(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Big Missing Reason for the Big Jobs Miss

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, automation, Biden, Build Back Better, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, child care, children, coronavirus, COVID 19, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, immunity, Jobs, jobs report, lockdowns, New Deal, parents, productivity, reopening, school closings, skills, skills gap, teachers, unemployment, unemployment benefits, vaccinations, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As reported widely, the big miss marking last Friday’s official monthly U.S. jobs report (for April) ignited a heated debate among politicians, economists, and many others over why the U.S. economy created so much less new employment that month (266,000 net new positions overall) than generally estimated (in the million neighborhood). At the heart of this debate: Do the many positions employers consistently say they’re struggling to fill amid a continuingly high jobless rate mean that the enhanced unemployment benefits offered throughout the pandemic are discouraging Americans from returning to the workplace?

What I’m not seeing, however, is anyone asking whether this is the right debate. It’s increasingly obvious to me that it’s not.

It’s easy to see why those who answer yes are viewing the issue far too narrowly. Surely some unemployed workers are content to stay at home because they’re currently making more from jobless payments than they were making from their previous employer. That should be clear from the number of businesses raising wages to fill the shortages they’re experiencing. (I’m not saying that these raises are or aren’t long overdue or otherwise deserved; simply that the higher pay and other incentives employers are offering can only be interpreted as companies recognizing that the enhanced benefits have, to a degree, increased the relative attraction of remaining on the employment sidelines versus reentering the job market.)

At the same time, is it reasonable to ignore all the other major reasons for this big labor market anomaly? Like ongoing fears of catching the CCP Virus at the workplace, or the need to stay home with school-age children forced to learn remotely? And don’t forget all the uncertainties created by the sudden stop-start nature of the virus-era lockdowns on the economy.

Yes, a rapid U.S. reopening is taking place now. But all over the world, infection surges are producing new economic curbs. Can you blame workers for wondering whether shortly after they leave the unemployment and benefits rolls, their new workplace will need to close, or cut back on its operations, leaving them in the lurch while they either seek other jobs or file for new benefits?

It’s easy to see that all of these developments and circumstances and uncertainties and outright fears are keeping U.S. labor seemingly scarce. You can also add to the list the likelihood of growing skills mismatches in the American economy – that is, the numbers of jobs requiring more or different skills outgrowing the number of workers possessing these skills, and the numbers of companies replacing low-skill jobs with automation of some kind. Not that the resulting mismatches inevitably will be with the nation forever, or even long term. But they’re unmistakably present now.

So maybe the problem is simply too complicated for government to address? Or we’ll simply need to wait until a stable post-CCP Virus normality returns and labor markets start clearing as usual? It seems reasonable that the purely skills-based mismatches will defy ready solutions – unless America’s education system suddenly gets a lot better at preparing students for the economy they’ll be facing, and businesses get more serious about training and retraining workers, and turn  away from needlessly insisting on lofty credentials for jobs that don’t require anything close.

It’s also possible – though that’s the most I’m willing to say – that spreading automation will eventually help businesses become so much more productive that they’ll be able to turn out more products and services, and that this very success will generate all sorts of new jobs whose appearance can’t be predicted with any precision now. (My reservations stem from concerns that the newest forms of automation, especially artificial intelligence and super-sophisticated robotics, are qualitatively more capable of displacing many more kinds of labor than previous technological breakthroughs.)

As long as the federal government and the states remain willing to provide generous unemployment benefits (and other supports), the resulting situation would at least keep most of the jobless adequately fed, clothed, and housed. That’s a big “if,” though, for reasons economic (e.g., maybe Washington can’t keep borrowing and spending massively much longer?) and social and cultural (e.g., maybe ever longer term unemployment will start to produce more in the way of pathological behavior like drug abuse, violent crime, and worse classroom performance from students from families on the dole?).

Consequently, the more progress can be made returning the unemployed to work, the better, and however difficult the challenge of eliminating the purely or largely skills-based mismatches, Americans and their leaders shouldn’t overlook where policy can make a big difference. And the above analysis indicates that one big difference can be made by the U.S. government, and especially its public health authorities.

Specifically, they need finally to stop their CCP Virus alarmism and energetically spread the word that due to a combination of high and mounting degrees of various kinds of immunity, mass vaccinations, and the highly varying nature of the virus’ infectiousness and lethality, normality is unquestionably returning. Further, and crucially, although certain groups of Americans – like the elderly, and those with certain underlying medical conditions – are still too vulnerable and must be protected with special measures, the Biden administration and its health experts should acknowledge that nearly all others can safely return to normal activities because the already low odds of even getting the disease, much less suffering significantly from it, have now plunged to rock bottom.

In other words, Washington should announce that work places are safe to return to, bricks and mortars businesses are now safe to patronize, in-person schooling is just fine for both students and teachers and administrative staff alike, (thus solving the childcare dilemma), and that lockdowns have become a thing of the past.

