Im-Politic: The Case Against (Another) Impeachment

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25th Amendment, Capitol assault, Capitol riots, Constitution, election 2020, election challenge, election integrity, Im-Politic, impeachment, incitement, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, obstruction of justice, Trump, Trump rally

These last few days have been a great example of the adage that timing is everything. I was in full politics mode early this week because of the run-up to the eagerly and anxiously anticipated Georgia Senatorial runoff elections on Tuesday, and therefore decided to post Wednesday morning on the likely (and indeed eventual) results and the impact of the Democratic sweep on Republican Party politics.

I put up the post in the very early afternoon, and then almost immediately afterwards came the assault on the Capitol Building. Ordinarily, I’d have followed up with commentary on that outrage on Thursday or Friday. But as known by RealityChek regulars know, I focused instead on the new official U.S. foreign trade figures that came out on Thursday and the official U.S. jobs report issued Friday. In part I wanted to spend my time away from politics because I was trying to think of something original to contribute to the torrent of thoughts and emotions that followed the Capitol chaos, but also because to such an extent I’m an economics type, and the economy and its various problems haven’t gone away.

So it wasn’t until late-ish Saturday afternoon, as the news continued its own assault, that I’d collected my thoughts and reviewed the available evidence sufficiently to start writing on what has emerged as the question of the moment: What should the American system of government do about President Trump? More specifically, since (reportedly, at least) Vice President Mike Pence has ruled out using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove the President from office (and rightly, in my view), should Mr. Trump be impeached again? 

My answer: No.  Let him to serve out his term. But before making the case for that course, here’s one idea suggested by a friend yesterday (and that I subsequently found out also has been suggested here and here): Mr. Trump’s best option for Mr. Trump would be resigning as part of a deal in which new President Mike Pence would pardon him, and thereby shield him from prosecution for any crimes he might have committed as President (more on which below).

Such a pardon would still leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to civil and criminal indictments by state and local law enforcement authorities (described here). But even though there are no signs that President-elect Biden wants to pursue the possible Presidential offenses, foreclosing this option entirely would clearly leave Mr. Trump much better off than leaving it open.

As for impeachment, it’s important that Mr. Biden hasn’t yet endorsed such an effort. But he hasn’t opposed it, either. I hope he will, for the following reasons:

>The Senate trial that would follow an affirmative vote by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would further deepen and enflame national passions that clearly are more than deep and enflamed enough already, thank you very much.

>Reportedly, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is still the upper chamber’s majority leader, has sent out to his colleagues a schedule for a possible trial that serves as a reminder that, under existing Senate procedures, no such event could even start until January 19 – the day before Inauguration Day – without the consent of all sitting Senators. Since the President retains fairly substantial support from the Republican side, this means that the Senate vote required to approve the impeachment would take place after Mr. Trump has left office – an action that could easily be portrayed as one of pure vengeance, and that would further intensify political divisions.

>At least as important, for those claiming to be worried (as they should be) about the possibility of hostile foreign powers moving to capitalize on U.S. political turmoil, a full impeachment and trial would significantly lengthen this window of danger. It’s true that America’s adversaries have held back so far, but why increase the odds of a crisis, especially after the President is gone from the White House?

>Similarly, a full impeachment process would represent a major and completely unnecessary distraction for the federal government at a time when major distractions, even leaving aside national security considerations, are exactly what America doesn’t need right now. In case you’ve forgotten, a second (or third?) CCP Virus wave is still mounting, the economy remains in the toilet, and even with a major new stimulus/relief bill, months more of widepread suffering for many individuals, households, and businesses seems certain.

You don’t need to believe that the Trump administration excelled at dealing with the pandemic’s arrival to recognize that the previous impeachment effort preoccupied the attention of both the Executive and Congress for many critical weeks. Would the likely benefits of indicting President Trump and then seeking to remove him from office (at a Senate trial that would certainly take place after Inauguration Day) really outweigh the risks? And outweigh them significantly? Even though my belief has always been that any political leader or government worth its salt needs to be able to handle multiple challenges at once, I can’t see the wisdom of adding unnecessary challenges.

>One argument for impeachment and conviction is that the latter would prevent the dangerously unstable Mr. Trump from ever again holding public office at any level. That’s an understandable goal for those viewing the outgoing President as an incorrigible menace to America’s democracy and way of life. But even for such Never Trumpers, is it a goal consistent with democratic principles?

I’d answer “Yes,” if smoking gun-type evidence existed for Trumpian offenses. But as explained further below, based on what’s currently public knowledge, I don’t see a viable case. And in its absence, shouldn’t the final verdict on the President’s political future be left up to the American people? Don’t opponents trust in the electorate’s judgment? And in their ability to keep Mr. Trump away from official power-wielding via politics?

As for the Wednesday events themselves, and the issue of the President’s responsibility and the case for other instances of criminality during the last weeks of his presidency (which Constitutionally can be prosecuted once he’s out of office):

I watched the entire video of his speech to the rally that morning and have now examined the transcript. The only phrasing I heard that could even by the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered “incitement” was the President’s single use of the word “fight” and statements like “We’re just not going to let that [a final Congressional certification of the Electoral College vote] happen.”

In addition, on December 20, the President sent out this tweet: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

I agree with Fox News talker – and generally strong Trump supporter – Tucker Carlson that these remarks were “reckless,” because national passions are running so hot. But terrible judgment alone is almost never criminal according to both common sense and the American legal system.  

Further, the above remarks were accompanied by Trump statements like “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”; and ”[W]e’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country”; and “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

In other words, the only explicit instructions or advice or whatever you want to call it given by Mr. Trump to the crowd entailed peaceful, not violent, behavior. And anyone seizing (in isolation) on the use of “fight” needs to ask themselves if they’ve never heard a politician exhort his followers with that verb? Or characterize a campaign as a “battle”? That’s why the only reaction justified by the “fight charge” is “Oh, please.” The same goes for his claim that neither he nor his followers should ever accept the election results. That’s a far cry from recommending that they commit violent acts.

