Trump Nailed for Covering Up How His Tariffs Fuck Farmers
On inflation, too, the administration is hiding or just not gathering data revealing how shitty his policies are
June 5: Administration squashes report blaming farm trade deficit on Trump’s stupid tariffs bullshit … Trump also making sure inflation data won’t reveal how much he’s inflating prices … Trump’s office of management and budget director hasn’t managed to produce a budget … Tariffs projected to reduce national deficit by taking money from you …
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How badly will Pres. Donald Trump’s tariffs fuck us? So fucking badly that Politico just nailed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for censoring its own analysis of aforementioned fucking because said analysis revealed that America’s trade imbalance in farm goods will get worse because of his tariffs.
And that’s not the only Trump assault on government data that just got busted. But first, Trump’s fucking of farmers, their daughters, and the rest of their families.
The USDA releases quarterly reports and analyses on how much farm stuff we’re exporting and importing.
The most recent report, issued this week, forecasts that the farm trade deficit — the gap between the food America sells and buys — will hit a record $49.5 billion this year.
That’s a massive leap from last year’s also-record farm trade deficit, which was $31.8 billion. We’re talking about an increase of 55%!
What caused it? We don’t know because the written analysis that the USDA includes with its report was censored. Like, the whole thing.
There are lots of factors in something as big and complex as global markets, but Politico reports that the top-secret agriculture analysis “reflects Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs.” That’s based on two unnamed sources. We just have to hope Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shares it in a Signal group chat.
But now the Trump administration knows his tariffs will worsen the trade imbalance for America’s farmers. And unlike the last time he fucked America’s farmers, in his first term, he’s not leaving $23 billion on the nightstand for their troubles.
(We did have a hint Trump knew this was coming, because he’s already talking about giving farmers another bailout, which would be funded by taxpayers already paying more for food also because of Trump’s tariffs. Feel double-fucked yet?)
The USDA told Politico that the report’s non-public-ness is due to all the massive new red tape of the Trump administration except ha ha using nothing like those actual words.
“The report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline,” said USDA spokesperson Alec Varsamis, whose name TFN is including here to ensure that this newsletter pops up when his prospective future employers search for it. “[T]he Department is undergoing a review of all of its non-statutory reports, including this one, to determine next steps.”
Y’know what reviews and internal clearance processes are? Steps 1 and 2 of censorship!
And the USDA’s internal clearance processes have already given us at least one fudged fact on the report they did release. It was supposed to come out in May, and it’s dated May 29th but wasn’t actually released until Monday, May 33rd.
As Politico reports, farmers and commodity traders and pretty much the entire food industry depend on accurate or at least not-fucked government data and analysis to figure out how the fuck to survive another year of relentless capitalism. The analyses are also used to guide government policy, which presidents can guide however the fuck they want when they subject the analyses to “internal clearance process.”
Former USDA chief economist Joe Glauber told Politico, “[T]he public depends on” objectivity in these reports. “To lose that trust would be terrible.”
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, also terrible, is both a big champion for Trump’s tariffs and also part of the weekly White House Bible study led by far-right evangelical Ralph Drollinger, whose curriculum doesn’t appear to include “Thou shalt not bear false witness about international trade projections.”
Of course, censorship is a lot easier when you have less information to censor in the first place. Which brings us to the prices we’ll pay thanks to Trump’s tariffs…
Trump Fighting Inflation By Deflating Efforts to Track It
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced yesterday that it’s getting less information about how much Pres. Donald Trump’s policies are fucking us at the cash register except ha ha using nothing like those actual words.
A notice published yesterday used these words, instead: “BLS is reducing sample in areas across the country.” Meaning: the BLS will get less data from America about how much prices are going up throughout America.
How come? Obviously because Trump is defeating inflation so hard that there’s less of it! In fact, there is no inflation at all anymore in Lincoln, NE; Provo, UT; and Buffalo, NY, because BLS stopped all tracking there Trump is awesome.
And already, the data BLS does have are getting trashier and more suspect, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Here’s how. When BLS lacks data, it guesses, based on the data it does have. It’s called different-cell imputation. Basically, your rarely guessing TFN is guessing, they impute data they don’t have from the cells in their spreadsheets that have similar data.
