Donald Trump hates economic freedom - today's edition

 This isn't going to be one of those dispassionate analyses of the reality what the Republican Party has become. Statisticians and sociologists are doing a fine job of painting that picture. The 2024 election made clear that there is lots of realignment going on in post-America. There's a swath of the electorate that spans a lot of demographics, but has in common a feeling of being unsettled by the vast economic and cultural changes of the last several decades. It wants stability and familiarity.

But the truths of economics do not change. The free market, as described and defended by the great thinkers known well to all actual conservatives - Adam Smith, Bastiat, William Graham Sumner, Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt and Milton Friedman  - has proven that it is the only kind of economic system compatible with the other levels of human freedom. In fact, it's really not proper to speak of it as an "economic system." It's the absence thereof. It's the way human beings naturally transact in the absence of an externally imposed system. It's the sum total of millions of agreements reached daily between buyers and sellers of goods and services as to the value of each.

The 2024 Trumpist Republican Party gives not the first flying f--- about it. 

Exhibit A is this social media post by the Very Stable Genius:

I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan. Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!

Donald Trump Truth Social 09:21 PM EST 12/02/24 

@realDonaldTrump

9:32 PM · Dec 2, 2024

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318.5K

 Views

Excuse me, but it is not any of the federal government's business who buys US Steel. This is blatant, vulgar pandering to those who, for emotional reasons, bristle at the thought of a foreign company owning a manufacturer of one of the world's most basic manufacturing materials with the words ""United States" in its name. This is what the yay-hoos mean by "America First." The government is not there to guide the economy's dynamics in one direction or another.

Exhibit B is the bringing back of one of the most shameful hucksters from VSG 1.0:

President-elect Trump on Wednesday named his once-jailed former aide Peter Navarro as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to the incoming White House, picking a loyal ally to help implement broad plan for tariffs.

Navarro served as White House trade adviser in Trump’s first term. That eventually led to Navarro serving a a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Just hours after Navarro’s release from prison in July, he got a roaring reception by Republicans during his prime-time speech endorsing Trump for a second term at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“I am pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing,” Trump posted on Truth Social in announcing Navarro’s new role. “During my First Term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American. He helped me renegotiate unfair Trade Deals like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and moved every one of my Tariff and Trade actions FAST….”

The president-elect added that the senior counselor position will allow Navarro to use his experience and “his extensive Policy analytic and Media skills” to push forward the Trump trade agenda.

Implementing tariffs were a key part of Trump’s reelection campaign. He threatened last week to impose steep 25 percent tariffs on all goods from U.S. allies Canada and Mexico and ramp up tariffs on China with an executive order signed on Day 1.

The president-elect went on to praise Navarro in the Truth Social post.

“Peter is not just a superb, Harvard-trained Economist, he is a noted author of more than a dozen bestselling books on strategic business management and unfair Trade. He did a superb job for the American People in my First Term,” Trump said, “Peter will do even better as Senior Counselor to protect American Workers, and truly Make American Manufacturing Great Again.”

Navarro was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress — one for failing to produce documents related to the Jan. 6 probe and another for skipping his deposition before the now-defunct House committee that was investigating the riot at the Capitol that day.

So the VSG means business. He's showing his collectivist impulse. He has a vision of what American economic activity should look like and will use public policy to shape it accordingly. The stinking president of the United States is not supposed to have a vision of what American economic activity should look like. 

Didn't conservatives oppose FDR for grand-scale government economic interference? And those of Johnson, Carter and Obama?

Post-America is in no position to claim it sets an example for less-developed countries that want to up their prosperity and liberty levels.

Someone has to say so.

 

 

 

 

We can cross "stood up to China" off the list of supposed great things the Very Stable Genius did

 You know how Trumpists would - and still do, at least among the bitter-enders - at some point in a discussion of the VSG's fitness/unfitness for office toss out a list of what they were utterly certain were his great achievements as president? 

After about three or four that they know a conservative would agree on - judicial appointments, deregulation, embassy to Jerusalem - the list would start to get pretty shaky. One item that would always show up is "stood up to China."

Yeah, well, maybe it's time to take that one off:

Driving the news: China isn't even close to fulfilling its end of the deal — having come up 42% short of its commitment, Chad Bown, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, reported late last week.

• The phase one deal was meant to be the Trump administration's reward for U.S. farmers, manufacturers and other business owners who had been bludgeoned by Trump's tax on American businesses via the trade war's tariffs.

What was supposed to happen: The trade war was billed as a plan to bring China to its knees by choking off the all-important American market with 25% tariffs on many imports that would rein in the U.S. trade deficit, boost American exports and slow China's rise as a global superpower.

