Tuesday 8th of April 2025

not considering pausing tariffs despite global turmoil.....

German carmaker Audi is halting deliveries of its vehicles to the US due to the new tariffs on automobiles imposed by US President Donald Trump, the newspaper Automobilwoche has reported.

Trump’s 25% levy on car imports took effect last week as part of a series of “reciprocal” measures that have rattled global markets.

A spokeswoman for Audi told the outlet on Monday that a letter had been sent to dealers instructing them to withhold all vehicles that arrived after April 2. Dealers were also urged to focus on reducing existing inventory.

Audi currently has more than 37,000 vehicles in stock in the US that are not affected by the new tariffs and can be sold, the spokeswoman said, adding that this inventory should last about two months.

The company does not operate its own production facility in the US and imports all of its vehicles. Its US bestseller, the Q5, is produced at Audi’s plant in Mexico, while other models are sourced from factories in Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia.

Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen, has also warned US dealers of additional costs, according to a Wall Street Journal report last week. Volkswagen has reportedly halted the deliveries by rail from Mexico and from US ports. Clarity on pricing is expected by mid-April.

On April 3, Trump slapped tariffs on nearly all of America’s trading partners, including the EU, arguing the measures were needed to protect US manufacturers. In addition to the 25% levy now applied to car imports, 150 categories of auto parts will also become subject to the surcharge starting in May.

The German Association of the Automotive Industry called the tariffs “a disastrous signal for free, rules-based trade.” 

Analysts warn the German auto industry could be among the hardest hit, with Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz facing significant challenges in the US market. Rising production costs and factory closures have already put pressure on parts of Germany’s manufacturing sector.

On Monday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has called Trump’s tariffs a “major blow to the world economy,” offered to scrap duties on all industrial goods as part of trade talks. 

“We stand ready to negotiate,” she said. “We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners.” 

Von der Leyen noted the EU has “repeatedly” proposed a zero-tariff agreement for the automotive sector in the past but received “no adequate reaction” from Washington. She warned that the bloc is prepared to impose countermeasures to defend its interests.

Trump on Monday defended the tariffs, claiming on social media they delivered significant economic benefits.

https://www.rt.com/business/615354-germany-audi-supply-suspension-us/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

hate & rage....

 

SURVEY: 55% Of Self-Identified Leftists Say Killing Trump Is Justifiable BY: M.D. KITTLE

 

The unhinged left, fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and seething hatred for Elon Musk, is trending more violent, according to a new study that finds political violence targeting President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser is “becoming increasingly normalized.” 

The report, produced by the Network of Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab, finds a broader “assassination culture” appears to be “emerging within segments of the U.S. public on the extreme left, with expanding targets now including figures such as Donald Trump.” 

 

Less than a year after assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Trump and the literally explosive violence against Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles, it’s no secret that leftists are ratcheting up violent rhetoric and actions. The more troubling trend is that an “assassination culture” isn’t just coming from the “fringe” left. 

“These attitudes are not fringe — they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse,” states the report, titled, “Assassination Culture: How Burning Teslas and Killing Billionaires Became a Meme Aesthetic for Political Violence.” 

‘Widespread Justification for Lethal Violence’

NCRI, an independent institution working to “identify and forecast emerging threats in the era of information disorder,” finds the pattern is building on a broader trend discussed in two reports in Decemberthat analyzed “how viral social media narratives were legitimizing political violence, particularly in the aftermath of the United Healthcare CEO’s assassination.” 

“The reports found  widespread justification for lethal violence — including assassination — among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,” the authors of the latest study write. 

 

They note the spillover effect beyond the online world, illustrated by a proposed California ballot measure macabrely named “the Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act,” celebrating the alleged leftist terrorist and murderer of United Healthcare head Brian Thompson. The ballot measure targets health insurance denials, one of Mangione’s reported flashpoints. 

On Friday, a California man reportedly “angry with pharmacies” was arrested on charges of murdering a Walgreens employee just days after the Luigi Mangione Act was filed with the state. ABC 30 reportedthat Erick Velazquez, the victim, was not a pharmacist, and was a respected husband and father of two.

NCRI accessed the violence zeitgeist with original survey data and open source intelligence analysis to determine “how normalized and justified violence against the administration has become in public discourse.”

 

“The findings signal a threat to political stability and public safety,” the reports warns.

Here are some of the troubling numbers, according to the report: 

  • Murder Justification: 31% and 38% of respondents stated it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively. (These effects were largely driven by respondents that self-identified as left of center, with 48% and 55% at least somewhat justifying murder for Elon Musk and President Trump, respectively, indicating significantly higher justification for violence against these figures.)
  • Property Destruction: Nearly 40% of respondents (39.8%) stated it is at least somewhat acceptable (or more) to destroy a Tesla dealership in protest. 
  • Psychological/Ideological Correlations with Assassination Culture: These beliefs are highly correlated with one another, as well as with the justification of the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and hyper-partisan left-wing ideology. (This suggests that support for violence is part of a broader assassination culture, underpinned by psychological and ideological factors.)