Instead, of course, you’ve got a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that seems stuck in hyper- (and increasingly unscientific) caution territory, not to mention decimating its own message about vaccines’ effectivness by admitting almost no behavior payoff whatever; and a President and leading figures of his own party continuing to wear facemasks even in settings that “the science” had made crystal clear are as safe as they can be for the fully vaccinated.

To top if off, the President’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, has just taken pains to speculate that Americans may start wearing facemasks to guard against all sorts of respiratory diseases on a seasonal basis. Given this administration’s record so far, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched to worry that new CDC guidelines along these lines, plus recommendations to resume some forms of social distancing, and even new business curbs, could quickly follow if this kind of Chicken Little-ism isn’t stopped. For now, though, no wonder so many Americans are still scared stiff of the virus.

It’s becoming more and more common to compare President Biden and his ambitious plans for “Building the U.S. Economy Back Better” with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs.  (See, e.g., here and here.) But it’s hard to imagine Mr. Biden succeeding to any lasting degree if his CCP Virus policy doesn’t start reflecting one of FDR’s most and most deservedly famous insights: “[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Biden Keeps Following The Trump on China Trade

Tags

Biden, China, Donald Trump, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Katherine Tai, Phase One, tariffs, Trade, trade war

“China is the big winner of Trump’s ‘phase-one’ trade deal with Beijing. True to form, [then President Donald] Trump is getting precious little in return for the significant pain and uncertainty he has imposed on our economy, farmers, and workers.”

– Candidate Joe Biden, January 15, 2020

 

“President Joe Biden’s chief trade negotiator pledged to build off the deal with China reached under Donald Trump and said that….[the] Biden administration respects the continuity of the so-called phase-one agreement….”

– Bloomberg.com, May 5, 2021

 

(Sources: “Biden Slams Trump-China Trade Deal as Lacking on Key Disputes,” by Jennifer Epstein, Bloomberg.com, January 15, 2020, Joe Biden Blasts Trump Phase One U.S.-China Trade Deal – Bloomberg & “Biden Trade Chief Pledges to Build Off Trump’s China Agreement, by Eric Martin, Ibid., May 5, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-05/biden-trade-chief-pledges-to-build-off-trump-s-china-agreement?srnd=economics-vp)

Making News: Podcast On-Line of National Radio Interview on Biden & China…& More!

Tags

allies, Biden, China, Japan, Making News, Taiwan, tariffs, Ted Galen Carpenter, The John Batchelor Show

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of the podcast of my latest interview on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show. The segment, which aired last night, can be found here, and focused on the Biden administration’s surprising (to me, anyway) decision to keep in place all of former President Trump’s towering and sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods.

In addition, my good friend (and incisive foreign policy analyst) Ted Galen Carpenter quoted my views on the U.S.-Japan security relationship in this recent blog post. Indeed, Ted’s piece shows that the likelihood of Tokyo helping the U.S. military meaingfully in a shooting war over Taiwan is even dimmer than I had previously written.

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Whose Trade Representative?

Tags

America First, Biden, Donald Trump, Katherine Tai, middle class, positive sumn, supply chainsi, tariffs, Trade, trade talks, U.S. Trade rep, USTR, zero sum, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since her appointment as President Biden’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), Katherine Tai has become known as a master of the “noncommittal interview style,” steadfastly remaining in the realm of lofty generalities “but never getting pinned down on specifics.” I’d add that this description has characterized her other public statements, too.

Last week, though, appearing on Marketplace radio, Tai appeared to let her guard slip – and in ways indicated that even moderate American liberals like her have turned as thoroughly, and in my view, worrisomely, ambivalent about the main purposes of U.S. trade policy as their more progressive counterparts.

As I’ve written, by the late-1990s, this ambivalence has long been a major obstacle to turning U.S. trade policy from an exercise in offshoring that had been devastating the productive heart of the American economy and its workforce into a drive to boost domestic employment and production. For although progressives agreed that trade policies were harming American workers, they also tended to claim that it had been harming their third world counterparts, too – which was critically important given the tight focus of pre-Trump U.S. Presidents and their allies in Congress on expanding trade with very low income countries.

As a result, their critiques of trade policy were continually debunked by convincing evidence that the era of rapid globalization had actually been a major boon to much of the “global south.” (See, e.g., here.) And they continually refused to acknowledge that, at least for some undefinable period of time, changing trade flows to channel more of the benefits to Americans would entail hard choices that came at the expense of developing countries. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t until a full-throated champion of America First-oriented trade policies emerged as a major force in American politics that public pressure finally brought the offshoring-focus of trade diplomacy to a resounding halt.

To their credit, early on in the last presidential campaign, candidate Joe Biden and his key aides recognized the importance of prioritizing of domestic interests – including worker interests – and their endorsement of Trump-ian economic nationalism has been most recently expressed in the President’s promise that “In everything we do, we will aim to make life better, safer, and easier for working families in America.”

