While America’s trade policy needs rethinking, it’s clear President Trump hasn’t put much thought into his haphazard trade policies, and the American people are paying the price.
While Trump launches trade attacks on Twitter, saying “trade wars are good, and easy to win,” and lashes out at our allies over personal grudges, the inevitable retaliation is taking a toll.
In his latest brush-off, Trump responded to concerns about Americans getting hurt by saying, “We’re playing with the bank’s money,” suggesting that because stock prices had continued to rise under his presidency, nobody would be hurt.
That might be true for him personally, since his family is making more money with China than ever, but it would be news to an awful lot of states around the country. Just a few examples:
- Indiana: “Dependent on trade, Mike Pence’s hometown takes a hit due to Trump’s tariffs”
- Iowa: “Midwest farmers take trade woes, frustrations to Capitol Hill”
- Virginia: “8 members of Va. congressional delegation decry tariffs on Canadian newsprint”
- California: “Tariffs Put a Frown on Pistachio Growers”
- Kentucky: “Trump tariffs put Kentucky Republicans in a political bind”
Like every other Trump foreign policy, Trump’s trade policies are erratic, stirred by personal animus toward our closest allies, and put himself first with little regard to actual Americans affected.
CARTER PAGE DOCS EXPOSE HOUSE GOP COVER-UP.
On Saturday, the Department of Justice released the classified application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who was suspected by the FBI of being a Russian agent.
The documents make clear that the FBI had been monitoring Page and his work in Russia for years before his joining the Trump Campaign, debunking false claims by Rep. Devin Nunes and his colleagues that the surveillance was based entirely off biased information from the Steele dossier, and that the FBI hid the origins of the dossier.
For months, Nunes and his colleagues in the House abused their access to classified intelligence to mislead the public in an effort to skirt justice and cover for the president and smear our law enforcement agencies.
The congressional majority is still using its power to cover up the Russia scandal. Follow the Moscow Project to keep up.
KAVANAUGH AND THE WATERGATE TAPES.
It looks like a Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court would have let Nixon off the hook, with a justification that would be music to President Trump’s ears.
It’s easy to believe that Richard Nixon’s resignation was inevitable. But it was a Supreme Court decision, announced 44 years ago tomorrow, that sealed it by confirming that Nixon would indeed have to hand over the Oval Office tapes of his corruption to the Department of Justice.
The decision was unanimous, 8-0, and Nixon resigned 16 days later. Had the decision gone the other way, history might have unfolded very differently, and a corrupt President’s insistence that the investigation was a “witch hunt” might have allowed him to survive with the support of his base.
One might think that no Justice would have decided differently, or have put a president above the law, but we now know that Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, would most likely have done exactly that.
Kavanaugh, who would have the power to overturn this precedent on the Supreme Court and protect President Trump, made clear in 1999 that he believed the Watergate tapes decision was wrong in sweeping terms, in that it “took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch.”
Does anybody doubt that President Trump chose Kavanaugh precisely for the purpose of protecting him in such a situation? Can anybody argue that Kavanaugh shouldn’t at an absolute bare minimum pledge to recuse himself from all such cases related to Trump?
In a last bit of irony, there was a reason that the decision was 8-0 instead of 9-0. A young Justice Rehnquist, who Judge Kavanaugh has identified as his personal hero, had recused himself to avoid even the slightest appearance of a corrupt cover-up. Kavanaugh should take a page from his hero and make an absolute commitment to recuse himself from all decisions involving Trump. Otherwise any Senator who votes to confirm Kavanaugh is voting to gut a crucial check and balance against presidential abuses of power.