Sunday Cutdown L (10 November 2024)

Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document

Thomas PM Barnett

Nov 10, 2024

1) Trump’s terrifying tariff threat

CNN: Steve Madden just drastically changed its business to avoid Trump’s tariffs

We hear it’s all about negotiating, and yet, sometimes, it’s not.

The threat is 40-60% on Chinese imports and 10-20% on everybody else.

So, guess what? Some of those firms that rely heavily on China are moving manufacturing and production.

Steve Madden, a $3 billion shoe company, announced Thursday that it would rapidly halve its Chinese production to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

An early win?

Hmm, sort of?

Steve Madden isn’t moving its production to the United States. It said it will be sourcing its goods from Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil and some other countries.

Why the negotiations may not turn out so well: Everybody in this world knows that Trump’s win was fueled mostly by inflation and dissatisfaction with the economy in general. Placing tariffs on imports is an immediate inflation booster. Negotiations could last … who knows how long? Manufacturers moving production back to the States … MUCH longer timeframe.

Trump does not have the political patience for this sort of popular economic harm. Here, his reliance on billionaire advisors should hopefully relegate the more expansive threats to just that … hot air designed to encourage deal-making.

Beyond that, tariffs are just an inappropriate tool in this day and age. Back in the day Trump imagines taking us back to, the US accounted for almost one quarter of global imports. Today, it’s less than 10 percent.

Let the game of chicken begin!

2) Let the open hating (re)begin!

WAPO: After election, racist texts nationwide threaten Black people with slavery

Keep telling yourself that race had nothing to do with Trump’s win over the “DEI candidate.” Whites were just over 4/5ths of his vote in 2020 and it’s the same this time. Doesn’t come close to painting every one of them racist, as that would be an absurd accusation.

But, when combined with the normalization of extreme White Christian nativism, that underlying divide (an 80% White GOP versus a 60% White Democratic Party in a 60% White America) creates a permissive environment that my three non-White daughters immediately notice in their day-to-day lives.

It felt bizarre to have to explain the causality to them back in 2016, and it’s even more bizarre now … I mean, after a Black/Asian woman got 48% of the national vote.

None of this political braking changes the track we’re on: namely, the reality that Whites go majority-minority (under 50% of the population) in approximately two decades. Or the reality that White Christians are already a majority-minority, followed by Christians as a whole around 2070.

America’s racial (and ultimately religious) makeover doesn’t inherently advantage either party. Been saying that for years and this election showed it decidedly among male Latinos. But it does reduce that permissive space for hate, which is why those who feel (and fear) that coming reality, sense that now is the time to let it rip.

That’s part of the Trump us-v-them bargain. White supremacists sense that this is their moment to shine — again.

“Your body, my choice. Forever,” posted white supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes hours before the race had even been called in Trump’s favor.

And people wonder why Elon Musk offered — unprompted — to impregnate Taylor Swift.

Fuentes is not some nobody. He’s had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago

3) Who’s got the stuff?

VISUAL CAPITALIST: Top 10 Countries by Value of All Their Natural Resources

The way to read this chart is as follows:

North America — the US-Canada perfect superpower combo — is incredibly blessed (our combined $78T tops even resource-king Russia)
Four of the top-ten hail from the Wester Hemisphere (to include Brazil and Venezuela).
Russia is top nation-state — by far, which is why it still matters … albeit more and more as a “sick man” target for resource-hungry superpowers like China and India
China is seriously resource poor relative to its needs
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China) collectively rule in their own right (tossing in largely captured Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela [which exports twice as much to China+India than to the US]), which is why Beijing created the group in the first place.

Given this distribution, I’m not seeing the need for East-v-West “resource wars” as long predicted.

4) Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

FORBES: A Ukrainian Drone Motored 700 Miles And Blasted Three Russian Warships In One Blow

The Military Singularity looms that much closer on the horizon.

Months ago Russia felt forced to basically move its entire Black Sea fleet (its huge advantage over now-nearly landlocked Ukraine) to the far eastern shore.

