Dear Editor,
In response to the letter published April 9, on tariffs.
You, like the president, have sprinkled in enough facts to cover up the fallacies of your argument.
So, you want to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.A.? Not a bad idea, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. We cannot just fire up decades-old power plants and start making obsolete products. Retrofitting for modern goods will take years. I remember the 1970s smog alerts in Los Angeles – people were warned to stay inside until the air quality became safe again. These rolls of smog washed over the city and other areas of the state almost on a daily basis. This president is now calling for bringing back coal mining – a backwards-thinking approach that could cost more to clean up than any profit made. Democrats have been pushing for green energy development for decades, only to have Republicans dismiss it and vote against it. Now China is the number one leader in renewable energy. In 2022, China installed as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, then doubled additional solar in 2023. If we wanted to “beat” China, this was the area to do it.
This is what I see from this current administration:
A felon becoming our president when a regular citizen with felony status is not legally allowed to vote.
Our government leaders using an unsecured app to discuss combat maneuvers, not accidently, but to use the erasure feature and avoid entering the conversation into government records as required by law.
The president hiring an unelected billionaire to scour through our U.S. Treasury containing sensitive material from all citizens in this country with not a single approval from any of us.
The president flying over ongoing disaster areas to “win” a golf tournament while four U.S. soldiers are buried quietly in his absence.
People being pulled from streets and sent to detention centers and prisons in foreign countries with no due process or humanity for their wellbeing.
Tariffs being announced, unannounced, then announced again so the president can pound his chest, creating havoc with the economy and allowing himself and his bros to use it to illegally make millions through insider trading.
We are thus losing our status in the world – the dollar weakening to the euro and yen, retirement accounts tanking, and everyday costs rising.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth McNally
Ludlow, Vt.