Trump Dump: Foreign Policy (Thread I)

[madd0ct0r]

So between this and pretending interest in buying greenland, what is the bad news he í trying to bury?

[Lost Soal]

Probably his attempt to pull out of the Flores Agreement which can then be used as the justification for ignoring their recent court loss which says they can't treat migrant children like battery chickens (my paraphrasing).

[The Romulan Republic]

Which is part of a whole spree of down-right despotic immigration policy moves of late:

-Another attempt at pulling out of Flores so they can lock up children indefinitely (which he is trying to sell as keeping families together, instead of how the nasty Obama administration would separate them- a lie, of course).

-Another crack at revoking birthright citizenship (so he can ethnically cleanse citizens).

-Wanting to allow immigrants to settle only in specific cities or states, which would ultimately mean the death of freedom of movement within the United States.

[The Romulan Republic]

US withdraws from international postal union- a 145 year old treaty regulating mail between countries:

https://naco.org/blog/us-withdrawal-int ... nistrators

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Implications of U.S. withdrawal from Universal Postal Union remains uncertain for counties mailing ballots to military members and American citizens living overseas
On October 17, 2018, President Trump announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), a United Nations agency that facilitates collaboration of postal services between 192 member countries by establishing multilateral agreements and regulating international mail traffic. The administration cited concerns over terminal due rates as the primary reason for the withdrawal and hopes to establish self-declared rates for small packages to ensure American businesses remain competitive in the e-commerce marketplace. As required under the Union’s constitution, the announcement and notice to the UPU initiated a one-year withdrawal process during which the United States can renegotiate terms before the exit becomes final on October 17, 2019.

If the withdrawal takes effect in October, the United States would need to negotiate bilateral agreements with countries that carry American mail. This potentially lengthy process could create complexities that include delayed delivery, increased customs scrutiny and higher costs. The full impact of a U.S. withdrawal from this 145-year treaty remains uncertain, particularly as it relates to election mail.

IMPACT ON MILITARY AND OVERSEAS VOTERS
Military service members, their eligible dependents and U.S. citizens living abroad face unique challenges in participating in our elections. The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) estimates that about three-quarters of the 1.3 million active duty service members and three million other U.S. citizens across 170 countries are covered under the Uniformed Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which allows these citizens to vote absentee while away from their voting jurisdiction.

One of the largest barriers for UOCAVA voters is the transit time to receive and return a ballot, which can vary depending on ballot delivery method, submission options allowed by state law, duty location and internet connectivity. As primary administrators of our nation’s elections, counties are responsible for transmitting and processing military and overseas ballots. To allow extra time and mitigate possible delivery issues, federal law requires these ballots be transmitted no later than 45 days before federal elections. In the 2016 presidential election, counties sent nearly a million absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters. Most ballots are returned to the county through postal mail.

As many counties prepare to mail UOCAVA ballots in mid-September for state and local elections this November, any disruption to the mail service could negatively impact the ability for military members, their spouses and other overseas citizens to participate. Additionally, a U.S. withdrawal from the UPU this October could have even broader implications on the 2020 primaries and presidential election.

NEXT STEPS
On September 24-25, the UPU will convene an Extraordinary Congress to consider proposals related to terminal dues. If a resolution is not reached, the U.S. will withdraw from the union on October 17. The U.S. Postal Service has indicated it is making necessary preparations for a withdrawal, though USPS has not indicated how reliable delivery and return of UOCAVA ballots factors into their planning decisions.

And why would the Trump Regime engage in such an utterly brain-dead move? Well, if its not obvious, read this bit again:

As many counties prepare to mail UOCAVA ballots in mid-September for state and local elections this November, any disruption to the mail service could negatively impact the ability for military members, their spouses and other overseas citizens to participate. Additionally, a U.S. withdrawal from the UPU this October could have even broader implications on the 2020 primaries and presidential election.

So yeah. Voter supression of absentee votes.

As an absentee voter myself, I am absolutely fucking livid over this. This is a direct attack on my voting rights, and those of millions of other Americans living abroad.

I advise anyone voting from overseas to request their ballot far in advance to avoid any issues.

[houser2112]

Aren't most military members Republican? This seems like a rather dumb move if so.

[The Romulan Republic]

Aren't most military members Republican? This seems like a rather dumb move if so.

Could backfire, perhaps. But non-military overseas voters tend to be disproportionately Democrat (for example, Democrats Abroad has branches in countries all over the world, while to my knowledge there is no equivalent Republican organization). There was an effort by the Trumpers to keep absentee votes from being counted in close races in 2018, as well.

In either case, its a stupid move that will make it harder for people to vote.

Edit: This could hurt Bernie in the primaries, too, as (at least in 2016) he had a lot of support from military members.

[FaxModem1]

Law and Crime

U.S. Spy Extracted After Trump ‘Discussed Highly Classified Intelligence’ with Russian Officials: Report
by Jerry Lambe | 10:37 am, September 9th, 2019
submit to reddit
HELSINKI, FINLAND - JULY 16: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive to waiting media during a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. The two leaders met one-on-one and discussed a range of issues including the 2016 U.S Election collusion.

