Trump sought to break from the gate of his second term at top speed, executing a raft of executive orders and other directives on his first day (see Lambert’s tally for details) and even holding an informal press conference during his signing. And he’s keen to keep the appearance of momentum up. For instance, he didn’t implement additional tariffs among his opening day actions, even though that is within Presidential authority, but on his second day saber-rattled about deploying them against China and Europe.
But as most readers here know, an executive order is valid only within the ambit of Presidential authority. Trump has elicited a raft of legal challenges with more likely to follow, on some of his executive orders that smack of overreaching. Others, as we’ll show, are more on the order of press releases, to call extra attention to things he could have done via less flashy means. We’ll also look at his memorandum on OECD-driven pending changes in taxes on multinational. It’s elicited a kerfluffle among the media, when the reaction appears to be a result of having missed the earlier plot. Finally, we’ll turn briefly to Ukraine. There, many Trump-friendly commentators are concerned that he’s being cognitively captured by neocons who may succeed in keeping the US supporting the war.
Keep in mind Trump is already running into execution problems, or what in the Johnson Administration was called a credibility gap. Trump has not gotten an end to the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of taking office. Trump has not imposed his much-noised about big tariffs on China, Europe, Mexico or Canada.1 The sanctuary city immigration raids, promised to start on Tuesday in Chicago by ICE chief Tom Homans, have yet to begin.
One way to think about the Trump show of force is that it amounts to an effort to restore the Presidential ability to use jawboning to get his way. A notable historical example, recounted in Slate:
The federal government’s ongoing collaborative role in the [labor negotiation] process was demonstrated in April 1962 when President John F. Kennedy, having talked the United Steel Workers into accepting a moderate wage increase, publicly attacked U.S. Steel over a price hike he deemed excessive (“a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest”), forcing the steel giant to back down. According to [MIT economists Frank] Levy and [Peter] Temin, this display of muscle “helps to explain why the reduced top tax rate” enacted two years later (it dropped to 70 percent) “produced no surge in either executive compensation or high incomes per se.” Fear of attracting comparable attention from President Lyndon Johnson kept corporations from showering the bosses with obscene pay hikes.
The Wall Street Journal, in its lead story today CEOs Launch War Rooms, Hotlines to Cope With Trump’s Order Blitz, confirms that Trump has gotten the attention of C-suites. Remember, for every group like the AI overlord looking to feed at Trump’s promised $500 billion trough (which would have to be approved by Congress), there are many who are looking at having rice bowls broken, for instance, by spending cuts or unfavorable regulatory changes (recall that quite a few sectors of the economy depend on existing complexity, starting with H&R Block and TuroTax, not that they are under threat). High points from the Journal’s account:
The blitz of executive orders and memos from President Trump left business leaders—some still in the tuxedos they wore to White House inaugural galas—scrambling to make sense of sweeping changes to tax, immigration, trade and energy policies….
Many of Trump’s first-day moves were expected, and there were few details on some of the biggest topics, including deportations….
The details of any new tariff policy would be critical for companies including 3M, the American manufacturing company behind everything from Scotch tape to materials used in electric-vehicle batteries….
Many companies remain concerned about changes to immigration policies. The law firm Fisher Phillips on Tuesday launched a rapid-response immigration team….
The firm sent clients a 24-hour hotline number that they could call in the event of an unexpected immigration raid. Employees in such industries as construction, hospitality and healthcare have conducted training sessions or posted placards at front desks so receptionists know what to do—and whom to call—should immigration officials show up unannounced.
Peter Belluomini, a citrus grower in Kern County, Calif., said he temporarily lost about 70% of his harvest crew earlier this month when a local Border Patrol raid prompted many workers to lie low.
“Basically the word gets out in the community and that part of the labor force gets nervous so they’ll stay home,” he said. Belluomini added that he expected “any disruption would be temporary and short-lived.”
However, despite the whinging and lobbying, the Journal report that big business remains optimistic that Trump will be a plus for them.
