90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

LAUGHING STOCK Germany’s soldiers forced to use BROOMSTICK for a gun as Donald Trump blasts Angela Merkel over NATO spending

A German tank unit was forced to use broomsticks as mock weapons during a 2015 Nato exercise, pictured

The highly embarrassing episode, revealed in a leaked report, is just the beginning of the country's woes as it fights to reverse chronic army shortages

GERMANY'S military is so underfunded its troops used BROOMSTICKS painted black as mock weapons during a Nato defence exercise.

But the highly embarrassing episode, revealed in a leaked report, is just the beginning of the country's woes as it fights to reverse chronic army shortages.

It comes as Donald Trump has vowed to make Chancellor Angela Merkel increase her defence spending to reach the minimum spending obligations all Nato members must adhere to.

General Harald Kujat, a former chief of staff of the German armed forces, later described it as a "huge embarrassment".

The unit was supposed to be ready to deploy whenever a Nato member was threatened, he warned.

He added: "If that is not the case, then both for Nato, and for the Federal Republic of Germany, this is a huge embarrassment," The Telegraph reported.

And a spokesperson for the Defence Ministry stated: "In the case of the Boxer armoured vehicle, it was being used as a mobile headquarters, and a weapon is not foreseen and not necessary for a mobile headquarters.

"It was not a fighting vehicle. So we have no explanation why the soldiers would simulate a weapon."

In 2015 it also emerged the German military was using ordinary civilian Mercedes vans as stand-ins for armoured personnel carriers.

And The Times today reports all six of the country's submarines were recently put out of service at the same time due to various repairs.

Andreas Krause, the German navy's inspector, said: "It does not frustrate me but it is very...

Too Bad Someone Didn't Start Playing Hardball With China Sooner...

The U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China set a record through May, hitting $152,237,500,000 for the first five months of 2018, according to data released Friday by the Census Bureau.

From January through May, the Census Bureau reports, the United States exported $52,902,300,000 in goods to China while importing $205,139,800,000 in good from China.

That means the dollar value of the goods the U.S. has bought from China so far this year is 3.87 times greater than the dollar value of the goods China has bought from the United States.

Before this year, the largest merchandise trade deficit with China in the first five months of the year was in 2015, when it hit $148,499,390,000 in constant May 2018 dollars (adjusted using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator).

The month-by-month U.S.-China merchandise trade numbers going back to 1985 are posted on the Census Bureau’s website.

According to the Census Bureau, the last month that the U.S. ran a merchandise trade surplus with China was April 1986. That month, the U.S. exported $318,900,000 to China, imported $264,900,000 from China—and ran a monthly surplus of $54,000,000.

In the 385 straight months since then, the U.S. has run a merchandise trade deficit with China.

In 1985, the first year the U.S.-China trade balance is reported by the Census Bureau on its website, the U.S. ran a $445,030,000 merchandise trade deficit in January through May (in constant May 2018 dollars). The 2018 January-through-May U.S. China trade deficit of $152,237,500,000 is about 342 times that.

Through all of 2017, according to the Census Bureau, the top products the U.S. imported from China (by dollar value) were: