DC Follies? Reciprocal Tariffs, The Mag 7, Corporate Yields And Market Corrections (-17.5% Vs -35.4% In 2020)

US tariff policies for the last 50 years represent a folly. Particularly since Presidents Obama and Biden (along with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi) did nothing to correct the enormous disparity in tariffs. Trump is trying to do something to right the ship before it sinks like The Titanic.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote in the Daily Signal, “China has prohibitive tariffs, so does Vietnam, so does South Korea, so does Japan, so does Mexico, and so does Europe. So do a lot of countries. So does India. But if tariffs are so destructive to their economies, why is China booming?

Why is Canada mad at us when it’s running a $63 billion surplus and it has tariffs on some American products at 250%. Doesn’t it seem like the people who started this asymmetrical—if I could use the word—trade war should be the culpable people, not the people who are reluctantly reacting to it?

Were tariffs leveled against countries that had no tariffs against us?

The US hasn’t run a trade surplus since 1975 or 50 years. So, it wasn’t suddenly we woke up and said, “It’s unfair. We want commercial justice.” No. We’ve been watching this happen. For 50 years it’s been going on. And no president, no administration, no Congress in the past has done anything about it.

In the postwar period, we were so affluent, so powerful—Europe, China, Russia were in shambles—that we had to take up the burdens of reviving the economy by taking great trade deficits. Fifty years later, we have been deindustrialized. And the countries who did this to us, by these unfair and asymmetrical tariffs, did not fall apart. They did not self-destruct. They apparently thought it was in their self-interest. And if anybody calibrates the recent gross domestic product growth of India or Taiwan or South Korea or Japan, they seem to have some logic to it.

There’s a final irony. The people who are warning us most vehemently about this tariff quote the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. But remember something, that came after the onset of the Depression—after. The stock market crashed in 1929. That law was not passed until 1930. It was not really amplified until ’31. And here’s the other thing that they were, conveniently, not reminded of: We were running a surplus. That was a preemptive punitive tariff, on our part, against other countries.
We had a trade surplus. And it was not 10% or 20%. Some of the tariffs were 40% and 50%. And again, it happened after the collapse of the stock market.

In conclusion, don’t you find it very ironic that Wall Street is blaming the Trump tariffs for heading us into a recession, if not depression, when the only great depression we’ve ever had was not caused by tariffs but by Wall Street?”

Average reciprocal tariffs could rise to 35%!

The Mag 7 index has gotten crushed under Trump’s tariffs.

Corporate bond yield has soared with Trump’s tariffs.

The market correction thus far is -17.5%, not even close to the worst correction since 2009 (-35.4% in 2020).

The Urgent Need For D.O.G.E.! $4.7 Trillion In Virtually Untraceable Treasury Payments

Janet Yelllen, the former Federal Reserve Chair and Treasury Secretary under clueless Joe Biden was a disaster in every respect. As Fed Chair, she was noteworthy for her clinging to low rates for too long. And as Treasury Secretary, she is noteworthy for her gross fiscal mismanagement (look at the deficit and debt crisis!). Now Zero Hedge has this disastrous report of $4.7 TRILLION in virtuallly untraceable Treasury payments.

The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are “almost impossible” to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money. 

With a debt load of $36.5 trillion and D.O.G.E. clock at $109 million and growing. Not to mention the $227 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

Mind you, it’s not as if such a federal tracking system wasn’t already in place — it simply went casually unused for all sorts of payouts adding up to an almost unfathomable $4.7 trillion. Without Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) identification codes associated with those payouts, there’s little hope in figuring out where all that money went. 

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those “optional” days are over. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE added. 

Musk celebrated the move. “Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!” he tweeted. “This was a combined effort of DOGE, USTreasury and FederalReserve. Nice work by all.”

DOGE’s scrutiny of various government agencies is eliciting high-pitched shrieks from nearly every leftist in America, from establishment politicians who don’t want the curtain that hides their hijinks and grifting torn down, to your liberal sister-in-law who thinks the government has an endless supply of money and that it spends it all virtuously.  

Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back on portrayals of DOGE employees as reckless rogues. “These are highly trained professionals,” he told Bloomberg“This is not some roving band going around doing things. This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings.”

In the wake of the latest revelation that makes normal people glad that DOGE teams are scouring the federal government, Democrats desperately tried to find a way to make it sound bad that DOGE exposed trillions in untraceable payouts and promptly instituted tighter accounting discipline. 

