Hey, How’s THE GROCERIES?

Spoiler: So bad that Trump fired the messenger!

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Back in ‘24, 77 millions voters chose a man convicted of 34 felonies, who bankrupted six companies (including two casinos) and was found liable for financial fraud because they thought that guy would be good for the prices of The Groceries. How’s it going?

Welp, on Friday the stock market plummeted after the regime announced new, insane tariffs against allies Canada and Switzerland. Tariffs on goods coming in to the US are now the highest in a century, and will cost the average American household $2,400 a year, hurting poorer people the most, of course. The dollar is sinking, Treasury yields dropped, indicating pessimism, and the VIX, AKA the OH SHIT market-volatility index, went up. The unemployment rate has been going up, and the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics revised (downward) its payroll count for May and June by a combined 258,000 jobs. And July’s report, well…

Consumer prices are up, up, up like a rocket since Trump took office, and spending is down. Titty tassels are even a-droop in Las Vegas, where hotel occupancy is down nearly 15 percent from the same time last year.

By every indicator, the economy is slowing down like a pizza-clogged colon, and even Fox was shook.

If Trump was actively trying to wreck it by injecting as much uncertainty as possible, it would not look any different.

But somebody’s got to get blamed for anything that makes Dim Jong Un look bad. So, he decreed YER FIRED the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, by TruthSocial post (naturally), hours after the revised jobs report came out.

I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000. These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes. McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative. The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting “Kamala” elected – How did that work out? Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put “out to pasture.” Thank you for your attention to this matter!

McEntarfer has been in government for 20 years — including under Trump I — and re-adjusted numbers under Biden too, because the estimates and the final numbers are always different. But, same old Trump, the one who said about COVID, “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” scribbled Sharpie on that hurricane map, said he weighed 215 pounds, and otherwise generally has a habit of making shit up out of thin air while the people around him applaud and thank him with tears in their eyes. Don’t nobody bring him no bad news!

He continued on:

The numbers, the numbers, who can trust them?

Alternative facts, alternative science, and now alternative math! Firing the person who brings the bad news, no bueno. Only six months in and we’re at the Stalin 1937 census stage! As NBC gently put it: “The politicization of economic data and potential interference with it by political appointees is something that's typically seen in nondemocratic countries like Russia, Venezuela or China.” The next step after that is nothing good, and the word “famine” has often been involved.

And the news gets worse, for investors who like stability. Friday Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Adriana Kugler abruptly resigned months before her term is officially up, leaving a spot for Trump to plug in whatever under-qualified loyalist goober on the seven-member board that sets interest rates.

Then Thursday night, hey, it’s new tariffs! Once again showing the world that the administration and the US economy are being run on the whimsy of a man with delusions of grandeur and fifth-grade logic skills.

On Wednesday, Swiss trade negotiators were savoring their evening Toblerone, thinking they were all set with a trade deal, because that’s what Trump’s little negotiators Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer had assured them. But then 10 hours before the new rates were supposed to take effect, the Swiss trade reps found out that Trump wouldn’t sign off on the deal. Because, “For Trump, a goods trade imbalance of nearly $40 billion is akin to stealing from the US.”

Exchanging goods and services for money is the literal opposite of stealing, but Trump wanted to extort the Swiss into buying some $40 billion worth of whatever from the US to get the deal done. TrumpCoins, Trump cologne, Palantir facial recognition technology, Boeing planes that the doors blow off of, who knows. The trade representative declined, and “Trump was so angry that the 39 percent rate he imposed on the Swiss hours later was chosen more or less at random, according to a person familiar with the matter.” Though as Bloomberg full well knows, it is not actually imposed on the Swiss, it is imposed on Swiss products when they enter the US, paid by importers and passed down to consumers.

And now US consumers will have the privilege of paying 35 percent more on goods from Canada, seemingly because Trump is mad that they are preparing to recognize a Palestinian state, or maybe because former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was spotted at a Katy Perry concert, who can say. But goods from Mexico got a reprieve from another hike, and will stay at 25 percent for 90 days after Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had a phone call where she blew smoke up his ass in whatever just-right way.

As his former best friend Jeffrey Epstein once put it, “With respect to real estate deals, he’s brilliant. He’s a salesman. He knows real estate really well. Anything else but that, he knows nothing. No history, no strategy … he can’t read a spreadsheet, which is funny.”

Sounds like that old pedophile had his number. Except for the brilliant real estate deals part, no points awarded for fraud!

But, other people can read spreadsheets and do math, and they know that don’t nobody bring me no bad news is not solid fiscal policy, and the American economy’s greased log flume ride from standard-bearer of the world to a dictatorship hell with all the trimmings is just getting started.

Better news for the price of Toblerone, though, they’re mostly made in Slovakia now, so they are only 10 percent more expensive.

Stock up, you’re gonna need it!

[Bloomberg archive link / WSJ gift link / The Guardian]

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