Tag: Trade
Stevenson’s army, February 9
– I like and agree with Jennifer Harris and Jake Sullivan’s argument that US strategists need to include domestic and foreign economic policy in their plans.
– Conservative scholar Yuval Levin says Congress has degenerated into a bunch of self-promoters: But Congress has progressively lost its inner life, as all of its deliberative spaces have become performative spaces, everything has become televised and live-streamed, and there is less and less room and time for talking in private. By now, about the only protected spaces left are the leadership offices around midnight as a government shutdown approaches, so it is hardly surprising that this is where and when a great deal of important legislation gets made.
– Adam Gopnik reviews a revisionist book that argues Lincoln was less important than Congress during the Civil War.
-The budget comes out tomorrow. The Hill highlights some of the choices the administration has to make.
– WSJ lists some of the winners and losers from the US-China trade war.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Guilty as charged
The opening of the trial proceedings in the Senate has already produced an obvious result: the President has no defense against the charge that he tried to use US government aid to gain a personal political advantage over a potential rival, then obstructed Congress in its investigation. White House lawyers are not claiming he didn’t try to extort the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, only that he was free to do it and to block witnesses and documents the House of Representatives requested.
This amounts to the inverse of nolo contendere, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but accepts punishment. Trump is admitting the facts, but the Republican-controlled Senate is protecting him from the penalty provided in the Constitution, removal from office. It has the power under the Constitution to do that and is exercising it with vigor, preventing even submission of documentary evidence and witness testimony to the wrongdoing.
The big question is how the country will react to a President who believes he can abuse power as much he wants and suffer no consequence. According to the first poll taken since the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate, a thin majority of Americans now believes he should be removed from office, a wider margin believes the charges against him are true, and two-thirds believe the proceedings in the Senate should include testimony from witnesses.
If confirmed, those results would be a substantial deviation from the trend line in recent months, which is basically flat. The partisan divide is still wide and Republicans in the Senate continue to believe that their prospects in the November election are more threatened by Trump-allied challengers in the primaries than by Democrats at the polls. None of the supposed Republican moderates in the Senate have budged from the majority on the many Democratic proposals to bring witnesses and documents into the process.
The Republicans have an option if the going gets rough. They could decide to defenestrate Trump and put Vice President Pence in his place. More genuinely conservative than Trump on social and religious issues, Pence could be relied on to appoint judges who would please the anti-abortion, pro-Christian, Republican base as well as continue the anti-immigration crusade (double meaning intended) Trump has conducted. What Pence lacks is even a rudimentary personality, never mind charisma.
The Democrats are meanwhile still engaged in the fratricidal warfare of the presidential primaries. For now the presidential hopefuls seem mostly incapable of refocusing their attacks on Trump rather than each other. That isn’t good, but the next month or two may well sort out who the candidate will be. If that doesn’t happen, the Democrats could go to the mid-July convention in Milwaukee without a candidate. A “brokered” convention would not be a good thing.
But the biggest single factor in the next election will be the economy. Trump’s bragging at Davos this week was based on falsehoods. The Obama expansion has continued, but growth is now slowing, though not dramatically yet. The Trump tax cut did little to stimulate the economy but a great deal to balloon the government deficit. The trade deal with China failed to correct most of the structural issues that have given the US such a large bilateral deficit. The trade deal with Mexico made desirable updates. Hourly wages have begun to perk up, but inequality continues its long rise.
The picture is worse on the national security front. The fights Trump has picked with North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran have produced no good results for the US. He has nothing to show for his lovefest with Russian President Putin, who still sits on a big piece of Ukraine. The Israel/Palestine peace plan is a bust. The NATO allies despise the President and are holding their breath for him to leave office. He ignores Latin America and Africa (to their benefit more than likely) while talking tough on China but doing precious little.
If there were professor who could judge the Trump Administration on its economic, social, and national security merits, it would get an F. He is not only guilty as charged, but incompetent as well.
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The end is nigh 2019
Except for my 401k, the teens have not been a great decade. We’ve watched the Arab spring turn into the Arab civil wars, Russia reassert itself annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine, China increase its overt and covert challenges to the US, and North Korea defy American efforts to limit or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs. The US has initiated trade wars, withdrawn from international commitments (including the Paris climate change accord as well as the Iran nuclear deal and the intermediate nuclear forces agreement), and abandoned its support for democracy and rule of law, not only but importantly in Israel and Palestine.
Several of these developments could worsen in 2020. The Iran/US tit-for-tat is more likely to escalate than de-escalate. Some Arab civil wars like Yemen and Syria are burning out, but others are spreading beyond the Arab world, with Turkey intervening in Syria and Libya, Russia and Egypt in Libya, and Iran in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Russia is not advancing in Ukraine, but it seems disinclined to withdraw via the Minsk II agreement that would re-establish Ukraine’s control over its southeastern border with Russia and allow a significant degree of autonomy for Luhansk and Donetsk. China and the US have reached a limited and partial agreement on trade, but no more comprehensive accord is in sight. North Korea is bound to test more missiles, if not nuclear weapons.
US mistakes are especially concerning. The withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has freed Iran to begin to violate its provisions, accelerating the date at which Tehran will have all the technology it needs to make nuclear weapons. Global warming is accelerating and the arms race with Russia is quickening. NATO is not brain dead, but US leadership of the alliance is more in doubt than ever before due to the President’s inability to recognize the real advantages a multilateral partnership gives to American power projection. American abandonment of even the pretense of evenhandedness in Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has opened the door to extremist Jewish ambitions to annex the West Bank.
