Donald's steel connected magnates, including his buddy Carl Icahn, ArcelorMittal and Donald's handler Wilbur Ross, profited from the Trump I tariffs (or the exemptions):
https://ronpaulforums.com/threads/trump-man-of-steel.544202/post-6951013
It sure is strange that with all these media against poor, poor drain the swamp Donald this never became a media hysteria. It’s almost like minor scandals (bad, bad Hegseth…) are made into media hysterias to distract the gullible public from the major scandals…
In 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on imports from China, but also set up an “exclusion process” – ostensibly to protect small businesses but in reality rewarded the rich and corrupt.
Eight in ten waiver requests were granted to foreign-headquartered companies, with less than 20% to US-owned companies..
CEOs that donated to Republicans had a 1 in 5 chance of getting their exemption granted, against 1 in 10 for CEOs that supported Democrats. Many of the companies that got their exemptions had ties to the Trump administration and/or hired expensive lobbyists.
Ballard and his colleague received $540,000 from Varian Medical Systems for lobbying, arranging a meeting with Peter Navarro. Four of Varian’s 5 exclusion requests were granted, which boosted revenues by $23 million.
Trump fundraiser Marc Lampkin donated the maximum to Trump in 2016 and 2019. Lampkin sits on the executive committee of the lobby firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, whose “dubious clients” include Big Pharma, Big Oil, a blacklisted Chinese tech company, Palantir and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Outokumpu Stainless USA, a US subsidiary of a Finnish corporation, paid Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck nearly a half-million dollars in 2019 for lobbying, and was granted over 500 exemptions.
In April 2018, the US imposed sanctions against then-president of United Rusal Company, Oleg Deripaska (there he is again). On 19 July 2018, 3 days after Trump met Vladimir Putin in Finland, its 20th request for exclusions was granted. This was however cancelled after some adverse publicity.
On 26 July 2019, Donald tweeted that “
Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!”
But of course many of Apple’s made in China were for some reason not subjected to the tariffs. A few months later, the administration granted more exemptions for Apple products.
Before joining Trump’s first administration, Mick Mulvaney represented Fairfield County in South Carolina, home to the television assembly plant Element Electronics, which donated nearly $25,000 to Mulvaney in 2016 congressional race. Element got the lucrative waiver in September 2018.
Apparently make America great again, means making the rich and corrupt even filthier rich, and as someone has to pay, this means taking from the middle class. So one of Trump’s first actions as the liar-in-chief in 2017 was to withdraw rules that protected farmers from gigantic agribusinesses. From September 2018 to September 2019, farm bankruptcy filings rose 24% in the US.
China reacted to Trump’s tariffs with counter-tariffs that caused nearly $26 billion in agricultural export losses from 2018 through 2019. The Trump administration started a bailout program, and in 2019 the payment limit farmers could receive was doubled from $125,000 to $250,000, so that an additional $519 million could be funnelled to 10,000 of the largest farms… protecting the mega farms to NOT help the small farms.
One of the beneficiaries of the bailout program, with over $67 million, was the Brazilian meat-processing company JBS known for a “its track record of corruption, human rights abuses, monopolization of the meatpacking market, as well as environmental risks”:
https://www.citizen.org/article/trump-loves-tariffs-just-not-for-the-rich-and-well-connected/
(
https://archive.is/eNqZD)
Of course getting rid of small land owning farmers, will help in the planned “land grab”.
Catherine Austin Fitts explained on her Solari report the end game for the crypto reserve, which is a pump and dump scheme so the oligarchs can get the needed cash for a land grab in the US.
