Month: June 2025

Paleontology News for May 2025. 

Three interesting stories about ancient life have come to my attention so I thought I’d pass them along. As usual I’ll begin with the oldest and move forward in time.

Like any good story the history of life should be told from start to finish. To have some idea of where we’re going, we need to understand where we’ve come from! (Credit: th.bing.com)

In fact I have something of a personal interest in my first story because I have met all of the principle scientists involved in the new research. The research concerns Tiktaalik roseae, a middle Devonian aged fish, about 375 million years ago, which is our best guess at being the first fish to climb out of water and walk on land. T roseae was first discovered back in 2004 on Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north by paleontologists Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences along with Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago.

The actual fossil of Tiktaalik rosae (r) with a reconstruction (l), inset map shows where in Canada’s far north the fossil was unearthed. (Credit: Understanding Evolution)

Referring to the image below T roseae is a flat-headed fish with large, muscular ‘lobe fins’. It is thought that T roseae lived in shallow, muddy streams and bogs and used its muscular fins to crawl along the bottom. It is also thought that during dry periods the fish could use those fins to crawl out of an isolated, evaporating mud hole and propel itself to a larger body of water. That’s what makes T roseae the first vertebrate creature to walk on land.

The first specimens of T rosae consisted of only the front half of the animal, notice how the above illustration doesn’t show much of the back. Because of this it was thought that on land Tiktaalik mostly flopped along on its two muscular front flippers. (Credit: Futurity.org)

Now the first specimens of T roseae to be unearthed and analyzed were only partial skeletons of the animal’s front, the head to just past the front fins. Based on those fossils T roseae was described as having a strong, muscular rib cage with ‘shoulder like’ bones connecting to the front fin bones. The rear half of T roseae was expected to be more fishlike with a backbone comprised of a series of identical vertebrae. T roseae’s power to walk, whether on land or on a stream bottom was thought to come from the front fins.

The latest fossil remains of T rosae brought back three years ago. This specimen clearly shows that Tiktaalik’s rear fins are every bit as muscular as its front fins. (Credit: Eberly College of Science – Penn State University)

Three years ago however the researchers made another expedition up to Canada’s Artic regions and brought back several new, more complete specimens of T roseae. The new specimens have now been cleaned and analyzed by Thomas Stewart of Penn State University. Using high-resolution mico-CT scans Stewart was for the first time able to see the rear portion of T roseae and discovered bones that were different from normal vertebrae, bones which were connected to the bones of the rear fins. In other words, the bones formed a kind of early version of a pelvis, a kind of bony structure no modern fish has!

Paleontologist Thomas Stewart of the Pennsylvania State University. (Credit: Eberly College of Science – Penn State)

This finding makes T roseae look like it was even more capable of spending brief periods of time on land than before. With rear fins that could also supply power T roseae may have walked further and perhaps even lifted itself up onto its four ‘proto-legs’ in order to get a better look around.

According to the latest fossil finds this is a more accurate representation of Tiktaalik walking across the land. (Credit: Cosmos Magazine)

Tiktaalik may have been the first vertebrate to walk on land but millions of years before that the arthropods had already adapted to life out of the water. Then as now arthropods were the most populous and diverse of the all of the kinds of animals on Earth. Throughout our planet’s history they have evolved into a bewildering array of creatures.

There is simply no other group of animals as diverse as the arthropods. (Credit: Exploringnature.org)

Perhaps the most successful of all of the arthropods is the common ant, which is itself a misnomer because there are an estimated 100,000 different species of ant as the animals have adapted to nearly all of our planet’s environments. Ants are of course social animals, related to both bees and wasps, all of which are thought to have evolved from a wasp like ancestor more than 100 million years ago.

Ant colonies can be very large and complex structures. How such tiny creatures, with equally tiny brains ever live in, let alone construct such structures is a big question. (Credit: Britannica Kids)

Just what part of the world ants first appeared has been a contentious issue with the oldest known specimens of ant coming from France and Myanmar indicating that ants evolved in the northern hemisphere. Those fossils were dated to just about 100 million years ago. Collectively those early ants are known as ‘Hell Ants’ because they possessed large, fearsome mandibles capable of ripping apart other insects.

