Warren Buffett's record is one big argument against competition
Warren Buffett, in the eyes of JPMorgan Chase's chief executive Jamie Dimon, represents 'everything that is good about American capitalism and America itself – investing in the growth of our nation and its businesses with integrity, optimism, and commonsense'.
Does he really?
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Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
Donald Trump and Elon Musk must continue making progress together for good of the United States
The relationship between President Donald Trump and tech titan Elon Musk factors among the most consequential political relationships in American history and it must be repaired, quickly, for the good of the United States and the continued support of the Republican Party base. There is too much at stake in America today for their division to disrupt the process of the MAGA movement in reversing the incredible harms that were wrought on the country and the world by the Biden Administration. Five months into Trump's second term in the White House, he has taken the country by storm with a string of major accomplishments that, a year ago, most in the country despaired could never be achieved. As a result, his approval rating has reached its highest point in months, Americans are expressing greater satisfaction with the direction of the country than at any time in recent history, and Democrats have fallen even deeper into disarray. The public feud between the president and Musk threatens to upend the successes of the Trump Administration and create an opening for Democrats to regroup and take advantage of a fractured MAGA movement. The rift originated from a spending bill recently passed by the House of Representatives, which Trump is now promoting and referring to as the 'big beautiful bill.' It will soon go up for a vote in the Senate. Just days after the president gave him a celebratory farewell at the Oval Office, Musk wrote on X, 'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.' In a subsequent post, Musk threatened that 'we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people' by supporting the bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson and the White House have closed ranks around the legislation, touting it as the best solution to reform government while extending Trump's tax cuts. But Musk's criticisms have emboldened other Republicans who believe the bill is anything but conservative and will only further help to bankrupt a nation that is already $37 trillion in debt. Congressman Thomas Massie voted against the bill, along with three other House Republican colleagues, because it would add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit and raise the debt ceiling by trillions. Now, amid Musk's criticisms of the legislation, it appears to be "losing momentum" on the Senate side. Musk took his criticisms beyond just the spending bill: He claimed that Trump was in the Epstein files and that's why they haven't been released to the public. In response to the attacks, Trump said the relationship with Musk is over. The impacts of the Trump-Musk relationship ending badly could be catastrophic. Musk's influence in today's MAGA movement cannot be overstated, and it should not be underappreciated. The billionaire played a bigger role in electing Trump president than anyone other than Trump. His visibility on the campaign and in the administration, as well as his recent commitment to supporting and funding right-of-center candidates, has made him a superstar in the MAGA community. Even Vice President JD Vance, a Trump loyalist, conceded in an interview that he "understands" Musk's frustration with the spending bill. Musk was instrumental in convincing Trump to choose Vance as his running mate, and when the Trump-Musk spat spilled out into the open, Musk indicated support for a viewpoint circulating on X that Vance should take over as president. Vance also knows that Elon's deep pockets could be critical in helping him clinch the MAGA mantel as the GOP candidate for president when Trump's second term concludes. Musk's influence is not limited to donation-seeking politicians. A massive base of conservative supporters, many of them young voters, follow him zealously. Nearly 70 per cent of young men have a favorable view of Musk. Now many of those supporters are defending Musk on X, and in the process criticising the president. Ask an average voter to name one figure in the country who is most symbolic of the MAGA movement, and they will either name Trump… or Musk. By publicly clashing, and forcing supporters to choose a side, Trump and Musk risk disunifying the Republican Party—and that's just what the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media want. Since Musk's first combative post on X challenging Trump's spending bill, the feud has dominated news coverage and commentary. At this moment, the country is no longer talking about the administration's tremendous wins at the southern border, its accomplishments in returning safety to America's streets, the de-weaponisation of our Department of Justice, or its courageous efforts to bring manufacturing back the United States. Instead, the media can keep viewers' and readers' blood pressure high with incessant headlines about division, confusion, and 'chaos!' While the Democratic Party may be foundering and at a loss for a strategy to defeat the GOP in 2028, this is the media's strategy: to distract the public from Trump's wins, while compelling Americans to feel anxious and exhausted by a constant perception that Washington is disorganised and full of mayhem. Then, the Democrats can enter stage left and urge voters to elect them on the platform of an ostensible 'return to normalcy,' unity, and order. The White House likely made a mistake by allowing Musk to have so much visibility in the administration at the beginning. It was obvious from the start that while Trump and Musk were aligned on many fronts, there were many points of difference that would be impossible to reconcile despite their desire to collaborate. All of that, plus there were obvious concerns to be had about the risks and pitfalls of putting the world's most powerful man and the world's richest man in the same building from day to day. But for Trump and Musk to end the relationship in this way, and to do so while trashing each other publicly no less, is a grave mistake. Both men have unique and vitally important abilities to offer the country. Democrats significantly eroded the quality of life in the United States under the Biden Administration. More than 10 million illegal immigrants came through our open border, bringing drugs and crime. Millions of Americans worried about filling their cars with gas or buying groceries for their families due to inflation. Violent crime skyrocketed in American cities and towns. Leftists used lawfare to target and imprison their political enemies. We cannot afford to return to those dark days. Trump and Musk must bury the hatchet now and continue making progress together.
Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
‘A significant risk': Prime Minister Albanese warned not budge on beef import rules during trade negotiations with President Trump
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being warned not to cave to US demands on beef imports during upcoming trade negotiations with President Donald Trump. The Prime Minister is expected to meet with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit this week in order to discuss the tariffs imposed on Australian goods earlier this year. America's 47th President has imposed a massive tariff regime since taking office in January, including a 50 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium and a 10 per cent across the board tax on all Australian imports. Trump's tariffs are a breach of the existing Australia-US free trade agreement, but White House officials have defended the President's decision by claiming Australia bans the importation of US beef. A blanket ban on US beef imports - imposed in 2003 - was repealed in 2019, however biosecurity rules remain in place and no American beef has been imported under the new scheme. Mr Albanese has previously ruled out watering down the rules, but reports indicate government officials have been reviewing the scheme in order to provide the Prime Minister with a bargaining chip. Speaking to Sky News Australia on Monday, Nationals Leader David Littleproud said weakening Australia's biosecurity regime was 'not something we should entertain', as he called on the Prime Minister to again rule it out. Mr Littleproud said there were 'strict protocols' around the importation of US beef because Australia needed to ensure the cattle had been 'born in the United States and bred all the way through to their slaughter in the United States'. 'What Anthony Albanese and his departments were (considering)… was a relaxation of beef that was born in Mexico and Canada, where we don't have the traceability that we have over the US production system,' he said. 'Cattle can come into Mexico and then end up in a slaughterhouse in the United States, and then end up in Australia. 'We could be seeing those pests and diseases like mad cow… that's not something that we should entertain.' 'That's why Anthony Albanese needs to rule out straight away that he would open that up to those cattle that were born in Canada, Mexico or anywhere else in the Americas, because that poses a significant risk unless we can trace those cattle.' The former agriculture minister acknowledged the Prime Minister had previously ruled out weakening the biosecurity rules but that recent reports had called this into question. 'When you see reports from departments saying this is what's on the table in terms of negotiations where there's smokeless fire, and that's why the Prime Minister needs to rule this out,' Mr Littleproud said. The Nationals Leader said Australia had been 'fair' in its restrictions, which were based on science, and that traceability is also a requirement imposed on Australian beef. 'Every beast here in Australia has an ear tag from the moment they're marked through to the time they go to slaughter. They've got an ear tag that we can trace, what property they've been on, where they are, what they come into contact with,' he said. 'We have traceability in this country, and all we're saying to our foreign competitors is, if you're going to bring a product in this country, we need to know where your animals have been so that we can… protect our environment and our production.' Cattle Australia boss Chris Parker also backed standing firm on traceability, describing it as a 'pretty simple requirement' and adding that the US had similar requirements for the importation of Australian beef. "They insist that we provide that level of traceability for our beef going to their country and it's not unreasonable for us to have a requirement where we want to see at least equivalence of traceability so we have a good sense of where this is coming from,' Mr Parker told the ABC.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Trump v Musk is the final battle before a catastrophe
