(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump Metals Tariffs Coverage has Just (Again) Been Exposed as Largely Fake News

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ABC News, aluminum, Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, durable goods, Financial Times, Jobs, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, Marketwatch.com, metals, metals-using industries, NBC News, PBS, private sector, Reuters, steel, tariffs, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, Washington Post, {What's Left of) Our Economy

In case you still think that President Trump’s charges of fake news-peddling by the national news media are fake news themselves, consider this: For the second time in two months, if you decided to hold your breath till you found a Mainstream Media item reporting that the America’s metals-using industries have been major job-creation leaders, not laggards, you’d have died.

Such omissions are especially important because since the Trump administration began imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports (in March), the media has been filled not only with predictions of massive employment and production losses in metals-using manufacturing (because the prices of two noteworthy inputs for these industries was bound to rise), but with accounts of actual economic damage that numerous companies in these sectors have already suffered. (See here and here for just two examples.) 

Last month, I noted that, for all these accounts, authoritative government data (through June) showed that the metals-using industries’ performance by both measures had both generally improved, and had indeed both generally improved more than job creation and output in the rest of manufacturing.

Since then, more steel and aluminum tariffs were put in place (mainly because some major U.S. trade partners initially exempted from the tariffs were subjected to the levies). And what did we learn from the newest jobs report, which was released last Friday, and took the story through July (on a preliminary basis)? That the metals-using industries continue to set the national job-creation pace for the entire economy, not simply for manufacturing.

Here are the percentage gains for employment in some major sectors of the economy from April (the first month during which any metals tariffs effects would have been felt) through July except for the industries noted:

entire private sector: +0.53 percent

overall manufacturing: +0.73 percent

durable goods: +0.96 percent

fabricated metals products: +1.10 percent

non-electrical machinery: +1.43 percent

automotive vehicles & parts: +1.06 percent

household appliances (thru June): -0.63 percent

aerospace products & parts (thru June): +1.05 percent

Unfortunately, it was not possible to learn any of this from America’s leading news organizations. For these figures were completely ignored.

To their credit, some leading media mentioned that Trump tariffs and trade war fears in general seemed to be having no effect on manufacturing job creation overall despite industry’s exposure in principle to the fall-out. These included the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Financial Times, CNN, ABC News, and NBC News. Yet the metals-using sectors were never mentioned.

As for The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and CBS News, they made no connection of the tariff/trade war-manufacturing job connection whatever.

And several news organizations actually tried to rationalize the unexpected results. Reuters, for example, claimed that “With manufacturing payrolls increasing by the most in seven months, the moderation in hiring reported by the Labor Department on Friday likely does not reflect the rising trade tensions between the United States and other nations including China.”

According to PBS, “Economists say it is too early to tell whether the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum are having a significant effect on manufacturing jobs.”

Bloomberg and Marketwatch.com weren’t as disingenuous, but still felt compelled to contend that rising trade tensions continued to cast a long shadow on the job markets’ future – without reporting that, if anything, new U.S. policies and statements were so far having exactly the opposite effect on parts of the economy most exposed to existing metals tariffs.

But no account of press coverage of these Trump trade policies would be complete without observing an equally weird development: Neither the President nor anyone else in his administration has pointed to the outperformance of the metals-using industries, either.

In a little over a week, the nation will get its next major opportunity to gauge the impact of metals and other tariffs, and future possibilities thereof – when the Federal Reserve releases the July industrial production data, which includes detailed statistics on inflation-adjusted manufacturing output. Will the Mainstream Media finally zero in on the sectors where the tariff rubber hits the road? At this rate, Americans should be grateful if they simply ended the string of job loss and other Chicken Little metals tariff impact stories.

