Tag Archives: politics

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 19.

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            I think that Donald Trump is a bad man with some good ideas and some bad ideas.  He seems prone to stick with the bad ideas (and bad people, like Pete Hogwallop[1]) while rabbiting around on the good ideas.  He may well represent a threat to Democracy.  Or not.  His method, much more this term than in the first, is the bull-rush.  Doing “everything, everywhere, all at once.”  Testing, even blowing through, established limits of all sorts; moving very fast and keeping it up across time; forcing changes that may or may not endure.  He’s a wrecking ball and a disruptor, not a builder. 

            Trump also is not a “politician.”  In contemporary America, a “politician” is a career public employee who gets his/her/their contract renewed every 2, 4, or 6 years by playing it safe within the terms of their own constituency.  Most of them rise by following what the Romans used to call the “cursus honorum” (“course of honors/offices”).[2]  They’re committed to never doing anything “risky.”[3]  Trump thinks that these people are Nithings.[4]  He’s pretty much right about most of them.[5] 

            But what is the alternative to Trump?  Leave things the way they were?  Keep going along the same lines that produced gigantic deficits and a national debt that seems likely to end in default?  A creeping expansion of the Executive Branch and rule through regulation, executive orders, and executive agreements, rather than legislation?  A withering of the Legislative Branch through its own indifference to its responsibilities?  A well-advanced politicization of the Judicial Branch?  That’s going to end in the election of Supreme Court Justices.  An economy that prioritizes Finance over everything else, including Manufacturing?  A neglect of American military power in an era of rising danger?  A materialist, consumerist culture—against which Jimmy Carter warned long ago—that has reduced us to a “Country Made of Ice Cream”?  How is any of that going to be reformed in a timely fashion by continuing with “the way we do things around here”? 

[1] Start at 4:05.  Pa always said never trust a Hogwallop! 

[2] Cursus honorum – Wikipedia 

[3] The NYT is risk averse in its attitude toward change.  New York Times risky – Search

[4] Old English term.  See the first meaning given.  NITHING definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary 

[5] But not all of them.  Gina Raimondo for the Democrats and Mike Gallagher for the Republicans offer hope. 

The Alien Enemies Act. Or, the Aliens Are Enemies Act.

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            As the result of historical experience during the French and Indian Wars, Anglo-Americans regarded France as the enemy and Britain as their benevolent parent-country.  Then the British and their American colonists fell out.  War followed.  During the Revolutionary War, the self-proclaimed United States signed an alliance with the French monarchy.  France loaned money to the Americans and declared war on Britain.  France also sent military forces to America.  The Franco-American alliance remained in effect after the war.  Then the French Revolution broke out, France overthrew the monarchy and declared itself a Republic, and declared war (1792) on everyone except the Man in the Moon and the Americans. 

            Americans divided sharply on how to deal with France.  Many people (often Federalists) hated the French version of revolution.  Many other people (mostly Democratic-Republicans) sympathized, at the least, with the aims of the French revolutionaries.  The issue became a partisan matter.  Congress seized the opportunity to repudiate repayment of the French war loans because they were onerous (1793).  Congress then ratified the “Jay Treaty” which settled disputes between the United States and Britain (1794).  France responded by allowing French “privateers” to seize a lot of American merchant ships in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.  Trying to fend off a war, the Americans sent a delegation to negotiate with France (1797-1798).  This ended badly and a “Quasi-War” at sea broke out (1798-1801).[1] 

            President John Adams and the Federalist majorities in Congress passed a package of four “Alien and Sedition Laws” (1798).  Formally, Adams feared that the French would try to spread their revolutionary ideology to the United States.  Informally, the Federalists had come to see the Democratic-Republicans as inclined toward the same policies as the French.  So, stomp on them. 

            The “Alien Friends Act” allowed the President to deport anyone considered to be “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”  The law sun-setted after two years, and the government didn’t make much of an effort to enforce it anyway. 

