The Tarriff Hype.

bob the dog

Council Member
Aug 14, 2020
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One thing about concrete is that it is a very forgiving construction material where people who don't know what they are doing are able to achieve somewhat satisfactory results subject to the test of time. When there is a problem later on it is always the fault of the concrete.

If we adhered to correct portions and stayed away from adding water for ease of placement or at least embrace the concept of wet curing we would have much longer lasting concrete again subject to deicing chemicals and loader buckets. Another issue is we use too much cement per cubic meter for the most part again to protect against uncontrollable variables and many of the molecules take years to hydrate if ever.

I'm probably one of the few people interested in the potential of concrete and would love to show the Romans how we do it now but politicians and bureaucrats keep getting in the way. We were hopeful of 750 years of good service for the hydro dams I was part of.

Good concrete placers are hard to find and part of the reason sub standard work can take place. 7 days damp curing can help immensely.
 

bob the dog

Council Member
Aug 14, 2020
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Hard to believe a structure could remain relevant over such great lengths of time other than to serve as a museum in recognition of itself. One of the issues with old city infrastructure are the buildings that outlive their designed purpose.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Regina, Saskatchewan
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The new tariffs, the highest in Asia, took effect at 12:01 a.m. in Washington on Wednesday, doubling the existing 25% duty on Indian exports. The levies will hit more than 55% of goods shipped to the US — India’s biggest market — and hurt labor-intensive industries like textiles and jewelry the most. Key exports like electronics and pharmaceuticals are exempt, sparing Apple Inc.’s massive new factory investments in India for now.
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The move marks a sharp deterioration in ties for the two nations and an about-turn in Washington’s strategy over the years to court India as a counterweight to China. Trump has slammed India for buying Russian oil, which he said was funding President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. New Delhi has defended its ties with Russia and has called the US’s actions “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”
1756298797542.jpeg
1756300026563.jpegTensions have also simmered over Trump’s repeated claims that he brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day armed conflict in May. The US president has said he used trade deals as a bargaining chip in the truce, comments that Modi and his top officials have consistently denied.
(YouTube & What's Next as US Imposes 50% Tariffs on India)

The fraying relationship has pushed India to edge away from the US and forge deeper ties with fellow members of the BRICS bloc. Beijing and New Delhi have in recent months sought to patch up ties that had plummeted after violent border clashes in 2020, with Modi expected to meet President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a security summit in China next week — his first visit there in seven years.
1756299408147.jpeg
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
118,052
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Low Earth Orbit
View attachment 30788
The new tariffs, the highest in Asia, took effect at 12:01 a.m. in Washington on Wednesday, doubling the existing 25% duty on Indian exports. The levies will hit more than 55% of goods shipped to the US — India’s biggest market — and hurt labor-intensive industries like textiles and jewelry the most. Key exports like electronics and pharmaceuticals are exempt, sparing Apple Inc.’s massive new factory investments in India for now.
View attachment 30790
The move marks a sharp deterioration in ties for the two nations and an about-turn in Washington’s strategy over the years to court India as a counterweight to China. Trump has slammed India for buying Russian oil, which he said was funding President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. New Delhi has defended its ties with Russia and has called the US’s actions “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”
View attachment 30789
View attachment 30792Tensions have also simmered over Trump’s repeated claims that he brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day armed conflict in May. The US president has said he used trade deals as a bargaining chip in the truce, comments that Modi and his top officials have consistently denied.
(YouTube & What's Next as US Imposes 50% Tariffs on India)

The fraying relationship has pushed India to edge away from the US and forge deeper ties with fellow members of the BRICS bloc. Beijing and New Delhi have in recent months sought to patch up ties that had plummeted after violent border clashes in 2020, with Modi expected to meet President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a security summit in China next week — his first visit there in seven years.
View attachment 30791
BRICS hasn't slowed down, Modi took the lead from Putin.

So the price of a glass bongs are going up eh?
 

bob the dog

Council Member
Aug 14, 2020
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They aquaducts are still in use.
Plenty of water for hydration and perfect application for concrete. Even so you would think they would have been upgraded along the way due to capacity.

It's intersting how sophisticated engineering was back in that day and earlier on with the pyramids and so on. All lined up with the North Star.

Perhaps it was a time before greed and anarchy ruled the day.
 

Tecumsehsbones

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 18, 2013
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Plenty of water for hydration and perfect application for concrete. Even so you would think they would have been upgraded along the way due to capacity.

It's intersting how sophisticated engineering was back in that day and earlier on with the pyramids and so on. All lined up with the North Star.

Perhaps it was a time before greed and anarchy ruled the day.
Yeah. No greed or anarchy in the Roman Empire.
 

spaminator

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 26, 2009
39,073
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Trade war pushes Canada’s current account deficit to record
Author of the article:Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Erik Hertzberg and Mario Baker Ramirez
Published Aug 28, 2025 • 1 minute read

(Bloomberg) — Canada’s current account deficit reached the widest on record in the second quarter as the country’s exports to the US dropped because of the trade dispute.


