We won't engage in a 'race to the bottom' regarding banking regulation, European Commissioner for financial services says
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New York Post
39 minutes ago
- New York Post
Wrong and more wrong: How America's ‘experts' burned their last shreds of credibility
The first six months of the Trump administration have not been kind to the experts and the degree-holding classes. Almost daily during the tariff hysterias of March, we were told by university economists and most of the PhDs employed in investment and finance that the United States was headed toward a downward, if not recessionary, spiral. Most economists lectured that trade deficits did not really matter. Advertisement Or they insisted that the cures to reduce them were worse than the $1.1 trillion deficit itself. They reminded us that free, rather than fair, trade alone ensured prosperity. So, the result of Trump's foolhardy tariff talk would be an impending recession. Advertisement America would soon suffer rising joblessness, inflation — or rather a return to stagflation — and likely little, if any, increase in tariff revenue as trade volume declined. Instead, recent data show increases in tariff revenue. Personal real income and savings were up. Job creation exceeded prognoses. Advertisement There was no surge in inflation. The supposedly 'crashed' stock market reached historic highs. Common-sense Americans might not have been surprised: The prior stock market frenzy was predicated on what was, in theory, supposed to have happened rather than what was likely to occur. Advertisement After all, if tariffs were so toxic and surpluses irrelevant, why did our affluent European and Asian trading rivals insist on both surpluses and protective tariffs? Most Americans recalled that the mere threat of tariffs and Trump's jawboning had led to several trillion dollars in promised foreign investment and at least some plans to relocate manufacturing and assembly back to the United States. Would that change in direction not lead to business optimism and eventually more jobs? Would countries purposely running up huge surpluses through asymmetrical trade practices not have far more to lose in negotiations than those suffering gargantuan deficits? Were Trump's art-of-the-deal threats of prohibitive tariffs not mere starting points in negotiations that would eventually lead to likely agreements more favorable to the United States than in the past, and moderate rather than punitive tariffs? Would not the value of the huge American consumer market mean that our trade partners, who were racking up substantial surpluses, would agree they could afford modest tariffs and trim their substantial profit margins rather than suicidally price themselves out of a lucrative market entirely? Illegal immigration: wrong again Economists and bureaucrats were equally wrong on the border. We were told for four years that only 'comprehensive immigration reform' would stop illegal immigration. Advertisement Most Americans differed: They knew firsthand we had more than enough immigration laws, but had elected as President Joe Biden, who deliberately destroyed borders and had no intention of enforcing existing laws. Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here! When Trump promised he would ensure that, instead of 10,000 foreign nationals entering illegally each day, within a month no one would, our experts scoffed. But if the border patrol went from ignoring or even aiding illegal immigrants to stopping them right at the border, why would such a prediction be wrong? Advertisement Those favoring a reduction in illegal immigration and deportations also argued that crime would fall, and citizen job opportunities would increase, given an estimated 500,000 aliens with criminal records had entered illegally during the Biden administration, while millions of other illegal aliens were working off the books, for cash, and often at reduced wages. Indeed, once the border was closed tightly, hundreds of thousands were returned to their countries, and employers began turning to US citizens. Job opportunities did increase. Crime did go down. Advertisement Legal-only immigration regained its preferred status over illegal entry. Trump talked of trying voluntary deportation — again to wide ridicule from immigration 'experts.' But why would not a million illegal aliens wish to return home 'voluntarily' — if they were given free flights, a $1,000 bonus and, most importantly, a chance later to reapply for legal entry once they arrived home? Iran fears came to naught Many of our national security experts warned that taking out Iran's nuclear sites was a fool's errand. Advertisement It would supposedly unleash a Middle East tsunami of instability. It would cause a wave of terrorism. It would send oil prices skyrocketing. It would not work, ensuring Iran would soon reply with nuclear weapons. In fact, oil prices decreased after the American bombing. A twenty-five-minute entrance into Iranian airspace and bombing led to a ceasefire, not a conflagration. As for a big power standoff, World War III and 30,000 dead, common sense asked why China would wish the Strait of Hormuz to close, given that it imports half of all Middle Eastern oil produced? Why would Russia — bogged down in Ukraine and suffering nearly a million casualties — wish to mix it up in Iran, after ignominiously fleeing Syria and the fall of its Assad clients? Russia usually thinks of Russia, period. It does not lament when tensions elsewhere are expected to spike oil prices. Why would Russia resupply Iran's destroyed Russian-made anti-aircraft systems, when it was desperate to ward off Ukrainian air attacks on its homeland, and Iran would likely again lose any imported replacements? As for waves of terror, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis have suffered enormous losses from Israel. Their leadership has been decapitated; their streams of Iranian money have been mostly truncated. Why would they rush to Iran's side to war with Israel, when Iran did not come to their aid when they were battling and losing to the Israelis? Has a theater-wide war really ever started when one side entered and left enemy territory in 25 minutes, suffering no casualties and likely killing few of the enemy? As far as the extent of damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, why should we believe our expert pundit class? Prior to the American and Israeli bombing, many of them warned that Iran was not on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon, and therefore, there was little need for any such preemptive action. Then, post facto, the same experts flipped. Now they claimed, after the bombing severely damaged most Iranian nuclear sites, that there was an increased threat, given that some enriched uranium (which they had previously discounted) surely had survived and thus marked a new existential danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Was Trump really going to 'blow up,' 'destroy' or 'cripple' NATO, as