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Muda69

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7 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Notice in your graph where the recent significant drop in apprehensions started - About the time the last border fence construction was started......In other words, the wall worked......So finish the wall......

You do know that also corresponds to last great recession, which foxbat previously mentioned?  It was economics, not a wall, that caused the reduction in apprehensions.

 

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2 minutes ago, swordfish said:

DJT was elected in 2016, took office in January, 2017.  The Republican congress and Senate did not deliver any legislation in 2017, so in early 2018 the President informed them he was going to do exactly what he did in December if this issue was still being ignored.  Now everyone acts surprised with his frustration and his determination to get something accomplished that EVERY administration since Reagan has PROMISED the American people.

Notice in your graph where the recent significant drop in apprehensions started - About the time the last border fence construction was started......In other words, the wall worked......So finish the wall......

There is no one that is surprised.  And if you still believe that he is, then there's not much to a discussion about this because it's pretty clear that this is about ego and not national security.  The fact that his claims about drug implications don't fit with reality also indicates that he's not approaching it logically.  Similarly, the fact that some 400 people just tunneled under a stretch of existing  wall shows even more disconnect from reality.  Should Trump ever get out of the courts to complete his wall, it's likely that it might be studied along with other ill-advised structures like the Maginot Line.

As for the graph, correlation does not specifically mean causality.  A much more likely explanation for decrease is tied to an increase in Mexico's economy, especially as more US jobs went further south, as well as a drop in Mexico's fertility rates which has it right above the sustainability level sans immigration.  Less competition for jobs in Mexico, better jobs in Mexico, and a better economy in Mexico than in the 20th century are all contributing factors to a lowered rate.  BTW, you do realize that a growing issue for illegal immigration isn't border crossings, but instead overstayed visas?  In 2016-2017, almost two-thirds of undocumenteds came with a visa and overstayed while just a bit over a third came from border crossings.  For the last seven years, overstays have outpaced illegal crossings.  

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4 hours ago, Muda69 said:

FTA:

the federal government owns less than a third of the land on the southern border. The rest belongs to other entities, including states, Native American tribes, and private individuals. Most of the border land in Texas, in fact, is private property. In order for the wall to get built, the federal government will need to confiscate quite a bit of privately owned land.

I cannot get passed this. To me this is a HUGE issue in the wall talk.

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Trump Wants To Raid an Asset Forfeiture Black-Box Fund To Build His Border Wall: http://reason.com/blog/2019/02/15/the-asset-forfeiture-fund-trump-wants-to

Quote

President Donald Trump's plan to build a wall along the southern U.S. border will partially rely on the Treasury Department's asset forfeiture fund, according to news reports, but that money comes from a secretive fund potentially rife with civil rights abuses.

Among other sources, the Trump administration reportedly plans to use $600 million from the Treasury Department's Asset Forfeiture Fund, which holds revenues from asset seizures by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Since 2014, ICE and CBP have seized more than $4 billion worth of property that was allegedly used in crimes, according to government records obtained by Splinter. Among the seized assets were human remains. The Treasury Department's forfeiture fund had a balance of $2.2 billion as of fiscal year 2017.

 

But it's unclear how many of those cases were criminal forfeitures, in which the property was forfeited after the federal government obtained a criminal conviction against a defendant; and how many were civil forfeitures, wherein the government seized property on the mere suspicion that it was connected to criminal activity.

...

Civil asset forfeiture has been roundly criticized by civil liberties groups and a wide, bipartisan swath of lawmakers at both the federal and state level because of abuses just like these. More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform over the last decade in response to similar cases.

A 2017 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that, between 2012 and 2014, the IRS seized more than $17 million from innocent business owners using obscure anti-money laundering rules and civil asset forfeiture. The inspector general found money seized and forfeited by the IRS was legally obtained in 91 percent of a sample of 278 structuring investigations it reviewed. As Reason reported:

The investigation was launched in 2014, when media investigations and several lawsuits by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, highlighted the cases business owners who had their life savings seized by the IRS for violating anti-"structuring" rules.

