changegonnacome

Well if you want to get technical.....GE/Safran will also pay due to future demand destruction....which is to say GE/Safran all things being equal would have sold more jet engines, service contracts and parts in a 0% indian tariff market world over time......so the Indian government first hurts its own consumers by driving up the price of jet engines it can't produce itself, so domestic demand for air travel falls due to higher prices...the addressable market for jet engines in India goes from a 5% CAGR to 1% CAGR...it contracts...now the Indian government raised revenue, first its domestic consumers got hurt but then the foreign producers got hurt.....everybody is worse off except you might argue the Indian government (but even this is wrong). The only way you might come up with a scenario where the outcome is neutral is in a world where you belive the Indian government or the US government, now holding this tariff revenue in treasury, can allocate it more efficiently than the private sector would have. This is the irony of GOP politcians. If you want to make that argument, go for it, the reality is the US government/Indian government will malinvest those tarfiff duties. So Trump's tariff's will make everybody in aggregate worse off.......US consumers, EU producers, US producers & EU consumers......Trump destroyed many businesses in his time as private citizen......the amount of aggregate trade value and future points of GDP he is destroying here irrefutably puts this in his most costly business mistake (he just happens to Chairman & CEO of USA LLC this time).........US consumers aggregate consumption has been hurt by these tariffs, it will go down because some level of tariff incidence will fall on them except if you work in US steel maybe or your goat cheese producer constaintly beaten by your French competitor you are now better off. So congrats Trump - EU producers and EU economies will be hurt too, they pay tariffs....but dont US companies also sell products to Europe? which has now been made poorer.......so how exactly does it help your exporters to make the EU worse off economically? If I'm being kind the Trump team might tell you that they think they can make the bottom 200 million American better off through re-industrial prosperity and 140m top American's relative to a no tariff baseline worse off....and thats a worthy social economic redistribution project...that costs some aggregate amount of total GDP in total........but make no mistake about it......Trump is taking a pie......taking a slice (tariffs)....and that simple act of taking the slice actually contracts the whole pie......because now the government is holding a slice of a private transaction in cash in the treasury general account and it will misallocate that capital relative to the private sector. Both immediately and over time everybody (foreign and domestic) are worse off - the only argument one can make is that this shrunken aggregate prosperity has been relocated across soceity in a way that is more equitable than the pre-tariff status quo....it is however irrefutable that you shrunk the overall pie or the pie is smaller, over time, than it would have otherwise have been. To counter the above you are on very shaky ground. Cause essentially this is your argument: The Government is a superior allocator of capital than the private sector The only argument IMO that 'works' for all this tariff stuff Trump is doing below: Yes the economic pie is immediately smaller for everyone and its going to be smaller than it otherwise would have been over time but we are not optimizing for pure GDP anymore.....we are optimizing for some kind of happiness/social cohesion adjusted GDP metric and we think that this is going to give us a better society at the modest expense of few tens of bps of the economy and economic growth over time. That's the argument - a funny one for Republican's to make dont you think but Trump is a populist and his proposition to his poor base is that unlike the Democrats I wont send you welfare cheques, I'm going to send you factories!

