Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Toward Avoiding New Afghanistans

Tags

Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, America First, Antony J. Blinken, Barack Obama, Biden, China, credibility, globalism, Jack Keane, jihadism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Taliban, terrorism, Washington Post

The humanitarian calamity seemingly sure to erupt in Afghanistan now that the Taliban have taken over means that this is no time for I-told-you-so-type gloating – even by long-time critics of U.S. military involvement and nation-building since these jihadist extremists were driven from power in late 2001.

So as one of those long-time critics, I offer the following two observations simply as an attempt to help avoid repeats of this disaster going forward. And interestingly, they’re both inspired by a single Washington Post article.

The first concerns a statement from early this month by a spokesman for the Chinese defense ministry. According to one Colonel Wu Qian, Washington “bears an unavoidable responsibility for the current situation in Afghanistan. It cannot leave and shed the burden on regional countries.”

There’s no doubt that the U.S. military withdrawal could have been handled much better – especially for the local U.S. allies who will be left to the mercy of violent, reactionary, misogynistic Islamists. In particular, as retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane asked on Friday, why did President Biden decide to complete the pullout in the middle of Afghanistan’s fighting season – when the weather is warm enough to permit aggressive, large-scale Taliban military campaigns? Why didn’t he wait till the winter – when, as has consistently been the case, the cold has prevented such operations?

But this notion that America “cannot leave and shed the burden on regional countries”? What on earth is Colonel Wu talking about? Not only can the United States do exactly that. It should have done exactly that long years ago, once the main mission was accomplished of ousting the Taliban regime that permitted Al Qaeda to turn the country into a base for launching terrorist strikes like the September 11 attacks.

And the reason is pretty simple: As I recently posted, Afghanistan is in China’s neighborhood. Not to mention Russia’s and Iran’s. And it’s as far away as it can be from America’s neighborhood. As a result, it’s always been the case that once the United States left, it would have been the regional countries’ burden, and therefore, these countries (which aren’t exactly weak mini-states) would have had no choice but to figure out how to deal with a Sunni Muslim jihadist-led country capable of causing big problems for all of them.

How could this be done? Frankly, that’s not America’s problem. Because the only valid reason Americans ever had to have any significant self interest in who runs Afghanistan had to do with its terrorist base potential. And once the Taliban was gone, along with the unique threat it posed of giving sovereign-state shelter to a terrorist organization, that challenge has always best been handled with a genuine America First strategy: genuinely securing the U.S. border (something Washington can reasonably hope to control) rather than (1) chasing jihadists around a Middle East so dysfunctional that it’s bound to keep breeding new extremist groups faster than existing groups can be neutralized by the American military; much less (2) trying to build nations where none have existed before.

At the same time, more than cynicism and opportunism may be responsible for that Chinese statement. For it comes against the backdrop of decades of Washington acting like Afghanistan’s political makeup and regional behavior indeed mattered more to the United States than it mattered to Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Just as important, the statement also comes against the backdrop of decades of pre-Trump, globalist U.S. politicians, like Mr. Biden, prattling on about how America is and must be the world’s leader and “indispensable nation.” It seems perfectly reasonable, therefore, to suppose that even countries like China, which clearly has some global leadership ambitions of its own, have taken the idea seriously, at least on some subliminal level. That is, the indispensable stuff looks like it’s backfired big-time in the case of Afghanistan. So maybe Washington, and especially the globalists, could bring such bloviation, and the cluelessness and hubris behind it, to an end?  

The second statement that I hope can guide wiser post-Afghanistan U.S. foreign policy decisions (sort of) came today none other than Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. According to the Washington Post‘s account:

“…Blinken rejected criticisms that the withdrawal damages U.S. credibility. He said staying mired in a conflict that is not in the ‘national interest’ would do far more damage.

“‘Most of our strategic competitors around the world would like nothing better than for us to remain in Afghanistan for another year, five years, 10 years, and have those resources dedicated to being in the midst of a civil war,’ Blinken told CNN. ‘It’s simply not in our interest.'”

I said “sort of” because if you look at the transcript of the interview from which this statement came, Blinken didn’t make the global credibility connection explicit. But since Mainstream Media news organizations like the Washington Post play such a big role in creating dominant narratives on issues like this, he might as well have.

And this connection matters, because it essentially echoes my main point from yesterday’s post: America’s global credibility depends most not on trying to stamp out every foreign challenge that arises, and even less on sticking with obviously lost causes. In fact, pretensions of omnipotence that are just as obviously groundless, and an unwillingness to cut losses, are likeliest to be seen, and have been seen, as signs of lousy judgment.

The real source of U.S. global credibility is demonstrating the wisdom to avoid plunging into conflicts or problems in low priority areas in the first place, and correcting such mistaken moves ASAP.

Former President Barack Obama put it cogently: “Don’t do stupid sh– (stuff).” It seems like a low bar for American foreign policy to meet. But especially as long as the country is led by globalists – like Mr. Biden – who for decades characteristically have viewed security and prosperity as internationally seamless wholes that will unravel disastrously if a single thread becomes loose, any sign that his administration may be learning the Obama lesson is unmistakably encouraging.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Progress!