            The “Naturalization Act” extended the residence requirement before obtaining citizenship from 5 years to 14 years.  Lots of/most immigrants voted Democratic-Republicans once they got the right to vote.  The law was repealed in 1802. 

            The “Sedition Act” criminalized saying mean things about Federalists in government.  A whole bunch of Democratic-Republican writers for the media of the day were prosecuted.  (My personal favorite is Jame Callender.)  The law expired in 1801. 

            The “Alien Enemies Act” granted the President the authority to arrest, imprison, or deport any non-citizen during a time when the United States was at war with, either formally or informally, a foreign country from which that non-citizen originated.[2]  The informal part gave the president the right to act in something like the undeclared “Quasi-War” or if an attack occurred when Congress could not be consulted immediately.  The Act has never been repealed.  The Act has been used in the War of 1812, the First World War, and the Second World War. 

            So, can an old law be re-interpreted for new purposes?  If so, who can re-interpret it? 

[1] XYZ Affair – Wikipedia (sort of a “Town Mouse and Country Mouse” affair) and Quasi-War – Wikipedia 

[2] OK, that’s a long and clotted sentence.  The point is, the United States is not now at war with or suffering a “predatory incursion” ordered by a foreign country.  People free-lancing a “predatory incursion” isn’t covered by the language of the law.  Ipso fatso, President Trump doesn’t have a leg to stand on. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 18.

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            Americans have come to depend on cheap Chinese products.  Conversely, China has come to depend on massive exports of its goods to the United States.  Hence, President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 145 percent tariff on imports from China will shock both the American and Chinese systems.[1] 

            What does the United States get from China?  At least 75 percent of electric fans, dolls, video game consoles, tricycles, food processors, and smart phones.[2]  Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard all source many of their products from Asia (China, Taiwan).  The tariffs could push the price of a basic iPhone 16 from $799 to $1,140.[3]  China also produces and exports renewable energy equipment, lithium batteries, and electric vehicles. 

            Much of the American reaction to the trade war with China has been “Eeeek!”  One newspaper warned  of “an economic crisis that could leave America poorer for generations.”  A West Coast port executive said that “essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased.”  As a result, one business economist[4] warned of “empty shelves in U.S. stores in a few weeks,” and “Covid-like shortages for consumers.”  These stoppages will cascade into job losses for longshoremen, truckers and railroads, and retail sales.[5] There could be a grievous toy shortage at Christmas because 80 percent of America’s toys are made in China.[6] 

What does China get from the United States?  Soybeans.  Some kinds of computer chips.  And many jobs.  All the stuff no longer going to America either has to be sold somewhere else, or stock-piled in warehouses, or not made at all.  Neither of the last two is sustainable, politically or economically, for long.  So China has to find a new target for its exports. 

Which country will blink first?  Is there a reasonable compromise that can be negotiated? 

Trump has wobbled on China to a degree.  He exempted some consumer electronics (smart phones, laptops) from most of the China tariffs.  He also indicated that he was ready to negotiate with China and that Xi Jinping had called him.  At the same time, he seems determined to “decouple” the economies of the two countries.[7]  At the very least, he said, “China will probably eat those tariffs.  Everything is going to be fine.” 

For their part, the Chinese seem not to have anticipated the “speed and ferocity” of the American trade counter-attack on China’s economic strategy.[8]  China’s public response has been to dig in.  “Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst.”[9]  Threats of retaliation abound.  When Trump said that Xi Jinping had called about tariffs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry basically called Trump a liar.  Hard to know which of those two to believe. 

[1] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34.    

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Inflation: How tariffs could push up prices,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 17.    

[4] As in an economist employed by a business, in this case an asset management firm. 

[5] “Trump shrugs off warnings over trade war costs,” The Week, 9 May 2025, p. 4. 

[6] Feels heartless denying kids their hearts’ desire at Christmas.  Still, Boxing Day can be a time for repentance. 

