Im-Politic: Fin de Trump? Again?

Tags

2016 election, Donald Trump Jr., establishment, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jared Kushner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Manafort, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Russia, Russiagate, Trade, Trump, Vladimir Putin

The latest Trump-Russia revelations make me feel like the Bill Murray character in “Groundhog Day.” I’ve already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble this time.” I’ve also already written posts to the effect that “[Candidate] Trump could really be in trouble and this time it could be different.” Like practically everyone else I read and communicate with, I’ve been wrong on these scores, but I’ll be plowing the same fields again – if only because the circumstances are so extraordinary, and especially because so much is still unknown.

First, my bottom lines: I remain skeptical that the emails Donald Trump, Jr. released yesterday (after he was told they’d be published) will result in the end of his father’s presidency in any direct sense (i.e., impeachment and removal, or resignation). I remain equally skeptical of meaningful (and I know that’s an important qualifier, as I’ll discuss below) Trump-ian collusion with Russia’s government (which includes lots of operatives without official positions) to undermine his chief presidential opponent Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

I am, however, more convinced than I had been that what is different about the newest disclosures is that Washington will remain preoccupied with “Russiagate” for most of the rest of the President’s (first?) term, that they’ve just about ruled out any meaningful policy accomplishments through 2020, and that one reason is that Mr. Trump will have bigger reasons than ever to toe a standard Republican establishment policy line that’s highly unpopular even with his own base, but that’s still gospel with a Washington wing of the party whose loyalty is vital to his survival.

Second, let’s knock down the main talking points offered by Mr. Trump’s aides and other supporters (full disclosure: I support much of his agenda, and most of his establishment-bashing). As should be obvious, the failure of the Russian lawyer actually to produce any damaging information on the Clinton campaign does not absolve the president’s son – or son-in-law cum adviser Jared Kushner, or then campaign manager Paul Manafort, of the charges that they tried to cooperate with foreign agents to affect an American political campaign (the heart of the politically salient collusion charge).

The email exchange showed that this information was the principal reason that all three figures attended the meeting. Their motives are completely unaffected by the false pretenses under which they acted.

Just as obvious, and just as bogus, is Trump, Jr.’s claim that he and his colleagues viewed an offer from Russia as nothing special because the Russia-gate charges had not proliferated. Manafort, for example, formally joined the Trump campaign manager on March 29. Certainly by May 2 – a month before Trump, Jr. first heard about the supposed Russian information – Manafort’s longstanding lobbying for pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine was making news. As a result, even if the president’s son was politically inexperienced enough not to recognize the potential dangers, Manafort himself, a veteran Washington operative, surely knew the score.

Even more important, the Russia business ties of Trump, Sr. himself were being scrutinized and fretted about at least as early as March 15.

Have any laws been broken? Beats me. That’s now officially the responsibility of Robert Mueller, te Justice Department’s Special Counsel, to determine. But much of this uncertainty centers on how much is known about this meeting, and how much is known about similar activities. Further, neither impeachment nor the future of the Trump presidency will necessarily hinge on such legal questions. A president, as I’ve noted previously, can be impeached for anything the House of Representatives believes satisfies the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” – which itself is a political, not a legal, concept. The Senate, moreover, can remove a president from office for equally political reasons.

So public opinion will be crucial. There are no signs yet that Russia-related charges have significantly damaged President Trump’s support either with the general public or among Republicans. But the more such Russia-related material keeps coming out, the likelier such erosion becomes.

Nor will the president’s political support depend completely, or even largely, on politicians’ often less than steely backbones. The new Trump, Jr. emails – and the continuing and utter failure of anyone in the Trump circle (including the president himself) to provide straight, durable answers to perfectly reasonable questions – understandably revive questions of how extensively individuals associated in any significant way with Mr. Trump or his campaign worked with the Russian government to sway election results.

Until yesterday, as I’ve written, I’ve felt confident that no important collusion evidence would emerge because none had yet been leaked – even though the matter had been probed for months by several official and many unofficial investigations, and even though bureaucrats at the highest levels have been positively eager to reveal incriminating Trump information even if national security could be undermined.

In addition, it’s never been clear to me why Russian interference with the election ever required cooperation from the Trump campaign – or any other American source. As long as Moscow was so motivated, its formidable hacking and disinformation capabilities were amply capable of producing the desired results on their own. Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community’s January report on the Russian interference campaign itself reported that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was wary of praising candidate Trump too enthusiastically precisely for fear of generating a backlash.

At the same time, even the canniest political leaders and other figures don’t always behave logically or sensibly. It’s also now clear at least that many in the Trump circle have been less than canny or, when it comes to explaining controversial events, even minimally competent. As a result, as stated above, there’s now indisputable evidence of receptivity to collusion by three extremely influential Trump aides (including two family members).

If the June Trump, Jr. meeting represents the extent of the collusion, there’s still an excellent chance that the president ultimately will survive the Russia mess. After all, what kind of (serious) collusion effort, once started, would feature no follow up? But because no one close to Mr. Trump now enjoys (or deserves) much credibility on these matters outside hardcore Trump-supporter circles, Democrats now have the pretext they need to force the administration to keep trying to prove a negative – a challenge no one should relish. Special Counsel Mueller has a comparable justification for prolonging his own investigation considerably.

Yet even before the possible crumbling of the president’s political support, for either legal or political reasons or some combination of the two, the Trump administration’s Russia-related problems could profoundly impact the nation’s policy agenda – and not in a good way if you’ve hoped Mr. Trump would be an agent of serious change. Here’s what I mean.

Recall that last year, Mr. Trump did not simply assume the leadership of the Republican party after winning its presidential primaries. He engineered a hostile takeover, supplanting a party mainstream that strongly opposed him on his two signature issues – trade and immigration policies. The shocking Trump fall victory, however, gave the incoming president crucial leverage in this relationship, and for a very powerful, concrete reason. The Republicans’ establishment leaders in Congress gave his campaign, and especially the inroads he made with new constituencies, abundant credit for saving the party’s control of both the House and Senate.

Once the Russia-gate charges and Team Trump’s failures to address them adequately began gaining critical mass, though, the dynamics of this relationship began changing dramatically. President Trump’s future became more dependent on the establishment GOP’s support. Therefore, he needed to warm to its establishment agenda – notably their budget and healthcare proposals – despite the poor poll numbers they’ve been drawing. Additionally, his ability to reach across the aisle on promising areas of bipartisan agreement, like infrastructure, turned into a function of the overall party’s flexibility – which seems pretty limited to date.

Since such vast new – and, due to the Trump circle’s constantly changing responses, legitimate – investigative frontiers have been opened up by the new emails, the Trump wagon now looks to be hitched to the Congressional Republican star more tightly than ever. That’s not to say that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will never stray from their party’s orthodoxy. McConnell, at least, has hinted that bipartisan compromise may be needed on healthcare. Moreover, the party establishment is by no means united on all major issues, either. Consequently, intra-party divisions may widen the scope for bipartisanship (as has generally been the case to avoid or mitigate various budget crises).

But the main point here is that at this point, these decisions are likeliest to be driven by the establishment, not the president. And the tragedy, at least for anyone rooting for the president or any of his agenda, is how many of the resulting White House political and policy wounds will have been entirely self-inflicted.

Im-Politic: The Polls Say “Let Trump Be [Campaign-Version] Trump”

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2016 election, ABC News, budget, conservatism, discretionary spending, entitlements, Freedom Caucus, healthcare, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, NBC News, Paul Ryan, polls, poverty, Republicans, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, Washington Post

They’re only polls and we all should remember how badly most polls blew their calls in the last presidential election. But two new surveys from the Washington Post and ABC News on the one hand, and the Wall Street Journal and NBC News on the other, are signaling to me anyway that Donald Trump has made a major mistake so far in his young presidency in tilting so markedly toward the keepers of the orthodoxy (especially the most doctrinaire versions) in his own party. Instead, he should have been focusing all along on developing a promising new American political center of gravity that he started defining (in his own imitable way) during his campaign.

As widely observed during the 2016 elections, Mr. Trump was anything but a conventional conservative – at least as the term has been understood for the last quarter century. Yes, he made frequent nods toward cutting taxes and regulations, as well as to balancing budgets (objectives that of course aren’t always consistent). He also expressed some support for social conservative positions like further restricting abortion and appointing “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court. But as also widely observed, if that mix of views was what voters in the Republican primaries and general elections really wanted, they would have voted for an orthodox conservative.

Instead, Mr. Trump trounced his opponents even though he at least as often promised to protect massive federal entitlement programs heavily relied on by the middle class and senior citizens; to guarantee adequate healthcare for non-seniors who can’t afford it; to preserve government support for Planned Parenthood’s provision of non-abortion-related women’s health services; to uphold the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans; and of course to ignore free market dictates when they seemed to undermine public safety and prosperity by fostering unrestricted trade and immigration.

Undoubtedly, much of candidate Trump’s appeal also sprang from simple, nonpartisan voter anger at the failures and self-serving priorities of the bipartisan national political establishment. But Mr. Trump did the best job of all last year’s presidential hopefuls of identifying the combination of specific grievances that created this anger: notably, over those jobs and incomes lost to Americans Last trade and immigration policies, over those related dangers posed by terrorism and leaky borders, and over the astronomical costs and risks of fighting seemingly futile foreign wars and defending free-riding allies.

The president’s Inaugural Address – which declared his intention to fix these problems with America- and Americans’- First policies – unabashedly proclaimed that President Trump would govern like candidate Trump.