Regarding the December 20 tweet – which was sent out weeks before the Capitol attack – the “wild” reference was clearly meant as a description of the anticipated rally scene, and used to convey boisterousness, excitement, etc. Good luck contending in a court of law that this amounted to a request or demand to act in an out-of-control, much less illegal, manner, and using it as a basis of an incitement charge.

>Arguments have also been made that the President’s phone calls to the Georgia state officials and especially his January 2 declaration that he “just wanted to find 11,780 votes” amounted to solicitation of election fraud or participating in a conspiracy against people exercising their civil rights.

Ironically, though, one of the President’s best defenses harkens back to one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s explanations for why there was no airtight case for charging Mr. Trump with obstruction of justice based on the evidence he uncovered in his probe of the so-called Russia collusion scandal: The President arguably had no criminal or corrupt intent because he genuinely believed he was being framed. Similarly, Mr. Trump’s phone call was motivated by a sincere belief that the election had been stolen. (See Volume II, p. 89 here.)

The election fraud etc argument is also ironic because of all the pre-Capitol riots talk of indicting the President for obstructing justice based on the Mueller probe’s findings. Even Mueller wasn’t terribly confident about Mr. Trump’s culpability on this score.

The only caveat to this analysis that needs to be kept in mind is that the standards for determinations of guilt in civil law suits are lower than for criminal prosecutions.  So in principle, those kinds of legal avenues are plausible, and convictions might obtained in at least some cases – even though these procedings won’t do wonders for the cause of reasonable national unity, either. 

But overall, just as genuinely good options are usually awfully difficult to find during hot messes like that which the United States faces now, options that satisfy everyone or even a majority of Americans will be scarce at best, too. So permitting the Trump presidency to come to as normal a possible end seems the best of an unsatisfactory lot – provided of course that new news shocks don’t shake up an already disturbingly settled national scene over the next ten days.

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Im-Politic: Can Trumpism Without Trump Really Be a Thing?

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CCP Virus, conservatives, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2024, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, Populism, Republicans, Ross Douthat, The New York Times, Tom Cotton, Trump, Wuhan virus

I might have gotten a little ahead of myself when a recent post speculated (optimistically) about the future of Trump-ism without Donald Trump. It’s not that I was wrong that nationalist populism will continue dominating the Republican Party instead of its decades-long belief in globalism, minimal government, and minimal taxes as economic cure-alls in particular. At least not yet.

Instead, reportedly, anyway, there’s a real chance that President Trump won’t pass from the scene if he does lose the White House. There’s even chatter that he might even run again in 2024! Given Mr. Trump’s personality, it’s clear I shouldn’t have overlooked his love of the spotlight. But as a recent column by The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat reminded me, there are solid reasons for viewing the President’s leadership as crucial to the future of the distinctive approach to foreign and domestic policy that he’s spearheaded.

I had written that TrumpWorld shouldn’t find it overly difficult to find a nationally competitive candidate (or candidates) who strongly supports the essentials of Trumpism yet possess the personal discipline to avoid the wild excesses that clearly wounded the President – perhaps mortally – throughout his term in office.

But Douthat noted how central Mr. Trump’s bluster and bombast have been to both creating his base and, just as important in electoral terms, turning them out. And lest we forget amid all the uncertainties about who will take the Oath of Office in January, the Trump vote this month was bigger in absolute terms than in 2016.

It’s still reasonable to argue that, given the advantages of incumbency, Mr. Trump’s style cost him more backing than it maintained or reenforced. But it’s just as reasonable to contend that the President was done in by a literal bolt from the blue — the CCP Virus. Or was a critical mass of voters ultimately convinced that, however much they liked or tolerated Trump-ian excesses during normal times, he was the wrong leader for a pandemic – and for similar future emergencies that couldn’t be ruled out?

If the President stays in the political arena, the big question facing him, supporters and sympathizers, and the nation, will be what, if any, lessons he learns from these last election results. So far, his claims that he actually won reelection indicate that the answer so far is “None.” And in terms of actual results, if he winds up triumphant, or if he loses and his successor’s term isn’t overall a major success, he could be proven right.

But to me, the safest bet for the time being is that the President’s election challenges will fail, that the reasons for his defeat will remain murky, and that the Biden administration’s first term record will fall in the middle ground between unalloyed triumph and unmitigated disaster.

As a result, the best strategy for Trumpers going forward would seem to be to try creating the best of all possible worlds – to find a leader, or leaders, able to thread the needle between Trumpian boisterousness and satisfactory levels of self-control.

The less successful the Biden administration is, the more of the former will be acceptable, and vice versa. But even so, looking at the landscape, it’s tough to identify prominent Republican politicians who can play to in-person and electronic crowds like the President. Conservative populists like Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio seem to check the main issues and the Responsible Adult boxes. So does Vice President Mike Pence. (Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton checks some of these boxes, but his approach to foreign policy has been highly interventionist, and he’s said little of note about using government more to help struggling families or nurture vital but still early-stage industries and technologies.)

But even though Pence was a long-time radio talk show host, I’ve seen no evidence that any of these figures can light up an audience like the President. Optimists can note that Hawley et al aren’t exactly household names, and therefore still have opportunities to create national brands. Pessimists can note that, although they’re all veterans of national politics (except relative newcomer Hawley)…they’re not exactly household names. Maybe that means that they simply lack the “Happy Warrior” gene to begin with?

So leaving aside the Biden factor, the ability of conservative populists to win nationally without Mr. Trump could indeed well hinge in part on whether and to what extent any conservative populists can replicate charisma comparable to the President’s. In particular, can they create or summon up an inner Regular Guy, or project some other persona that’s similarly effective and engaging?

