Are the markets in denial about Trump's tariffs?

With all that's going on at at the moment - wars, economic uncertainty, climate change-related extreme weather events, persistent inflation worries, weakened consumer confidence, and a global trade war, just to to name a few - it's hard to believe that the world's stock exchanges are just shrugging it all off.

But, more than that, the major stock exchanges are in all-time record territory. Do they know something we don't? Well, they should: stock brokers and institutional investors are supposed to be the experts; they are highly paid professional, and spend almost all their waking hours researching and looking at past trends and future predictions. But I have to wonder.

In the USA, the S&P500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq indexes were all showing record highs, as was Canada's TSE. European stock exchanges are being more circumspect, but they too were trading at record levels just recently. Asian markets too are showing broadly positive vibes, if not actual record highs.

But it's still hard to believe that they see a rosier future that most of the rest of us can envisage right now. While those who are in the know admit that economic modelling is "very difficult" right now because "things are changing constantly", that doesn't seem to be holding investors back any. Some experts, however, are warning that markets may be taking a "naive view of what's happening on the trade front". 

For example, there seems to be a rather gung-ho reliance on TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) on the part of many investors. Yes, Trump has indeed "chickened out" many times over the last few months of tariff negotiations, if that's how you want to interpret it. But to bank on that trend continuing seems, well, unjustifiably optimistic and idealistic to me. Can the glass really be half-full? Or are they in denial?

One indication that all is not quite as hunkydory as the stock exchanges suggest is the increasing value of, and investment activity in, gold. If things are so great, then why are so many people putting big money into gold bullion, which is usually seen as a solid fall-back position when stocks seem risky? Also, US government bond yields have been heading higher for some time now, for much the same reason.

Some influential market commentators certainly believe that investors are in denial about where all this tariff talk is going to end up, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

America's Faustian bargain

I know it doesn't do to dwell on what-if's, but it's hard not to muse on what life might have been like had Donald Trump not been elected by a relatively slim majority.

Had just a few thousand voters here and there in swing states decided not to vote for nastiness, hatred and selfishness - and here I can't help but think of the swathes of immigrants who voted for Trump because they thought he would somehow make them a little bit richer; did they really not think it through? - America would be living under a Kamala Harris presidency, and the status quo would be very much in force.

Ms. Harris was never going to set the world on fire, but then that's the whole point. The United States would be doing very nicely thank you, just as it was under Joe Biden - the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, with the grudging respect of the rest of the world.

Instead, it is now more deeply polarized than ever before, riven by hate and division, and buckling under the yoke of a super-wealthy plutocracy. Years of painstaking gains in environmental and social policy have been scuppered overnight. The populace, Republican and Democrat alike, is starting to feel the effects of the unnecessary and ill-advised tariffs. Hundreds of thousands have been, or are soon to be, laid off from their jobs. Hundreds of thousands more live day to day, traumatized by the prospect of being kicked out of the USA, sometimes the only country they have ever known. And any respect and goodwill the country may have enjoyed across the world have come crashing down, and America is thought of abroad as a maverick state and a pariah on a par with Russian and China.

Good job, guys.

And the rest of the world? I'm not saying that everything was entirely hunkydory before Trump was elected. But, despite wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, it was at least functional. Today, Trump's ongoing tariff war with every country on earth has set everyone against everyone else, and the whole world is teetering on the edge of recession. Multinational organizations and humanitarian agencies have been hamstrung and hung out to dry. China has nimbly stepped into the USA-shaped vacuum in international relations and, frankly, is looking pretty good in comparison.

To say that the American public struck a Faustian bargain in November last year is putting it mildly indeed. Right now Mephistopheles is running rampant across the world.

Emergency food to be destroyed

In one of the more outrageous actions of the Trump administration - and that's a pretty high bar - it has ordered 550 tonnes of emergency food aid to be destroyed (incinerated!) because it has cut funding for USAID.

