Hysterical Hochul vowing to flout law to redraw voting map
'Children are starving,' Hochul emoted to Rachel Maddow on Monday; that's why she'll 'fight fire with fire' by redrawing New York's House districts to counteract Texas' redistricting plan — which she calls a 'declaration of war on the American people.'
Utter hogwash: The gov claims kids are 'starving' because Republicans cut SNAP (food stamp) benefits; in fact, the expanded work requirements (for some recipients) won't kick in until 2027 at the soonest — it's another phony 'famine.'
The string of nonstop lies began with Hochul's pledge in a Houston Chronicle column to save 'our democracy' by gerrymandering New York's congressional map to kill Republican-leaning seats if Texas GOP lawmakers go ahead with their Democrat-reducing plan.
Yet the gov can't get New York redistricted that fast: The state Constitution not only explicitly forbids (nakedly) partisan map-drawing, it also orders redistricting get done at the turn of the decade.
As it is, the state just redrew its maps last year after long court battles prompted by state Democrats' 2021 drive to kill GOP districts.
Even after Dems packed the state's top court, the justices will find it hard to swallow Hochul ordering up a new map just because she's changed her mind about the one she signed into law a year ago.
So she'd need to get the state Constitution amended first — and that's at least a two-year process that she'd have to start by calling a special session since the Legislature finished for the year months ago.
Hochul's just jumping on the Democrat outrage wagon, along with Govs. Gavin Newsom and J.B. Pritzker.
Yet, unlike those two blowhards, Hochul isn't even eyeing a 2028 presidential run, so why bother with this bull?
Our best guess: She figures Democrats are so deep in denial that they'll turn on her if she doesn't join in the fibbing.
Which prompts the question: Who's more pathetic here — Hochul or her whole party?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
14 minutes ago
- The Hill
What to know about past meetings between Putin and his American counterparts
Bilateral meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterparts were a regular occurrence early in his tenure. But as tensions mounted between Moscow and the West following the illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and allegations of meddling with the 2016 U.S. elections, those became increasingly less frequent, and their tone appeared less friendly. Here's what to know about past meetings between Russian and U.S. presidents: Putin and Joe Biden Putin and Joe Biden met only once while holding the presidency –- in Geneva in June 2021. Russia was amassing troops on the border with Ukraine, where large swaths of land in the east had long been occupied by Moscow-backed forces; Washington repeatedly accused Russia of cyberattacks. The Kremlin was intensifying its domestic crackdown on dissent, jailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny months earlier and harshly suppressing protests demanding his release. Putin and Biden talked for three hours, but no breakthroughs came out of the meeting. The two exchanged expressions of mutual respect, but firmly restated their starkly different views on all of the above. They spoke again via videoconference in December 2021 as tensions heightened over Ukraine. Biden threatened sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine, and Putin demanded guarantees that Kyiv wouldn't join NATO –- something Washington and its allies said was a nonstarter. Another phone call between the two came in February 2022, less than two weeks before the full-scale invasion. Then the high-level contacts stopped cold, with no publicly disclosed conversations between Putin and Biden since the invasion. Putin and Donald Trump Putin met Trump met six times during the American's first term -– at and on the sidelines of G20 and APEC gatherings — but most famously in Helsinki in July 2018. That's where Trump stood next to Putin and appeared to accept his insistence that Moscow had not interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and openly questioned the firm finding by his own intelligence agencies. His remarks were a stark illustration of Trump's willingness to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy and rattle Western allies in service of his political concerns. 'I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,' Trump said. 'He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be.' Putin and Barack Obama U.S. President Barack Obama met with Putin nine times, and there were 12 more meetings with Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president in 2008-12. Putin became prime minister in a move that allowed him to reset Russia's presidential term limits and run again in 2012. Obama traveled to Russia twice — once to meet Medvedev in 2009 and again for a G20 summit 2013. Medvedev and Putin also traveled to the U.S. Under Medvedev, Moscow and Washington talked of 'resetting' Russia-U.S. relations post-Cold War and worked on arms control treaties. U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton famously presented a big 'reset' button to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting in 2009. One problem: instead of 'reset' in Russian, they used another word meaning 'overload.' After Putin returned to office in 2012, tensions rose between the two countries. The