The rules are intended to stop money launderers from evading federal banking regulations by making small cash deposits under $10,000, but IRS agents ruthlessly pursued cases against small business owners when there was no other evidence or indication of criminal activity. For example, The New York Times profiled the case of Carol Hinders, an Iowa woman runs a small, cash-only Mexican restaurant. In 2013, two IRS agents showed up at Hinder's door and told her the agency was seizing $33,000 from her bank account for structuring violations. She was never accused of a crime.

In response to public outrage, the IRS announced in 2014 it was changing its asset forfeiture policies to only pursue cases where there is other evidence of criminal activity.

The IRS has previously released some limited data on structuring cases to the Institute for Justice, which leads them to believe the Treasury Department is intentionally stonewalling them.

"We know that they have this information, and we know that they can give it up, but they don't want to give us the entire database," says Jennifer McDonald, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Justice, "which leads us to believe that there is something they don't want us to know about these funds."

Mr. Trump stealing money from a fund of stolen money/assets.  Beautiful.

 

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2 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

The bogus "national emergency" is also more ammo for the impeachment crowd.

 

My guess is that one of the first witnesses to be called to testify against the President will be ... Donald J. Trump.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/430215-trump-says-he-didnt-need-to-declare-emergency-but-wanted-faster

FTA:

"I want to do it faster. I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster," Trump said during a press conference at the Rose Garden in the White House. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, swordfish said:

A two year event?  What rock have you been living under since Reagan was in office and has resulted in (estimated) almost 13 million illegal aliens undocumented immigrants.  Everyone seems to forget that little bit of history like when the fencing/border barrier was approved under Bush 44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Fence_Act_of_2006 and continued through Obama.

 

SF doesn't like it either, but with this having been going on since the Reagan years without ANY resolution this President (who IMHO really wants results, not sweet talk) is determined to get this done since the partisan divide in the House and Senate is making it impossible.  I don't agree with your opinion that it is against the American people.  My main concern is that this action will lead to the next side of the aisle declaring "man-made climate change" a national emergency under the next administration.

You seem to be implying that the level of illegal immigration has been unabated since the Reagan years, which obviously is not true.

The question of whether (and if so, what) we need to do about the 11 million illegals already here -- most of whom have been here for quite awhile-- is a completely separate question from whether we need to be doing something new or different today from the (apparently fairly successful) things we have been doing over the last 30 years to mitigate or limit further illegal immigration. Or, even if we do decide we do need to do something new or different, whether building  "The Wall" (however that is being redefined this particular week/day/hour/minute by the President) is the right thing to do to achieve that goal.

The notion that, because some Democrats voted in past years to add or upgrade fencing along some parts of the border, current Democrats are being hypocritical not to support the President's undefined, amorphous Wall, is akin to saying that all Republicans who today don't support the Dreamers Act are hypocrites, because many Republicans supported the Reagan era "amnesty" for illegals. 

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45 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

When I saw the headline, I actually thought Ann Coulter was the author.

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Wonder how long it will take before Trump stops visiting Manafort in jail.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/13/politics/paul-manafort-robert-mueller/index.html

FTA:

Paul Manafort "intentionally" lied to special counsel Robert Mueller's office, breaking the plea agreement that made him the star cooperator in the Russia probe, a federal judge found on Wednesday.

Manafort "made multiple false statements to the FBI, the OSC and the grand jury concerning matters that were material to the investigation," including his contacts with his Russian associate during the campaign and later, Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote on Wednesday.

...

Manafort is still bound by what he agreed to in the plea, so he will not be able to retract his guilty pleas. But the finding frees Mueller's office from its contractual obligations in the plea, like asking for a reduced sentence for him because of his cooperation.

 

Word on the street,  is that Manafort's  looking at 19-24 years and that prosecutors have indicated to the judge that they see no reasons for special consideration in sentencing including issues of Manafort's age or health.  In other words, prosecutors are not likely to be going to bat for a reduced sentence.  You have to wonder if these folks are just mentally-impaired or plain old arrogant.  AMI's Pecker is also going to possibly be facing a situation where he cut a deal with the feds and then violated the terms.  With guys like Stone still in the wings, I have to imagine this may not be the last time we see something like this.  Assuming Trump gets out of it all with no jailtime, he's going to be spending an awfully long time visiting a lot of his buddies in jail.

