Trump claiming that the tariffs on China are bringing in tons of money is, shockingly, false:
Linky.
The tariffs are a ******** all the way around. They clearly were not through through and the implementation is horrendous.
I've spent more than 40 hours going through the paperwork and compiling to submit exemption requests for aluminum, instead of performing audits and improving the QMS system or doing material analysis in the lab. We have to submit an exemption request for every aluminum we buy. Not just every kind of aluminum; every form factor and material change has to be submitted separately. This means that when we get foil in a coil that is .123mm* thick by 107.12405mm wide in our propriety aluminum based on 3003-O, we have to submit a separate form for the one that is .12305mm thick. They might even make us do different ones for different lengths of coil.
This is even true once we have shown that our aluminum is
proprietary which is
not produced in the US. We even have letters from US manufactures saying that they won't make some of these even if they could, and they can't because it was done with agreement with the Chinese plant.
Did I mention that they are requiring the exact composition to be submitted too? Which, of course, is a trademarked corporate secret. These documents get publicly posted on the docket. I didn't used to know some of the exact compositions of some Nissan steels, but I do as of last Friday! (I want to know how they got away that much manganese, maybe a mistype?)
I have been able to submit twenty requests, out of somewhere between 200-1000 requests we have to do. They didn't do the form well, so I can't even copy/paste most of the information that remains the same (but clever saving gets around that). I figure I'll get them done just in time of the tariffs to change.
*I don't know why I'm using fake numbers here; the real ones are ending up on the docket anyway...
From Trump's tirade today:
It is clear from context ("believe it or not") that Trump honestly thought real, literal coyotes are a problem that a wall would stop. He really does not appear to know that "coyote" in this context is one who smuggles immigrants over the border.
Maybe the speechwriter tried to explain it to him, maybe not, but in any case, it didn't stick.
The silly, 'if you're against putting kids in cages and border walls, then you're against absolutely all border controls' thing comes up constantly, but it's just a dumb argument. It doesn't convince most people, but I guess GOPers are down with rule by 25% of the vote...