The lower court record now on these reciprocal tariffs is quite clear so far....he's playing outside the lines... The section 232 stuff he is on much firmer ground..........but lots of these trade understandings/frameworks we are talking about the bulk of trade value does not fall on 232.....they fall on this reciprocity concept....which will in my opinion, having reviewed it myself, in a fair bit of detail will fail at the Supreme Court. Now the admin is expanding 232 investigations around lots of areas......exactly because of what I said above.....they see reciprocity falling at the supreme court level and want a bunch of 232's on ICE....or why bother with stacking these 232's? in background.!?! The 232's then - if we focus on these......again fail the policy durabilty test....they amount in governance terms to executuve orders.....if you believe that there will never be a Democratic free market/globaist president again then they are permanent.......or more reasonable argument to make would be a little like replacement theory was a way for the Democratic party to stack the deck at elections with voters........Section 232 is a way to get whole industries into your GOP voter column (what steelworker in his right mind would vote for a democratic President who wanted to drop 232 on steel, ditto for autoworkers!!!!!). So the GOP is involved in its own cynical replacement project here....they are replacing their ageing voter base....with tariff shielded industries who's employee base will vote with their pocket books at election to keep the trade barriers...and the companies in which they work will pay tithings to the GOP (via SuperPacs) to keep the protectionist barriers up.........net net as @dwy000 points out....its a dead weight loss economically.....if you step out of the realm of pure economics maybe you come to a different view from society perspective......as many folks have pointed out recently GDP per capita is not a very holistic metric that one can measure the success or failure of your Country.....the US is the GDP per capita king of the jungle......but fentanyl deaths, gun violence, mass shootings, wealth distribution, suicide rates, number of people one paycheck away from bankruptcy, healthcare access and costs tell a different.....European's have a much lower GDP per capita than us.......and I have many friends there who visit the United States and when the consider things in the round they consider the United States to be an inferior value proposition to the median citzen and when you talk with them....its very very very very hard to argue with them.

Yes big big picture......there is no free lunch here...Friedman & Thomas Sowell are right....the Government has inserted themselves into a transaction between two parties.....a foreign producer and a US consumer.....in myriad different ways consumers and producers will pay for this interference.....it is quite something to see a nominal GOP government advocate for more taxes and more Government involvement in transactions between private parties but here we are its a crazy world and this isn't your Grandma GOP.....the Miran/Bessent/Trump thesis of course is that the US had untapped leverage in its trade relationships.....their bet is that when its all summed up....the tariff burden will fall disproportionately outside the US....and so it will be a net global transfer....they are also (subtly) if you listen to them, accepting that American's will get to consume less goods and so be worse off (in aggregate) but that expanded economic opportunity to the bottom 20% of American's (via re-industrialization) is a worthy tradeoff. Indeed what they are attempting to do is a right wing version of the 'new deal' - Trump's new deal is that everybody is little worse off from tariffs but a motivated Joe Sixpack has a little more diversity of economic opportunity moving forward and his labor might get a little more edge over capital. The proof will in the pudding on whether all this has worked.....you'd really need to see the bottoms quartiles real wages move up in ways we havent seen before....I'm skeptical...as I've said above.....15% in lots of these deals is not enough to move production....so you get the worst of all worlds.....higher prices, less consumer choice, less aggregate consumption, domestic producers coattaling foreign price increases and pocketing the difference with no incremental domestic production/import substitution or real wage growth (indeed perhaps even real wages start to slip)

I think alot of countries - are starting to look at it from the EU perspective I outlined earlier....Trump's tariff regime has no policy durability underpinning it....if you take the medium to long term view which many of these countries are.....best to give Trump a PR win now....and let the the Supreme Court first or the Congress a little later dismantle them.....put another way these trade 'understandings' aren't an end state....they are a political aberration for an unusual period in US politics where a US President is overstepping his constitutional powers and the Congress is not pushing back. For sure - its a clever way to sneak a federal sales tax into peoples daily lives, reduce consumer choice with some forced 'buy American'.... and somehow get half the country at least to think its some kind of big picture 'win'. You can have endless debates on what the Trump admin is doing......but based on tariffs, GENIUS act, deregulation, DOGE, BBB, Fed takeover with likely fiscal dominance coming...what I will say is that they are attempting to apply a very innovative and novel playbook to solving the nations fiscal trajectory mess that both parties have got us into in the last 10yrs.......there are pluses and minuses to the strategy. I'd really like it work and am rooting for Stephen Miran & Bessent's superior market smarts to be right here.....if they pull it off..... it will be a beautiful deleveraging of USA LLC.....and Trump & team will deserve all the credit in the world for taking a non-conventional approach to an age old problem of the fiscal authority getting into deep debt.....but its not without the risks.....I think one should view what they are doing as a high risk - high reward strategy.....we'll know in 4-5yrs if its paid off....nobody, not a single person can say for sure whether its succeeding or failing at this early stage.....those talking about all the Trump 'wins' are calling a baseball game thats in its first inning....and likewise for those calling the opposite......the final inning and the game result on all this stuff is at least 4-5yrs out....and folks should be humble enough to know that.