Tags

American Affairs, antitrust, Barack Obama, competition, Financial Times, free trade, Jobs, John Maynard Keynes, Martin Wolf, production, Project Syndicate, Robert Skidelsky, stimulus, stimulus package, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, trade deficit, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I hope you’ll all forgive me for an exercise in self back-patting that (I hope) you’ll read through the end. But the two instances described here of leading economics commentators expressing support for highly unconventional trade policy positions I’ve taken for years are simply too striking to pass up. Even more eye-opening: They appeared within a week of each other!

In chronological order, the first came courtesy of Martin Wolf, the Financial Times columnist who’s more-than-the-average pundit because he boasts both considerable policymaking experience and serious academic chops. As those two bios make clear, he’s also been a strong (though not completely uncritical) supporter of the standard free trade and globalization policies that decisively shaped the entire world economy, including America’s positions, for decades until the CCP Virus’ breakout. (Or did the turning point come with the financial crisis of 2007-08? Oh, well – no need to settle that question right now.)

That’s why I was so amazed to see in his column this past Tuesday the observation that the United States “gains many of the benefits of trade through internal specialisation” essentially because it’s “a large country with a sophisticated economy and diverse resources….”

Wolf’s point may not sound like much. But it not only contradicts the long-standing conventional wisdom – and rationale for supporting the freest possible global trade flows – that emphasizes (1) the centrality of international specialization for maximizing the prosperity of all individual countries and indeed the entire world, and (2) the imperative of exposing national economic activity to global competition in order to force domestic industries continually to improve quality and lower costs.

Wolf has also echoed (unwittingly, no doubt) my own argument that, whatever the validity of these ideas for most countries, there’s no reason for Americans to place any special value on them.

The reason? As I explained in an article in the Summer, 2019 issue of the journal American Affairs, the greatest possible degree of international specialization is advantageous and even crucial for the prosperity of most individual countries because they lack the ability to provide for a critical mass of their essential needs at affordable cost, let alone generate progress.

Any number of reasons or combination of reasons could be responsible. They might lack vital raw materials. Even if they’re wealthy and/or technologically advanced, their domestic market alone might be too small for most forms of economic activity aside from subsistence farming to achieve the scale needed for efficient and therefore relatively low-cost production. Alternatively, this domestic market could be inadequate because most of their people are too poor to be satisfactory customers.

In addition, because they’re so small, inadequate domestic markets have been considered incapable of generating enough competitive pressure needed to force their own producers to keep improving quality, innovating, and to maintain reasonable prices.

Conventional trade thinking has held that these problems could be overcome by individual countries (1) focusing on turning out the goods and services they could provide most efficiently (interestingly, whether in world-leading fashion or not), and (2) selling them where they were in greatest demand (because of other countries’ shortcomings) in exchange for what they themselves required.

Even better, such free trade would continually maximize the efficiency, and therefore the wealth, of all countries, as well as create the conditions for sustainable progress by requiring efforts to enter new, more promising industries to meet global competitive standards.

My own article, however, emphasized that the United States isn’t like most other countries. In fact, it’s uniquely blessed with both the size, the variety of resources, and the economic and social dynamism to supply nearly all its needs and wants from within. In the words of that 1980s inspirational song, in economic term, the United States “is the world.’

As a result, Americans have no inherent need to keep their home markets open, or open them wider, in order to secure adequate supplies of goods and services. And if they’re unhappy with the levels of competition their companies face, because of the country’s gargantuan scale, their best bet for maximizing such competition is resuming the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws – which, as I documented, had long been largely neglected.

Wolf didn’t accept the policy implications I drew concerning these insights about America’s economic distinctiveness. But since he evidently accepts the basic proposition, it’s legitimate to ask why not.

The second example of a leading economic authority making one of my central points came yesterday on the Project Syndicate website. That in itself is pretty remarkable because, as I’ve previously suggested, Project Syndicate is best described as a digital op-ed page for globalist elites. Just as remarkable, and gratifying, the author of the post in question is Robert Skidelsky, a veteran British politician and venerable academic who’s best known for a highly acclaimed three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20^th century and a scholar whose work still shapes much global economic thought and policy.

According to Skidelsky, one of two major gaps in President Biden’s economic proposals – and especially his stated desire to rebuild manufacturing in America – is its failure to impose tight curbs on imports. Without a plan that Skidelsky (and its originator) calls “compensated free trade,” the author writes that domestic industry won’t be “built back better.”

That’s already nearly identical to arguments I make all the time. But what I found most intriguing was Skidelsky’s principal rationale: America’s still towering trade deficits are bound to permit too many of the job- and production-creating benefits of Mr. Biden’s stimulus spending to drain overseas.

That’s virtually identical to the case that I and a colleague made early during the recovery from the previous U.S. recession. Unfortunately, then President Barack Obama apparently didn’t see our New York Times article, because he ignored the continuing growth of the deficit, and partly as a result, the rebound he presided over was the weakest in American history.

I’m hardly above wishing to have gotten some credit for these ideas.  But progress on the economics of trade (as opposed to the ongoing U.S. policy departures from free trade absolutism bemoaned by Wolf) has been so slow to develop that I’ll take it in whatever form it comes – and of course be keeping an eye out for more.           

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Recent Revisions Muddy the U.S. Manufacturing Picture Still Further

Tags

Barack Obama, CCP Virus, China, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, Federal Reserve, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, manufacturing output, metals, real value-added, tariffs, Trade, trade policy, trade war, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As if the CCP Virus pandemic and its aftermath haven’t made gauging the real health of the U.S. economy difficult enough, the Federal Reserve late last month came out with its latest long-term (“benchmark”) revision of its domestic manufacturing production data that confuse the picture of industry’s recent status still further.

