Thread: President Donald Trump

Meanwhile

Anyone, anyone? What happened when the US last introduced tariffsWillis Hawley and Reed Smoot were reviled for a bill blamed for triggering the Great Depression. Will Trump follow their lead?




As America inches towards a potential trade war over steel prices can Donald Trump hear whispering voices? Alone in the Oval Office in the wee dark hours, illuminated by the glow of his Twitter app, does he feel the sudden chill flowing from those freshly hung gold drapes? It is the shades of Smoot and Hawley.


Willis Hawley and Reed Smoot have haunted Congress since the 1930s when they were the architects of the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, among the most decried pieces of legislation in US history and a bill blamed by some for not only for triggering the Great Depression but also contributing to the start of the second world war.


Pilloried even in their own time, their bloodied names have been brought out like Jacob Marley’s ghost every time America has taken a protectionist turn on trade policy. And America has certainly taken a protectionist turn.


Willis Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot, co-sponsors of the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif Act of 1930
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Willis Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot, co-sponsors of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Successful presidents including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have campaigned on the perils of free trade only to drop the rhetoric once installed in the White House. Trump called Mexicans “rapists” on the campaign trail. And China? “There are people who wish I wouldn’t refer to China as our enemy. But that’s exactly what they are,” Trump said.


As commander-in-chief he has shown no signs of softening and this week took major action announcing steel imports would face a 25% tariff and aluminium 10%.


Canada and the EU said they would bring forward their own countermeasures. Mexico, China and Brazil have also said they are considering retaliatory steps.


Trump doesn’t seem worried. “Trade wars are good,” he tweeted even as the usually friendly Wall Street Journal thundered that “Trump’s tariff folly” was the “biggest policy blunder of his Presidency”.


When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!


March 2, 2018
It is not his first protectionist move. In his first days in office the president has vetoed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the biggest trade deal in a generation, said he will review the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), a deal he has called “the worst in history”, and had his visit with Mexico’s president cancelled over his plans to make them pay for a border wall.




Free traders may have become complacent after hearing tough talk on trade from so many presidential candidates on the campaign trail only to watch them furiously back-pedal when they get into office, said Dartmouth professor and trade expert Douglas Irwin. “Unfortunately that pattern may have been broken,” he says. “It looks like we have to take Trump literally and seriously about his threats on trade.”


Not since Herbert Hoover has a US president been so down on free trade. And Hoover was the man who signed off on Smoot and Hawley’s bill.


Hawley, an Oregon congressman and a professor of history and economics, became a stock figure in the textbooks of his successors thanks to his partnership with the lean, patrician figure of Senator Reed Smoot, a Mormon apostle known as the “sugar senator” for his protectionist stance towards Utah’s sugar beet industry.


Before he was shackled to Hawley for eternity Smoot was more famous for his Mormonism and his abhorrence of bawdy books, a disgust that inspired the immortal headline “Smoot Smites Smut” after he attacked the importation of Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover, Robert Burns’ more risqué poems and similar texts as “worse than opium … I would rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books.”


But it was imports of another kind that secured Smoot and Hawley’s place in infamy.


The US economy was doing well in the 1920s as the consumer society was being born to the sound of jazz. The Tariff Act began life largely as a politically motivated response to appease the agricultural lobby that had fallen behind as American workers, and money, consolidated in the cities.

President Ronald Reagan: after Smoot and Hawley ‘we lived through a nightmare’. Photograph: Marcy Nighswander/Associated Press
Foreign demand for US produce had soared during the first world war, and farm prices doubled between 1915 and 1918. A wave of land speculation followed and farmers took on debt as they looked to expand production. By the early 1920s farmers had found themselves heavily in debt and squeezed by tightening monetary policy and an unexpected collapse in commodity prices.


Nearly a quarter of the American labor force was then employed on the land, and Congress could not ignore heartland America. Cheap foreign imports and their toll on the domestic market became a hot issue in the 1928 election. Even bananas weren’t safe. Irwin quotes one critic in his book Peddling Protectionism: Smoot Hawley and the Great Depression: “The enormous imports of cheap bananas into the United States tend to curtail the domestic consumption of fresh fruits produced in the United States.”


Republicans called protective tariffs “essential for the continued prosperity of the country” and Hoover, who said agriculture was “the most urgent economic problem” facing the nation, said “an adequate tariff is the foundation of farm relief”.