The Biden administration’s record to date has been more mixed than its words – e.g., retaining every single dollar of Donald Trump’s China tariffs so far, but defining secure supply chains as including production nodes that are not only overseas, but locaed in many countries that haven’t remotely earned the designation of “trusted suppliers.” But it’s nonetheless revealing that even this position has some prominent globalization cheerleaders accusing the new President of neanderthal protectionism.

That’s why it was so surprising to see this exchange in Tai’s Marketplace interview:

[INTERVIEWER] “…l want to go back to that speech from a week or so ago that you gave about trade policy and environmental policy. And one of the things you aid was: ‘My job is to push for trade reforms that translate into meaningful change in the lives of farmers, ranchers, factory workers, parents and children, not just in the United States, but around the world.’ And I wonder whether you thought twice before you wrote that and you said that because to some in this country, that’s going to clang a little bit.

“Tai: Really, why is that?

[INTERVIEWER]: “Well, I think at this moment where we are a deeply polarized society, the idea that the United States trade representative would be worrying about workers, farmers, children and students in countries other than the United States might be problematic for some.

“Tai:  We don’t exist in a vacuum. And, you know, all you need to do is take a look at a map. We are all inextricably linked to each other and we are sharing this planet as a home in terms of climate and COVID-19. These are collective challenges, and we only get through them if we can get through it collectively.”

As I wrote previously, the point to keep in mind is not that global win-win solutions to trade problems are impossible to conceive, or should be ruled out of hand. The point to keep in mind is that someone who starts out in a negotiation over trade (which will be a big part of Tai’s job) or anything else assuming the best of all possible worlds doesn’t seem likely to recognize when the inevitable real world complications start intruding.

This kumbaya attitude shapes up as a tactical disaster for another reason, too: Tai can be sure that any international interlocutors will be focused like the proverbial laser beam on maximizing their own countries, not on achieving some hypothetical positive sum result. If that’s her starting point, it’s all too easy to imagine that she’d accept a final outcome much closer to other countries’ preferences than to America’s.

To be clear, I’m not troubled by Tai’s remark because I think she’ll be making any of the big calls on U.S. trade policy.  USTRs rarely do, and she simply doesn’t have the stature or the personal connection with the President.  I’m troubled by her remark because Tai’s many years as a Congressional staffer have surely taught her never to say anything that clashes with her boss’s official line. If as careful a bureaucratic operator as the new USTR doesn’t seem to understand that she’s the Trade Representative of the United States, not the world at large, maybe Mr. Biden needs to be reminded of his real job definition, too?

Im-Politic: Why Herd Immunity Could be Really Close

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, herd immunity, Im-Politic, reopening, Wuhan virus

How great to report potentially great news about the CCP Virus pandemic! According to numbers recently put out by seemingly serious people who study diseases and their spread, herd immunity – AKA, The Promised Land or The Other Side – may be tantalizingly close. Like five weeks away close.

Just to remind, here’s how the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define herd immunity:

“A situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. Even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community. Also known as herd immunity.”

And herd immunity is important for more than pure public health reasons. Although the professionals still disagree on many of the specifics (including on exact herd immunity threshholds for a novel virus), they do agree that the greater to percentage of those immune, the closer society and the economy can move to their pre-virus normals.

Even so, the recent data support considerable optimism. For example, let’s say that if 70 percent of Americans become immune, the normality return can greatly accelerate. That 70 percent figure matters because it’s been used by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and President Biden’s chief medical adviser. And let’s bear in mind that the total U.S. population now is estimated by the Census Bureau at 330.23 million.

We start with a solid figure – the number of Americans who have been fully vaccinated. As of today, the CDC says it was 94.77 million as of yesterday. (Here’s the home page for the agency’s “Data Tracker.”)  As for reported virus cases, the same agency says they total 31.85 million as of yesterday. Take away the nearly 569,000 fatalities (a slightly less solid number because of differences across the nation in defining virus-caused deaths, among other problems), that makes 31.08 million Americans who have been reported infected and have survived. 

Now we get more speculative. Because so many of those infected have displayed no symptoms, it’s clear that the number of Americans who have actually been infected and survived is much higher. How much higher? One recent study pegged the figure at 71 million – but that was in February, when reported infections stood at 26.7 million. Let’s assume that the 71 million figure is reasonable, and also that the number of total infections as of yesterday remains 2.66 times higher than the number of reported infections – just as in February. If true, 82.67 million Americans have caught the virus and survived.

Add this number to the total of fully vaccinated Americans, and you get 177.44 million who are genuinely immune. That number in turn represents 53.73 percent of the country’s population. And it’s not all that far from the 70 percent herd immunity figure.