In any case, against total federal spending last year of nearly $US7 trillion, it is but a drop in the ocean, and only goes to show how difficult it is to find serious savings in government administration, even when given a free hand with the headcount. The rampant corruption and incompetence that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency expected to find in the Washington and wider government machine has turned out to be largely an illusion, and many of the cuts he has managed to make seem to have done more harm than good. This is not to argue that it's not worth trying, or that you cannot make public services more efficient. But it takes time, substantial upfront investment, and the savings are generally not as big as anticipated. To nobody's great surprise, it transpires that the skills needed to run a successful business do not transfer easily to the public sector, where the disciplines of the bottom line, the profit motive and competitive markets don't exist. Loading The shame of it is that the Musk who built Tesla and SpaceX into two of the world's most successful companies over a period of nearly two decades has been almost entirely absent while at DOGE these past four or five months. Instead, we have seen a reckless, chainsaw-wielding – and if the American press is to be believed, drug-fuelled – Musk who, like his one-time boss Donald Trump, seems to regard government more as performative art than public service. We can all point to myriad examples of public sector waste, of unfathomable spending decisions and stultifying, jobsworth bureaucracy, but the imagined savings from addressing these things nearly always turn out to be a mirage. In Britain, Nigel Farage's Reform UK claims there is £7 billion to be saved by scrapping public sector spending on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. Sadly, no such saving exists. Recent government figures showed just £27 million ($56 million) was spent by the civil service on DEI measures during 2022-23. This might well be £27m too much, but it is not going to solve Britain's debt crisis. The two big cash-burners in advanced economies' state spending are public sector salaries and welfare, and both desperately need to be addressed if Western democracies are ever to extract themselves from now mountainous debt. Musk has comprehensively failed on the first of these missions, and not surprisingly so. The sort of productivity-improving automation and digitalisation we see widely applied in the private sector to stay competitive is a marathon, not a sprint, and it requires precision in planning and execution. None of these characteristics was on display from the tech bros sent in to tackle the bloated size of the American state. Their approach was one of slash and burn rather than the slow, methodical re-engineering of government needed to achieve sustainable savings and productivity improvement. What's more, Trump shows little or no appetite for meaningful entitlement reform. OK, some attempt is being made to trim spiralling Medicaid spending, but it's half-hearted and is really only there as a gesture to appease fiscal hawks among House Republicans. Nobody can tell you exactly when the storm will break, but Musk's failure brings the final reckoning that much closer. The bottom line is that Trump is as much a creature of fantasy economics as any. He wants both low taxes and high spending, and expects economic growth to make up the difference. It's the same delusion as Liz Truss, only very much more dangerous in its seeming rejection of fiscal orthodoxies. Unlike Britain, America is the beating heart of the global financial system, and if US debt markets go belly-up they'll take everyone else down with them. Back here in Britain, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, shows similarly little sign of getting to grips with the leviathan of public spending as she puts the finishing touches to next Wednesday's spending review. Public sector salary costs are rising, not falling, and while ministers talk the talk on welfare reform, their approach to the issue is no more convincing than that of Trump. It's just a little tinkering around the edges. Simply getting working-age benefits back to their pre-pandemic level would save £49 billion a year – more than enough to avoid tax rises and fund the desired increase in defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP, Jeremy Hunt, Reeves' Conservative predecessor as chancellor, points out. Spending on disability benefits alone has surged from £37 billion just before the pandemic to £56 billion now, much more than in any comparable economy, with the bulk of the growth coming from mental health conditions. Loading Yet Reeves used up almost all her political capital axing the winter fuel allowance to all but the poorest pensioners, a course of action that saves only £1.5 billion a year. This has left her with virtually no space for more serious entitlement reform. In both the US and Britain, cutting state spending back to size is simply not happening on the scale needed to stem the rising tide of debt. Attempts by Musk to draw a line in the sand have ended in acrimony and recrimination. Nobody can tell you exactly when the storm will break, but Musk's failure brings the final reckoning that much closer.
