Im so bored with the USA: Countries, two for a Dollar in Trumpton

 

“Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, and Grubb..” 

 

 

I shall repeat my constant refrain: Europe doesn’t need to go to war with the US, it doesn’t need to fall-out with the US, it just needs to be independent of the US.

 

 

America today is nothing to be proud of nothing to fear. Bullies rarely are. 

USA = Utterly Stupid A….., oh, work it out for yourself! 

If ever the actions of one person summed up a country, then this is it……Sam Jones, a US hunting influencer, caused outrage in Australia after grabbing a baby wombat from its mother. 

Jones left the country after the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said immigration authorities were checking if she had breached the conditions of her visa. 

I watched the video from Instagram of herself approaching and then grabbing the wombat joey as it walked with its mother at an unknown location, that was shown in the news. It was thoughtless insensitive, pointless, and cruel. She’s in good company in Trumpton. 

 

‘It was thoughtless insensitive, pointless, and cruel. She’s in good company in Trumpton’

 

Returning to Trumpton’s ruling family, Mark Zuckerberg is seeking to block a memoir by Facebook’s former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams. # 

This is somewhat ironic as Zuckerberg and Facebook are supposed to be the bastions free speech. In fact he is supposedly so in-favour of it that there are no longer factcheckers to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship”.  

Trumpton’s very own Mini-me, JD Vance, the US vice-president, and his wife Usha, went to the opera where he was booed by the audience as he took his seat at a National Symphony Orchestra concert at Washington’s Kennedy Center. Not what you expect at the opera 

Vance, possibly too thick-skinned to notice, acknowledged the yelling and shouts of “You ruined this place!” with a smile and a wave. 

Their anger goes back to February, when  Trump sacked the chairman of the Kennedy Center board along with 13 of its trustees, appointing himself the new chair, bringing in foreign policy adviser and close ally Richard Grenell as interim leader, and naming new board members – among them, Usha Vance.  

Trump had said: “So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.” 

Vance and opera aren’t easy bedfellows; in a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Vance said he had not realised that people listened to classical music for pleasure, saying: “Elites use different words, eat different foods, listen to different music – I was astonished when I learned that people listened to classical music for pleasure – and generally occupy different worlds from America’s poor. Unfortunately, this can make things a little culturally awkward when you leap from one class to the other.” Peasant! 

Equally bizarre, is the fact that Elon Musk’s Tesla has sent an unsigned letter to Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, saying that Tesla “supports fair trade” but that the US administration should ensure it did not “inadvertently harm US companies”. 

 

‘I was astonished when I learned that people listened to classical music for pleasure – and generally occupy different worlds from America’s poor’

 

Tesla said: “US exporters are inherently exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to US trade actions. The assessment undertaken by USTR of potential actions to rectify unfair trade should also take into account exports from the United States. 

“For example, past trade actions by the United States have resulted in immediate reactions by the targeted countries, including increased tariffs on electric vehicles imported into those countries.” 

Tesla’s share price has fallen by more than a third over the last month in an apparent buyer backlash against Musk. 

Before leaving the US there is the Ukraine peace, in which Trump, the great dealmaker is showing the art of negotiation – giving in! 

It appears that Putin is seeking for rewards for his aggression, such as the surrender of Ukrainian forces in Kursk; international recognition of Ukrainian territory seized by Russia as Russian; limits on Ukraine’s ability to mobilize; a halt to western military aid; and a ban on foreign peacekeepers. 

All of this allows Putin time to regroup, resupply, and redeploy before some false-flag event on the front lines is staged to justify its next attack. 

The end-game here is clear, ultimately Russia will seize Ukraine. Trump will do nothing because he doesn’t care. Defending Ukraine is a European problem. 

Europe is in a much stronger position than the US and others think, and seems prepared to have a physical presence in Ukraine. Trump is the weak appeaser, Europe must do better if we are to deny Russia an easy American-sponsored win in Ukraine 

Governments should stop dancing round Trump, he isn’t our ally and is never going to be. America is a bust flush with far more to worry about than they understand, Russia is little better. Both are governed by unhinged megalomaniacs but, scratch the surface and there is no substance. 

 

‘Trump, the great dealmaker is showing the art of negotiation – giving in!’

 

Europe is considerably richer, populated by some 650 million well educated, healthy people. By comparison, there are 145 million poorer, lower-life-expectancy, Russians 

Domestically, Starmer’s “Ukraine moment” has worn off and we are back to a gripping reality. 

The health secretary, Wes Streeting has ordered a “high-stakes” reorganisation of the NHS, scrapping  NHS England and folding it into the Department of Health, 

The reforms are expected to take two years, save up to £500m and lead to a halving in the size of the merged DHSC and NHS England, which collectively have 19,000 employees. 

Streeting said the move to abolish the “world’s largest quango” would put ministers back in charge of the health service while saving hundreds of millions of pounds that could be better spent on doctors, nurses and improving frontline care. 

Streeting had come to see NHS England as an organisation that “is in charge of everything but didn’t seem to be able to deliver on the things that matter most to politicians”, one insider said. 

The aim is for ministers to take back responsibility, but put an end to micromanaging by an arm’s-length central authority and empower hospitals and local health authorities to make their own decisions about how to improve. 

Whilst the jury might still be out on the governments NHS reforms, their economic policy based around growth is stuck in reverse, with a 0.1% decline in decline in GDP in January. This seems to endorse thoughts that the UK was stagnating even before Donald Trump began tearing up the global trading system. 

The fall was driven by weak manufacturing output, down by 1.1% on the month, and construction, which fell by 0.2%. Within the construction data the issue was a 0.7% decline in new work, which is worrying given the government’s commitment to building 1.5m new homes over this parliament. 

