#U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

[wausaupilotreview]

Several of Wisconsin’s top industries have to adapt to heightened operational costs due to new and changing tariffs. President Trump says these tariffs are due to the opioid crisis.

[contemplatingoutlander]

How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data

Curating reality is an old political game, but Trump’s sweeping statistical purges are part of a broader attempt to reinvent “truth.”

Trump appears to be turning the federal government into its own 1984-style Ministry of Truth.

This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall to read it. Below are some excerpts/highlights.

By Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell | March 11, 2025 The Trump administration is deleting taxpayer-funded data — information that Americans use to make sense of the world. In its absence, the president can paint the world as he pleases. We don’t know the full universe of statistics that has gone missing, but the U.S. DOGE Service’s wrecking ball has already left behind a wasteland of 404 pages. All sorts of useful information has disappeared, including data on:

[...]

[See more under the cut.]

Three cases of legerdemath and other tricks up Trump’s sleeve

Deleting data isn’t the only way to manipulate official statistics. Trump and his allies have also misrepresented or altered data. Here are a few examples: 1. Incorrect data

Witness DOGE’s bogus statistics on its supposed government savings. The administration counts as “savings” some canceled contracts that had already been paid in full. Some canceled expenses were created out of whole cloth, such as $50 million supposedly spent on sending condoms to Gaza. 2. Misrepresented data

One of Trump’s favorite charts on immigration is riddled with errors. For one, it does not show the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally, as he claims, but the number of people stopped at the U.S. border. Similarly, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was recently asked how much DOGE funding cuts might reduce economic growth, he suggested that the agency might decide to change how economic growth is calculated so that the usual GDP report strips out government spending altogether. This would be an abrupt change to the standard GDP methodology that has been used around the world for nearly a century, but it would certainly make the DOGE cuts look less painful. 3. Altered data

When data doesn’t tell the story Trump wants, he fabricates it. In what became known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump notoriously altered a map of Hurricane Dorian’s path in 2019.

Likewise, before Jan. 30, a National Institutes of Health website documenting years of spending data included a category called “Workforce Diversity and Outreach.” That line item is now gone — even though the money was, indeed, spent.

Taking cues from authoritarian illusionists

Such actions are straight out of authoritarian leaders’ playbooks. Research suggests that less democratic countries have been more likely to inflate their GDP growth rates and manipulate their covid-19 numbers. Statistical manipulation is also more common in countries that shun economic openness and democracy. [...] To be clear, efforts to rewrite reality via statistical manipulation often don’t work. If anything, China’s data deletions reduced public confidence in the country’s economic stability. (No one hides good news, after all.) The Trump team’s efforts to suppress nettlesome numbers have similarly eroded trust in U.S. data. Only about one-third of Americans trust that most or all of the statistics Trump cites are “reliable and accurate.”

Meanwhile, missing or untrustworthy data lead to worse decisions: Auto companies, for example, draw on dozens of federally administered datasets when devising new car models, how to price them, where to stock and market them and other key choices. Retailers need detailed information about local demographics, weather and modes of transit when deciding where to locate stores. Doctors require up-to-date statistics about disease spread when diagnosing or treating patients. Families look at school test scores and local crime rates when deciding where to move. Politicians use census data when determining funding levels for important government programs.

And of course, voters need good data of all kinds when weighing whether to throw the bums out. Many of us take the existence of economic or public health stats for granted, without even thinking about who maintains them or what happens if they go away. Fortunately, some outside institutions have been saving and archiving endangered federal data. The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, for instance, crawls sites around the internet and has become an invaluable resource for seeing what federal websites used to contain. Other organizations are archiving topic-specific data and research, such as on the environment or reproductive health. These are critical but ultimately insufficient efforts. At best, they can preserve data already published. But they cannot update series already halted or purged.... Some private companies may step in to offer their own substitutes (on prices, for example), but private companies still rely on government statistics to calibrate their own numbers. Much of the most critical information about the state of our union can be collected only by the state itself. Americans might be stuck with whatever Trump chooses to share with us, or not.

[saywhat-politics]

Stocks retreated on Monday, extending February’s rout after President Donald Trump’s confirmation of forthcoming tariffs ratcheted up economic concerns.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 834 points, or 1.9%, hitting the low of the session amid Trump’s comments. The S&P 500 fell 2.2%. The Nasdaq Composite slid 3.1%, weighed down by Nvidia’s decline of more than 9%.

All three indexes traded higher earlier in the session, with the Dow at one point up nearly 200 points. Stocks took a notable leg down in afternoon trading following Trump’s reiteration that 25% levies on imports from Mexico and Canada would go into effect on Tuesday, dashing investors’ hopes of a last-minute deal to avert the full tariffs on the two U.S. allies.

