(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Score Another Victory for Trump’s Tariffs – on Metals

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aluminum, Bob Tita, China, metals, overcapacity, steel, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, Trump, World Steel Association, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Wall Street Journal manufacturing reporter Bob Tita, who knows his stuff, more than earned his paycheck with a new story on how all the coronavirus-related disruption to the global economy is worsening a chronic global glut of key metals – especially steel – that’s likely to keep ballooning thanks to continued over-production from glutter-in-chief China.

Especially alarming seems to be this Tita finding: As the PRC’s economy and manufacturing sector have slowed markedly due to the outbreak, and reduced demand for metals,

“many of the country’s steel mills and aluminum smelters have continued to operate because stopping and starting equipment handling molten metal is expensive and risky. Millions of tons of steel and aluminum produced during what is now the worst manufacturing slump on record in China have created a surplus of metal that will take months to shrink, even if the epidemic is contained and demand recovers later this year in China and beyond.

“As a result, the global stockpile of steel and aluminum threatens to push down prices and put new pressure on producers in the U.S., Western Europe and elsewhere. Many of those companies were already struggling to earn a profit on steel and aluminum because of lower prices and weakening demand from manufacturers.”

Indeed, he quotes a U.S. scrap steel broker as fearing that “We could see China swamp the entire world with steel.”

Yet Tita – and the broker – seem to be missing something crucial about the steel glut’s recent past, present, and likely future: The situation then, now, and going forward would’ve been much worse if not for the global nature of President Trump’s steel tariffs. And the latest global output data from the World Steel Association have just proven this point yet again.

When first imposed, in March, 2018, the levies were blasted as catastrophic mistakes by globalist and free trade conventional wisdom-mongers in politics, the Mainstream Media, big metals-using industries, and their hired guns in the think tank world. Yes, they acknowledged, China has been guilty of dumping its bloated steel (and aluminum) output overseas at artificially low prices, thereby exporting not only metals but a metals recession and unemployment around the world. But the United States was an exception, because of steel tariffs already imposed under the Obama administration.

The new U.S. duties were hitting America’s trade partners indiscriminately, including supposedly loyal allies in Europe and East Asia (along with Mexico and Canada). What could be dumber or more short-sighted – especially since these countries had joined with the United States to start putting multilateral pressure on China to cease and desist?

But as RealityChek regulars know, none of these complaints held even a drop of water. For the rest of the world was likely to continue responding to the metals flood from China the way it always had – by ramping up their own exports to the United States, and/or putting the Chinese metals inundating their own markets into new boxes with their own labels and sending them state-side – a practice known as transshipping (and involves committing customs fraud).

Moreover, after achieving exactly nothing since it was created in September, 2016, the multilateral steel talks seem doomed because China has decided it’s had it even with pretending to be interested in cutting its capacity meaningfully.

Yet thanks to the global scope of the Trump tariffs, the U.S. economy is no longer serving as the world’s steel buyer of last resort – and manufacturing punching bag. I first documented their effectiveness in this May, 2019 op-ed. And I’m pleased to report that as of January, 2020, the World Steel Association’s figures show that they’re still working exactly as intended.

The Association tracks output for 64 countries that comprise the vast bulk of global production. And its new figures show that on a January-January basis, China’s steel production rose in tonnage terms by 7.2 percent. That’s considerably faster than world production growth of 2.1 percent.

But the American industry expanded output by more than the global industry, too – by 2.5 percent. And much of this relative improvement stemmed from the poor production performances of other regions and countries that traditionally viewed the United States as the world’s big steel dumping ground. For example, during this year-long stretch, steel tonnage production in Japan rose by only 1.3 percent. For South Korea and Taiwan, it actually fell – by eight percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. And overall European Union production sank by twelve percent.

This success contrasts sharply with the pre-tariffs situation, when the United States was clearly the world’s biggest steel production loser as the result of gluts not only in China but created by many other economies.  

At the same time, the battle to safeguard American domestic metals producers hasn’t been won once and for all. As Tita notes, although “Tariffs have made many types of metal made in China uncompetitive in the U.S.,” China’s still “large steel-and-aluminum output drives up supply and weighs on prices around the world. Excess metal in China could create more competition for U.S. steel exports or enter the U.S. indirectly as imports from Canada and Mexico” – where the American levies have been lifted in connection with the signing of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA), the follow-on to the North American Free Trade agreement (NAFTA).

But the new U.S. and global production numbers also show indisputably that Mr. Trump was right and his critics wrong about his sweeping approach to the metals tariffs. Just don’t expect any of the critics to admit it.

Im-Politic: Home Delivery for Chinese Propaganda

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"Democracy Dies in Darkness", BBC, China, China Daily, ChinaWatch, fake news, Im-Politic, journalism, Mainstream Media, propaganda, RT America, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

For all the attention that’s been focused lately on the mainstream media’s objectivity and credibility, there’s no doubt that some major newspapers have for years been foisting unmistakably fake news on their readers, and I just got a reminder when I went out to my front porch this morning to pick up my Washington Post. It comes in the form of the ChinaWatch supplement (see here, e.g.) that arrives stuck inside the print edition periodically.

My main problem with ChinaWatch – which also has deals with other leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal – isn’t that it’s issued by the Chinese government, and therefore is nothing more than Beijing propaganda. Any country valuing free expression should welcome all comers to its media markets and national debates.

Instead, my main problem with ChinaWatch is that there’s no way for anyone lacking considerable knowledge about China and its state-run media to know that ChinaWatch is a Chinese government product.

Near the top of the front page, readers can see that the ChinaWatch supplement is “prepared by China Daily, People’s Republic of China” and “did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington Post.” At the very bottom comes the statement, “ChinaWatch materials are distributed by China Daily Distribution Corp., on behalf of China Daily, Beijing, China. Additional information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.”

But why should that raise any red flags (no pun intended) with non-specialists? After all, the Post and most other news organizations routinely report that the Chinese economy is full of “private companies.” (See, e.g., here.) Why not simply assume that China Daily Distribution Corp. is simply one of them? It certainly sounds like a typical American-style business. And although the Justice Department reference might look a little odd, how many readers of American newspapers recognize it as a sign that the “company” is required under U.S. law to register as a foreign agent (though not necessarily as a foreign government)?

On page two you’ll find the masthead, with contact information for ChinaWatch‘s offices in China and various foreign locations. But no hint of any Chinese government affiliation appears here, either.

But there’s an easy fix for this problem: Require ChinaWatch to mention prominently on the front page (at least) that it’s a Chinese government publication. And because ChinaWatch is hardly the only foreign government product to appear in American news media outlets, the same should go for the United Kingdom’s BBC, Russia’s RT America, and others. As those two are among the foreign government media organizations that mainly broadcast, their identification could come in the form of text that continually appears in the “crawls” that so many televised news programs run at the bottom of the screen, or, in the case of radio, as periodic announcements (say, every five minutes).

And finally, in the interests of full disclosure, although ChinaWatch specifies that its content has nothing to do with the news and editorial departments of papers like the Washington Post, its appearance has lots to do with the business departments of those newspapers, and their bottom lines. For ChinaWatch is paid advertising. So the Post and the Journal and any others should make clear on a regular basis that they depend in part on the Chinese government for revenue.

After all, as the Post declares ominously in its new, Trump-era advertising slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness.” That’s also the place where reader ignorance and conflicts of interest flourish.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Evidence of the Crucial U.S. Role in China’s Tech Rise

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Broadcom, China, Daniel Strumpf, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm, Silicon Valley, tech, tech transfer, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you need any further evidence that American technology firms have played vital roles in China’s transformation into a major technology power capable of threatening U.S. national security as well as economic interests, check out Dan Strumpf’s article in The Wall Street Journal today. In the process, he inevitably exposes gaping holes in President Trump’s China strategy that need to be closed up pronto if the President is serious about checking China’s dangerous rise.

Here are just some of the highlights of Strumpf’s piece – which is limited to U.S. tech firms’ contributions to the emergence of Huawei, whose CFO (and founder’s daughter) was arrested in Canada a week ago on charges of helping the entity use fraud to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. (As always, I refuse to use words like “company” or “business” in describing Chinese economic actors, since they have nothing in common with corporate organizations in free market economies.)

>”Silicon Valley giants from Intel Corp. to Broadcom Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. are top suppliers of Huawei, which buys their components to make equipment such as base stations and routers and Huawei mobile phones.”

>”Qualcomm and Intel are also working with Huawei on its development of next-generation 5G technologies, a field in which the Chinese company’s aim to be a global leader has alarmed some in Washington.”

>”Huawei still relies on imports from U.S. chip companies such as Broadcom, Xilinx Inc. and Analog Devices Inc. for components used in its telecom equipment…Huawei buys equipment from data-storage equipment maker Seagate Technology PLC for use in its enterprise business, and uses memory chips made by Micron Technology Inc. in its smartphones….”