[7] The historian Stephen Kotkin has observed that Trump often talks out of both sides of his mouth, but if you look at what he actually does, you can tell what he really means.  His remarks bore on Iran’s nuclear program.  He thinks Trump means to stop it, whatever that may require.  There’s no reason not to apply the same view to China trade. 

[8] “Decoupling: The U.S.-China trade divorce, The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 34. 

[9] Given China’s behavior toward its neighbors in Taiwan and the Philippines, this is comic. 

Battering elite universities.

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The Second Addams Administration is pounding on Science. On the one hand, there’s R.F.K., Jr. “Nuff said there. On the other hand, the handful of “elite” universities (the Ivy League, the “public Ivies,” and the other great private universities like Stanford and Chicago) are all being menaced with loss of government research dollars and with investigations.

I suggest, just for the sake of argument, that there is a difference between the two prongs of the offensive. Kennedy’s actions pose a serious threat to public health. We’re talking about the increased potential for dead children and other living things.

The attack on the universities is different from this. What Trump and Republicans really want is to put a stop to the left-wing tilt in liberal arts and humanities faculties and in law schools. The great problem here for the administration is that the government doesn’t have much purchase on these people. The amount of public money spent on support for the liberal arts and law schools is minute in comparison to the money spent on Science and Engineering. There are the miniscule (but very welcome) sums paid by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. There are the miserly sums dispensed to support National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The latter amount to welfare for the intellectual left middle class. These are the parts of the universities and public culture that produce and disseminate D.I.E. scholarship and teaching. Turn off the tap on these funds and universities won’t even blink. “Professor Smithers, you have to be willing to sacrifice for your lonely pursuit of Truth and Beauty.”

If the administration wants to force universities to snap a choke chain on D.I.E. stuff, then it has to act like Willy Sutton. Go “where the money is.” Which it is doing by withdrawing funds for scientific research. If the universities want to tap turned back on, then they need to correct course in the liberal arts and the law schools. Sure, it’s humiliating to bend the knee to someone like Donald Trump. What’s more important to the universities, scientific research on cancer or an inter-sectional reading of bell hooks?

War Movies: “Anthropoid” (2016).

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If you want a look at a true case of “state-sponsored terrorism” and at one approach to counter-terrorism, watch “Anthropoid” (dir. Sean Ellis, 2016).  It gives a compelling view of the May 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (the head of the Reich Main Security Office and also “Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia”[1]) and of what followed. 

In the movie, the motive for the assassination is the desire on the part of the Czech government-in-exile to inspire more resistance in the Nazi-occupied country.  The team of killers (Josef Gabcik, Jan Kubis[2]) is air-dropped at night; overcome difficulties to reach Prague; find that the Germans have wrecked the resistance movement and they must rely upon a small group of locals; eventually, they are joined by some other parachutists who had been dropped later; and they improvise an attack on Heydrich.  The German is mortally wounded; a gigantic manhunt begins; the Germans track the parachutists to a Prague church; and one hell of a gunfight ensues.  The few surviving parachutists kill themselves rather than be taken alive. 

The movie strives for realism: it was filmed in Prague and mostly on the sites where events occurred; the pervasive fear of the Germans among the Czechs is brought out, not minimized; the semi-botched assassination is clearly portrayed; and the ferocious Nazi manhunt should leave anyone squirming. 

Still, the movie simplifies or omits some things.  First, it begins with Gabcik and Kubis on the ground in a Czech forest.  The movie elides the origins of “Operation Anthropoid.”  In fact, Eduard Benes, the leader of the Czech government-in-exile, feared that the West would sell out his country after the war if the Czechs didn’t show some fight.  The British and French had surrendered the Sudetenland to Hitler at Munich (September 1938) and had shrugged their shoulders when Germany occupied the rest of the country (March 1939).  Several thousand Czech soldiers had found their way to the West before the Second World War began (September 1939), but this wasn’t much of a contribution.  Internal resistance had mostly been the work of the Czech Communist Party after Germany attacked the Soviet Union (June 1941).  If the Germans lost the war, the Communists might claim a moral right to rule as the only true “resisters.”   A dramatic act might arouse non-Communist resistance, but it would surely make the government-in-exile appear to be doing something.  So, kill Heydrich now for a distant gain.    

