Writers and Editors

What Trump is doing with tariffs: a roundup of links

• Tariff (Wikipedia) A long, informative entry. 

    "A tariff is a duty (a tax) imposed by a national government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports (or, exceptionally, exports) of goods. Besides being a source of revenue, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and policy that burden foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry.

    'Protective tariffs' are among the most widely used instruments of protectionism, along with import quotas and export quotas and other non-tariff barriers to trade. In April 2025, President Donald Trump of the United States announced a substantial increase in tariffs and a 10% base tariff on all imported products, resulting in the US trade-weighted average tariff rising from 2% to an estimated 24%, the highest level in over a century, including under the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930" (just before the Great Depression).

• Covering Trump’s tariffs? Here are 4 things you need to know (Clark Merefield, Journalist's Resource, 1-28-25) The Journalist's Resource and Econofact recently hosted a webinar featuring two trade economists and an NPR producer whose reporting teams have covered tariffs. Watch the recording and read key takeaways. Here are 4 things to know if you’re reporting on tariffs. 1. Know the history of U.S. tariffs. 2. Know who pays for tariffs in the short and long run. 3. Know the price and employment effects of tariffs. 4. Know that there are stories to be told about how businesses ‘contort themselves’ to get around tariffs.
---The Long-Term Impact of Steel Tariffs on U.S. Manufacturing (Lydia Cox, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2-19-25) Main point: Temporary upstream steel tariffs have highly persistent negative impacts on downstream industry exports, production, and employment.

 

• 'The Economist' editor unpacks the 'biggest trade policy shock' of Trump's tariffs (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, 4-9-25) President Trump's sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs have upended the global economy, sending stock markets into turmoil. "This is, without a doubt, the biggest trade policy shock, I think, in history," Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, says.

    "Trump last week ordered a minimum 10% tax on nearly everything the U.S. buys from other countries. He's also ordered much higher levies on things the country buys from China, Japan and the European Union. However, a lot of those tariffs are in flux, because almost each day the president has either increased some tariffs or paused others."

• Between tariffs and survival, American business owners are doing alarming math (Alina Selyukh, North Country Public Radio, The Economist, 4-7-25) "Even if we pass some (cost) to the consumer, we can't pass it all," says Wells, based in Virginia. "So I really think the honest answer is that businesses will close." For some, it's survival mode, which means shrinking selections and freezing hiring.

• The tariff madness of King Donald, explained (The Economist,4-10-25) As his policy turns on a dime, pity those tasked with justifying his actions.

   
• What happened the last time the US went all-in on tariffs? (Nicole Narea, Vox, 4-8-25) Plus 6 other questions about Trump’s tariffs, answered.
---This Trump policy didn’t work in his first term. He’s trying again. (Eric Levitz, Vox, 2-11-25) Why steel and aluminum tariffs are back — and might stick. Trump’s commitment to re-running his experiment with large steel and aluminum tariffs is curious, since his first try yielded terrible results. It goes without saying that tariffs harm domestic consumers: Putting a tax on imported goods tends to make them more expensive.
---What Trump’s tariff pause can’t solve (Nicole Narea, Vox, 4-10-25) Nobody knows what Trump will do next — and that’s a problem. Even with some of the tariffs paused, there’s a deeper economic malaise taking hold. The uncertainty created by Trump’s whiplash-inducing changes to the US’s trade policy is not just going to evaporate. And even at their current level, Trump’s tariffs are already upending the global trade order in hard-to-predict ways. That’s a problem for business owners, investors, and the everyday Americans impacted by their decisions. The pullback did nothing to address economic uncertainty.
---Trump’s tariff war isn’t over (Eric Levitz, Vox, 4-9-25) There’s a questionable assumption fueling the stock market rally. Wall Street’s burgeoning optimism for the American economy depends on the assumption that Trump will continue retreating from his current position. If he instead maintains his current course, the US will face surging prices and a heightened risk of recession.