These revisions cover the 2017-2019 period, and as such, they’re especially important in gauging how U.S.-based industry fared under President Trump and the trade policy revolution he launched versus their performance during the second term of Barack Obama’s presidency and his standard trade policies. (As known by RealityChek regulars, these two time periods provide the best basis for comparison, since they came closest together during the same – expansionary – business cycle.) Moreover, because the revisions create a different baselines, they also affect the post-2019 period’s growth results for manufacturing, which include the pandemic period.

The Fed’s summary makes clear that the revisions show the inflation-adjusted expansion of manufacturing output during that Trump period to have been significantly slower than previously reported. That finding indicates that far from boosting manufacturing production, and particularly compared with the Obama years, the Trump tariffs (on steel and sluminum, and on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods from China) actually held it back.

Indeed, the revisions are so substantial that the picture they draw is a mirror image of the predecessor data – which showed that, at least before the virus struck, Trump-era manufacturing growth in real terms considerably bested the Obama-era performance. For that matter, the previous Fed numbers showed that domestic industry fared relatively well under Trump even counting the pandemic-induced recession year 2020.

Here are the results side-by-side for after-inflation manufacturing production growth in percentage terms:

                                                                   pre-revision               with revision

last four Obama years:                                   +2.45                          +1.30

Trump years pre-pandemic:                           +3.60                           -0.41

all four Trump years:                                     +2.13                           +0.82

So when it comes to growth – an especially important metric, since it’s tough to imagine creating many jobs without it – the new Fed revisions show that the second Obama term was better for U.S. manufacturers than Trump’s single term, CCP Virus or no.

Or were they? As also known by RealityChek regulars, the constant dollar output figures used by the Fed aren’t the only way to measure growth in manufacturing (or any other sector of the economy). Another is value-added, which attempts to avoid the double counting built into the standard output numbers created by their failure to distinguish between the value of the parts and components of a final product, and that of the final product itself. That’s why economists generally view them as the more revealing statistics. And in the above-linked announcement describing the revision and its methodology, the Fed says that the new numbers incorporate insights gleaned from the latest value-added figures (which are reported by the Commerce Department).

But when the latest version of these statistics are examined, they still show that domestic manufacturing grew much faster during the Trump years than during the final four Obama years. Here are the results in percentage terms when value-added is adjusted for inflation:

last four Obama years:                                    +3.88

Trump years pre-pandemic:                            +7.56

all four Trump years:                                       +9.22

One especially interesting feature of the above – the real value-added numbers show that U.S. manufacturing output actually grew further during the pandemic. In fact, even the revised Fed growth numbers show that industry has fared a good deal better so far during the pandemic than previously reported – with after-inflation production shrinking by just 0.92 percent between February, 2020 and this past April, not 1.42 percent.

Tomorrow the Fed will publish its first read on real manufacturing output for May. It will of course shed some more light on the status of domestic industry. But never forget that, given how the results will be revised not only several times during the next several months, but also about two years from now, the degree of illumination may be relatively modest.

Following Up: Gun Sense Still Lacking in the Crime/Violence/African Americans Debate

Tags

African Americans, Arionne Nettles, Barack Obama, Chicago, crime, Following Up, gun violence, guns, homicides, law enforcement, police reform, policing, poverty, racism, The New York Times

Everyone (like me) worried about the metastasizing influence of race-panderers can give thanks that so many are so completely, and indeed stupefyingly, incompetent. Otherwise, merchants of division like Northwestern University journalism faculty member Arionne Nettles and her enablers at The New York Times might be overwhelming favorites to tear the country apart for good. All the same, the more they push claims (I’m getting fed up with the pseudo-sophisticated term “narrative”) that are not only flagrantly phony but transparently contradictory, the more they obscure genuine and important failures and inequities that need fixing.

Nettles and The Times editors who considered her piece on African American victims of “gun violence” worthy of publication in this form took only a paragraph and a half to blow up their own case that big cities across the United States have seen a recent “rise in gun violence – perpetrated both by civilians and police officers” that’s taken an especially heavy toll on black children and teenagers.

They’re of course right about these tragedies and their scale. But the obvious insinuation that “civilians and police officers” share even remotely comparable blame is demolished by the observation that

“In one especially alarming spree last summer, Chicago police officers shot five people in just two months. And shootings and murders in the city were up more than 50 percent overall in 2020 compared with 2019; 875 people died from gun violence – a record high. A majority of the city’s victims (78 percent) were Black.”

Let’s assume that every one of the five Chicago police shootings mentioned here was totally unjustified. Let’s also state categorically that unjustified shootings by police are way more disturbing than other types of shootings because law enforcement must be held to a much higher standard. Are Nettles and The Times still seriously contending that the two categories of violence are on anything like a par, even as threats to African American lives?

More important, these and similar passages – along with Nettles’ interviews with African American mothers who have lost children to such violence – add powerfully to the evidence that, as I’ve argued before, the overwhelming problem here isn’t “gun violence” at all. Instead, it’s a culture of violence and broader irresponsibility that’s gained a strong foothold in too many Black neighborhoods, and whose importance keeps being ignored by supposed champions of American minorities.

