"But real, lasting damage has already been down, and it will take years, if not generations, to repair it." - maybe we can accelerate the repair with some constitutional amendments? For example requiring all new/changed tariffs to be approved or rejected (majority? 3/5s?) by congress within 30 days.
And while we're at it: begin an automatic impeachment if a president defies a supreme court decision. Also term limits and age limits.
Term limits won’t matter in my gerrymandered state. And if we do institute them you can bet corporations and right wing organizations will just choose candidates that will do their bidding in exchange for a high paying position when their term is up. I also don’t care much about age limits. Nancy Pelosi was one of the most effective Speakers when she was in her 80s. Getting rid of Citizens United would be far more impactful.
That was only a partial list of my proposed constitutional amendments: replacing the electoral college with a direct popular vote, corporations are not people, contribution limits, redistricting to list a few. There are so many more - my point being that this can theoretically be made much better.
George W Bush walking away from the agreement the Clinton administration North Korean nuclear arms agreement was clear evidence that other nations can’t trust us to uphold our agreements, at least when Republicans are in power. Most people are not aware of that fact because the media chose to erase that story, even after North Korea had obtained nukes and the missiles to deliver them. As a result Bush did not pay the price for badly damaging trust in our country’s word. Trump then destroyed Obama’s agreement with Iran — a story the the media paid far more attention to but without bringing up the fact that Bush had done the same with the NK agreement. (In both cases the warmonger John Bolton was pushing hard behind the scenes to undo those agreements.)
if we can't unload our debt by virtue of being the default currency, we have troubles.... as in even more exorbitant piece of the pie spent on interest on the national debt. All by this stupid stupid man and his enablers, who incidentally want to pile on more debt to pad already stuffed pockets. Fight on guys....
The United States are facing a possibility it hasn’t truly encountered in nearly a century: the need to internalize the cost of its own crisis. There may be no external landing pad this time. No one left willing, or able, to carry the burden of America’s excesses. Is the “Sell America” trade just another passing mood, or are we witnessing something deeper?
Electoral outcomes, when observed over time, display statistical regularities, yet these patterns are not temporally stable. While certain jurisdictions may appear structurally robust, the persistence of political equilibria is contingent on a range of economic and institutional factors. In this sense, stability is often illusory, a function of historical path dependence rather than an inherent characteristic of the system itself. It is particularly relevant to consider how shifts in political preferences can be conceptualized probabilistically, with different regimes corresponding to distinct probability distributions. Movements toward the tails of these distributions should be avoided, as they are typically dangerous and, more often than not, unidirectional.
Regarding the 'blips' - I agree, they are best ignored. However, they are also trading opportunities for those with advance notice. The Trump regime is not only incompetent but also highly unlawful.
Trump ran on the premise, "I alone can fix these problems."
In reality, he alone was the person most able to unwind the post WW2 order.
And he has done that by trying to force Ukraine to accept what cannot, by UN mandate, be accepted - validating Russian territorial ambitions.
Looking beyond Trade, save to note that nothing has been definitively resolved with China or Japan, consider our fiscal situation.
Trump was elected by the oligarchs to force sufficient spending cuts to put the US fiscal deficit back onto a sustainable trajectory. He's cut taxes but will cave when it comes to the spending cuts.
So we are heading to disaster.
As the CBO said in a letter to Sen Merkley (dated 4/10/25) when asked about Trump's plan:
In that scenario, deficits and debt are larger than they are in CBO’s extended baseline (see Figure 1):
• Primary deficits over the first decade of the projection period (fiscal years 2026 to 2035) are about $6 trillion larger. By 2055, the primary deficit equals 3.8 percent of GDP, 1.9 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• The total deficit in 2055 equals 12.0 percent of GDP, 4.7 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline. • Debt held by the public in 2055 equals 220 percent of GDP, 63 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• The average interest rate on federal debt in 2055 equals 4.0 percent, 0.3 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• Real GNP per person is 3.3 percent lower in 2055 than in CBO’s extended baseline (or $4,375 lower, in 2025 dollars).
The 74M Trump voters haven’t been dissuaded, Congress is behind him, DOGE is continuing to disassemble the government and SCOTUS is reluctant to stand in his way, he hasn’t issued an Executive Order republishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion yet, it’s probably coming …
"But real, lasting damage has already been down, and it will take years, if not generations, to repair it." - maybe we can accelerate the repair with some constitutional amendments? For example requiring all new/changed tariffs to be approved or rejected (majority? 3/5s?) by congress within 30 days.
