Firestarter wrote: ↑Fri Apr 02, 2021 8:04 pmDonald's tax exemption for Brazil from which his buddy Carl Icahn, ArcelorMittal and Donald's handler Wilbur Ross profited, was reportedly cooked up at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
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Firestarter wrote:On 8 March 2018, President Trump signed an order to impose a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminium imports in 15 days.
Gullible fools might think that this will hurt the Brazilian business interests of Carl Icahn (iron is the most important ingredient of steel)...
But then on 30 April, in a “surprising move”, President Donald gave Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, South Korea, and Brazil exemption from the steel and aluminium tariffs.
viewtopic.php?p=5725#p5725
It sure is strange that with all these media against poor, poor drain the swamp Donald this never became a media hysteria. It’s almost like minor scandals (bad, bad Hegseth…) are made into media hysterias to distract the gullible public from the major scandals…
In 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on imports from China, but also set up an “exclusion process” – ostensibly to protect small businesses but in reality rewarded the rich and corrupt.
Eight in ten waiver requests were granted to foreign-headquartered companies, with less than 20% to US-owned companies..
CEOs that donated to Republicans had a 1 in 5 chance of getting their exemption granted, against 1 in 10 for CEOs that supported Democrats. Many of the companies that got their exemptions had ties to the Trump administration and/or hired expensive lobbyists.
Ballard and his colleague received $540,000 from Varian Medical Systems for lobbying, arranging a meeting with Peter Navarro. Four of Varian’s 5 exclusion requests were granted, which boosted revenues by $23 million.
Trump fundraiser Marc Lampkin donated the maximum to Trump in 2016 and 2019. Lampkin sits on the executive committee of the lobby firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, whose “dubious clients” include Big Pharma, Big Oil, a blacklisted Chinese tech company, Palantir and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Outokumpu Stainless USA, a US subsidiary of a Finnish corporation, paid Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck nearly a half-million dollars in 2019 for lobbying, and was granted over 500 exemptions.
In April 2018, the US imposed sanctions against then-president of United Rusal Company, Oleg Deripaska (there he is again). On 19 July 2018, 3 days after Trump met Vladimir Putin in Finland, its 20th request for exclusions was granted. This was however cancelled after some adverse publicity.
On 26 July 2019, Donald tweeted that “
Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!”
But of course many of Apple’s made in China were for some reason not subjected to the tariffs. A few months later, the administration granted more exemptions for Apple products.
Before joining Trump’s first administration, Mick Mulvaney represented Fairfield County in South Carolina, home to the television assembly plant Element Electronics, which donated nearly $25,000 in 2016 to Mulvaney’s congressional race. Element got the lucrative waiver in September 2018.
Apparently make America great again, means making the rich and corrupt even filthier rich, and as someone has to pay, this means taking from the middle class. So one of Trump’s first actions as the liar-in-chief in 2017 was to withdraw rules that protected farmers from gigantic agribusinesses. From September 2018 to September 2019, farm bankruptcy filings rose 24% in the US.
China reacted to Trump’s tariffs with counter-tariffs that caused nearly $26 billion in agricultural export losses from 2018 through 2019. The Trump administration started a bailout program, and in 2019 the payment limit farmers could receive was doubled from $125,000 to $250,000, so that an additional $519 million could be funnelled to 10,000 of the largest farms… protecting the mega farms to NOT help the small farms.
One of the beneficiaries of the bailout program, with over $67 million, was the Brazilian meat-processing company JBS known for a “its track record of corruption, human rights abuses, monopolization of the meatpacking market, as well as environmental risks”:
https://www.citizen.org/article/trump-l ... connected/
(
https://archive.is/eNqZD)
Of course getting rid of small land owning farmers, will help in the planned “land grab”.
Firestarter wrote: ↑Mon Mar 10, 2025 9:45 pmAnother potential cover-up is what Catherine Austin Fitts had to say on her Solari report about the end game for the crypto reserve, which is a pump and dump scheme so the oligarchs can get the needed cash for taking control of land in the US.
https://youtu.be/YyH5I32jfVI
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Firestarter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:47 pmSo on 10 February, Trump issued an Executive Order to stop investigations/prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for 180 days, to effectively allow American corporations to pay bribes and kickbacks (a.k.a. pay to play) in foreign countries to get lucrative business deals, no doubt expecting that Trump and his cronies will likewise be rewarded.
Trump’s Justice Department has also ordered prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams (that was getting some bribes from the Trump-connected Chabad-Lubavitch, Israel and Turkish state companies)
Not very surprising, the Trump II kleptocracy has halted the prosecution of white-collar crime (especially in/from India…).
After Trump issued the executive order to put the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on hold, Gordon Coburn and Steven Schwartz had their upcoming trial for paying bribes in
India stopped.
Lawyers for
Indian billionaire Gautam Adani asked the Justice Department to drop the criminal charges for a foreign-bribery scheme.
The new US attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, asked to dismiss charges against the former Cognizant executives for paying bribes in
India.
The White House fired federal prosecutor Adam Schleifer in LA, that was overseeing a fraud case against Trump donor Andrew Wiederhorn, chief executive of Fat Brands.
Schleifer was fired after right-wing personality Laura Loomer questioned his 2020 anti-Trump tweet.
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Firestarter wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 8:22 amLast year, Trump’s sons, Don Jr and Eric, launched the crypto venture World Liberty Financial. Last month, World Liberty was present at a Bitcoin event in Abu Dhabi (in the UAE where else?!?) that featured Eric Trump and Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who helped launch World Liberty.
World Liberty boasts among its top investors the controversial Chinese-born TRON founder Justin Sun, who reportedly pumped $75 million into World Liberty.
The SEC paused a lawsuit against Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto magnate accused of market manipulation and fraud.
In 2022, Switzerland-headquartered Glencore pleaded guilty to overseas bribery and market manipulation, but has got the Justice Department’s support to end the work of $140 million costing compliance monitors. Glencore has used for an argument that it is an important supplier to the US of cobalt (how would that make them less guilty?!?).
Charges against democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams were dropped, even though Manhattan federal prosecutors objected:
https://archive.is/cWdzs
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NYC mayor since 2022 Adams was charged with bribery and soliciting illegal foreign donations to his election campaign.
Adams received more than $100,000 worth of luxury travel benefits from foreign businesspeople and a Turkish government official from 2016 to 2021.
Adams pressured New York Fire Department officials to sign off on a new high-rise building for the Turkish Consulate General despite safety concerns.
Adams criticised the Biden-Harris administration for the migration crisis, and shortly before the indictment complained about being another victim of the Biden administration. Did Turkey pay him to get their boy back in the White House?!?
I’ve searched in vain for more information on the Turkish involvement, expecting a connection to the Trump cabal in Turkey:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/2 ... ed-to-know
Persons named in the subpoenas against Eric Adams include:
Reyhan Özgür, former Turkish consul general in New York, whom Adams in 2022 described as a “good friend”;
Arda Sayiner, influencer and journalist who does business in Turkey. Sayiner arranged Adams’s itinerary for a December 2015 trip to Turkey while borough president, his second visit to Turkey in 4 months.
The prosecution also demanded information related to Israel, China, Qatar, South Korea and Uzbekistan:
https://archive.is/bLwJO
In August 2023, Mayor Adams was in Israel for 3 days, meeting PM Benjamin Netanyahu and a settler leader, which was controversial.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/new- ... ontroversy
Former cop Eric Adams tells that he asks questions from the diseased (?!) “Grand Rebbe of Lubavitch” and (other) Rabbis (starting at 5:30).
https://youtu.be/6JODxUTTp1c