Helpfully, BLS announces how much different-cell imputing they do. And here’s what it looks like, month by month. See if you can spot The Trump Effect’s subtle outlier here:
That’s right. They different-cell imputated almost a third of their April data. The more different-cell imputating there is, the less certainty there is in the numbers.
And, of course, presidents don’t have to tell their agencies to stop showing how much they suck if they just fire the suck-measurers. And I think it’s pretty safe to infer that BLS’s guesses are due to Trump’s cuts leaving BLS without resources to support its data collection efforts.
How can we infer that? Because BLS said: “BLS makes reductions when current resources can no longer support the collection effort.” So, yeah, they’re straight-up admitting it.
Of course, the cutbacks aren’t done yet, so as BLS shrinks, we can expect to see inflation disappear entirely from Bemidji, MN; Sheboygan, WI; and even more-amusingly named cities. Don’t be surprised if the cutbacks lead the BLS to cut its name to just BS.
Of course, Trump has a plan for any government data that do slip through, along with non-government data…
Everyone Revealed To Be Wrong About Big Beautiful Bullshit
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday released its new, updated estimate of the impacts of Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act legislation. And the Trump administration instantly claimed that the CBO is wrong, along with all the other people in the world.
The CBO estimates that the bill’s cumulative cuts to government health-care subsidies could leave 16 million (more) people without health insurance over the next ten years. Trump isn’t arguing that — he’s just arguing that those 16 million people are thieves who should die or at least have the decency to be less healthy.
No, the area where Trump’s implementing his new strategy for inconvenient facts is, of course, the money. They’re just dismissing money facts they don’t like.
The CBO now estimates Trump’s bill will add $2.4 trillion to the national debt.
That’s because cutting spending by $1.3 trillion while reducing tax revenues (mostly from rich people) by $3.7 trillion = $2.4 trillion in new debt, because math is still a thing. Or is it…?
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought — another White House Bible study buddy and key architect of Project 2025 — testified before a House committee yesterday that the CBO doesn’t know how to do CBing. Also no longer good at math, according to Vought, are Moody’s and the Cato Institute. And some Republican senators. And the richest man in the world. (Yes, Elon Musk continued his online assault on the bill yesterday.)
So here’s Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), at yesterday’s hearing, getting Vought on record as the world’s last surviving mathematician:
Vought and Trump’s other GOP defenders make two claims to justify their “math.” One is that the CBO and other estimates don’t take Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as a baseline. Meaning, Vought wants the CBO not to include the effects of those tax cuts in its calculations, because the CBO is supposed to calculate only the effects of the new bill.
Here’s the problem with that: The new bill extends those 2017 tax cuts. Without this new bill, those tax cuts disappear at the end of this year.
The other claim Trump’s emotional support clowns make is that they’ll take in tons more money in tax revenues — despite cutting tax rates — because this bill will make the economy so great that there’ll be tons more profits to tax. Which no one thinks will happen. (And the IRS will have much fewer resources to get whatever there is.)
Oh, and as for Vought’s ability to manage a budget as director of the Office of Management and Budget, he failed to send Congress a full White House budget like he’s supposed to.
Even House Republicans pressed Vought for failing to do his homework — submitting only a partial spending plan last week with no sign of economic forecasting. Vought said he’s waiting for the final Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Buuuut … House Republicans said they need his budget to finish it.
And one source of new tax revenue that the CBO does predict is one that Republicans might not wanna brag about…
Tariffs Could Shrink Deficit By $2.8 Trillion (of Your Money)
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) yesterday released new estimates on everything apparently, including the impact of Pres. Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Remember how Trump promised lots of revenue from tariffs? Potentially enough to kill personal income taxes? Well, there’s lots of revenue coming, all right. From you! On top of income taxes!
The CBO estimates that tariff revenues will be so great over the next ten years, if they remain steady — HAAAA!!! — that the federal deficit will be $2.8 trillion lower than it would’ve been. Here’s the key point from ABC that ABC could’ve put a lot higher in their story:
It is important to note that the money raised to pay down the deficit is revenue from taxpayers who are paying the duties on imported goods.
That’s you, Newsfuckers! And you, MAGA!
All told — or not-yet all told — tariffs will add an estimated 0.4% to the inflation rate over the next two years.
