on to something."

The Trump administration is nearing the end of trade talks with China on a deal to lift the tariffs and make China's market friendlier to American business. Grassley said that China, and not America's allies, should be the focus of pressure.

"The administration can take the lead by promptly lifting tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico and working with allies to address the true source of overcapacity: China," Grassley said.

So here's a recap:
1) Trump declared NAFTA was the worst thing ever and he would destroy it while campaigning.
2) He was not successful.
3) So he applied metal tariffs to our neighbors and major trading partners to blackmail them into signing a deal they didn't like.
4) They didn't. They instead put up retaliatory tariffs.
5) And now the GOP, whose base this is hurting, wants the tariffs removed before the vote.
6) Giving Mexico and Canada zero reason to sign. The GOP just blinked.

Canada and Mexico now know they've got the upper hand. Trump lost his hostage.

It is now in Canada's and Mexico's best interest to refuse to sign anything. The US is bleeding money and jobs. They can wait it out. Or, they can tear up NAFTA 1.0.0.2 and ask for an even better deal -- with their own hostages: not only US farming money/jobs, but also, a cooperative deal against China as Grassley is asking.

"Well, that's not good news for Trump. But at least his base can cheer on that massive military spending boost!"

*ahem*

"Oh fuck me, what now?"

US federal spending bills this year are going to be something special. Basically, I wish @Skroe was here, but until then, I'll use this summary piece:

Trump has given the GOP leader some time to work with Democrats but doesn’t want the talks to drag on all year and lead to an agreement that would increase spending — and the budget deficit.

McConnell, a longtime member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has said he wants to try to pass regular spending bills before defaulting to a continuing resolution (CR).

To Trump, the advantages of a yearlong stopgap are obvious.

Any negotiation with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats is likely to increase spending, and that’s the last thing Trump wants ahead of his reelection effort in 2020.

Trump doesn't want to risk being put in a position of having to sign a bill that further blows up the deficit, say sources familiar with the White House’s position.

But McConnell, an ex-appropriator and dealmaker who faces a reelection race himself next year, wants to avoid a continuing resolution.

He wants to strike a deal to raise defense and non-defense spending, along the lines of what congressional leaders agreed to in the late winter of 2018.

And one reason is that under the 2011 Budget Control Act, a continuing resolution would trigger automatic spending reductions known as sequestration that would lead to huge cuts at the Pentagon and to domestic spending.

Now to be fair: nobody wants automatic budget cuts. Everyone loses.

But Trump fought so hard on so many hills oh wait he can't climb a small hill on the campaign trail and beyond that he would give the Defense the budget they wanted, with or without goddam steam. If he signs nothing, that goes away.

This means there's basically three options.

1) The House gives the Senate a budget McConnell actually likes. With the partisan divide, this is very unlikely to happen.
2) The House gives the Senate something both parties can live with (again), with spending boosts matching in the military and non-military programs. McConnell sends it to Trump, who goes into 2020 having signed the biggest deficit busting budget of all time.
3) Or, Trump vetoes it, killing defense funding while also being blamed for cutting social programs -- and the blame is accurate.

Trump promised to...look, here's the quote:

It can be done. ... It will take place and it will go relatively quickly. ... If you have the right people, like, in the agencies and the various people that do the balancing ... you can cut the numbers by two pennies and three pennies and balance a budget quickly and have a stronger and better country.

Those are from Hannity interviews. There will be no saying FAKE NEWS! today.

Of all Trump's promises, this is the one he arguably broke the most. Not only did he fail to even try to balance the budget (no really, check his own submitted budgets, laughingstocks or not they didn't do the job, either) and not only are the tax cuts for the rich failing to have the promised effect of paying for themselves, the Trump Shutdown wasn't even about spending -- except he wanted to spend more -- but he broke it in the worst possible way: going an excessive amount in the opposite direction, and doing it all on purpose.

