The List

[Chap]

But...I thought that George Washington wrote to George the third like that on a daily basis, just to show he was a Red-blooded American Warrior.... Didn't he?

[canpakes]

Who could have ever foreseen that the policies that caused a net loss of manufacturing jobs would cause a net loss of manufacturing jobs when implemented a second time.

On that note -

Have Trump's tariffs worked? This is where things stand a year after 'Liberation Day'

APRIL 2, 20265:00 AM ET
Scott Horsley

President Trump ordered double-digit tariffs on nearly everything the U.S. imports on April 2 last year. This is where things now stand a year later.


A year ago, President Trump ordered double-digit tariffs on virtually everything the U.S. imports.

In a ceremony at the White House, he promised that jobs and factories would come "roaring back" to the country as a result, that consumer prices would fall and that April 2 would go down in history as "the day we began to make America wealthy again."

One year later, many of Trump's import taxes have been struck down by the Supreme Court. But the president remains committed to tariffs.

Here's where things stand on the first anniversary of "Liberation Day."

The government collected a lot of money but has to give half of it back

Tariffs are generating tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government.

In the first five months of the fiscal year, the government raised $151 billion from tariffs — nearly four times as much as during the same period the previous year.

A shadowy industry is helping small businesses pay tariffs — at a high cost
Most of that tax bill is being paid by U.S. importers, and in some cases they're passing the cost on to consumers. But six weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority with some of the tariffs he had imposed, and now about half of the total tariff revenue will have to be refunded.

Customs officials are working on a plan to refund about $166 billion in tariffs that were wrongly collected, and they hope to have the details worked out by mid-April.

A boom in domestic manufacturing hasn't happened

Taxing imports was supposed to give a boost to U.S. manufacturers.

"We will supercharge our domestic industrial base," Trump said in announcing the tariffs last year. But manufacturing has been in a slump for most of the last year. U.S. factories employed 89,000 fewer people in February than they did in April, when the worldwide tariffs took effect.

The president boasts that foreign companies are investing huge sums in the U.S. to avoid his tariffs, and Trump often cites wildly inflated figures. In fact, official government tallies show that foreign direct investment last year was $288 billion — slightly less than the previous year and below average for the last 10 years.

Inflation remains elevated

Inflation has cooled considerably from its four-decade high in 2022 — but prices are still climbing faster than the Federal Reserve would like, in part due to tariffs.

Inflation in February was 2.4%, slightly higher than it was last April.

"These elevated readings largely reflect inflation in the goods sector, which has been boosted by the effects of tariffs," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told reporters last month.

And economists warn that inflation could now worsen after the U.S. and Israel started a war against Iran, sending global energy prices sharply higher.

The trade deficit hasn't changed much

Imports seesawed last year as U.S. businesses tried to stockpile goods before tariffs took effect or whenever the import tax rate was temporarily reduced.

But over the course of 2025, Americans actually imported slightly more goods than they did the previous year, before Trump's tariffs took effect.

Imports of goods last year totaled $3.4 trillion, up 4% from 2024 — but exports totaled $2.2 trillion, a 6% increase. That helped lead to an increase in the total goods trade deficit, which rose about 2% to $1.24 trillion.

Import taxes are high, but not as high as a year ago

The average tariff rate soared on Liberation Day and the days that followed, at one point topping 21%. Goods from China were briefly subject to a tariff of 145%, which brought imports from that country to a virtual standstill.

But the Trump administration later reduced many of those import taxes, and the Supreme Court then removed some tariffs altogether. As of February, the Tax Foundation estimates that the average tariff on imports is about 10%. That's about half of what it was at its peak but still about four times as high as the average import tax at the beginning of last year, before Trump returned to the White House.

"By our count, tariffs changed more than 50 times between Liberation Day and now," says Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation. "There was just no way for businesses to plan."

York says that this volatility contributed to last year's sluggish job gains and the slowdown in economic growth.

"It's going to weigh on hiring. It's going to change investment plans," she says. "On top of the significant tax increase the tariffs caused, they also had this added uncertainty tax on top of that."

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/02/nx-s1-57 ... on-economy

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Anyone want to do a comparison of where we were at with Iran under Obama vs where we’re at with Iran under Dump?

Because it’s not good. Not good at all.

[Doctor Steuss]

Anyone want to do a comparison of where we were at with Iran under Obama vs where we’re at with Iran under Dump?

Because it’s not good. Not good at all.

Based on the current "framework," Iran will control the Strait, which will enable them to enact tolls on all vessels traveling through it. We'll pay them a silly amount of money. They'll be able to continue the windfall Trump handed them of selling their oil on the open market.

