Shawn Donnan
@sdonnan
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Senior writer, Bloomberg @economics. Ex @FT. Aussie. Red Sox nation. Opinions mine alone. RTs not endorsements. [email protected]
Joined February 2009
So as best I can tell this morning we now have:. - A pandemic crisis.- A supply chain crisis.- A demand crisis.- A labor market crisis.- An equity market crisis.- An oil price crisis.- A brewing bond market crisis.- A developing currency crisis.- A potential housing market crisis.
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“I am speechless,” said Kevin Wolf, who oversaw the launch of the ZTE case as assistant secretary of commerce in the Obama administration. “I’m highly confident that a [US] president has never intervened in a law-enforcement matter like this before.”
Trump orders U-turn over sanctions against Chinese telecom group
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This quote is devastating: “This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible,” Jha said. “Losing 2 months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.”.
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This is legitimately a big win for Trump.
I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States. Great to see Apple follow through as a result of TAX CUTS. Huge win for American workers and the USA!
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Goldman Sachs has a simple retort to all those who say Trump’s tariffs aren’t causing consumer prices to go up.
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Gulp. “Almost 40% of projected farm profit this year will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, federal subsidies and insurance payments, according to the report, based on Department of Agriculture forecasts. That’s $33 billion of a projected $88 billion in income.”.
U.S. farm bankruptcies surged 24% in September, to the highest since 2011, amid the trade war and a year of wild weather
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Trump’s trade war has killed 300,000 jobs, says Moody’s Analytics.
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Thank you to @peterbakernyt's editors for resisting the temptation to straighten out this paragraph. It is a fantastic act of grammar as journalism.
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It looks like he misspoke. White House officials being forced to clarify that restrictions will only apply to humans. .
And trade and cargo. This will have a huge economic impact if he goes through with it. A bigger disruption, dare I say, than any tariffs. .
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I took an Uber ride back from the airport tonight with a young Afghan father of three who moved here three years ago after spending eight years working as a translator for the US military. He works 60 hours a week driving for Uber and walked me through the economics of it. .
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On nights like this I’m thankful for my fellow journalists who have chosen to be in harm’s way so that the world can see and hear and read what is happening. Stay safe people.
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One of the things I don’t understand: If presidents can make tax and economic policy via executive order why haven’t they done so before?.
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We spent months gathering data and talking to people, experts, lawyers & officials around America. It was sobering. Half the 64.3m people who applied for regular unemployment – the system left after this crisis – didn’t get benefits. That’s 2x denial rate in the Great Recession.
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An economy is made up of its people. And this year millions of people have had their lives knocked off course by the pandemic. Here is the story of four of them:.
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Trump just threatened tariff on EU cars unless they drop one on lobsters. He complained Canada doesn't face EU tariffs on lobsters. Two points: . - Main hit to Maine lobsters has come from China trade wars. - Canada has trade deal with EU. US doesn't.
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We don’t talk enough about those who fell through the cracks in this pandemic. People like Barb Ashbrook, Ray Rand, Ralph Wyncoop and Anthony Barela. They and 9m others didn’t get the help needed, as my @economics colleague @readep & I write for @BW:.
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This Mattis answer to a young lieutenant on whether the US should return to isolationism is something else.
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America's inequality paradox is always stark viewed up close. The Cleveland Clinic had $10.5bn in revenues last year. It's the largest employer in Cleveland. It is thriving. Yet half the children in Cleveland live below the poverty line.
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I have a teen-age son who is studying economics for the first time. What's the best book out there that will get him excited about economics and take it beyond the dull Econ101 territory full of formulas and curves that he is encountering now?.
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Forbes takes Wilbur Ross off billionaires list and declares that he lied to them for years about his net worth.
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Just spoke to official who oversaw launch of ZTE case during Obama administration and spent years working on it: “I am speechless.”
President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!.
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We don’t have a picture of Ralph Wyncoop because he died March 17, a year after the Uber driver first applied for unemployment. For months he was denied PUA because he couldn’t provide a utility bill. Why? Because utilities were paid by his landlord, who was trying to evict him.
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FWIW pretty much all of Cotton’s GOP caucus at the time voted to grant China “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” in September 2000 including Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley, who both have leadership roles in the Senate today. The vote was 83-15 for.
China should be stripped of its permanent most-favored-nation status. Joe Biden voted to give the communist country the special trade status 20 years ago, supercharging the loss of American manufacturing jobs. I'm introducing legislation to end it.
