Im-Politic: Bad Polling News for Both Biden and Trump

Tags

Associated Press, Biden, conservatives, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, GOP, Im-Politic, independents, Laura Ingraham, Morning Consult, National Opinion Research Center, NBC News, Politico, polls, Republicans

A major shift in American politics may be in the works according to some recent polling results about President Biden and Donald Trump. Specifically, they could mean that the American public has had it with both of them.

Let’s start with the President’s results…since he’s the President. Astonishingly, no fewer than three surveys during the last week show not only that his popularity and job approval are way down, but that huge and in one case slightly growing percentages of the public doubt his overall mental fitness to handle his job.

Two days ago, Politico and Morning Consult consult released survey findings reporting that only 22 percent of all registered voters “strongly agree” that Mr. Biden “is mentally fit,” 18 percent “somewhat agree,” 12 percent “somewhat disagree,” and 37 percent “strongly disagree.” So a plurality (49 percent) are in the “disagree” camp (versus 40 percent agreeing that the President is mentally fit), and the most popular answer, by 19 percentage points, was “strongly disagree.”

Of course there was a partisan split. But when it comes to political independents, those who overall disagreed that President Biden is mentally fit outnumbered those that agreed by 48 percent to 37 percent, with 33 percent choosing “strongly disagree.”

More worrisome for the President: Politico and Morning Consult asked the same question in November, and since then, those disagreeing that he’s mentally fit has inched up from 48 percent to 49 percent, and those agreeing that he’s mentally up to snuff has fallen from 46 percent to 40 percent. About the same deterioration appeared among independent voters.

Similarly, a poll this week from NBC News asked American adults (a group somewhat different than registered voters) how they would rate various Biden traits on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being “Very Poor” and 5 being “Very Good.” No party affiliation-based findings were provided. But on “Having the necessary mentally physical health to be president,” here are the Biden scores:

5: 18 percent

4: 15 percent

3: 16 percent

2: 9 percent

1: 41 percent

In other words, 4 and 5 (those believing Mr. Biden is mentally and physically healthy enough) add up to 33 percent. One and 2 (those who don’t) add up to 50 percent. And “Very Poor” leads the pack by a mile.

The Associated Press (AP) and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) reported better views of the President’s capacities – but not much. Here the question (again, for adults) was “How confident are you that Joe Biden has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president?” There was no political affiliation breakdown here, either, but here are the results:

“Extremely confident”:   11 percent

“Very confident”:            17 percent

“Somewhat confident”:   25 percent

“Not very confident”:      18 percent

“Not at all confident”:     29 percent

AP-NORC concluded that those lacking confidence in Mr. Biden’s mental fitness outnumbered those with confidence by 47 percent to 28 percent – figures not far off those published by NBC News. And once more, the biggest individual category contained those with the least confidence.

The news isn’t any better for the former President, though. Since early this year, I’ve been trying to keep track of whether Republican and Republican-leaning voters are more loyal to their party, or to Trump. And the new sounding from NBC News makes clear that Trump has been losing ground on this score.

As the survey reports, since January, 2019, although the results fluctuated some, the “supporter of Trump” position consistently registered a plurality and often a majority. (Those answering “both” never made it out of the single digits as percents of the whole sample.) Even last January (not a great month for Trump politically or in any sense), the “supporters of Donald Trump” and “supporters of the Republican Party” were tied at 46 percent.

But as of today? The percentage of “Republican supporters” topped that of “Trump supporters” by a whopping 56 percent to 36 percent. That’s the biggest such margin ever in this data series.

One other (non-poll) possible straw in the wind worth noting in this respect. In a magazine interview this month, Fox News talker Laura Ingraham said that “I’m not saying I’m there for him yet,” when asked if she would endorse a 2024 Trump presidential bid.

As is well known, Ingraham remains a fervent backer of Trump’s presidential record and policies, as well as an admirer of the former president personally. Less well known – Ingraham was dissenting in a Trump-ian/populist way from the old Republican Party orthodoxy for several years before Trump declared his first White House candidacy, especially on China-related issues. Given her wide following, that’s a clear signal that what’s been called Trump-ism without Trump is a distinct possibility for the Republican future.

But on the subject of the future, the worst news for both the President and his predecessor came from the AP-NORC survey. By a gaping 70 percent to 28 percent margin, respondents didn’t want Mr. Biden to seek reelection. That was almost identical to the 72 percent wanting Trump to stay on the sidelines and only 27 percent supporting a third White House bid.

