Im-Politic: Unpacking the Ilhan Omar Mess

Tags

free expression, identity, Ilhan Omar, John McCain, race-mongering, racism, terrorism, The Squad, Trump

It’s so utterly typical of how fevered Americans of all political stripes have become in the last decade or so (and especially in the Age of Trump, which began as soon as he declared his candidacy for presidency): The more verbiage that’s spilled over the clash that’s developed over controversial recent remarks by the four Democratic Congresswomen comprising the so-called Squad, and President Trump’s reactions, the more confused and dangerously simplistic this rhetorical gang war becomes.

So for the record, here’s my effort to spell out the only reasonable conclusions to draw about the main participants – and especially Mr. Trump and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who have generated the most intense reactions pro and con. Also utterly typical of the times: I have no doubt that few of you readers on any side are going to be entirely pleased.

My bottom line: There can be no reasonable doubt that the President was deeply and offensively wrong when he tweeted that Omar and the other Squad-ers should “go back” to their troubled countries or origin and help fix their problems instead of “loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.” But there can also be no reasonable doubt that there are entirely reasonable grounds for finding many of Omar’s own statements repugnant and insulting enough prompt speculation about her allegiance to the nation – in an emotional, if not a legal, sense.

Of course, the Trump tweets were completely and inexcusably inaccurate in the case of Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – who are all American born. And since all four of the Squad-ers are women of color, he once more opened himself up to reasonable charges of racism, or at least expressing racist views – since his phrasing unmistakably equated being non-white with being foreign-born.

In my view, Mr. Trump was simply once again being stupid and sloppy. Still stupider on the President’s part: As a result, he’s legitimized at least some of the race-mongering of four politicians who have been among the most flagrant race-mongers seen in American politics since the heyday of segregationist resistance to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

But what I want to focus on here is that he plainly stepped in it, and needlessly deepened national divisions. Presidents should try to do the opposite.

In this vein, also deeply and offensively wrong have been the President’s “love it or leave it”-type tweets and subsequent remarks, whether meant for the Squad or for anyone legally or even illegally living in America. Everyone resident here enjoys full Constitutional free expression protections. Period.

Worse still was the “Send her back” chant that broke out during his rally in Greenville, North Carolina last week. All those participating should have their proverbial mouths washed out. For unlike the “go back” Trump tweets and statements, this call amounted to a demand that Omar be forcibly removed from the country for her opinions. The President (who certainly knows how to egg on a crowd) never encouraged these cries, and in fact looked pretty unhappy while listening to it for its 13-second duration. But he didn’t move to quiet it. So even though he has never expressed this sentiment and disavowed it subsequently, it’s entirely fair to charge that he badly flunked the leadership test passed with flying colors by the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain during his unsuccessful presidential campaign of 2008.

Still, none of the above can create any reasonable doubt that Omar is an anti-American ingrate – and that as such, Americans (including President Trump) have every right to be offended by many of her own remarks, and even to wonder why (but not to favor expelling her), if her affinity with her adopted country is so threadbare, she’s chosen to stay.

This question of identifying with America is crucial because no one can legitimately question the loyalty or identity of Omar (or the other Squad-ers, or other Americans) for denouncing specific current and past U.S. policies and circumstances in the most vehement possible terms. Moreover, as noted in this must-read (especially for Trump supporters) Washington Post piece on many of the President’s own statements, Mr. Trump’s record is full of such sentiments, too. (Portraying the country’s very founding – as has become all too common on the far Left – to be an act grounded in white supremacy is another matter, in my view. But I haven’t found any comments from any of the Squad-ers deserving of that description.)

These allegations are easily supported by Omar’s unquestioned belittling of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks by violent Muslim jihadists, by her giggling dismissal of Americans’ fear of Al Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist group that planned and carried out these attacks, and by her call for lenient treatment for young Somali-Americans convicted of planning to join another jihadist terror group, ISIS. Slighting the importance of an event that claimed thousands of American lives and generated thousands more casualties, ridiculing the idea that the perpetrators are a major threat, and sympathizing with those seeking to join an equally hostile organization – this record is so far out of the range of normal that it does indicate a fundamental alienation from her adopted country.