Meanwhile, leftists have also been foaming at the mouth over news that DOGE staffers are looking into the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) books, as if they were going to start rerouting funds to Tesla. Considering Social Security is careening toward mandatory benefit cuts as soon as 2033, everyone should welcome a team of financial professionals making sure the system isn’t being drained by improper payments

Of course, that appears to be exactly what’s been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of “the biggest fraud in history,” as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old

Bent on derailing DOGE, Democrats have sued to prevent the organization from accessing federal data associated with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Transportation, Labor and Commerce departments. On Monday, the federal judge handling the request for a restraining order expressed skepticism over Democrats’ challenge, noting that their “evidence” was largely media speculation about potential harms springing from DOGE’s activities: “The courts can’t act based on media reports. We can’t do that.

A ruling is expected Tuesday. Here’s looking forward to DOGE proceeding to uncover a relentless string of scandals for months and months to come. 

Why Doge? Federal Deficit Is Up $306 Billion Compared to Same Period Last Year (Long-run Deficits Are Grim!)

When the (fiscal) music’s over. For corrupt politicians, that is!

Mike Shedlock (aka, Mish) had a great article on the fiscal dumpster fire facing the Trump Administration. After you get a load of the long-run deficits and debt load, you can understand why Trump wants to cut Federal waste (Doge).

The US deficit for the first four months of fiscal Year 2025 is $838 billion, up $306 billion. Adjusted, the increase is more like $157 billion to $225 billion.

The federal budget deficit totaled $838 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That amount is $306 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year. Revenues were $11 billion (or 1 percent) higher, and outlays were $317 billion (or 15 percent) higher.

The change in the deficit was influenced by the timing of outlays and revenues, which decreased the deficit during the first four months of fiscal year 2024 but increased it during the same period this fiscal year. Outlays in October 2023 were reduced by shifts in the timing of payments that were due on October 1, 2023, a Sunday. (The payments were made that September.) Outlays in the first four months of 2025 rose, on net, because payments due on February 1, 2025, a Saturday, were made in January. If not for those shifts, the deficit so far this fiscal year would have been $750 billion, or $146 billion more than the shortfall at this point last year. Part of the deficit increase in 2025 also arises from the postponement of some tax deadlines from 2023 to 2024 (described below), which boosted receipts in 2024.

The long-run deficits are grim, according to the CBO.

Outlays in the first four months of fiscal year 2025 were $2.4 trillion, CBO estimates, $317 billion more than during the same period last year. If not for the timing shifts discussed above, outlays so far in fiscal year 2025 would have been $157 billion (or 7 percent) greater than outlays during the same four months in fiscal year 2024. The discussion below reflects adjustments to exclude the effects of those timing shifts.

Maxine Waters is an unhappy girl along with most Democrats about Trump and Musk looking into USAID.

Welcome to a new world under Trump.

Biden Boogie! Biden’s Final Punch In The Jaw, Greatest Fiscal Deficit To Start The Year In History, Largest Debt Load, Interest Expense Now Exceeds Social Security

It is the Biden Boogie!

Joe Biden is leaving the Presidency with an attrocious record. While saying he is leaving Trump with the strongest economy in modern times, the is actually leaving Trump and Republicans with a hollow shell for an economy. It is the final punch in the jaw from an angry, failed President.

The following chart shows that in October and November, the US deficit exploded to a staggering $624.2 billion, and even though this included several calendar adjustments – which explains the freak September surplus which as we said was due to calendar effects – the November deficit of $367 billion was $14 billion more than consensus estimates of $353 billion. Worse, combining October and November we find that not only was the combined number of $624 billion some 64% higher than the corresponding period one year ago, but it was also the highest deficit on record for the first two-months of the year (and that includes the spending insanity during the covid crisis).

Putting the deficit in context, the budget deficit in October and November – the first two months of fiscal 2025 – are now officially the worst start a year for the US Treasury on record.

No wonder even Statist Janet Yellen (Treasury Secretary who failed utterly at her job) apologized that her abysmal performance. “I am concerned about fiscal sustainability and I am sorry that we haven’t made more progress,” she said adding that “I believe that the deficit needs to be brought down especially now that we’re in an environment of higher interest rates.” Meanwhile Biden keeps handing out $$$ to Ukraine, Africa, Syria, illegal immigrants and anything else that asks … unless it it American citizens. Man, does Biden HATE America!

