President Trump has issued his list of “final” reciprocal tariffs which became effective Aug. 7th. They apply to almost all goods exported to the U.S. from sixty countries and the European Union with base rates ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent. Along with previously applied sector tariffs, the U.S. now charges an average tariff of approximately 18 percent, the highest rate since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Bill of 1930. Trump has levied the tariffs on countries that have a trade surplus with the U.S., making the false claim that surpluses indicate unfair advantage. Trump states that countries with a trade surplus have exploited our open markets while restricting access to their markets through tariffs, currency manipulation, unfair subsidies and restrictive regulations. According to Trump, the reciprocal tariffs will “reset” global trade, restoring American advantage and bringing industries and jobs back to the homeland.
Trump’s economic nationalism is not new. Similar policies have been enacted by fascists and populist autocrats from Mussolini and Hitler to Victor Orban and Recep Erdogan. In all cases, protectionism has failed. Like most of his talking points, Trump’s argument that trading partners have been “ripping off” the U.S. is overblown. For the past eighty years, beginning in 1944 with the Bretton Woods Accords and continuing through eight rounds of meetings known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, global tariffs and other trade barriers have been consistently lowered. As a result of these efforts, global trade barriers have been significantly reduced, and average global tariff rates had fallen into the low single digits prior to Trump’s tariff assault. The outcome of lower barriers has been a burgeoning of global trade that, according to the UN, has lifted more than one billion out of extreme poverty and provided unprecedented prosperity to the industrialized nations. Some unfair trade practices have persisted, especially in the case of China, and trade dislocations have inevitably disadvantaged some workers. Economic inequalities persist but it is undeniable that globalization has materially benefited most nations and especially the U.S. which has risen to be the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
The problems caused by globalization can and should be addressed through specific, targeted programs. Tariffs can be part of a strategy to remedy a specific unfair practice or to aid the development of a critical industry without burning down the entire trading system. Trump’s willy-nilly tariffs lack any rational justification in either economic theory or as an element of geopolitical strategy. They are a manifestation of his deluded conceit and will damage global relationships as well as domestic growth. Trade agreements should benefit both parties, but Trump views any negotiation as a zero-sum game that he must win. Although he touts his superior bargaining skill, he is no more than a bully and extortionist who uses access to the American market as a bludgeon against those nations whose prosperity rely on sales to the American consumer. Trump is the Mafia Don who offers trade partners an “offer that they can’t refuse” rather than skillful diplomat.
The consequences of the tariffs are already becoming manifest and will become more damaging over time no matter how many government statisticians Trump fires to hide the facts. Recent wholesale price indexes indicate that imported parts and supplies have become more expensive due to tariffs. It is just a matter of time until they affect the price of consumer goods. Retail prices of home appliances and food are rising. American auto makers have reported drastic drops in quarterly earnings, opting to temporarily reduce profits rather than pass on the cost of tariffs to the car buyer. They will not continue to resist price increases as their profitability drops. Hiring has stagnated over the past three months as businesses evaluate the impact of tariffs. Economic growth has slowed to a yearly rate of 1.2 percent compared to 2.5 percent last year. And this is only the beginning — brace yourself, the Trump tariff tax tsunami is coming.
Just think: if an effective vaccine were developed against the Dunning-Kruger effect eighty years ago, eight billion people wouldn’t be facing an impending global economic collapse.
The U.S.A. operates the best observatories in the world, on ground and in space, that study our planet, Earth. That’s about to change. Trump’s budget, passed by the Republicans in Congress, cancels programs that produce unparalleled scientific information.
Two Orbiting Carbon Observatories, costing $750 million to develop and launch, have been sending highest-quality data, measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, for years. They will be shut down in October, saving a paltry $15 million. Four land-based observatories, in Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, and Antarctica, that have been measuring atmospheric pollution for 70 years, will close, saving a miniscule $164,000.
Scientific understanding about our changing climate will be blinded. And that’s the reason these observatories will be terminated. When interrupted, our ability to manage long-time trends will be stunted.
Shutting down observatories is like poking pointed sticks into our eyes. We won’t know what hits us next, until it does.
