Month: June 2018

FYI: On stupid trade

by digby

Catherine Rampell on Trump’s “trade” policies:

President Trump says we need to be “smarter” in how we deal with other countries. And yet his approach to extracting concessions from our trading partners has proved very, very dumb.

Notwithstanding Trump’s Twitter declarations, trade wars are neither good nor easy to win. In a trade war, every side loses, experiencing lost jobs, crippled businesses and higher prices for consumers. We learned that the last time we had a full-blown global trade war — in the 1930s after Congress passed sweeping tariffs that exacerbated the Great Depression.

Even so, it’s possible for some countries in a trade war to lose more than others. And that’s the position Trump is leaving the United States in, by taking perhaps the worst possible approach to economically bullying other countries.

Most of the time when a U.S. president takes an aggressive new trade action, it’s a tariff that targets a specific country or narrow set of countries. There’s good reason for this: Again, most of the time, these actions are in response to an act of alleged foul play.

Yet another reason to slap tariffs only on imports from selected countries is to limit the pain to U.S. businesses and consumers that purchase those products. We want to make sure we have alternative suppliers available when the imports from one misbehaving country suddenly get pricier.

Again, that’s how we usually think about trade measures. It’s not what happened this time around with steel and aluminum tariffs, however.

Using a rarely invoked authority designed to protect “national security,” Trump has imposed a global tariff on steel and aluminum.

Because it’s a global tariff on a commodity supplied by dozens of countries, each of those other countries is taking a hit. But the hit is relatively small compared with the one we’re experiencing — the one we’ve inflicted on ourselves.

After all, we can’t easily shift supply around to limit U.S. business and consumer pain if we’re slapping tariffs on steel and aluminum produced by almost everyone. And while we do produce these metals here, the exact mix of products that, say, U.S. steel mills make is not identical to the mix of steel products we import. Which means factories here can’t easily convert and scale up their production to meet market demand even if they do have idle capacity.

Unsurprisingly, this has major consequences for the many American firms that purchase steel and aluminum, and that are now less competitive because their costs have skyrocketed.

U.S. steel prices have risen nearly 40 percent since the start of the year, and are now more than 50 percent higher than in both Europe and China, according to the S&P Global Platts benchmark price assessment for hot-rolled coil, the bellwether product.

But that’s not the only reason these tariffs are going to hurt us a lot more than they hurt everyone else. The bigger problem is how other countries, including our friends and military allies, are responding to our protectionist measures.

Collectively Canada, the European Union, Mexico, Russia, India, Japan and Turkey have already announced $40 billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made products. The scale of these retaliatory tariffs isn’t what’s most concerning; it’s the composition. These other countries have been far more strategic about which U.S. products they choose to target than we apparently were in launching this trade war.

That is, their counterpunches are likely to draw more blood than our sloppy opening gambit.

Why? First, these other countries have tried to pick and choose products that their businesses and consumers can easily obtain elsewhere. In fact, when the E.U. recently revised its list of U.S. products subject to retaliation, it decided to remove some items for which non-American close substitutes apparently weren’t available, as The Economist’s Soumaya Keynes pointed out.

Even worse for Trump, these angry countries are choosing products with political sensitivities in mind. Hence the appearance of Kentucky-made bourbon, Iowa-farmed pork, Wisconsin-manufactured motorcycles and Ohio-made washing machines on these lists.

In short: Our trading partners have fine-tuned the art of minimizing their own pain — and maximizing ours.

Trump clearly believes he’s being “tough” with these other countries, and protecting American jobs, with his ineptly designed tariffs. In fact, he’s putting many more jobs in other industries at risk. A report released this week by the Trade Partnership, a consulting and research firm, estimated that the ratio of jobs lost to jobs gained from Trump’s trade actions will be about 16 to 1: 26,280 steel and aluminum jobs gained, compared with 432,747 jobs eliminated throughout the rest of the economy.