The shortfall rose to C$21.16 billion ($15.4 billion) in the second quarter, Statistics Canada reported Thursday. That’s the largest since at least the early 1980s, and significantly deeper than the C$1.32 billion deficit recorded in the first three months of this year, when Canadian exporters benefited from US companies building inventories to get ahead of tariffs.


The current account deficit was only slightly wider than the C$19.3 billion expected by economists in a Bloomberg survey, but captures the major trade disruption posed by US President Donald Trump’s tariff barrage.

Canada’s goods exports have dropped to 2021 levels, the agency said, falling 13.1% in the second quarter. Canada’s trade deficit in goods widened to a record C$19.6 billion, primarily due to a reduction in shipments to the US, the country’s largest trading partner.


The current account is a broad measure of international payments and receipts including trade in goods and services and other sources of income and investments. Large surpluses tend to support currencies, while deficits can act as a drag.

“Not a great showing for Canada, but it was clearly an exceptional quarter,” said Benjamin Reitzes, rates and macro strategist at Bank of Montreal. “Those flows need to turn positive or the Canadian dollar could be in for a rough ride.”

The Canadian dollar is up about 4.5% so far this year against the greenback, and was trading at C$1.377 per US dollar as of 10:03 a.m. Ottawa time.

In the US, inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased at a 3.3% annualized pace, according to a revised estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday.

Falling exports likely caused the country’s economy to stall in the second quarter. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg see gross domestic product contracting at an annualized minus 0.7% pace during that period. Statistics Canada reports GDP data by expenditure and income on Friday.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Regina, Saskatchewan
Well, this is interesting. The judges on the US Court of Appeals get to keep their jobs at this point, or at least four of them anyway. A federal appeals court ruled 7-4 on Friday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, and that he did not have the authority to impose most of his broad tariffs on foreign products from across the globe.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower-court decision that Trump overstepped his authority when imposing most of his tariffs.

Despite the ruling, Trump’s tariffs will be allowed to remain in effect for now, to allow time for an appeal.😉. Time to appeal the appeal?
1756582459421.jpeg
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the court’s decision was wrong and that the Justice Department would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

If Trump’s tariffs are annulled, the Trump administration has other ways to impose them, such as through the 1974 Trade Act. That particular law, however, restricts tariffs to 15 percent and 150 days, “unless such period is extended by Act of Congress.”

A lower court will also reconsider part of the case on whether the government should refund tariffs to all companies that already paid them, or just the parties that sued the government.🤔

The ruling involves tariffs imposed through five executive orders from February to April. In some of those orders, the Trump administration justified tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China by alleging that those countries had taken insufficient action to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.

In another order, Trump said that “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits” with the rest of the world warranted sweeping tariffs affecting more than 50 countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Lesotho.

(The ruling does not cover all tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, such as those on steel and aluminum)
The court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose most of his tariffs. The IEEPA is an emergency law that has been used to impose economic sanctions in the case of threats against the country.

In the Friday ruling, a majority of federal judges said that the law “bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.”

It noted that, “when drafting IEEPA, Congress did not use the term ‘tariff’ or any of its synonyms, like ‘duty’ or ‘tax,’” and that “other statutes indicate that whenever Congress intends to delegate to the President the authority to impose tariffs, it does so explicitly, either by using unequivocal terms like tariff and duty, or via an overall structure which makes clear that Congress is referring to tariffs.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the court a “Highly Partisan Appeals Court” and said “ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT!”

The 11 judges who heard the case were named by presidents from both parties. The dissenting opinion was written by a judge nominated by President Barack Obama.

The Liberty Justice Center, which represents the small businesses in the lawsuit, described Friday’s ruling as its “second major victory” in its challenge against Trump’s tariffs, adding that IEEPA “does not give the President unilateral authority to impose tariffs on any country he wants, at any time he wants, at any rate he wants, for any reason he wants.😳

(Since the tariffs were proposed, the Trump administration has signed deals with the United Kingdom, the 27-nation European Union, Japan and South Korea)

The administration is still in negotiations with Mexico and China, while steep levies were introduced on imports from India, Switzerland and Canada, among other countries, earlier in August.
 

spaminator

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 26, 2009
39,073
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Well, this is interesting. The judges on the US Court of Appeals get to keep their jobs at this point, or at least four of them anyway. A federal appeals court ruled 7-4 on Friday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, and that he did not have the authority to impose most of his broad tariffs on foreign products from across the globe.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower-court decision that Trump overstepped his authority when imposing most of his tariffs.

Despite the ruling, Trump’s tariffs will be allowed to remain in effect for now, to allow time for an appeal.😉. Time to appeal the appeal?
View attachment 30841
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the court’s decision was wrong and that the Justice Department would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

If Trump’s tariffs are annulled, the Trump administration has other ways to impose them, such as through the 1974 Trade Act. That particular law, however, restricts tariffs to 15 percent and 150 days, “unless such period is extended by Act of Congress.”

A lower court will also reconsider part of the case on whether the government should refund tariffs to all companies that already paid them, or just the parties that sued the government.🤔

The ruling involves tariffs imposed through five executive orders from February to April. In some of those orders, the Trump administration justified tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China by alleging that those countries had taken insufficient action to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.

In another order, Trump said that “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits” with the rest of the world warranted sweeping tariffs affecting more than 50 countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Lesotho.

(The ruling does not cover all tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, such as those on steel and aluminum)
The court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose most of his tariffs. The IEEPA is an emergency law that has been used to impose economic sanctions in the case of threats against the country.

In the Friday ruling, a majority of federal judges said that the law “bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.”

It noted that, “when drafting IEEPA, Congress did not use the term ‘tariff’ or any of its synonyms, like ‘duty’ or ‘tax,’” and that “other statutes indicate that whenever Congress intends to delegate to the President the authority to impose tariffs, it does so explicitly, either by using unequivocal terms like tariff and duty, or via an overall structure which makes clear that Congress is referring to tariffs.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the court a “Highly Partisan Appeals Court” and said “ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT!”

The 11 judges who heard the case were named by presidents from both parties. The dissenting opinion was written by a judge nominated by President Barack Obama.

The Liberty Justice Center, which represents the small businesses in the lawsuit, described Friday’s ruling as its “second major victory” in its challenge against Trump’s tariffs, adding that IEEPA “does not give the President unilateral authority to impose tariffs on any country he wants, at any time he wants, at any rate he wants, for any reason he wants.😳

(Since the tariffs were proposed, the Trump administration has signed deals with the United Kingdom, the 27-nation European Union, Japan and South Korea)

The administration is still in negotiations with Mexico and China, while steep levies were introduced on imports from India, Switzerland and Canada, among other countries, earlier in August.
evil finds a way. :(
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
118,052
14,452
113
Low Earth Orbit
Well, this is interesting. The judges on the US Court of Appeals get to keep their jobs at this point, or at least four of them anyway. A federal appeals court ruled 7-4 on Friday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, and that he did not have the authority to impose most of his broad tariffs on foreign products from across the globe.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower-court decision that Trump overstepped his authority when imposing most of his tariffs.

Despite the ruling, Trump’s tariffs will be allowed to remain in effect for now, to allow time for an appeal.😉. Time to appeal the appeal?
View attachment 30841
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the court’s decision was wrong and that the Justice Department would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

If Trump’s tariffs are annulled, the Trump administration has other ways to impose them, such as through the 1974 Trade Act. That particular law, however, restricts tariffs to 15 percent and 150 days, “unless such period is extended by Act of Congress.”

A lower court will also reconsider part of the case on whether the government should refund tariffs to all companies that already paid them, or just the parties that sued the government.🤔

The ruling involves tariffs imposed through five executive orders from February to April. In some of those orders, the Trump administration justified tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China by alleging that those countries had taken insufficient action to stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States.

In another order, Trump said that “large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits” with the rest of the world warranted sweeping tariffs affecting more than 50 countries, including Cambodia, Laos and Lesotho.

(The ruling does not cover all tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, such as those on steel and aluminum)
The court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose most of his tariffs. The IEEPA is an emergency law that has been used to impose economic sanctions in the case of threats against the country.

In the Friday ruling, a majority of federal judges said that the law “bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.”

It noted that, “when drafting IEEPA, Congress did not use the term ‘tariff’ or any of its synonyms, like ‘duty’ or ‘tax,’” and that “other statutes indicate that whenever Congress intends to delegate to the President the authority to impose tariffs, it does so explicitly, either by using unequivocal terms like tariff and duty, or via an overall structure which makes clear that Congress is referring to tariffs.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the court a “Highly Partisan Appeals Court” and said “ALL TARIFFS ARE STILL IN EFFECT!”

The 11 judges who heard the case were named by presidents from both parties. The dissenting opinion was written by a judge nominated by President Barack Obama.

The Liberty Justice Center, which represents the small businesses in the lawsuit, described Friday’s ruling as its “second major victory” in its challenge against Trump’s tariffs, adding that IEEPA “does not give the President unilateral authority to impose tariffs on any country he wants, at any time he wants, at any rate he wants, for any reason he wants.😳

(Since the tariffs were proposed, the Trump administration has signed deals with the United Kingdom, the 27-nation European Union, Japan and South Korea)

The administration is still in negotiations with Mexico and China, while steep levies were introduced on imports from India, Switzerland and Canada, among other countries, earlier in August.
evil finds a way. :(
There goes the USD.