“No room left for Mexico or for Canada,” Trump said alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick from the White House. “Reciprocal tariffs start on April 2 ... but very importantly, tomorrow, tariffs, 25% on Canada and 25% on Mexico, ... will start.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lawless tyrant Donald Trump plans to enact a grossly authoritarian power grab by ending nearly 55 years of USPS having political independence and wreck the e-commerce economy, and place it within the Department of Commerce

Jacob Bogage at Washington Post:

President Donald Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the 250-year-old mail provider and trillions of dollars of e-commerce transactions into turmoil. Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. The board is planning to fight Trump’s order, three of those people told The Washington Post. In an emergency meeting Thursday, the board retained outside counsel and gave instructions to sue the White House if the president were to remove members of the board or attempt to alter the agency’s independent status. Two of the group’s GOP members — Derek Kan, a former Trump administration official, and Mike Duncan, a former chair of the Republican National Committee — were not in attendance, according to a person familiar with the gathering. The two did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump’s order to place the Commerce Department in charge of the Postal Service would probably violate federal law, according to postal experts. Another executive order earlier this week instructed independent agencies to align more closely with the White House, though that order is likely to prompt court challenges and the Postal Service by law is generally exempt from executive orders. Members of the Postal Service’s bipartisan board are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump, at Lutnick’s urging, has mused about privatizing the Postal Service, and Trump’s presidential transition team vetted candidates to replace Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a retired logistics executive and GOP fundraising official who took office in 2020 during Trump’s first term.

[...] From its founding in 1775 until 1970, the U.S. mail system was a political organ of the White House. Presidents were known to appoint their political allies or campaign leaders as postmaster general, and the mail chief was often a key White House negotiator with Congress. But the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the product of a crippling nationwide mail strike, led Congress to split the agency off into a freestanding organization, purposefully walling it off from political tinkering. Americans consistently rank the Postal Service among their most-beloved government agencies, second only to the National Park Service. A 2024 study by the Pew Research Center found more than 70 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the agency, a view that was similar among Democrats and Republicans. Trump’s first administration sought to test the agency’s independence. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first-term treasury secretary, attempted to control the 2020 hiring process that brought DeJoy to the Postal Service, and a task force run out of Mnuchin’s department recommended dramatically shrinking the scope of the agency and preparing it for privatization via an initial public offering.

This is tyranny full stop.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In a powerful act of solidarity and resistance, more than 500 Canadians formed a long line along the U.S.-Canada border in Quebec on last Saturday's International Women's Day to protest the U.S. government’s attacks on women’s rights and Canada’s sovereignty. “The turnout on a frigid, blustery Saturday morning overwhelmed organizers,” one participant wrote on social media, with the hundreds of participants facing south toward Vermont. Huge numbers of protesters also flooded several blocks in downtown Montreal chanting "shame on you" outside the U.S. Consulate.

In Montreal, protest organizer Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette denounced the actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, asserting: “You are not kings. We are not handmaids." Fellow organizer Laure Waridel took aim at the U.S. government's increasingly repressive policies toward women, declaring: “Shame on you for your treatment of women." “Shame on you for your betrayal of your friends and allies,” she continued, accusing the administration, in a reference to Trump's increasingly close alliance with Vladimir Putin of Russia, of “siding with murderers and despots” and undermining democracy. “You can try to intimidate us with trade wars, (but) we’ll never become your 51st state."

Over the past month, Trump has repeatedly attacked Canada, one of the country's closest allies for over 150 years, on numerous fronts. In addition to starting what has been described as a "very dumb" trade war with one of the nation's largest trading partners and imposing on and off again tariffs against Canada which have caused the U.S. stock market to nosedive to a six-month low and raised fears of a recession, Trump has repeatedly made comments threatening Canada's sovereignty.

In addition to calling Canada "the 51st state" on multiple occasions and referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "governor," when asked in early January by a New York Times reporter if he was planning to use military force to annex Canada, Trump admitted that he planned to use "economic force." According to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Trump is considering tearing up a slew of agreements and treaties that govern the relationship between the two countries with the longest undefended border in the world and he wants to eject Canada from the 69-year-old intelligence-sharing Five Eyes alliance made up of four of the US' closest allies.

On Tuesday, Trump intensified his threats against America's long-standing ally, writing on social media: "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever — And Canada will be a big part of that. The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World — And your brilliant anthem, “O Canada,” will continue to play, but now representing a GREAT and POWERFUL STATE within the greatest Nation that the World has ever seen!"

Canadian citizens and elected officials are taking Trump's threats very seriously, with many expressing a feeling of dismay and violation at such abhorrent treatment from a long-time trusted friend and ally. As Trudeau said last week, after Trump imposed tariffs yet again: "The excuse that [Trump's] giving for these tariffs today of fentanyl is completely bogus, completely unjustified, completely false. What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us."

Thank you to our Canadian friends for their support for American women! A Mighty Girl supports our proud and independent neighbor to the north!

[A Mighty Girl]

To read more about Trump's aggression toward Canada, visit https://www.nytimes.com/.../trump-trudeau-canada-51st...

To read about the International Women's Day protests in Canada, visit https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/article801877.html

[mariacallous]

When U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, on Feb. 7, that he’d appointed “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” to the Kennedy Center, people responded with bafflement and jokes. When the president-cum-Kennedy Center chairman then appointed his loyalist follower Richard Grenell interim executive director and installed a MAGA-inspired board, the bafflement and gallows humor reached new highs.