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Is this the first bankruptcy attributable to Trump's tariffs?. Bayou Steel Group filed for bankruptcy Monday. "Bayou Steel is “particularly vulnerable” to tariffs because it uses imported scrap metal, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said.".
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Trump promised to stop US jobs going offshore. The data says that didn’t happen. In his first 3.5 years in office 12,000+ more jobs left US than in same period of Obama’s 2nd term. One company doing so: Wilbur Ross’s former auto parts group, IAC.
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Trump Says He Boosted U.S. Incomes By $7,000. He Hasn't, Per Data - Bloomberg
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I am a journalist and I am all for transparency and access. But forcing an athlete to withdraw from a tournament if they won’t do press conferences when they plead their mental health is at stake is just wrong.
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This remains one of the best pieces of journalism I read this week.
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This is Ray Rand. He’s a Las Vegas IT guy who lost his work for an RV rental firm. He finally got paid benefits June 18, 13 mths after applying. Why was it held up? He doesn’t know. He survived on food stamps, rental assistance, & stimulus payments. And stress. “It’s been hell.’’
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To sum up Trump tonight: I'll jail my opponent, I didn't pay taxes for 20 years and I haven't spoken to my VP nominee.
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Officials told us they'd identified a million fraudulent claims but wouldn't provide us more evidence than that. When we looked at the Dept of Labor data we found that Nevada had actually reported only one confirmed case of PUA fraud worth $3,108.
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This straight out of the playbook in authoritarian countries. First you force the sale of an asset, then you force a “donation” to a foundation that acts to further your political goals.
NEWS: Trump wants $5 billion from companies creating a new U.S.-based TikTok venture directed toward teaching American children “real history, not the fake history.”. Story by me, @MarioDParker @josh_wingrove .
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Worth pointing out that this is effectively the US president calling for the central bank governor he appointed to devalue the dollar.
At my meeting with Jay Powell this morning, I protested fact that our Fed Rate is set too high relative to the interest rates of other competitor countries. In fact, our rates should be lower than all others (we are the U.S.). Too strong a Dollar hurting manufacturers & growth!.
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“It’s going to stop. Or we’ll stop trading with them. And that’s a very profitable answer, if we have to do it.”. Profitable? . US exports of goods to the other G7 countries were worth $512bn last year.
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Mauricio Macri of Argentina criticizes those who pursue the “primacy of national interest” as he opens WTO ministerial. Presidents of Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay flew in to back him. Pretty amazing. .
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“I have no idea why I was denied and cannot reach anyone to clear up my problem,” Wyncoop wrote to the state labor department last fall. “By not paying me what I am entitled to under the CARES ACT, I am now homeless, bankrupt, and in declining health daily. Please Help Me.”.
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AFL-CIO pulls all reps from Trump manufacturing council, citing today's comments by the president.
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There’s also evidence that innocent people have been caught up in efforts to clamp down on fraud. “They just deny, deny, deny,” says Mark Thierman, a Reno lawyer suing Nevada on behalf of gig workers denied benefits. “Their definition of fraud is they disagree with you.”.
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Context: This is essentially what China was buying before Trump started imposing tariffs. It’s also half what Trump promised as part of the “phase one” deal announced two weeks ago.
BREAKING: China is willing to buy $20 billion of U.S. farm goods in year one if it signs a partial trade deal with the U.S., Bloomberg News reports
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Big takeaway from this excerpt from Bolton’s book confirms something people who have tracked Trump on China closely know: Trump is not the China hawk his hawks want him to be.
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"The theory is you turn (imports) off, the jobs come back. That's not really true. The buildings don't exist. The people don't exist. The machinery does not exist.”. Fascinating piece from furniture country.
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When rolling back your own policy is a huge win what does that tell you about the policy?.
"We've just reached an agreement with Canada and Mexico, and we'll be selling our product into those countries without the imposition of tariffs or major tariffs.". — President @realDonaldTrump announces huge wins for American farming, aluminum, and steel!
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This is Barb Ashbrook. She cobbles together a living from part-time jobs in Indianapolis. When she lost her job as a food court cashier in a downtown building in March 2020 she sought unemployment. The problem: She made more than $121/wk at her other part-time job at Dollar Tree.
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We thought we'd found a mistake when we discovered in the data that Nevada had only paid out one in ten claims for PUA. But officials told us that the data was correct. They blamed fraud, which is a common refrain from state officials.