Alternatively, the President could buck the odds and display some kind of a learning curve. The wide gap separating his performances during the first and last presidential debates this fall indicates that’s not out of the question. Much more certain – all parties concerned could benefit from some vigorous competition.

Im-Politic: New Signs that Biden Will Lift the China Tariffs – & That Beijing is Counting on It

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China, China tariffs, currency, election 2020, exchange rates, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Susan Page, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Vice Presidential debate, Xi JInPing, yuan

Between wall-to-wall coverage of the fly and the smirks, it was easy to lose sight of one of the most important reveals of Wednesday’s vice presidential debate: There’s now more reason than ever to believe that if Joe Biden becomes President, he’ll lift President Trump’s tariffs on China. And just as important, there’s now more reason than ever to believe that this is exactly what China is expecting.

Whether you believe that Trump-type China trade policies have been needed and/or have worked (two closely related but not identical matters), the likelihood that the tariffs would be toast is incredibly important because it begs the questions of whether the Democratic nominee has a coherent alternative China trade poicy in mind that can adequately serve U.S. interests (along with alternative investment and tech policies) and whether he’s capable of developing one.

As known by RealityChek regulars, I believe that on both scores, the answer is an emphatic “No.” But what’s more important right now is making clear that Biden running mate Kamala Harris’ debate performance strongly indicated that a major course change is coming.

First, though, a deserved swipe at moderator Susan Page’s China question. Page, the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today, inadvertently reminded viewers (and should have reminded the Commission on Presidential Debates that organizes such events) why veteran campaign and White House reporters are almost uniquely unqualified to serve in these roles – at least if you’re looking for some minimally satisfactory discussion of issues.

For these journalists tend to be preoccupied with politics, not policy – and with the most superficial horse race or gossipy dimensions of politics at that. As a result, their substantive background is even less impressive than that usually boasted by colleagues who are supposed to know something about the issues they cover (a low bar).

So although Page deserves some credit for even bringing up the topic of China policy, no one should have been surprised by the Happy Talk nature of her question. I mean, here’s a country that’s been blamed across the American political spectrum for destroying huge numbers of American jobs with its wide-ranging trade predation, whose tech companies have been just as widely deemed as dangers to U.S. national security and American’s privacy rights, which increasingly is threatening U.S. allies and other countries in the “Indo-Pacific” region (foreign policy mavens’ latest name for the Asia-Pacific region, due to India’s, and which is treating its own population ever more brutally.

And Page’s question was dominated by claims that China is “a huge market for American agricultural goods” and “a potential partner in dealing with climate change and North Korea”? Not to mention suggesting that its role in bringing the coronavirus to the nation and world is nothing more than a charge leveled by President Trump?

All the same, Harris’ answer was what counted:

“Susan, the Trump administration’s perspective, and approach to China has resulted in the loss of American lives, American jobs and America’s standing. There is a weird obsession that President Trump has had with getting rid of whatever accomplishment was achieved by President Obama and Vice President Biden. For example, they created, within the White House, and office that basically was just responsible for monitoring pandemics. They got away, they got rid of it.”

Previously that evening, she argued that:

“You, [Vice President Mike Pence] earlier referred to, as part of what he thinks is an accomplishment, the President’s trade war with China. You lost that trade war. You lost it. What ended up happening is, because of a so called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Farmers have experienced bankruptcy, because of it. We are in a manufacturing recession, because of it. And when we look at this administration has been, there are estimates that by the end of the term of this administration, they will have lost more jobs than almost any other presidential administration.”

Let’s leave aside the accuracy or relevance of any of these points – like the 300,000 manufacturing jobs claim loss claim that apparently comes from an economist who admits his 2016 predictions about economy’s performance during the Trump era were completely off-base; or the plainly nutty insistence that the Trump China policy cost American lives.

If Harris believes any of this, and especially that the trade war has been “lost,” then clearly the only important question about the China tariffs isn’t whether they’ll be lifted by a President Biden, but how fast.

Moreover, there’s abundant evidence that Biden fully agrees that these Trump measures have been seriously counter-productive. When asked in August if he’d “keep the tariffs,” he responded, “No. Hey, look, who said Trump’s idea’s a good one?” said Biden. “Manufacturing has gone into a recession. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay.” In other words, most of the main anti-tariff arguments in two pithy sentences.

An aide to the former vice president tried to walk back these remarks, shortly afterwards, but Biden’s words perfectly fit journalist Michael Kinsley’s epic definition of what’s usually mischaracterized in American politics as a “gaffe”: an instance “when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”

Equally interesting and important with regard to the Biden-Harris China policies – one clear and one possible new sign that Beijing is actively rooting for their success, and assuming the tariffs’ removal. The first came during the vice presidential debate, when Chinese authorities censored some of Pence’s critical comments on China just as Chinese audiences were about to hear them, and then restored the signal in time for Harris’ rejoinder.

The second came last night, when in its first announcement since the end of its Golden Week holiday of a new exchange rate for China’s currency, the yuan, versus the U.S. dollar, Beijing revalued (i.e., made it more expensive compared with the greenback) by the greatest amount in four and a half years. The main reason – at least as I see it: China believes that Biden will win, and is permitting its currency to strengthen because any competitiveness loss by its exports resulting from this and even significant further revaluation will be more than offset by the removal of U.S. levies that have typically hit 25 percent.

Of course, I could be wrong about Biden. So could China. But keep in mind that the former Vice President boasts that he knows Chinese dictator Xi Jinping well because of all the time he’s spent with him. Does anyone seriously think that, by the same token, Xi hasn’t learned a thing or two about Biden as well?