The question of Omar’s gratitude matters, too. Again, it’s by no means illegal. But as opposed to given its long and deep roots – this Washington Post profile shows that it began practically from her arrival and continues today – it also quite naturally raises the question of why, during all these years, she hasn’t concluded that she’d be better off somewhere else. After all, she’s still quite young, she has most of her life ahead of her, she’s a gifted orator and politician, she clearly has had the means to leave for some time. And surely there are countries beyond America’s borders that haven’t conducted foreign policies so brutal and otherwise disgraceful that they haven’t provoked (understandable, as she sees it) jihadist retaliation, and that have been more welcoming to Muslims.

In other words, Omar has a perfect right to stay and engage in any Constitutionally protected expression she wishes. But I and others have an equal right to express outrage and also to proceed to ask “What gives?” without being slimed for intolerance. And to attack President Trump for blurring these vital distinctions. Meanwhile, all of us should be discouraged that so many of us evidently can’t keep them straight, either.

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Im-Politic: America Needs to Get Its Citizenship Act Together

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Alexander Hamilton, Census, citizenship, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, national identity, naturalization, non-citizens

Despite all the heat that it’s generated, the most important citizenship-related issue facing Americans today is not the one revolving around whether long Census form should seek this information from residents of the country. Instead, given all the clashing views of national identity that have emerged in recent years, the most important issue is developing a coherent concept of citizenship – what it should entail in terms of rights and responsibilities, and why .

Suggesting that the United States – a 243-year old country with a history that’s been a rousing success by any reasonable standard – hasn’t been thinking clearly about citizenship certainly seems odd. But the history actually couldn’t be clearer. And the confusion begins at the beginning. Although the Constitution refers to “the Privileges and Immunities of Citizens,” the document says remarkably little about what these are and, more important, about the reasons that such privileges and immunities should be enjoyed by one group of residents in the country but not others.

Even the choice of some of the most prominent privileges and immunities that are specified are peculiar, to put it mildly. For instance, the framers of the document designated citizenship as a requirement for holding the offices of President, U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator. But nowhere does the Constitution’s body say explicitly that the Vice President must be a citizen – that provision had to wait until the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. Nor does the document explicitly require federal judges to be citizens. 

At the same time, the Constitution’s federal office-holding criteria obviously assume that some citizens are more equal than others.  In the best known example, only “natural born” citizens (a term never defined in the Constitution or by the Supreme Court, and still debated, though it’s widely thought to mean a citizens born in American territory or born outside the United States or its possessions to citizens parents) are eligible to be President.  That’s why former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger or former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could never realistically dream of becoming President.  They, and so many other prominent Americans, were foreign born and naturalized.   

But not just any natural born citizen can serve in the White House.  He or she needs to be at least 35 years old, and have lived in the country for fourteen years.  

As for voting in federal elections, it’s now a crime for non-citizens, but that’s only been the case since 1996. It’s by no means grounded in the Constitution, which generally authorized the states to decide eligibility for elections at all levels in the federal system. And the states have a long history of permitting voting by non-citizens.  (See here for a detailed history of non-citizen voting – by a supporter of this policy.)

Further muddying the situation: Many citizens have long been denied rights and privileges extended to other citizens, at the federal, state, and local levels alike. Women have expressly been classified as eligible for citizenship since the earliest immigration and naturalization laws, which were passed shortly after the Founding. But for more than a century afterward, female citizens faced all manner of limits (mainly at the state level but including on the national level) on their “privileges and immunities” that didn’t apply to male citizens – notably, the right to vote and the right to own property. (See here for some key milestones in the history of such limits and the pushback.) Children born in the United States are unmistakably citizens, yet they still don’t enjoy many of the rights of adults.

Equally confusing are the obligations of non-citizens legally resident in the country. They can’t vote for the federal (and in most cases, the state and local) officials who make tax policy. But especially if they hold green cards, they’re considered “tax residents” upon legal entry and must declare their total income and pay taxes required under U.S. tax law. 

