"Buy American" -- A Bad Idea

 George F. Will at WP:

“Buy American,” like protectionism generally, can protect some blue-collar jobs — but at a steep price: A Peterson Institute for International Economics study concludes that it costs taxpayers $250,000 annually for each job saved in a protected industry. And lots of white-collar jobs are created for lawyers seeking waivers from the rules. And for accountants tabulating U.S. content in this and that, when, say, an auto component might cross international borders (U.S., Canadian, Mexican) five times before it is ready for installation in a vehicle.

In the usual braying-and-pouting choreography of the State of the Union evening, members of the president’s party leap ecstatically when he praises himself, and members of the other party respond sullenly, by not responding. This year, however, something unusual happened when President Biden vowed to “require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America.” A bipartisan ovation greeted his promise to reduce the purchasing power of tax dollars spent on infrastructure projects by raising the cost of materials.

Tariffs and Regs Helped Create the Baby Formula Shortage

 WSJ Editorial:

Last year Abbott accounted for 42% of the U.S. formula market, about 95% of which is produced domestically. There are only four major manufacturers of formula in the U.S. today: Mead Johnson, Abbott, Nestle, and Perrigo. One reason the market is so concentrated is tariffs up to 17.5% on imports, which protect domestic producers from foreign competition. Non-trade barriers such as FDA labeling and ingredient requirements also limit imports even during shortages.

Canada’s strong dairy industry has attracted investment in formula production. But the Trump Administration sought to protect domestic producers by imposing quotas and tariffs on Canadian imports in the USMCA trade deal. The FDA can inspect foreign plants so the U.S. import restrictions aren’t essential for product safety. They merely raise prices for consumers and limit choice.

Further limiting competition is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) for low-income mothers. By the Department of Agriculture’s estimate, WIC accounted for between 57% and 68% of all infant formula sold in the U.S. Under the welfare program, each state awards an exclusive formula contract to a manufacturer.

Companies compete for the contracts by offering states huge rebates on the formula women can buy. The rebates equal about 85% of the wholesale cost, according to a 2011 USDA study. Women can only use WIC vouchers to purchase formula from the winning manufacturer. These rebates reduce state spending, but there’s no such thing as free baby formula.

Why would manufacturers give states an enormous discount? Because the contracts effectively give them a state monopoly. Stores give WIC brands more shelf space. Physicians may also be more likely to recommend WIC brands. After 30 states switched their WIC contracts between 2005 and 2008, the new provider’s market share increased on average by 84 percentage points.

Paleoconservatives

Matthew Continetti at Commentary:

However strong the conservative consensus of the mid-1990s may have appeared at the dawn of the Republican Revolution, it soon came under sustained criticism from intellectuals excluded from Kristol’s “more comprehensive conservatism.”

The most coherent challenge came from the so-called paleoconservatives. Their main cause was the dramatic reduction of immigration. Their champion was the syndicated columnist, author, former White House official, and cable-television personality Patrick J. Buchanan. He had built his reputation as a smart, plainspoken pundit before making a transition into electoral politics. After a surprise showing as a protest presidential candidate in New Hampshire in 1992, Buchanan galvanized that year’s Republican National Convention with a speech both describing and advocating a “culture war” in the United States.

Buchanan launched his second run for the presidency on March 20, 1995. In his announcement, he singled out Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, the GOP front-runner, for supporting American membership in the World Trade Organization. Buchanan pledged to withdraw from the WTO and the newly minted North American Free Trade Agreement. He said he would remove U.S. troops participating in UN peacekeeping missions, build a wall along the southern border, and bar immigration for at least five years. “When I raise my hand to take the oath of office,” he said, “this whole New World Order is coming crashing down.”