Neither piece appears to allow for the fact that many of Trump’s plans are subject to being delayed or overturned by court challenges. We described the fast-out-of-the-box filings against the improper construction of DOGE, including its lack of required transparency, like keeping records that can be FOIAed. If DOGE manages to get off the ground, it is certain to face additional litigation, such as over its expected refusal to spend fund already approved by Congress, or impoundment. Note that the Trump team appears to be avoiding engaging that type of battle yet; for instance, it put a 90 day pause on foreign aid for review as opposed to (yet) trying to cancel any. Well, with a noteworthy exception:
Trump signed an executive order suspending all foreign aid for 90 days. This was the headline published by all media outlets.
Buried in the fine print was that Israel and the US-Israeli Arab shield puppet regimes of Egypt and Jordan are exempted from the order. pic.twitter.com/CWS6UHFvj8
— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) January 22, 2025
Similarly, the lead story at the Financial Times tonight is Donald Trump halts more than $300bn in US green infrastructure funding. The subhead correctly points out that this is a pause; Trump again is going to have to devise legal justifications for ending the spending permanently and can still expect court pigfights he may well lose.
This list is sure to grow, but in an e-mailed morning update, the Hill identified some new legal actions taken against some of the Trump first-day initiatives:
He also pledged to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment. On Tuesday, attorneys general from 22 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, sued Trump in two federal district courts to block an executive order that refuses to recognize children of immigrants without legal status who were born in the U.S. as citizens.
“President Trump now seeks to abrogate this well-established and longstanding Constitutional principle by executive fiat,” one group of states wrote in their complaint. “The principle of birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution for more than 150 years. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously and expressly confers citizenship on ‘[a]ll persons born’ in and ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States.” ….
Meanwhile, the National Treasury Employees Union sued over an executive order creating a new class of federal employees — Schedule F — who can be hired outside the traditional merit-based system for bureaucrats. Federal workers see Schedule F as a way to insert politics into government actions, a move that could both reward Trump allies and politicize government decisionmaking.
However, it’s important to keep in mind some of the executive orders have more bark than bite. The order on “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government” clearly takes aim at ideological and popular support of trans rights, so the official cover can be argued to be more important than the immediate impact. But the order does not attempt to bar funding of transitioning by minors. And even some of the areas it takes aim at are misfires. For instance:
There's a direction that Homeland Security should change rules about passports, visas, and Global Entry cards to redefine sex under Trump's terms. But those are programs under the Department of State.
— Ezra Ishmael Young (@ezraiyoung) January 21, 2025
Office of Personnel Management (federal gov't HR) is asked to make sure that all federal employee records "accurately report" sex, as defined at conception. There are ~2.3M fed workers. That's a lot of time machines and microscopes.
— Ezra Ishmael Young (@ezraiyoung) January 21, 2025
Trump demands that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent agency, rescind a guidance document. Prez has no such power. As the label suggest, independent agencies are in fact independent.
— Ezra Ishmael Young (@ezraiyoung) January 21, 2025
A press release packaged as an order is “America First Policy Directive To The Secretary Of State”:
Seriously? A memo to Mario Rubio would have been more than sufficient.
But let’s turn to some odd coverage. Last night, the first day memorandum, “The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal)” generated lead story at the Financial Times: Donald Trump threatens tax war over US multinationals.2 It and the Wall Street Journal coverage oddly miss a key point, which is why Trump can proceed here with a mere memorandum: the OECD scheme to harmonize a corporate base rate had never been approved by Congress. The OECD seemed to be operating as if this was a “rules based order” item, that if the IRS implemented it merely on Biden Administration authority, of course it would all be good. But the reality is the IRS has a nasty propensity to lose pretty much all big corporate cases filed against it, so the odds are the US (and OECD) would have faced an unholy mess if this scheme went live.3 See the embedded document at the end of the post, posted by Tax Notes, in which House leaders tell the OECD that the Biden Adminstration did not have the authority to commit to OECD recommendations (not rules, they aren’t rules).
A short version of the bone of contention, from the Financial Times account:
Donald Trump has ordered officials to draw up retaliatory measures against countries applying “extraterritorial” levies on US multinationals, in a move that threatens to trigger a global confrontation over tax regimes.
The US president made the move in an executive order on Monday night, withdrawing US support for a global tax pact agreed at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last year that allows other countries to levy top-up taxes on US multinationals….