>”Intel and Qualcomm, which draw huge revenue from China, are seen by Huawei as more than suppliers. In Huawei’s annual report, Intel is described as a ‘strategic partner,’ and the companies work together in a range of areas, including next-generation 5G technology.”

>”In 2015, Qualcomm, Huawei and China’s largest chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., launched a joint venture in Shanghai to work on next-generation chip technology.”

And lest you think it’s just Huawei, click here and here for numerous examples of similar assistance rendered by such American corporations to other Chinese entities and industries.

Strumpf’s article also makes clear the flip side of these American companies’ operations: Chinese entities like Huawei have become major customers and sources of revenue for the U.S. tech sector.

Nonetheless, it’s inconceivable that any Trump administration policy to address the China tech threat can succeed if these sales and partnerships are allowed to continue. Silicon Valley will of course cite these earnings in its inevitable campaign to any attempted curbs on its China activities (while simultaneously urging Washington to “do something” about the Chinese intellectual property theft- and extortion-fueled tech ambitions that has these companies scared silly for their own selfish reasons). And that’s why the President urgently needs to get on TV from the Oval Office, explain comprehensively how the tech firms’ massive giveaway of critical knowhow has undermined their country’s future, how his globalist predecessors’ indulgence has enabled this risky business, why the course change he’s engineering in China policy is so essential, and what his end-game is.

Trade wars may not be easy to win, contrary to the President’s recent boast. But can anyone reasonably doubt that this message will be easy to sell?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: America’s Persistent China Delusion Syndrome

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agriculture, China, comparative advantage, establishment, Made in China 2025, Mainstream Media, offshoring lobby, private sector, tariffs, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The week has barely started and already the Mainstream Media have delivered some genuinely bizarre – indeed seemingly clueless – China-related moments.

There’s the big New York Times series titled “China Rules.” It usefully describes how the People’s Republic has completely confounded the bipartisan American political and policy establishment’s confidence that its growing integration into the global economy would turn it into more cooperative, more economically and politically open power. And thankfully, the series does point out this mistaken official U.S. optimism – which it notes spanned fully eight presidencies. But it says nothing about the massive amounts of money spent by offshoring multinational corporations in Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country’s political and policy communities (encompassing academia and think tanks alike) to foster China myth-making and spoon-feed it to the national media, which overwhelmingly swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Given that this self-interested myth-making bears so much blame for China’s emergence as a major threat to America’s national security and prosperity, it’s imperative that The Times (and the rest of the Mainstream Media) start telling this story in detail – both to reveal how active and influential the myth-makers remain, and to reduce the odds that they’ll stage a comeback down the road.

The Times itself just provided one clear example of such influence in a tweet this morning about a piece on the just-concluded summit of Asia Pacific countries in Papua New Guinea – which tells readers that “The Chinese delegation sought to reaffirm its opposition to the protectionism and unilateralism that have been a focal point for criticism of the United States.” Honestly. “Reaffirm”? Like China’s (stated) opposition to protectionism as such is something to be taken seriously? Or that even China takes seriously?

Are such longstanding journalistic conventions the product of simple laziness? Or of literally decades of media reliance for information and analysis on myth-makers with strong vested stakes in portraying China as a steadily reforming economy? The answer, of course, is “both” – and that the latter fosters the former.

Another example of these habits’ persistence: today’s Wall Street Journal article describing how China’s central government and major local governments are now trying to support a “private sector” that “has become a weak link in a slowing economy.” Yes, there are entities in China that are now customarily called “private sector.” But in a command economy like China’s, where the state wields power in a wide variety of direct and indirect ways, they have about as much in common with genuine private sector companies as fool’s gold has with the real thing.

But perhaps the week’s most important China media reference – at least so far – appeared in a Journal article on how the country’s farm sector is coping with the advent of high tariffs on many U.S. agricultural products. It came in the form of some statements made by China’s President, Xi Jinping that deserve major coverage on their own, but that were presented as little more than boilerplate:

“Unilateralism and trade protectionism are rising, forcing us to take the road of self reliance. This is not a bad thing. China ultimately depends on itself.”

Xi was speaking specifically about agriculture, and can’t reasonably be criticized for wanting his country to be more self-sufficient in this sector. After all, what national leader could genuinely be happy about depending on other countries for food?

