Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Signing the Hong Kong Democracy Bill Should be a No-Brainer for Trump

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China, Congress, democracy, Hong Kong, Hong Kong protests, human rights, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, trade deal, trade talks, Xi JInPing

Full disclosure: I don’t believe that promoting human rights and democracy abroad should be a high priority for U.S. foreign policymakers. (My most detailed explanation comes in this late-1994 article in FOREIGN POLICY magazine, which is available on-line here and here.) All the same, there’s no doubt in my mind that President Trump would be making a big political and substantive mistake if he, as he’s (very obliquely, to be sure) hinted that he might veto the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 just passed overwhelmingly by both the House and Senate.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m under no illusion that the legislation will do anything in the foreseeable future to promote human rights and democracy in Hong Kong – and you shouldn’t be, either. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that it’s a classic example of political virtue-signaling. For example, even the sponsors of the bill don’t seem to believe that any plausible official American words or deeds can affect the fate either of Hong Kong generally or of the huge numbers of protesters who have been challenging China’s determination to keep eating away at the special freedoms enjoyed by its residents since its hand over by the United Kingdom to Beijing in 1997.

If they did, you’d think that they’d have included in the bill some economic sanctions against the Chinese economy. But not only are such provisions entirely missing. The only measures resembling economic sanctions or potential sanctions are directed against the economy of Hong Kong – in the form of requirements that the various ways in which U.S. policies and other laws that treat Hong Kong differently from China (based on the assumption that this “Special Autonomous Region,” as Beijing calls it) really still is autonomous – remain justified by the facts on the ground in Hong Kong.

The bill does contain some sanctions instructions directed at China – but not at any sectors of its economy. Instead, they’re to be applied against “foreign persons” determined to be “knowingly responsible” for any “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights in Hong Kong.”

To which the only serious response is “So what?” The Hong Kong officials who give the specific orders to the police to fire tear gas or crack some heads or shoot rubber bullets into crowds are nothing more than tools of the dictators in Beijing. Concentrating punishment on them amounts – knowingly – to punishing the little fish and letting the prize catches get away. And P.S. – they’re as easily replaceable and interchangeable as any ordinary functionary.

Unless you can think of many U.S. politicians in either party who would back imposing sanctions on Chinese kingpin Xi Jinping or any of his senior cronies? Fat chance – assuming you could even locate any of their assets vulnerable to America’s reach. After all, how many American elected officials genuinely doubt that China’s top leaders are ultimately responsible for the harsh repression of the Hong Kong protests – or for the extradition law that triggered this uprising?

Nonetheless, the politics alone argue compellingly for presidential signing of the Hong Kong measure. It attracted nearly unanimous support on Capitol Hill, so a veto override is likely. And although the President won’t win much praise for enacting the bill into law, he’ll generate a hail of brickbats for any opposition.

And for what? As I argued in the article cited at the beginning, human rights interests generally should take a back seat in U.S. foreign policy for any number of reasons, but chiefly because other interests are usually more important for America’s security or prosperity (since foreign governments’ human rights practices as are almost completely incapable of undermining these objectives). Moreover, American actions can sometimes backfire, and it’s far from far-fetched to worry that a Trump approval of the Hong Kong bill and more frequent and stronger expressions of official outrage will only further convince China’s dictators (and much of the nationalistic Chinese public) that the unrest in Hong Kong stems from foreign meddling, not legitimate concerns.

Yet U.S.-China relations these days are so bad that it’s difficult to imagine a Trump signature on the Hong Kong legislation significantly worsening them. It’s possible that Beijing could retaliate with still higher tariffs or other curbs on American exports, especially farm products, but China remains much more vulnerable to U.S. economic pressure than vice versa. Nor is the President likely to suffer much politically from such measures during the upcoming election year, since nearly all of his political opponents have spoken out much more emphatically against China’s record in Hong Kong than he has. As for “outside agitator” claims – the Chinese are already making them, including against the United States.

Which leaves us with the one stated presidential reason for considering a veto of the Hong Kong bill – that an obstacle could be created to reaching a trade deal. The problem here is that a trade deal that serves U.S. interests (as opposed to a cosmetic deal that, e.g., results in increased American exports to China in exchange for American tariff reductions with no commitments from Beijing to end its most important predatory trade practices) simply isn’t possible. As I’ve written repeatedly, even a complete Chinese cave-in on paper to every demand the administration has ever made can’t possibly be verified adequately – because the Chinese government is so big and so secretive.

In fact, if there’s any relationship between trade policy and Hong Kong policy, it surely works the other way: More human rights pressure from Mr. Trump would be added to the economic pressure that’s already making Xi’s life hard enough. And whatever throws the Chinese off balance by definition helps the United States. For it would force Beijing to spend more time putting out fires and playing defense generally across the board, and leaves less time for pursuing offensive economic and geopolitical goals that undermine American interests.

As I’ve always seen it, claims that these interests (properly defined, of course) and ideals are always ultimately compatible are among the most fatuous made by practitioners, scholars, and historians of American foreign policy. But especially for a country with America’s range of geopolitical and economic choice (by dint of its high degree of built-in security and economic self-sufficiency, and potential for even more), there’s also no question that the United States can afford to promote its admirable values on a regular basis.

Hong Kongers’ struggle for more freedom and democracy represents one such case, meaning that a Trump-ian failure to sign the Hong Kong bill would call into question not only his support for these ideals, but his pragmatic instincts as well.

Im-Politic: Why You Should be Really Skeptical About the Green New Deal

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, climate change, Congress, Green New Deal, Im-Politic

Since I have no special expertise on climate change, I can’t comment usefully on the scientific aspects of the Green New Deal (GND) resolution introduced recently in the House of Representatives. As a result, I don’t even believe that I can comment usefully on how the U.S. economy may be affected by a major green refit and the tradeoffs it will inevitably entail even if I had a clear idea of what such a blueprint would entail.