The global deal agreed at the Paris-based OECD in 2021 and partly introduced by several countries last year was expected to raise the tax take from the world’s biggest multinationals by up to $192 billion (€185 billion) a year.
Under “pillar two” of the OECD deal if corporate profits were taxed below 15 per cent in the country where the multinational was headquartered, signatories could potentially charge top-up levies. But one part of the interlocking measures, known as the undertaxed profits rule (UTPR), has long drawn Republican anger, with the party labelling it “discriminatory”.
Oddly, my pdf of the original story, but not the Irish Times version, contains:
Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, an international campaign group, said Trump’s move in effect left the OECD pact “dead in the water”.
The Journal article did give a clearer idea that the Biden Administration had never properly firmed up the OECD commitment, but skipped over what the new scheme was about.
In 2021, about 140 countries reached an international tax agreement in two parts, attempting to put a floor under corporate tax rates and create clearer rules for which countries get to tax which income. Companies and Republicans have been objecting in particular to attempts to tax U.S.-based companies that pay below the 15% corporate tax floor in the U.S., which undercut the research tax credit.
Trump signed an executive memo on Monday that says Biden administration commitments under the deal have no force within the U.S. without congressional approval and asked administration officials to study potential U.S. actions.
Tonight, however the Financial Times described how the US has the means to aggressively retaliate if the other OECD members try to apply the new system to US companies abroad. From Donald Trump threatens to double tax rates for foreign nationals and companies based on a more careful reading of a related order:
His order, signed on Monday, specifically asks the Treasury secretary to “investigate whether any foreign country subjects US citizens or corporations to discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes” so it conforms with Section 891.
This section says that when a president formally declares there is such discrimination, the tax rates should “be doubled in the case of each citizen and corporation of such foreign country” — without needing Congressional approval.
“This [invoking Section 891] is the most extreme option and it’s interesting that they’re threatening to use it straight out of the gate,” said Alex Parker, tax legislative affairs director at Eide Bailly. “Based on the way the legislation is worded, it does seem to be double or nothing.”
Trump also issued a separate policy memo withdrawing US support for last year’s OECD global tax pact, which allows other countries to levy top-up taxes on US multinationals.
Finally, and only briefly, to Ukraine. Trump is a master of sensing weakness, witness him successfully putting Netanyahu on the back foot (although nothing is over till it’s over with Netanyahu). Sadly, that means Trump is particularly ill-prepared to contend with a situation where he has no leverage, as with Russia. He can’t cow or threaten Putin, nor can he deliver anything Putin might value, like a binding commitment of no Ukraine in NATO evah. He also can’t achieve a “new European security architecture” which is another keen Putin desire. Not only, as the Russians know bloody well, no US commitment can be assured to endure even as long as a single administration, but Starmer and key European have worked themselves up to a new high warble of anti-Russia war lust statements.
Of course, statements like the ones Trump just made are the predictable result of filling his foreign policy team full of neocons:
US President Donald Trump says Russian President Vladimir Putin should make deal to end war in Ukraine because conflict is destroying Russia pic.twitter.com/rkCuxulJhj
— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) January 21, 2025
I can’t find a clip on Twitter that includes this section, quoted in Politico:
Trump said Putin couldn’t be happy with the slow progress of his war against Ukraine — nearly three years after he ordered an all-out assault, and 11 years after disguised Russian troops first entered Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
“He’s grinding it out. Most people thought it would last about one week and now you’re into three years. It is not making him look good,” Trump said.
“We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed. About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia’s bigger, they have more soldiers to lose but that’s no way to run a country,” he added.
The claim about Russian losses has been sharply disputed by many Ukraine war commentators. Simplicius is representative:
Unfortunately, Trump exposes his complete ignorance and lack of credibility when it comes to the Ukrainian conflict by subsequently complaining that Russia has suffered an outrageous one million dead soldiers in the war. How can anyone possibly count on the man so ill-informed to be the savior that miraculously ends the war? We can understand a little flourish for the media to dress it up a bit, make things seem more dire for effect—but peremptorily citing such numbers just makes Trump look sadly disconnected, which further colors any of his efforts toward the war as similarly half-assed; that’s not to even mention his claim that Spain is a member of BRICS.