Hoover won in a landslide against Albert E Smith, an out-of-touch New Yorker who didn’t appeal to middle America, and soon after promised to pass “limited” tariff reforms.


Hawley started the bill but with Smoot behind him it metastasized as lobby groups shoehorned their products into the bill, eventually proposing higher tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods.


Siren voices warned of dire consequences. Henry Ford reportedly told Hoover the bill was “an economic stupidity”.


Critics of the tariffs were being aided and abetted by “internationalists” willing to “betray American interests”, said Smoot. Reports claiming the bill would harm the US economy were decried as fake news. Republican Frank Crowther, dismissed press criticism as “demagoguery and untruth, scandalous untruth”.


In October 1929 as the Senate debated the tariff bill the stock market crashed. When the bill finally made it to Hoover’s desk in June 1930 it had morphed from his original “limited” plan to the “highest rates ever known”, according to a New York Times editorial.


The extent to which Smoot and Hawley were to blame for the coming Great Depression is still a matter of debate. “Ask a thousand economists and you will get a thousand and five answers,” said Charles Geisst, professor of economics at Manhattan College and author of Wall Street: A History.


Unemployment in the US rose to 25% during the Great Depression. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Getty Images
What is apparent is that the bill sparked international outrage and a backlash. Canada and Europe reacted with a wave of protectionist tariffs that deepened a global depression that presaged the rise of Hitler and the second world war. A myriad other factors contributed to the Depression, and to the second world war, but inarguably one consequence of Smoot-Hawley in the US was that never again would a sitting US president be so avowedly anti-trade. Until today.


Franklin D Roosevelt swept into power in 1933 and for the first time the president was granted the authority to undertake trade negotiations to reduce foreign barriers on US exports in exchange for lower US tariffs. The backlash against Smoot and Hawley continued to the present day. The average tariff on dutiable imports was 45% in 1930; by 2010 it was 5%.


The lessons of Smoot-Hawley used to be taught in high schools, said Geisst. Presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan have enlisted the unhappy duo when facing off with free trade critics. “I have been around long enough to remember that when we did that once before in this century, something called Smoot-Hawley, we lived through a nightmare,” Reagan, who came of age during the Great Depression, said in 1984.


They even got a mention in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when actor Ben Stein’s teacher bores his class with it. “I don’t think the current generation are taught it. It’s in the past and we are more interested in the future,” said Geisst.


But that might be about to change. “The main lesson is that you have to worry about what other countries do. Countries will retaliate,” said Irwin. “When Congress was considering Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s they didn’t consider what other countries might do in reaction. They thought other countries would remain passive. But other countries don’t remain passive.”


The consequences of a trade war today are far worse than in the 1930s. Exports of goods and services account for about 13% of US gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of an economy. It was roughly 5% back in 1920.


“The US is much more engaged in trade, it’s much more a part of the fabric of the country, than it was in the 1920s and 1930s. That means the ripple effects are widespread. Many more industries will be hit by it and the scope for foreign retaliation, which in the case of Smoot-Hawley was quite limited, is going to be much more widespread if a trade war was to start,” said Irwin.


“When you start talking about withdrawing from trade agreements or imposing tariffs of 35%, if you are doing that as a protectionist measure, that would be blowing up the system.”


That the promise of “blowing up the system” got Trump elected may be why the ghosts of Smoot and Hawley are once again walking the halls of Congress.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...m-donald-trump

Chaos in the Whitehouse.

‘Call it chaos’: Trump adrift after week of White House anarchy

As high winds bore down on Washington, the president lost his closest aide and saw his son-in-law humiliated. Fiercer storms may be round the corner



The god of giant metaphors struck on Friday. Winds of 65mph battered Washington, uprooting trees, cutting power to nearly half a million people and forcing the federal government to close. Donald Trump had to change his travel plans and fly via Dulles airport, where one plane had such a bumpy descent that, the pilot said, pretty much everyone on board threw up.


It was the apt end of a week that left the president, Lear-like, all but abandoned in a raging storm. Hope Hicks, an aide so close that she has been described as a surrogate daughter, became the fourth communications director to leave his administration. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, was stripped of high-level security clearance amid revelations about potential conflicts of interest. The king himself fulminated on topics from gun control to trade tariffs, leaving courtiers scrambling to offer reassurances about his state of mind.


