Nationwide injunctions, more tariffs and EV mandates

Will Trump’s tariffs unite the rest of the world?

Somebody please tell Kristi Noem to ditch the false eyelashes.

I guess I am easily confused. I thought the Supreme Court was considering Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship. Yet the arguments seem to be around the issue of whether a single Federal court can issue a nationwide injunction. Did I read right when it said that to date 40 such injections have been issued against the president? I know that plaintiffs can shop for a sympathetic judge to issue an injunction but it seems to me that if the injunction applied only to that plaintiff and only in that district, then the administration can then keep doing whatever it was doing in another district and if it loses there can go to yet another district and there are 94 federal districts.

Walmart in defiance to Trump is raising their prices opening the floodgates for others to follow. I said that Trump would blink on tariffs once prices started to rise and shelves became empty. He may blink before that. Yes I know that Trump rolled back his China tariffs but they still stand at 34%. I hope Walmart puts that on their sales slips.

Ford is raising the price of its three Mexican produced vehicles, the electric Mustang, the Maverick pickup and the Bronco Sport by only $2,000 each. First, that pushes the price of the Maverick above $30,000 negating its selling point of being less than $30,000. Second, the tariff on the Mustang will raise its cost by $12,000 meaning that Ford is going to have to eat the other $10,000. Since Ford loses $132,000 on every EV it makes, whats another $10,000 per Mustang?

BTW, often overlooked is the fact that one impact of Trump’s tariffs has been the fall in the dollar. Maybe this was part of the plan to make imports more expensive.

The increase in prices is expected to cause a rise in inflation from its current level of 2.4 percent to 3.8 percent. Does Trump really think he can browbeat the Fed to cut interest rates in the face of rising prices? Threatening Jay Powell will only cause the Fed to dig in its heels and circle the proverbial wagons at the Open Market Committee. I do not sense any desire amongst any of the committee members to bend a knee to the president.

Vermont has just exited from the California EV mandate. Vermont? Home of Bernie Sanders and Ben and Jerry’s? Other leftist states are leaving as well: Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and purple Virginia. What in the name of Karl Marx is going on? It is the slow EV sales which make it impossible to meet the mandate’s deadlines unless the internal combustion engine is outlawed. Mini Cooper which had announced that it was going all electric has now recanted. For the foreseeable future it will manufacture internal combustion engines for the US market. Someone once said that the only law that governments try to repeal is the law of supply and demand and invariably the governments fail. All hail Adam Smith!

When the House voted to repeal granting California’s EV mandate, it easily passed with 35 democrats joining the republicans. The mandate was granted to address California smog but was used for carbon emissions which have nothing to do with smog. I would guess that the 35 democrats are likely from automobile producing states and energy producing states. Turns out that two were even from California (gasp).

Canada reelected the liberals throwing a finger at Donald Trump. The new prime minister Mark Carney may be worse than the old one. Carney is a green zealot. Energy rich Alberta is already calling for a vote on separation next year. Remember the votes in Quebec? They failed. It will be interesting to see what happens in Alberta whose premier calls Ottawa’s energy policies “an hostile act.” But can Alberta leave or is it virtually impossible like it is in the United 

States? Here is what the Canadian supreme court has said “The Constitution does not permit unilateral secession: Canada is a federal state based on constitutional government – and subject to the rule of law. The courts have a duty to uphold that Constitution – and to ensure that no level of government exceeds its powers. Secession would affect the structure and scope of that Constitution – so it would require constitutional amendments.” I guess that means that Alberta can vote but its only for show.

I wonder why doesn’t China call Trump’s hand on high tariffs by cutting off all rare earth minerals? It has a strangle hold on dysprosium, producing 90 percent of the mineral. Dyso-what? The mineral is essential in making magnets. You cannot build an EV motor without magnets and you cannot build a magnet without dysprosium. Trump called his tariffs a response to a “national emergency”. Well if there is a national emergency it is the reliance on China to export to us a mineral vital to everything that moves – including national security. BTW, China has in the past insisted that the use of the mineral would not be for the military. But doesn’t the military use EVs and magnets? In fact they are the essential building blocks of much of modern technology, forming parts of everything from satellites to jet fighters to CT scanners and iPhone speakers.