Free or Fair Trade for Old Men at Project 2025
A two-sided debate at a four-sided table
The one chapter in Mandate for Leadership, Project 2025’s roadmap for an incoming President who happens to be named Trump that doesn’t preach about destroying the civil service and keeping uppity “others” in their place is the presentation on trade.
There are differences on the right about what path is the most beneficial for the US economy; building a wall or managed engagement. Given that China is the boogieman du jour in the fevered fantasies of the right, discussion about the practical application of these approaches centers on that country, and trade issues were discussed as if they were wars (hot or cold).
Both of these approaches are rooted in geopolitical grounds, and fail to take into account technological and environmental changes challenging traditional approaches to trade.
The COVID pandemic showed policymakers that prior trade agreements had left out responses to existential threats and/or opportunities. Manufacturing resilience, supply chain management, an existential climate crisis, and the emergence of (more) intelligent technologies have become part of any bilateral conversation on trade. The flawed notion of rising skill sets offsetting disruption of job markets left millions of workers behind, laying the groundwork for authoritarian challenges to democracy world-wide.
If I had to create a metaphor for this “debate” on trade, I’d say it’s equivalent to arguing about total rainfall from a storm when a tsunami from an earthquake is on the horizon.
Baked into right wing discussions on trade is the (generally anti semitic) justification for otherism, namely globalism. In practical terms, this vision/practice means nation-states coming together to address mutual concerns. In the minds of MAGA, globalism is about surrendering some part of national identity.
The nation-state, in the reasoning of reactionaries, is the ultimate solution to governance. It never occurs to them that not many centuries ago the entity didn’t exist. Nor does it occur to them that a world without nation-state identities is a future to be pondered.
Having said about one-thousandth of what I want to say on geopolitics, let’s move on to this largely irrelevant discussion concerning the missteps that a Trump administration might make on trade.
The Case for Fair Trade. Author Peter Navarro*
Navarro starts out claiming Most Favored Nation/World Trade Organization trade rules have exploited American farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and workers through higher tariffs, while ignoring the ruling class strategy of exclusionary wealth creation.
China is inherently evil, according to this essay, and waging economic warfare against the United States in a quest for world dominance. Trade deficits are the tools of the devil and are leading us away from being the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
So Navarro posits that a tit for tat tariff policy and closing our “open borders” is the way for America to win. His list of measures to be taken against China is extensive and tainted with racism.
The clear lesson learned in both the Obama and Trump Administrations is that Communist China will never bargain in good faith with the U.S. to stop its aggression. An equally clear lesson learned by President Trump, which he was ready to implement in a second term, was that the better policy option was to decouple both economically and financially from Communist China as further negotiations would indeed be both fruitless and dangerous.
Let me insert the observation that Chinese leadership does have geopolitical intentions that incorporate pushing aside the US as a world power. The presumption that these intentions would play out to military or political conquest is not a way forward and only serves to inflame nationalistic passions.
The Chinese have made their own mistakes in seeking economic power by cutting deals for exploitation of resources / political favors that are simply not sustainable.
What eludes both authors is the concept that “winning” for the United States ignores the rest of the planet and threatens civilization in the longer run. Then again, MAGA is all about “Me, Me, Me.” Good luck with that in the coming centuries.
The Case for Free Trade. Author Kent Lassman.
This section argues for engagement in trade as a force for projecting American values. To his credit, the author acknowledges that trade is not as powerful as many people assume. Mission creep (i.e. environmental concerns) has overtaken economic importance, in his view, through inclusion in some negotiations, making agreements difficult to reach.
The author also challenges the notion (without giving credit for success) that the US economy is a disaster. He also correctly claims that the Trump era tariffs have been failures, raising prices for consumers and not impacting China’s foreign or domestic policies.
What he argues for is for non-economic issues to be negotiated separately, for alliances to be made on a regional/block basis, and for ending protectionist regulations. Rather than having blanket tariff policies toward China, he argues for more targeting aimed at specific abuses/abusers.
He also notes that China has internal contradictions.
At the same time, recent revelations about China’s official statistics overstating its GDP by 30 percent track well with other problems that were already known. These include one of the world’s worst demographic aging curves thanks to China’s one-child policy; a population that may already be declining; an unsustainable debt load that is already causing problems; countless failed boondoggles, from empty cities to its underwhelming Belt-and-Road Initiative, that are wasting significant resources; Xi Jinping’s authoritarian turn; increasing state control of the economy; and a zero-COVID policy that has sabotaged the economy and driven away foreign investment.
The point here is that he thinks China should be looked at realistically and responded to on many levels with appropriate intensity.
His first solution to domestic issues resulting from trade agreements is the mantra of all traditional conservatives: less regulation.
The one point of unanimity between both authors is that the President should have unilateral authority in negotiating trade agreements. Those damn constituents keep messing up congressional approval of conservative priorities.
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The long view of this chapter on trade as it’s envisioned for a Trump administration is that he’ll pick and choose from the options presented herein. That ain’t gonna happen; chances are Navarro’s ideas will get first hearing given that he’s spent the most time playing the toady. And ultimately, Trump will act on whatever path is most self-serving. After all, he’s the guy with all those bank accounts and business connections in China.
