In which, after a tip of the hat to Lord Downer, the pond declares "Our Henry Day" and a Killer time is had by all ...

 

The pond woke to news of an absurdity so weird that for a moment the pond thought it was still in a returning dream, or nightmare, of being back in Tamworth ...

Yes, she really had gone there, yes, it was too late to be an April Fools prank ...she really had compared herself to Martin Luther King Jr. 

On the upside, Rosa Parks had been spared.

With a sigh and a heavy heart, the pond turned to the lizard Oz, and there was immediate relief, what with the other early morning news - the Duttonator's abject, cowardly, supine, craven retreat from WFH policies - featuring at the top of the digital edition...

With a sigh of relief, the pond knew it had no need to know anything about the latest instalment in Dame Slap's latest crusade ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘I’ll remember’: Law lecturer warned students over Indigenous history ‘walkout’
A University of Queensland law lecturer berated first year law students, warning they should ‘watch out what you say and what you do’ if they wanted to do well in their law degree.
By Janet Albrechtsen and Noah Yim

How long can this crusade go on? Was there at least a hint of irony on offer? 

There was, there was ...

The Major had spared precious time from the golf course to advise ...No referendum required, political will needed to fix issue of native title.

In a rag which had done much to take down the voice referendum, and in a rag which sees Dame Slap  routinely get indignant about anyone heeding uppity, difficult blacks, the Major offered ...

Native title plight is out of sight, out of mind for politicians
No referendum is needed to fix this issue, which could involve billions of dollars nationally. Just a bit of political will by federal and state Labor would do it.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

All the pond needed to know about that was whether the Major had advised others to get off the golf course ... he had, he had ...

More old-fashioned journalism in the Aboriginal world would help. That means news organisations getting out of the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra Aboriginal rights bubble and into remote community life.

With the Caterist MIA early in the day, the pond wanted to stay in the reptile bubble, hive mind if you will, and decided to declare this "Our Henry Day."

First there could be an entrée, and what better way to start than with a fatuous fop producing a truly fatuous header ...

For those who missed all the print details

Windmills and solar panels won’t help defend Australia, Instead of properly funding our defence force, our governments have been wasting money on fatuous windmills and solar panels that will not make one jot of difference to the climate.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will have much to ponder after the federal election. Artwork: iStock
This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Before anyone shouts, "take me anywhere else but there", the pond dared to suggest that perhaps nuking the country might not save the planet, but this was His Lordship in warrior mode, taking on the war with China ... due by Xmas at the very latest ...

Australians should take very seriously our inadequate response to a Chinese naval taskforce and research vessel circumnavigating the Australian coast.
China is, of course, making a very strident point. That it has force projection capability into our own neighbourhood, and that is a warning to us. Should we decide to trigger our alliance relationship with the United States in the event of conflict with China watch out!
The fact that we have shown hesitancy and technical inadequacy in responding to this challenge should be a dire warning to our candidates in this election campaign. They should be taking seriously their primary responsibility to defend the nation and its interests. It’s too easy for the political class to think that our defence force would never be called on except to assist with natural disasters in the Pacific or Southeast Asia.
Yet what would Australia do if China imposed a blockade on Taiwan and the US Navy went to the support of Taiwan endeavouring to break the blockade? This, after all, is a real-life scenario: it could happen. It has been assumed by policy planners and commentators that if the United States went to the aid of Taiwan, Japan would automatically support the United States. That is a fair assumption. But in this difficult scenario, what would the Australian parliament and government want to do?

Rhetorical questions are always tricky to answer. What if the Cantaloupe Caligula showed as much interest in defending Taiwan as he does helping out Ukraine while Vlad the sociopath keeps raining down missiles and drones on that long suffering country? (Given that he thinks they did the invading).

The pond was spared the need to answer by an AV distraction featuring good old Shoe having a word or two with petulant Peta... Strategic Analysis Australia Director Michael Shoebridge has criticised the Albanese government's failure to effectively communicate the importance of national security investments. Mr Shoebridge’s remarks come after teal candidate Kate Hulett recently claimed she would oppose the “crazy” AUKUS deal. "It tells you what a failure there has been from the government to communicate the state of our security," he told Sky News host Peta Credlin. "And who could blame people for discounting our national security when the government just recently told everybody having Chinese warship sales around our country was no problem … but it's a failure of leadership from the government to be honest and compelling about our security."

That sent Lord Downer right off a sublime comedic invention ...

