March 1, 2017

Trump passes blame for Yemen raid to his generals: They lost Ryan

WAIT A GOD-DAMN MINUTE.

Just a news-cycle ago this raid was a complete success, according to both Trump and his spicy press-pony. Now, we here this:

"In an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday morning, Trump said the mission 'was started before I got here.'

He noted that the operation was something his generals 'were looking at for a long time doing.'

'This was something that was, you know, just — they wanted to do,' Trump said. ("And since I was busy with the ice carvings at Mar-a-Lago, I said yeah, sure, whatever.“)

'And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected.'

'And they lost Ryan,' Trump continued."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/02/28/trump-passes-blame-for-yemen-raid-to-his-generals-they-lost-ryan/?utm_term=.d1cc3e44906da

So it was a complete success, except for the part that wasn't, like getting no usable intelligence and getting a Seal killed and getting a bus-load of kids killed.

The success part was tremendous, very big, very special. The failure part was Obama's fault, and also the fault of those respected but awful generals who wanted to do this and ended up making a completely successful-failure out of it.

Have you tried the little meatballs?

February 23, 2017

Trump administration may tweak data to re-calculate trade deficit

". . . The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged, these people told The Wall Street Journal.

Economists say that approach would inflate trade deficit numbers because it would typically count goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out, known as re-exports.

Data on trade balances and surpluses, widely followed by Congress, are at the center of a political battle over whether existing trade agreements should be retained, renegotiated or tossed out altogether. A larger trade deficit would give the Trump administration ammunition in arguing that trade deals need to be renegotiated, and might help boost political support for imposing tariffs. . . ."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-administration-may-tweak-data-to-re-calculate-trade-deficit-2017-02-19

See also https://qz.com/917039/donald-trump-has-a-plan-to-boost-the-trade-deficit-in-one-easy-step/

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This is raw politics. There is nothing even remotely logical about taking re-exports off of the export side of the ledger and leaving them on the the import side. It doesn't make a lick of economic sense, and serves only to feed his base an apocryphal story line about trade deficits. It is, in short, par for the course with Trump -- fabricating an alternate reality one factoid at a time.