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Trump Team Scrambles to Backpedal on Slip About Arms Sale to China
newrepublic.com

... Selling weapons to China is suddenly off the table. It's unclear how it got on the table in the first place.

U.S. Ambassador David Perdue told Fox News Sunday that "President Trump continues to say: Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world," and that "he actually asked [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] would he like to buy some at one point."

But hours later, the Trump administration aggressively attempted to cover its own tracks. Two U.S. officials denied any such plan while speaking with The Wall Street Journal.

One source told the daily that the White House had no intentions of selling weapons to Beijing, while the other acknowledged that it's already illegal to do so.

That ban circles back to Taiwan, which relies on U.S. weapons to deter Chinese encroachment. ...


As we have seen with the Obama measures, some "efficiency regulation" can be gamed.

Need to look at the details to see, perhaps this will drive American cars to be smaller.

Tightening the "Light Truck" Definition: Starting in model year 2030, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is amending the fleet classification system. The rules make it structurally more difficult for automakers to use specific design elements and equipment additions to trick the system into classifying small SUVs and crossovers as light trucks. This forces more of these high-volume vehicles back into the stricter passenger car regulatory bucket.

Elimination of Credit Trading: Historically, automakers who failed to meet efficiency metrics could purchase regulatory credits from cleaner automakers (like Tesla). The new regulation eliminates the inter-manufacturer credit trading system starting in model year 2028. This forces every manufacturer to stand on their own fleet's merits rather than subsidizing non-compliance through competitors

Removal of Compliance Fines: The pressure to forcefully electrify fleets is lowered by rolling back or eliminating standard steep financial penalties for compliance gaps, aiming to give automakers more design freedom to build vehicles based purely on consumer demand rather than regulatory metrics.
qz.com

This is actually pretty good list of changes, means the RAV4 isn't an SUV, lowering the fleet MPG but changing the categories is actually pretty good idea. idk who thought of it. But the Obama rules were getting gamed and needed to change.


Then there's this ...

Trump's economy polls terribly. It's also surging.
www.politico.com

... Consumer sentiment is sagging, yet the economy is powering forward, driven by an AI investment boom and people still spending despite the strain of higher prices.

It might surprise a lot of disgruntled voters, but the U.S. economy is doing pretty well.

After all, oil prices have repeatedly breached $100 a barrel, driving gas prices above $4 a gallon. The U.S. government's borrowing costs are rising, pushing mortgage rates above 7%. Consumers are gloomy, and polling on President Donald Trump's handling of the economy is abysmal.

And yet, the economy is powering forward, driven by an AI investment boom, and everyday people who are still spending despite the strain of higher prices. A survey last week by S&P Global showed that U.S. business activity accelerated at the fastest pace in more than five years, boosting employment and manufacturing output. That suggests GDP might have grown at a rapid pace of about 4% over the past three months.

Unemployment has fallen back down to 4.1%, and the number of new people claiming jobless benefits was near 57-year lows, the government said last week.

But those positive numbers are hard to pitch to the public just over a month until the midterm elections, where affordability concerns are expected to dominate voter decisions and consumer sentiment has fallen 15% since the beginning of the year. In fact, Trump's economy may be a victim of its own success, with the Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates at least once more before the year is out in a bid to rein in inflation that's being fueled in part by that growth. ...


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