Interestingly, the report finds liberal social media platform BlueSky “plays a significant and predictive role in amplifying radical ideation.” BlueSky has seen its new user numbers surge since November’s election, according to the leftist publication The Guardian. Curiously, the “great X-odus” has been driven by liberals “seeking to escape Elon Musk’s X amid warnings from anti-hate speech campaign groups and the EU about misinformation and extremism on the platform,” The Guardian asserts. 

NCRI also found that users are increasingly tying the “memification” of Mangione with calls for political violence against Trump, Musk and others, “reflecting the growing cyber-social presence of assassination culture.” Mangione supporters have been using a meme of the Luigi character from the Super Mario Brothers video game/movie franchise as a symbol of political violence. Some of the threats echo the “Deny, Defend, Depose” mantra inscribed by Mangione on the shell casing that killed Brian Thompson, according to the report.  

‘We Will Gut You’

In February, law enforcement officials charged 28-year-old David Allen June Cherry of southern Indiana with felony intimidation after police say he posted online multiple violent threats against Elon Musk, including that Cherry would “gut” the close adviser to President Donald Trump.

“You’ve broken the law. You’re on the hit list,” Cherry allegedly declared on the Musk-owned social media platform X, to a Musk post, according to an affidavit.  “You’re robbing American people. We will gut you and parade your corpse in the streets,” the leftist allegedly menaced Musk a short time later. 

Indiana State Police tracked Cherry at his job at Batteries Plus and arrested him, according to news accounts. Detectives reportedly seized an AR-15-style rifle, a handgun, ammunition and a ballistic vest at his Palmyra home, according to Fox7.

Cherry, who reportedly runs an online business selling anti-Musk merchandise — including an “anti-oligarch” patch with what appears to be an image of a raised-arm Musk in cross-hairs —  told officials he merely wanted to make his posts “edgy” to spur social media reactions, and that he meant Musk no harm. He was released on $2,500 bond and faces the potential of six years in prison on the felony counts while he continues his hate campaign against the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX. His trial is set for August, according to court records

Cherry appears to be celebrating his alleged intimidation game on his Red Pawn Dynamics page. 

“Let it be known that Red Pawn scared the richest man on the planet. What a giant p*ussy,” the webpage boasts.

His GoFundMe page has raised $4,500 of a $15,000 goal, supposedly for legal fees and to get his car out of impound. His supporters claimthe First Amendment protects Cherry’s speech and that he is being persecuted because “his opinion was about a billionaire.” 

‘Too Far Down the Deep End’

Musk reportedly has been the target of a growing number of threatsover his leadership role in Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and his pledge to trim $2 trillion a year from the bloated, wasteful and fraud-plagued federal budget. 

A Tennessee man reportedly upset with Trump and Musk was arrested on charges of assembling explosives to “burn down” Musk’s artificial intelligence data facility in Memphis. Ethan Paul Early, 25, told police that his friends talked him out of going through with the plan. He said had gotten too wrapped up in politics and had gone “too far down the deep end,” according to the affidavit, KBTX reported

A recent Fox News analysis found that there have been more than 50 reported targeted attacks on Tesla EVs, dealerships and charging stations in the U.S., and at least 17 internationally. 

“The incidents range from minor vandalism, such as keying or graffiti, to more extreme cases like arson and drive-by shootings allegedly targeting Tesla vehicles,” the news outlet reports. 

Trump, who was shot and narrowly escaped being assassinated at a Pennsylvania campaign rally in July, is a constant target of threatsfrom members of the unhinged left. On Friday, Jupiter, Florida, police arrested Glen DeCicco on charges of making written threats on his Facebook page a to kill Trump. “The Jupiter Police Department worked in coordination with the United States Secret Service throughout the investigation,” the press release states.

‘Real-World Escalation’

The NCRI report on the growing assassination culture notes support for such political violence on the right, but the prevalence is not nearly as large. 

“This report points to disturbingly high levels of support for political violence, particularly targeting President Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” the authors write. “Across survey responses, nearly one-third of respondents—and a significantly higher share of left-leaning respondents—expressed some degree of justification for acts of lethal violence.”

While threats and acts of violence rise on the left, the silence from Democrats in power is deafening. But we’ve seen this movie before. Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t end well for a lot of innocent people. Attorney General Pam Bondi has rightly called the spate of attacks against Tesla “nothing short of domestic terrorism,” because that’s what it is. Just like the myriad acts of domestic terrorism by the left during the Black Lives Matter riots at the end of Trump’s first term. 

“For the last five years, the violent left has run rampant with few consequences for the chaos it has sown,” Karol Markowicz recently wrote in the New York Post. 

The NCRI report includes a stark warning. 

“Unless political and cultural leadership explicitly confronts and condemns this trend, NCRI assesses a growing probability of real-world escalation,” the report concludes. “Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action.”

https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/07/survey-55-of-self-identified-leftists-say-killing-trump-is-justifiable/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.