Simon Lester

@simonlester

Founded WorldTradeLaw.net & ChinaTradeMonitor.com Non-Resident Fellow @bakerinstitute.bsky.social Trade Policy feed:

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Website Website Bluesky

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Simon Lester@simonlester· 29d

They seem to be panicking about the possibility of lost US weapons export sales.

Colby claiming US won't lose weapons export sales

Simon Lester@simonlester· 29d

Is the "upsurge in desire for engagement with the United States" in the room with you now?

Colby being delusional about foreign policy

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jul 13

It doesn't seem possible to cut needed spending AND increase the US federal budget deficit, and yet here we are.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jul 12

From @scottlincicome.bsky.social on the recent talk about communism:

“Far from being a bulwark against creeping American communism, Trump is laying the groundwork for more of this in the future. The president himself has said that he thinks it’s very American to take these government equity stakes based on what the country needs. It’s almost comical how much that sounds like ‘seizing the means of production’ [or] ‘to each according to his needs’,” said Lincicome, referencing traditional Marxist lingo.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jul 7

Apparently only clairvoyant people could have predicted the Platner revelations of today, so congrats to everyone on here for being clairvoyant!

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 30

More here: "the relevant principles ... must be faithfully applied not only to circumstances as they existed in 1787, 1791, and 1868, for example, but also to modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers." Like maybe the gun situation?

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 30

From Justice Kavanaugh: "significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868 and that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment could not have fully anticipated." OK, but could the framers of the 2nd amendment have anticipated modern guns?

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 26

It gets better/worse

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 26

More details

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 26

Fascinating!

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 17

There's an effort underway to present Vance as an anti-hawk, but I think the internal GOP battle is really more about standard hawks like Vance versus über-hawks like Lindsey Graham. wapo.st/4eNWKo0

Vice President JD Vance has become the face of a temporary peace agreement designed to end an unpopular war against Iran that he was skeptical of entering to begin with — a position his allies maintain is a net positive politically, even as it puts him at odds with influential hawks within the GOP.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 15

Thank you random reddit user for articulating what I've been thinking

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 6

I am skeptical that left, right, D and R all want the same things.

"WTF timeline are we on. Someone called me the MAGA whisperer and I’ll gladly take the title. Left, right, D or R we all want the same things. We’re being divided on purpose by the Epstein Elite Oligarch class because as long as we’re at each other’s throats, they get fat and rich off of our misery. The second we figure out we agree on more than we disagree, they’re done. Love your neighbor. Be yourself. Radical honesty. No fucks given, no fucks taken. Everything else is just noise. (But still fuck Jake “Brick Tamland” Tapper on any time line)"

Simon Lester@simonlester· Jun 3

Which economies get 10% and which get 12.5% under USTR's proposed Section 301 tariffs related to forced labor imports? The Federal Register notice breaks it down: ustr.gov/sites/defaul...

For economies that impose a forced labor import prohibition—Canada, Ecuador,
the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan; for economies that have
undertaken commitments in their respective Agreements on Reciprocal Trade regarding
forced labor import prohibitions—Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan; and economies that have
imposed a partial regime with the effect of preventing the importation of certain forced
labor goods—the United Kingdom; the Trade Representative proposes additional duties
of 10% for products of these economies. For all other economies that have failed to
impose and effectively enforce a forced labor import prohibition, the Trade
Representative proposes 12.5% as the rate of additional duties.

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 31

I know there's a lot to be outraged about, but a refugee policy that is almost exclusively for white people should be an above the fold headline in every major paper every day. www.economist.com/united-state...

"The refugees Donald Trump wants are white and middle-class
Afrikaners are welcome. Pretty much no one else is"

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 30

The actual Pew survey data on which this article is based is not exactly reassuring, but is perhaps as not as bad as the headline makes it sound.

data on Americans' views of the causes of climate change

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 22

This may not go very well

"One of them is Luther Campbell, known as Uncle Luke from 2 Live Crew, a hip-hop group from the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Campbell, an activist, music producer and former youth and high school football coach, said last week that it was “appalling” for Ms. Wasserman Schultz to be considering a run in that district.

“I will drag her,” he told Politico. “And you know what’s going to happen? The relationship between the Jewish community and the Black community will be over at that moment.” (Ms. Wasserman Schultz is Jewish.)"

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 22

I repeat, what on earth is going on

“Your audience absolutely trusts you,” an emotional Mr. Biden said. “And the reason that they trust you is because you’ve shown an enormous amount of courage of speaking your mind.”

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 18

It's the official start of my "fantasizing about moving to Canada" season

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 15

Just arrived in the mail. Can't wait to read it, and then start and win a trade war!

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 10

This quote at the end was kind of funny though.

Simon Lester@simonlester· May 9

It hadn't been totally clear to me if @wsocial.eu was being built on the AT Protocol, but this seems definitive.

How is W built?
W is built on the open AT-Protocol, a global standard for interoperable social networking. This allows your posts and content to work across apps, rather than being locked into a single platform.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Apr 30

(To get a bit more technical, USTR is running things, but there's an interagency process)

Simon Lester@simonlester· Apr 20

I'm skeptical of many of @linamkhan.bsky.social's antitrust views, but I would like to see her posting on Bluesky. Would be a good way to take on corporate power.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Apr 5

I missed the "neoliberalism" debate last night, but highlighted below is a question I once asked. The problem I see is that no one is defining the term in a way that makes it easy to figure out who falls into the category.

There is a lot of space between complete socialism and a pure free market, and the vast majority of people are somewhere in that space. Are they all neoliberals? What level of support for markets justifies the use of that term?

Simon Lester@simonlester· Mar 30

This Newsom response on Cuba was quite the word salad.

We’ve been trying to do that for [nearly] 70 years. Dumb as we want to be, continue to do what you’ve done, you’ll get what you got. I appreciate, in one respect, that the Trump administration is sort of approaching things because of an opportunistic situation regarding Venezuela. This quasi-blockade has created conditions where now we have 51 prisoners that have been released, that we’re having a different conversation with the leadership, that we’re negotiating a different framework from a different position of strength. So I appreciate and admire at least a willingness to iterate. But look, you talk about a dictatorship, right? You’re talking about Maduro. No love lost for Maduro. You’re talking about a dictatorship, you’re talking about the leadership in Cuba today. So pursuing those values, absolutely,

Simon Lester@simonlester· Mar 25

Spanberger has been too extreme according to ... Jill Biden's former spokesman? Congrats on successfully digging so deep to find a Dem to criticize her!

Simon Lester@simonlester· Mar 22

There's an effort in the media to present Tucker Carlson (and various others) as "anti-war," but when you read the full details it always turns out they just want to focus US foreign policy on China, so even if they object to wars A or B, I'm not sure "anti-war" is the right term here.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Mar 22

I'm interpreting this @economist.com headline to mean they think economists themselves should engage in sex work and I'm not going to read the article to find out anything different.

Simon Lester@simonlester· Mar 21

Thinking back on when Matt Stoller believed the Trump administration would be a tough antitrust enforcer. 🙃