We’re still very early in political cycle for this year’s Congressional elections, much less the 2024 presidential race. But so far, the polls are saying pretty clearly that Americans want new faces to choose from when they next choose a Chief Executive – and pretty ardently.

Im-Politic: Covid Derangement Syndrome

Tags

CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, health care, hospitals, Im-Politic, mask mandate, masks, Omicron variant, Politico, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

If there’s emerged an Exhibit A as to how completely incoherent the nation’s public health establishment and medical systems have become on dealing with the CCP Virus (including its super-infectious but generally mild and often asymptomatic Omicron variant), it’s an article yesterday in Politico headlined “Health care workers are panicked as desperate hospitals ask infected staff to return.”

As is so often the case, moreover, this virus-related trend and its fallout has been reported without any allusions to the incoherence. And practically all of the muddle is expressed in the very first paragraph, starting with the very first half of the very first sentence:

“While most health workers are vaccinated, many are still falling sick, exacerbating a staff shortage as more Americans seek hospital care. The reliance on employees who may still be infectious comes despite objections from nurses‘ unions and the American Medical Association, which warned the decision puts patients’ health and safety at risk. And there are no requirements that patients be notified if their caregiver is sick.”

Presumably, when reporter Rachael Levy writes that “most health workers are vaccinated,” she means “fully vaccinated” – including boosters. Yet “many are still falling sick.” Readers never learn how many or, more important, what percentage. But it’s no doubt lots – indeed, enough to create and worsen staff shortages.

That alone should blow a big hole in the various sweeping “vaccines work” claims used, notably, to justify mandates for the jabs, especially since these health care workers by definition must overwhelmingly be individuals young enough and free enough of the special medical conditions to be able to avoid illness serious enough to render them too infeebled to report to work — much less to threaten grave illness or death.

But the headline indicates that the concern of the “panicked” health care workers isn’t simply that the colleagues who believe they should be staying home are crawling in, uncontrollably shedding pathogens and threatening staff and patients alike, and/or are physically incapable of performing their duties adequately.

They’re also concerned that these colleagues are “infected” in the first place.

Yet these worries are loopy for any number of glaringly obvious reasons. For example, if infected health care workers are asymptomatic, they should be fully capable of doing their jobs. In addition, the evidence so far seems to show that most virus victims don’t spread the pathogen (see, e.g., here and here), and when they do, they’re most contagious very early in their infections.

That last point is crucial because it’s behind the latest guidance for health care facilities issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As Levy (thankfully!) reports, this advisory allows such providers “to bring back workers after five days of isolation, instead of 10, without a negative Covid-19 test.” What’s more, “In cases where workforce shortages become extreme, hospitals can bring back staff without any isolation period.”

Stranger still: Presumably the health care workers who so fear their supposedly irresponsible colleagues are, according to their own definitions, behaving very responsibly themselves. In other words, they’re surely individuals who are both fully vaccinated and dedicated mask-wearers.

If they’re vaccinated, of course, it’s now clear that their protection against infection is far from perfect, but that their protection against severe illness and death is very good. That is, if they do get infected, and since they are young-ish and strong-ish, they’ll recover fully and pretty quickly — assuming they experience any symptoms at all.

Further, since they work in hospitals, they’re almost certainly also wearing the kinds of masks that are highly effective in preventing infection, not the cloth masks worn so widely outside hospitals that even the CDC has found provide pretty ineffective protection. So have the worried workers now joined the “vaccines and many masks don’t work at all” camp?

It’s true that the Omicron variant may be a virulent enough spreader to confound both vaccines and boosters and even high quality masks, at least to a significant degree. But if this is the case, to date, the health effects of Omicron spread look much too weak to justify panic or even close for anyone without specific vulnerabilities.

Yes, hospitals are full of people with such vulnerabilities – the patients. But the CDC guidelines contain recommendations for dealing with them.

Not that the CDC has covered itself with glory throughout the pandemic. Or that this specific approach that it’s taken to the health care system will keep everyone involved fully protected.

But as one hospital CEO quoted by Levy reminds, “We don’t have good choices — or the choices that we want.” A new consensus seems to be emerging in the nation that America has to “learn to live” with the CCP Virus. Unless it’s believed that somehow the health care delivery system should be an exception (and should be crippled until somehow something close to Zero Covid is reached without it?) hospital workers need to follow this advice, too.