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Im-Politic: Latest Charlottesville Polls Suggest a U.S. Race Relations Muddle

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ABC News, CBS News, Charlottesville, Confederate monuments, Harris, Harvard University, Huffington Post, Im-Politic, Marist University, Mark Penn, Morning Consult, NPR, Politic, polls, race relations, The Hill, Trump, Washington Post, white nationalists, white supremacists

Keeping in mind how flawed they are, and keeping in mind that the wording of their questions matters a lot, several polls are now in (out?) on the intertwined issues of what to do about the nation’s various (and variegated!) Confederate monuments, and how Americans viewed President Trump’s response to the recent Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite the Right” rally, the counter-protests it attracted, and the violence that resulted – which of course produced the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. The findings seem pretty clear, if somewhat challenging to explain: Most Americans don’t want the statues etc, removed from public spaces, but at the same time, most Americans disapproved of Mr. Trump’s response to the controversy – which included a defense of keeping the monuments in place.

Huffington Post, a news outlet I rarely cite, just performed a useful service by compiling the results of seven surveys on the Confederate monuments question conducted this month by six organizations. In five of the seven (including the NPR-Marist poll I wrote about last Friday), majorities backed keeping the monuments exactly where they are. In one of the outliers, this position was backed by a big plurality (49 percent).

The only survey showing a widespread desire for change found that by a wide 58 percent to 26 percent margin, respondents supported “relocating monuments honoring the Confederacy from government property and moving them to museums or other historic sites where they can be viewed in proper historical context.” Unless it’s assumed that “proper historical context” would portray the Confederate cause in an overall less-than-flattering light, even this arguably moderate viewpoint doesn’t exactly demonstrate that most Americans view its links to slavery and treason as especially troubling. Which of course I find especially troubling.

It’s possible to explain how these opinions dovetail with the negative reviews drawn by the president’s Charlottesville-related words and deeds, but it’s anything but easy, as I’ll elaborate on in a moment. But first the actual findings.

The earliest survey on the matter yielded results that could be seen as ambiguous. It was the NPR-Marist poll, and it showed that by 51 percent to 31 percent, the public viewed the Trump “response to the violence in Charlottesville” was “not strong enough” (as opposed to being “strong enough). This poll, remember, came out on August 17, and was only asking respondents about the president’s remarks as of Monday, August 14 and Tuesday, August 15 – before his late Tuesday afternoon press conference, when he made much more controversial comments. So it wasn’t entirely clear of whom Mr. Trump should have spoken more “strongly” – if any group or individual.

Subsequent polls, however, have made clear that most Americans believe that the racial issues as well as that Trump performance lay at the heart of their criticisms. The first clue came in a CBS News poll that was released on Thursday, the 17^th. According to the pollsters, a strong majority disapproved of “Trump’s response to Charlottesville” attack and that “Disapproval of the president’s handling of events rose [in interviews conducted] following the [Tuesday] press conference.” Indeed, those interviewed by CBS Tuesday and Wednesday frowned on Mr. Trump’s remarks by a 58 percent to 33 percent margin. The Monday interviewees disapproved by a 52 percent to 35 percent margin.

On August 21, the Washington Post reported that a poll it conducted with ABC News found that that Mr. Trump’s Charlottesville comments earned a failing grade from Americans by a two-to-one ration (56 percent versus 28 percent). And three days later, a survey conducted by Harvard University and the Harris polling firm found that 57 percent of respondents viewed the Trump remarks as a missed opportunity to bring the country together, and 57 percent believed he should do more to promote racial unity. (And in case you’re wondering, 59 percent agreed that the President should be doing more in this respect.)

Moreover a similar Harris finding – that the Trump comments did more to divide the country than to unite it – was supported by data both from the CBS News poll and a separate Politico/Morning Consult survey released on August 23). 

Nevertheless, these polls all presented results that raise important questions as to exactly how their Charlottesville-related views are or aren’t influencing Americans’ views on race relations above and beyond the Confederate monuments controversy.

For example, despite the stated desire both for better race relations and for a greater presidential effort to bring them about, and even though Mr. Trump’s comments on Charlottesville were broadly unpopular, most of the polling evidence shows agreement with the President’s view that both sides deserve equal blame for the violence in that city. (CBS’ was the only poll I found with contrasting results.) Those two sets of views don’t easily jibe with the great dissatisfaction expressed with Mr. Trump’s comments ostensibly because they weren’t racially sensitive enough.