The United States extracted a high-level spy who had infiltrated the Russian government due to concerns that President Donald Trump and others in the administration had, on several occasions, mishandled classified intelligence that could expose the Kremlin asset’s true identity, according to a CNN report Monday.

The secret extraction mission was reportedly ordered in May of 2017, shortly after President Trump met with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. During that meeting, Trump revealed highly classified intelligence pertaining to the terrorist group ISIS and its activities in Syria, which had been provided by Israel.

According to the report, such an operation, often referred to as “extraction” or “exfiltration,” is an “extraordinary remedy” that is reserved for circumstances wherein those atop the U.S. intelligence hierarchy believe an asset to be in imminent danger.

Reached by CNN for comment, Brittany Bramell, the CIA director of public affairs denied Monday’s reports.

“CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false. Misguided speculation that the President’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence—which he has access to each and every day—drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate,” Bramell said.

Five sources who served in the Trump Administration and the intelligence community confirmed the details of the story to CNN. The news organization also withheld several details connected to the situation in order to protect the identity of the former Russian asset.

A spokesperson for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the director of the CIA at the time of the reported exfiltration operation, declined to comment on CNN’s report. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said that CNN’s reporting was “not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger.”

The decision to extract one of the nation’s most valuable Russian spies was made despite the difficulty in cultivating such an asset.


Julia Davis
@JuliaDavisNews
After the decision to extract the spy, Trump met privately with Putin and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter's notes. Intel officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intel w/ Russia.https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/stat ... 2555624449 …

Julia Davis
@JuliaDavisNews
In 2017, the US successfully extracted from #Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian gov't, driven by concerns that Trump repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/politics ... index.html …

Incompetence or malice, you decide.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why can't it be both?

It is worth noting that if literally anyone but the PotUS pulled this shit, they'd probably be charged with espionage or similar crimes. Chelsea Manning went to prison for leaking US government secrets, and the only reason Snowden hasn't is that he's hiding out in Russia.

[FaxModem1]

TIME

President Trump Slaps Tariffs on Solar Panels in Major Blow to Renewable Energy

BY BRIAN ECKHOUSE, ARI NATTER AND CHRISTOPHER MARTIN / BLOOMBERG UPDATED: JULY 3, 2019 10:08 AM ET | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JANUARY 22, 2018
In the biggest blow he’s dealt to the renewable energy industry yet, President Donald Trump decided on Monday to slap tariffs on imported solar panels.

The U.S. will impose duties of as much as 30 percent on solar equipment made abroad, a move that threatens to handicap a $28 billion industry that relies on parts made abroad for 80 percent of its supply. Just the mere threat of tariffs has shaken solar developers in recent months, with some hoarding panels and others stalling projects in anticipation of higher costs. The Solar Energy Industries Association has projected tens of thousands of job losses in a sector that employed 260,000.

The tariffs are just the latest action Trump has taken that undermine the economics of renewable energy. The administration has already decided to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement, rolled back Obama-era regulations on power plant-emissions and passed sweeping tax reforms that constrained financing for solar and wind. The import taxes, however, will prove to be the most targeted strike on the industry yet.

Read More: The Trump Administration Protested When Kenya Halted a Coal-Fired Power Plant

“Developers may have to walk away from their projects,” Hugh Bromley, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview before Trump’s decision. “Some rooftop solar companies may have to pull out” of some states.

U.S. panel maker First Solar Inc. jumped 9 percent to $75.20 in after-hours trading in New York. The Tempe, Arizona-based manufacturer stands to gain as costs for competing, foreign panels rise. First Solar didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Solar Energy Industries Association also didn’t immediately respond.


The first 2.5 gigawatts of imported solar cells will be exempt from the tariffs, Trump said in a statement Monday. The president approved four years of tariffs that start at 30 percent in the first year and gradually drop to 15 percent.

The duties are lower than the 35 percent rate the U.S. International Trade Commission recommended in October after finding that imported panels were harming American manufacturers. The idea behind the tariffs is to raise the costs of cheap imports, particularly from Asia, and level the playing field for those who manufacture the parts domestically.

For Trump, they may represent a step toward making good on a campaign promise to get tough on the country that produces the most panels — China. Trump’s trade issues took a backseat in 2017 while the White House focused on tax reform, but it’s now coming back into the fore: The solar dispute is among several potential trade decisions that also involve washing machines, consumer electronics and steel.

Read More: A Coal Executive Switched to Building Solar Plants. Now He’s Worried Trump Will Hurt His Business

“It’s the first opportunity the president has had to impose tariffs or any sort of trade restriction,” Clark Packard, a trade policy expert at the R Street Institute in Washington, said ahead of the decision. “He’s kind of pining for an opportunity.”

Trump’s solar decision comes almost nine months after Suniva Inc., a bankrupt U.S. module manufacturer with a Chinese majority owner, sought import duties on solar cells and panels. It asserted that it had suffered “ serious injury” from a flood of cheap panels produced in Asia. A month later, the U.S. unit of German manufacturer SolarWorld AG signed on as a co-petitioner, adding heft to Suniva’s cause.

