For anybody under the delusion that Donald Trump has settled any trade
deals, or that the trade wars he started are behind us, here's a few things
to take note of, based on data from the Pew Research Center.
When Trump took office he cleared out the entire upper echelon of civil
servants. Traditionally a president takes out just the appointed top 5%
percent of that and replaces them with their own people, leaving all the
people with the institutional knowledge in place. Trump fired EVERYBODY,
and only replaced the top 5% with loyalist that have absolutely no
institutional knowledge in the departments they are overseeing, such as
trade.
Besides civil servants and cabinet positions, a newly elected president
normally brings between 1300 - 3000 people with them to stock the senior
government in the form of advisors, special councils, experts in their field,
etc .... Trump brought ZERO people with him and fired the previous senior
staff because he doesn't like to be told he's not the smartest person in the
room.
The fastest the U.S. has ever negotiated a trade deal since WWII was with
Singapore and it took a little over 10 months. That was with a competent
U.S. Trade Representative, who had a full staff, and that staff had an army
of civil servants at their disposal to help them with all the paperwork and
fine print. That was also just one trade deal, The U.S. currently has almost
200 trade deals pending with over 125 countries.
Moral of the story
The Tangerine Palpatine can regurgitate whatever rhetoric he wants about
him making a deal with so n so, or with this or that country, but it's all
bullshit, and about as reliable as Dubya Bush's "Mission Accomplished"
ceremony at the beginning of a 20yr war in the Middle East. Buckle up
folks, this, with the Big POS Bill that just passed, is just the beginning of
the "Find Out" stage of this ride.