There has been disarray in the White House before but this time, observers said, the checks and balances that have provided a modicum of restraint appear to be crumbling, leaving Trump isolated, angry and ready to lash out. It is, they fear, not inconceivable that the world’s most powerful country is now being guided by instinct, by impulse, by whim and by mood swing.


“This feels like it’s turned a corner and not for the better for the White House,” said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, once press secretary to Vice-President Dan Quayle.


“As layers of this onion – the people who have seniority, who he listens to and who hopefully can talk him down – unpeel, there are fewer and fewer people to do that, which means he can operate on his gut, and he doesn’t have the experience to do that.”


Since Trump’s inauguration in January last year, there has been an ever-decreasing inner circle of trusted advisers. Back then, it seemed that three competing centres of power in the West Wing might provide a balance of sorts.


Jared Kushner listens as Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jared Kushner listens as Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
First, there was Reince Priebus, the chief of staff and former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). But he struggled to bring order and was gone by July, replaced by retired general John Kelly.


Second was chief strategist Steve Bannon, who had no political experience but personified Trump’s populist, nationalist base. His appointment was announced at the same time as that of Priebus, as if teeing up a palace rivalry. The men forged an alliance of convenience but Bannon stole too much of the limelight and was out by August. His philosophy lived on in Trump’s abrupt announcement this week of long-term tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, spoiling for a trade war.


Third, in a less formal role, was Kushner, also a political ingénue. His vast portfolio, including pacifying the Middle East, became a running joke but was steadily curtailed. This week he suffered several blows that could prove fatal. Kelly downgraded his security clearance, denying him access to the president’s daily intelligence briefing, because he had not been permanently approved for the highest level of access.




In addition, it was reported by the Washington Post that officials from four foreign countries discussed ways to manipulate Kushner via his business arrangements. The New York Times said two companies made loans worth more than half a billion dollars to Kushner’s family property company after executives met him at the White House. The disclosures could leave him exposed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia.


Rick Tyler, a political analyst, said: “It’s appalling that anyone would leverage their time in government to enrich themselves or do personal business and Jared Kushner appears to have been doing that consistently. He ought to leave immediately. They are nothing but grifters.”


Priebus, Bannon, Kushner: two down, one clinging on by his fingertips. Galen said: “The issue with the three is that none had any White House experience. Priebus came closest with the RNC, but that’s part of the problem getting worse and worse for the White House. There are fewer and fewer people. No one is banging on the gate wanting to work there because of the damage it will do to their reputation.”


‘Gunning for a fight’
Until now, Trump’s defenders have insisted that people should focus on what he does, not what he says or tweets. The machine of government is ticking over, they have claimed, with victories including economic growth, tax cuts and the appointment of conservative judges. According to this view, the infighting and shenanigans at the White House are just background noise.


The press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told Fox News: “If they want to call it chaos, fine, but we call it success and productivity and we’re going to keep plugging along.”


Trump speaks at the NRA’s Leadership Forum in Atlanta in April 2017.
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Trump speaks at the NRA’s Leadership Forum in Atlanta in April 2017. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
But this was one of Washington’s wildest weeks yet and, critics argue, there are signs that Trump’s unchecked volatility is bleeding into policy. On Wednesday, before the TV cameras, he hosted a negotiating session with members of Congress on the issue of gun violence. To the dismay of his own party, he backed several Democratic gun control proposals and even said that in the case of mentally unstable people, authorities should “take the guns first, go through due process second”.


Tyler, a former spokesman for a pro-gun rights senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, described it as “the single most disturbing thing he’s said as president”, likely to do “exponentially” more political damage than who’s in and who’s out at the White House.


The NRA are single-issue voters


“The NRA [National Rifle Association] are single-issue voters and will not take kindly to someone who talks one way on the campaign trail and then throws them under the bus,” Tyler said.


That evening, according to an official quoted by NBC, the president became “unglued”. The NBC report said three unrelated events – Kushner’s humiliation by Kelly, Hicks’s nine-hour testimony to a congressional committee investigating Russian election interference and recurring exasperation at the attorney general, Jeff Sessions – left Trump “angry and gunning for a fight”.


On Thursday morning, he got it. The commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, an ally, arranged a meeting with 15 executives from the steel and aluminium industry. It did not appear on the public schedule and blindsided Kelly and other White House staff. Then Trump invited reporters in and, apparently off the cuff, announced plans to impose tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium imports.


The move caught the state department, treasury and Pentagon unawares, wiped hundreds of points off the stock market and rattled America’s closest allies.


