President-elect Donald J. Trump.
President Trump
The NYT title says it all:
Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment
Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and polarizing campaign that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of American democracy.
The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr. Trump’s unvarnished overtures to disillusioned voters took hold.
I watched basically all day as I did other things. It seemed to start slowly enough but once it was clear he had won Ohio, it seemed to me, that the entire dynamic changed. You could hear the puzzlement of anchors as they spoke, realizing everything they expected to see, was not happening. It wasn’t disappointment or disapproval but more an absorption, a wonderment, as to how this could be happening. Questioning how the pollsters and pundits could have gotten it so wrong. Some had no problem allowing that to have a positive edge; you could see them mentally re-arranging their thoughts. John King was the first I heard say, long before it was a given, that things were not going well for Hillary. He seemed to have a feel for it, to see the pattern present itself and then play out, state by state. It was fascinating to watch him go through each one, accurately assessing which pockets had yet to be counted, which ones would go to Hillary but as things progressed, would still not be enough.
A long long wait to get the final counts for Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (which earlier in the evening, had seemed clearly in the Democrat’s pocket). Trump had 244 electoral votes with 9 states to go. It was pretty obvious how it was going to work out in the end.
An ugly argument took place between Van Jones and Corey Lewandoski once John Podesta announced that there would be no announcement from Clinton’s end until all the votes were counted. In a very undignified and ungracious way, Lewandoski pounced on the fact that Trump had been roundly criticized for saying he might not accept the results of the election. He did not listen when it was suggested that if Trump were in Hillary’s shoes, he likely would have waited too, until every vote had been counted. I believe in that exchange also came the statement that Hillary would be investigated for all of her alleged issues.
That aside, the DOW fell 1000 points the last time I checked. The USD was worth $0.75 CDN. Just like that. The Senate remains Republican; thank God Chuck Schumer, will not be the Senate Majority leader. (What a nice taste of revenge for expats.) Let’s hope we see some of what was in the Republican platform, though I expect it may take some time to get to it. At least we can envision tax reform. This time, we will be speaking to a more receptive group.
So, the American people have chosen to strike down the establishment. It is not difficult to understand. In spite of some of Mr. Trump’s less-than-dignified ideas/statements about Muslims, women, Mexicans, et al, the American people said “Enough” to the useless bureaucracy of Washington. I don’t blame them.
FINALLY, IT’s OVER!
Republicans now control the White House (the important presidential veto), the House, and the Senate.
Always possible that Republicans could lose the House and Senate in two years (2018). This means that any attempt by Republicans to kill the FATCA law and to repeal CBT has to be done “soon”.
A message to me this morning…
I personally have no avenue to do that with my hands, but I do feel I should pass this message on for anyone who wishes to communicate to their US representatives.
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Rand Paul this morning on, among other goals, tax reform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1Tp1X-W6o
The tide has finally turned in our favour with a united Republican government. I didn’t vote for Trump (nor did I vote against him), but he has my full support if he supports us. We’ve never had a better chance for FATCA repeal and a return to RBT. Let’s not let them squander the opportunity.
OMG! Both choices for US president were ominous in their own way. I watched the results last night with “shock and awe”. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Trump does to improve the horrific extraterritorial US tax laws. Renunciation was the lesser of two evils for me. I hope to be able to continue to visit my relatives residing in the US who are too elderly to travel to Canada.
I’m truly relieved that Hiliary will not, make that may not, be president (she may blame the Russians and refuse to concede) but I cannot rejoice at Donald’s win. The equal percentage in the popular vote simply means that both candidates were so unpopular that noses were held and people voted against what they perceived was the most evil of the two lessers. What a heckofa tough decision to have to make. (Glad it wasn’t me.) What I do take hope from is that the establishment and their media have been taken down a peg or two. I wonder if they even know that though? Anyway, now’s the time to put the RNC’s feet to the fire and make them leap forward with vigour to get FATCA repealed and CBT abolished. It just has to happen. It’s time for some reason and sanity to enter the stage.
So do you think the odds of a FATCA repeal and on what timeline?
Tim. Trump can terminate the IGA,s. by executive authority. His treasury security can exempt countries for fbar reporting.that would gut it.
