There's the hype of Trump's talk about revising U.S. trade and cutting government regulations and setting broad new policies. And then there's reality. Now showing are several articles underscoring that reality is swamping the hype, hence hope remains that not too much damage will be done before this swindling charlatan of a chief executive is ousted from office.
In "Trump’s early trade gains could come at future cost," the Washington Post explores the administration's recent South Korea trade deal, which Trump has touted "as vindication for the 'America First' approach.'" Said an administration official last night, "[The U.S.-South Korea] agreement is visionary and innovative, and it underscores a pattern of failure by previous administrations to negotiate fair and reciprocal trade deals." The White House has also touted the agreement as "historic." But as the Post smartly acknowledges, "threatening negotiating partners with tariffs unless they make concessions … is not President Trump's innovation. It is a tactic that Washington often used before the creation of the World Trade Organization, though one that did little to reduce the bilateral trade deficits that preoccupy the president."
In addition to hearing the administration's hype, you should know the reality, as expressed by the experts who know trade, quoted by the Post. Says Edward Alden, a Council on Foreign Relations trade specialist, "[Trump is] resurrecting the 1980s.... [His trade policy is from] the Reagan playbook. The reason it hasn’t been used in a long time is the U.S. made a decision that binding dispute settlement [through the World Trade Organization] was better than tariffs as a weapon." Phil Levy, formerly a senior economist in the George W. Bush administration, addressed the U.S.-South Korea deal critically: "The expanded quota on autos allows in cars we don’t want to ship. The extended tariff on trucks blocks pickups the Koreans are not exporting. And the limitation on Korean steel exports will make life more difficult for all the U.S. manufacturers who use Korean steel. In what way does this help?"
Politico, in "Trump is winning the trade war — for now," notes the "conviction" of the European Union's trade chief, Cecilia Malmström, "that Trump’s tariffs will come back soon enough to bite him — just as the U.S. steel tariffs did back in 2002, when the resulting trade disruptions cost thousands of American jobs. The implication is clear," writes Politico: "In the long term, Trump will lose." Said Malmström earlier this month in a moment of wild fancy, "I hope that someone in the White House has read the history book." Says Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy: "It doesn’t matter to Trump whether this will hit back at the U.S. economy in the longer term…. It’s a political initiative, not an economic measure." The Europeans are likely to outsmart Trump, however, just as the South Koreans did — who gave him what he wanted politically but protected their economic interests.
On the second matter, Georgetown University law professor Lisa Heinzerling writes reassuringly in "Trump is losing his war on regulations" that the administration is botching pretty much everything. "The courts have found elementary legal mistakes in the Trump administration’s approach to agency decisions. Specifically, they have concluded that the administration has misread legal provisions, ignored factual evidence and bypassed required processes." Thus the courts have repeatedly shot down the administration's anti-reg goals. Heinzerling also notes that "It shouldn’t be too difficult for the Trump administration to avoid these kinds of errors," but "that it has failed to do so, repeatedly, in this first phase of the war on regulation bodes ill for its success in the next phase, which involves not just delaying or suspending existing rules, but actually removing them from the rule books."
In another Post op-ed, "Trump is running on animus autopilot," constitutional lawyer Joshua Matz observes that "A little more than 14 months into Trump’s presidency, a pattern has emerged in cases challenging some of his most despicable decisions," specifically his Muslim and military transgender bans. On the latter, unsurprisingly, "the reasoning offered to support Trump’s policy is riddled with empirical errors and anti-trans stereotypes," which, like Trump's clumsy approach to overturning regulations, makes it rather easy for the courts to step in and stop it. The "pattern" detected by Matz is one of almost breathtaking ineptitude.
"Step One: Trump shoots from the hip in creating policy." Which is to say, "Trump ask[s] a gaggle of incompetents to make good on [some] long-promised [policy]." "Step Two: Trump’s original policy is successfully challenged on legal grounds." What follows is familiar. "His apologists blame 'the resistance,' but often the real culprit is Trump himself. He proudly tweets his own unlawful intentions and sabotages his lawyers’ best arguments.""Step Three: The Trump administration engages in animus laundering." Here, Trump "grudgingly allows his lawyers and advisers to undertake a series of bogus, ends-driven 'reviews,'" whose goal "is to put just enough lipstick on the pig to pretend it isn’t a pig anymore." "Step Four: Trump’s revised policy is again challenged in court." What then follows is also familiar. "The plaintiffs … [then] poke holes in the shoddy, results-oriented justifications advanced by the government. And they emphasize that minor tinkering cannot save a policy whose only reason for existing in the first place was Trump’s desire to harm a vulnerable group."
My apologies for the length of this post. Citing others' in-depth analyses is not the stuff most contemporary blogging is made of. But such analyses are essential not only for understanding the cruelty, shallowness and stupidity of the Trump administration, but what promises to be its ultimate failure. Perhaps most encouraging is that American institutions are holding — preeminently, the courts and the Fourth Estate. What's needed next is the institution of democratic action — for voters to throw the Trump-enabling bums out, and two years later, the chief bum himself.