Thanks for bringing this up. Every time we’ve approached this subject we’ve ended up prostrate on the newsroom floor, writhing in anger and frothing at the mouth.
We have yet to hear NPR or anyone else point out the obvious motivation for this: it disarms those who are trying to prevent the fossil fuel industry from killing us all in their pursuit of profit.
If there were a Nobel Prize for Crime, we’d nominate this one.
Israeli historian Adam Raz’s 2024 book, Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property, provides a carefully researched account of how ordinary Israelis and soldiers systematically looted Palestinian homes, shops, and farms during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War to prevent Palestinians from returning.
Looting encompassed everything from furniture, household items, and valuables to factory and farming equipment.
The book also documents how these actions were acknowledged and lamented by contemporary Israelis, with Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, privately condemning the theft as widespread even as it continued.
Raz bases his work on extensive archival research, including newly opened records, eyewitness accounts, diaries, and newspapers, making the evidence particularly credible.
Raz’s book provides an explanation of how 58 Palestinian refugee camps developed in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Meanwhile, several refugee camps in the West Bank have been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces, and the Gaza Strip has been reduced to worse than a de facto refugee camp for more than two million Palestinians.
Israel has stolen from Palestinians not only the foundation of their wealth, but also their sense of community, identity, and connection to their land.
How tragic that the United States is encouraging the further displacement and erasure of Palestinians. President Trump proposed building a Gaza “Riviera,” and his administration has actively searched for other countries to which Palestinians could relocate.
Americans must demand policies that prioritize providing humanitarian aid and rebuilding Palestinian communities and infrastructure, rather than those that treat Palestinians as disposable.
A large swath of MAGA Republicans apparently support Israel because they believe that once Jews build a new Temple and sacrifice a red heifer, Jesus will return, and the End of Days will commence. Good Christians like themselves will go to heaven; the Jewish people will all go straight to Hell.
Many of these “good Christians” live in the American South. During the centenary of the Civil War, a classmate of the editor, whose surname was Sherman, visited that region. He reported being grilled rather severely about whether he was any relation to General Sherman, whose march through Georgia a century earlier was still bitterly resented. Compared to Gaza, Georgia got off easy.
We’re not arguing in favor of a federally-sanctioned religion, but if the historical record of American foreign policy showed a few more glimmers of Christ’s teachings, and a lot less Wall Street, the world would be a better place.
America the Spineless is caving to Trump at every turn: law firms, universities, corporations, state legislatures, newspapers, once independent-minded Republicans and Democrats, the military, religious leaders, PBS, governors, Hollywood, sports leaders, Congress, the Supreme Court, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser… in fact everyone everywhere except those few left in the country who have an actual conscience.
This country is headed for ignorant and violent fascism faster than you can say “jack rabbit.” Can anyone be found with a sophisticated plan to right the sinking ship? Nope.
Our ancestors are turning over in their graves with embarrassment, and so are our freedom-loving allies the world over.
When I think of Angels, I see soft heavenly beings who are loving and helpful, not multi-million dollar fighter jets that represent what more modern jets do to create violence and destruction against human beings who are often seen as the “other.”
So, I will not go to see the “Thunder Over N.H. Air Show,” featuring the “Blue Angels” on September 6th and 7th at Pease ANGB, but I do want to call out the sponsors and the military for staging this recruitment tool, and for the adverse impact it has on climate change. Magnify the dozens and dozens of these “air shows” that occur around the country and the pilots’ training that goes into the preparation for these public-relations military celebrations, and the result is that obscene amounts of fossil fuel are burned which results in a deleterious impact on our environment.
So, N.H. Veterans for Peace say — Stop using these jets that glorify militarism! Say “NO” to the Blue Angels, and reflect on whether Militarism continues to be America’s religion which costs us dearly.
PS: During the Blue Angels history, tragically, 27 Blue Angels’ pilots have been killed in air shows or training accidents. There have been 261 pilots in the squadron’s history, giving the job a roughly 10 percent fatality rate. (source: fighterjetsworld.com)
Will:
According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Pentagon is the world’s largest single institutional consumer of fossil fuels. Though the Blue Angels “contribution” can be but a fraction of that colossal waste, it is far from insignificant.
