Barackface: 3: Trump

Monday, November 03, 2025

3: Trump

A Wealth Tax that Will Work How we build a better future despite Trump and his Republican lapdogs (Part 1) ................. one of California’s most powerful unions (SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers West, whose members work in hospitals and clinics across the state) and one of the nation’s most respected economists (Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez) to unveil a 2026 California state ballot measure that would establish the nation’s first wealth tax. ............... proposals to raise taxes on the ultra wealthy to finance what average working people need are emerging in several places — most notably in New York City, where Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani (who may be elected the city’s next mayor tomorrow) aims to raise the income taxes of residents with annual incomes in excess of $1 million by 2 percent in order to fund universal child care. .......... when Massachusetts passed a “millionaires tax” in 2023, conservatives claimed the rich would flee. But two years later, they haven’t — and Massachusetts has collected $5.7 billion for infrastructure and public education. ............... The incomes of America’s billionaires have been rising by an average of 7.5 percent a year since the start of the pandemic — in sharp contrast with the measly 1.5 percent average increase for median-income Americans. So even after the 5 percent tax is levied, the ultra wealthy will still be getting wealthier at a rapid clip. ................. The sums they’ll owe are readily calculable, since about 72 percent of billionaires’ wealth is in their ownership of publicly traded stock. As they do with their payment of income taxes, billionaires would file their wealth taxes themselves in 2027 (assuming the measure had been enacted the previous November) based on their net worth in 2025. The state can audit those returns if its estimates of their fortunes are significantly at variance with those filings. .............. The politics of this couldn’t be better — given that 15 million Californians on Medi-Cal (the state’s version of Medicaid) are on the brink of losing much if not all of their health insurance because of cutbacks imposed by Trump and congressional Republicans — who, again, redirected those funds to massive tax cuts for the rich......... And remember,
this tax affects just 200 billionaires.
............. It may open the way to further efforts to rein in the obscenely rich. Hopefully, Mamdani’s election tomorrow will open up another. ........... powerful reminders that even with Trump lording over America like a giant slug, positive change can and will still happen at the state (and city) level.

We’re Number Two! How Trump ceded the future to China .......... Does Donald Trump realize that he has ceded world leadership to China? Probably not: During his recent Asian trip, foreign leaders flattered him and showered him with personal gifts, so he came home with his ego even more inflated than usual. Nobody close to him would dare tell him that if you look at the substance of what he agreed to, it amounted to an ignominious retreat. ............

The whole world knows what Trump’s sycophants won’t tell him: His confrontation with China has ended up demonstrating Chinese strength and American weakness.

............ China’s astonishing rise since the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping hasn’t made America poorer. If anything, the rapid ascent of a nation of 1.4 billion people from desperate poverty to middle-income status (per capita, China still lags America and Europe) has made us richer, expanding world markets and providing us with manufactured goods that would be far more expensive to produce at home. .............. China isn’t evil, and while I love my country I don’t believe that America and its allies have any inherent right to rule the world. But by historical standards America was a relatively benign hegemon, largely because we were more than a nation: we were an idea. And the Pax Americana, for all its many failures and sometimes grievous sins, was on balance a force for freedom. Calling us the leader of the free world was more than political boilerplate: It described something real, despite the many blots on our record. .......... Nor does China seem to stand for anything beyond China. .......... tariffs on China are now similar to tariffs on other countries excluding Canada and Mexico. For example, China now faces tariffs not significantly higher than those imposed on our erstwhile allies in the European Union. ............ And Trump has suggested that Nvidia, which produces the most advanced AI chips, may be allowed to sell to China after all. ...........
the Chinese had more leverage over us than we did over them. We are or were an important export market for China, but China has a near-monopoly on rare earths, which are crucial for much advanced technology. And China’s limits on rare-earth exports to the United States were a much bigger problem for us than Trump’s tariffs were for them.
............. he was clearly oblivious, imposing punitive tariffs without any apparent awareness that China could strike back. ............ Trump has also proved willing to be moved by Chinese promises to resume purchases of U.S. soybeans. You might say that he ceded the future to China in return for a hill of beans. This is especially amazing when you bear in mind that China made similar promises to buy U.S. goods during the first Trump administration and never came close to delivering on those promises. .............. despite tough talk about China, Trump’s tariff spree hasn’t focused clearly on the key geopolitical issue of rising Chinese power. Instead, he’s been busy imposing tariffs on Brazil because he doesn’t like its domestic politics — they dared to try and convict a former president who attempted a coup — and on Canada, because the province of Ontario aired a TV ad that upset him. Trumpian tariff policy has been less America First than Ego First. ............ in the way that Trump has alienated our allies, and it seems fair to say that America is no longer the world’s leading power. Unless a future president can engineer a miraculous recovery in our global stature, the future now belongs to China.