Buchanan’s invocation of a sinister global conspiracy hinted at his populism’s dark side. He was a well-known opponent of the neoconservatives, and he laced his rhetoric with anti-Semitic tropes cleverly masked for plausible deniability precisely because he was so intelligent. He flirted with racists, anti-government extremists, and conspiracists. The chief theoretician of Buchanan’s movement, the newspaper columnist Samuel T. Francis, was fired from an editorial position at the Washington Times in 1995 after it was revealed that he had told an audience, “The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.”

Francis believed that conservatism was defunct. The label “conservative” was meaningless, he said, because Buckley’s movement had failed to generate support among the masses. He argued that the future of American politics hinged on “Middle American Radicals,” also known as the men and women from MARs. These were non-college-educated blue-collar workers disaffected from the electoral process and contemptuous of political, business, social, and cultural elites. They decided elections because they had no allegiance to either party.

According to Francis, the MARs seesawed between the economic nationalism of the left and the cultural nationalism of the right. Buchanan was the first Republican of the post–Cold War era to understand the importance of MARs. He campaigned for their votes by combining economic and cultural nationalism into one angry package. He and Francis introduced many of the terms and concepts that would come to dominate political discourse on the right—phrases like “the ruling class” and “globalism” and slogans like “America First.”

De Facto Chinese Censorship of US Films

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian at Axios:

China's box office is projected to soon surpass the U.S. as the largest film market in the world.

• "Access to that market can make or break the success of a major Hollywood film," said James Tager, the author of a recent PEN America report about how the Chinese government censors the U.S. film industry, and how the industry responds by self-censoring.
• But the Chinese government tightly controls access to the market, excluding films that include content it dislikes, and blacklisting individual actors or film studios that have previously participated in activities the Chinese Communist Party doesn't like.

...

Movies also have an almost unmatched ability to instill widespread public sympathy for vulnerable groups and to prolong remembrance of crimes against humanity, such as the Rwandan genocide, depicted in "Hotel Rwanda."

• But the last time a major Hollywood studio made a movie that presented a vulnerable group as the victim of Chinese government aggression was in 1997 with "Seven Years in Tibet" starring Brad Pitt.
• The Chinese government responded by slapping a five-year ban on Columbia TriStar, the production company that made the film — a response that cast a chill over the U.S. movie industry.

The result: Film studios now go out of their way to ensure their movies avoid topics or depictions of China that might fall foul of China's censors.

• "The most significant effect of this censorship and self-censorship is completely invisible, because it involves the movies that are never made," said Tager. "What major Hollywood studio would make a movie about what is happening in Xinjiang, with the internment of over a million Muslims?"
• “For 10 years, you haven’t seen any bad Chinese guys,” said Schuyler Moore, a partner at Greenberg Glusker. “If I saw a script with an anti-Chinese theme, I would advise my client that that film would never be released in China.”

Americans Pay American Tariffs

Mary Amiti, Stephen J. Redding, David E. Weinstein at NBER:

Using data from 2018, a number of studies have found that recent U.S tariffs have been passed on entirely to U.S. importers and consumers. These results are surprising given that trade theory has long stressed that tariffs applied by a large country should drive down foreign prices. Using another year of data including significant escalations in the trade war, we find that U.S. tariffs continue to be almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers. We show that the response of import values to the tariffs increases in absolute magnitude over time, consistent with the idea that it takes time for firms to reorganize supply chains. We find heterogeneity in the responses of some sectors, such as steel, where tariffs have caused foreign exporters to drop their prices substantially, enabling them to export relatively more than in sectors where tariff passthrough was complete.

Tariffs Don't Work

Flaaen, Aaron, and Justin Pierce (2019). “Disentangling the Effects of the 2018-2019 Tariffs on a Globally Connected U.S. Manufacturing Sector,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-086. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,
https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2019.086  The abstract:

Since the beginning of 2018, the United States has undertaken unprecedented tariff increases, with one goal of these actions being to boost the manufacturing sector. In
this paper, we estimate the effect of the tariffs—including retaliatory tariffs by U.S. trading partners—on manufacturing employment, output, and producer prices. A key
feature of our analysis is accounting for the multiple ways that tariffs might affect the
manufacturing sector, including providing protection for domestic industries, raising
costs for imported inputs, and harming competitiveness in overseas markets due to
retaliatory tariffs. We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import protection is offset by larger negative effects from rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs. Higher tariffs are also associated with relative increases in producer prices via rising input costs.