Moreover, fully nine percent of Americans, according to the Post-ABC poll, said that it is “acceptable” to “hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.” Another eight percent were undecided. (The NPR-Marist poll, held before the heated Trump press conference, found support for “white supremacist” and “white nationalist” groups at only half these levels.)

The best explanation I’ve found for these apparent inconsistencies comes from Mark Penn, a well known pollster who helps direct the Harvard-Harris operations. Penn centered on that Trump press conference and contended, “His arguing the point about the violence is a Pyrrhic victory as he still gets the blame for the polarization in the country. The voters are looking for a uniter and he is coming off as a divider.”

I fully agree that Mr. Trump’s big post-Charlottesville problem has been being too argumentative (on top of firing off inconsistent comments seemingly from day to day) and that most Americans want a unifier in the White House. Yet the polls and Penn’s observation leave me less convinced that a critical mass of the country agrees on what it wants this unifying message to be, especially when it comes to race issues.

Im-Politic: Clinton’s Campaign Sure Thinks the Mainstream Media is “With Her”

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2016 election, ABC News, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, CNN, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, The Intercept, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wikileaks

The word “surrogate” is defined in dictionaries as “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office.” Now thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures of internal emails and other strategy documents from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, we know that the Democratic candidate and her operatives believed that many members of the Mainstream Media fit that description for her upcoming White House race as well.

According to a memo released by Wikileaks on Friday, and first reported (to my knowledge) on The Intercept website, the list of journalists viewed by the Clinton-ites as reliable conveyors of her message included numerous opinion journalists whose liberal leanings are no secret. Examples include E.J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post; and David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins of The New York Times.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with their presence. There’s no evidence so far that any of them offered their services to the campaign either voluntarily or in response to a request. And unless material comes out indicating active collusion, although surely most are bristling at the suggestion that they’ve been in the tank for anyone in politics, none of these pundits has any control over how they’re viewed by politicians.

But the Clinton characterization of other list members is much more troubling. Dan Balz of the Post isn’t exactly a pure-play columnist – presumably that’s why his employer doesn’t place his pieces on the op-ed page. But his “news analyses” are supposed to occupy some middle ground between opinion and hard news. That concept isn’t necessarily illegitimate. But maybe the Post could clue its readers in on how it views the relevant distinctions, so they could make up their own minds as to how to view these articles?

Another category of listees is problematic, too, but maybe a little less so, since Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Mathews host talk shows on a cable network (MSNBC) that doesn’t try very hard to hide its partisanship. (Similar criticisms of course can be leveled at many of their counterparts on Fox News.)  

Major problems, however, surround the inclusion of news show hosts and anchors who do style themselves as objective journalists. For reasons, I described yesterday, no one should be surprised that ABC News Sunday talk show host George Stephanopoulos is viewed as a Clinton surrogate. But his CBS counterpart John Dickerson? Wolf Blitzer of CNN? Charlie Rose, who does double duty at CBS and PBS?

And scariest of all is the number of listed journalists who present themselves as completely objective beat reporters, like Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Jon King and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, Mara Liasson of NPR, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post. Moreover, in another memo, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman was described as an especially “friendly journalist” who has “never disappointed” the Clinton team with her performance after their promptings.

Since this material dates from spring, 2015, it’s of course nothing more than speculation (however plausible) to venture that Clinton’s operatives have viewed these same journalists as trusted allies in the campaign against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. (He didn’t declare his candidacy until June.) But the timing is revealing nonetheless because by April, Clinton’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, had thrown his hat into the ring, and it was clear by then that many voters in the party’s left wing were recoiling at the prospect of Clinton as liberalism’s standard-bearer.