Yet although the president has by and large kept his immigration promises, and approved some (limited) measures to combat foreign trade predation, his domestic policy proposals look like they’re right out of the Chamber of Commerce and Moral Majority playbooks. Nowhere has this development been more obvious than in his endorsement of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s healthcare plan, and in his release of a budget outline that, outside of defense spending, libertarians should be swooning over.

Late last month, I ventured that the president’s support for the “Ryan Care” proposal was a head fake: He had knowingly backed a measure so draconian that he knew it would fail, in order to establish some orthodox conservative street cred with Congressional Republicans and thus enlist their support for the pivot to greater moderation he had planned all along. Something like this scenario could still unfold; according to press reports, even the hard-core anti-government House Freedom Caucus members are growing more amenable to a compromise proposal that would preserve many of the more popular provisions of President Obama’s healthcare reforms.

But Mr. Trump’s continuing insistence on a federal spending blueprint that either eliminates or greatly slashes funding for medical and other scientific research, Chesapeake Bay cleanup, and food and heating aid for the poor, is not only plain bizarre, especially since the dollars involved are trivially small. It’s also politically inexplicable, because there’s absolutely no evidence that these are viewed as priority savings among any important Trump constituencies.

And that’s where the new polls come in. As per the headline results, Mr. Trump’s popularity at this point in his presidency is much lower than the ratings of most of his predecessors early in their first terms. In fairness, the Post-ABC survey also shows that the president would beat his chief 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, in the popular vote if a new election was held – showing that he’s even more popular versus the Democratic nominee than on election day.

But the both polls showed the president’s support tightly concentrated among his own core voters and Republicans generally. Even accepting the claim that rapid partisanship by Democratic party leaders is proving effective in limiting Mr. Trump’s appeal to their rank and file, it’s still a sign of trouble for the president that his ratings among self-described political independents is markedly on the wane according to the Journal-NBC findings (falling to 30 percent) and low (38 percent) according to the Post-ABC survey.

One main reason: The Washington Republicans President Trump is apparently still courting are even less popular than he is. The Journal-NBC poll reports that many more Americans are dissatisfied with the Republican-led Congress nowadays than in February, and Ryan’s approval ratings are even lower. Moreover, the Republican-led Congress and the Speaker, in turn, are less popular than the president even among voters identifying as Republicans.

None of these results necessarily bodes ill for the Freedom Caucus. Its members don’t care for Ryan, either – allegedly for being too moderate. But many of the latest measures of Americans’ views of major policy issues do. For example, the Journal-NBC poll found that, since February, the share of respondents agreeing that “Government should do more to solve problems and help meet people’s needs” shot up to 57 percent. Even more independents (59 percent) endorsed this position. The share of total respondents believing that “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals plummeted to 39 percent.

More pointedly, the Post-ABC poll showed Americans opposing the Trump budget proposals by 50 percent to 37 percent overall, and independents disapproving by an even wider 52 percent to 35 percent margin.

The Journal-NBC survey also found record shares of Americans viewing “free trade” and “immigration” positively – at 57 percent and 60 percent, respectively. But the abstract nature of these questions could well have tilted these answers. One reason for supposing so: The Post-ABC poll reporting that, by a strong 73 percent to 22 percent, Americans favor “Trump pressuring companies to keep jobs in the United States.” Among independents, the results are an even better 75 percent to 19 percent.

So the recipe for Trump political success seems pretty clear: Dump the Freedom Caucus under the Trump Train on the budget and healthcare; preserve (and even boost to some extent) discretionary spending programs that strengthen the economy’s foundations and provide for the needy; keep the campaign promises on entitlements so highly prized by the middle class; and take bolder measures to Buy American and Hire American (as one new set of trade-related Trump jobs programs is called).

Keeping the focus on these priorities, along with a well thought out infrastructure program, should attract and keep enough backing among Republicans and independents to offset any losses in Freedom Caucus ranks, both in Congress and at the grassroots level (where they seem modest in number). Adding new policies to combat predatory foreign trade practices, moreover, should please organized labor enough to bring into the fold many union members and leaders plus the Congressional Democrats they strongly influence. An extra bonus – this program could well give President Trump the political leeway he needs to stay his course on immigration (which of course has seen a softening of his views on the so-called Dreamers).

Often in American history, calls to “Let [name your favorite politician] be [name that same politician]” have reflected core supporters’ naive beliefs that campaign promises can easily be turned into policy by the office-seekers they elect. But as is so often the case with the current president, Letting Trump be Trump, could confound the political conventional wisdom.

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.  

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Multinationals Debunk a Major Free Trade Claim

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2016 election, BAT, border adjustment tax, Congress, exports, free trade, GE, General Electric, House of Representatives, imports, Jeffrey Immelt, Kevin Brady, multinational companies, Paul Ryan, Republicans, retailers, tariffs, tax reform, Trade, Trump, value-added tax, VAT, {What's Left of) Our Economy

President Trump has been slow so far to launch the major trade policy transformation he promised during his campaign – in part because most of his trade policy team has taken so long to be confirmed by Congress, and in part because (especially in the case of Japan), he seems so far to be listening too closely to national security advisers who clearly prioritize alliance relationships over economics. But his election has already triggered major upheaval in America’s trade politics, and in the process fatally weakened one of the leading arguments advanced against curbing imports.

The trade politics earthquake has three major related sources. First, Republican Congressional leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan and especially Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady, who have long strongly supported jobs-killing trade deals and related policies, have become major champions of a measure that would create one of the biggest trade barriers in American history – the so-called Border Adjustment Tax (BAT). Their proposal, which is part of the House Republicans’ larger tax reform package, would offset the discriminatory effects of foreign value-added taxes (VATs) by imposing levies on imports – as well as by supporting exports by exempting them from taxes.

Their change of heart in turn surely stems at least partly from the second big change in trade politics – a major shift among Republican voters on trade policy. As I’ve reported previously, whereas for decades, they tended to support freer trade, and the policies that have ostensibly sought to further liberalize global commerce, more recent polls show that the GOP base has turned against the idea. (Democrats, however, have become much more positive on trade’s impact on the American economy.) And the evidence goes far beyond polls – as made clear by Mr. Trump’s capture of the GOP presidential nomination over numerous free-trading rivals and his November triumph.

But it’s the final trade politics shift that has really floored me. Many of the big multinational manufacturing companies that have also strongly pushed for those same deficit-boosting trade deals – because they made it easier to source products from abroad and supply the U.S. market from foreign production sites – support the BAT, too. In fact, they’ve created a lobbying coalition to turn the idea into law.

And it’s their BAT stance that has weakened a longstanding pillar of free-trade thinking: the insistence that any sweeping tariff measures (like the BAT) would actually backfire on domestic U.S. manufacturers and other producers by raising the cost of imported inputs they use – like parts, components, and materials. Here’s the latest example of this claim – from a former bigwig at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, no less.

I’ve presented the evidence revealing that this argument completely ignores the immense existing scale of American inputs manufacturing – and the huge markets, new growth, and jobs gains that would result by replacing foreign-made goods with these U.S.-made products. But at least as important is how the multinational practitioners themselves are refuting the theorists by endorsing the BAT.

Incidentally, the multinationals’ BAT position could indicate that I’ve been wrong about their trade performance and about the principal rationale for their backing of offshoring-friendly trade agreements – data I’ve seen showing that they import much more than they export. For if they were indeed big contributors to America’s trade deficits (that is, big net importers), then you’d think they’d be much more concerned about potentially more expensive imports than about any export boost possible from the BAT. The companies themselves, as I’ve repeatedly stated, know the definitive answer – at least regarding their own trade performance. But as long as they’re not required to disclose their import and export figures – as opposed to releasing cherry-picked numbers – we can’t be sure.

But this business enthusiasm for the BAT could also stem from an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality – as General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt has signaled. In other words, perhaps they’ve decided that more localized production everywhere is an irresistible wave of the future – at least for the time being. Alternatively, the multinationals could believe that they themselves could enter the aforementioned new BAT-created domestic input manufacturing markets. If these businesses believe that the rest of that tax reform package along with the regulatory relief President Trump has promised will lower domestic American business costs further, domestic sourcing could become all the more attractive. Another possibility – precisely because America’s and their own export performance has been so relatively weak, they view foreign markets as an especially exciting growth opportunity that the BAT tax breaks could open wide. And the likeliest possibility? The answer for most of these companies is a mix of some or all of the above.

What is certain, however, is that we’re now hearing, “No thanks” from the companies that economists keep telling us are among the biggest beneficiaries of cheap imports furnished by wide open trade policies. Of course, the retailers – which relay so heavily for their profits on cheap consumer goods imports – are campaigning just as hard against the BAT. The plan’s verdict will speak volumes about whether Americans, and their political system, assign more value to making stuff or to buying it.

Im-Politic: The Day After, Part I

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2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Cheap Labor Lobby, conservatism, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jeb Bush, Mainstream Media, Marco Rubio, Obama, offshoring lobby, Open Borders, Paul Ryan, Populism, Republicans, Ross Perot, Ted Cruz, Trade

How did I go wrong on analyzing President-elect Donald Trump’s rise during this epochal presidential campaign? Let me count the ways.

My first post on this populist phenom expressed full confidence that he would never win the Republican presidential nomination – or even “come close.” Although I didn’t explicitly say it, I viewed the idea that he could win the White House as positively ludicrous.

