Trump's tariff tirade will be bad for Alaska

The Alaska Permanent Fund is diversified, which is something to be thankful for on a day when stocks cratered because of Donald Trump’s trade war, executed in a “bizarre, slapdash way.”

That’s how the Trump enablers at the Murdoch Wall Street Journal described the White House bumbling. “Our guess is that investors are losing confidence in U.S. economic decisions,” the Journal said.

I am waiting to hear the arguments about how the Trump trade war, which has the backing of Alaska Republicans not named Sen. Lisa Murkowski, will be great for Alaska.

That Alaska oil production is going to go way up because of Trump, while Alaska oil prices are going to go way down, a combination that will never happen.

That Trump will be great for the export of Alaska fish and that Trump’s attempt to blackmail countries in Asia is just what we need to get the Alaska gas pipeline built.

This, after all, is the Golden Age of Alaska, brought to us by the great and powerful leader, according to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich 3.

“Alaska’s moment has arrived,” says Nicholas the Third. “It’s morning again in Alaska,” says Sullivan. “It’s like Christmas every day now,’ says Dunleavy.

For some reason the Alaska supplicants didn’t have much to say about the benefits of Trump’s Liberation day and the $3 trillion slide.

“Mr. Trump's tariffs are the biggest policy shock to the world trading system since Richard Nixon blew up Bretton Woods in 1971. As with that decision, Mr. Trump is acting with little understanding about the damage his tariffs will cause,” the Journal said.

We live in an interconnected world, but Trump has other ideas. He wants the world to beg for his approval.

Regarding Alaska and its seafood, a 2023 report by the McKinley Research Group on the seafood supply chain speaks to the dependence of Alaska’s fishing industry on worldwide markets.

“When it leaves Alaska, most Alaska seafood first goes to Asia, which is both a final market (particularly Japan) and a reprocessing market (particularly China, Thailand, and Vietnam). Much of the Alaska seafood processed in China and Southeast Asia is eventually shipped back to the U.S. or to other major markets,” the report says.

“Although the importance of China in the Alaska seafood supply chain has declined since 2017, in 2022 China remained the world's largest export market for Alaska seafood by volume (Japan was the largest by value),” McKinley said.

The Trump gang—which based its tariffs on the nonsensical approach of dividing a country’s trade deficit with the U.S. by its exports and cutting it in half for a Trump “discount,”—cannot be expected to perform real analysis.

Regarding Alaska oil, the only way that Alaska oil production will increase substantially in the years ahead is if prices are high. The Trump babbling that he will “unleash” liquid gold and make the nation wealthy while making fuel cheap is lunacy. Shouting “energy dominance” like pro wrestlers won’t make any difference.

Which brings us to the Alaska gas pipeline.

No nation and no company overseas is going to make serious financial commitments to a guy who expects the world to fall in line and obey his every whim. The rest of the world is not the Republican Party.

While the U.S. Senate voted 51-48 to end the phony emergency Trump declared so he could start his trade war Canada, the split between Alaska’s senators was predictable and depressing.

Sen. Dan Sullivan had his office issue an extended piece of gibberish claiming that there really is an emergency with Canada regarding fentanyl and that Trump was right to go after Canada, blah, blah, blah.

The truth is that Sullivan will do whatever Trump wants and he will lie to Alaskans to avoid revealing his complete subservience, claiming he is a thoughtful person. Even when it comes to this dumb trade war.

Murkowski, by contrast, was one of the four Republicans who voted to end the phony emergency.

“Like any relationship, there are certainly areas for improvement. I support the President’s efforts to block the flow of fentanyl in our country, but we should remember the old saying that the U.S. and Canada are ‘neighbors by geography, and friends by choice.’ In that same spirit, I’m certain we can find a better way to mutually secure our borders and address fentanyl trafficking than by starting a trade war,.” she said.

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