Not true - its all situational - every product is its own micro market...elasticity of demand, substitution effects, producer margins, market share aspirations.....how the tariff incidence is allocated is going to be very different for each product. Tariffs are almost a perfect rorschach test for how partisan you are......if you belive it will be bourne completley by US consumers I can confidently tell you, you are LIB-tard......if you think the foreign company will pay it completley, I can confidently diagnosis you as having a serious case of MAGA.

Your right of course....but sometimes, in lots of categories your not buying chicken..........and the EU, in lots of product categories, is not selling chicken either, they are selling best in class patented products where they are the sole supplier with low elasticity of demand and where the tariff incidence is obvious....a few below > Eliquis (best in class blood thinner) (Germany) Prolia®/Xgeva® (netherlands) Keytruda (cancer) ( netherlands) Kyleena (best in class IUD, no alternatives) (Finland) Things are way more complicated that the democrat morons who say consumer will pay all these tariffs (not true)....and the MAGA morons who say no consumer is going pay these tariffs (not true).....the answer is in-between and complicated and nobody likes that of course because nobody does nuance anymore cause they’re too busy trying to own the libs or destroy MAGA.

Like lots of Trump wins (and this is one) they are never quite as great as the press release & PR event make them out to be. He is fundamentally a showman that prioritizes optics over policy durability. Counterparties understand the President's attention span is short, his core MAGA supporters attention span even shorter. For example - I consider the foreign direct investment commitments from Japan and the EU to be red herrings....some combination of annual capitals flows already in place summed up over 10yrs with some aspirational incremental commitments that will never come to pass. These are, to put it mildly, simple big numbers designed to be passed around on truth social or twitter by Trumps supporters. Simplified tidbits, for simplified minds. Now dont get me wrong Joe Biden people did this to, every politician worth their salt does......but you can be certain in years to come they will be deconstructed by a journalist and be shown to have never happened or simply double counting of historical capital flows already in place between Japan/EU & USA. Right now the lack of detail of course you could drive a bus through..........the big overarching question is will the 15% rate stick? Many including the EU itself apparently and the likes of Piper Sandler below are betting that they won't. Trump’s trade deals are illegal, Piper Sandler warns https://fortune.com/2025/07/25/trump-trade-deals-illegal-piper-sandler-tariffs-supreme-court/ A more interesting question is, if they do stick, whats the tariff incidence. The EU isn't China - the products we consume from the EU are not, in the main, commodities. They actually tend to the opposite of commodities. They tend to be products where the US consumer considers the EU product to be superior, where the higher price for the EU product is signaler of its superior quality (luxury goods etc.). The tariff incidence will be interesting to track. Finally the EU is actually something of sole supplier for key patented life sciences products to the US. I'm not sure how slapping 15% on the below is a 'win' for US patients and insurers> Wegovy/Ozempic (Demark/Germany) Eliquis (best in class blood thinner) (Germany) Botox (Ireland) Prolia®/Xgeva® (netherlands) Keytruda (cancer) ( netherlands) Kyleena (best in class IUD, no alternatives) (Finland) I guess the textbook would say that with no good substitutes & limited elasticity of demand the tariff incidence will fall heavily on the US healthcare system for the above. Finally as mentioned a few times now if we take Trump at this word - that tariffs are a means by which US gets to reshore manufacturing to the United States.....and as I've covered a couple of times now re:EU where I can speak with some authority having seen many many analysis.........15% tariffs on products I listed above and many others.... is not the number that changes what the comparison spreadsheet says a company should do here.......sure at the margins & with 100% US expensing the math might change for a subset of a subset of manufactured products, business units......but trust me as regards US vs EU........15% is uncomfortably in the no mans land between not being enough to move manufacturing wholesale from the EU and being low enough and falling on products with no good US substitutes to fall heavily on US consumers as a sales tax. I no nobody does details anymore in the realm of politics- everything is either a total win for Trump and total loss for his opponent or vice versa. If this sticks and its a big if - its a win for Trump...but under the hood not quite as big.... US consumers are going to pay the majority of the tariffs here on lots and lots of EU products....and if the courts throw out these tariffs in 10 months time it will be a much ado about nothing.