An attorney for Solarworld didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Suniva had sought import duties of 32 cents a watt for solar panels produced outside the U.S. and a floor price of 74 cents a watt.

While Trump has broad authority on the size, scope and duration of duties, the dispute may shift to a different venue. China and neighbors including South Korea may opt to challenge the decision at the World Trade Organization — which has rebuffed prior U.S.-imposed tariffs that appeared before it.

Lewis Leibowitz, a Washington-based trade lawyer, expects the matter will wind up with the WTO. “Nothing is very likely to stop the relief in its tracks,” he said before the decision. “It’s going to take a while.”

The solar industry may also attempt a long-shot appeal to Congress.

“Trump wants to show he’s tough on trade, so whatever duties or quotas he imposes will stick, whatever individual senators or congressmen might say,” Gary Hufbauer, a Washington-based senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said by email before the decision.

Because hey, why let us be energy independent when we can pay more for the tools to even try to do so?

[mr friendly guy]

Lets be fair to Trump on solar tariffs, the US did worse under Obama
In 2012
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... 9U20120517

Under the decision, 59 Chinese solar companies that petitioned the U.S. government in the case will also face an import duty of about 31 percent, including Yingli Green Energy, LDK Solar, Canadian Solar, Hanwha Solar One, JA Solar Holding and Jinko Solar.

31% is more than Trump's 30%, and that was in 2012 when as per the article, Chinese companies accounted for 60% of the market.'

In 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/busi ... anels.html

The department announced anti-dumping duties of 26.71 percent to 78.42 percent on imports of most solar panels made in China, and rates of 11.45 percent to 27.55 percent on imports of solar cells made in Taiwan. In addition, the department announced anti-subsidy duties of 27.64 percent to 49.79 percent for Chinese modules.

I am no mathematical genius, but I am pretty sure those numbers add up to more than the 30% Trump put on there.

[madd0ct0r]

Lets be fair to Trump on solar tariffs, the US did worse under Obama
In 2012
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... 9U20120517

Under the decision, 59 Chinese solar companies that petitioned the U.S. government in the case will also face an import duty of about 31 percent, including Yingli Green Energy, LDK Solar, Canadian Solar, Hanwha Solar One, JA Solar Holding and Jinko Solar.

31% is more than Trump's 30%, and that was in 2012 when as per the article, Chinese companies accounted for 60% of the market.'

In 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/busi ... anels.html

The department announced anti-dumping duties of 26.71 percent to 78.42 percent on imports of most solar panels made in China, and rates of 11.45 percent to 27.55 percent on imports of solar cells made in Taiwan. In addition, the department announced anti-subsidy duties of 27.64 percent to 49.79 percent for Chinese modules.

I am no mathematical genius, but I am pretty sure those numbers add up to more than the 30% Trump put on there.

It's an interesting one. China is dumping them at below cost, and if they destroy/prevent any domestic production capacity being developed (the same way computer chips are highly highly concentrated and a source of power) then that is a problem to be managed.

At the same time, As TRR says, if china is willing to subsidize usa emission reductions, hey, free money! I guess the tariffs just divert that subsidy striaght to the USA government at the cost of slightly suppressing uptake rates and with the benefit of protecting domestic producers.

[mr friendly guy]

More effect on Trump's trade war on farmers. Who I believed a lot voted for.

U.S. farm bankruptcies rise as trade war drags on
ByJessie Higgins

EVANSVILLE, Ind., Sept. 30 (UPI) -- As the trade war with China drags on, many of America's farms are going bankrupt.

The number of farmers falling behind on loans and filing for bankruptcy has jumped since the trade dispute began in spring 2018, according to industry statistics. And farms of all types and sizes continue going out of business.


"Many farmers and ranchers are reaching their breaking point," said Matt Perdue, the government relations director at the National Farmers Union. "The consensus is that this is going to lead to a lot of exits and more consolidations."

Between July 2018 and June 2019, the number of farms that filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcies (a type of bankruptcy designed to allow family farmers and family fishermen to restructure their finances) rose by 13 percent over the previous year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

RELATED China's decision to cease agricultural imports rocks U.S. farmers
Loan delinquency rates have reached a six-year high. And nearly 13,000 farms disappeared in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Farm experts say these figures indicate a troubling trend in American agriculture. Farmers are struggling to stay afloat.

Low prices

RELATED Chinese cancel plans to meet with Midwest farmers
The problem can be summed up in two words -- low prices.

Nearly all commodity prices have been low since about 2014, said John Newton, the chief economist at the American Farm Bureau.

Prices tend to cycle up and down in agriculture and short periods of low prices are typical. Farmers try and plan their businesses around these cycles, banking money during years of plenty to survive years with less.

RELATED Tentative trade deal with Japan encourages U.S. farmers, ranchers
The problem with this particular low cycle is that it's lasted longer than usual.

"We've had low ag prices for four to five consecutive years," Newton said. "The first year, people weather it. The second year, they tighten their belts and cut costs. But, over time, you run out of options without higher commodity prices."

