Coffee Talk with Tiff

July 2, 2025 12:58 pm EDT Tiff Editorial (Open Thread) Comments Off on Coffee Talk with Tiff
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Wednesday…

President Shitshow’s public schedule for…

Wednesday, July 2 2025
The President has no public events scheduled
The White House
9:00 AM
In-Town Pool Call Time
The White House 
In-Town Pool

It’s been a long year today. I’ve been involuntarily binge-watching the nation’s most exhausting daytime drama: “Republicans Can’t Govern.” Now in its 473rd season, featuring surprise betrayals, recycled plotlines, dramatic pauses before every vote, and absolutely no character development.
New episodes daily. No resolution in sight.

Show more =’s Without ordering the previous question, @SpeakerJohnson doesn’t have an escape hatch if he starts debate on the bill. Meaning, they have to vote on the bill once they get onto it. Johnson is probably going to want to fix this with an amendment on the floor when they begin considering the rule. But they will need a majority to change the rule.

It was a rule vote brought by D’s. The motion failed.

There have also been sighting of R’s entering and leaving the White House.

Show more =’s Conservatives are raising concerns about the Senate version, citing its changes to the clean energy tax credits and number it would add to the US deficit. But Trump is a huge factor here. Rep. Eli Crane (R., Ariz), a strong Trump supporter, told me last week Freedom Caucus members want to help the president but that they also want to be “principled.” https://wsj.com/politics/policy/house-republicans-threaten-to-sink-trumps-megabill-66cd241d?st=ir1sjn&reflink=article_copyURL_share

There are currently 28 R’s “Big Mad” over the BBB Senate Edition. Three of those Big Mad’s include Chip Roy who is Know To Fold.

We should not lose sight of what’s actually happening in this deeply unserious episode of legislative theater. This entire dumpster fire of a bill exists for one reason and one reason only: because our Reality TV President wants to sign something —anything — into law with “July 4th, 2025” on it, like it’s the season finale of a show he won’t shut up about.

The Reality Star Cosplaying as President has announced via “Lies Social” that they’ve made a trade deal with Vietnam.

He pinned this beauty…

President Donald Trump wants the U.S. to increase its exports and lower its imports. Thanks to a historic decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, he may get his wish — but at a cost he may not have anticipated.

Over the past six months, the dollar has declined more than 10% compared with a basket of currencies from the U.S.’ major trading partners — something it has not done since 1973. Today, it sits at a three-year low.

The simplest explanation for the decline is that global investors now expect the U.S. economy to no longer outperform the rest of the world as a result of Trump’s tariffs and worsening fiscal issues. Even with U.S. stocks returning to record highs, the return on other countries’ equities has been even stronger. Meanwhile the return on lending to the U.S. is expected to decline as growth here slows.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Many, including members of Trump’s own Cabinet, assumed his tariffs strategy would strengthen the value of the dollar relative to foreign currencies. The thinking behind it was that as American consumers began to purchase fewer foreign goods, those other countries’ currencies would weaken relative to the dollar.

Instead, the opposite has occurred. U.S. growth prospects have weakened — in part because of Trump’s tariffs. That has made U.S. debt relatively less attractive for foreign investors, especially compared with the returns on lending to other countries, like Germany and Japan, that are now expected to experience higher growth.

NBC News. 07/02/2025.

Because the 4th of July is Friday, May’s jobs report is due to be released tomorrow. ADP the payroll company reported that May saw 33,000 jobs lost. Not gained.

Private payrolls lost 33,000 jobs in June, the ADP report showed, the first decrease since March 2023. Economists polled by Dow Jones forecast an increase of 100,000 for the month. The May job growth figure was revised even lower to just 29,000 jobs added from 37,000.

“Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a press release published Wednesday morning.

To be sure, the ADP report has a spotty track record on predicting the subsequent government jobs report, which investors tend to weigh more heavily. May’s soft ADP data ended up differing significantly from the monthly jobs report figures that came later in the week.

This week, the government’s nonfarm payrolls report will be out on Thursday with economists expecting a healthy 110,000 increase for June, per Dow Jones estimates. Economists are expecting the unemployment rate to tick higher to 4.3% from 4.2%. Some economists could revise down their jobs reports estimates following ADP’s data.

CNBC News. 07/02/2025.

The above article is about their AI investment plans.

This CNBC News article is about the layoffs.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it will lay off about 9,000 employees. The move will affect less than 4% of its global workforce across different teams, geographies and levels of experience, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.

The announcement comes on the second day of Microsoft’s 2026 fiscal year. Executives at the Redmond, Washington-based company typically unveil reorganizations at the time of the new fiscal year.

“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email.

Microsoft has held several rounds of layoffs already this calendar year. In January, it cut less than 1% of headcount based on performance. The 50-year-old software company slashed more than 6,000 jobs in May and then at least 300 more in June. As of June 2024 it employed 228,000 people. In 2023, it laid off 10,000.

CNBC News. 07/02/2025.

There is other news. Sean “Diddy Combs” was found guilty on 2 of the 5 counts he was charged with. RICO was a not guilty charge. For the two counts he could see a max of 20 years in prison.

This is an open thread

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About Tiff 3188 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.