Got the skinny from my buddy in the EU - the commission's view and the willingness to take 15% today versus upping the stakes with retaliatory tariffs etc is very simple apparently....... The view is that Trump has built his tariff house on shaky ground on a number of fronts.....and so better to let them collapse of their own accord than get down in the dirt with Trump for a fight on something so temporary and think strategically and long term re: a long run ally like the United States. The 15% level has a shelf life they think of less than year and at worst perhaps 18 months. The high leve take is this: (1) the commission's view is that tariffs will be deemed illegal by no later than June 2026 by the US Supreme Court (all lower court indications are pointing in this direction apparently) (2) the commissions view is barring the tariffs being declared illegal by mid-2026 by the SC - inflation combined with the fallout from the BBB will see the house (& possibly even the Senate) flip Democratic....so what the courts don't stop, the Democratic congress will wrestle back these powers and declare whatever deals Trump has done without standing and re-assert their trade negotiation powers by appointing Congressional negotiating teams. The EU is happy to come to do press conference where they talk about 'understandings', 'frameworks, & 'agreements in principle' with Donald....15%,20%,25%....no matter.....they are taking a holistic approach cognizant of the NATO, Ukraine portfolios and long term EU-US relationships once Trump has departed (i.e. playing the long game)....time is on their side they believe, the law is on their side too....not to mention the political gravity of higher prices and the small matter of the US constitution....which is very clear trade powers....the man who just came of a golf course in Scotland today had no constitutional right to make a trade agreement (sorry trade understanding) with anyone today.....and Ursula Von Der Lyn and the EU knows it but happy to play footsie with him to have cordial relationship with the USA writ large for the next few months until this trade overreach is corrected by the courts or the political system. He outlined a very interesting twist on this expectation - one which will be quite embarrassing if it comes to pass. European companies will now push as much price as the US consumer will bear to recoup the interim 15% tariff rate and protect margins - it will inevitably end up with US consumers paying more for EU items for the next 18 months......when the tariffs are deemed illegal however they will have a legal right to recoup the tariffs resulting in a EU corporate windfall.......US consumers that had paid the tariffs of course have no refund recourse....and so tariffs today will come back to EU companies as incremental margin on their historical US sales later (a one time wealth transfer from US consumer to EU corporates facilitated by DJT).

Doing a trade deal with the US with Trump in the WH is apparently like doing a deal with psychiatric patient suffering from ADHD, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia & alzheimars combined......there is no coherent negotiating position, no clear overarching strategic aim.....just vibes & Trump's ever changing moods/opinions. Trade negotiating professionals on the US side (guess you'd call them the Deep State @cubsfan) are apologizing, in private, daily to their EU counterparts that a coherent US position cannot be established to allow for substantive talks on major issues. indeed the joke in the EU is that while its difficult to get 27 EU countries to agree to anything - that actually all the sympathy should be for the US negotiating team...they have 27 different Trump's to deal with & everyone of those Trump's has no idea how international trade works

Exactly what I was getting at........stablecoins are obscure enough that people dont quite get the game here...they hear innovation (& thats true) but its also the US solving for illicit global activity friction in exchange for incremental T-bill liquidity....the alternative would be much more obvious, nod to the underworld, and that would printing up some new $500 or $1000 bills as a new product for the 'hot money' crowd.