The "high energy biscuits", intended for malnourished children living in war and disaster zones, and sufficient to feed 1.5 millon kids (think the starving younger residents of Gaza) are currently being stored in a warehouse in Dubai. But in the absence of USAID staff, now laid off by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the stores will instead be destroyed.

And this won't be the last. There is currently an estimated 60,000 tons of food aid languishing in US warehouses around the world which will probably end up being destroyed too. And all in the interests of saving a few bucks towards Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy.

How ridiculous! 

Can it not be given to a sensible aid organization like UNHCR, UNWRA, UNICEF, or the World Food Programme. I'm guessing it's not quite so simple. And even those organizations are severely constrained by staffing and funding shortages. Can Dubai not distribute it itself (Dubai is not short of money, and think of the kudos to be earned)?

If even Daivd Suzuki is sounding defeatist...

I'm not sure I'vebever heard the usually ebulliant and ever-young David Suzuki being quite so pessimistic about climate change.

Canada's best-known environmentalist is usually so positive and upbeat that I wonder how he keeps it up in the face of all the challenges and set-backs facing the environmental movement. In a recent interview, though, he admits that he has basically given up on expecting politicians, governments and large-scale political entities to see the light and to push for legislative change to curb the worst effects of climate change.

It's not that he has compketely given up on fighting against global warming. It's just that he has realized that the political system in which we operate is too much geared towards short term solutions, optics, and winning the next election to expect politicians to fight for any meaningful changes vis-à-vis the climate.

He believes that we have already overshot on seven of the nine global "tipping points" or "planetary boundaries" identified by influential environmentalist Johan Rockström, and there is now no way back. All that remains, he says, is to try to minimize the damage and to help each other deal with the fallout at a small-scale community level.

As Suzuki says, "The science says we're done for ... let's fight like mad to be as resilient as we can in the face of what's coming". Self-sufficiency and self-reliance will be key in the future world we are inheriting, he warns. 

It all sounds pretty gloony and apocalyptic. But he's probably not wrong.

Masked ICE agents part of the long slide into totalitarian terror

More and more report and videos are emerging of some of the nefarious tactics being employed by Trump's ICE warriors. Women and children separated from husbands and fathers, disguised and unmarked officers punching victims repeatedly in the head. They may be detained unlawfully in unsanitary conditions for many hours, even days. There seem to be few, if any, checks on their behaviour.

These are scenes straight out of dystopian fuction, but this is real. And this is not theocratic Iran, or 1980s El Salvador, or Chile under Pinochet; this is today's America under Donald Trump.

So, if ICE is a legitimate government department in a democratic country, why are its agents wearing face-obscuring masks and dark glasses and using unmarked vehicles? The official line is that they are protecting themselves from doxing (maliciously publishing private information about individuals on the internet) and increasing threats to their safety. 

But these are not clandestine operations agsainst organized drug rings or violent criminal gangs. The subjects being targeted by ICE are usually private individuals - family men (and women and children), students, construction workers, restaurant staff, delivery guys, often born and raised in America.

Civil rights workers and legal advocates say this approach, much like that of Elon Musk's DOGE goons, is deliberately designed to create a climate of fear and intimidation, and to undermine public trust. It is quite literally terrorism. Masked men do not feel accountable because they cannot be identified, and so they are much more likely to engage in violence and to flout the existing laws. There have already been cases of people impersonating ICE or Homeland Security agents to carry out robberies and other crimes.

It can't be long until cattle prods and state-sanctioned rapes become part of the American urban landcscape.

MAGA feeling threatened by the new Superman movie

The MAGA-verse is up in arms about the new Superman movie. I kid you not.

Many right-wing commentators - Kellyanne Conway, Jesse Watters, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, End Wokeness and others - have taken issue with director/writer James Gunn's characterization of the Superman story as an immigrant narrative.

Clearly, it IS.(and always has been) an immigrant narrative - Kal-El came from the planet Krypton, and landed in rural Kansas as an illegal immigrant. Superman's original creators, Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster, were the childen of Jewish immigrants from Europe in the early 20th century. 