Encased in amber of millions of years a ‘Hell Ant’ is using its powerful mandibles to chow down on another insect. These ants were the first type of ant to evolve about 100 million years ago. (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)

Now a new specimen of Hell ant has been discovered in Brazil from geologic strata dated to 113 million years ago by paleontologists at the University of São Paulo. This new specimen not only pushes back the evolution of ants by 13 million years but now suggests that they evolved in the southern hemisphere on the ancient super continent of Gondwana. Whether this new specimen, which has been named Vulcanidris cratensis will remain the oldest known ant remains to be seen, but you can be certain that paleontologists will keep searching for more specimens.

One of the Hell Ant specimens found in Brazil. Are these the first ants ever to evolve or will some other paleontologist find even earlier specimens? That’s always the question. (Credit: Sci.News)

My final story today concerns everybody’s favourite candidate for the most fearsome beast of all time, Tyrannosaurus rex or T rex for short. As arguably the best known extinct animal ever you won’t be surprised to know that paleontologists are working hard to not only learn all the can about T rex as a species but about T rex’s ancestors as well.

Everybody’s favourite bad boy the T rex may have been the top predator of all time. (Credit: St. Louis Science Center)

As to T rex itself, it appears that the species was confined to the continent of North America. Of the dozens of T rex fossils unearthed to date all have come from North America and most from the western part of the continent. So, it appears certain that the species T rex evolved here in North America but were its ancestors also native to our continent?

About 70 million years ago a large amount of North America was under water in the ‘Western Interior Seaway’. Fossils of T rex have only ever been found in the western land mass called Laramidia. (Credit: The Cretaceous Atlas)

Not so according to a new survey of previous discoveries conducted by researchers at the Universities of Oxford, Pittsburgh, Aberdeen, Arizona, Anglia Ruskin, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Surveying the basic characteristics of all known late cretaceous theropod dinosaurs the paleontologists concluded that the ‘grandfather’ species for T rex arrived in North America from Asia via a land bridge connecting Alaska to Siberia. (Sounds like same path by which we think the original Native Americans came to North America.)

Many times over the last 100 million years sea levels dropped and a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia became passable. It is thought that such a land bridge allowed the Native Americans to reach the western hemisphere. Did the ancestors of T rex do the same thing? (Credit: National Park Service)

   Another factor the scientists studied is why the tyrannosaurids and the closely related megaraptors came to dominate the late cretaceous period. About 92 million years ago, a period known as the cretaceous thermal maximum, the top predator slot was held by a group of theropods known as the carchrodontosaurids.

Before T rex the top predators were a group of related theropod dinosaurs called Carchrodontosaurids. (Credit: Reddit)

After that period of time there was a worldwide cooling of Earth’s temperature so the paleontologists theorize that the tyrannosaurids and megaraptors had some physiological advantage, possibly feathers or warm bloodiness, that allowed them to better adapt to the cooler climate. So it was that after the thermal maximum that the tyrannosaurids in the northern hemisphere and the megaraptors in the southern grew to the enormous size that makes them the killer dinosaur par excellence.

Call me an Illegal Alien will ya. Waddaya gonna do about it? (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

One thing about the study worries me however, if the original tyrannosaurids came from Asia, without a visa, I just hope Trump doesn’t find out that they’re illegal aliens. On the other hand I think that I’d love to see Trump try to deport a Tyrannosaurus rex!

Space news for June 2025: Is it just me or does it Seem like Politics is Creeping into Everything? 

Frequent readers of this blog know that ‘Space News’ is probably my most common topic and they have come to expect stories about space missions and spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, past, present and future. Not this time however because thanks to Trump’s determination to screw up every department of our government the big news about space this month all deals with politics and budgets.

Is it just me or does it seem like all our wonderful leaders do anymore is fight each other! (Credit: Southwest Times Record)

Trump wants another big tax cut for himself and his billionaire buddies, a tax cut that is estimated to add more than another $3 Trillion dollars to our national debt. The sheer recklessness of this plan has already caused the credit agency Moody’s to downgrade our nation’s credit rating from its triple ‘A’ position and Moody’s was the last of the big credit agencies to give US bonds such a high rating. In order to minimize the increase to the deficit somewhat Republicans in congress are searching high and low for cuts that they can make in federal spending. They can’t cut back on Social Security or Medicare, that would be political suicide, and Trump actually wants to increase the military budget so every other government agency is being targeted for massive cutbacks.