---Live Updates: U.S. Market Tumbles; Trump Says China Tariff Is at Least 145% (NY Times, 4-10-25) The S&P 500 fell 4 percent by early afternoon, as investors assessed the worsening trade war with China. The White House clarified the total new tariffs on Chinese goods now stands at 145 percent.
---This Trump policy didn’t work in his first term. He’s trying again. (Eric Levitz, Vox, 2-11-25) Why steel and aluminum tariffs are back — and might stick. Trump’s commitment to re-running his experiment with large steel and aluminum tariffs is curious, since his first try yielded terrible results. It goes without saying that tariffs harm domestic consumers: Putting a tax on imported goods tends to make them more expensive.
---What Trump’s tariff pause can’t solve (Nicole Narea, Vox, 4-10-25) Nobody knows what Trump will do next — and that’s a problem. Even with some of the tariffs paused, there’s a deeper economic malaise taking hold. The uncertainty created by Trump’s whiplash-inducing changes to the US’s trade policy is not just going to evaporate. And even at their current level, Trump’s tariffs are already upending the global trade order in hard-to-predict ways. That’s a problem for business owners, investors, and the everyday Americans impacted by their decisions. The pullback did nothing to address economic uncertainty.

---Trump’s tariff plan is an inflation plan (Ellen Ioanes, Vox, 11-26-24) New tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China could make life more expensive.
---Tariffs, trade war inflation impact to be ‘pretty ugly’ by summer, economists say (Greg Iacurci, CNBC, 4-10-[25) Economists expect that tariffs will lead to higher prices for consumers. The price impact will be noticeable by summer, economists said. Food prices will be among the early indicators, then physical goods, they said. President Donald Trump may change course regarding policy, however.
---U.S. and China Headed for ‘Monumental’ Split, Putting World Economy on Edge (Daisuke Wakabayashi, Alexandra Stevenson, Patricia Cohen, and Keith Bradsher, NY Times, 4-10-25) Good graphics and timelines. A dizzying escalation of tariffs has unraveled a trade relationship between the United States and China forged over decades, jeopardizing the fate of two superpowers and threatening to drag down the world economy.
      "The brinkmanship displayed by the two countries has already far exceeded the battles they waged during President Trump’s first term. In 2018 and 2019, Mr. Trump raised tariffs on China over 14 months. The latest escalation has played out mostly over a matter of days, with levies that are far greater and apply to broader swath of goods."

 

• U.S. stocks slide again as euphoria over Trump's tariff pause fades (Willem Marx and Sherisse Pham, NPR, 4-10-25) U.S. stocks slumped on Thursday, giving up a chunk of the spectacular gains seen in the previous session, as some of the relief after President Trump paused many of his tariffs started to dissipate. Many investors say they would rather see an end to this explosive trade war between the world's two largest economies. But China's foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said on Thursday that China is prepared to continue fighting. But, Minton Beddoes adds, the economic turmoil caused by the tariffs creates "a lot uncertainty, and a lot pain for consumers because tariffs are taxes on consumers. The people who pay this in the end, the cost of the tariffs, are people who pay more for the things that they buy."

    Also in this issue: On if the tariffs are to re-industrialize America, or if they're a negotiating tool. Sen. Maria Cantwell says there is bipartisan support to rein Trump's tariffs. Trump trade official signals tariffs are negotiating tool amid GOP skepticism. On the idea that tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the U.S. On what a tariff war with China might look like

    "Being in Washington, DC this week has felt like being on the fringes of an all-consuming—and terrifying—reality TV spectacle: the Trump Tariff Show. Against the made-for-TV backdrop of America’s capital in (somewhat chilly) springtime, my colleagues and I shuttled around to meetings with administration officials, congressmen, diplomats and scholars. We learned about the divisions among Donald Trump’s economic advisers (crudely, the “pause and negotiate” camp led by Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, versus hardliners, such as Peter Navarro). We heard earnest—if unconvincing—attempts by officials to explain the logic of causing the biggest tariff shock in history. We witnessed the bafflement of diplomats and politicians from tariffed countries. We could sense the growing alarm as the markets plunged—and the bewildered relief on Wednesday afternoon after Mr Trump blinked and announced a 90-day pause on his bonkers “reciprocal” tariffs.

