United States

Submitted by Peter Klein via The Mises Institute,

NPR featured an unintentionally funny piece this week on Donald Trump's views toward the EU and free trade. The guest, former US ambassador to the EU Anthony Gardner, rightfully criticized the president's view that "protection will lead to great prosperity and strength," and called for continued global engagement by US companies and consumers. But he revealed, perhaps inadvertently, what political actors mean by "free trade."  

Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog,

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of protesters descended on Washington DC and many other other cities across our nation.  The aim of the protests was to demonstrate women’s rights, and use female disgust for Trump’s alleged lack of respect for women as a springboard to protesting Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States.

While much has been said about the impact on the dollar from the proposed Border Tax Adjustment, which may or may not be implemented depending on what Trump says/tweets on any given day (and as a reminder, there has already been a loud outcry against it by powerful lobby groups, including the Kochs, as a result of the expected decimation of US retailers should BTA be implemented) little has been said about how it could impact US commodity production in general, and oil in particular.

Perhaps reports of the Trumpflation rally's death have been somewhat exaggerated in the past few days. After RBC pointed out yesterday that equity generalists are "increasingly uncomfortable with reflation trades", this morning we have seen the latest violent inversion in this theme.

According to a new Reuters / Ipsos poll, a record number of disaffected, Hillary-supporting Californians now support secession from the United States because they're just so "triggered" by Trump's victory.  If successful, California would become the single largest "safe space" in the world.

Per the poll, 1 in every 3 Californians now support a "peaceful withdrawal from the union," which is a substantial increase from the 20% who favored such a withdrawal the last time a similar poll was conducted in 2014.