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The Board’s cheerleaders are easily manipulated. We only hear from them when Shit For Brains cleans up his own disastrous or foolhardy messes.

From the OpEd:

The trade deal with China might head off a looming, man-made recession but does nothing to achieve any of the ambitious objectives, such as reviving U.S. manufacturing or reducing the trade deficit, that Trump laid out for his trade war. (Of course he was unlikely to achieve those aims, no matter how long the higher tariffs lasted.) Little wonder that Hu Xijin, former editor of China’s state-run Global Times, claimed “victory,” writing, “Today we have definitely driven the Americans back to the 38th parallel,” a reference to the border between Chinese-backed North Korea and U.S.-backed South Korea.


Last week’s U.S. trade deal with Britain was even less significant. Sure, the British agreed to lower barriers to some U.S. imports and to purchase more Boeing jets. In return, the Trump administration lowered tariffs on the first 100,000 vehicles imported from Britain annually to 10 percent from 27.5 percent and eliminated a 25 percent tariff on British steel and aluminum exports. But the 10 percent baseline tariff remains in effect for most British exports — and that’s still a historically high rate. (The tariff on British cars was only 2.5 percent under President Joe Biden.) Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told CBS News that trade with Britain “remains worse than the pre-Trump status quo.”

n truth, if there is one thing we should have learned by now about the “author” of the ghostwritten “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” it is that his “big, beautiful” deals are more marketing hype than reality, as you would expect from a developer who became notorious for exaggerating the height of his buildings. Trump simply loves to, well, trumpet deals — content irrelevant. It’s easy to mock him for not achieving his grandiose objectives, but his willingness to reverse course may be his saving grace.

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The only reason Trump was able to conclude even these modest trade deals was because he was ameliorating problems that he had created with his self-declared, self-destructive trade war. It’s a lot harder to solve problems he didn’t create, which is why he has made so little progress in ending wars in Gaza or Ukraine.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is in no mood to compromise, because he thinks he’s winning, and Trump is not inclined to apply any pressure on Putin. (He even exempted Russia from the tariffs he imposed on essentially the rest of the world.) Rather than hitting Russia with additional sanctions for refusing his demand for a 30-day ceasefire, Trump is now telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to talk to Putin without any ceasefire.

Trump had more luck in negotiating a minerals deal with Ukraine — it’s usually easier to pressure an ally than an enemy — but only by radically diluting his demands. Initially Trump had insisted that Ukraine repay the United States for past aid with state revenue. In the deal that was signed on April 30, Ukraine pledged only to contribute half of its revenue from future mineral rights deals to a joint reconstruction fund jointly managed by Kyiv and Washington.

But it will probably take at least a decade to construct any new Ukrainian mines — if it is economically feasible at all — and by then the United States might have a pro-Ukrainian president who could quietly abrogate this agreement. So the deal is mostly meaningless, except to the extent that it convinces Trump to continue supporting Ukraine.


Trump’s deal with the Houthis was only marginally more meaningful. Last week, Trump called off the bombing of Houthi positions in Yemen after 51 days, claiming that the Iranian-backed militants had agreed to stop attacking shipping in the Red Sea. But the group said it agreed only to stop attacking U.S. shipping; it made no pledge to refrain from attacks on Israeli or Israeli-linked shipping — a designation amorphous enough to justify attacks on just about any commercial vessels.

This was essentially a return to the status quo before Trump began his bombing campaign, which is why shipping-container companies aren’t ready to return to the Red Sea. “The Houthis bet from the beginning of the strikes that they could outlast the United States — and they did,” writes Yemen expert April Longley Alley in Foreign Affairs. So Trump didn’t achieve his original goal — he had vowed that the Houthis would be “completely annihilated” — but he did find an off-ramp from a conflict that was draining scarce U.S. military resources.

In short, while Trump has not displayed much dealmaking prowess, he has shown a welcome willingness to backtrack, whether with Ukraine or China or the Houthis, on his unrealistic demands. That may be a positive augury for his ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.


Trump in 2018 exited the Iranian nuclear deal that the Obama administration had agreed to in 2015. He promised to negotiate a much tougher agreement, but now appears to be leaning toward reviving some version of the deal he once excoriated. That may not be a Nobel Prize-worthy achievement, but it beats the alternatives: either letting Iran go nuclear or going to war. This is yet another area where Trump’s desire to sign deals — even without attaining his original goals — could redound to America’s benefit.

How is it that our global trade situation is improving daily?

Have another DNC donut.

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You want me to start enforcing a stalker rule? Half of you would wind up on permanent suspension.

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Same thing with Chris94. Both are quite capable of defending their positions.

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But you won't. Because this rebranded warmonger is a staunch antiTrumper. Let me say it 101st times: You sold your soul to neocon.

Also, you must be worried that Trump seems to be starting to realize that Putin is the reason for the war.

Talk about worlds colliding for you.

But he is succeeding.

I don’t think his predecessor would have done that.

He can indeed change course, and quickly. That’s a good thing.

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If it happens. Neither will his base. We don't sell our souls.

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The high tariffs were never intended to stand unless countries refused to offer reciprocal trade arrangements.

Most are agreeing to negotiate "deals".

This would mean accepting that he was wrong and that Trump is smarter than he and his fellow liberals are which is a direct violation of Liberalism Rule #4:
Liberalism Rule #4 - We believe ourselves to be smarter thus, we cannot admit that we are wrong.
i) Admitting mistakes undermines the premise of being smarter, ergo self correction is not possible.


Thus, he accepts his hard Left party spin that it was all a show and that we’re just back where we started.
It would be funny if it weren’t sad.

….you never wanted to give Trump credit for his deal making approach because of your TDS.

Now, you want to pretend that everything is just back to where it was under Biden which is false - again because of your TDS.

It doesn’t matter that you can’t understand what is happening. It doesn’t matter that the only way this fits into your worldview is if it’s “just a grift that he has all of his cultists believing”.
It’s real. He’s kicking ass. The US is winning again, and your dream globalist world run by unelected academics is over.

You are just going to have to up your spin and bury your head further in the ground because most of what you have built your understanding of how things really work in this country upon is wrong.

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