Tariffs, Afghanistan etc

Antara disliked Donald Trump's tariff wars, at least till she understood what it was about. 

Trump curtailed US government expenses by taking away American jobs, then punished the world and collected surplus tariffs, then built great infrastructure in the US (if he built it) for unemployed Americans paying higher bills for those tariffs?

Even Antara's mind boggled, and she was reasonably clever.

What did Trump want, that unemployed and impoverished Americans race along splendid highways or ride Amtrak trains? 

Wasn't it called the Great Depression? Well, at least the rail coaches were better designed, the hobos could ride on the roofs of the trains.

Did Antara feel that Trump's tariffs against India were meant to humiliate her? Trump and Vance were apparently among those people who believed that Antara's immigration to the United States needed their approval. Either they'd make it clear immediately on entering the Oval Office or on their way out. 

For example, Antara was supposed to get a job in 2017 but the first Trump Presidential term had started, she didn't get the job, instead she got a destructive torture-surveillance. Thus, no matter how Europe hankered for a solving of the legit lease situation, Trump was in no mood to relent.

When Trump left office at the end of his first term, it was with the Jan 6 2021 US Capitol rioting, so no doubts left in anyone's mind about how he regarded the chances of Antara immigrating to the United States.

It was unlikely to be a statutory obligation that Antara needed US Presidential approval to visit the United States but since Trump routinely put Muslim countries on travel-ban list, Antara was being reminded of Jim Banks-Indiana, the supposed store of RMS Titanic intelligence in Balochistan.

If the US President invoked Balochistan with the Citizenship and Immigration Services, the latter wouldn't let Antara visit the US. 

That was the exalted behaviour and politics of the White House in DC, as of now, bringing up a ship sinking in which American tycoons had drowned, and using that against Antara.

ii. The above would have sufficed but we have already ventured into Gordievsky, what information he had collected on earlier US Republicans like Treasury's Donald Regan and handed them over to the British. Trump was friends with the British, wasn't he?

For some reason, the Gordievsky information on the Treasury was used against BT's House, to begin with. Why was that so, was Trump displeased with what the Pentagon had achieved in Afghanistan? Did it seem to him that the assignments for American soldiers were not challenging enough?

Did the Northern Alliance, not Abdul Rashid Dostum but maybe others, also show loyalty to the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers? The Pashtuns and Tajiks were older people, it was not so easy to completely 'own' their loyalty. 

The above was not a 'demanded' blogpost. There was no need to cause physical harm to Antara, attack her gadgets, cut off her utilities services. 

It was NRIs who had brought up Dostum and the Northern Alliance and if further discussions made them uncomfortable, especially the Class of 1995, then Antara would move on to topics other than Dostum and Northern Alliance.

Oh, and there was no need to fill the shelves of the Modern Bazar outlets with items which were no longer usable, such stores employed staff, or did they work for the Trump administration? 

(Pic below, item bought in end-July 2025).

July 31, 2025.