But Trump didn't just make things worse for Turkey and any American business that may have been purchasing Turkish steel or aluminum, it appears he has also made things worse for retirees in Tennessee.

The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS), the pension fund for public employees, is apparently invested in Turkish securities.

The Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS), which manages a retirement plan for public employees statewide, was the largest institutional shareholder in the U.S.-based iShares MSCI Turkey ETF, according to Thomson Reuters data based on public filings as of June 30, with more than with 880,000 shares valued at around $19 million as of Friday’s value.

The Turkey ETF has lost around half its value for the year to date, hit by worries about Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's influence over monetary policy and a worsening diplomatic rift with the United States. [...]

“It is a obviously a frustrating situation and it’s a real shame what’s happening in the country,” Michael Brakebill, TCRS’s chief investment officer, said in an interview on Friday.

There is a 99.9 percent chance that neither Trump or anyone else in the White House knew this about when they doubled their tariffs on Turkish metal.

I didn't know about it, but I'm not a government official responsible for knowing these kinds of things.

Perhaps someone could have informed the White House if they went through a formal process to impose tariffs rather than imposing them because Trump tweeted it. Maybe these decisions should be vetted before they're imposed. Maybe -- I know this is a stretch -- but maybe Congress should hold hearings on Trump's global trade war. Congress may want to even consider stopping it.

Those constituents challenged Bevin's Medicaid work requirements in federal court and they won so, in response, Bevin filed a countersuit against them by claiming they had harmed Kentucky by challenging the state's policy in Washington D.C.

Not surprisingly, Bevin's ridiculous lawsuit was thrown out of court yesterday.

[U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove] dismissed Bevin's lawsuit after finding the administration lacked "standing," or a sufficient basis, for bringing the case against 16 Kentuckians who had filed the legal challenge to the Medicaid changes.

"Not all disputes are capable of federal judicial review," Van Tatenhove wrote in a 12-page opinion. "Federal courts are limited in their jurisdiction and they can only hear cases where the plaintiff can establish jurisdiction. Here, the Commonwealth failed to do so."

Bevin's countersuit in Frankfort argued that "liberal interest groups" filed the case outside Kentucky and "failed to include the Commonwealth."

The idea that the original lawsuit challenging Bevin's work requirements didn't "include the Commonwealth" doesn't pass the laugh test.

Matt Bevin himself chose to participate in that lawsuit as a defendant. He's the fucking governor. He represented the Commonwealth.

Amusingly, when the first lawsuit was filed against Bevin's work requirements, he argued that the case should be moved to a federal court in Kentucky as if that would automatically lead to a better outcome for the state. Bevin filed his countersuit in Kentucky and that didn't work out for him either.

Nothing has worked out in Bevin's favor because, at the end of the day, this is a Trump regime policy that was thrown together on a whim. Matt Bevin made the decision to impose work requirements, but the federal government had to give him permission to do so. And as you might expect, neither Matt Bevin or the Trump regime could demonstrate in court that work requirements would help more people than it harms.

Even under ideal conditions, the subsidy was not expected to return a profit to the state budget until sometime around the year 2042 (really), but what if those ideal conditions never materialize?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Foxconn is already scaling back their plans before they've even broken ground.

While two economic-impact analyses prepared last year and the state’s contract with Foxconn say the company will build a type of factory that carves display panels out of immense sheets of wafer-thin glass, Foxconn now says it first will erect a plant that uses much smaller sheets of glass.

Such factories typically are much smaller and less-expensive than the sort of plant Foxconn originally planned, industry observers say. [...]

Foxconn says it could build the larger type of factory in a second phase of its project. The company has ample land available for such construction.

In a statement, Foxconn said they're changing their plans to meet demand for "other technologies and products that will be the focus" of their new facility.

What does that mean? It means what I've been saying for at least a year. The idea of investing this much money and resources into a liquid crystal display (LCD) factory was preposterous from the very beginning because LCDs were an obsolete technology before Foxconn's deal with Wisconsin was even conceived. LCDs will remain in demand for many years to come, but not for another 25 years; the length of time the factory would need to operate at full capacity to return a profit to the state.

The idea that this will return a profit to the state in 2042 is based on the projection that the factory will employ 13,000 people (a majority of them residents of Wisconsin) at living wages, but Foxconn is only required to employ 3,000 and a majority of them will probably commute from Illinois because the area of Wisconsin the factory is being built in literally does not have enough available labor.

I'll go out on a limb and predict this will never return a profit to the state. I don't believe their factory will even be in operation in the 2040s and, even if it is, by that time it will be fully automated with robots.