Only 11 months remain before the next US presidential election. It will focus mainly on domestic issues like the economy, health care, religion, and race. But there can be no doubt the United States is less well positioned internationally than it was in January 2017, when President Trump took office. The rest of the world increasingly regards the U.S. as a menace to peace and security, not its guarantor. Excessive reliance on military force and erratic decisionmaking have reduced American influence. Even the relatively strong economy, which has continued to grow at the pace established in the Obama administration and thereby reduced unemployment to historic lows, has not propped up American prestige, because of Trump’s trade wars. Enthusiasm for America is at a nadir in most of the world.
We can hope for better and toast the prospects this evening. But there is little reason to believe the United States is going to recover until it gets new leadership, not only in the White House but also in the Senate, where the new year will see some semblance of a “trial” of President Trump on self-evident impeachment charges. He tried to extort Ukraine into investigating a political rival for his personal benefit using US government resources and has withheld cooperation with the resulting investigation. But few if any Republican Senators seem ready to acknowledge the facts. I might hope Chief Justice Roberts will refuse to preside over a sham procedure and insist on testimony, but he has given no hint of that yet.
America is a great country. It has survived many mistakes. But whether it can get through the next year without doing itself irreversible harm is in doubt. It could “acquit” and re-elect a president most of the world regards as more of a threat to peace and security than Vladimir Putin. Or it could, against the odds, redeem itself and its role in the world with a conviction, a good election free of international interference, and inauguration of someone the world and most its citizens can respect. Take your choice, America.
And happy New Year!
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Stevenson’s army, December 28-31
I was traveling over the weekend, so managed to miss some first-rate recommendations by Charlie Stevenson:
December 31
Forward: Protesters storm US embassy in Baghdad — in response to US airstrikes, as reported by WaPo and NYT stories.
– Likely changes in congressional representation after 2020 census.
– Chinese impact in Djibouti.
– Navy tries again to decommission carrier Truman and cut an air wing.
Backward: Sarah Binder reflects on Congress in 2019.
– FP lists top ten stories.
See you next year….
December 30
– NYT has long piece with previously unreported details of administration fights over Ukraine aid. OMB began working in June to halt aid; Trump met in late August with Pompeo, Esper & Bolton and rejected their unanimous advice to release aid.
-WaPo reveals backchannel of Giuliani & Cong. Pete Sessions negotiating with Maduro.
–US struck forces linked to Iran in Iraq & Syria in response to attacks in Kirkuk that wounded Americans. Here’s Reuters background.
– NYT explains al shabab’s strengths.
– Armed Services chairmen vow smaller NDAA next year. It was amazing to me how many foreign policy and non-defense matters were shoehorned into the bill. But, then, few other bills were debated in the Senate.
December 29
– NYT has long article documenting Trump administration’s demotion and disregard of scientific expertise.
-Newly released documents show how banker David Rockefeller maneuvered to help the shah of Iran.
-Hard to dispute:article calls Sen. McConnell the “most consequential US politician of the past decade.”
December 28
– NYT says Russia is ahead in hypersonic weapons.
– Congress is more assertive against Trump on foreign policy.
– Huawei is making nice in Europe and winning.
– Fed study says Trump tariffs backfired.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, December 21 and 22
December 22
– Washington awaits North Korean missile test with policy in disarray, NYT says.
– WSJ says Navarro endures on trade issues.
-Former CIA official reflects on Post’s Afghanistan articles. I agree.
-Newly released emails show OMB blocking Ukraine aid 90 minutes after Zelensky phone call.
– NYT compares political situations of Nixon and Trump.
December 21
– The administration forced Congress to back down on a provision in the omnibus spending bill that would have forced early release of military aid to Ukraine.
– NYT can track you by your phone, and they did it on the president.
-WaPo lists the contenders fighting in Libya.
– NYT says there’s vote rigging in Venezuela..
– The fight over control of the world’s financial system.
– FP explains why US and Israel don’t have a formal alliance.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, December 20
– NYT has the tick tock on how Pelosi and Lighthizer got to Yes on the USMCA trade deal with labor support.
– WaPo shows sequence of Trump’s belief in Ukraine interference in 2016. Former Trump officials link it to Putin’s influence.
– There’s still hope: the special House committee on modernization urges specific reforms. There’s their release.
BTW: both Houses have adjourned until January.
– India cracks down with detentions and internet suspension.
– A Tufts prof says cybersecurity experts are being driven out of government.
– One of the most significant unreported [other than FT] stories is this: China is set to open enough new coal-fired plants to equal Europe’s current capacity.
PS: SecState Pompeo has lunch scheduled today with Trump. Will he finally announce his plan to return to Kansas and run for Senate?
And a supplement:
I found several more items worthy of your weekend time.
– Ward Just has died. He was an outstanding WaPo reporter from Vietnam until being wounded. He then turned to fiction, and wrote some of the most realistic Washington novels I’ve ever read. [Only Thomas Mallon comes close.] His political characters are true and complex.
– The Vietnam draft lottery spawned decades of valuable scientific research because it produced truly random samples for later study. Some of the vet/nonvet results are deeply troubling. [FYI, I lucked out: my birthday was 312 in the lottery.]
-CFR has its latest report on what to worry about in 2020. [We’ll read this in the spring course.]
– Reuters says Saudi oil fields attack came from the north, thus likely Iran.
– Atlantic Council has a good new report urging “managed competition” with China, with justifiable heavy emphasis on economic issues like R&D and trade.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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