04/08/25
Good morning! It’s Tuesday, April 8th.
Give a Baby a Massage Day.
Well call me a baby then because naps are great and I’d love a massage.
And now, the news.
Tariffs
-via BBC, CNN, AP News, and Axios
Starting with finance.
I’m a finance expert now. Well, I’m going to be.
Didn’t need to be before. I actually voted for the candidate who was going to make it possible for me to never learn about global markets and futures and all that. But nevertheless, here we are.
Because now I know what a bear market is.
But please bear with me while I learn more.
Get it? Bear? Laughing through a recession. We have fun. (Not because we want to, but because laughing’s free, and we can’t afford anything else.)
So, what’s a bear market?
A bear market occurs when a financial index, like the Dow or the S&P 500, drops a sustained 20% or more from the recent high.
It’s called a bear market because bears hibernate, which is what these stocks are doing. A fun fact is that there’s also a bull market, because bull’s charge.
While there are a few financial indexes, I mentioned Dow, there’s also the Nasdaq, but the S&P is the main barometer for how things are going. It stands for Santa and Parrots.
1 Santa and 499 Parrots.
On Monday the Santa and Parrots was down .2%, after being down as much as 4.7%, which brings it 17.6% below February 19th’s all-time high.
And I don’t mean to further knock your socks off with my math but… 17.6 is pretty close to 20.
The most recent bear market was from January to October of 2022. That was caused by surging inflation as well as a reaction to the uncertainty of covid’s long-term effects and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which upset the supply chain.
See, bear markets don’t just happen. Something has to happen to call them.
And just like how you know that you can’t leave a pic-a-nic basket out and not expect to see Yogi’s little hat and tie hiding behind a tree, this bear market was as predictable as anything else.
Because it’s all due to Trump’s tariffs. The immediate effect, as well as the market uncertainty.
So if we’re about to hit a bear market, and a trade war, and lose our close allyship with countries like Canada, well then I’m sure there’s a good reason for these tariffs, right? Like, they much have been really well thought out, right?
Welp.
Turns out the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative think tank, believes the Trump administration forgot to carry the one and screwed up the entire math equation.
Seriously.
So the formula is the U.S. trade deficit with each country (when you spend more on imports than that country spends on your exports) divided by the value of the goods we import from that country.
But in the equation, there are also two other variables that cancel each other out. Except they shouldn’t cancel each other out. But they do because there was an error in one of the variables. Because instead of using the value for import prices, they used the value for retail prices.
If you’re wondering how much of a difference that little error makes… the American Enterprise Institute notes that if they’d used the right math, Vietnam’s tariffs would have been 12.2%, not 46%.
And look, everyone makes mistakes, but it’s just… that’s a basic mistake that someone who knows what they’re doing wouldn’t make. It’s just another example of how Trump surrounds himself with incompetence, and the consequences are globally terrible.
Alien Enemies Act
Speaking of globally terrible…
On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed with the Trump administration and will allow the unsigned Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to be used as a reason for the deportation of 250 Venezuelans who the Trump administration has decided, based on nothing but the fact that they are from Venezuela.
And if you think I’m kidding about that, know that right now there is a man named Abrego Garcia who, in 2019, received protection from deportation back to El Salvador but he is, in fact, right now sitting in that horrific prison in El Salvador through what the Justice Department has called an “administrative error.”
He has no pending charges. He’s actually never been charged with a crime in any country. He is married to an American citizen.
And even though the administration knows he’s not supposed to be there, they asked the Supreme Court to halt a lower court’s ruling that Garcia must be returned to the United States by Monday at midnight.
They know it was an error. They are still keeping him there. Because even though there is no evidence proving it, the Trump administration says he’s a member of the gang M13. So they’re just leaving him there.
So these dual rulings from the Supremes, that Trump doesn’t need to rush to bring back someone who is legally in this country and had legal protection from the court’s, to not be sent back to El Salvador, as well as the ruling that, although we are not in a war, the war-time Alien Enemies Act can still be used to deport Venezuelans without even allowing for due-process, should be incredibly upsetting.
There is a tiny, itty bitty, silver lining, which is that anyone deported under the act is subject to judicial review. Detainees must also be given notices before being removed from the country, which is another win.
Though it’s important to be cautiously optimistic here, as the administration has also taken to ignoring court orders before deporting folks.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
No it’s not, Kim. That’s a lie.
It’s not a lie! “That’s the news” is how I end the episodes! I know it’s not all of the news. But I’m trying to keep us all a little sane here and between the Santa and Parrots and then Supreme Court saying it’s okay to kidnap people out of America…
Do you really want MORE news?
Take a break.
Get your own little baby massage. Perhaps have a bottle.
And because I know you deserve only the best things… I’m proud of you.