Im-Politic: Yet Another Weird, Dangerous Turn in Identity Politics

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affirmative action, African Americans, colleges, Congress, higher education, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, Hispanics, historically black colleges and universities, identity politics, Im-Politic, lobbying, minorities, Politico, reconciliation bill, universities

Just what America needs right now – yet another source of identity politics-driven division, right? And one that looks completely bogus. Apparently this is exactly what the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) thinks.

Politico.com reported last week that the organization is competing with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) for funding reserved for “minority-serving institutions” in the big social spending bill (also called the “reconciliation bill”) passed by the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives but still still under consideration in the Senate.

And according to Politico, that’s how the measure has been structured – which depressingly indicates that the scramble for power, influence, and government resources has great potential to pit various racial and ethnic minority groups against one another, as well as continuing to foster competition between these groups collectively against whites. (Another example of intra-minority tensions – the pushback by Asian-American groups against affirmative action programs that they claim unjustly discriminate against them and for other “people of color.”)

But let’s say that, for some whacko reason, Americans decide that these battles among minority groups should be encouraged, or tolerated. Let’s also agree for the sake of argument that throughout American history, Hispanics have suffered from discrimination comparable to that which has victimized African Americans. (It’s a completely specious claim, but that’s not the point.) Shouldn’t the organizations involved at least boast genuine levels of legitimacy? If you agree, then the HACU doesn’t have a leg to stand on, even though according to the group’s website, the federal government for decades has formally recognized “campuses with high Hispanic enrollment as federally designated HSIs and [begun] targeting federal appropriations to those campuses.”

After all, the HBCUs were founded because of decades of unquestionably systemic and predominantly officially sanctioned discrimination in U.S. higher education against black Americans. Those days thankfully are gone, but it’s understandable that many African American students still want to attend those colleges and universities for reasons like demonstrating solidarity with them due to their historic role, or to a greater sense of comfort academically and/or socially on majority black campuses.

But the story of “Hispanic Serving Institutions” (HSIs) is totally different from that of the HBCUs. In fact, it’s so totally different that they don’t seem to have a story as such at all. The first big clue comes from the HACU’s own description of its membership: They’re schools “committed to Hispanic higher education success in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Latin America, Spain and U.S. school districts.” Even overlooking the inclusion of non-U.S. institutions in this definition (and, incredibly weirdly, Spain???), evidently the only hard and fast characteristic distinguishing these schools is their domination of Hispanic college enrollment in the United States (allegedly two-thirds).

But a look at the HACU’s membership list (which includes memberships of all types, in addition to institutions it classifies as HSIs) reveals that this criterion is meaningless on two major grounds. First, a very large percentage of these institutions are located in places like California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, and New York. In other words, they’re located in states with big Hispanic populations – along with Puerto Rico. So of course they enroll outsized shares of Hispanic students – especially since so many of those schools are public colleges, universities, and community colleges. And that’s supposed to demonstrate a defining commitment?

Second, perusing the membership list also quickly reveals that this commitment is often pretty weak, at least numerically speaking. For instance, Ball State University in Indiana is a member. Hispanics represents just 6.26 percent of its undergraduate and graduate enrollment. Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio belongs, too. It’s Hispanic enrollment is just 6.52 percent. For Central Michigan University, it’s a mere 4.89 percent. Duke University, with an overall student body that’s 6.78 percent Hispanic is a member. So is Emory University in Atlanta (8.17 percent), Michigan State University (6.01 percent), Mount Holyoke College (7.61 percent), Northwestern University (8.68 percent), the Univeristy of Alabama-Birmingham (4.42 percent), the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (7.31 pecent), the University of Tennessee (4.75 percent), the University of Chicago (4.54 percent), the University of Michigan (6.51 percent), the University of Pennsylvania (6.74 percent), the University of Pittsburgh (3.70 percent), Villanova University (5.38 percent), Washington University in St. Louis (6.69 percent).

(Note: Many of these figures come from the “Universities” section of the DataUSA.io website founded in part by the international consulting firm Deloitte.  The others come from the websites of these institutions themselves.)