• Inside Trump’s tariff retreat: How fears of a bond market catastrophe convinced Trump to hit the pause button ( Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny, Phil Mattingly, Kayla Tausche and Alayna Treene, CNN, 4-9-25) "Even for a president famous for his policy bobs and weaves, Wednesday’s announcement he was pausing his long-touted reciprocal tariffs for three months amounted to a stunning reversal of a plan he had appeared only a day earlier to be fully behind and came as his own trade representative was testifying on Capitol Hill to the benefits of the tariffs, seemingly catching him unaware of the pause.
    "Days of pressure from fellow Republicans, business executives and even his close friends hadn’t appeared to move Trump, who insisted last week: “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”
    "By Wednesday, however, it had become evident the campaign to convince Trump to change course would not let up. It had also become plain after a sharp sell-off in US government bond markets — usually a safe corner for investors — that the economic ramifications of the president’s strategy were potentially catastrophic and worse than his advisers had previously predicted.
     "It was another whirlwind Wednesday at the White House, with advisers scrambling to keep pace with the president’s decisions. He sought to take a victory lap after one of the most humbling retreats of his presidency, eager to take credit for the stock market gains Wednesday – without mentioning the record-setting, trillion-dollar losses over the last week.

 

 

 

If this column is too narrow to read, scroll down and click on one of the headings/links.

That should bring the columns back to a readable width.

 

Trump Watch

A steadily growing batch of links, continually updated (most recently, 4-9-25)

 

Sign seen recently:
TRUMP FIRED THE WATCHDOGS. PROJECT 2025 IS HAPPENING NOW.
Trump and Musk are tearing down democracy to expedite Project 2025—threatening everything from fair elections to Social Security.  See more about Project 2025 here.

• Obamacare would be even harder to kill now, but Trump promises to try anyway (Tami Luhby, CNN, 1-7-24) Nearly 60% of adults had a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act in May 2023, close to the highest share since the law was passed in 2010, according to the KFF Health Tracking Poll. In November 2024, Trump posted on his Truth Social site that Republicans should “never give up” trying to terminate the law and that he would replace it with “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE.”

 • Trump Moves to End Union Protections Across Broad Swath of Government (Tyler Pager, NY Times, 3-28-25) An executive order signed by the president would cancel collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of workers, the largest federal employees union said. “Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else.” Unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government to put it more directly under his control. They have repeatedly sued over his blizzard of executive actions, winning at least temporary reprieves for some fired federal workers and blocking efforts to dismantle portions of the government.
---Federal worker unions sue to block Trump’s effort to strip them of bargaining rights. (NY Times, 4-4-25) The complaint, filed late Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, Calif., is the latest development in the unions’ escalating battle with the administration over its attempts to slash the federal work force and roll back the protections afforded to the civil service employees. Unions representing government workers have repeatedly sued over the efforts to cut jobs and dismantle offices and agencies, winning at least temporary reprieves in some of those cases.

• Trump’s DEI Undoing Undermines Hard-Won Accommodations for Disabled People (Stephanie Armour, KFF Health News, 4-3-25) Sign-language interpreters have been noticeably absent from Trump administration press briefings, advocacy groups say. Gone, too, are the American Sign Language interpretations that used to appear on the White House’s YouTube channel. A White House webpage on accessibility, whitehouse.gov/accessibility, has also ceased working.
• White House insists Musk cuts to Social Security, Medicare won’t affect benefits (Justine McDaniel, WaPo, 3-11-25) Elon Musk alleged that up to $700 billion in entitlement spending could be “waste and fraud,” raising alarm among Democrats. That figure is much higher than what has been identified by watchdogs.

