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James Eagle: Chart Dump: US Tariffs

President Trump’s latest tariff salvo has gone into effect. We’ve seen a doubling of India’s rate to 50% for buying Russian oil that the US once begged them to purchase. Swiss diplomats are in emergency sessions after a random 39% shock that makes no sense to fair trade and competition. Meanwhile Toyota just announced it’s suspending new model launches.

We are witnessing the most radical reshaping of global trade since the 1930s, compressed into seven chaotic months of Trump’s presidency. The numbers are staggering: effective tariff rates have sextupled from 2.5% to over 18%, the highest since Smoot-Hawley helped trigger the Great Depression.

I’ve done a chart dump for you. These 18 charts show how $108 billion in tariff revenue is costing trillions in economic destruction, why China is winning by losing this trade war, and how Trump’s fiscal fantasy is colliding with mathematical reality.
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Today’s effective tariff rate almost match the Depression-era Smoot-Hawley tariffs that helped collapse global trade by two-thirds, providing the historical context for Chart 1’s alarming numbers. But unlike the 1930s gradual descent, we’ve speedrun to Depression-level protectionism in just seven months.
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Michael Thomas: Trump’s Latest Policy Could Threaten Every Wind Project in America

President Trump has been a vocal opponent of wind energy for more than a decade. But up until recently, his policies have never matched his rhetoric.
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Shortly before he took office in January, Trump told reporters in Mar-a-Lago that his second administration would take a very different approach to wind energy. “We are going to have a policy where no windmills are being built,” he said.

The growth of wind energy and the legal guardrails that should make such policy impossible made it easy to dismiss this early warning sign. Since then, it’s become clear that the administration is willing to break laws and pursue unprecedented policies to stop wind energy development entirely.

A new escalation that could threaten every wind project

This week, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman broke a story about the administration’s latest attack on wind energy:

The Transportation Department last Tuesday declared that it would now call for a national 1.2-mile property setback — that is, a mandatory distance requirement — for all wind facilities near railroads and highways.

A 1.2-mile setback in a country with as many highways and railroads as ours would restrict development on a huge swatch of the country’s land. But it was a single sentence buried in the same release that signaled a threat that could be much larger.

DOT said that it would instruct the Federal Aviation Administration to “thoroughly evaluate proposed wind turbines to ensure they do not pose a danger to aviation” — a signal that a once-routine FAA height clearance required for almost every wind turbine could now become a hurdle for the entire sector.

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William Kristol: Maybe the American Experiment Isn’t Dead Yet

Death by a thousand cuts still requires a thousand cuts.
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On the one hand, the first couple hundred days of this presidency have featured truly striking and dramatic advances by the forces of authoritarianism. The dangers to our free political institutions are clear, present, and increasing in strength. The situation is grim. One fears that “American exceptionalism” will culminate in an exceptional demonstration of a nation frittering away the privileges of freedom in as feckless a way as possible.

On the other hand, while authoritarianism is winning right now, and night is more visible on the horizon than dawn—there are countervailing forces.

Perhaps the most hopeful is that it’s clear the Trump presidency is unpopular, and is becoming more so. Several recent polls show Donald Trump with a job approval rating among the American people down around 40 percent. A new poll released yesterday by UMass Amherst has Trump at 38 percent approval, 58 percent disapproval—down from 44 percent approval, 53 percent disapproval three months ago.

What’s more, Trump’s weakest issues seem likely to be among the topics that remain front and center for voters, at least for the foreseeable future. He is at 18 percent approval, 70 percent disapproval on his handling of the Epstein matter. He’s also at 31 percent approval, 63 percent disapproval, on the issue of tariffs and on that of inflation—our old friend from the Biden presidency which may well bedevil Trump, too.
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NPR: Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that “the data are of exceptionally high quality” and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission.
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Texas Tribune: Texas House Democrats flee the state in bid to block GOP’s proposed congressional map

The lawmakers’ absence means the lower chamber won’t have enough members present to function, stalling passage of a draft map Democrats have condemned as a political power grab.
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“This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”
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“We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent,” he said. “As of today, this corrupt special session is over.”
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Texas’ redistricting effort is also poised to set off a broader redistricting arms race, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom telling aides that he will move to redraw his state’s congressional lines to advantage more Democrats if Texas Republicans pass their map, The Tribune previously reported.
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NY Times: Until Trump Fired Her, She Was an Economist With Bipartisan Support

Erika McEntarfer led the agency that produced key data on jobs and inflation. Then July’s report showed a weakening economy, and President Trump accused her of “rigging” the numbers.