And here’s some vital context: As of the latest available (2016) data from the U.S. Department of Education, the share of Hispanic students at all degree-granting American post-secondary schools was 17 percent. So all the above schools associated with the HACU are serving Hispanic students much less well according to this key measure than the national average. And since figures from the same agency show that the Hispanic share of the American college and university student body has been rising faster than that of any other racial or ethnic group, and since the above enrollment figures are all from well after 2016, arguably their performance has worsened in recent years.

Even more bizarre: The HACU reports that for its own “membership purposes, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are defined as colleges, universities, or systems/districts where total Hispanic enrollment constitutes a minimum of 25% of the total enrollment.” So by its own standards, none of the above schools should be members – or even close.

Moreover, the federal government itself has no official list of HSIs. But for the purposes of determining eligibility for aid, the 25 percent threshhold also seems crucial (though as you will see, HACU acknowledges that there’s no fixed formula.

If Hispanics want to start their own separate higher education system and then seek as much taxpayer-funded assistance as they can get, that’s their God-given right as citizens of this great country. But it’s obvious that no such system has ever existed, that none exists now, and that the idea that Congress should pay any attention an organization even claiming to speak for a significant number of schools with an unusually strong commitment to higher education for Hispanics is a sham.

Moreover, rather than continue to play grievance politics – and with an artificial interest group – wouldn’t it be much better for the nation as a whole, and even for Hispanics specifically, for these institutions reorient their lobbying toward ensuring college affordability for all American students in need who can truly benefit from higher education. And wouldn’t it be nice if on top of seeking additional access to the government funding trough, and thereby indirectly feathering their own nests even more lavishly, they paid at least as much attention to reducing their long-soaring costs – e.g., by improving their performance and their efficiency?

After all, if American higher education doesn’t start helping students think more logically and coherently; receive an accurate, balanced picture of the society in which they live and the civilization that spawned it;  and function effectively in the economy that it’s created, then any lobbying victories it wins will be hollow for those they say they’re championing.       

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Quickest Foreign Policy Study Ever?

Tags

Biden administration, foreign policy, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Kamala Harris, Mainstream Media, Politico, The Washington Post

“Harris gets a crash course on foreign policy.”

– Politico, February 26, 2010

 

“Kamala Harris is playing an unusually large role in shaping Biden’s

foreign policy.”

– The Washington Post, March 8, 2021 Politico, February 26, 2010

 

(Sources: “Harris gets a crash course on foreign policy,” by Eugene Daniels and Natasha Bertrand, Politico, February 26, 2021, Harris gets a crash course on foreign policy – POLITICO and “Kamala Harris is playing an unusually large role in shaping Biden’s foreign policy,” by Olivier Knox, The Washington Post, March 8, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/08/daily-202-kamala-harris-is-playing-an-unusually-large-role-shaping-bidens-foreign-policy/)

Im-Politic: The Case That the Virus and Not the Fraud Beat Trump

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, battleground states, Biden, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, election 2020, Im-Politic, mask mandate, Politico, Tony Fabrizio, Wuhan virus

So Donald Trump legitimately lost last November’s presidential election and it was his handling of the CCP Virus pandemic that largely did him in. That’s an argument recently made by one of the former President’s own pollsters, and I take it seriously because the pollster was Tony Fabrizio.

I first became familiar with him in the late 1990s, when he and then partner John McLaughlin (another pollster who worked with the Trump campaign) published a groundbreaking analysis that first identified major opposition in the Republican base to pro-free trade positions and other longstanding GOP stances. In other words, he’s not your typical conservative Beltway mercenary who just hopped on the Trump bandwagon when it became convenient and is now jumping ship and frantically swimming back to establishment shores.

According to an election post-mortem from Fabrizio that was leaked to the news website Politico, Trump lost in 2020 five of the ten battleground states he won in 2016 (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) largely because the virus was by a wide margin the single most important voter concern, because Americans decidedly rejected the Trump campaign’s argument that economic revival counted for more, and because they disapproved of his pandemic policies.

In the five battleground states that flipped against Trump, fully 42 percent of voters according to the exit polls identified the virus as “the most important issue.” “The economy” did come in second, but garnered only 28 percent support. Another major Trump emphasis, law enforcement, barely moved the needle on this question, with only three percent agreement. Moreover, when explicitly asked to rate the importance of virus mitigation versus economic revival, 60 percent in these flip states chose the former. And by a 48 percent to 39 percent, these voters rated candidate Biden as likelier to deal with the virus best.