International Emergency Economic Powers Act

From CRS:

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) provides the President broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency. IEEPA, like the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) from which it branched, sits at the center of the modern U.S. sanctions regime. Changes in the use of IEEPA powers since the act’s enactment in 1977 have caused some to question whether the statute’s oversight provisions are robust enough given the sweeping economic powers it confers upon the President upon declaration of a state of emergency.

Over the course of the twentieth century, Congress delegated increasing amounts of emergency power to the President by statute. The Trading with the Enemy Act was one such statute. Congress passed TWEA in 1917 to regulate international transactions with enemy powers following the U.S. entry into the First World War. Congress expanded the act during the 1930s to allow the President to declare a national emergency in times of peace and assume sweeping powers over both domestic and international transactions. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, TWEA became a critically important means to impose sanctions as part of U.S. Cold War strategy. Presidents used TWEA to block international financial transactions, seize U.S.-based assets held by foreign nationals, restrict exports, modify regulations to deter the hoarding of gold, limit foreign direct investment in U.S. companies, and impose tariffs on all imports into the United States.

Following committee investigations that discovered that the United States had been in a state of emergency for more than 40 years, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA) in 1976 and IEEPA in 1977. The pair of statutes placed new limits on presidential emergency powers. Both included reporting requirements to increase transparency and track costs, and the NEA required the President to annually assess and extend, if appropriate, the emergency. However, some experts argue that the renewal process has become pro forma. The NEA also afforded Congress the means to terminate a national emergency by adopting a concurrent resolution in each chamber. A decision by the Supreme Court, in a landmark immigration case, however, found the use of concurrent resolutions to terminate an executive action unconstitutional. Congress amended the statute to require a joint resolution, significantly increasing the difficulty of terminating an emergency.

Like TWEA, IEEPA has become an important means to impose economic-based sanctions since its enactment; like TWEA, Presidents have frequently used IEEPA to restrict a variety of international transactions; and like TWEA, the subjects of the
restrictions, the frequency of use, and the duration of emergencies have expanded over time. Initially, Presidents targeted foreign states or their governments. Over the years, however, presidential administrations have increasingly used IEEPA to target individuals, groups, and non-state actors such as terrorists and persons who engage in malicious cyber-enabled activities.

As of March 1, 2019, Presidents had declared 54 national emergencies invoking IEEPA, 29 of which are still ongoing. Typically, national emergencies invoking IEEPA last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer--the first state of emergency declared under the NEA and IEEPA, which was declared in response to the taking of U.S. embassy staff as hostages by Iran in 1979, may soon enter its fifth decade.

IEEPA grants sweeping powers to the President to control economic transactions. Despite these broad powers, Congress has never attempted to terminate a national emergency invoking IEEPA. Instead, Congress has directed the President on
numerous occasions to use IEEPA authorities to impose sanctions. Congress may want to consider whether IEEPA appropriately balances the need for swift action in a time of crisis with Congress’ duty to oversee executive action. Congress may also want to consider IEEPA’s role in implementing its influence in U.S. foreign policy and national security decisionmaking.

Not the Most Competitive Economy

The impact of the 2017 tax cut is fading while the impact of the trade wars is showing.  Shirley Tay at CNBC:

For the first time in nine years, Singapore surpassed the United States and Hong Kong to clinch the title of the world’s most competitive economy.

y, according to annual rankings compiled by Switzerland-based business school IMD.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday, Arturo Bris — director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center — said the Southeast Asian country had been following a simple “recipe for competitiveness.”

Singapore’s immigration laws, advanced technological infrastructure, availability of skilled labor and efficient ways to set up new businesses helped it advance to the top, IMD’s 2019 World Competitiveness Rankings found.

