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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: 'Nowhere on earth is safe.' [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-03
We begin today with Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reminding us exactly where the real power to impose tariffs lies.
Two thoughts on today’s tariffs. I could get into the substance of the decision. But I think that goes without saying. Point one is that we should remember that Presidents have no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. This isn’t like war powers or pardons where these are questions the Constitution assigns to the will of one person. They are entirely delegated by Congress and could be taken back at any moment. They are also explicitly reserved for emergencies. They aren’t meant to be used as to create entirely novel trade regimes. But Congress lets the President decide what constitutes an emergency. The logic of that delegation is based on the flexibility and convenience the delegation creates and the assumption that the president wouldn’t be nuts. The Republican Congress could bring this absurd gambit to a halt tonight. So it’s all on them, every one of them individually. Point two is what happened today in the equities markets. In a more or less immediate response to Trump’s 4 p.m. speechlet they dropped precipitously. On first blush that makes sense. These tariffs at best represent a big shock to the economy. At worst, well … at worst it’s much worse. But this is actually very, very weird. Trump wasn’t coy. These tariffs have been telegraphed weeks in advance and with increasing certainty and specificity in recent days. While the precise details were somewhat up in the air, in broad outline Trump announced exactly what he’s been saying he was going to announce for days. This suggests the equities markets are still in the grip of quite a bit of magical thinking, especially about Donald Trump.
Olivia M. Bridges of Roll Call reports that the U.S. Senate passed a bill easing the impact of tariffs on Canada.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was a co-sponsor of the measure offered by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, along with Paul, voted in support of the resolution. Republicans had previously been largely uncritical of Trump’s trade agenda. “It is crucial that we remain a dependent and vibrant global trading partner, particularly with Canada,” Collins said, raising concerns about the impact on aquaculture, manufacturing, tourism and other industries. “These tariffs on Canada would jeopardize current jobs and also block future ones.” [...] The president’s executive order declaring the emergency said the intent was to get Canada to address the flow of fentanyl and immigration crossing the border to the U.S. Collins said that less than 1 percent of fentanyl was trafficked through Canada in fiscal 2024.
Truly, we should thank Senator Collins for her “concerns” (need I add the ROFL?) even though the Senate’s measure is likely to fail in passing the House.
And yes, aquaculture is a very important thing.
Sebastian Strangio of The Diplomat looks at the harsh impact of the tacky shoe salesman’s new tariffs on Southeast Asia.
According to a list of tariffs released by the White House, which appear to include the 10 percent baseline tariff, three Southeast Asian nations were among the hardest hit nations in the world: Cambodia, which was slapped with a 49 percent tariff, Laos (48 percent), and Vietnam (46 percent). Myanmar, which is subject to layers of U.S. sanctions and currently conducts minuscule amounts of trade with the U.S., will be subject to a 44 percent tariff. It was followed by Thailand (36 percent), Indonesia (32 percent), Brunei (24 percent), and Malaysia (24 percent). The nations that got off most lightly were the Philippines (17 percent), Timor-Leste (10 percent), and Singapore (10 percent). The latter two are the only Southeast Asian nations that currently run a trade surplus with the U.S. [...] As numerous observers have already noted, the tariffs that the administration claims have been imposed on U.S. goods correspond to the nations’ current trade surplus with the United States, expressed as a percentage of these nations’ total exports to the U.S. This is true of the figures for all nine of the Southeast Asian nations that have been subjected to reciprocal tariffs, as well as seemingly every other nation that falls into this category. (The White House later appeared to confirmthis.) The fact that the administration has passed this off as a “tariff” rate, and then used this as the basis for the imposition of so-called reciprocal tariffs on other nations – in most cases the latter seems to have been calculated simply by halving the former – is a sign of spectacular mendacity and incompetence. As Mike Bird of The Economist noted on X, the fraudulent way that the tariffs were calculated is “almost a worse signal than the tariffs themselves.”
Kate Lyons and Nick Evershed of the Guardian reports that even a few uninhabited island territories governed by Australia were subjected to Trump’s tariffs.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast. They are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago. Nevertheless, Heard and McDonald islands featured in a list released by the White House of “countries” that would have new trade tariffs imposed. The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said on Thursday: “Nowhere on earth is safe.” Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several “external territories” of Australia listed separately in the tariff list to Australia, which will see a 10% tariff imposed on its goods. External territories are part of Australia and not self-governing but have a unique relationship with the federal government. Such territories featured on the White House list were the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Islandand Norfolk Island.
Parish Dave and Louise Matsakis of WIRED report that federal funding for a program designed to provide consulting to small manufacturers is being withheld.
At the height of the US trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas, and dog food. But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities. [...] The Democratic congressional aides and heads of MEP centers in multiple states believe that abandoning support for the program runs counter to Trump’s long-standing goals of boosting domestic manufacturing and winning the ongoing trade war with China. While the president has demonstrated a preference for punitive measures such as tariffs over subsidies to increase American manufacturing capacity, his defunding of the centers could leave US small businesses without the support they need to take advantage of such policies, advocates for the MEP program say.
One area of the world curiously absent from being affected by Trump’s tariffs is Russia. In fact, Albert Torres and David J.Kramer of Just Security report that the Trump Administration is read to lift sanctions and do business in Russia.