And that’s presumably not even counting any of the hundreds of jobs now held by Trump’s fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Trade wars can turn into shooting wars. But he’s a fool who doesn’t have a clue. So…

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He’s been preparing his whole life

by digby

…. for this:

“I think within the first minute I’ll know. Just my touch, my feel.” — Trump on whether or how he will know if Kim is serious about a deal

Now watch:

President Trump says he thinks he’ll know “within the first minute” if North Korea is serious about peace https://t.co/MVjRocxDyj pic.twitter.com/DIf6s1ELuC— CNN (@CNN) June 9, 2018

“Obama can say all he wants, but he allowed Russia to take Crimea. I may have had a much different attitude,” he says. “Why did he do that? Why did he do that?” But “with that being said, it’s been done a long time.”

“other countries will reduce their tariffs or we’ll stop trading with them — and that’s a very profitable answer if we have to do it.”

“I blame our past leader for unfair”trade. In fact, I congratulate the leaders of other countries for so crazily being able to make these trade deals that were so good for their countries and so bad for the United States”

Hookay.

The whole press conference was demented. He’s either tired, high or losing what’s left of his mind.

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No American left behind
by Tom Sullivan

Image via Pinterest

I had plans for another post entirely when the first thing I saw this morning was this thread:

I did some incredibly stupid fucking things in Afghanistan. Mostly because I’d volunteered for it out of anger in the first place, and then I ended up with no supervision, literally no supervision at all, in country.— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

But I never did that stupid shit alone. Someone always had my back. Usually it was 2 or 3 Marines, or a couple of British military cops. And it was never a feeling of “these guys won’t let me get shot.” It was more like “these guys won’t let me get shot more than 5 or 6 times.”— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

And because I knew they had my back, and I had theirs, we leaned way the fuck out and did a lot of things no one else was doing, that needed to be done. We were able to take those risks because we knew we had support.— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

In the context of a fucking war movie, Americans understand that. But in the context of society at home in peacetime, they can’t understand that the same principle applies. Give people a minimum feeling of security and support, and they will take risks to do important things.— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

That’s a decent education, basic health care including mental health care, basic income, a roof over their head and some food on the table. We all pitch in and do that for each other and the result will be more good shit getting done, not more people on the couch.— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

And the other result will be giving people some fucking reason to believe in this country.— Splitcoil (@Splitcoil) June 9, 2018

In a later tweet, Splitcoil worries his thread came off as chest-thumping. It is not even clear he was in Afghanistan in the military, but his story echoes what I’ve heard from a few vets. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas says he went into the army a Republican and came out a Democrat. Everybody had a job. Three hots and a cot. Health care. Purpose.

Markos wrote this in 2006:

There’s a reason most vets running for office this year are running as Democrats. The military is perhaps the ideal society — we worked hard but the Army took care of us in return. All our basic needs were met — housing, food, and medical care. It was as close to a color-blind society as I have ever seen. We looked out for one another. The Army invested in us. I took heavily subsidized college courses and learned to speak German on the Army’s dime. I served with people from every corner of the country. I got to party at the Berlin Wall after it fell and explored Prague in those heady post-communism days. I wasn’t just a tourist; I was a witness to history.

The Army taught me the very values that make us progressives — community, opportunity, and investment in people and the future.

Different times, a different army, and different Republicans, he acknowledges. But what Markos took from his service echoes Splitcoil. Not all vets come away with that.

I had their experience in mind when I wrote one of the first 30-second spots for our 2008 Blue Century radio campaign. Titled “Left Behind,” it read:

VO: Think No Child Left Behind is a goal everyone can embrace? Then why not No Worker Left Behind? No Family Left Behind? No American Left Behind?

VO: We train our soldiers – never leave a team member behind. It’s a code of honor. Why is that good enough for our troops, but not the rest of us? Been struggling as an army of one? Don’t stand alone.

VO: Register. Vote. Volunteer. Learn more at Blue Century dot org

A friend with a chronic illness struggling to pay her bills and keep her house heard it and cried.

For all the veneration of the military conservatives demand, they are quick to dispose of its supposed values in the “by your own bootstraps” civilian world. The point of “Left Behind” is why should that vaunted esprit de corps end at the post fence line? John Rambo, struggling with PTSD, says in First Blood: “For me civilian life is nothing! In the field we had a code of honor, you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there’s nothing!”

In “I’ve got mine, Jack” America, no one is watching your back, and the strain is eating at people. It’s why my friend cried.

