https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/article/h1b-visa-trump-work-job-21102258.php
What they’re ignoring is outsourcing. American companies will end up with many more remote workers in India. The net gain in U.S. tech jobs will be nil.
The Art of The Deal has come to government. President Trump wants a piece of the action on transactions needing government approval or funding. He wants equity stakes in an ever-increasing number of America’s major corporations, giving him a say in what those corporations invest in, from whom they buy, to whom they sell, whom they fire and much more. The free-market capitalism that saw this nation prosper like no other is no more. The confessedly corrupt early 20th-century politician George Washington Plunkitt famously said, “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.” Trump “seen” his.
The first opportunity was presented by a global trading system that seriously disadvantaged the US. Trump replaced it with a system of tariffs that transfers enormous powers to him. Nvidia, a world leader in AI development, was granted an export licence to sell some of its chips to China in return for directing 15 per cent of the proceeds to the Treasury over which Trump, in effect, presides.
The president now has life-and-death power over Apple, which has won exemption from tariffs on its iPhones and other devices by pouring the odd billion into Trump’s headline-generating announcements of new investments in America. Such relief is in the gift of the president, creating a giant pay-to-play casino where market forces, flawed though they were, once prevailed. Congress can read all about it on Truth Social.
The second opportunity was presented to Trump by Nippon Steel’s request for approval of its acquisition of US Steel. Permission granted, in return for which the government received a golden share in the combined company. That, added to its need for tariff protection, gave Trump considerable power not only over the new US Steel but over the auto, appliance and other industries that use the metal, both domestic and imported.
The third opportunity for power enhancement was created for Trump when President Biden ladled out billions in subsidies to chipmaker Intel. In return, in the inimitable words of commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, “We got nothing, nothing.” A Republican president of the old school might have cancelled the Biden subsidies and left Intel at the mercy of market forces.
Trump has been accused of many things, but never of being a traditional Republican. He demanded that Intel issue and turn over to the government some $8.9 billion of new shares, in effect giving him control of 10 per cent of Intel’s outstanding shares. Socialist senator Bernie Sanders professed delight. Intel’s competitors not so much. Existing rivals and those the Silicon Valley crowd expects to conjure will be at a significant disadvantage competing with businesses in which the government has a financial interest, and with which Trump’s political future is now linked.
The president promises “many more” such deals, or “shakedowns” as his critics call them — the substitution of state capitalism for market capitalism, as an economist would put it. MP Materials, a potential major producer of rare earth magnets, is to receive government financial aid that it says will position the Department of Defense “to become the company’s largest shareholder”.
Lockheed Martin, which gets 90 per cent of its revenues from the US government, might be the next of many defence contractors Trump is planning to add to the congeries of enterprises under his management. The issuance of new shares to the government, of course, will dilute the value of existing shares, and is therefore a de facto seizure of private property. And, say critics, will surely slow the pace of risk-taking innovation.
In short, the extent of presidential control of the economy has not been seen since the end of the Second World War. Trump has added to his influence over macroeconomic policy by levying tariffs, another name for taxes. He is in the process of gaining control of monetary policy by packing the Fed board and firing an existing board member for alleged mortgage fraud, no trial necessary.
Fed independence, done and dusted, control of the macroeconomy complete, he is turning his attention to the independent players that make up the microeconomic economy. With sycophants in seats once occupied by powerful advisers and the opposition Democrats in disarray, effective resistance to Trump’s power push is negligible.
Economists have long linked free markets with individual freedom, state control of the economy with the power of government to decide which companies prosper and which industries provide jobs in which states. Trump has displaced those market forces with, well, himself. Add control of the criminal justice system and the firing or demotion of two dozen January 6 prosecutors; replacement of professional number-crunchers with Maga loyalists at no-longer independent agencies; raids on the home and office of former National Security Advisor John Bolton; and plans to replace local law enforcement with what the Founding Fathers feared, a federal “standing army” under the control of the president, America’s new CEO-in-chief.
“You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet” has long been a common boast among America’s entertainment celebrities, of which the star of The Apprentice is one. Now, as president, he is favouring visitors with baseball caps emblazoned “Trump in 2028”.
The Social Security Administration’s (SSA) recent anti-fraud initiative, influenced by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has stirred a storm of debate. The DOGE, once under the leadership of Elon Musk, made audacious claims about rampant fraud within the SSA. However, the SSA’s new detection system revealed a starkly different reality, identifying only a minuscule amount of potential fraud while inadvertently delaying the processing of numerous claims.
The primary justification for the SSA’s anti-fraud policy stemmed from statements by DOGE members. Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE engineer, claimed on Fox News that 40% of calls to the SSA for direct deposit changes were from scammers. This assertion was echoed by Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. Musk even suggested that his engineers had uncovered “$100 billion a week” in fraudulent payments, a figure that raised eyebrows across the board.
Of over 110,000 claims reviewed, less than 1% were flagged for potential fraud, and only two were deemed to have a “high probability” of being fraudulent.