Second, Heydrich had crushed the resistance by a combination of carrot and stick.  He had good material.  Few Czechs wanted to run risks for the sake of the Western powers that had betrayed them before.  Wages and working conditions in factories were improved at the same time that Gestapo penetration agents combatted the Communist underground. 

Third, the Germans unleashed a savage response to the attack on Heydrich.  Mass arrests; right to torture in the pursuit of some clue; massacres of villages on the mere rumor that someone had sheltered the killers.  In a society where few people actually backed resistance, this worked.  Finally, one of the parachutists betrayed someone else to save his own family; and the betrayed finally gave up the hiding place of the other parachutists. 

“The Battle of Algiers” openly confronts truths that “Anthropoid” skims over. 

[1] Also the driving force behind the implementation of the Holocaust.  On this, see: “Conspiracy” (dir. Frank Pierson, 2001), with Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann. 

[2] Played by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan respectively. 

China Tariff Shock.

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            Once upon a time, people harbored high hopes for post-Mao China.[1]  The country adopted “market socialism,” invited Western capital and experts to facilitate its transition to participant in the global economy, and sent many of its own best and brightest to study and work in Western countries.  Employing a very simplified understanding of the West’s own history, people conjectured that a market economy would grow, enrich, and make assertive a middle class that would insist upon a more responsive government.  China would “Westernize.” 

            To accelerate this process, in 2001, China won admission to the World Trade Organization (W.T.O, successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, G.A.T.T).  “It did not have the effect that Long Shanks planned.”[2]  Instead, for ten years, cheap Chinese goods deluged foreign markets.  In the United States, 2.4 million jobs were lost, a million of them factory jobs.  All this happened between 2001 and 2011, and it kept happening at a slower pace afterward.  In 2019, China earned a trade surplus with the rest of the world of more than $500 billion.  Nobody did anything about it.  Why not?  Well, the price of many consumer goods fell.  Consumption increased for many people.  The number of service jobs increased, so lots of people weren’t working in factories, “dark, satanic” or otherwise.  “We’re doing better, right?”[3] 

            Since 2020, China has pursued a major export offensive on top of this already large volume of exports.  It has done so by subsidizing manufacturers of its already low-cost products to the tune of $1.9 trillion over four years. 

In one sense, the offensive has succeeded: in 2024 it earned a surplus of almost $1 trillion.  Since 2013, China has deployed much of its new-found wealth to entangle other counties in a complicated relationship that makes tariff retaliation against China difficult.[4]

In another sense, the offensive has failed: it has aroused international alarm and resistance.  Beyond the United States, the affected industries range from Indonesian textile factories to the German auto industry.  The first phase of the counter-attack against China’s trade offensive appeared in President Donald Trump’s first term with tariffs on China.  These were retained by the Biden administration.  The Chinese responded by moving some of its production “off-shore’ to other countries like Vietnam and Thailand, Turkey and Hungary, and—of course—Mexico.[5]  Trump’s second term began with new and gigantic tariffs on China, but also on many other countries. 

The American tariffs close off an estimated $400 billion in sales to the American market.  If China can’t cut back production, those goods will have to go elsewhere.  Other countries have begun to follow Trump’s lead.  They are hampered by those previously-established economic relationships with China. 

            Trump’s tariff barrage is best understood not as the start of a “Trade War.”  It’s best understood as a counter-attack in a trade war that has already been going on.  It’s a trade war which the United States and many other countries have been losing.  Through not fighting back. 

[1] “China Shock 2.0” The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 11. 

[2] Reference to another Mel Gibson historical wish-it-had-been-this-way mess. 

[3] To belabor the obvious, both the job losses and the failure of solidarity eventually had large political effects. 