How soon can it be expected? According to the CDC, the number of fully vaccinated Americans is increasing daily by a seven-day average of 1.38 million as of April 20 (the latest figured). So if that rate holds, even if 82.67 million figure for Americans who have become naturally immune stays exactly the same, getting from the 177.44 million total number of immune Americans to the roughly 231 million needed to reach the 70 percent herd immunity figure would take just under 39 days. That is, herd immunity would arrive in very early June.

But because the number of naturally immune Americans will surely increase, rather than staying the same, herd immunity would surely come even sooner.

The 70 percent herd immunity figure, however, isn’t the only one suggested by Fauci and other specialists. As per the above linked CNN post, he’s also used 85 percent. That target would require a total immune population of 280.70 million, meaning that the United States currently has 103.26 million to go. If the numbers of those fully vaccinated keep growing at 1.38 million per day, and the number of those naturally immune or recovered stays at 82.67 million (which, again, it won’t), then 85 percent herd immunity is about 75 days away – meaning that it would arrive around mid-July.

It’s entirely possible that vaccine resistance could slow the above rate of vaccinations (it’s been falling since early April, the CDC data show), and therefore herd immunity’s attainment. But ironically, one of the biggest wild cards may be Fauci himself. As reported here, he admits that since the pandemic’s early days, he “had slowly but deliberately been moving the [herd immunity] goal posts [higher]. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”

Indeed, during that interview, which took place in late December, Fauci said that the real herd immunity goal may be close to 90 percent. That would mean that just under 120 million more Americans would need to become immune somehow. Using the above (again, very conservative) methodology would push back herd immunity arrival to just under three months from now, or late July.

Of course, the bad news is that Fauci could persuade President Biden and the rest of America’s political leaders that the herd immunity number should be raised still higher. The good news is that even he can’t move it past 100 percent – can he?

Im-Politic: Can Biden Really Solve the “Root Causes” Behind His Border Crisis?

Tags

Biden, Border Crisis, border security, CAFTA, Central America, Central America Free Trade Agreement, Colbert I. King, Cold War, Donald Trump, El Salvador, foreign aid, George W. Bush, globalism, Guatemala, Honduras, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Jorge Castaneda, Kamala Harris, Lawence E. Harrison, migrants, Northern Triangle, race to the bottom, Trade, Washington Post

One of the time-honored practices – and myths – behind globalist U.S. foreign policies has been its faith that turmoil in various parts of the world that allegedly threatens American interests can be either eliminated or reduced to manageable levels with enough foreign aid. The idea is that such assistance will address the social and economic problems thought to be mainly to blame for the instability. So it’s no surprise that the globalist Biden administration has decided that aid programs are the keys to bringing immigration from Central America under control – though not of course right away.

As stated by Vice President Kamala Harris upon being tasked by President Biden to oversee U.S. effort to turn the counties of the region’s “Northern Triangle” into places whose populations won’t be determined to leave, the United States “must address the root causes that cause people to make the trek” northward.

That’s why I sure hope she reads Colbert I. King’s column in Tuesday’s Washington Post before she rolls up her sleeves too far. For as the author notes, the Biden administration plan to turn the Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) from clearly failed states into (reasonable) success stories isn’t exactly new in its essentials.

And especially in recent years, when conditions in the region ostensibly worsened dramatically, and therefore fueled especially big migrants flows, there’s been no shortage of U.S. aid, especially considering the tiny size of the three economies.

As King details,

“Congress appropriated more than $3.6 billion to fund a Strategy for Engagement in Central America program between 2016 and 2021. The money was supposed to strengthen rule of law, improve the administration of justice, promote economic prosperity, prevent violence and combat gangs, and empower youth and women.

“>In fiscal 2021 alone, U.S. funding amounted to $505.9 million.

“>Between 2013 and 2018, The U.S. Agriculture Department allocated $407 million to Central America to provide school meals, nutritional programs for women, infants and children, and to train and provide technical assistance to improve agricultural productivity.

“>The Obama administration asked for money to help the region in fiscal 2016, and Congress appropriated $750 million, requiring the countries to improve border security, combat corruption and address human rights concerns.”

Then the author – properly – proceeds to ask “What happened to it all?” And what can the Biden administration do to make sure that the $4 billion it plans to spend in the region will work any better if Congress approves this sum?

Moreover, the case against more Central America aid as a Border Crisis game changer is actually stronger than King describes. Because Washington has not only been pouring money into the region for decades. It’s also granted these three Central American countries (and their regional neighbors) tariff cuts and other trade-related assistance aimed at enabling them to export their way to prosperity.

Indeed, as then President George W. Bush declared while lobbying for passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) – which was eventually expanded to include the Dominican Republic,

“People have got to understand that by promoting policy that will help generate wealth in Central America, we’re promoting policy that will mean someone is less–more likely to stay at home to find a job. If you’re concerned about immigration to this country, then you must understand that CAFTA and the benefits of CAFTA will help create new opportunity in Central American countries, which will mean someone will be able to find good work at home, somebody will be able to provide for their family at home, as opposed to having to make the long trip to the United States. CAFTA is good immigration policy as well as good trade policy.”

