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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Point of no return [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-13
We begin today with Jerusalem Demsas of The Atlantic that the Trump Administration has reached the point of no return with their on-and-off tariff regime.
The first Trump administration flirted with protectionism, but nothing like what the second Trump administration is trying now. Those earlier efforts seem quaint in hindsight. Not only were tariffs imposed selectively on specific goods such as solar panels and aluminum, but they were much smaller in size and escalated gradually over the course of 2018 and 2019. This was trivial compared with the plans launched and unlaunched over the past 10 days that have sent bond markets reeling. Usually, investors in search of a haven from a plummeting stock market will flee to buy safe, reliable U.S. Treasury bonds, but the opposite seems to be happening, indicating that investors no longer view the U.S. government as the safest bet in town. America sports a half-earned cockiness that has mostly served the country well. But as the Financial Times’ Tej Parikh pointed out earlier this week, the United States “isn’t the main driver of global trade growth,” and despite being the world’s largest economy, just over 13 percent of world imports flowed into its borders (as of November 2024). Instead of reshaping trade partnerships to further benefit the U.S., it could be left behind. One analysis Parikh cites—as something of a thought experiment, hopefully—tries to model what would happen to America’s trading partners if the country were to be fully closed to trade in 2025. That analysis predicts that, within the year, nearly 41 percent of U.S. trading partners would have fully recovered from the lost U.S. exports, and by 2029, 100 out of 144 trading partners would have recovered the entirety of their loss of U.S. sales because of the expected growth in other economies.
Jonathan Freedland of Guardian crowns the tacky shoe salesman as the world’s biggest drama queen and notes that the entire world is paying a price.
Last week, it was Trump as gameshow host in the White House Rose Garden, proudly unveiling his Price is Right table of import duties, listing each country alongside the percentage by which it was about to get whacked. He called it “liberation day”. This week, it was the 90-day “pause” – climbdown would be another word – for everywhere except China, which got hit with extra levies. Throughout, people in every ministry and trading floor on the planet held their breath, along with the boardroom of every company that buys or sells overseas, as they watched to see what Trump would do next to the global economy currently held hostage in the Oval Office. With a gun to the temple of the world trading system, Trump’s every twitch has commanded humanity’s attention. And, my, how he loves it. You could see his pleasure as he told a Republican dinner on Tuesday that the world’s nations were “kissing my ass” to negotiate a deal that would spare them tariff pain. For him, the uncertainty is all part of the fun. As the Economist rightly observed, he relishes “being the focus of a planetary guessing game”. Trump used to get his dopamine hit from a mention in the gossip columns of the New York tabloids; now he’s tasted the thrill of commanding an audience in the billions and he’s hooked. But consider the price we are all paying. I don’t (only) mean those trillions of dollars wiped out at a stroke through tumbling stocks, or even the investments put on hold as businesses decide that, amid all this uncertainty, now is not the right time to open that new factory or launch that new product, thereby delaying, perhaps for ever, the jobs or wages that would have found their way to people who need them.
Paul Krugman has a conversation with former 538 editor-in-chief G. Elliott Morris.
Krugman: Okay, that's where I want to go now. So, it's only about 30% of the population actually sees any news? G. Elliott Morris: News from a news outlet on a daily basis. Monthly news share is much higher, it's close to 60 or 70%, according to Pew. But 30% of people are consuming news directly from news outlets daily. It's probably close to 90 % if you count social media. But that sort of underscores the point, which is, if the stock market falls, even if you're not directly exposed to it, you can be exposed to negative news about the stock market. And that’s because of the way that modern, especially network and cable news is set up to really draw you in, to have some sort of number that they can cite and repeat, to have some sort of source of objectivity and the need for it to be fresh. All those three things make people latch on to stock market numbers. It's also really easy to draw a chart that looks like this inverse hockey stick and it's scary. And so, people watch the news. So, I think, maybe to pick up where you're going, the exposure that people have to news about the stock market is much higher than their direct exposure to the stock market. And it's very easy to tell stories about the president's effect on the stock market, which is usually, you know, zero, but this time probably 100% attributable to the president's actions.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is sounding like Kagro in the Morning’s very own David Waldman; that is, where are the paper trails for all these deals being cut with law firms and universities by the Trump Administration?
Here’s one thing that’s hardly been discussed as far as I can tell. We know about the Trump “deals” with various law firms. We know about the “deal” with Columbia University, which the administration has now violated to the extent it was ever actually a deal. But where are these deals? What are they exactly? I mean, have these agreements been committed to paper? In every one of these that I have seen each side has a general description of what’s been agreed to but there’s no document that you would have in the real world – or the real non-corrupt world – when two parties agree to something.
William H. Frey of Brookings Institution says that America’s urban areas are gaining in population again because of immigration.
These new numbers, detailing growth in the nation’s metro areas and counties though the middle of last year, follow those released earlier for the nation and states, and incorporate updated immigration numbers. 1 They indicate that the rise in immigration over the 2023-24 period drove national population growth to the largest level in two decades, and accounted for most of the growth in 38 states. The new data show immigration to be especially essential for the growth of the nation’s major metro areas (those with populations exceeding 1 million), as well as the cities and core counties within them. The data also reveal a softening of peak pandemic-era domestic migration patterns, with smaller out-migration flows from coastal and Midwest metro areas and reduced in-migration to “pandemic magnets” in the South and West. [...] Among the 55 major metro areas, only one (Memphis, Tenn.) lost population in 2023-24, compared with 20 in 2020-21, 14 in 2021-22, and five in 2022-23 (see downloadable Table A). Fifty-two grew more rapidly in 2023-24 than in 2020-21, led by New York, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C. While natural increase rose somewhat in most areas and domestic out-migration softened in the last three years, immigration contributions grew substantially in the last two years, affecting all areas in 2023-24.
Finally today, Alex Taylor of BBC News announces that a spin-off of Saturday Night Live will be debuting in Great Britain next year.
For five decades, the phrase "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" has boldly opened episodes of Saturday Night Live, with its tried and tested mix of topical sketch comedy, celebrity cameos and big-name musical guests. Now, the stateside staple is to come live from London after Sky announced plans for a "star-studded" UK spin-off, fronted by British comedic talent, to launch next year. Overseen by the US original show's creator Lorne Michaels, now 80, the broadcaster is promising the same "live, fast-paced style" as its American cousin. [...] There are some notable differences between the two transatlantic TV industries. The US SNL budget will be far bigger than UK TV norm, paying for a large cast and a team of writers working to the wire to keep jokes current. "In the American version, it's a very expensive format, having a writers' room and keeping a cast of actors on retainer, essentially, the whole time. That's really expensive," Lewis told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.
Everyone try to have the best possible day that you can!
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