Prices were beginning to rebound in the first part of 2018, indicating to economists that the farm-price cycle finally was inching toward a high.

RELATED U.S. loses 100,000 dairy cows in last year as more dairy farms close
But that high never came, because on July 6, 2018, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods in retaliation for their "unfair trading practices." China responded in kind, placing tariffs on billions of dollars of U.S. goods -- many of them agricultural.

Nowhere to sell

China was America's top buyer of agricultural goods, making the nation a linchpin in the U.S. farm economy. When that market went away, farmers were left suddenly with a massive surplus of products and nowhere to sell them.

Commodity prices collapsed.

"I don't think you can understate the severity of the challenge the trade dispute created," the farmers union's Perdue said. "It was a situation where we were already down, and then you find out the bottom is falling out of the commodities market."


Soybeans have hogged the limelight in the trade war story because of the direct and catastrophic impact the tariffs had on that industry.

China had consumed about a third of all the soybeans grown in the U.S. -- most of which was ground into livestock feed. Since enacting the tariffs, China all but stopped buying American beans.

But many other commodities are also taking a beating, including nuts, cotton, pork and dairy.

"A lot of crop prices tend to trend with each other," Perdue said. "A lot of crops have been severely hit."

The billions of dollars in trade assistance the Trump administration has provided farmers has helped, Perdue added. But that money is not making up for all the losses, he said.

Signs of stress

Industry experts are seeing the signs of financial farm stress across the country. Farm groups have responded by hosting workshops and seminars to teach struggling farmers about bankruptcy options.

In upstate New York, the Rural Law Initiative is hosting one such seminar Tuesday.

"A lot of people don't understand this is even an option for them," said Taier Perlman, the lead staff attorney for the Rural Law Initiative. "They may not have to sell their land, leave their farm and move on with their lives."

More than 1,000 miles to the west, a bankruptcy attorney in Omaha hosted a similar workshop in July.

"The continued pressure on the market is causing more and more people in inch toward needing to file bankruptcy," said Donald Swanson a bankruptcy attorney with Koley Jessen.

"It's not a floodgate yet, but the problem is there is no obvious solution to cash flow. When prices drop dramatically, it just doesn't work. You have farmers who lost money last year and the year before," Swanson said.

And bankruptcy is not the best option for everyone, he added. Chapter 12 is designed to help farmers who are over-extended reduce their debt enough to stay in business.

"If you go into Chapter 12, you decide what assets you want to keep," Swanson said. "But the rule is you have to pay for what you keep, and you can discard the rest. But -- and this is a big but -- you have to have enough cash flow to pay that debt. So, you have to cover the cost of operations and the remaining debt servicing."

This makes the Chapter 12 option appealing to young farmers, who have time to strip down their business, repay the debts and rebuild.

But with the average age of the American farmer at 58, many simply don't have that time.

Expensive equipment

Farms easily can accrue millions of dollars of debt. Many have large real-estate loans that they use to buy farm land and build or upgrade buildings. In addition, they may take out multiple other loans to purchase new tractors and other machinery.


"People don't realize how expensive farm equipment is," Newton said. "You can pay $100,000 for a tractor, or $1 million for a cotton picker. That's a lot of debt."

Problems arise quickly when commodity prices fall, and farms aren't able to earn enough money from their goods to pay those debts. Banks then have a decision to make. They either can work with the farmer, weathering the low alongside him in the hopes that prices will rebound and payments will resume or they can call in the loan.

For now, many banks appear to be working with farmers, Swanson said. Part of the reason is farmland values are holding surprisingly strong despite the dip in prices.

It's unclear exactly why land is holding its value, but industry experts say that might be what is keeping America's farm economy from total collapse.

"As long as the land values hold, in most situations, bankers are going to continue to limp along with the farmers," Swanson said. "But, if the price of the product stays down and the land value drops, we'll see a lot of bankruptcies."

This can be seen in the states that have the highest bankruptcy rates. Kansas and Nebraska, which have second- and fourth-highest number of bankruptcies with 39 and 25, respectively, also have experienced the greatest devaluation of farmland, said Robert Dinterman, a postdoctoral agribusiness researcher at Ohio State University, who recently completed a farm bankruptcy analysis.

Dairy in crisis

Wisconsin leads the nation in farm bankruptcies, but for a different reason -- its high concentration of dairy farms.

The dairy industry was in crisis before the trade war began, and, like other commodities, the trade war has exacerbated the situation, dairy experts say.

After experiencing record high milk prices in 2014, dairy farms across the country expanded.

"Between 2011 and 2014, we had above average prices," said Terry Estes, a former Wisconsin dairy farmer who lost his farm in 2017. "So, the banks started pushing farmers to expand. Anybody who expanded or made major improvements on their farm during that era is in real trouble now."

By 2015, the market was flooded with milk. Prices soon were so low that the average farmer lost money on every pound of milk sold.

As the years dragged on, dairies folded. Since 2015, more than 2,500 Wisconsin dairy farms went out of business, according to the USDA.

