Dmitry Grozoubinski

@explaintrade

Author of Why Politicians Lie About Trade | Trade and Negotiations Explainer. Forever D&D DM. 🇺🇦 Born. 🇦🇺 Raised. 🇨🇭 Based. Media and training: explaintrade.com Consultancy network: auroramacro.com Speaking representation: cwgspeakers.com

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Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir explaintrade.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 9d

Gentlemen, I believe I have a pitch that will appeal to both Pete Hegsteth and Donald Trump.

Don Draper from Mad Men, in an army uniform pitching "Tequila and Tariffs"

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 10d

For the record I didn't post this as a draft script.

Post by Dmitry Grozoubinski on Bluesky:

"She gave as good as she got, it was all a bit of fun and banter."

Was it?

Or was she desperately trying to diffuse the situation by playing along because you and three of your gigantic drunk mates had her cornered in a crowded bar and she's 5'2"?
10:46 AM · Jul 31, 2026

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 12d

BANTA!

Footage posted by Scott Margerison includes him swearing at a stranger, making sexualised comments about young women and an interaction with a Sikh shopkeeper where he talks about a plan to "breed out the white race".

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 15d

I am normally the first to defend civil servants. However, if this reporting is true then there should be mass firings and if at all legally feasible, criminal charges. To butcher a West Wing quote: everyone who did it, everyone who ordered it, and everyone who knew about it.

A senior judge has accused the Home Office of relying on “AI hallucinated” information to refuse an asylum claim.

The case relates to a Moroccan woman and her child who fled her country after experiencing forced underage marriage and extreme violence, including rape. The woman claimed asylum on the basis of fears that she would be killed by her husband: a powerful, previously convicted criminal.

The Home Office refused her case, citing evidence from a supposedly independent and authoritative document known as a country policy information note (CPIN), which they said confirmed that Morocco would be safe for her.

But the document could not be found, although its existence was relied upon by a judge who rejected her appeal against the Home Office’s refusal decision in an immigration court known as the first-tier tribunal.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 16d

Yes! I wrote this in July of last year talking about the inevitable self-defeating nature of being a massive tool. www.explaintrade.com/resources/tr...

Deals with the Devil

A devastatingly handsome and disarmingly humble trade geek recently wrote a book about how often trade policy tends to be politics first, economics a distant seventh. You should buy two copies for each of your pets.

One aspect of trade policy becoming political is that the popularity of a country and its national leader abroad can give those they are negotiating with more or less political space to do deals with them.

Any trade deal requires making concessions that are going to piss some people in your country off. If I lower a tariff, the companies who enjoyed tariff protection are going to complain loudly about it.

The less the average voter in your country trusts or likes a foreign leader, the less patience they have for tolerating your making politically painful concessions to them in order to get a deal across the line.

The Trump administration’s rather bellicose America-first rhetoric and general posture is actively limiting the political space other leaders have to make deals. The most obvious example of this is of course Canada, where proximity to Trump cost the opposition leader a double digit lead in the polls and propelled Mark Carney into power on the back of an ‘elbows up’ message.

As a general rule, you want to avoid making fighting you a political slam dunk for foreign politicians - and unfortunately for Trump’s trade policy goals, in many places it is.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· 27d

Google's AI summary so take with a grain of salt, but I don't think "no one" is entirely correct.

Reform UK: Advocates for re-industrialization by abandoning Net Zero policies, which they claim would drastically reduce electricity costs for manufacturers. They have engaged with industry leaders to draft alternative strategies focusing on retaining domestic virgin steel-making capacity and using targeted procurement to protect British supply chains.

Restore Britain: Led by Rupert Lowe, the party emerged from a split within Reform UK and campaigns on a localized, protectionist platform. They emphasize policies to repeal regulations that hinder British families and businesses, heavily prioritizing the rebuilding of domestic sovereign capabilities and supporting local grassroots manufacturing.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jul 10

Can't believe he managed to stretch, "US bad, and also only country on earth with agency" to 450 pages. Kind of impressive, honestly.

In pursuit of this aggressive geopolitical design, successive US administrations exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions and sabotaged every chance for compromise while relentlessly backing Russia into a corner. Gambling with the global economy and risking nuclear war, US planners then provoked and prolonged an illegal Russian invasion that has had catastrophic consequences—for the Ukrainian people above all.

Washington’s cynical foreign policy did not just detonate peace in Europe but also deranged politics at home. Controversies around Russia and Ukraine played a pivotal role in three consecutive US presidential campaigns, driving the national hysteria known as “Russiagate” as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

With Trump's re-election pledge to broker peace still elusive, Maté presents a groundbreaking account of how the Russia–Ukraine conflict came to be, and how a brutal proxy war with existential stakes for humanity can finally be resolved.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jul 7

To stay completely on brand this announcement should just be a donations link to a GoFundMe page for a Cayman Islands LLC with a Russian name that's currently under fraud and tax evasion investigation by half the free world.

