Smart U.S. commercial products require even more of the minerals. Their manufacturers are presently receiving enough supply to get by for as much as six months, generally allowing to stockpile enough for a month and more, while new export licenses are hopefully being approved.
But, actually, the viewer learns from the show's fictional news channel — Fox News — that Trump has now gone further than authorizing exports to China of previously prohibited jet engines and micro-chip manufacturing software. He has also authorized licensing to sell Chinese companies high-grade H20 micro-chips that were previously withheld “for national security reasons.” Inside sources report that Trump has done this as a step toward his genius, 4-dimensional secret master-plan. He had planned to give the permission from the start, the viewers are informed.
Not covered on Trump Show fictional news stations was China's “withdrawal” from a previous “deal” committing it to divest from Panama Canal area ports. Trump's great “foreign policy victory” has disappeared in a puff of smoke (there having been no formal agreement signed). China has silently waited for its moment and now demands at least 50% Chinese control of the ports' operations and profits.
Like all of Trump Show's deals, to date, these exist only on the show. They are “real” because words came out of the mouths of Donald Trump and the supporting cast of the Donald Trump Reality Show nutshelling the deals (it only being a television show, after all) in which Trump's character — the all-time genius of deal-making — somehow gets everything he wishes yet again.
In the tariff negotiations, a temporary tariff rate and port fees have been announced that may change from tariff pause to tariff pause, for some time to come. A final deal is a daunting prospect for the Donald Trump Show. The show's writers will now have to create a new story line to match: an ever more difficult task as the “deals” pile up.
For the present, China's recent actions do not exist in the “real(ity show) world” and definitely have nothing to do with a huge (and perhaps irrecoverable) blunder by the reality-show-president regarding vital rare earth minerals. Nor does the fact exist that Chinese President Xi has not responded to requests for a meeting between the two leaders, leaving Trump to wait hat-in-hand.
Instead we hear the star declare that
We're very close to a deal with China. We really sort of made a deal with China but we'll see how it goes.
The China temporary-tariff is expected to be extended for another 90 days. The next meeting of the negotiators will occur on Monday.
In the meantime, a Japan deal was announced, at 15%, which the star of the show announced included a $550 billion investment fund to be directed solely by himself. The U.S. is to receive 90% of some-undefined-thing (profits, apparently — from what who knows), Japan 10%. What incredible deal making skills the star possesses! This, he announced, would be the template for success in the deals that lay ahead! Billions of dollars laid at his feet in tribute. Surely, he has made the “greatest deal of all time!”
What an episode! The U.S. stock markets spiked. Japanese officials were silent until after the star's victory scenes had played out before gently suggesting, off-camera, that there was no such $550 billion fund as described. The U.S. stock markets leveled off. But, still, new record levels had been reached and widely proclaimed. The Japanese officials continued over the following days to make timid statements to the effect that no such fund as Trump described was in the “deal”.
Nothing has been signed, of course. No detail description of the “deal” has been provided to the public.
Days later, Trump traveled to Scotland to shoot the greatest ever reality-round of golf and to advertise his newest Scottish course. The European Union trade deal having been in negotiation, by then, for months, Trump met with the President of the European Union, Ursula Von der Leyen.
After a 75 minute meeting the two made a public appearance to announce they had closed the agreement. The star did almost all of the talking, all of it self-congratulatory. “I think it's the biggest deal ever made.”
Von der Leyen knew her role. She spoke her admiring lines beginning with “We have a deal!” See! Even the other party says for the camera that this is definitely a “deal”.
As the Trump Show fictional media outlet, the New York Post, announced:
It took just 75 minutes for President Trump to get everything he wanted from the European Union.... Trump was triumphant. Europe is buy $750 billion in American energy products, invest $600 billion in new money in the US, buy additional US military equipment and drop all tariffs on American goods, according to the preliminary agreement.
No negotiator worth their salt in the real world believes for a second that anything substantial toward the deal was negotiated in those 75 minutes. The scenes were written for the Donald Trump Reality-Show audience to admire the greatness of the star character. Again, Von der Leyen, being a real-world president knew the importance of delivering her lines as written when doing a guest appearance on the Donald Trump Reality Show.
In Von der Leyen's press-conference to follow she expanded on the details of the deal inasmuch as they have been agreed. The agreement established a number of tariff categories for which each side negotiated zero tariffs. For most of the rest of the trade categories the EU would pay a 15% tariff. It would be “non-stackable,” which is to say that previous tariffs are nullified and no increase in tariff rates will be permissible in the future.
The tariff reductions to 0 and 15% will be instituted immediately. The rest of the agreement establishes a “framework” upon which to implement the other aspects, over the coming months, defining what exactly they come down to, upon what price and time schedule they will be realized, etc. She did not mention the purported $600 billion dollars of investment at all.
Not being a reality-star president, she has had the presence of mind to gain for her government a powerful tool to expand the EU sanctions against Russian oil and gas to long-recalcitrant member-states such as Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, etc. The star of the show specifically mentioned the possibility of individual member-country tariffs. They will at long last be forced to switch away from Russian products in order to avoid punitive tariffs that will cripple their economies.
The commitment to purchases of US military equipment has already been made long ago as part of other negotiations. Now, however, the US will have specific obligations to provide at price and on schedule. What rights will be included to resell equipment to Ukraine should be negotiated, as well, with the EU in an improved position.
The EU consisting of 27 willful member-countries will spend months squabbling over every detail. In the meantime, US tariff rates for the EU will be at the reduced rate.
During the same press conference, Von der Leyen very much stressed that Europe was rapidly expanding its markets throughout the world. While EU-US details are being negotiated, new trading partners will be importing a wide range of products from the EU and exporting tariff-free metals with which to build considerably less expensive EU products. This, of course, can only be intended to neutralize future attempts at strong arm economics.
Also from the Virtual Vanaprastha:
- Donald Trump and the Donald Trump Show starring Donald Trump. July 6, 2025. "Fate gave him a large inheritance, mediocre business prowess and the wiles to realize that his genius lay in opportunism, self-promotion and the ability to manipulate others."
- Harvard and Columbia: What Stephen Miller, Russ Vought and the Heritage Foundation Know. June 2, 2025. "beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, they discovered that not all of the Progressive activists that had supposedly been swept away had actually disappeared."
- Shelving the books in a dying democracy. March 24, 2025. "I only now begin to shelve books, in fits and starts, with the scenes I am seeing replaying over and over as I do."
- Public Health Alert: Trump Variant Corona Virus 2025. February 17, 2025. "It is now running rampant through the body politic furiously working to hollow out its institutions and shift taxation..."
- Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.
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