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And boom! There it is. Biden administration lifts US block on Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for WTO director-general.
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After today I’m pretty sure I know who the bigger threat is. And it’s not my Uber driver or anyone like him. I wished my driver luck when he dropped me off this evening. He has big plans. He has a family to take care of. He’s going to need all the luck he can find. .
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This morning's big revelation from @NewYorker: Scaramucci asked for part of call with @RyanLizza to be off record and they respected that.
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Remember how the cost of tariffs and price impact on aluminum cans was going to be minimal? Well, the beer industry says it contributed to the loss of 40,000 jobs. Reminder: As of April, jobs in “primary metals” in US were up by 4,700 in last year.
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“For basically six weeks I’ve received nothing.”. One of the responses to the US economic crisis underway was an expansion of unemployment benefits. But the reality is millions of claims are still unpaid. And that is helping fuel the push to reopen.
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I can’t believe how often this historical context gets glossed over. Even after the recovery in the second half of the year 2020 was a horrific year economically for the US.
GDP will be down about 3-1/2 percent for 2020 relative to 2019. This is the largest decline in GDP since the demobilization from World War II in 1946, worse even than the 2.5 percent decline in 2009. This is because Q2 GDP was very low and then it only partly recovered in Q3&Q4.
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“Direct government aid, accounting for 39% of net farm income, rose to a record $46.5 billion from $22.4 billion last year.”.
BREAKING: U.S. Farm Profits on Track for One of Best Years in a Half Century -- Even Adjusted for Inflation -- as Government Aid Hits All-Time High via @bpolitics.
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I have to say as a foreigner living in America one of the things that continually perplexes me is how anyone can make a case for making it harder for people to vote in a democracy. .
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Toyota on today's Trump auto proclamation and its focus on defending "American-owned" companies:. “Today’s proclamation sends a message to Toyota that our investments are not welcomed, and the contributions from each of our employees across America are not valued.”. @TheTerminal.
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Special programs rushed into existence by Congress filled part of that gap. At least 16.7m people got Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for gig workers, contractors, & others not otherwise eligible. But millions got left out.
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What seems far more clear is millions of people who needed help didn't get it. Anthony Barela lost his job as an Albuquerque barber when New Mexico shut down in March 2020. He was denied PUA by the state for reasons he’s still trying to figure out.
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Why does this matter as US recovers? The system left behind for the next crisis just hasn’t kept up with economic change & that has consequences. Data point: The # of people who sought/didn't get regular unemployment is akin to everyone in the labor force in California & Texas.
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So it looks like Trump may have gotten his aluminum prices mixed up. According to metals ace @JoeDeaux Trump appears to have quoted global (LME) prices. The picture for US domestic buyers is, er, a little different. .
Trump's saying aluminum prices are down 12% since he instituted tariffs. So, aluminum is a globally traded exchange price. Separately, the U.S. is paying 26% higher prices to ship aluminum regionally. My story about some SUPER IN THE WEEDS aluminum pricing.
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Trade in a single tweet. .
I ask @SenJohnKennedy if he would support lowering U.S. tariffs as part of Trump's alleged goal of getting to 0 tariffs and subsidies. "Absolutely," he says at first, "… except on sugar. Sugar’s different. And crawfish and shrimp." . "It’s a very difficult issue," he concedes.
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FWIW the government’s own independent experts actually estimate it will add 0.3% to US GDP and 175,700 jobs. Total. After six years. So roughly 29,000 jobs a year. 1.4m people filed for unemployment just last week. .
“The experts tell us that the USMCA… could create up to 589,000 new jobs across this country.” -@Mike_Pence.
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This front-page @nytimes photo by @kianahayeri stopped me cold today. Read that caption. It’s Mother’s Day.
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And that's it. After almost 20 years writing for the @FT I'm off. Sad to be leaving a fabulous news organization. But very, very excited to be joining the team at Bloomberg @economics later this month!.
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“It’s numbing,” said Sister Patricia Siemen, leader of the religious order. “We had six women die in 48 hours.”
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Trump administration objecting to World Bank lending plan to China. This is going to get interesting.
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The UK is slipping down the Trump administration’s trade priorities, Larry Kudlow tells us. That’s largely for practical reasons, he says. UK talks still “in preliminary stages of preliminary talks,” Kudlow says. “There is no structure.”