our diplomatic experts insisted, when his first-term jawboning led from six to twenty-three nations meeting their 2% of GDP defense-spending promises? Given two ongoing theater-wide wars, given Trump's past correct predictions about the dangers of the Nord Stream II pipeline, given the vulnerability of an anemic NATO to Russian expansionism, and given that Russian leader Vladimir Putin did not invade during Trump's first term, unlike the three presidencies before and after his own, why wouldn't NATO agree to rearm with 5%, and appreciate Trump's efforts both to bolster the capability of the alliance and the need to end the Ukraine war? Why the 'experts' repeatedly fail Why were our 'scientific' pollsters so wrong in the last three presidential elections, and so at odds with the clearly discernible electoral shifts in the general electorate? Where were crackpot ideas like defund the police, transgender males in women's sports and open borders first born and nurtured? Answer: the university, and higher education in general. The list of wrongheaded, groupthink, and degreed expertise could be vastly expanded. We remember the '51 intelligence authorities' who swore the Hunter Biden laptop was 'likely' cooked up by the Russians. Our best and brightest economists signed letters insisting that Biden's multitrillion-dollar wasteful spending would not result in inflation spikes. Our global warming professors' past predictions should have ensured that Americans were now boiling, with tidal waves destroying beachfront communities, including Barack Obama's two multimillion-dollar estates. Our legal eagles, after learning nothing from the bogus Mueller investigation and adolescent Steele dossier, but with impressive Ivy League degrees, pontificated for years that Trump by now would be in jail for life, given 91 'walls-are-closing-in' and 'bombshell' indictments. So why are the degreed classes so wrong, and yet so arrogantly never learn anything from their past flawed predictions? One, our experts usually receive degrees from our supposedly marquee universities. But as we are now learning from long overdue autopsies of institutionalized campus racial bias, neo-racial segregation, 50%-plus price-gouging surcharges on federal grants, and rabid antisemitism, higher education in America has become anti-Enlightenment. Universities now wage war against free-thinkers, free speech, free expression and anything that freely questions the deductive groupthink of the diversity/equity/inclusion commissariat, and global warming orthodoxies. The degreed expert classes emerge from universities whose faculties are 90 to 95% left-wing and whose administrations are overstaffed and terrified of their radical students. The wonder is not that the experts are incompetent and biased, but that there are a brave few who are not. Two, Trump drove the degreed class insane to the degree it could no longer, even if it were willing and able (and it was not), offer empirical assessments of his policies. From his crude speech to his orange skin to his Queens accent to his MAGA base to his remarkable counterintuitive successes and to his disdain for the bicoastal elite, our embarrassing experts would rather be dead wrong and anti-Trump than correct in their assessments — if they in any small way helped Trump. Three, universities are not just biased, but increasingly mediocre and ever more isolated from working Americans and their commonsense approaches to problem solving. PhD programs in general are not as rigorous as they were even two decades ago. Grading, assessments, and evaluations in professional schools must increasingly weigh non-meritocratic criteria, given their admissions and hiring protocols are not based on disinterested evaluation of past work and expertise. The vast endowments of elite campuses, the huge profit-making foreign enrollments, and the assured, steady stream of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal aid created a sense of fiscal unreality, moral smugness, unearned superiority and ultimately, blindness to just how isolated and disliked the professoriate had become. But the public has caught on that too many Ivy-League presidents were increasingly a mediocre, if not incompetent, bunch. Most university economists could not run a small business. The military academies did not always turn out the best generals and admirals. The most engaging biographers were not professors. And plumbers and electricians were usually more skilled in their trades than most journalist graduates were in their reporting. Add it all up, and the reputation of our predictors, prognosticators and experts has been radically devalued — to the point of utter worthlessness. Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
Axios
2 hours ago
- Axios
Trump tariff letters going to a dozen countries Monday
President Trump said the U.S. will begin sending letters Monday to other countries setting a tariff rate on their imports. Why it matters: After months of threats, Trump is abruptly re-escalating the trade war. For businesses craving certainty, who've had a period of relative calm of late, the move could once again upset that balance. It also injects a new risk into financial markets that have largely moved on to a post-tariff world. European stocks, and U.S. stock futures, fell Friday as Trump warned the letters were coming. Catch up quick: Trump told reporters late Friday aboard Air Force One that about a dozen letters would go out Monday. He didn't say which nations would be targeted, or what rates would be set. On Thursday, he said the rates in the letters would go into effect August 1 — and warned some could be as high as 70%. Yes, but: The administration has used a similar tactic before — taking an aggressive posture on coming tariffs, but with a deadline just far enough out that trading partners could still bring last-minute offers the president would be willing to accept. Reports in recent days suggest multiple trading partners, including South Korea and Thailand, are scrambling to do just that. Flashback: Trump set a new regime of sweeping global tariffs on April 2, only to pause much of it a week later. At that time, his administration promised 90 trade days in 90 days. Through the first 85 days, it made three — with the UK, China and Vietnam. In mid-May, Trump began indicating deals weren't really necessary, because the U.S. would simply send letters to trading partners in subsequent days setting a rate. He made the same threat again in mid-June, and once more late in the month, noting he preferred the letters as a simpler solution than complex talks with dozens of countries. Between the lines: Though the tariff pause is due to expire July 9, some countries, like China and Canada, have separate deadlines later in the month or next month. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has indicated the deadlines are fungible and the goal is to be done with trade deals by Labor Day. What we're watching: It's not clear how aggressive Trump intends to be with these new tariff rates.