Add the above broken promises to the now literal ten thousand lies he's told in office -- including that he called OPEC to reduce gas prices because he never called them and they're not coming down.



Are we tired of winning yet?

[Edge-]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/b...ntractors.html

Trump, champion of the "working man", and his labor department seem to be siding with tech companies rather than the "independent contractors" that they fuck over to build their riches upon.

So much for caring about the working class, guess gig workers will continue to enjoy all the benefits of not having any employment protections while the tech bros pull in huge paychecks and enjoy all that sweet IPO money.

[Edge-]

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/pol...509222551.html

Some more fact-checking on this.

I missed where he said we need more workers in the US. It's almost like the US isn't "full" like he's previously claimed, and that the data shows we need to continue to bring in more immigrants to keep a growing workforce and economy.

But of course his contradictions will be ignored by his supporters, as they always seem to be.

[Paranoid Android]

Foxconn got a $4B tax incentive package to build a huge factory in Wisconsin, a plan urged by Trump. Contractors bulldozed 75 homes and cleared hundreds of acres. Then Foxconn retreated. By Dec. 31, the company spent 1% of its pledged investment.
https://t.co/4bWSDE64hB

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/...987769857?s=19

I don't live in Wisconsin but if this is not used in political ads for upcoming elections would amaze me.

This goes more to Scott Walker, who is gone but you must educate the Wisconsin electorate that they are not on their side.

[Skroe]

Now to be fair: nobody wants automatic budget cuts. Everyone loses.

But Trump fought so hard on so many hills oh wait he can't climb a small hill on the campaign trail and beyond that he would give the Defense the budget they wanted, with or without goddam steam. If he signs nothing, that goes away.

This means there's basically three options.

1) The House gives the Senate a budget McConnell actually likes. With the partisan divide, this is very unlikely to happen.
2) The House gives the Senate something both parties can live with (again), with spending boosts matching in the military and non-military programs. McConnell sends it to Trump, who goes into 2020 having signed the biggest deficit busting budget of all time.
3) Or, Trump vetoes it, killing defense funding while also being blamed for cutting social programs -- and the blame is accurate.

It's going to be (2) until the end of time. I know you know that, but it's mindboggling it has to be explained to folks years after Sequestration, after two rounds (and soon three) of two-year budget deals.

In the modern United States, with extremely developed and mature legal and political infrastructure, the primary functional outcome of congressional representation is to maximize the amount of Federal tax dollars redistributed to the States. It could be through defense. it could be through non-defense. It could be through Healthcare. Moving money around is good for the national economy, is good for states and their services, and is a reliable way for a politician to argue for re-election.

I shared this before and I'll dig up the graph if I'm asked, but well over half of all federal tax dollars spent on Defense go towards blue states. Maine, Connecticut, Virgina, California, Washington State, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and others are all important parts of the defense-industrial complex. "Massachusetts you say". One of the states largest employers used to be (it still may be) is Raytheon. I grew up in a town with a fortress like Raytheon across from a Star Market, for crying out lout.

Similarly, as shared in another thread last week, the biggest recipients of federal tax dollars overall, are predominantly red states.

This is why the Wall is Dead, and it's never coming back.
This is why Medicare For All and free college for all are never going to happen.
This is why a big cut to defense spending is never going to happen.

Politicians say they want things. They do it on behalf of their constituents. They'll get on TV and say it. They'll get in front of crowds and say it. They'll fundraise and say it.

But when the chips are down, and they have to choose between cutting off the reliable flow of federal dollars to their states that they're already getting, in order to bring about some policy change, most will never pull the trigger. The zealots among them will. There will always be some "Tea Party" type thing. But the vast majority wont. A congressman may want universal healthcare or the wall. They don't necessarily want it so much that it endangers the $1.5 billion their district is getting in the next two years for a Pentagon contract.

Oh, and by the way, replacing your Congressmen and Senators doesn't work either. Go look at the turn-over in the House and Senate since 2012. The new guys do this just as much as the old guys.

