To understand the China ‘One-Belt / ‘One-World’ economic trade forum it becomes necessary to understand how structurally weak the Chinese economy was created.
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People often talk about the ‘strength’ of China’s economic model; and indeed within a specific part of their economy -manufacturing- they do have economic strength. However, the underlying critical architecture of the Chinese economic model is structurally flawed and President Trump with his current economic team understand the weakness better than all international adversaries.
Lets take a stroll and lightly discuss.
China is a central planning economy. Meaning it never was an outcropping of natural economic conditions. China was/is controlled as a communist style central-planning government; As such, it is important to reference the basic structural reality that China’s economy was created from the top down.
This construct of government creation is a key big picture distinction that sets the backdrop to understand how weak the economy really is.
All positions have some bearing on the average American; however, some confirmation votes are more directly tied to the well-being of ordinary people than others. This confirmation will directly and specifically make the lives of middle-class workers, and ordinary American people, improve.
Thank you to those who contacted their Senator and applied the pressure. There was a great deal of feedback received by the senate in the past 24 hours. There are those within the swamp lobbying community who are beginning to understand that WE KNOW far more than they ever thought we know. Change is a direct consequence of that reality.
In a strong showing of bi-partisan support for Trump’s ‘America First’ trade platform the nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, was confirmed by the Senate with a vote of 82-14. The U.S. Trade Representative is a critical position ahead of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
Three Republicans voted NO: ♦Cory Gardner (Colorado), ♦John McCain (Arizona), and ♦Ben Sasse (Nebraska).
For the past 30 years Lighthizer has been a trade lawyer representing American steel companies in their efforts to fight dumping of foreign-made steel below costs and unfair steel subsidies from foreign governments. He has pledged to strengthen enforcement of existing trade deals and to find new legal tools to combat unfair trade practices.
Lighthizer has criticized some Republicans for being too pro-free trade. He told a Senate panel this year that the U.S. should have an “America first trade policy.” “We can do better in negotiating our trade agreements and stronger in enforcing our trade laws,” he said.
The economic lobbyist community known as The Big Club is represented most visibly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Tom Donohue.
Via the Wall Street community, CoC President Donohue pours tens of millions of multinational corporate contributions into DC lobbying efforts to retain control over politicians and legislation that relates to U.S. trade and economic matters. [FYI Donohue’s Chamber of Commerce lobbying group were the primary architects of the now dispatched TPP trade deal; they actually wrote the U.S. part of the construct.]
Tom Donohue funds a large number of politicians in DC in an effort to control the outcomes of legislation and policies that could become adverse to his multinational interests. Two of those primary beneficiaries are John McCain and Ben Sasse.
As a consequence it doesn’t come as a surprise to see McCain and Sasse announce their intention to block the confirmation of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer:
REUTERS– Republican U.S. Senators John McCain and Ben Sasse said on Wednesday they would vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, because of his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“Unfortunately, your confirmation process has failed to reassure us that you understand the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) positive economic benefits to our respective States and the nation as a whole,” McCain and Sasse said in a letter to Lighthizer. (read more)
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and President Trump strongly support Lighthizer for U.S. Trade Rep. The institutional control agents within K-Street, aka the economic lobbying group, do not.
Behind the social justice interventionism of the Birkenstock wearing Brangelina Peacenik useful-idiot-crowd, there’s the group of multinational financial interests who play the strings on the idiots.
Multinational corporations and billionaire financiers use climate change as a tool toward furtherance of collected global wealth. Their strategy is quite simple, and has been played out for several cycles. Create an institutional trade instrument (housing financial bubble example), control it, drive the pricing to an apex and reap the financial rewards.
Their expressed holy grail for human control is a global tax on all people more commonly known as a “carbon-trading tax”. A planetary tax on personage. Various religious groups have a financial method to purchase entry to heaven called ‘indulgences’. Hence the comparison of Climate Change to a religion is exponentially accurate.
The “Carbon Trading” fundamental financial instrument is the foundational block of the financial interests behind modern climate change. The latest exhibition of a decades long series of international construct was the Paris Climate Change agreement.
REUTERS – Investors with more than $15 trillion of assets under management urged governments led by the United States to implement the Paris climate accord to fight climate change despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to pull out.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to be cowering to the demands of British Columbia Provincial Premier Christy Clark who asked for retaliatory trade action against Oregon and the Pacific Northwest after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced a tariff on Canadian soft-wood imports.
Yesterday (Friday) Prime Weasel Trudeau threatened to ban shipments of U.S. thermal coal from Pacific ports and suggesting sanctions against additional trade products from Oregon due to the support for the soft-wood tariff by Democrat Senator Ron Wyden.
ENERGY ECON […] Trudeau said Ottawa would study whether to stop U.S. firms from shipping thermal coal via the Pacific province of British Columbia. Provincial Premier Christy Clark asked for the ban in response to the U.S. tariffs.
Canada is also considering duties on exports from Oregon such as wine, flooring and plywood, said a source close to the matter, citing Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden’s prominent role in pressing for the lumber tariffs.
