More Tariffs

Many posts have dealt with tariffs and trade. 

Ilya Somin at Reason:

Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision striking down his massive IEEPA tariffs in our case challenging them, Donald Trump issued an executive proclamation invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose 10% global tariffs, and then upped the rate to 15%. Prominent conservative legal commentator Andrew McCarthy has an insightful National Review article explaining why these new tariffs are also illegal. McCarthy and I differ over many issues. But we agree on this one. Here's an excerpt:

These new tariffs are even more clearly illegal than Trump's IEEPA tariffs…..

In Section 122, Congress endowed the president with narrow, temporary authority to impose tariffs "to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits" (emphasis added). What Trump is complaining about — something he insists is a crisis but is not — is the balance of trade, not of payments. The United States does not have an overall balance of payments deficit, much less a large and serious one.

A trade deficit between the U.S. and a foreign nation occurs, mainly in connection with goods (which is just one aspect of international commerce), when imports are greater than exports. This is not really a problem for a variety of reasons — e.g., a trade deficit results in an investment surplus, the U.S. is a major services economy and often runs exported services surpluses that mitigate the imports deficit in goods, etc.

The balance of payments is a broader concept than the balance of trade. It accounts for all the economic transactions that take place between the United States and the rest of the world. Even without getting into every kind of transaction that entails, suffice it to say that foreign investment in the United States, coupled with the advantages our nation accrues because the dollar is the world's reserve currency, more than make up for the longstanding trade deficit in goods.

Our overall payments are in balance. There is no crisis.

National Cemetery Administration

Many posts have discussed the US military.

At WP, Casey Cep profiles Ronald E. Walters, Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Memorial Affairs (PDUSMA) for the National Cemetery Administration (NCA).  According to the VA: he helps lead 155 national cemeteries in providing dignified burial services for military Veterans and eligible family members. 

The work Walters does would be admirable no matter how well he did it, but, as it turns out, he and his colleagues do their work better than any other organization in the country. Not just better than other cemeteries and funeral homes — better than any other organization, period. Seven consecutive times, the NCA has received the highest rating of any entity, public or private, in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Developed at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the ACSI has been the gold standard for measuring consumer experiences for the past 30 years; its satisfaction scores range from zero to 100, with Costco pulling a whopping 85, Apple a respectable 83, McDonald’s a middling 71 and Facebook an underwhelming 69. The average ACSI score for federal agencies is 68, but the NCA most recently scored a 97 — the highest rating in the survey’s history, except for the last time the NCA participated, when it also scored 97.

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Color guards, taps, marble headstones, military escorts, flags draped over coffins: So many of the traditions we associate with burying fallen heroes were standardized in the aftermath of the Civil War, when more than a half-million Americans had been killed and their loved ones struggled to make sense of their grief. Few people remember today that the occasion for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was the consecration of the national cemetery at that battlefield, where some 3,000 men were respectfully laid to rest and the president declared: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

The national cemeteries were part of an effort to unite the living in the pursuit of a lasting peace, creating a space where the soldiers whose lives had been sacrificed for the preservation of the Union could be glorified — to honor their memory, and also to ensure that no American would forget the wages of war. It was the first time in history that a country had gathered its war dead this way for reburial, a practice the United States continued throughout its foreign conflicts. The largest repatriation effort came after World War II, when President Harry S. Truman promised next of kin that they would get to decide where their loved ones would be buried, no matter how difficult it was to identify them, no matter how far from home they died. Well more than half the men who perished fighting alongside Staff Sgt. Ferris — more than 170,000 veterans — were returned to the United States for interment after the armistice. The effort to bring the others home has never ended.

Presidential Dropouts

 Louis Jacobson at PolitFact:

By now, most of us are used to living in "unprecedented times." But just how unprecedented is Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race a little more than three months before Election Day?

Occasionally, incumbent presidents have decided to not seek reelection. But dropping out midcampaign is incredibly rare. And it has never happened this close to an election.

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The two closest political shake-ups to Biden’s were withdrawals by President Harry S. Truman before the 1952 election and President Lyndon B. Johnson before the 1968 election.

Both Truman and Johnson had assumed office following a president’s death and served a full term of their own; they each would have been eligible to run for a second full term had they wanted to. But following poor showings in each of their respective New Hampshire primaries in 1952 and 1968, both exited the race.

Truman withdrew his name from the presidential election on March 29, 1952, or 220 days before Election Day. Truman, who was suffering from low popularity amid the Korean War, dropped out less than three weeks after losing the New Hampshire primary. (In that era, there were relatively few primaries; in many states, party insiders controlled the nomination process.)

Ultimately, Adlai Stevenson II won the Democratic nomination but lost in the general election to Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star U.S. Army general from World War II who ran as a Republican.

Johnson dropped out of the race March 31, 1968, 219 days before the election. Johnson — who had become broadly unpopular because of another war, Vietnam — had not formally filed to run, and was on the New Hampshire ballot only as a write-in. But after a poor showing, and facing primary challenges from two strong contenders, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson dropped out.

In the end, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, was nominated but lost the general election to Richard Nixon.

Biden’s move is far closer to Election Day — 107 days — and comes after all Democratic voters have had their say in the presidential primaries.

Juneteenth and the Army

From the US Army:

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — Juneteenth is known as America’s “second” Independence Day because it commemorates the end of slavery in America. The holiday also represents the beginning of the fulfillment of America’s promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for Black Americans.

President Abraham Lincoln issued The Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, declaring “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” However, Texas resisted the Emancipation Proclamation for more than two years.

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and free the last enslaved Americans in Texas from bondage. This day became known as “Juneteenth”, or “Jubilee Day,” “Freedom Day,” or “Emancipation Day.”

Juneteenth is considered the longest-running Black American holiday. Over the years and through successive waves of migration, Juneteenth celebrations spread to the rest of Texas and eventually the country at large.

The Juneteenth Day of Observance officially became the 11th federal holiday in 2021 and is the first new federal holiday since the recognition of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 1983.

“Juneteenth represents not only the commemoration of the end of slavery in America more than 150 years ago, but the ongoing work to bring true equity and racial justice into American society,” said U.S. President Joseph R. Biden before the signing of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021.

APG Soldiers, civilians advocate for equality in Harford County

Juneteenth is an integral part of Army life. It is a time to reflect on the crucial role the Army played in the Emancipation Proclamation and ending segregation in the U.S.

On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which ended segregation in the military. This order marked a significant moment in the civil rights movement. It was also one of the first instances where a U.S. president used an executive order to implement a civil rights policy.

Locally, APG Soldiers and civilians were instrumental in the desegregation of Harford County by leading efforts to desegregate local restaurants, facilitate school integration, and advocate for fair and open housing in the 1960s, said Patricia D. Cole, President of the Havre de Grace Colored School Museum and Cultural Center, Inc.

These efforts included peaceful protests, speeches, and involvement in lawsuits. For example, Cole said many Soldiers and civilians were involved in the Route 40 protests, advocating for the desegregation of restaurants and other public accommodations.

In the 1960s, George S. Pettit, an APG scientist, filed a lawsuit to enable his son A. Dwight Pettit to attend Aberdeen High School. After a two-year legal battle, the Pettit family won the lawsuit, allowing A. Dwight Pettit to attend Aberdeen High School instead of Havre de Grace Consolidated, a segregated school for Black students. Today, A. Dwight Pettit is a prominent Baltimore lawyer.

Cole said in 1961, APG leaders facilitated meetings between local restaurant owners and civil rights leaders to advocate for removing racial exclusions in restaurants along Route 40.

“This effort was crucial as Black Vietnam veterans returning home faced significant challenges in finding housing off the post,” Cole said.

This Juneteenth, take time to reflect on what it means to be free, celebrate the resiliency of Black Americans, and honor those who fought and sacrificed to ensure the Constitution fulfilled its promise to all Americans.

Abusing the IRS

Previous posts have discussed the IRS.  The story below has precedents.

Michael S. Schmidt at NYT:

While in office, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials.