The same goes for questions of war and peace: Legal non-citizens can’t choose the politicians who make these decisions, but they’re potentially required to live with the gravest consequences, since they’re obligated to register for the military draft (unless they’re women – who can’t register even if they are citizens) – and have been often during American history.  (See, e.g., here and here.)

It’s not that the Founders didn’t think about citizenship seriously at all. The very first Article of the Constitution (Section 8) very prominently sets out “establishing a uniform Rule of Naturalization” as one of Congress’ powers. As early as March, 1790, the first Congress in U.S. history followed suit by passing a naturalization act to establish a process and criteria for grants of citizenship. Approved – revealingly – during the same month that that year’s Census was mandated, the law held that foreign-born persons could become U.S. citizens only if they were free, white, lived in the United States for at least two years, resided in the state where they filed the application for one year, proved their “good character” to a court, and swore allegiance to their new nation. Children of citizens born outside American territory would be considered citizens, too. Five years later, the U.S. residency requirement was raised to the current five years.

The residency requirement – and its durability – hints at one possible answer to the question of why citizenship matters. This category was valued because it identified residents judged (to paraphrase an article by former law professor and current U.S. Congress-person Jamin Raskin) “fit to govern” – and by extension (quoting directly now) deserving of “the opportunity to participate in the essential and representative act of democratic politics [voting].” The flip side of this coin, as observed by a much more conservative legal authority, Alexander Bickel, was a position found in western political theory since classical times – which inspired so much of the Founders’ political worldview: “It is by virtue of of his citizenship that the individual is a member of the political community, and by virtue of it that he has rights.”

The reference to a political community is crucial, because what little the Founders collectively said about citizenship often focused on precisely this aim, as did the (admittedly minimalist) legislative and Constitutional record they created. Jefferson and Hamilton embodied fundamentally different approaches to arranging political power within the new nation and equally clashing ideas about the optimal future for the economy (largely because of their political philosophies). But they both agreed that great dangers were likely from a large influx of newcomers from countries whose views and political traditions diverged much further still from those prevailing in the existing U.S. population – and whose national loyalties might be suspect – and that a major response was needed.

The residency requirement that became law clearly reflected Hamilton’s belief that “Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of at least a probability of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.” (See here for the case for the Constitution as a key part of the Founders’ exercise in political community-building. Interestingly, the author’s main thesis is that membership in this community should be expanded to include non-citizens.)  

And yet, from literally the beginning, so many opportunities to link the creation of such a community to citizenship were went ungrasped. The Constitution could have specified that Congressional apportionment (determining the numbers of House of Representatives districts would be given to each state) must be based on numbers of citizens. Instead, it simply holds that the count should consist of “the whole number of free persons,” indentured servants, and “other Persons” (meaning slaves), who would be treated as three-fifths of the other two categories. Native Americans who were “not taxed” were the only category of resident explicitly excluded.

Moreover, because there is no Constitutionally mandated connection between citizenship and Congressional apportionment, there’s no link between citizenship and the allocation of electoral votes, either, since that figure is based in part on the number of House districts per state.

A third missing link – which seems a matter of recent bureaucratic custom rather than law: As of 2015, more than a hundred federal programs used Census data to determine the distribution of $675 billion in taxpayer funds to pay for everything from Medicare Part B to Medicaid to school lunches to highway construction.

And despite the loyalty oath required for naturalization, and the Founders’ concerns about divided or competing national allegiances, neither the Constitution nor any code of federal law has ever prohibited dual citizenship. Stranger still – many American citizens today legally serve in the militaries of foreign countries not engaged in hostilities with the United States, and even in senior government positions in foreign governments.

Numerous observers believe (and even hope) that these glaring contradictions in the treatment of citizens show that the concept is weakening.  I fervently hope that they’re wrong.  For I believe that the Founders were right.  In other words, as clearly, and as consistently as possible, it’s essential that the law define citizens as that segment of the population that enjoys a specific set of (mainly voting- and governing-related) rights in exchange for supporting the nation’s core political values. Otherwise, Americans will never preserve what one commentator has called “the cohesiveness and sense of community…vital to the success of popular government.”