If you didn’t read the Part-V explainer of how we got to this point in congressional history stop and go read it. This stuff is all connected and cannot be absorbed without a thorough understanding of motives behind the advancing agenda-writers.
Make Sure You Watch The Embed Video (below) from Wilbur Ross.
The interim Continuing Resolution (CR) is fraught with demands of the “Big Club”. That is: Wall Street, their lobbyists, and those who have created the UniParty for over three decades. The “Big Club” is fighting back against the insurgent presidency of Donald Trump and is using the Republican wing of the UniParty to do it.
It is Republicans, not just Democrats, in congress who are putting the most toxic spending priorities within the $1+ trillion spending bill and forcing a spending bill onto President Trump’s desk which factilitates the needs of the lobbying class and undermines parts of the structural agenda of President Trump.
The outrage should be rightly focused on the UniParty in congress, and more specifically the Republicans therein, not President Trump.
What would the ankle-biters and antagonists (gnats) have President Trump do? Veto a bill constructed by bipartisan legislation in congress? Shut down government? That’s exactly the dynamic the “Big Club” has set up through their paid opposition represented by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
Earlier today President Trump and first lady Melania welcomed the President of Argentina Mauricio Macri and his wife Juliana Awada to the White House.
One of the key topics on the agenda for President Macri is trade with the U.S., specifically the Argentinian export of lemons into the U.S. Understandably California, and to a lesser extent Florida, citrus growers are opposed to large scale imports of competing crops.
Additionally, during the customary Oval Office photo-op President Trump remarks about the ongoing NAFTA trade issues, and the phone calls yesterday between Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and Mexico’s President Peña Nieto:
“If I’m unable to make a fair deal for the United States–meaning a fair deal for our workers and our companies, I will terminate NAFTA.”
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The U.S. media are considerably invested in framing NAFTA trade issues around their ever-present need to oppose the White House (Trump Derangement Syndrome); and many of the recent media narratives around NAFTA are entirely false.
During an AP interview last week President Trump first mentioned a possibility of complete withdrawal from the 25-year-old NAFTA agreement. Today several outlets are reporting on a draft executive action to do just that.
BACKGROUND: One of the problems with the NAFTA trade agreement (and most other trade deals) has been that no administration ever reevaluates them to measure their long-term impact since implementation. It has been almost 25 years since Bill Clinton signed NAFTA (’94) and only now in 2017 is the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross evaluating the current value and measuring the economic impact to the U.S. in current terms.
Having spent over 30 years deep in the weeds on the actuarial side of trade and economics, I can guarantee you there’s a generational need to completely reset all frames of reference when it comes to imports, exports, and U.S. trade principles in general.
It is no longer worthwhile even beginning a conversation around the arcane concept of “free trade”, especially when discussing commodities and agricultural trade. The “free market” was structurally disassembled years ago when multinational corporations began using the business end of agriculture to create investment and global profit via Wall Street.
The BIG AGRICULTURE legislative lobbying groups are funded -much like the U.S. CoC- with multinational corporations and multinational investment banks. Agricultural prices, formerly referenced on basic supply and demand principles have been bastardized through global purchases, and contracts therein, of U.S. farm products.
Simple question to understand the dynamic: “If there is such a U.S. glut of raw milk, then why has the 10-year price of milk skyrocketed”? Within the answer to that question you realize the product is not domestic. It is controlled by multinationals, exported under controlled contract, and the domestic price (you pay) driven by global trade not domestic production/consumption (supply and demand).
The inverse (import pricing) is also true. We’ve been getting screwed by the multinational interests of global trade for decades. This is NOT ‘free trade’. The BIG CLUB owns the process (inputs and outcomes) and manipulates the market in their interests, not yours. There simply is no “free market”.
[TRANSCRIPT] – 3:14 P.M. EDT – THE PRESIDENT: Busy day. They had a very busy day — had a good day. We’re doing well, very well. Things are turning around. I know they’re turning around for you folks, so I just want to welcome you very much to the White House — special place — America’s farmers and ranchers.
I especially want to congratulate Secretary — now I can say, Secretary Sonny Perdue, who was just sworn in as the Secretary of Agriculture — (applause) — sworn in by Justice Thomas. And it was a beautiful ceremony, and we’re going to celebrate a little bit later, and that’s great. We’re very happy. And you had a good vote too.
After a lengthy confirmation process -the result of Democrats choosing to politicize, obstruct and delay the Trump administration- the Senate voted yesterday (87-11) to confirm Sonny Perdue as Agriculture Secretary.
Sonny Perdue came by his knowledge of agriculture the old fashioned way: he was born into a farming family in Bonaire, Georgia. From childhood, and through his life in business and elected office, Perdue has experienced the industry from every possible perspective. Uniquely qualified as a former farmer, agribusinessman, veterinarian, Air Force veteran, state legislator, and governor of Georgia, he is the 31st United States Secretary of the Department of Agriculture
Secretary Perdue was sworn in earlier by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a fellow Georgian, and promptly went directly to the USDA to begin work. Here’s his introduction (skip to 4:41 for Perdue remarks beginning):