That said, we have no doubt that any Member of Congress interested in retaining his or her seat will insist that this airborne dog and pony show must go on — probably for vague “national security purposes.”
We tried, not terribly hard, to confirm the fatality rate at fighterjetsworld.com, but were unable to locate the specific item. Judging from other sources, they’ve undercounted the total number of pilots, and overcounted the losses. Wikipedia gives what seems like a more likely accounting, as of 2020: a total of 272 pilots, and 20 fatalities, for a rate of 7.3 percent.
As for the air show in general, we could do without the noise pollution.
I recently listened to an incredibly sad interview on Israel’s Channel 5 News with the mother of an Israeli soldier who was deployed in Gaza. Representing a group of mothers of members of the Israeli Defense Forces, she explained that after two years of continual trauma, “Today, they are broken, they are finished.” She implored that they desperately need time to heal.
The mother went on to describe a paratrooper who had a panic attack “because the smell of food reminded him of corpses being eaten by dogs in Khan Younis.” She further testified that “They don’t encounter terrorists; they encounter IEDs and blow up!”
What this distressed mother recounted reminds me of clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay’s powerful book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. The book is about Vietnam veterans and the psychological and moral wounds of war. Shay wrote that “Time and safety to mourn were built into ancient warfare and were absent in Vietnam.”
Added to this is the immense, constant suffering of Palestinians. Psychiatrist Dr. Samah Jabr explains that, for the children of Gaza, the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder is a misnomer. According to Jabr, “there is no ‘post’ because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing.”
Our leaders should be deeply ashamed of the paths they have so often taken to address our world’s problems. The U.S. annual defense budget edges toward $1 trillion, while the Trump Administration slashes funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid programs. Moreover, the world’s top five arms manufacturers are American companies.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his courageous opposition to the Vietnam War, warned that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
His words ring true today — for Gaza and other conflict zones. Let us choose justice and compassion to break the cycles of violence before future generations are also lost to war.
Congratulations and thank you to the Portsmouth City Council for unanimously approving a resolution to protect residents’ constitutional due process rights. The Council upheld their oath to uphold the United States and New Hampshire Constitutions. Specifically, the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which states that “no person be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The constitution does not provide any exceptions or conditions. If you are a person, then you must be afforded due process under the law.
Some have opposed this resolution based on the fact that the federal government has the sole power and authority with regard to immigration and that the City Council should not engage in this matter. The fact is that no one disputed that the federal government has the sole jurisdiction over immigration law. The resolution that the Council passed had nothing to do with the power of the federal government to enforce immigration law. The resolution does not in any way dispute that some immigrants may deserve to be deported or face other consequences if they have violated the law. The resolution only supports the constitutional obligation of the federal government to follow due process when enforcing the law with regard to Portsmouth residents.
I am proud of our City Council for having the courage to uphold their oath to the Constitution, to reject fear, and to be on the right side of history. Unfortunately, it seems that too many people in government who take the same oath have put their politics and their loyalty to an individual ahead of their loyalty to their oath.
You’ve gone right to the heart of the matter. Without due process, we’re all at risk.
As usual, those who support authoritarianism are confusing the issue.
Is that due to ignorance, or malice? We’re unable to say.
My last letter to you complained that the Gazette did not do much reporting on the U.S. and Israeli genocide against the Palestinians unfolding today.
As I noted, the current state of the genocide is that Israel has set up 4 sites to provide food manned by U.S. mercenaries. These replace the 400 food sites previously provided by the UN. When starving Palestinians come to these sites, they are gunned down; over a thousand have died so far. Pictures of starving children are all over the the Internet. Yet the Gazette says nothing. Instead of the Gazette front page trumpeting the horror of these Nazi-like actions again and again it remains reserved for yet another put down of the idiot in the White House and his corruption. Or, as was the case the previous week, an article advising the Democratic Party to drop its current leadership in favor of one that can better fool workers and rights activists into coming back, the better to be hoodwinked again by a party that is controlled by the same war mongering evil corporations that control the Republican Party, Trump non withstanding.