For a non-Trump administration there should be an understanding that trade is a key element of solving global challenges that affect us all, like the green energy transition and the risks of AI and the digital economy. Separating these concerns out in individual negotiations increases the likelihood that narrow economic interests will have a dominant role in future trade agreements.
Finally, these discussions about trade largely overlook the issues of transnational crime and the cryptocurrency scams sucking livelihoods, pensions, and aspirations out of society. It makes little sense to reduce or increase tariffs on goods when the trailers used for import provide cover for smugglers.
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(*) Peter Navarro is one of only three former senior White House officials crazy enough to serve from the start of the campaign through Trump’s term in office. After refusing to appear before congress and supplying documents concerning the pandemic in his role as Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator, he was convicted of contempt and sentenced to jail.
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(**) Kent Lassman is President and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (major players in climate change denialism), and a writer on topics of telecommunications, privacy, environmental, antitrust, consumer protection regulation, trade policy and regulatory systems
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Tomorrow: Independent Financial Regulatory Agencies
Previously:
(Intro) Digging Deep into Project 2025 - (a multi-part Series)
Going Deep into Project 2025 - Partisan Priorities for Civil Servants
Project 2025: Christian Soldiers Marching Off to Land Wars
Homeland Security’s Authoritarian Role in Project 2025
What Can You Do For Trump Today? Project 2025’s Diplomats, Spies and Spokespersons
No Soup For You: Project 2025’s Foreign Aid Program
Project 2025’s National Nightmare for “The General Welfare”
Project 2025: Junk Food and Parents Rights
Make America Dirty Again: Project 2025 on Energy and the Environment
Project 2025: Some (Christian) People Are More Equal Than Others
Public Land for Sale, Cheap: Project 2025
Revenge Drives Project 2025 Justice Department
Don’t Let Trump Fool Ya: Project 2025 Lives
Department of Labor Gets Religion with Project 2025
Going Nowhere Faster - Project 2025’s Department of Transportation
Project 2025’s Assembly Line Veteran Care
Weather by [color descriptor redacted] Marker Pen: Project 2025's Department of Commerce
Project 2025: Looting and Booting at the Department of Treasury
Finance, Purgatory and Paradoxes in Project 2025 (Import/Export Bank, Federal Reserve, Small Business Administration)
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Tuesday’s Other News to Think About
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An anti-childcare movement is spreading online – it’s both disturbing and regressive by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett at the Guardian
It’s up to parents whether to put their children in childcare – though it’s not always a freely made choice – but even those committed to stay-at-home parenthood should be disturbed by this. The trad wife movement overlaps with white supremacy, fascist ideology and online misogyny, and anti-childcare dogma is forming an increasing part of that far-right picture. It may even be the next frontier.
The anti-childcare movement may have well-established roots in the US – from childcare being framed in the 1960s as a communist plot to destroy the traditional family, to accusations of mass child abuse in the satanic panic of the 1980s – but it has no place in any progressive society with good insight into child psychology and how separation between parents and children can be healthy and beneficial.
So next time one of those videos makes its way into your social media, resist feeling bad – they want to capitalise on maternal guilt. Instead, try to remember a line from another Gibran poem, On Children: “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth
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Private equity: health care’s vampire by Steffie Woolhandler, David U. Himmelstein, Elizabeth Schrier, and Hope Schwartz at STAT Opinion
While mythological vampires have supernatural powers to control their victims’ minds, private equity firms use more mundane methods: doctors who resist their owners’ profit-driven modus operandi lose their jobs, and the ubiquitous non-compete clauses they often sign mean they have to move outside of the region to continue practicing medicine.
Like vampires, private equity investors in medicine despise the light: At least for now, they can keep secret their purchases and financial information (for a decade, Steward outright refused Massachusetts’ demands for that), as well as staffing and service changes such as closing obstetrical units.
The well-established harms of private takeovers of hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians’ practices call for strong action. Although 33 states ban corporations from practicing medicine, loopholes allow private equity firms to use financial levers to effectively control physicians. An outright ban on private equity ownership of doctors’ practices is the only surefire way to assure that these companies aren’t pulling medical strings. A similar ban should apply to hospitals and nursing homes, most of which were built with taxpayer dollars channeled through grants, tax exemptions, and capital payments that are folded into Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Mandating that private equity owners disclose their purchases, financial information, and service changes is also needed.
Communities, not investors, should control essential health resources.
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California's shoplifting laws are not broken. California is "fixing" them anyway. by Judd Legum and Noel Sims at Popular Information
Some of the money saved from a reduced prison population after the passage of Proposition 47 — nearly $100 million annually — was redirected to fund drug treatment, mental health, and reentry programs. Only 15.3 percent of participants in these programs were convicted of a new felony or misdemeanor, according to a report by the California Board of Corrections. This is far lower than California's overall criminal recidivism rate of 35-45%.
Proposition 36 could cost "hundreds of millions of dollars each year" due to an increased prison population, according to the California Legislature's non-partisan Legislative Analyst's office. By increasing costs, it could dramatically reduce the funds available for the programs funded by Proposition 47.
Further, by sending more people to jail for longer periods of time, Proposition 36 would likely increase recidivism among shoplifters. Incarceration can protect the public from truly dangerous people. But sending more non-violent offenders to prison for longer periods of time — while draining funding for rehabilitation — will likely be counterproductive.