A handful of data points from recent (2018) national (FBI) law enforcement statistics clinch this case. First, of the 328.24 million total U.S. population estimated by the Census Bureau that year, 76.3 percent were white and 13.4 percent African American. That’s a ratio of nearly six-to-one. Yet that year, reported Black homicide offenders in one-on-one incidents actually slightly outnumbered their white counterparts in absolute terms (3,177 to 3,011).

Almost as stunning: Of the 2,925 Black homicide victims that year, nearly 89 percent were killed by other Blacks. Nearly 81 percent of the 3,315 white homicide victims in 2018 were killed by whites, so it’s clear that American killers principally go after members of their own race. But relatively speaking these figures – combined with Nettles’ accurate observation that Blacks are much likelier to die in firearms incidents than Whites – reveal not a gun violence crisis afflicting so many African American communities. They reveal an African American violence problem.

No one can reasonably doubt that racism’s legacy and the resulting lack of economic opportunity and poverty play a big underlying role. As I (and many others) have written, the racial wealth gap alone is yawning, owes much to discrimination, and generates affects that have lasted generations. It should be just as hard reasonably to doubt, however, that something other than poverty is responsible.

Look at Chicago. In 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, its Black poverty rate was 26.3 percent – that’s much higher than the overall poverty rate for the city (16.4 percent), or the national African American poverty rate (18.8 percent). So even though there seems to be a Chicago-specific problem on top of a poverty problem, even in Chicago nearly three fourths of the Black population lives above the poverty line. That hardly means affluence, but it’s hardly destitution, either.

Moreover, the Chicago Black poverty rate is down considerably from 2010’s 33.6 percent (although the city’s overall poverty rate fell faster during this period). Yet the city’s numbers of homicides and its homicide rate have roughly doubled during the subsequent nine data years, and in Chicago, the vast majority of the killers (as with the victims) are African American.

As suggested above, moreover, Nettles’ ham-handed treatment of the “gun violence” and homicide issue is all the more inexcusable because the author’s interview subjects do a decent job of reinforcing the case that there does exist a serious race-based policing problem in this country. Not that the African American women with which the author spoke are entirely free of denialism about what’s plaguing their neighborhoods. There’s Shanice Steenholdt, who seems to believe that Australia-like gun control laws would turn her city of Houston into a replica of the small Australian town in which she lived for a time where she “didn’t feel like [she] had to worry about gun violence.” There’s Chicago’s Diane Lasiker, w appears to think that the big problem in her city is that it seems “to want to keep the Police Department separate from the community.” Her fellow Chicagoan Chez Smith and Flint, Michigan’s Marcia McQueen put much stock in “offering conflict resolution techniques” to their communities’ youth.

But the story told by Atlanta’s Cora Miller of her husband’s arrest (in Minnesota) reinforces the case that it’s much too common for completely innocent African Americans to be mistreated by police. As I’d written last August, I’ve heard first-hand accounts of such episodes from Black friends who have experienced it first hand – on top of South Carolina Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott’s experiences with Capitol police. If these individuals – who are all highly successful by any reasonable definition – can be harassed for no good reason, imagine how often everyday folks just trying to get by face these indignities and indeed dangers.

So let’s by all means get policing up to snuff. Let’s by all means identify the most effective ways in which government and business can help foster opportunity in needy Black (and other) communities. But let’s also never forget a voice who has passionately argued that

“no matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose or how many government programs we launch — none of it will make a difference, at least not enough of a difference, if we don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.”

In case you’re wondering, his name is Barack Obama.

Those Stubborn Facts: Immigration Excuse-Making for California

Tags

Associated Press, Barack Obama, California, Donald Trump, green card holders, green cards, immigrants, Immigration, legal immigration, Mainstream Media, MSM, Those Stubborn Facts

California’s “immigration decline has been particularly fast in the past half decade as President Donald Trump’s administration sharply reduced the number of people legally entering the United States.”

– Associated Press, April 24, 2021

 

Average annual grants of legal permanent U.S. resident status to

immigrants, Trump years: 1,085,181

 

Average annual grants of legal permanent U.S. resident status to

immigrants, second Obama term: 1,060,402

 

(Sources: “Awaiting census count, California ponders slow growth future,” by Kathleen Ronayne, Associated Press, April 24, 2021, Awaiting census count, California ponders slow growth future (apnews.com) & “Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019,” Yearbook 2019, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Immigration Data and Statistics, Department of Homeland Security, Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019 | Homeland Security (dhs.gov))

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: “Joe Science” – Finally?

Tags

Barack Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton, Congressional Research Service, defense, dual-use technologies, George W. Bush, infrastructure, National Science Foundation, research and development, science, scientists, technology, {What's Left of) Our Economy

President Biden is a champion of science – everyone knows this, right? He promises to follow it on major issues like the CCP Virus. He’s pledged to boost Washington’s funding of research and development. He’s blasted his predecessor for neglecting this responsibility. (See here for examples of the last two statements.)  And the scientific community the world over is brimming with confidence that greater respect from the White Houe and more resources are on the way.  (See, e.g., here and here.)

Judging from his remarks unveiling his big new infrastructure plans, it looks like Mr. Biden will indeed bolster the federal government’s support for science and technology. And that’s great news, because such efforts will be crucial to meeting any number of big public policy challenges and seizing equally important opportunities. Dealing with enviromental threats, beating back the China challenge, and boosting the nation’s productivity – its best hope for raising living standards on a sustainable basis – are just a few that come to mind.