MAGA, of course, clearly feels threatened by the portrayal of America's greatest ever hero as an immigrant, legal or otherwise. I guess they have never thought about it before. Gunn, let it be said, is unarguably a political animal, and probably deliberately stressed the immigrant/outsider aspect of his movie. But MAGA is going off half-cocked, and not responding very coolly (or rationally).

Hell, Trump himself is the son of a Scottish immigrant mother and a son-of-a-German immigrant father. Like Canada, hardly anybody in America is that far removed from immigrant forebears. Why is immigration such a big deal for Republicans. Oh, wait, some of them are not even white, right?

Trump's tariffs nothing to to do with economics

As Trump threatens more tariffs on Canada - 35% this time, supposedly starting August 1st, unless of course that changes - he is still trying to tie it to the perceived egregious supply of fentanyl and other drugs from Canada to USA.

As had been noted before, months ago, the flow of fentanyl from Canada to the United States is miniscule - of the order of 0.2%, according to the US's own Customs and Border Control agency - with 99% of it actually coming in from the Mexican border. Maybe he's getting the two countries mixed up? Easily done. 

In fact, there are many more drugs (principally methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl) flowing from the US to Canada than the other way round. Not to mention guns and other bad stuff

I'm sure someone has explained all this to him, although given how shit-scared all his staff seem to be of saying anything that might be seen to contradict him, that is by no means certain. Mark Carney should be very sure to mention it to him, though. It's possible, just possible, that he doesn't know.

But we should be past the stage of trying to find rhyme or reason in all this. The US tariffs, in general terms, are supposed to be about correcting the "unfair" trade balances countries have with America. But Brazil just got slapped with a 50% tariff, and they have a negative trade balance with the US. 

The justification Trump uses there is that he objects to the country's treatment of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, an old Trump buddy and copycat, and fellow far-right populist, is currently on trial for trying to stage a Trump-style coup after he lost the vote in the last Brazilian elections. So, nothing to do with economics, then. This is public policy based on whims, grudges and the Old Boy's Network. And the rates - 25%, 30%, 35%, 50% - completely random.

The whole world, apart from some Republican extremists in the USA, are now heartily sick of the whole random Trump tariff thing. A world that was operating, at least macro-ecconomically, quite well before he showed up, is now in tatters, all due to the misguided beliefs of one man. He has set one country against another, and destroyed any goodwill the world bore towards the USA. 

History will certaunly judge him badly, whatever he.says, but in the meantime, we have to live through that history.

Canadian army members' revolutionary plans are kind of ludicrous

Well, this is kind of crazy. The RCMP has arrested four members of the Canadian Armed Forces.(CAF) on terrorism (and related) charges. The four Quebec squaddies diverted a huge number of guns, ammo, grenades, night-vision goggles and laser-sighters, etc, in an unprecedented ideologically-motivated plot by extemist army members to form an "anti-government militia" and take over some land in the Quebec City area. I'm not entirely sure how this qualifies as "terrorism", but I'll take that on trust.

These guys apparently held their own military-style training exercises - shooting, ambushing, survival and navigation - and there are even some awkward posed photos of at least some of them holding their oversized guns on social media. It's rather cute in some ways - like a group of boys playing at soldiers, except these ARE soldiers, and the weapons are real. Two of the four are current active CAF members.

It's thought they have ties with some pretty shadowy extreme right-wing groups. For example, there is a Facebook group called the "Blue Hackle Mafia", which boasts many members of the CAF, and which features "racist, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic comments and images", and there is speculation that the four would-be revolutionaries are also involved in various white supremacist groups.

But it was the detail about their plans to "forcibly take possession of land in the Quebec City area" that struck me most. It seemed like such a modest goal. And what would they do there? Hold military parades? Farm it? They apparently wanted to set up an "anti-government community" north of Quebec, which sounds rather quaint, like a hippy commune or something.

You just have this feeling that they didn't quite think it all the way through. The whole thing seems equal parts scary and hilarious.