He goes on to say that Putin is destroying Russia by not making a deal, and the way he says it almost feels as if Trump is now convinced that Putin has already made up his mind not to “make a deal”. He further claims that Russia’s economy is in ruins, and most notably, says that he would consider sanctioning or tariffing Russia.
Is there anything left for the US to sanction? Alexander Mercouris has argued that if the US were to find a way to further tighten the screws on Russian energy exports, it would increase prices in the US, since these are global, connected markets. It appears that concerns about inflation have stayed Trump’s hand on imposing new tariffs. Why should the calculus be any different with Russian sanctions, even before getting to the fact that they’ve backfired?
Now perhaps Trump will get a wake up call when he does meet Putin, not from any Putin-provided facts about the economy or the state of his military, but by simply making clear to Trump that Russia has the means to continue the war indefinitely and the Russia people are overwhelmingly in support of the campaign.
So while Trump likes conflict, he likes winning even more. And it’s far from clear how many of the dust-ups he’s started will produce wins. But even if he loses more than he succeeds on the policy front, he does look well on his way to shifting priorities and prevailing ideologies.
____
1 The Bloomberg story linked above and the Wall Street Journal piece quoted below differ on how quickly Trump might act on tariffs, if at all. Bloomberg points out that his executive orders call for reviews: “But the only actual action taken so far is the call for a review of trade practices that’s due by April 1, potentially giving China and others almost 10 weeks to avert new levies or address his demands.” The Journal, by contrast, cites Trump as saying he will Do Something with respect to Mexico and Canada by February 1.
2 Oddly, that version is no longer available on the pink paper’s site (I happened to have pdf’d a copy) but can be found syndicated at venues like the Irish Times
3 Yours truly is NOT arguing against the substantive merits of the OECD initiative but the Biden Administration fudge.
00 tax notes OECD
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What about the residential on-demand gas hot water heaters?
Please look at the post title again. That is not in the “shock and awe” category.
Beware these things. They run super hot and are being sold as the equivalent of a boiler to drive hot-water heating systems. They don’t appear to be designed to run for hours daily like a boiler.
Similarly, heat pumps with their complex electronics- each leg has electronic controls and gates- appear fragile.
I thank my lucky stars I replaced my gas boiler with a new gas boiler. Cast iron and designed to last (the old one clocked 33 years) and 83% efficient.
OT sorry but practical.
83% efficient ? For a new gas boiler ? Not even legal in Scotland.
Even condenser gas boilers in England are all above 90%, most around 95%.
No wonder your chief moron wants out of the Paris agreement.
Efficiency is defined differently in Europe and North America.
The highest theoretical efficiency in NA is 100%, whereas in Europe it can easily be above 100%. It all depends on whether you count the latent heat loss of boiling water in the exhaust, ie., whether you use the higher heating value HHV of the fuel, or the lower heating value LHV.
In North America, a boiler with higher than 100% efficiency would fill your tank with fuel while it operates ;-)
Turley talks about one of the Executive Orders concerning education.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/22/227929/
Thanks but this is not “one of those” Executive Orders, as in one of the 26 published the first day (this post is limited to his visible first-day actions). It is one that has not been published yet but Turley got the text in advance.
But yes, this is going to turn >60 years of affirmative action on its head. And Turley points out it will lead to a ton of litigation. There are a lot of measures embedded in legislation, although as Turley points out, the order takes the view that a recent SCOTUS ruling overturns that and the order is therefore implementing the decision
Business Insider and others call it a “private-sector investment of up to $500 billion for AI infrastructure”. That wouldn’t need to be approved by congress I assume?
I admit to connecting some dots, but no way, no how could $500 billion come from the private sector and Elon Musk confirmed that:
https://www.ft.com/content/b2899d25-9b16-461d-b406-89cfcadf3afc
And it would have to get approvals to be “infrastructure”. That = exclusivity or first mover status to insure economic value.
Musk undercuts Trump’s Stargate AI investment announcement
That makes me think it’s companies that put up the money.
Yves, adding my comment in Links to here, which seems a more fitting place. Sorry for the duplication, I defer to you whether it’s appropriate.
