tuff was all solved. If you solved it immediately you would still have a problem that the ships had been used for other things and there wouldn't be enough ships to make up for the shortfall because everybody would be scrambling for the same materials. So we're going to have some pretty serious shortages and maybe some of our factories will go idle and go out of business. So there's going to be some disruption and the faster the China tariff situation gets solved, the better we'll be.

Now we don't know yet and I don't know I guess if this will hurt the United States more than it will hurt China. So of course the game here is that both will pretend, well you can't hurt me. We can work with this. And each side will say, no it's worse for you than it is for me. You'll crack. I don't know. Do you think China's going to crack? I think Trump is wise to be moderating his tone so that he's treating China as a respectful peer that we negotiate with and not somebody we're trying to walk all over. So we'll see.

Apparently Trump has vetoed the idea of increasing taxes on rich people. There was an idea that the federal tax on people making over a million a year would go to something like 40%. But Trump says no because if you raise taxes on the rich they leave the country and you need the rich to pay taxes. Now I'm not sure if that's the only reason or if it's he's just being a Republican and he doesn't want to raise taxes on anybody, but he called it very disruptive. So I guess we're probably not going to see taxes on the rich go up.

According to the Wall Street Journal, and I don't know why this took so long, there's a new French study that showed that sure enough not only is it true that some of the additives in our food are bad for us and cause diabetes and whatnot, but if you combine them it's extra bad. So what the new study is is not looking at one additive, which is normally the way the studies work. They would look at what happens if you have several of these additives in the same food. And apparently it's as bad as you think. So if you add together multiple additives in the same food you've got a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes and god knows what. So the food industry of course defended it and they say it's important for food safety and quality. But then you have to ask the question, if it's important for food safety and quality, why isn't it important in Europe where a lot of this stuff's illegal? I guess they need to answer that question.

In other news related, RFK Jr. is apparently noodling on removing the CDC's COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for children. Were you even aware that the CDC was still recommending COVID-19 vaccines for children? How many of you even knew that that was a thing? Well here's the good news, and this is reported in Politico. Here's the good news. Apparently only 13% of children have gotten that COVID shot. So most parents are pretty keyed in that young people don't really have a bad time with COVID and there's no reason to add another risk on top of the COVID itself. So we don't know yet if Kennedy will actually pull that or get that reversed, but I feel like it's going to happen. If only 13% of people are getting it anyway it wouldn't be that big of a shock to the system to say okay this is not recommended. You know you could get it if you want but it's not recommended.

Here's a surprise. Senator Fetterman was asked in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon and he said that we should bomb Iran's nuclear sites. And he says quote waste that shit. He said quote you're never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing in the region for decades already. And now we have an incredible window I believe to do that and to strike and destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. How do you feel about Fetterman now? Not so good, right? We were enjoying watching Fetterman agree with Republicans on a lot of stuff, at least the common sense stuff. But he seems pretty pro-Israel and pretty pro-war at least in this particular context. And I have to say that his credibility just went to zero for me. Do you feel comfortable with that? That Fetterman says yeah let's go. Stop negotiating. There's nothing.

Now I don't know that he's wrong in the sense that the negotiating might never work. You know we're dealing with somebody we can't negotiate with maybe. But I also think there's a nonzero possibility that Iran might think that for its own benefit it doesn't need to be developing nuclear weapons because they would get bombed. So they might think we've got so many good missiles and so many good drones now because apparently they're pretty good at making them that militarily they would be better off using missiles and drones anyway because they're not going to get nuked if they use non-nuclear weapons. So I don't know. I think only because missiles and drones are the new way of war. I think there might be an opening in which they would think it was to their own best interest to stop refining things to weapons grade in the nuclear domain. That's what I feel like. I don't think it's likely we'll find an agreement. I think he's right that the Iran regime has shown that they can't be trusted etc. But it's a little worrying that he's so pro-war. Bomb them. Bomb them. Yeah I'm not comfortable with that at all.

Meanwhile economist Jeffrey Sachs is saying that Ukraine will have to agree to peace or continue without US backing. Now that's the same thing I sa