And if you’re one of those who believe the Feds can’t do anything right, you need to learn some history. Washington has a formidable record both on the basic research and applied research sides. (Here’s an impressive list from America’s National Laboratories system, and it doesn’t even include major advances fostered by other agencies in medicine, agriculture, aerospace, and information technology – some of which are summarized here.)

Mr. Biden also is unmistakably right about America having fallen behind on these fronts. But what he hasn’t told you, and what his scientific backers seem to have forgotten, is that in the last roughly quarter century, federal science and technology spending in toto never stagnated as much as during the administration he served as Vice President.

The data below are calculated from the annual research and development budget requests made by U.S. Presidents going back to the Clinton years. (For the data from 1998 through 2015, see the National Science Foundation reports archived here.  For the later data years, see the annual Congressional Research Service reports here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Since Congress has the authority to raise or lower these requests, these figures don’t measure actual federal research and development spending by year. But they do shed light on how much various Presidents sought to spend, and by extension how greatly they valued nurturing such activity, how much they believed they could convince Congress actually to appropriate – and, by implication, how hard they were willing to push to achieve these goals.

In this vein, during his second term, Bill Clinton’s overall annual federal research and development budget requests rose by a total of 15.54 percent.

During the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency, such Executive Branch requests increased by 43.91 percent.

For the eight years of Barack Obama’s administration? These requests climbed by 6.56 percent.

And under supposed science denier Donald Trump? They were up 20.82 percent.

Some important qualifications need to be made here. The big Bush increases were driven by major new asks for defense-related R&D (think “September 11,” “Global War on Terror,” and “Iraq”). Indeed, during his administration, such spending grew from 52.47 percent of total federal research and development spending to 58.97 percent. And when you draw this distinction, the Obama (-Biden) record looks better if you value civilian research over military. Here’s how recent Presidential requests compare on that score.

Clinton civilian requests: +25.67 percent

Bush civilian requests: +24.24 percent

Obama civilian requests: +34.26 percent

Trump civilian requests: +19.07 percent

But the Obama-(Biden) record doesn’t look that much better, especially than the Trump record. After all, that 34.26 percent increase took place over eight years, not four. And the Obama-Bush comparison, and other Obama comparisons, need to take into account the ever-blurring line between defense and non-defense-related research and development, because so many new technologies can be used in both fields and spur progress in both. That is, advances in defense knowhow can and do produce spin-off effects in the civilian world, and vice versa.

It still remains to be seen how the Biden infrastructure plan translates into specific research and development budget requests. But for now at least, Americans can be grateful that the Joe Biden of 2021 seems to be much more of a science and tech enthusiast than the administration he worked for a decade ago. 

By the way, special thanks to Rafal Konapka, who first brought the recent federal research and development trends to my attention.

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Aides Show How Not to Deal with China

Tags

Alaska, Antony J. Blinken, Asia-Pacific, Barack Obama, Biden, China, Donald Trump, global norms, globalism, Hong Kong, human rights, Indo-Pacific, international law, Jake Sullivan, liberal global order, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Reinhold Niebuhr, sanctions, Serenity Prayer, South China Sea, Taiwan, tariffs, tech, Trade, Uighurs, United Nations, Yang Jiechi

You knew (at least I did) that America’s top foreign policy officials were going to step in it when they led off their Alaska meeting yesterday with Chinese counterparts by describing U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic as first and foremost a globalist exercise in strengthening “the rules-based international order” rather than protecting and advancing Americas’ own specific national interests.

This emphasis on the part of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan simultaneously made clear that they had no clue on how to communicate effectively to the Chinese or about China’s own aims, and – as was worrisomely true for the Obama administration in which both served – unwittingly conveyed to Beijing that they were more concerned about dreaming up utopian global arrangements than about dealing with the United States’ own most pressing concerns in the here and now.

It’s true that, in his opening remarks at the public portion of yesterday’s event that Blinken initially refered to advancing “the interests of the United States.” But his focus didn’t stay there for long. He immediately pivoted to contending:

“That system is not an abstraction. It helps countries resolve differences peacefully, coordinate multilateral efforts effectively and participate in global commerce with the assurance that everyone is following the same rules. The alternative to a rules-based order is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us. Today, we’ll have an opportunity to discuss key priorities, both domestic and global, so that China can better understand our administration’s intentions and approach.”

Where, however, has been the evidence over…decades that China views the contemporary world as one in which peaceful resolution of differences is standard operating procedure, much less desirable? That multilateral efforts are worth coordinating effectively? That might shouldn’t make right and that China shouldn’t “take all” whenever it can?

Even more important, where is the evidence that China views what globalists like Blinken view as a system to be legitimate in the first place? Indeed, Yang Jiechi, who in real terms outranks China’s foreign minister as the country’s real foreign affairs czar, countered just a few minutes later by dismissing Blinken’s “so-called rules-based international order” as a selfish concoction of “a small number of countries.” He specifically attacked it for enabling the United States in particular to “excercise long-arm jurisdiction and suppression” and “overstretch the national security through the use of force or financial hegemony….”

Shortly afterwards, he added, “I don’t think the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would recognize…that the rules made by a small number of people would serve as the basis for the international order.”

Yang touted as a superior alternative “the United Nations-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.” But of course, even if you swallow this Chinese line (and you shouldn’t), it’s been precisely that system’s universality, and resulting need to pretend the existence of an equally universal consensus on acceptable behavior and good faith on the part of all members, that’s resulted in its general uselessness.

