Author Archives: eehines

TACO Trump?

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Trump Always Chickens Out goes the latest anti-Trump meme of the Left. This graph tells a different story.

All of those latest agreed/imposed tariffs are higher than the original tariffs.

Keep in mind that Trump is, from the beginning, a builder who learned his trade in the blunt-speaking, trash talking New York City environment and a marketer who learned negotiating in that same environment.

The best deals are made by a marketer who begins the negotiations with an already clearly understood price range within which he’s willing to close a deal and outside of which is willing to walk away. The marketer then begins with offers that are extremely low on proffered buys and extremely high on proffered sales and lets himself be talked up/down toward his already determined range in exchange for more things from the prospective seller or buyer.

This is what that graph illustrates.

Tacit Hamas Apologia

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United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his nation would join France in recognizing a Palestinian state by the end of summer. Never mind that there is no state to recognize; the far larger problem and UK failure is this:

So today [Starmer said], as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations general assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
This includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank. Meanwhile, our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal.
The Palestinian people have endured terrible suffering. Now, in Gaza, because of a catastrophic failure of aid we see starving babies, children too weak to stand—images that will stay with us for a lifetime.
The suffering must end. Yesterday I discussed this with President Trump and we are mounting a major effort to get humanitarian supplies back in, by air—and UK aid has been air-dropped into Gaza today—and, crucially, by land. We need to see at least 500 trucks entering Gaza every day.

The trouble with Starmer’s position is that it entirely mischaracterizes the source of the problem. It is Hamas that opposes peace and refuses any sort of ceasefire short of Israel’s abject surrender; it is Hamas that is actively interfering with delivery of humanitarian aid, actively interfering as it does with Gazans’ efforts to get to aid deliveries unless they come through Hamas, diverting UN-sourced aid from deliveries to Gazans toward itself, stealing delivered aid from Gazans; it is Hamas causing the Gazans’ suffering, especially that of children for the sake of the optics—which is rewarded by their effects on the naïve and those like Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, who should know better.

This is Starmer sub rosa (not sotto voce because he really does know better) supporting the terrorists. That’s the unequivocal message he has for Hamas. How far the UK has fallen.

Can’t Come Soon Enough

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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is moving to rescind an Obama-reign rule that classified atmospheric CO2—plant food—as a pollutant and a threat to public health.

The rescission can’t come soon enough; it’s cost us more than enough already in dollars and foregone hydrocarbon-sourced—which is to say, cheap and reliable and clean—energy generation. It’s cost us more than enough already in dollars diverted to patently unreliable “green” energy sources like solar and wind, the former which fails utterly when the sun doesn’t shine ( and that’s not only at night), and the latter which fails utterly when the wind doesn’t blow or it blows too hard. Windmills have additional, drastically destructive, impacts on birds, on aquatic life, and on our beaches when offshore windmills shed their blades.

Naturally, the Climate Funding Industry and a potful of fee-seeking lawyers will sue and try to tie up the rescission for as long as they can. That just puts a premium on pushing ahead, promptly, with the rescission.

Progressive-Democratic Party Policies

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Neera Tanden, ex-policy advisor to ex-President Joe Biden (D), has a proposal regarding immigration. I’ll elide the manufactured hysteria with which she opens her piece.

Our proposal ends the misuse of asylum and restores it to its original purpose—to protect those persecuted for who they are or what they believe.
…
…more personnel, better technology, and barriers where appropriate—to deter illegal immigration and apprehend contraband goods.
…
We should expand legal immigration—with safeguards that prevent displacement for American workers….

With no ideas for how to prove the legitimacy of those asylum claims; throw money and bodies at the problem, though; and make sure those lettuce pickers and lawn mowers and house cleaners are available to do the dirty work for us.

The core of Tanden’s position, though, is this:

Democrats can win this issue—and cleave Republicans—if they support ending illegal immigration and increasing legal immigration. The left also has a chance to split the right as they have split us.

Party adherents’ policy plainly is merely anti-Republican and not at all pro-what’s good for America and America’s citizens. What about a policy whose goal is America and Americans winning?

Party adherents have no policies that they’re for; their core policy is Oppose the Other Side. Immigration is merely a tool for Party defeating Republicans. It’s not about making our nation greater.

A Thought on Interest Rates

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William Silber had one on the Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday opinion pages. Naturally, I have one on his.

The core of Silber’s thought is this:

The so-called neutral rate of interest is observed in hindsight—by whether the economy is expanding fast enough to keep unemployment low but not too fast to provoke higher inflation. By that measure, the current target interest rate of 4.25% to 4.50% seems about right. I say “about right” because the unemployment rate is low but the rate of inflation is somewhat elevated. That suggests, if anything, the target interest rate should be higher to push down inflation.

Silber is right on the first part. He’s wrong on the second. The current target interest rate “seems about right” because it historically correlates with the Fed’s inflation target of 2%. Now it’s time for the Fed to sit down and be quiet—and to say in so many words that that’s what it’s going to do. Excursions above and below the inflation target are just the noise of a free market. The time is not yet—if ever in the current market conditions—to make any sort of move on target interest rates.