[4] See: Belt and Road Initiative – Wikipedia 

[5] See: How Chinese firms are using Mexico as a backdoor to the US 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 17.

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            Has the post-Second World War period of ever-increasing “globalization”[1] come to an end?  If it has, then what will replace it?  Will it be a return to widespread “protectionism”?[2]  Will it be a restricted and managed globalization within large economic blocs protected by a high common external tariff? 

            Some will attribute the troubled state of international affairs to President Donald Trump’s rash and unsteady imposition of tariffs on anyone who crosses his line of sight.  In this view, “more trade is better, especially for the United States.”[3]  Trump’s tariffs will push up prices for consumers while slowing down economic activity.  It will make it “more costly for U.S. manufacturers to source vital parts and machinery.”  The result may be “stagflation” (stagnation plus inflation), such as what beset America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[4]

One could also attribute the smoldering crisis to a long-running combination of Chinese aggression with American complacency. 

            Chinese aggression should and does strike fear in the hearts of men.  China has used hard work, the mobilization of national talents, the repression of consumption below what might have been, the conversion of a vast population of under-employed peasants turned into tireless industrial workers, borrowed Western expertise, intellectual property theft on a grand scale, manipulation of the international trade regime, the repression of individual liberty by an autocratic state, and appeals to national pride.  Economic power has been transformed into military and diplomatic power.  China has begun to throw its weight around in the Far East and beyond.  The goal seems to be to evict the United States from the Western Pacific.  That would be a first step to establishing Chinese hegemony over South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.[5]  On the other hand, there’s a particularly American character to China’s policy.  As the political philosopher George Washington Plunkitt once said, “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”[6]   

            The manifestations of American complacency appear in the triumphalism following victory in the Cold War;[7] the misinterpretation of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man Standing; the combination of a long decrease in defense spending to yield a “Peace Dividend”; and the cornucopia of material benefits unleashed by ever more free trade.  Toy shops and coffee shops and retirement savings will now suffer.  Nobody wants discomfort.    

[1] Defined as progressive rounds of reducing barriers to trade, finance, and migration. 

[2] Defined as individual nations or blocs of nations raising up tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade, combined with restrictions on the movement of capital and people. 

[3] Republican Yoda Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, quoted in “Global order: Goodbye to the age of free trade?”, The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 34. 

[4] Tom Orlik in Bloomberg, quoted in ibid. 

[5] Strategists refer to Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines as the “First Island Chain.”  South Korea and Vietnam can be considered the mainland anchors of this chain.  Together, they provide the geographic positions from which to limit Chinese power projection.  The loss of that island chain to Chinese domination would cripple both American trade relations with those countries and power projection.  For some idea of how the United States reached this advantageous position, see Evan Mawdsley, Supremacy at Seas: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory (2025). 

[6] “I Seen My Opportunities and I Took ‘Em.”: An Old-Time Pol Preaches Honest Graft 

[7] Queen – We Are The Champions (Live Aid 1985) 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 16.

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            The United States and China continued hammering each other in mid-April 2025.  Both countries raised their tariffs on each other (the US to 145 percent and China to 125 percent).  China barred is airlines from taking delivery of Boeing jets and its rare-earth and magnet producers from exporting to the United States; while the United States tightened the screws on AI technology exports to China.  The United States showed some interest in negotiating, but China wouldn’t bite.[1] 

            The incoherence of the Trump administration’s tariff policy with regard to the rest of the world flooded into the China policy.  President Donald Trump said that there would be no “carve-outs,” then crawfished again.  There would be only a 20 percent tariff on cell phones, laptops, and modems.  Then he crawfished again: new tariffs on electronics and semi-conductors would soon be announced. 

            Regardless of their incoherence, the main point in the eyes of some critics lay in the pain that they inflict on ordinary Americans.  Tariffs will force up prices and disrupt supply-chains.  “Mom-and-pop shops that rely on Chinese imports” will suffer.[2]  “Mom-and-Pop!  Their lives of hard work and service to the local community wrecked by Trump’s tariffs!”  Well, actually, most of the Mom-and-Pop stores got destroyed decades ago by Walmart and Amazon.  This is just evoking a nostalgic image for lack of a good argument. 

