Milei continues to cut taxes, in this case import tariffs.
Why not cut them to zero? He's commited to maintaining a fiscal surplus. He's decreasing tax rates as spending is cut and the economy grows, but paying down his national debt is always the number one priority.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
An early taste of the Trump Temper Tantrum Tariff recession was spotted in a ZeroHedge article this morning that was otherwise devoted to giving Trump a big fat slobbering blowjob:
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Fixed Investment came at 0.08%, a big drop from the 1.31%, and perhaps the only concerning point in today's report: was there really no major data center investments in the second quarter... and if so what are the hyperscalers doing?
This is an area I've been working in lately. The reason is that if you want to start a large capex project under Trump, you had better be able to just write a check for it. Even then there are hold-ups (which is why even the Mag 7 are stuck), but there is virtually no big finance money flowing since the inauguration.
The reason is simple, easy, and obvious: these are projects that generally take 2-4 years to complete. Nobody knows what costs are going to be next week, let alone next year, because once they got their hands on the economic levers of power MAGA loves ...
The horrific effects of government-forced economic change sometimes take decades to be understood.
The sugar tariffs didn't just destroy American health - they also severely harmed the economies of many Caribbean islands, to the point where even today they have not fully recovered.