I had remarked that Canadian news was reporting Trump’s anti-DEI executive order has specifically rescinded Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights era EO 11246 requiring non-discrimination in Federal employment hiring practices as well as the same for Federal contractors.
This would appear to suggest the Trump admin has identified civil rights and/or the civil rights movement as the source of or connected to DEI, as well as identified mere anti-discrimination requirements as DEI. Or at least that they are intending to fabricate a connection between civil rights and DEI.
The EO ending birthright citizenship is a trap if I have ever seen one. Putting on my legal hat here, the issue of birth right citizenship has NEVER been decided by the Supreme Court. The two previous decisions refer to the idea of birth right citizenship in what is referred to as “dicta”, or verbiage around the issue being decided by the Supreme Court that is not necessary to decide the instant legal matter under review. Novices often mistake “dicta” as part of a Court ruling – in a strict sense it is not – when in reality it is the “legalese” version of “uhhhhhhhhh” before a thought is voiced.
The 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside…” The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” will be tricky because one can argue that means only LEGAL residents are “subject to the jurisdiction”.
The man who spear headed the 14th Amendment, Senator Howard, stated “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.”
The first SC decision to deal with this issue came about in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Court ruled that a child born on US soil (and the child of legal Chinese immigrants) could not be excluded from returning to the US under the Chinese Exclusion Act because he was “born of the soil.” What folks don’t appreciate is the legal immigrants portion of the ruling. It was extended, via dicta, to the children of non-legal aliens in the late 1960s.
This matter will be contentious but given the Court’s make up it will not be the slam dunk the left believes…
whenever i have thought about this…since the right began muttering about it on the fringes…i thought of my wife’s familia.
her great grandad came here, after “riding with Pancho Villa”, to escape the federales.
everyone of his descendants have been born right here in this town, save for my boys, and their generation of cousins(since we no longer have a “hospital”…the one in fredericksburg is the usual place).
great grandad, Luis, was definitely illegal.
are they gonna go all maximalist on this, and extend it down through the generations?
seems kinda crazy,,…but we all know these folks,lol.
i’d prolly be ok, as will my boys, because i can prove Chocktaw in my direct ancestry(Dawes Rolls)…but man…do they really wanna open that can?
extended to the uttermost end of reductio ad absurdam, it would invalidate everyone in the usa who cant prove Native American descent, no?
Agreed that this is a much more open question than suggested by most media commentators including those quoted by YS above.
The Wong Kim Ark opinion says “the question presented… is whether a child born in the United States of parents… who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States… becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States.” So the facts appear to be distinguishable from a case involving parents in the US illegally or on a tourist visa or other temporary permission. Also worth noting that standard rules of construction may require giving meaning to the words “and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” beyond mere presence within the US since that would likely be true of anyone claiming birthright citizenship. A further complication is that the concept of “illegal immigrant” did not exist in 1868 when the 14th amendment was adopted (since the first federal law restricting immigration was not enacted until 1882) so principles of originalism may come into play with the usual red/blue positions reversed.
See also Elk v Watkins, an 1884 Supreme Court decision holding that an individual born within US borders to parents living on Native American tribal lands did not qualify for birthright citizenship because the parents were not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”.
It’s stretching it to say there was no concept of illegal immigration when there were laws regulating immigration as early as the 1790s.
However, it is clear that almost everyone at the time and since has taken birthright citizenship for granted. On what planet are undocumented immigrants not subject to the laws of the country in which they reside? Are they free to break any law they want, like diplomats with diplomatic immunity?
I still suspect that Trump wants to find a way to declare victory and get out of Ukraine. Let’s not forget that he withheld aid to Ukraine in 2019, apparently because he suspected Ukraine of involvement against him in the 2016 election and in RussiaGate.
Trump also wanted to “force Ukraine to conduct investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically, including one focused on a potential Democratic 2020 rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.” Ukraine resisted, and the result was that Trump got impeached.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/us/politics/trump-ukraine-military-aid.html
All this has to rankle Trump. I doubt that he has forgotten or forgiven.
