Trump’s China tariffs could actually work

President Trump has officially picked a fight with China, announcing Thursday that the United States is imposing up to $60 billion in new tariffs on Chinese goods, along with additional restrictions on China’s ability to invest in US companies.

How China will respond is unclear. The Chinese government has sent mixed signals about its readiness to negotiate but also its willingness to retaliate, including against vulnerable sectors of US agriculture. Just the threat of a trade war was enough to rattle global markets and push the Dow Jones Industrial Average down over 700 points.

At its root, this is a fight about intellectual property: how US companies try to safeguard their innovations, and how China tries to get around those safeguards via reverse engineering, coercion, or even theft.

Pirated software is perhaps the most familiar example, so common across China that one trade group has estimated that as of 2015, 70 percent of software installed on Chinese personal computers was unlicensed.

But that’s only the beginning. Sometimes, the only way for US businesses to gain access to the Chinese market is by partnering with a local firm and handing over precious intellectual property — which could be anything from new manufacturing techniques to software algorithms. Refuse, and businesses can be subject to provisions of Chinese law that actually force dominant companies to license their treasured tech to competitors.

If that doesn’t work, China also engages in various forms of industrial espionage: hacking into US companies to gather sensitive information, or luring away employees who might pass along well-guarded details. Affected businesses span the economic gamut, from wind turbine programmers to semiconductor manufacturers to the makers of genetically modified seeds.

The full extent of these practices is hard to quantify, as is the cost to US businesses and consumers. There’s no central repository of incidents, and many of the companies affected might not even know they were infiltrated or exploited.

During Thursday’s announcement, Trump put the figure at “hundreds of billion of dollars,” though his administration later released a fact sheet estimating the annual cost from improper IP transfer at approximately $50 billion per year, or something closer to 0.25 percent of gross domestic product.

Yet whatever the exact number, the politics are potent — centered around a narrative of innovative US companies having their hard work stolen away by a foreign economic rival. It’s a neat fit with Trump’s longtime contention that the global trading system is rigged against America.

The question is: Can Trump’s plan for new tariffs and other pressures make a real difference?

As with all tariffs, there will be costs, including for consumers, who probably will have to pay more for some electronics gear. Those costs will only grow if China responds in kind, whether taxing select agricultural imports, placing further restrictions on new US businesses, or cutting cooperation with firms already on the ground in Shanghai or Beijing. Worries of this damaging tit-for-tat helped fuel Thursday’s stock sell-off.

But an escalating trade war isn’t inevitable. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he thought we would “end up negotiating these things rather than fighting over them.”

Just as important, China has also signaled a willingness to talk, suggesting that Trump’s gambit could work, creating some real, effective pressure that ultimately forces China to rethink its approach to US intellectual property rights.

Trump’s negotiating position was probably strengthened by his decision last week to reject a proposed takeover of the US telecom firm Qualcomm, for fear that it would give China too much control over wireless technology. If he could attract allies in Europe and around the world — many of whom share concerns about China’s lack of respect for intellectual property — that also would help, including by building broader support for another action Trump unveiled Thursday, a challenge against China at the World Trade Organization.

But here’s where Trump’s mercurial side becomes a liability. In recent weeks, he has angered key trading partners with the announcement of wide-reaching steel and aluminum tariffs — not to mention making himself look unprepared for sacrifice by saying trade wars are easy to win.

There may well be a deal out there on protecting US intellectual property, which this package of tariffs and other restrictions can help forge. All that’s required is for Trump to prove himself the deal-maker he has long claimed to be.

SOURCE 

******************************

Authoritarianism for Me but Not for Thee

It's funny how projection works. These hysterical Democrats calling for President Trump's impeachment because of his dastardly "authoritarian tendencies" are the ones with authoritarian tendencies.

I'll bet you didn't know that the president commits an impeachable offense if his political opponents harbor an irrational fear that he has authoritarian tendencies — whether or not he has acted outside the scope of his constitutional authority, flouted the rule of law or done anything else that could be remotely construed as a high crime or misdemeanor. I didn't, either.

