Liberation?

I have too much to cover in one post, but as I have other things I want to talk about later on on this blog - possibly including comments about my other blog, which I am shutting down later this spring - I'll try.

First, Liberation Day.  Yesterday was Liberation Day, because Donald Trump said it was the day we'd been liberated from foreign domination of  American market.  We were "liberated" from German cars, French wine, Japanese electronics and Swedish furniture because Trump is placing an average tariff of 29 percent on all countries still part of the Paris climate accord.  As a result, every imported product sold here will be priced high above what they should be.  And any products produced domestically, be it by an American or a foreign company, will be priced higher because the manufacturers will know that they can't be undercut.  

Trump, by the way, ordered domestic manufacturers, including the Paris-based Stellantis, not to raise prices of their vehicles.  The muffled sound you hear coming from Detroit is suppressed snickering.

As for foreign products . . .  well, let me use Volkswagen as an example.  Trump's tariffs are meant to discourage us from buying foreign vehicles and en-courage us to buy Chevrolets and Fords.  Apart from the latter half of the nineties, when I owned a Toyota Tercel out of necessity, I have owned nothing but Volkswagens since 1990 because domestic cars are so dull.  Now, more than ever, I'd better hang on to my 2012 Golf tooth and nail because tariffs will raise prices so high on foreign cars that the Golf GTI and R (imported from Germany) and even the once-cheap Jetta (imported from Mexico) will be out of reach.  Parts for my car will be expensive enough, since Trump is imposing tariffs on them too.  And all VW will offer for sale in America are SUVs, just like Chevrolet (except for the Corvette) and Ford (except for the Mustang) now do.

In short, everything will be expensive, some products (including Post Shredded Wheat cereal, made in Canada) may be unavailable completely, and lots of merchants and merchants' employees, along with importers, import-car dealers, customs officers, and virtually everyone else will be out of a job.  And then comes a recession.  I'm luckier than most.  I own my house outright, I have a recession-proof job (as well as a second job that's not recession-proof) and I am single, with no family whatsoever to support.  But my long-awaited and long-postponed trip to Europe . . . well, it might be postponed a bit longer, because Trump's recession will make it impossible to travel.  A depression will also have the benefit (for Trump) to force any Americans ready to undertake the very expensive process of moving out of the country to stay where they are.

And for Americans who already have made the move, to, say, Germany . . . yeah, well, they're going to regret the move when the Russians, having reconquered Ukraine and Poland, march through Berlin a second time.

As for the tariffs . . .  financial institutions are rightfully alarmed, fearing the worst.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 3.71 percent as I type, with a 35 percent chance of recession.  The Standard & Poor's gross-domestic-product forecasts have fallen as a result of Trump's tariff effects, which could cause the weakest post-pandemic growth since 2022.

I mentioned automobiles . . . prices for cars could rise by as much as 31 percent, and not just imported models - also domestic models with high import content, which could see increases higher than the overall average.  (Forgot about that, didn't you, Trump?)  Foreigners are now boycotting American products, particularly those that come from Republican states.  Tourism is already being affected, as foreigners are canceling trips to the U.S., though Americans (at least those with the means to do so) are likely to continue traveling to foreign locales . . . unless Trump declares martial law in response to anti-Trump demonstrations, in which case no one leaves.

And while all this tariff business was going on . . .  Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey (above) - my Senator - stopped being a cautious moderate and rediscovered his progressive roots as a councilman and mayor of Newark.  He took to the floor of the U.S. Senate in a 25-hour speech that eclipsed then-Democratic then-Senator Strom Thurmond's record filibuster speech against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (which took place on August 28 of that year, exactly six years to the day before the March on Washington) from his first term representing South Carolina as the longest Senate speech in history.  Senator Booker deliberately wanted to break that record to make a longer speech for civil rights, as well as a speech that chronicled every violation of the rule of law committed by Trump Mark Two.  That is why he was guaranteed to break Thurmond's record, so long as he had a steady supply of coffee - he had more than enough material.  A Senate speech chronicle all of Trump's crimes from January 2025 to the beginning of April 2025 would have to go for a week - in relays. 

For doing something rare among Senate Democrats - standing up to Trump - Cory Booker not only won back the respect of progressives who dismissed him as a centrist hack, he left many Democrats wondering why on earth Charles Schumer is the leader of Senate Democrats.  As for Booker, this speech was definitely a liberation - for himself and any Democrats still taking the advice of an overpriced consultant.  

Well, that's the end of this post.  Did I cover everything that happened this week so far?  I'm not sure.  I think there were other stories, but I probably forgot them after Trump's tariffs flooded the zone.

I'm free.

And freedom tastes of reality.