For the first time I think its now a 100% certainty in two years but we need to start writing we need aca onboard and we need republicans overseas onboard. This is all part of the election platform.
Don’t need repeal of FATCA, all you need is a President actually enforcing the law as written. And the FATCA law says nothing of IGAs and all the rest.
We also need a moderator to create a blog article so we can discuss what we want done and how trump can do it
I am shocked and dismayed and very worried that Trump will fly off the handle for any perceived offence to his ego.
But having said that- I will regain hope that perhaps now FATCA can be repealed. And I LOVE Rand Paul. Hopefully his voice will gain some weight too.
So that is a comfort.
And yeah- since the Occupy Movement Americans have been angry at the establishment.
@Polly: “And yeah- since the Occupy Movement Americans have been angry at the establishment.”
Apparently, exit polls suggest that Trump, a rich white male, owes his victory to people like himself: rich, white and male.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/white-voters-victory-donald-trump-exit-polls
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/09/501378673/how-trump-won-according-to-the-exit-polls
USA today has something to add:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/09/how-move-canada/93534462/
“So many people are searching how to move to Canada, Canada’s immigration site is struggling with bandwidth and actually crashed repeatedly Wednesday as election results were coming in.”
I wonder if any of these people know what FATCA is?
Good thought, George, about Trump being able to can the IGAs all by himself.
Stephen, you’re right about the importance of getting this CBT/FATCA mess taken care of before 2018. As a group we need to encourage Rand Paul and other senators and representatives who are particularly interested in tax reform to take this bull by the horns right away.
@iota
Do you still believe polls? LOLOLOL
But I could imagine some educated white people also voted for him in the hope that he would stop the crooks in Washington. The system of lobbying for cash should be scrapped. Don’t know if he would touch that hot iron though.
@Polly, “I am shocked and dismayed and very worried that Trump will fly off the handle for any perceived offence to his ego.”
Let me say something as a means for providing you encouragement. I firmly believe the world is safer as in closer to peace today with Trump versus Clinton. US Military members overwhelmingly supported Trump for a reason and that reason was that he would not use those men and women as cannon fodder.
In my mind, Trump is like Reagan who wants to carry a big stick (yuuuge stick) but never use it.
Clinton wanted no fly zones over Syria that would have been without UN sanction and without permission of the Syrian government. That would have meant being ready to shoot down Russian planes which would have been an act of war against Russia a nuclear power.
The neocons all supported Clinton for a reason and hate Trump.
“Do you still believe polls?”
Two polls were spot on, the rest were right but people do not know how to read polls as in you read them based on the margin of error.
“The system of lobbying for cash should be scrapped.”
Trump does have his problems (we all do) but as I said above he is not a neocon which to me is evil, and I believe he can not be bought because of his wealth.
@Polly – good point about the polls 🙂
Although credit where credit’s due, Nate Silver did point out the race had got so close that the difference was within a standard polling error.
@Muzzled, we need to discuss this to pieces on Brock as there is a yuuge amount of brain power! We need to understand how the President can destroy FATCA on his own, what Congress can do and we need to have arguments on how its little tax revenue so no revenue needs to be replaced.
We also need to lay this mess solely at the feet of Obama and that America needs to go back to the days of 250 renunciations a year not 6,000 which is a badge of shame. We need to talk how the 6,000 renunciations a year are a badge of shame on America!!
I think Trump understands the 9 million Ambassadors argument!!
@George
I made you a starting post. 🙂
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/11/09/nows-the-time-heres-what-they-promised-lets-hold-them-to-it/
As a reminder, here we again see this good article now at TaxConnections, a reminder to us of one of the important area to continue communicating on:
Exposé On The Cost For An Accidental American Under FATCA
An interesting read by the Telegraph that walks an Accidental American through the process of renunciation of American citizenship to avoid paying a life time of US taxes, penalties, interest, and potentially criminal offences for non-filing. Read it here.
