It was reported last Friday that inflation rose slightly in August, but not enough to suggest that it was impacted by US tariffs that are either here or on the way. What affect that will have on the Fed and interest rate changes seems to be under discussion with no clear indication of how the Fed intends to proceed.
Mr. Trump has now decided to impose 25-100% tariffs on pharmaceuticals, trucks, and household furnishings. With regard to the pharmaceutical industry, he is looking to see who is building a plant as to how much will be imposed in terms of tariffs. It appears that many of the larger pharmaceutical companies do not believe that this will have a significant impact on them. And if that is the case, then the only ones that are going to be hurt are the smaller manufacturers, which plays to the advantage of the bigger manufacturers. More evidence of Mr. Trump’s basic economic incompetence.
I haven’t touched on this subject matter in some time, but it appears that construction workers in Los Angeles discovered 9,000,000-year-old sea creature fossils buried under a local high school.This has given the students the opportunity to experience an archeological dig right under their feet, if you will.It appears that this area was a seabed millions of years ago, and these fossils were deposited there leaving this trail of information about that stage of the world.
It appears that China is circumventing US tariffs via Mexico and Canada through the handling of their imports.Mr. Trump thought dealing with China and Russia would be simple, and that they would bow to him. What it appears is happening, in the case of Russia, is Mr. Putin is simply saying “no”, and in China’s case they are being a bit more devious but achieving the same result in that they are not bending to his threats.
We previously discussed the impact of Mr. Trump’s policies on farmers. In particular, we noted the substantial reduction at that time of slightly over 50% of soybean purchases by China were declining.That has now taken yet another turn for the worse if you will, in that China’s purchases last year of soybeans was 12.5 billion, and as of this year, 0. Mr. Trump has compounded his attack on farmers by cutting off many of the internal US food programs, with the sellers to those programs being farmers who now have lost that source of revenue as well. This is a typical demonstration of how Mr. Trump works, and his failure to understand the impact of these decisions even on his supporters, which is unfortunately not a surprise.
Elise Stefanik’s bid for Governor seems to be running into at least initial issues in the polls as she is behind Governor Hochul by approximately 30 points.She has also run into some local trouble as her preferred candidate to fill the assembly seat in our area, the 115th, has been rejected by the three county chairs due to the fact that the Clinton County chair controls 57% of the vote, thus, whomever that chair votes for, if you will, wins. She is now apparently behind the scenes trying to get the New York State party to refuse to fund the candidate selected by the county chairs. I wonder if she’ll win that one.
We are moving into a chapter in our history that is sounding like the period when Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy were at work and we can lump this into the long history of this kind of attack on the First Amendment, with the Know-Nothings in the 1800’s and others who wanted to silence their opponents. This is an extraordinarily dangerous trend and does in fact mirror what has happened in so many other countries when power becomes consolidated in the executive.
Joe Rogan recently indicated after the Jimmy Kimmel situation developed that conservatives should be wary because it will be used against them at some point, and Senator Cruz has essentially made this same point.It appears conservatives are deaf, or simply unable or are refusing to understand that administrations change. This philosophy established by Mr. Trump could well be used against them.
The recent election in Arizona and the one occurring several weeks ago in northern Virginia, in which Democrats were successful in those special elections has several interesting facts associated with them. Even though these are Democratic districts, the margin was greater than it was for the prior Democratic incumbent. Do these elections portend a good outcome for Democrats in the 2026 mid-terms? I think that is hard to tell, but it does seem that the Democratic base is motivated.
Mr. Trump was quoted as having said in 2013 about President Obama that the reason for the shut down during that period was the result of the ineffectiveness of the President. I wonder ifhe thinks that still holds true. It is possible that is why he has reached out after initially refusing to meet with Democrats because he wonders whether or not he could be blamed. I’d love to see their inside polling on this.
The Cato Institute, not exactly a liberal thought center, reports that since 1975 right-wingers accounted for 391 murders and the left-wingers for 65. Right-wingers were motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, and other right-wing ideology, while the left-wingers were motivated by black nationalism and anti-police sentiment and other belief systems. So, Mr. President, who in fact is more violent?
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