But Trump’s takeover of a cultural institution should not just be a source of amusement, especially since the president has also promised to change the center’s programming. The moves put him in the company—historic and current—of tyrants, not auteurs.

Classical music is rarely front-page news, and the move took the Kennedy Center by complete surprise. The cultural center in Foggy Bottom, after all, hosts a leading symphony orchestra and a major opera company and is hardly a center of political fights.

The idea that Trump might be interested in its chairmanship had been on no one’s radar. In fact, so unexpected was the news that music aficionados on social media began asking which symphonies and operas the new chairman—noted for his love of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats—might decide should be performed there, and whether he might decide to conduct them himself.

The jokes swiftly faded when, a few days later, Trump appointed Grenell the Kennedy Center’s interim executive director. The jokes fell completely silent when, on Feb. 12, the Kennedy Center announced its new trustees, installed to replace trustees fired by Trump. Those now installed on the board of trustees include Vice President J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; his deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino; White House Presidential Personnel Director Sergio Gor; and Allison Lutnick, the wife of Trump’s secretary of commerce nominee, Howard Lutnick.

To be sure, the Kennedy Center’s board has always included a bipartisan political element; Democrats and Republicans have traditionally nominated half the board each. But this is different. Now every board member belongs to the Trump camp. The reconstituted board. “President Donald J. Trump was just unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The President stated, ‘It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!’” he posted on Feb. 12.

This is a president who despises (or perhaps doesn’t know) high culture taking over a famed cultural center. And it’s not a silly game. In announcing his own appointment as chairman, Trump vowed the programming was going to change. He had heard about drag shows at the center. As a regular visitor there, I recall only countless opera performances and symphony concerts, as well as a lot of jazz and folk in the foyer, though the center has hosted the occasional drag event. Either way, Trump announced that “THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

I’d hate to be alarmist, but the president of the United States is invoking the language of a certain German regime that, in the 1930s, banned what it labeled “Entartete Kunst,” degenerate art. The Nazis wanted German culture organized neatly under the government’s control. Soon after taking power, this regime made its preferences known to Germany’s myriad publicly funded theaters, opera houses, and concert halls. It also created the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), under which culture in Germany would operate; Joseph Goebbels was appointed the chamber’s president.

Soon German culture—for so long the envy of the world—became more and more constrained as practitioners and artistic products, especially books, were banned, while other practitioners, from conductors to painters, engaged in self-censorship or left the country. That’s how Thomas Mann ended up in Pacific Palisades. In his novel Mephisto, Klaus Mann—Thomas’s son—masterfully portrays the careerists who thrive in autocracies, while talent withers.

And the urge to control culture didn’t die with Goebbels and his ilk. Wanting to control culture is, in fact, the hallmark of authoritarian regimes. The Cold War was characterized by Eastern Bloc regimes’ attempts to govern all culture and, in the process, ensure that undesirable expressions of it were weeded out. Every novel Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote was at immediate risk of being banned, and the Russian author constantly faced the risk of imprisonment. In Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel was kept under constant surveillance and denied jobs worthy of his talent. The artists the regimes deemed acceptable, by contrast, were well-looked-after by the respective countries’ cultural organizations. Untold numbers of artists less known than Solzhenitsyn and Havel suffered the same fate.

Today, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro continues this tradition. Until recently, countries around the world sought to emulate Venezuela’s El Sistema, a government-funded program that teaches scores of children to play instruments at a level previously thought unachievable. Not only have hundreds of Venezuelan children grown up to play in El Sistema’s many symphony orchestras, including the world-class National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra; many of the musicians have also been appointed to the world’s very best orchestras. The double-bass player Edicson Ruiz was hired by the Berlin Philharmonic, considered the world’s best symphony orchestra, while still in his teens. Listen to him here.

But Maduro couldn’t resist the urge to control the program. Now El Sistema is fraying, the inevitable result of political encroachment that has seen Maduro install his vice president and his son on El Sistema’s board and try to use El Sistema for propaganda purposes abroad. In 2017, after El Sistema’s most celebrated graduate, the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, wrote an op-ed voicing criticism against the regime’s brutal crackdown of pro-democracy protesters, Maduro canceled a planned U.S. tour by Dudamel and the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela. Many El Sistema musicians in their late teens or early 20s have now found conservatory places or jobs abroad or are trying to do so.

On the other side of the spectrum are the political leaders who are passionate about the arts but would never dream of politicizing them, precisely because they understand that the arts will languish if put under political control. Helmut Schmidt, West Germany’s chancellor in the late ’70s and early ’80s, was a concert-level pianist. (Hear him play Mozart here.) If he’d decided he wanted to become chairman of the Berlin Philharmonic, it would have made a lot of sense. But he didn’t, because he knew that arts thrive only when separated from politics.

Trump has never considered himself an arts lover; indeed, he recently told a reporter on board Air Force One that he’s never attended a performance at the Kennedy Center. Even so, for the purported sake of protecting the arts, he’s putting himself in the company of Maduro, the Soviets, the Czechoslovak rulers, and Goebbels.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a new trade investigation that could heap more tariffs on imported lumber, adding to existing duties on Canadian softwood lumber and 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods due next week. In his third new tariff probe in a week, Trump signed a memo ordering Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to initiate a national security investigation into U.S. lumber imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The trade law is the one Trump also used to impose tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports. The probe covers derivative products made from lumber that could include furniture such as kitchen cabinets, which in some cases are made of U.S. lumber that had been exported. The order said the Commerce Department investigation must be completed within 270 days.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[syn0vial]

A timeline of the Trump Administration's hostile actions and threats of annexation towards Canada

Shared from the Facebook page of Mugsy Margarit, who is keeping an updated timeline on their page here.

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One thing I've learned over the past few weeks, and it's been a bit of a sobering lesson, is that a lot of Americans I know don't actually know what's going on between the US and Canada right now, and just how seriously Canadians are taking this. So, against my better judgement, here's a timeline to explain why we're here, and why we're angry.

Nov 30th, 2018 - The United States, Canada and Mexico finalize a trade agreement. Trump personally negotiates the terms and signs the document, celebrating it as 'the greatest trade agreement in history". (This is important.)

Nov 29th, 2024 - In a face to face meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump threatens the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, that he will be imposing 25% tariffs and that if Canada wants to avoid that, it should join the US as a state.

Nov 30th, 2024 - Trump publicly calls our Prime Minister 'Governor Trudeau' and instructs his staff to only address him as Governor going forward. He again suggests Canada should join the USA.

Dec 3rd, 2024 - Trump remarks that he would split Canada into two states once annexed.

Dec 10th, 2024 - Trump posts that the majority of Canadians support annexation, despite public polling that only 13% of Canadians would consider the idea.

Dec 18th, 2024 - Trump again falsely states that the majority of Canadians support annexation and that one of his lapdogs, Wayne Gretzky, should have a leadership role in that new scenario.

Jan 7th, 2025 - At a press conference, Trump says that he would use economic force to destroy the Canadian economy to annex it.

Jan 14, 2025 - Trump again claims that most Canadians want to be American, despite new polls showing only 10% of us are open to the idea.

Jan 20th, 2025 - During his inaugural address, Trump says that the U.S. will 'expand its territory' during his second term.

Jan 23rd, 2025 - At the World Economic Forum, Trump says that Canada can avoid tariffs and economic collapse if it joins the US. He says this in front of representatives from most countries in the world.

Jan 24th, 2025 - During a press conference in North Carolina, President Trump reiterated his position, stating that Canada "will" become a U.S. state. He claims that under American governance, Canadians would benefit from "lower taxes" and "better health care."

Jan 31st, 2025 - Trump announces a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports to begin the next day.

Feb 2nd, 2025 - Trump refers to Canada as its 'Cherished 51st state' and that it should join the US to avoid tariffs.

Feb 3rd, 2025 - A one month delay is agreed upon. Trump, in a conversation with Trudeau states that he doesn't think existing border treaties with Canada are valid, and need to be revised.

Feb 7th, 2025 - In a closed door meeting with his cabinet, Prime Minister Trudeau is recorded, without his knowledge, telling everyone that he believes very strongly that Trump is serious and that he stated his reason for annexation as Canadian resources.

Feb 9th, 2025 - In a Super Bowl pre-game interview, Trump says that he's serious about his threats, calling it a 'viable consideration for expanding US territory'

Feb 10th, 2025 - Trump announces an additional 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada to come into effect March 12th.

Feb 24th, 2025 - Trump publicly remarks that whoever signed the USMCA agreement is an idiot. He was the one that signed it.

March 4th, 5th, and 6th 2025 - Tariffs come into effect. Canada retaliates with it's own tariffs. Tariffs are again postponed until April 1st after a huge market backlash.

March 4th, 2025 - In an address to a joint session of congress, Trump states that the US will own Greenland 'one way or the other'.

March 5th, 2025 - US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick told Canadian finance minister Dominic LeBlanc that Trump "had come to realize that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon."

March 7th, 2025 - Unconfirmed Memorandum and maps leaked on twitter reveal Trump is allegedly planning to annex the entirety of the great lakes and Southern Ontario, home to 13,491,332 Canadians. This amounts to 35.25% of Canada's total population and includes its largest city, Toronto. This region accounts for 38% of the Canadian economy, and its loss would make Canada's independence functionally impossible. *THIS IS STILL NOT OFFICIALLY VERIFIED*

March 7th, 2025 PT II - Trump claims to reporters that he had Canada’s dairy-tariff situation “well taken care of” at the time he left office the first time, “but under Biden, they just kept raising it.” In fact, Canada did not raise its dairy tariffs during the Biden administration.

March 7th, 2025 PT III - Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to Trump, says that Canada has been “taken over” by Mexican cartels.

March 8th, 2025 - Canada's foreign minister warns European allies that their government considers Canada to be under existential threat. She emphasized that Canada's current challenges could foreshadow similar threats to other nations, stating, "We are the canary in the coal mine. If the U.S. administration is doing that to Canada, you're next."