Along with all of these provisions Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill includes cuts to almost every government department, including NASA. (Credit: ABC News)

That includes NASA. A proposed budget for the space agency in 2026 has been released and it contains a overall reduction of nearly 20% in NASA’s resources, much of which will come from the science budget. Overall NASA’s budget would drop from its current $25 billion to less than $20 billion but the science budget, the best part, the part of NASA that has achieved the most notable discoveries over the last twenty-five years, would see its budget slashed from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion.

NASA’s budget is divided into several categories. The biggest cuts planned by the Trump Administration would be to the Science section. In other words, the fun stuff! (Credit: The Planetary Society)

Specific details include cutting the astrophysics budget by two thirds to $487 million and the heliophysics budget by even more to just $455 million. Earth science would see its funding cut in half to $1.033 billion and planetary science would suffer a thirty percent drop to $1.929 billion. Fortunately most existing science programs like the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes along with the Mars rover Perseverance and Parker Solar Probe would continue to be funded, all be it at a lower level.

While both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes would see their budgets cut other planned space telescopes, like the Nancy Grace Roman, would be cut entirely! (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

Not so new programs like the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope and the Mars Sample Return (MSR), which could be canceled entirely. This is especially bad for the Nancy Grace Roman telescope, which has finished construction and is now undergoing testing in preparation for a scheduled launch as early as 2026. Any missions beyond that, for example proposed helicopters for both Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan probably won’t even get off of the drawing board because there simple won’t be any money to fund them.

The success of the little Mars ‘copter Ingenuity has inspired NASA to start planning bigger, more autonomous helicopters for both Mars and Saturn’s Moon Titan. Those plans will be dead in the water if Trump gets his way! (Credit: Science Alert)

How much these budget cuts will effect manned missions remains to be seen, but you can bet that there won’t be an increase over the number that are currently planned. At the moment NASA still intends to continue to man the International Space Station (ISS) until it is de-orbited in the year 2030 and to proceed with the Artemis Lunar program at a rate of about one mission per year. In fact Lockheed-Martin has recently delivered the Mission 2 Orion manned capsule to NASA for a possible mission in early 2026.

The Orion capsule for the Artemis mission 2 has completed construction and is now undergoing testing. But will it ever actually fly? (Credit: Space)

However it must be remembered that Elon Musk, the head of Trump’s Department Of Government Efficiency or DOGE, who just happens to be the CEO of Space X, has publicly declared that the ISS should be de-orbited as soon as possible. There are also rumours that Trump will cancel the Space Launch System (SLS), the big and very expensive rocket that will take the Artemis astronauts to the Moon, immediately after the mission that actually puts Americans back on the Moon. That would be just like Trump, he’d make a big deal about how he was the one who got us back to the Moon and then cancel any further missions, goodbye lunar base!

NASA had hoped that this time once we got to the Moon we’d stay there, eventually building a Lunar Base. Again Trump’s cuts will make that dream impossible. (Credit: en.wikipedia.com)

And now Trump and Elon have had a big bust up over Musk’s criticism of how the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will add more than three trillion dollars to the nation’s debt. Like a pair of immature children the two have been trading insults and threats including Trump’s to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts, which would leave NASA with no way to get its astronauts to the ISS. And don’t forget that Space X is also building the Lunar lander for the Artemis program. Canceling that contract would leave NASA without a vehicle to actually put astronauts on the Moon’s surface.

Children say nasty things about each other behind the other’s back. Trump and Musk do it on Twitter. Not much difference really! (Credit: The New York Times)

The exploration of space requires long-term planning and financial commitment, which is difficult to do when you’re at the mercy of politicians who are incapable of thinking past the next election. And now we are strapped with a president whose attention span is that of a five year old. All of which makes it a good bet that the next person to set foot on the Moon will be Chinese!

It’s your choice America. We’re ahead right now but China is catching up. (Credit: The Conversation)

Speaking of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope the spacecraft has completed its assembly and is now undergoing final testing, including shock and thermal testing in a giant vacuum chamber. The testing is taking place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which is also slated to be closed due the budget cuts discussed above. Once the testing is completed the Space Telescope will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center where it will be prepared for a launch as soon as late fall of next year, 2026. Assuming of course, it doesn’t just get canceled after all of the money that’s already been spent on it!