But doesn't it bother you just a little bit that the very people who are calling for Trump's removal because they don't like him or his policies want to put their own authoritarians in power, where they can actually flout the rule of law?

My chief complaint is not their hypocrisy, though it abounds among these sanctimonious progressives. It is that they are eager to twist the law to suit their political agenda while masquerading as sacred guardians of the Constitution.

Someone should ask these mob-thinking witch-hunters how they can contemplate impeachment without a colorable claim that Trump has committed an impeachable offense. Other than their incapacity for self-reflection, why are they demanding an official proceeding to remove the president based on what he stands for and things he says?

Granted, impeachment is largely a political matter, but riotous partisans shouldn't be allowed to just make things up and ignore the plain language of the Constitution and the historical background informing its provisions. Sure, liberal activists who can find an emanation and penumbra behind every constitutional rock can distort any constitutional provision beyond recognition. But would anyone but a rabid authoritarian pretend that the Framers intended "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" to include any lawful conduct or tweet that could be exploited in bad faith to overturn the democratic will of the voters?

The less likely it appears that Trump did anything improper with Russia the more desperate these Democratic authoritarians become. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of actual evidence against Trump and the intensity of the Democrats' impeachment rhetoric. Old adages endure for a reason, and the Democrats are quite familiar with this one: "If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell."

Everywhere we look, Democrats are pounding the table and yelling like hell. On MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes," Sen. Bernie Sanders said Trump has "a strong authoritarian personality" and shows a "disrespect for democracy" in the U.S. His proof: Trump admires foreign dictators, and he disrespects democracy in terms of voter suppression, gerrymandering and his attacks on the media.

Well, I hate to tell you, Bernie, but one of the telltale signs of leftists these days is their adoration for dictators such as the Castros. I also regret to inform you that Barack Obama declared war on Fox News and conservative talk radio without a syllable of protest from you or your comrades. And gerrymandering? Really? Nevertheless, it's amusing for socialists to complain about authoritarianism when their lives are dedicated to consolidating governmental power to exercise authoritarian control over their subject citizens. But at least Sanders is not demanding impeachment — yet.

Liberal MSNBC host Brian Williams slammed Republicans for lacking the courage to discuss impeaching Trump. Unsurprisingly, the authoritarian-prone Williams didn't cite any impeachable offenses.

Campus Reform reports that Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe is teaching a class that explores what impeachment and removal by other means might resemble in the Trump era. He has a new book coming out on the subject, and he was already calling for impeachment last May in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

In that essay, Tribe cited no impeachable misconduct on Trump's part. He just groused about the "emoluments clause" — give me a break — and that "ample reasons existed" to worry about Trump even before he fired FBI Director James Comey. Tribe argued that the nation couldn't afford to wait to begin impeachment proceedings. "To wait for the results of the multiple investigations underway is to risk tying our nation's fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader."

Soon after, Tribe said on MSNBC: "Letting him just sit out the time ... is too dangerous for the country. We have to start an impeachment investigation in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee now while the FBI continues to do its work."

Does that sound a bit authoritarian to you? Just begin the formal process to remove a sitting, duly elected president against whom there is no evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor. No big deal, right?

Not one member of the reckless cabal wildly calling for Trump's impeachment — which includes leftists and parts of the never-Trump right — can cite an actual abuse of authority by Trump, much less a high crime or misdemeanor. President Obama violated the Constitution and the rule of law for sport, and liberals didn't care.

For the left, this isn't about the Constitution, the rule of law or authoritarianism; it's about getting rid of Trump at any cost to the Constitution and the rule of law — and by any authoritarian means necessary.

SOURCE 

********************************

John Brennan’s Thwarted Coup

As his plot to destroy Trump backfires, his squeals grow louder.

It was the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky who coined the phrase the “dustbin of history.” To his political opponents, he sputtered, “You are pitiful, isolated individuals! You are bankrupts. Your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!”

It is no coincidence that John Brennan, who supported the Soviet-controlled American Communist Party in the 1970s (he has acknowledged that he thought his vote for its presidential candidate Gus Hall threatened his prospects at the CIA; unfortunately, it didn’t), would borrow from Trotsky’s rhetoric in his fulminations against Donald Trump. His tweet last week, shortly after the firing of Andrew McCabe, reeked of Trotskyite revolutionary schlock: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”

[Compare  what Lenin said in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others).  He spoke of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests". Old Communist Brennan even uses language reminscent of Lenin.  Leftists are expert at abuse, if nothing else]

America will triumph over a president it elected? That’s the raw language of coup, and of course it is not the first time Brennan has indulged it. In 2017, he was calling for members of the executive branch to defy the chief executive. They should “refuse to carry out” his lawful directives if they don’t agree with them, he said.

Trump has said that the Russians are “laughing their asses off” over the turmoil caused by Obamagate. No doubt many of the laughs come at the sight of Brennan, a supporter of Soviet stooges like Gus Hall, conducting a de facto coup from the top of the CIA and then continuing it after his ouster. Who needs Gus Hall when John Brennan is around? This time the Russians don’t even have to pay for the anti-American activity.

Another hardcore leftist, Samantha Power, who spent the weeks after Trump’s victory rifling through intelligence picked up on his staff, found Brennan’s revolutionary tweet very inspiring. “Not a good idea to piss off John Brennan,” she wrote. Sounded pretty dark and grave. But not to worry, she tweeted later. She just meant that the former CIA director was going to smite Trump with the power of his “eloquent voice.”

Out of power, these aging radicals can’t help themselves. They had their shot to stop Trump, they failed, and now they are furious. The adolescent coup talk grows more feverish with each passing day. We have a former CIA director calling for the overthrow of a duly elected president, a former attorney general (Eric Holder) calling for a “knife fight,” a Senate minority leader speaking ominously about what the intelligence community might do to Trump (“they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer has said), and assorted former FBI and CIA officials cheering for a coup, such as CNN’s Phil Mudd who says, “You’ve been around for 13 months. We’ve been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played. We’re going to win.”

In all this unhinged chatter, the partisan origins of Obamagate become clearer. The same anti-Trump hatred on display in their tweets and punditry drove the political espionage. James Kallstrom, the former FBI Assistant Director, notes that the “animus and malice” contained in Brennan’s tweet is “prima facie exposure of how he felt about Trump before the election.”

All the key figures in the decision to open up a probe on Trump wanted him to lose — from Brennan to Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump machinations included, according to the latest batch of texts with his mistress, plotting to manipulate a buddy on the FISA court. In one text, he wonders if he can finagle a meeting with his friend by inviting him to a “cocktail party.” The impropriety aforethought on display in that tweet is staggering, but of course the media has paid no attention to it, preoccupied as it is with Andrew McCabe’s retirement income.

McCabe, by the way, has removed all doubts about his capacity for partisan lying with his post-firing statement, which rests entirely upon it. With all of its anti-Trump special pleading, the statement reads like it was cobbled together by Rachel Maddow. Like so many other ruling-class frauds, McCabe seeks absolution for his perjury and leaking through liberal politics. I stand with the liberal powerful against Trump, you can’t touch me — that’s the upshot of his defense. Comey has taken the same tack. The title of his forthcoming book should be: How the Law Doesn’t Apply to the Self-Appointed Ruling Class.

What an amazing collection of entitled creeps, who long ago convinced themselves that the “rule of law” is identical to what they see as their sacred right to exercise power in any way they see fit. All the blather about Trump’s violation of the law is simply a projection of their own lawlessness. So far the coup has been thwarted. They had hoped to stop him in the campaign through political espionage. But that didn’t work. Then they tried to upend him through spying during the transition, holding out hope until the very last moment, as evidenced by Susan Rice penning her sham exculpatory note only after Trump’s swearing-in. Now they join Brennan in seeking to bury Trump in Mueller’s dustbin.

Trotsky would have understood the shorthand of all the tweets, polemics, and posturing perfectly. Nothing in this show trial bears any relationship to reality or justice. It is simply an expression of power politics, which doesn’t always end well for its exponents. As even an old Gus Hall supporter like John Brennan must know, and perhaps his fulminating panic indicates a dawning awareness of it, those who talk the loudest about their enemies heading for the ash heap of history often end up in it.

SOURCE 

*******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************