The city-state is “a poster-child for the world economy today, and not surprisingly it made it to the top position this year,” Bris said.

IMD measures a country’s competitiveness using four indicators: economic performance, infrastructure, government efficiency and business efficiency.

Here are the top 10 economies by competitiveness, according to IMD:

• Singapore
• Hong Kong SAR
• USA
• Switzerland
• UAE
• Netherlands
• Ireland
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Qatar

International Students: Decline in New Enrollment

Nick Leiber at Bloomberg:

New foreign student enrollment in the U.S. dropped by 6.6 percent in the 2017-18 academic year, double the previous year’s rate of decline, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). While the total number of international students in the U.S. grew slightly, the drop in new enrollees is the biggest since 9/11, said Rachel Banks, public policy director at NAFSA: Association of International Educators. The decline seems to be continuing this year, she said.

...
“Education—particularly higher education—is a major American export,” University of California, Santa Barbara economics professor Dick Startz wrote in a Brookings Institution blog post in 2017. “When we provide a service that leads to foreigners sending money into the U.S., that’s an export with exactly the same economic effects as when we sell soybeans or coal abroad.”

Revolving Door 2018

Me to Joe Lieberman, 2012: "You’re retiring after serving 24 years in the Senate. What lobbying firm are you going to join now?"
Lieberman: "I’m not going to lobby. For sure."
2018: China's ZTE taps Joe Lieberman for D.C. damage control https://t.co/Jn3c2dx5Ez via @politico

— Mark Leibovich (@MarkLeibovich) December 14, 2018

Byron Tau at The Wall Street Journal:

Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is weighing the creation of a consulting firm when he leaves government after being ousted by voters in last month’s midterm elections.

Mr. Rohrabacher, who has represented a California district in Congress for three decades, has told senior staff and other acquaintances in recent weeks that he plans to form a company called R&B Strategies with top aide Paul Behrends, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for Mr. Rohrabacher, who represents Orange County, said the lawmaker hasn’t decided what he will do, but the spokesman didn’t deny the conversations and said forming a company is one of many options the congressman is considering.

The spokesman, Ken Grubbs, said Mr. Rohrabacher’s only definite plans are to move to Maine after the current session of Congress ends in early January and newly elected lawmakers are sworn in.

Mr. Rohrabacher is one of the many lawmakers expected to go to work in lobbying or consulting when they leave government in January. Dozens of Republicans retired or lost their seats this year, making for a crowded post-government employment market for many lawmakers.

Philip Wegmann at The Washington Examiner:

Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., is leaving Congress, but she's not going very far. She is cashing out and turning to lobbying after a decade in Congress.

Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual: the career arc of many a politician runs from Capitol Hill through K Street. The difference is Jenkins isn’t waiting around. She announced the opening of her own lobbying shop with six weeks left as representative for the 2nd Congressional District of Kansas.

This gives Jenkins time to attract potential clientele during while still voting on issues of import.

Ethics laws prohibit Jenkins from making lobbying contacts for a year after leaving office. But she can still run a lobbying shop and supervise and employ lobbyists.

“This is an egregious abuse of the revolving door,” Craig Holman of Public Citizen toldMcClatchy, “I suspect she’s being coached as to how to dance around the law, but it certainly violates the spirit of the revolving door law itself.”

Tariffs Mean Lobbying

Recent tariff actions have spurred activity by the interest-group community.

From from Politico Influence:

Here’s a rundown of the latest registrations: Twin Enterprises Inc. (dba ’47 Brand),a sports licensing and apparel company based in Massachusetts, hired Crowell & Moring to lobby on tariff exclusions; TricorBraun, a St. Louis packaging company, hired Husch Blackwell to lobby on tariffs; Edelman / Char-Broil hired Robert Carlstrom Jr. to lobby on tariffs on Chinese products; and Air Master Awning, a Puerto Rican company, hired Sorini Samet to lobby on Chinese trade actions.

