The cost, production time, and efficacy of American military technology has shifted the balance of its military might to hostile nations. 

• A U.S. Patriot interceptor missile costs $4 million per shot versus $2,000–$4,000 for some Ukrainian interceptor drones.
•  Two-thirds of the U.S. Patriot missile inventory has been used up in the Iran war,
• Its interceptor missiles it uses to shoot down Iranian missiles have been consumed at a pace the U.S probably hasn’t budgeted for. 
• Given the time of production for U.S. missiles, they will probably arrive too late and in amounts to small to continue the conflict with Iran whose drones can be produced in mass in a fraction of the time it takes the United States.

The populations of our enemies are more willing to endure suffering without adverse political consequences than American voters are. Russians will cheer Putin on for new invasions. His ratings rose to 84 percent during his second war in Chechnya and to 88 percent after he annexed Crimea, which gave birth to the “Crimean consensus” holding that Russians are willing to endure hardship to recreate a Russian-led Eurasian empire. 

Germany agreed to buy a massive amount of gas from a new pipeline that will provide Russia with leverage over Europe’s energy security.

The U.S. has become gullible about Putin’s good will towards America. Bush told the press that he looked Putin in the eye and saw his soul, and that he can be trusted.

Our enemies have lost fear and respect for America’s military strategies.

• Our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan exposed careless military planning and preparations. The U.S. should have realized that a withdrawal would be inevitable long ago, and should have avoided or planned for it.

• Pete Hegseth has decided to phase out an Army drone unit, seemingly because it was championed by generals he didn’t like. 

• The Biden administration’s weak response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fomented doubt about America’s tolerance of Russian or Chinese aggression. Biden should have reacted immediately upon Putin’s deployment of troops along Ukraine’s border and shouldn’t have waited until the invasion to arm Ukraine or coordinate with NATO to deploy troops in Ukraine, which could have avoided the invasion completely.

Our enemies are cooperating with each other to ready more military strength against the United States.

• Putin’s  “no limits” partnership with China gave him confidence he could vanquish Ukraine,

• Russia is helping North Korea modernize its armed forces, and Kim Jong Un reciprocated by sending millions of artillery rounds to Russia and thousands of troops to fight against Ukraine. 

• China is supplying Russia with most of the electronic components used in its drones and other military hardware. 

• Russia has given Iran critical targeting intelligence to strike U.S. bases and ships in the Middle East. 

• In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, Russia’s powerful Pacific submarine fleet is available to help China

• China has already ordered its armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.

• A senior Biden national security official, evaluating our chances in a war with China uttered “every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had redundancy after redundancy.”

• The travails of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln are a national disgrace and have called attention to the small size of the fleet and a depleted industrial base that struggles to build and maintain ships. 

• Trump’s alienation of U.S. allies has cast doubt on their willingness to come to the United States aid in the event of a conflict.

Although this ominous momentum has built over many administrations, it is the current Trump administration’s reckless, haphazard and planless war that has depleted our military materiel, that turned fear of our military into near entertainment by its slapstick military operation, and its unprecedented rudeness and betrayal of our allies that lost their willingness to help us.   

Twitter (X): https://x.com/ChaosPolicy/status/2097771319421198829?s=20

The post BE AFRAID OF WORLD WAR III. AMERICA HAS SLEPT IN THE FACE OF THREATENING  WINDS. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, most voters in battleground states believe that former President Donald Trump would do more for the economy than President Biden in a second term.reflecting their belief in the Trump economy’s potential.

Polling Results and the Trump Economy

A new poll shows Trump leading in all swing states except Wisconsin (where Trump and Biden tie), with 56 percent of voters saying the former president would do a good job on the economy versus just 40 percent for Biden. 

The Reality of the Trump Economy

These voters are sadly mistaken. Trump’s first term and current policy proposals are dire warnings that a second round of Trumponomics would be devastating to everyday Americans. 

Trump Economy and Tax Cuts

Trump is promising to give big tax cuts to everybody, and to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the truth is that his proposed tax cuts will benefit the wealthy at the expense of low- and middle-income Americans, and he will cut entitlements to cover any lost tax revenues. 

Historical Lessons from the Trump Economy

We’ve seen this movie before. In 2016, Trump promised his tax cuts would favor working- and middle-class Americans. The cuts he delivered, however, favored the wealthy, widened income inequality, and encouraged massive tax fraud (which Trump may view as normal practice, given his own bogus tax write-offs). 