Agree Or put a crater in the curve - right at the 10yr point....by forward guidance or by QE3 Can't help but feel like the GENUIS act too.....effectively cementing short term treasury backed stablecoins....as the casino chip of choice of crypto land gambling....and all sorts of secondary & tertiary offshore non-FATCA, non-AML/KYC shenanigans......is a kind devils bargain to get Bessent what he needs - a way to create a much deeper, wider and liquid t-bill market.....such that the treasury can continue to double down & expand short term issuance to fund the GA. It feel like the US is really starting to run on fumes re: fiscal stimulus.....every get out of jail budgetary trick seems to have been put on the table (tariffs, stablecoins, DOGE, hostile takeover of the Fed) instead of what is the right thing to do - cutting all core spending programs a little and raising taxes a little on everyone...

Cracks widen in Japan and US’s interpretation of tariff trade deal https://www.ft.com/content/c1183b13-9135-41f6-9206-7b52af66f0a5 "Japanese officials said there was no written agreement with Washington — and no legally binding one would be drawn up — after Trump administration officials claimed Tokyo would back investments in the US from which American taxpayers would reap nine-tenths of the profits." "Officials familiar with the US-Japan talks said the deal was pulled together in a slapdash manner during a 70-minute meeting between Japan’s chief negotiator Ryosei Akazawa and Trump on Tuesday." When a trade deal isnt a deal at all- its a just a bunch of idiots shit talking. Trump is quite something.....freestyling & improvising a global trade deal in 70 minutes....the man is a genius......the biggest deal in human history I believe he said....small problem nothing is signed and none of the details have been worked out.

Trump (always) needs a fall guy - sure jawboning for lower rates might get lower rates but probably not.......but when it comes out next year that say the US grew 1.4% in 2025 under Trump......but 2.1% under Biden in 2024....I mean what can Trump say......Biden was senile he said and he grew the US economy at over 2%........if he was senile what does that make Trump?......you get the picture....."its all Jay Powell's fault, blah blah blah, it would been 3% growth if rates weren't so damn high, its the best economy the world has ever seen....in fact I know it would have been over 3% because very good business friends of mine told me it would be over 3% if it wasn't for these rates we have from too late Powell" Trump is a big believer of getting your excuses in early and often. Presidents growing the economy is very shaky science anyway....what I do know is that ever increasing annual fiscal deficits sure helped keep us up around the 2% level for in the period 2016-2025 (how could it not, the debt curve is beautifully sloping upwards)......and like any drug, maintenance requires ever increasing doses.....2016 to 2025 has been a nice period of ever increasing Government deficits & their mirror image which is corporate and consumer surpluses......the annual fiscal debt seems to have topped out at this 6.5% level....debt seems to be getting harder to flog......not much incrementally left on the big red button called 'juice the economy with more federal borrowing'

Yep - this is what I've been saying.....its not somehow like this Epstein stuff is going to have to seem him resign or thrown out or any of that other leftist lunatic stuff.....the reality......is simply that Trump's hold over the GOP wanes and he becomes yesterdays man much quicker than he would have otherwise. The noisy minority on the right (the conspiracy wing of the coalition) breaking with Trump on this issue creates a permission structure for GOP Senators and Congressman to diverge from the President on other stuff.....the BBB is passed.....TCJA tax cuts we're extended, Trump served his purposes for the core tax cut retention agenda........ However the bill is laced with politically toxic material (medicaid cuts, deficit continue to explode etc.) alot of the cuts we're required as pay fors, for Trumps cockamamie no tax on tips and other populist nonsense that in there......GOP house and senate members know how toxic this stuff for next years Midterms....they know there are going to be constituents who will identify tariff driven price increases or domestic businesses not helped but severely hurt by tariffs in their district...... Midterms are going to be tough for folks trying to explain what got done in DC in H1 2025 (BBB + Tariffs)....BBB more or less maintained the status quo for most voters....you can characterize an extension of the TCJA as a cut....but that is the way polticts works....so no new voters gained here.....while hurting the new MAGA base (white non-college educated medicaid etc.)....there are no, in my opinion, incremental votes in what Trump has done this year.....quite the opposite....its bad politics what Trump has presided over....when GOP congress members come back (or dont come back) from the Midterms with a big fat loss on their hands they'll very quickly switch to we need to dump this guy Trump, he's a liability. The Epstein stuff has brought that conversation forward by about 18 months.

