The Donald Trump Score Card

Year to date I've lost $500. I'd do better investing my money under my mattress.

 

Same

I did gain a lot of money in 2017
So basically I'm back to where I was at the end of 2016

 

The low education voter who Trump loves so much is about to get an education in imminent domain law.

 

He sure had not problem with Sholomo Rubashkin's use of illegals.

 

Now it's China's 'unfair retaliation'.

Trump considers imposing tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese goods as a response to what he refers to as China using 'unfair retaliation' to the tariffs he initiated.

This is vintage Trump and a part of his door-in-the-face psychological approach.


Make outrageous demands initially to leverage the other party to get something that you want.
(Sue Palm Beach for $100 million for a claim such as aircraft soot on your mansion; use leveraged buyouts to acquire casino property)

Accuse the other party of responding unfairly to garner public support for yourself.
(Palm Beach was supposedly being unAmerican for requiring Trump to lower his oversize flagpole at Mar-a-Lago which violated city code)

Get a portion of what you initially demanded.
(A lease to use airport land in Palm Beach for a Trump golf course)

After you get it, don't follow through on your part of the agreement to maximize your gain.
(After bragging about an exaggerated worth to the public, when it comes tax time, claim that your business is worth much less than it actually is to avoid paying taxes. Sue the creditors for unfair lending practices to avoid paying back the loans. Don't pay the rest of the contractor bills, claiming shoddy work.)

Trump has used this approach for his golf course and mansion in Palm Beach, buildings in NY, and the failed Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, Trump Tower Tampa, Trump University, Trump Airways, Trump Magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, and Trump Pale Ale. .

 

Trump was supposed to have a round table discussion about taxes in WV. Instead it was another round table circle jerk with one person after another saying what an honor it was to be in his presence.

He is still carnival barking conspiracy like he was in 2015 about Mexican rapists and millions of illegal votes for Hillary.

He gave a similar campaign style rant in Ohio about a week ago.


Trump ditches ‘boring’ tax script for Mexican rapists, illegal voting claims
By CRISTIANO LIMA
04/05/2018 03:29 PM EDT
Updated 04/05/2018 07:09 PM EDT

Trump ditches ‘boring’ tax script for Mexican rapists, illegal voting claims

 

But will it work with China? All this tough talk is an inducement for them to buy more soybeans from Brazil, not buy more of our debt, etc. And his "go it alone" approach has divorced us from our allies. The Chinese invented water torture. Drip, drip, drip!

 

A trade war can spill into other venues that aren't primarily about trade of goods but that can have a similar amount of leverage.


China Vows to Fight Trump Tariffs ‘to the End’ as Tension Rises
By Toluse Olorunnipa
and Andrew Mayeda
April 5, 2018, 6:53 PM EDT
Updated on April 6, 2018, 9:35 AM EDT

China Vows to Fight Trump Tariffs ‘to the End’ as Tension Rises

From the article:

"The impact could be felt well beyond the usual suspects. Most U.S. businesses with substantial revenue in China have so far been spared from the country's retaliatory wrath, but tech companies such as Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. are directly in the firing line if things heat up.

Boeing Co., General Electric Co. and United Technologies Corp., whose substantial Chinese aerospace businesses have so far been largely spared, could also be targeted. Caterpillar Inc. risks getting locked out of the Belt and Road infrastructure bonanza.

Other firms could be damaged by local action that barely touches on formal goods trade.

Las Vegas Sands Inc., controlled by 2016's biggest conservative political donor Sheldon Adelson, doesn't technically export anything much to China -- but if Macau authorities decided to strip away the license for his casinos that's up for renewal in 2022, the company could lose three-fifths of its revenue in a flash.

On paper, the U.S. may have the stronger hand. Still, any poker player knows that you don't win by getting the best cards, but by knowing your opponent's weaknesses. Beijing's most powerful weapon -- harming prominent companies to make President Trump lose face with the U.S. business community -- has barely been touched so far in this conflict."

 

U.S. farmers are experiencing anxiety with Trump playing a game of chicken with their livelihood and his recent remarks about going through the pain of a tariff war to be stronger in the end.

It's like being in a race car with Trump at the wheel skirting cliffs while he says, "Rest easy. All of this will make things better in the end once we have won."

Sometimes the person who was thought to be a savior turns out to look like something else.

 

These so-called "campaign" speeches are obviously to throw some red meat to his base. They need to be reminded about the hordes of Mexican rapists heading to the border with their dicks out looking for white meat! I reckon that eventually, even his hard core supporters will be embarrassed at their naive and slavish fealty to him.

 

Trump Doubles Down on a Trade War He Can’t Win
By Jonah Shepp
April 6, 2018 3:51 am

Trump Doubles Down on a Trade War He Can’t Win

Excerpts:

"Trump may think that it counts as “winning” if China suffers more than we do, but voters are unlikely to see it that way. As Toby Ziegler one famously mansplained, thanks to free trade, “Food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper, steel is cheaper, cars are cheaper, phone service is cheaper.” Make Everything Expensive Again doesn’t have much of a ring to it, as campaign slogans go."