March 9th, 2025 - Mark Carney, the new Canadian Prime Minister, in his acceptance speech, states that Trump is seeking to destroy Canada, and its way of life.

March 11, 2025 - President Trump threatens to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada” if Canada does not drop a 250% to 390% tariff on U.S. dairy products, which he doesn’t state only kicks in after a certain quantity of tariff-free U.S. dairy enters Canada, a quantity that was originally negotiated and agreed to by Trump during the USMCA in 2018.

In Trump's own words, "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever — And Canada will be a big part of that. The artificial line of separation drawn many years ago will finally disappear, and we will have the safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World — And your brilliant anthem, “O Canada,” will continue to play, but now representing a GREAT and POWERFUL STATE within the greatest Nation that the World has ever seen!"

March 11th, 2025 PT. II - Peter Navarro, a Senior Advisor for Trump is interviewed by MSNBC. When asked about the tariffs he responds with "Just tamp it down, please, over there, ok? They're throwing down the hockey gloves. Stop that rhetoric...we're not going to tolerate anything but them stopping killing Americans", insinuating that this situation was caused by Canadians killing Americans. It's assumed he's referencing fentanyl, but he doesn't specify the reason.

March 11th, 2025 PT III - Trump again publicly muses that Canada, Greenland, and the US should be one country, and questions the validity of the Canadian and American border.

March 11th, 2025 PT IV - Canada sells $3.5 Billion dollars of its US Bonds

March 11th, 2025 PT V - Trump claims in a social media post that Canada is “One of the highest tariffing countries in the world.” He also claims the trade deficit between the two nations is '$200 Billion dollars". Official US statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion

Despite Trump's claims about Canadian tariffs, Canada is the 102nd-highest nation on a World Bank list of 137 countries’ trade-weighted average tariff rates in 2022 – and had a lower average (1.37%) than the United States (1.49%) that year, the most recent for which the data is available. This means the US tariffs more than Canada, with Canada being one of the most tariff free countries in the world.

March 12th, 2025 - Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc announces tariffs on $29.8B worth of U.S. goods. This includes tariffs on Steel, Aluminum, computers, tools, sporting equipment and cast iron products.

March 12th, 2025 Pt. II - Mark Carney, Canada's incoming prime minister, expresses willingness to meet with Trump to renew economic and security partnerships between the two countries despite the challenges posed by the recent tariffs.

March 12th, 2025 Pt III - Widespread boycotts of American products across Canada and international markets begin making serious impacts on US economy

March 13th, 2025 - Trump claims that “they (Canada) don’t take our agricultural product for the most part”; he mentioned dairy, then said, “A little bit they do, but not much.” This is false even with Trump’s qualifiers. Canada was the world’s second-largest buyer of US agricultural exports in 2024, according to the US Department of Agriculture, purchasing about $28.4 billion worth.

March 13th, 2025 PT II - New polling shows 46% of Canadians are in favor of joining the EU, something that would have been pure fantasy just a few months ago.

March 13th, 2025 PT III - The Group of Seven (G7) ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, along with the EU, meet in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada for two days of meetings.

March 13th, 2025 PT IV - Alaskan state-level politicians introduce resolutions to oppose Donald Trump’s “restrictive trade measures that would harm the unique Canada-U.S. relationship”

March 13th, 2025 PT V - The Vancouver Sun reports a Canadian woman was arrested by ICE and has been held at the San Luis Detention Center in Arizona since March 3rd with 30 other individuals. Her mother, in an interview: "They are housed together in a single concrete cell with no natural light, fluorescent lights that are never turned off, no mats, no blankets, and limited bathroom facilities."

March 13th, 2025 PT VI - Trump says that he would 'allow Canada to keep their national anthem' -- as a US state.

"As a state, it would be one of the great states. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at the map, they do an artificial line right through it between Canada and the US. A straight artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago. And it makes no sense. It's so perfect as a great and cherished state".

March 13th, 2025 PT VII - Trump's choice for United States ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, says that "Canada is a sovereign state" when asked about Trump's repeated threats to annex Canada and make it a U.S. state.

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To my American friends, I know most of you are amazing and generous people. You didn't ask for this, and I understand that. I hold no ill will towards you, whatsoever. But I must stress, with as much seriousness as I can, the amount of damage this has done.

We have viewed you as our closest friend and ally for a century. We thought of you as brothers and sisters. We answered the call, again and again, for any support you needed from us. Most of Canadians visit the USA so much that we've seen more of the US than we have the rest of Canada.

American products have been taken off our shelves. Canadians are cancelling travel plans to the US. Photo after photo has been shared on social media of empty flights from Canada to the USA.

This isn't a joke to us. We're not overreacting. We don't think he's just saying this shit to cause chaos or negotiate a deal. We wholeheartedly believe that our closest ally and friend is about to bring violence across our border, economically destroy us, and eliminate our way of life.

The main driver for Canada's creation in 1867 was SPECIFICALLY to not be part of America, and to end America's very public threats and plans to annex our territory.

