Barackface: 31: Trade

Republicans Look Set To Get Wiped Out in 2025 and 2026 | Opinion Someday, someone will crack the most difficult code in American politics—how to win midterm elections two years after securing a governing trifecta. But based on the polling that we have right now, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are not going to be the ones to do it. President Trump burned mindlessly through his limited political capital within weeks of taking office in January, and the Republican-controlled Congress has essentially ceded its constitutional authority—and its political fate—to the White House. Unless something dramatic changes in the coming months, that may have fateful consequences for Republicans up and down the ballot starting with November's bellwether off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. ........ The race for the House of Representatives is starting to look much more like the 2018 cycle, when Republicans trailed from pretty much the day pollsters started asking thanks to the enduring unpopularity of President Trump's policy agenda, and more importantly, his gratuitously provocative and confrontational political style. ........ The betting site Polymarket gives Democrats a 70 percent chance of retaking the House in 2026, and this grim outlook certainly isn't lost on the GOP, which is scrambling to pull off a mid-decade redistricting in Texas to squeeze a few extra seats out of an already-aggressive gerrymander that gave them 25 out of 38 seats in both 2022 and 2024. ......

Republican gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey are also trailing badly in races that will be decided in just a few months.

......... While Democrats are a distinct underdog in the race to control the Senate, they scored a major victory this week when Roy Cooper, the popular former Democratic governor of North Carolina, announced he would seek the seat being vacated by the retiring Senator Thom Tillis. ........ Democrats are already favored in Maine, where 72 year-old Senator Susan Collins' remarkable run of defying partisan polarization seems unlikely to continue even if she chooses not to retire. But even assuming Democrats win all the battleground state seats they have to defend, including Michigan and Georgia, flipping North Carolina and Maine would still leave them two seats short of a majority. .............. Democrats are eagerly watching the mess unfolding in Texas, where scandal-ridden extremist Ken Paxton is ahead in limited polling against incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn. While he would probably still be the favorite, a Paxton win in the primary would without question put Texas in play. Even with a Texas miracle, though, Democrats will still need to win a race in at least one state that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024, whether that's Iowa, Alaska, Florida, or Nebraska. It's an extremely heavy lift, but Republicans certainly can't feel as secure about their lock on the Senate as they did after November's elections unexpectedly left them with a seemingly insurmountable 53 seats. ..........
Is there anything Republicans could do to avoid the fate that almost every president's party has met in the midterm elections?
For starters, President Trump would need to stop doing unpopular things—like building a lavishly funded internal detention gulag, securing trade "deals" that make daily life more expensive for ordinary Americans, and wasting his time whining about what D.C.'s football team is named, or what's happening in the writer's room of adult cartoon TV shows—and start governing in a way that isn't designed to deliberately alienate more than half the country.

Republicans Look Set To Get Wiped Out in 2025 and 2026 | Opinion @davidmfaris https://t.co/LIOgRtVJBi
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 31, 2025

Listen to "Tariffs, Trade, and Geopolitics: A Multipolar Perspective" by Tech, Politics, Business And Faith. https://t.co/Wd3QStbfXo
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 31, 2025

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Listen to "The Awaited One: A New Era Begins" by Paramendra's Books https://t.co/2gIdgwlR3Y. https://t.co/hyko4ijadU
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 31, 2025

Mr. Trump’s threat to penalize India may be a reflection of his frustrations over a lack of progress with Russia to end the Ukraine conflict ......... India has otherwise already reduced its historic defense reliance on Moscow — a reliable friend since the Cold War era — and is increasingly purchasing its big-ticket platforms from the United States and its Western allies. ........ The nuance in the bilateral relationship embraced by U.S. presidents since Bill Clinton because of India’s rising importance to America’s national security appears to be fading ......... “India’s primary challenge is that, for the first time in 35 years, it is faced with an American administration that is not driven by strategic altruism”

GDP numbers buoy Trump The U.S. economy rebounded in the spring after contracting in the winte ...... This comes after the GDP fell by 0.5 percent in the first quarter while President Trump triggered a trade war.

Squeezed ‘like a lemon’: White House raising the pressure ahead of Friday tariff deadline Foreign trade delegations are engaged in frantic last-minute talks to avoid punishingly high tariffs just after midnight on Friday.

Trump just upped the tariff burden on American consumers – this time for low-cost goods from around the world
Donald Trump faces new lawsuit from House lawmakers
Powell Hits Back at Trump for Tariffs Pushing Up Prices Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has warned that tariffs are already driving up prices in a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump....... The president insists that his policies have curbed inflation, and he has repeatedly urged the Fed Chair to lower interest rates. ....... “Increased tariffs are pushing up prices in some categories of goods,” Powell said. “Near-term measures of inflation expectations have moved up on balance over the course of this year on news about tariffs.”

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— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) July 31, 2025