 

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3 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

 

Kind of reminds me of that unawareness vibe that Tommy gave off when he was being taken to be made.  Completely unaware ... right up until he realized that he wasn't getting made. 

Hopefully, these guys aren't visiting with folks like Jong-un, al-Assad, Putin, Bin Salman, Xi, etc. with that unawareness.

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Washington Imperialists Fret Over Trump's Troop Withdrawals: http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/18/washington-imperialists-fret-o

Quote

"The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December," Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) announced in a wave-making Washington Post column in January, just prior to being sworn in. Why that particular month out of the president's tumultuous first 24?

"The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly," Romney wrote, "the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president's thoughtless claim that America has long been a 'sucker' in world affairs all defined his presidency down." In other words, it's the foreign policy, stupid. When the White House takes minor steps to ratchet back Washington's default posture of global interventionism, it's greeted as a catastrophe.

It is amazing what Washington's proverbial "adults in the room"—as both Mattis and Kelly were frequently characterized as during their Trump tenure—consider to be a red line of presidential comportment. Sure, Trump can impose reckless and unconstitutional bans on legal U.S. residents from certain majority-Muslim countries, consciously enact a family-separation policy as an immigration deterrent, and call trade wars "good and easy to win," all while averaging 10 lies a day and acting like your boorish-if-occasionally-hilarious Uncle Bob. But contemplate withdrawing a combined 9,000 troops from Syria and Afghanistan, as Trump did in December, and suddenly no one's laughing.

 

"We are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries," warned Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) at the time.

"Never been more alarmed for the nation since coming to DC over three decades ago," tweeted Bill Kristol of the recently shuttered Weekly Standard.

Mattis resigned within hours of Trump's announcement that all 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria would be withdrawn, saying in his resignation letter that the president has "the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects." Kelly, who worked both as Trump's secretary of homeland security and as his chief of staff, told the Los Angeles Times in an exit interview that his performance in the latter position should be measured by what the president didn't do—namely, withdraw troops from abroad sooner.

"When I first took over [in August 2017], he was inclined to want to withdraw from Afghanistan," Kelly told the paper. Instead of cutting and running, the president added 4,000 troops at the urging of Kelly and the military brass. Eighteen Americans have died in the country since then.

By most reported accounts, Trump's December decisions—the details of which were still being contested at press time, not least by Trump himself—came off half-cocked, poorly coordinated, and sold with a combination of hyperbolic bluster and blunt truth telling. In other words, they were in keeping with how the current president does just about everything.

But because the moves involve life and death, and because the political class is inherently accepting of lethal force abroad, mainstream Democrats joined disappointed Republicans and never-Trump conservatives in declaring that this flawed process for once cannot stand.

"This country's national security decision-making process is more broken than at any time since the National Security Act became law in 1947," former Obama administration National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote in The New York Timesin December. "Cutting and running from Syria benefits only militants, Turkey, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Russia and Iran."

Rice's former boss Hillary Clinton—in a tweet that served as a timely reminder of her comparatively more interventionist instincts—also asserted that "this President is putting our national security at grave risk."

If there's this much freakout over the withdrawal of four figures' worth of troops, imagine what would happen if the president got serious about our 26,000 in South Korea, 54,000 in Japan, and 64,000 in Europe.

By the time the U.S. overthrew the Taliban government in December 2001, a total of seven Americans had died in the war there. That number is now north of 2,300. "There is virtually no possibility of a military victory over the Taliban and little chance of leaving behind a self-sustaining democracy," foreign affairs author Robert Kaplan wrote in The New York Times on January 1, "facts that Washington's policy community has mostly been unable to accept."

Trump is routinely accused, with good reason, of distorting the facts and failing to face reality. It's time for his critics to take a good long look in the mirror.

It sounds like the military-industrial complex has not been able to control Mr. Trump as much as they thought they could.

 

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U.S. states sue Trump administration in showdown over border wall funds: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-challenge/u-s-states-sue-trump-administration-in-showdown-over-border-wall-funds-idUSKCN1Q8022

Quote

A coalition of 16 U.S. states led by California sued President Donald Trump and top members of his administration on Monday to block his decision to declare a national emergency to obtain funds for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came after Trump invoked emergency powers on Friday to help build the wall that was his signature 2016 campaign promise.