More confirmation of the CCP Virus’ major role: In these flip states, respondents backed mask-wearing mandates by a huge 75 percent to 25 percent margin, and they approved of the job being done by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, by a nearly as big 72 percent to 28 percent.

And these virus-related gaps exerted a considerable effect on actual voting behavior. Mr. Biden carried flip state voters who prioritized handling the pandemic by three-to-one.

The CCP Virus clearly wasn’t the only reason for the election verdict. And as I’ve written, in my view, the mass mail-in voting last fall created a system “veritably begging to be abused.” But given the closeness of the flip state votes, disparities this wide on any single issue can generate make-or-break impacts all by themselves.

And although as known by any regular RealityChek reader, I don’t consider Trump’s virus policies to have been distinctively ineffective by any stretch (although the messaging was often off-key), I never joined the Cult of Fauci, and I’ve found President Biden’s pre- and post-inauguration virus statements and policies to be monumentally unimpressive (see, e.g., here) , Fabrizio has marshaled evidence that Trump and his supporters shouldn’t ignore. It’s not that America’s CCP Virus history is likely to repeat itself exactly. It’s because many of the leadership do’s and don’ts it’s exposed are likely applicable to a wide range of potential future crises.

Im-Politic: The Latest Trump CCP Virus Fake News

Tags

Beth Cameron, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, ebola, Im-Politic, National Security Council, NSC, Obama administration, pandemic, Politico, Tim Morrison, TIME, Trump, Washington Post, WHO, World Health Organization, Wuhan virus

I’m getting sick and tired of debunking Mainstream Media myths spread about the Trump administration’s failures in dealing with the CCP Virus (as I have now taken to calling it, in honor of the Chinese Communist Party regime’s role in covering it up and thereby preventing timely responses all over the world). And maybe you’re getting sick and tired of reading them.

All the same, the attacks keep coming, and three in particular that have appeared in the last week – which happen to be closely related to each other – are screaming out for pushback.

Off the bat, though, some essential context: As I’ve tweeted repeatedly, I agree that the President’s anti-Wuhan Virus (another monicker I’ve been using) policy has been flawed. Chiefly, Mr. Trump does deserve criticism for claiming until recently that everything’s under control – although I can’t help but continuing to note that the World Health Organization (WHO) didn’t declare the situation to be a global pandemic until March 11. That’s a grand total of nine days ago.

In addition, testing of course took off way too slowly. I strongly suspect that this stemmed from outmoded guidelines and manufacturing processes at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that predated the Trump inauguration. But the buck in the U.S. government ultimately and rightly stops on the President’s desk, and a Chief Executive who’s described himself as a Can-do-type disrupter should have stopped the agency’s business-as-usual approach faster.

As for the broadsides with much less, if any, merit? The first concerns the claim that the administration foolishly abolished the National Security Council (NSC) office that it inherited from the Obama administration that focused on protecting the country from pandemics. This allegation, first made by that office’s first director, has been (to put it charitably) exposed as misleading by one of her NSC successors, Tim Morrison.

He’s explained that the office’s responsibilities were merged into a new office that looked at pandemics more holistically, because they’re closely related to challenges like those posed by weapons of mass destruction generally. And Morrison has contended – credibly – that thanks to various preparations made by this reorganized NSC, an Ebola outbreak was quashed quickly.

To be sure, as I’ve pointed out, the emergence of diseases in regions like Central Africa, which have scant connections with the global economy, and in places like China, which have extensive connections, pose dramatically different challenges. And I continue to think, as argued, that bureaucratic reforms involving such tiny government agencies are game-changers in real-world terms. But you’d think that the initial accuser, Beth Cameron, might consider apologizing. And that the Washington Post would acknowledge a huge fact-checking failure (though it did run the rejoinder).

What’s even less well known – and has gone even more scantily reported than the Morrison observations – is that Mr. Trump’s predecessors approved decisions that actually do look like genuine pandemic defense downgrades. According to this TIME magazine post:

“The Trump Administration has become the third White House in a row to downgrade or eliminate the senior White House personnel tasked with tracking disease and bioterrorism threats, according to Kenneth Bernard, a retired Rear Admiral and physician, who served as a special assistant to the president for security and health during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.”

TIME continues:

Bernard “served in the top role in the Clinton National Security Council, only to be ignored by the incoming George W. Bush Administration, which eliminated his special advisor position.

