Trump To Slap $16 Billion In New Tariffs On Chinese Imports Starting August 23

Completing the latest round of tariffs pledged against China, the US Trade Representative announced on Tuesday (after the close of course) it will impose 25% tariffs on $16 billion-worth of Chinese imports starting August 23. The new round of tariffs completes Trump's previously disclosed threat to impose $50 billion of import taxes on Chinese goods. The first $34 billion-worth went into effect on July 6th.

According to the USTR statement, customs will collect duties on 279 product lines, down from 284 items on the initial list; as Bloomberg notes, this will be the second time the U.S. slaps duties on Chinese goods in about the past month, overruling complaints by American companies that such moves will raise business costs, tax US consumers and raise prices.

On July 6, the U.S. levied 25% duties on $34 billion in Chinese goods prompting swift in-kind retaliation from Beijing.

Of course, China will immediately retaliate, having vowed before to strike back again, dollar-for-dollar, on the $16 billion tranche.

The biggest question is whether there will be a far bigger tariff in the near future: as a reminder, the USTR is currently also reviewing 10% tariffs on a further $200 billion in Chinese imports, and may even raise the rate to 25%. Those tariffs could be implemented after a comment period ends on Sept. 5. President Donald Trump has suggested he may tax effectively all imports of Chinese goods, which reached more than $500 billion last year.

Over the weekend, Trump boasted that he has the upper hand in the trade war, while Beijing responded through state media by saying it was ready to endure the economic fallout. Judging by the US stock market, which has risen by $1.3 trillion since Trump launched his trade war with China, which has crushed the Shanghai Composite, whose recent drop into a bear market has been duly noted by Trump, the US president is certainly ahead now, even if the market's inability, or unwillingness, to push US stocks lower has led many traders and analysts to scratch their heads.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-07/trump-slap-16-billion-tariffs-chinese-imports-starting-august-23

Anyway in another prime example of blaming Trump for what (((they))) do

Former Obama official says Trump wants an uneducated workforce due to his ‘authoritarian tendencies’

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested that President Donald Trump is intentionally harming the American education system in order to institute an authoritarian government on Thursday.

Duncan told CNN, “I’m not sure President Trump wants to have the best-educated workforce. I think it doesn’t play to his authoritarian tendencies.”

Duncan’s comments are the latest in a string of criticisms he’s lobbed toward the current administration.

How’s that?

While out promoting his new book, Duncan has taken a number of opportunities to criticize the leadership of both the president and current Education Secretary head Betsy DeVos.

Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Duncan talked about how the education system “runs on lies.”

The toughest lie, he said, is that “we say we value kids and we’ve raised a generation of young people teens who have been raised on mass shootings and gun violence. And that simply doesn’t happen in other nations.”

The former secretary went on to tell host Margaret Brennan that he feels “a huge sense of urgency” to fix the U.S. education system.

“We have got to get better, faster as a nation,” he said. “We’re not top 10 in anything.”

Duncan then criticized DeVos, saying she doesn’t understand some basic concepts of education policy.

When pressed to explain further, Duncan said of DeVos, “You probably saw in the news — for me it was just a crazy metaphor — that about a week ago her yacht was found adrift. $40 million yacht just out there. For me that sort of represents where they are in terms of education policy. There isn’t one.”

Anything else?

The name of Duncan’s book is “How Schools Work,” and is being published by Simon & Schuster, which is a division of CBS Corporation. A review published in the Chicago Tribune last week proclaimed, “Arne Duncan’s ‘How Schools Work’ is really about politics.”

Duncan hasn’t been afraid to wade into public discourse in the past, either. Last year, he joined former assistant education secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, in writing an op-ed slamming the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw guidance on bathroom access for transgender students.

The title of the piece was “The White House’s thoughtless, cruel and sad rollback of transgender rights.”

Secretary Duncan served under President Barack Obama from 2009-15, following his tenure as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/08/07/former-obama-official-says-trump-wants-an-uneducated-workforce-due-to-his-authoritarian-tendencies

Rodrigo Duterte threatens to kill corrupt police officers

Philippine president tells dozens of policemen that they will be ‘watched for mistakes’

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has threatened to kill corrupt police officers, including those accused of involvement in illegal drugs and other crimes, in an expletives-laden encounter on live TV.

More than 100 policemen, many of them facing administrative and criminal complaints including rape, kidnapping and robbery, were escorted to the presidential palace to meet Duterte, police officials said.

The national police, which the president once called “corrupt to the core”, have been undergoing an internal cleansing since his crackdown on illegal drugs last year, due to reports of abuses. Duterte later allowed them to rejoin drug raids, partly because the small lead anti-narcotics agency lacks personnel and firepower to quell the drug menace.

“If you’ll stay like this, son of a bitch, I will really kill you,” Duterte told the policemen in the dressing-down broadcast by local TV networks.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/rodrigo-duterte-threatens-to-kill-corrupt-police-officers

Mattis calls space a ‘developing war zone,’ mulls creating combatant command before Space Force

US Defense Secretary James Mattis says the Pentagon agrees with President Donald Trump on viewing space as a possible battlefield and is considering setting up a combatant command until the Space Force can be created.

“We need to address space as a developing war-fighting domain, and a combatant command is certainly one thing that we can establish,” Mattis told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the Pentagon is “in complete alignment” with Trump’s concerns about protecting US assets in space.

“We’re going to have to address it as other countries show a capability to attack those assets,” the secretary added.

Trump issued a directive in June to begin preparations for creating the Space Force as a separate branch of the US military, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. Doing so will ultimately require an act of Congress, however.

“We are working our way through all this,” Mattis said. “The vice president is kind-of the point man for the president on this, we are working daily with his office and with supporters on Capitol Hill and the relevant committees.”

Though Mattis was opposed to the idea of setting up a space force last year, he seems to have come around to Trump’s viewpoint that space “is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air, and sea.”

America’s way of life is dependent on space, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told CBS News last month. “If we lose the GPS signal, there are no inner bank transfers, that means there will be no milk in the grocery stores, our way of life shuts down, and that’s why hostile countries around the world are taking action to make these capabilities vulnerable for the USA,” he added.

Current Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has pointed to China’s 2007 use of a guided missile to destroy a satellite in orbit as a potential threat to 77 US military satellites currently orbiting the earth.

“The United States is determined to protect our capability on orbit, we’re going to defend ourselves, and we’re developing the capability to do that,” Wilson said at an event hosted by the Washington Post last month.

Setting up a space force as a separate service branch won’t do much good without a combatant command, Wilson’s predecessor, Deborah Lee James, argued at a Brookings Institute event.

“A military service trains, organizes, and equips, it doesn’t war fight. The combatant commands do the war fight,” James said.

The comments from Mattis on Tuesday seem to indicate the Pentagon is looking at setting up a command first, while continuing to push the launch of Space Force through the bureaucratic channels of Washington.

"We'll get it right. We'll work it through the Congress. We have the direction from the president and we're underway,” Mattis said.

The US currently has six geographic (Africa, Europe, Central, Northern, Southern, Into-Pacific) and four functional combatant commands (Cyber, Strategic, Special Operations and Transportation).

https://www.rt.com/usa/435364-space-command-mattis-trump/

>>2500528

Senate Democrats Are Circulating Plans For Government Takeover Of The Internet

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-07/senate-democrats-are-circulating-plans-government-takeover-internet

>>2501056

MAGA IS Q IS MAGA IS Q IS MEGA

WWG1WGA