☕️ HUMPHREY HOWLED ☙ Tuesday, May 27, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trio of tariff wins: Japan bankrolls bailouts, EU folds fast, China buckles under pressure; WaPo wails over vax freedom; climate blamed for women’s cancer; SCOTUS spooks Swamp.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! I hope everyone enjoyed a thoughtful but rewarding Memorial Day yesterday. Today’s stellar roundup includes: trio of tariff goodness; Japan antes up behemoth bailouts to stay in the tariff negotiating game; EU caves under a whiff of pressure and agrees to fast-track trade talks; corporate media starts retconning brave China talk and begins to admit that Trump pressure is peaking over the Asian giant’s economy; WaPo hysterically reports democracy is dying in the darkness of non-free covid shots; nation’s top liberal paper blamed women’s rising cancer rates on the climate, with a straight corporate media fact; and SCOTUS enters an unsigned order that terrifies the deep state— even more.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Let’s check in on Trump’s tariff negotiations. Corporate media is diligently working to conceal the fact that Trump and his team are making significant progress, as shown by three different articles that appeared in this morning’s headlines. Not that you’d know from reading them.

Trade talks are always hard to follow, by design. By their very nature, trade negotiations, which affect real money, are deeply secretive; the parties never leak anything but strategic lies, and they don’t even hint about what they really want or are really afraid of. Even when we do hear something, the terms change and evolve faster and more dizzyingly than backstage ballerinas changing costumes during Nutcracker season.

📈 Yesterday’s first story ran in the NYT under the headline, “Japan Will Spend $6.3 Billion to Shield Its Economy From Trump’s Tariffs.” Japan, the world’s fifth-largest economy (overtaken just this year by India), is spending it own taxpayers’ money to “reimburse businesses and households adversely affected by the tariffs.” In other words, they’re taking money from taxpayers, then giving it back to them, and this somehow makes them better off. Make it make sense.

It’s big bailouts! And it shows you the level of emergency they’re navigating. Snatching cash from certain taxpayers to prop up more politically-connected others —robbing Peter to pay Paul— is not sustainable. It’s just moving the deck chairs around the Titanic. Japan is carving its economy into bite-sized sushi in a ritual economic seppuku.

The story, desperately trying to craft a negative narrative about Trump’s unreasonable personality, the Times still managed to describe a country that is beginning to panic and is facing not just a little economic inconvenience, but potential financial armageddon.

The ‘news’ was Japan’s approval, under intense political pressure, of its mega-bailout package aimed mostly at its key auto industry, which faces 25% U.S. tariffs. We then discover that Trump’s negotiating team has said that term is non-negotiable. For now, at least.

The tariffs are hammering Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. Toyota, for example, is forecasting a $1.3 billion hit just for April and May. The article also offhandedly reported that Nissan announced plans to move some of its production to the U.S.— a cornerstone of Trump’s policy and an unequivocal success.

Japan’s wider economy, already pressured by declining demographics, massive debt (over 250% of GDP), and a sagging yen, now faces “overall growth that could be more than halved.” In other words, Trump’s negotiators have found Japan’s pressure point, and are bearing down on it hard.

The article cited more good news for the U.S. Last month, Spain also deployed a bigger, $15 billion bailout package, to buy more time to negotiate a tariff deal with America. Canada has also “earmarked billions” for tariff relief. And Germany’s parliament is currently debating its own industrial bailout package. What all this means is that other countries are being forced to pay to stay in the game.

It’s like one of those swanky private poker tables where the ante is $1,000 a hand. Welcome to Mar-a-Lago.

And, again defying all expert predictions, things are moving at the speed of business, not politics. “While Japan has yet to secure concessions,” the Times blandly reported, “Mr. Akazawa expressed optimism that an agreement could be ironed out during a Japan-U.S. meeting in mid-June.” Meaning, in two weeks.

Trump is winning. He’s crushing it. And he’s doing it without a treaty, without years of State Department dickering, without Congress, and without a war. It’s unbelievable.

Media bust a gut laughing when Trump said, “you won’t believe how fast we can make a deal.” Yet here we are.

📈 Our second tariff story ran in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, headlined, “Dow Futures Rally After European Union Agrees to Fast-Track Trade Talks.” The sub-headline explained, “President Trump agreed over the weekend to delay 50% tariffs on the EU until July 9th.” Agreed with whom? Reading further, we find it was with obsequious EU Presidentress Ursula Von der Leyen, who until this weekend was busy vowing to resist American imperialism to the last Ukrainian.

Last week, in a saucy Truth Social post, President Trump slammed the EU for dragging its diplomatic heels, and declared it time to crank EU tariffs up to an eye-watering 50%. Despite all the bellicose bravado from Brussels, and all the sneering condescension from corporate media, EU ministers fell right in line like sashimi chefs behind the counter —knives ready, smiles fixed— waiting to take Trump’s order.

It was a swift, silent about-face wrapped in diplomatic seaweed. Vanished from this week’s Journal coverage like a ninja in a smoke bomb were all last week’s breathless explanations about how the European Union is too ponderous, too fragmented, too bureaucratic to possibly move quickly. And yet —prego, amico!— now they can, apparently, slice together a deal as fast as a Tokyo teppanyaki chef on Red Bull. Fast-tracked.

Trump’s pressure on Europe is arguably more intense and painful than the pressure being applied to Japan. The EU isn’t one country— it’s 27 governments with 27 different domestic agendas. Trump’s pressure exploits those divisions. France wants protections for agriculture, Germany cares about manufacturing, Eastern states just want to stay out of the crossfire.

The European Union has a central bank, but it has no unified treasury. So they can’t throw bailout billions around, not without approvals from Brussels, Berlin, and a dozen skeptical finance ministers. If Japan’s over a barrel, the EU is strapped to a teriaki spit.

📈 Third, and finally for today, reality is setting in for the world’s second-largest economy and in media’s reporting rooms. The New York Times ran a gloomy China story this morning, headlined “China’s Soft Spot in Trade War With Trump: Risk of Huge Job Loss.” As we proceed, remember corporate media called the tariffs “economic suicide,” promised that Trump’s China tariffs would cause U.S. prices to skyrocket, and sneered that the Chinese held all the cards.

At first, China said it would never negotiate with the U.S., not until all tariffs were dropped. Then, it agreed to negotiate. Now the Times tells us, “China’s economy is struggling.” Only weeks into the trade war, “the situation is clearly much worse,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, a hyphenated chief economist for an Asian investment bank.

Even worse for the Asian dragon, China’s counter-tariffs are failing. One Shanghai equipment maker mentioned in the story collapsed, closing down operations due to China’s punitive retaliatory duties on U.S. machinery. Another toy factory owner said it best: “It’s existential. We might not exist.”

So, if China keeps retaliating with its own tariffs, it will destroy its own importers. But if it doesn’t retaliate, it looks weak. Lose-lose. Would you rather get Fauci’s face tattooed on your forehead, or drink a bucket of monkey snot?

Last month, China stopped publishing all employment figures. (Nothing shows confidence like hiding the scoreboard.) China’s growing unemployment disaster is a political powder keg. Even though the Chinese meekly submitted to lockdowns, they become much more restless when their jobs disappear. The Chinese Communist Party’s whole social contract depends on a simple, unspoken bargain: You stay out of politics. We’ll deliver economic growth and stable employment.

The last time mass unemployment and inflation combined in China was 1989. The result was Tiananmen Square. The CCP hasn’t forgotten. Which is why it is directing factory owners to lay off workers “quietly,” and explains why the government is fudging unemployment stats to calm the crowds.

How much longer can they bail themselves out?

Once again, as in Japan and the EU, Trump has found China’s exposed nerve and is standing on it in steel-tipped boots, grinding away with the weight of the world’s largest economy behind him. Negotiations continue, but China is holding a hand of low cards.

Trump is practically making it look easy.

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What would corporate media do without worry? Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a surprising story headlined, “FDA’s plan to limit covid vaccines worries some who won’t be eligible.” The unintentionally hilarious sub-headline explained, “If coronavirus vaccines are restricted to seniors and those at high risk, parents of young children and relatives of medically vulnerable people face a higher bar for shots.”

Haha, democracy may die in darkness, but for some low-risk medical fetishists, it’s apparently also dying because they can’t get their free covid boosters on demand.

“Some Americans,” WaPo mournfully noted, “are rushing to get vaccinated before fall, toying with the idea of going abroad for shots or deciding if they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars.” (Going abroad for cheaper shots? Um … what about travel costs? Oh, nevermind, dammit.) Without any sense of irony, the story continued, “For many Americans, vaccination against the coronavirus has become a sort of security blanket.”

L.O.L., security blanket. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. In other words, we’re no longer talking about rational risk management— it is really just ritualized injections for the spiritually anxious.

Under the FDA’s new framework, high-risk individuals can still get the shots. The panic is coming from the low-risk cohort— people who aren’t actually at risk, but apparently are just worried enough to want the sacred juice for free, but not worried enough to pay for it themselves. It’s a conundrum.

And yet somehow, this handful of superstitious jab zealots —too healthy to need it, too cheap to pay for it— are enough to fuel a breathless Washington Post exposé about vanishing access to their sacred syringes.

But wait, there’s more.

💉 On the same day, the Post ran a darkly amusing bit of narrative craftsmanship under the headline, “Cancer rates rose for women in some countries where extreme heat is rising, study says.” Great Scott, now what?

The study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, analyzed data from 17 Middle Eastern and North African countries between 1998–2019. In other words, it conveniently cut off just before the jabs, which gave away the game. The study’s statistical analysis purported to show that, as temperatures rose, so did women’s cancer rates— especially breast and ovarian cancers.

The white-coated lab prostitutes speculated that hotter weather might increase UV exposure, worsen air pollution, and maybe even affect cellular biology itself. Somehow. And— it only hits women, for some unexplained reason (“A gender-sensitive lens is needed,” the scientists mused. But what if the gender-sensitive lens only works if it’s penis-shaped? What then?). Nor did the study even try to explain why Washington state has 10% higher age-adjusted cancer rates per capita than does the Sunshine State— even though Florida’s population is much older and much hotter.

Anyway, there you have it. Climate change is causing all these turbo cancers, not jabs, stupid. It’s so obvious … to experts.

You aren’t, but … don’t be fooled. This is no genuine inquiry. It’s a post-hoc alibi. The public’s not blind— people can see for themselves the post-2021 rise in aggressive, fast-growing turbo cancers. Rather than investigate what changed recently (like mRNA rollouts, immune dysregulation, or novel environmental exposures), we get this kind of stupid science: it’s the weather.

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Yesterday, SCOTUSblog ran an encouraging story headlined, “Supreme Court allows Trump to remove agency heads without cause for now.” This is a much bigger deal than it looks at first blush.

In a decision that sent tremors rumbling through D.C.’s bureaucratic marble halls, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to remove two federal agency heads— without showing cause. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) have both historically been insulated from presidential whim by statutory “for-cause” removal protections.

Those two agencies are critical to Trump’s agenda, since they review and can halt any other federal firing. Until President Trump began firing board members, the boards were majority Democrat.

Several lower federal judges and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered the Administration to let board members on the two “independent agencies” stay in office after President Trump tried to fire them. But Thursday, the court explained that staying those lower orders “reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”

The three liberal Justices —Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson— howled in dissent, excreting an 8-page stinker that called the majority’s two-page ruling “extraordinary.” Justice Kagan, writing for the outraged minority, said, “It favors the President over our precedent, and it does so unrestrained.” Kagan gloomily warned that the majority is letting independent agencies —in her view designed to be “bipartisan” and “expertise-driven”— be gutted like fish even before the full case can be heard.

When Kagan referred to “preferring the President over precedent,” she was talking about an old FDR-era (1935) Supreme Court case called Humphrey’s Executor, which was directly on point. In that case, the Supreme Court had unanimously ruled that Congress can limit the president’s power to remove officials from independent agencies. Since 2020, the conservative Court delicately chipped away at Humphrey’s holding in two Biden-era cases.

This isn’t chipping though. This is just tossing Humprey’s into the bleach-bitter. It would’ve been far easier—and far more typical—for the Court’s majority to let Humphrey’s New Deal precedent stand for now, even if they were quietly polishing the judicial garden shears for later pruning. Instead, they reached right past their precedent toward the chainsaw.

The majority’s order letting Trump proceed with the two firings seems to signal the Court is ready to overturn or at least further modify Humprey’s. If upheld, it will cut deeply into the modern administrative state, letting the president fire anyone at will, even if Congress tried to prevent the president from doing exactly that. So-called “independent agencies” include the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, the SEC, and more.

To be clear: despite all the corporate media hand-wringing, this isn’t about building up the Executive Branch’s power into a dictatorship. It might look like a shift of power from Congress to the President, but that’s a smokescreen. Instead, this decision is part of a much broader movement that is slowly shifting power from the unelected permanent bureaucracy —the deep state— and back to the President where it belongs.

The deep state appears nowhere in the Constitution, and that founding document sure doesn’t let Congress create a permanent “fourth branch” of power-wielding bureaucrats.

In other words, Presidential power isn’t expanding— it’s being restored to where it was originally placed in the Constitution: at the top of the executive pyramid. Congress’ attempt to protect federal agencies from their own boss was the original usurpation of Constitutional order. The Founders gave us three branches, not four. They vested executive power in a single person for a reason: so voters can hold someone accountable.

So— be encouraged. Despite all the attention to one frustrating immigration decision last week, the Supreme Court has not gone rogue. The brake on rogue lower courts is still working.

Have a terrific Tuesday! We’ll return tomorrow morning with even more encouragement, essential news, and snarky commentary.

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