We're angry. We're really, really fucking angry. Open your eyes to what's happening because we're tired of trying to make you understand why and asking you why it seems like none of you care.

I still hope that there is time to repair this. I still believe that this is the result of one man's plan to burn it all down. But time is running out, and fast.

**Note**

The hundreds of positive comments and messages I've received from Americans today have restored my faith in you, and humanity. You do care, and I was wrong in assuming you didn't.

[dostoyevsky-official]

The Trump administration may exclude government spending from GDP, obscuring the impact of DOGE cuts Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the U.S. economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because changes in taxes, spending, deficits and regulations by the government can impact the path of overall growth. GDP reports already include extensive details on government spending, offering a level of transparency for economists.

[darkmaga-returns]

The Trump administration has unveiled the first phase of its bold plan to abolish the IRS, eliminating income taxes for Americans earning under $150,000 annually.

“I know what his goal is — no tax for anybody making under $150,000 a year. That’s what I’m working for,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Infowars .com reports: The move would massively help the majority of taxpayers since, according to the 2022 Census, around 93 percent of working Americans earned under $150,000.

The administration is also looking at eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay, which Lutnick said “will change America.”

Most citizens would embrace a huge increase in the amount of money they take home at the end of a hard day’s work, and the move would likely make millions of apolitical Americans fans of the MAGA movement.

To assist with the decrease in federal revenue that would come along with the tax cuts, the administration is eliminating government waste and gutting the federal workforce while also bringing in excess money via tariffs on trade partners who have been taking advantage of the U.S. for decades.

[clonebrainrot]

Now why is trump disbanding the groups that know the economy the best? Is it because he’s about to run us off a cliff?

“WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics, potentially affecting the quality of data.

The terminations by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were effective February 28 and communicated on Tuesday via email to one of the panels, the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), which assisted with inflation and employment gross domestic product (GDP) data.”

Source

[meret118]

ETA: "But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is run by a few oligarchs loyal to him," Chakrabarti added. "Creating that state is hard in a large, dynamic, powerful economy with too many actors who can oppose him. So he's accelerating concentrating money and power into the hands of his loyalists while he crashes the rest out."

Responding to this, Ball asserted that "at this point, until proven otherwise, the primary actor in the government and the economy is actually Elon, so I think it makes sense to think of Elon's incentives here and what he may actually want to accomplish."

"If you think back at the last economic crashes—both in Covid and in the 2008 financial crash—while initially everyone suffered, including the rich, out of both, the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before," she noted.

"So in 2008, not only did they get their own custom bailout, but they were able to buy housing stock at absurdly low prices," Ball recalled. "The rich got richer than ever, inequality skyrocketed, and the big banks got bigger than ever."

"Same deal with the Covid-era recession," she continued. "So, while again, everyone suffered initially, there was a huge bailout package which, yes, did benefit ordinary people, but if you look at who came out really on top... you could see people like Elon Musk, people like Jeff Bezos, people like Mark Zuckerberg getting far wealthier. Their net worths, which were already very high, skyrocketed beyond anyone's wildest dreams."

“To understand the federal government, it is like a corporate takeover at scale, but one where the company is actually in much worse shape than any commercial company could ever be,” Musk said at the conference, reported CNN’s Hadas Gold.

Musk then went on to say that “logically we should prioritize anything that can reasonably be privatized,” including public services such as the postal service and Amtrak.

Last month, officials with the United States Postal Service flagged that the Trump administration was looking to dissolve the organization’s governing board and place it under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick. Experts believe doing so would likely violate federal law.

-------

It's vulture capitalism of an entire country. I don't know why I'm surprised. It's the same thing big oil is doing to the entire planet. And none of them care how many people they kill.

Do the republicans in congress realize when the stock market crashes like it's 1929 they'll lose their money too?

[follow-up-news]

Amazon has made a late bid to purchase TikTok, a person familiar with the ongoing White House-led discussions to identify a non-Chinese buyer for the social media app told NBC News. The bid, first reported by The New York Times, arrived this week, via a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Given the last-minute timing, days before a Saturday deadline to stave off a ban of the app in the U.S., the bid is not being treated as serious, said the source, who was granted anonymity to share details of private negotiations.

[gwydionmisha]

Atlanta Fed shock sounds 'Trumpcession' warning: McGeever

Trump is deliberately tanking the economy and then trying to cover it up with more firings and cooking the books. If no federal economic data is reliable then no one can trust it for things like investments, business decisions, government planning for economic downturn, etc.. This is yet another essential step in the Republican plan to ruin the economy for the benefit of Vladimir Putin and a hand full of Billionaires so rich they benefit if there is stagflation, or even worse deflation.

There is no non-sinister reason to do any of this.

Trump administration disbands two expert panels on economic data

Trump Advisers Want to Strip Public Spending From the GDP Tally. Why It Makes No Sense.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Torri Lonergan at MMFA:

Right-wing media appear not to be fully aligned with President Donald Trump’s framing of his tariffs. After announcing tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, Trump administration officials tried to claim this was the start of a “drug war” rather than a trade war, insisting that Trump imposed the tariffs to combat fentanyl trafficking. However, some right-wing media figures have acknowledged that Trump’s tariffs are a tactic in a trade war that is hurting the economy.