Musk and fellow DOGE proponents’ assertions about revamping Social Security due to colossal fraud losses have been met with skepticism.
Fortune reports that Doge’s bid to transform the government’s main safety-net program, citing claims of it hemorrhaging vast sums to fraud, despite Musk’s team being denied permission to view official documents.
Musk, who had a humiliating screaming match with a Trump official, has boldly claimed that his team has unearthed weekly fraudulent entitlement payments totaling a staggering $100 billion, calling the situation ‘utterly insane. ‘
During an April Fox News interview, Social Security department staffer Aram Moghaddassi concurred with Musk’s sentiment, stating that 40% of calls they receive about altering direct-deposit data are from tricksters.
…
However, according to Fortune – which referenced a government technology-focused news source, the actual frequency of phone-related fraud is minuscule, barely exceeding a fraction of 1%.
Nextgov/FCW snagged an internal scoop revealing that out of 110,000 Social Security claims, merely two have been identified as highly probable for fraud. The tech news site indicates less than 1% of claims are even slightly suspicious for fraudulent activity.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-social-security-doge-35277349
Donald Trump caught his first sight of the so-called “palace in the sky” in February as he climbed the red-carpeted steps of the Boeing 747-8.
The Qatari plane was parked at Florida’s West Palm Beach International Airport, and offered a chance for the president to see what a newly refitted Air Force One could look like, easing his frustration with the long-delayed Boeing project.
In the event, it appears to have been more of a test drive. His administration’s plan to accept the $400m (£300m) luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, which he is expected to use after his presidency, is the latest example of what many view as an increased disregard for ethics in Washington under his second term.
During his first term in the White House, foreign governments buying meals and block-booking rooms at Trump hotels set alarm bells ringing.
Yet now the president has created even more opportunities for those looking to curry favour with him – and his children. From pay-to-dine cryptocurrency schemes, a new social media platform that carries advertising and the expansion of their property empire, it has never seemed easier for the Trump family to line their pockets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/18/trump-turned-white-house-cash-machine
“Donald Trump announced the External Revenue Service, and his goal is very simple: to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News on Feb. 19. The idea is that once the budget is balanced, taxes will be waived for Americans earning less than $150,000 a year.
However, the flaw in this plan is that tariffs are not paid by “outsiders.” Rather, tariffs are a tax placed on imported goods and services.
“When the U.S. imposes tariffs on imports, businesses in the United States directly pay import taxes to the U.S. government on their purchases from abroad,” according to the Tax Foundation. During Trump’s first term, “the economic evidence shows American firms and consumers were hardest hit by the Trump tariffs.”
At the same time, it would be hard to replace the revenue collected from income taxes with revenue from the planned tariffs. According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a non-partisan research group, the U.S. imported $3.1 trillion in goods in 2023 while raising about $2 trillion through individual and corporate income taxes.
This means it would be nearly impossible to replace income taxes with tariffs, since the tariff rate would have to be “implausibly high,” according to PIIE. The institute determined that even at a “revenue-maximizing tariff rate,” the U.S. could raise only a fraction of what it raises with income taxes.
Characterised by screeching handbrake turns, made-up policy on the hoof and mixed-messaging on steroids, it’s been another week of chaos in Washington.
If anyone knows what on Earth it is that the US is trying to achieve on trade, and much else besides, then I’d like to hear from them, because having come to the US capital in the hope of garnering some insights, I’m none the wiser.
What’s now increasingly obvious, however, is that Trump is in ragged retreat; he’s compromising all over the shop, such that if the plan was to upend the established global order, one can almost definitely say that, beyond the rhetoric, it is already over.
Rank lack of professionalism and organisation has defined the endeavour all along, and now it’s coming apart at the seams. Sensing an administration on the run, no one is any longer hurrying to do a trade deal with the US. From Britain to Canada and beyond, getting the right deal rather than a quick one has become the new mantra.
Trump has in the meantime made himself – and the US – into an international laughing stock, never mind the damage that policy uncertainty is inflicting on the global economy. You’d be forgiven for thinking that chaos is itself the policy goal.
Repeatedly forced to row back on its demands and aspirations, the White House has been left looking back-footed and ridiculous.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/26/trumps-attempt-to-upend-the-global-order-defeated
With his chaotic trade policy, President Donald Trump is digging himself into an economic and political hole so deep, it may prove impossible to climb out.
On Wednesday morning, just after markets spent a day reeling from Trump’s on-again-off-again threat to levy extraordinary energy, steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and to destroy the country’s auto industry, Trump placed tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported from every country around the world, a policy that could drive up prices on a broad range of consumer and industrial goods for Americans. Europe immediately retaliated, adding pressure on a variety of American industries.
Wall Street has grown nervous about the damage Trump’s policies could inflict on America’s still-strong but increasingly wobbly economy. Stocks have plunged, with the Nasdaq falling into correction (a decline of 10% from its recent high) and the S&P 500 flirting with that inauspicious territory.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/12/economy/recession-tariff-trump/index.html