What I do claim some expertise on is political posturing and elementary logic. And on those bases alone, it’s glaringly obvious that the resolution’s Congressional and other supporters aren’t the slightest bit serious about preventing catastrophic global warming.

Here’s the dead giveaway: Nothing in the plan, or about it, is remotely capable of addressing the threat as it’s described by GND-ers.

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that most, or perhaps not even many, of the resolution’s backers don’t literally agree with their leading spokesperson, freshman Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, that “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change….” (And even this phrasing is pretty fishy. What’s with using fudgy language like “address” in such a cassandra-like clarion call? Did President Franklin D. Roosevelt warn Americans that the country could be endangered if it didn’t “address” the Nazis and the Japanese militarists? Moreover, how many years of planetary survival will be gained by “addressing” the threat? How long does the Earth have until climate change is ended or whatever ultimate goal the GND-ers have in mind?)

Even GND-ers believing the planet has more than twelve years surely view the situation as desperate. But if so, what’s the point of spending precious time working up a document that’s non-binding, and that even many backers view as “aspirational”? (See, e.g., here and here.) What possible excuse could there be for not focusing on whatever it takes to passing a mandatory climate change plan ASAP – and with veto-proof majorities?

In addition, why, given the immediacy of the threat and the literal life and death stakes for humanity as a whole do the GND-ers clutter up their manifesto with objectives and standards such as “ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition….”? Or “guaranteeing a job with a family-sus4 taining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States….”?

In other words, no planet-saving campaign can be approved unless it benefits organized labor? And how long do those paid vacations need to be?

Similarly, why, given the ostensible urgency, does the resolution insist that the program “be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses….”? What a time sink that’s going to be!

And that leads to the most suspicious substantive feature of the GND movement so far. Even though climate change warnings have been sounded literally for decades, and even though they’ve been issued with increasing frequency by more and more individuals, organizations, national governments, and international organizations, the above phrasing is an explicit admission that there’s no commonly agreed upon plan that would even cover the United States alone.

Principally, on the one hand, the resolution states that its goals (including “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources….”) “should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization.” On the other, it proposes achieving these goals through “making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries….” In other words, after all this time, the GND-ers don’t yet know what these technologies could be, let alone how long it will take to turn whatever laboratory breakthroughs they envision into knowhow usable in the real world.

One of my favorite adages is that necessity is the mother of invention, mainly because its opposite is usually true as well: If there’s no real invention, you can be there’s no necessity. As demonstrated by the form and substance of the resolution, that’s a legitimate conclusion to be drawn about the Green New Deal.

Following Up: Sign the Deal – then Seize the Border Security Initiative

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border security, border wall, Congress, crime, criminal aliens, Defense Department, Democrats, detention, Following Up, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, national emergency, shutdown, Trump

From what’s known of it, I’m as angry about the border security deal reached last night by Congressional negotiators to avert a new partial federal government shutdown as much as any immigration realist and/or supporter of President Trump. Even so, I would urge the President to sign it. (If he can win a few small improvements over the next day or two, as he’s just suggested he’ll seek, fine – but nothing achievable is worth sinking the agreement.) Then I’d recommend that he move to keep his promise that “we’ll be building the wall anyway” by using statutory authority to use Defense Department and other federal assets and resources to engage in barrier construction and secure the border in various other ways. In addition, the Trump administration should redouble efforts to keep his opponents on the defensive politically by shining the spotlight even more brightly on border security gaps left wide open by deal provisions they’ve insisted on.

I know that in yesterday’s post I argued that the Congressional Democrats, who have increasingly made clear their desire to gut meaningful border security completely, would both own a new shutdown morally (in terms of responsibility for government workers and contractors temporarily denied paychecks) and possibly pay a heavy price politically. The trouble is, that contention assumed that the Democrats’ latest cynical gambit, a new, goalpost-moving demand to shrivel (further) the federal government’s ability to detain apprehended illegal aliens – including surging numbers of border crossers – until their status hearings are held, would prevent the negotiators from reaching any agreement.

Consequently, any number of such aliens, including convicted criminals, would be released into American society, with little reason to believe many of them would risk a deportation decision (which would not be first for many). The result, as I wrote yesterday, would be a big victory for the Democrats’ principal goal of maximizing the number of migrants who can set foot on American soil to begin with, who consequently could avail themselves of the full range of legal due process protections to which everyone within U.S. territory is entitled, who would be released before their status hearings, and who would be scot-free to live and work in the United States until the Open Borders crowd could implement yet another amnesty.

Instead, the negotiators came to a conclusion that they, at least – if not necessarily many in their respective parties – could accept. There’s no denying that its threadbare reported barrier appropriation figure ($1.375 billion) would leave the current border security situation just about as unacceptable as it is today. So would the reported new quota on detention beds, which represent a big part of Washington’s ability to ensure that individuals arrested for immigration-law and related transgressions show up for hearings.

Final judgment should be withheld until the official text of the deal is released – especially on the beds issue. But some of the worst possible outcomes – from an immigration realist perspective – appear to have been avoided. In particular, although previous votes by Democrats so far haven’t been enough to prevent closet Open Borders supporters like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from declaring walls to be “immoral,” the new agreement will make this childish position more difficult than ever to take. In addition, the current number of border detention beds is being cut, but not, it seems, by nearly as much as the Democrats recently sought, and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency apparently will retain flexibility in their location.

Further, as its spokespeople have insisted, there’s a strong argument that President has ample legal authority to build and strengthen more in the way of barriers than the deal approves – even without taking the highly controversial step of declaring a national emergency. For example, as noted by one of my Twitter followers (“TruthHunterMan”), in a variety of circumstances, federal law states that “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any other department or agency of the Federal Government or of any State, local, tribal, or foreign law enforcement agency.”

Moreover, this statute specifies that one of the purposes for which this assistance may be provided include “the transportation of supplies and equipment, for the purpose of facilitating counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime within or outside the United States” and, more specifically, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In addition, as stated by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, “We will take as much money as you can give us and then we will go find money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier.” So let the search intensify.

