Day 82: There Goes the Wine

 

It is a beautifully rainy day today, in other words, perfect blogging weather. Happily, or unhappily, depending on your POV, the news cycle has calmed down since Sir Brave Trump courageously ran away from his tariffs, both claiming that they were the right thing to do as well as declaring that rolling them back was also the right thing to do. Such is the way of MAGA.  After all, you don't have to make sense when your most ardent fans are the type of people who repeatedly respond to 'Nigerian Prince' email scams. Don't believe me? Check out this YouTube video where a beekeeper voted for Trump a third time despite getting burned by Trump's tariffs during Trump 1.0:

Yeah, these people are kinda stupid.

Of course, Team Trump, looking like the cavalcade of clowns and cretins that they most assuredly are, had to do something to save face, so they announced that the tariffs on China will reach 145% for...reasons, I guess? In response, China, because they can, has announced that they are retaliating with a 125% rate on American goods. 

Incredibly, after triggering an international trade war, Trump warned the world not to retaliate. This, of course, is the modus operandi of a bully: the use of force is only for them to exercise, with their victims expected to take it on the chin. Well, as the retaliatory Chinese tariffs indicate, as well as the EU tariffs that were set to go into effect before Trump wet his pants over the possibility of a global depression,  things are not going to plan. Trump is discovering, once again, that he is less terrifying than he is laughable. So, now, despite the total surrender on tariffs for the EU, etc., Trump still finds himself in an intractable trade war against the second-largest economy in the world, one that has the deep pockets and global military and political power to withstand Trump's inept decision-making. Indeed, because Trump has so thoroughly alienated our former trading partners, China has been given an opening to strike new trade deals with the EU, Japan, and South Korea, to just name a few. I'll give Trump's trade policy credit for one thing: it has managed to make the "Never Trump" brand the most popular American export.  

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Economic effects, like political effects, ripple out slowly but ripple they do. The tariffs are starting to be felt. Just today, I received an email from my wine club that pricing for a case of wine will be increasing due to this pointless trade war:

Fortunately, America has a thriving domestic wine industry, so I do not worry about shortages, especially understanding that American products are no longer being stocked around the globe in retaliation to Trump's unhinged trading policy. We will probably have a glut of wine before too long. However, the same cannot be said for, say, electronics:

The hits keep coming: Dell, HP, Lenovo pause laptop shipments to U.S.

As the trade war between the United States and China heats up, laptop makers including Dell, HP, and Lenovo will reportedly stop importing new devices into the U.S. for “at least two weeks.”

The report comes from the Commercial Times, a Chinese-language newspaper in Taiwan. The pause by companies like Dell and Lenovo could affect all of the consumer electronics they sell in the United States, such as laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets.

Remember those COVID days when, due to Trump 1.0's botched handling of the pandemic, the entire global supply chain got disrupted, resulting in video cards and laptops becoming scarcer than an innovative Apple product, with prices climbing to ridiculous levels (again, like an Apple product in normal times)? Well, here it comes again, brought to you by the same man, only this time there wasn't a reason. Well, outside of economic illiteracy, anyway.  History repeats, first as tragedy then as farce...

This is the problem with both Trump and his MAGA base. They have no idea how things are made. I suspect most of them think you can just buy an abandoned factory in Michigan, and start churning out high-tech products like laptops in a matter of weeks. They have no understanding of the complexity of modern manufacturing for the electronic devices we all depend upon. For example, when President Biden used his CHIPS Act to bring semiconductor manufacturers to US shores, it was announced that some of the new manufacturing facilities would take years just to build because of the highly specialized equipment needed to get them up and running. Obviously, this does not take into account the time required to find the highly specialized talent necessary to operate such complex facilities.  The days of churning out products with just a wrench and a furnace are long gone. 

(Fun fact: the same guy who wants to bring manufacturing back to our shores is the same guy who is trying to kill the CHIPS Act because he is a small, small man obsessed with destroying the work of his predecessors because they remind him of his inferiority.)

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I am a proud wirehead so the idea of living through a shortage of electronic gear terrifies me. I did it back in 2020, and I have no desire to do it again. Yet, because 77 million Americans decided to put a metaphorical gun in their mouth and pull the trigger out of spite and bigotry, here we are. Be that as it may, I want to recommend an electronic escape from these insane times while we still have the gear to run it. 

Egosoft is a German game development company with a passion for space games. Since the 1990s, they have been slowly developing their vision for a fully simulated space experience under the X-series moniker, with X4: Foundations being the latest in Egosoft's "universe in a box" line of X titles. First released in 2018, X4 has come a long way from its rough launch as Egosoft continues to iterate on its core gameplay formula over nearly a decade. All that hard work has paid off as the title now stands alone as an unmatched offline, single-player space game experience. Check out the following video to get an idea of what the game offers:

If you are a fan of great space shows like The Expanse (the best sci-fi since Star Trek: The Next Generation), or just an old school gamer with fond memories of playing Atari's Star Raiders or even Asteroids, this is a title you should check out. You will need a beefy desktop PC or high-end gaming laptop to run it comfortably, but I am happy to inform you that it is also available as a Geforce Now title, something that will allow those of you with weak hardware to bypass those requirements by offloading the work to nVidia's hardware. I am so glad we don't live in the 1870s...

We all need stress relief during this time of American fascism, and X4: Foundations is a great way to get a space vacation in the comfort of your own home. Give it a try!

See you, space cowboy...

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