Here is Yellen’s record on debt. A total of $15.2 TRILLION under her leadership.

Under Biden/Yellen (don’t forget Senate fools like Schumer and McConnell!), debt interest has surpassed Social Security and Medicare as the second largest government agency expense.

Biden is a classic progressive Democrat, spending other people’s money like a wild man (sort of like California Governor “Greasy Gavin” Newsom’s father. Or grandfather. And let’s not forget the $222 TRILLION in UNFUNDED liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare.

“See Joe, I can destroy California’s economy just like you destroyed the US economy!”


Biden/Harris Replicates Reagan’s Soviet Bankruptcy Strategy IN REVERSE, US Debt Stands At $36 TRILLION With $220.3 TRILLION In Unfunded Liabilities (Too Bad Total US Assets Are Only $217 TRILLON)

I just watched Dennis Quaid in “Reagan”. Excellent film. But it reminded me of how Reagan sank the Soviet Union: by outspending the Soviet Union on the arms race. It worked! The Soviet Union, hamstrung by grossly inefficent central planning, couldn’t keep up and collapsed under President George H.W.Bush.

Fast forward to today. Starting with Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2009, following the financial crisis in 2008. The Federal government ramped up Federal spending, and Federal debt. While The Federal Reserve, the hand maiden to the Federal government, ramped up M2 Money supply.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” – Rahm Emmanuel

Then came Biden/Harris who drove Federal debt and spending to absurb level (orange box). Like the financial crisis, fans of big government and big government spending will utter the word “Covid.” But that is gross misleading. Covid was the excused for wild spending and debt issurance. And MORE Fed money printing. It’s almost as if Obama/Biden/Harris were replicating Reagan’s bankrupcy strategy in reverse! That is, collapsing the US from within.

As we are all painfully aware, the US Debt now stands at $36 TRILLION with $220.3 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. Too bad total US Assets are only $217 TRILLON.

Do I believe that Obama/Biden/Harris want a “Great Reset”? Absolutley. Just look at our fiscally unsustable open borders and our politiicians blatanly lying to us. :Like Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown who brags about his helping write the border bill that would reverse Trump’s deportations and fund the speeding up of immigration.

$36 Tons Of Debt! Federal Gov’t Ends 2024 With $1.8 Trillion Deficit As National Debt Nears $36 Trillion (Family Of Five Citizens Has A Liability Of $3.25 Million For Unfunded Liabilities)

Tennessee Ernie Ford sang it best. $36 tons of debt. Another day older and deeper in debt. Notice virually no political candidate will acknowledge or discuss.

The federal government spent $1.8 trillion more than it collected in tax revenue in fiscal year 2024, according to figures released Friday by U.S. Treasury Department. 

Congress has run a deficit every year since 2001. In the past 50 years, the federal government has ended with a fiscal year-end budget surplus four times, most recently in 2001.

The deficit for fiscal 2024 was $1.8 trillion, or $138 billion higher than the prior year’s deficit. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit was 6.4%, an increase from 6.2% in fiscal 2023. The 2024 deficit is $196 billion lower than in 2023, excluding the effect of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Biden v. Nebraska regarding student loan programs, according to year-end data from the September 2024 Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government. 

And then we have the REAL disaster in the form of unfunded liabilities of $220 TRIILLION (or $651,000 per citizen). For a family of 5 citizens (like my household), that amounts to $3.26 MILLION per household of 5.

Imagine Kamala’s filibustering a response to a question about the national debt and unfunded liabilities. Other than “Donald Trump.”

Perhaps Tennesse Ernie Ford could have recorded “220 Trillion Tons of Unfunded Liabilities” instead.

The Obama/Biden/Harris Economic Model: Spend Trillions, Borrow Trillions, Hire Gov’t Workers (Hand Our Grandchildren The HUGE Bill)

There have been to significant jumps in the Federal Debt. The first coming after the financial crisis of 2008 and election of Obama/Biden in 2008. The second with the outbreak of Covid in 2020 and the election of Biden/Harris in 2021.

The Federal (public) debt was just over $10 million when Obama/Biden were elected and it now stands at a staggering $35.7 trillion. That represents over a tripling of the Federal debt under Obama/Biden/Harris. So when asked what she would do diffeerent than Biden, Harris replied “Nothing comes to mind.” That means MORE spending, MORE debt and MORE unproductive Government jobs.

Here is a chart of public debt and GDP under the triumvirate of Obama, Biden and Harris. No, not Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus). But it is feeling like the Roman Empire prior to its collapse.