In a flash, Trump had reverted to protectionist instincts that long predated his political career and that he championed during the election. He defied the protests of his economic adviser, Gary Cohn, and treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and tweeted unrepentantly: “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win.”


There was a barrage of criticism from economists, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and Republican free trade advocates. Senator John Thune of South Dakota admitted wryly: “There is no standard operating practice with this administration. Every day is a new adventure for us.”


Late on Thursday, Trump appeared to change his mind again, this time on gun control after a meeting with NRA leaders. The erratic behaviour continued when he turned his ire on Saturday Night Live star Alec Baldwin in a misspelled 5.42am tweet that said: “Alex Baldwin, whose dieing mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him.”


The reality TV president is now in high definition. Michael Steele, a former chairman of the RNC, said: “That’s the space Donald Trump has been trying to get to since the day he became president. Now with Hope [Hicks] gone, he doesn’t have the voice in the room saying, ‘Mr President, we have to think about this’. Now when he wants something done, it gets done.”


The loss of Hicks, 29, who occupied the desk closest to the Oval Office, will leave a void. Along with Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, she was one of the last survivors of the Trump Tower days and has been dubbed the “Trump whisperer”, soothing the president’s ego with constant affirmation and loyalty. She reportedly admitted telling “white lies” on his behalf.


What happens when he faces the kind of genuine crisis that hits a lot of presidents early in their term?
Larry Jacobs, University of Minnesota
But even she had enough, joining the cascade of departures. Steele added: “It’s consistent with anyone who generates chaos. It’s like a bunch of marbles. You shoot into a group of marbles and some of the marbles get bumped out of the circle. The problem Trump has is finding more marbles to put in the circle. With the departure of Hope Hicks this week, the president is missing one of the marbles.”


More could follow. NBC reported that Trump is preparing to replace the national security adviser, HR McMaster, next month, though officials deny this. There is also speculation over the future of Cohn, Sessions and Kelly, who bungled the handling of domestic violence allegations against a close aide, Rob Porter, and whose attempts to regulate Trump are said to have exhausted the president’s patience.


West Wing morale is understood to be at an all-time low and recruiting high-calibre replacements is becoming harder. Bill Galston, who worked on policy in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “If you value your reputation, you now should have learned that you can’t serve in this White House and emerge untarred.”


‘His poll numbers have brightened slightly’
Increasingly isolated and mercurial, pining for the team spirit of the 2016 presidential election campaign, Trump is yet to be tested by a national security emergency. Thousands of miles away, adversaries such as Russia and North Korea stoke fear of nuclear conflict.




Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Trump has the greatest turnover of any modern president in his inner circle. It’s almost impossible for him to govern because of the chaos. They are staggering from one crisis to another.


“The thing that worries people is what happens when he faces the kind of genuine economic or international crisis that hits a lot of presidents early in their term?”


As the US capital reeled from another bomb cyclone of a week, one significant piece of news came and went quickly. Trump named digital strategist Brad Parscale as campaign manager for his re-election bid in 2020 – an election he could still win thanks to diehard supporters who care little for Washington intrigue.




Jacobs said: “His poll numbers have brightened slightly in recent weeks and the economy is gradually improving. Despite the chaos and cycles of problems in the White House, I wouldn’t describe his political prospects in the same way.”


A key Trump ally, the Newsmax chief executive, Chris Ruddy, told the Guardian he saw the president in Florida on Friday.


“He was in a very good and relaxed mood,” Ruddy insisted. “I’m a little bewildered by these reports he’s angry and in personal turmoil. I don’t see it.


“The last couple of times I’ve talked to him in the last two weeks he’s been in a very good mood. He specifically references the positive poll numbers and the economy doing well.”


Ruddy also disputed the reported timeline of the tariffs decision – one that he personally disagrees with – saying he heard two weeks ago Trump was moving in that direction.


“I don’t think it has anything to do with the staffing changes,” he said. “He’s used to a lot of changes and transformations. He’s perfectly fine with things happening as long as he thinks he’s on the right track.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...s-tarriffs-nra

He's been congratulating Xi Jin Ping on becoming Pres. for Life. He has no clue what 'defending the Constitution' means or what the US is about.

Twisted titans.....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.11bd2d9729f3

So do you think Kelly's days are numbered when the fuckwit "Mooch" is the top headline on fox bitching about Kelly's management stykle

Originally Posted by uncle junior

^he's got a yuuuuge iq and a really good brain

he also knows the best words.