Im-Politic: VP Debate Questions That Should be Asked

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1619 Project, African Americans, Barack Obama, Biden, budget deficits, CCP Virus, censorship, China, Confederate monuments, Constitution, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, election 2020, Electoral College, filibuster, Founding Fathers, free speech, healthcare, history, history wars, Im-Politic, inequality, investment, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, national security, Obamacare, police killings, propaganda, protests, racism, riots, semiconductors, slavery, spending, Supreme Court, systemic racism, Taiwan, tariffs, tax cuts, taxes, Trade, trade war, Trump, Vice Presidential debate, Wuhan virus

Since I don’t want to set a record for longest RealityChek post ever, I’ll do my best to limit this list of questions I’d like to see asked at tonight’s Vice Presidential debate to some subjects that I believe deserve the very highest priority, and/or that have been thoroughly neglected so far during this campaign.

>For Vice President Mike Pence: If for whatever reason, President Trump couldn’t keep the CCP Virus under control within his own White House, why should Americans have any faith that any of his policies will bring it under control in the nation as a whole?

>For Democratic candidate Senator Kamala Harris: What exactly should be the near-term goal of U.S. virus policy? Eliminate it almost completely (as was done with polio)? Stop its spread? Slow its spread? Reduce deaths? Reduce hospitalizations? And for goals short of complete elimination, define “slow” and “reduce” in terms of numerical targets.

>For Pence: Given that the administration’s tax cuts and spending levels were greatly ballooning the federal budget deficit even before the virus struck, isn’t it ridiculous for Congressional Republicans to insist that total spending in the stimulus package remain below certain levels?

For Harris: Last month, the bipartisan Congressional Problem Solvers Caucus unveiled a compromise stimulus framework. President Trump has spoken favorably about it, while stopping short of a full endorsement. Does Vice President Biden endorse it? If so, has he asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to sign on? If he doesn’t endorse it, why not?

For Pence: The nation is in the middle of a major pandemic. Whatever faults the administration sees in Obamacare, is this really the time to be asking the Supreme Court to rule it un-Constitutional, and throw the entire national health care system into mass confusion?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration offer free taxpayer-financed healthcare to illegal aliens? Wouldn’t this move strongly encourage unmanageable numbers of migrants to swamp U.S. borders?

For Pence: President Trump has imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese exports headed to U.S. markets. But U.S. investors – including government workers’ pension funds – still keep sending equally large sums into Chinese government coffers. When is the Trump administration finally going to plug this enormous hole?

For Harris: Will a Biden administration lift or reduce any of the Trump China or metals tariffs. Will it do so unconditionally? If not, what will it be seeking in return?

For both: Taiwan now manufactures the world’s most advanced semiconductors, and seems sure to maintain the lead for the foreseeable future. Does the United States now need to promise to protect Taiwan militarily in order to keep this vital defense and economic knowhow out of China’s hands?

For Pence: Since the administration has complained so loudly about activist judges over-ruling elected legislators and making laws themselves, will Mr. Trump support checking this power by proposing term limits or mandatory retirement ages for Supreme Court Justices? If not, why not?

For Harris: Don’t voters deserve to know the Biden Supreme Court-packing position before Election Day? Ditto for his position on abolishing the filibuster in the Senate.

>For Pence: The Electoral College seems to violate the maxim that each votes should count equally. Does the Trump administration favor reform? If not, why not?

>For Harris: Many Democrats argue that the Electoral College gives lightly populated, conservative and Republican-leaning states outsized political power. But why, then, was Barack Obama able to win the White House not once but twice?

>For Pence: Charges that America’s police are killing unarmed African Americans at the drop of a hat are clearly wild exaggerations. But don’t you agree that police stop African-American pedestrians and drivers much more often than whites without probable cause – a problem that has victimized even South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott?

For Harris: Will Biden insist that mayors and governors in cities and states like Oregon and Washington, which have been victimized by chronic antifa violence, investigate, arrest and prosecute its members and leaders immediately? And if they don’t, will he either withhold federal law enforcement aid, or launch such investigations at the federal level?

For Pence: Why should any public places in America honor Confederate figures – who were traitors to the United States? Can’t we easily avoid the “erasing history” danger by putting these monuments in museums with appropriate background material?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration support even peacefully removing from public places statues and monuments to historic figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because their backgrounds included slave-holding?

For both: Shouldn’t voters know much more about the Durham Justice Department investigation of official surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016 before Election Day?

For both: Should the Big Tech companies be broken up on antitrust grounds?

For both: Should internet and social media platforms be permitted to censor any form of Constitutionally permitted speech?

For Pence: Doesn’t the current system of using property taxes to fund most primary and secondary public education guarantee that low-income school children will lack adequate resources?

For Harris: Aren’t such low-income students often held back educationally by non-economic factors like generations of broken families and counter-productive student behavior, as well as by inadequate school funding – as leading figures like Jesse Jackson (at least for one period) and former President Obama have claimed?

For Pence: What’s the difference between the kind of “patriotic education” the President says he supports and official propaganda?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration oppose local school districts using propagandistic material like The New York Times‘ U.S. history-focused 1619 Project for their curricula? Should federal aid to districts that keep using such materials be cut off or reduced?

Now it’s your turn, RealityChek readers! What questions would you add? And which of mine would you deep six?

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of Last Night’s NYC Radio Appearance

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court packing, FBI, filibuster, Frank Morano, Kamala Harris, Making News, Mike Pence, rock music, Supreme Court, The Other Side of Midnight, Trump-Russia, Vice Presidential debate, WABC AM, Yankees

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now on-line of my appearance last night on Frank Morano’s “The Other Side of Midnight” program on New York City’s WABC-AM radio station. For a – really – wide-ranging discussion encompassing tonight’s Vice Presidential debate, the Supreme Court, rock music, the economy, the latest revelations about FBI misdeeds, and of course the Yankees, click here and then on the “Staten Island” link. My segment beings at about the 20:30 mark.