Finally, the Trump administration has done a fair job of publicizing the dangers to public safety posed by inadequate border security, but much more is possible. For instance, couldn’t the administration vividly illustrate how limits on detention are forcing the release of dangerous aliens by publishing on a regular basis the names of these individuals and the charges against them? And maybe some mass releases could be conducted regularly, too – with officials reading this information to broadcast news audiences as the migrants in question are set free? That would sure be Must-See TV. 

This strategy would have the added virtues of freeing federal workers – especially low-wage workers employed both directly and indirectly through contractors – of the threat of real economic hardship; of avoiding the forced labor situation that results from requiring essential workers to report to their jobs even if their departments aren’t funded; and of ensuring that the quality of vital services like air traffic control and Department of Homeland Security missions including Coast Guard patrols isn’t dangerously degraded.

Even passage of the latest full Trump proposal wouldn’t have strengthened border security much in the near future. So signing the Congressional compromise clearly wouldn’t produce a fatal setback. The main challenge now before the President is to flip as much of the script as he can, and capitalize on all the opportunities before him to secure as much of the border as America can ASAP.

Im-Politic: Why Democrats Will Own a Second Shutdown

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barriers, border security, border wall, Congress, crime, Democrats, detention, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Open Borders, Trump

With Congressional negotiators still racing to reach a deal, it’s unclear whether or not they’ll be able to reach the immigration and border security policy compromise needed to avoid the second partial federal government shutdown in two months. What’s completely clear, however, is that although President Trump declared that he “owned” the first shutdown, Congressional Democrats will deserve the blame this time.

The reason? In recent days, they’ve removed any doubt that their position has nothing to do with their stated belief that border walls are “immoral,” or even that President Trump’s focus on new barriers of any kind is hopelessly out of date. Instead, these Democrats – or at least their leaders – have now disclosed that their real price is a big step toward gutting any meaningful enforcement of immigration law.

Skeptics obviously haven’t paid attention to the course of Congressional negotiations since Friday. At that point, both Republicans and Democrats were expressing guarded optimism that a deal was in sight that involved keeping the entire federal government open in exchange for including actual funding (i.e., appropriations), for more barriers in the Department or Homeland Security (DHS) budget for the current fiscal year – not the kind of unenforceable promise to authorize certain levels of spending over the course of man years that marked previous recent efforts to keep the whole government open.

Hopes for a deal aren’t dead yet, but over the weekend, the Democrats dealt them a major setback by moving the goalposts. Their major new demand was for an unrealistically low (given the great recent increase in would-be border crossers of all kinds) limit in the number of beds maintained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to detain individuals arrested for violations of immigration law.

Congressional Democrats described their stance as an effort to impose sanity on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. In the words of California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country.”

But no one can seriously doubt that crippling immigration enforcement is the real objective. In the first place, although it’s tempting – at least for argument’s sake – the critics’ charges that the Trump enforcement dragnet is too broad, let’s not forget that a key demand of many Democrats in recent months has not been to reform ICE practices, but to abolish the agency.

Second, there’s every reason to view the Democrats’ definition of “criminals” and “real security threats” as far too narrow. For example, many U.S. illegal aliens who hold a job are committing identity fraud in one form or another – including theft of Social Security cards. Critics of strict enforcement of immigration law tend to belittle these violations, and if you agree, that’s your right – but please spare me your complaints the next time you’re victimized by identity theft, or  become upset that constantly rising Social Security outlays are fueling the national debt.

Moreover, closet Open Borders supporters have a long record of defining down below the “serious” level many crimes that physically harm or endanger individuals – including assault, battery, sex offenses, drunk driving, and gun-related crimes.

And these coddlers of illegal alien crimes aren’t restricted to the Mainstream Media. In Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington, D.C. – lawmakers introduced a measure to provide taxpayer-funded legal aid to illegal aliens that originally would have extended such assistance to illegals convicted of offenses such as “fraud, distribution of heroin, second- and third-degree burglary and obstruction of justice….” And let’s not forget the indulgent attitudes and practice of the nation’s many sanctuary jurisdictions.

What the Democrats pushing for fewer beds really want is a de facto (at least at first) U.S. immigration policy that prioritizes maximizing the numbers of foreign migrants able to set foot on U.S. soil, to thereby avail themselves of the wide range of due process protections afforded to anyone within this country’s territorial limits, and to then be released shortly after their initial apprehension.

As a result, these migrants – including declared asylum seekers and would-be refugees – will be completely free to skip their scheduled status hearings, and to become eligible for whatever future amnesties the Open Borders crowd has in mind once it regains enough power in Washington.

Of course, it’s one thing to make the case on the merits that the Democrats will own this shutdown. It’s another entirely for Mr. Trump to convince the public. Making this sale could represent his biggest challenge yet as President.

Im-Politic: Shutdown Lessons – So Far

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border security, border wall, China, Congress, Democrats, E-Verify, election 2020, establishment Republicans, government shutdown, illegal alien crime, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, North Korea, Paul Ryan, Populism, Russia-Gate, shutdown, Swamp, Trade, Trump

Since the fight isn’t over by a long shot, it’s chancy at best to try to figure out many of the biggest implications of President Trump’s decision to reopen the shut down parts of the federal government despite getting no new funding for a Border Wall or any new physical barriers aimed at strengthening border security. Still, here’s what looks reasonably clear at this stage of the struggle:

>First and foremost, the shutdown situation, context, and therefore even the verdict were set in stone more than two years ago by the Russia collusion/election cheating charges, by the opposition (mainly passive) to President Trump’s immigration agenda of the establishment Republicans still so prominent in Congress (and not just in its leadership) during the Trump administration’s first two years, and the resulting politics of impeachment.

That is, as I’ve written previously, from his first day in office, Mr. Trump needed to secure the protection of Congressional Republicans – including their establishment ranks. Therefore, he needed to prioritize their top issues, like Obamacare repeal and a tax cut heavily weighted toward business, rather than his top – populist – issues, like fixing America’s broken trade and immigration policies.