Mr. Kelly said that among those Mr. Trump said “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on” were the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. His account of Mr. Trump’s desires to use the I.R.S. against his foes comes after the revelation by The Times this summer that Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe had both been selected for a rare and highly intrusive audit by the tax agency in the years after Mr. Kelly left the White House.

Mr. Trump has said he knows nothing about the audits. The I.R.S. has asked its inspector general to investigate, and officials have insisted the two men were selected randomly for the audits.

Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted. He said that despite the president’s expressed desires to have Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe investigated by the I.R.S., he believes that he led Mr. Trump during his tenure as chief of staff to forgo trying to have such investigations conducted.

After Mr. Kelly left the administration, Mr. Comey was informed in 2019 that his 2017 returns were being audited, and Mr. McCabe learned in 2021 that his 2019 returns were being audited. At the time both audits occurred, the I.R.S. was led by a Trump political appointee.

Mr. Trump regularly made his demands in response to news reports in which he thought his perceived enemies made him look bad. The president would carry on about having them investigated to the point that Mr. Kelly thought he needed to tell the president that what he wanted was highly problematic, explaining, in sometimes heated conversations, that what Mr. Trump wanted was not just potentially illegal and immoral but also could blow back on him.

Forgetting Presidents

A release from Washington University in St. Louis:

American presidents spend their time in office trying to carve out a prominent place in the nation's collective memory, but most are destined to be forgotten within 50-to-100 years of their serving as president, suggests a study on presidential name recall released today by the journal Science.

 

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Findings showed several consistent patterns in how we have forgotten past presidents and offer a formula to predict the rate at which current presidents are likely to be forgotten by future generations.

Among the six presidents who were serving or had served most recently when the test was first given in 1973, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford are now fading fast from historical memory, whereas John F. Kennedy has been better retained. The study estimates that Truman will be forgotten by three-fourths of college students by 2040, 87 years after his leaving office, bringing him down to the level of presidents such as Zachary Taylor and William McKinley.

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America's memory for Johnson and Reagan, like that for most presidents, is destined to fade along a quick and predictable trajectory as new elections inexorably push them and their memories further down the list of the most recent and currently best-remembered presidents, the study suggests.

While most collective memory research conducted thus far has explored how we as a nation remember historic events, such as the Holocaust or the 9/11 terror attacks, this study is among the first to focus on how we forget salient events of the past over generations and to obtain estimates of rate of forgetting over time.

"Our results show that memories of famous historical people and events can be studied objectively," Roediger said. "The great stability in how these presidents are remembered across generations suggests that we as a nation share a seemingly permanent form of collective memory."


Journal Reference:
H. L. Roediger III And K. A. Desoto. Forgetting the presidents. Science, 28 November 2014: 1106-1109 DOI: 10.1126/science.1259627

Cuban Missile Crisis: JFK Calls Former Presidents

On October 28, 1962, JFK called former president Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower about the apparently successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 It is hard to believe, but all three old men would outlive the youthful chief executive.

President Obama in Adversity

In our chapter on the presidency, we discuss chief executives who have faced hard times. President Obama is currently doing so. Though the overall unemployment rate is down a bit, it remains very high by the standards of recent decades. His health care legislation has stalled, at least for the time being. In some polls, his job-approval rating is below 50 percent. And there is an outside chance that Republicans would win the House or (less likely) the Senate in the 2010 midterm election.

Yet even if his poll numbers stay low and the other party triumphs in the midterm, the president need not lapse into political paralysis.

In their paper "What Can We Learn from Presidential Adversity?" Ryan J. Barilleaux, Marc Bacharach, and Jewerl Maxwell pointed out that presidents retain a great deal of power in difficult moments. Three examples help make the case.

Adversity makes it more difficult for the president to succeed with legislation and thus encourages the chief executive to take recourse in unilateral action. But adversity does not strip the president of the ability to shape policy. Some of Truman’s greatest policy achievements came during his tough times. Ford was able to conduct foreign policy and his veto strategy on spending was more successful than not Reagan concluded a key arms-control treaty withthe Soviet Union and conducted a military operation against Iran. Granted, presidential power is reduced by adverse circumstances, but it is not erased.