But the bitter divisions that have opened recently in America’s politics and society demonstrate that the wildly incoherent approach to citizenship that’s evolved until now is giving the nation the worst of all possible worlds. If a completely chaotic disintegration of the country into a gaggle of hostile, quarreling groups is to be avoided, a clear choice needs to made – and the sooner the better.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is Manufacturing Hiring – & Any Trade War Problems – Out of the Woods?

Domestic U.S. manufacturing regained some of its lost job creation prowess in June, according to this morning’s monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The takeaway for trade mavens? Oddly mixed. Problems remained in numerous industries especially affected by President Trump’s metals tariffs. But the effects of the levies on imports from China (which are much harder to gauge) revealed no consistent pattern.

The June figures, which are preliminary, showed that manufacturers’ payrolls increased by a net 17,000 jobs – the best such performance since January (when the same gain was reported). Revisions were mixed, with May’s 3,000 increase (also still preliminary) revised up to 4,000, but April’s previously estimated 5,000 improvement (which had been upgraded from 4,000) now downgraded to 3,000.

But the overall manufacturing results say little about how domestic manufacturing is faring in the Trump trade wars. To answer that question, it’s necessary to zero in on metals-using industries (where higher costs for the steel and aluminum they use are supposed to be crippling) and on sectors reliant on products from China.

The main metals-users are easy to identify, and for the most part, the June figures signal a continuation of recent trends: Particularly strong hiring during the early months following the steel and aluminum has lost considerable momentum.

The metals tariffs might not be the only reason. For example, U.S. housing, a big consumer of metal products that are used in construction and for appliances, has actually shrunk on net since the end of 2016. American motor vehicle sales have basically flatlined since the fall of 2015 after a strong rebound from a scary recessionary nosedive. And the aerospace industry has been troubled since safety issues began prompting countries to ground Boeing’s popular 737 jets – and resulted in dramatic company-wide orders cuts.

Nonetheless, as indicated above, some of these problems have been dogging manufacturing for years, yet the metals-using sectors held up exceptionally well – until the last few months. The table below shows the hiring performance of these industries since April, 2018 (the first full month that the duties were in effect). And for perspective, figures are also included for the American private sector in general, for manufacturing overall, and for the durable goods super-sector (where the main metals users are found).

                                                   Old thru May         New thru May         Thru June

entire private sector:                 +1.79 percent          +1.99 percent      +2.14 percent

overall manufacturing:             +1.60 percent          +1.61 percent      +1.74 percent

durable goods:                          +1.94 percent          +1.96 percent      +2.11 percent

fabricated metals products:       +1.71 percent         +1.59 percent      +1.49 percent

non-electrical machinery:         +2.52 percent         +2.53 percent      +2.92 percent

automotive vehicles & parts:    +0.20 percent         +0.29 percent      +0.27 percent

household appliances:               not available           -4.73 percent       not available

aerospace products & parts:      not available          +7.46 percent       not available

Weakened momentum compared with the entire private sector and all of industry is clear from the the fabricated metals and automotive data, and for durables in general. Machinery and aerospace, however seem to be holding up well, and appliances of course have faced their own separate tariffs on large household laundry machines since February, 2018 .

As usual, the China effect is much harder to determine, both because the tariffs have been imposed in several phases, because the first have been in place only since July, 2018, because the list of tariff-ed imports employs a manufacturing classification system different from that used by the BLS to track jobs, because Chinese inputs are found so widely throughout manufacturing, and because their importance to individual industries varies just as widely. So keep taking the figures below – which present the post-July, 2018 results for some of the few BLS sectors that match up reasonably well with the tariff list – with considerable skepticism.