Named for the astronomer who convinced NASA to build the Hubble Space Telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study Dark Energy while at the same time search for exo-planets. It has completed construction and is currently undergoing testing but Trump’s budget would cancel its launch, wasting all of the money that’s already been spent on it! (Credit: Space)

One final note, which probably also has something to do with the budget cuts is that as of June 12th NASA will no longer be supporting its ‘Spot the Station’ website! For several decades now the information available on this website has enabled people from around the World to experience something of space exploration as they watched the ISS fly across the sky.

This is what NASA’s ‘Spot the Station’ website used to look like, giving all of the details you needed to be able to watch the ISS as it traveled overhead. No more, it site is gone now and although you can download the app for your phone it’s just one less way our kids can learn about the Universe above their heads! (Credit: Research Parent)

Well no longer, the website will be closed as of June 12th. NASA plans to continue their mobile app so you can still get the information you need to watch the ISS pass overhead but let’s be honest, we should have more ways to get people, especially young people interested in space and science. Instead, we’ll now have one less way!

Climate Change and the increasing number of Weather related Disasters: June 2025.

The last two years, 2023 and 2024 have been simply the hottest years ever recorded for our planet with last year being so hot that the planet as a whole broke the 1.5ºC above pre-Industrial averages limit that scientists are convinced will bring on worldwide disasters. In fact every month since July of 2023 has been hotter than 1.5ºC above the world’s average for that month during the 19th Century. This year the world’s temperature was expected to moderate slightly as an El-Ninó condition in the Pacific has been replaced by a La Niná but the steady rise in temperature due to our continued emissions of greenhouse gasses means that 2025 will still be hot, just hopefully not as hot as 2024.

It’s easy to see why scientists like to compare our rising temperatures to those of the 19th Century. The last ten years have in fact been the hottest ever recorded and that trend is certain to continue. (Credit: New York Times)


Nevertheless 2025 has already had its share of weather related disasters, from the wildfires that swept Los Angeles to major flooding events to severe outbreaks of Tornadoes. Hurricane season is just beginning, and this year is expected to be a busy one, but already the US has suffered from numerous episodes of severe weather strengthened by climate change.
The year was only a few days old when the first disaster suddenly struck in the form of a series of wildfires that broke out in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. Within hours two of the fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires had destroyed hundreds of homes and would go on burning for weeks destroying a total of more than 18,000 structures. The total damage caused by the LA fires as a whole has been estimated to be somewhere between $35 and $45 Billion dollars making it the third costliest natural disaster in US history after only Hurricanes Katrina ($102 Billion) and Ian ($56 Billion).

Southern California is usually a raher dry region but the drought that started in 2024 was the worst ever, fueling the LA fires of January 2025
Just Two of the thousands of homes destroyed by the January fires in LA. (Credit: Phys.org)

Now LA has often the location for wildfires as its long dry summers cause vegetation in the nearby hills to die and the Santa Ana winds from the north both fuel and spread whatever flames get started. The extreme severity of this year’s fires however were undoubtedly due to climate change as last summer’s heat and drought set records throughout the southwestern US. Even the strength of the Santa Ana winds was above average, helping to spread the fires further and faster than in other years. The added strength of those winds is again likely due to climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The LA Fires weren’t just a single fire but a series of blazes of the outlying areas north and west of LA. (Credit:CERT-LA)


Then, starting in April it was the middle of the country’s turn as a series of severe storms caused destruction from Texas in the south to Illinois in the north, from Colorado in the west to Georgia in the east. Springtime in those areas often brings strong storms and tornadoes as warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moves north and runs headlong into dry, cool air coming down from Canada. That’s why the plains states are known as tornado alley.
Thanks to global warming however the both the water and the air of the Gulf set records for high temperatures last year leading to increased ocean evaporation that supercharged with moisture the air before it moves north. With record amounts of both water vapour and energy this year’s storms have triggered massive flooding and catastrophic winds, both tornado and straight line, that have been causing destruction on an almost daily basis.

At one point on the 16 of March there were 29 Tornado warnings at the same time across the Midwest. (Credit: Weather Channel)


The twin calamities of tornado winds and rising floodwaters can even leave people not knowing how to protect themselves. Think about it, in a tornado warning you are supposed to get underground for protection but in a flash flood warning you need to get as high up as possible. What do you do when both warnings are issued for your location at the same time? This is something that has happened over a hundred times so far this year.