"I was a dairy farmer for 25 years," Estes said. "I had 130 cows and worked 500 acres."

Estes brought his son into the business, and together they expanded their farm shortly before the prices collapsed. It's a difficult topic for him to talk about.

"Just imagine that, in one day, all of a sudden your bank calls and tells you they're calling in the note on your house," Estes said. "And that same day your boss tells you you no longer have a job. So, you've lost your house and your job in the same day. That's what happened."


After losing his farm, Estes became a real estate agent for Wisconsin dairy farms. He currently has more than a dozen farms listed.

"My thought was, in the beginning, maybe I could help the younger generation get started in farming," Estes said. "The reality is, I'm spending most of my time with people 55 to 65 years old, who are trying to figure out what to do and how to have something left for retirement."

Farm closures

Wisconsin is the only state in which the USDA tracks monthly farm closures. The data for the rest of the country is published annually. The latest count, for 2018, showed that 4,400 farms selling more than $10,000 in products went out of business.

"It's a little too early to tell if the last 18 months accelerated farm closures," Newton said.

Farm economists overall agree that the trends in agriculture are troubling, but most stop short of calling the current situation a crisis.

"Crisis might be a strong word," Newton said. "But all the indicators right now are going in the wrong direction."

[mr friendly guy]

Trump's trade advisor turned out to be a phony.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjw3 ... -it-sooner

Trump’s Top China Adviser Quoted a Made-Up Expert in His Books and Can’t Believe We Didn’t Spot It Sooner
Trump's trusted adviser in the trade war with China called his serial fabrication "an inside joke that has been hiding in plain sight for years.”
By David Gilbert
Oct 18 2019, 8:51pm

As tense negotiations continue over a possible U.S.-China trade deal, President Donald Trump could ask his trusted trade adviser and China hawk Peter Navarro if he knows of any economist who might be able to provide some much-needed insight.

Perhaps he could call Ron Vara, the Harvard-educated economist Navarro quotes in a number of his books, including his most recent one, “Death by China: Confronting the Dragon — A Global Call to Action.”

Could Ron Vara be the key to unlocking the 18-month impasse that has damaged the U.S. economy and caused widespread angst among farmers, workers, and businesses?

Well, no, he couldn’t, because he doesn’t exist.

Ron Vara, an anagram of Navarro, is a completely invented character who appears in a number of Navarro’s books. In “Death by China,” Vara is used to back up claims made in the book, such as accusations of currency manipulation against Beijing, and the allegation that China is deliberately harming Americans with dangerous consumer goods.

Navarro’s fiction was revealed by Australian academic Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a professor emeritus of Japanese history at the Australian National University, and first reported in the Chronicle Review earlier this week.

But when the trade adviser was confronted with these revelations, he didn’t appear very contrite.

He told the website that Vara was a “whimsical device and pen name I’ve used throughout the years for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact.”

He compared the Ron Vara character to “Alfred Hitchcock appearing briefly in cameo in his movies," and said that it's “refreshing that somebody finally figured out an inside joke that has been hiding in plain sight for years.”

Navarro’s publisher Pearson was less amused,

“We take any breaches of our [strict editorial] standards very seriously and take swift action when one is identified,” the company said in a statement. “In this case, we are amending our current inventory and all future reprints and editions to alert readers that this book contains a fictional character.”

Navarro, who was brought into the administration in 2016, remains one of the president’s most trusted advisers on trade. The White House has yet to comment on Navarro’s fabrications.

He quotes an "expert" on Chinese affairs by the name of Ron Vara (which is an anagram of his own name, Navarro), who doesn't exist. But that's ok, because it was meant as an insider joke but which you continue to described it as an expert. But Navarro has shown himself to be a goddamn idiot.

Navarro once said that since GDP involves exports subtract imports, therefore if we imported less our economy would be even bigger. Which sounds good until you think deeper and realise that American businesses actually do something with the imports, like sell them for even more than they paid so that boost consumption by a greater amount. And consumption is also in the calculation of GDP. If some idiot still doesn't get it, that's like saying my profits are revenue subtract cost, so if I don't pay for the raw materials for that product, I will have zero cost, so my profit is even greater. Yeah, but if you don't pay for them, you don't have the raw materials, you have no final product.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the- ... u-ron-vara

Confronted with the facts — Harvard had no record of Vara’s being a doctoral student, as Navarro claimed — the Trump adviser said the character was a “whimsical device and pen name I’ve used throughout the years for opinions and purely entertainment value, not as a source of fact.”

It’s “refreshing,” Navarro said, that “somebody finally figured out an inside joke that has been hiding in plain sight for years.”

A co-author disagreed.

The Chronicle said they asked Navarro’s “Seeds of Destruction” co-author, Columbia professor Glenn Hubbard, if he knew Vara was made up, and whether Hubbard was OK with that.

“No and no,” Hubbard responded.

In the book, Vara is quoted with the aphorism: “When you build a new housing subdivision, you provide jobs for a few months. When you build a new factory, you provide jobs for years.”