                                     July-April     Old July-May    New July-May    July-June

private sector:            1.38 percent   +1.46 percent    +1.45 percent    +1.60 percent

overall mfg:             +1.00 percent   +1.04 percent    +1.02 percent    +1.16 percent

aircraft engines &    +1.51 percent    not available    +1.39 percent     not available

  engine parts:

industrial heating:    +1.12 percent    not available    +1.23 percent     not available

  equipment

oil & gas drilling     +5.29 percent    not available    +5.02 percent     not available

  platform parts:

farm machinery &   -0.10 percent    not available     -0.05 percent     not available 

equipment:

ball bearings:         +1.68 percent     not available    +2.18 percent     not available

Weaker momentum is detectable in aerospace, energy-related equipment, and farm machinery (where sales are clearly being affected by flooding, by retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other foreign economies, and by the slump in farm prices that began five years ago). But whereas the pace of hiring slowed in those industries, in contrast to quickening in the private sector and in manufacturing overall, in ball bearings and industrial heating equipment, job creation is accelerating, too.

In sum, if the various Trump tariffs led much of U.S. manufacturing into the woods starting early this year, the new jobs report indicates that some sectors remain mired, and some might be coming out. Still far from clear – how deep have the woods been to begin with?

Making News: Podcasts, We Have (Trade War) Podcasts….

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AM 970 The Answer, China, Frank Morano, i24News, Liquid Lunch, Making News, Morano in the Morning, Morano Whenever, Newsmax TV, Trade, trade war, Trump, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce that two podcasts of interviews last Friday are now on-line.

The first is an appearance on Frank Morano’s Morano Whenever podcast recorded Thursday afternoon.  Frank has interviewed me before on his early Sunday morning talk show on New York City’s AM 97 The Answer station.  But in contrast to those relatively brief segments, this interview went on for more than an hour and covered topics ranging from the U.S.-China trade conflict to New York Yankee baseball to my own personal experience as a stutterer (about which you can read a bit more here).  And it was all the more fun because we did the program in studio!

I hope you find it as enjoyable to listen to as I found expounding on these subjects.  Here’s the link.

That evening, I returned to the U.S.-Israeli TV network i24News program Clearcut to help provide an update to the Sino-American trade war and preview the summit between President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that took place in Japan yesterday.  Click on this link and press the download button to watch.

For the record, I was correct in predicting that the meeting would end in an agreement to resume talks officially, but with no timetables set for progress on any of the issues at stake.  But I was wrong in predicting that no progress would be announced on any individual issues.  (I analyzed the actual results in yesterday’s post.)

My fellow panelist, Mitch Roschelle, from the global consulting firm PwC, was wrong in predicting that timetables would be agreed to.  But he was right in anticipating that the two leaders would agree to more simply to begin talking again.

Finally, on Friday, I appeared on the Newsmax TV program Liquid Lunch to talk about the trade war and the Trump-Xi summit.  No word on a podcast yet, but I’ll post one ASAP if one becomes available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: Podcasts Now On-Line of Yesterday’s Two National Radio Trade War Interviews…& More!

Tags

China, Dallas Federal Reserve, FoxNews.com, Gordon G. Chang, IndustryToday.com, Making News, manufacturing, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, tariffs, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce that the podcasts are now on-line of yesterday’s two national radio interviews I did updating the U.S.-China trade conflict and previewing the upcoming summit between President Trump and Chinese leader XiJinping.

Click here to listen to my conversation with Market Wrap host Moe Ansari, and here to access my segment on The John Batchelor Show.

In addition, in a new column for FoxNews.com, sometime Batchelor Show co-host Gordon G. Chang quoted my views on an underappreciated impact on the U.S. economy from artificially cheap imports from China.  Here’s the link.

Finally, IndustryToday.com posted my column from this past Monday on the surprising trade war-related findings from the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank’s latest monthly survey manufacturing activity in Texas and parts of Louisiana and New Mexico.  Click here to read.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

Making News: Two Trade War National Radio Interviews Coming Today…& More!

Tags

Bill Powell, China, G20, G20 Summit, Gordon G. Chang, Group of 20, Japan, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, Newsweek, Osaka, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump, Xi JInPing

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to appear twice today on national radio to help update the U.S.-China trade conflict.  In addition, I’ll no doubt be previewing the upcoming meeting later this week between President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit being held among the heads of the world’s twenty largest economies (the so-called Group of 20, or G20) in Osaka, Japan.