Trump’s order would allow him to spend on the wall money that Congress appropriated for other purposes. Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall this year..

“Today, on Presidents Day, we take President Trump to court to block his misuse of presidential power,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

“We’re suing President Trump to stop him from unilaterally robbing taxpayer funds lawfully set aside by Congress for the people of our states. For most of us, the office of the presidency is not a place for theater,” added Becerra, a Democrat.

The White House declined to comment on the filing.

...

Three Texas landowners and an environmental group filed the first lawsuit against Trump’s move on Friday, saying it violated the Constitution and would infringe on their property rights.

The legal challenges could slow Trump’s efforts to build the wall, which he says is needed to curb illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The lawsuits could end up at the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court.

Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Michigan joined California in the lawsuit.

....

Isn't this pretty much what Mr. Trump predicated would happen when he issued his bogus emergency declaration?

 

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5 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

U.S. states sue Trump administration in showdown over border wall funds: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-challenge/u-s-states-sue-trump-administration-in-showdown-over-border-wall-funds-idUSKCN1Q8022

Isn't this pretty much what Mr. Trump predicated would happen when he issued his bogus emergency declaration?

 

Yes, but he used sing-song when he stated it.

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On 2/16/2019 at 4:27 PM, foxbat said:

 

Word on the street,  is that Manafort's  looking at 19-24 years and that prosecutors have indicated to the judge that they see no reasons for special consideration in sentencing including issues of Manafort's age or health.  In other words, prosecutors are not likely to be going to bat for a reduced sentence.  You have to wonder if these folks are just mentally-impaired or plain old arrogant.  AMI's Pecker is also going to possibly be facing a situation where he cut a deal with the feds and then violated the terms.  With guys like Stone still in the wings, I have to imagine this may not be the last time we see something like this.  Assuming Trump gets out of it all with no jailtime, he's going to be spending an awfully long time visiting a lot of his buddies in jail.

 

This is what Stone posted ... and then quickly took down and apologized.

image.thumb.png.e4f9df4ab68725df05b417b44eca382e.png

 

Crosshairs on the picture of a federal judge is a bonehead move.

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4 hours ago, foxbat said:

This is what Stone posted ... and then quickly took down and apologized.

image.thumb.png.e4f9df4ab68725df05b417b44eca382e.png

 

Crosshairs on the picture of a federal judge is a bonehead move.

Roger Stone Ordered to Explain Instagram Photo of Judge With Crosshairs Symbol

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-19/roger-stone-ordered-to-explain-instagram-post-about-judge?cmpid=socialflow-facebook-politics&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=politics&fbclid=IwAR2VvnoijOsIwr0ve2tl4T-x3CJuYhDEjP8mtlktHssUZ5io7yew2_jOD0c

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9 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

So is anyone actually buying what Roger's selling?  From the article, "Stone’s lawyers on Monday apologized for the post in a public letter to the court, saying "Mr. Stone recognizes the impropriety and had it removed."  Seriously, Roger's inner voice didn't recognize the impropriety before posting it? Stone got his picture from CosmicConvergence, http://cosmicconvergence.org/?p=30951, a wacko conspiracy site which tends to put judges, lawyers, and politicians with cross-hairs and a skull and crossbones on their pictures.  Here's the original image from the conspiracy site:

image.png.c91d0eaa835ac7672124444373afa3c2.png

Stone spent some time editing the picture from the original, so he had a little bit of time to think about it before posting ... especially given the source.  Then again, if he was "just posting a picture" he could have used the original BEFORE it was photoshopped by the conspiracy site and before he photoshopped it again.  I'd love to be a fly on the wall during his hearing tomorrow.

image.png.8791c92c61e723dca5be59f051860545.png

 

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Congress Is Complicit in Trump’s Power Grab: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/trump-national-emergency-declaration-congress-diminishing-role/

Quote

Some 20 years ago, Paul Begala, then an adviser to President Bill Clinton, expressed his marvel at the ability of the president to act unilaterally. “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.”

