Tag Archives: Amuse on X

The Impact Of The Trump Tariffs

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On Tuesday, Amuse on X posted an article about the impact of President Trump’s tariffs.

The article reports:

Less Than Two Years of Trump Tariffs and Tax Cuts Generated $11.2 Trillion in US Investment 

Biden’s Scoreboard Was $1 Trillion in 4 Years. Trump’s Is $11.2 Trillion in just 20 Months.

This month, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, Hyundai and POSCO broke ground on a $5.8 billion electric-arc mill built to pour 2.7 million tons of automotive sheet metal a year. It is the first purpose-built automotive mill of its kind in the country, and it anchors Hyundai’s $26 billion American program. Officials put the local effect at 1,300 direct jobs and roughly 4,000 indirect ones, with the first coil targeted for 2029. The steel is meant for vehicle bodies assembled in Alabama and Georgia, coil that would otherwise have been stamped from imported steel. Contractors are already on the site in Ascension Parish.

…Liberation Day tariffs put a charge on access to the American consumer and turned the world’s richest market from a free good into a scarce one. The July 2025 tax law then changed the plant’s return. 100% expensing of equipment and qualified production property lets a firm deduct the full cost of a factory in the year it builds it. Power finished the argument for the projects that swallow electricity. American energy abundance made the American data center and the American fab among the few sites that can feed an AI load at scale. European industrial power is still expensive, and several Asian grids cannot promise the same firm load on a construction calendar, which is why data centers and leading-edge semiconductor fabs keep landing here. Reciprocal trade frameworks did the last piece of work. Tariff relief became a multi-year investment vehicle from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Europe’s industrial champions. Lutnick stated the bargain plainly. If you make it here, you don’t pay tariffs, but if you don’t, be prepared to pay to enter the greatest market in the world. Kevin Hassett, the president’s economic adviser, added the tax half. Tariffs are pushing people to onshore activity, and expensing is making them want to invest like crazy.

The article concludes:

Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1791 that a country’s independence and security are materially connected to the prosperity of its manufactures. The Marshall Plan spent about $13 billion in then-dollars, roughly $170 billion today, rebuilding allied industry so that allies could buy American goods. What is underway now runs that sequence the other way. Allied treasuries and allied champions are rebuilding American industrial capacity as the price of admission to the American customer. For four decades America gave its market away and watched the factories follow the giveaway. This term reversed the bargain. If you want the customer, you build the plant here, and in the strategic sectors the taxpayer keeps a warrant. Today, that claim is $11.2 trillion in announced commitments, a steel mill rising in a Louisiana parish, and a stock certificate in the public’s name.

There Are Many Ways To Control Congress

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A lot of the problems we currently have in getting President Trump’s policies through Congress can be traced back to the 2020 census. The census determines how many representatives each state gets, and it also determines the number of Electoral College votes a state will have. The numbers from the 2020 census have been shown (by the people responsible for the census) to be questionable in many areas.

On Friday, Amuseonx reported the following:

The Census Bureau’s own Post-Enumeration Survey, the internal audit that checks the official count against a sample of households, found that Tennessee was undercounted by 4.78%, Florida by 3.48%, and Texas by 1.92%. On the other side of the ledger, Delaware was overcounted by 5.45%, Rhode Island by 5.05%, and New York by 3.44%, with Hawaii and Minnesota padded as well. These figures are the Bureau’s own, and they are not rounding artifacts. A 3.48% miss in a state of 22 million people is roughly 750,000 residents who were never recorded. The Bureau published these figures, described them as regrettable, and then explained that nothing could be done about them until 2030. The agency confessed to the error and simultaneously declared the error permanent, which is a convenient combination for anyone who benefits from it, and the people who benefit from it are Democrats.

The 2020 count miscounted Americans in a pattern that ran in a single direction: toward the states Democrats dominate and away from the states Republicans dominate. The direction is the whole story, and a great deal of official commentary since 2022 has been devoted to persuading the public that the direction can be ignored. Democrats and the press that covers for them have talked as if a one-way miss were weather. An error that always lands on the same party’s states is the thing a serious country investigates, and this country has been asked to shrug instead.

The article explains that the 2020 census was not done entirely by the government–the Census Bureau partnered with more than 55 NGOs. Oddly enough, the majority of these NGOs were left-leaning.

The article concludes:

The census is the foundation on which the rest of the political structure rests, and a foundation poured out of truth does not fix itself as the building goes up. It transmits the flaw upward, into every seat, every electoral vote, and every dollar allocated for the next ten years. Americans of all parties should want this instrument to be trusted, because the alternative is a decade of citizens who reasonably believe the deck was stacked before the first card was turned. Secretary Lutnick has our attention, and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has subpoena power; both should use what they have. Count the people, all of them, accurately and once. That is the entire job, and it is time somebody did it.

Ignoring The Will Of The Voters

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President Trump was elected by a large majority. Congress (particularly the Senate) does not seem to understand that. The Senate has been blocking the SAVE Act which 80 percent of Americans support, but it has also been blocking President Trump’s nominations.

On Tuesday, Amuse on X noted that the Senate has been in pro forma session rather than go into recess and let the President make recess appointments.

The article at Amuse on X reports:

The pattern, until recently, was easy to describe. Pro forma sessions, when used to prevent recess appointments, were always an opposition-party weapon. Senate Democrats used them to block George W. Bush. Senate Republicans used them to block Barack Obama. Each side learned the tactic from the other and used it to constrain a president of the rival party. By the standards of American constitutional practice, that was ordinary politics. The branches fought, the parties fought, and the alignment was predictable. The president and his Senate majority stood on one side. The opposition Senate used scheduling to deny him appointments power on the other.

Donald Trump broke that pattern, although not by his own action. The Senate broke it for him. In August 2017, Scripps News reported that Senator Mitch McConnell’s Senate held nine pro forma sessions during the August work period, sessions which by their structure prevented President Trump from making recess appointments during a stretch of weeks in which his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, appeared at risk of being replaced. Axios and the Voice of America described the calendar in similar terms. The legal effect of the schedule was unmistakable. By breaking the long summer break into intervals of less than four days at a time, the chamber denied the president a constitutionally qualifying recess. The Republican majority’s calendar, not the Democratic minority, was what made the difference.

The article concludes:

This is not a high-minded defense of the Senate. It is obstruction wrapped in procedural Latin. A Republican leader who genuinely believed in advice and consent would be moving heaven and earth to schedule the floor time, change the rules where needed, and confirm the President’s people. He would not be reading scripts into an empty chamber for the express, well-understood purpose of denying the President a recess. Donald Trump did not invent this constitutional collision. He is simply the first president in American history to absorb its full weight from his own side, after the Supreme Court made the relevant law clear, and at the precise moment the voters had handed his party the unified government that was supposed to make obstruction like this impossible. The voters did their part. Leader Thune has not done his.

It’s time to replace John Thune.