Trump's Farm Bailout Was A Ripoff?!?!

The f*ck you say!

Just like the 2017 trillion dollar tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, the farm bailout to ameliorate the pain from nitwit narcissist Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump's trade wars will benefit the part of the Republican base that matters most:

The Trump administration last week revealed details of a $16 billion aid package for farmers hit in the U.S.-China trade war, with key provisions meant to avoid large corporations scooping up big payouts at the expense of small farmers.

According to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), most of the $8.4 billion given out so far in last year’s farm bailout went to wealthy farmers, exacerbating the economic disparity with smaller farmers.

An EWG analysis found that the top one-tenth of recipients received 54 percent of all payments. Eighty-two farmers have each so far received more than $500,000 in trade relief.

One farm, DeLine Farm Partnership of Charleston, Mo., has so far received $2.8 million.

The top 1 percent of recipients of trade relief received, on average, $183,331. The bottom 80 percent received, on average, less than $5,000, EWG said.  (our emphasis)

Not sure what the "patriotic" small farmers Trump expects to soldier on can do with $5,000.  That might just cover a month's operating expenses on a small farm.  Meanwhile, markets that these farmers used to sell to are being lost forever, all thanks to the Very Stable Genius's ignorance about how tariffs work.

Winning!

GM Closing Five Plants, Laying Off 15,000 Workers

So much winning!

General Motors will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. 

The reduction includes 8,100 white-collar workers, some of whom will take buyouts and others who will be laid off. Most of the affected factories build cars that won’t be sold in the U.S. after next year. They could close or they could get different vehicles to build. They will be part of contract talks with the United Auto Workers union next year. 

Plants without products include assembly plants in Detroit; Lordstown, Ohio; and Oshawa, Ontario. Also affected are transmission factories in Warren, Michigan, as well as Baltimore. 

About 6,000 factory workers could lose jobs in the U.S. and Canada, although some could transfer to truck plants.

GM says among the "headwinds" facing the company are the tariffs on imported steel imposed by the Trump regime earlier this year.  The steel tariffs have also caused Ford Motor Company last October to look to layoffs, in part to ameliorate the tariffs' negative effects.  A lot of workers trusted Trump's bald- faced lies about saving manufacturing and coal jobs.  Now the reality (assisted by his boneheaded tariffs) is maybe sinking in, albeit two years too late.

Observations:

Trumbull County, Ohio, shifted 30 points to vote Trump. It didn’t save its car plant. https://t.co/gzuaBBGexw

— Post Politics (@postpolitics) November 26, 2018

Apparently the President has no comment about how his policies have led to the loss of 15,000 jobs in states he needs to get reelected.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) November 26, 2018

Trump has been lying this month that car plants are opening in "Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and South Carolina and North Carolina and Florida." https://t.co/GmEX5ynZz2

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 26, 2018

Meanwhile, U.S. Steel still isn't opening the 6-8 new plants that Trump repeatedly & falsely claims it is.
While I continue to use the word "lie" sparingly, these are lies he tells to working class Americans who most believe/support him. Coal mines aren't coming back either. https://t.co/RBrssS8PHD

— Jackie Calmes (@jackiekcalmes) November 26, 2018

Thanks, Trump!

How are those Trump tariffs workin' out for ya?

Ford Motor Company is reportedly preparing to initiate major layoffs after suffering a blow to profits of at least $1 billion due to tariffs enacted by President Donald Trump. 

The nation’s largest automaker hasn’t yet revealed how many workers will be affected. But a report by Morgan Stanley estimated that as many as 12 percent of the company’s 202,000 workers worldwide could be cut, NBC reported. 

Layoffs will center on Ford’s 70,000-strong white-collar workforce as part of what the company is calling a “redesign” of its staff in an ongoing $22.5 billion reorganization, according to NBC.  (our emphasis)

So much winning!

Trump Trade Moves: He's "The Bobby Fischer Of Being A Moron"

As noted below, the trade wars initiated by world- class numbnut Donald "Rump" Trump are coming back to bite his large ass.  Stephen Colbert looks at the mess "the Bobby Fischer of being a moron" has gotten us into on trade.  Now the moron is going to use $12 billion to compensate farmers for the damage done by his tariffs ("That's a good deal. Normally Trump only pays 130 grand to people he's screwed" - rimshot).

Uneasy Rider

With the full impact of neo-fascist demagogue and bungler Donald "Rump" Trump's trade war yet to be felt, we can judge from his finger-pointing tweets reacting to Harley-Davidson's move to more overseas production that Rump has no clue about, well, anything besides grifts. He must have slept through the international trade course at Trump University Wharton, because he has made a mess of the issue of trade and tariffs.

Even the right-wing, Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal sees the disaster unfolding in Rump's moronic tariffs, which will fortuitously impact his cult most of all:

"Donald Trump’s trade war has been an abstraction for most Americans so far, but the retaliation has now begun in earnest and the casualties are starting to mount...But the biggest losers Monday were the American workers who make Harley-Davidson motorcycles whose jobs will soon be headed overseas thanks to the Trump tariffs. [snip] 

Harley hasn’t provided details about how its American workforce will be affected. But Harley employs more than a thousand unionized U.S. steelworkers—the very folks the President claims he’s protecting."

 As Rethuglican Sen. Ben Sasse noted in the above-linked NPR story,

"This will go over like a Vespa at Sturgis. The problem isn't that Harley is unpatriotic — it's that tariffs are stupid. They're tax increases on Americans, they don't work, and apparently we're going to see more of this."

(photo: Very Stable Genius shoots Harley-Davidson in the middle of Fifth Avenue....)