After several of his insult barrages and other verbal bombshells, I was all but certain that his campaign was finished.

I had no doubt that, as with third party presidential candidate and fellow tycoon Ross Perot in 1992, his unwillingness to take advice – especially of the critical kind – would cripple his candidacy. Similarly, I believed that he would run his presidential operation the same way that many successful business leaders engage in politics – incompetently.

So I guess I’m qualified to be a Mainstream Media pundit! But seriously, since I got at least some things right – like translating Trump-ish into language that the chattering class should have been able to grasp – I’m not totally sheepish about serving up a first batch of thoughts about what all Americans either are chewing over or should be in the weeks ahead.

>For all the teeth-gnashing about the ugliness of the presidential campaign, and for all the responsibility for it that Trump deserves, imagine what the race for the White House would have been like without him. The Republicans would have nominated either a tool of the Cheap Labor and Offshoring Lobbies like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush or Florida Senator Marco Rubio, or a social conservative extremist like Texas Senator Ted Cruz. And none of them would have felt major pressure to pay attention to the Republican base’s anger about mass immigration, job- and growth-killing trade deals, or the income stagnation they fostered.

On the Democratic side, this kind of conventional Republican nominee may well have enabled Hillary Clinton to win that party’s crown without many nods to the populist positions taken by her chief rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – including on trade policy, along with Wall Street reform.

What a clueless – and maybe dangerously clueless – campaign that would have been! In particular, with no political safety valve, the continuing buildup of working- and middle-class rage that both major-party standard-bearers would have kept blithely ignoring could have exploded much more powerfully.

>The Trump victory could be a milestone in not only American politics, but policy. Yet the potential may never become performance unless this most successful outsider in U.S. history meets a staffing challenge that has hung over his campaign since his strength starting being apparent. Specifically, where is he going to find the populist policy specialists and academics and business types and politicians to fill the hundreds of key cabinet and sub-cabinet posts where presidential ambitions can just as easily die a lingering death as produce real, on-the-ground change?

The institutions needed to nurture and train such cadres simply haven’t existed. Or they’ve been way too small (i.e., modestly funded) to produce the needed numbers and possibly the needed quality. After his first White House victory, President Obama dismayed many of his followers by appointing to key economic positions in particular the kinds of Wall Street-friendly Clintonians that he had raked over the coals during that campaign (including Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination that year). His response? As I recall at the time (and I’m still looking for a link), something to the effect “What choice do I have?”

Although Mr. Obama never intended to bring the substantive break with the past that his successor has vowed, Mr. Trump could find himself in the same position, and his administration could drift steadily, and even imperceptibly towards a more conventional, and indeed donor-class-friendly, form of conservatism.

>Finally, for today, the Trump triumph places the Republican party in its current form in just as much jeopardy as a narrow Trump loss.

Had Trump lost in a landslide, the GOP’s future would have been easy to predict: The Never-Trumpian Washington establishment would have loudly crowed, “I told you so,” and advanced an overpowering rationale for returning to its low-tax, small-government, free-trading, open-borders, global interventionist orthodoxy of recent decades.

But last night’s results could be the death knell of establishment Republicanism – at least as a viable political force. It’s entirely possible that this establishment’s corporate and similar funders could decide for the time being to keep afloat the think tanks, media outlets, lobbying shops, and political consultancies comprising the GOP/conservative establishment. Indeed, since Trump could flop disastrously, preserving this infrastructure in preparation for 2020 makes perfect sense.

But for the foreseeable future, this is Donald Trump’s Republican party (whether he has to staff his administration with lots of standard-issue Republicans or not). House Speaker Paul Ryan, who strongly opposes his own party’s president-elect on issues ranging from trade and immigration to entitlement reform to foreign policy, can talk all he wants about reestablishing party unity. But the key question surrounding such calls is always “Unity on whose terms?” Until Mr. Trump fails a major test of leadership (or even two or three), or until events beyond his control render him ineffective (like a weakening economy) he’ll be calling the shots.  

And however lavishly financed the party’s establishment may remain, this election has made painfully obvious that its grassroots are shrunken and browned out. Since one of the prime takeaways of this election cycle is that voters ultimately count even more than money, it will become increasingly difficult even for the donors to treat the Washington Republicans as a true national political movement, as opposed to a self-appointed clique of supposed leaders with embarrassingly few followers.

So there’s of course a chance that the Ryan wing (emboldened by some truly desperate plutocrats) might at some point bolt and try to reclaim the Republican brand as its own or launch a third party. But these well-heeled dissidents will face the strongest of tides with the weakest of paddles – the more so given Ryan’s acknowledgment that Trump’s unexpectedly strong showing helped the GOP retain both houses of Congress. 

Tomorrow I’ll be offering some further initial thoughts. Until then, like so many others, I’ll go back to catching my breath!

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Opposition to the September 11 Law is Completely Stupid

Tags

Bob Corker, energy, foreign policy establishment, international law, lobbying, Middle East, Mitch McConnell, Obama, oil, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paul Ryan, Saudi Arabia, September 11, September 11 bill, sovereign immunity, terrorism

Thanks to foreign policy establishmentarians on the Left and Right, ranging from President Obama to Congress’ Republican leaders, we’ve just gotten a moment when the folks we’ve entrusted to chart our country’s course in world affairs have not only gotten something massively wrong, but literally stopped thinking.

I’m talking about reactions to Congress’ override of the president’s veto of the September 11 bill, which will now enable the families of American victims of terrorism on U.S. soil to seek legal damages from foreign governments found to be responsible. Sure, all or most of the misgivings being expressed by figures like House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker could be resulting from lavish campaign contributions they’ve received from Washington’s big Saudi Arabia lobby. (I have no concrete evidence of this, but the Saudis have always been major Beltway players, and they’re one of the governments sure to be sued under the new law.)

But what’s most revealing about the concerns and outright fears being expressed is their content. For the counter-arguments now being made – and made all along by the Obama administration – reflect jaw-dropping misunderstandings about geopolitics and the role of international law in international relations that have practically defined mainstream foreign policy thinking across the American political spectrum.

Two in particular stand out, and they’re related to the principle objection to the September 11 law: If American citizens can now bring court cases against foreign governments, in violation of the longstanding international legal principle of sovereign immunity, then foreign citizens will feel free to file all sorts of lawsuits against the U.S. government and its representatives at home and abroad.

First, though, does anyone really think that it’s international law that keeps American diplomats and official Washington safe from the reach of foreign legal systems (and the flagrant pseudo-legal systems found in so many countries – including Saudi Arabia)? If they do, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the American foreign policy decision-making process.

What has really ensured these results is the shield that has always been America’s most reliable asset: American power in all its forms. This should be obvious when it comes to countries considered allies – since the United States is so inherently secure and prosperous that it needs them militarily and geopolitically much less than they need America. Indeed, if any allies are now considering or have ever even contemplated legally harassing American diplomats for any reason, that would count as a disgraceful failure of U.S. policymaking.

And P.S., that goes double for Saudi Arabia. In case the foreign policy establishment hasn’t noticed, even leaving aside the abundant support for Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists influential Saudis have provided for decades, the days when the United States and the rest of the world needed to tremble at the thought that Riyadh might push through a big oil price hike or even shut off the spigots ended long ago. Even better, that’s mainly because of the energy production revolution in the United States.

So although Saudi retaliation for the September 11 bill might unnerve its hired guns in Washington, the United States is fully capable of telling its government, “Enjoy fighting Iran by yourself.”

Second, fears about a new global wave of anti-American lawsuits stupidly assume that most and even all foreign governments will react in the same way. The worrywarts don’t seem to understand that the September 11 bill only permits suits against foreign governments accused of supporting terrorism in the United States. Is this new law really likely to worry the British? Or the Japanese? Or even the Chinese?

The September 11 bill fear-mongers aren’t normally the types to softpedal the differences between America’s friends and foes, or between democracies and dictatorships, or even between ordinary foreign governments of whatever stripe and rogue states. So what’s going on? Simply put, their analytical compasses and even bedrock common sense apparently have been thrown off by the assumption – so crucial to modern international law – that all sovereign governments are created equal and much be so treated legally. Therefore, September 11 bill opponents seem convinced that all sovereign governments can be counted on to act in the same way as well.

Dickens famously characterized the law as “an ass” when, as is the case from time to time, its precepts produce head-scratching decisions. But in countries with legal systems worthy of the name, those bloopers are rightly accepted as one price of seeking and enforcing equitable societies and the common standards of behavior they require.

But the international sphere lacks the ingredients needed for effective legal systems – i.e., consensus about those standards. And no such meeting of an adequate number international minds is remotely foreseeable. Therefore, the ludicrous controversy about the September 11 bill should be reminding us that in the foreign policy sphere, the law is especially asinine – and should have no meaningful influence on American decisions and actions.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Big Business Still Favors A TPP Fast Track – for Everyone Else

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Business Roundtable, Congress, fast track, Michael Froman, National Foreign Trade Council, Obama, offshoring lobby, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, TPA, TPP. Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, {What's Left of) Our Economy

A funny thing has happened to the Offshoring Lobby groups that pushed so hard (and successfully) for Congress to give President Obama fast track trade negotiating authority. Now that they’ve seen the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal whose passage they’ve also urged, several have decided they don’t like the core provision of fast track trade negotiating authority.

