Australia’s taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda network national broadcaster is at it again. Three years ago, the ABC’s ‘flagship current affairs program’, Four Corners, aired a ‘spectacularly wrong’ three-part ‘special investigation’ parroting the already-discredited by then ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory. Even after the narrative was debunked by the same US legacy media who’d peddled it for so long, and its main source was indicted for lying to the FBI, the ABC refused to issue a correction or clarification.
Even while other ABC stories admit that ‘it’s now been found to have been a complete fabrication’.
Well, the ABC is in their most Trump-deranged form, again, with a ludicrous hit-job on Trump’s tariffs.
Almost 90 days ago, Donald Trump shocked the world when he announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories.
Designed to punish foreign nations who ran trade deficits with the US, the tariffs have instead put much of Trump’s heartland in the crosshairs.
And their evidence for this is? A handful of randos who Just Reckon.
Business owners and workers across the US are reeling from the chaos and confusion unleashed by Trump’s trade policy […]
[Toy manufacturer Molson Hart] described Trump’s trade policy as “probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen” and says he does not think it will meet its stated aim of bringing back American manufacturing.
Of course, it’s not as if Hart doesn’t have a vested interest in keeping the status quo where China flooded the US with cheap goods, while erecting mighty tariff walls of its own to keep foreign competitors out of the communist dictatorship.
Mr Hart understands trade with China better than most. He has worked in Chinese factories and his products are made there. He speaks Mandarin and has been in the manufacturing industry for 15 years.
What he really means is that he’s benefitted from exploiting cheap Chinese labour.
He says even if the policies managed to bring manufacturing back to the US, it’s unclear if the labour force is there to do the work.
“I work with some fantastic people in the United States, but it will take some training and some time and possibly some sort of mental adjustment period for Americans to start doing some of the jobs that are done in China. They’re really hard,” he says.
And so it goes. All anecdotes and no evidence. Where, for instance, are the facts and figures to back the ABC’s claims that Trump is decimating US manufacturing? Tellingly, the ABC doesn’t provide any at all.
Fortunately, others have. Even economists who previously rubbished Trump’s tariffs.
Torsten Sløk, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management […] published a blog post titled “Has Trump Outsmarted Everyone On Tariffs?” In it, he explains a possible scenario in which Trump keeps tariffs below his highest threatened rates just long enough to ease uncertainty and avoid the economic pains that would come with massive tariffs […]
Sløk theorized that by extending that deadline by another year, other countries and US businesses would have more time to adjust to a “new world with permanently higher tariffs,” and would ease the immediate uncertainty rocking the markets.
“This would seem like a victory for the world and yet would produce $400 billion of annual revenue for US taxpayers,” he wrote. “Trade partners will be happy with only 10 per cent tariffs and US tax revenue will go up. Maybe the administration has outsmarted all of us.”
Okay, but we’re still in the ‘I Just Reckon’ territory. What are the numbers saying? Show me the data!
President Trump is still issuing tariff threats, consumer spending is weakening, and the Mideast is in turmoil. So why did the S&P 500 hit a record high Friday? […]
Although tariffs did come into effect starting in February on China, Canada and Mexico, as well as on autos, steel and aluminum, the effect on inflation to date has been milder than feared. Oil prices leapt when Israel attacked Iran and the US joined in, but have since fallen back.
But what about those salt-of-the-Earth businessmen, pouring out their sob stories to a no-doubt-delighted ABC?
In recent months, business confidence fell amid tariff threats. Yet that sentiment never fully translated into behavior: Businesses kept investing in equipment, factories and technology. They kept adding jobs, albeit at a slower pace than last year […]
Consumer confidence has also recovered a bit. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index rose 16 per cent in June from May, though it remains 18 per cent lower than in December.
In other words, a great many people bought into the legacy media’s unhinged fearmongering.
Earlier this year, “consumers were really on a downward trend, they really were worried that the high levels of tariffs threatened and policy volatility could lead to very dire consequences,” said Joanne Hsu, director of consumer surveys for the University of Michigan. Now, “consumers don’t think we’re out of the woods, but they’re less worried about the worst-case scenario.”
Mostly because they’ve realised that it was MSM bullshit all along.
This past week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged there has been little evidence of tariffs pushing up inflation broadly thus far, and some Fed officials have said a rate cut should be on the table as soon as next month. That has caused some bond yields to drop, which is also good for the stock market […]
In a recently released report, the White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted the Senate draft of Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will significantly boost investment, wages and employment in the next four years relative to a scenario in which the 2017 tax cuts expire this year, as scheduled.
Just don’t expect to hear about it from the ABC.