This gets back to, and I really wish people would just *listen* on this, trying to utilize the Federal Government to do things nationally for what should be done at the State level. The wrong tool is being used, and the tool is functioning as it is designed, making alternative outcomes improbable. State legislatures and governors don't face these pressures. Most "trans-formative" policy, of any sort, will be far faster implemented and better executed at the State level, financed by State taxes.

Moving it up to the Federal level just leads to endless rounds of can kicking because hazy long term goals ALWAYS come second to near term priorities, which in this case is to make sure the Federal dollar spigot never gets turned off.

I've said that Democrats would be insane to not nuke the Filibuster if they manage to retake the Senate and the presidency in 2022. I've said it is entirely in their interest to wage thermonuclear policy warfare. If they don't, Republicans will eventually. But even if they did that, the Bernie Sanders wish-list comes on top of what is already there. If he were to suggest cutting defense spending or any type of spending, fellow Democrats would laugh at him.

So this is what is going to happen. Sometime in the next 8 months, Chuck, Nancy and Mitch are going to come together to make a budget that is broadly unobjectionable and increases everything for everybody. AOC will hate it. Sanders will denounce it (though not the F-35 contracts Vermont gets of course). The Freedom Caucus will lose their shit as usual. But it'll be popular enough with broad spectrum super-majority from center right to center left, that Trump will cry like a bitch again and sign it. And that will handcuff Trump's ability to do anything from October 1st 2019 to September 30th 2020, and his successor from October 1st 2020 until September 30th 2021.

Rather than treat politics like an article of pop culture, folks need to pay more attention to how sausage is made.

[Elegiac]

He lives. Welcome back my dude. @Skroe

[Skroe]

He lives. Welcome back my dude. @Skroe

There ain't now alt-right forum goon who will ever keep me down!

[Nellise]

https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/...987769857?s=19

I don't live in Wisconsin but if this is not used in political ads for upcoming elections would amaze me.

This goes more to Scott Walker, who is gone but you must educate the Wisconsin electorate that they are not on their side.

The pushback already is that since the new governor was opposed to it, it scared Foxconn away, so Republicans are using that. It's insane since Foxconn has a history of pulling out of deals like this, but somehow this is the Democrats' fault.

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/homela...rotests-report

The Department of Homeland Security used a private security firm to monitor more than 600 planned protests against the Trump administration’s family separation policy last summer, according to a Monday report from The Intercept. Documents shared with the outlet reportedly show that LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, compiled a list of the hundreds of protests and associated Facebook accounts, and shared that list with DHS and state-level law enforcement. DHS did not deny that the information was shared with the department, but called the data “unsolicited.”

Immigration attorneys told The Intercept that they were furious that government resources were being used to keep tabs on activists. “The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration’s shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,” the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project told The Intercept. “They’ll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.”

Taxpayer dollars going to good use to...pay for private security to "monitor" peaceful, planned protests.

Money that could have gone towards just about anything else in the world and been more productive. Why is DHS and the Trump administration afraid of peaceful liberals protesting the governments policy of kidnapping children?

[kaelleria]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/homela...rotests-report



Taxpayer dollars going to good use to...pay for private security to "monitor" peaceful, planned protests.

Money that could have gone towards just about anything else in the world and been more productive. Why is DHS and the Trump administration afraid of peaceful liberals protesting the governments policy of kidnapping children?

Because obviously after you start tracking journalists you need to start tracking protests!

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/investig...506783231.html

[Edge-]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-deputy-...213716952.html

Rosenstein out on May 11.

[D Luniz]

*snip*

side note on the farmer issue
China has some disease thats expected to kill a fourth of their pigs
one of the main reasons they import so many soy beans is to feed the pigs. So even if the tariffs were removed, and they could get their contracts back from the Brazilian farmers that took over selling to china, the market demand might be gone for a year or more