I think we know what the Greens, the Gucci greens – as Peta Credlin calls the teals – and Labor’s left would want to do. They would want to do nothing. Their argument would be that Trump has imposed a 10 per cent tariff on Australia so why would we want to help America? They will use the tariff issue to argue the ANZUS alliance is anachronistic. So let’s think this through. Would they be relaxed about China seizing democratic Taiwan and in doing so becoming the metropolitan power of the Asia-Pacific region? Would they feel okay that a communist dictatorship in Beijing demanded our region pay tribute to it and steer our and our neighbours’ economic policies to the benefit of China and its regime?

Gucci greens? But pray, do tell, what brand of stocking and high heel does His Lordship favour?

His Lordship embraced the mango Mussolini while managing to erase his own valiant efforts from the record ...

Donald Trump wants to pivot US security policy away from Europe towards what he sees as the China threat, not retreat into isolation. He does value allies – particularly Japan and Australia – and we need America to work with us to balance power in the region. That means protecting Taiwan and, above all, protecting an open and free Asia-Pacific region.
The trouble with the more moderate and freedom-loving political class in Australia is that it has made a very poor effort of building up our defence force over the last 15 or so years. Back in 2009, the Rudd government produced a defence white paper and committed to buying Tomahawk cruise missiles, investing in ballistic missile defence systems and replacing not just our Anzac-class frigates and the Collins-class submarines but, importantly, our ageing fleet of minesweepers.

"Over the last 15 years or so", and a mention of former Comrade Rudd, and any hint of remembering the reigns of the onion muncher, Malware and the liar from the shire are swept from the record, together with His Lordship's own valiant contributions way back when ...

Inevitably during these sorts of rants, the reptiles produce snaps of vessels at unknown locations, and sure enough, A Chinese naval vessel sailing at sea during the Joint Sword-2024, A military drill at an unknown location. Picture: AFP/Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army

Again the reptiles had lit a fuse, but don't get Lord Downer wrong...he loves himself them subs ...

Plenty more was promised in that white paper, some of which has materialised and much of which has not. We are nowhere near replacing our Collins-class submarines, the Anzac-class frigate replacement program is delayed, we still haven’t purchased the Tomahawk missiles, we have no ballistic missile defence system, and we only have two elderly minesweepers left, which are about to be decommissioned.
In recent years, a substantial proportion of the defence budget has been diverted to the AUKUS submarine project. It’s hard to put a specific figure on this but defence sources tell me something like $100bn of the defence budget has so far been diverted from acquisition programs to AUKUS.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in favour of Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. But they are very expensive and will require a substantial increase in the defence budget if we are to maintain defence capability while we introduce – at least in a short term – the Virginia-class submarines. What’s now happened is the non-AUKUS defence budget has substantially declined.
So back to the dangerous risk of a war over Taiwan. If we joined with our friends and allies – the Americans and the Japanese – to help defend Taiwan, what would China do about us? Well, the naval task force that recently circumnavigated Australia should give us a hint. It was meant to. Included in that taskforce was China’s most modern guided missile cruiser, which is armed with strike weapons known as Long Sword.
In the event of war, China could send aggressive task forces down to Australia and strike domestic targets with ship-borne missiles. The targets could include defence establishments, power stations and data centres. China could use its enhanced taskforces to blockade our ports and possibly even mine the access to those ports.
What would we do about it?

Um, do what we're currently doing for Ukraine? Close eyes and pray?

Never mind, just to terrify the hive mind, the reptiles slipped in a final snap,  Chinese President Xi Jinping applauds during the closing of the Third Session of the 14th National People's Congress. Picture: Getty Images

That inspired a final bout of war mongering from Lord Downer ...

We might be able to put two or even three Collins-class submarines to sea to try to attack the Chinese taskforces. We could fire missiles at their ships although they may be able to shoot those missiles down. But the truth is, we would be really struggling to destroy the taskforces. We wouldn’t be able to de-mine our harbours because we don’t have minesweepers, and we wouldn’t be able to defend sensitive targets with anti-ballistic missile defence systems because we don’t have them.
Then there is our essential trade. If the Chinese navy were able to blockade or even partially blockade our ports, how would we import everything from oil to essential medicines? We don’t even have a merchant shipping fleet any more. In times past the government could requisition merchant ships for essential trade but that’s not an option anymore.
Instead of properly funding our defence force to deal with any range of contingencies, and thereby being able to defend our country and to contribute to the security of the Indo-Pacific region, our governments have been wasting money on fatuous windmills and solar panels that will not make one jot of difference to the climate. It would have to be the most extravagant and feckless example of public policy I have seen in my lifetime.
There is still nearly four weeks to go in the election campaign so hopefully these issues will be addressed with a degree of urgency we haven’t seen in recent times. Maybe we will be grateful to Xi Jinping for sending his task force around Australia last month to shake us out of our complacency.