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“As his most ardent fans remained in Washington to fight for what many of them considered to be among the most important causes of their lifetimes, the president headed to Trump National in the Virginia suburbs for a round of golf.”
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Twitter is an ugly place. But those of you greeting this story by attacking Larry as a drunk or drug addict are pretty loathsome. Kudlow is open about his battles with drug & alcohol. He calls his “personal crash and burn” a defining moment. He also has been sober for 25 years.
NEW COVER: Larry Kudlow says "we're not going to panic" over the economy. Trump’s top economic adviser is a relentless cheerleader, but is he right?
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An astonishing tweet for anyone who has followed US trade & economic policy over the past 30+ years. But astonishing also because as the GOP’s own @ChuckGrassley has said: USMCA is 95% Nafta. Its biggest accomplishment is that it preserves a North American free trade area. .
In 1993, Biden supported NAFTA & downplayed arguments against it—calling them “vastly, vastly, vastly overblown.”. NAFTA killed THOUSANDS of American jobs & put other countries' workers before our own. Pres. Trump's #USMCA—to be put into effect today—puts #AmericaFirst!.
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The coming months are crucial for advocates of reform. Dems in Congress want big changes after what happened during the pandemic. “The unemployment system is broken,” @RonWyden told us. The Biden admin has said it wants reform. But what will get through Congress is less clear.
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Big story from my @business colleague @hannahlevitt on @WellsFargo’s plans to retreat from US mortgage market. One thing prompting rethink: New scrutiny in wake of our March report on its treatment of Black homeowners.
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An answer that would be good to see from more people who aren’t experts in virology or epidemiology.
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A gentle reminder: The US is not in a recession though markets have been tumbling because they are worried one MAY hit in 2023 as Fed tightens rates to rein in an economy that has been too hot. And the last recession wasn’t circa 2008. It was in 2020.
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This is a stunning quote from FedEx's CEO, Fred Smith: . “Most of the issues that we’re dealing with today are induced by bad political choices,” Smith said, including “the tariffs that the United States put in unilaterally.”.
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Your reminder, if you need one, that when the Fed is making a big, bold emergency policy move on a Sunday evening before Asian markets open it is not because things are looking good. .
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Good morning from Washington. Some personal news:. Almost 20 years after my first @FT byline I’m moving on. Sad to be saying goodbye to a great institution & colleagues. But very excited to be joining fellow FT alum @MyStephanomics’ Bloomberg @economics team later this summer.
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More importantly. The trade balance is not a profit and loss statement. America didn’t lose anything. It bought a lot of things.
Trump says America lost $817 billion in trade: "We can't do that and we're not going to do that. So, we're negotiating deals." . The trade deficit was actually $568 billion in 2017, per BEA:
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The reforms are also coming too late for the millions who fell through the cracks in this crisis.
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You hear a lot about fraud when you poke around. There’s clearly been fraud. But how much is still unclear. FWIW by the end of March states had reported paying out <$2bn on fraudulent unemployment claims to the DOL. The US has paid out >$750bn in benefits during the pandemic.
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The US was once working on trade deals with both. Now it isn’t working on deals with either.
EU and Japan finalise deal for trade zone covering 30% of global GDP
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He’s moved on with his life. He's back working for $10.50/hour as a barber. But not getting benefits had very real economic consequences for him. .
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The issue is whether the trade pars will cause even a small erosion in support for Trump in tightly-contested states. As I reported here: PA lost more than 8k manufacturing jobs in the first 7 months of this year. 5/.
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Great piece of work here on how companies took PPP money promising to keep workers on the payroll and then turned around and closed plants anyway. .
New from me: The $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to keep workers employed. But its power to do so was limited, and gradually got watered down. 1/.
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Were you or someone you know denied unemployment benefits? We're not done with this topic. Share your story with us. Email us at: covidstories@bloomberg.net.
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So US trade policy is hindering US foreign policy?.
. Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place). .
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I often wonder what JD Vance’s political currency would be if he was introduced as “the Yale-educated venture capitalist”. .
Here's my response to @JDVance1's awful take on the migrant influx. This has created very hard moral and policy dilemmas. But Vance doesn't seriously engage them at all. Instead he hides behind phony anti-woke posturing to elide them. You deserve better:.
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Everything is totally fine. .
35.8 m Americans are either currently on unemployment benefit (UI/PUA) or have recently applied for it and are waiting to hear back. @EconomicPolicy via @SoberLook
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