And, of course, we all remember President Obama’s assertion that he could bypass Congress as long as he had “a pen and a phone.” Obama used that pen and phone not only to implement DACA but to rewrite parts of the Affordable Care Act, to circumvent the constitutional requirement that Congress approve treaties, and to target US citizens with drone strikes. In fact, DACA may turn out to be the most defensible of Obama’s presidential power grabs.

In between, President George W. Bush declared unilateral presidential authority to “nullify statutes and court judgments” by refusing to enforce them, acting on the basis of his independent legal judgment. Perhaps most notoriously, when Congress passed an amendment to an emergency defense-appropriations bill prohibiting torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists, President Bush issued a signed statement asserting that he was not bound by it. And while the War on Terror was the biggest impetus for Bush’s accretion of presidential power, he also asserted the unilateral power to act on issues ranging from Medicare to whistleblower protections to affirmative action.

Now, we have President Trump claiming the authority to reallocate funds that Congress had (a) specifically appropriated for other purposes, and (b) specifically refused to appropriate for the uses the president wants.

The legal arguments around Trump’s declaration are unclear. The president’s actions certainly appear to contravene Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which says, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . .” On the other hand, the National Emergencies Act does give the president a great deal of unilateral discretion. Other presidents have used it at least 59 times to trample on congressional power (though most often for imposing sanctions on foreign companies or individuals, or wartime military projects).

Trump’s use of the statute might be more egregious than most, but it’s neither completely unprecedented nor without foundation. Congress may actually have voluntarily surrendered its authority. And therein lies the bigger problem. For decades, Congress has been abdicating its role in our constitutional structure, ceding more and more power to a monarchical presidency. The Founding Fathers, justifiably wary of a king, intended the legislative branch to be preeminent. As Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”

The job of the presidency is to see that the laws that Congress has passed “are faithfully executed.” And as Chief Justice Jackson wrote in the 1952 case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, “In the framework of our Constitution, the President’s power to see that laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker . . . The Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the president is to execute.”

But increasingly, that’s been flipped on its head, with the complicity of presidents of both parties and of Congress itself.

It’s easy to understand why presidents would want to try to seize more power. But it’s less clear why Congress would so cravenly surrender its prerogatives — if not cowardice. After all, if Congress has no responsibility for anything, congressmen can’t be held responsible for anything that voters might not like.

Congress might grumble when a president unilaterally imposes tariffs, for example. But grumble is all that it will do. When Congress does actually pass legislation, it still leaves the real authority to the president and executive agencies. All too often, Congress simply expresses its desire for vague (and popular) goals like “clean air,” then leaves the actual hard choices to others.

Even on matters as basic as war and peace, Congress is AWOL. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war. Yet, US troops are currently fighting in more than a dozen countries without no such declaration from Congress. This Congress refuses to even debate updating an Authorization for the Use of Force that was intended for Afghanistan 18 years ago and is now used to justify interventions from Somalia to the Philippines.

We’ve reached the point where presidents can go to war, appropriate funds, impose revenue measures, and far more, all without Congressional approval. As James Madison warned in Federalist No. 48, “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by others.”

Congress could restore those checks and restraints by reclaiming its authority. That should start by disapproving Trump’s power grab. It’s telling, though, that no one really believes that they will do this.

That’s not so cool after all.

Agreed.  As Mr. Madison warned we now have had a series of "elected despots".

 

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Trump’s Tariffs May Classify Imported Cars as National Security Risks: http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/21/trumps-tariffs-may-classify-imported-car

Quote

If you drive an imported car, as I do, your vehicle may soon be declared a national security risk by the Department of Commerce. If you drive an American-assembled car, your car may also pose a threat to U.S. national security because it inevitably contains some foreign parts—which Commerce could include in its list of threats to national security. If President Donald Trump acts on this finding, it'll be bad news for automakers and even worse news for consumers.

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gives the president unilateral authority to impose tariffs or quotas on imports that "threaten to impair" U.S. national security. In a still-undisclosed-to-the-public report sent to the administration on Sunday, many suspect that Commerce contends imported foreign cars and parts represent just such a threat. If that's the case, it would give the president power to impose restrictions on them, such as a 25 percent tariff. He has up to 90 days to announce his decision and another 180 days to negotiate remedies with trade partners.