Impact of Trump Economy on Income Distribution

By the time they expire next year, Trump’s tax cuts are projected to have boosted after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of earners by 3 percent, to an average of $2.1 million. But they barely affect the bottom 60 percent of earners, increasing their 2025 incomes just 1 percent, to $41,800.

Long-Term Effects of Trump Economy on Tax Savings

By 2025, average tax savings will amount to just $70 for the bottom 20 percent of earners, $61,090 for the top 1 percent, and $252,300 for the top 0.1 percent. If extended to 2027, the tax cuts would actually make low- and middle-income earners worse off.

Trump Economy and Federal Debt

Trump promised his tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating robust economic growth. But that never happened, so they ended up adding between $1 trillion and $2 trillion to the federal debt. 

Entitlement Spending and the Trump Economy

Republican leaders blamed this on Democrats for borrowing too much, and they use this talking point to push for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump himself signaled openness to cutting entitlements before walking his comments back and promising to protect them. But unlike the party elites, most rank-and-file Republican voters actually want to expand them. 

Fiscal Challenges and the Trump Economy

Rising entitlement spending isn’t our real fiscal problem. In fact, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office dramatically lowered its forecast for growth in healthcare costs. Our deficits are due primarily to Trump’s tax cuts. Extending them would add another $4.6 trillion to the federal debt, CBO found. 

Republican Proposals in the Trump Economy Era

Rather than confront that reality, the Republican Study Committee, which represents a majority of congressional Republicans, keeps proposing big cuts to Social Security. So when Trump vows to “never…hurt” entitlements, or that extending his tax cuts will benefit the majority of Americans and pay for themselves, voters would be ill-advised to believe him.  

Trump Economy and Tariff Impacts

Ditto for Trump’s claims about tariffs. He is threatening to slap new ones of at least 10 percent on the $3 trillion in goods we import annually. He insists exporting countries would pay for this, but it’s actually American consumers and businesses who would pay.

Effects of Tariffs in the Trump Economy

Universal 10 percent tariffs would cost U.S. households an average of $1,500 a year as companies raise prices to absorb them. They would trigger additional inflation, further increasing the cost of necessities like food, housing and healthcare, hitting working families hardest. And they’d endanger American jobs by hampering U.S. companies’ ability to compete. 

Trump Economy and Trade War Consequences

Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, for example, led to higher costs for U.S. manufacturers when Chinese suppliers cut their exports to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs. And when China switched to importing soybeans from the European Union, Argentina, Brazil and Russia, U.S. soybean exports plummeted by more than $10 billion. China also retaliated against Trump’s trade war by lowering tariffs on other trading partners to lure their imports away from the U.S.  

Donald Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim economies including the U.S. and, importantly, excluding China. The TPP would have eliminated 18,000 tariffs on made-in-America exports including every type of U.S.-manufactured product and most agricultural products. It would also have imposed stronger labor and environmental standards on Asia’s state-owned enterprises, leveling the playing field with U.S. businesses, particularly small businesses, which make up 98 percent of U.S. exporters and employ millions of American workers. 

Walking away from the agreement made imported goods from Asia more expensive for Americans, hampered our exports to the southeast Asia, and hit Americans’ wallets, lowering average U.S. incomes by $131 billion through 2030.  

By scuttling the TPP, Trump ceded the field to China, which stepped in and replaced the U.S. with a Chinese-led trade agreement among 15 Asia‐Pacific countries, boosting trade among them and offering them greater access to China’s vast markets. That left Washington with fewer enticements to convince other countries to adopt U.S. trading rules.  

Such perverse tax and trade policies are likely to lead to a recession, which in Trump’s hands could spiral into depression. Tax cuts and extensive tariffs deepened the Great Depression. But in the 1920s the U.S. was a major creditor nation, with the flexibility to borrow and provide liquidity and stimulus. Today Republican tax cuts have driven U.S. debt to 116 percent of GDP, hobbling our ability to engineer our way out of a crisis. 

Unlike Presidents Bush and Obama, who tapped highly qualified leaders to manage the recovery from the 2008 recession, Trump will avoid anybody who isn’t a sycophant or who has the backbone to disagree with him. Instead he’ll hire enablers who are likely to preside over a new crisis and find ways to profit from it while the rest of the country suffers. It will fall hardest on low- and middle-income earners who haven’t shared in the wealth Trump’s tax cuts generated for elites.  

The post Mad about the economy? Blame Donald Trump. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.