Critics can reasonably argue that these U.S. programs failed to achieve their immigration aims because they were poorly designed. On the aid front, it’s true that too much of the assistance provided by the United States during the Cold War was military or other security assistance that largely helped corrupt governments repress their own people – and fight rebels labeled as tools of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

When it comes to trade, globalist U.S. Presidents did Central America no favors, either. For CAFTA simply plunged the region into a frantic race to the bottom in wages and worker safety that had been sparked by the decision to free up trade indiscriminately with all the very low-income countries (including China, India, and Bangladesh) that also produced the apparel products that have represented Central America’s best hope for prospering via globalization.

At the same time, significant U.S. assistance for Central America continued after the Cold War’s end, and more was targeted at economic development. And the Biden administration has said nothing about U.S. trade policy reforms that actually would give the Northern Triangle – or the rest of Central America for that matter, or Mexico – major legs up on non-Western Hemisphere competitors.

All of which could support the conclusion that no amount of aid or trade breaks can make Central America successful. A globalist administration will be particularly loathe to accept this admittedly depressing proposition, but there’s abundant evidence in its favor. The work of development economist Lawrence E. Harrison, to cite one leading example, has compellingly argued that some counties – and entire regions – simply don’t have what it takes to achieve economic success because of the cultures they’ve evolved.

At the same time, as my friend – and noted political scientist and former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda – has argued, the Central American economies are so small that enough smartly spent U.S. money might be able to overcome even these deep-rooted obstacles.

I can’t say that I know the answer. But the analyses of King, Harrison, and Castaneda all point to the overarching conclusion that the kind of business-as-usual version of the address-the-root-causes of Central America’s failings being contemplated by the Biden administration can’t possibly stem the migrant flow. Moreover, until genuinely promising plans are developed, there will be no substitute for re-securing the border by reinstating the type of Trump-ian controls that minimize the strength of the U.S. magnets that influence migrant flows as surely as the problems of sending countries.

 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Grave Doubts Still Justified About Japan’s Reliability Against China

Tags

alliances, allies, Asia-Pacific, Biden, burden sharing, China, deterrence, globalism, Indo-Pacific, Japan, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, Yoshihide Suga

The more I read about last week’s summit in Washington, D.C. between President Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the more I’m reminded of that expression ”putting lipstick on a pig.” For far from the unalloyed success described by the Biden administration and so many of the press accounts (see, e.g., here and here) the results of the meeting can easily be seen as just the latest sign that, from the U.S. standpoint, the so-called alliance between the two countries still can’t be counted on to pass what must be the acid test of such relationships – and at a time when Tokyo’s support looks more important than ever.

The reason Japan’s contribution counts can be summed up in one word: Taiwan. As known by RealityChek readers and many others, the island has emerged in recent years as the world’s leader in the knowhow needed to produce the world’s most advanced semiconductors. These devices of course are not only the electronic brains of all those wonderful high tech devices we all enjoy using – and need. Microchips also control most of the highest tech weapons in America’s military arsenal, and the ever more capable versions that will be turned out by factories (or “fabs”) on Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, in South Korea, will power the cutting edge weapons that will determine victory and defeat on the increasingly electronic battlefields of the future.

If Taiwan was located, say, in the Caribbean, its semiconductor manufacturing leadership mightn’t be such an urgent problem. But it’s sitting in the South China Sea a scant 100 miles from China, which has not only become a powerful rival to U.S. interests in Asia and all over the world, but keeps sounding increasingly determined to take control of the island – which it regards as an outlaw province.

Once upon a time (when Taiwan wasn’t nearly so important), the United States could be sure of deterring a Chinese invasion or military operations aimed at resting major concessions from Taiwan’s government, or of actually defeating such Chinese actions. Now, though, as RealityChek reported years ago, the U.S. nuclear edge needed for high confidence deterrence is gone, and it’s widely agreed that the non-nuclear military gap has narrowed considerably as well – especially for a conflict in China’s backyard.

Which is where Japan (and other U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific – now more often called the Indo-Pacific region) come in. It would greatly increase the odds of both U.S. deterrence, and victory if need be, if Washington could count on Tokyo to fight alongside America’s military if a war over Taiwan heaven forbid broke out. This is the acid test I was talking about up top. Any military planning for war needs to know for sure what assets it can absolutely rely on when the shooting starts and what assets are only “maybes.” And the results of the Biden-Suga summit left way too many maybes.

It’s true that Japan has added significantly to its military strength in recent years – though such a wealthy country can afford to spend much more. It’s also true that Japan has agreed to take on more responsibilities for preserving security in that Indo-Pacific region. Moreover, the joint declaration issued by the two governments after the summit specifically mentioned “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and [encouraging] the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.” Similar recent statements by Japanese officials during Mr. Biden’s term are widely considered breakthroughs in terms of Tokyo’s recognition of the situation’s gravity.