Notably, Navarro’s now-staggering influence over President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China can be traced back to one of his books. Jared Kushner reportedly asked Navarro to join the 2016 Trump campaign as a trade adviser after stumbling across the 2011 book “Death by China” on Amazon. That work, like a half dozen others, quotes the fake source.

Morris-Suzuki, who discovered the truth about Vara, told the Chronicle that Navarro had used Vara to drum up “fear and loathing about China.”

“The joke wore very thin,” she said.

“Only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel.” (“Death by China” pp. 33)

That's fucking racist. MacGyver isn't Chinese.

[mr friendly guy]

Paul Krugman weighs in on the trade war via this OP Ed piece in the NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/opin ... trade.html

How Trump Lost His Trade War
On speaking loudly and carrying a small stick.

Paul Krugman
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Dec. 16, 2019

Trade wars rarely have victors. They do, however, sometimes have losers. And Donald Trump has definitely turned out to be a loser.

Of course, that’s not the way he and his team are portraying the tentative deal they’ve struck with China, which they’re claiming as a triumph. The reality is that the Trump administration achieved almost none of its goals; it has basically declared victory while going into headlong retreat.

And the Chinese know it. As The Times reports, Chinese officials are “jubilant and even incredulous” at the success of their hard-line negotiating strategy.

To understand what just went down, you need to ask what Trump and company were trying to accomplish with their tariffs, and how that compares with what really happened.

First and foremost, Trump wanted to slash the U.S. trade deficit. Economists more or less unanimously consider this the wrong objective, but in Trump’s mind countries win when they sell more than they buy, and nobody is going to convince him otherwise.

So it’s remarkable to note that the trade deficit has risen, not fallen, on Trump’s watch, from $544 billion in 2016 to $691 billion in the 12 months ending in October.

PAUL KRUGMAN’S NEWSLETTER Get a better understanding of the economy — and an even deeper look at what’s on Paul’s mind. Sign up here.
And what Trump wanted in particular was to close the trade deficit in manufactured goods; despite giving lip service to “great Patriot Farmers,” it’s clear that he actually has contempt for agricultural exports. Last summer, complaining about the U.S. trade relationship with Japan, he sneered: “We send them wheat. Wheat. That’s not a good deal.”

So now we appear to have a trade deal with China whose main substantive element is … a promise to buy more U.S. farm goods.

Trump’s team also wanted to put the brakes on China’s drive to establish itself as the world’s economic superpower. “China is basically trying to steal the future,” declared Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser, a year ago. But the new deal, while it includes some promises to protect intellectual property, leaves the core of China’s industrial strategy — what’s been called the “vast web of subsidies that has fueled the global rise of many Chinese companies” — untouched.

So why did Trump wimp out on trade?

At a broad level, the answer is that he was suffering from delusions of grandeur. America was never going to succeed in bullying a huge, proud nation whose economy is already, by some measures, larger than ours — especially while simultaneously alienating other advanced economies that might have joined us in pressuring China to change some of its economic policies.

At a more granular level, none of the pieces of Trump trade strategy have worked as promised.

Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that China is paying his tariffs, the facts say otherwise: Chinese export prices haven’t gone down, which means that the tariffs are falling on U.S. consumers and companies. And the bite on consumers would have gone up substantially if Trump hadn’t called off the round of further tariff increases that had been scheduled for this past Sunday.

At the same time, Chinese retaliation has hit some U.S. exporters, farmers in particular, hard. And while Trump may quietly hold farm exports in contempt, he needs those rural votes — votes that were being put at risk despite a farm bailout that has already cost more than twice as much as Barack Obama’s bailout of the auto industry.

Finally, uncertainty over tariff policy was clearly hurting manufacturing and business investment, even as overall economic growth remained solid.

So Trump, as I said, basically declared victory and retreated.

Will Trump’s trade defeat hurt him politically? Probably not. Many Americans will surely buy the spin, and the trade war was never popular anyway.

Furthermore, voting mostly reflects the economy’s direction, not its level — not whether things are good, but whether they’ve been getting better recently. It may actually be good political strategy to do stupid things for a while, then stop doing them around a year before the election, which is a fair summary of Trump’s trade actions.

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There will, however, be longer-term costs to the trade war. For one thing, the business uncertainty created by Trump’s capriciousness won’t go away; he is, after all, a master of the art of the broken deal.

Beyond that, Trump’s trade antics have damaged America’s reputation.

On one side, our allies have learned not to trust us. We have, after all, become the kind of country that suddenly slaps tariffs on Canada — Canada! — on obviously spurious claims that we’re protecting national security.

On the other side, our rivals have learned not to fear us. Like the North Koreans, who flattered Trump but kept on building nukes, the Chinese have taken Trump’s measure. They now know that he talks loudly but carries a small stick, and backs down when confronted in ways that might hurt him politically.

These things matter. Having a leader who is neither trusted by our erstwhile friends nor feared by our foreign rivals reduces our global influence in ways we’re just starting to see. Trump’s trade war didn’t achieve any of its goals, but it did succeed in making America weak again.

[bilateralrope]

The environment disagrees with Trump's wall.