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
Want to land a tech internship? A Google engineer explains how networking 'intentionally' can help
It's just not enough to cold apply for tech jobs anymore, said Aashna Doshi, a two-time intern turned software engineer at Google. To land a spot at a tech giant, you need to be networking "intentionally." "Knowing who you want to meet, finding that common bridge between both of you, and then really learning from their experience, was a big game changer for me," Doshi told Business Insider. Doshi suggests reaching out not only to people whose career paths you'd like to emulate, but also those with whom you share common ground, including similar personal experiences. "I was talking to a bunch of people, and saw this software engineer who was working out of Europe, and was super inspired by her story," she said. "She was also a woman. I love to see other women in tech and also, she's European. I grew up in Belgium, so that's kind of my connecting point to her." A foot in the door While Doshi ended up getting a referral from the engineer in Europe, she said she wasn't initially thinking of asking for one. Reaching out because you're genuinely interested in someone's trajectory, she added, has twofold benefits — you're likely to learn more from a less stilted conversation, and the connection you make could last throughout your career. "I reached out to her to learn more about her story, not like, 'Hey, can I get a referral at Google?'" she said. "I actually didn't even have any intention of asking her for this internship referral, but we became friends and she let me into her life, which is what her day-to-day looks like, how she grows in the role that she's in." Remembering that professional connections, like any relationship, are two-way streets, also goes a long way towards helping them endure, Doshi added. "As we move and progress in our life, the way in which I think about it is, we are collecting people, and we are supporting people," she said. "And the people that will come all the way through will be the ones that you have formed a genuine bond with. If you ask someone for a referral and they give it to you, I mean, that's well and good, but five years down the line, 10 years down the line, they might not even remember who you are." If you can't get an internship, complete a project Since you're likely to be taking similar classes as your competition, it's what you do with that knowledge that can make you stand out, Doshi said. Projects are the "one thing that I will say again and again and again for any student," she said. The Google engineer partly credits her success in securing an internship to the projects she developed in her downtime. "This is the way you can set yourself apart from 1000 other people, because if you take data structures and algorithms, and your peers take data structures and algorithms, you all have the same foundational knowledge that you are building," she told BI. "But what you do with that knowledge, what you do with the data structures and algorithms, really, really makes a difference." There's no pressure to specialize in a niche skillset right out of the gate to impress potential employers, either, Doshi said. What you're really aiming for is a broad knowledge base and a flexible personality. "They don't expect you to come in with tons and tons of experience," she said. "They actually care about more — can you think in a specific way, and given a situation changes, are you able to adapt to that? More than doing like 700 LeetCode questions and getting those exactly right, I tried to do more problem solving in adaptive sense." Becoming a 'go-to' person If and when you finally do land an internship, the challenge then becomes securing a full-time return offer. In Doshi's case, she did her best to become integral to the teams she was placed on — being a point person for a particular issue can help you be more memorable, as well as slowly build a positive reputation with senior employees. "If they have a bug, and they trust you enough to be like, 'Oh, Aashna, you've done something like this before. Why don't you take this up?'" she said. "That is not just giving you work. It's, 'Oh, we trust you to take something like this up.' So being that person they can trust, being that go-to person, is an absolute game changer." Doshi also cautions interns against self-isolating. You're not expected to know everything, and shouldn't try to act like you do. "As an intern, you are coming in with, as everyone knows, less experience than the rest of the team. The intention is to show progress," she said, adding, "The key lies in asking the right questions. A lot of people say there are no wrong questions, etc, etc. Maybe there are no wrong questions, but there are questions that are better than others, in my opinion." Knowing how to ask for help can be just as important as knowing when — Doshi suggests presenting your questions in a way that shows you've attempted to solve the problem on your own first. "Do your due diligence before that, which means if you're stuck, ask the right person for help," she said. "I'm going to explain that I already tried to do X, Y, Z, and it didn't work. How do I move forward?" The goal of an internship is, after all, to absorb as much knowledge as possible. Try to avoid letting your fear of looking lost halt your progress, she added. "So this kind of framework really accelerated my learnings, because I wasn't wasting hours and hours on something that absolutely I didn't understand or didn't work," she said. "And while I wasn't spending those hours, I still did my due diligence, which is, do my research, look through the code base."