But there are two glaring problems brought up by his remarks. First, as I’ve written frequently, the contemporary global trading system, and the conventional economics underlying it, condemn the quest for self-sufficiency in any part of a country’s economy as a No-No. Trade (and therefore production) patterns are supposed to help develop the most efficient global division of labor possible. In plain English, this means that countries are supposed to specialize in what they make best, and to remain satisfied with importing most of the rest. And if food production isn’t their strong suit, they should be confident that they’ll always be able to buy from abroad all that they need.

Second, as I’ve also written, China’s quest for self-sufficiency is hardly confined to food. The country’s policy record makes clear that it’s the goal for its entire economy. The regime’s Made in China 2025 manufacturing and technology program is only the latest example. Among its objectives is reducing the country’s dependence on foreign-made parts, components, and materials for a wide range of manufactures. In other words, China’s leaders aren’t satisfied with importing goods and services where it currently lacks what economists call “comparative advantage.” They want to create this advantage for China – and according to a very specific schedule of highly concrete goals.

Whether dealing with another party, it’s crucial to define it correctly, and doubly so when that party is a “competitor” or a “rival” or outright enemy. Thanks to articles like those above, Americans have just been reminded vividly how far much of their leadership class remains from achieving this objective when it comes to China.

Making News: National Radio Podcast on the Economy and the Midterms Now On-Line…& More!

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Breitbart News Tonight, China, conservatism, economy, health care, IndustryToday.com, infrastructure, Making News, midterm elections, midterms 2018, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump

Last night I got another late-night national radio opportunity, so I couldn’t clue you in beforehand. But thank goodness for podcasts, because now you can listen on-line to my interview with Breitbart News Tonight on the U.S. economy and next week’s midterm elections.  Click on this link and then scroll down a fair ways until you see the episode with my name on it.

Also, it was great to see IndustryToday.com re-post my October 25 offering on a Wall Street Journal pundit who just unwittingly reminded Americans why a Trump-style course change in U.S. China trade policy was urgently needed.

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Pundit’s China Policy Delusions

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2016 election, artificial intelligence, big government, China, Holman Jenkins, incomes, Jobs, Jr., national security, offshoring, tech transfer, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, Welfare State, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Holman Jenkins, Jr. did make one important and useful point in his Wall Street Journal column yesterday on U.S.-China trade policy (which puts him far ahead of most of the punditocracy): He’s absolutely right to call on President Trump to “lay out for the American people just how thoroughly [he] intends to shake up the hugely important U.S.-China economic relationship.”

For weeks, I’ve offered Mr. Trump exactly the same advice – to explain his China end game comprehensively to the American people in a prime-time Oval Office address (though unlike the free trade-obsessed Jenkins, I believe such a speech would boost public support for the Trump China agenda by describing the compelling long-term stakes of what I view as an effort to disengage economically from the PRC – and why they’re more than worth short-term sacrifices).

As for the rest of his column? It’s useful only for reminding Americans how internally contradictory and dangerous (not to mention downright ditzy) the case remains for retaining most of the pre-Trump China policy status quo. Just a few key examples:

>Jenkins insists that rather than pursue a “shakeup” that would amount to “following [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping down the path of seeking foreign scapegoats for failure and heavy-handed intervention at home,” the United States should be “building up our military and alliances.”

But what would be the point of sending more troops and equipment to East Asia while Washington returned to trade policies that have transferred literally trillions of dollars to the Chinese state and helped fuel a rapid military buildup, and investment policies that have ignored the massive export of advanced defense-related knowhow to Chinese entities, and for too long overlooked Chinese acquisitions of similar assets in the American economy?

>According to Jenkins, “China’s avid pursuit of artificial intelligence” shouldn’t worry Western experts because it’s “likely to be employed mainly in destroying the creativity and initiative of its own people.” But capabilities even remotely that massive won’t threaten any major U.S. strategic interests?

>In Jenkins’ view, central to strengthening the U.S. economy sufficiently to meet the Chinese threats he doesn’t laugh off is “dealing with the fiscal challenge of our welfare state.” But good luck with the politics of shrinking social safety nets under an American approach to globalization that kept sending valuable opportunities to earn middle- and even living-wage working- class incomes to China and other penny-wage and regulation-free production and export platforms.

Jenkins isn’t entirely wrong in his overall conclusion that “American prosperity is still made at home.” But the impact of purely domestic reforms is bound to be seriously diluted after decades of Jenkins and his crowd at the Journal (along with most of the rest of the nation’s punditocracy, the pre-Trump Republican party, and the Clinton-ite Democrats) focusing like laser beams on building a truly globalized economy.