    Musk has previously attacked Social Security, calling it a “Ponzi scheme” and reposting a meme calling people who receive federal benefits “the Parasite Class.” Democrats have warned that those cuts could affect Americans’ ability to collect their benefits and said that further cuts could decimate the system.

• The Unchecked Authority of Trump’s Immigration Orders (Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker, 1-24-25) The President is recasting migration as a form of “invasion,” broadening his already expansive powers and making anyone in the U.S. who’s undocumented a potential target.

• Trump Whacks Tiny Agency That Works To Make the Nation’s Health Care Safer (Arthur Allen, KFF Health News, 4-3-25) On April 1, the Trump administration slashed the organization that supported that research — the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ — and fired roughly half of its remaining employees as part of a perplexing reorganization of the federal Health and Human Services Department.

• Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions (Just Security)

  The Tracker is part of the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of the Trump Administration’s Executive Actions.

 

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• The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out. (Michael Schaffer, Politico, 11-15-24)

   I quote: The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much. Trump returns to office with far more radical ambitions than he had in 2016, and much more coherent plans for achieving them. If you’re against gutting environmental regulations, bulk-firing public servants, doing away with Obamacare or instituting mass deportations, public fury is a way to push back — or at least stiffen the spines of Democrats who might collaborate with the administration. The left will have to wait for actual presidential deeds to drive the backlash. For better or worse, those will happen soon enough.

• Trump Administration Live Updates: Firing of National Security Agency Head Surprises Intelligence Experts

• The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, 3-24-25) U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling. This article is the first in a series about the Trump administration's use of Signal group chatting.
---Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal (Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, The Atlantic, 3-26-25) The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

• Greenland PM rejects Trump's attempts: 'US won't get Greenland, we decide our future' (Anissa Reyes, Fox News, 3-30-25)The prime minister of Greenland said the U.S. will not take control of Greenland, despite President Donald Trump’s assertions. This post comes after Trump told NBC News that military force was not off the table to acquire Greenland.

 

• West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government (Adam Wren, Ben Johansen, Sophia Cai, and Irie Sentner, Politico, 3-28-25). Your guide to Donald Trump’s unprecedented overhaul of the federal government.
As DOGE continues to wreak havoc on the federal bureaucracy, Elon Musk’s critics speculate his involvement in government work is tied to business interests. But his overtures in Wisconsin are the clearest evidence yet that his political work is fueled by his business interests. Musk first showed interest in the race earlier this year just days after Tesla filed a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s prohibition of vehicle manufacturers having dealerships.

• This Shit Is Getting Real (Lucian Truscott) Sums up a lot that's wrong with Trump's second presidency, not least of which is this: "what are now referred to by the MSM as “Trump’s tariffs” are turning out to be the least of it. Trump has used his deportation of some 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members to bully the citizens of his own country into frightened submission that the same thing might happen to them. On Monday, Trump ordered his Solicitor General to tell the highest court of the land – which he often refers to as “my” Supreme Court – that the United States has no power or authority to intervene with a foreign nation once the government has deported someone and relinquished him or her into the legal custody of that country.
     "It goes without saying that Donald Trump is a bully. Always has been. To be able to bully others, always those weaker than himself, appears to be his reason for being, and may be, along with using the presidency to make hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, the reason he ran for president in the first place."

 

 • Trump's further descent into dictatorship (Robert Reich, 3-18-25) This morning, he issued a bellicose post against a federal judge who's trying to constrain him. It's part of an increasing attempt by Trump and Musk to threaten judges with violence. But today’s post by Trump was his first and most direct attack on the judiciary since he’s become president for the second time. Federal courts are now hearing more than 100 lawsuits challenging Trump’s and Musk’s initiatives. That's the issue: The collapse of the rule of law. 