Trump's wall: Winds blow over section of US-Mexico border fence

A new section of President Donald Trump's signature wall along the US-Mexico border has been blown over in strong winds, US officials say.

Steel panels from the fence in the town of Calexico, California were knocked down on Wednesday morning.

The concrete used to anchor the 30ft-tall (9m) panels in place had not yet set.

Gusts of around 30 mph (48 km/h) were reported at the time, the US National Weather Service said.

The fence is part of the Trump administration's ongoing construction project to stop illegal migration across the 1,954 mile-long (3,145 km) US-Mexico border.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump boasted at a campaign event in New Jersey that the wall was "going up at record speed".

A day later, high winds blew a section of newly installed panels against trees lining a road in Mexicali, a city on the Mexican side of the border.

"Luckily, Mexican authorities responded quickly and were able to divert traffic from the nearby street," US Border Patrol agent Carlos Pitones told the LA Times.

There was no damage to property or injuries, Mr Pitones said.

Pictures from the border show construction workers with a crane apparently attempting to fix the fence, which appears lopsided.

When visiting a section of the wall in California last year, Mr Trump described its concrete and steel slats as "virtually impenetrable".

The project has been hampered by legal challenges from the beginning, but it has made progress, albeit slowly.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it had built around 100 miles of new wall. Much of this, however, has replaced existing structures.

Mr Trump announced his intention to use Pentagon funds for the wall last February, after a 35-day government shutdown triggered by his demand that congressional Democrats approve funding for the barrier.

He declared a national emergency, arguing that Americans were in danger due to lax southern border security.

Earlier this month, a US appeals court lifted a legal block on $3.6bn (£2.7bn) in defence funds, allowing Mr Trump to spend money on the project.

Trump’s Border Wall Reportedly Needs to Be Left Wide Open for Months Due to Floods

Welcome to the absolute dumbness of it all. This is what happens when reality gets retrofitted to accommodate a bad idea. You end up with this, the Trump border wall, which apparently will need, essentially, to be left open for months at a time to accommodate flash flooding during the summer “monsoon season.” This episode of reality bites, the Washington Post reports, is brought to us by in-the-know border officials, agents, and engineers. Here’s the most maddening part from the Post: Along the more remote portions of the Southern border, large unmanned gates that need to be manually raised ahead of the seasonal flooding, and then left open for months to accommodate the large amounts of debris carried with it, are already being waltzed through by smugglers and undocumented migrants. Put more simply: The wall is already not working, so let’s build more!

The flooding risks are not new, but they represent one of the most significant engineering hurdles to President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of a “big, beautiful wall” on the Mexican border. The Trump administration has been largely silent on how it intends to cope with the diverse environmental realities of the border region that spans desert, canyons, and mountains. “The border is so diverse,” Roy Villareal, chief of Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, told the Post. “You have to plan for water flow. … People think it’s just this monolithic wall, sort of like the Great Wall of China, where you drop it into place and that’s all there is to it. And that’s not the reality at all.” On the upside, Villareal said the wall, even with gaps, narrowed the area that required human-monitoring.


Trump’s descriptions of the wall have evolved—to the point of absurdity, like alligator-filled moats—but they always sounded pretty Great Wall–like. “Trump’s wall, which features 30-foot metal bollards spaced four inches apart, effectively acts as a sewer grate that traps the debris; when clogged, the barriers cannot withstand the power of the runoff,” according to the Post. “Veteran Border Patrol officials acknowledge that the government would be foolish to place vertical metal bars in the direct path of rivers and creeks that swell to dangerous volumes during summer storms. The U.S. southern border is crisscrossed by hundreds of drainage channels and several rivers … [where] smugglers and other border-crossers can enter through the large gaps and ­advance northward following stream channels and narrow canyons to avoid detection.”

[The Romulan Republic]

So I'm guessing the Christian fundamentalists are just ignoring the fact that (by their worldview) God is literally smiting Trump's wall?

[The Romulan Republic]

Giuliani lackeys Parnas and Frumans' trial will likely be delayed until next year due to COVID-19, so there goes the chance of the trial resulting in a juicy October surprise, or at least putting Ukraine and impeachment back in the spotlight. Damn it.

https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-trum ... SKCN21W33C

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The trial of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, for alleged campaign finance violations will likely be delayed until after November’s presidential election because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken, who presides over the case, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan said the government did not object to a defense proposal to adjourn the trial until February 2021 from Oct. 5, 2020.

Berman said pandemic-related travel and social distancing restrictions have limited the availability of witnesses and grand jurors, causing the government to push back its timeline to possibly amend the October 2019 indictment.

He also said the restrictions have made it harder for Parnas and Fruman to prepare their defenses.

A trial delay requires Oetken’s approval.

The Ukraine-born Parnas and Belarus-born Fruman were charged over their alleged use of a shell company to make an illegal $325,000 donation to a committee supporting Trump’s re-election.

Giuliani has not been criminally charged and has denied wrongdoing.

Two other defendants, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, also face charges in the case, over a separate alleged scheme to channel donations to U.S. politicians from a Russian businessman to support a proposed marijuana business.