The Trump administration has repeatedly insisted its tariffs are part of a drug war, not a trade war

On March 4, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico. The administration said the tariffs were intended to combat “the flow of contraband drugs like fentanyl into the United States.” Trump complained that both countries have “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens” and said the tariffs will continue until the fentanyl crisis “stops, or is seriously limited.” Trump also imposed a 20% tariff on imports from China using the same rationale. [White House, 2/1/25, 3/3/25; Associated Press, 3/4/25, 3/5/25; Truth Social, 2/27/25; Tax Foundation, 3/7/25]

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Fox’s Martha MacCallum, “This is not a trade war. It’s a drug war.” Hassett complained that Canada is “not trying hard enough” to prevent fentanyl trafficking and claimed that’s why tariffs were implemented. [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 3/4/25]

On Fox, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted, “It’s a drug war, not a trade war.” Navarro reiterated this point to Politico and CNN and while speaking to reporters outside the White House. [Fox News, America Reports, 2/3/25; Politico, 2/4/25; CNN, The Situation Room, 3/5/25; C-SPAN, 2/3/25]

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg, “This is not a trade war. This is a drug war.” Lutnick made the same argument on Fox Business, Fox News, and CNBC, insisting the tariffs are about fentanyl deaths rather than trade policy. [Bloomberg, 3/5/25; Fox Business, Kudlow, 3/4/25; Fox News, America Reports, 3/5/25; CNBC, Squawk Box, 3/4/25]

Fox News helped amplify Trump's “drug war” narrative. The Trump administration’s propagandist allies at Fox News were initially helpful in rebranding the unnecessary trade war against America’s neighbors as a necessary step in a “drug war” against fentanyl while the administration spread misinformation about the crisis. [Media Matters, 3/5/25]

While U.S. officials have claimed this is a “drug war,” both Canadian and Mexican leaders have labeled it a “trade war.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada “will continue to be in a trade war that was launched by the United States for the foreseeable future.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated, “We don’t want to enter into a trade war.” [Reuters, 3/6/25; The New York Times, 3/4/25]

Fox Business anchor Liz Claman said, “We have a trade war. Let’s just call it what it is.” Claman questioned how long “the people of America will remain patient, especially when they may have checked in on their 401(k)s at the worst points of the session today and really gulped and got worried, especially people who are close to retirement.” [Fox Business, The Claman Countdown, 3/4/25]

Fox anchor John Roberts said, “It could be that there’s a little bit of a trade war brewing between the United States and Canada.” [Fox News, America Reports, 3/4/25]

Newsmax host Rob Schmitt reported, “Trump's commerce secretary says this trade war will likely be over before it really even begins.” Schmitt also noted that “tariffs are freaking out Wall Street.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 3/4/25]

One America News’ Pearson Sharp predicted that China is “probably prepared to go higher” on reciprocal tariffs in response to “the trade war.” Sharp also said China “didn’t think this was about fentanyl. They thought this was about the trade deficit, and they thought that maybe these things should be separate issues, and we should work on the trade deficit and not use the fentanyl as — what they said — an excuse to address it.” [One America News, The Matt Gaetz Show, 3/5/25]

Certain right-wing media personalities have admitted that Donald Trump’s so-called “drug war” is really a trade war, especially towards China, Canada, and Mexico.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Today in Tottenham (North London)

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 12, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 13, 2025

Trump’s 25% tariffs on all aluminum and steel imported into the U.S. went into effect today, prompting retaliatory tariffs from the European Union and Canada. The E.U. announced tariffs on about $28 billion worth of products, including beef and whiskey, mostly produced by Republican-dominated states. “We deeply regret this measure,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers. These tariffs are disrupting supply chains. They bring uncertainty for the economy.”

Canada also announced new tariffs on Wednesday on about $21 billion worth of U.S. products, in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs. François-Philippe Champagne, Canada's minister of innovation, science, and industry, said: “The U.S. administration is once again inserting disruption and disorder into an incredibly successful trading partnership and raising the costs of everyday goods for Canadians and American households alike.”

With the stock market falling and business leaders begging Trump to stop the trade machinations that are creating the volatility that is wrenching the economy downward, Trump said yesterday to reporters: “[L]ong-term, what I’m doing is making our country strong again.”

In an interview on the CBS Evening News last night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire financial executive, was asked whether Trump’s economic policies were “worth it” even if they cause a recession.

“These policies are the most important thing America has ever had,” Lutnick answered. “It is worth it.”

Former representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) reposted Lutnick’s assertion and said: “In my graduate thesis, I quoted a hardline communist official from Poland in the 1950s who was asked about terrible shortages of food and housing. He said people had to sacrifice and “if that’s what it takes to prove the superiority of socialism, it’s worth it.”