“But after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington spurred fears Al-Qaeda would follow up with a bioweapons attack, and the anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush Administration re-established the office, bringing Bernard back to serve as the first former Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense, as a subset of the White House’s Homeland Security Council (HSC), which later helped combat outbreaks of SARS and the Avian Influenza.”

And as for the Obama record:

“Under Obama’s NSC, Bernard says the office was downgraded again, until the 2014 Ebola crisis emerged, and President Barack Obama appointed ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain. National Security Advisor Susan Rice later institutionalized the office in 2015, calling it the Directorate for Global Health and Security and Biodefense.”

Not exactly a model of foresight.

The next two myths were propagated (and weirdly invalidated at the same time) by this supposed Politico scoop about a transition-period Obama administration warning to the incoming Trump administration to ramp up for an inevitable big-time pandemic. The thrust of the article, written by Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman, and Dan Diamond, is that outgoing Obama officials held a briefing with soon-to-be Trump counterparts on the potential dangers of the kind of bio-threat being faced by the nation right now, and that the Trump-ers were decidedly uninterested.

The allegedly clear implication, as the article quoted former national security advisor Susan E. Rice as recently writing: “Rather than heed the warnings, embrace the planning and preserve the structures and budgets that had been bequeathed to him, the president ignored the risk of a pandemic.”

As noted above, the structures and budgets point is bogus. But so is the warnings point. And we know this in part because, as Politico stated (in paragraph 18), “None of the sources argued that one meeting three years ago could have dramatically altered events today.”

Also important to note: The authors presented documents presented at the meeting, and they make clear the phoniness of both the charge that Trump officials were (uniquely) caught flat-footed by CCP Virus testing requirements, and that the leadership vacuum they’ve created has given the states no choice but to fill a gap that’s not their responsibility.

Except the documents say absolutely nothing about boosting testing capabilities or modifying CDC guidelines. And they specify that “State and local governments lead public health response,” especially when it comes to “hospital preparedness and response.”

Recent news reports have created some optimism that effective anti-CCP Virus medicines may be developed sooner than initially expected.  Too bad there’s no reason to think that another serious malady – Trump Derangement Syndrome – will soon come under control.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Politico Shoots Itself in the Foot on Foreign Meddling

Tags

Democrats, election 2016, election interference, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, MSM, Politico, Trump, Ukraine

“…acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told reporters the U.S. aid was withheld at least in part because of a request to have Ukraine investigate unfounded allegations that foreign countries assisted Democrats in the 2016 election.”

–Politico, October 17, 2019

“Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”

– Politico, January 11, 2017

 

(Sources: “Mulvaney acknowledges Ukraine aid was withheld to boost political probe,” by Quint Forgey, Politico, October 17, 2019, https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/17/mulvaney-confirms-ukraine-aid-2016-probe-050156 and “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire,” by Kenneth P. Vogel and David Stern, Ibid., https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is Trump Finally Getting It on NAFTA?

Tags

automotive, Bill Clinton, Canada, Inside U.S. Trade, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Ronald Reagan, rules of origin, tariffs, Trade, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s still unconfirmed, but if true, a development reported in the (usually reliable) newsletter Inside U.S. Trade would reveal that the Trump administration is finally recognizing a major weakness in its approach to revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And special bonus – the proposal in question would also go far toward solving the trade problems with China and most of the rest of the world that have been rightly identified by the administration.

Here’s a good summary of the scoop provided Tuesday by Politico:

“Three sources close to the [NAFTA] talks said the U.S. has demanded that Mexico, and possibly Canada, accept a higher tariff rate for autos that don’t meet the pact’s new content rules. That would essentially force companies that build cars in Mexico to agree to have exports to the U.S. that don’t conform to the rule be subject to a tariff beyond the 2.5 percent rate Washington bound itself to at the World Trade Organization. USTR [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] also declined to confirm this development….”

The key here is the point about higher tariffs. The three NAFTA signatories have now come to agree that the treaty’s regional content rules need to be made more strict. So far, in order to qualify for tariff-free treatment anywhere inside North America, autos and light trucks (which comprise an outsized share of intra-North American trade, and have attracted the most attention in the talks) need to be made of 62.5 percent North American parts and components. The aim, at least ostensibly, has been to encourage producers outside North America to relocate production and jobs inside the free trade zone.