And finally – about that headline calling for a “vote on a China Cold War”  (even though the article’s body only glancingly mentions the point): During his successful White House run, President Trump made no secret of his determination to overhaul America’s China trade policy. From the standpoint of democratic legitimacy, the Trump 2016 election victory was all the mandate his administration’s China policy measures need.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where China Trade Retaliation Could Really Hurt

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China, import penetration, imports, intermediate goods, manufacturing, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, U.S. Department of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

According to a Wall Street Journal news report this weekend, China is considering an escalation in its trade conflict with the United States that could cause real problems for the American economy: restricting its “sales of materials, equipment and other parts key to U.S. manufacturers’ supply chain.”

There’s no significant statistical evidence that the U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese-made steel under the Obama administration have harmed domestic American manufacturing, and as I’ve shown in several posts (e.g., here, here, and here) as of now, there’s no such evidence either that the Trump administration’s more sweeping, worldwide tariffs on aluminum as well as steel have inflicted any harm on those American industries that are significant users of these metals.

But Chinese limits on exports of the parts and components that go into a wide variety of goods manufactured in the United States could produce a very different story. The U.S. government hasn’t officially tracked this development. Indeed, the share of various American manufacturing markets captured by imports from anywhere, or the global total, hasn’t been monitored since 1995, when the Commerce Department’s annual U.S. Industrial Outlook report was discontinued.

So for more than twenty years, there’s been none of the kind of government-generated information that President Trump and his aides can consult in order to assess the possible damage to domestic industry. This information vacuum – which of course predates the current administration – speaks volumes about how cavalierly Washington has taken the responsibility of safeguarding crucial American economic interests against predatory foreign competition

Yet unofficial data is available, in the form of China import penetration rates for dozens of advanced manufacturing sectors that I calculated for several years through 2011. (Here’s the latest.) I haven’t published any follow-ups since 2013’s edition (which presented the 2011 data – the latest then available) because each year, more and more of the raw output or trade figures I needed to perform the calculations seemed unreliable. Specifically, they would produce results that were mathematically impossible (e.g., imports accounting for more than 100 percent of the entire U.S. market for various sectors, or results that exhibited wildly excessive swings year-to-year).

The 2011 results, however, are worrisome because they revealed that products from China had grabbed noteworthy shares of American markets for large numbers of high value industrial parts and components, as well as industrial machinery categories (including much of the equipment used by U.S. industry to produce a wide range of intermediate and final goods). Further, in many instances, Chinese market shares had increased at jaw-dropping rates.

Even more important, in the seven intervening years, most of these Chinese import penetration rates have surely risen to greater heights still.

China’s capture of these markets and the leverage it undoubtedly creates reflects one of the most crucial failures of America’s trade policies in recent decades. The very magnitude of China’s success might prevent Beijing from pulling the trigger on the proposal reported by The Journal – i.e., that the domestic U.S. industry has simply become too big a market for China to exit. Satisfactory substitutes from other countries, or from domestic sources, might also be available. But it’s also possible that in many key manufacturing sectors, Beijing has the U.S. economy over a barrel.

What is certain is that knowledge is power, and that if the United States doesn’t study more carefully its vulnerabilities to foreign retaliation to more assertive trade policies such as the Trump administration seems determined to pursue, its chances of prevailing in the ensuring showdowns won’t look promising. And voters’ ability to judge campaign promises to this effect will be almost nil.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The China Trade Cheerleaders Make their Failures Painfully Clear

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Bill Clinton, Bob Davis, Charlene Barshefsky, China, Financial Crisis, Global Imbalances, Great Recession, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This is how abysmal America’s pre-Trump China policies were: Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis recently gave supporters of China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) ample opportunity to defend their positions on this landmark decision. And what were the most convincing rejoinders they could muster to claims that the benefits of WTO membership (chiefly, legally sheltering China from unilateral U.S. responses to its wide array of predatory trade practices) enabled China’s rise as a dangerous economic and military power – and that American trade policy needs to respond vigorously? Observations that the biggest gains have indeed flowed to China.

According to Davis, WTO admission advocates “can point to real gains from integrating China into the global economy. According to the World Bank, some 400 million Chinese have been lifted from extreme poverty—that is, from living on less than $1.90 a day—since 1999.”

In addition, “After the deal, foreign investment in Beijing mushroomed from $47 billion in 2001 to $124 billion a decade later. The lower investment and import restrictions required of China as part of its WTO entry also encouraged multinationals to rush in, as did the prospect of serving the vast Chinese market. China became the world’s manufacturing floor, and Chinese imports [sic] to the U.S. soared.”

