CPI is Jake -- Inflation rose 0.2% in April for an annual Consumer Price Index of 2.3%, a tick down from March’s CPI of 2.4%, the Labor Department reported. All CPI items less food and energy also rose 0.2% in April for an annual rate of 2.8%. Importers had rushed to ship goods ahead of April 2’s “ Liberation Day,” so price increases from the tariffs are not likely to show up for at least another month, however. CHART: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Flying High – Is a $400 million Boeing 747 “Palace in the Sky” from Qatar a Sky Mile too far? BuzzFeed blared this headline for its top story Monday: “Donald Trump Just Made a Move So Wild That Even His Most Loyal Followers Are Upset.”
That might be a stretch, willful thinking for never-Trumpers, given it was Trump’s most loyal MAGA followers who led the charge to get him back in the White House. Remember, about a year ago, Trumpists were concerned about how he could raise the $454 million+ to pay fines levied in the New York v. Trump fraud case. That 747 would have gone a long way. As if to further highlight this turnaround, Trump on Monday named his attorney from that case, Todd Blanche, as the new librarian of Congress, replacing the first Black person and first woman in that role, Carla Hayden, fired last week just short of the close of her 10-year appointment, for being too DEI.
Tuesday, Trump arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to a “lavish welcome” according to NPR. The president’s four-day Middle East visit will include Qatar – of course – and the United Arab Emirates, which with Saudi Arabia will “invest great sums of cash into the US economy and get a more engaged Washington in return,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
The trip skips a stop in Israel, a “glaring miss” according to the WSJ, but a slight that New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman lauded Sunday under the headline, “This Israeli Government is Not Our Ally.”
Back to Air Force One; Fox News über-host Sean Hannity accompanied President Trump on his trip to the Middle East. Elon Musk is there as well.
Laura Loomer? Probably not. Back in the US Trump’s racist, far-right confidant of late said this about the Qatar 747 (which is to go to the Trump presidential library after he leaves office, presumably in 2029): “How are we supposed to ever see the US under the Trump administration designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, if the US is now going to accept a $400 million jet from Qatar to fly the US President and his staff around on?”
Her objection was reported by Fox News Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz, who concluded; “If you’ve lost Loomer, you’re losing the argument.”
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Correction – There were 59 Afrikaners aboard the chartered jet that carried them from South Africa to Washington, where they were the first immigrants granted protected status by the Trump administration, 10 more than we reported on Monday.
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And Apology – Also on Monday, we noted that the Chinese are “not importing much in terms of vital goods from the US,” and that’s plain incorrect. American farmers continue to count on exporting crops to China as a significant part of their business, so the freeze on China’s 125% tariff on US goods (cut back to 10% for 90 days) is indeed significant. But our point stands that it is Xi Jinping and not the Trump administration that is winning the deal, so far.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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Another Tariff Pause
MONDAY 5/12/25
Drugs -- President Trump signed an executive order Monday he says will cut the price of prescription drugs in the United States by 30% to 80%. Calling it a ‘most-favored nation’ policy, he told a press conference “whoever’s paying the lowest price, that’s what we’re going to pay.”
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Chinese Tariffs Cut to 30%, For Now -- The White House announced a 90-day pause in its trade war with China overnight after what it calls successful negotiations between Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese trade officials in Geneva, Switzerland, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. Beginning Wednesday the US tariff of 145% on Chinese imports will be 30% for at least the next 90 days, while Chinese tariffs will be cut from about 125% on US imports down to 10%.
Bessent promises more US-China trade meetings likely in the “next few weeks,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
But where negotiations will go from there are unclear. China simply is not importing much in terms of vital goods from the US, while Trump administration tariffs on Chinese imports have already contributed to a reported 35% drop in shipments into US ports, on everything from Walmart and Amazon shipments on down.
Small businesses dependent on Chinese-produced imports are laying off employees and dipping into savings to ride out the tariff roller-coaster, according to a WSJ business feature. One example according to the newspaper is the US company Think Tank, which markets watches, watch bands and medical jewelry and had a recent UPS shipment from China with tariffs as high as 161% per item, adding $8,752 to a $5,649 order.
The Trump White House will have a good day on Wall Street Monday, however, as stock futures were up sharply ahead of the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell.
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Trump Travels to Gulf States – No, not the Gulf of Mexico – or America – but to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates where he will work deals on oil and trade, investment into the US, the conflicts in Gaza (Trump is not stopping in Israel), and negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program, The Guardian reports. This, his second trip as Trump 47 (after Pope Francis’ funeral in Vatican City) is a repeat of his first foreign trip as Trump 45 in 2017.
“He wants a big, successful visit, and those are countries where he’ll be received in grand style,” an ex-US official told Politico in exchange for anonymity. “It’ll be carefully choreographed, there won’t be any public protests.”
Plane deal … Meanwhile, Qatar is set to give Trump a luxury Boeing 747 for use as Air Force One, and then for his personal use when he leaves the White House, The New York Times and ABC News scooped Sunday.
Democrats say such a gift must be approved by Congress, NPR reports, and of course Trump Truth Socialed about it thusly Sunday night: “So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!!”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has lately taken on the role of Trump-style Democratic attack dog, responded on X-Twitter: “This isn’t a good idea even if the plane was being donated to the US government. But Trump GET TO KEEP THE PLANE??? It’s simply a cash payment to Trump in exchange for favors. Just wildly illegal.”
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Right Kind of Immigrants? – The Trump administration’s immigration policy has kept out virtually all Black immigrants, the South African author and founder of progressive Afrikans publication Vrye Weekblad, Max Dupreez, told the BBC Monday as 49 white Afrikaners were about to land in Washington under protective immigration stays. The Afrikaners getting special treatment by the Trump White House are claiming discrimination by the post-apartheid South African government, even as white people own more than half the nation’s land and make up just 7.3% of the population.
Dupreez said that white South African native Elon Musk – who says he is not an Afrikaner but is of British/English lineage – has his hands all over the protective immigration stay.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa