Rambod Behboodi
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genevatradelaw.bsky.social
Rambod Behboodi
@genevatradelaw.bsky.social
190 followers 12 following 25 posts
Lawyer and law prof, former Canadian diplomat, aspiring scénariste of Persian legendary history. I have no views about things I know nothing about.
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"I voted for the person who is doing exactly what he said he would do, in explicit terms, because I hate the people he also hates. Now the things I voted for are hurting me. WTF?"
Following President Trump's latest comments, the usual suspects are out, "if only we give this one or two - or three - concession, everything will be alright."

Well, it's complicated. Just look at pharma. Which has nothing to do with supply management or DST.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
Pharma, national security and tariffs: Where do we go from here?
Plan ahead for Section 232 and MFN policy changes. BLG trade lawyers can help you manage risk and protect your cross-border operations.
www.blg.com
This is for the trade nerds.

Canada is not alone having to deal with complexities of trade agreements and federalism.

How does the EU deal with mixed competence agreements?

Here are some thoughts.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
Finding a ratification solution in the EU-Mercosur trade deal
www.blg.com
The US Court of International Trade ruled the fentanyl and reciprocity tariffs unjustified and illegal. What does it all mean?

Check out our dedicated resource centre for regular updates.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
Tariffs and Trade Resource Centre
Tariffs and Trade Resource Centre
www.blg.com
Reposted by Rambod Behboodi
Here we go again.

Tariffs to the rescue, this time to Make Hollywood Great Again.

Or how filming Star Trek in Toronto is a national security threat to the United States.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
A new threat to U.S. national security: the imminent demise of Hollywood
www.blg.com
Here we go again.

Tariffs to the rescue, this time to Make Hollywood Great Again.

Or how filming Star Trek in Toronto is a national security threat to the United States.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
A new threat to U.S. national security: the imminent demise of Hollywood
www.blg.com
Let's not forget where that term - "shock and awe" comes from. Let's not forget the damage it caused. Let's not forget that Trump is a symptom, and not a cause, of the present malaise of the Republic.
I started writing about interprovincial trade in 1994. I'm glad we're finally catching up with the 20th century.

Ontario is leading the way.

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
Ontario’s new trade fund: Everything you need to know
Government of Ontario announced that it was launching the $50M OTTF
www.blg.com
For thirty years, when it comes to tariffs and sanctions I've said the same thing: "The choice is not between 4 Italian shirts rather than 1; but for low income families, one shirt or toy rather than repeat visits to the thrift store."

He's literally telling his "but egg prices" voters to stuff it.
Trump on China: "They made a trillion dollars with Biden selling us stuff. Much of it we don't need. Somebody said, 'oh, the shelves are gonna be open.' Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
I was privileged to be invited by PAFSO to talk trade.

I spoke about tariffs, trade deficits, and Canada-US trade relations.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHt...
Rambod Behboodi ¬ Tariffs // Tarifs
YouTube video by PAFSO-APASE
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They shouldn't.
These are the voters the Republican Party groomed for decades. Destroyed their brains with "run gub'mint like business" nonsense, and brought us here.
Words fail.
Laid-off IRS employee said he had voted for Trump: "I thought that someone with his business acumen would have come in with a fine-tooth comb and actually found it instead of coming in with a wrecking ball and destroying people’s lives for no reason."

www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/p...
There was a small window to self-correct. By the end, without an ethos, with the mob ready to be launched, that window closed.

How did we get here, a prominent Federalist Society lawyer asks. Why, Sir, look in the mirror. /f
Thus drained of any ethos other than power and overflowing with animus for the Great Society, Brown, the New Deal, Stonewall, the Republican Party handed itself to Roy Cohn's Star Pupil.

What's more, the American media, driven by Star Power, proved all too easy to manipulate. To overtly control. 4/
And "conservative" thinkers and intellectuals and lawyers gave them cover.

Every cynical transgression was manifest. As "moderate" Republicans saw the moral carnage and fled, the "conservative" activists - right-wing Jacobins, really - gloated with glee. 3/
But why are we here? Republics don't fall into moral apathy overnight. They corrode from within. Through cynicism.

The Southern Strategy, Welfare Queens, Roe, Iran-Contra, Gingrich; the list is long, unbroken.

Throughout, the Oligarchs used the plebs. They still do. 2/

bsky.app/profile/gtco...
This country has seen some bad moments in the 61 years, 5 months, 16 days I’ve been on this Earth. But it has never, ever before come close to the supertoxic level of stupidity, mendacity, narcissism, nihilism, and moral apathy that threaten to destroy it today.
The corrupting bargain was not with Trump. It had longer roots.
Last year I wrote in the
@thedispatchmedia.bsky.social about the corrupting bargain the conservative legal movement made in Trump 1.0. We can debate how that worked out. But in 2.0, the scales rapidly tip away from ordered liberty and we must wake up to the threat.
thedispatch.com/article/the-...
The Conservative Legal Movement Got Everything It Wanted. It Could Lose It All.
Trump-era advances in jurisprudence came at a deep civic cost.
thedispatch.com
Don't forget to regularly check out our Trade and Tariff Resource Centre.

Along with long-form substantive articles, we now offer Perspectives ... occasional short-form explainers of what's going on in the world of trade.

Our latest, "Reciprocity".

www.blg.com/en/insights/...
Tariffs and Trade Resource Centre
Tariffs and Trade Resource Centre
www.blg.com
My take, essentially, is that the Republic is already dead. It died when the institutions of the Republic failed their basic duty to remove a lawless president in the first impeachment. Since then, we have the theatre of the Republic, but not its ethos.
My take, essentially, is that we could be weeks or maybe even days away from the disintegration of the rule of federal law in this country. At some point this administration is going to stop obeying court orders. What then? Nothing good.
If I were the one who had made up the title of this episode, I would have added “—Or Not” to it. And with some emphasis on the “not.”
This is what I wrote in 2019 in response to an AAT "checks and balances" argument.

It was clear to me then that the Republic was already dead. Because I'd loved through one national suicide already.