In other news, the ACLU has filed a legal complaint against Facebook for allowing companies to explicitly exclude women from seeing their ads for job opportunities in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
Meanwhile, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's says most states will be unable to respond to the next recession without immediately cutting spending. Only 20 states have reserves or rainy-day funds that would delay budget cuts.
Moody's Analytics also says at least 17 states could not respond to even a minor dip in the economy.
Those states, in order of least-prepared, are Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Jersey, Montana, Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kansas, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Michigan and Arkansas.
Finally, Chinese officials are making it fairly clear that they won't be giving in to Trump's unknowable and impractical demands. It looks like they're planning to pass a stimulus package to make up for whatever Trump does.
Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said Trump’s tactic of trying to pressure China into trade concessions wouldn’t work because the economy was too strong. Tariffs on all exports to the U.S. wouldn’t be enough, he said.
“Even in that scenario, the negative impact on China’s economy is about 0.7 percent of GDP decline,” Fang said on a panel at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Tianjin on Tuesday. “China has ample fiscal and monetary policies to cushion that impact. So we prepare for the worst, and we think the economy will still be fine.”
This is why we should expect to see Trump move ahead with his next round of $267 billion in tariffs, and why we should expect to see his new 10 percent tariff increase to 25 percent in January.
Trump isn't going to back down because China isn't going to give him things they can't give him. China can't reduce our trade deficit. Only Americans can.