Meanwhile, surely striking Beijing as both cynical and utterly hollow were Blinken’s efforts to justify U.S. criticisms of China’s human rights abuses as threats to “the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.”

After all, whatever any decent person thinks of Beijing’s contemptible crackdown in Hong Kong, arguably genocidal campaigns against the Uighur minority, and brutally totalitarian system generally, what genuinely serious person could believe that the United States, or other democracies, had any intention or capability of halting these practices?

What might have made an actually useful, and credible, impression on the Chinese from a U.S. standpoint would have been blunt declarations that (a) Beijing’s saber-rattling toward (global semiconductor manufacturing leader) Taiwan and sealanes-jeopardizing expansionism in the South China Sea, and cyber-attacks were major threats to American security and prosperity that the United States would keep responding to with all means necessary; and (b) that Washington would continue using a full-range of tariffs and sanctions against predatory Chinese economic practices as long as they continued harming U.S. businesses and their employees. That is, Blinken and Sullivan should have emphasized Chinese actions that hurt and endanger Americans – and against which in the economic sphere, Donald Trump’s policies showed Washington could make a significant difference.

It’s possible that in the private sessions, President Biden’s emissaries will dispense with the grandstanding and zero in on the basics. (Although that shift would raise the question of why this approach was deemed unsuitable for the public.) But the Biden-ites weirdly advertised in advance that China’s economic abuses and the technology development threat it poses wouldn’t be U.S. priorities at any stage of the Alaska meetings.

In the mid-20^th century, American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr popularized (although probably didn’t write) a devotion called the “Serenity Prayer” whose famous first lines read “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I’m hoping someone puts copies into Blinken’s and Sullivan’s briefcases for their flight back from Alaska.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Sorry, but Little Evidence Yet That Trump-onomics Left Blacks Behind

Tags

African Americans, Barack Obama, Biden, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, Economic Policy Institute, Federal Reserve, Labor Department, Labor Force Participation Rate, median household income, median weekly earnings, racial economic justice, racial wealth gap, systemic racism, Tracy Jan, unemployment rate, Washington Post, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

No one should be surprised, much less outraged, if President Biden spends the next year – or four! – blaming the Trump administration for every problem that remains with or emerges in the American economy, or any other dimension of national life. After all, problems do linger from presidency to presidency, and at least as important, it’s the politically expedient road to take — as much history shows.

Less justifiable are journalistic displays of such behavior. But if Tracy Jan’s January 22 Washington Post piece on African Americans and the economy is any indication, not only are four more years of blame-casting in store, but four more years of whoppingly inaccurate and indeed one-sided blame-casting are in store.

Actually, Jan’s article isn’t quite as slanted as the headline, which proclaims “The Trump Economy Left Black Americans Behind.” Readers are told right off the bat, for example, that racial economic gaps have persisted for decades, and that consequently “many black voters” have been “skeptical of the Democratic Party to represent their interests.” The author adds that “unemployment rates for Black people were at a historic low before the coronavirus shutdown, as Trump frequently reminded voters.”

But her dominant themes are that the CCP Virus pandemic has hit black America much harder economically than white, that therefore racial economic disparities have widened during the pandemic, that Trump’s mismanagement of the response was to blame, and that this CCP Virus period failure is enough to warrant labeling his entire term in office a racial economic justice flop.

I’d grade that first claim as largely accurate, as made clear by the impressive evidence Jan cites; the second claim as largely accurate, too; the third claim as more controversial, since it assumes that another President would have fared much better; and the fourth a wild stretch at best.

In fact, even if it is kosher to view 2020 developments as decisive in evaluating the Trump racial economic justice record, and the full range of policies that produced it, it’s important to note that two key indicators showed that the racial economic gap actually narrowed last year – median weekly earnings of full-time workers, and the headline unemployment rate.

Here are the (Labor Department) data for the former, going back to 2009 – the start of the Obama administration, which hasn’t been accused of having a particularly poor racial economic justice record. The numbers are in pre-inflation dollars, and because they come out quarterly, it’s possible to present the figures for the beginnings and ends of the Obama and Trump administrations, and for the CCP Virus period specifically. The ratios between the two are shown as well. 

                               non-hispanic white     non-hispanic black ratio     white-black

2Q 2009:                          757                                 592                             1.28:1

1Q 2017:                          894                                 679                             1.32:1

2Q 2017:                          886                                 689                             1.29:1

1Q 2020:                          980                                 775                             1.26:1

4Q 2020:                       1,007                                 792                             1.27:1

As made clear by the ratio numbers, even counting the pandemic period, weekly pay for the typical black full-time worker rose at a faster rate during the one Trump term than during the two Obama terms. Indeed, during the Obama presidency, the typical black full-time worker fell further behind his or her white counterpart. And between the final pre-virus period last year (the first quarter of 2020) and the final quarter of the year, the gap widened minimally.

The headline unemployment rates that come out monthly (also from the Labor Department) permit an even more precise comparison of the Obama and Trump records, and of the Trump record during the CCP Virus period. And as made clear below, the story they tell (including the ratios presented in the right hand column) isn’t terribly different from that of the weekly pay figures.