Ah yes - kinda fun…total hearsay…and slightly embarrassed I bothered recounting it at all i dunno I think something everybody can get behind is that United States with the abundant talent it has should be able to do better than the last three occupants of the White House for sure…I’d personally lob Obama in there myself (though I know he has his cultists)….and agree with the view expressed here that the Dems scorched earth approach to the candidacy of right leaning centrists in the GOP like Romney is in part to blame for the rise of the lunatic right

Funny thing is....I think Trump is completely innocent of any paedo/Epstein stuff.....what he is guilty of IMO is being thin skinned that he cant stand to have it confirmed with hard evidence that he = was very very tight buddies with Epstein in the 80's, 90 and early 200's......and to stop that non-crime but embarrassing detail coming out.....he is breaking a bunch of norms that will only accelerate the lost faith people have institutions...... norm one.....if this we're any other President he'd have appointed a special counsel on all this Epstein stuff the second he heard his name was in the files........which Trump did hear back in May from Pam Bondi..... second norm.....as President you dont send your god damn personal criminal defense attorney down to Florida to speak with the principal witness in a case where there is even a sniff of criminality on your part in the past...

Top Justice Department Official Visits Former Epstein Associate Ghislaine Maxwell Lawyer for convicted Epstein confidante calls it a ‘productive’ day of questioning https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/top-justice-department-official-visits-former-epstein-associate-ghislaine-maxwell-0598e4c0 "Blanche earlier this week announced his plans to meet Maxwell. “For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” he wrote on X." More accurately re-written.......Todd Blanche....Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney from his most recent New York case parachuted into the DOJ....but still fundamentally Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney......is spending two days with Ghilaine Maxwell trying to get a sense of what she might say and do to damage Trump when her last chance saloon appeal gets thrown out of the Supreme Court in a few weeks time.....where she has zero to lose and can go beast mode if she wishes......my guess....watch for a subtle shift in the narrative soon........to Maxwell having being "very badly treated" by Biden's DOJ, being unbelievably cooperative with Trump's DOJ, wanting to help in anyway she can the victims cause maybe she's kinda a victim of Epstein herself.....indeed if you think about it what Trump really needs Ghilaine to do next is get the 'Eye of Sauron' on to another man in the Epstein files.....Clinton, Prince Andrew....somebody the MAGA conspiracy theorists will tie themselves in knots with........it sure looks to me, for political expediency, they are also going to strongly hint to Maxwell that a pardon could come down the tracks in 3.5yrs.

Agree results speak louder than style

me too.....I might go as far to say that AOC might be worse than Trump.......Trump for all his chaos & attrition in the next 3 or 4yrs....is likely not to break the capitalist goose that lays the golden egg......his vandalism of social safety nets, various overreaches can be fixed up fairly easily i think by the next admin......a populist left demagogue.....they would try to tinker with the engine......Trump for all his faults is kinda just a panel beater....he's making a lot of noise, creating alot of attention.....but there's enough real business people around him to stop him messing with the core engine too much. Yep haven't seen enough of him myself.....but at the end of the day he strikes me as a guy who could run General Motors if he wanted to.......or run a country (which he is)......astute, assured, structured, strategic, measured, long term oriented, in control of himself and those around him.....Canada is lucky to have him I think (when I look at the global political talent out there, cant think of many with Carney's CV & presense)......will need to see if that all translates into genuine political change.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Birthday Book Included Letters From Bill Clinton, Leon Black https://www.wsj.com/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-birthday-album-included-letters-from-bill-clinton-leon-black-a7cd8cb1?mod=hp_lead_pos7 The other scumbag Clinton in the book...why am I not surprised....the WSJ sure has made up alot of details about an imaginary fake book.......and set themselves up for another few hundred million dollars of defamation suits from billionaires like Leon Black...and powerful folks like Bill Clinton......Rupert Murdoch, it seems, is hell bent on bankrupting the WSJ and News Corp here with this one story. Oh what a web weave, when first we try to deceive.....what an idiot Trump is......you get the call from the WSJ, you say "so what I wrote/drew a guy I knew 30yrs ago a bawdy birthday wish and 20yrs after that he turned out to be a creep.......suck eggs.....but nope he had to deny and lie.