If Lord Downer's war mongering is addressed with the same degree of urgency as the WFH policy matter, the pond can turn to "Our Henry Day" in a relaxed and comfortable state of mind...

You see, over the weekend, our Henry was featured in the Inquirer section of the lizard Oz ...

The pond was mortified. 

The pond is deeply devoted to our Henry's history lessons, and yet the pond had almost missed a lecture ... accompanied by the usual warnings ...

Return of the tariff man: why trade protection wins hearts and minds in AmericaThe impetus behind Donald Trump’s tariffs is not difficult to understand when seen against the carnage caused to the US by cheap imports and a predatory China.
President Donald Trump says the tariffs will force manufacturers to build products in the United States.
This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Well, here we are, with our Henry in lengthy full flight, a tad hard to swallow on a Monday, but like cod liver oil, good for the brain...

As the tariffs announced on Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” send world markets reeling, the future of the international trading system seems more uncertain than ever. But it is important to remember that the crisis has been brewing for some time.
Its distant origins were set in the late 1970s and 80s when a sharp and prolonged tightening of monetary policy in the US, aimed at curbing inflation, provoked a steep rise in the value of the US dollar.
Compounding that increase were changes in global capital markets – and most notably in savings-abundant Japan – that made it easier for foreigners who had US dollars to use their dollars to purchase American financial assets, increasing the dollar’s attractiveness and further boosting its value.
As the dollar rose to spectacular heights, the competitiveness of US exports plummeted, while what had been a reasonably steady flow of manufactured imports became a flood.
At the same time, an attempt by the US to initiate a new round of global trade talks failed miserably, not least because the world economy was beset by both “stagflation” and the beginnings of a debt crisis in developing countries.
Faced with that failure, American policymakers concluded that only drastic unilateral action could reduce the obstacles and distortions that had built up in the world trading system.
Meanwhile, as imports surged, the protectionist pressures in congress became overwhelming, with 600 trade bills introduced in 1984 alone. And judging by the widespread support Richard Gephardt, a Democrat from Missouri, secured when he proposed that an immediate 25 per cent tariff surcharge be slapped on countries that ran “excessive” trade surpluses with the US, voters were plainly clamouring for more.

The reptiles interrupted the flow with a snap of Ronnie Raygun, Former US president Ronald Reagan was convinced by his treasury secretary that it would be better to seek a reduction in the overvalued dollar than to strangle trade flows. Picture: AP

That sent our Henry right off, back deep into last century US history ...

The result was a proliferation of unilateral measures. After rising from 8 per cent in 1975 to 12 per cent in 1980, the share of US imports covered by trade restrictions jumped to 21 per cent in 1984. Those restrictions took the form of quotas, which helped hide just how punitive the measures were: had the same protective effect been secured by tariffs, the tariff rate on the products affected would have been in the order of 50 per cent.
But although it undoubtedly imposed high economic costs, the wave of import restrictions induced a beneficial policy response.
In particular, James Baker, who became Treasury secretary after Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984, convinced Reagan that it would be far better to seek a reduction in the value of the dollar – which was plainly overvalued – than to strangle trade flows.
Other countries (whose exports would suffer if the US dollar depreciated) resisted strongly, as they had when Richard Nixon had tried to achieve the same outcome in 1971, but Baker had a trump card.
“Our leverage with them,” he later wrote, “was that if we didn’t act first, the protectionists in congress would throw up trade barriers.” With manufacturers “pounding the desks at the White House, Treasury and congress, demanding that something be done to save them from foreign competition”, the threat was all too credible; so that by late summer 1985, “top foreign economic officials had begun to see that we were serious”.
And in September 1985 the world’s leading economies signed the Plaza Accord, which helped effect a gradual decline in the US dollar to more sustainable levels.
Nor did the consequences of the protectionist episode end there. Rather, the initial wave of American unilateral restrictions, and the possibility of worse to come, were a crucial factor in the launch and success of the Uruguay Round of global trade negotiations. During what was by far the most ambitious and far-reaching multilateral trade negotiations ever held, the risk of American unilateralism weighed heavily on the negotiating parties.
The round’s results were spectacular. Tariffs, which had averaged 40 per cent in the early 50s, came down to a developed world average of about 5 per cent. Even more important, progress was made, for the very first time, in reducing a broad range of non-tariff barriers, including to trade in ser­vices, which would boom in the years ahead.
The impacts of those outcomes on US policymakers were as far-reaching as the outcomes themselves. Clearly, they concluded, multilateral negotiations could work; but, equally, occasionally wielding a big stick was not entirely counter-productive.

This is all very well, but what does our Henry feel about the latest iteration? 