                               non-hispanic white     non-hispanic black     white-black

Feb. 09:                              7.6                            13.7                       0.55:1

Jan. 17:                               4.2                             7.4                        0.57:1

Feb. 17:                              4.0                             8.0                        0.50:1

Feb. 20:                              3.5                             6.0                        0.58:1

Dec. 20:                             6.0                             9.9                        0.60:1

The white headline unemployment rate started the Obama years – as the last, post-financial crisis Great Recession was still worsening – at only 55 percent of the rate for blacks. By the final month of his tenure, the white rate had risen to 57 percent of the black rate, meaning that the gap had narrowed slightly. It narrowed significantly faster during the pre-pandemic Trump years, sinces during the former President’s first full month in office, the white rate stood at half the black rate, and hit 58 percent last February, the final full pre-virus month). During the pandemic in 2020, the white-black ratio narrowed even further.

Jan’s narrative is much stronger for data called the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR), which gives a more accurate picture of the national employment scene because it reveals and takes into account how many adult Americans have become so discouraged in their search for work that they’ve just given up. The higher the LFPR (also tracked by the Labor Department), the fewer the number of these discouraged workers and vice versa.

                              non-hispanic white     non-hispanic black    white-black

Feb. 09:                            66.2                            62.9                     1.05:1

Jan. 17:                             62.8                            62.2                     1.01:1

Feb. 17:                            62.8                            62.2                     1.01:1

Feb. 20:                            63.2                            63.1                     1.00:1

Dec. 20:                           61.6                            59.8                      1.03:1

These statistics are released monthly (as part of the overall jobs reports) and, as you can see, tend to change only very slowly. But as shown by the dramatic (by these standards) LFPR drop for blacks, the pandemic period has been a stunning exception to the detriment of African Americans. Until then, though, the Obama and Trump results weren’t notably different, especially considering that the former was President twice as long as the latter.

Lots of other relevant statistics only go through 2019, and they don’t exactly scream “Trump failure,” either. Check out one dataset that’s attracted special, and deserved attention – the racial wealth gap. As noted by two other Post writers last year, “More wealth makes for more a comfortable, safer living. And, more importantly, it is passed on to the next generation. Their parents’ wealth gives many white children a boost at birth, an advantage many of their black peers lack.” And my post on the subject at that time expressed full agreement.

The official wealth gap figures come from the Federal Reserve, and are issued only every three years. But since last June (when I first reported on them), we’ve gotten the results (for median households in inflation-adjusted dollars) for 2019. As shown below, they report that although the Obama years saw considerable backsliding, the Trump years showed even greater progress in narrowing disparities:

                               non-hispanic white     non-hispanic black     white-black 

2010:                               144.3                              17.6                    8.20:1

2013:                               146.4                              13.6                  10.76:1

2016:                               181.9                              18.2                    9.99:1

2019:                               188.2                              24.1                    7.81:1

By contrast, the after-inflation dollar median household income numbers (which measure what’s earned each year versus what’s owned in toto) show pre-virus backsliding under Trump. (Here I’m using Labor Department figures as presented by the Economic Policy Institute — definitely a part of “MAGA World” — because they take into account some recent methodological changes made by the Labor Department.)  

                              non-hispanic white     non-hispanic black     white-to-black

2009:                             67,352                         40,231                      1.67:1

2016:                             69,292                         42,684                      1.62:1

2019:                             76,057                         46,073                      1.65:1

Biden has four years to show his racial economic justice stuff, and all Americans should hope that he makes further progress. But where Jan (and so many others) seem to be expecting a major improvement over his predecessors’ record, it seems just as legitimate to wonder if he’ll wind up matching it – even after the results for CCP Virus-ridden 2020 are in.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Public Knows Best

Tags

Alexis de Tocqueville, Barack Obama, Democracy in America, Financial Times, globalism, Joe Biden, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, Trump

Since the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville came out in 1835 with his classic Democracy in America, insightful foreign analysts have used their outsiders’ perspective to help Americans themselves learn much about their own country.

The Financial Times‘ new editorial about the Never Trump-y globalist approach to foreign policy sure to be taken by a Biden administration continues this tradition – however unwittingly. In the British newspaper’s enthusiasm for a return to a pre-Trump U.S. international strategy, it valuably reminds Americans of how far that globalism has taken these American foreign policy traditionalists from the objectives that should always make up the nation’s overriding priority in world affairs.

The editorial contains the usual mindless paeans to content-free “multilateralism, free trade and an active American role around the world. That is, it regurgitates the idea that America’s best bet for maximal security and prosperity lies in pushing practices and positions that in the end are nothing more than means (in other words, tools, or tactics) that may or may not be useful in the kinds of circumstances that ultimately require countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place – those where a valued objective needs to be achieved.

But what really stands out about the article is its inadvertant acknowledgement that the agenda of the globalist President-elect and his establishmentarian team is not only highly unpopular with the public, but rightly so.

It’s become standard operating procedure for foreign policy professionals and self-appointed thought leaders to bemoan Everyday Americans’ reluctance to recognize the importance of globalism’s devotion to (quoting from the editorial) “restoring US leadership,” playing “global policeman,” and the like, and here the Financial Times writers don’t disappoint.

Much more unusual is their acknowledgement that there exists a “perceived disconnect between the Washington view of US interests and middle America’s more immediate concerns for its physical and economic security.”

A longtime hallmark of globalism has been to equate the two – and insist, in fact, that preserving that physical and economic security simply isn’t possible without globalism’s characteristic energetic international engagement in every dimension imaginable.