Kremlin accused the West of interfering with Russian domestic affairs, saying it fomented anti-government protests that rocked Moscow just as Putin sought reelection. The authorities cracked down on dissent and civil society, drawing international condemnation. Obama canceled his visit to Moscow in 2013 after Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower. In 2014, the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies responded with crippling sanctions. Relations plummeted to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Kremlin's 2015 military intervention in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad further complicated ties. Putin and Obama last met in China in September 2016, on the sidelines of a G20 summit, and held talks focused on Ukraine and Syria. Putin and George W. Bush Putin and George W. Bush met 28 times during Bush's two terms. They hosted each other for talks and informal meetings in Russia and the U.S., met regularly on the sidelines of international summits and forums, and boasted of improving ties between onetime rivals. After the first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush said he 'looked the man in the eye' and 'found him very straightforward and trustworthy,' getting 'a sense of his soul.' In 2002, they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty -– a nuclear arms pact that significantly reduced both countries' strategic nuclear warhead arsenal. Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attack, offering his condolences and support, and welcomed the U.S. military deployment on the territory of Moscow's Central Asian allies for action in Afghanistan. He has called Bush 'a decent person and a good friend,' adding that good relations with him helped find a way out of 'the most acute and conflict situations.'
The Hill
14 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump turbocharges redistricting fight
Morning Report is The Hill's a.m. newsletter. Subscribe here. In today's issue: ▪ Trump revives battle over census ▪ What gerrymandering means for voters ▪ FBI fires officials at odds with White House ▪ Israel cabinet backs Gaza City takeover plan President Trump is raising the stakes of the midterms redistricting fight with his push to revive a battle over the census. Trump on Thursday directed the Commerce Department to start work on a 'new' census. Work is already underway for the census scheduled for 2030. The president said in a Truth Social post that the next census should not count those who are in the country without authorization and use the 'results and information gained' from the 2024 presidential election. The plan would likely face significant legal hurdles, writes The Hill's Jared Gans. The Constitution's 14th Amendment says the decennial census should be conducted on the basis of the total number of people in each state. The Supreme Court effectively blocked the citizenship question from being added to the 2020 census. It was unclear Thursday whether the president was calling for a mid-decade census or changes to the next one in 2030. Still, the push adds a new dimension to the fierce redistricting battle playing out across the country, as Republicans seek to gain the upper hand ahead of next year's midterm elections. Trump's call for a new census shows he's doubling down on this strategy of adjusting the terms of engagement in the elections to come, Gans writes. 'From a messaging standpoint, it is ingenious to push the envelope on this front,' Republican strategist Ford O'Connell told The Hill. ▪ The Associated Press: Can Trump hold a census in the middle of a decade and exclude immigrants in the country illegally? Trump himself kicked off the redistricting arms race with his call for Texas Republicans to approve a new congressional map that aims to give the GOP five more seats in the state in next year's midterms. The president said earlier this week the GOP is 'entitled' to five more seats. ▪ ABC News: How gerrymandering has reshaped the political map for red and blue states. ▪ The Atlantic: How Democrats tied their own hands on redistricting. LONE STAR STANDOFF: Democrats in Congress are defending the Democratic legislators who fled the Lone Star State in an effort to block the GOP-controlled Legislature from moving ahead with redrawn maps. The group of more than 50 Texas House Democrats are scattered across various blue states, vowing to wait out the remainder of the special session. Claims by Texas Republicans that the FBI is getting involved in efforts to track down and possibly detain the Democratic state lawmakers are getting strong pushback from Democrats in Congress. Democratic members are investigating how involved the FBI is in the Texas redistricting battle, The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports, and lawmakers who have weighed in on the matter say FBI intervention would be an egregious politicization of the nation's top law enforcement agency. Responding to a claim by Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) that the FBI will help find the lawmakers who fled the Lone Star State, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said: 'These extremists don't give a damn about public safety.' Jeffries said in a Thursday interview with ABC News that the FBI lacks the legal authority to intervene in a state-level political dispute. 