Trump’s smoke-and-mirrors trade deal with China

While the benefits of the trade war are speculative, its costs are real: The Tax Foundation estimates that Trump’s tariffs have cost Americans more than $88 billion so far, making this one of the biggest tax hikes in history. To cushion the blow, the administration gave $28 billion to farmers — twice the cost of the 2009 auto industry bailout. Waging a trade war is like hitting your head against a wall; it feels good when you stop. But most trade experts agree with my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Edward Alden when he says: “It’s hard to see this China deal as the vindication of the president’s tactics. It’s a pretty small deal, coming at a pretty high cost.” Indeed, the New York Times reports that Chinese hard-liners are “jubilant and even incredulous” that they have gotten such a good deal. They have good cause to cheer because the real issues with China — from trade barriers to militarism in the South China Sea to human rights violations — remain unaddressed. Trump would rather trumpet “our GREAT new deal with China” than take serious action to address the real challenges from China.

By Max Boot 

Columnist

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/16/trumps-smoke-and-mirrors-trade-deal-with-china/

 

 

Cajun Christmas

Deeply immoral trashing of public servants by GOP

From article:

Partisan extremes in the United States have become entirely consequentialist in their ethics. The overriding goal may be the end of Roe v. Wade — or its preservation. It may be passage of gun control legislation — or protection of the Second Amendment. In each case, the objective — always measured in saved lives — means everything. But if the objective means everything, then how do we judge the character of leaders or the morality of political methods? If ending Roe, for example, is really all that matters, wouldn’t a corrupt or lying politician who opposes Roe always be better than the ideological alternative? This is a point I have sometimes pressed with pro-Trump, pro-life evangelicals: Would you support a rapist who opposes Roe over a pro-choice Democrat? How about a serial killer? The result is usually uncomfortable silence. If political outcomes are truly all that matter, there is no way to draw necessary moral lines.

 

Since Trump is on “our” side in the culture war, any excess can be forgiven. There is no penalty for corruption, deception or cruelty. And more than this, many Trump supporters have begun to enjoy the transgressive side of our brutal political culture.

Why should we care? Because democracy is hard to sustain in the absence of certain values. Self-government requires ethical hierarchy — a belief that honor is better than dishonor, fairness is better than exploitation and truth is superior to lies. American freedom is not based on relativism; it is based on the belief that the dignity of human beings is a knowable, universal truth. And the success of that principle is demonstrated in the way we treat each other.

There are categorical commitments to respect and truthfulness that can’t be subordinated to partisan outcomes. And they point to an essential, post-Trump task: restoring a decayed moral environment.

By 

Michael Gerson 

Columnist

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-spurs-a-wild-west-of-continuously-worsening-political-rhetoric/2019/11/18/59185e5a-0a3a-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html

 

 

It’s the Wise Men vs. the wise guys in Trump’s America

In midtown Manhattan, Trump learned to dominate the news — in his rise, that meant the New York Post, with its screaming, one-sourced stories, an early harbinger of the presidential Twitter strategy. He learned the power of TV. And he learned that tough guys — or “killers,” in a favorite approbation of Trump’s — like Ailes, who presided over this stew of often-abusive power, money and misinformation, were the kinds of guys he could count on.
For one thing was certain: The Wise Men of 68th Street or the United Nations or any of the traditional institutions of expertise weren’t his guys. The question America now faces in impeachment and, should Trump prevail, in the 2020 election, is whose New York will serve us best in the long run — the wise guys’ or the Wise Men’s?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-the-wise-men-vs-the-wise-guys-in-trumps-america/2019/11/14/277f1850-0708-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html

In Syria and elsewhere, Trump is making Russia great again

From article: Trump has sacrificed the high ground at home as well as abroad. He engages in blatant self-dealing — conditioning aid to Ukraine on political help for himself, operating hotels where foreign emissaries stay, paying off a mistress in violation of campaign finance laws, obstructing justice, etc. — and claims immunity from any consequences. His lawyer argues that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted even for shooting someone. This allows Putin to say: You think I’m bad? Everyone’s corrupt. Look at the United States.

Trump is further normalizing Putin by emulating the Russian leader’s strongman tactics. He calls opponents “human scum” and the media “the enemy of the people” while launching an investigation of the investigators who dared to probe his links with Russia. Trump is also helping Russia by denigrating the FBI, CIA, and even his own ambassador to Ukraine and one of his own National Security Council staff members as agents of a nonexistent “Deep State.” He is thereby undermining the individuals and institutions most dedicated to combating Russian designs. The leading Russian hard-liners — Fiona Hill and John Bolton — have already left the White House, no doubt to Putin’s delight.

“Russia likes seeing President Trump in the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with [President Richard M.] Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical,” former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev recently wrote in the New York Times. The only way to undo some of the damage, he argued, is to impeach and remove Trump. That would send a message to the world similar to the one sent by Nixon’s resignation: “Moral principles still matter in American politics and policy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-syria-and-elsewhere-trump-is-making-russia-great-again/2019/10/30/9d99ddde-fb48-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html

 

 

Democrats preside over stronger economies

Article: But the question naturally follows: Why are expectations for strong stock performance higher when Democrats ascend to the Oval Office? One plausible reason is that their Republican predecessors often leave behind a screwed-up economy with stock prices already depressed.
 Presidents don't have total control over an economy. There are lots of influences — new technology, energy prices, demographic changes — that can boost or drag economic performance.
 But history suggests that economic governance goes south when a Republican president has a Republican Congress backing his bad ideas. Start with 1930, when Republican Herbert Hoover made a troubled economy worse by launching a trade war. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had to pick up the pieces.
 Another example is 2008, a time of near financial collapse. George W. Bush's administration had encouraged speculation in house prices, let Wall Street run wild and supercharged deficits thanks to large tax cuts and little control on spending. (Bill Clinton had left him a booming economy with budget surpluses.) Barack Obama inherited Bush's mess.
 It would be unfair to compare investment performance early in Obama's presidency, when stocks had nowhere to go but up, to that of Trump. So let's compare the first 33 months of Trump with the last 33 months of Obama.
 Under Trump, so far, the S&P 500 has risen just over 33%. During Obama's last 33 months, it jumped almost 48%.
 Republicans argue that a Republican-controlled Congress curbed President Clinton's ability to spend. There may be some truth to that. But George W. Bush had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress — for half his presidency — when all fiscal discipline flew out the window.
 The same can be said for the first two years of Trump's presidency. We're now running annual deficits of around $1 trillion a year. And Trump's trade war adds further drag.
 The economy may not currently be "in deep trouble," but what can you say to those who still believe in Trump's magical powers to make everyone rich? You're on your own.
https://www.tribstar.com/opinion/columns/froma-harrop-democrats-preside-over-stronger-economies/article_e99c0a3e-00c2-11ea-9d75-17eb5ca27efa.html?fbclid=IwAR3hIcL00-ylbi_5b0qmSKUvmdwfQzqnUtegj3Ww8F3z9jhwLIjr7Zhw8Tk

Don't Try to Explain Away Trump's Crazy Ideas

Loopiness at the highest level encourages a certain type of staff response. According to the Axios report on the nuclear proposal, the shocked national security briefer answered, “Sir, we’ll look into that.” Which is the answer of a staffer hoping the topic will never be raised again. Under a president such as Trump, a considerable amount of White House staff time and energy is devoted not to managing urgent crises or pursuing the country’s good — but to minimizing the damage of the boss’s strangeness and poor judgment. In this type of atmosphere, the agenda is often set by a leader’s obsessions, rather than by opportunities or obligations. Staffers must hold their breath at every presidential press availability, and during every tweet storm, wondering what random, ridiculous notion might dominate their week, or month, or year.
Then-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) once referred to Trump’s White House as an “adult day care center.” This means, among other things, that it can’t properly focus on the needs of the nation.
Outside of government, it is easy for Trump’s followers to become invested in his nonsense. The authority of the presidency can give absurd proposals and theories a veneer of credibility. And because of the demands of political tribalism, lunacy can become defined as loyalty. Craziness can spread like a flu epidemic. However low Trump goes, his supporters go low with him.
And then there is the risk — however effective the White House staff, Congress and the courts might be at blocking Trump’s pixilated ideas — that one of them might slip through. And let’s hope it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-try-to-explain-away-trumps-crazy-ideas/2019/08/26/569dc736-c82d-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html

Trump doesn’t just pollute the social environment with hate. He is the environment.

Eric Hoffer (circa 1898-1983), the longshoreman philosopher, said that “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” This anticipated the essential fact about the 45th president — Trump’s fascination with what he utterly lacks and unconvincingly emulates: strength. Hence his admiration for foreign despots and his infantile delight in his own bad manners.

It is one thing to have a president who, drawing upon his repertoire of playground insults, calls his alleged porn-star mistress “Horseface .” Polls indicate that approximately a third of Americans, disproportionately including religiously devout worriers about the coarsening of America’s culture, are more than merely content with this. It is quite another thing to have a president who does not merely pollute the social atmosphere with invectives directed at various disfavored minorities; he uses his inflated office not just to shape this atmosphere but to be this atmosphere.

When Gerald Ford became president after Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, he told the nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.” Today’s long — and perhaps occasionally lethal — national embarrassment will continue at least until Jan. 20, 2021. If it continues longer, this will be more than an embarrassment to the nation, this will be an indictment of it.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-doesnt-just-pollute-the-social-environment-he-is-the-environment/2019/08/05/65cb525a-b7b6-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html

 

 

For Trump,Empathy is a Foreign Language

When Robert F. Kennedy spoke on the topic of national division at the Cleveland City Club shortly before his death, it was the culmination of a very different public role. “Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.”

That is exactly what many in the corporate world, and many conservative Christian leaders, are doing in their devotion to Trump: honoring swagger, bluster and force, and excusing a leader who constructs his political success on the cultivation of contempt and slanders against the weak. By their nearly blind support, such leaders are complicit in Trump’s rule by resentment.

“But we can perhaps remember,” said Kennedy, “that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek — as we do — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.”

It is only on empathy — the virtue most foreign to the president — that unity can be built.

Read more from Michael Gerson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .

 

 

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/promoting-love-and-unity-goes-against-trumps-political-brand/2019/08/05/2223db56-b7b8-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html