To be sure, the editorial’s use of the word “perceived” signals its belief that any such disconnect exists only in the minds of the uninformed or the shortsighted. But its use of the phrase “more immediate” inadvertantly indicates that the disconnect has a basis in reality. For although this wording doesn’t flatly deny the linkage, it carries the suggestion that the nation’s physical and economic security can be achieved to a significant, and even for the time being, an adequate extent without assuming all of globalism’s labors.

Globalists can still (and no doubt will) maintain that, even if true, this minimalist version of success can’t last indefinitely without completing more ambitious tasks – specifically, eliminating the very sources of threats to that American physical and economic security. To which critics of globalism can and should reply that this challenge is so formidable, and therefore costly and risky, that its pursuit risks turning the utopian into an enemy of the good.

Further, given how cloudy the personal crystal balls of even the most brilliant globalists undoubtedly are, and therefore how unpredictable many future challenges and opportunities will inevitably be, a more modest strategy of coping, reacting, muddling through, and avoiding “stupid stuff” (an unusually sound bit of non-globalist advice from globalist former President Barack Obama) logically makes the most sense – and doubly so for a country like the United States that’s already blessed with the kinds of strengths and advantages that can enable a low-risk, low-reward foreign policy to deliver results that are eminently acceptable, especially compared with many of the alternatives.

A final theoretical reason to pursue globalist foreign policies might be called the spiritual case – condemning the low-risk, low-reward alternative as utterly uninspiring. This supposedly lackluster nature matters crucially because, as explained in last Monday’s post, so many globalists seek foreign policy careers and push for their characteristic proposals not to help achieve ostensibly mundane aims like ensuring narrow-bore security and prosperity for their country, but out of loftier hopes to prove America’s historical worth by curing various global ills and slaying various global dragons. As a sympathetic author I quoted wrote of the globalist Biden team, they’re “eager to leave their mark on American foreign policy—and the world.”

But as even the Financial Times editorial writers point out, seeking global goals for there is absolutely no domestic political mandate could be a formula for “sparking a counter-reaction” strong enough to return “Trumpism to the White House in four years time.” All Americans have major stakes in hoping that a new administration learns this lesson sooner rather than later.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Big Productivity Data Surprise

Tags

1990s expansion, Barack Obama, Labor Department, labor productivity, manufacturing, multi-factor productivity, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

In a world that keeps reminding us it’s full of surprises both good and bad, why should official U.S. economic data – even data that rarely make headlines – be any different? So I suppose that I should have expected that the big news in a recent release on the broadest measure of productivity (which I was planning to write on basically in order to start closing the books on the Trump administration’s pre-CCP Virus economic record), turns out to be completely different than I could have foreseen. It has to do with the significantly revised – and worse – picture it draws of the U.S. economy’s performance in the 1990s, and specifically in manufacturing.

The new statistics from the Labor Department cover multi-factor productivity – which as the name implies, tries to measure efficiency according to how much in the way of all different kinds of inputs (like labor, capital, materials, and energy) are needed to generate a unit of output.

These figures attract less attention that the statistics that track the role of labor alone, because they come out much less often than the quarterly labor productivity numbers. But even given how much uncertainty surrounds the entire idea of gauging productivity, their breadth arguably makes them more important. And of course both measures of efficiency matter greatly because it’s been tough for anyone to figure out how a country achieves and maintains true economic health and sustainably rising living standards without strong productivity growth.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the best way to measure any economic trend or development entails comparing performance during similar phases of the economic or business cycle – that is, expansions or contractions. And before the latest manufacturing multi-factor productivity data came out (last Thursday), bringing the story through year-end 2019, here’s how the numbers for the last three expansions stacked up through 2018:

1990s expansion (1991-2000): +23.40%

bubble decade expansion (02-07): +11.74%

last expansion (10-18): -4.84%

So clearly, there’s not only been a big slowdown over time in manufacturing’s multi-factor productivity growth. During the expansion that was still underway through 2018, Americans had actually experienced multi-factor productivity decline.

Last Thursday’s report contained revisions, and although the slowdown story remained intact, look at the results for that 1990s expansion:

1990s expansion (1991-2000): +15.77 percent

bubble decade expansion (02-07): +11.72 percent

last expansion (10-18): -2.55 percent

Manufacturing’s multi-factor productivity growth turns out to have been about a third lower than previously thought. That’s huge! And the better figure for the latest expansion through 2018 doesn’t come close to compensating – especially since last year’s 1.6 percent annual drop dragged the expansion total decrease down to 4.14 percent.

But the revisions also shed new light on the Trump record per se, and in particular on its performance in multi-factor productivity terms versus that of the final three years of the Obama administration. And the Trump record comes out ahead.

Here’s what we knew along these lines before last Thursday’s report came out: The last two Obama years saw a total 3.18 percent drop in manufacturing multi-factor productivity, compared with a fractional 0.07 dip during the first two Trump years.

The new Labor Department revisions improve the Obama performance to a 3.03 percent decrease, but upgraded the Trump performance to a 1.56 percent increase.

And since these numbers now go through the end of 2019, they show that manufacturing multi-factor productivity over the last three Obama years sank by 1.95 percent, and over the first three Trump years declined by 0.11 percent (due to that lousy 2019).

Because as indicated above, measuring productivity growth is such an inexact science, and because the federal government’s career economists generally are so diligent, next year’s multi-factor productivity report could well contain still more surprising revisions. But as for that new dimmer view of the 1990s expansion, so often lauded as an economic near-Golden Age – I suspect it’s here for the duration.