Trump tariffs will make everyone poorer. Make America "grieve" again! "Brother can you spare a dime?"

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Justin Wolfers:

Dr. Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Trump tariffs will hurt. A lot. By my calculations, this round of tariffs may be 50 times as painful as the ones Donald Trump instituted in his first term. That means they are going to reshape your life in much more fundamental ways.

To illustrate how, let’s look at a prosaic example: your washing machine. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s relatively modest tariffs caused washing machine prices to rise by nearly $100. As a result, many families elected to stick with their aging machines longer than they otherwise would have. But that choice incurred a new set of costs: late-night thuds from unbalanced loads, wads of scrunched cloth still dripping wet after a cycle and higher energy and water bills.

In other words, the total cost of a tariff isn’t just what comes out of your checking account. The time you spend to rearrange the stuff in your washer is a cost. The time you spend wringing out sopping wet T-shirts is a cost. Tariffs are costly not just because they raise prices but because they force you to make different decisions that will extract a different kind of cost from you over time.

Small tariffs create small problems. Big tariffs create huge ones. Take Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles, which is expected to raise their prices by roughly $4,000. Many families, like mine, will probably decide not to buy a second car. That creates far bigger problems than an aging washer. Now, we’re constantly juggling how to get our kids to all their activities, and ourselves to work, with only one set of wheels.

And it’s not just cars. These are across-the-board tariffs, so they will distort virtually every purchase you make. In each case you’ll have to stop your baked-in calculations, recalibrate and find a way to make do — perhaps substituting frozen vegetables for fresh vegetables, a less effective medication for a higher-priced import, or corn syrup for sugar. And in each case, you’re worse off.

By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions; they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday are roughly 10 times as high as those of most other industrialized countries, and higher than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs (of Great Depression fame).

Trump’s latest tariffs will lead folks to rethink not only whether to replace their washing machines — as they did in 2018 — but also their dryers, refrigerators, stoves, groceries, clothes, cars and even everyday essentials.

By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions; they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.

The tariffs announced on Wednesday are roughly 10 times as high as those of most other industrialized countries, and higher than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs (of Great Depression fame).

Trump’s latest tariffs will lead folks to rethink not only whether to replace their washing machines — as they did in 2018 — but also heir dryers, refrigerators, stoves, groceries, clothes, cars and even everyday essentials. Many of the substitutions we’ll make will be quite painful. If a 1 percent tariff leads you to switch from real guacamole to a pea-based alternative, then you really didn’t care about guac all that much. But if it takes a 20 percent tariff to get you to switch, that’s a sure sign that going without the real thing is a serious hardship.

And so, this is why higher tariffs generate a far greater amount of pain. These forces aren’t independent of each other. They interact. Or in math, they multiply, which means their costs rise in the square of the tariff rate. That leads to some pretty painful arithmetic.

The average tariff rate was about 1.5 percent just before Trump’s election in 2016. He subsequently raised tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and many goods from China, but left much of the rest of the economy untouched. All told, by 2019, he roughly doubled the tariff rate, to around 3 percent — and so effectively quadrupled whatever pain the 2016, tariffs were causing. (Yes, two times two is four.)

President Joe Biden kept some of these tariffs, but Trump’s latest round pushes our current rate to around 15 times its 2016, level, and so squaring that, it’s 225 times more painful.

That’s more than 50 times as large as the cost of Trump’s first-term tariff increase.

Perhaps voters pulled the lever for Trump with warm memories of the good economic times. But the reality of his first term is that there was a lot more tariff talk than action. They were barely more than a bump in the road. This time, they’re a mountain. And so the impact will be more like a crash than last time’s comfortable jolt.💢

Brother Can you spare a dime? 

Antisemitism in Michigan

An echo opinion letter published in The Michigan Daily , aka,"The Daily" newspaper by an annonomous contributor. The Michigan Daily is an independent, student-run newspaper serving the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor communities since 1890.

It has been a tumultuous year for both Jewish and Palestinian residents in the state, including at the University of Michigan.

Letter to the Editor: Hamas’ antisemitism cannot be glossed over.Content warning: This article contains mentions of violence.

I have always been proud to be Jewish ✡️— proud of the culture, values and resilience of the Jewish people. 🕎

But now, more than anything, I am afraid: afraid of the rise of antisemitism across the world, afraid of the surge of antisemitic tropes here on campus and afraid of the antisemitic ideology perpetuated by The Michigan Daily by publications such as: “Breaking walls, building solidarity: Unveiling the apartheid struggle in Palestine.”

I want to begin by saying that just because I am Jewish does not mean that I support all the actions of the Israeli government, the same way that being American does not mean I support all the policies enacted by the former and now President-elect Donald Trump 😟😩. Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the displacement of many Palestinian people, there is no doubt that Israeli governmental policy has inflicted harm on those residing in the West Bank and Gaza. I understand and empathize with the hurt and frustration of the Palestinians living in these territories who are not granted full rights under the Israeli government.