The first will be broadcast at 3 PM EST on the nationally syndicated Market Wrap with Moe Ansari.  Click here to listen live on-line.

The second entails a return to The John Batchelor Show.  Click here to listen on-line at 10 PM EST to the latest in the always lively discussions among John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me on the rapidly evolving trade war scene.

As usual, if you can’t listen today (or want to hear the interviews again) I’ll post podcasts of the segments if and when they’re available.

Finally, it was great to be quoted several times in this excellent long look back at U.S.-China economic relations by Newsweek‘s Bill Powell in this week’s edition of the magazine.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments!

Im-Politic: Times Pundit Krugman Grows Ever More Truth-Challenged

Tags

class warfare, Fox News, Im-Politic, Immigration, non-college whites, Paul Krugman, polls, Populism, pundits, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, Trump

Oops, he (almost) did it again. That’s not only (almost) a gender-specific version of a Britney Spears song. It’s also an apt description of Paul Krugman’s latest column for The New York Times. As I wrote on RealityChek two weeks ago, Krugman’s June 3 essay on tariffs cited information on the U.S. agriculture sector fallout from 1920s duties that the source material simply didn’t contain. Yesterday, his piece on President Trump’s allegedly phony populism were partly based on a blatantly cherry-picked poll result.

According to Krugman, Mr. Trump’s talk of helping his core white working class voters economically is in fact so transparently phony that even these voters no longer believe it. His evidence? A June 16 Fox News poll finding “that only 5 percent of whites without a college degree believe that Trump’s economic policies benefit ‘people like me,’ compared with 45 percent who believe that the benefits go to ‘people with more money.’”

Regardless of whether these views reflect economic reality, the results certainly sound damning. But here’s the rub. First, Krugman didn’t get the question exactly right. Pollsters asked respondents whether the Trump programs “benefit everyone” or “mostly benefit people like you….” In other words, the benefits distribution was not presented solely as an either-or choice.

Second, and more important, the percentage of whites without college degrees believing that the Trump program “benefit everyone” (i.e., including them, and not qualified with “mostly”) was 32 percent. That’s not stratospheric, by any means, but it’s a lot higher than five percent. (See question 24.) 

(Adding another complication missed by Krugman, that five percent wasn’t five percent of the entire non-college white sample. It was five percent of the respondents who didn’t view the Trump policies as benefiting “everyone.”)

And some other notable poll results Krugman conveniently passes over:

The percentage of total Trump voters answering that his economic policies “benefit everyone” was 67 percent. That finding suggests an inclusive, rather than an us-versus-them view of how the economy should work – which in turn interestingly indicates that this part of the electorate isn’t terribly receptive to the kinds of so-called class warfare memes pushed by so many Democratic politicians.

In addition, the share of non-college whites who say they’re “strongly” or “somewhat optimistic about the U.S. economy right now” was 55 percent. That’s only a bit less than the 58 percent of the total sample that turned in such answers.  (See question 23.)  

These Fox poll results hardly demonstrate that the President is home free with his base on the economy. Moreover, they show that he’s far from having persuaded this big share of his staunchest supporters – much less the rest of the electorate – that he’s on the right track when it comes to his signature issues of immigration and trade (although as is often the case, in my opinion, the questions on these subjects – see 16-20, and 25-26 – leave much to be desired).

But Krugman’s selective report on the survey, following his off-base portrayal of an analysis of past tariffs, does demonstrate that his writings should now be accompanied by the warning, “Let the reader beware.”

Making News: Back on Israeli TV on Trump’s Mexico Tariffs – & a New Podcast!

Tags

border security, i24News, Immigration, Making News, Mexico, migrants, tariffs, Trade, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to Israel’s i24News TV network to discuss President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico if Mexico doesn’t step up its efforts to ease the crisis on the two countries’ borders.  i24News is available by subscription only, but you can see the segment, which is slated to air at 8 PM EST, by clicking on this link and registering for a free trial subscription.