Yet just three weeks after the Riyadh meeting, the Trump administration began prepping proposals for sanctions relief and held talks to resume the transportation of Russian gas via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, an almost 800-mile artery from Russia to Germany. Most recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that “there is a conversation about Nord Stream” with the United States and that “it would be interesting if the Americans used their influence on Europe and forced it not to give up Russian gas.” A similar agreement between the two countries is currently under consideration for joint projects involving rare earth metals, with several companies reportedly expressing interest. Meanwhile, the American Chamber of Commerce, which represents American companies operating in Russia, is working on a report for the U.S. government with proposals to lift restrictions and recover lost market share connected to existing sanctions. Putin, eager to reopen the Russian market to Western businesses after years of being ostracized because of his brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine and eyeing a potential infusion of dollars, ordered his Cabinet of Ministers just days after the Riyadh meeting to prepare for the return of Western companies into the Russian economy. A week later, hoping to capitalize on the budding relationship, Putin endorsed the idea of his own minerals deal with the United States as a counterproposal to negotiations being conducted at the time between the United States and Ukraine. Putin’s offer of resources to American partners – including in “new territories,” a brazen term coined by Putin for Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine – is designed to lure eager American businesspeople.
I noticed that the tariff news seemed to wipe the national security story du jour off of the front pages but there is Dasha Burns of POLITICO’s reporting that national security advisor Mike Waltz had at least 20 Signal accounts set up for working on a variety of national security issues.
National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats. Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed. [...] Waltz’s use of Signal to coordinate the work of the NSC has come under intense public scrutiny after he accidentally included a journalist on the Signal group text about military strikes in Yemen, sparking a firestorm of political backlash and calls for Trump to force Waltz out of his job. Waltz and incoming NSC staff first started using Signal prolifically during the transition period before the inauguration and never stopped, according to another one of the four people who participated in the chats.
Gmail accounts for national security business. Really?!
Don Moynihan of the “Can We Still Govern” Substack encapsulates the totality of Elon Musk’s loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Musk’s candidate lost by 10 points. In Wisconsin terms, that is a landslide. Trump won the state by less than one percent. A GOP-backed referendum to add voter ID to the constitution, intended to boost Schimel, passed. Dems won a less visible race, for State Superintendent for education, but only by about five percent even with an incumbent candidate. Crawford supporters were less likely to vote for downballot races — their focus was on the Supreme Court race. All signs suggest that Musk was a drag, rather than a boost, to the candidate he invested so much personal and financial capital into. Musk spent his money not just on advertising, but by paying voters in what looks awfully like a bribe. Musk promised to pay people $100 to sign his petition against what he called activist judges (i.e. judges he disagrees with), or $50 to show pictures of his preferred candidates at voting locations. [...] And so, the race centered on Musk: could the richest man in the world buy an election in a state he had never previously visited to protect his movement (and increasingly, it is his movement, not just Trump’s)? In his event for Schimel, Musk was unable to refer to Wisconsin issues, and instead delivered “extended monologues about immigration policy, alleged fraud in the Social Security system and the future of artificial intelligence.” Could he engage in brazen election deception and paying voters for their participation? Could the sheer volume of money overcome the increasing dislike of Musk and anger at his dismantling of public services? The stakes could not be higher. If Musk won, his combination of unlimited money and social media dominance would appear unbeatable. But his loss signals that money and messaging cannot dominate the deep and growing sense of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, and with Musk in particular.
The independent Russian media outlet Meduza has a photo essay of some of the Ukrainian mining areas being affected by ongoing “negotiations” over mineral rights between the U.S. and Ukraine.
Ukrainian experts reviewing a new draft resource agreement from the United States — one that now extends far beyond rare earth minerals — have warned it could jeopardize the country’s path toward European integration. One government official, speaking anonymously to The Financial Times, describedthe U.S. proposal as “robbery.” The British outlet The Times framed it as yet another attempt to “humiliate” Ukraine’s leadership, while also noting that it remains unclear how such a sweeping deal could be implemented in a country still at war, with parts of its territory under occupation. So far, Ukrainian officials have avoided public criticism of the proposal, saying only that negotiations are ongoing. “Any public discussion of this agreement only harms the talks and makes it harder to engage constructively with our American partners,” said First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said only that “the terms keep changing,” and added that he currently has no plans to travel to Washington to sign the agreement. (An earlier version of the deal was left unsigned in February, when what was meant to be a straightforward trip to formalize the agreement devolved into an Oval Office shouting match.) Shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, The Washington Post reportedthat Russian forces had seized territories containing 63 percent of Ukraine’s coal reserves, 11 percent of its oil, 20 percent of its natural gas, 42 percent of its metals, and 33 percent of its rare earth and other strategic minerals. Here’s a look at what the war has done to several of these sites — deposits the United States now hopes to gain access to.
Finally today, Eleri Griffiths of BBC News presents the author of a known fake story that Google AI presented as real information.
In 2020, Mr Black published a fake story claiming Cwmbran had been recognised by Guinness World Records for having the most roundabouts per square kilometre. Despite altering the wording of his article that afternoon, when he searched for it on 1 April he said he was "shocked" and "worried" to find the false information being used by Google's AI tool and presented as real information. [...] The concept for his story in 2020 came from Cwmbran being a new town, where "often linking houses with roundabouts is the easiest way to build". "I made up a number for the roundabouts per square kilometre and added a fake quote from a resident and clicked publish. "It went down really well from memory, people laughed," he said. That afternoon, Mr Black marked the story as an April Fools' prank to clarify it was not fake news to his readers. However, the next day, he was "annoyed" to find it had been picked up by a larger national news website without his permission, and despite efforts to try and get the story removed, the story is still online.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
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