Trump is visiting the site of Foxconn's first facility today where he'll probably try to take credit for everything.

Unfortunately for him, Trump's tariffs could just as easily lead to more imports for reasons that industry experts have been predicting since last summer when Trump first began floating the idea of starting a trade war.

Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum have increased costs for industries that use metal inputs to create products and, as a result, clients are importing finished products that aren't subject to tariffs instead of assembling them here.

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. steel producers are benefiting from tariffs that make it more expensive for companies to buy the metals overseas. But some U.S. firms that use the metals to make everything from refrigeration parts to wheels say the tariffs have led to higher materials prices that are forcing them to charge more for their products. These firms say that in some cases, customers are turning to foreign suppliers that use cheaper, tariff-free metals to make the same products they can then export to the U.S. without bumping up against the new trade barriers. [...]

One option for manufacturers with established supply chains abroad is to shift production outside the U.S. to take advantage of lower costs.

“A few of our customers have moved some of their production back to Europe and Canada because of the increases in prices for raw materials,” said Jerry Pines, chairman of Millenia Products Group, a fabricator based in Itasca, Ill. Mr. Pines said the effect of tariffs on pricing and availability “has made the marketplace the most difficult place to operate in the 50 years I have been in the steel business.”

You may recall that industry experts have also predicted that changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) proposed by Trump's trade representative Robert Lighthizer would also lead to more imports for very similar reasons.

Industry sources say higher content thresholds (and exclusive quotas for car parts produced in the United States) for automobiles manufactured in North America under NAFTA would lead to more imports of fully assembled cars because that would be cheaper than building them here under the new rules. That could lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses at manufactures that produce cart parts and auto assembly plants in the United States.

The bad news is this information is unlikely to change the Trump regime's thinking to the extent that they actually think anything through.

Acknowledging that their policies will have unintended consequences would require admitting fault. That's not something they're accustomed to.

Temporarily lifting sanctions on Rusal means Deripaska's company will have an opportunity to dump their stock on the market.

Not surprisingly, this sent the market tumbling this afternoon.

Aluminum prices on the London Metal Exchange tumbled more than 8 percent after the U.S. Treasury Department announcement, which gives Rusal longer to sell off large quantities of aluminum it had been stockpiling in the wake of sanctions.

Shares in Rusal, one of the world’s largest aluminum companies, rose 13 percent on the Moscow Exchange after the announcement. Earlier, Rusal had ended Hong Kong trading down 8.4 percent. Shares of its U.S. rival Alcoa Corp slid 12 percent.

Although this is not directly related to Trump's tariffs, this is the third time Trump has sent metal prices tumbling over the past couple months.

Prices plummeted when Trump announced that Mexico and Canada would be exempt from his tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and again when he announced that the European Union (EU) would be exempt.

You might call this ironic because the whole point of implementing tariffs was to raise prices and boost American metal producers, but everything Trump has done since the tariffs were first announced has led to lower prices.

We are shocked -- shocked! -- that the Trump regime is completely incoherent.

The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania has released their own analysis of the "plan" and I can only describe the results as hilarious.

The Wharton School says the plan wouldn't trigger anywhere near the amount of spending it's suppose to.

President Trump recently released his updated infrastructure plan along with the Fiscal Year 2019 Budget. The plan proposes to increase federal infrastructure investment by $200 billion to provide incentives for a total new investment of $1.5 trillion in infrastructure.

However, based on previous experience reviewed herein, most of the grant programs contained in the infrastructure plan fail to provide strong incentives for states to invest additional money in public infrastructure. Indeed, an additional dollar of federal aid could lead state and local governments to increase infrastructure total spending by less than that dollar since state and local governments can often qualify for the new grant money within their existing infrastructure programs. We estimate that infrastructure investment across all levels of government, including partnerships with the private sector, would increase between $20 billion to $230 billion, including the $200 billion federal investment.

We estimate that the plan will have little to no impact on GDP.

In other words, the plan may contribute to a $20 to $30 billion increase in spending by states and private companies, not $1.3 trillion.

So, what's going on here?

The Wharton study explains that states already spend as much as they're able to on infrastructure projects which the federal government contributes to with matching grants. Wharton's model found that state spending would increase by an average of less than $1 (in some cases only 50 cents) for each additional dollar the federal government spends, but not all of that would be invested in new infrastructure projects. Trump's "plan" would allow states to use their grants for existing projects that wouldn't represent new spending.

