Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and India ought to give Trump a voluntary elimination of their own import tariffs in a bid to get their rate down to 10% like South America

 

Trump’s Tariffs Don’t Apply to Chips, but Taiwan Remains Wary

The chip companies in Taiwan, the center of the global supply chain, are expected to face pressure from Washington to invest more in the U.S.

Meathead doesn't understand our “America’s Edge,” where Anne-Marie Slaughter argued that power in the 21st century would accrue to nations that put themselves in the center of networks, and that America was well suited to play that role. We have a diverse populace with global connections, alliances across two great oceans, the greatest universities with large foreign student bodies.

 

How to Destroy What Makes America Great

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

As a long time food importer I was never impressed by Food and Drug testing and safety enforcement

 

F.D.A. Layoffs Could Raise Drug Costs and Erode Food Safety

Trump cutbacks were supposedly aimed at administrators. But scientists in food and drug-testing labs and policy experts who advance generic drug approvals were also dismissed.

Trump hits everyone not on his shit list with a minimum 10% tariff. Now he has to get Congress to eliminate the ninety-nine chapter U.S. Tariff Schedule and release the bureaucrats enforcing them and the private bureaucrat followers to find employment elsewhere

 

Friday, February 14, 2025

Trump Widens Trade Fight to Include Global Taxes and Regulation

     President Trump and his team are keen on imposing tariffs on imports but instead of a mercurial approach with a decision one day and a reversal the next it is suggested he and his administration first apply a KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach. First, have Congress make a new tariff law that eliminates all previous ones for a new one that simply charges 5% of the invoice value. Most importantly this duty should be on all imports on all goods from all countries without exception. Second, he should have his cohort Elon Musk eliminate the staff devoted to the implementation of the ninety-nine chapter U.S. Tariff Schedule and release them and their private bureaucrat followers to find employment in some other field. Additional tariffs could be applied by the executive branch to friend or foe and complicated or simple as they would like but never by modifying the fixed 5% rate passed by Congress applied to every country without exception.

Sure, service members like it when senior leaders work out alongside them, but they like it much more when senior leaders live by the same standards they impose on their troops. They also like it much more when senior leaders can keep the nation’s most precious secrets.

 

What Rusting Russian Tanks Can Teach Us About the Pete Hegseth Group Chat

By David French

Opinion Columnist

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, several leading Trumpists developed a strange fascination with the Russian Army. They contrasted masculine Russian recruitment ads, which featured chiseled Russian soldiers displaying their martial prowess, with much softer American ads on social media.

The Russians were masculine and tough, they said. Americans were woke and weak. But the illusion of Russian prowess was shattered on those battlefields north of Kyiv. There is much more to military strength than physicality and bravado. Ukraine, the much smaller representative of the so-called woke West, has turned much of Russia’s conventional arsenal into smoking ruins.

It’s telling that Hegseth is turning to martial, masculine symbolism to save his career. He’s putting out images of himself working out with Navy SEALs, as if his fitness can cover for his carelessness and incompetence.

As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.

 

Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.

By Phil Klay

Mr. Klay is a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war.

Its so French

 

They Want More Babies. Now They Have Friends in the White House.

The American conservative movement has long worked to put the nuclear family at the center of cultural and economic life. Lately, it has added a twist. It wants to make those families bigger.