In reply to my letter, you stated that there was a misunderstanding. That the Northeast Chronicle contained a great deal on the genocide, which is true. In all the years I have seen the Gazette in stores or other locales I have yet to see a copy of the Northeast Chronicle. My subscription to the Gazette does not include the Northeast Chronicle. But even if it did, the Gazette remains aloof about the most important issue of our day. I hate to think, were it the 1940’s again with the Holocaust in full tilt, that the Gazette would simply ignore it in favor of articles attacking the Republicans or advising the Democrats how to pull it over working people by sucking them into a party where causes go to die.
[This is the added part:]
You point to W.D. Earhart’s [sic] work as proof that the Gazette is covering the genocide in Gaza. I beg to differ. So far, in my experience, his articles appear in only one of three issues and always on the back pages. Second the politics expressed in his latest article are reactionary. After a heart-rending letter from a Palestinian mother, he goes into a confusing account of a walk he took with a true believer in Israel. This person supports the murder of women and children because “Hamas is using them as human shields”, e.g. Hamas somehow used 30,000 children as human shields! This business of blaming the genocide on Hamas is an Israeli talking point (in other words a lie) used in a desperate attempt to fool Jews in the diaspora to align themselves with the fascistic majority of Israel.
Sadly, Earhart’s only response is to say that Hamas was funded by Netanyahu to divide the Palestinian people. True, but that does not answer the points raised by his genocidal friend. Then Earhart goes on to slander the Middle East resistance to Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, claiming they all want to kill all the Jews in Israel. In reality they want to destroy the Israeli state which many of us also desire, and turn Israel from a Jewish supremicist apartheid state into a multi-ethnic democratic state in which the land stolen from Palestinians would be returned to them.
And once again, higher up, there is an article on the Democratic Party urging them to pretend to care for working people by pushing economic-oriented slogans. Of course, once the workers have voted for them, they will go on with business as usual: breaking strikes, initiating more wars, funding Israel’s genocide and attacks on its neighbors and what not.
Again I ask: is that why the soft pedal on the Gaza genocide, to not embarrass the Democratic Party which has passed every single funding bill to supply Israel with the arms they need to massacre Palestinians?
In this letter you use 660 words to rehash an old argument, clearly based on a misunderstanding which we tried to clear up in our last issue. You seem not to have read our reply.
You refer to a “Northeast Chronicle.” We know of no such entity. We do use the rubric “Northcountry Chronicle” online. As we explained last fortnight, it’s a way to categorize columns from regular contributors.
We considered saving some space by paring out the repetitious confusion in this letter, but that would have taken too much time. We run it in its entirety so as to give us the opportunity to provide you with fair warning: our indulgence has its limits.
You seem to have a beef with W.D. Ehrhart — whose name you misspelled, by the way. Rather than rack our brains trying to parse out the particulars of your argument, we’ll let him defend himself, if he cares to.
Finally, you ask if we’re doing something which we manifestly are not doing, in order to avoid embarrassing the Democratic Party. Since the question makes no sense, we will make no response.
The redistricting debacle is not just a political maneuver; it’s a direct threat to the democratic process in America. Texas, under the direction of the President, has taken steps to redraw the maps in a way that would ensure the House of Representatives remains in GOP hands. This move, if successful, would undermine the very foundation of our democracy. Those familiar with political analysis understand that the governing party typically loses seats in the House. This trend has only been defied once in the 21st century, when in 2002, Republicans picked up eight seats.
Republicans know that their brand is beyond toxic and see that they would receive a smackdown at the polls. So, Texas, following the lead of the President, who tried to destroy the government on January 6th, was more than keen to redraw the maps to keep the House in GOP hands. This spineless and heinous power grab doesn’t solve their difficulties. California Governor Gavin Newsom reported that California would redraw its maps in reaction to Texas’s stunt. New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that New York would be doing the same. While I do not endorse mid-decade redistricting, a process of redrawing electoral district boundaries in the middle of a decade, the actions by Governors Newsom and Hochul (with more Democratic governors set to follow) are a move that sticks it to the President and the GOP.
