Trump – Man of steel

[Firestarter]

When I think of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) I'm thinking about oil, the genocide of Yemen and Trump cronies. I never would have guessed that the UAE is one of the largest aluminium exporters to the US...


On his last day in office, president Donald exempted the Emirates from the 10% tariff on aluminum. Instead quotas were placed on the UAE, that imports have to remain close to "historical levels without meaningful increases".


The UAE is the third-largest exporter of aluminium to the US, after China and Russia, and also sells steel to the US.
In 2020, the UAE were roughly 11.5% of total U.S. aluminium imports and about 14% in 2019 (in 2019, that was about 10.7% of total U.S. aluminum demand).
https://archive.is/Ju3jV

 

[Firestarter]

Donald's tax exemption for Brazil from which his buddy Carl Icahn, ArcelorMittal and Donald's handler Wilbur Ross profited, was reportedly cooked up at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

The event was supposedly set up by the Brazilian Bolsonaro crony Mário Garnero, who proposed Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's visit to the Mar-a-Lago.
Garnero, through a mutual friend, passed the letter on to Mar-a-Lago member Richard Bernstein.

See from left to right: Alvaro Garnero, Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump and Fabio Wajngarten at the Mar-a-Lago.

Garnero has been pictured with Pope Benedict, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and counts Sen. Robert Kennedy, President Ronald Reagan and Rainier III prince of Monaco among his personal friends.
Mário and his son Alvaro Garnero both attended the summit between the presidents of the USA and Brazil.
Bolsonaro press secretary Fabio Wajngarten who was also at this Mar-a-Lago event later tested positive for the infamous coronavirus.

See in the back row Eduardo Bolsonaro (Jair's son) who stands left from Ivanka and Jared Kushner.
In the front row President Jair Bolsonaro is seated left from President Donald Trump.

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Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Korea are exempt from the additional tariffs on derivative steel products.
This means that the Ferrous Resources of Trump’s friend Carl Icahn, located in Brazil, will profit from the higher prices for exports to the US

On 1 March 2017, Wilbur Ross resigned from the board of directors of the largest steel manufacturer in the world, ArcelorMittal. With factories in the USA and Brazil (also exempted from Trump’s steel tariffs) to profit from the steel tariffs.
Ross held $750,000 to $1.5 million in ArcelorMittal and, while he promised to divest his stake, he didn’t say how fast.

Trump told the group that included Bolsonaro, Pence and Ivanka Trump, about his present to exempt Brazil from the tariffs (which was really a present to Icahn and Wilbur):

I gave him a great gift — I gave him a good gift. We didn’t charge him tariffs on something and that made him much more popular.

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Maybe even more interesting is that Richard's wife, Robin Bernstein, was appointed by President Donald as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 2018 to 2021. Robin Bernstein, was one of the 25 founding members of Mar-a-Lago.
The insurance agency Richard S. Bernstein & Associates, has insured the Trump Organization for 2 decades. The Bernsteins are billionaires. Richard's wife, Robin Bernstein, was one of the 25 the founding members of Mar-a-Lago.
Robin Stein Bernstein was once on the transition team for president Jimmy Carter: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article241026546.html

 

[Firestarter]

In December 2022, Donald Trump released great digital NFT trading cards, showing himself (or his face…) as the man of steel!

 

[Intrepid]

Donald's tax exemption for Brazil from which his buddy Carl Icahn, ArcelorMittal and Donald's handler Wilbur Ross profited, was reportedly cooked up at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

The event was supposedly set up by the Brazilian Bolsonaro crony Mário Garnero, who proposed Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro's visit to the Mar-a-Lago.
Garnero, through a mutual friend, passed the letter on to Mar-a-Lago member Richard Bernstein.

See from left to right: Alvaro Garnero, Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump and Fabio Wajngarten at the Mar-a-Lago.

Garnero has been pictured with Pope Benedict, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and counts Sen. Robert Kennedy, President Ronald Reagan and Rainier III prince of Monaco among his personal friends.
Mário and his son Alvaro Garnero both attended the summit between the presidents of the USA and Brazil.
Bolsonaro press secretary Fabio Wajngarten who was also at this Mar-a-Lago event later tested positive for the infamous coronavirus.

See in the back row Eduardo Bolsonaro (Jair's son) who stands left from Ivanka and Jared Kushner.
In the front row President Jair Bolsonaro is seated left from President Donald Trump.

.


Trump told the group that included Bolsonaro, Pence and Ivanka Trump, about his present to exempt Brazil from the tariffs (which was really a present to Icahn and Wilbur):

.
Maybe even more interesting is that Richard's wife, Robin Bernstein, was appointed by President Donald as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 2018 to 2021. Robin Bernstein, was one of the 25 founding members of Mar-a-Lago.
The insurance agency Richard S. Bernstein & Associates, has insured the Trump Organization for 2 decades. The Bernsteins are billionaires. Richard's wife, Robin Bernstein, was one of the 25 the founding members of Mar-a-Lago.
Robin Stein Bernstein was once on the transition team for president Jimmy Carter: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article241026546.html

All of that goes to show how awesome is the DJ Donald Trumpmaster D.