Nearly the entire Senate supported Erika McEntarfer in 2024 to lead the agency that produces key data on jobs and inflation. The widely respected economist was confirmed on a bipartisan 86-8 Senate vote, with support from Vice President JD Vance, who was then an Ohio senator, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator.

But Dr. McEntarfer was suddenly caught in the political crossfire on Friday when President Trump lashed out over the agency’s most recent jobs report and fired her for releasing monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring. He called the data “rigged” without offering any evidence, and he accused Dr. McEntarfer of manipulating the job numbers “for political purposes.”

Dr. McEntarfer was nominated to her most recent post by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Before that, she earned her stripes at the Census Bureau, where she worked for over two decades under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
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Robert Reich: Trump destroys our source of information about jobs. This is beyond irresponsible.

He hates facts. He rejects truth. He doesn’t want the public to know what’s really happening.

I spent much of the 1990s as Secretary of Labor. One unit of the Labor Department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Otherwise, this crown jewel of knowledge about jobs and the economy would be compromised. If politicized, it would no longer be trusted as a source of information.

So what does Trump do? With one fell swoop on Friday he essentially destroyed the credibility of the BLS.

Trump didn’t like the fact that the BLS revised downward its jobs reports for April and May.

Well that’s too bad. Revisions in monthly jobs reports are nothing new. They’re made when the Bureau gets more or better information over time, which it often does.

Yet with no basis in fact, Trump charged that Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, “rigged” the data “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” Then he ordered her fired and replaced with someone else — presumably someone whose data Trump will approve of.

How can anyone in the future trust the information that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job? Answer: They cannot.
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David French: The Boy Who Cried Hoax

President Trump isn’t just trying to change the subject; he’s also trying to rewrite history — or maybe I should say reality.

Earlier this month — while Trump was struggling to answer questions about his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, released a report purporting to show that senior Obama administration officials participated in a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 that was designed to hurt the incoming Trump administration.

Last week the Justice Department piled on. It announced that it was creating a “strike force” to “assess” Gabbard’s evidence and “investigate potential next legal steps.” For his part, Trump reposted a fake video depicting former President Barack Obama’s arrest.

And he’s kept on posting. Days later he reposted a meme that Photoshopped Obama into the infamous white Bronco from O.J. Simpson’s police chase in 1994, with JD Vance and Trump himself Photoshopped into police cars.
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Rebecca Solnit: Epstein Is Only the Tip of the Iceberg: The Trump Protection Machine and the Epidemic of Violence Against Women

On July 2, the jury delivered a guilty verdict on some of the charges against music mogul Sean Combs for his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women with the help of his extensive staff and deep pockets. He’s also accused in many civil suits of sexual abuse of adults and minors. It seems like everyone promptly forgot about Combs when the facts about financier Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of horrific sexual abuse of at least a hundred girls and women, with the help of his extensive staff, deep pockets, banks, and elite connections – including to Donald Trump – became the next front-page ruckus.

In June, movie producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty in a New York retrial for some of his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women, with the help of his extensive staff, top lawyers, the film industry, some ex-Mossad agents, and of course his deep pockets. In February a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of rapper R. Kelly’s 30-year prison sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking, last year his other 20-year sentence was also upheld, for producing child pornography and enticement of children for sex. Of course his deep pockets and extensive assistance had also been factors in how he too was able to abuse girls for so long.

One of the reasons the epidemic of violence against women is so unacknowledged is because cases like these are talked about individually, and often treated as though they are shocking aberrations rather than part of a pervasive pattern that operates at all levels of society.
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NY Times: There’s a Name for What Trump Is Doing. Juan Crow.

In its merciless pursuit of people without papers — most of them Latino — and its demonization of asylum seekers, refugees, holders of temporary protected status, Muslims and Palestinian rights activists, the Trump administration is accelerating toward a new, modern nadir of Juan Crow, just downstream of Jim and Jane.

When a sitting U.S. senator refers to New York immigrants as “inner-city rats,” when a Florida governor waxes rapturously about the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center, when a presidential administration takes two months to dismantle decades of civil rights law, we must admit that these are acts in a feature presentation of neo-Confederate revanchism targeting brown and Black people. The targeting of the undocumented has a name, after all, based in ugly history and shameful tradition: Juan Crow.

The phrase was popularized by the journalist Roberto Lovato to describe the “matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems” that isolate and control undocumented immigrants. The domestic policies of the Trump administration have taken this legacy to a more dangerous place.
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