Saturday, March 11, 2017

Anybody who depends on consistency from DJT is going to be left holding the bag

Read this piece by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, as well as his piece from a few days earlier to which he links.

Taken together, they tell the tale of two camps having formed among those advising Trump on trade and broader economic matters.

Peter Navarro, head of DJT's National Trade Council, leans protectionist. He thinks that the over-valued Euro and yen are creating such a trade deficit that it has ominous implications for US strategic position on the world stage - and even domestic well-being.

You may recall a post here some time back about him speaking disparagingly about global supply chains.

Steve Bannon is in the Navarro camp.

Pitted against them is Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council and depicted as a "Goldman globalist." And Trump is depicted as appearing to lean toward this group.  It seems that Cohn has been given a prominent position in talks about renegotiating NAFTA.

And he is jockeying to solidify that position:

Cohn's sidelining of Navarro has only picked up recently, and in an attempt to alienate him from Trump, he has become "an increasingly isolated figure in the administration. He has been operating with a very small staff out of an office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House while Mr Cohn, who has been adding staff to his NEC base inside the president’s residence itself."
Meanwhile, Cohn has been beefing up his staffing ranks with more, like-minded "globalist" supporters, such as Andrew Quinn, a former trade official who served as a senior negotiator during the Obama administration’s push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries. In other words, someone who is desperate for much more, not less, global trade alliances. The White House last month announced Mr Quinn would serve on the NEC as a “special assistant to the president” for international trade. Quinn's appointment led to an outburst from Breitbart, which labelled the career official an “enemy within” the Trump administration earlier this month.

European economic officials are pleased to see this trend of less talk of tariffs.

Durden closes with this nugget of food for thought:

In retrospect, those who said Trump will ultimately do Wall Street's bidding, may have been correct all along. 
Somebody hand Laura Ingraham a napkin to wipe the egg off her face.
 


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