Suicide rates in the U.S. rose 25 percent between 1999 through 2016 reports the Centers for Disease Control, and by 30 percent in half the states. Suicides this week by CNN host and chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade show that for all their celebrity and money, America didn’t have their backs.

Celebrity suicides get a lot of press. Suicide by guns and opioids get little.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, spoke with CNN:

“The most common method was firearm, followed by hanging or suffocation, followed by poisoning,” Schuchat said. “Opioids were present in 31% of individuals who died by poisoning.” She added that intentionality is difficult to determine in cases in which a person dies by overdose.

“Give people a minimum feeling of security and support, and they will take risks to do important things.” Take that away and they retreat into ideological bunkers and into self-medicating. They become prey for con men who, rather than address their problems, give them Others to blame for them. And here we are, with white nationalists marching in the streets and their spiritual leader occupying the White House.

Democrats in Congress last summer trotted out their “Better Deal.” Is it another five-point plan or is it ten? Who knows? More importantly, who cares? People in pain, people in despair, people, urban or rural, who feel America has left them behind don’t vote for policies. They vote for people they feel have their backs. Democrats need to demonstrate they do on an emotional level, not convince them with charts.

[h/t @DarcyBurner]

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Grab a drink and watch this baby elephant for a minute. You won’t be sorry:

Have a good week-end folks.

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L’etat c’est Moi o’ the day: thumbs up thumbs down

by digby

"I'm thinking about Muhammad Ali. I'm thinking about that very seriously" – President Trump on future pardons. pic.twitter.com/LuvaorFGR9— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 8, 2018

Trumpie likes to pardon because it makes him feel vewy, vewy powerful. Like Emperor Nero at the Roman Circus:

NPR reports:

Certain rituals have grown up around the use of the presidential pardon.

The most common is a lengthy review by the Justice Department on the merits of any such petition for a pardon.

But for President Trump, the pardon seems to have become the ultimate symbol of presidential power — the ability to use this exclusive authority as an act of benevolent largess and as the ultimate political perk.

In recent decades the power to pardon has been used to varying degrees, but one thing fairly consistent is that pardons traditionally went through a careful process. Before the president would sign off on the ultimate act of legal forgiveness, the Justice Department would review each case and then make a recommendation on its worthiness.

Let’s go back 60 years and the past 10 presidents. Lyndon Johnson comes in at the top with 960 pardons. Barack Obama pardoned just 212.

President Trump’s tally in less than 18 months is so far small. Just five total.

But it stands out nonetheless.

While other presidents have occasionally issued controversial pardons — think Bill Clinton’s gift to millionaire financier Marc Rich on his final day in office in 2001 — most are somewhat mundane and follow the process of formal petition to the White House and a formal investigation on the merits.

Even though the number of Trump pardons is small, he is openly enamored of the tool. And a trend has already appeared — Trump’s pardons have leaned toward persons of some notoriety. Think Sheriff Joe Arpaio or Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Or they’ve been famous — the late boxer Jack Johnson. Each came quickly, seemingly through direct engagement of the president himself. And often there’s a clear message to Trump’s political base.

Today President Trump is signaling that the pace will pick up.

“There will be more pardons,” he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House as he departed the U.S. for summits in Canada and in Singapore where he’ll meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Just how many more could be coming? Well, the president said he’s got a long list of requests they are looking at.
“We have 3,000 names,” he said today, adding, “many of those names have been treated unfairly.”

Asked if there’ll be one for OJ Simpson, the president replied that he’s “not thinking about OJ” but quickly added that he was considering another famous athlete, “I’m thinking about Muhammad Ali.” Ali went to prison and was forced to put his boxing career on hold for his refusal to submit to the military draft during the Vietnam war. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court did unanimously reverse Ali’s conviction. Ali’s attorney, Ron Tweel, reacted to Trump’s comments on Friday saying that the high court’s ruling makes a pardon wholly unnecessary.

“There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed,” the attorney said in a statement.

There is no small irony here. Ali’s legend grew out of that anti-war protest and the sacrifice that came with it. He was opposed to the actions of the U.S. government. He was opposing the war. Now Trump is offering a pardon to the late boxing icon even as the president regularly questions the patriotism of modern day athletes who kneel during the national anthem at sporting events to protest and bring awareness to the treatment of black Americans in this country — including police brutality.