What really happened: "The trade war with China hurt the US economy and failed to achieve major policy goals," a recent study commissioned by the U.S.-China Business Council argues, finding that the trade war reduced economic growth and cost the U.S. 245,000 jobs.

• Last year, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its largest on record. In the fourth quarter, the U.S. goods trade deficit hit its highest share of GDP since 2012 and the U.S. current account deficit jumped to its highest level in more than 12 years in the third quarter.
• Foreign direct investment to the U.S. fell 49% in 2020 — outpacing the overall global decrease of 42%.
• These trends had all been moving in this direction since 2017, and were accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic as Trump refused to remove tariffs despite their strain on businesses.

The big picture: "The tariffs forced American companies to accept lower profit margins, cut wages and jobs for U.S. workers, defer potential wage hikes or expansions, and raise prices for American consumers or companies," analysts at Brookings noted in August.

This is yet another example of how Trumpists' characterization of their object of worship and the movement to which they belong is in no way conservative. 

Not all conservatives are purists about advocating free-market economics, but most see it as at least a lodestar, even if adjustments must be made in an imperfect world. But rank protectionism is not part of any conservative's economic policy. It's a distortion of the free market with the purpose of  having some vague notion of "putting America first." 

No, we can see that it is among Trump's greatest bungles. The guy had no idea what he was doing. Same goes for Peter Navarro and Wilber Ross. 

 

Saturday roundup

Love me some natural gas!

The decade in energy saw the returns from the shale boom of oil and gas pay off.

The shale revolution from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, which started to take off in 2006 but peaked this decade, helped get the United States to the verge of being a net energy exporter for the first time since 1953, moving off its dependence on Middle East oil and closer to “energy independence."

“The entire psychology of energy as a country shifted this decade to one of scarcity to one of adequacy and eventually abundance,” said Kevin Book, managing director for research at ClearView Energy. “What it means is Americans are not afraid of running out of energy like they used to be.”

The rise of gas has allowed the U.S. to wield energy as a geopolitical weapon. 

Before the shale boom, the U.S. was expected to become a big importer of liquified natural gas — the chilled, liquid form to which gas must be converted for shipment in giant tanker vessels across the sea. 

The U.S. now exports LNG to 36 countries, double the 18 destinations at the beginning of the Trump administration, which has sought to ship more gas to Europe to reduce its dependence on Russia.

“The geopolitical leverage of dominant pipeline suppliers like Russia has been weakened, enhancing our energy security and helping move China to less polluting fuels,” said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former White House energy adviser to President Barack Obama.

The proliferation of natural gas is also the biggest reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined this decade, defying projections from the Energy Information Administration in 2010 that emissions would continue rising, but at a slower pace. Natural gas, a fossil fuel that emits half as much carbon as coal, has mostly replaced coal in the electricity sector, generating 35% of U.S. power in 2018, the most of any source.

Scotland officially goes all in on the mass delusion of our time:

 Adults will be able to choose between 21 sexual orientation options in the next Scottish census under plans to expand the categories.

Sexual orientation will be featured for the first time in the 2021 census. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) has suggested increasing the range of categories from four: straight or heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, or other orientation.
The new choices include: androphilic, androsexual, asexual, bicurious, bisexual, demiromantic, demisexual, fluid, gay, gynephilic, gynesexual, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian, pansexual, polysexual, queer, questioning, skoliosexual, straight, unsure.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

2 Timothy 3:12 

Islamic State released a video purporting to show its militants beheading 10 Christian men in Nigeria, saying it was part of a campaign to avenge the deaths of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and its spokesman.

The militant group posted the footage on its online Telegram news channel on Thursday, the day after Christmas, with Arabic captions but no audio.

The video showed men in beige uniforms and black masks lining up behind blindfolded captives then beheading 10 of them and shooting an 11th man.

An earlier video seen by Reuters said the captives had been taken from Maiduguri and Damaturu in Nigeria's northeastern state of Borno, where militants have been fighting for years to set up a separate Islamist state.

In that video, the captives pleaded for the Christian Association of Nigeria and President Muhammadu Buhari to save them.

Reuters could not verify the authenticity of either video.

Memo to the Very Stable Genius: knock off the protectionism:

President Donald Trump’s strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.

“We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” concluded Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, in an academic paper.

While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found.

“While the longer-term effects of the tariffs may differ from those that we estimate here, the results indicate that the tariffs, thus far, have not led to increased activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector,” the study said.

Tit-for-tat trade retaliation is an idea best relegated to the past, given the presence of globally interconnected supply chains, the Fed researchers found.

The top ten manufacturing industries hit by foreign retaliatory tariffs were producers of: magnetic and optical media, leather goods, aluminum sheet, iron and steel, motor vehicles, household appliances, sawmills, audio and video equipment, pesticide, and computer equipment.

