Dennis Gorelik

Donald Trump said today: "in the war against Chinese virus".

So Trump implies that the US is kind of in a war with China.

WTF?
Trump should have known that the problem is not the Coronavirus itself, but our society panic about it.
Bringing up that war reference and blaming Chinese for detecting Coronavirus - will make the panic situation worse, not better.

I think that Trump will lose the next presidential election (2020-11-03).

As a result of all these "Trump vs Putin" discussions, I asked myself: am I qualified to evaluate Putin and Trump's relationships?

Considering how much effort over the years I put to understand these two populist politicians -- I think I am well qualified.

One interesting sign is that I voted in both Putin and Trump Presidential elections (in 2000 and in 2016).

My guesstimate is that there are only about several thousand people like that in the entire world.

I think these sanctions would end up being mostly symbolic and would have no real effect. Which is exactly how it should be, considering that some limited lobbying of US elections by other countries is a good thing (it keeps countries together).

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https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/06/14/senate_approves_new_russia_sanctions_limits_on_trump_134193.html
The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 97-2 sent a message to Vladimir Putin that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are serious about punishing Russia for its actions last year -- and sent a message to Trump that they're serious about ensuring that those sanctions stay in place until Congress is ready to lift them.
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https://www.reuters.com/.../us-usa-russia-sanctions...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman ... said it was "strange" that sanctions intended to punish Russia for alleged interference in the U.S. elections could also trigger penalties against European companies.
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Donald Trump suggested to pay for the wall from the new 20% tax on Mexican imports. Lawmakers refused to cooperate. So Trump changed his mind.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/donald-trump-mexico-import-tax-border-wall/index.html

That made me think if Trump understands what he is going to do with the economy.
But the thing is that economy is not the only Trump's consideration. More importantly, he has to comply with public opinion. Unfortunately that public opinion is self-destructive on multiple issues.
So balancing public opinion vs practical economic goals is hard.

I believe that in order to increase our economic benefits - we should reduce government regulations ~5x (or, at least, 2x for starters).
Which means that government should work mostly on reducing regulations, not on introducing new ones.

However that thing with reducing government regulations is actually not that simple.
Complex government regulations could serve an important role of circumventing popular (but dumb) public opinion.
For example:
1) Complex tax code (such as tax deductions) allows to effectively reduce taxes without offending popular public opinion that we should tax rich people a lot.
2) Introducing legal minimum wage allows to discriminate against low skill people and keep them away from affluent neighborhoods.
Etc.

Politics is really complex and hard to grasp.