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***• Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable (Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, 3-20-25) During his first official campaign rally for the 2024 Republican nomination, held in Waco, Texas, Donald Trump vowed retribution against those he perceives as his enemies. Sixty days into Trump’s second term, we have begun to see what that looks like.

    The president fired the archivist of the United States because he was enraged at the National Archives for notifying the Justice Department of his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office following his first term. (The archivist he fired hadn’t even been working for the agency at the time, but that didn’t matter.)

   U.S. Marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels as Elon Musk and other Trump-administration allies “ramp up efforts to discredit judges,” according to a Reuters report. On his social-media site, Musk has attacked judges in more than 30 posts since the end of January, calling them “corrupt,” “radical,” and “evil,” and deriding the “TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY.” ["Must" reading. Do read, or skim, the full article.]

---Trump Revokes Security Clearances for Biden, Harris, and More. Here’s the Full List and What That Means (Rebecca Schneid, Time Magazine, 3-22-25) President Donald Trump has made good on his promise of revoking security clearance for former President Joe Biden. Issued late on Friday night, a memo titled “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals” laid out Trump’s instructions for Biden, several members of the Biden Administration, and other political rivals to have their security clearances rescinded.

---Trump moves toward a more efficient fascism (Lucian Truscott Newsletter, 3-23-25)

    File under Getting Even. "Donald Trump is in the process of issuing a series of executive orders targeting law firms he doesn’t like. The orders strip partners and employees of the firms of their top-secret security clearances, bar the firms from doing business with the federal government, ban employees of the firms from federal office buildings, ban federal contractors from doing business with the firms, and initiate federal investigations of the firms for hiring and promoting people on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation.
     "Trump’s first order was against Covington & Burling, a firm that had done legal work for Jack Smith, the Special Counsel assigned to investigate Trump for his theft of top-secret national security documents and attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election."

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• One Word Describes Trump: Patrimonialism (Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic, 2-24-25) Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones.
     "Patrimonialism explains what might otherwise be puzzling. Every policy the president cares about is his personal property. Trump dropped the federal prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams because a pliant big-city mayor is a useful thing to have. He broke with 50 years of practice by treating the Justice Department as “his personal law firm.” He treats the enforcement of duly enacted statutes as optional—and, what’s more, claims the authority to indemnify lawbreakers. He halted proceedings against January 6 thugs and rioters because they are on his side. His agencies screen hires for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.
     "In Trump’s world, federal agencies are shut down on his say-so without so much as a nod to Congress. Henchmen with no statutory authority barge into agencies and take them over. A loyalist who had only ever managed two small nonprofits is chosen for the hardest management job in government. Conflicts of interest are tolerated if not outright blessed. Prosecutors and inspectors general are fired for doing their job. Thousands of civil servants are converted to employment at the president’s will. Former officials’ security protection is withdrawn because they are disloyal. The presidency itself is treated as a business opportunity."

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• How Trump’s Federal-Aid Fiasco Is Testing the Separation of Powers (Tyler Foggatt, New Yorker, 1-30-25) “We are in an era of a real reckoning with the relationship of the President to the other branches of government,” the Harvard Law professor and New Yorker contributor Jeannie Suk Gersen says.

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• American Oligarchy (Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, 1-24) The US is finally taking Russia’s oligarchy seriously. "It’s time we started paying attention to our own."

• Donald Trump (Brittanica profile) An overview of his life and first presidency (especially his first term)
---Ukraine Scandal (Brittanica entry) This U.S. political scandal arose in the summer of 2019 from an attempt by Pres. Donald J. Trump to coerce the president of Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter for alleged wrongdoing in connection with a Ukrainian energy company. The scandal led the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Trump in December 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.In December the Judiciary Committee drafted two articles of impeachment against Trump, one for abuse of power and the other for obstruction of Congress. The articles were adopted in two party-line votes by the entire House on December 18, making Trump the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

 

• Trump to declare “illicit” fentanyl “Weapon of Mass Destruction," per draft EO (Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket, 3-18-25) The heads of the US Departments of Commerce, Defense, Justice and State received a copy of a draft executive order (EO) likely sometime last week stating that President Trump would be designating “illicit” fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, The Handbasket is first to report.
     'The EO may be published as early as next week, the Department of State source tells me, but the timeline isn’t confirmed. The source speculates the purpose is a combination of designating fentanyl cartels as terrorist organizations and creating justification for conducting military operations in Mexico and Canada. They also suspect that it will be used domestically as justification for rounding up homeless encampments and deporting drug users who are not citizens.'