It’s true that in his second year, the President has ramped up the pressure on leading trade predator China and on other mercantile economies (with his steel and aluminum tariffs). But unlike the Border Wall, those measures didn’t require Congressional funding, or any form of approval from Capitol Hill. (The new trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement seems to be moderate enough to at least have attracted mild endorsements from the Big Business-run Offshoring Lobby.)

And if establishment Congressional Republican leaders like former House Speaker Paul Ryan and current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell weren’t going to go the mat for the Wall (which of course would also have required helping to persuade some moderate Democrats to come along as well) when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, there was absolutely no way Mr. Trump could have generated Wall funding once the Democrats gained control of the House.

Incidentally, it’s being reported by at least one non-anonymous source with first-hand knowledge that the President himself provided some confirmation for this argument – by blaming Ryan for “having ‘screwed him’ by not securing border wall money when Republicans had the majority….”

>If you’re going to shut down the government, and especially if you’re planning to dig in your heels for the duration, shut down the right agencies. For example, if the issues are illegal immigration and law enforcement, don’t shut down the Department of Homeland Security – which is chiefly responsible for protecting the nation’s security in these areas. If you’re a Republican, don’t shut down the Agriculture Department, whose rural constituency is overwhelmingly Republican and conservative, and which was already unhappy enough with the President about China trade policies that had pretty much shut down America’s immense soybean exports to the People’s Republic. Also if you’re a Republican don’t shutdown the Federal Aviation Administration – because victims are especially likely to be businessmen and women and other relatively affluent voters – who provide lots of actual and gettable Republican votes.

>Consequently, the politics of shutdowns, and of some aspects of political populism, are becoming clearer than ever – especially if they’re long ones. And many of these should have been obvious from the start.

Most obvious, voters of all kinds – populists and non-populists alike – who are receptive to anti-government arguments get a lot less anti-government when the affected services affect them directly.

Less obvious, populist voters themselves say and act happy to see populist politicians act like disrupters when it comes to the mutually supportive networks of corruption and propaganda set up by establishment politicians, lobbyists, consultants, think tank hacks, and mainstream media journalists in the Washington, D.C. Swamp The same goes for establishment policies they believe have brought them nothing but trouble, like mass immigration, offshoring-friendly trade deals, and pipe dream foreign wars and similar ventures.

What they don’t want disrupted is the steady stream of government services that make their lives easier – and even viable in the first place.

>For reasons like the above, it’s unimaginable that Mr. Trump will follow through with his threat to shut down the government again if he can’t persuade Democrats to compromise acceptably on Wall funding. His best hope for some kind of partial win is to portray himself as the reasonable party, and the Democrats as the arrogant, rigid extremists.

>In that vein, expect continued, and even more frequent administration activity spotlighting crimes by illegal aliens – especially in the districts and states of key lawmakers. But success is also likely to require claims (which are entirely credible, in my opinion) that illegal aliens steal jobs from native-born Americans and/or drive down their wages, and that the leading victims include minority Americans.

>One particularly effective tactic would be for the administration to push for mandating that businesses use the E-Verify system to prevent illegal aliens out of the national job market. E-Verify is currently being used on a voluntary basis by many companies (not including most Trump-owned companies), and by all accounts is extremely accurate. (That is, it snares virtually no innocents in its electronic net.) But its use so far has been voluntary, meaning that companies that blow it off get legs up on their competition by virtue of easy access to bargain-basement illegal employees.

>Another potentially effective talking point that the administration has strangely ignored: focusing on the sheer numbers of foreigners who’d be likely to swamp U.S. borders – and the country’s asylum system – without more effective physical barriers. The administration and all of its spokespeople and media supporters should keep asking the question of Democrats: How many tens of millions of these would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers can the United States afford to admit?

>If these Trump efforts fail, declaring a national emergency looks like the President’s best bet to reestablish credibility with his base and perhaps with fence-sitting voters and Members of Congress, and even some legislative opponents.

Such a move could also go far toward putting the most politically damaging aspects of this issue behind him. After all, there’s little that opponents can do about such a national emergency declaration other than try to tie it up in the courts. And Mr. Trump could – credibly, in my opinion – respond by using information about illegal aliens crime to accuse them of endangering their countrymen and women’s security. So even if rulings by friendly judges hold up actual Wall construction, Mr. Trump’s political position could benefit.

>The President also could well be tempted to score political points by pressing harder to win some foreign policy victories. A China trade deal and significant progress in limiting the nuclear weapons threat posed by North Korea are the two most obvious candidates, but presidential over-eagerness could seriously undermine major American interests.

I’m most worried about the administration’s dealings with Beijing, given the talk out of China of ending the current trade conflict for the foreseeable future by buying lots more American goods and services. More Chinese imports from the United States would be welcome – no mistake about that. But not if the price is letting Beijing off the hook for its ambitions literally to steal and subsidize its way to global supremacy in key technologies that not so coincidentally have big defense implications.

>Finally, re shutdowns themselves, the policy of requiring furloughed workers to do their jobs without getting paid strikes me as completely unacceptable. In other circumstances like this, at home or abroad, these practices are called “forced labor” or “wage theft.” And they’re rightly condemned. Nearly as bad, these furlough practices help pro-shutdown politicians curry favor with their supporters while mitigating or at least postponing the harm to the public – including those supporters.

In other words, if you’re for a shutdown, make it a real shutdown. For any agency whose funding is cut off, the workers stay home – and the jobs they do don’t get done. If that means chaos ensues and public safety is put at risk, too bad for shutdown-ers. They’ll own it.

>Speaking of owning it, that’s the situation that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now finds herself in not only regarding border security but every issue that comes up in national affairs. In particular, when you show you’ve gained enough power to win political battles, you also show that you’ve gained enough power to frustrate initiatives that may be unpopular among your caucus in Congress, or some of your caucus, but that may be popular with everyone else. So forget about the the idea that Pelosi is now free to conduct a campaign of all-encompassing resistance to the Trump agenda, and to dictate terms of those proposals that she is willing to consider.