Pause for a moment for a snap of slick Willy ... Bill Clinton argued that while globalisation brought new challenges, ‘open and competitive commerce will enrich us as a nation’. Picture: Ron Edmonds/AP

Then came more US history as seen through the eyes of our Henry ...

It was against that backdrop that the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated. The proposal had originated in Canada with Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney inviting Reagan to initiate the process in October 1985. In February 1991, under the auspices of Baker, who had become secretary of state in the administration of George HW Bush, Canada, the US and Mexico announced their intention to proceed with what became NAFTA.
At first Bill Clinton, who took office in January 1993, was somewhat ambivalent; but in a speech he gave shortly after coming to office he argued that while globalisation brought new challenges, “open and competitive commerce will enrich us as a nation”.
“In the face of all the pressures to do the opposite,” he concluded, “we must compete, not retreat.”
What Clinton didn’t realise was that the politics of US trade policy were undergoing dramatic change.
In effect, the reaction to NAFTA verged on hysteria – on both sides of American politics.
On the left, the manufacturing unions, which had long been protectionist, found new, quite unexpected, allies in the environmental movement and, even more surprisingly, received strong support from consumer advocates including Ralph Nader. Equally opposed were leading civil rights activists, with Jesse Jackson declaring “NAFTA is a shafta, shifting our jobs out of the country”.

We've only got up to Ross? US presidential candidate Ross Perot famously issued a warning about the North American Free Trade Agreement. Picture: AP

On with the history lesson, which was starting to feel like a trudge ...

Nor was the reaction on the right any more favourable. Along with conservative leader Pat Buchanan, a serious campaign against NAFTA was launched in the 1992 election by Ross Perot, who famously warned that if NAFTA was approved, “you are going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country”.
That Perot secured 19 per cent of the popular vote – an extraordinary success for a third-party candidate – signalled the depth of the change then under way.
It did not take long for the effects to become apparent in congress. From the late 50s through to NAFTA, both Democrats and Republicans were broadly in favour of trade liberalisation. With NAFTA, Democrat support for legislation liberalising trade collapsed, never to durably recover.
As a result, the Republicans (who had historically been protectionists) were left as trade liberalisation’s only reliable congressional supporters, greatly increasing their political vulnerability.
The split played itself out over the opening to China. The Clinton administration’s decision to support China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation had been announced in the most inauspicious circumstances imaginable – the riot-plagued WTO meeting held in Seattle in November 1999.
At that meeting, Charlene Barshefsky, the US trade representative, told the assembled parties that subject to congressional approval, the US would extend “permanent normal trade relations” to China.

At the mention of China, soon to swoop down from the north, the reptiles reflexively produced an AV distraction, China filed a World Trade Organisation complaint on Wednesday against U.S. President Donald Trump's new 10% tariff on Chinese imports and his cancellation of a duty-free exemption for low-value packages, arguing the actions are "protectionist" and break WTO rules. Gabe Singer reports.

Whatever the threat of the fiendish orientals, our Henry still wasn't done with history ...

In theory, securing approval should have been straightforward: the economy was strong and the unemployment rate had fallen to 4 per cent. In practice, getting it through was no easy task.
In the end, the legislation was approved by the House of Representatives in May 2000, but two-thirds of the house Democrats voted against it. It passed only because of the support it received from 164 Republicans – though the fact 57 Republicans voted against was a sure sign of what was to come.
To make things worse, shortly after that, global trade liberalisation ground to a complete halt. Under US pressure, a new round of multilateral negotiations was launched at Doha in November 2001. But there was no enthusiasm for the round in developing countries, which believed the benefits they had been promised from the Uruguay Round had not materialised, nor from the EU, which was reluctant to liberalise its agricultural markets.
Moreover, by that time the WTO had become an incredibly unwieldy organisation: as the number of “contracting parties” rose from 42 in 1961 to 76 in 1967 and then 160 in 2015, reaching the consensus needed for agreements became virtually impossible.
By late 2015, the round was plainly making no progress and so was mercifully ended. For the first time, a round had failed; without fundamental change in the rules, it was hard to believe that any round aimed at multilateral liberalisation could ever again succeed.
Taken together, those two factors – the change in US domestic politics and the collapse of the multilateral rounds – would have been enough to eventually trigger a turn in American trade policy to unilateralism. However, their effect was compounded by the impacts of China’s entry into the global trading system.

The reptiles tried to remind our Henry of current events with an AV distraction, Donald Trump is set to announce new tariffs this week in the hope of spurring American industry. US President Trump has promised to unveil a massive tariff plan on Wednesday, which he has dubbed “Liberation Day” following tariffs imposed on aluminium, steel and automobiles. The uncertainty has sent shockwaves through global markets, with concerns that a trade war could plunge the US into recession.

Our Henry was determined to stay with slick Willy ...

That American consumers benefited enormously is beyond question; but it is also beyond question that the job losses in US manufacturing were very substantial. There has been considerable controversy about their precise extent; however, the conclusion reached by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor David Autor and his co-authors that imports from China caused 21 per cent of the decline in US manufacturing employment over the period 1990-2007 seems plausible.
Nor did the wider geopolitical benefits that Clinton had pointed to as an important justification for the opening to China eventuate. That opening, Clinton had said in March 2000, “represents the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive change in China since the 1970s, when President Nixon first went there, and later in the decade when President Carter normalised relations”.
“In the new century,” he went on to claim, “liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem” – and as China reduced its barriers to trade, those would become ever more affordable. Yes, China would try to “crack down on the internet”. But “that’s sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall”. As those attempts failed, and as the middle class flourished, the pressures for democratisation, along with those for moving to a fully market-based economy, would become increasingly irresistible.

Perhaps a mention of the Cantaloupe Caligula's favourite Pres might help our Henry return to the present? US president William McKinley, who Donald Trump absolutely reveres, championed tariffs in 1890. Picture: Supplied

All that did was send our Henry back even further ...

That those predictions haven’t been borne out hardly needs to be said. On the contrary, the communist regime has both raised the surveillance state to new heights and reasserted its control over the economy, imposing myriad restrictions on international trade.
Seen in that perspective, the impetus behind the Trump tariffs is not difficult to understand. They were, moreover, one of his fundamental election commitments, constantly proclaimed and promised during the campaign. It is therefore hard to see them as anything other than a core part of his compact with American voters.
But it is by no means obvious that by taking the world trading system to the brink of disaster, those tariffs will, like the quotas the Carter and Reagan administrations imposed, provoke a reaction that ultimately strengthens global trade.
That was certainly not the case with the unilateral tariffs championed in 1890 by William McKinley, whom Trump absolutely reveres.
Hailed by his admirers as “the Napoleon of protection”, McKinley claimed that those tariffs, which more than doubled US rates of protection, were justified by being linked to reciprocity: if the target countries reduced their tariffs, so would the US.
In reality, the completely arbitrary nature of the tariff increases, the sheer harshness of the US demands and the intransigence of the American negotiators induced a worldwide move to greater protection, slashing global economic growth.
Even in Australia, where the direct impacts were insignificant, the ramifications proved material.
There was, to begin with, the economic effect, notably on wool exports, as British textile exports to the US declined into insignificance.

It began to dawn on the pond that our Henry might not be so keen on McKinley, what with McKinley himself discovering he wasn't so keen on McKinley, at least before he was shot by that anarchist Leon Czolgosz  ... 

Time for another AV distraction ... President Donald Trump often cites the 25th President, William McKinley, as an inspiration. The ‘McKinley Tariffs’ were some of the largest hikes in U.S. history, but in his second term, McKinley changed his mind, and argued for more free trade.

The history wasn't over, not by a long shot ...

“There is probably no country in the world with anything to export that is not affected by the McKinley tariff,” Perth’s Western Mail reported in January 1891, “and Australia is no exception to the rule. Her chief staple, wool, is as severely treated as can be imagined.”
But no less important were the political consequences as America’s shift to high tariffs emboldened protectionism’s Australian advocates, who had no difficulty caricaturing the free traders as babes in the wolf-infested woods of realpolitik.
Those claims were echoed by protectionists worldwide; and helping the protectionist cause was the immense boost the McKinley tariff gave to global anti-Americanism. In Canada, for example, there had been, until then, strong backing for some form of free trade with the US. But, Canadian politician George T. Denison said, the tariff was “a heavy blow struck alike at our home industries and at the prosperity and independence of the Dominion of Canada – an unprovoked aggression, an attempt at conquest by fiscal war”. Its inevitable consequence, said Denison, would be to rekindle “love for Queen, flag and country”.
Denison’s prediction was not far off the mark. With “American perfidy” causing an uproar, John Macdonald, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, transformed the elections of 1891 into a referendum on Canadian-American relations, changing the Conservatives’ likely defeat into a narrow victory over the partisans of continental free trade.
Convinced that “the great contest that is now going on will determine whether Canada is to remain British or become part of the United States” and that “we are in great danger”, Macdonald ensured Canadian protectionism would more than mirror its American counterpart, damaging economic relations between the two countries for a century.

The reptiles decided now was the moment for two more dead Presidents to feature, Quotas were imposed under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon tried to achieve a reduction in the dollar value in 1971. Picture: AFP/Getty Image

At last our Henry finally decided to play his hand, and suggest that perhaps tariffs weren't the way to go ...

Ultimately, McKinley came to regret the tariffs he had imposed, which contributed to the American recession of 1893 and durably soured relations between the US and its trading partners. But by then it was far too late.
There are, for sure, some economists, closely associated with the “Make America Great Again” movement, who believe that, far from stoking inflation and triggering a decline in economic activity, the Trump tariffs will revitalise American manufacturing and help unleash a new age of prosperity. And it is indeed true that if the tariffs remain in place, the protected industries will grow, as some part of the demand that was previously served by imports switches to domestic production.
But in an economy that now has low overall levels of unemployment, the growth of employment in traditional manufacturing must come at the expense of other industries – and the victims are almost certain to include the high-technology activities at which America excels. That those activities have – as the EU’s recent Draghi report on competitiveness clearly shows – both propelled economic growth in the US and cemented America’s geopolitical pre-eminence should lead Americans to think twice.
All the other inefficiencies that have always bedevilled protection, ranging from rampant rent-seeking to reductions in competition, make the likelihood of a renewed, tariff-induced, golden age all the dimmer.
Conversely, if the tariffs are merely an instrument to force greater openness in global markets and encourage an agreement along the lines of the Plaza Accord, they could, in the end, leave America and the world better off.
But that won’t happen automatically. It is often said that you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. But as anyone who has ever made an omelette knows, breaking the eggs is the easy part; transforming them into something worth eating requires real skill.
So too is it with the trading system: disrupting it is easy; putting it back together, in better shape than it originally was, requires both a clear political will and skills of the very highest order.
A great deal therefore rides on whether the Trump administration goes down the path McKinley and his successors took in the 1890s, provoking a dangerous spiral, or the path of co-ordinated global reform that Baker pursued a century later. With so much at stake, one can only hope that wisdom, along with a healthy dose of common sense, will prevail.

And that might have been that for the pond, the catch-up with our Henry done and dusted. 

The pond might have wrapped things up with another RFK Jr. moment, RFK Jr. Makes jaw-Dropping Gaffe About Measles Outbreak (archive link) and finished with an RFK Jr. cartoon ...

But keen-eyed correspondents will have noted that our Henry was out and about again today, forming a pincher movement with Pincus ... 

Our Henry and his chum were allegedly only a three minute read, but to appreciate it, the pond had to do some digging, because the header was ominous and mentioned Killer ...

Friends, foes alike at mercy of Trump tariff tsunami, Trump’s tariffs could do both Americans and Australians great harm if remaining in place, If the US tariffs are, as Adam Creighton suggests, intended to remain in place, then they would do both Americans and Australians great harm.

Even more ominous, after that talk of TTT, the pair started this way ...

Writing on these pages Adam Creighton, in an attempt to minimise the impact of the Trump tariffs, advances a number of propositions that are highly questionable at best, plainly incorrect at worst.

Sheesh, not Killer, not duelling reptiles at ten paces. 

Worse, the reptile link to Killer's original outing didn't work, so the pond had to do some digging and return to the original Killer "think" piece (the pond intends "think" as a form of low comedy)...

The pond decided to strip Killer of his illustrations, except for the opening one...

Killer was in fine form ...

Amid the cacophony of ignorant rage over the US tariffs, another obvious though no less significant point has been overlooked: Trump repeatedly said he would prefer to rely more on tariffs and less on income tax.
“Most economists argue this huge new round of tariffs will be passed on into higher domestic prices for Americans in any case, so why is that any of our business?” writes Adam Creighton.

Those who remember Killer's piece can skip all that follows...

Rather than mocking the US President, whose administration practically underwrites Australia’s defence in increasingly perilous times, Anthony Albanese should be sending him a thankyou note.
Donald Trump, as he repeatedly promised throughout his presidential campaign, has announced tariffs of upward of at least 10 per cent on all imports into the US.
Imports from Australia will attract the equal lowest tariff of any country, 10 per cent, less than half the tariff that will apply to imports from Japan, India and the EU. Chinese goods will be taxed at more than 50 per cent. Australian beef exports will apparently even escape US tariffs entirely.
Australia has done very well out of this relative shift in revenue-raising in the US from taxation on labour income to taxation of imports. Most economists argue this huge new round of tariffs will be passed on into higher domestic prices for Americans in any case, so why is that any of our business?
America is facing $US2 trillion ($3.19 trillion) deficits as far as the eye can see; it must either cut spending or lift taxes. Trump’s unilateral tariffs announced on Thursday will make significant inroads into that colossal gap, raising around $US700bn a year, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Amid the cacophony of ignorant rage over the US tariffs, another obvious though no less significant point has been overlooked: Trump repeatedly said he would prefer to rely more on tariffs and less on income tax.
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the US was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been … then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax,” the US President said, making an implicit argument about the relative merits of different taxes. Perhaps one that’s gone over our Prime Minister’s head!
It’s entirely the sovereign right of the US to decide how it raises revenue from economic activity that occurs within its jurisdiction. If the US, whose share of global GDP has halved to around 25 per cent of global GDP since World War II, wants to build an economic moat around itself, then so be it.
Australia prevents foreigners from buying established dwellings and accessing our subsidised public health and, quite reasonably, insists foreign workers pay Australian rates of income tax. Similarly, Australians pay US tax rates when conducting business in the US.
Trump often says tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”. But it is a wonder it’s in the dictionary at all, given the confusion caused. Tariffs are simply another type of tax, in this case on US importers, which are the only entities obliged to pay any of these new taxes to the US government. No Australian will pay a cent to the US government from these tariffs.
It’s not correct to say the US is putting tariffs on Australia or other countries; no one outside the US will pay a cent to the US Treasury as result of these new measures. To be sure, Australian and other exporters into the US may choose to lower the prices they charge US importers to partly offset the impact of the tariff, thereby seeking to remain competitive against locally produced alternatives.

It's worth remembering that the reptiles decided to interrupt Killer the comedian with another killer comedian, in an AV distraction... Comedian Alex Stein discusses how the Trump administration’s Liberation Day tariffs will affect the United States. “I’m sure there is going to be some short-term pain, then you read that Hyundai is going to build a $US20 billion factor in the United States to build cars”, Mr Stein told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “I think it is going to hurt in the short term and be better for the long term.”

On Killer ranted, determined to stick in our Henry's gorge ...

But that’s nothing new. The real burden of a given tax is never the same as the legal incidence. It depends on the relative market power of buyers and sellers in a given market.
All taxes – whatever names they go under: customs, duties, levies – are bad in varying degrees, and there’s a strong argument that income tax (Australia’s favourite) is even more economically damaging than a general tariff, let alone the stamp duties Australia levies on property transactions at obscene levels.
Far be it for us to lecture the US on optimal taxation!
“Tariffs are a recipe for higher prices and slower growth right around the world,” said Treasurer Jim Chalmers, whose government has imposed industrial and energy policies that do just that.
Trump hopes tariffs will revive the emaciated US manufacturing sector, which began to shrink precipitously in the early 2000s as American firms moved operations offshore to lower cost jurisdictions. Trump is channelling an increasingly niche but longstanding view about the pre-eminence of manufacturing going back to Alexander Hamilton, who once wrote: “Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures.”
Such jobs will only return if businesses believe these new measures to be permanent, and if the tariff makes significant enough inroads into the cost advantage of manufacturing outside the US. But that’s far from clear, given US wages are among the highest in the world.
In any case, the long-term damage to the global economy may not be as severe as feared.
Tariffs got a very bad name in the wake of Herbert Hoover’s infamous Smoot Hawley Act of 1930, which is widely believed to have triggered the Great Depression. No doubt, a significant increase in tariffs didn’t help the US economy at that time, but the New York stock market and industrial production had already tanked a year earlier owing to a more fundamental economic malaise.
Almost a hundred years later, the benchmark S & P500 index in New York fell by less than 3 per cent on futures markets after Trump’s announcement. The local ASX200 fall didn’t even breach 2 per cent, suggesting the long-term hit to growth from these measures isn’t so significant. The economics profession appears to be predicting serious economic disruption, but that same group has made a habit of being totally wrong about the economic outlook for years – think the global financial crisis and Covid burst of inflation.
The word tariff incites fear and loathing, but it is just another tax, one of many the US might need to increase if Washington refused to get spending under control.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

And so after that interminable ramble, to the rebuttal by our Henry and the pinching Pincus ...which began with a snap of King Donald, the Trump tariff tsunami man ... Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden. Picture: AFP

Suddenly all that re-reading of Killer of the IPA paid off, as the pair tore into the man and his idle scribbling ...

Writing on these pages Adam Creighton, in an attempt to minimise the impact of the Trump tariffs, advances a number of propositions that are highly questionable at best, plainly incorrect at worst.

Be still, beating, pulsating heart, it's a rumble in the jungle between feuding reptiles, and Killer is in for a ravaging ...

It is, to begin with, quite wrong to claim, as Creighton does, that the economic cost of the tariffs will be very largely or entirely borne by Americans. That claim would hold were the US what the theory of international trade refers to as a “small country” – that is, a country whose impact on world trade flows is inconsequential. But no one could reasonably believe that the United States, the world’s largest net importer of goods, fits into that category.
It is true that the issue of incidence (ie, who ultimately bears the cost of a tax on imports) can be extremely complex, particularly in markets that don’t meet the textbook criteria of perfect competition.
What can be said, however, is that because of reductions in product variety and losses in economies of scale, the long-term economic costs of tariffs – both to the country that imposes them and to the world as a whole – are likely to be even higher in those markets than they would be in simple, perfectly competitive, markets.
Even putting aside the question of incidence, the macroeconomic linkages between the American economy and those of other countries – linkages Creighton simply ignores – are, in reality, immensely consequential.

Yes, indeed, take that ignorant Killer ...

The Killer beating continued ...

Those linkages operate, in the first instance, through the direct effect of American demand for goods and services on the level of economic activity elsewhere. Even if the US avoids recession, a tariff-induced fall in American demand for imports would cut incomes overseas, roiling global economic growth. Should the US go into recession, the downturn in American demand for imports would obviously be even greater, as would be the income falls in other countries, including Australia.
Those direct impacts are compounded by indirect effects through financial markets. Already, the uncertainty that has thrown financial markets into turmoil will increase the cost of capital and reduce investment levels worldwide, adversely affecting productivity and growth.
And if the tariffs induce an acceleration in US inflation, provoking the Federal Reserve into a monetary tightening that raises interest rates and causes further drastic falls in financial markets, the adverse impacts on employment, investment and growth will be greater yet.

The beating was so severe that the reptiles felt the need to provide an AV distraction, China's Foreign Ministry has criticised Donald Trump's tariffs saying “the market has spoken”. A foreign ministry spokesperson posted on social media that the tariff war started by the US is “unprovoked and unjustified”. He urged the Trump administration to reverse course and resolve differences.

Then it was on to more Killer thrashing ... and don't spare the moist warm lettuce leaf ...

As if all that were not enough, Creighton argues that the tariffs are no more than a tax shift, as they generate revenues that can be used to cut income taxes. Assuming that is indeed the administration’s goal (and it seems to have several, not entirely consistent, objectives), it would be difficult, if not impossible, to think of a substantial change in the tax mix that would be more economically harmful.
That isn’t to ignore the very substantial distortions income taxes can cause; but they pale into insignificance compared to those likely to arise from the tariffs Donald Trump has imposed. This is for two reasons.
First, unlike income taxes, which are imposed on an extremely broad and largely inelastic (ie, unresponsive) base, the tariffs fall on a base that is narrow and elastic: they will, in other words, induce responses that both reduce the revenue the tariffs collect and harm productivity, in the US and internationally, as sources of supply that have high costs but have been hit with relatively low tariffs displace lower-cost but high-tariff rivals.
Second, and even worse, the Trump tariffs are light years away from “efficient” tariffs: that is, tariffs whose structure is designed to raise a target amount of revenue at minimum economic cost. Instead, in a pattern that defies economic logic, they include extremely high effective tariff rates on goods used in the production of other goods (that is, intermediate inputs and capital goods), thus taxing US domestic production and so discouraging it.
This tax switch would, for those reasons, reduce American long-term growth, with consequences that would be felt globally – and even more so if the tariff hikes provoke a wave of retaliation worldwide.
Finally, Creighton asks what gives us the right to comment on the US’s choice of economic instruments. The answer is simple.
If the tariffs are merely a bargaining tool, intended to force a general reduction in trade barriers, their not insignificant short-term costs could be offset by longer-term gains – though achieving those gains would require wise leadership, a clear political will and great diplomatic skill.
However, if the tariffs are, as Creighton suggests, intended to remain in place, then they would do both Americans and Australians great harm. Australia and the United States have a shared interest in prosperity. As good friends and close allies, that shared prosperity deserves defending.
Henry Ergas is a columnist for The Australian and Jonathan Pincus is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Adelaide and former principal economic advisor to the Productivity Commission.

Of course the news this morning is that it was all 5D chess ...with the mango Mussolini's team out and about defending the carry on as skilled negotiations, with some 50 countries reportedly about to fold ...and never mind all the collateral damage...per WaPo and the NY Times... (and never mind poor old Lesotho )...

It got even fruitier in the tabloids...Musk Melts Down at Trump’s Tariff Guru as Feud Goes Public (archive link)

It was on for young and old ...

Uncle Leon sniping with Navarro, Killer being done down by our Henry and comrade Pincus?

Where will it all end? 

Will China invade by Ēostre? 

Will Killer snap back at Henry? 

Must the pond wait until Friday before he's given the chance to knock the old curmudgeons for six? 

Or will he do an IPA fudge, and retreat back to ranting about Covid and masks?

Who knows, all the pond knows is that the immortal Rowe hits just the right note as the pond closes out this chapter in the tariff and reptile wars ...with a special mention of golf to pander to the Major ...