Evidently, the WTO admission supporters tried to identify benefits for the United States, too. For example, “Today, technology companies tap the Chinese market to boost profits and defray research costs.” And “The low inflation associated with cheap imports, together with Chinese purchases of U.S. government bonds, has also helped to hold down interest rates, making it cheaper for Americans to buy not only clothes and electronics but also homes and cars.”

But apparently none could point to evidence of U.S. companies’ China earnings trickling down to the American domestic economy and its workers. Indeed, the reference to “defraying research costs” looks like a euphemistic way of describing how these businesses often moved white collar and professional as well as blue-collar manufacturing jobs to China.

Similarly, the low inflation and interest rate points amount to gushing that China’s WTO membership helped enable Americans to live way beyond their means. On that score, the only sane U.S. response should be “thanks but no thanks” – since the result was a decade of bubbles whose inevitable bursting triggered the terrifying global financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession.

The unprecedented bubble decade global trade imbalances fostered by the WTO’s enabling of China’s mercantilism, and their nearly cataclysmic results, also provide vital context to claims (chiefly by former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky) that China “became the world’s second-largest importer, giving a boost to rich and poor nations alike.” For these imports and their growth were clearly dwarfed by China’s export surge. And although China’s post-2009 spending spree did help “the global economy from tumbling even more deeply into recession,” it’s unquestionable that the “kitchen sink” stimulus from the Federal Reserve and other major central banks played a far more important role.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence offered in Davis’ article for the abject failure of the China WTO decision came from former President Bill Clinton – who led the campaign to support Chinese membership by promising both an economic boom for U.S. exporters and irresistible pressure for a democratization of China that would bring more global peace and freedom. As Davis reports, the normally loquacious Clinton “declined to comment for this article.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

entire private sector: +0.53 percent

overall manufacturing: +0.73 percent

durable goods: +0.96 percent

fabricated metals products: +1.10 percent

non-electrical machinery: +1.43 percent

automotive vehicles & parts: +1.06 percent

household appliances (thru June): -0.63 percent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is the Offshoring Lobby Shaping U.S. China Policy Once More?

Tags

Bob Davis, China, Logan Act, offshoring lobby, Robert Mueller, Special Counsel, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Quite the nugget that came near the end of The Wall Street Journal‘s April 29 report on the run-up to the upcoming U.S. trade talks with China scheduled to begin in Beijing this week:

“During the past few weeks, China’s ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive director, Myron Brilliant, operating as a backchannel between the two governments, called on their extensive contacts in Washington to try to get talks going again.”

It’s bizarre on so many levels. Most notably, but far from certainly, is the possibility that President Trump (whose campaign for the White House emphasized remaking America’s China trade and broader economic policies specifically to promote U.S. growth and employment) is being significantly influenced by the Chamber of Commerce (which has long championed a China policy that helps America-based businesses supply the lucrative U.S. market from super low-cost and largely unregulated China)?

That would be some kick in the pants to Trump supporters expecting the President to keep his China trade campaign promises.

Alternatively, the President might simply have been using the Chamber as a means of communication. But this decision would be puzzling, too, since the United States maintains a big embassy in Beijing, complete with a full-fledged ambassador, as well as numerous other official ways to talk with the Chinese. What could the Chamber add?

It’s even more interesting, and potentially important, to consider the chances that the Chamber took the initiative. If so, could the Logan Act have been violated? You may remember that this is a U.S. law requiring criminal penalties for

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States….”

You might also remember that in the wake of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s admission of lying to the FBI in connection with the the Bureau’s Trump Russia collusion investigation, calls proliferated to prosecute him – and other Trump-ers – for violations of this (little used) eighteenth century statute. No one outside his office knows whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into this possibility in its own probe, but this former Chairman of the organization Common Cause believes he should. If the Chamber was acting as a free agent, might it be in legal jeopardy, too?

I asked Bob Davis, a co-author of the Journal piece, about how this backchannel began, and he responded that he couldn’t go beyond his description of the actions he was told about. Which is of course fair enough for any reporter.

What should be clear, however, is that, if the Journal report is accurate, neither of the above explanations should comfort anyone, whatever their views on U.S.-China trade issues. The former could signal the imminent shattering of a campaign promise – which could only fuel further corrosive public cynicism about American politics. The latter could indicate that special interests unaccountable to the American people keep wielding ever greater influence over the nation’s policies – including those extending “beyond the water’s edge.”

So let’s all hope that Davis and his Journal colleague will keep digging, and/or that other reporters start.