            Other critics warned that the tariffs will just make China mad.  It will retaliate in ways that hurt Americans and America.  China can restrict exports (as with rare earths and high-end magnets); China can blacklist American firms, driving down their profits and the value of their stocks; China could sell off a part or all of its $760 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds. 

            They aren’t drawing the logical conclusion.  First, we’re very vulnerable to Chinese pressure and, to some degree, dependent upon Chinese good will to fend off disaster.  So we should make nice?  How about we remember the old adage that “If I owe you $100, then I have a problem; if I owe you $1 million then you have a problem”?    

            Rare earths and magnets are described as “critical to manufacturing everything from cars and planes to drones and weapons systems.” So we are dependent on our chief rival for these goods?  In case of open conflict, or even just tense bargaining over important issues, China could boycott their export to the United States?  With what effect on our ability to produce “cars and planes… drones and weapons systems”?  OK, suppose we got into a dispute not with China, but with China’s ally Russia?  I know that’s far-fetched, but give me some rope here.  Say Russia attacked Ukraine.  Would fear of China withholding key resources cause us to support Ukraine less fully than we could do and might want to do?  In any case, would it be a good idea to try to regain our technology industrial independence? 

            Second, the United States isn’t really hammering China with tariffs.  Almost alone and in his usual rabbity fashion, Donald Trump is hammering China.  Lots of right-thinking people are trying to distance themselves from a president engaged in a trade war with our deadly enemy in economy and international relations.  Who do you think Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Australia would want to win that one, if they have to choose?  Who would you choose? 

[1] “Trade war with China threatens U.S. economy,” The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 5.    

[2] New York Post, quoted in “Trade war with China threatens U.S. economy,” The Week, 25 April 2025, p. 5. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 15.

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            Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has led the way in the construction of an international economic system based on “relatively free trade bound to relatively predictable governance and the rule of law.”[1]  Along the way, according to some critiques, America’s trading partners have exploited the system to America’s disadvantage.  Now, President Donald Trump has alleged that many of America’s trading partners engage in “unfair trade practices.”[2]  In early April 2025, Trump imposed a 10 percent basic tariff on all imports, plus additional tariffs as high as 50 percent on other countries.[3] 

            The reaction to this announcement got ugly: the stock market lost $10 trillion; China imposed a retaliatory 84 percent tariff on imports from America; and all sorts of people howled.  JPMorgan said the tariffs would probably cause a recession; and Lawrence Summers, the former Secretary of the Treasury and former President of Harvard University known for giving it with the bark on, predicted such a recession would cost 2 million Americans their jobs.  Other critics argued that the tariffs would dismantle the American-led international economic system.  Who will profit?  China will profit, because all the countries bruised by American tariffs and incoherence might look to China as a new leader.  Xi Jinping “is unlikely to miss the priceless opportunity Trump has given him.”  Really?  China will abandon its long-running policy of repressing domestic consumption and conquering foreign markets in order to replace the Americans as the world’s leading consumer-nation? 

            Then Trump abruptly crawfished, suspending the implementation of his “additional” tariffs on most countries for 90 days.  For these countries, the administration was willing to negotiate, if they wanted to do so.  However, he jacked up the tariff on Chinese goods to 125 percent in retaliation for China’s retaliation for Trump’s initial tariff increase.  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that trade negotiations had been the plan all along.[4]

            Critics on left and right belabored the incoherence of the tariffs.  Acknowledging that criticism to be on-target still leaves a question.[5]  Is it useful to distinguish between Trump’s tariffs policy toward China and Trump’s tariff policy toward the rest of the world?  Trump has flip-flopped on everyone except China.  With China, he has doubled-down.  That country produces many goods that were invented in America and are important consumer goods, like cell and computers. 

