Liberation Day? According to Trump, yesterday, April 2, 2025, shall always "be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed and the day that we began to make America wealthy again." (So, America is poor?) What this comes down to, according to the ABC News report, is a "minimum baseline tariff of 10% on all trading partners and further, more targeted levies on certain countries like China, the European Union and Taiwan." Wow. Just wow. This is going to be very bad indeed. Why? Because a protectionist policy can only benefit the working classes if it has capital controls. Meaning, if it prevents the rich from moving their money easily around the world. Without that, Liberation Day may as well be April Fools' Day. And hardworking Americans will soon find some meaning in these words by T.S. Eliot: "April is the cruelest month."

And here is another problem. US deficits were sustained by what the French famously called, back in the 60s, its "privilège exorbitant." The key features of this privilege are plainly described in Yanis Varoufakis's The Global Minotaur. What it comes down to is this: You can maintain deficits in the current account (what a country imports against what it exports) if your own currency happens to be the world currency. The upshot: If the world doesn't buy American paper in the form of debts (the exorbitant privilege), then the US economy must face the consequences of a massive current account correction.

Trump dropped his Liberation Day video on social media.  It's all white men. It's as nutso as all get out:


Have you watched Hamilton? Yes? No? Either way, let me tell you now what the man on the ten-dollar bill was really about: infant industries. Meaning, he promoted the protection of America's industrial development against developed competition (in his day, the UK stood as the factory of the world). This approach is also called an "industrial policy." The Civil War was more about industrial policy than the liberation of Black labor. The North wanted tariffs to protect its nascent industries, and the South wanted to import manufactured goods and export raw ones picked by free Black labor. The North won the war, and the US became the factory of the world. An industrial policy, however, will not work without policy alignments, like infrastructure development, protective regulations, and R&D support. The government, in short, must be more active, more inventionist. But the government we see today is anything but that. It's being stripped down to the bone by DOGE. In such a situation, tariffs cannot be a hat from which you pull out a whole rabbit. (For more on the Civil War and Hamiltonian economics, read Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder.)    

At this moment, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost over 2 percent (1,200 points) of its value. And the S&P 500 is looking at its "worst drop in 2 years." The markets are said to have lost something like $2 trillion on this fine morning.

Back to Life, Back to Reality: Winter failed to leave our state with a serious snowpack. It is, as with last year, depressingly below average. This means Washington is facing a summer that will place a great amount of pressure on its water supplies. Does that fact give you a little climate dread? Channel that into The Stranger's 2025 Climate Issue.

Speaking of the Climate Issue: The one bright side to Trump's globally historic tariffs is they will certainly increase the cost of cars. Even KOMO  sees the darkness falling on America's automobile religion. The conservative, pro-Trump rag reports: "Dave Anderson was scouting a North Seattle car dealership when he and his wife described concern about spiked costs for car maintenance and insurance as a result of potentially boosted car prices." But Dave, you live in a city (not the car-dependant boonies). Seattle has made a big investment in public transportation. Its light rail system is happening. It's even smashing records. So, get out of your car and into this socialist dream. 

The weather you say? Today will be nice (high of 57 and cloudy). Tomorrow, not so nice (high of 65 and sunny). We love you Roy Ayers, and may you rest in peace; but not everybody loves the sunshine. 

One of the many things you must not do today is enter the water at Pritchard Beach.  It is, at present, not water for people and pets. It's water for shit. Thanks to a sewage spill, the kind of viruses and bacteria that can make you sick real quick are enjoying this part of Lake Washington. Let them have their day, and be on your way. Seattle Parks hopes to reopen the beach on April 8.

Just another day in paradise? ICE raided Mount Baker Roofing in Bellingham and arrested 37 people it claimed "fraudulently represented their immigration status and submitted fraudulent documents." The arrested were promptly sent to Northwest ICE Processing Facility in Tacoma. 

Amazon wants to buy TikTok? AP reports that the Seattle-based tech giant has put "in an eleventh-hour pitch as a U.S. ban on the platform is set to go into effect Saturday." Apparently this offer was sent directly to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. But all of this is still nothing more than a rumor. Amazon has zipped its lips; as well as TikTok. 

For my post-colonial headz, do you remember Zippo?

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, will run in November's election as an independent because, for obvious reasons, his path to re-election is closed as a Democrat. 

 

Breaking News: Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said he would not seek re-election as a Democrat, instead running as an independent in November’s election.

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) April 3, 2025 at 4:13 AM

 

Yeah, we up shit creek, but let's chill for a minute and listen to the lead track of Hiroshi Yoshimura's recently reissued 1987 album Flora. 

 

 

 

 

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