>And finally, that’s one of the many reasons it’s way too early to predict how the shutdown fight will impact the next presidential election. The main additional reasons: There’s still a long ways to go before that campaign achieves critical mass, and any number of events could turn the political calculus upside down. And similarly, it’s glaringly obvious that the Trump era news cycle – along with the national attention span – is already the shortest in recent memory – and could well keep getting shorter.

Im-Politic: Never Trump-er Democrat Can’t See the Walls in Front of His Face

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border wall, Capitol Hill, Capitol Police, Congress, Democrats, Eric Swalwell, Im-Politic, Immigration, Trump, U.S. Capitol

Even in a Congress full of Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers, California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell rose head and shoulders above the rest of these political Section 8-ers yesterday with a tweet about President Trump’s proposed Border Wall.

Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and possible 2020 presidential candidate , is best known for his efforts to de-legitimize the 2016 presidential election results by hawking charges that President Trump and/or his campaign stole their way to victory by colluding with Russia to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In the process, he’s accused Mr. Trump of “working on behalf of the Russians” while in the Oval Office. And like nearly the entire roster of Democrats in the House and Senate, he’s working overtime to prevent the President from keeping his signature campaign promise on illegal immigration (though lately Swalwell has said he’s OK with “fencing where there are vulnerabilities”).

So evidently in an effort to hold Mr. Trump’s version of physical border barriers up to ridicule, Swalwell yesterday sent the Twitter-verse the following challenge:

“If you’ve been to the U.S. Capitol, close your eyes. Do you remember a wall around it? But do you remember officers guarding it? Cameras? And barriers at vulnerable points? Do you believe our Capitol is at any risk of an invasion? We don’t need a wall, we need smart security.”

But as must be obvious to anyone who has indeed visited the Capitol, Swalwell has missed more than a few critical details. Most fundamentally, as a building, the Capitol actually consists of walls. Moreover, doors don’t exactly abound, few of these are open to the public, and the public entrances are manned by Capitol Police officers who, for good measure, require every prospective visitor to go through a metal detector. The same goes for the nearby House and Senate office buildings.

An that’s not all. Capitol Hill security employs “barricades that block cars from approaching the Capitol and office buildings and snipers positioned on the terraces.” And for years, anchoring the security strategy is a $621 million Capitol Visitor Center through which most visitors to the Capitol building itself must pass. Indeed all told, Congress spent $423 million in 2018 on security for itself and its workplace – a sum that has quadrupled since 1998. And the 2,200 officers and civilians comprising the Capitol Police represent a security contingent larger than the police forces of Atlanta, St. Louis, New Orleans, or Denver.  (See the previous linked Roll Call article for these details.) 

Further, one big reason for this impressive effort is that in 1998, before it reached this scale and form, a gunman forced his way into the Capitol and killed two Capitol Police officers. And a handful of violent incidents since then could have surely been much worse – including a 2013 near-disaster involving a driver who tried to crash her vehicle through barriers near the Capitol and surrounding the White House.

Not that the Trump Border Wall, nor his decision to shut down the government partially by leaving spending legislation for some federal agencies in limbo, are beyond criticism. But Swalwell’s from yesterday is clearly off the wall. And weirdly, he’s served in Congress since the beginning of 2013. Maybe instead of urging his fellow Americans to close their eyes and picture the Capitol of his imagination, he should open his and check out the real thing.

Im-Politic: Will Trump Let Trump be Trump on Issues?

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Congress, conservatism, conservatives, Democrats, deregulation, establishment, Im-Politic, infrastructure, John McCain, Marco Rubio, midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Populism, regulation, Republicans, tax cuts, Trade, Trump

Ever since Donald Trump made clear his staying power in presidential politics, his more populist supporters have tried to beat back efforts of more establishment-oriented backers to “normalize” him by insisting that they “Let Trump be Trump.” The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections tell me that the populists’ arguments on substance (as opposed to the President’s penchant for inflammatory and/or vulgar rhetoric) are stronger than ever, but that the obstacles that they’ve faced remain formidable.

The “Let Trump” argument contends that the President’s best hope to attract the most voters has always been his willingness to reject positions that for decades have been conservative and Republican hallmarks, but that have become increasingly unpopular outside the realms of most national GOP office-holders, other Washington, D.C.-based professional Republicans and conservatives, and the donors so largely responsible for their power, influence, and affluence. These maverick Trump positions have included not only trade and immigration; but the role of government and the related issues of entitlements, healthcare, and infrastructure spending; and Wall Street reform.

But since his election, as I’ve argued, Mr. Trump’s willingness to embrace the full maverick agenda has been blunted by his vulnerability on the scandals front. Specifically, he’s seemed so worried about impeachment threats from Democrats that he’s been forced to shore up his support with the conventional Republicans that dominate the party’s ranks in Congress. Why else, I’ve written, would his first two years in office have so prominently featured strong support for right-of-center standbys like major tax and federal discretionary spending cuts; curbs on regulation; repeal of Obamacare; and bigger military budgets, rather than, say a massive push to repair and retool America’s aging or simply outdated transportation, communications, energy, and other networks?

It’s true that Trump remained firmly in (bipartisan) populist mode on trade (notably, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and slapping tariffs on metals imports and many Chinese-made products), and just as firmly in (conservative) populist mode with various administrative measures and proposals to limit and/or transform the makeup of legal immigration – though many of his most ardent backers accuse him of punting on his campaign promise to build a Border Wall.

Yet this Trump populism strongly reflected the views of the Republican base – a development now not lost on conventional conservatives when it comes to immigration, even though they’ve been slow to recognize the big shift among Republican voters against standard free trade policies. By contrast, the President has apparently feared that Congressional Republicans would draw the line on the rest of their traditional agenda – or at least that he could curry favor with them by pushing it.

