A story surfacing in Politico about the collapse of the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the inability of the entire trade policy group to find any willing trade partners was entirely predictable.
You might remember how the insufferable U.S. business media constantly said the Trump trade team was not going to be successful because the administration was disliked by global trade partners. Every Trump trade approach from tariffs to section 301 compliance, to U.S. demands around foreign policy tied to the economic Trump Doctrine was decried by U.S. multinational corporations as too divisive, too intransigent. However, Donald Trump and his trade wolverines racked up more trade wins and established more trade agreements than any administration in history.
From KORUS (Korea/US) to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, European energy deals, massive changes with China, new Ag agreements, demanded technology sector investment back in the USA, and the successful renegotiation of NAFTA (Canada, Mexico, USA) into the USMCA – all of it was stunning in scale, scope and success. Trump’s global trade success was exactly the opposite of every predictive declaration by the professional media. All of the Trump strategic policy shift created the framework for the largest domestic expansion of the U.S. economy, evident in every 2019 economic metric prior to the pandemic.
Biden took office with the full support of the lying liars who lie in the media, and they said Biden’s team was a shoo-in for success. Again, exactly the opposite has happened.
The ideological leftists who came with the Obama/Biden plan forcibly tried to push their Green New Deal policies into every trade agreement. The result and response from all U.S. trade partners has been a massive failure of epic proportions.
Despite the international pontifications around support for the globalist energy policies, ie. the “Build Back Better” bulls**t pushed by western government, the World Economic Forum and the globalists, when it comes to where the rubber hits the road no nation is willing to attach themselves to the economically destructive millstone demands of U.S trade. In material fact, many of the BBB agenda priorities are now completely rejected by the same politicians who promoted them.
In part, we in the USA are suffering through some of the most horrific inflationary economic outcomes from this Biden ‘Green New Deal’ program. Any nation that aligned itself is feeling the same impact in direct proportion to how close they followed the program. The more ‘Green’ compliant the nation, the more the economic hardship upon the citizens within that nation. This is just the non-pretending reality of the thing.
So, it doesn’t come as any great surprise to see a thoroughly rejected and dejected career trade group now walking to the exits with zero accomplishments for their last three years of effort.
WASHINGTON – Frustration with a stalled trade agenda and unhappiness with the leadership of President Joe Biden’s trade chief is pushing more than a half-dozen senior trade officials out the door, according to four current and former administration officials with knowledge of the departures.
The exits include the White House’s point person on international economics and two of the three deputy U.S. trade representatives responsible for implementing the Biden administration’s “worker-centered” trade policy.
The exodus comes after Biden’s trade agenda ran aground on multiple fronts in 2023: failing to reach a green steel and aluminum deal with the European Union and pulling out of trade talks that were part of the U.S.-crafted Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in November. The administration, meanwhile, remains internally divided on other key trade policy decisions, like how to regulate digital information flowing across the globe.
Those headwinds — and the realization that little real progress is likely to be made in an election year during which former President Donald Trump will put a glaring spotlight on trade — have convinced some officials it’s time to move on. Adding to the frustration: simmering discontent with the management practices of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
[…] Biden’s “worker-centered” trade agenda was designed to smooth over frayed relations with close trading partners and win back those blue-collar workers in battleground states. But his sweeping plans to reshape global trade rules haven’t assuaged concerns from Democrats who worry that Trump will again use trade issues as a cudgel against them in the industrial Midwest — a region that could determine control of Congress and the White House in November.
That disconnect has forced USTR to freeze, abandon, or dramatically scale back its signature initiatives and negotiations, leaving some top lawmakers and staffers frustrated. In particular, Wyden and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are fuming that the administration hasn’t matched the Trump administration’s accomplishments on trade, like the binding labor and environmental standards that Democrats got inserted into the rewrite of NAFTA that Trump signed in 2020.
“Sen. Brown and I have consistently said that you need the kind of proposal that you saw in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement where you open up markets for business and you have tough enforcement,” said Wyden, “and a lot of what’s been put up doesn’t meet that test.” (read more)
Go figure!….
Want success?…
Want trade deals that lift the USA economy?…
Want USA “deflation,” yes, the actual lowering of prices for goods and services?…
Want lower costs of goods, and lower prices for consumers by leveraging the size of the USA market?…
Can’t wait to see if Trump will lower the guillotine in electric cars, windmills, and other green tech mandates and the global warming scam. I am hopeful but not convinced he will do it.
President Trump said yesterday (and doubtless before) that he would end the mandates and subsidies for electric cars.
It’s all being done on purpose to destroy America and the West. This pile of plundering bullshit will all collapse under it’s own weight just as it did in the former Soviet Union. I only hope we have a softer landing.
Regarding “electric cars, windmills, and other green tech mandates and the global warming scam…” all PDJT has to say is ONE word. Like the utterance “Rosebud” in the movie Citizen Kane, all PDJT needs to whisper is “Solyndra.”
Three words would spell doom for the entire BS electrification push. DRILL BABY DRILL!
The subsidies for windmills, cars, solar panels and other nonsense should end immediately. Moreover, an honest assessment of environmental damage starting from mining materials to disposal at the end of product life should be done. An open market would have the initial costs built in, though not the disposal costs, and the disposal costs are very high for most of the novel green(ish) technology.
I have nothing against battery electric vehicles if they are not subsidized. I drove a friends Tesla Plaid a while ago and it is really an astoundingly quick car. My buddy knows that he will never “save” any money on it, no matter how far he drives it. He bought it because it runs mid 9 second quarter mile times.