Tweet from Nigel Farage MP.

It reads, "I will make a statement on my future in public life at 2pm."

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jul 5

He's being illustrative here but this this actually summarizes so much of conservative policymaking on issues well beyond immigration. "We must drop everything to focus on being as cruel as possible or risk a wildly improbable, highly contrived scenario I have just invented."

Tweet from Stephen Miller:

"If you believe a foreign government can sail a hospital ship to the edge of US territorial waters, deliver a hundred babies to foreign moms, then promptly sail back to a foreign port, and that every one of those babies is American for life, you don't believe in nationhood at all."

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jul 2

My post, wit the word "in politics" underlined.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 30

Ah, the Supreme Court.

The bellcurve meme.

On the top are normal people saying "Words mean things" on the left are Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas saying "No they don't." On the right is Kavanaugh saying "Sometimes."

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 26

I for one would like, subscribe and leave a comment for the algo.

A parody MrBeast-style YouTube thumbnail. On the left, an excited MrBeast-like creator with a huge open-mouthed expression points toward a sparse grey room. On the right, journalist Marie Le Conte sits on a bed holding Dmitry Grozoubinski’s book Why Politicians Lie About Trade. Large text reads “3 MONTHS,” “ONLY THIS BOOK!” and “$1,000,000,” with a red countdown timer showing “90:00:00,” stacks of cash, and a wall sign saying “NO PHONE. NO INTERNET. NO ESCAPE.”

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 26

Hey Stephen. Stephen, I got Mark Carney. I got Mark Carney, Stephen. Is that good? It seems good. Who did you get? Are they as cool as Mark Carney? Stephen? Buddy? Are an admirable public figure like Mark Carney, Stephen? Stephen? Is your guy destroying society? Stephen? Pal?

The results of my political affiliation quiz.

Your Results
81% Woke - 19% Chud
61% Techbro - 39% Neo-Luddite
75% Hopepilled - 25% Doomer
83% Davos - 17% Dubai

My closest match is Mark Carney the Canadian Prime Minister.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 25

??????

A table of countries by GDP. The UK is 5th.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 23

I cannot overstate how minor this project is in aid terms. They were spending 2 million a year out of a $52 billion (2014) USAID budget. That's 0.0038%. If the US could spontaneously trigger revolutions half-way across the world with grants like this, I promise you it would happen more.

The project accomplished notable achievements in three of its four objectives.

Objective 1. Pact reported providing 116 local advocacy grants to CSOs and coalition groups that achieved positive results in areas such as local government accountability, citizen participation, and empowering disadvantaged groups. Pact reported that grantees initiated 69 advocacy campaigns that led to the approval of 62 local level regulatory acts. In addition, Pact reported that coalition efforts that included the participation of local and national actors initiated 29 regulatory acts and public policies at the national level.

Objective 2. The project supported 46 positive modifications made to enabling legislation or regulations for civil society at local and national levels. For example, the Law on Charity and Charitable Organizations was adopted in part because of a project partner that led efforts to draft the law. The new law simplified registration procedures for charitable organizations, increased their transparency requirements, and gave them new ways of getting funding, such as
charitable bequests.

Objective 3. Pact reported that it helped 551 organizations improve their internal organizational
capacity.

Through the Marketplace voucher system, project grantees and other CSOs applied for consultations, training, and educational programs in areas such as strategic planning, organizational and financial management, and fund-raising skills.

Despite these notable achievements, the audit found that:

• The project’s primary goal was not realistic (page 4). The goal was difficult to achieve, and even if realized, the results may not be directly attributed to the project.

• CSOs were not more financially sustainable (page 5). They remained largely dependent on funding from international donors.

• USAID’s verification of Pact’s data was inadequate (page 6). The performance indicator results Pact reported to the mission were not always accurate or reliable.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· Jun 5

Terry Pratchett absolutely nailed this in Maskerade and Going Postal.

"Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honesty with merely being rude. I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes."

It was the face, that was what it was. He had an honest face. And he loved those people who looked him firmly in the eye to see his inner self, because he had a whole set of inner selves, one for every occasion. As for firm handshakes, practice had given him one to which you could moor boats. It was people skills, that's what it was. Special people skills. Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds. That was the trick, the trick of all tricks. You changed the way people saw the world. You let them see it the way they wanted it to be.
— Moist von Lipvig, Going Postal

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 25

Is there anything on Mars we actually want? If you want an incredibly dry place with very little to recommend it that has a vast amount of room really far away from civilization, there are other options:

A map of Australia with the desert bit circled.