— The lobbying comes as trade associations and coalitions continue their broader push to stop the tariffs. The Tariffs Hurt the Heartland campaign will hold a town hall Thursday with former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in Indianapolis. The town hall will also feature Brian Kuehl, executive director of Farmers for Free Trade; Steve Bohman, vice president of global production for Vera Bradley, and others.

Tariff Authority

Rachel Fefer and colleagues write at CRS:

Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. §1862) provides the President with the ability to impose restrictions on certain imports based on an affirmative determination by the Department of Commerce (Commerce) that the product under investigation “is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security.” Section 232 actions are of interest to Congress because they are a delegation of Congress’s constitutional authority “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” They also have important potential economic and policy implications for the United States.
...

Congress enacted Section 232 during the Cold War when national security issues were at the forefront of national debate. The Trade Expansion Act sets clear steps and timelines for Section 232 investigations and actions, but allows the President to make a final determination over the appropriate action to take following an affirmative finding by Commerce that the relevant imports threaten to impair national security. [Before 2017] there have been 26 Section 232 investigations resulting in nine affirmative findings by Commerce. In six of those cases the President imposed a trade action

...
In establishing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, Congress delegated aspects of its authority to regulate international commerce to the Administration. Use of the statute to restrict imports does not require any formal approval by Congress or an affirmative finding by an independent agency, such as the U.S. International Trade Commission, granting the President broad discretion in applying this authority. Should Congress disapprove of the President’s use of the statute, its current recourse is limited to passing new legislation or using informal tools to pressure the Administration (e.g., putting holds on presidential nominee confirmations). Some Members and observers have suggested that Congress should require additional steps in the Section 232 process, such as requiring an economic impact study by the U.S. International Trade Commission, congressional consultation or approval of any new tariffs (see, for example, S. 3013), or allowing for a resolution of disapproval as exists in the case of petroleum. In addition, some Members and observers have suggested that Congress should revisit the delegation of its  constitutional authority more broadly, such as by requiring congressional review of executive branch trade actions generally (see, for example, H.R. 5760 and S. 177).

Trade

Mike Allen at Axios:

Reagan on Free Trade

Ronald Reagan: "Radio Address to the Nation on the Canadian Elections and Free Trade ," November 26, 1988. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=35207

This week, as we prepared for Thanksgiving, Canada held an important election, and I'm pleased to again send my congratulations to Prime Minister Mulroney. One of the important issues in the Canadian election was trade. And like our own citizens earlier this month, our neighbors have sent a strong message, rejecting protectionism and reaffirming that more trade, not less, is the wave of the future.

Here in America, as we reflect on the many things we have to be grateful for, we should take a moment to recognize that one of the key factors behind our nation's great prosperity is the open trade policy that allows the American people to freely exchange goods and services with free people around the world. The freedom to trade is not a new issue for America. In 1776 our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, charging the British with a number of offenses, among them, and I quote, "cutting off our trade with all parts of the world," end quote.

And that same year, a Scottish economist named Adam Smith launched another revolution with a book entitled "The Wealth of Nations," which exposed for all time the folly of protectionism. Over the past 200 years, not only has the argument against tariffs and trade barriers won nearly universal agreement among economists but it has also proven itself in the real world, where we have seen free-trading nations prosper while protectionist countries fall behind.

America's most recent experiment with protectionism was a disaster for the working men and women of this country. When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country—the same line we hear today. The actual result was the Great Depression, the worst economic catastrophe in our history; one out of four Americans were thrown out of work. Two years later, when I cast my first ballot for President, I voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who opposed protectionism and called for the repeal of that disastrous tariff.

Ever since that time, the American people have stayed true to our heritage by rejecting the siren song of protectionism. In recent years, the trade deficit led some misguided politicians to call for protectionism, warning that otherwise we would lose jobs. But they were wrong again. In fact, the United States not only didn't lose jobs, we created more jobs than all the countries of Western Europe, Canada, and Japan combined. The record is clear that when America's total trade has increased, American jobs have also increased. And when our total trade has declined, so have the number of jobs.

