Tariffs, Native-Born Jobs, and Crippling Putin

You know something’s working when the front page of the Wall Street Journal reads: “The Tariff Effect: Billions in Revenue but No Economic Earthquake.”So far, there’s no tariff recession, no tariff inflation, and no tariff retaliation war.Meanwhile, imports from Communist China have fallen off a cliff — below 2002 levels.And the American trade deficit is at a two-year low. Just saying.In other news, there is a great piece out by the brilliant Larry Lindsey called “Border enforcement and the labor force.”Since January, foreign-born employment has fallen by one million. And native-born workers have skyrocketed 2.5 million.The border is closed, thankfully. A major success story by President Trump. Yet it has not crippled the labor market.And while this is happening, Hispanic employment continues to rise under Mr. Trump, but that’s because a majority of Hispanics in America are actually native-born.And, I will add, Mr. Trump did especially well with this demographic.As always, there are pluses and minuses.Yet Mr. Trump has slapped a 25 percent tariff on India because they keep buying oil from Russia, despite the fact that Mr. Trump has asked them not to any number of times.I certainly hope India won’t become some kind of rogue nation, but they’re now facing a 50 percent tariff — 25 percent baseline and 25 percent Russia punishment.And despite occasional positive rhetoric from Prime Minister Modi, no real trade and tariff progress was ever made with India.As for Russia, even if secondary sanctions are slapped on countries like China and India, or whoever keeps doing business with Russia and buying their oil — that still leaves the issue of Russia’s fleet of covert tankers that have gotten around any number of sanctions and tariffs down through the years.The question now is, what does Mr. Trump want to do about their covert tanker fleet?If you cut off Russian oil sales, then the whole country will implode. And they’ll never have the financial means to keep fighting Ukraine or anyone else.Why not maximum sanctions on all of their businesses?And remember, America and the EU have half of all the Russian central bank’s reserves.It’s about $300 billion. America controls only $5 billion. The rest is the EU.The reserves are dollars, other currency, gold and bonds.Want to really cripple Mr. Putin? Confiscate Russia’s financial crown jewels.You could even send them directly to Ukraine. Just saying.From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.

Tariffs, Native-Born Jobs, and Crippling Putin

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