But that would probably also require him to quit winging it in everything he does:

Trump’s fancy-free scheduling approach is no mistake. In "The Art of the Deal," he explained that he thought too much planning curbed his creativity and impeded his thinking. That philosophy is alive and well in the White House, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials.

Between the lines: Trump believes to his core, one former senior White House official told Axios, that he's better off not preparing for some meetings. He thinks preparation hinders his ability to read the room and act with spontaneity, this former aide said.

• "I play it very loose," Trump wrote in 'The Art of the Deal."
• "I don't carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you've got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops."

One of the key challenges for his staff: He doesn't like long or complex documents.

• He'll skim newspaper articles, news summaries and bullet points, but hates anything longer. So his evening briefings look quite different from his predecessors'.
• "Trump does review briefing materials, at least if you make it a point to have him do so," said a former senior White House official who has direct knowledge of Trump's reading habits. "But only if you talk and guide him through it as he's reading."
• Trump receives national security materials and news summaries every evening. But the package is more visual than those of his predecessors, with screenshots from the Drudge Report homepage, pictures of his own tweets and snapshots of cable news chyrons from throughout the day, according to people who've seen Trump's nightly briefing packages.

Maybe the decade now in its final hours was one of big accomplishments - in terms of commonly recognized credentials and symbols of personal advancement -  for you. Then again, maybe it was your decade for inner accomplishments, which sometimes require even more character and perseverance.

 Turkey seems less interested in being a NATO member in good standing or even a Western nation by the day. Now it's seriously considering shutting down US access to the Incirlik and Kurecik military installations. Those are where we store nuclear weapons and have critical radar capability.

Barney & Clyde - episode 14

It's here.

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 1. The Green Leap Forward - Dems break out the ban hammer against meat. 2. Maybe Someday We'll Try a Free Market - The Trade War with China is just another tax. 3. The Lights are Going Out on the Bay - San Francisco declares the NRA a terrorist organization. 4. Resisting Centralization is Futile - The Brits are still fighting for independence amongst more Brexit Chaos. Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com

Friday roundup

Ilhan Omar was married to one guy but filed joint tax returns with another guy.

Andrew Napolitano's take on the I--think-I'd-take-it remark is pretty unequivocal:

Asked for his reaction to Trump's comments, Napolitano said on Fox News's "Shepard Smith Reporting" that Trump's remarks showed the president is "prepared to commit a felony to get reelected."

Some Fortune 160 CEOs speak plainly about the impact of tariffs:

US president Donald Trump’s trade wars are hurting American companies and threaten the stability of the global economy, a group of Fortune 500 CEOs told reporters in Washington, DC today.

Some companies are suffering more than others.

All of the gains that Indiana engine-maker Cummins received from Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut will be lost this year to the extra tariffs the company now must pay, said Cummins CEO Tom Linebarger.

“The taxes from tariffs have now outgrown the benefits from the tax reform act,” Linebarger said at a meeting arranged by the Business Roundtable, an executive group that aims to influence policy. “Our net taxes are higher now.”

Linebarger spoke alongside JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Dimon called the gathering an attempt to “educate” politicians and voters about the impact of the trade tariffs, as well as other White House policy.

The CEOs openly criticized the president’s reliance on tariffs as a diplomatic tool, and said the White House wasn’t taking corporate America’s advice on the situation. Linebarger said he was particularly alarmed that the White House mingled security policy and trade policy. 

In the capital of soul music, a riot broke out last night because Memphis police, in their attempt to arrest a 20-year-old guy with several felony warrants, had to deal with and the dude ramming their patrol cars and then getting out of his own car and brandishing a weapon, shot him.

Let's not be coy here. The rioters were rioting because of the guy's skin color.

Which was the same card played in the Oberlin College - Gibson's Bakery case, but there the jury wasn't buying it:

Oberlin College in Ohio will have to pay a nearby bakery more than $11 million in damages because it libeled the store, tagging it as racist, and interfered with its business, a jury said on Friday.

Gibson's Bakery came under fire after Allyn Gibson, the owners' son, got into a physical altercation with a black student who reportedly tried shoplifting and using a fake ID at the store, The Chronicle-Telegram said. Two other black students got involved, appearing to prompt accusations of racial profiling.

The three students eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and read statements defending Allyn Gibson's right to detain them. They also read statements claiming that his actions weren't racially motivated, but within days of the incident, students were turning out for protests fueled by accusations of racist intent.

The jury found the school and Oberlin's vice president and dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, guilty of libel after Raimondo allegedly helped pass out flyers claiming that the bakery was "racist" and had a history of "racial profiling and discrimination."