'There would be no authority for the FBI to target Democrats from the Texas Legislature in connection with an act that Democrats have taken that is authorized by the Texas Constitution,' he said, adding that the redistricting effort in Texas is 'a clear power grab because Donald Trump and House Republicans are desperate to try to hold on to their thin majority in the House of Representatives.' Cornyn made the call for FBI involvement, which Gov. Greg Abbott (R) appeared to confirm Thursday when he wrote on social media that Texas authorities and the FBI were 'tracking down' the lawmakers. 'Those who received benefits for skipping a vote face removal from office and potential bribery charges,' he wrote. 'In Texas, there are consequences for your actions.' Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) — who is challenging Cornyn for his Senate seat — on Thursday asked an Illinois court to enforce arrest warrants against the Democratic lawmakers. The warrants are only enforceable within state lines, a largely symbolic threat that ensures any members who return to Texas can be apprehended and returned to the House chamber. It remains unclear what the FBI has agreed to in terms of aiding Republicans. Experts who spoke with The Hill on Wednesday expressed skepticism that the FBI even had the jurisdiction to aid Texas Republicans in forcing Democrats to return to the state. 'I don't see why the FBI would be involved in this at all,' said Richard Painter, who served as associate counsel to the president in the White House counsel's office during former President George W. Bush's second term. ' I mean this is Texas politics and the FBI has no business trying to enforce Texas state law.' BACKFIRE? Various other states have now pushed for midcycle redistricting. Red states, including Indiana, Florida and Missouri, are looking to follow the Lone Star State's example. Blue states, including New York, New Jersey and California, are pushing to redraw their own maps, sometimes in the face of years of Democratic pushes for more equitable maps and independent redistricting commissions. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told reporters this week that California is charging ahead with preparations for potential redistricting ahead of the midterms 'in response to the existential realities that we're now facing.' 'We're going to fight fire with fire,' Newsom said. Blue state Republicans at risk of retaliatory redistricting efforts are sounding the alarm on what they dub a Trump-directed Texas power grab. The Hill's Emily Brooks and Caroline Vakil write the Republicans worry efforts to undergo mid-decade districting could ultimately backfire in their home states. Mid-decade redistricting being considered in California alone could cancel out Republicans' wins in Texas. 'I think the whole thing is pretty disgusting,' Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), whose reelection could be at risk if California Democrats pursue new maps, told The Hill of the redistricting battles across the country. He said constituents don't want politicians manufacturing 'a temporary gain by — any side — manipulating lines.' 3 Things to Know Today Trump ordered federal law enforcement to begin patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., to crack down on crime. Actor Dean Cain says he's becoming an ICE agent. Cain is best known for playing Superman in the mid-1990s 'Lois & Clark' series. The Federal Aviation Administration plans to 'supercharge' hiring efforts to bring on 8,900 new air traffic controllers by 2028. But experts say that may not be enough. Leading the Day The Hill's Elizabeth Crisp spoke with Princeton University professor Samuel Wang, who leads the university's nonpartisan Gerrymandering Project that tracks and seeks to eliminate partisan mapmaking. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. THE HILL: What are your thoughts on the Texas redistricting fight and the tit for tat that it seems to have sparked? WANG: The Texas redistricting is just an intensification of what Texas already did with its current gerrymander, which already got an F from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. It's probably worth three seats for Republicans, but by cutting things closer there is both downside risk (they could underperform that) or they could get the five seats that news outlets are claiming. A lot of the talk may not turn into action, since many states either have no legal path, or are already gerrymandered. The only options that will produce multiple seats are Ohio and Florida (for Republicans) and California (for Democrats). Do you think that there is a shift toward more gerrymandering? Or is it just becoming more explicit? No, it's the opposite — gerrymandering has decreased. Since its peak in 2010, gerrymandering has decreased thanks to independent commissions, state court actions, and bipartisan government. But public attention has increased massively, which is a good thing. Do you think that it is possible to have more competitive or purple/swing districts in the current climate? Yes, it is possible. Since 2012, the number of competitive swing congressional districts has nearly doubled. See [ this ] Atlantic piece. Much of what people think of as gerrymandering is just the fact that most districts are partisan, because of voters sorting themselves. Gerrymandering starts from that and makes things worse. Could things get better? Yes! Independent commissions by citizen initiative (Ohio, Illinois), court actions (Wisconsin, Utah), and bipartisan governance (Pennsylvania, Minnesota) can all chip away at the problem. Not Texas, though. Sadly, there are no laws in Texas that restrict congressional redistricting. It all depends on each state's laws. What is the direct impact to voters when the goals are to intentionally create 'red' or 'blue' districts? Gerrymandering reduces competition. Even worse than your topic (congressional redistricting) is legislative redistricting, where there is a direct effect on how people are governed. In that case, legislative gerrymanders in Texas and Illinois do not cancel out. FBI PURGE: Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting FBI director at the start of Trump's second term and who refused to turn over a list of agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases, is being fired. The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch reports that Driscoll has been asked to leave the bureau by today and that his removal seems to be part of a wider purge in the agency. 'Last night I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the FBI. I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time,' Driscoll wrote in a note to staffers that one shared on LinkedIn. 'Please know that it has been the honor of my life to serve alongside each of you. Thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders throughout it all. Our collective sacrifices for those we serve is, and will always be, worth it. I regret nothing. You are my heroes, and I remain in your debt,' he continued. Steve Jensen, the assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, reportedly also was asked to leave, along with agent Walter Giardina, who worked on a number of Trump-related cases. The FBI Agents Association said in a statement that it was concerned by reports of the firings of senior leaders and that it was reviewing legal avenues to defend agents who were only doing their jobs. 'Agents are not given the option to pick and choose their cases, and these Agents carried out their assignments with professionalism and integrity,' the agents' union said. 'Most importantly, they followed the law.' When and Where The president will hold bilateral meetings with the prime ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. At 4:15 p.m., he will participate in a trilateral signing with both prime ministers. The House and Senate are in recess until September. Morning Report's Alexis Simendinger will return on Monday. Zoom In TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Trump rounded out the first day of his new sweeping tariff overhaul by bringing out charts to defend the state of the economy during an event in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon. The president and conservative economist Stephen Moore mocked a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report that found the economy added about 250,000 fewer jobs than previously thought in recent months. The duo displayed massive charts highlighting the economy under Trump compared to the Biden administration. 'This one chart really says it better than anything, if you look at this. This is great. But this chart is pretty amazing,' the president said while holding up a diagram Moore made showing median household income growth. The Washington Post reported that Moore and his team at the nonpartisan Committee to Unleash Prosperity created a new model, using data from monthly Census surveys, to predict national income figures with a 3 percent error rate. Their findings were the basis for the charts Trump displayed in the Oval Office. 'This is going to be a big deal for us because no one else has just figured out how to do this,' Moore told the Post. 'It's very positive for Trump.' 'He likes data, especially if it's good news,' Moore added. The effort to highlight more positive material came as Trump again claimed without evidence that BLS numbers were manipulated to make him look bad. Trump has faced criticism from some economists and others over his decision to fire the BLS commissioner who produced last week's report showing dismal job growth. Trump has defended his move to impose sweeping 'reciprocal tariffs' on most U.S. trade partners, which went into effect Thursday after repeated delays and negotiations to work on more favorable agreements. 'Tariffs are flowing into the USA at levels not thought even possible,' the president said Thursday morning. But the news didn't quite arrive in the global financial markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Thursday with a loss of 0.5 percent, falling 224 points, as Trump's tariffs went into place, while the S&P 500 index fell by roughly 0.1 percent. 'We are trying to rebalance trade in America's favor. You know, President Trump has said, and I've said we want to bring back the high-precision manufacturing jobs,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in appearance on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' on Thursday. 'We want to get rid of these big deficits that we have with countries that have created these big surpluses and gutted our manufacturing base and have been terrible for American workers.' Economist and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who was director of the National Economic Council during the first Trump administration, insisted this week the worst predictions about Trump's tariffs have not come to fruition. 