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

Im-Politic: Why China’s U.S. Election Interference is a Very Big Deal

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battleground states, Center for Strategic and International Studies, China, Chinese Americans, collusion, Democrats, election 2020, elections, entertainment, Freedom House, Hollywood, Hoover Institution, Im-Politic, Mike Pence, multinational companies, Nancy Pelosi, National Basketball Association, NBA, Robert Draper, Robert O'Brien, social media, The New York Times Magazine, think tanks, Trump, Trump-Russia, Wall Street

It’s baaaaaaack! The Russia collusion thing, I mean. Only this time, with an important difference.

On top of charges that Moscow is monkeying around with November’s U.S. elections to ensure a Trump victory, and that the President and his aides are doing nothing to fend of this threat to the integrity of the nation’s politics, Democrats and their supporters are now dismissing claims administration about Chinese meddling as alarmism at best and diversionary at worst.

In the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, commenting on recent testimony from U.S. intelligence officials spotlighting both countries’ efforts, to “give some equivalence” of China and Russia on interference efforts “doesn’t really tell the story. 

She continued, “The Chinese, they said, prefer [presumptive Democratic nominee Joe] Biden — we don’t know that, but that’s what they’re saying, but they’re not really getting involved in the presidential election.” ,

The Mainstream Media, as is so often the case, echoed this Democratic talking point. According to The New York Times‘ Robert Draper (author most recently of a long piece in the paper’s magazine section on Mr. Trump’s supposed refusal to approve anti-Russia interference measures or take seriously such findings by the intelligence community ), China “is really not able to affect the integrity of our electoral system the way Russia can….”

And I use the term “Democratic talking point” for two main reasons. First, the Chinese unquestionably have recently gotten into the explicit election meddling game – though with some distinctive Chinese characteristics. Second, and much more important, China for decades has been massively influencing American politics more broadly in ways Russia can’t even dream about – mainly because so many major national American institutions have become so beholden to the Chinese government for so long thanks to the decades-long pre-Trump policy of promoting closer bilateral ties.

As for the narrower, more direct kind of election corrupting, you don’t need to take the word of President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien that “China, like Russia and Iran, have engaged in cyberattacks and fishing and that sort of thing with respect to our election infrastructure and with respect to websites.”

Nor do you have to take the word of Vice President Mike Pence, who in 2018 cited a national intelligence assessment that found that China “ is targeting U.S. state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy. It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence.”

You can ignore Pence’s contention that that same year, a document circulated by Beijing stated that China must [quoting directly] “strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups” in the United States.

You can even write off China’s decision at the height of that fall’s Congressional election campaigns to take out a “four-page supplement in the Sunday Des Moines [Iowa] Register” that clearly was “intended to undermine farm-country support for President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war….”

Much harder to ignore, though: the claim made last year by a major Hoover Institution study that

“In American federal and state politics, China seeks to identify and cultivate rising politicians. Like many other countries, Chinese entities employ prominent lobbying and public relations firms and cooperate with influential civil society groups. These activities complement China’s long-standing support of visits to China by members of Congress and their staffs. In some rare instances Beijing has used private citizens and companies to exploit loopholes in US regulations that prohibit direct foreign contributions to elections.”

Don’t forget, moreover, findings that Chinese trolls are increasingly active on major social media platforms. According to a report from the research institute Freedom House:

“[C]hinese state-affiliated trolls are…apparently operating on [Twitter] in large numbers. In the hours and days after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters in October 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported, nearly 170,000 tweets were directed at Morey by users who seemed to be based in China as part of a coordinated intimidation campaign. Meanwhile, there have been multiple suspected efforts by pro-Beijing trolls to manipulate the ranking of content on popular sources of information outside China, including Google’s search engine Reddit,and YouTube.”

The Hoover report also came up with especially disturbing findings about Beijing’s efforts to influence the views (and therefore the votes) of Chinese Americans, including exploiting the potential hostage status of their relatives in China. According to the Hoover researchers:

“Among the Chinese American community, China has long sought to influence—even silence—voices critical of the PRC or supportive of Taiwan by dispatching personnel to the United States to pressure these individuals and while also pressuring their relatives in China. Beijing also views Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that presumes them to retain not only an interest in the welfare of China but also a loosely defined cultural, and even political, allegiance to the so-called Motherland.

In addition:

“In the American media, China has all but eliminated the plethora of independent Chinese-language media outlets that once served Chinese American communities. It has co-opted existing Chineselanguage outlets and established its own new outlets.”

Operations aimed at Chinese Americans are anything but trivial politically. As of 2018, they represented nearly 2.6 million eligible U.S. voters, and they belonged to an Asian-American super-category thats been the fastest growing racial and ethnic population of eligible voters in the country.

Most live in heavily Democratic states, like California, New York, and Massachusetts, but significant concentrations are also found in the battleground states where the many of the 2016 presidential election margins were razor thin, of which look up for grabs this year, like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

As for the second, broader and indirect, Chinese meddling in American politics, recall these developments, many of which have been documented on RealityChek:

>U.S.-owned multinational companies, which have long profited at the expense of the domestic economy by offshoring production and jobs to China, have just as long carried Beijing’s water in American politics through their massive contributions to U.S. political campaigns. The same goes for Wall Street, which hasn’t sent many U.S. operations overseas, but which has long hungered for permission to do more business in the Chinese market.

>These same big businesses continually and surreptitiously inject their views into American political debates by heavily financing leading think tanks – which garb their special interest agendas in the raiment of objective scholarship. By the way, at least one of these think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has taken Chinese government money, too.

>Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. entertainment industry has become so determined to brown nose China in search of profits that it’s made nearly routine rewriting and censoring material deemed offensive to China. And in case you haven’t noticed, show biz figures haven’t exactly been reluctant to weigh in on U.S. political issues lately. And yes, that includes the stars of the National Basketball Association, who have taken a leading role in what’s become known as the Black Lives Matter movement, but who have remained conspicuously silent about the lives of inhabitants of the vast China market that’s one of their biggest and most promising cash cows.