And while we're on that subject, check out this in-depth look at Meredith Raimondo, Oberlin's dean of students, assistant to the president for equity, diversity and inclusion, and "comparative American studies" professor. She's a real humdinger. She checks off such social-justice jackboot boxes as antisemitism, defining triggers so as to include "a smell, song, scene, phrase," and "academic" exploration of "intersecting structures of race, gender, class, sexuality, ability and citizenship." From the accompanying photos, you can see that she's quite a fetching lass, too!

How far did the pathetic appeasement of Iran go in the run-up to the JPCOA? The UK Daily Telegraph says British officials hid a Hezbollah bomb plot from the public. 

Here's an example of what I was talking about yesterday. We must not permit ourselves to become inured to this kind of thing: The Cartoon Network is using the Powerpuff Girls to promote Pride Month. 

Tariffs vs. tax cuts: the Very Stable Genius is undermining what his right hand is doing with the actions of his left

Two pieces for your consideration today.

One is a lengthy - as in cover story of the print edition - piece by Kevin Williamson at National Review entitled "Trump's Trade War Casualties." It's the kind of study Williamson is particularly good at. He profiles two South Dakota farmers, to the extent of tracing the number of generations their families have had roots in the area, and their trade-association activities and extra-agricultural business interests, and paints a spot-on portrait of Sioux Falls ("one of those midwestern gems . . . that punches above [its] weight . . [with] wine bars and ambitious little restaurants").

It's so wonderfully crafted and in need of being read in its entirety that I dare not give you a bunch of money paragraphs, but two little excerpts get to the essence of his point.


This:

Farmers in large part are paying the price for somebody else’s crusade. This is really not their fight. They’re farmers. They don’t do drama and hysterics and Sturm und Drang: They do business. VanderWal said as much in congressional testimony not long ago: “Farmers are patriots. We were willing to step up and take one for the team. But, at some point . . .” 

What’s really annoying to farmers is that none of this is really about them. This is about BMWs and Toyotas and steel and Boeing and the fact that Americans don’t like seeing “Made in China” on socks and flipflops they buy at Walmart because we are losing our position of worldwide sock and flipflop dominance, of front-runner status in the flipflop race, whatever. “For years, this was a nonpartisan issue,” VanderWal says. “I didn’t like Bill Clinton very much, but he did a fine job on trade. Obama worked on trade. The president is right about the theft of intellectual property, and we do broadly support what the president is trying to do.” 

But is it getting done? VanderWal smiles. “The president doesn’t respond well to criticism.”

And this:

“I want to let people know they need to make their planting decisions and cropping decisions, all production decisions based on where they see the market and where they see their own weather pattern and when they can get into the fields in their own area,” says Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture. Translation: Don’t count on a bailout for tariff-crippled farmers to make you whole. There’s going to be something, yes, but that’s just a patch. It is a big wide complex world and, the grand tradition of U.S. farm policy notwithstanding, a check from the government is not a long-term solution.

The other piece I want to bring to your attention is a more straightforward presentation of facts and figures. It's an article at Yahoo Finance entitled "Trump's Tariffs Have Already Wiped Out Tax Bill Savings for Average Americans."

President Donald Trump’s trade wars have already wiped out all but $100 of the average American household’s windfall from Trump’s 2017 tax law. And that’s just the beginning.

That last $100 in tax-cut gains also could soon disappear -- and then some -- because of additional tariffs Trump has announced or is considering. If the president makes good on his threats to impose levies on virtually all imports from China and Mexico, those middle-earning households could pay nearly $4,000 more as they shell out more for a vast range of goods -- from avocados to iPhones.

Subtract the tax cut, and the average household will effectively be paying about $3,000 more a year in additional costs.

“It’s giving with one hand and taking with the other,” said Kim Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, who’s written a book promoting free trade.

Here’s how the math works: middle earners got an average tax cut of $930 for the tax overhaul passed in late 2017, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The tariffs already in effect cost the average household about $831, according to research from the New York Federal Reserve.

China Goods

Add in the additional tariffs on another $300 billion in Chinese goods that Trump proposed in May, and is still considering, and that increases the cost for an average family of four to about $2,294 annually, according to research from “Tariffs Hurt the Heartland,” a coalition of business groups.

Trump has also threatened to levy tariffs on all imports from Mexico, starting with a 5% tax beginning as soon as Monday that would increase monthly to 25% in October unless Mexico curbs illegal migration to the president’s satisfaction.

If the tariffs reach their highest level, the annual cost to households would increase by $1,700, according to Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the centrist Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The VSG is not playing 5-D chess, people. He's winging it.

As I've said before, I really have to wonder what private conversations between Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore are like - when Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro are not around.