'All the gloom and doom, tariff inflation, tariff recession, tariff catastrophe, none of that has happened, OK? And in fact, as you noted earlier, the tariff revenues are pouring in,' Kudlow said Thursday in a Fox News interview. FED UP: Meanwhile, Trump has named his new pick to join the Federal Reserve's board of governors, following Adriana Kugler 's early retirement announcement last week. Trump's new nominee is Stephen Miran, who has been a top economic adviser to the president since his return to office in January. 'It is my Great Honor to announce that I have chosen Dr. Stephen Miran, current Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, to serve in the just vacated seat on the Federal Reserve Board until January 31, 2026,' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. 'In the meantime, we will continue to search for a permanent replacement.' Miran is a vocal critic of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has been openly feuding with over interest rates. Elsewhere BILATERAL TALKS: Trump is eyeing a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as early as next week as he pushes for an end to the war in Ukraine, a potential face-to-face gathering that carries potential risks for the White House at a time when it's gotten tougher on Moscow. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin as Russia carries out strikes despite U.S. calls for a pause in the fighting. The administration on Wednesday announced tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil, and additional sanctions on Russia are set to take effect today. The president told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that Putin doesn't have to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in order for Trump to sit down with the Russian leader, walking back a White House statement from earlier in the day. 'No, he would like to meet with me, and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing,' Trump said. 'So last month, they lost 14,000 people — killed. Every week is [4,000] or 5,000 people. So I don't like long waits. I think it's a shame.' Much is still unknown about the meeting, including when, where and whether it will happen. The Hill's Brett Samuels and Laura Kelly break down five key questions. ▪ BBC: Why Trump-Putin talks are unlikely to bring a rapid end to the Ukraine war. ▪ CNN: Five ways the Russia-Ukraine war could end. ▪ CNBC: Russia and the United Arab Emirates double down on trade, testing U.S. limits. ALL OF GAZA: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday the Israeli military will begin a new offensive to occupy the entire Gaza Strip in an effort to root out Hamas. The Israeli security Cabinet approved the plan today. Earlier in the week, senior military officials pushed back against the plan, warning that expanding operations could endanger the hostages and kill more Palestinian civilians. The announcement comes 23 months into a war in which Israeli attacks have killed at least 61,000 Palestinians, a third of them children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu was asked if Israel would take control of the whole enclave. 'We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza, and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,' Netanyahu said. 'We don't want to keep' Gaza, he added. 'We want to have a security perimeter. We don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life.' ▪ Axios: Senior United Nations aid officials met Wednesday with the chair of the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. ▪ Reuters: The U.S. presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel's military operations in the country. ▪ The Hill: The Department of Justice on Thursday upped the reward for information that leads to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was indicted in 2020 on U.S. charges of narco-terrorism for allegedly attempting to weaponize cocaine. Opinion India's 50 percent tariff is a US sanction in disguise, columnist Andy Mukherjee writes in Bloomberg. Bring back the presidential fitness test, by The Washington Post editorial board. The Closer And finally… 👏👏👏 Kudos to our Morning Report quiz winners! We were inspired by the growing interest in redistricting and how some politicians are now openly discussing efforts to maximize partisan advantages in House maps. Readers clearly are paying attention to the Texas redistricting fight and the push for more guaranteed 'blue' or 'red' seats. Here's who went 4/4: Mike Collins, Jack Barshay, Robert Bradley, Mark R. Williamson, Linda L. Field, Peter Sprofera, William Bennett, James Morris, Rick Schmidtk, Carmine Petracca, Alan Johnson, Chuck Schoenenberger, Harry Strulovici, Joseph Webster, Pam Manges, William Chittam, Pavel Peykov, William D. Moore, Lynn Gardner, John van Santen, Carmine Petracca, Stan Wasser, Joe Atchue, Steve James, Savannah Petracca and Brian Hogan. Vice President Elbridge Gerry, while serving as the Massachusetts governor in 1812, signed off on a new state Senate map that included a district in the Boston area many likened to a salamander shape. The Boston Gazette described the curiously cut district as the 'Gerry-mander,' and the term stuck (no longer needing a hyphen). Today, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 18 districts as 'toss ups' — meaning the 417 other House districts are packed with reliably Republican voters or Democrats.