Then let’s not forget Hunter Biden’s lucrative sinecure with Burisma and Joe’s hold on aid until Ukraine’s own investigations of Burisma stopped.
In addition, I suspect that Ukraine, notorious for corruption, siphoned of a good chunk of US aid and may well have laundered it back into Democratic coffers, though maybe this time around, Republicans got some, too. IMO there are reasons that Democrats were so adamantly opposed to an inspector general for Ukraine aid, the real reasons for which are never supposed to see the light of day…
Trump’s comments on Russia were very disappointing especially about the condition of their economy and their losses since 2022 – all are false claims – which sound like Kagan’s editorial in the NYP earlier this week – (Major Neocon & Husband of Nuland).
The tone was not right, if you need to end this quickly and get it off the table, so he is not tarred by devoting more time and resources, which will not change the Russian position – they will fight on for marginal cost and big gains – given the exhausted condition of the Ukie Military which more money and armaments will not solve.
He should listen to Bannon !
Trump listens to Neocons like “Glitch” McConnell far too much and it would be they who would have been feeding him all those hokey figures like a million Russians dead and their economy in tatters, in taters they would have told him. All of what he said are neocon talking points. If he goes in to meet Putin believing those figures it would be a fiasco for him so maybe somebody on Trump’s team should pull him aside and give him the low down. Trouble is that when Trump believes something he is loath to change his mind even in the face of solid information and truth.
Anyone want to offer odds on how much US aid to Ukraine just got laundered into $TRUMP meme coin?
Plz explain? How
The European carbon tax on multinational companies that don’t follow there daft energy policies, is now dead in the water.
The NetZero polices in Europe, will have to end, since if they do not, every energy intensive industry will leave to the USA, china or India.
This idiocy is killing consumption in the EU. Look at new housing and automobile sales. France is effectively taking 10% of housing off the market with energy conservation rules. Instead of paying owners to fix it, they’re just banning rental. And my pet peeve, the €60k ecotax on any new car that emits over 200g/km CO2… How do they expect this to work out? No wonder they’re short on tax revenue.
From Simplicius:
A Ukrainian journalist who allegedly met with Washington Post staff reported that a full reboot was in order on Ukraine:
“Alarming: The Pentagon has fired and suspended everyone who was responsible for Ukraine and aid to it. The US Department of Defense is in a complete reboot”
▪️ There will be a new format of relations with Ukraine, it’s all a bit alarming, – said propagandist close to the Armed Forces of Ukraine R. Bochkala following a meeting with journalists from The Washington Post.
Is this remotely true?
The effort to “Trump proof’ the Ukraine project was done by Executive authority and seems like it could be reversed the same way.
I think the effort by Bannon to loudly announce that Trump is the Biden ‘designated bagholder’ in Ukraine could be effective. He seems to focus only when the politics is personal. Trump promised a deal in Ukraine, not a win. The fact that Biden and his guys always said they(Ukraine) were fighting to get the best deal possible, 3 years have consistently left less to bargain with. It’s all Biden’s fault, nothing to see, move on.
Dima reported that logistics flights for Ukraine through NATO air bases in Poland and Romania had dropped to almost nothing.
Concerning refusing to spend environmental funding included in appropriation bills, passed and are law…
In a small part of my career developing and acquiring weapon in DoD, we had a contract in negotiation we in the program office had the temerity to decide it was useless and if we slow rolled a month or two the obligation authority would expire, and we would avoid a waste.
Two weeks before the end of the fiscal year we received a letter from higher ups, directing we would not violate law and must let the contract. We tried!
I suspect Trump can stop the part not yet in appropriations but should spend out approved budget
My experience is more along the lines of the August Friday afternoon budget call from NavComp distributing a 10% whack against all unobligated balances and requiring a program office reclama by that evening.
For Russia, Trump has almost no leverage, as Yves has noted. For domestic issues, I’d say that Trump has quite a bit of leverage and to dealing with the Western world. Trump seems to be resorting to bullying the other party in any negotiations, which is his usual tactic – trying to say what might happen if no deal is done (ex: high tariffs).
