August 27, 2019: Guess Where Trump Wants to Hold Next G-7!

 

8/27/19: Americans learn this week that the United States will be responsible for holding the G-7 summit in 2020. Well, then, where, oh where, would the best place to hold that meeting be? 

If you said: “Trump National Doral Miami,” you win the prize. 

According to the owner of said property, Doral would be perfect for such a gathering. Let’s have the Commander-in-Chief explain the joys that would await leaders of the G-7 (or the G-8, if he can invite Putin): 

Everybody’s that’s coming, all of these people with all of their big entourages come. It’s set up so — and by the way, my people looked at 12 sites. All good, but some were two hours from an airport, some were four hours from, I mean they were so far away. Some didn’t allow this, they didn’t allow that.

 

Yeah, imagine. Trump’s people looked at a dozen sites. And they realized, hey, Doral is the best!!! 

With the world watching with amaze, and the G-7 in France wrapping up, Trump continued with his sales pitch. 

With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows. They each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms, with magnificent views. We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants. It’s like, it’s like such a natural. ... And what we have also is Miami, and we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida, and the best. It’s brand new. 

 

Plus, if hurricanes threaten – we have the nukes. (See: 8/25/19.)

Trump at G-7, and of course he wants to lean into the picture.

 

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SPEAKING OF THREATS to the safety of millions of Americans, a judge in Oklahoma penalizes Johnson & Johnson $572 million for its role in marketing opioids and claiming they were perfectly safe. That judgment won’t bring back the tens of thousands who have died, of course. 

News of that judgment spooks other pushers. Purdue Pharma, which marketed opioids most aggressively, and claimed they were the safest, has offered to settle in federal court and pay $10-12 billion in damages. 

The victims of greed still won’t rise from the dead.

 

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PRESIDENT OBAMA may be gone. The imaginary “War on Coal” he supposedly launched, continues to be fought. 

U.S. coal demand fell in 2018 to the lowest level since 1979 and is expected to drop further this year. 

Must be Obama’s fault!

 

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“They picked winners, and they picked losers.” 

WE MIGHT NOT be getting hurt in the tariff war, according to President Trump; but lobster fishermen would choose to disagree. In the first six months of 2018, the Chinese bought 12 million pounds worth of the crustaceans from the U.S. And then Trump raised tariffs. 

China retaliated as anyone could predict. 

In the first six months of this year, U.S. sales of lobster to China fell 80 percent, to 2.2 million pounds.

 

Stephanie Nadeau, owner of The Lobster Company in Arundel, Maine, explains how tariff wars turn bloody in the real world. “They picked winners, and they picked losers,” she says of Trump and his economic advisers, “and they picked me a loser. There is no market that’s going to replace China.”  

Loss of market forced Nadeau to lay off seven of the fourteen people she once had working in wholesale. 

Nadeau is hardly alone in her pain. One trade group estimates that Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. businesses $3.4 billion in June.