The desert bit is most of it.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 23

No really. I talk about it within like 15 pages.

Trade is especially vulnerable to this kind of demagoguery. Although
it is confusing and technical, with many knock-on effects that only
happen further down the line, trade is also the sort of topic people feel like they intuitively ‘get’. This leaves them open to confidently spouted
rubbish disguised as plain spoken common sense. Trade rhetoric is
inflated with this hot air.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 21

With the greatest possible respect, this is wild.

The congressional approval process will offer more opportunities for the public and elected representatives to shape trade agreements. I will seek expedited congressional approval of trade agreements only when every regional advisory committee and the labor, consumer, and rural advisory committees unanimously certify that the agreement serves their interests. I will also expand the list of congressional committees that must review any agreement before it is eligible for expedited consideration.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 16

lol

A spokesperson for Chubb said: “The DFC programme’s purpose is to insure ships while transiting under naval escort, and there has been no escort.”

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 10

Holy shit they did the meme.

A comic. In the initial four panels, an athlete is seen wildly celebrating his medal. He's testing its gold content, throwing up the middle finger to the crowd, spraying champagne.

In the last panel, the camera zooms out and it is revealed he is in last place.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 8

7/ Then today, out of nowhere and without me actually having appealed again, YouTube arbitrarily reinstates my account. Again, no explanation of what I did to pop up on their radar and no explanation of why I was exonerated. Just missives lobbed from beyond visual range here.

Hi Dmitry Grozoubinski (ExplainTrade.com),

We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve recently reviewed your YouTube account, and after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service. We have lifted the suspension of your account, and it is once again active and operational.

We’d like to thank you for your patience while we reviewed this case.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us here.

Sincerely,
The YouTube team

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 8

5/ 24 hours later I receive an "Appeal Rejected" with no explanation. The "resolution options" button, after a bit of clicking, takes you to a form that's basically exactly like the one I already filled in to appeal, albeit with I think 200 extra characters to use.

Hi Dmitry Grozoubinski (ExplainTrade.com),

We have reviewed your appeal for the following:

Channel: Dmitry Grozoubinski (ExplainTrade.com)

We reviewed your channel carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy. We know this is probably disappointing news, but it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all.

How this affects your channel

We won't be putting your channel back up on YouTube.

Learn about your resolution options.

Thanks,
The YouTube team

Please briefly explain why you think your channel was suspended in error. Be sure to review YouTube’s Community Guidelines and copyright policies before submitting your appeal. Please note: If your appeal involves one or more private videos, by submitting this request you are explicitly giving permission for our reviewers to view your private video content. *

Then there's a box with 1000 characters worth of text to fill in.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 8

3/ Yesterday, I received this e-mail from YouTube. There was no indication of which of the spam, deceptive practices, & scams policies I violated, when or where. Which is a challenge, because that list covers everything from spam comments to misleading thumbnails. WHAT DID I DO?!?

Hi Dmitry Grozoubinski (ExplainTrade.com),

We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube.

We know this is probably very upsetting news, but it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all. If we think a channel severely violates our policies, we take it down to protect other users on the platform - but if you believe we've made the wrong call, you can appeal this decision. You'll find more information about the policy in question and how to submit an appeal below.

What our policy says

Content that promotes spam, scams, or other deceptive practices isn’t allowed on YouTube.

Learn more

How this affects your channel

We have permanently removed your channel from YouTube. Going forward, you won't be able to access, possess, or create any other YouTube channels.

What you can do next

There are steps you can take if you want to appeal this decision:

Review YouTube's Community Guidelines.
Appeal here. Make sure to fill out the appeal form as completely as possible, including your channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgeFpDzX6H2VIkYrCIhk5PA

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us here.

Sincerely,
The YouTube team

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 4

How dare you, sir?

Jonn's tweet with the letters "D M I T R Y" circled.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 3

16/ Bonus: Derpy historical artefact cats from various museums. All 10/10,000 BC. /end

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 3

15/ I thought I wouldn't get any more cat photos once I got to Heraklion, but this little guy came to say hi. 10/10 surprise cat.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 3

14/ This cat in the ruins of the Knossos Palace looks 100% like a fresco. 10/10 historical camouflage.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 3

13/ This cat gets 10/10 for stealth, having hidden cleverly behind the giant meat bird. Once we finished lunch he'd relocated and was sleeping curled up in a planter.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade· May 3

12/ We named him 'Sasha' and he lives at a resort in the mountains where despite being fed he keeps trying to scam cheese out of restaurant-goers. (He succeeded). 10/10.