If Trump imposes these trade restrictions, it will make producing and purchasing every single new automobile in America more expensive. Yes, I mean all automobiles, not just imports. That's because, while car brands can be national (e.g., Toyota is Japanese, Mini is German, Ford is American), in reality they are global automakers using global sources for their parts.

 

Many "foreign" automakers produce and assemble cars in the United States and then export them to the rest of the world. The same is true for "American" automakers who have both domestic and international locations from which they produce for export and domestic consumption. No automobile is made with 100 percent of its parts from one county. For instance, Tesla—which is unique in that it produces all of its vehicles in the United States—imports half of the parts it uses.

Looking at the percentage of each vehicle's parts and manufacturing that comes from either the United States or Canada as tracked by U.S. regulators, CNN Money reported that "the two most 'American' cars are both Hondas—the Odyssey minivan and Ridgeline pickup. Three-quarters of each vehicle's components are made in the United States or Canada."

In other words, no automakers—not even G.M. or Ford—will be safe from these tariffs. All manufacturers will suffer rising costs, much of which will be shifted onto consumers via higher prices.

A new study from the Center for Automotive Research estimates that import restrictions would increase new-car prices by $455 to $6,875, depending on the approach the administration takes. These higher prices would reduce annual consumer demand by 493,600 to 2 million vehicles. But that's before other countries retaliate with their own tariffs and quotas.

These new U.S. trade barriers will impact more than sticker prices. If the American market is too small for a foreign automaker to justify building a U.S. factory for a given model, all the models of that car sold here will be imported. Those tariffs could make the cost of importing that particular model so uncompetitive that the company simply stops selling it here, meaning fewer choices for American consumers.

U.S. exports could also fall. Foreign and domestic companies produce cars for U.S. consumption, but they also export a massive amount. Motor vehicles and auto parts are respectively the third- and fourth-highest U.S. exports. If new tariffs are implemented, the high cost of importing will make the domestic production of auto exports for foreign markets more expensive and uncompetitive. Manufacturers will then have a big incentive to shift production abroad, and that will only intensify when foreign retaliation kicks in.

We saw this play out last year after the administration used Section 232 to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports. Many countries retaliated with their own tariffs and quotas, and a few months later, Harley Davison announced that it would move some of its production to Thailand. BMW also announced that it would move some of its U.S. SUV production abroad.

We all better hope Trump doesn't go ahead with these tariffs.

Possible bad news here in Indiana, where Japanese-owned automakers like Honda, Subaru, and Toyota are major employers with large manufacturing facilities.  And also count in the myriad of smaller parts suppliers that have cropped up around these facilities.

 

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1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Trump’s Tariffs May Classify Imported Cars as National Security Risks: http://reason.com/archives/2019/02/21/trumps-tariffs-may-classify-imported-car

Possible bad news here in Indiana, where Japanese-owned automakers like Honda, Subaru, and Toyota are major employers with large manufacturing facilities.  And also count in the myriad of smaller parts suppliers that have cropped up around these facilities.

 

I'd consider it much less of a risk economically and more of a concern politically.  All kinds of jokes about AOC and Sanders turning the country into Venezuela, but these kinds of actions, tied to national emergencies, potentially take us closer and closer to state-owned oil, state-owned manufacturing, etc.  Historically, we looked back at Truman's failure to have the government take control of the steel mills with a sign of relief and an assurance that the balance of power works.  I'm feeling a bit less confidence nowadays with Congress seemingly willing to abdicate many of its powers and a potential for weakened confidence in the judiciary.

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https://news.yahoo.com/ex-trump-adviser-stone-tells-u-judge-abused-201322232.html

Looks like Stone wasn't nearly the wisea$$ that he usually is while appearing before the court today to explain his most recent post.  I have to imagine though, given his persona, that he regained his bravado as soon as he left the courthouse.

FTA:

"I abused the order," Stone told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson during a hearing to examine whether he violated his bond conditions or should face greater restrictions on discussing the case in public.

"I am kicking myself over my own stupidity," Stone said.

"Your honor, I can only beseech you to give me a second chance," Stone said. "Forgive me the trespass."

He apologized to the judge.

 

 

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