Central to the case for fast track – now officially known as Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – is that preventing Congress from monkeying around with the final text of trade agreements negotiated by presidents and their aides is vital to persuading America’s interlocutors to negotiate seriously. If American lawmakers could amend the deal at will, why would foreign leaders put forward their best offers, especially if they might anger powerful domestic constituencies?

That’s what U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has made unmistakably clear. In a late-2014 article in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Obama’s chief trade diplomat wrote, “By ensuring that Congress will consider trade agreements as they have been negotiated by the executive branch, TPA gives U.S. trading partners the necessary confidence to put their best and final offers on the table.”

The Republican leaders who have supported the president’s trade agenda agreed as well. According to Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch of Utah, TPA “allows for trade deals to be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote, an incentive for negotiating nations to put their best offer forward for any deal.” And before he was elected Speaker and chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan contended (in an article co-authored with Texas Republican Senator and current presidential candidate Ted Cruz, “By establishing TPA, Congress will send a signal to the world. America’s trading partners will know that the U.S. is trustworthy and then put their best offers on the table. America’s rivals will know that the U.S. is serious and won’t abandon the field.”

When Congress was considering fast track, moreover, leading business groups strongly echoed this line. As specified in a statement from the Trade Benefits America coalition that spearheaded the pro-fast track lobbying campaign, fast track historically ”has provided our trade negotiating partners with a degree of comfort that the United States is committed to the international trade negotiating process and the trade agreements we negotiate.”

One of the coalition’s major members, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), was even more explicit: “Without U.S. trade negotiating authority, other countries will be unwilling to negotiate with the United States for fear that U.S. commitments and concessions would not hold weight.  In particular, they would be unwilling to put important politically sensitive concessions on the table.”

Last week, however, some of these organizations were changing their tune. In a statement calling for Congress to pass the TPP, the Business Roundtable declared that it also wanted to administration “to quickly address the remaining issues that impact certain business sectors in order to ensure the broadest possible benefits to all sectors of U.S. business, which will enable the broadest support possible for the TPP.” Huh? It’s true that Congress can attempt to clear up purported ambiguities in the text when it writes implementing legislation, but as for changing the text itself? Sorry, but that’s a no-no under TPA. Unless the Roundtable wants to reopen the entire negotiation?

Similarly, the NFTC reported that it is “encouraged by discussions that are underway between Congress and the Administration to address provisions in the agreement in order to further improve trade and investment liberalization, and strengthen the system of international trade and investment disciplines and procedures, including dispute settlement, for all of American business. Early resolution of areas for improvement identified by the business community will speed approval by Congress in 2016.”

With due respect, what on earth are they talking about other than the aforementioned clarifications and interpretations that unfortunately are entirely unilateral, and have no standing under the new TPP regime?

It seems that when the Offshoring Lobby touted the importance of banning Congressional amendments to TPP, it meant all amendments except its own. You can’t blame its organizations for seeking such blatant favoritism; it’s their job. Now we’ll see if Congress believes that enforcing the principle of equality under the law is its job.

Im-Politic: Republicans Happy to Trust Obama When He Pushes Offshoring

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Boehner, campaign finance, Darrell Issa, fast track, Im-Politic, Immigration, Iran, Jeb Bush, Obama, Paul Ryan, TPA, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP

That’s some stunningly contradictory message leading Republicans have been sending lately regarding President Obama’s negotiating skills. On the one hand, they portray him as a bumbling naif on issues like normalizing ties with Cuba and eliminating the Iran nuclear weapons threat. And on the other hand, they’re happy to grant him sweeping Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to negotiate history’s biggest trade agreements.

This incoherence was most recently displayed by likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that the Obama Cuba diplomacy that began to reestablish diplomatic and economic relations amounted to “bad negotiations.”

According to Bush, “[W]e got nothing in return. We traded a guy who was held hostage, Alan Gross, an aid worker for no reason. He was allowed in the country, he was held hostage and he was languishing in prison, and, in fact, his wife believed that if he stayed much longer, he was going to die, for spies that were convicted in our American judicial system.

“That was not an equal trade. We opened up additional mounts of travel, so many of you may have gone as — like, I say in quotes, education trips. And now that those have been expanded the president has that authority to do so. And nothing in return.”

Yet in the same speech, Bush endorsed the president’s request for a near-blank check from Congress to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and any other agreements he – and possible Democratic successors – might pursue over the next five years.

The disconnect arguably is wider on Iran. House Speaker John Boehner is so worried that President Obama will ultimately cave in and accept an agreement that will enable Iran to develop nuclear weapons that he’s bent Washington protocol and created a firestorm by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address Congress to warn against such appeasement. Moreover, speaking about Mr. Obama’s executive action on immigration, Boehner has declared, “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our law.” Yet Boehner’s only criticism of the president’s trade policies is that Mr. Obama hasn’t worked hard enough to win Democrats’ support.