As a result, these memos add to the case that much of the national press corps has seen its real mission not as reporting events as objectively as possible, or even as fronting for Democrats, but as defending a center-left status quo against populist challengers of all stripes. Certainly Sanders and many of his backers count themselves as victims.

Fortunately, the only silver lining in this picture is a bright one: Americans’ trust in the mass media to give them the straight news dope is at an all-time low, at least according to Gallup. Undoubtedly that’s a big reason why the establishment media’s finances show signs of weakening across the board. If money really does talk in the ranks of these profit-seeking enterprises, mounting business pressures could push them back to their more responsible roots. Or the Mainstream Media’s owners could arrogantly decide to go down with their ships – in which case the big question will be whether investors more devoted to quality journalism will recognize the vacuum they’ve left.

Im-Politic: The Media’s Mindlessly Flailing Trump Coverage

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2016 elections, 60 Minutes, Bernie Sanders, CBS News, Donald Trump, Ester Bloom, Im-Politic, military spending, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama, Rolling Stone, Scott Pelley, The Atlantic, Trade

What is it about covering Donald Trump that causes Mainstream Media figures to lose whatever judgment and common sense they may possess? Whatever the answer, if you doubt how completely thrown off their game they get when reporting and commenting on the Republican presidential front-runner, check out the recent high profile Trump features on 60 Minutes and in The Atlantic.

The most egregious example was provided last Sunday by Scott Pelley in his 60 Minutes feature on Trump. The CBS News anchor and managing editor may indeed be “one of the most experienced reporters in broadcast journalism” and a recipient of many of his profession’s leading awards. He was also clearly loaded for bear for his Trump interview. Yet his performance made painfully clear that he hasn’t the vaguest clue when it comes to U.S. trade policy and Trump’s critique of its failings. Moreover, Pelley obviously was so cocky that he didn’t even ask 60 Minutes‘ research staff to investigate either his known or his unknown unknowns and fill him in.

Thus Pelley dredged up the specter of launching “a trade war,” when Trump proposed tariffing Chinese imports to offset the impact of currency manipulation – which of course Washington has failed to respond to effectively for years. But when was the last time Pelley heard of a business declaring war on an indispensable customer? Why does he suppose China would be much different, especially given that its slowing economy makes Beijing more dependent than ever on selling to the United States – and not only for growth but for the jobs that are crucial to political stability, not to mention the leadership’s very survival?

Pelley seemed no more aware that – as Trump tried to remind him – like all treaties, trade agreements have “out clauses” and don’t bind signatories to their terms in perpetuity. So he couldn’t have been more wrong when he insisted that Trump would “have to live with” the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) even though he considers it “a disaster.” (Maybe Pelley relied for his information on Paul Solotaroff’s Rolling Stone Trump portrait earlier in the month, which took the same erroneously fatalistic view?) Further, apparently no one told Pelley that the decisive economic leverage the United States enjoys with China is positively dwarfed by its influence over Canada and Mexico, since it represented nearly 86 percent of the North American market as of last year.

And here’s an interesting historical footnote that was also missed by the vaunted 60 Minutes staff. During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the candidates promised to renegotiate NAFTA using “the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.” His name was Barack Obama. (And he ultimately backed away from this position.) But do you think Pelley, or CBS News, tried coming down on him like a ton of bricks? In fact, the organization’s main treatment of this subject was decidedly respectful.

The second example of Trump Disorientation Effect comes from The Atlantic and a new post from contributor Ester Bloom. Her Pelley-like determination to show up Trump entailed chiding his core constituencies for forgetting that the 1950s they seem to hold up as an example of the “national greatness” Trump promises to restore “were a time of Big Government. And Big Labor.” (Along with much higher marginal tax rates.) Cackled Bloom, “If bigger government, stronger unions, and higher taxes on the rich are what it takes to make America great again, Republican primary voters might be surprised to learn that the candidate who truly shares their values is not Donald Trump, but Bernie Sanders.”