So, not only will they have a massive influx of cash, and increased steady cash flow, but they also have increased reason to develop a nuclear deterrent.

5d super genius chess.

Ultimately, I think it'll all come down to what China will allow Iran to do. If China hadn't intervened, I doubt Iran would have worked with Pakistan at all (even though the terms are highly in their favor). The longer their strangle-hold on the Strait continued, the stronger their bargaining position would become, regardless of what genocidal asshattery Trump engaged in.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

But but but some BLACK PEOPLE were on some WELFARE! But but but some BROWN PEOPLE were REPLACING a ROOF. But but but some MUSLIMS were WORKING at the HOSPITAL.

MAGA is a mental illness.

[canpakes]

“We will target everything, from car affordability to housing affordability, to insurance costs, to supply chain issues,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina in August. “I will instruct my Cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days or much sooner than that.”

“Prices will come down,” Trump told voters during a speech last week laying out his vision for a return to the White House. “You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything.”

Trump is having some difficulty getting this List item going.

[I Have Questions]

It’s beginning to read as if Trump hasn’t delivered anything that he promised voters he’d deliver. Everything he promises he’ll make better, he ends up making worse. He could bring America closer to being great if he just spent all his time on the golf course…oh, wait…

At least ajax has good explanations for why Making America Great Again has turned into Make America A Laughing Stock.

[canpakes]

It’s beginning to read as if Trump hasn’t delivered anything that he promised voters he’d deliver. Everything he promises he’ll make better, he ends up making worse. He could bring America closer to being great if he just spent all his time on the golf course…oh, wait…

At least ajax has good explanations for why Making America Great Again has turned into Make America A Laughing Stock.

It would seem that kicking brownish people out of the country is the only thing that really matters to MAGA voters.

Even with that, Trump will reverse course when it helps out his friends or benefits his own properties. Check out the next post.

[canpakes]

.
Trump needs immigrants more than he realized, apparently.

Trump Is Exposed Bending Key Policy to Benefit Himself

Cameron Adams
Published Apr. 15 2026 10:15PM EDT

Donald Trump changed course on a key policy of his administration after being influenced by business pals at one of his Florida golf clubs.

Trump, 79, met with Mar-a-Lago staffers Bernd Lembcke and Peter Petrina in January, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. The men on Trump’s payroll told the president that the hospitality industry needed to hire more seasonal workers ahead of peak tourism periods in winter and spring.

On the final day of last year, the government signaled it would release only 35,000 additional H-2B visas for 2026, which was nearly half the number made available over the previous three years.

The H-2B visa allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for temporary jobs, usually in areas such as hospitality, construction or tourism.

Two weeks after that meeting in January, Trump’s administration changed direction and released the maximum number of additional H-2B visas, which is 64,716.

Trump has used the H-2B visa program to hire roles such as cooks, housekeepers and waiters at his properties, including his private resort Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

“Fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that the president himself is a program user. Mar-a-Lago uses H-2Bs,” Tom Bortnyk, general counsel for másLabor, the nation’s largest provider of H-2A and H-2B services, told Bloomberg Law in February, after the decision was reversed.

“They’re not strangers to the H-2B programs.”

The Journal report also claimed that Trump had been lobbied by Republican congressman Andy Harris to reverse the cut to extra H-2B visas. Harris’ voters in Maryland rely heavily on seasonal workers to pick crabs on the Eastern Shore.

Trump “took the lobbying campaign,” which also included input from industry leaders, seriously, sources told the publication. It resulted in the president instructing his advisers to restore the number of additional temporary visas.

The program is popular with industries that struggle to find enough Americans prepared to work for only a few months a year, such as landscaping, forestry, amusement, recreation, seafood processing, and fisheries.

Seasonal industry lobbyists also leaned on their allies in Congress to reverse the decision on the additional H-2B visas this year ahead of looming key tourism events, including the FIFA World Cup finals and America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

“We were really doing everything we could to explain to the administration that 35,000—while we appreciated it—we needed the full 64,716,” Andrew Bray, vice president of government relations at the National Association of Landscape Professionals, told Bloomberg Law in February after the decision was reversed.

The publication also cited an industry lobbyist who said Trump officials were “testing the waters” with anti-immigration groups by releasing more seasonal visas.

Those groups have traditionally opposed the visas, believing they take jobs from American workers. The additional visas also seem at odds with Trump’s policy of mass deportation.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/Trump-is- ... t-himself/

[Jersey Girl]

I don't even believe this. I seriously need to return to the Lent observance and get away from this abject insanity. Talk about brain rot. Did he even parent his own children?

Lawrence: RFK Jr. lied to Congress when he denied saying ‘every Black kid’ should be ‘re-parented’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_uVMNbOAg