Wharton's model did find that the plan could increase the size of the economy if it's financed through taxes or fees, but no one expects that will happen. Our Republican-controlled Congress has already ruled out raising the gas tax and no senator is going to vote for a bill that allows states to place tolls on existing federal highways.

Hiring a two-person company to rebuild the entire island's electrical grid may have seemed like the height of no-bid contracting incompetence, but it may not have been.

The New York Times reported this morning that FEMA contracted a one-person company to feed the island and, not surprisingly, it didn't go well.

For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

Ms. Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA’s solicitation required “self-heating meals.”

“Do not ship another meal. Your contract is terminated,” Carolyn Ward, the FEMA contracting officer who handled Tribute’s agreement, wrote to Ms. Brown in an email dated Oct. 19 that Ms. Brown provided to The New York Times. “This is a logistical nightmare.”

If you were wondering why it was necessary for a team led by celebrity Chef Jose Andres to descend on Puerto Rico and prepare literally millions of meals, this must have been at least one reason why.

I don't want to make light of the situation, but I trust that Jose Andres also prepared significantly better meals. Andres personally put his elbow into it and helped cook over 150,000 hot meals per day at one point.

Meanwhile, this one-person company shipped some wild mushrooms to the island; to Puerto Rico. That in itself seems like a crime.

Politico reports that officials now say there's no timetable for release and it may not even happen this month.

A White House official said Tuesday that there have been “no decisions yet on timing” for the release. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) separately told POLITICO — after a meeting with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and other officials — that administration officials are still deciding whether to publish legislative principles for the plan before or after the president’s State of the Union address Jan. 30. [...]

Trump’s advisers have told him that pursuing an infrastructure bill will give Republicans the best chance of holding onto the House because the prospect of building new roads and bridges has broad appeal with the electorate.

It greatly amuses me that Trump's advisers are telling him this is their best bet for retaining control of Congress because these are the same advisers crafting a plan that has no money in it.

The proposal being floated by the White House would include just $200 billion in federal spending and that is virtually nothing. Trump's advisers, such as Gary Cohn, say this will somehow trigger an additional $1 trillion in spending by states and private companies. That's $1 trillion that states don't have or $1 trillion that private companies aren't going to invest in projects that don't generate profits.

None of this makes any sense unless you're a corporate drone who believes federal investment works just like seed money or venture capital. In some limited cases it does, and the alternative energy and electric vehicle markets are good examples of this, but that is quite a bit different from a federal highway, a sea wall, or a bridge. Highways don't generate profits.

I suppose it's possible Trump will call for building a nationwide network of toll roads, but he can forget retaining control of Congress or the White House if that's the case. That may even cause a riot.

Snark aside, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan released his own list of priorities last night and it doesn't include spending money on infrastructure. Of course, there is no money left to spend on infrastructure now that Ryan has looted the treasury with tax cuts.

Ryan's list of priorities may seem like a minor detail, but Republicans only have a few months to do whatever they're going to do before virtually everything shuts down for the midterm elections.

Bronze Star LLC, a company that was created just two weeks before being awarded a contract by FEMA, apparently did absolutely nothing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After Hurricane Maria damaged tens of thousands of homes in Puerto Rico, a newly created Florida company won more than $30 million in federal contracts to provide emergency tarps and plastic sheeting for repairs.

Bronze Star LLC never delivered those urgently needed supplies.

According to an exclusive Associated Press report, the Federal Emergency Management Agency terminated the contracts this month, without paying any money, and re-started the process to supply more tarps for the U.S. territory.

Whitefish Energy may have grossly over-billed the government, but at least they did something. This company did nothing at all.

FEMA reportedly canceled the contract with Bronze Star, but the agency waited a full month before doing so. Funding for relief and critical supplies was tied up on this bullshit company while people on the ground in Puerto Rico waited for help.

Those concerns appear to have born out. A major line that was repaired by Whitefish Energy failed last night and areas of Puerto Rico that had their power restored lost their power again.

From Buzzfeed:

Just 18% of Puerto Rico now has power, according to the island's energy utility, down from 43% before the line failed on Thursday, wiping out a quarter of Puerto Rico's power generation.

The line failure took out 25% of Puerto Rico's power generation, which was at 43% capacity just before the failure, according to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Just 18% of the territory now has power, and officials did not have a clear timeline on when the power will be restored.

Of course, Whitefish Energy has denied responsibility for the failure even though no one seems to know exactly what happened.

In any case, Whitefish's (now canceled) contract left the company free of liability so, technically speaking, I suppose they aren't responsible.