The midterm results, however, might have brought these political calculations to a turning point. On the one hand, there’s no doubt that most House and Senate Republicans, along with the donors and most of the party’s D.C.-based establishment, are still all-in on their tax, spending, regulatory, and Obamacare positions.

On the other hand, according to the exit polls and other surveys, the tax cuts didn’t even greatly impress Republican voters (let alone independents). And most Americans aren’t willing to risk losing Obamacare benefits they already enjoy (especially coverage for pre-existing medical conditions) by supporting Republican replacement ideas that may be less generous.

The message being sent by all of the above trends and situations is that President Trump may have even more latitude than he’s recognized to cut deals with Democrats. At the same time, the Democrats’ capture of the House of Representatives on Tuesday and signs that they’ll ramp up the scandal investigations could keep preventing him from “being Trump” on such issues and possibly antagonize most Republican lawmakers.

Of course, my political neck isn’t on the line here. But I’d advise Mr. Trump to follow his more unconventional instincts. The Congressional Republicans still uncomfortable with him ideologically must be aware that his personal popularity with GOP supporters has grown significantly since mid-2017, and that this surge owes almost nothing to their own priorities. So if they don’t help staunchly resist any intensified Democratic probes, their political futures could look pretty dicey, too.

One big sign that ever more establishment Republicans are getting “woke” on the obsolescence of much establishment conservatism: the efforts by long-time mainstream conservative/Republican favorites like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to develop a Trump-ian agenda that can survive Mr. Trump’s presidency. Further, resistance in Washington to their efforts is likely to continue weakening, since so many of the President’s ideological opponents on the Republican side are leaving the House and Senate. (And of course, their spiritual leader, veteran Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently passed away.)

To be sure, Mr. Trump yesterday (rhetorically, anyway) erected his own obstacle to deal-cutting – his declaration that he won’t be receptive if investigations persist and broaden. House Democratic leader (and still favorite to become Speaker again) Nancy Pelosi has pretty clearly, however, signaled that she herself is not impeachment-obsessed, even if those exit polls say most of the Democratic base is.

As a result, I can’t entirely blame the President for still feeling spooked by the Democrats – at least this week. But what an irony if the most important opponent “letting Trump be Trump-ism” – whose broad popularity could well combine with the advantages of incumbency to outflank the Democrats, win the President a second term, and pave the way for a truly earth-shaking, lasting realignment of American politics – turned out to be President Trump himself.

Im-Politic: Want to Really Fuel Big Government? Ditch Trump’s Trade Policies

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Affordable Care Act, big government, budget cuts, Congress, conservatives, discretionary spending, entitlement spending, healthcare, Im-Politic, industrial policy, Mick Mulvaney, Obamacare, Republicans, Trade, Trump, USAToday

USA Today‘s editorial yesterday on U.S. trade policy did an excellent job of stating a major objection to tariffs and other measures that interfere with international commerce – and one that understandably resonates strongly in a nation that prizes free market values, and especially among its conservatives: These trade curbs fuel Big Government, thereby preventing the economy from achieving its full potential, and harming the nation’s society and culture as well as the economy by sapping the attractiveness of individual initiative.

The essay also understandably focused on a development that looks like a poster child for trade-fostered Big Government – the process set up by the Trump administration to decide which companies will receive exemptions from recent metals tariffs, based on claims that adequate domestic substitute steel and aluminum products aren’t available.

In the words of the editorial writers:

“[T]he administration has imposed a new tax on imported metals and then put itself in a position to decide who has to pay it and who does not.

“This is Big Government at its worst — arbitrary and capricious, if not outright political, as it picks winners and losers in business. And all this is being done without any new law being passed and while a Republican Congress, which used to stand for free enterprise and limited government, remains supine.”

One obvious rejoinder is the observation that, however cumbersome the exemptions process may or may not be, Washington actually has an impressive historical record of “picking winners and losers in business.” Examples include the information technology hardware and software industries, which were practically launched with public (largely Pentagon sponsored) research and development funds, and critically nurtured by government (again, largely defense-supplied) markets; the world-class farming sector fostered by U.S. Department of Agriculture research findings; the equally world-class pharmaceutical industry aided by the National Institutes of Health; and an aviation and aerospace industry supported by the Defense Department, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and by a NASA predecessor aeronautic agency. (For an excellent summary of this historical record, see this study from the National Academies of Science.) 

But there’s another vital point missed by USAToday and by conservatives who remain devoted to preserving or renewing the expansion of the existing free trade realm: If they succeed, they’re likely to see the kind of Big Government metastasis America has never experienced before. The reason? So many renumerative Americans jobs will be lost, and so much income destroyed, that political pressures for a much more generous welfare state will positively skyrocket.

Another favorite cause of newspaper editorialists like the USAToday writers and many Big Government-phobic conservatives – the return of mass immigration – will bring the same type of outcome, for many of the same reasons.

And if you think that the nation’s leaders will unite to uphold the causes of self-reliance and much smaller government, you weren’t paying attention to the recent fight over abolishing “Obamacare.” For better or worse, the national healthcare system created at the initiative of the former President remains largely in place even though its Republican opponents control the entire federal government and a huge majority of state governments because lots of these Republican politicians recognized that eliminating this latest entitlement would be political suicide.

At the same time, standard-issue conservatives aren’t the only Americans who may need to learn these lessons. Donald Trump belongs on this list, too. Interestingly, he won the presidency after running a campaign that both promised an Americans-First overhaul of trade policy and to protect the nation’s immense middle class entitlement programs – both of which clashed strongly with conservative dogma.

But his biggest first-year push as President involved going after Obamacare – well before he had achieved any of his trade policy goals, and before he even began pursuing them energetically. And he’s so far permitted his budget director, former Tea Party stalwart Mick Mulvaney, to propose numerous deep cuts in discretionary spending and even some entitlement spending that aren’t exactly middle class-friendly, either.

