Agent of chaos

So we are suddenly back to the trade wars after a short period of calm. China put controls on rare earth exports and in retaliation Trump said he will impose a 100% tariff on goods from China.

The financial folks reacted and the stock market took a tumble.

The president then did what one analyst described as a “mega Taco,” shorthand for “Trump always chickens out.” He delayed imposition of the tariff.

The stock market more or less recovered.

Meanwhile, I went to the supermarket to buy one bottle of wine and a tri-tip to barbecue along with red potatoes to make “cocottes,” which is what my mother called potatoes cubed and cooked in a cast-iron pan. With a couple sourdough baguettes and a few minor additional items, the bill was just shy of $300.

How do people pay that much for groceries?

Meanwhile government health care subsidies have been cut for those who can’t otherwise afford the huge premiums charged by private insurers. So their payments will go up and many will drop out, and they will go back to the emergency room when they’re sick.

I’m wondering when all this will add up in the popular mind.

So — the trade war — I read a story in the Financial Times one morning last week saying the Chinese had imposed rare earth export controls that amount to a push to dominate the technology supply chain around the world.

The article was deep inside the paper and it quoted a former official who passed it off as a “negotiating pawn” for the upcoming meeting between Trump and Xi.

I read that comment and was surprised that it would be seen that way, since it seemed like serious muscle flexing in the dominant trade sector of tech.

As in physics where every action brings a reaction, a flex by Xi brought the same from Trump. Unlike the action, the reaction was news at the top of The New York Times front page.

But then it was attenuated, softened, reduced to a maybe.

So the Trump Roller Coaster is still taking us for a ride, almost every day.

During that time, BBC’s business report aired an interview with an investment analyst who said the events showed Xi is dealing from a position of strength, and knows it, while Trump is not, and who knows if he knows it.

In some ways, it seems like a soap opera. There are twists and turns in the plot and they come with every episode, which, like most soaps, means they come every week.

Moving to the shutdown, I checked the NYT to see how they were playing it. The story was relegated to a second tier section while the top tier was devoted to National Guard troops going into American cities.

It is a kind of drinking game to guess at who will be blamed for the shutdown and why the Democrats took the risk. My game chit goes on the square that says the Democrats decided they have nothing to lose, something I would agree with.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Pakistan said 23 of its soldiers were killed in an overnight battle with Afghan forces. The Taliban-lead Afghans said their action was “retaliatory,” tied to an earlier strike in Kabul.

In the night’s clashes along a shared border that runs for 2,600 miles, Pakistan, with its highly capable military, reacted with cross-border raids and rockets launched into Afghanistan.

A couple days earlier, the Danes announced they were spending almost $9 billion to buy top-of-the-line fighter jets that will be based in Greenland — to counter pressure from both the Russians and the Americans.

Meanwhile, an investigative piece in the FT concluded that American intelligence is — no surprise at all — helping Ukraine find and destroy Russian oil depots, gas pipelines and 16 out of Russia’s 38 oil refineries.

The White House as a whole these days is the agent of chaos.