Part of the difficulty in accepting the good news about trade is in our words. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war, for one side to win, the other must lose. But commerce is not warfare. Trade is an economic alliance that benefits both countries. There are no losers, only winners. And trade helps strengthen the free world.

Yet today protectionism is being used by some American politicians as a cheap form of nationalism, a fig leaf for those unwilling to maintain America's military strength and who lack the resolve to stand up to real enemies—countries that would use violence against us or our allies. Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogs who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom.

After the Second World War, America led the way to dismantle trade barriers and create a world trading system that set the stage for decades of unparalleled economic growth. And in one week, when important multilateral trade talks are held in Montreal, we will be in the forefront of efforts to improve this system. We want to open more markets for our products, to see to it that all nations play by the rules, and to seek improvement in such areas as dispute resolution and agriculture. We also want to bring the benefits of free trade to new areas, including services, investment, and the protection of intellectual property. Our negotiators will be working hard for all of us.

Yes, back in 1776, our Founding Fathers believed that free trade was worth fighting for. And we can celebrate their victory because today trade is at the core of the alliance that secure the peace and guarantee our freedom; it is the source of our prosperity and the path to an even brighter future for America.

Until next week, thanks for listening, and God bless you.

Lies and Silence

At WP, Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta and Erica Werner report that Trump bragged about lying to an ally's head of government.

President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S. ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether that was the case.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.

“ ... So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’

‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. … And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

The Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

 Peter Baker at NYT:

Britain’s tough response in holding Russia responsible for a poisoning attack on its soil increased the pressure on President Trump to join with a NATO ally in taking action, even as he has been reluctant to retaliate for Moscow’s intervention in the 2016 election in the United States.

Mr. Trump, who was visiting Missouri on Wednesday, has not personally addressed the attack since London assigned blame to Russia and left it instead to aides to express public solidarity with Prime Minister Theresa May after she expelled 23 Russian diplomats, canceled high-level contacts and vowed to impose more sanctions.

The White House issued a boilerplate statement saying the attack was bad.

But for whatever reason, Mr. Trump avoided saying so personally in public, much as he has generally avoided condemning Russia for its election meddling. He has allowed top advisers to denounce Moscow for its interference in American democracy, but when it comes to his own Twitter posts or comments, he has largely stuck to equivocal language, seemingly reluctant to accept the consensus conclusion of his intelligence agencies and intent on voicing no outrage or criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, for whom he has expressed admiration.

Expertise

 Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey at WP:

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson privately warned senior trade officials on Tuesday that President Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum could endanger the U.S. national security relationship with allies, according to five people familiar with the meeting.

The morning meeting came as Republican lawmakers grasped for a strategy to persuade Trump to change his mind, with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who had loudly criticized the plan on Monday, telling members in a closed-door meeting not to bully Trump on the decision. He said it could backfire and make things even worse.

And then on Tuesday evening, top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who had been furiously fighting the tariffs for months, announced his resignation. His exit will remove the most vocal critic of Trump’s new trade agenda from internal debates.
...
Those who opposed the tariffs were disappointed in Robert E. Lighthizer, an official involved in the discussions said, because he expressed skepticism in private but usually not in front of the president. And Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, did not work to sway his father-in-law against the tariffs, senior officials said.

The president considered the advice, but said he was skeptical of economists and their data. He had promised this sort of policy as a presidential candidate, and it was popular with his base. At the time, Porter, who opposed the tariffs, told others they would need to find new ways to sway Trump, people involved in the debate said. Almost everyone in the West Wing was opposed, two White House officials said.

Emily Holden and Jeremy C.F. Lin at Politico:

More than 20 top political appointees and nominees across the Trump administration either decline to acknowledge that humans are the main cause of climate change or say that significant questions exist about how much people contribute to the problem. A few even say global warming could be a good thing or might not be happening at all. Their views are in stark contrast to mainstream science, raising questions about how they will make decisions about the impact of climate change on issues like energy policy, disaster planning and national security.