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• There Is a Very Good Reason Why Donald Trump Thinks Everything Is Rigged (David Corn, Mother Jones, 1-24)

    In business, he was a master of gaming the system.

    "When the US targeted Russia’s oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, the trail of assets kept leading to our own backyard. Not only had our nation become a haven for shady foreign money, but we were also incubating a familiar class of yacht-owning, industry-dominating, resource-extracting billionaires. In the January + February 2024 issue of our magazine, we investigate the rise of American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us.    

    "Donald Trump is not a typical oligarch. Before entering politics, he was not part of the small group of powerful and rich people who buttressed the ruling elite.... But essential to his own rise to wealth and power was a core component of oligarchy: exploiting a rigged system. And during both his private sector career and his time in the White House, he has been friendly to oligarchs, cutting deals with them, cozying up to oligarchic regimes, and stacking his own Cabinet with the super­rich. It’s this world of immense wealth and power that Trump wishes to rule."

• The Claim Trump Is Making That 'Could Break the American System' (Jamelle Bouie and Aaron Retica, audio essay and transript, Opinion, NY Times, 3-24-25) More than two months into his second term, President Trump is testing the limits of the U.S. Constitution. But which of his executive actions are legally sound, and which defy constitutional principles? Understanding the president's shift from constitutional to anti-constitutional actions. (Gift link so nonsubscribers can read the article.)

• The Repercussions of Trump v. United States May Finally Be Hitting Roberts (Jamelle Bouie, Opinion, NY Times, 3-22-25) The Supreme Court’s decision last year in Trump v. United States gave the president of the United States criminal immunity for “official acts,” defined as anything that could involve or plausibly extend to the president’s core duties.

    “The court,” Sotomayor wrote, “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since Read More 

Gathering your personal history

by Mary Scott, Advocate Staff Writer, Calvert Advocate.

5-26-09. Reprinted here by permission.

 

Everyone has a story to tell. A good personal history won’t include just facts; it will also include stories, according to Pat McNees, a professional personal historian.

 

"The first thing to do is start a timeline...make it include a combination of incidents in your life and turning points,” McNees said. "You want to get the significant periods like high school. When you met your husband, got married, or had children.”

 

Instead of just writing these things down, McNees suggested either video or audio recording the person telling the stories so their voice is preserved. “The voice is an essential part of the person. When you hear someone’s voice it immediately brings back a flood of memories,” she said.

 

Photos can also be a part of someone’s personal history. McNees suggested going through your photographs and  Read More 

A long roundup of links to life as being radically changed by Trump and (unelected) Musk.

 

• NPR News Now A roundup of the day's top stories in under five minutes. New podcast episodes each weekday. (Bookmark that, to return to for later roundups.)
• Trump-Musk news (ongoing links to stories, Washington Post)  Keep this link open so you can follow stories as they appear.

• Spotlight on President Trump Ongoing news, New York Times.

• ‘It felt like Squid Games’: HHS employees on finding out their jobs were eliminated (WTOP,4-2-25) Employees with the Department of Health and Human Services tell WTOP they lined up and scanned their badges one by one Tuesday. If the light turned green, they still had their job. If it turned red, they didn't. “It felt like ‘Squid Games,'” one worker said.
    One worker said while they want agencies to be more efficient and accountable, the strategy being used does not make sense. They said many units in the agency consist of “small teams” that are “efficient,” especially in what they are able to accomplish.
   One worker, in response to comments that better jobs will come along, said: “It means so much more than just the job itself … It’s like wiping out an entire collection of history of knowledge and being like, it doesn’t matter … It doesn’t matter, and these groups of people don’t matter.”

• Section on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine (many sources)

---The Shame of It (Robert Reich).

   Reich's tips on How to help the people in Ukraine. Here's the practical part:
  "Europe and all free people around the world must rally at this time of American emergency. If the United States won’t seize Russia’s frozen assets and put them into an account for Ukraine to pay for further arms, Europeans must do this and let Ukraine buy from European defense contractors.  Read More 

Listen to Amy Collins on How to Get Your Books Into Bookstores and Libraries, a brillian pep talk on Tom Corson-Knowles Publishing Profits Podcast (a while ago, but the advice still seems sound). Amy is knowledgeable, practical, and a really good, speaker. Here's one point she makes, from 2015 data: Over 60% of Americans have a library card; over 40% of them have been in a library in the last month. Only 5% of them have been in a bookstore in the last month.

   A lot of books will license an e-book, for a limited time. And if the e-book is popular, when the license is up, they'll re-up.

• The Humble Neighborhood Library: Why It Should Be Part of Your Book-Enthusiasm-Generating Plan (Kelly Turner on Jane Friedman's blog, 2-13-25) Since most readers don't have an independent bookstore in their neighborhood, public libraries can be an ideal spot for author events.

    Comments are interesting, including this by Kelly herself: From the ‘author’ side, I found it helpful (and honestly a little jarring) to talk to other readers at the event. I realized I’ve become quite clinical in the way I talk about books: ‘genre – pov – tense – setting – kind of story.’ The readers I spoke with talked about books very differently, which reminded me that if I want to have and engage with readers, I shouldn’t drown them with all this ‘backend’ vocabulary.

    "According to the Panorama Project's 2019 survey of nearly 200 libraries in 30 states, about half of responding libraries produced ten or more events (including book clubs, speaker series, and author events) each year. Libraries hosting fewer than 10 events per year were more likely to host community book clubs and speaker series than author events. I can't claim these data are representative of the (over 17,000) public libraries in the US, but given the American Association of Publishers reports nearly $30 billion in US book sales in 2023, there's capacity for more library events connecting authors and readers."

 

There are four times as many libraries as there are bookstores in the U.S.--in Canada, six times as many. There are over 2400 independent bookstores in the U.S., but 12,000 public libraries (9500 physical permanent public library branches). A lot is going on in libraries and their budgets are going up. The average library system budget is about $1.8 million, some of which goes to staffing, magazines, and other materials. They buy hardcover and paperback and license ebooks and in many cases audiobooks (sometimes from self-published and independent authors). The materials budget is roughly distributed thus:
• Paperbacks: 41%
• Audiobooks: 20%
• eBooks: 19%
• Hardcover books: 9%.
If they can’t afford your book they’ll find a competitive book that’s less expensive. Having your books in the library increases sales of your books outside libraries.

How to sell books to libraries
To sell books to libraries, you have to be listed in the two main library databases and with at least one main wholesaler.

Libraries won’t order books until they have money in their budget and they will pay you through the wholesaler they purchase books from (the wholesaler will pay the publisher).
Authors: Traditional publishers will typically register your books with library databases. 

Indie publishers, it's important to register yours in library databases, also. 

 

The two easiest ways/venues to register your books in library databases:
1) Register your book and ISBN with Books in Print (RR Bowker, My Identifiers), by registering your ISBN: www.myidentifiers.com and get a BARCODE

2) Register with OCLC, which funds and runs WorldCat Registry (OCLC Developer Network)
It's pretty easy, or you can hire a company to create a PCIP (publisher cataloging in publication) block for you. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is an American nonprofit cooperative organization that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large--to make information more accessible Read More