But the tariffs will also hamper the economy, the CBO says. Ten years from now, America’s gross domestic product — the value of all our economic activity — will be 0.6% lower than without Trump’s tariffs.
Bottom line: Economic growth will slow, meaning less growth of jobs and wages, so we’ll have less money to pay higher prices for shit, because we’ve had to pay $2.8 trillion worth of tariffs which are a tax that hit you harder the poorer you are … all to subsidize tax cuts that massively benefit the rich more than the rest of us.
And even the South African illionaire who stands to benefit the most recognizes this as a disgusting abomination. Feeling great again yet, MAGA?
KEEPING HOPE ALIVE Remember, even if Congress does pass some version of the Abominable Snow Job, it’s not permanent. We just need to fight for leaders who will do more than just undo it.
MEDIA WATCH Your news-consuming TFN saw headline after headline saying the CBO predicts Trump’s tariffs will shrink the economy. Not what the CBO said.
I had to find their actual letter to figure this out. That’s right, our innumerate corporate media are so bad I had to resort to a fucking primary source! What have we come to, America?
The CBO’s letter says “…the level of real GDP will be 0.6 percent lower than it was in CBO’s economic forecast from January 2025.”
That doesn’t mean the economy will shrink, it means the rate of growth will be lower than previously expected. Can’t really blame people for not trusting the media.
Trigger Warning: Brutiggieg Takedown
I feel like I have a pretty good sense of why so many people like former Transportation Secretary and future President Pete Buttigieg. For one thing, he works his ass off to make it easy!
But with any politician, I think it’s really important to hear the critics of even/especially your faves. Former Daily Show writer Jim Earl is great at testing your capacity for exactly this. And now he’s posted a reminder of just some of the reasons progressives/Commies and pretty much everyone left of center has perennial Buttigieg skepticism. WARNING: Do not read if your Buttilove obliges you to hate his meannest critics, because we should all remain receptive to whatever Jim Earl has to say.
TCB
CROWDSOURCING/PLOITATION! There’s a weird Venn diagram between exploitative capitalism and real, collective Communism. It’s called crowdsourcing. I love/hate/love it and I’m thinking of it cuz I just launched a new TFN tracking page for upcoming elections. At the moment, it’s poopy-doody, but my hope is that with some crowdsourcing/sploitation we can make it useful for focusing attention on upcoming elections in helpful/actionable ways without burying people in every upcoming contest. Curated, ‘n’ shit!
If you’ve ever wanted to pitch in, please check it out and feel free to go nuts in the comments or get in touch with me directly if you’re shy. (We’re all shy.)
WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE? Last week’s experiment with a Saturday wrap/summary of the week generated…mixed results? My son is graduating from high school this weekend, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to try another one on Saturday, but if you feel strongly — or weakly! — about it, please let me know. Plus, there’s a lot of news on my to-newsfuck list, so maybe I’ll try to sneak some new stuff in if I do it.
SUPPORTING TFN With Substack’s apparent slowdown (it’s not just TFN — we haven’t lost a beat on the Leaderboard!) — I’m going to have to dedicate more time to trying to build awareness outside this weird platform.
(I was just interviewed for an upcoming article related to Substack, so maybe that’ll help! Oh, and I’m set to join Joe Sudbay on SiriusXM on the Progressive channel at 7pm eastern on Friday, yay!)
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QUESTION Any interest in a live newsfucking by me? I’m thinking of doing a live video, in which you Newsfuckers pitch articles at me for me to newsfuck in real time (analyzing them, basically). What do folks think?
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Go get ‘em, kids! The coalition for facts now includes Republicans, the Cato Institute, Elon Musk, oh and pretty much everyone who’s not one of Trump’s emotional support clowns…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
I thought I couldn't love TFN any more, you use a plural verb when the subject is "data". Squeeee 💜
The censoring of Government data is really concerning to me. It's not like we can just calculate this stuff ourselves. Especially not if the data is also being censored. And we may not be able to recovered later! This administration's actions are terrifying. There may not be any news to fuck if this continues.
I have faith in our democracy (barely) but the opposition really really REALLY needs to win control of Congress in 2026. Or we are fucked (and not in a good way).
Count me in as a weekend reader, as well as all week long. So whatever you can send, whatever it is, I'll be reading it!