The world does not trade in US dollars, thats a myth. If a Japanese company buys something in Australia, they convert from yen to AUD, they don’t go through the USD. Thats not what “reserve currency” means.

There used to be a thing called the Gold Standard. The amount of gold you had in reserve was linked to the amount of money you could print. The gold standard failed because it was too restrictive.

After WW2, the US proposed that instead of a lump of metal, money creation would be tied to the national economy. The US economy would be the “gold reserve” of the world and all the other currencies woudl be compared to it. The goal was to reduce the amount of foreigners using USD, as this was causing American notes to leak overseas and made inflation difficult to determine.

The Euro is used over a range of economies that are only loosely tied together. Although crude monetary policy like interest rates are common, tax collection is up to individual countries, so the Euro is not a stable value as there are too many variables.

That’s not what happended.

The Supreme Court refused to prosecute Trump (for a blatantly illegal act) and ruled that he was immune to prosecution for “official acts” which they refused to define.

Then they slow walked the case back to a lower court - deliberately - so the determination was not made until after the election.

Then in a state court, Trump was convicted, but the judge delared there was no penalty “because only a federal court could apply punishment”.

Then a couple of days later the DoJ dopped the case because “the president is immune from prosecution”.

The ruling says that any prisoners sent to El Salvador are still under US jurisdiction.

Go and read it this time.

As far as I can find out, there is no constitutional restriction on outsourcing the imprisonment of Americans in foreign countries. This is not deportation.

Australia was founded on the outsourcing of imprisonment of British prisoners, after the US war of Independence when US states refused to continue to take British prisoners.

Garcia was determined to be a refugee because he was a member of an El Salvadorian gang, so there is no likelihood he will be released in El Salvador.

“You need a pen licence because that’s what you use at work”.

Um no. Secretaries, lawyers and journalists used typewriters and engineers used propelling pencils. Builders had these odd rectangular shaped pencils that could write on anything. Fitters and boilermakers used chalk.

Only schoolchildren used biros.

There are 10 Commandments.

No - there’s 14.

And most of them also have sub-commandments, just to confuse it further.

So presumably NASA is anti-science ?

Because they have redetermined that Pluto is a planet.

Yeah but its such a hassle to find, so…

Edison ivented the light bulb in the US. No, it was Tungsram in Hungary. Edison did employ him as a result though. Bell invented the telephone. No, it was Edison labs. Bell stiole the patent from an Italian guy when he was working in the patent office. Philco invented the TV set. Nothing to do with it, it was Edison-Marconi. The CRT controller was invented in the Soviet Union hence the Philco invention story.

Stomach ulcers are caused by stress. Nope.

Alcoholism runs in families. Nope.

Heart disease runs in families. Nope.

You can run Deepseek on a Raspberry Pi.

War and Peace is made up of 42 or something full length novels.

It starts off with two lovers meeting at the man’s house, he joins the army as an officer, they have children, the man rises to become a captain or soemthing, then the Napoleonic War starts, then it follows Napoleans journey from France, through Italy, Austria, eastern Europe and then to his seige of Moscow. The youngest son has now joined the army, and he his keen to join in. The French army are retreating from Moscow, fed up, starving, tired and exhausted, the boy comes up to a band of French stragglers, the French lieutenant, slumped over on his horse, tiredly grabs his sword and slashes blindly behind him, decapitating the boy, his head held on by skin, his horse runs back to the rest of the Russians, where his father is leading.

Then there are 15 more novels after that !

Walmart will benefit because they buy in wholesale and the tariff is applied to the landed price. Amazon has warehuse in the US so Chinese traders can set up operaions in the US and pay the bulk price as well.

eg an item that is $100 on Aliexpress, costs $15.12 per 10,000 on Alibaba. A consumer pays $245, but Walmart pays about $35.

200 to make it a round number. That’s why they increased it from 104 to 125.

Actually you had 3 hours to do it before he changed his mind.

He’ll change it again later today.

Probably will have some delays as the software get updated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of Chinese goods get re-routed through Vietnam or other countries with lower import tariffs.

Most likely they’ll just have is “assembled” (put in a box) in Mexico.

India has 300% tariff on Chinese goods. Everything is still made in China there. US auto workers make $40 an hour, a Chinese autoworker makes $100 a week. Yes there are robots, but they have to be maintained. The difference is the costs of fitters in the US and China is even greater.

There might be a few edge cases where it is cheaper to make in the US ; food processing for example, where the sale price is low and transport is a large proportion, or highly automated things, like making plastic bags or injected moulded stuff like those garden chairs or plastic tanks.

They have to show the invoice from the supplier.

Yes, where the importer is also the manufacturer (such as cars), the factory can sell at a loss and make up the difference onshore. However, then their tax liability is greater. What they usually do is sell via a tax haven, the importer is based in Barbados, pays their supplier below cost, and the onshore distributor then pays the importer more than they sell for, so they make a “loss” for tax purposes. Tax is only liable on profits.

How can they ? Trump has cancelled negotiations.

Anyway, he’ll just change his mind tomorrow. Or sign an agreement and then renege on it.

The minister is also a Conservative MAGA fan. This is the CDP.

The far right in SA/NZ/Australia are pro-EU. That’s why they were so confused about Brexit.

Of course they would be pro-Europe, how could they be anything else ?

How about the deafening silence from the Jewish community.