The Trump administration has been pressing to raise the content levels needed for such tariff-free treatment to at least 70 percent for passenger vehicles, and reportedly Mexico is now on board in principle (though the exact number has yet to be agreed on). But so far, the administration has not demonstrated much, if any, awareness that higher mandated local content levels alone won’t bring many new factories or jobs to the signatory countries – and have under-performed on this front so far – for a very simple reason. As I’ve noted repeatedly, the penalty that non-North American producers need to pay for non-compliance is only 2.5 percent – an extra cost they can easily absorb.

The Inside U.S. Trade item suggests that this point has been taken, which would be great news for all three NAFTA countries if the eternal tariff is raised high enough to foster North American production and discourage imports. Even better, this proposal – which would essentially turn North America into a genuine trade bloc if extended to all traded goods and services – would by definition limit American imports from all the countries long regarded in Washington as troublesome trade partners (like China, Germany, and Japan). For they would all find it much more difficult to supply the United States – along with Canada and Mexico – with exports, and would face great pressure to serve North American customers instead with products overwhelmingly made in the free trade zone by North American workers.

It’s true that an increase in the external NAFTA tariff would violate WTO rules and would therefore expose all three North American economies to retaliation from outside the continent. But all three countries have run chronic trade deficits with the rest of the world, so they stand to come out ahead if a full-fledged trade conflict actually resulted. And as former President Ronald Reagan emphasized when he originally broached the subject (back in 1979), North America is self-sufficient, or could easily become so, in every significant product or service used by a prosperous economy.

Indeed, Reagan subsequently and explicitly contended that NAFTA was needed as a trade bloc to fend off the challenges posed by regional consolidation in Europe and East Asia. (The Wall Street Journal article in which this argument was made is now behind a pay wall, but the quote is found in my Marketwatch.com op-ed linked above.)  So did former President Bill Clinton. Both were known – and rightly so – as free trade supporters. Donald Trump, a decided free trade skeptic, should settle for no less.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Offshoring Lobby Snake-Oil on NAFTA

Tags

China, Cummins Inc., free trade agreements, manufacturing, Morning Trade, NAFTA, North American Free Frade Agreement, offshoring, offshoring lobby, Politico, steel, tariffs, Tom Linebarger, Trade, Trump, Vietnam, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If Tom Linebarger conducts business the way he talks about trade policy, I’d watch out for my wallet if I dealt with his company. Because recent remarks made by the Cummins Inc. Chairman and CEO about President Trump’s efforts to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) represent an unusually brazen example of snake-oil peddling.

In an interview with Politico‘s “Morning Trade,” Linebarger, whose firm is a leading manufacturer of diesel and natural gas engines and engine components, contended (in the reporter’s words) that “Although Trump believes differently, the United States is a much less attractive place for companies to invest if NAFTA no longer exists.”

In Linebarger’s view (and his own words), even if they’re only bargaining tactics, Mr. Trump’s threats to terminate the deal are “a terrible idea” because “Investors make decisions based on what they project is going to happen and one of the challenges in posturing with something of this nature is that people will begin to change their plans.”

Continued Linebarger:

“Not only would terminating NAFTA worsen the position of the U.S., but it causes multinational companies like mine to figure what’s the best way to position yourself for a world without NAFTA, which might mean changing manufacturing locations. Mexico has 44 free trade agreements. The U.S. has free trade agreements with 20 countries. So the very best way to sell to everybody else is to be in Mexico.”

But here’s what Linebarger didn’t tell Politico. First of all, according to Cummins’ latest annual report, more than half (54 percent) of all of the company’s net sales last year went to customers in the United States. The year before, it was 56 percent. Second, one of Cummins’ senior executives for Latin America stated publicly last month that all of Cummins’ Mexico engine production is exported, and that 80 percent goes to the United States. (The rest goes to the United Kingdom.)

So if Trump terminated NAFTA, and (as he has pledged) raised tariffs on Mexico-produced goods and services high enough to make the country unprofitable as an export platform, Cummins could lose nearly all of the customers for its four Mexico factories if it failed to return that production to the United States. It would also lose a big chunk of its total worldwide customers. 

Of course, Linebarger, Cummins, and other footloose multinationals could always try to skirt those tariffs by producing for the American market in other countries.  But that strategy could only succeed if the Trump administration simply sat back and did nothing about U.S. trade with any of these countries.  And just this week, Washington served notice that it would respond to such production-shifting ploys by announcing stiff new tariffs on Chinese-made steel entering the American market from Vietnam.        