Its gonna be funny - with all these expanded powers of the Presidency that Donald is pathfinding right now - with various executive actions, shakedowns and lawsuit wins setting precedences all over the place............oh what fun a left wing populist nut (a mirror of Donald the right wing populist nut) is going to have when he or she (AOC!) gets into the White House.....the GOP will howl and scream till they realize it was Trump who expanded and created the playbook for this type of imperial federal Presidency.

Imagine for a second this was the Chairman & CEO of a company you owned (Trump) and the CFO (Powell) doing a walk through of their new plant where they stopped for a press gaggle…..and started passive aggressively lobbing grenades at each other….you’d sell the company in the morning…I don’t care who you think is right or wrong here Powell or Trump….the whole edifice of the Reno walk through is political theatre….the snipping in public unbecoming of the office both men hold.

Certainly the people who own MA & V arent taking it seriously.......I was expecting to see even a mild 2-3% drop in their price outside normal beta....but nothing.....zilch

OK just V & MA didn't budge an inch on the passing of GENUIS act.......market seemed to look at all the hype and shrug its shoulders

One nugget that has drifted out this week....that is likely in the Epstein files (if the files have lots of Epstein's historical communications)...... Everybody knows that Epstein and Donald fell out over a property in Palm Beach in 2004......Epstein had an offer of $30m accepted on the property and seen as Donald was very very very good friend of his for 20+ years in real estate business he asked him to come over to the property, he was yet to close on, to seek advice on reno options for the property. Donald being the dog that he is decided to gazump his good friend Epstein behind his back.......with a $41m offer and bought the property....ironically called Maison de l’Amitie (French for "House of Friendship")!!!!........Epstein, its reported, told numerous people in PB how angry he was and also how he knew for a stone cold fact Donald didn't access to $41m for the house.....and so Epstein told people in Pam Beach he was convinced Donald had been 'fronting' for somebody else to buy the house......i.e. Donald was helping somebody hide their purchase, was hiding the real beneficial owner and the source of funds etc.. With Epstein running around Palm Beach bad mouthing Donald......its reported that its Donald that decided to weaponize what he knew about Epstein's young ladies and so tipped off the Palm Beach police that they should look into his ex-friend. Anyway - this Friendship house is the famous house that Donald sold four years later in the midst of the GFC for $90m!!!!! a sale that left Palm Beach realtors puzzled at its high price....the purchaser a Russian oligarch billionaire. All interesting stuff.....especially when you realize that Ghilaine Maxwell was around during all this period...no doubt hearing what Donald was up to....dealing with the fuming Jeffrey about the falling out of the two men who were 'great' friends for the past 20yrs......all that and right now Trump's personal criminal attorney Todd Blanche.....that is now moonlighting as the nominal Deputy Attorney General of DOJ......is flying down to see Ghilaine in-prison.....for a "conversation" on what she knows. All of the above is pure speculation & conspiracy theories of course.....and I'm indulging them here for entertainment purposes.....the facts though are becoming clearer.....these guys we're intertwined in each others lives for a couple of decades.....in NYC and palm beach....via weddings, birthdays, girlfriends , social events & property deals in PB......its quite something....and now the Presidents personal criminal defense attorney is headed down to Florida to meet the only woman alive who has first hand knowledge of this stuff just as her last chance saloon appeal is winding its way to a final, widely predicted, negative decision at the Supreme Court......I can't wait for definitive Trump biography to come out after he's long gone....its gonna be a beauty