However indirect this Chinese involvement in American politics is, its effects clearly dwarf total Russian efforts – and by orders of magnitude. Nor is there any reason to believe that Moscow is closing the gap. In fact, China’s advantage here is so great that it makes a case for a useful rule-of-thumb:  Whenever you find out about someone complaining about Russia’s election interference but brushing off China’s, you can be sure that they’re not really angry about interference as such. They’re just angry about interference they don’t like.`      

Im-Politic: “Mayor Pete’s” Fuzzy Turnaround Record

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Census Bureau, Democrats, election 2020, Im-Politic, Indiana, Mayor Pete, Mike Pence, Mishawaka, Notre Dame, Pete Buttigieg, South Bend

“Mayor Pete” Buttigieg’s now officially running for the Democratic nomination for President, and before long we’ll see if he can make the transformation from precocious (37-year old) “flavor of the moment” and all-purpose vessel for so many anti-Trump hopes to durable candidate. I’m hesitant to say, because I was among the vast majority of skeptics that Mr. Trump’s own 2016 run had a prayer of success.

What I do feel confident in saying is that anyone will find their work cut out for them if they try (as they should) to assess his record as Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and especially his claim to have been a “turnaround” expert whose experience qualifies him to steer the American economy effectively.

The first problem they’ll encounter is finding South Bend-specific data during Buttigieg’s tenure (2012-2017). Not that statistics on U.S. cities’ economic performance are the slightest bit scarce. The Census Bureau collects and post oceans of it. But when it comes to South Bend, these figures tend to be lumped in with those for neighboring Mishawaka – which is wealthier. (See here and here for the evidence supporting that assertion and much of the following city-specific numbers.). Indeed, its median household income and property values are significantly higher, and its poverty rate much lower. So it’s tough to find many of these numbers and identify where whatever progress is shown during the whole of the Buttigieg years (and progress is definitely shown on indicators like economic and employment growth, and improvement in income per head) has taken place in which city.

Those that are available, however, aren’t especially flattering to South Bend. For example, between 2013 and 2016, South Bend’s median income advanced by 3.64 percent. Mishawaka’s (higher) median income rose by 4.35 percent. During that time, South Bend’s poverty rate fell by 3.92 percent (to 26.73 percent). But Mishawaka’s plummeted by 19.66 percent (to 17.41 percent).

It’s important to note that these data say nothing about the situation beforehand – so there’s no way to tell whether Buttigieg’s South Bend performed worse still before 2013, and therefore to know about at least some of the context of the 2013-2016 figures. But such numbers can be found for overall population – which matters because Buttigieg has emphasized that South Bend finally arrested a long population decline while he was in charge.

He’s right. From 2012 to 2017, the number of city inhabitants rose by 1.25 percent after decreasing by 3.21 percent during the previous five years. Mishawaka’s population (which is only about half of South Bend’s) loss between 2007 and 2012 was comparable – 3.12 percent. Yet during the 2012-2017 period was a more impressive 2.29 percent.  (See here and here for the data.)

Even accepting as useful the combined South Bend-Mishawaka statistics raises problems, though. Chiefly, it’s tough to find meaningful comparisons that can shed light on the area’s performance versus similar regions throughout the rest of the country. It’s pointless to compare South Bend-Mishawaka’s economic or employment growth with that of U.S. urban areas as a whole (which U.S. Commerce Department figures permit) because the latter is such a diverse group. After all, no one can reasonably hope to learn much meaningful by examining South Bend-Mishawaka side-by-side with New York or Los Angeles.

But the obstacles to finding metropolitan areas similar to South Bend-Mishawaka are formidable because of one of its major features – large and wealthy Notre Dame University. The school is a major contributor to the region’s economy, but the resulting situation is unique in Indiana because it’s a private, not state institution. In fact, it’s hard to come up with any South Bend-sized American cities hosting a single major private university. The only one that’s occurred to me is way out in Washington State, where Spokane (with a population roughly twice as big as South Bend proper) is home to Gonzaga University (whose enrollment is somewhat smaller than Notre Dame’s).

In fact, not only has Notre Dame given Buttigieg a major advantage not enjoyed by many, if any, of his genuine mayor peers. As early as the 1990s, it began to change its practice of standing aside from the city economically and using its resources to promote the economic and specifically technology-oriented business development that’s been a big Buttigieg rhetorical theme. Moreover, the city’s centerpiece economic revitalization project – the $200 million Eddy Street Commons – mainly resulted from a partnership between the university and a realty group.

Further, as is the case with state and local level leaders generally, their control over their jurisdictions’ economies is usually far from absolute – and the more local they are, typically the less control. In this vein, it’s especially interesting that South Bend economic development efforts under Buttigieg were  major beneficiaries of a municipal grant program put into effect by Vice President Mike Pence when he was Indiana governor. This year, the openly gay Buttigieg has spent considerable time attacking Pence for his allegedly bigoted views about homosexuality.

Perhaps even more important, Buttigieg had the good fortune to enter office in South Bend just as ecovery from the worst national economic slump since the Great Depression was finally gaining some momentum.

Not that Buttigieg doesn’t deserve credit for helping to attract considerable investment to South Bend. Revealingly, among those who make this case most convincingly are Indiana journalists. And at least as revealingly, South Bend voters have emphatically agreed on his effectiveness. Fully 80 percent of them voted to reelect Buttigieg in 2015 – even more than the 74 percent who supported him in his first mayoral run. (See this link for the numbers.) Will voters outside his hometown give this record rave reviews, too? The answer is likely to go far toward determining whether Buttigieg has a prayer of becoming “Nominee Pete,” much less “President Pete.”