There is a very important distinction to be made between being pro-Palestine and supporting Hamas. Hamas is an openly extremist group, designated by the U.S. Department of State as a foreign terrorist organization, and internationally recognized as a terrorist organization by the European Union, Japan, Egypt and Canada as well. The original charter of Hamas calls for not only the “obliteration” of the state of Israel, but the genocide of all Jews worldwide. Witnessing the amount of support that people on this campus have pledged toward the recent actions taken by Hamas has been incredibly upsetting for those of us that still bear the generational scars of the last genocide of Jews.

The article published by The Daily completely justifies Hamas’s recent attack on Israel. While it mentions deaths of some Israeli soldiers, it conveniently leaves out the more than 1000 innocent civilians, including young children, who were kidnapped and brutally murdered by Hamas. The author cites openly biased and anti-Israel sources, such as the Jewish Voice for Peace, cherry-picking evidence to fit their one-sided narrative.

But, most dangerous is the author’s propagation of false information. Upon an in-depth review of the article, I found multiple of the author’s claims to be completely unfounded:

The author claims that “the United Nations has explicitly stated that ‘the (Israeli barrier) wall is a tool for ethnic cleansing.’ ” This was not a position taken by the United Nations as an entity, but rather a sentiment expressed by the Saudi Arabian Delegate, Al Anazi, in December 2006, during a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

The author accuses The New York Times, Fox News and the Times of Israel of fabrication, simply for “presenting this recent act of resistance as an act of terrorism.”

The inflammatory one-sided narrative perpetuated by the author, along with the blatant distribution of misinformation, has huge implications for the University of Michigan’s Jewish community. The deaths of our people are not, and should not, ever be justified.

Violence between Israel and Palestine is one of the most nuanced and complicated conflicts in modern history, and one which I don’t pretend to be an expert on, but the facts are the facts: Hamas is a terrorist group, openly supporting Nazi ideology and determined to destroy both the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Mutilating bodies, raping women and burning innocent civilians alive is never justifiable. 

As a Jewish woman I cannot stay silent and let my peers accept these falsities as truths. Being a Jew on campus these past weeks, I have not only felt terrible sadness, I have also felt unsafe and uncomfortable. Personally witnessing protesters holding up signs with various antisemitic sentiments has been a 💀scary and disheartening experience 😟.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion; but before forming an opinion, I urge you to consider the facts beyond those cited in this one-sided article. I am not in support of suppressing anyone’s voice — I only aim to lift up the voices of my Jewish peers. We are scared💀, but we will never be silenced.

This contributor has asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, The Daily granted this request.

Michigan medical students take a stand to support abortion care

As a nurse, I wish abortions were rare. Nevertheless, the risks of making abortions illegal put women at risk of morbidity and death. In my opinion, the general public does not understand about how making all abortions illegal will cause many innocent women to suffer as a result of being forced to carry to term an unwanted pregnancy or others that may be forced to bear a fetus conceived as a result of rape or incest. 

Echo report published in Medscape Nurses

Dozens of University of Michigan medical students walked out of their white coat ceremony Sunday as a keynote speaker began to talk. 

A Twitter video showing the walkout has gone viral. By press time, the video had garnered more than 9.5 million views. 

In fact, the walkout comes days after more than 340 medical students at the school had signed a petition opposing the selection of Michigan assistant professor Kristin Collier, MD, for the ceremony because of her anti-abortion views, according to The Michigan Daily.

In response to the incident, a medical school spokeswoman told Medscape Medical News that Collier was chosen to be speaker "based on nominations and voting by members of the U-M Medical School Gold Humanism Honor Society, which is comprised of medical students, house officers, and faculty."

The press statement continued, "The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues. Its focus will always be on welcoming students into the profession of medicine. Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks. However, the University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs."

The university further stated that it remains committed to providing reproductive care for patients, including abortion care, which remains legal in Michigan following the recent US Supreme Court ruling overturning abortion rights, according to the statement by Mary Masson, director of Michigan Medicine public relations.

The state has an abortion ban, but a recent court order temporarily blocked enforcement of it, according to the statement.

In her speech, Collier recognized the divisiveness of the issue. "I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks. We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur. And I hope for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters the most, coming together with a goal to support our newly accepted students and their families."

Following applause from the remaining audience, she continued to offer advice for the incoming students about how to thrive in their chosen profession.

Collier, a graduate of the medical school and director of its Health, Spirituality and Religion program, has 15.2K Twitter followers. She has been known to post anti-abortion sentiments, including those cited in the students' petition.

"While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University's position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care," the petition reads, in part.

The petition states that the disagreement is not over personal opinions. "We demand that University of Michigan stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community. This speaker should inspire the next generation of healthcare providers to be courageous advocates for patient autonomy and our communities."

For more news, follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Ignore pandemic history and we are doomed to repeat it

Echo essay published in The Conversation: 

By J. Alexander Navarro, Assistant Director of the Center for the History of Medicine, at the University of Michigan

People gave up on flu pandemic measures a century ago when they tired of them – and paid a price.

1918 the greatest pandemic in history

Picture the United States struggling to deal with a deadly pandemic.

State and local officials enact a slate of social-distancing measures, gathering bans, closure orders and mask mandates in an effort to stem the tide of cases and deaths.

People were ready to be done with masks as soon as it looked like the flu was receding. PhotoQuest/Archive Photos via Getty Images

The public responds with widespread compliance mixed with more than a hint of grumbling, pushback and even outright defiance. As the days turn into weeks turn into months, the strictures become harder to tolerate.

Theater and dance hall owners complain about their financial losses.

Many citizens refuse to don face masks while in public, some complaining that they’re uncomfortable and others arguing that the government has no right to infringe on their civil liberties.

Clergy bemoan church closures while offices, factories and in some cases even saloons are allowed to remain open.

Officials argue whether children are safer in classrooms or at home.

As familiar as it all may sound in 2021, these are real descriptions of the U.S. during the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic. In my research as a historian of medicine, I’ve seen again and again the many ways our current pandemic has mirrored the one experienced by our forebears a century ago.

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, many people want to know when life will go back to how it was before the coronavirus. History, of course, isn’t an exact template for what the future holds. But the way Americans emerged from the earlier pandemic could suggest what post-pandemic life will be like this time around.

Sick and tired, ready for pandemic’s end:

Like COVID-19, the 1918 influenza pandemic hit hard and fast, going from a handful of reported cases in a few cities to a nationwide outbreak within a few weeks. 

No mask- no service in 1918 on streetcar

Many communities issued several rounds of various closure orders – corresponding to the ebbs and flows of their epidemics – in an attempt to keep the disease in check.

These social-distancing orders worked to reduce cases and deaths. Just as today, however, they often proved difficult to maintain. 

By the late autumn, just weeks after the social-distancing orders went into effect, the pandemic seemed to be coming to an end as the number of new infections declined.

People clamored to return to their normal lives. Businesses pressed officials to be allowed to reopen. Believing the pandemic was over, state and local authorities began rescinding public health edicts. The nation turned its efforts to addressing the devastation influenza had wrought.

For the friends, families and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had died, post-pandemic life was filled with sadness and grief. Many of those still recovering from their bouts with the malady required support and care as they recuperated.

At a time when there was no federal or state safety net, charitable organizations sprang into action to provide resources for families who had lost their breadwinners, or to take in the countless children left orphaned by the disease.

For the vast majority of Americans, though, life after the pandemic seemed to be a headlong rush to normalcy. 

Starved for weeks of their nights on the town, sporting events, religious services, classroom interactions and family gatherings, many were eager to return to their old lives.

Taking their cues from officials who had – somewhat prematurely – declared an end to the pandemic, Americans overwhelmingly hurried to return to their pre-pandemic routines. They packed into movie theaters and dance halls, crowded in stores and shops, and gathered with friends and family.

Officials had warned the nation that cases and deaths likely would continue for months to come. The burden of public health, however, now rested not on policy but rather on individual responsibility.

Predictably, the pandemic wore on, stretching into a third deadly wave that lasted through the spring of 1919, with a fourth wave hitting in the winter of 1920. 

Some officials blamed the resurgence on careless Americans. Others downplayed the new cases or turned their attention to more routine public health matters, including other diseases, restaurant inspections and sanitation.

Despite the persistence of the pandemic, influenza quickly became old news. Once a regular feature of front pages, reportage rapidly dwindled to small, sporadic clippings buried in the backs of the nation’s newspapers. The nation carried on, inured to the toll the pandemic had taken and the deaths yet to come. 

Unfortunately, people were largely unwilling to return to socially and economically disruptive public health measures.

It’s hard to hang in there:

Our predecessors might be forgiven for not staying the course longer. First, the nation was eager to celebrate the recent end of World War I, an event that perhaps loomed larger in the lives of Americans than even the pandemic.

Second, death from disease was a much larger part of life in the early 20th century, and scourges such as diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, whooping cough, scarlet fever and pneumonia each routinely killed tens of thousands of Americans every year. Moreover, neither the cause nor the epidemiology of influenza was well understood, and many experts remained unconvinced that social distancing measures had any measurable impact.

Finally, there were no effective flu vaccines to rescue the world from the ravages of the disease. In fact, the influenza virus would not be discovered for another 15 years, and a safe and effective vaccine was not available for the general population until 1945. Given the limited information they had and the tools at their disposal, Americans perhaps endured the public health restrictions for as long as they reasonably could.

A century later, and a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it is understandable that people now are all too eager to return to their old lives. This end of this pandemic inevitably will come, as it has with every previous one humankind has experienced.

If we have anything to learn from the history of the 1918, influenza pandemic, as well as our experience thus far with COVID-19, however, it is that a premature return to pre-pandemic life risks more cases and more deaths.

And today’s Americans have significant advantages over those of a century ago. We have a much better understanding of virology and epidemiology. We know that social distancing and masking work to help save lives. Most critically, we have multiple safe and effective vaccines that are being deployed, with the pace of vaccinations increasingly weekly.

Sticking with all these coronavirus-fighting factors or easing off on them could mean the difference between a new disease surge and a quicker end to the pandemic. 

COVID-19 is much more transmissible than influenza, and several troubling SARS-CoV-2 variants are already spreading around the globe. The deadly third wave of influenza in 1919, shows what can happen when people prematurely relax their guard.

Pelosi and Schumer: futility of expensive Trump border wall

Video shows the confrontational White House meeting

Essay echo published in the History News Network by Juan Cole*

(MaineWriter- Yet again, we need a reminder that Donald Trump said Mexico will pay for the wall.)

Ann Arbor, MI (Informed Comment) – Trump’s televised badgering of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi was made for cable television, which predictably looped it over and over again. 

Cable stations assembled “panels” of “experts” who solemnly parsed Trump’s insane meanderings, Schumer’s hamming it up for the cameras, and Pelosi’s call for a “fact-based” discussion.

Less was said by cable news about the substance of the main point of debate, which is that Trump, having bankrupted the government with massive tax cuts for his billionaire cronies last February, now wants to increase government spending by spending $5 bn for a border wall. Although they initially thought they might throw Trump a bone (a mere $1.6 bn?), the wave of anger and indignation this mealy-mouthed approach provoked among the Democratic faithful appears to have put some iron in their spines. Pelosi told Trump to his face that he wouldn’t be able to find a majority in the House for such spending.

Here are the top 6 reasons the Democrats shouldn’t spend a cent on Trump’s vanity project of a border wall:

1. Trump’s conviction that there is a crisis of illegal border crossings in the Southwest shows that he is stuck in the 1980s and 1990s. The problem has plummeted in significance in the past decade and a half, according to The Center for Migration Studies. The Border Patrol is only arresting about 1/4 the number of those attempting to come in without paperwork as was true in the 1990s. And, in 2014 only one tenth as many people even tried to come in illegally as in 2005. (Taken together, these two statistics show that Border Patrol’s efficiency in apprehending undocumented entrants has increased substantially).

2. Politifact certified former California governor Jerry Brown’s argument that southwest border arrests of undocumented entrants are as low as they have been in 50 years. The trend lines all show a sharp drop-off in this problem, so why enact heroic measures now?

3. Even if you were worried about undocumented immigrants, which most Americans are not, putting billions into wall-building is useless. In 2014, DHS figures show that two-thirds of undocumented immigrants into the US that year came in through airports and simply overstayed their visas. In general, it estimated that among the some 11 million undocumented residents in the US, 42% were visa overstays who came in legally by air or sea, and that proportion is certainly much higher today.

4. The number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US has fallen from 6.9 million in 2007 to only 5.4 million today, declining by 1 million persons. The problem is going away, since more are leaving than coming in. . Politifact notes that U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, (D-La Crosse) said, “We’re experiencing a net outflow of illegal, undocumented workers from America back to Mexico. To build a wall now would be locking them in this country.”

5. There is no reason to think that a wall, which would harm the environment and migrating animals, would even be effective. In 2010-2015, nearly 10,000 people came in through areas where there is already a border fence (about 654 miles). People dig tunnels, e.g.

6. A scientific study of 200 urban areas over the past several decades shows that those with high numbers of immigrants for the most part actually saw falling or stable levels of crime. Trump’s conviction that immigrants = crime is empirically untrue. Undocumented immigrants for the most part are especially law-abiding, since they don’t want to be apprehended and deported. Obviously, there are immigrant criminals, but they are a tiny percentage of the whole, and there is substantial evidence that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.

Beyond the problem that Trump repeatedly asserts things that are patently untrue on the immigration issue, the fact of the matter is that Democrats need to stand up to him if they are to vindicate themselves. They ran on a more progressive America, not on an America that is a giant prison surrounded by walls.

*Juan Cole is Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan. He maintains a blog on US foreign policy and progressive politics, Informed Comment.