The city of Little Rock was being subjected to massive flooding at the same time as tornado warnings were being issued. What would you do in the situation? (Credit: KGW)


There was flooding up and down the Mississippi valley in early April along with numerous Tornadoes and other severe weather. (Credit: Weather Channel)

From the 3rd to the 6th of April a series of storms lashed the Mississippi valley leading to numerous flood and tornado warnings. The flooding was responsible for more than eight deaths while hundreds if not thousands of homes were damaged. Then, just a little more than a month later on the 15th and 16th of May another series of storms unleashed dozens of powerful tornadoes. One tornado moved through the city of St. Louis killing 5 and destroying over 5,000 structures. Another tornado struck the town of London, Kentucky killing 18. While those days may have seen the greatest number and intensity of tornadoes so far this year nearly every day since March there has been a handful of tornado and severe storm warnings issued by the National Weather Service.

The statistics on the tornado that struck London, Kentucky on the 16th of May killing 18 people. (Credit: Weather Channel)


Meanwhile to the north fire season in Canada is well underway with over a hundred and thirty wildfires burning over eight million acres of forest, an area greater than the size of the state Delaware. Those same winds that triggered the tornadoes are now also bringing the smoke from those fires south into the US impacting the health of millions of people. Because of this air quality alerts have now joined tornado warnings, flash flood warnings and severe weather threats as a daily occurrence somewhere in this country.

The smoke from the massive fires in Canada is coming across the border into the US no matter what the politicians say about illegal immigration! (Credit: The New York Times)


Now we have the start of Hurricane season, and again this year is forecast to be above average. Not that that means wildfire season or tornado season is over. We could easily have forests burning out west and up north at the same time that tornadoes are ravaging the middle of the country all while hurricanes are slamming into the Gulf or Atlantic coasts.

The number and intensity of the Canadian wildfires is unprecedented for this early in the year. Makes you wonder how bad it’s going to get in the next few months! (Credit: Weather Channel)


Global warming caused by our emissions of greenhouse gasses is making the entire world hotter and heat is a form of energy, a particularly violent form of energy. If we don’t stop it it’s only going to get worse.

Trump’s Tariffs. 

This is going to be something of a wild post because, let’s face it Trump’s tariff policy has been both incomprehensible and chaotic. The imposition of massive excise duties on virtually every product from every foreign nation one day and then soon afterwards the announcement of a general pause in the implementation of those tariffs, except on China, which three days later got some exceptions, which are only temporary, has left everyone’s head spinning.

Trump’s on again, off again tariff policy has businesspersons around the world going nuts trying to keep up with what’s going on today let alone try and plan for the future! (Credit: Fisher College of Business)

Such confusion has generated a great deal of uncertainty and confusion in the business community in general and the stock markets in particular with all of the major markets losing more than 10% of their value within just a few days, and then regaining much of it back. Over a two day period the New York and NASDAQ exchanges lost over $6 trillion dollars, most of which was soon regained. However, the markets have been plagued by volatility ever since.

Mommy, look at what I did! Trump always has to make a big show about everything just like a little five-year-old wanting attention. That’s true even when what he’s doing is really a big screw up! (Credit: Wikipedia)
A four to five percent drop in one day. Wall Street’s reaction to Trump’s Tariffs was so bad that he was immediately forced to pull back on his plans. (Credit: YouTube)

Now Trump made no secret of his love of tariffs, on the campaign trail he repeatedly claimed that tariffs were his favourite word and asserted that they would be a key element of his plans to ‘Make America Great Again’. Problem is that Trump simply doesn’t understand tariffs, let alone possess any idea of the correct way to use them, see my post of 5 October 24. Trump still insists that it’s the companies in other countries that pay the cost of the tariffs but they just don’t. In actual fact it’s the import firms, usually American companies that pay a tariff fee when a foreign product physically crosses the US border, and those companies almost always pass that cost along to the consumer here in the states.

So bad are Trump’s economic policies that Wall Street has given him the name ‘TACO’ meaning ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’. (Credit: Medium)

The whole purpose of a tariff is to make foreign products more expensive than their American equivalents therefore making American products more attractive to consumers. By making domestic products comparatively cheaper tariffs enable American industries to grow stronger. Because of this the very idea of putting tariffs on things that we don’t make here in the US, like bananas, mangoes or coffee beans, is simply stupid. Strong evidence that Donald Trump is simply stupid.

Since the US produces neither Bananas nor Avocados a tariff on them would simply hurt the businesses involved, both foreign and domestic, without helping any American business! (Credit: My Fearless Foodie)

Anyway, let’s see if I can recount the whole imbecilic tale of tariffs, reciprocal tariffs, market collapses, tariff pauses and exceptions and etc. With all of the ups and downs and conflicting signals from the White House I’ll bet that I get a few things wrong but hopefully I’ll remember all of the high points, or should I say low points.

Somebody ought to tell this the Trump! (Credit: Pondering Life)

Trump began his trade war almost as soon as he got back into office, quickly putting a 20% tariff on everything that we import from China. He then claimed that the US-Mexico-Canada-Trade Agreement (USMCTA) was ripping off our country. (I guess he forgot that he himself had negotiated the USMCTA) So he imposed a 25% tariff on selected goods from our two neighbors like automobiles, lumber and garden produce. (Again, US farmers grow very few avocadoes so putting a tariff on them is simply stupid) Canada and Mexico quickly responded in kind and the possibility of a trade war with two of our biggest trading partners caused Wall Street to decline.

Trump was all smiles when he signed the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement in 2020. Now he’s claiming that out neighbors are using it to ‘Rip Us Off’. Well, who’s fault is that????? (Credit: Border Assembly)

In just a couple of days Wall Street had given back all of the gains that it had made since Trump was elected back in November while at the same time consumer confidence saw a significant drop. Some economists were already suggesting that the tariffs could trigger a recession, although the White House guaranteed that there would be no recession.

The practical definition of a recession is two or more quarters of negative growth in our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We’ve already had one quarter in the first three months of 2025 so are we already in a recession! We’ll know in July! (Credit: Oberlo)

It was on Wednesday the second of April that Trump finally announced his reciprocal tariffs, retribution he claimed for those countries that had been ‘ripping us off’ for decades. Apparently every country on Earth has been ripping us off because the long list of tariffs included every nation on Earth along with Heard Island and McDonald Islands off of Antarctica whose only permanent inhabitants are penguins and seals.

The only inhabitants of Heard and McDonald Islands are Penguins. I guess they’ll pay Trump’s Tariffs in cuteness! (Credit: Yahoo)

At first the amount of the tariffs each country would have to pay seemed to make no sense to either economists or the media so the White House released a complex mathematical formula that they claimed to have used to calculate the tariff percentage that each country would pay. Although the tariffs are called reciprocal the formula does not in fact include the tariffs or trade restrictions that other countries impose on goods from the US. In essence the formula is just engineered to eliminate the trade deficit that the US has with that nation. The amounts of the tariffs were so large that anyone who understood the economy at all knew that they would simply kill international trade and drive the US into a deep recession if not worse.

Trump claims that his tariffs are ‘reciprocal’ meaning they are in response to the tariffs other counties put on US goods but are really designed to eliminate the trade deficit we have with those countries whether it’s fair or not. (Credit: Axios)

In response on the third and forth of April the markets reacted as if they had fallen off of a cliff, all the major exchanges were down by 10% or more. Over the weekend that followed the White House tried to calm the fears of Wall Street by insisting that in the long run the tariffs would make the US economy stronger. Trump himself told the nation that the tariffs were medicine for what ailed the US and that medicine doesn’t always taste good.

Like a child Trump refuses to accept the medicine that tariffs simply won’t achieve the results he expects them to. (Credit: GoodRx)

The markets weren’t listening and continued their decline so that on the ninth of April, just hours after the new tariffs had actually taken effect Trump issued a 90 day pause on all except the tariffs on China. Trump had backed down in the face of Wall Street losses but the White House couldn’t admit to that. Even as they tried to explain Trump’s retreat administration officials couldn’t agree on the reason for the pause because while trade advisor Peter Navarro and press secretary Karoline Leavitt were claiming that this had been the strategy all along Trump himself admitted that he did it because investors were afraid. Remember that, it was the Wall Street investors who were afraid, not him.

Trump likes to portray himself as a strong, fearless leader but in reality, he always backs down and often is known for hiding from a confrontation. (Credit: Redbubble)

Meanwhile China had decided that it would impose tariffs of its own on US goods, 80% worth. This angered Trump who increased the tariffs on China to 105% and then 125%, I can’t remember the reason for the second jump but China followed suit and now both countries tariffs stand at 125%, I think.

Trump’s latest tariff gambit is to increase the tariffs on Steel and Aluminum to 50%. We’ll see how long that lasts! (Credit: YouTube)

Then on the 12th of April Trump decided to make a few exceptions to the China tariffs, basically for electronic goods. According to Trump the exception is temporary, but no one knows what that means. I haven’t heard whether or not China has responded by given a few exceptions to US goods. That’s the problem with all of this back and forth, up and down, tariffs or pauses and exceptions; it’s nearly impossible to keep up with them. Imagine yourself being a customs agent and a crate of textiles comes into the US from Vietnam, does that agent actually know just what tariff he’s supposed to charge?

This is true of most bureaucrats at the best of times. With all of Trump’s chaotic impulses it’s become universal! (Credit: The Cubical Chick)

All of the confusion and uncertainty is also killing the US’s reputation around the world. First of all there’s the anger that Trump’s bullying is generating among the citizens of countries that thought they were our friends. Travel agencies are reporting that bookings for tourists from Europe and Canada coming to visit the US are way down, which could result in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars to airlines, hotels and restaurants.

My hometown of Philadelphia is looking forward to hosting a half dozen World Cup games next year, but will anybody come since the whole world is pissed at us thanks to Trump! (Credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Next year the US is going to host the World Cup in football, my home city of Philadelphia will be the site of six games. What happens however if foreign football fans simply don’t come because of the anger generated by Trump’s trade war. CNN recently broadcast an interview with a Danish citizen who asserted that he had no intention of coming to the World Cup unless “Denmark plays one of its games in Canada.” If that attitude continues the Word Cup could wind up a financial fiasco and America stands to lose a great deal of money.

Lincoln Financial Field is where the Superbowl Champion Eagles play. It is also the site of six world cup games in 2026. But will the games be played to an empty stadium)

Even worse, ever since the end of World War 2 the US has been the world’s economic center, with US treasury bonds the world’s safest investment. Anytime the stock market was in trouble, anytime stock prices would fall you would see the demand for US bonds go up as investors sought a reliable place to keep their money. No more, even as the stock markets were losing 10% of their value investors, both foreign and domestic, were selling their treasury bonds. Apparently, thanks to Trump America is no longer considered a reliable, safe place to keep your money. Because of that the value of the dollar is falling against other currencies like the Euro, the Pound and the Chinese Yuan.

As the dollar becomes weaker thanks to Trump’s chaos will the Euro or Yuan become the world’s new standard medium of exchange? (Credit: Alamy)

Finally, why is Trump doing this? Well, he claims that his tariffs, by making foreign products more expensive, will bring manufacturing back to this country creating millions of good paying blue collar jobs. The lie about American manufacturing jobs going to other countries, Mexico and China get blamed the most, has been around since Ross Perot back in the 1990s. In fact for every manufacturing job that left the US three jobs were lost to robots, to automation. So, even if Trump does succeed in bring manufacturing back to the US the only people that will benefit will be the robots!

The Blue-Collar Worker of the future, whether we like it or not. The US needs to invent new jobs, not try and resurrect the jobs of the past. Embracing innovation is what made America great in the first place! (Wevolver)

So that’s what Trump claims is his goal but in reality he is nothing but a bully, a two-bit hoodlum who has his entire life wanted to use the strength of the United States, economic and military, to extort money from other countries, mostly our friends. Being nothing but a cheat himself he imagines everyone else is cheating him so he feels he has to cheat harder, which is what he really wants to do anyway.

He grew up in New York City during the time of the Five Families and he absorbed much of the mob’s ‘Standard Operating Procedures’. (Credit: Amazon.in)

Now the first results of Trump’s monetary policies are beginning to be quantified as first quarter GDP numbers have been released for 2025 showing a 0.3% drop in all economic activity, the first such drop in three years. This economic chaos is just starting. Who knows what Trump will do when his 90-day pause is over? So hang on tight folks, it’s gonna be a wild ride these next three years.