By Michael Woyton
If you’ve looked at your stock ticker or favorite stock app, no doubt you’ve noticed that people who buy stocks aren’t that happy about the “pause” on tariffs that President Donald J. Felon announced Wednesday.
That’s because, sorry about the all caps, THERE ARE STILL TARIFFS IN EFFECT.
So if you read or heard that the grifter-in-chief paused tariffs which corrected the market drop, you haven’t been given all the information.
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Yes, the adjudicated rapist blinked when he finally realized — or someone was able to get him to understand — that “stocks going down and bonds going up” was a terrible thing for him — not for the country or you and me.
Most likely someone said the magic words “Trump Recession” and that scared the orange makeup off of him.
In any case, the mayor of Mar-a-Lago paused the higher targeted tariffs for 90 days, but did not pause the 125 percent tariffs on China or the 10 percent across-the-board tariffs, according to NBC News.
NOTE: CNBC clarified Thursday morning that the actual tariffs on China are now 145 percent.
To put it another way, the current occupant of the Oval Office decided not to go through with the additional tariffs he trotted out on a big display the other day in the Rose Garden. You know, the one where he was putting an additional tariff on a couple of islands in the southern hemisphere that were only occupied by penguins.
That’s enough on the seesawing stock market for today. I don’t know what the Mad King will next say that will send Wall Street into a frenzy.
What I can say is that, yes, my 401(k)s did go back up yesterday, but it’s no where near where it was on Jan. 20. And if the Dow continues to drop today, it will probably go back down.
Congress could stop this madness if they wanted to.
If you have Republicans representing you in Congress, it’s worth giving them a call or sending them a message. Call the Democrats, too.
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Some Democrats in the Senate are going to look into whether all the market fluctuations led to some financial shenanigans.
Sens. Adam Schiff, D-California, and Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, have accused the president of facilitating insider trading, according KEYE, a CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas.
The two senators wrote a letter to the Office of Government Ethics and White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles asking “whether President Donald Trump, his family, or other members of the administration engaged in insider trading or other illegal financial transactions, informed by advance knowledge of non-public information regarding his changes to tariff policy, yesterday or at any time during this administration.”
Of note, Schiff and Gallego pointed out an 18 percent surge in the price of Tesla stock and the presidential social media posts such as “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.”
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At the ASU+SGSV Summit Tuesday in San Diego, Education Secretary Linda McMahon lived up to the legacy of Betsy DeVos while speaking at one of the panel discussions on “AI in the Workforce.”
As can be heard in the clip below, which is cued up to the moment McMahon was speaking (about 2:06:00), she said, not once but twice, how great it will be that even the youngest school children will be able to take advantage of “A1” technology.
Perhaps McMahon should try using AI technology to find out that it stands for artificial intelligence and not the tasty steak sauce.
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And in addition to slashing Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for billionaires, the Mad King wants to put tariffs on prescription drugs.
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Lead art: Screen grab from CNBC
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