Im-Politic: New Evidence that “Hamilton” is (Embarrassingly) Fake History

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"Hamilton", Alexander Hamilton, diversity, Forbes, Founding Fathers, history, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, liberals, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike Pence, Ralph Benko, Trump

American elites’ views on immigration issues are just the gift that keeps on giving if you suspect that way too …

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: How Trump Can Get His Trade Chops Back

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bilateral trade agreements, China, dispute resolution, free trade agreements, Government Accountability Office, Japan, managed trade, Mike Pence, multilateral trade agreements, North Korea, Robert Lighthizer, semiconductors, South Korea, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, U.S.-Japan semiconductor agreement, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Comments made by Vice President Pence on his Asia trip concerning America’s trade relations with Japan and South Korea show both the promise and peril of the Trump administration’s approach to international commerce and globalization. Major gains for the economy are possible from negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Japan and revamping what Mr. Pence described as a failed deal with South Korea. But first, the president and his aides must show more awareness than to date of why accords with countries like these keep failing.

According to candidate Trump, and President Trump, the main problems with such measures have been, variously, incompetent U.S. negotiators, dominance of the policy process by offshoring and similar interests, and a mistaken preference for multilateral arrangements over bilateral deals where America’s leverage is less likely to be watered down.

The second reason for failure cited above has certainly shaped U.S. trade agreements with super low-cost countries that have been tempting locations for production and job offshoring, and that have revealingly comprised the vast majority of trade deals initiated and signed by Washington since the early 1990s. But footloose multinationals have played a much smaller role when it comes to higher income countries like Japan and South Korea. There, achieving better results for the American domestic economy has faced two leading obstacles.

The first has been widely noted: the longstanding tendency of the U.S. leaders to elevate geopolitical aims like strengthening security alliances over economic aims like removing distortions to trade flows. Here, strangely, the administration has been giving off mixed signals lately. The president is now clearly treating the security-related objective of gaining more Chinese cooperation in resolving the North Korea nuclear weapons crisis as a higher priority than combating the numerous predatory Chinese trade policies that have hurt domestic employers and their workers. But he blasted such priorities as recently as last month. And the Pence statements indicate that trade and security issues will be handled on separate tracks for Japan and South Korea.

The second obstacle has been less widely noted – although it’s been a major theme of mine: Opening markets in highly protectionist countries like those Asian powers is fiendishly difficult, at best. As I’ve written, these economies are most accurately seen as nation-wide systems of protection and mercantilism. The particular form taken by any of their trade barriers or subsidies at any given moment matters much less than the underlying intent to manage trade flows to their advantage. In addition, these protectionist systems are run by powerful bureaucracies whose secretiveness and agility makes even identifying problematic practices – much less combating them – excruciatingly difficult.

The bottom line is that trade agreements with such countries are virtually impossible to monitor and enforce effectively, and because their governments know this, the provisions are violated routinely.

By contrast, because the U.S. government is so transparent, almost of America’s trade barriers and subsidies are easy to identify and attack, and American compliance with trade agreements is easy to measure. So it’s easy to see how these agreements strongly tend to create more (and more strongly guaranteed) access to the U.S. market than vice versa. This new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows how these damaging results can stem from multilateral agreements, but the Korea deal spotlighted by Spence and a long string of agreements with Japan show the similarly dismal record of bilateral arrangements.

That’s not to say that worthwhile trade deals with Japan and South Korea are impossible. But they’ll require thinking that’s much further outside the box than the administration seems to be engaged in. The best possibility would be going the managed trade route. That is, rather than accept unverifiable promises to dismantle trade barriers or end subsidies, America’s interlocutors would commit to allot specific shares of their domestic markets to specific U.S.-origin goods and services. There’s even a precedent for this practice – the 1986 semiconductor trade agreement reached between Washington and Tokyo.

Managed trade of course isn’t free trade. But little about Japanese and South Korean policies fits the definition, either. And the history of the semiconductor deal is well known by President Trump’s choice to head the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, Robert Lighthizer, because he was personally and deeply involved.

Another possibility would be to expand one of the few modestly worthwhile leafs from former President Obama’s 2012 trade agreement with South Korea. Precisely because Seoul’s predatory practices in the automobile sector specifically were so difficult to combat via the standard, legalistic procedures used in the dispute-resolution systems in most American free trade agreements (and the international counterpart run by the World Trade Organization), Mr. Obama secured South Korean acceptance of provisions that are especially appropriate in dealings with opaque bureaucracies that prevent significant evidence gathering.

Specifically, if a dispute-resolution panel convened under the agreement decides that Seoul is violating the auto provisions, and the United States restores pre-agreement tariffs on Korean products, it’s up to the Koreans to prove that they’re back in compliance with the treaty before the new tariffs are removed. Even better, however, would be to impose the burden of proof on South Korea, Japan, and similar countries as soon as a complaint is filed.

Yet there’s a strong argument that the very structure of dispute-resolution mechanisms is fatally flawed. Whether the trade agreement in question is bilateral or multilateral, these arrangements treat the United States as an equal party. But given the huge size of the U.S. economy relative to any other trade agreement signatories, and therefore given its status as the paramount prize in any such agreement, this “one country-one vote” set-up is as absurd as it is detrimental to American interests.

Rather than agree to such standard dispute-resolution systems – which invariably result in deadlocks that penalize open economies like America’s – Washington should insist that dispute-resolution votes be allotted more realistically. Basing them on the sizes of the various signatory economies is one obvious formula.

And don’t forget the ultimate America-First trade policy: Dispense with negotiations altogether, or for the most part, and start imposing tariffs on the imports of predatory trading powers, or on all imports (in order to prevent offshore exporters from switching production sites). Of course, that universalism is a big virtue of the border adjustment tax proposed by the House’s Republican leaders. In return, Mr. Trump could offer greater U.S. market access to those countries that prove (after years of good behavior according to exclusively American judgments) that they’re giving American exports a fair shake. This form of unilateralism should have special political appeal for an administration that’s increasingly in need of some big early economic wins.