The problem is that this style is ill-suited for dealing with Russia. The Russians have a lot of intelligence on the US capabilities, along with all of the Western world. The West has been completely defeated in Ukraine. I know that there have been posts about “Russia may win the war, but lose the peace”, but I would argue that rump Ukraine will probably be reintegrated the way Chechnya was after the CIA sponsored that war in the 1990s. It will not be a part of Russia, but more like Belarus, a union state with Russia.
Trump doesn’t have any real leverage to stop that. He can threaten to increase aid, but the Russians know the US doesn’t have the industry to manufacture enough military equipment to seriously challenge Russia and as noted, there isn’t much left to sanction. Alexander Mercurious is right – any more sanctions could easily backfire on the West. Keep in mind that Trump was elected heavily due to the rising cost of living in the US, which puts severe limits on how much Trump can risk inflation at home. Any high inflationary crisis could easily sink his presidency.
Steve Bannon has indicated that Ukraine could easily be the next Vietnam for Trump. The smart thing to do is to pull out. I may not always agree with Bannon, but he does have a good point here. The other point is that the Ukrainians and other Western nations want the war to keep on going.
He also has very limited leverage on China. The Chinese have diversified their export base and attempts to use sanctions on goods such as computer chips seems to be only causing the Chinese to increase their domestic production of computer chips. The Chinese economy is growing and they seem to have overcome their challenges with real estate. In the event of a shooting war with China, the US would lose badly, something that is known in military circles. Trump is right to be averse to war with China over Taiwan.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1856703906723864686
Where Trump has more leverage is towards the allies. Note how quickly the Europeans, Canadians, and other nations are on the defensive. IF the US wants to annex Greenland, for example, there isn’t much that the Danish government could realistically do. Of course, I think that this is most likely a Trump tactic to gain power in negotiations rather than to send US troops to annex Greenland.
Likewise, at home, Trump does have legitimacy to carry out at least some of his agenda, particularly if it improves the standard of living of Americans. The Democrats are deeply unpopular and their ideology seems to be repulsive to most Americans outside of the upper middle class and very rich. The majority of the American people may not like Trump, but he is seen as against the Establishment they dislike even more.
Overall, it is a story of no leverage with the Chinese and Russians because the US is a declining power, but leverage over the Western world because they are declining even faster, and some support for the Trump “MAGA” platform at home. Whether Trump can restrain his ego and come up with the best solutions given the constraints he faces is another matter. His most recent rants on Russia are not an encouraging sign at all.
The upper middle class and the very rich comprise no more then 10% of the electorate. Trump did not win by a landslide. He got 51 percent of the vote. If there is a mandate it is only that the house and senate are GOP controlled. Trump’s success will depend on their cooperation. They seem more interested in pursuing a grudge match then legislating.
How effective is litigation going to be in the circumstances ? How powerful has the Imperial Presidency really become ? What remedies does a Federal judge have if his orders are refused or neglected by a politicised law enforcement infrastructure ?
If Mr Trump’s party can maintain discipline in the Houses laws can be changed in time. The people behind Mr Trump this time are more competent witness his campaign trail which was particularly well executed.
Huge mistakes are going to be made as well as huge opportunities open up ( one sleeper is the proposal to cancel non-profit status for hospitals, this would finish off the health system ). In other words chaos, and the nimble will be able to profit a lot more.
I hope that there is a commenter here who is an expert in tax law. I can only go by what I have learned as someone who has dual citizenship and lives outside the U S of A:
Oh?
Why, that “foreign country” would be the U S of A, with its insistence on taxing worldwide income.
Life’s little ironies. So will this “investigation” backfire?
The USA is a rare bird in the income tax department as it taxes its citizens regardless of residence. Almost all other jurisdictions tax income based on residence. So if a US citizen is resident in another country, he must pay income tax on his worldwide income in that country, and also file a US tax return on his worldwide income. The US allows an income exclusion for non-residents (it’s in the $125k range) who work abroad and also a tax credit for foreign taxes paid to prevent double taxation.
Now a foreign citizen residing in the USA is not required to file a tax return in his home country as he is not resident in that country. However, there is withholding tax by the foreign jurisdiction on income sourced in that country. This is governed by international tax treaties. And this withholding tax is creditable on the person’s US tax return as a foreign tax credit.