Atlantic
16 minutes ago
- Atlantic
So, About Those Big Trade Deals
If there's anything Donald Trump loves more than tariffs, it's a deal. So you can understand his excitement lately. Over the past few weeks, the president has announced tariff-related deals with three major trading partners—the European Union, Japan, and South Korea—that have been hailed as major victories for the United States. In each case, America's partners agreed to accept 15 percent tariffs on their exports to the U.S. while lowering trade barriers on American goods and promising to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. economy—in essence paying Trump to impose trade restrictions on them. 'Europe Caves to Trump on Tariffs' read a representative New York Times headline. In the days following the European Union deal announcement, the White House released a fact sheet quoting all the positive coverage. On Thursday, Jamieson Greer, Trump's top trade official, published a New York Times op-ed boasting that, with the completion of these deals, the administration had successfully 'remade the global order.' But upon closer inspection, Trump's trade deals aren't nearly as impressive as they sound. In fact, they aren't really trade deals in the traditional sense, and they might not benefit the U.S. at all. Trump did prove the doubters wrong in one important way. When the president originally announced his 'Liberation Day' tariffs, other countries threatened to respond in kind, leading many economists and journalists (myself included) to conclude that the tariffs would lead to a spiral of retaliation. With a few exceptions (notably China and Canada), that didn't happen. Instead, Trump has gotten key trading partners to back down. But simply avoiding retribution was never the goal of tariffs. The whole point of Trump's dealmaking strategy was supposedly to get foreign countries to lower their existing trade barriers—the classic purpose of a trade agreement. In his Liberation Day announcement, Trump complained at length about what he considered to be the excessive restrictions that other countries had imposed on American goods—including not only tariffs but also currency manipulation, value-added taxes, and subsidies to domestic firms—and vowed not to back down on tariffs until those countries lowered them. Scott Lincicome: What the U.K. deal reveals about Trump's trade strategy The announcements of the new deals purport to have delivered on this promise, giving Americans 'unprecedented levels of market access' to Europe, 'breaking open long-closed markets' in Japan, and making South Korea 'completely OPEN TO TRADE with the United States.' But the details of the deals, which remain sparse, tell a very different story. None include agreements by trading partners to meaningfully reform their tax or regulatory codes, strengthen their currencies, or reduce the barriers that have long been major sticking points in prior trade negotiations. Instead, the announcements are full of vague statements of intent—'The United States and the European Union intend to work together to address non-tariff barriers affecting trade in food and agricultural products' (my emphasis)—and references to things such as 'openings for a range of industrial and consumer goods.' The main concrete action that the EU agreed to was to eliminate its tariffs on American industrial products. This sounds impressive unless you're aware that the average EU tariff rate on nonagricultural goods prior to the deal was just 1 percent. The main difficulty in trade negotiations with the EU has long been its barriers on agricultural products, which appear to have been untouched by these deals. South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, agreed to allow more American-made cars into their markets—which also sounds great until you realize that the main reason American companies don't sell a lot of cars to those countries is the fact that almost nobody wants to drive a truck or SUV in Tokyo or Seoul. Lower trade barriers won't change that. What about the investments? According to the announcements, South Korea, Japan, and Europe have respectively pledged to invest $350 billion, $550 billion, and $600 billion in the United States (In an interview with CNBC, referring to the EU investment, Trump claimed that 'the details are $600 billion to invest in anything I want. Anything. I can do anything I want with it.') The EU has also agreed to purchase an additional $750 billion of American oil and gas. Those are big numbers, but they might not add up to much in the real world. The EU has no authority to require European companies to invest in the U.S. or buy its products. What the Trump administration touted as 'commitments' were mostly rough numbers based on what European companies were already planning to invest and buy. 