Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

Salutary lesson to those in the Conservative Party ,one would now hope ?

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk sparred on social media Tuesday with White House Senior Counselor Peter Navarro, after Navarro said in an interview Monday that Tesla was a car "assembler" rather than a manufacturer.

"Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks," Musk said in an X post on Tuesday.

"Navarro is truly a moron," Musk said in a separate post. "What he says here is demonstrably false."

Both Navarro and Musk are two of Trump’s closest advisors, and Navarro previously served in Trump's first administration as the director of the White House National Trade Council and the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

The corruption just keeps getting more blatant. After launching his own cryptocurrency 3 days before inauguration, the Trump admin is now disbanding a unit dedicated to crypto-related investigations. NCET, or the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Unit, was disbanded “effective immediately” last night as part of the agency’s efforts to comply with Trump’s January executive order on digital assets, which aimed to “establish regulatory clarity” for the industry.

https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/04/08/doj-ncet-disbands-memo-todd-blanche-trump/

Yes its massively undemocratic, the UK have only had 1 government in the last 100 years elected by a majority of voters thanks to FPtP.

In 2024 Labour won 63% of seats with only 33% of the votes

The UK has FPTP and several parties which can gain seats in its parliament and usually solves this potential issue via coalitions. I realise that the American political system at its top level is really geared toward oppositionality rather than broad, calm consensus, so the whole idea is quite alien to them, but they have had political coalitions in the distant past, of a sort, in 1854, 1858, 1860 and 1862. The timing of these coalitions does speak to the idea that America's really in trouble if anything disrupts their usual system because it speaks to intense political pressure, but I think America's getting to that point again.

At the moment, you have the MAGA caucus utterly dominating the Republican party. Moderates don't get much of a say on the party's direction. On the other side, with the Democrats, the corporate centre is quelling any new thinking from the left wing of the party. It used to be that both parties functioned as de-facto coalitions in their own right between several factions or 'caucuses' but this is getting less and less true. MAGA are busy tearing down US democracy while the left of the Democrats are screaming at the party's power brokers to do something, but they just carry on like it's business as usual. Something has to give, here.

40 minutes left for Trump's deadline

I am wracking my brain thinking what would China want to buy from the US? Aside from the odd car, and bottles of wine, there's not a whole lot. Certainly nothing crucial. Meanwhile an analyst on CNN last night said that tarrifs could increase the price of the new iPhone to $3000 for Americans.

Honest question, what do you think the EU will end up having to concede to satisfy the orange buffoon?

Whoa. I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Elon. Navarro is a criminal (another convicted felon) and obviously a fraud. Shouldn't be on the street let alone in the WH. I didn't think Trump could do worse than Kudlow as an economic adviser, but Kudlow's just a fool, not a criminal, fool, naieve zealot like Navarro.

Trumpspeak has to be translated to reality speak.

Trumpspeak "Things are going well" Reality - It is an Armageddon situation, a million people have died from Covid

Trumpspeak "Things are going very well"

Reality - Stock markets are crashing, unemployment rising rapidly, Gaza out of control

Trumpspeak "We are doing exceptionally well, like no one would believe"

Reality - Stock market falling but not too many planes falling out of the sky

Trumpspeak "We are performing better than anyone in history, by a lot, it is not even close"

Reality - Trump has been playing golf for the day, nothing much happened

I have no idea for what Trumpspeak would be for a Reality of things going well. We will just have to wait and see if this ever happens

"Pharmaceutical and medicine exports to China saw continued growth
US exports of pharmaceuticals and medicines to China continued their growth streak, jumping $3 billion in
2022, or 38 percent. Much of this growth was concentrated in North Carolina, which boosted its exports by
$2.1 billion compared to the year prior. A handful of states also saw massive growth relative to 2021, with
Rhode Island, Utah, Nevada, Arkansas, Michigan, Louisiana, and North Carolina all more than doubling their
pharmaceutical exports to China. While this report does not include data for territories such as Puerto Rico or
the US Virgin Islands, it is noteworthy that Puerto Rico exported $1.1 billion in pharmaceuticals to China in
2022, behind only North Carolina and Indiana.
Over the past few years, China has sped up regulatory processes for new drug approvals, which has allowed
US companies to more rapidly bring new drugs to the country’s market. While some US companies are able to
export a large amount of high-value, high-demand drugs that have no domestic equivalents in China, China’s
national pharmaceutical procurement program may pose a long-term barrier to continued growth for US
companies in this sector."

If we weren’t in EU (your dream) Ireland would have gotten 69% tarrifs due to us being such a large exporter (thanks to EU) to US

Technology would be one area - although over time the technology that China has been importing has decreased because they have been knocking out their own, firstly as copies of Western technology and then as better versions.

They still have to import massive amounts of semi conductors from other Asian countries for all the kit they produce.

One of China's biggest imports is food, they have massive amount of people and even though big country huge chunks are not suitable for massive agriculture due to desserts, mountains, etc.

The Chinese haven't been investing in Africa or Siberia for no reason.

wow…104% more on china…has he upped the tariffs on the penguins yet…?

"they're taxing the penguins..."