It’s a clunky system that provides quite a bit of work for CPA’s!
The word here is that countries all over the world are moving to worldwide taxation of individuals, due to OECD pressure. Thailand is expected to implement it by 2029.
That’s very bad news for many. I wonder if there will be a real benefit re. tax compliance and resulting increased receipts. Living in Italy and doing my own tax work (I’m retired; it’s a hobby, sort of), I spend at least a man-week a year on extra computation and reporting for my US IRS filing obligation. Total annual tax payment to the IRS after credit for Italian taxes paid: $0. Who benefits (other than TurboTax; the Italian equivalent software is free from the tax authorities)?
I am still convinced that he’ll accomplish extending his tax cuts (while the oligarchs cross the aisle singing a song of growing out of the deficit). That’s the only thing I’m confident about. I’m pretty confident he will be less belligerent than his predecessor, Blinken.
Interesting to see plans for a massive mal investment in data centers coincident with the Chinese demonstrating an LLM model comparable to Open AIs, using cheaper chips and at reportedly 1/30th the cost.
LLM model???
Referring to DeepSeek r1 I guess. It’s almost equivalent to OpenAI’s o1 in terms of benchmarks but it’s much cheaper to access. Also, the weights were released also so anyone with the necessary hardware can run it locally, something that isn’t possible with OpenAI, Anthropic or Google’s LLMs
I’ve seen reports that it can be run with 8 H200 gpus, which is unfeasible to purchase for most individuals but certainly feasible for medium sized businesses.
Judging from my social feeds the last two days, Trump will get very far with his supporters if he keeps this up. I have friends who are in full God bless America mode over everything Trump is doing right now. He’s certainly giving more for his supporters to talk about than his predecessor.
How effective will any of this be? I have no idea. But in certain areas, it doesn’t have to be effective to create the desired effect. Let’s say I announce over and over that I’m trying to get ICE raids on facilities in Chicago. At what point do those people just leave before they’re apprehended?
On the PMC and DEI angle, I think it will be weird for many in the DC/MD/NoVA area. The general take is (1) Trump is a horrible person but (2) I don’t know anyone who got their job due to these policies. They seem much more concerned about the RTO order than the ending of DEI.
Regardless, Trump thundering through his first week is going to create a huge problem for Democrats. Democrats never seem to do anything. They don’t want to listen to their base. And here Trump goes doing what he said he’d do and trying like hell to cross off every item on his list. I don’t think the buyer’s remorse is going to hit his voters like the Blue Anon folks hope it will.
On July 5th, the dazzling fireworks of the 4th are a distant memory. Trump’s style is evident in his slogan: “Make America Great Again”. These words imply the following: 1) Once upon a time America was Great; 2) In it’s current state, America is no longer Great, &3) Under Trump’s stewardship, America will become Great, again. Provided nowhere is a definition of ‘Great. Without that, it is not necessary to provide a roadmap.
Trump’s Executive Orders are like fireworks – an amazing display for children, the inebriated, the mentally dull, & the MSM. The US could definetly use a reboot. Problem solving requires the identification of what needs to be remedied. Maybe addressing the country’s fianancial condition and the health, education, and the economic well being of its citizens would be the place to start. Trump scattergun approach doesn’t prioritze anything and provides only distractions. Enjoy the lollipop; Be exceptional & Be happy, then the USA will be a country to be respected worldwide for its greatness.
I don’t think any one can “fix” late stage monopoly capitalism.
My one hope for this administration is that rfk gets something done about the industrial food industry which is sickening the country- and the profiteers in the pharma cartel who profit from this chronic state.
“Office of Personnel Management (federal gov’t HR) is asked to make sure that all federal employee records “accurately report” sex, as defined at conception. There are ~2.3M fed workers. That’s a lot of time machines and microscopes.”
LOL! Does this mean every federal worker is going to have to take a DNA test?!?! While I’m sure it’s only a small fraction of the workers, but a tiny percentage of people are born looking one sex, but their DNA is actually of the other sex. At the time of birth when your birth certificate is written most of these people probably got listed as the visual gender even if later medical history revealed they were actually genetically of the other sex. The only way to confirm the gender at conception for everyone would be with a DNA test.