For its part, China isn’t sweating the prospect of a trade war with the U.S. nearly as much as Trump would probably like. While the Chinese economy is hardly impervious to American pressure, the much larger economic role of the state gives President Xi Jinping more levers with which to counteract the negative impact of U.S. tariffs. He also has less to fear in terms of political consequences or press criticism (an authoritarian feature Trump covets).

Though Xi may have fewer cards to play in this game than Trump, he is playing them cannily. It is not lost on him that agriculture and certain manufacturing industries are powerful political lobbies in the U.S. and that workers in these industries make up an important component of Trump’s base, and it’s no accident that Wednesday’s threat from Beijing targets goods produced in America’s domestic political battlegrounds.

China also has other, less conventional methods at its disposal for harming the U.S. economically if it feels compelled to. It could crack down on joint ventures and make it much harder for American companies to manufacture and sell goods in China, or go for the “nuclear option” of dumping its sizable hoard of U.S. Treasury bills and messing with the U.S. bond market, thereby causing a spike in interest rates. These moves would be costly for China, too, but Xi has already indicated that he is willing to make sacrifices if he has to: After all, China consumes a lot of soybeans.

If the U.S. wanted to confront China on these practices, the best way to do that would be to clearly articulate the policy changes it wants Beijing to make and form an international coalition of other large economies to present a united front. Instead, Trump has made a habit of threatening, insulting, and otherwise alienating our key allies and trade partners with his neo-mercantilist policies."

 

An article about the uncertainty in the agricultural markets that Trump has already created with his impulsive behavior. The perception of uncertainty in buyers of U.S. agricultural products could damage the U.S. farmers for years, even if Trump ends his game of chicken without any immediate damage.


Farmers to Trump: No trade war, please
‘What [Trump] did last night was outlandish. Enough is enough. Let’s sit down and talk. Let’s not threaten any more’
By ADAM BEHSUDI, CATHERINE BOUDREAU and DOUG PALMER
04/06/2018 05:16 PM EDT

Farmers to Trump: No trade war, please

From the article:

"Support payments may remove some short-term pain, but farmers say the real damage would come in the long term.

“When we become a supplier that’s not reliable, countries look elsewhere,” said Recker, who currently serves as president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. “This will embolden South America — Argentina and Brazil — to expand their acres and just make them even more of a competitor.”

Brian Duncan, who raises hogs and cattle and grows row crops in Ogle County, Illinois, and is vice president of the state’s Farm Bureau, told POLITICO that while he appreciates the president acknowledging that agricultural producers are going to take a hit, he is skeptical of the assistance being promised.

“We’ve spent decades trying to work ourselves away from government assistance,” Duncan said. “Part of that has been the development of foreign markets.”

He echoed Recker’s concerns about losing markets that the U.S. has spent years developing due to all the trade uncertainty, saying that the effects of a tit-for-tat dispute could ripple across generations."

 

Orange County is an outlier. All of the members of its board of supervisors are Republican. A few locales in Orange are the places that Trump has embraced in an effort to find support for his anti-immigration policies.

Like much of the rest of CA, and the U.S. as a whole, the Christian white segment of Orange is gradually yielding to a population that is becoming increasingly Hispanic and Asian. Over the past few decades Orange has been gradually and consistently shifting toward Democratic. It voted for Hillary in 2016, the first time it went Democratic since FDR.

The current board in Orange may be the last hoorah for a nostalgic past for the county in general, similar to how one of its cities, Garden Grove, went through its last gasp a few decades ago.

Tough talk from Trump and Sessions directed at CA is unlikely to change the overall demographic tide, similar to how it isn't going to bring back the coal mining and steel industries.


Trump finally finds a part of California he likes — Orange County — even as it grows bluer
By Bradley Zint, Hillary Davis and Cindy Carcamo
Mar 28, 2018 | 2:30 PM

Trump finally finds a part of California he likes — Orange County — even as it grows bluer

 

Yeah lets waste money and resources despite a negative net immigration rate right now. Fiscal conservatism at its best!

 

How is this a good thing when as Meliai pointed out, net immigration is in the negative?

 

How is this a good thing when net immigration is negative?

 

Going after Amazon...pretty unbelievable considering Trump's shady business practices. he does not practice what he preaches, does he?
Pretty damn hypocritical, if you ask me.

 

As Okie pointed out, the CEO of Amazon is a political enemy of Trump. Trump believes in one thing and one thing only, and that's Donald Trump.

 

well, of course, that is the reason.......What else? nothing new there.........Let him keep being a fan of Roseanne, who I cannot stand now, especially since she supports him...never did like her much anyway.

 

All theater, at taxpayer's expense. Trump's base will like it. That's all that counts for him. He couldn't get his wall, so he's giving them this and hoping it gets by. But Mexico ain't paying for it!