This set of priorities may have been unavoidable politically, reflecting Mr. Trump’s perceived need to establish some conservative bona fides with Congressional Republicans – who mainly still strongly support the party’s old orthodoxy, but whose staunch backing he would need in any impeachment proceedings.

At the same time, a fair number of those donors-friendly, offshoring-happy Congressional Republicans are retiring – largely because they recognize that Trump-ian trade and other unorthodox policies have won over the base. And although Democratic hardliners may indeed push successfully for impeachment proceedings if the party wins the House, it’s likely that, in the absence of a major smoking gun, this campaign could alienate independent voters – who are hardly gung ho to give Mr. Trump the heave-ho. Chances are they’d be even less receptive to an impeachment spectacle dominating Washington if the President distanced himself from meat-axe public spending cuts.

If this scenario unfolds, the loudest voices complaining that Trump-ian trade policies lead to Big Government could be mainstream media editorialists and pundits. But these voices would be less important than ever.

Following Up: Time for a “Truth in Testimony Act” for Think Tanks

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business, civil society groups, Congress, corporations, data, exports, Following Up, globalization, idea laundering, imports, Jobs, labor unions, offshoring, statistics, think tanks, Trade, trade balances, transparency

So far, my work on the problems for our democracy caused by corporate- or other special interest-funded think tanks has emphasized that the media has a special responsibility – and ability — to help solve them. How? By making sure that whenever they quote staffers from these organizations as experts on this or that issue, they reveal who’s signing the tankers’ paychecks.

But another major segment of society also needs to play a role in preventing what I call think tank idea-laundering – posing as objective, academicky-type organizations in order to portray their staffs’ findings as the products of disinterested scholarly research rather than exercises in agenda-pushing. That segment is government.

Legislatures at the local, state, and federal levels should pass what might be called “Truth in Testifying Acts.” That is, whenever they invite input from think tanks in hearings they hold, or in public comment exercises they conduct, the law-making bodies should require these organizations to disclose all their funders with a financial stake in the subject being examined, or the decision that’s pending. As a result, the public or any other consumers of these analyses would have the information they need to judge how much credibility they feel the information deserves, and what kind of material has been deliberately exaggerated or spotlighted or downplayed or ignored altogether.

In fact, these requirements should be imposed on so-called civil society groups, foundations, labor unions, academic institutions, and business organizations, too. Sometimes their biases are obvious from their names, but only sometimes. Best to err therefore on the side of caution – and more disclosure.

Further, while we’re on the subject, I’d like to see something else added to these Truth in Testimony Acts, or follow-on legislation, which is especially relevant to the trade issues I follow so closely: requirements that business groups and their think tank fronts lay out comprehensively their own domestic and international operations and structures, and those of their major funders. They’re needed because representatives of these organizations have long gotten away with literal intellectual murder by presenting legislators with shamelessly cherry-picked data.

For example, when trade agreements and other trade policy decisions are being examined, it’s become standard operating procedure for witnesses in favor of greater liberalization to present figures on exports from the country as a whole, from individual states or Congressional districts (always of major concern to Senators and House members), or from whatever company or industry they represent. And typically, they’re allowed to ignore the import and trade balance sides of the equation. Talk about a total crock.

Similarly, these individuals and organizations are happy to report on how many workers they employ nationally, and in various states and localities, and how many of these jobs depend on exports at a given moment. But they have no interest in discussing how these trends have changed over time, or how many jobs and how much production they’ve sent overseas or have lost to imports, or how these situations have evolved, say, over the life of a certain trade deal.

The companies and industries justify this selectivity by contending that information on imports and offshoring is proprietary, and that keeping it confidential is crucial to their commercial success. That’s often true. But the Truth in Testimony Act should specify that if witnesses wish to keep close to their vest information on one side of the trade ledger (e.g., their firm’s imports), then they can’t brag about their performance on the other side (e.g., their firm’s exports). There’s simply no reason to allow these businesses to play, “Heads, We Win; Tails, You Lose.”

Nor need there be anything the slightest bit coercive about such requirements. If businesses and industries and their various representatives feel so strongly about the secrets to their success, they should be free to decline invites to appear before lawmakers.

Actually, I’d like to extend these requirements to the financial statements public companies need to file with the feds. As with their testimony, such businesses often include flattering trade-related information in quarterly and annual financial statements. If they’re not willing to give investors the full picture, they should need to drop the whole subject.

And why restrict such disclosures to public businesses? Companies of all kinds are required to report all sorts of information to Washington. Their submissions form the basis of much of the economic data that is made publicly available by the federal government. The shield of anonymity provided by the Census Bureau and other statistical agencies to prevent rivals from using the data to gain advantage is entirely reasonable from the standpoint of these businesses. But from a national standpoint, it makes no sense at all. Indeed, it puts policymakers and the public in the position of flying largely blind when it comes to evaluating the impact of trade policy decisions.

The same kind of problem is created by the narrow range of trade-related info that businesses are legally obligated to share. Why not force them to specify their job and production offshoring, the wages of their U.S. and overseas workers, their foreign and domestic procurement, the foreign and domestic content of their products, and similar statistics? And why not demand time series, so that long-term patterns can be identified?  BTW — content information has been required of auto-makers selling in the United States since the 1990s, so major precedent exists. 

The business secrets problem is easily solved: If all firms wishing the privilege of operating in the United States need to share the same information, no one company is put behind the eight-ball. And again, no coercion is involved. Companies would be perfectly free not to comply – and exit the world’s most lucrative market by far in the process. And what about the regulatory burden that would be placed on smaller firms? There’s a strong argument for exempting them, as larger firms dominate U.S. trade flows anyway.

Such a sweeping “Truth in Globalization Act” would probably be a heavier legislative lift than the “Truth in Testimony Act,” so I’d focus first on the former. But both are urgently needed to ensure the soundest possible U.S. policymaking process.  And how could anyone genuinely devoted to the national interest object?  

Im-Politic: Did Trump (and Trump-ism) Really Lose Big in the Healthcare Fight?