What is wrong-headed about Trump’s tariff war is that he has not offered a coherent plan to rally the rest of the world against the Chinese export giant while negotiating tariff equality with America’s other trading partners.  China has been steam-rolling many countries.  There is a lot of fear and resentment directed at China abroad in the world.  The makings are there for a better American-led system. 

[1] Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, quoted in “Trump dials down tariffs, but not for China,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 4.  On the institutional structure of the American-led, rules-based order, see: Bretton Woods system – Wikipedia; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – Wikipedia ; and World Trade Organization – Wikipedia 

[2] If he means that other countries impose higher tariffs on American goods than America imposes on goods from those countries and/or they raise up other “non-tariff barriers,” then he’s pretty much right. 

[3] “Trump dials down tariffs, but not for China,” The Week, 18 April 2025, p. 4. 

[4] Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (3/10) Movie CLIP – I Meant to Do That (1985) HD 

[5] I’m willing to stipulate that it is an ignorant, probably stupid, question.  But I want to ask it all the same. 

Not the Country We Once Were 2.

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            Why are bond-holders retreating from U.S. Treasury bonds now?  The huge deficits and growing national debt have been around for a while.  The willingness and ability of the United States government to pay the interest on the debt is no different now than it was a year ago or—in all likelihood—a year from now.  How is the sell-off to be explained? 

            Peter Goodman of the New York Times,[1] has raked up a variety of explanations.  They require some interrogation.[2]  Goodman doesn’t necessarily connect the explanations, but they can be read to point in one direction. 

“An erosion of faith in the governance of the world’s largest economy appears at least in part responsible for the sharp sell-off in the bond market in recent days.”  President Trump’s tariffs, he reports, have “shaken faith in that basic proposition [that the US will properly manage the global environment and maintain its creditworthiness], challenging the previously unimpeachable solidity of U.S. government debt.”  Goodman quotes Professor Mark Blyth of Brown University for support.  “The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it is doing.”  He adds that “[o]ne reason [for the bond sell-off] appears to be an effective downgrading of the American place in global finance, from a safe haven to a source of volatility and danger.”  Purportedly, the tariff war with China, in particular, creates the danger of a global recession and undermines the role of the U.S. as the manager of the world’s “peace and prosperity.” 

I can believe the first half of this, but the second half is less credible.  Nothing fiscal is threatening the creditworthiness of the United States right now.  Why do tariffs disturb the bond market?  Similarly, bonds are commonly regarded as a hedge against stock fluctuations and in recession.  So, fear of a recession is making people sell bonds, rather than buy them? 

Goodman mentions other possible factors:

“Hedge funds and other financial players have sold holdings as they exit a complex trade that seeks to profit from the gap between existing prices and bets on their future value.”  This sounds very much like “financial players” are dumping bonds now to force the government to raise the yield on bonds.[3]  Today’s sellers will then buy back the bonds at a higher rate tomorrow.  Similarly, “[s]ome fear that China’s central bank [which holds $761 billion] in U.S. Treasury debt, could be selling as a form of retaliation for American tariffs.” 

What are the effects of investors selling bonds now?  In early April 2025, “the yield on the closely watched 10-year Treasury bond soared to 4.5 percent from below 4 percent—the most pronounced spike in nearly a quarter century.”  Raising interest rates to attract borrowers “tends to push up interest rates throughout the economy, increasing payments for mortgages, car loans and credit card balances.”  This will hurt ordinary Americans.  They will howl. 

            Are Wall Street and China pressuring President Trump to lay off his incoherent tariff policy?  If so, is that who we want to surrender to?  It won’t be the last time. 

[1] Peter Goodman, “Trump Tariffs Shake Faith In the Safety of U.S. Bonds,” NYT, 14 April 2015.

[2] Pin on The Far Side 

[3] “Speculators have been unloading bonds in response to losses from plunging stock markets, seeking to amass cash to stave off insolvency.”  Does this mean that other “financial players” are in danger of getting gored as collateral damage?