 

[Firestarter]

Surprising or not, the Biden administration has continued many of the awesome import tariffs imposed during Trump’s reign, but made some bilateral agreements to cancel tariffs for some countries.
As predicted the tariffs had mostly negative impacts on American consumers and companies (except for the lucky few).

Trump’s tariffs let to retaliation by the EU, China, Canada and Mexico.
In December 2022, the WTO ruled against the US steel and aluminium tariffs against China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey, concluding that there was no national security emergency to justified them.

American buyers and exporters of goods for which steel and aluminium were used, paid the price for the tariffs.
Following the tariffs on Chinese goods, prices of U.S. intermediate goods rose by 10% to 30%, about the rate of the tariffs.

By December 2018, Trump's tariffs resulted in a reduction in aggregate US real income of $1.4 billion per month, and on top of that cost US consumers $3.2 billion per month in added tax. The study's authors noted that the real costs from the tariffs were even higher, because they did not take all the negative impacts into account.

In 2019, Federal Reserve Board economists found that the steel tariffs led to 0.6% fewer jobs in the manufacturing sector because of the tariffs; or approximately 75,000 jobs.
General Motors cut over 14,000 jobs in plants in Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario, because of the steel tariffs.

In October 2019, it was estimated that US consumers and firms who buy imports lost $51 billion (0.27% of GDP) as a result of the 2018 tariffs, an aggregate US real income loss of $7.2 billion (0.04% of GDP).
Interestingly it were especially workers in predominantly Republican counties that suffered most from the trade war, because retaliatory tariffs focused on agricultural products. This reportedly also cost Republican politicians votes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs

 

[Firestarter]

Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium not only damaged the US economy, but also of US allies.
While a little more steel and primary aluminium was produced in the US, the main result of the tariffs was inflation, as US prices of steel and aluminium rose substantially.

The tariffs cost American importers dearly, with the tariffs squeezing the importers’ profit margins and reducing US manufacturing employment: https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-an...rope-remove-trumps-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs

 

[Swordsmyth]

That wasn't what caused the inflation and you know it.

 

[acptulsa]

That wasn't what caused the inflation and you know it.

It didn't cause any of it?

 

[Swordsmyth]

It didn't cause any of it?

No.

 

[acptulsa]

No.

Prove it.

 

[Firestarter]

That wasn't what caused the inflation and you know it.

It didn't cause any of it?

I'm just a simple guy, and I think that the insane tariffs (of which , Trump cronies benefited) DID cause inflation of steel, alumunium, and products that use these materials in the US.
I also think that there were other negative consequences of these tariffs.

Many economists agree with me on this...

There are of course other causes of the "recent" inflation and negative spiral of the economy:
The brutal lockdown that was started by warp speed Donald,
The many illnesses appearing since the clot shots, that prevent people from working.

And of course the sanctions on Russia, following the Ukrainian invasion.
Maybe with Trump as president this would have worked out differently, but we'll never know.

 

[acptulsa]

I'm just a simple guy, and I think that the insane tariffs (of which , Trump cronies benefited) DID cause inflation of steel, alumunium, and products that use these materials in the US.

Of course they did. No one who has a shred of credibility and values it even slightly could deny it. Clearly they had that effect, they always do. They're designed to.

That said, the bulk of the inflation is simple supply and demand. They increased the money supply a hundredfold, and now they're acting like they're surprised that dollars are only worth a penny now that they're as common as pennies used to be. And what's more, Biden did a lot of it, but Trump was worse.

 

[Firestarter]

I thought it would be easy to show how the Trump gang would profit from this deal, but it isn’t as obvious as I expected.
The major US steel shareholders, making a huge profit from selling it to Nippon Steel, include the familiar BlackRock, Vanguard Group and State Street Corporation (at places 1, 2 and 4).

More surprising are Pentwater Capital Management and Dimensional Fund Advisors (at 3 and 5): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel


Pentwater Capital Management, with an 8.2% stake in US steel, is interesting.

In 2024, Pentwater took a stake in Twitter, making a huge profit when Elon Musk bought it (financed by the Qatar buddies of Trump and Kushner).
Pentwater later committed to the private investment in public equity raised to take Donald Trump’s social-media company public through a blank-check merger (the deal hasn’t closed and Pentwater ultimately didn’t invest).

Matt Halbower launched Pentwater in 2007, after stints at hedge fund Citadel: https://archive.is/c50xn

 

[Firestarter]

The Trump presidency in a nutshell…

 

[acptulsa]