We've been in full Appalachian Rainforest mode around here lately. I hope you've managed to keep some socks dry.
While it hasn't really rained all that much, we're soaked through and through by the 100% humidity that hangs on the hillsides like a wet shroud. A thirty foot walk from your air conditioned pick-up to your air conditioned double wide is cause for a dry shirt.
Don't get chilled now.
Speaking of chilling, the Trump effect has put our state squarely in the shooting zone of the coming trade war with China and Europe. Kentucky exported over one billion dollars (that's a one followed by 9 zeros for you with barely one and no zeros in your pocket) of products to China last year that get new tarriffs on July 1.
Those tarriffs will raise the cost of bourbon, tobacco and soybeans to Chinese consumers which means Kentucky producers of those products will lose sales. Lost sales means fewer jobs for workers and less tax revenues into the state.
It's potentially so bad that Senator Yertle actually made a statement against the Fraud in the Oval Office's trade policies. Granted, it was a short statement, but you have to realize McConnell makes money directly from products shipped to China, so it's going to effect his bottom line, too.
Forget principles, the way to get action from politicians like Yertle is to lower his income and Trump's trade war with China will do exactly that. The Great Turtle's inlaws ship everything from cars to cocaine (ask Don Blankenship) between North America and Asia.
While few of those products are produced in eastern Kentucky, there is one other one China just announced will also be hit by a 25% tarriff. Can you say coal?
While the market for steam, or power plant, coal is still dead, the market for metalurgical coal has grown in the last year thanks to worldwide increases in steel production.
But China will soon be looking elsewhere, like Australia, for met quality coal. Last year they imported almost 400 million tons of American met coal. Instead of importing more, as they planned as little as a month ago, a 25% price increase means they'll almost certainly import less.
I shouldn't have to tell you most local miners who have returned to work in the last eighteen months are mining met coal. Decrease the market and fewer of them will be working in six months.
If the coal industry was bigger, that might pull some support from the Trump. The art in the Donald's deal is the kind found on cave walls in France...crude and simplistic.
The true test for the Trumpet surfaced this week. Harley-Davidson has announced it will produce bikes overseas to circumvent new European tarriffs.
The Donald reacted in his usual way, by throwing a Twitty Fit. A Twitty Fit is a hissy fit with a character limit. That's appropriate for the guy with no character at all.
Will Cadet Bone Spurs alienate his base when he attacks the quintessential American company widely revered by so many of us?
Or will the next big rally of Bikers for Trump feature rice burners and saki?