Trump has gone so far as to say that those who refuse to stand for the anthem shouldn’t be allowed in this country.

Alluding to those who protest, Trump said Friday that if those athletes have complaints then a better process would be to reach out to him personally.

“I’m going to ask them to recommend to me people who are unfairly treated,” he said.

It’s a statement that implies that he can fix such concerns, even as he pursues policies that his critics say make achieving equality and justice for many Americans less likely.

There’s another example of this dynamic at work. The Trump pardon this week — at the request of TV reality show star Kim Kardashian — of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63 year old woman serving a life sentence since 1996 for distributing cocaine and money laundering.

The White House portrayed it as an act of compassion, issuing a statement that read, “While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance.”

Here’s how Trump himself put it on the south lawn,

“The power to pardon is a beautiful thing,” adding, “I want to do people who are unfairly treated like an Alice.”

He didn’t elaborate on how, specifically, she was treated unfairly. At the same time, however, the President and his Justice department are taking action that would put other non-violent drug offenders in a position similar to Johnson’s, where they face long, mandatory prison sentences for drug related offenses. The Obama justice department had begun to implement changes in sentencing guidelines resulting in such lengthy incarceration for non-violent offenders. The Trump administration has reversed those changes.

That puts the Presidential pardon at odds with the presidential policies.

The dotard just wants famous people bring him the names of those who will beg him for mercy and then he will pardon them if he thinks they deserve it. And they’d better ask nicely.

He alone decides what’s “fair” and what isn’t. Like a Roman Emperor.

By the way, his desire to pardon Mohammed Ali is especially rich considering that Ali’s conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971 — and he had originally been convicted for the crime of refusing to go to war because it violated his Muslim faith. Dotard.

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Trump’s blunderbuss tariffs are bad for the economy? What?

by digby

Oh look, they’re lying again. It must be a day that ends in “y”.

A White House economic analysis of President Trump’s trade agenda has concluded that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will hurt economic growth in the United States, according to several people familiar with the research.

The findings from the White House Council of Economic Advisers have been circulated only internally and not publicly released, as is often the case with the council’s work, making the exact economic projections unknown. But the determination comes as top White House officials continue to insist publicly that Mr. Trump’s trade approach will be “massively good for the U.S. economy.”

The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, an economist who came to the administration from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, dodged questions at a White House briefing on Tuesday about whether tariffs would hurt an economy that has accelerated during Mr. Trump’s tenure.

Asked whether the administration’s economists had modeled the impact that a trade war with China would have on the United States economy, Mr. Hassett said Mr. Trump was a great negotiator who would persuade other countries to open their markets to American products.

“If you model a future where everybody else reduces their trade barriers to ours, then that’s massively good for the global economy and massively good for the U.S. economy,” Mr. Hassett said.

But the immediate effect of the administration’s trade agenda has been the opposite, as other nations retaliate against the United States with their own tariffs.

Huh.

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“Don’t get sick. And if you do, die quickly.”

by digby

That was former congressman Alan Grayson’s description of the Republican party’s health care plan. And he was right.

The Trump administration is now attacking the provision of the ACA that prohibits insurance companies from denying insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions by refusing to defend it in a lawsuit brought by a bunch of red state assholes.

I’m not kidding.

Here is an explainer of the lame constitutional argument they are making. It concludes:

The real-world consequences of refusing to defend would be hard to predict. They might be minimal. The courts can and probably will appoint lawyers to defend the ACA, as Somin points out. (For the record, I’m happy to volunteer for that job—it’s the sort of thing I used to do when I worked for the Justice Department.) So the final outcome of the litigation shouldn’t change.

But declining to defend the ACA could have implications for whether the Trump administration chooses to enforce it. That’s a question that has become urgent with Idaho’s decision to flout the law. Unless HHS intervenes, other states will likely follow its lead. It’d be much harder for HHS to step in if the Justice Department takes the position that the whole law is unconstitutional.

The fight to destroy the ACA is going to go on for decades. They’re still trying to destroy Social Security, after all.

But this is currently the only issue that is more important to the Democratic base than stopping Donald Trump. The Democrats must make sure their voters know what the Trump administration is doing with this.