President Trump (at least the pre-China currency version) has been termed a trade policy disrupter. If he wants to re-earn that label, getting the nation’s Japan and South Korea trade right after decades of frightful losses would be a great place to start.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Carrier’s Manufacturing Offshoring to Mexico Matters

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Carrier, China, currency, exchange rates, Financial Crisis, green manufacturing, Indiana, Indianapolis, Jobs, manufacturing, Mexico, Mike Pence, multinational companies, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama, offshoring, peso, productivity, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, United Technologies, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The decision of United Technologies (UT) to move 2,100 heating equipment jobs and the related production from Indiana to Mexico is a major indictment of America’s longstanding approach to global economic challenges and opportunities on two levels – and has rightly become a presidential campaign issue.

Evidence abounds that UT and its Carrier subsidiary decided to ship this output and employment south of the border largely due to features of the post-Cold War global economy that U.S. leaders in both major parties have persistently ignored or rationalized away despite their destructive long-term effects on the domestic economy. But this latest instance of high-wage job flight also represents a failure of one of President Obama’s highest profile proposals for stemming the tide. Let’s deal with this narrower issue first.

As reported by Jillian Kay Melchior in National Review, in 2013, one of the Carrier plants heading to Mexico secured $5.1 million in federal tax credits aimed expressly at expanding production of energy efficient gas furnaces in domestic locations like Indianapolis. These tax credits came from a $2.3 billion Obama administration program designed to “create new jobs and supply more clean-energy projects in the United States and abroad with equipment made in America” in the words of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence and United Technologies blamed heavy federal regulations for the move – though the company reportedly failed when asked to identify any government mandates that tipped the balance toward offshoring. And although Indiana union officials complained about the low Mexican wages that they believe largely lured the company south, it’s not as if labor costs have been crippling United Technologies’ competitiveness in the sector.

Thanks to the two-tier wage system the company was able to impose on its Indianapolis workforce (thanks to the last recession, the slow recovery and, as will be seen, the implicit threat of offshoring), a quarter of the employees slated to lose their jobs were earning a mere $14 per hour – about $26,000 annually. That’s only about 55 percent of the current average private sector hourly wage, a slightly lower percentage of the current average manufacturing hourly wage, and just under 52 percent of the current average hourly wage in durable goods industries – the manufacturing super-sector to which the heating and cooling equipment category belongs.

The other three-fourths of the soon-to-be cashiered workers earn $26 per hour – a bit higher than the pay for the typical private sector and manufacturing worker, and a bit lower than the wage for the typical durable goods employee.

Moreover, wages in the heating and ventilation sector have been rising unusually slowly. Since the current recovery technically began, in June, 2009, they’re up in pre-inflation terms by only 10.10 percent. For the entire private sector, hourly pay has risen by 14.14 percent during this period, and in manufacturing overall, the increase has been 10.90 percent. At the same time, in durable goods – which still pays better in absolute terms than manufacturing in toto – wages are up only 9.46 percent since the last recession ended.

Of course, heating and ventilation equipment and other durable goods industries have no hope of competing with third world facilities based on wages. The key to keeping them in the United States, according to the conventional wisdom, is capitalizing on and increasing their innovation and productivity edge. But this is where one of those long-neglected aspects of the Age of Globalization comes into play.

As has been documented since the early 1990s as the debate heated up over U.S.-Mexico trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), countries like Mexico offered offshoring-happy American multinational companies like UT an extraordinarily attractive combination: very low wages kept down by rapid population growth, high unemployment, and repression of unions, plus surprisingly high and rising levels of productivity.

The productivity levels weren’t high because Mexican workers were naturally smarter and more skilled than their American counterparts. They were high – and boasted major potential to rise quickly – because talent is evenly distributed around the world and American multinationals are exceptionally good at maximizing the efficiency of their employees. In fact, this is a prime feature of their fundamental business model.

And more than two decades of U.S. trade policy decisions like NAFTA – which enable firms like UT to supply the lucrative American market from very low-cost Mexico (and China and elsewhere in East Asia and Central America) – have naturally encouraged these companies to pour productivity-enhancing investment into Mexico, and often at the expense of their American operations. The result has been increasing foreign efficiency further, and therefore pushing the production costs of these facilities even lower vis-a-vis the United States.

I haven’t seen any data on productivity growth in Mexico’s heating and ventilation sector factories. But the country’s high-value manufacturing – much of it export-oriented and foreign-owned – boosted productivity by 5.8 percent annually from 1999 to 2014, according to the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm. We do have productivity data on American-based heating and ventilation manufacturing, and its performance has been much weaker. The cumulative growth between 1999 and 2014 has been only 30.7 percent.

But UT is also aware that Mexico’s cost advantages over American manufacturing are growing for another reason: Mexico’s peso has weakened in value versus the U.S. dollar by more than 26 percent over the last year. That means that producing in Mexico has become much cheaper versus producing in the United States during this period.

No one has yet accused the Mexican government of manipulating its currency’s value to gain trade advantage, along the lines of Chinese policy for so many years. But an American government that keeps failing to address exchange rates in its trade policy – as in its stance in the new Pacific Rim trade deal that includes Mexico – is inevitably going to preside over even more U.S. de-industrialization than has taken place so far.

A sliding peso could also mean that Mexico will pay more and more for the parts, components, and other imported inputs that go into its manufactures. By the same token, though, a weaker currency stands to solve the problem by luring more of that intermediate goods output to Mexico, too. But Mexico’s generally impoverished consumers are sure to face even greater obstacles to bringing bilateral trade flows into even rough balance by Buying American. And overall, current U.S. trade policies will continue creating a world in which America’s comparative advantage isn’t producing anything at all, but rather consuming the output of others on borrowed money.

I’m old enough to remember that the resulting imbalances and debt buildup helped trigger the financial crisis. Are any of America’s leaders? And how long will they continue claiming that yet more NAFTA-like trade agreements and green manufacturing subsidies can prevent a rerun?