And while we're at it: begin an automatic impeachment if a president defies a supreme court decision. Also term limits and age limits.
Term limits won’t matter in my gerrymandered state. And if we do institute them you can bet corporations and right wing organizations will just choose candidates that will do their bidding in exchange for a high paying position when their term is up. I also don’t care much about age limits. Nancy Pelosi was one of the most effective Speakers when she was in her 80s. Getting rid of Citizens United would be far more impactful.
That was only a partial list of my proposed constitutional amendments: replacing the electoral college with a direct popular vote, corporations are not people, contribution limits, redistricting to list a few. There are so many more - my point being that this can theoretically be made much better.
George W Bush walking away from the agreement the Clinton administration North Korean nuclear arms agreement was clear evidence that other nations can’t trust us to uphold our agreements, at least when Republicans are in power. Most people are not aware of that fact because the media chose to erase that story, even after North Korea had obtained nukes and the missiles to deliver them. As a result Bush did not pay the price for badly damaging trust in our country’s word. Trump then destroyed Obama’s agreement with Iran — a story the the media paid far more attention to but without bringing up the fact that Bush had done the same with the NK agreement. (In both cases the warmonger John Bolton was pushing hard behind the scenes to undo those agreements.)
Great post. Thank you.
He already has.
if we can't unload our debt by virtue of being the default currency, we have troubles.... as in even more exorbitant piece of the pie spent on interest on the national debt. All by this stupid stupid man and his enablers, who incidentally want to pile on more debt to pad already stuffed pockets. Fight on guys....
The United States are facing a possibility it hasn’t truly encountered in nearly a century: the need to internalize the cost of its own crisis. There may be no external landing pad this time. No one left willing, or able, to carry the burden of America’s excesses. Is the “Sell America” trade just another passing mood, or are we witnessing something deeper?
https://open.substack.com/pub/marketszoon/p/the-great-unwind-sell-america-this?r=58uzcq&utm_medium=ios
Electoral outcomes, when observed over time, display statistical regularities, yet these patterns are not temporally stable. While certain jurisdictions may appear structurally robust, the persistence of political equilibria is contingent on a range of economic and institutional factors. In this sense, stability is often illusory, a function of historical path dependence rather than an inherent characteristic of the system itself. It is particularly relevant to consider how shifts in political preferences can be conceptualized probabilistically, with different regimes corresponding to distinct probability distributions. Movements toward the tails of these distributions should be avoided, as they are typically dangerous and, more often than not, unidirectional.
Another key player is the SCOTUS. If they side with Trump, it will immeasurably increase the potential for damage -- both political and economic.
No matter whether Trump is declaring tariffs or pauses, he is always an idiot.
steve miller is certifiably insane. that he is an advisor to the united states president is beyond frightening!
Another excellent post.
Regarding the 'blips' - I agree, they are best ignored. However, they are also trading opportunities for those with advance notice. The Trump regime is not only incompetent but also highly unlawful.
Trump ran on the premise, "I alone can fix these problems."
In reality, he alone was the person most able to unwind the post WW2 order.
And he has done that by trying to force Ukraine to accept what cannot, by UN mandate, be accepted - validating Russian territorial ambitions.
Looking beyond Trade, save to note that nothing has been definitively resolved with China or Japan, consider our fiscal situation.
Trump was elected by the oligarchs to force sufficient spending cuts to put the US fiscal deficit back onto a sustainable trajectory. He's cut taxes but will cave when it comes to the spending cuts.
So we are heading to disaster.
As the CBO said in a letter to Sen Merkley (dated 4/10/25) when asked about Trump's plan:
In that scenario, deficits and debt are larger than they are in CBO’s extended baseline (see Figure 1):
• Primary deficits over the first decade of the projection period (fiscal years 2026 to 2035) are about $6 trillion larger. By 2055, the primary deficit equals 3.8 percent of GDP, 1.9 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• The total deficit in 2055 equals 12.0 percent of GDP, 4.7 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline. • Debt held by the public in 2055 equals 220 percent of GDP, 63 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• The average interest rate on federal debt in 2055 equals 4.0 percent, 0.3 percentage points higher than in CBO’s extended baseline.
• Real GNP per person is 3.3 percent lower in 2055 than in CBO’s extended baseline (or $4,375 lower, in 2025 dollars).
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-04/Merkley-Letter.pdf
The 74M Trump voters haven’t been dissuaded, Congress is behind him, DOGE is continuing to disassemble the government and SCOTUS is reluctant to stand in his way, he hasn’t issued an Executive Order republishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion yet, it’s probably coming …