Two types of people buy these EV’s. True believers who buy the junky little tuna cans you see at Whole Foods who wear masks when they’re outside by themselves, they think they’re making a difference, they’re not. Also, wealthy people that can afford the status symbol of the expensive models, you see them at the country club, these people also have a big old Caddy SUV in the garage for any real driving, they think they’re better than you, they’re not. The real bottom line for both these types is the fact that the replacement battery costs upwards of $20,000 before install. The cost of disposal is also huge. A fraud from start to finish.
And incandescents!
I love that picture of Lighthizer, Mnuchin, and President Trump. I wonder what Lighthizer and Mnuchin were smiling about.
And I love the pictures on https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2018/07/25/commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-discusses-principles-of-u-s-eu-trade-agreement/ of
Wilbur Ross – Secretary of Commerce
Steven Mnuchin – Secretary of the Treasury
Peter Navarro – National Trade Council Director
Robert E. Lighthizer – US Trade Representative and
Larry Kudlow – Director of the National Economic Council.
“Want lower costs of goods, and lower prices for consumers by leveraging the size of the USA market?…
…..Get Donald Trump Back in Office!” — Amen!
Wilburine, Mnuchin and the US trade delegation were the rock stars of the President Trump administration.
I so hope we could put that band back together.
Wilbur is a bit old. I’m sure Trump will find an equivalent younger one.
Yup
Possibly my favourite photograph of all time of President Trump with Lighthizer and Mnuchin.
Wish I’d been a fly with big ears on the wall there.
This picture of Lighthizer and Mnuchin clearly enjoying a moment with Our President is one of the all-time classics. And I’m getting a kick out of all the talking heads thinking that November is going to be “close”. This is all setting up to be the Marxist Dem/RINO wipeout that Sundance predicted for 2016, by the time The Great Awakening plan has been fully executed. Kind of a future proves past….
Absolutely no accountability in government creating corruption in action. The end result is happening right before your very eyes.
Going green has consequences. Those forced to pay higher prices on groceries because of this idiocy, have turned to growing their own, but they can’t have that, can they?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-allotment-increase/
This is epic bullshit created by several Green New Derp governments’ agencies to demonize home food production as a precursor to utterly banning it.
Not for anyone’s good, of course, but to force all to submit to fifteen minute cities in narrow human habitation corridors where people will subsist on the detritus that flows from industrial “vertical farming” factories and insect abattoirs.
The entire Green Agenda is Satanic, Communists committed to dethroning God and destroying His most precious Creation, His children.
One of the most necessary ingredients of our atmosphere for the successful growth of plants is CO2. In fact, if CO2 were to increase a bit, we would actually have more lush growth as has been documented in a study in India.
I think friend you are speaking of what JWoo has written about today happening in her home state of Indiana. They are destroying farm land large areas and destroying our food supply and flora & fauna
Yes, we will only have the food the government decides to ration us. I don’t have an alarm bell loud enough, friends.
Colkitto, loss of US farmland is something I’m very concerned about. Once land is covered with buildings or roads, it won’t produce any more food.
Do you have links to the writing about the loss of Indiana farmland? Thank you.
Bone meal and blood meal is something I like to have on hand, and in plentiful supply. Have you seen the price of blood meal? and that is if you can get! The reduction in meat market slaughter is making it very scarce indeed!
I can’t remember, what is the old cliche’ about a “sinking ship”?
Democrats flee!
Who would deal with America when the political Parties make deals and the other Party cancels them because the Ideology is so different. America was considered stable until the State Department was taken over by the Marxists.
What’s interesting in the Politico article is that Liz Warren comes out strongly in support of Tai, and Sherrod Brown is publicly critical (and even compares Biden’s track record unfavorably to Trump’s). Warren and Brown were in the same camp in 2016, both against TPP and opposed to Obama’s policy from the left. Would be interesting to know more about the inter-party dissension, and how this pair fell out on opposing sides. According to the article, a point of contention is digital trade. That’s one to watch too, not just green policies. International pacts on digital trade lay out how regulators can regulate data/information. Meaning this could be another place the war on information control (and privacy) is playing out.
Justin Trudeau was even more demanding. During talks for a TransPacific Partnership deal he demanded guarantees of climate targets, union encouragement, quotas for women and promotion of sodomy. He demanded these from Asians.
When they predictably told him in no uncertain terms to shove his woke BS up his ass he threw a teenage girl hissy fit and blew off the meeting to close the deal. When the Aussie PM took him aside to admonish his childish behaviour Trudeau asked him if he liked his novelty socks.
When Chrystia Freeland was negotiating a trade deal with the EU and they also told her to stick to business matters and she was seen bawling her eyes out over the rebuke like a teenage girl. These things are running Canada.
in their stupidity, they thought rational, sentient leaders would be willing to jump out of the boat into the deep blue Sea with them-how wrong they were. the end result is to destroy our economy and they’re still hell-bent on doing it.
E=mc2
This equation is proof that man-made climate change is BS.
Easy solution
I’m betting it’s next to impossible to accomplish unless somebody starts getting held accountable
(hint: not likely)
Please re-print Trump’s Economic Agenda 47. Thank you for your consistent dedication and discipline.
Excellent posting, Sundance! Thanks. The truth will always prevail if it is seen or heard.
call me shocked … ( sarc … )
If the worker driven trade deals are so bad no other counties want to do a trade deal with us, that is so opposite of the purpose of the Constitution, to fund the Federal Government, it must be scorned and mocked, or arrested.
As goes Biden so goes Obama and Big Mike. What do you expect from a senile fool, a poseur, and a tranny.