Why?

Battlespace around Ukraine got too dangerous, as cheap drone-delivered munitions were taking out expensive capital ships.

Now, the Ukrainians are sending drone vessels hundred of miles across the Black Sea and hitting Russian ships when docked.

The isolationist wing here in the States want us out of this conflict, but this war is a perfect laboratory for exploring the future of non-human-centric warfare. The US must be represented in this fight, not just because we’re learning so much and this dynamic is already radically reshaping our antiquated military industrial base, but because we’re buying the decimation of the Russian military — cheap, while sending clear deterrence signals to China over Taiwan (our now-threatened “drone hellscape”).

This is a win-win-win-win, to include a big one for the global order, so long as we stay in the fight — albeit with zero skin in the game.

5) The rule of the American oligarchs

BLOOMBERG: Trump Win Gives Loyal Billionaire Backers Power to Sway Top Jobs

Trump 2.0 will tame our nation’s restive economic populism with a cabinet made up of, and largely hand-selected by, Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires.

What could go wrong?

How much you wanna bet that, a decade from now, we’ll look back and see that all of these guys grew atrociously richer while our national debt skyrocketed and our middle class stagnated further?

But what the hell? Musk alone paid more than $100m for this administration. Dude expects to make it all back several times over on government contracts.

You get what you pay for, damnit!

The glass-half-full slant?

The tech bros’ libertarian lean will temper the government’s push for both regulation and trust-busting at a moment in history when maybe … just maybe … we’re better off as a nation to have our tech giants capable of doing fierce battle with China’s tech giants the world over.

How long is too long in letting Silicon Valley run wild with AI and cryptos and the like?

History says we await either a huge scandal or a triggered economic downturn (or both) as the sign that some progressive off-ramp must be constructed.

Honestly, that doesn’t feel like anytime soon.

6) All that grooming pays off for Putin

WAPO: ‘We have won’: Russians envision new global system with Trump victory

NYT: Putin Lavishes Praise on Trump, Saying Russia Is ‘Open’ to Restored Ties

A KGB officer versus a narcissist … it was never a fair fight.

From the WAPO story, the glee is palpable:

Donald Trump’s stunning political comeback has created an opening for Russia to shatter Western unity on Ukraine and redraw the global power map, according to several influential members of the Russian elite.
In the corridors of power in Moscow, the win for Trump’s populist argument that America should focus on domestic woes over aiding countries like Ukraine was being hailed as a potential victory for Russia’s efforts to carve out its own sphere of influence in the world.
In even broader terms, it was seen as a victory for conservative, isolationist forces supported by Russia against a liberal, Western-dominated global order that the Kremlin (and its allies) have been seeking to undermine.

The Kremlin telling the White House that we should stay home and fix ourselves, leaving the world-ordering to more capable powers … talk about a successful influence campaign.

7) Modern Family

VISUAL CAPITALIST: Over Half of Households in the U.S. Don't Have Kids

I was born in 1962, so basically the story of my nation as I have experienced it: today, US households with no kids outnumber those with kids.

Yes, you can try to socially engineer things back to the way we were, but good luck with that, based on all history to-date. Today, only one-fifth of households meet the “intact” or “nuclear” definition of kids with married parents.

We think the Chinese are doomed with their “4-2-1 problem”: four grandparents, two parents, and one kid to support them all in their old age.

Now imagine no US immigration being added to these trends and ask yourself: better or worse?

8) How dusty becomes our bowl?

WAPO: Drought conditions cover a record swath of the U.S. What to know.

I know, I know.

Now that it’s all drill baby drill!, climate change is complete bullshit that can be excised from all government documents, regulations, and laws — like those troublesome transgenders conquering girls’ sports. DeSantis leads the way: speak no climate change, see no climate change, suffer no climate change.

The power of positive unthinking.