All the defendants have pleaded not guilty.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[The Romulan Republic]

Iran orders arrest warrant for Donald Trump:

https://bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53223523

Iran has issued an arrest warrant for US President Donald Trump over the killing of top Iranian commander Gen Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in January.

Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said Mr Trump and 35 others faced murder and terrorism charges, and that Interpol had been asked to help detain them.

However, Interpol said it would not consider the Iranian request.

The US special representative for Iran said the warrant was a propaganda stunt that nobody would take seriously.

Soleimani died in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport ordered by Mr Trump, who said the general was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops and was planning imminent attacks.

Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at Iraqi military bases housing US forces.

"About 36 individuals have been identified in connection with the assassination of Hajj Qasem. They supervised, acted upon, and ordered [it]," Mr Alqasimehr was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

"This includes political and military officials from the US as well as other countries, for whom the judiciary has issued arrest warrants and the Interpol has issued Red Notices."

Mr Trump was on the top of the list and his arrest would be sought even after his presidency had ended, the prosecutor added.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Baharvand said Iran's judiciary would soon issue an indictment for those responsible for the attack on Gen Soleimani, and was hoping to identify the operators of the drone, according to the Isna news agency.

"Iran will not stop its efforts until these people are brought to justice," he declared.

The killing of Gen Soleimani pushed the US and Iran to the brink of war
An Interpol Red Notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. It is not an international arrest warrant.

US special representative Brian Hook said: "Our assessment is that Interpol does not intervene and issue Red Notices that are based on a political nature.

"This is a political nature. This has nothing to do with national security, international peace or promoting stability... It is a propaganda stunt that no-one takes seriously."

Interpol, which is based in the French city of Lyon, subsequently told the BBC that it would not consider the Iranian request for help.

Under its constitution, it was "strictly forbidden for the organisation to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character", it said.

Analysts say the issuing of the arrest warrant is little more than a symbolic gesture by Iran, but that it reflects the depth of animosity felt towards President Trump.

Of course, Trump is wanted because he terroristically murdered Iran's terrorist murderer, so the hypocrisy is immense here. But at the same time, murdering a criminal is still murder.

[Ace Pace]

Iran orders arrest warrant for Donald Trump:


Of course, Trump is wanted because he terroristically murdered Iran's terrorist murderer, so the hypocrisy is immense here. But at the same time, murdering a criminal is still murder.

Typically, we do not consider enemy combatants murderers. I find it hard to believe the U.S. should consider Iranian military leaders criminals and not enemy combatants. While there is no formal war between the U.S. and Iran, in practice there is.

[Ralin]

Typically, we do not consider enemy combatants murderers. I find it hard to believe the U.S. should consider Iranian military leaders criminals and not enemy combatants. While there is no formal war between the U.S. and Iran, in practice there is.

Because America is special and Iran isn't.

[The Romulan Republic]

Typically, we do not consider enemy combatants murderers. I find it hard to believe the U.S. should consider Iranian military leaders criminals and not enemy combatants. While there is no formal war between the U.S. and Iran, in practice there is.

Because America is special and Iran isn't.[/quote]

Don't put words in my mouth. As I stated above, I believe that General Soleimani and President Donald Trump should be treated exactly the same for their war crimes and murders.

[Ralin]

Don't put words in my mouth. As I stated above, I believe that General Soleimani and President Donald Trump should be treated exactly the same for their war crimes and murders.

Thank you for clarifying, U.S.

[The Romulan Republic]

Don't put words in my mouth. As I stated above, I believe that General Soleimani and President Donald Trump should be treated exactly the same for their war crimes and murders.

Thank you for clarifying, U.S.

CLARIFICATION FROM THE MODS PLEASE: is it permitted on this board to misrepresent and dismiss someone's arguments, and characterize and ridicule them personally, soley on the basis of their nationality? Or is it only permitted if that person is an American? Or is it only permitted if that person is me? I'd just like to know what the ground rules are here.

[Ralin]

CLARIFICATION FROM THE MODS PLEASE: is it permitted on this board to misrepresent and dismiss someone's arguments, and characterize and ridicule them personally, soley on the basis of their nationality? Or is it only permitted if that person is an American? Or is it only permitted if that person is me? I'd just like to know what the ground rules are here.

Look America, I'm just saying that it is good that you, the U.S., clarified what you meant in response to Ace and I posting about why and how you, the U.S., consider Iranian military leaders criminals rather than enemy combatants.

[The Romulan Republic]

CLARIFICATION FROM THE MODS PLEASE: is it permitted on this board to misrepresent and dismiss someone's arguments, and characterize and ridicule them personally, soley on the basis of their nationality? Or is it only permitted if that person is an American? Or is it only permitted if that person is me? I'd just like to know what the ground rules are here.

Look America, I'm just saying that it is good that you, the U.S., clarified what you meant in response to Ace and I posting about why and how you, the U.S., consider Iranian military leaders criminals rather than enemy combatants.

Ad hominem, nationalist bigotry, nationalist stereotyping, defamation.