Regarding Iran, Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan emphatically agrees with Boehner. The Ways and Means Chair has insisted that “The president’s policies with Iran have bipartisan concern. A huge bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate are very worried about the handling of these negotiations.” But he’s tried to justify his enthusiasm for “fast tracking” Mr. Obama’s trade deals through Congress by insisting that “I am not saying to enhance our leverage we have to enhance the administration’s power—far from it. What I’m saying is this bill would enhance Congress’s power. TPA empowers Congress.” What Ryan has not explained is why he thinks the president is more likely to follow the law on trade than he’s been on immigration.

But at least Ryan doesn’t descend into the outright schizophrenia displayed by Rep. Darrell Issa. The California Republican, a fierce Obama critic, told the Washington Post, “This president has earned our distrust, but having said that, I still support TPA. I still want to have the trade team be able to go forward and make good offers.”

One explanation for these seeming inconsistencies may be these Republicans’ belief that bad trade deals are much less likely to damage important U.S. interests than are bad national security deals – though that will be a tricky argument to make during an economic recovery with which few Americans are happy. Or maybe most Republican leaders think that, although President Obama’s terrible instincts on economics become excellent once matters go international? That’s a contention that looks too clever by half.

Instead, these clashing Republican positions seem best explained by the role of Big Money in politics. America’s offshoring lobby has told these lawmakers to jump. And their only uncertainty is “How high?”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Hatch Joins Obama in Looking Like a Currency-Related TPP Phony

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Barack Obama, currency manipulation, fast track, House Ways and Means Committee, Michael Froman, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, Senate Finance Committee, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S. Trade Representative, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The politics of currency manipulation, which are strongly influencing Congress’ views of President Obama’s prospective Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, just keeps getting more and more interesting.  So do policy moves surrounding the issue. The bottom line:  Both new Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch and the Obama administration seem to be stepping up efforts to snooker Congress and the public on measures to safeguard American businesses and their employees against this exchange-rate protectionism.

Hatch is drafting new Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation along with his House Ways and Means counterpart Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and both will have major says over whether the Pacific trade deal and the negotiating authority critical to its approval will pass Congress. And he’s definitely trying to pose as a public servant completely alert to currency threats.

Just look at the widely reported speech the Utah Republican gave on trade at the end of last month. He blasted President Obama for “pretending these [currency] concerns don’t exist” and proudly declared that “we included within our TPA bill, for the first time, a new principal negotiating objective addressing currency manipulation.”

But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that Hatch’s definition of “meaningful” is a low bar. So far he has simply stated, “We need to see commitments from our partners in ongoing trade negotiations to avoid manipulating exchange rates to gain an unfair competitive advantage over other parties to the agreement, a standard reflecting commitments parties have made in the International Monetary Fund.” In other words, Hatch appears to be pushing language in this fast track legislation that merely urges the president’s trade negotiators to try their best to deal with the issue. Worse, it sounds like he would be satisfied with promises from other TPP signatories that they already have often broken whenever they have believed their interests dictate.

In fact, Hatch made no reference in his address to inserting enforceable disciplines against currency manipulation in the TPP. Given the likelihood that the agreement will include a dispute-resolution process giving a major role to countries with a demonstrable fondness for manipulation, such rules are shaky bets at best to safeguard American businesses and their employees against exchange-rate protectionism. But it’s revealing that Hatch seems unwilling even to support this inadequate measure.

At the same time, Hatch’s apparent double-talk on currency manipulation shouldn’t be a surprise. Back in 2005, when the Senate was considering a bill to enable Washington better respond to currency manipulation unilaterally by using U.S. Trade law mechanisms, Hatch supported the legislation – on a vote that was wholly procedural. The bill’s own sponsors eventually withdrew it following (eventually broken) administration promises to increase pressure on China. In 2011, when the Senate took up a similar bill in final form, Hatch flip-flopped and voted “Nay.”

Not that Hatch is looking like Washington’s only currency manipulation phony. President Obama reportedly has told House Democrats that adding the issue to the TPP would be “complicated.” Yet he has also staunchly opposed dealing with foreign currency protectionists unilaterally – in the form of the aforementioned 2011 bill. Moreover, although U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has been testifying under oath to Congress that currency issues are the Treasury Department’s province and that Secretary Jack Lew is raising these matters in international fora like the Group of 7 major economies and the International Monetary Fund, journalists keep reporting the opposite.

In October, according to a New York Times piece, Lew and the rest of the administration, along with the Federal Reserve, had decided to accept the lower currency values that inevitably followed foreign central bank monetary easing moves because they were needed to stoke growth overseas. Just yesterday, the Financial Times reported that this enabling of foreign currency manipulation has continued.

The Hatch, Obama, and Froman hokum at least clarify one point. Supporters of U.S. trade policy still don’t think they can steer new agreements through Congress by telling the truth.