Here is a chart of government jobs and government expenditures. Great for government workers, bad for everyone else.

Of course, SOMEBODY has to pay the growing gov’t debt burden. Rest assured it won’t be Obama/Biden/Harris.

Here is Obama holding court.

Ten Thousand Commandments! Biden/Harris Regulations Cost Families $15,000+ (17% Of Household Income) … And More To Come! (Yellen Wants $78 TRILLION To Combat Climate Change)

Regulate! Regulate! Dance to THEIR music!

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Biden/Harris heaped droves of regulations on American families in the amount of $15,000 per family.

Here is a breakdown of the annual cost of regulations:

And “China” Kamala (ChiKam) plans even MORE regulations!

  • Federal regulation’s total compliance costs and economic effects are at least $2.117 trillion annually in Ten Thousand Commandments’ estimate, and almost certainly higher.
  • An October 2023 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) report models regulatory compliance at $3.079 trillion annually.
  • US households pay on average $15,788 annually in a hidden regulatory tax, which consumes 17 percent of income and 22 percent of household expenses.
  • These outlays exceed expenditures on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings. Only the costs of housing, which stand at $24,298 annually, exceed regulation.
  • The higher NAM figure implies $22,962 per household, or 31 percent of the household expense budget.
  • The regulatory tax of $2.117 trillion rivals individual income tax costs estimated at $2.328 trillion for 2023 and stands at nearly four times the corporate income tax of $546 billion.
  • The NAM cost figure of $3.1 trillion annually would exceed the sum of both ($2.9 trillion).
  • If it were a country, US regulation would be the world’s 10th-largest economy, ranking behind Canada and ahead of Italy.
  • If we exclude the US economy from the list, the US regulation economy would be the ninth largest, still behind Canada and ahead of Italy.
  • The 10.34 billion hours Washington says it took to complete federal paperwork in 2022, according to the Information Collection Budget, translate to the equivalent of 14,883 human lifetimes.
  • The tally of final rules for 2023 stood at 3,018, which is the second-lowest count since at least 1976.
  • On the other hand, the Federal Register containing those rules surged to 89,368 pages, the second-highest tally on record and a 12 percent rise over 2022.
  • Although we have fewer new rules, they appear to be broader in scope.
  • During calendar year 2023, agencies issued 3,018 rules, whereas Congress enacted 68 laws. Thus, agencies issued 44 rules for every law enacted by Congress.
  • This Unconstitutionality Index—the ratio of regulations issued by agencies to laws passed by Congress and signed by the president—underlines how much agency lawmaking has replaced that of elected officials. The average ratio over the past 10 years is 23 rules for every law.
  • Since the Federal Register first began itemizing final rules in 1976, 217,565 have been issued. Since 1993, when the first edition of Ten Thousand Commandments appeared, agencies have issued 120,475 final rules.
  • A 2023 draft consolidated version of the White House Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations caught up on fiscal years 2020–2022. The report for 2023 has still not been released.
  • A total of only 31 “major” rules had both benefits and costs quantified, and these add $13 billion to the annual regulatory cost bill; another 56 rules with costs but not benefits quantified add another $46 billion to annual costs.
  • Employing our lower estimate, regulatory burdens of $2.1 trillion amount to nearly 8 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP), reported by the Commerce Department at $27.36 trillion in 2023.
  • The NAM regulatory figure implies 11 percent of GDP.
  • Regulatory costs stand at over 60 percent of the level of corporate pretax profits of $3.523 trillion.
  • The NAM figure would take that to over 80 percent.
  • When regulatory costs of $2.1 trillion are combined with federal outlays of $6.135 trillion, the federal government’s share of the $27.36 trillion economy reaches at least 30 percent. State and local spending and regulation add to these costs.
  • Until April 2023, a subset of each year’s 3,000-plus rules was deemed economically significant, referring to annual economic effects of $100 million or more. Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (“Modernizing Regulatory Review”) eliminated that category and initiated a higher $200 million Section 3(f)(1) Significant category.
  • In the year-end 2023 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, 69 federal departments, agencies, and commissions present 3,599 regulatory actions flowing through the pipeline as follows:
  • 2,524 rules in the active (prerule, proposed, final) phase
  • 431 recently completed rules
  • 644 long-term rules
  • Of the 3,599 regulations in the fall 2023 Unified Agenda’s pipeline, 304 are Section 3(f)(1) Significant category rules (which implies at least $60 billion in economic impact), as follows:
  • 233 rules in the active (prerule, proposed, final) phase
  • 41 completed rules
  • 30 long-term rules
  • Despite his own higher $200 million threshold, high-significance rules in the Biden pipeline outnumber the Bush, Obama, and Trump years when the lower $100 million threshold applied.
  • Major rules as defined in the Congressional Review Act leave a $100 million threshold intact despite Biden’s executive order. The Government Accountability Office database contains 76 finalized major rules for 2023. The Biden average exceeds those of Bush, Obama, and Trump.
  • Final rules affecting small business appear to be mounting and could generate calls for reform. Biden’s three years have averaged 870 rules annually in the Federal Register affecting small business, compared with 694 and 701 for Obama and Trump, respectively.
  • Of the 3,599 rules and regulations in the fall 2023 Unified Agenda pipeline, 690 affect small businesses; of those, 370 required an official “regulatory flexibility analysis.”
  • Biden-era mandates affect state and local governments at heights not seen in over a decade. Rules in the Unified Agenda pipeline affecting state governments stand at 507, while rules affecting local governments stand at 349.
  • The five most active rule-producing executive branch entities in the Unified Agenda—the departments of the Interior, the Treasury, Transportation, Commerce, and Health and Human Services—account for 1,497 rules, or 42 percent of all rules in the pipeline. The five most active independent agencies account for another 318 rules.
  • From the nation’s founding through 2022, more than 15,635 executive orders have been issued. Biden issued 24 executive orders in 2023, well below his peak 77 of 2021. Biden’s presidential memoranda continue to outstrip the average of recent predecessors.
  • Public notices in the Federal Register always exceed 22,000 annually, with uncounted guidance documents and other proclamations that hold potential regulatory effect among them, whereas other guidance documents issued do not appear in the Federal Register at all. In 2023, 23,197 notices were issued. There have been 714,563 public notices since 1994 and over a million since the 1970s.