A “remarkable” 87% of the US is experiencing drought this year — the first year in which the world is likely to record an average temperature that crosses the dreaded-threshold of being 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Our electoral timing on this could not be more perfect.

See sand, insert head, ponder why ass is on fire.

Well, at least we know we’re free … to largely deal with this on our own for the next four years.

9) And while we’re on this super-dry subject …

WAPO: Why future droughts will not be about rain

As I have shorthanded in the past: climate change basically de-humidifies Earth’s surface while humidifying its atmosphere, yielding the fabulous pairing of drought interrupted by torrential rains that bring little relief.

Turns out that push-me, pull-me dynamic favors the atmosphere over the land.

A new study documents that “since 2000, rising temperatures — leading to greater evaporation — have done more to contribute to the severity and extent of droughts in the West than a lack of rainfall.”

Global warming is winning:

Warmer temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold more water and suck moisture from the ground. This “evaporative demand” grows as temperatures rise.
The role of evaporation has been an important issue as western states debate how to divvy up the dwindling Colorado River, which provides water for tens of millions of people. Scientists have long known that temperatures play a big role in the declining flows of the river.

Heat surpassing precipitation as the driver of droughts. That is a seriously nasty doo-loop that we’ve created.

Matter to you?

What had been a 1-in-1,300 year event could happen once every six years, the study found.

Only if you plan to live more than six years, I guess.

10) Sacking Washington will solve all of our problems

FEDERAL NEWS NETWORK: Trump seeks to relocate 100K federal employees, doubling down on first-term playbook

A big part of dismantling the “deep state” involves re-locating thousands upon thousands of DC-based Federal workers to “places filled with patriots who love America,” per Trump.

Why?

All those rogues need to get gone, ending the Fed’s longtime persecution of Whites, Christians, and conservatives in general.

Don’t believe me? Click on the video above.

All those people need to have their freedom (read, privilege) restored ASAP — particularly White male billionaires, who have suffered the most under the rule of the radical Left (Trump most of all!).

America’s Progressive Era has finally begun, and it naturally involves killing the civil service — the signature failure of the previous Progressive Era.

The Gilded Age returns … replete with no personal income tax?

We can only dream.

11) Lysistrata revival!

NYT: After the Election, a Call for Women to Swear Off Men — Interest in South Korea’s 4B feminist movement, which rejects dating, marriage, sex and childbirth, has risen in the United States.

Buy your tickets now. Just don’t expect to have an opposite-sex date.

The gist:

The original 4B, or 4 Nos, movement started to gain momentum in 2019, during a time when women in South Korea were undergoing a reckoning over the longstanding gender rights disparities in their country. The movement ramped up further during that country’s 2021 elections. The four B’s in question are references to Korean terms regarding marriage, childbirth, dating and sexual relationships.

4chan v. 4B: it was inevitable.

Searches for “4B Movement” in the United States spiked the day after the election, according to Google Trends. Dozens of videos on the topic have popped up on TikTok in the last 48 hours, with users sharing why they are for or against the movement’s gaining steam in the United States. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Mr. Trump’s opposition to abortion, there’s concern that his administration could enact a federal abortion ban. Couple that with the spread of online misogyny, known as the manosphere, and its subset of incel culture, among self-described involuntary celibates who disparage women, there’s increased concern that women’s rights will be further eroded.

No handmaid, no tale, no baby.

12) Ending on this hopeful note

NYT: The World Isn’t Spending Nearly Enough to Adapt to Climate Shocks, U.N. Says — A new report, urging rich nations to give more climate aid to poorer ones, comes as Donald Trump’s election throws global climate talks into disarray.

Again, America’s electoral timing is exquisite.

When the going gets tough, America goes home, as does much of the Global North, it seems:

While wealthy nations provided $28 billion in aid for climate adaptation in 2022, the report estimates that developing nations need between $187 billion and $359 billion annually in additional funding to cope with climate change disasters.

Pay them now or get charged later.

Where do you think all those climate migrants go when life across the lower latitudes becomes impossible?

I say again: