Why is Heinz Ketchup Called "Tomato Seasoning" in Israel—and How Trump's Tariffs could end up being great for Israelis.

The victims might be the monopolies, Netanyahu and the public might be the victors. This presents huge opportunities for the savvy. Here’s how: (1/8)

Shipwreckedcrew @shipwreckedcrew
Everyone should read this link and understand the implications.

We have $29 trillion in debt held by the "public."

33% of that debt, or $9 trillion, will mature in the next 12 months. That means we will need to sell new bonds to raise the money to pay off that $9 trillion to the holders of the bonds that will mature.

Five years ago, the AVERAGE interest rate across all of the national debt was 2.32%. That meant the mix of T-Bills (2-12 months) to bonds (up to 30 years) could be averaged out to 2.32%.

Today, because of the borrowing during the Biden Admin post COVID using mostly 3 and 5 year bonds, the average interest rate across all the debt is now 3.35%

That 1.03% increase is actually a nearly 50% increase in borrowing costs across the entirety of the debt.

That's why interest on the national debt this year exceeds the Pentagon budget.

What Pres. Trump is doing by design is to drive down interest rates so that when we have to sell $9 trillion in new bonds over the next 12 months, the interest rates on the new bonds will be less than the interest rates on the bonds sold that were sold by the Biden Admin to fund the nonsense crapola that DOGE has been exposing.

The Hancock @HancockThe1011
·
15h
In short the Biden administration deliberately attempted to bankrupt America to funnel $ to the DC connected class. Arrest them all and throw away the key.

Uğur Demir @lastpresser1
·
5h
I agree with your points — just want to add one thing:

In a normal year, Treasury issuance is roughly 20% short-term and 80% long-term. But in recent years, it's flipped — around 80% is now short-term. That’s why markets have become hypersensitive to quarterly refunding...

MTM 14 @mtm14
·
13h
It is worse than that too…when rates were zero bound under Yellen’s term that bubble head academic did all short term debt instead of issuing more 30 year bonds. Bessent should bring back 20 year issuance and make many of those bonds callable at specific intervals....

cpindc @cpindc
·
18h
I've said this for months. Yellen and President Ron Klain deliberately rolled debt into short term notes.
Anyone who looks at bond market sees the play.

Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador, who is portrayed as a "Maryland father" in most news reports, entered the US illegally in 2011. In 2019, he was arrested on allegations of membership in the violent Salvadoran gang called Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. At that time, he applied for political asylum, which was denied. He was given an order of removal, but a judge put his deportation on hold on the grounds that he might be in danger if he returned to El Salvador. In early March, Garcia was arrested and put on a plane to El Salvador and the Terrorist Confinement Facility, CECOT.

His attorneys sued, and a judge ordered the Trump administration to return Garcia to Maryland. In her order, the judge called the deportation “an illegal act.”

When White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reacted by saying, “We suggest the Judge contact [El Salvador’s] President [Nayib] Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador,” it struck me, and many others, as the kind of remark you can make if you are in no danger of facing the judge in a courtroom. As it turned out, she perfectly captured the tone of the administration's request for a stay of her order.

High Points

The first response was that the judge's order is impossible to comply with.

The district court’s order—a command to “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return from a foreign country by midnight on Monday—is unlawful. There is no likelihood that it would survive review on appeal.

...

The order below is neither possible nor proper. As noted, Abrego Garcia is an El Salvadoran national, being held in El Salvador, at the hands of the El Salvadoran government.

The conclusion is my favorite.

Because the United States has no control over Abrego Garcia, however, Defendants have no independent authority to “effectuate” his return to the United States—any more than they would have the power to follow a court order commanding them to “effectuate” the end of the war in Ukraine, or a return of the hostages from Gaza.

The government's argument is that Garcia had a final deportation order, so the district court judge erred in hearing the case because it was outside her jurisdiction.

Even putting aside these fundamental defects, the order below also runs into a statutory bar. Section 1252(g) strips district courts of jurisdiction to review “any cause or claim by or on behalf of any alien arising from the decision or action by the Attorney General to … execute removal orders 11 against any alien” under the INA, except as otherwise provided in § 1252. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g) (emphasis added). This is such a suit. The district court thus lacked jurisdiction over this case, and lacked authority to issue its order. //

The government's brief conclusively takes apart every aspect of Garcia's case. He had a deportation order, he had MS-13 connections that make him ineligible to enter the US, the judge not only doesn't have the clout to make El Salvador send him back to the US, she isn't legally allowed to hear the case.

President Trump has made one intention very clear, that being that he will be working to restore the United States' industrial base. He's been taking steps to do that, and many of those steps have involved tariffs intended to balance trade. This effort has culminated (so far) with the April 2nd "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs. Democrats and even some Republicans are opposing the tariffs, but one administration member, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, went on record on Friday in support of the president's plans. //

Granted, tariffs make many uncomfortable, and that discomfort is not limited to the left; free-trade advocates on the right are concerned as well. But, as President Trump points out, free trade has to work both ways, and many nations have heavy tariffs on American goods.

The free-market advocate website Issues & Insights is a little more cautious on the matter, but they are not ruling out the idea that the tariffs may have the desired effect. //

If Trump’s approach works better than all those trade deals at bringing down other nations’ tariffs, who can complain? Certainly not free traders.

You don't get much more free trader than I&I's editorial board. //

The thing is, we're in terra incognita here. The United States has not tried a major tariff reset since Smoot-Hawley in 1930. And, despite what you will hear in some quarters, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn't cause the Depression; the market crash that led to that financial disaster happened in 1929. No less an economist than Milton Friedman opined that the effect Smoot-Hawley had on the Depression was minimal. What's more, the global economy is vastly different now than it was in 1930. Britain, in 1930, had the world's largest and most powerful navy on the planet and a powerful industrial base, while the United States was still moving from being a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrialized one - and only ten years later, we would be the "arsenal of democracy." Japan was the primary power in Asia, militarily and economically, while China was an agricultural country mired in what we would now call the third world.

Much has changed since then. //

anon-9s7n
3 hours ago edited
Trump has been right about pretty much everything so far. The status quo of being a services economy (that is pretty easy to compete against given our woeful status of education) is not acceptable to anyone with a functioning cranium. We have to incentivize manufacturing in this country and not one single person at any level of the public square has come up with a better way than this.

All the detractors need to clamp their pie holes shut until they can come up with a detailed, multi-year strategy to achieve the same end of bringing manufacturing back to this country.

I'm far more interested in FAIR trade than free trade. Free trade just means giving other nations a free ride on the back of Americans. Enough! //

Eric R EDMUND
an hour ago
There were 10% drops twice in 2024 with no tariffs and a Dem in the White House, no one panicked, almost no one even noticed. The markets will recover quickly enough and if the number of people working has increased in the mean time, it will based on healthier fundamentals. //

At last check, we were north of 160 federal lawsuits filed against Trump administration executive actions, and while the district courts have been furiously handing out temporary restraining orders (TROs) and injunctions, a number of the cases have been snaking their way up through the appellate courts to the Supreme Court. Mind you, these are largely procedural rulings rather than decisions on the merits. There's still a long way to go before all the dust settles.

But the Trump administration scored a win before the Supreme Court Friday afternoon as the high court issued a 5-4 decision granting the administration's request for a stay of a district court TRO, which enjoined the administration from terminating various education-related grants and required it to pay out past-due grant obligations and continue paying grant obligations as they accrue. //

As noted above, this was a 5-4 decision. It is per curiam, so there's no designated author of the majority decision, but Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's three liberal justices in dissent. //

DaveM Outerlimitsfan
an hour ago
Roberts has been a problem from the day he became Chief Justice.
When he became Chief Justice he exposed himself as a typical long service government bureaucrat- i.e the smooth functioning of the organization is vastly more important than anything the organization actually does.

Media political commentator Jonathan Turley broached the subject on Wednesday, opining that a third term in office for Trump is "unlikely":

The late Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes.” His point was that courts are skeptical of using minor provisions in a statute to achieve sweeping new legal changes.

The challenge of stuffing an elephant into a mousehole came to mind this week after President Donald Trump said that he is “not joking” about considering a third term and that experts told him it is possible under the Constitution.

One often has to take such moments with a heavy dose of skepticism from a president who clearly relished handing snake-in-a-can soundbites to the media just to watch the resulting screams. If so, he was not disappointed. The media went into renewed vapors as commentators pronounced, yet again, the death of democracy.

However, given the president’s statement, it is important to be clear about the basis for this theory, which has long been something of a parlor game for law professors on how a president might be able to circumvent the two-term limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment. //

Translation: While some on our side relish Trump's role as a master troller, this is one area where trolling, if he is indeed doing so, could potentially hurt both the president and congressional Republicans who defend such talk.

It behooves the wise among us—including Trump, I hope—to understand that while he relishes playing to loyalists, his decisive president election win was made possible by untold numbers of Democrat crossover votes, including record numbers of Black and Hispanic voters, who may not have been huge fans, but voted as much against Harris-Walz as for Trump-Vance. //

etba_ss
an hour ago
There is only one way, legally. A new Constitutional Amendment. If they tried the back door, SCOTUS would rule 9-0 against it, as they should.

A ticket of Vamce-Trump would lose, as the focus would be on subverting the Constitution. The votes you'd lose on that issue would make it unwinnable. Why would Vance be interested in that?

Trump isn't serious. He's trolling. I think it's a foolish troll that offers no reward but risks him being viewed as the tyrant they claim he is by people who aren't crazy about him in the first place.

Some jokes aren't smart to make.

Red in Illinois
2 hours ago edited
Rand Paul is good on alot of things but he should not be in charge of anything. His “principles” will not allow him flexibility to actually get to where his principles are occurring.

We do not have free trade right now. We have free trade for thee but not for me. We allow most countries to import their goods to our shores at little cost while these same countries create barriers to our exports….making them non-competitive in foreign markets. These barriers can be out right tariffs, import quotas, regulations that make thier domestic good more affordable and/or manipulate their currency. They can also subsidize their industries effectively making them undercut our products.

For those that havent learned how Trump operates yet….I’ll clue you in. The end goal is not to collect tons of $ from these tariffs nor to raise prices of imported goods. That may occur during the interim though. The goal is to get these countries to reduce their barriers to our exports by using the admission price to the US consumer market as leverage.

In other words, these tariffs are meant to promote FREE trade between countries…not end it.

I don’t know if it will work but I have learned a long time ago that Trump often ends up proving alot of people wrong. I think he’ll do it again.

There are plenty of details throughout that indicate the procedures predate the current administration. An email from an employee complaining about these flights was delivered last year. The company they worked for - GlobalX - made reference to these ICE flights and what the employees do on them during an earnings phone report in 2023. In another section a quote from an ICE official regarding some of their protocols is from 2021. There is in reference to the controversial use of a particular restraint during flights, seen in a DHS report – that is from 2024, regarding the use in the previous year. //

Yet despite the timing of these interviews ProPublica never managed to issue this report until now? Even if there is some form of explanation made regarding the timing of publication, how do you speak to these employees in 2024 regarding what they experienced on flights that year and those prior and never managed to reference these were practices and policies made during the Biden administration?

This entire presentation is about using prior examples to demean what is taking place under the new leadership. Nowhere in this report is there a cited detail about what the current ICE flights are engaged in. It is a sham that all the objectionable actions are offloaded onto the current administration. //

C. S. P. Schofield
4 hours ago
So, once again the Democrats want to blame a Republican President for something a Democrat President did.

Yawn

How tiresomely predictable.

JHW252
5 hours ago edited
If tariffs are so bad why is the rest of the world using them against us ? My father was a successful businessman who owned a small engineering firm. He predicted everything that is happening now back in the 80’s.
“If they sign NAFTA that’s the end of manufacturing in the United States”
“There is no substitute in an economy for the blue collar worker and his paycheck”. //

Blue State Deplorable
6 hours ago
In general, I agree tariffs drive up prices and discourage trade or so I was taught as an Econ major.

But, I think that analysis fails to capture what Trump seeks. This is a gambit. He’s leveraging the power of the American marketplace to encourage other nations to trade fairly. If you wish to export to the US, you’ll eliminate the tariffs you impose on American goods (and subsidies to your manufacturers that allow them to compete unfairly) or suffer the consequences in the form of retaliatory tariffs. Trump’s betting most nations will fold. Whether it works, remains to be seen.

At the same time, Trump is wooing investment from abroad to create jobs and reinvigorate America’s manufacturing base. He’s also seeking to incentivize American manufacturers to produce goods in the US. Why? Well jobs, as I said, but it’s more strategic than that.

Trump sees a dangerous world and with it, declining US power. He believes that a weakened US makes the world more dangerous and less stable. To shore up US power, he’s looking to re-establish American manufacturing and wealth (particularly middle class wealth). Why? So that America can continue to project power to ensure a stable, less dangerous world and wield that power lethally when it becomes necessary.

The tariffs Trump’s imposing are designed to reset America’s trade relationship. They are intended to be short term in nature and predicated on the assumption that most of the world will play ball. As I said above, whether it works remains to be seen. //

Blue State Deplorable anon-lier
4 hours ago
Yes, “unequal tariffs” make those imports more expensive for American consumption, but they remain cheaper than goods manufactured here. Why? For a lot of reasons. Some of it has to do with the cost of producing in a first world economy, some of it has to do with direct and indirect subsidies that importing manufactures benefit from like Chinese slave labor and the like.

Trump’s view of the world is a little different though. His goal is not higher prices or reduced trade, it’s trade on an equal footing, it’s more manufacturing in America, it’s more good paying American jobs. Could we see higher prices? Possibly, but if real wages go up, it doesn’t necessarily matter.

It’s a complex issue, but I do heed Thomas Sowell’s warning (see above). Make no mistake, Trump’s gambling. It could pay off handsomely, but there could also be severe consequences. //

Outerlimitsfan
6 hours ago edited
Meanwhile Rand Paul is Saying tariffs and protectionist policy was a political disaster for McKinley in 1890. Yes, McKinley(a Congressman) and his party lost badly soon after.

Rand failed to mention though that McKinley later became President in 1896 and reelection for a second term. Rapid economic growth occurred under his protectionist/tariff policies as President. Highest tariffs in U.S. history occurred in late 1800s/early 1900s.

Also Alexander Hamilton and many of the founders supported tariffs and protectionism. //

surfcat50 Outerlimitsfan
6 hours ago
People forget, or may not know, that prior to the constitutional amendment bringing the income tax to life in the US in 1913 (using the same lies then that only “the rich” would pay it), the federal government was funded entirely through duties, excise taxes and . . . TARIFFS.

anon-rjsc
6 hours ago
President Trump’s tariffs are much more than a simple tool to get concessions and/or collect money. He’s setting a new global baseline for international relations. For 40 years, the baseline has been zero US tariffs, high tariffs into other countries, and we impose sanctions when we want countries to change. The new baseline is a bilateral reciprocal tariff. From there, we reward a country AFTER it does something beneficial to us, like lowering their tariffs. This new baseline opens countless opportunities way beyond tariffs.

anon-ai01
3 hours ago
Since Jimmy Carter founded the Dept. of Education in 1978 as a payoff to the teachers' unions for their support, educational achievement for US students has gone from #2 in the world to #40. So many children cannot read. It is a crying shame. Teachers' unions oppose teaching phonics. Returning power to the local level weakens union control. Thank you, Pres. Trump and Sec. McMahon!

Illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped once again in March, plummeting to a historic low, with Border Patrol encountering just over 7,000 for the entirety of March.

Border Czar Tom Homan praised Trump's leadership for achieving a stunning drop in illegal border crossings in a post on X.

“President Trump’s leadership continues to break records! Border Patrol encounters for the month of March were just 7,181 total,” Homan wrote, emphasizing the historic significance of the figures. “I started as a Border Patrol Agent in 1984, which was 41 years ago. I cannot recall a single month since then that the numbers have been that low.”

These numbers represent a sharp contrast to what the country experienced under the Biden administration.

“It’s a far cry from the more than 11,000 [encounters] a day that we saw for a time period under Biden,” Homan noted. //

“The men and women of the Border Patrol have proven what they can accomplish when they are allowed to do their job and complete the mission of their agency,” he said.

It's been evident that the Trump family maintains a close relationship with Don's ex — Vanessa seems to be present at most family events — so it's not surprising to hear the president speak fondly of her. It struck me, though, that he seemed genuinely saddened by the breakup of his son's marriage — and it was fascinating to learn he blames it in part on the Russia collusion hoax. We often speak of it in terms of how it affected Trump himself, but it's easy to look past the impact it had on his family, as well.

What was clear from the exchange is that President Trump genuinely cares about both his former daughter-in-law and Woods. It might just be me, but it seems like in addition to seeing a focused and more disciplined Donald Trump these days, we're also seeing a softer side of him.

The Department of Justice sued Thursday night to decertify labor unions representing eight federal agencies. The lawsuit was in response to President Trump's Executive Order titled Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs. This executive order vastly expanded the number of agencies granted an exception to the right to unionize under Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978;

Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh
·
🚨 Trump just posted this video that pushes for the U.S. to take foothold in Greenland

It goes all the way back to WORLD WAR 2 when the Arctic was targeted by Germany.

"Now is the time to stand together again - for the future. America stands with Greenland."
1:30 / 1:30
2:46 PM · Mar 28, 2025

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1905692867693285730

Trump War Room @TrumpWarRoom
·
White House Chief of Staff @SusieWiles shows @LaraLeaTrump her West Wing office and teases turning her patio into a cigar bar if @POTUS will allow her 🤣👏🏻

9:42 PM · Mar 29, 2025. //

bk
11 hours ago
The Dems blew it. They could have had a second term of Trump 1.0 crippled by covid, but they just HAD to steal the 2020 election. The result is Trump 2.0, who is absolutely running rampant over the deep state. //

Cranky Wine Lady
8 hours ago
It's pretty amazing that the Dems' installation of the cadaver-in-chief puppet president is proving to be the biggest political miscalculation in history. They gifted Trump 4 long years to plan, and he and his crew are kicking the donk's butt every day with a vengeance. It's a beautiful thing to watch. Major h/t to Susie Wiles for managing the speeding Trump train. The fact that you never hear much about her is a testament to her professionalism and expertise. I thought the last 4 years would never end. Now I want this 4 years to last forever. //

D. Roberts
9 hours ago edited
Wiles is good because she has old-fashioned honor, integrity, and a sense of mission. She's not operating out of ego, she's not gathering material for a tell-all memoir, she's not trying to set herself up as a future lobbyest. She just believes in what Trump is trying to do and doing her best to make it happen. And he knows that and trusts her. It's a great relief after the series of failed Chiefs of Staff during Trump 1.0.

Kernen: “Did you call for Lloyd Austin’s resignation? Not only did we lose 13 service members, we left $70 billion worth of equipment that fell into the hands of the Taliban.”

“Couple of years later, he was out of pocket for two weeks and didn’t tell the White House. Did you ask for him to resign at this point?”

Coons: “The fact the Secretary of Defense was getting healthcare is fundamentally different from the Secretary of Defense sharing on an unsecured platform attack plans.”

Kernen: “The point is you’re going to complain about a splinter in one eye and ignore a 2x4 in the other eye.”

In signing the EO, President Trump used the authority granted him by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), which empowered presidents to shape and oversee the federal workforce. We'll see what the judicial branch has to say about that and whether or not they held previous presidents to the same standards. //

Eric Blanc (also at ericblanc. b s k y ) @_ericblanc
Trump's executive order tonight has illegally cancelled union contracts for 67% of the federal workforce & 75% of unionized federal employees — roughly 700,000 union workers

This may be the single biggest attack on the labor movement in American history
10:45 AM · Mar 28, 2025. //

G3
an hour ago
Labor unions came about to protect employees from predatory employers...is the federal government in the habit of mistreating its employees? No? then why should federal employees be unionized...other than to line the pockets of a select few at the top.

Frankly, most unions are worthless - especially the teachers' union. //

NorCalGC SH-2F SCPO
22 minutes ago
My grandfather was a member of the carpenters union. During WW2 he moved to the SF Bay Area to work as a welder in the shipyards. It was a nonunion job. When the war ended he went back to work for the union. After he’d put in his 30 years he went to the union office to get his pension. They told him he wasn’t eligible because his 30 years weren’t consecutive. They screwed him out of his pension. No one in his family has had any use for a union ever since. //

Az-Mt
an hour ago
Congress allocates money for wages and benefits so administration should not negotiate on anything except working conditions. Very little use of unions. Also stop deducting their dues. Make the Union collect them.

And the media was running anonymous stories claiming that Hegseth's colleagues thought he should resign; for instance, Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth's growing pile of mistakes - POLITICO and Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal | CNN Politics.

Pete Hegseth has been targeted for destruction, but he was merely a participant in the chat group. This isn't new. It comes after another failed attempt to claim that Hegseth had briefed Elon Musk on top-secret war plans targeting China.... The question is: Why?

The answer to that, I think, lies in what Hegseth has done since taking the reins at the Pentagon. He has swiftly removed the most problematic military leaders and replaced them with people who support his agenda. He has largely uprooted the massive DEI infrastructure transplanted into the Pentagon during the Obama years and nurtured to maturity under Biden. He has made great strides in focusing the Pentagon on fighting and winning wars. I think the team he is building will begin to repair much of the damage done to the services, particularly the Navy. His willingness to work with DOGE ensures he is making enemies in the right places. As we've noted before, Hegseth is facing a lot of pushback from the status quo in the Department of Defense, and he's not backing down. //

There is no logical reason why Pete Hegseth should resign or be fired over the Signal fiasco, but there is a very logical reason why that blunder is being used to discredit him and try to have him removed. Hegseth is an existential challenge to the left's "long march" through the military. He's taking back ground the left fought hard to gain in turning the military into a giant petrie dish for social experimentation. The team he is putting together holds the promise of being transformative. That is why Pete Hegseth has become the target.

According to numbers compiled by the Harvard Law Review, U.S. District Courts have issued more sweeping injunctions against Trump in the past two months than they have against three former presidents over their entire terms.

Since Jan. 20, lower courts have imposed 15 nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration, compared to what the Harvard Law Review recounts as six over the course of George W. Bush’s eight-year presidency, 12 over the course of Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, and 14 during Joe Biden’s single four-year term.

During his first term, Trump was subjected to 64 nationwide injunctions. If inferior courts continue issuing nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration at the current rate (15 for every two months in office), then the second Trump administration will have accumulated 360 nationwide injunctions by the time the president leaves office—and a grand total of 424 over the course of both of Trump’s terms. However, there have been a total of over 45 rulings or more targeted injunctions leveled against the second Trump administration overall, according to The New York Times. //

The Harvard Law Review’s tally (published in 2024) also noted the increased partisanship of the federal judiciary. Of the six injunctions imposed against Republican Bush, half came from judges appointed by Democrats and half from judges appointed by Republicans. Of the 12 injunctions imposed against Democrat Obama, seven (less than 60%) were issued by judges appointed by Republicans. Of the 64 injunctions Trump’s first Republican administration was slapped with, 92.2% were issued by judges appointed by Democrats. All—100%—of the 14 injunctions issued against Democrat Biden came from Republican-appointed judges. //

The growing use of nationwide injunctions by inferior courts, the prestigious legal journal warned, necessarily has a chilling effect on the development of law and precedent. When several inferior courts of different jurisdictions issue conflicting rulings, the matter often winds up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where a definitive standard is set for addressing similar issues going forward. However, nationwide injunctions halt the continued challenging of executive orders, executive actions, or laws, since, as the Harvard Law Review pointed out, various other inferior courts simply refuse to take up related cases, determining that there can be no demonstration of injury in fact while the nationwide injunctions are in place.