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Have you been affected by the Fatca legislation? Get in touch via email to james.connington@telegraph.co.uk
This was my comment on Facebook this morning:
To the Democratic Party:
Today you wonder why this happened – that Trump was elected: You have VP Joe Biden wondering: “We have to figure out why, what’s eating at them,” Vice President Joe Biden said Monday night at his final campaign stop, in what he thought was preparing Clinton supporters to be gracious winners. “Some of it will be unacceptable, but some of it will be about hard truths about our country and about our economy.”
It’s not the racists, the misogynists and those marginalized that you need to worry about. Oh, sure they are your problem, they’re homegrown, they’re disaffected and pissed off. But they are your radicals and your problem.
However what you should worry about is this: It’s the fact that you went after expatriates who are working in other countries; those who are unofficial ambassadors for the United States abroad. You profiled expatriates with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; painting them with broad brushstrokes, calling them tax-cheats saying that they weren’t paying their fair share. US expats do not use US infrastructure, nor do they take benefits (because most of them don’t qualify for US based benefits such as a 401K). You chose to go after expatriates because they were easy-pickings. They had no representation – they were a voiceless minority and on top of that you tried to cherry-pick expatriate children – conferring onto them a citizenship they did not want (even though they were born abroad) and furthermore subjecting them into the citizenship taxation loop that is never-ending unless they paid an exhorbitant renunciation fee. And for those expatriates who have a foreign-born disabled child, even that door was closed to them. Those foreign born disabled children were locked into a vampiric US citizenship that sucked money out of their disability (because it didn’t fall under the “foreign earned income exemption”) and were unable to renounce because the Department of State stated clearly that in order to renounce; the renunciant had to be cognitively aware of the action of which he/she was taking. Which simply meant that those disabled children were permanently trapped into US citizenship while the IRS gleefully plundered their disability income at will. You were told about the compliance issues; you were told about the hardships conferred on expatriate families (you were planning to siphon income from the foreign spouse – if they had joint bank accounts; even if the US partner wasn’t earning a single dime – just because of a signature). On top of that, each year of compliance cost expatriates over $2000/return. How many people have that kind of money? But you figured that all expatriates were tax cheats and rich millionaires hiding their money abroad. You didn’t care that you were hurting families (of modest income). One Swiss US Expatriate chose to commit suicide because he no longer knew what to do, his family was hurting financially, and he chose to end his life because he fell into despair and didn’t know the way out. All the while, you and your Democrat cronies decided that you wanted more and continued to ramp up the war against expatriate minnows by continuing to call them “tax cheats” and “not paying their fair share”.
You hurt a nine-million American demographic (that rarely gets any exposure) and pissed them all off. You did everything that you could to financially hurt them based on vilification, lies and media stories based on tax cheats and you chose to cherry pick those too. You tried to paint expats as rich people like Eduardo Saverin, while most earn between $18,000 and $65,000.
We protested FATCA, and FBAR and told you the painful stories of compliance issues and how they were financially hurting our families and yet YOU DID NOTHING!!!!
Now America has paid the price of not listening to those who have protested. Hope you all like the next four years.
@ADCS and @ADCT, I think we (as in we being supporters)need to rethink how can re-enter and support BOTH causes now because of the change of circumstances.
Decision making last week was sound but the ground has shifted.
I hope you think about new fronts that can be opened in your battle plans. Legal fronts…..
The Republican Overseas suit failed in part because the Administration defended itself!!
How about a fresh lawsuit that would hit shortly after the new administration takes place daring them to defend.
Come up with a fresh plan, I will send money…far in excess of anything I ever donated to the cause.
FATCA and the expat vote from ‘abroad’;
“……..Some Americans in Canada, however, say they prefer to stay under the radar because of a crackdown by U.S. authorities on collecting taxes from expats. They worry registering to vote could raise red flags. ”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1398244-trump-vs.-clinton-activists-hoping-expat-americans-tip-vote-balance
President Elect Donald John Trump has commented that “treaties are not treaties unless and until they are ratified by Congress”
In one sentence nullifies ALL IGAs.
You can see where this is going and quickly.
Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Meadows already on board and in hand to implement.
Interesting CNN article (not new – Sep 28) discussing the unpicking of regulations that have come about as a result of executive orders:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/28/politics/trump-executive-action-obama/
@Furious…who is Meadows? What about a letter to that office?