Also, FYI, the GOP House voted on a party line to cut the Children’s Health Insurance Program this week. Some Democrats are quick off the mark:

He's celebrating the fact that House Republicans cut $7 billion from children's health insurance. That's what he calls "wasteful government spending." #CHIP https://t.co/GqCrUEepDO— Conor Lamb (@ConorLambPA) June 8, 2018

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He really does hate the G7

by digby

So, Trump starts a trade war with the G7 which benefits Russia and now wants them to let Russia back in the group. You may recall that Russia was expelled from the G8 after it invaded Crimea.

President Donald Trump said Friday he thinks Russia should be reinstated into the Group of Seven, the industrialized countries whose leaders are meeting in Canada this weekend.

Trump, acknowledging his view “may not be politically correct,” told reporters before leaving for the summit: “We have a world to run and the G-7, which used to be the G-8 ― they threw Russia out. Russia should be in this meeting. They should let Russia come back in, because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”

Russia was expelled from what had been the G-8 in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea.

Trump’s comment was in line with his unusually friendly stance toward Russia, despite evidence that it interfered in the 2016 election to help his campaign.

I’m guessing that sentence should have read: “Trump’s comment was in line with his unusually because of evidence that it interfered in the 2016 election to help his campaign.”

If he’s completely innocent of conspiring with the Russians he’s so goddamned stupid that he can’t help but make himself look guilty over and over and over again. I’m honestly not sure which is worse at this point.

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Just say no (to this stupid anti-drug campaign)

by digby

Trump has repeatedly said that the answer to the opioid crisis is to tell people that drugs are bad:

The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place.If they don’t start, they won’t have a problem. If they do start, it’s awfully tough to get off. So if we can keep them from going on and maybe by talking to youth and telling them: ‘No good, really bad for you in every way.’”

Think Progress says:

“Historically, programs that have sought to scare people into avoiding drugs have either been ineffective or had the opposite effect,” said Omar Manejwala, chief medical officer of Catasys and an expert on addiction. “Effective approaches to adolescent prevention generally focus on skill building, developmental factors, community, and environmental contributors and policies.”

The “Just Say No” campaign unveiled in the 1980s is a major example. The campaign’s advertisements are largely seen in retrospect as unhelpful and many ads backfired. Experts say contemporary White House efforts will likely be more of the same.

“The problem with the ’80s ads was, they were aimed to please Congress, and when you are trying to please an audience of people who are about 50 years old on average and wear a suit to work and they think kids these days don’t listen — they’re going to love it. Trump will love these commercials,” said Humphreys. “But that’s not who these commercials are for. What is a teenager going to think? What did teenagers think when people smashed up a kitchen after smashing an egg in the 1980s? They thought it was ridiculous.”

It was.

Trump is setting up a situation where he’s going to say that he spent this money and told people not to take drugs and if they don’t listen it’s their own fault. He has no empathy or understanding of this issue. (Well, of any issue) But this one in particular. We know this because he rejected his own brother because of his alcoholism and even punished his brother’s kids.

This is where he’s going to place his emphasis:

“Strong law enforcement is absolutely vital to having a drug-free society,” Trump said.“At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer federal prosecutions than in 2011, so they looked at this scourge and they let it go by,” he said. “We’re not letting it go by.”

This isn’t going to end well unless this epidemic runs its course on its own.

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Trump takes a wrecking ball to the world stage

by digby

My Salon column this morning is about this next week with the miscreant, full of himself, meeting with world leaders:

Gird yourselves. Starting today, President Trump is on an international whirlwind trip, starting in Canada for the G7 meeting and then, barring someone screwing the pooch (which is entirely possible) he’s off to Singapore for the big summit with Kim Jong Un. It’s inevitable that Trump will embarrass himself and the country — and considering the stakes this time, embarrassment could be the least of it. Take a deep breath and hope for the best.

Yesterday Trump had a meeting at the White House with the prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe,  and he held a photo opp and press conference afterwards. Asked about his preparation for the North Korean Summit,  he said:

I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about attitude, it’s about willingness to get things done, but I think I’ve been preparing for this summit for a long time, as has the other side, I think they’ve been preparing for a long time also.