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border adjustment tax, Congress, conservatives, Freedom Caucus, healthcare, Im-Politic, Immigration, infrastructure, Obama, Obamacare, Paul Ryan, Peggy Noonan, Republicans, RyanCare, tax reform, Tea Party, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump

The list of realities, considerations, factors – call them what you will – that President Trump either forgot or overlooked as he pushed for House passage of the Republican healthcare bill is long, impressive, and pretty obvious according to the Washington, D.C. conventional political wisdom. On the off chance you haven’t heard it or read it, it includes the difference between cutting deals among real estate tycoons and negotiating with ideological politicians; his own voters’ tendency to rely heavily on the kind of government healthcare aid that the GOP legislation either eliminated or sharply curbed; the powerful vested stake developed after years or working with it in the current healthcare system – however troubled it might be – by major participants in the system; and the dangers to Mr. Trump’s own credibility and political power of choosing to tackle first a highly contentious subject (like healthcare) instead of a priority that’s reasonably uncontroversial (like infrastructure spending).

All those points seem valid to me, but I would add two more that seem at least equally important. Then I’ll present an interpretation of the healthcare story that hasn’t appeared anywhere else yet but that shouldn’t be overlooked – if only because it ties the otherwise puzzling story together in ways that are admittedly byzantine, but that make eminent sense in a Machiavellian (and therefore quintessentially political) way. In fact, this analysis dovetails exceptionally well with the president’s clear (to me, certainly) determination to remake American politics by rejecting the doctrinaire conservatism embodied by the Republican party for decades, and thereby increasing its appeal to independents and moderates.

The first such consideration that should be added to the overlooked list: how much more difficult it is both politically and substantively to take away government assistance used by economically stressed Americans (like those who backed Trump in droves) than it is to enable them to thrive without the assistance via other major planks of the Trump platform – chiefly immigration and trade policy overhaul.

One of the secrets of Trump’s success, after all, was his recognition that vast numbers of working and middle class Americans no longer buy the mainstream Republican argument that they could greatly increase their economic self-reliance through the wealth that would trickle down to them through shrinking taxes and government. He understood that this promise would always ring false as long as so many good jobs and so much income were being sent to foreigners through offshoring-friendly trade policies and mass immigration.

So it’s easy to understand why the Republican healthcare legislation registered so little support from even Republican voters – no doubt including many Trump backers. He seemed to be putting the cart before the horse not when it came to the kinds of government programs touted by liberals that Trump-ites viewed as bupkis, but with a program that had become central to their lives. (For a terrific analysis of Main Street views of healthcare at the usually ignored gut level, see this column by The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan.)

The second neglected consideration flows directly from the first: President Trump’s election shows that the Republican party has moved significantly in his more populist and particularly less ideological direction, if not at the interlocking think tank/donors/Congressional level, at the far more important voter level. As a result, there was no apparent reason for Mr. Trump to defer to the more ideological Congressional Republicans on the healthcare front.

More specifically, even though the national party’s leadership did indeed treat Obamacare repeal and replacement as a defining principle and promise to its grassroots, and even though candidate Trump expressed strong opposition to his predecessors’ signature achievement, healthcare was never the defining principle of the maverick movement he led. That’s why he so frequently spoke of achieving healthcare goals that have been so widely rejected in Republican and conservative and leadership circles, like ensuring universal coverage.

So why did the president lead off his legislative agenda with orthodox Republican-style healthcare reform? Here’s where the story gets Machiavellian to me – but in ways that should be entirely plausible to anyone familiar with how successful political strategists think. Further, it’s a narrative that fully takes into account the hyper-partisan nature of Washington and legislative politics with which Mr. Trump needs to deal. And it goes like this.

The president recognizes that even though he’s remade much of the Republican base in his own image on the issues level, he also must realize that the Washington Republicans – which include the party’s mainstream conservative Congressional leaders and its more ideological Tea Party wing – remain hostile on the highest profile matters on his own agenda. I imagine he also recognizes that they might be powerful enough to undermine his initiatives on trade, immigration, and/or infrastructure – especially if Democratic leaders remain in their adamant “resistance” mode.

For even if Democrats are ultimately winnable on trade and infrastructure, they have no interest even in these areas in giving the president the kind of quick victory that would greatly strengthen the odds of turning his first term of office into a success that would boost the odds of his reelection. They have even less interest in helping Mr. Trump further strengthen his appeal to many of big Democratic constituencies.

So the Washington Republicans needed to be at least neutralized – and sooner rather than later. And appearing to fight the good fight for their healthcare reform proposal was an ideal way to demonstrate his loyalty to their objectives and strengthen his case for demanding concessions from them in return in areas he valued much more highly. This calculation looks especially shrewd since the Republican bill was so draconian that even had it squeezed through the House, the Senate was bound to prevent its reaching his desk in anything like its current form.

As a result, now that the “RyanCare” legislation is dead, Mr. Trump can say to both the House Republican leaders and even to the hard-line Freedom Caucus something to the effect, “We tried it your way, I carried lots of your water, and I paid a noticeable price. Now we drop the healthcare effort, pivot to my priorities, and I expect your votes, even if you won’t pull front-line duty. And when we do address healthcare as Obamacare’s failures multiply, you’re going to do right by your own constituents and drop the free market extremism. P.S. Anyone remaining obstructionist comes into my social media cross-hairs with your reelection bids coming up.”

I have no inside information here, and my reasoning could certainly be too clever by half. Moreover, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my professional life is that just because an analysis seems logical or commonsensical, doesn’t mean that it’s true. But even though it’s only about a day since the healthcare bill was pulled from a scheduled floor vote for the second and final time, I derive some satisfaction in seeing the president is making nice with both House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Freedom Caucus members, and making clear that it’s tax reform time (which could bring a tariff-like border adjustment tax). Which could mean that Donald Trump’s presidency is highly conventional in at least one respect – temptations to dismiss it as a failure should be strongly resisted.