The days when the Republican Party were conservatives are long gone. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish politician and political thinker who began the process of articulating a conservative political philosophy, did so most famously in response to the French Revolution. In 1790, a year after the storming of the Bastille prison symbolized the rebellion of the people against the monarchy, Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Burke had supported the American Revolution that had ended less than a decade before largely because he believed that the American colonists were trying to restore their traditional rights. But the French Revolution, he thought, was an entirely different proposition. As revolutionaries in France replaced their country’s traditions with laws and systems based on their theory of an ideal government, Burke drew back.

He took a stand against radical change driven by people trying to make the government enforce a specific political ideology. Ideologically driven government was radical and dangerous, he thought: quickly, the ideology became more important than the complex reality of the way society—and people—actually worked.

In 1790, Burke argued that the role of government was not to impose a worldview, but rather to promote stability, and that lawmakers could achieve that stability most effectively by supporting the structures that had proven themselves effective in the past; in his time, that meant social hierarchies, the church, property, and the family. “Conservative” meant, literally, conserving what was already there, without reference to an ideology. Those in charge of government should make changes slowly, according to facts on the ground, in order to keep the country stable, he thought. If it behaved this way, the government, which in his time was usually seen as a negative force in society, could be a positive one.

In 2025 the Republicans in charge of the United States of America are not the conservatives they call themselves; they are the dangerous ideological radicals Burke feared. They are abruptly dismantling a government that has kept the United States relatively prosperous, secure, and healthy for the past 80 years. In its place, they are trying to impose a government based in the idea that a few men should rule.

The Trump administration’s hits to the economy have monopolized the news this week, but its swing away from Europe and toward Russia, antagonizing allies and partners while fawning over authoritarians like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, is also a radical stand, and one that seems likely to destabilize American security. Former allies have expressed concern over sharing intelligence with the U.S. in the future, and yesterday, 34 army leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, Japan, and Australia met in Paris without inviting the United States.

The wholesale destruction of the U.S.A.’s advanced medical research, especially cancer research, by firing scientists, canceling grants, banning communications and collaboration, and stopping travel is also radical and seems unlikely to leave Americans healthier than before.

Yesterday, news broke that the administration canceled $800 million worth of grants to Johns Hopkins University, one of the nation’s top research universities in science and medicine. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on the safe, effective measles vaccine as the disease continues to spread across the Southwest.

Today, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin boasted that the administration is taking 31 actions to roll back environmental protections. Those include regulations about electric vehicles and pollution from coal-fired plants. The administration intends to rescind the EPA’s 2009 finding that the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change endanger public health. That finding is the legal argument for regulations governing car and truck emissions and power plants.

Also today, the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees supplemental food programs, announced it was cutting about $1 billion in funding that enables schools and food banks to buy directly from local farms and ranches. This will hit farmers and producers as well as children and food-insecure families.

In place of the system that has created relative stability for almost a century, Republicans under President Donald Trump and his sidekick billionaire Elon Musk are imposing a government that is based in the idea that a government that works to make people safe, prosperous, and healthy is simply ripping off wealthy people. Asked if he felt sorry for those losing their jobs in the government purges, Trump told NBC News, without evidence: “Sure I do. I feel very badly...but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.”

The administration promises that it is eliminating “waste, fraud, and corruption,” but Judd Legum of Popular Information today launched the “Musk Watch DOGE Tracker,” which shows that Musk has overstated the savings he claims by at least 92%, with the warning that since these identified cuts are illegal and unconstitutional—Congress appropriates money and writes the laws for how it’s spent, and courts have agreed that the executive branch has to execute the laws as they are written—the contracts might not be canceled at all.

That the administration knows it is not operating on the up-and-up seems clear from its attempts to hide what it is doing. It has taken weeks for courts to get the administration to say who is running the “Department of Government Efficiency” and what the body actually is. The White House has tried to characterize Musk as a senior advisor to the president to shield him from questioning.

But today, in response to a lawsuit by 14 attorneys general from Democratic-dominated states arguing that Musk is acting unconstitutionally, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Musk and DOGE to turn over their records and answer questions, giving them three weeks to comply.

On Tuesday, remaining staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) received an email under the name of acting executive secretary Erica Carr at USAID telling them to shred or burn agency records, despite strict laws about the preservation of federal documents. “Haphazardly shredding and burning USAID documents and personnel files seems like a great way to get rid of evidence of wrongdoing when you’re illegally dismantling the agency,” said Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two lawsuits are already challenging the order.

And the corruption in the administration was out in the open yesterday. After Trump advertised Elon Musk’s cars at the White House, Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that Musk “has signaled to President Trump’s advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation.” This is separate from Musk’s own political action committee, which dropped almost $300 million into the 2024 election and which is now pouring money into next month’s election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The government that Trump and Musk are destroying, with the complicity of their party, is popular, and Republican members of Congress are apparently unwilling to have to vote on the policies that are putting their radical ideology into place. In an extraordinary move yesterday, House Republicans made it impossible for Congress to challenge Trump’s tariffs.

The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days.

But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.

The Republicans’ legislation that a day is not a day seems to prove the truth of Burke’s observation that by trying to force reality to fit their ideology, radical ideologues will end up imposing tyranny in the name of liberty.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON