REALLY BAD things are coming for Putin......sure they are

 

May 27, 2025 (127/1461)

So TOM is now really digging in on the temper tantrum. Pesky Putin won’t do what he wants so TOM says he’s going to impose more sanctions. Am I the only who thinks Putin doesn’t give one single rat’s ass what TOM does? Am I also the only one who thinks the more TOM tries to make Putin look the putz of the world, the more likely it is that TOM will have an unpleasant visit at some point in the future? “And in a Truth Social post Tuesday, the president wrote: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!” Classic narcissist, all threat no action. So maybe you could list off those REALLY BAD things. Cause from where I sit and read, I got nothing, buddy.

TOM V Harvard continues down the same unwavering path. “Trump laid into Harvard on social media over the weekend, threatening to cut an additional $3 billion in federal grants and give it to trade schools across the United States. He did not explain which grants he was referring to or how they could be reallocated. “We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump said on social media. It was not clear exactly what the president was referring to. The federal government already has access to visa information and other records on foreign students at Harvard and other universities.”

A little interesting twist has arisen out of the tariff tirade. Incentivizing fraud in imports. “Shipping companies, many of them based in China, have reached out to U.S. firms that import apparel, auto parts and jewelry, offering solutions that they say can make the tariffs go away.

“We can avoid high duties from China, which we have already done many in the past,” read one email to a U.S. importer.

“Beat U.S. Tariffs,” a second read, promising to cap the tariffs “at a flat 10%.” It added: “You ship worry free.”

“For a fee, they find ways to bring products to the United States with much lower tariffs. But experts say these practices are methods of customs fraud. The companies may be dodging tariffs by altering the information about the shipments that is given to the U.S. government to qualify for a lower tariff rate. Or they may move the goods to another country that is subject to a lower tariff before shipping them to the United States, a technique known as transshipment.”

There are two basic schemes for avoiding the tariffs, or lowering them. Fraud A is to lower the declared value of an item so that the tariff is lower. Fraud B, even better is to outright lie about the makeup of a product. Polyester has a higher tariff rate so lie and say it’s cotton.

Fraud C is to route the item through a country with a lower tariff.

You can always bet when the stakes go up, monetarily, the cheating will go up as well.

Delta used this earlier in the year, when it took ownership of a new Airbus in Japan and intends to fly it around Asia and Europe before bringing it into the US. It will be a big game of cat and mouse and I’m not so sure the cat will win.