Suga actually added in remarks to reporters following the summit that “We agreed to oppose any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China Seas [where Taiwan is located], and intimidation of others in the region.” So that sounds like a somewhat more assertive description of Japanese intentions on Taiwan.

But “oppose” could mean all sorts of things – a stern diplomatic note, a few sanctions. Maybe a very stern note. Or lots of sanctions. Neither Suga nor any other Japanese leader has said “If China attacks Taiwan, we’re sending in our troops, too.” In other words, uncertainty over Japan still leaves American war planners with a big problem.

And much more is involved here than my own personal skepticism. As noted here, even if Japan ultimately agrees only to provide logistical and other forms of non-combat support to U.S. forces fighting over Taiwan, itse home islands would run major risks. For due to China’s “ability to launch missiles to virtually anywhere in Japan,” Beijing could target “bases that the U.S. military would rely on for executing operations” and inflict major casualties on Japan.

Further, Tokyo’s distinct reluctance to voice full-throated condemnations of Chinese human rights violations and even atrocities for fear of disrupting lucrative economic ties raises even stronger doubts as to Japan’s willingness to participate in a full-fledged war with its leading trade partner. Indeed, in a post-summit event, Suga repeated another recent mainstay of Japanese diplomatic rhetoric:  “[W]e must work to establish a stable and constructive relationship with China.”

Given these considerations, it should be apparent that words alone simply can’t resolve legitimate doubts about Japan’s real intentions or likely responses to outright Chinse aggression anywhere in the region except for its own territory. 

I’m a foreign policy realist – someone who emphasizes the inevitably central role played by unsentimental, frankly selfish, judgments about concrete interests in all countries’ formulation of their foreign and defense policies. So I’m the last person to complain about Japan’s continuing caution and hedging as such. I can think of many compelling reasons for Japan to become more gung ho – e.g., does Tokyo really want to see China’s thug totalitarian government as the kingpin of its own neighborhood?. But this is a judgement for the Japanese people and their leaders to make.

Japan’s fence-sitting obviously also represents a challenge for American diplomacy, and President Biden has made improving cooperation with allies a centerpiece of his foreign policy. But major skepticism is justified as to whether he and his aides can turn Japan into a military ally worthy of the name, since their globalist emphases on alliances can too easily turn into prizing smooth ties for their own sake, as opposed to firm insistence on greater burden- and cost-sharing that’s bound to ruffle feathers at least in the short term. In fact, signs of such alliance fetishizing have already appeared in administration agreement to ease pressures on both Japan and South Korea for paying the costs of hosting U.S. forces clearly essential to these own countries’ defense.

And in this vein, this foot-dragging by Japan (and most other ostensibly staunch U.S. allies, too) raises a crucial question for Americans. Should they keep allowing their leaders to keep prodding and cajoling these countries in the hope that someday they might demonstrate plausible reliability?  Or should they conclude that the meager results of literally decades of prodding and cajoling mean that the success that’s so desperately needed should be written off as a pipe dream? As shown by rising tensions over Taiwan in particular, the clock is ticking – and quickly.

Im-Politic: Biden’s Big George Floyd Fail

Tags

African Americans, Biden, Chauvin trial, criminal justice, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Im-Politic, Jimmy Carter, law enforcement, police, police brutality, Soviet Union, systemic racism

Back in 1978, President Jimmy Carter felt he had a big problem. He wanted to use an upcoming speech to send a major message to Moscow about the future of his policy toward the Soviet Union, but his main foreign policy advisers were split. His White House national security chief urged him to take a tougher line across-the-board, but his Secretary of State backed a more nuanced approach.

According to some of his aides, he finally dealt with the problem by taking the preparatory memos each of them wrote, stapling them together, and using the resulting contradictory document as the basis of the address. Not surprisngly, Carter simply succeeded in sowing confusion throughout the nation and around the world, and reinforcing a growing perception that he was a fatally indecisive leader.

What really happened is still up in the air. (See here for the background and a good description of some of the major conflicting accounts). But I dredge up this episode because President Biden’s remarks yesterday about the verdict in the “George Floyd trial” struck me as equally incoherent and troubling – at best.

It seems clear that the President was trying to walk an unquestionably fine line. On the one hand, he was trying to make the case that although former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd during an arrest, serious racial problems still plagued American law enforcement. On the other hand, he obviously recognized the dangers of describing all or even most or even lots of policemen and women as disgraceful racists in whom the nation – and especially minority Americans – should place no trust.

But it should also be clear that Mr. Biden’s apparent balancing act merited a solid “F.” He did state that “most men and women who wear the badge serve their communities honorably” and even that exceptions were “few.”