Moreover, I appeared on i24News last Friday, too, to participate in a panel discussion of the subject.  You can access the video by clicking on this link and downloading the file.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: A Better Way to Pressure Mexico on Immigration

Tags

Border Crisis, border security, Central America, Charles Grassley, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mexico, migrants, remittances, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA

It’s not every day that I praise veteran Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever praised him in print. On trade policy he’s often especially especially clueless – his last foray into this field consisted of threatening to use his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee to scuttle the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) unless President Trump withdrew his tariffs on metals imports from Mexico and Canada.

(Grassley was upset because Mexico in particular had retaliated by slapping tariffs on some key American farm products exported by states like Iowa. He didn’t seem to realize that, as I’ve written here, the tariffs needed to be global in scope to be effective. Meanwhile, however serious American farmers’ woes, they began in earnest years before any Trump tariffs went into effect.)

So imagine my surprise yesterday upon learning that Grassley has proposed a response to Mexico’s foot-dragging on helping to ease the crisis on its border with the United States that’s much better than President Trump’s tariffs.

According to Grassley, the way to pressure Mexico to tighten its own curbs on the floods of Central Americans streaming through its territory toward the United States is to tax the remittances sent to their home country by Mexicans who have moved northward both legally and illegally.

Remittances consist of money sent by immigrants back to their home country – usually to relatives. They encourage immigration because they come from wages earned by newcomers to the United States that are much higher than those they can make in their countries of origin.

And we’re unmistakably talking big numbers – especially for Mexico. The country’s own central bank pegged them at almost $31.5 billion last year. That’s more money coming into the Mexican economy than it makes from oil exports, and in fact its second largest foreign exchange earner after auto parts exports.

Unlike tariffs, remittances taxes wouldn’t harm Americans who buy imports from Mexico – whether consumers or businesses. All the victims would be Mexicans in Mexico. And because so many poor Mexicans in particular rely on these funds to help maintain and improve their living standards, a smaller flow would squeeze their finances and surely increase political instability in a country that’s long suffered more than its share of turmoil. Don’t think Mexico’s leaders – who are already sounding inclined to make concessions to Mr. Trump to avoid the threatened tariffs – could brush these sanctions off.

At least as important, unlike the proposed tariffs, remittance taxes wouldn’t endanger Congressional passage of the USMCA or undermine the Trump administration’s China trade policies by reducing Mexico’s attractiveness as an alternative export platform for companies looking to move in whole or in part out of the People’s Republic.

The President has actually spoken of taking this step to raise the resources needed to finance a Border Wall, but never followed through. At the time, covert and overt Open Borders supporters charged that the move could be counterproductive, since the remittances increased the well-being of their recipients enough to encourage them to stay in Mexico.

But since these payments still represent only a fraction of the earnings of Mexicans in the United States, it makes no sense to believe that many Mexicans in Mexico seriously contemplating moving across the border would be satisfied by receiving a fraction of a loaf if they thought it was all potentially available.

It’s possible that the Trump tariff threat could suffice to produce enough of a Mexican response to satisfy him on border security and declare victory with no levies. In this vein, it’s significant that Mexico’s president has already signaled his willingness to appease Mr. Trump somehow. But a remittances threat could have accomplished the same goal with much less muss and fuss. If negotiations with Mexico can’t resolve the issue by the announced Trump deadline of June 10, switching tactics to a remittances tax a la Grassley would be an unmistakable no-brainer.

Making News: New China Trade Wars Op-Ed…& More!

Tags

China, Making News, RealClearPolitics.com, tariffs, The John Batchelor Show, The National Interest, Trade, trade war

I’m pleased to announce (a little tardier than usual) the publication of my latest freelance article.  Posted on The National Interest website Monday night, it takes a detailed look at the U.S. goods that China says it will tariff in retaliation for President Trump’s latest levies, and explains why they reveal how weak the Chinese negotiating position is, not how strong.  Here’s the link.

It was also great to see the piece headlining this morning’s edition of the aggregator site RealClearPolitics.com, as you can see by clicking here.

Finally, on Monday night I did a short-notice interview on the U.S.-China trade wars on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show.  The podcast, strangely, isn’t on-line yet, but I’ll post it as soon as it’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.