We begin today with Heather Cox Richardson writing for her Letters From an American Substack about the Republican majorities of the 119th United States Congress abandoning their constitutional duties.
I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.
But they are not doing that.
Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes. [...]
...permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.
Horses are horses, of course, of course...
Miguél Jiménez and Elías Camhaji of El País in English report about the agreement between the United States and Mexico to postpone tariffs on imported Mexican goods for 30 days.
Sheinbaum announced that her government will deploy 10,000 National Guard troops immediately to curb drug trafficking, particularly that of fentanyl, while Washington has committed to combating illegal firearms trafficking. “Our teams will start working today on two aspects: security and trade,” the Mexican president added.
The agreement comes as a surprise, on the verge of one of the worst crises that the bilateral relationship has faced in decades and while both countries were fine-tuning the final details to embark on a trade war. The agreement was reached after a call held at 8 a.m. Monday and which lasted more than half an hour, according to details shared by the Mexican government. “It was the work of the whole team,” said Sheinbaum as she announced a series of pacts for cooperation on the border. “Finally, we came to an agreement,” she said. [...]
Tariffs on U.S. imports from Mexico, Canada, and China have already caused an earthquake in the financial markets. Since the opening of trading desks in Asia, the dollar soared against major currencies and approached parity with the euro. The greenback hit record highs against the Canadian dollar, the Chinese yuan, and the Mexican peso. The stock markets suffered sharp falls, with the punishment concentrated on exporting companies and those with exposure to the United States through Mexico or Canada. Meanwhile, oil prices rose due to possible distortions in the market. Uncertainty and increased risk aversion also caused sharp falls in cryptocurrencies. With the announcement of the suspension of tariffs to Mexico, most of the previous movements were reversed.
Alexander Panetta of CBC News reports on a similar 30-day delay for Canada.
A months-long tariff psychodrama has just ended with Canada announcing and re-announcing a bunch of measures Monday aimed at the border and drug-trafficking.
Now, it's on to the next one. Trump is threatening to reinstate tariffs in 30 days unless he can reach a new economic deal with Canada: "FAIRNESS FOR ALL," he posted online, in all caps. [...]
Trump simultaneously released a formal declaration suggesting a different goal for the next 30 days. He'll also be watching for progress at the Canadian border, otherwise, take a wild guess about what he's threatening next.
You guessed correctly: More tariffs. This means that if, and when, Trump threatens economic pain again we can all resume arguing about whether it's the border or something else. [...]
They're talking about three different reasons for tariffs — to correct unfair trade, raise revenue and negotiate with other countries. It seems the drama we've just witnessed was driven by objective No. 3 — negotiation.
Yohannes Love (via Reuters) of the Guardian reports the latest on China’s retaliatory tariffs against U.S. goods, which did go into effect.
China on Tuesday slapped tariffs on US imports in a rapid response to new US duties on Chinese goods, renewing a trade war between the world’s top two economies as President Donald Trump sought to punish China for not halting the flow of illicit drugs.
Trump’s additional 10% tariff across all Chinese imports into the US came into effect at 12:01 am ET on Tuesday (05:01 GMT). Within minutes, China’s Finance Ministry said it would impose levies of 15% for US coal and LNG and 10% for crude oil, farm equipment and some autos. The new tariffs on US exports will start on 10 February, the ministry said.
Separately, China’s Commerce Ministry and its Customs Administration said the country is imposing export controls on tungsten, tellurium, ruthenium, molybdenum and ruthenium-related items to “safeguard national security interests”.
China also announced a probe into Google, moments after a deadline for the US imposing a 10% tariff on Chinese goods passed, restarting a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
China will investigate the US tech company for alleged anti-trust violations, according to a brief statement from the State Administration for Market Regulation.
Paul Krugman takes it all in on his Substack.
Donald Trump’s decision to launch an all-out trade war, not with China, but with our neighbors and allies — who are gearing up for large-scale retaliation — probably isn’t the most important thing happening right now. I’ll talk in a minute about what is. But it has certainly come as a wake-up call for business.
It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Actually it is funny if you’re into gallows humor. Trump spent the entire campaign proclaiming that he was a Tariff Man, promising high tariffs and asserting that we were somehow subsidizing Canada and Mexico. Yet businesses and bank analysts blithely assumed that he didn’t really mean it. On Inauguration Day he made a very specific promise: 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico by Feb. 1. Yet the newsletter I receive from Goldman Sachs summarized the day with the headline “A More Benign Tone on Tariffs,”…
For as I said, the trade war, drastic as it is, isn’t the most important story right now. It takes second place to what looks like a quiet takeover of the machinery of government.
Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic says that the playbook for Ketamine Caligula’s Elon Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government is very similar to his takeover of Twitter.
As the head of an improvised team within the Trump administration with completely ambiguous power (the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in reference to a meme about a Shiba Inu), Musk has managed quite a lot in the two weeks since Inauguration Day. He has barged into at least one government building and made plans to end leases or sell some of them (three leases have been terminated so far, according to Stephen Ehikian, the General Services Administration’s acting administrator). He has called in employees from Tesla and the Boring Company to oversee broad workforce cuts, including at the Office of Personnel Management (one of Musk’s appointed advisers, according to Wired, is just 21 years old, while another graduated from high school last year). During this time, OPM staffers, presumably affiliated with DOGE, reportedly set up an “on-premise” email server that may be vulnerable to hacking and able to collect data on government employees—one that a lawsuit brought by two federal workers argues violates the E-Government Act of 2002 (there has not yet been a response to the complaint). Musk’s people have also reportedly gained access to the Treasury’s payments system—used to disburse more than $5 trillion to Americans each year (a national-security risk, according to Senator Ron Wyden, a democrat from Oregon)—as well as computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of civil servants. (They subsequently locked some senior employees out of those systems, according to Reuters.) Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [...]
Two days before the 2024 election, I wrote that Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter was going to be the blueprint for his potential tenure at DOGE. Unfortunately, I was right—he’s running the exact same playbook. But it’s worth keeping in mind that there are two ways of measuring success for Musk’s projects: first, whether the organizations themselves benefit under his leadership, and second, whether Musk himself gets something out of the arrangement. Musk’s stewardship of X has been a financial nightmare. He has alienated advertisers, tanked revenue and user growth, and saddled investment banks with debt from the purchase that they’ll need to sell off. Yet Musk’s own influence and net worth have grown considerably during this time. His fanboys and the MAGA faithful don’t care that X is a flailing business, because Musk did deliver on giving liberals their supposed comeuppance by de-verifying accounts and reinstating banned trolls. He turned the platform into a conspiratorial superfund site, has boosted right-wing accounts and talking points, and helped elect Donald Trump as president. Musk’s purchase is a success in their eyes because he succeeded in turning X into a political weapon.
Technically, of course, Musk is not a lawmaker.
Finally today, Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe points to an Emerson College poll showing that almost half of Americans approve of the hot mess that the American government has become in the past two weeks.
Two weeks into President Trump’s second act, people like the chaos.
Not everyone. But enough to give him a 49 percent approval rating, according to an Emerson College poll of 1,000 registered voters that was conducted on Jan. 27 and 28. That means roughly half the country is OK with Trump’s actions, from his creepy and incompetent Cabinet nominees and revenge firings of prosecutors involved in the investigation of the attack on the US Capitol to his crackdown on migrants and his hand-off of public sector accountability to Elon Musk.
As Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic pointed out on a recent episode of “Washington Week,” what we are witnessing is “democracy at work because everyone knows what this guy was and this is perfectly predictable. People voted for it.” Given that reality, until the people who voted for Trump change their minds about what they want, he’s going to give it to them. Trump resisters still don’t get that. [...]
According to that Emerson College poll, Trump has a net approval rating with all age groups, except those over 70, who narrowly disapprove, 49 to 48 percent. That makes sense. Older people understand the gains of the last half century and understand what the country stands to lose under Trump.
…
I’m out!