Those contentions, though, were exceptions themselves, for much more of the text consisted of a description of American law enforcement that not only included the systemic racism charge, but that accused the system literally of waging war on minorities.

What else can be concluded from his contentions about “the fear so many people of color live with every day when they go to sleep at night and pray for the safety of themselves and their loved ones”?

And about the need to “ensure that Black and brown people or anyone…don’t fear the interactions with law enforcement, that they don’t have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life. They don’t have to worry about whether their sons or daughters will come home after a grocery store run or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park or just sleeping at home”?

And about the imperative of “acknowledging and confronting, head on, systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing and in our criminal justice system more broadly”?

Let’s leave aside for now the strong evidence that African Americans “want police to spend same amount of or more time in their area” – a share that stood at 81 percent according to a Gallup survey last summer. (For some other polling data powerfully challenging the systemic racism narrative, see this post.)

The most charitable conclusion possible is that Mr. Biden believes that this criminal justice system is systemically (meaning “deliberately?” “pervasively”? Both?) racist even though most of its foot soldiers – who interact with minorities the most often by far – somehow aren’t. That’s not exactly a resounding testament to his reasoning or analytical skills, or to his common sense.

Cynics could understandably decide that the President chose to pay a bit of lip service to cops before aggressively embracing the systemic racism school of thought in hopes of making everyone from politically moderate voters to his own party’s far Left happy.

And what’s to be made of a President who demonstrates absolutely no awareness that the views he’s expressing have little grounding in reality?

Near the end of his talk, Mr. Biden rightly warned about the threat posed by “those who will seek to exploit the raw emotions of the moment — agitators and extremists who have no interest in social justice; who seek to carry out violence, destroy property, to fan the flames of hate and division; who will do everything in their power to stop this country’s march toward racial justice. We can’t let them succeed.”

No sane person could accuse the President of supporting or fostering most of these outrages. But when it comes to “fanning the flames of hate and division,” his George Floyd remarks came uncomfortably close.

Im-Politic: Slandering the U.S. on Climate Change

Tags

Associated Press, Biden, Bloomberg.com, China, climate change, Conference of the Parties, COP26, Donald Trump, European Union, greenhouse gases, Im-Politic, Leaders Summit on Climate, Paris climate accord

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that it’s as typical for us news/policy bloggers as it is for journalists to start the day expecting to write on a certain topic only to change course abruptly upon encountering a development that SIMPLY CAN’T WAIT.

Especially with a big U.S.-organized global summit on climate change set for later this week, that’s the category into which I’d place this new Bloomberg.com post titled “Biden Wants the U.S. to Lead on Climate Action, But the World Needs Proof.” And if the header didn’t make the portrayal of the United States as a preachy climate change hypocrite clear enough, the subhead informs readers that “after policy reversals and years of inaction, the country has a wide credibility gap to overcome.”

Predictably, moreover, authors place all the blame on you-know-who:

“The Biden administration [will] have to overcome the major trust deficit run up by former President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the Paris agreement and dismantled domestic policies key to driving the the country’s promised emissions cuts. The past four years revealed how tenuous pledges of U.S government action can be.” {Note:  This Associated Press report made much the same point.] 

Whatever you think about the merits of the issue, there’s no question that climate change wasn’t exactly a Trump priority, that he weakened (but did not eliminate entirely) important Obama-era regulations aimed at slowing it, and ran a very fossil-fuel-friendly administration. Moreover, the former President displayed no interest whatever in meeting, much less beating, the Paris agreement goals set by Barack Obama’s presidency.

But is that the real measure of U.S. credibility on climate change? Only if you believe that words matter more than deeds. For the latest available (2018) data show that, by two key measures, America has actually done a better job  restraining greenhouse gas emissions than many of the main Paris accord signatories.

If the chart below looks familiar, it’s because I used it in a post near the beginning of last year. 

But it’s as important as ever. Because it shows that, on an absolute basis (the left half of the chart), U.S. emissions dipped slightly in 2009, and then stayed basically flat since (including in Trump years 2017 and 2018). That’s actually better than it sounds, however, because the US economy grew the entire time, meaning that more economic activity didn’t lead to more emissions. And growth picked up a fair amount during those Trump years.

As for other Paris signatory countries, China’s rapid growth has only slowed – but the Chinese economy has slowed, too, so that doesn’t necessarily signal any carbon efficiency gains.   

Emissions from 28 of the European Union (EU) countries, began falling in absolute terms in 1990, and have consistently been lower than America’s. (Earlier results aren’t presented.) But the EU’s economic growth also has been considerably lower than America’s throughout this period, so lower emissions no doubt are mainly due to that steady fall in overall economic activity. (You can compare the growth rates of any countries or groups of countries by playing around with this interactive feature on the World Bank’s website.)   

On a per capita basis (he right half of the chart), we see major U.S. progress since about 2000, and it’s continued with minor fluctuations through 2018 (an especially good US economic growth year).  In fact, the United States has performed better than the world as a whole since 1990.   