In addition, the Latin America executive made clear that, despite Linebarger’s touting of Mexico’s non-U.S. trade deals, the company has made scarcely any use of them. And continuing U.S. domination of Cummins’ Mexico exports is all the more striking given that Mexico has been able to benefit from a free trade deal with the European Union (which the United Kingdom of course will be leaving) since late 2000, and from such an agreement with Japan since mid-2005. (Incidentally, counting all the EU countries separately is the only way the number of Mexico’s free trade agreements gets anywhere close to Linebarger’s 44.)

The only conclusions that can be drawn from the numbers: Either Linebarger is a complete incompetent and has failed to use Mexico as a supply base for dozens of promising non-U.S. markets, or he recognizes that Europe, Japan, and much of the rest of the world have little interest in importing advanced manufactured goods like those made by Cummins — or at least little interest in importing them from Mexico.

But let’s not ignore an equally important conclusion made clear by this piece: If journalists don’t stop simply taking at face value the claims of Offshoring Lobby mainstays like Linebarger, Americans will never have the kind of informed debate they need on trade and their place in the global economy.

Im-Politic: More Fake News on Trump and Muslims

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Barack Obama, CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, George W. Bush, Hamas, Holy Land Foundation, Im-Politic, Immigration, Mainstream Media, Muslims, Politico, Sally H. Jacobs, terrorism, travel ban, Trump

American’s mistrust of the Mainstream Media is so great that even the Mainstream Media is getting worried. If these reporters and editors keep turning out slanted stories like Politico‘s article yesterday reporting a growing national shortage of Muslim clerics, their trust deficit can only deepen.

The main message that author Sally H. Jacobs and the Politico staff wanted to send is stated clearly in the headline and subhead: “America is Running Out of Muslim Clerics. That’s Dangerous: How Trump’s travel ban worsened a shortage of qualified preachers – and why that’s dangerous.”

And the piece does contain several anecdotes about imams from Muslim countries invited to serve mosques in the United States being turned away during the last year by U.S. immigration authorities. Moreover, it leads off with a story about one of those congregations being unable to generate enough volunteer imams from its own ranks, ostensibly because of studies showing that violence against American Muslims has been rising since the 2016 election that put Mr. Trump in the White House.

But there are two enormous, related problems with these points – one which Jacobs and her editors don’t appear to be aware of but should have investigated further, and one they clearly are aware of (which of course is a clear indication of bias).

The problem that’s known to the Politico team is that the only big decrease in the numbers of imams permitted to enter the United States that emerges from the best data available took place under former President Obama. How do I know that this is known to Jacobs and the Politico staff? Because it’s mentioned in the article:

“In an effort to stem fraudulent applications for such visas, the number of R1s [a U.S. visa issued for temporary religious workers] issued during the Obama era declined significantly from 10,061 in 2008 to 2,771 in 2009. In the following years, though, the number rose steadily and in 2016 the government issued a total of 4,764 R1s.

“It is unclear whether or by how much those numbers have dropped during the Trump administration, as statistics for fiscal year 2017 will not be available until next year, says a U.S. State Department spokesman.”

And something else crucial should be apparent from these sentences: The reason that the Obama administration cracked down – even as the Muslim population of the United States kept rising, thereby boosting the demand for clerics – is because it perceived a phony imam problem that needed to be nipped in the bud. This problem, moreover, surely grew under the presidency of George W. Bush – who so many Never Trump-ers across the political spectrum are now portraying as a paragon of tolerance.

If only these vital points hadn’t been buried in Jacobs’ piece!

The problem that Jacobs and the Politico staff may not be aware of (but arguably should have been) is that the main hate crimes figures cited in the piece come from a source that, to put it mildly, has reputational and objectivity problems: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Just one such problem: In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. government (under George W. Bush) “has produced ample evidence” to establish CAIR’s association with groups like the Holy Land Foundation (an Muslim charity convicted in the United States of funding Islamic militants) and Hamas (listed by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization since 1997).

There’s no denying that an actual or impending shortage of American Muslim clerics is an important and interesting development in its own right. And it raises the at least as important and interesting question of why Jacobs and Politico were so determined to turn a real news story into a fake news attack on President Trump?