^^

is that a recent screen shot of the homepage?

they (and their viewers) are obsessed with clinton.....FFS, he left office 18 years ago.

Originally Posted by raycarey

is that a recent screen shot of the homepage?

Minutes ago...

Originally Posted by CSFFan

So do you think Kelly's days are numbered when the fuckwit "Mooch" is the top headline on fox bitching about Kelly's management stykle

Well, considering Trump may see it, then yes. He gets his insiration from Fox.
I'd lay money on Trump catching a snippet on a Fox business report, may have even been a re-run and out of date, just before he came up with his trade war ideas.

Now for a moment of levity!

".... and Mexico's going to pay for it....".

The damage the fool is doing to the country is beyond belief.

11 Pacific trade pact countries go it alone without US.

https://m.bangkokpost.com/news/world...one-without-us

Originally Posted by uncle junior

He has no clue what 'defending the Constitution' means or what the US is about.

You mean the USA of corporate protectionism, serving the likes of Monsanto, Raytheon, Pfizer, ect ect...

The USA ceased being the USA over 100 years ago with the Federal Reserve act. Which helped fund the ring of pedophiles who sent 100's of millions to die in WW1 and subsequent global wars.

And now suddenly it is all Trump's fault...

Donald Trump's economic adviser Gary Cohn resigns, White House says



Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a Wall Street banker who became a key architect of the 2017 tax overhaul
and a bulwark against protectionist forces within the Trump administration, is resigning, the White House said.

"It has been an honour to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in
particular the passage of historic tax reform," Mr Cohn said in a statement issued by the White House.

"I am grateful to the President for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the administration great success in the future."
In a statement to The New York Times, Donald Trump thanked Mr Cohn for his "dedicated service to the American people".

Mr Cohn's resignation came after Mr Trump said he would impose hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium imports in a move
that would hit close allies Canada and Mexico.

Mr Trump's pledge to impose tariffs had prompted speculation Mr Cohn might leave the White House because of his opposition to the policy.


More Here

^Don't let the door hit ya in the ass Goldman Sachs c u n t. Get back to doing "god's work" ...fleecing the muppets.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

You mean the USA of corporate protectionism, serving the likes of Monsanto, Raytheon, Pfizer, ect ect...

The USA ceased being the USA over 100 years ago with the Federal Reserve act. Which helped fund the ring of pedophiles who sent 100's of millions to die in WW1 and subsequent global wars.

And now suddenly it is all Trump's fault...

Whooosh

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

The USA ceased being the USA over 100 years ago with the Federal Reserve act. Which helped fund the ring of pedophiles who sent 100's of millions to die in WW1 and subsequent global wars.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

You mean the USA of corporate protectionism, serving the likes of Monsanto, Raytheon, Pfizer, ect ect...

See comment below.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

And now suddenly it is all Trump's fault...

Once again you are a massive hypocrite. Your guy filled has cabinet with more billionaires than any other president in history, stacked it full of banksters, ceo's of corporations you mentioned and has filled the swamp to record high levels. Currently your bozo president is rolling back tons of regulations to give these crooks an even easier time to rip off the working class.

You are just another idiotic trumpanzee hypocrite.

When a snake like Cohn leaves the swamp, that is a huge signal of No Confidence in Trump. As we all (well, most of us with any brains....) said along ago, this will not end well.

Originally Posted by thailazer

said along ago, this will not end well.

As if it started well!

With 21 trillion debt, plus another 200+ trillion of derivatives contracts, this couldn't possibly end well. The debt is not possible to repay..

Mind this didn't happen overnight, it took eight years of GWB and eight years of BO to get here.

Yet according to dim and highly biased MSM; Trump is to blame....

Libtard myopia is really something to behold...

Now tha the big tax break has gone through, Cohn is free to resume his carpetbagging.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

From the Gospel of Earl

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

The USA ceased being the USA over 100 years ago with the Federal Reserve act. Which helped fund the ring of pedophiles who sent 100's of millions to die in WW1 and subsequent global wars.

Originally Posted by uncle junior

Now tha the big tax break has gone through, Cohn is free to resume his carpetbagging.

IMO, now that the tax break has gone through, the long knives are going to come out.....the list of powerful republicans who want to take down trump is long....and trump has no allies to speak of.