And just a reminder that "The Death of Expertise" is available as a book, Audio CD, on Audible, and soon, as a trade war https://t.co/hkjY0hapwf

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 7, 2018

Presidents on Trade Wars

Too often policies designed to preserve jobs in one industry reduce competitiveness and employment in other industries. A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that close doors, create greater barriers, and destroy millions of jobs. We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism. -- Ronald Reagan, January 10, 1989

When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018

Defense of the International Order

Arshad Mohammed reports at Reuters:

The longest-serving U.S. diplomat warned against isolationism, protectionism and Russian aggression on Friday in a retirement speech implicitly criticizing some of U.S. President Donald Trump's policies even as he urged officials to serve the White House loyally.

Ambassador Dan Fried argued that since becoming a world power over a century ago, the United States had largely pursued an open, rules-based world, rejected "spheres of influence" where great powers bully their neighbors and contributed to "the longest period of general peace in the West since Roman times."

"This track record suggests that an open, rules-based world, with a united West at its core, is an asset and great achievement, and a foundation for more," the former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs said as he wrapped up a nearly 40-year career at the U.S. State Department.

"Yet, some argue that this is actually a liability, that values are a luxury, that in a Hobbesian or Darwinian world we should simply take our share, the largest possible," he added.

The comment was an implicit rebuke to the "America First" approach in which Trump has pledged to end what he sees as decades of other nations freeloading on U.S. security and exploiting trade agreements harmful to U.S. workers

Amb. Dan Fried, one of generation’s great diplomats, retired today. Read his powerful defense of liberal international order. pic.twitter.com/BFGwLvK3Qw

— Antony Blinken (@ABlinken) February 24, 2017

Trade

Donald Trump is currently standing in front of a Boeing 787 citing it as an example of made in America.
Wrong.
Here is the 787 supply chain: pic.twitter.com/7dNDqcrakx

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) February 17, 2017

Trump's Predecessors

At Vox, Matt Grossmann notes that Trump unsuccessfully sought the Reform Party nomination in 2000,

What did Trump learn from his first presidential campaign? In an op-ed following his withdrawal, Trump touted his campaign as "the greatest civics lesson that a private citizen can have" but also said he "saw the underside of the Reform Party." He mentioned meeting earnest reformers as well as a host of odd conspiracy theorists.

By the time he announced for president in 2015, Trump had become the most prominent spokesperson for these conspiracy theorists with his long push for Obama's birth certificate. His new campaign retained his anti-trade and anti-elitist message but added Buchanan's warnings of losing the country to ethnic and religious minorities. He lashed out against undocumented Mexican immigrants in his announcement speech and made opposition to Muslim immigration the centerpiece of his winter campaign, earning the support of Buchanan and Duke. He even resurrected Richard Nixon's "silent majority" rhetoric, phrasing suggested to Nixon by Buchanan.

In retrospect, the changed approach does not seem like an accident. Trump draws from a history of presidential aspirants focused on immigration and international trade. In 1992, Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush in the Republican race, running on a Trump-style platform that eschewed internationalism and blamed immigrants and trade for economic woes. Later that year, Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote running as an independent on his business record and on a similar mix of populist positions (spreading his message through cable news shows).

Both Buchanan and Perot ran again in 1996, with Buchanan winning the New Hampshire primary and Perot winning 8 percent of the popular vote under the banner of the new Reform Party.

These candidates directly led the way to Trump's first campaign. Perot's electoral performance made the 2000 nominee of the Reform Party eligible for $12.5 million in federal matching funds, prompting Buchanan and Trump to seek the nomination. Ventura, a former professional wrestler who had won the Minnesota gubernatorial election in 1998 as a Reform Party candidate, had sought out Trump to block Buchanan.