Business clearly lacks the confidence to make investments, perhaps driven by the madness in Trumpton, but there is also the increase in employer NIC which comes into force in April, alongside a significant rise in the national living wage. Stuart Morrison, the research manager at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “With businesses facing an impending avalanche of cost pressures, it’s unsurprising that growth is in trouble,” adding that the economy appeared to be “treading water”. 

 

“With businesses facing an impending avalanche of cost pressures, it’s unsurprising that growth is in trouble,”

 

In addition, there are interest rates, with both the UK and US central banks meeting this week, with the added pressure caused by Trump’s threats of an all-out trade war. 

The Fed will examine the prospect of a “Trumpcession” brought on by tariffs that send import costs rocketing and convince consumers, already shellshocked from the cost of living crisis, to stop spending. 

There are growing concerns that Trump is so focussed on trade and tariffs that he is ignoring stock markets, and that he is sanguine about a fall in output which, if it continues, could bring about a full-blown recession. 

Tariffs will also be a concern for the BoE. Prior to Trumps re-election in November, the Bank believed inflation was beaten and interest rates were on course to fall below 4% in 2025.  

Both central banks are in a similar situation;  inflation is rising and remains above a 2% target level while the labour market, especially in the manufacturing and construction sectors, is characterised by rising unemployment, falling vacancies and warnings from employers of layoffs. 

In the UK, it is expected that there will be no change this week, with cut again in May, and a further ­quarter-point reduction, to 4%, before year end. 

The US is less predictable, as consumer spending is more heavily aligned with a downturn in stock market values. The strong retail sales since 2018 were been driven by richer households whose spending was more than twice as much as the low-income groups, mostly underpinned by gains from the stock market. As Albert Edwards at Société Générale says: “If the equity market now plunges, we might find that it disproportionately hits retail sales more than usual.” 

We finish by considering what might be referred to as our social contract; by that I mean the state and its citizens. 

PM Starmer has concluded that a “weak”, “overstretched” and “unfocused” state is failing to properly perform its “core purposes”. Voters feel they are paying more in tax, but seeing nothing for it. 

Funds are limited, and the need to increase defence spending only makes this worse. A backbench rebellion is brewing over plans to cut billions from the rising welfare bill by reducing some incapacity benefits. Ministerial mutiny is stirring over the squeeze to departmental budgets being demanded by the Treasury so that Rachel Reeves doesn’t breach her own fiscal rules.  

In what can only be described as political myopia the government is looking to make savings by targeting the most vulnerable in society – the sick, disabled people, mentally ill people.  

This is going beyond maintaining the austerity state they inherited, Labour are extending it. It begs the question, want is the point of having a Labour party? 

 

‘the government is looking to make savings by targeting the most vulnerable in society – the sick, disabled people, mentally ill people’

 

Having already pushed 1-million older people into skipping meals by cutting their winter fuel allowance, and maintained the two-child limit, they are now instigating immigration raids that Tory home secretaries would have died for. Now, rather than launching a fairer and progressive tax system, they have sided with the rentier class, leaving the “have nots” to pick-up the slack. 

As a result of trying to be Conservative, Labour is in trouble. The raft of welfare cuts the government is expected to announce this week, including plans to cut personal independence payments (Pip). Whilst they may still drop plans for a freeze of the benefit, there are still suggestions they will change the eligibility criteria making it harder for people to access it. 

In recent weeks we have seen Reform polling level with Labour. The first test of this will be in Runcorn and Helsby by-election. 

Pooling by Lord Ashcroft, a former Tory deputy chair who has been commissioning and publishing high-quality polling for years, shows Reform are ahead of Labour by 40% to 35%, with the Conservatives in third place on 10%. This represents a 20% swing from Labour to Reform since the general election. 

47% of people who voted Labour  at the last election disapprove of the government’s record, with 44% approving it 

Asked what how they rate Starmer, the responses from Labour voters are quite similar (46% disapproving, 47% approving). And 29% of people who voted Labour last year say the government is doing “much worse” than they expected.  

 

Is Trumpton heading for the UK? 

 

“All this aristocracy has really got to stop
We can overthrow the surgery and kidnap Dr Mopp” 

 

‘The US continues to plumb the depths, mired in uncertainty with one-off, stop-start policies.

It’s interesting to hear Trump now say it’s going to take time, when he campaigned on fixing everything immediately.

Tariffs were to be his go-to policy, in the expectation that everyone would back down when threatened with them, thus enabling him to fix everything. Instead, Europe, China and Canada have pushed back, standing-up to the bully, crashing his plans and the US economy.

Ukraine has shown him to be an appeaser and a colonialist seeking to divvy-up the plant into spheres of influence for rogue nations.

PM Starmer has excelled with Ukraine but continues to be a disaster domestically as he increasingly becomes a Tory tribute act.

If he has to reform something it should be taxes not benefits. The situation cries out for a wealth tax. If he instigated this he would pull the rug out from under Reform and start to help those in need. Instead, it’s austerity, migrant-bashing and more free tickets, this time the Chancellor going to see Sabrina Carpenter.

Perhaps Labour are favouring rentiers as it is what they aspire to be. What they aren’t is a Labour government.    

 Lyrically, we start with the opening from “Trumpton” a BBC children‘s programme from 1967 which, with hindsight, was genius. The same cannot be said of its US predecessor. More can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpton

We end with “The Trumpton Riots” by Half Man Half Biscuit, which is equally brilliant but somewhat different! And, if Starmer continues with his half-assed policies, riots and populism will be the likely result.

Not so enjoyable this week!  

Philip.’

 

@coldwarsteve

 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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