Actually, as I’ve written, Bloom is onto something when it comes to overlap between the Sanders and Trump platforms. But her picture of the 1950s economy is even less accurate and more naive than that she attributes to Trump’s supporters, because it misses two defining features. First, the United States and its middle class-job creating industries faced no significant foreign competition. And second, much of the Big Government Bloom lauds consisted of a gargantuan Cold War-era national security complex.

The author actually hints at the Pentagon’s prominence with a reference to the decade’s “war-induced solidarity.” But her suggestion that Sanders and his backers (as well as Bloom herself?) would be just fine with this outsized military growth and employment role makes clear that her insight was intellectually isolated.

To be sure, Trump himself could help his own cause immeasurably if he defended his trade (and immigration) positions more cogently when establishment journalists try to savage them. He could invaluably educate the public as well. Because he hasn’t, voters seeking information on these critical issues are stuck with a Hobson’s Choice between an almost defiantly imprecise and mercurial office seeker, and arrogant, know-nothing reporters and pundits.

Im-Politic: What the Polls are Really Saying About Obama’s Trade Agenda

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2016 elections, CBS News, Congress, currency manipulation, fast track, Financial Times, free trade agreements, Global Trade Watch, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jobs, Obama, polls, public opinion, Reuters/Ipsos, The New York Times, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership

I’m sure glad I’m not the Financial Times headline writer who told readers the other day that “Obama seems to be winning over public, if not Congress, on trade.” The writer blew it not because there haven’t been recent poll results containing good news for a president seeking a big new Pacific Rim trade deal and sweeping fast track negotiating authority from Congress. He or she blew it because such surveys have been showing such sharply contradictory results – as a new New York Times/CBS News sounding just reminded us. In fact, the headline was also off base in suggesting that any polls can be a reliable indicator of public on an issue like trade, which is poorly covered by the national media and partly as a result largely unfamiliar to many Main Street Americans.

As I wrote recently, the Pew Foundation findings stressed by the Financial Times contained some big apparent contradictions – chiefly, showing that Americans’ support for the idea of trade agreements keeps rising impressively, but that large pluralities believe the deals have significantly harmed the economy.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch has done an excellent job exposing the weaknesses in another recent poll – from Reuters/Ipsos – that seems downright incompetent. The survey reported majority support for “new trade deals,” but these agreements were described as seeking to “promote the sale of goods overseas.” Talk about a leading question!

In fact, as Global Trade Watch noted, a previous Ipsos trade poll found that when a specific feature of Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was included in a question (currency manipulation), nearly three quarters of Americans opposed the administration position. Moreover, that same survey showed 84 percent of the public agreeing that “protecting American manufacturing jobs” is more important than “getting Americans access to more products.”

The New York Times/CBS News results reported this morning contain more bad news for the president (and for that Financial Times headline writer). They show 55 percent to 42 percent public opposition to the president’s fast track request (which is accurately described). They show that although 78 percent of Americans have “heard or read…not much or nothing at all about the TPP (thanks, journalists!) they believe by a 22 percent to 16 percent margin that it will make fewer jobs available in the United States. (One third didn’t know or didn’t answer, and 29 percent doubted it would “make much difference.” And finally, 63 percent of respondents agreed that “Trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries” while only 30 percent supported the view that “Free trade must be allowed, even if domestic industries are hurt by foreign competition.”

So for what they’re worth – and again, that’s open to big doubts – recent polls aren’t collectively sending any clear message on trade policy generally, and even muddier ones on the specific controversies Congress is dealing with today. But another body of evidence is less equivocal. As I noted in that recent post, most presidential candidates in both parties who have spoken out are running against Mr. Obama’s trade agenda. Others, especially Hillary Clinton, have conspicuously remained on the fence.

Of course, the primary voters these hopefuls will initially face are more partisan and ideological than the electorate as a whole. But candidates also know that their primary positions tend to stick with them during general campaigns. If on balance, this many professional politicians see fast track and the TPP as political losers, it’s hard to believe that they’re far off the mark.