EU 28 progress on a per capita basis has been slower than the US’, but better than the world’s as a whole.  And China’s per capita emissions soared till about 2010, before starting to level off.

Does the chart show that the United States is doing enough to mitigate climate change? Nope. Does it mean that lots of skepticism isn’t justified about President Biden’s ability to turn his climate change agenda into U.S. policy? Of course not.

But it does make clear that it’s simply off the wall to claim that Mr. Biden will be chairing his own climate change conference, and participating in a United Nations conference this November, as head of a country with a climate credibility gap, or anything climate-y to feel sheepish about. Indeed, pushing that line can only undercut the President’s message, and do far more to retard climate progress, not spur it. 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden’s Real Afghanistan Mistake

Tags

Afghanistan, Biden, border security, Democrats, Donald Trump, jihadism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, September 11, Tajikistan, Taliban, terrorism

Isn’t President Biden supposed to be a foreign policy whiz? If so, why has he just stuck the United States with the worst of all possible worlds with his announcement Wednesday that all American military forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by September 11?

Mr. Biden’s big mistake isn’t promising to pull all the troops out by a date certain. It’s definitely a mistake, for all the (obvious) reasons noted by critics. Specifically, it tells the fanatic Taliban insurgents that if they just wait a few more months, the only obstacle they’d have left to taking over the country (and gaining the capacity to give the world’s jihadists all the kinds of advantages they enjoyed from the support of a sympathetic sovereign state, a la before the first September 11) will be the current, clearly ineffective Afghan government and its military. (America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO – have stated that they’re withdrawing their troops, too.)

But as I’ve written previously (see, e.g., here), the reestablishment of a national terrorist base in Afghanistan need not expose the United States to devastating terrorist attacks once again. The reason? Because “fighting ’em there so we don’t face ’em here” has always been sounder in theory than in reality. After all, “fighting ’em there” means chasing extremist groups around the Middle East for as long as that completely dysfunctional region keeps producing them – i.e., a very long time. 

At the same time, I’ve continued, there’s always been a way to prevent “facing ’em here” – by more effectively securing America’s borders, so that they can’t get “here” to begin with.

And here’s where we come to the President’s biggest mistake: Not only is he pulling the troops out of Afghanistan without improving border security. He’s pulling them out while substantially weakening border security with his raft of Open Borders-friendly immigration policies. So jihadists soon will both be free to resume organizing and training in Afghanistan and face a much easier challenge slipping back into the United States.

What he should be doing instead (and Donald Trump didn’t emphasize this crucial combination, either) is what I’ve been recommending for years: Pursuing the goal of keeping the Taliban off balance by keeping small contingents of U.S. and allied special forces units in Afghanistan to conduct harassment and disruption operations while putting into place the tough measures needed to make America’s borders truly secure. Once the latter have been completed, the American soldiers could safely leave. This strategy is much more promising than any tried to date because not only is controlling the Middle East intrinsically difficult – at best – but controlling America’s own borders is clearly far easier.

Interestingly, Mr. Biden himself clearly recognizes that the U.S. military’s Afghanistan mission hasn’t been accomplished completely enough to justify a complete withdrawal. That’s why he promised to “reorganize our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region to prevent reemergence of terrorists — of the threat to our homeland from over the horizon.” and to “hold the Taliban accountable for its commitment not to allow any terrorists to threaten the United States or its allies from Afghan soil.”

What’s missing so far, though, is any explanation of how he’ll “refine” America’s strategy “to monitor and disrupt significant terrorist threats” that could emanate from that country. The monitoring part arguably could work, given the remote surveillance capabilities of the U.S. military and intelligence community. But the disruption part? Without U.S. troops on the ground? Good luck with that, along with holding the Taliban accountable in any meaningful way. For the nearby bases that would be needed to host the American force that the President presumably believes would be on call to do the disrupting etc – at least in a timely way – simply aren’t available.

(Actually, there’s one intriguing possibility: Tajikistan, which borders the eastern Afghanistan region where jihadists have been strongest. But as the afore-linked Politico article notes, it’s “heavily dependent on Russia economically,” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s cooperation would be needed. Since its own ill-fated Afghanistan war decades ago, it’s been obvious that Moscow is also strongly opposed to any increase in Islamic extremists’ presence near its own southern borders. But the President and the rest of his party seem to equate any cooperation with Russia with – alleged – Trump-style collusion, so that option seems to be out unless his party’s Never Putin-ers relent.)

As the Politico piece observes, Mr. Biden is putting all of America’s Afghanistan chips on what national security types call an “offshore counterterror approach” – and has long advocated this strategy since his vice presidential days. What’s supremely ironic is that the best offshore counterterror approach by far has always entailed focusing tightly on the entirely feasible task of securing America’s own borders – and that the President has been bent on achieving exactly the opposite.