Above, former Ford CEO Mark Fields on strategies for dealing with tariffs.
Current Ford CEO Jim Farley has said Tariffs, if applied, would “Blow a hole in the auto companies like we’ve never seen.”
“It’s like trying to play 3 dimensional chess while blindfolded.” – Mark Fields
Just so we understand what this WHOLE MAGA thing is about, what it’s always been about, who is behind it, and who has been driving the narrative for 40 years, it is this, and nothing other than this.
All the other destruction to the Constitution, to our National Security, to NATO, to our alliances and economic place in the world, to people of color, women, and people of every sexual persuasion, to unions and workers, to Health Care, to our rule of law, Freedom of the Press, to Housing, Infrastructure, National Parks or Education – all of that, is just collateral damage and roadkill in the pursuit of this over-arching ultimate goal.
The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones.
Three people granted anonymity to discuss the action said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has recommended to the White House that the agency overhaul the finding, which underpins all Clean Air Act climate regulations.
The action, which was first reported by The Washington Post, represents President Donald Trump’s most aggressive action to date to wipe out the federal effort to combat climate change, which he has repeatedly labeled a “hoax” despite soaring global temperatures and the vast body of scientific evidence that it is fueling disasters around the globe.
Trump has long sought to undermine the science of manmade warming that is at the heart of the endangerment finding.
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” he famously declared on Twitter in 2012.
Continue reading “Eyes on the Prize: Trump EPA Moves Repeal Physics”Cattle herds “stressed by extreme weather and drought” a factor in big beef price rises.
Of course, bird flu, which has been set off by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO).
If Tariffs kick in, auto prices could jump, further stressing an already threatened US car industry.
Further underlining what we already knew about climate denialists.
In December, a Chicago-based organization called the Heartland Institute, which for decades has attempted to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, devoted an episode of its daily podcast to Elon Musk.
As recently as 2022, Heartland figures had ridiculed the Tesla CEO as a member of the “billionaire climate elite” based on Musk’s claim that as a top manufacturer of electric vehicles, his company was “doing the most to solve climate change.”
But perhaps, the podcast guests speculated, Musk was finally “abandoning the climate cult.”
The episode was recorded after Musk had given upwards of $277 million to get Donald Trump elected president, argued that “we don’t need to rush” on addressing climate change, and vowed to cut $2 trillion of federal government spending. One guest on the show was cautiously optimistic, saying: “I’m coming around on Musk.”
Heartland, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, isn’t the only anti-climate group embracing Musk these days.
DeSmog journalists in the European Union, the UK and the United States reviewed public materials from prominent climate deniers referencing Musk over recent months. Taken as a whole, these podcasts, opinion pieces, social media posts, newsletters, YouTube videos, and interviews with legacy media reveal an unmistakable trend: Musk’s public embrace of right-wing populists is invigorating a transatlantic movement aiming to spread doubt about the reality of climate change and sabotage action on the crisis.
His interventions ahead of Germany’s elections on Sunday have energized the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which says that climate policy “threatens our freedom,” a January poll suggests.
His courtship, along with Trump, of hardline leaders in Europe threatens to torpedo hopes of progressive climate action by the EU, think tanks warn.
And in the U.S., Musk’s ongoing war against the federal bureaucracy “erodes our collective ability to adapt to climate impacts,” Amanda Fencl, director of climate science for the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, has warned.
Continue reading “Heil Denial: Musk Boosts Climate Deniers, Neo Nazis. No Coincidence.”
My column is now running in the Midland Daily News, and the Mt Pleasant Morning Sun – pretty good coverage of key Central Michigan area.
Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:
Prior to the 2024 election, President Donald Trump vowed to slash energy and electricity prices in half in the first 12 months of hos second term.
But in his first month back in office, the Trump administration’s energy policies have been chaotic and contradictory.
The simple minded “Drill Baby Drill” slogan presupposed that with Trump back in power, drillers could shrug off woke snowflake regulations, rip into wild lands and open a floodgate of new oil and gas, dropping prices.
In reality, according the Wall Street Journal, the oil barons who bankrolled the Republican campaign are not interested in opening the spigots.
According to the Journal, the oil magnates worry their stocks would be “absolutely crushed” if production were to grow the way Trump hopes. Not only that, the Journal also reported that “production in most U.S. crude regions is set to decline as fields mature and sweet spots dwindle.”
An Exxon official told the Journal, “We’re not going to have the explosive growth that we’ve seen.”
Continue reading “Column: Trump Tripping Over Energy Ignorance”
Musk has taken that chain saw to what was once one of the world’s most enviable brands.
Is there no Board of Directors at Tesla? Who is letting this continue?
GLJ Research reports deliveries of Tesla (TSLA) vehicles in five countries in Europe are down about 56% through the first 51 days of Q1, while China is down 7.0% year-over-year through the first seven weeks of Q1 and Australia has seen a 33% year-over-year fall in Model Y sales in January. Taking all of that into account, “things are shaping up disastrously” for Tesla’s Q1 car sales, argues the long-time bear, who estimates the delivery number for Q1, so far, looks like it will come in around 360,000-370,000 units versus the current Wall Street estimate of 426,.977. GLJ Research maintains a Sell rating on Tesla shares.
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Today, Musk called the leader of Germany’s Neo nazi party to congratulate them on a good election showing. (they came in second overall and will be part of a ruling coalition)
The hard-right Alternative for Germany might not have done as well in Sunday’s election as its leaders had hoped, but its groundbreaking performance was enough for a congratulatory phone call from Elon Musk.
Continue reading “Tesla Sales Heading for Disaster”Svalbard.
I was ready to buy my ticket there in 2020, when the whole thing shut down for Covid. Norway has a key glacier science institute there.
Farmers all over the country who signed up for grants to improve resiliency, save energy and soil, getting crushed as DOGE cost cutting hammer illegally holds up funds already appropriated and contracted.
Farmers costs keep skyrocketing, while commodity prices don’t keep pace. Clean energy helps farmers diversify their income with drought proof, recession proof, flood proof revenue.
Above, a rural County Commissioner, and Township Supervisor weigh in on what they’ve seen first hand.
This coup is squarely on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, US manufacturing be damned.
But Ford’s restructuring of its EV investments and strategy has become a repetitive mantra for (Ford CEO Jim) Farley in recent weeks, as he tells Wall Street analysts the automaker is in good shape to develop a variety of vehicles and propulsion systems to meet customers’ range requirements and wallets. Most importantly, Ford is positioned to better compete against the Chinese EV giants, especially BYD, which is known for high-quality, yet affordable, EVs. Those cars are currently barred from the U.S.
“We think that our battery strategy is more fit than our competitors,” Farley said at a Wall Street conference recently. “And we have understood BYDs through teardowns and future knowledge from the supply chain.”
While Ford deserves credit for tweaking its EV strategy to focus on smaller, more affordable EVs, some industry experts said all of the Detroit automakers should have recognized sooner that developing cheaper battery technology on smaller vehicles was the right way to gain widespread EV adoption in the United States.
Continue reading “Who Benefits? While US Automakers Play Catch Up, Trump Handicaps US EVs”