Friday, February 21, 2025

No Rational Country Would Enter Into a Trade Agreement with Trump

Trump hopes to negotiate a major new trade agreement with China. But why would China make any trade deal with Trump? In only one month back in office, Trump has already casually broken several deals that the U.S. has with other countries. Trump doesn’t even honor agreements that Trump himself made!

In 2018 the first Trump Administration negotiated the USMCA (the successor to NAFTA), which is an agreement for a low-tariff free trade zone between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. And yet, Trump ordered the imposition of 25% tariffs on all goods on Canada and Mexico, a clear violation of that deal, immediately after becoming president. While the tariffs haven’t gone into effect yet (technically they are still on the table, he just delayed their imposition for 30 days), the fact that he is willing to completely disregard his own binding agreement with foreign countries speaks volumes.

Why would any country make any concession to the U.S. in exchange for anything else? Trump has made it clear he won’t feel bound by any deal. Trump has made it clear to the world that no one should make any deal with the U.S. We don’t keep our promises.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

King Trump

Am I the only one who thinks that this and several other statements Trump has made since he returned to the presidency, is just evidence that he is losing his fucking mind? This is a guy who showed enough signs of dementia for his doctors to give him a cognitive test five years ago. He seems even more off his rocker now.

Meanwhile, that all-the-news-that's-fit-to-print place does not think it's fit to give a front page headline to the fact that the President of the United States just declared himself to be a king. I dunno, that seems like a big deal to me. After the NYT lost its fucking mind last year, running over a hundred stories about Biden's age and possible mental infirmity every time he misspoke or forgot anything, it would seem like an aging President's repeated demented outbursts would at least seem relevant.



Friday, February 07, 2025

Tesla hate

I would never buy a Tesla now. In fact, Mrs. Noz and I recently bought a plug in EV and ruled out Tesla from the start. But my answer might have been different 3-4 years ago. Plus, cars are expensive. Many people buy a car and expect to be able to use it for a decade or more. It's not all that long ago that Tesla was an attractive brand for progressive people. So there are many left-leaning people who got a Tesla years ago without realizing that they were putting money in the pocket of a Nazi. Two of my friends are like that.

Which is why some of the hate directed at anyone driving a Tesla can be misplaced. If someone bought one in 2019, it's not clear what they should do now. Most of us can't afford to just trash their car and get another one, and Tesla resale values are tanking. When I see someone driving a Tesla sedan I wonder if I should feel sorry for them. They might see what is happening and feel stuck.

Of course this doesn't apply to Cybertruck drivers. That monstrosity just came out a year and a half ago, more than a year after Elon bought Twitter, when it was already obvious what a monster he is. Buying a Cybertruck is a conscious choice to join team-fascists. Also team ugly. Those things look hideous.


Thursday, February 06, 2025

الفهود تأكل وجهي!

 The thing I didn't get about groups like Arab Americans for Trump during last year's presidential campaign is: were they aware that Trump had been President before? I mean, you didn't have to guess what Trump's approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict would be. He had four years of open hostility to anything the Palestinians wanted. He moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and shuttered most services that used to be provided to Palestinians. He recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. He proposed a peace plan for the I-P conflict that required massive painful conditions on the part of Palestinians while giving Israel the right to annex large swaths of the West Bank. He declared that Israel's West Bank settlements would no longer be considered illegal by the U.S. All of these were huge breaks from prior U.S. policies, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, that were widely viewed as against Palestinian interests.

Trump's record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was really quite clear. While his recent proposal of U.S.-assisted genocide in Gaza is definitely a step further than anything he has ever proposed before, it is also consistent with both his erratic off-the-cuff style, his disregard for human rights, and his clear devaluation of Palestinian interests that was abundantly clear by the end of Trump's first term. I understand the Palestinian-American community's anger against the Biden Administration since October 2023. But any Palestinian who thought that Trump would be better than Harris on that issue was closing their eyes to reality.


Saturday, February 01, 2025

White Meat: Appetizer

In honor of Black History month and as a fuck you to those Trumps who are trying to erase it, go support my friend's film, "White Meat: Appetizer" on Kickstarter. Make America Taste Great Again!

 


Wednesday, January 29, 2025

EOs are as much bluster as law

Because Trump seems to be treating Executive Orders like they are legal decrees of a monarch, it is worth reviewing what Executive Orders are.

In the U.S. what counts as "law" is really broad. It encompasses a lot of things, statutes passed by Congress, judicial decisions, regulations from administrative agencies, etc. Executive Orders are treated as a kind of law. They can be legally binding. But they are not like statutes or regulations in that they aren't really binding on anyone who does not work in the executive branch of the federal government. At least not directly. An Executive Order is just an instruction to the executive branch from the President, the head of that branch, how to carry out some executive branch function. So, for example, the President can instruct the executive branch of the federal government to start referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" in its communications and publications. So when the U.S. Geological Survey comes out with its next map it will say "Gulf of America" and documents about the Louisiana Coast will start using that term. But that doesn't mean that anyone anyone else has to use that stupid name. It certainly doesn't require Google to change its maps. If Google does make that change, that is on Google.

Also Executive Orders, while treated as legally binding, they are the least binding of any form of law in the federal government. The priority for laws in the federal system is like this: Constitutional Provisions > Statutes > Regulations > Executive Orders. So if an Executive Order says something that conflicts with any other kind of federal law, that other Federal Law would prevail. For example, an Executive Order may say that the federal government should interpret the words "sex" or "gender" to mean the sex assigned at birth, and that would be binding on the federal government... except if there is a regulation from a prior administration that has not been rescinded yet that defines those words differently. (Except, of course, in the Judicial Circuits with Judges who blocked those rules)

Even though Executive Orders only directly apply to people in the executive branch, they can definitely have real-world consequences for people who do not work for the government. How members of the government interpret and apply the law can have widespread consequences for sure. But keep in mind that Trump's Executive Order pen is not as all powerful as he pretends it is.