While the GOP is aligning with an insurrectionist, the Democrats are courageously fighting to save our democracy. Their actions, in the face of such a blatant power grab, are a beacon of hope for the future of our nation.
For decades — ever since the Democrats sold out to the big-money donors, following McGovern’s loss — Republicans have been eating the Democrats’ lunch.
Now they’re finally showing signs of life. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
The Long-Running Presidential “Emergency Powers” Scam
To the Editor:
President Trump recently declared a “crime emergency” in D.C. and suggested it could be extended to large cities across the country whose efforts to stop crime do not meet with his personal approval. In doing so, he is making use of America’s long and sordid history of abuse of the Constitution’s requirements for implementing such powers.
The Constitution says, “He [the President] may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses.” This is taken to mean situations requiring immediate government action, such as emergencies or crises. (Article II, Section 3) Woodrow Wilson abused this provision soon after his election by calling Congress into special session to hear his plan for tariffs, as though that were an emergency requiring immediate attention, which it clearly was not. Today, of course, Trump has fully usurped Congress’ legal power to enact tariff measures as well as the requirement to call special sessions for emergencies by using instead an endless series of executive orders, press releases, and posts on social media to enact tariff policy.
America’s earliest precedent for the faulty use of emergency presidential power was George Washington. A federal tax on whiskey boiled over into a “rebellion” in Pennsylvania. The Constitution specifies that federal troops can be used to intervene in a state only when requested by the governor. Pennsylvania’s governor insisted he could handle the matter locally, but Washington instead raised a militia army of 12,950 and made a big show of marching to western Pennsylvania. He could only find and arrest 20 suspected rebels, only two of which were ever convicted.
Lincoln created the emergency he wanted to use by provoking South Carolina to fire the first shot in the Civil War while Congress was out of town. Lincoln was thus “forced” to run the government and engage in war on his own without obtaining Congress’ emergency approval. He finally called them back into session after four months, when the war was well along in progress.
Eight months after the armistice ending World War I, Wilson was still running railroads, and telephone and telegraph companies under an ongoing emergency power. Congress begged him to return the private sector to its rightful stewards, but Wilson refused.
Franklin Roosevelt got major grants of emergency power from Congress to deal with the Depression after calling an emergency session of Congress in March 1933. FDR declared 39 emergencies in his first six years in office, all during peacetime. One Congressman quipped, “Any national administration is entitled to one or two national emergencies in a term of six years. But an emergency every six weeks means plain bad management.”
Harry Truman extended the wartime emergency power of FDR well beyond wartime when in October 1945, he seized 26 oil companies on national security grounds when they threatened to go on strike. When the auto and steel industries were having labor disputes and shutdowns, he determined to enter the fray. He wrote in a journal, “Declare an emergency, call out troops. Start industry and put anyone to work who wants to work. If any leader interferes, court martial him. Adjourn Congress and run the country.”
Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty,” and the people pretty much accepted this as the same as an actual war. Johnson used emergency war-time housing regulations in peacetime by failing to rescind the earlier emergency. Johnson used the popular minister Billy Graham to advise him as to God’s will, suggesting that if God wanted it, it must be an emergency.
Nixon declared a state of emergency when the nation’s postal workers went on strike and used the U.S army to force workers back on the job. In 1971, Congress discovered that the U.S had been in a continuous state of national emergency since 1933 starting with Roosevelt’s banking emergency. A measure controlling the expiration of national emergencies was finally enacted in 1976 but has fallen into disuse as later presidents have ignored it and enacted emergencies by Presidential fiat.
Today, President Trump essentially has declared an emergency for a domestic war against half of the electorate that will not be lifted until he has established the one percent class in permanent power under his leadership. He is finding emergency conditions in Democrat-run cities, and among African American citizens, brown-skinned immigrants, people who failed to vote for him, and folks who don’t like his policies. Where is Billy Graham now when we need him?
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