DC bureaucrats are out of control. Treasury Secretary Yellen calls for $78 TRILLION to tackle climate change. So to quote The Carpenters, they’ve only just begun to regulate.

US Unfunded Liabilities Total $217.63 Trillion While TOTAL US National Assets Equal Only $210 Trillion (National Debt Equals $35 Trillion And Growing Awfully Fast!) Unfunded Liabilities 6.23X National Debt!

This scene from the film “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” sums up our political plight quite nicley. Politicians spend like crazy to stay in power (Biden/Harris) are excellent examples). Politicians promises endless money, then shoot the economy. The US is broke and relies on printing money and boowed funds to stay afloat. Harris wants to raise taxes on everyone to fund her plans like even MORE emphasis of failed green energy schemes and endless foreign wars. I doubt if Harris could defend her spending plans in light of the US already $35 TRILLION in debt.

Even more worrisome if thev fact that DC politicians have promised entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, etc. totalling $217.63 Trillion. Or 623% higher than the rapidly increasing national debt.

Biden/Harris raised thr national debt by 25% in less than 4 years. And Harris wants to increase spending! Harris wants illegal immigrants put on Social Security and Medicare, further bankrupting those entitlement programs.

Let’s see Harris explain her indefensible budget (like raising taxes and not hurting economic growth).

JOLT’IN Joe! US Job Openings Almost Exclusively Government Jobs (Productive Private Sector Jobs Barely Grow At 2.8% While Unproductive Government Jobs Grow 20%)

No, Joe Biden isn’t Joltin’ Joe Di Maggio (the Yankee Clipper). Joe Biden is a Socialist who loves government and hates free markets. I feel like Biden and his junta are emuilating the old Soviet Union and Communism. Those of us who still love free markets are back on the chain gang.

After two months of sharp declines in the number of job openings, moments ago Biden’s highly politicized Department of Labor reported that in May, the number of job openings unexpectedly spiked by a whopping 221K, to 8.140 million – far above the 7.950 million estimate – from a downward revised April print of 7.919 million, down 140K from the original print of 8.059 million.

Job revisions aside, there was only a 2.8% increase in private sector job openings in May. On the other hand, nonproductive job openings (aka, government) were up a staggering 20% in May.

C’mon man, hiring government workers doesn’t grow the economy in an organic way. Just a Soviet way.

Soviet Joe and the new Eva Peron. Don’t cry for Jill Biden, she is a half-wit acting like a Queen.