Dem
47
GOP
53
No, not that. That "wand" is hardly magical, at least according to Stormy Daniels. We mean tariffs, which are apparently the solution to every single foreign affairs issue ever.
We are hardly experts on international finance but pretty much all tariffs we've ever heard about were bilateral. Country A slaps duties on Country B, Country B generally responds by slapping duties on Country A. It would appear that Donald Trump is about to invent, for lack of a better term, trilateral tariffs. On Monday, he announced that any country that trades for Venezuelan oil would be hit with a 25% tariff on all goods that country tries to import into the United States.
It is one thing to try to use tariffs to influence some other nation's trade relationship with the United States. It is another thing to try to use tariffs to influence some other nation's trade relationship with a third nation (Venezuela or otherwise). We've never heard of that particular arrangement. It is possible that we're just not well versed enough to know about this, and we are happy to be advised by any reader who knows better. That said, we think we're probably right that this is a new "innovation" conjured up out of thin air, because when Trump announced the new plan, he had to make up a formal-sounding term. The White House is calling the punitive duties "secondary tariffs."
We suppose these so-called "secondary tariffs" are in the same ballpark as trade sanctions, but it's not quite the same. And we are rather skeptical that other nations will allow themselves to be strong-armed like this. If Trump follows through with his threats, which is always uncertain, there will undoubtedly be harsh counter-tariffs. For the record, the nations that buy the most oil from Venezuela are China, India, the U.S. and Spain. Of course, Trump has already hit China with a 10% tariff, so 25% on top of that would be... quite a lot.
Meanwhile, we continue to wonder exactly why Trump has such a bug up his a** about Venezuela. For some reason, he's convinced (and has been, for several years) that some huge portion of the world's ills emanate from that particular region. Yes, the residents of Venezuela are brown, but so too are the residents of most Latin American (and African) countries. And yes, the governments of Venezuela have often been corrupt, but so have the governments of Colombia, Peru, Panama, etc. And yes, sometimes the leaders of Venezuela have been socialists in name (not always in practice), but that's also true of many other Latin American countries. Whatever's going on, it's pretty clear that Trump has decided that the Axis of Evil is no longer Iran, Iraq and North Korea, it's Venezuela, Venezuela and trans people. (Z)