'We can't force the company to do anything, nor will be able to pretend that we can, but we can talk to them, we can get their intentions, and we can transmit that as a faithful indication to our partners in the U.S.,' Olof Gill, a spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU's trade-negotiation body, said after the deal was announced. The 'investments' from Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, might not be investments at all. Shortly after the deal with Japan was announced, the country's top trade negotiator said that he anticipated only 1 or 2 percent of the $550 billion fund would come in the form of direct investment; the rest would mostly consist of loans that would need to be repaid with interest. South Korean officials have made similar statements. 'These numbers bear no relation to any conception of reality,' Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a trade adviser to the Biden administration, told me. 'Everyone has figured out that Trump really likes big numbers to sell his trade deals and doesn't need much substance to do so.' Recent history supports this view. As part of Trump's first-term trade deal with China, Beijing agreed to increase its annual purchasing of American goods by $200 billion. In the event, it didn't increase its purchasing at all. If America's trading partners didn't agree to meaningfully lower barriers to U.S. imports, and if their promises of investment are likely vaporous, then the only real concession that Trump's tariffs have won is … the right to impose tariffs. This means that the value of the deals comes down to the value of the tariffs. Tariffs can help domestic producers by making their foreign competitors' products more expensive. But tariffs can also hurt them, by raising the costs of the inputs they import to make their products. Several studies of the tariffs imposed during Trump's first term, which were much smaller and more targeted, found that manufacturing employment either stayed level or actually fell as a result. The ultimate result of the current wave of tariffs is yet to be determined, but so far, since Liberation Day, the manufacturing sector has shed tens of thousands of jobs and investment in new factories has fallen. A quarterly survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers in May found that optimism among manufacturing firms had fallen to its lowest point since the height of the coronavirus pandemic; trade uncertainty and raw-material costs were cited as top concerns. Rogé Karma: The mystery of the strong economy has finally been solved The new deals should at least give companies some much-needed certainty about tariff rates, which will help them make investment decisions. But in other ways, the deals actively undermine key American industries. Foreign cars, which represent the single largest American import from Japan and South Korea and the third largest from the EU, will face 15 percent tariffs. That is far lower than the rate American car companies have to pay to import car parts, which are tariffed at 25 percent, and crucial car-building materials like steel and aluminum, which are tariffed at 50 percent. As Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, said in a recent interview, foreign competitors such as Toyota now have a $5,000 to $10,000 cost advantage over American-made vehicles. Ford projects that it will lose $2 billion in profits this year alone because of higher tariffs; General Motors forecasts losses of $4 billion to $5 billion by the end of the year. The deals announced so far are only the beginning. The Trump administration is currently in the midst of negotiations with several trading partners, including China, Mexico, Switzerland, and Taiwan, and just yesterday implemented a new round of tariffs on about 90 countries, the ostensible goal being to bring those nations to the bargaining table too. If recent events are an indication, any future pacts will be framed as historic milestones in the quest to remake the global trade system in America's favor. The White House will issue pronouncements of eye-popping investments, drastically reduced foreign-trade barriers, and major concessions to American industry. When that happens, remember to look closely at the details.
