patrick.net

Trump's greatest accomplishment...

Yookay

While in South Korea (neutral ground slightly tilted toward the US), Trump and Xi held the long-advertised meeting, prompted by China’s surprise move to cut America off from hard-to-get industrial magnets, which apparently are a much bigger deal than you would probably think. Trump had responded by jacking up China’s already-high tariff rates and launching a withering fusillade of social media commentary, all of which tricked the Democrats into believing that Trump had finally stumbled into a trade disaster.

Instead, according to this morning’s Times, China not only agreed to delay any changes to its magnet (“rare earths”) policies by a full year (by which point nobody will care), but also committed to yet more fentanyl-reducing policies. More tangibly, China agreed to buy “massive amounts” of American soybeans and other unnamed farm products.

For America’s part, Trump agreed to lower China’s tariff rate from 57% to 47% and to postpone special fees that he threatened to levy against Chinese ships docking in US ports —again, both were leverage Trump created from literally nothing— and agreed to consider loosening export controls on Nvidia’s AI chips (which he just ‘encouraged’ to move from Taiwan to Arizona).

In other words, the “looming trade disaster” was quickly resolved, purely using free leverage that President Trump created all by himself. ...

To me, the most fascinating bit of reporting appeared in CNBC’s story. It was right in the lead sentence: “Many people in China cheered the meeting Thursday between President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.”

In other words —and terrifying Democrats more than anything else— everyday Chinese are also learning to love the American President. CNBC reported that the most-viewed hashtag on China’s social media platform Weibo was about the two leaders’ summit meeting. ...

In short, President Xi just dashed Democrat dreams that China would defy Trump and break his unbroken winning streak. Now all they have is the government shutdown, and you know how that unfortunate blunder is going for them.

The treasury secretary ended the post with a fiery postscript, bashing the Biden administration's "autopenned efforts to bankrupt the US government."

"P.S. I am happy to inform you both that the Argentine economic bridge has now turned a profit for the American people," Bessent wrote. "While ‘profit’ is a private sector word that you may both be unfamiliar with, I would urge you to look past your previous experience working alongside the Biden Administration’s autopenned efforts to bankrupt the US government."

How much profit? I would appreciate a brief explanation. I did not find any in the linked article.

I was wondering what the mechanics of a swap line are, and in this particular case, what the profit is.