Davin News Server

On Wed, 20 Aug 2025 13:29:58 +0000,  Mitchell Holman says...  

> >>     Why is Trump slapping tariffs on them?
> >  
> > To KEEP it that way.
> 
> 
>    So we punish countries for not
> buying enough of our stuff. 
> 
>    And we punish countries for 
> buying too much of our stuff?

We're not "punishing" them.

We're trying to maintain a fair and level playing field.

If you tariff a country lower than others, the ones who have higher tariffs levied against them, will simply sell to THOSE 
countries and importers will buy from them, instead.

This has already been explained to you, Pookie.

=====

"Penguin" Islands Included In Tariffs To Stop Pass-Through Scheme Cheating - Obviously

CBS's "Face The Nation" host Margaret Brennan asked Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick to explain why the Trump administration 
imposed tariffs on the "Heard and McDonald Islands," an uninhabited territory of Australia.

The islands, now known for having a population consisting only of penguins, have become a punchline since Trump's announcement 
Wednesday, making an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" and fueling speculation that Trump simply used "Chat GPT" to create his 
list of countries.

Lutnick explained the obvious reason: "If you leave anything off the list, countries that try to basically arbitrage America will 
go through those to us."


"We can't let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through," Lutnick said. "Into these 
ridiculous loopholes."


BRENNAN: When we saw the president stand in the Rose Garden holding up that chart that you helped make, that wasn't actually 
tariffs-that was actually confusing to investors because it was some kind of other form-and the countries themselves seemed kind of 
random, like why are the McDonald Islands, which don't export to the United States and are inhabited by penguins-why do they face a 
10% tariff? Did you use A.I. to generate this?

LUTNICK: No.

BRENNAN: Why are they on the list?

LUTNICK: If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to 
us. Any country - we had tariffs - the president put tariffs on China, right, in 2018, and China started doing was they started 
going through other countries to America.

They billed through other countries to America, and so the president knows that, he is tired of it, and he is going to fix that.

So basically he said, "Look, I can't let any part of the world be a place where China or other countries can ship through them into 
those loopholes, these ridiculous loopholes."

Now what he is trying to say is, "I am going to fix the trade deficit of the United States of America-it's a national security 
issue. We need to make medicine, semiconductors, need to make ships, have steel and aluminum, come on, we need the greatness of 
America to be built in America!" And he is tired of getting ripped off by the rest of the world.


===============================================================================

"Trump Derangement Syndrome" Is a Real Mental Condition

All you need to know about "Trump Derangement Syndrome," or TDS.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a mental condition in which a person has been driven effectively insane due to their dislike 
of Donald Trump, to the point at which they will abandon all logic and reason."

Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times in 2016 that broke TDS down into 
three distinct phases or stages:

"In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion. The president-elect's every tweet provokes a firestorm, 
as if 140 characters were all it took to change the world."

"The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim's vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting 
solely of hyperbole."

"As TDS progresses, the afflicted lose the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality."

The Point here is simple: TDS is, in the eyes of its adherents, the knee-jerk opposition from liberals to anything and everything 
Trump does. If Trump announced he was donating every dollar he's ever made, TDS sufferers would suggest he was up to something 
nefarious, according to the logic of TDS. There's nothing - not. one. thing. - that Trump could do or say that would be received 
positively by TDSers.

The history of Trump Derangement Syndrome actually goes back to the early 2000s - a time when the idea of Trump as president was a 
punch line for late-night comics and nothing more.

Wikipedia traces its roots to "Bush Derangement Syndrome" - a term first coined by the late conservative columnist Charles 
Krauthammer back in 2003. The condition, as Krauthammer defined it, was "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in 
reaction to the policies, the presidency - nay - the very existence of George W. Bush."