If you’re the kind of person who relies on the likes of CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, NPR, and The New York Times you’re probably either too absorbed in marking down the days on your calendar until Donald Trump’s impeachment, cheering the fact that surveillance on a political campaign isn’t really spying, or starving your loved one of sex to protest the increasing threat to women’s reproductive rights (whatever that is) to recognize that this week was the most important week of Donald Trump’s presidency.
And that it had nothing to do with Russian “collusion”, obstruction of justice, or the 2020 political campaign.
Oh, that’s not to say that it wasn’t an important week in that regard – the almost daily revelations of how and when the kind of surveillance Comey talked began remains a drip, drip, drip that will in due time turn into a true, full-blown political scandal of epic proportions (I’m guessing right around the same time as the 2020 primary season kicks into full gear), the Democrats’ increasing hysteria over the use of subpoenas as a political weapon – something that has both wings of the Party’s political apparatus rightly concerned, and (if you’re ignoring the polls which mean nothing this far out) a growing unease within Democratic Party circles that gaffe-prone Joe Biden’s already old and tired-looking campaign is looking increasingly like Hillary II (or is it III?) were interesting enough in their own right, but hardly the stuff of true, lasting impact on the global political and socio-economic front.
No, I’m talking about what went down with the China trade negotiations this week. And it’s not as much important as it is cataclysmic in terms of our economic and political relationship with the Panda. Because, for the first time in American history, an American president has refused to kow-tow to China’s negotiating games and head fakes and not just walked away from a trade agreement, but do so by slapping a 25% tariff on various goods and services imported from China not currently subject to tarriff. Of course, this has all the usual globalists that serve as talking heads on the cable networks and their “China First, America Second”, cheap-labor-above-all-else compadres on Wall Street, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce talking economic Armageddon and wagging their fingers in disdain.
Me, I was in full agreement with Steve Bannon on this when he predicted the President and his savvy team of negotiators wouldn’t hesitate to walk away in the face of China back-tracking on positions that had been negotiated over the past year and a half:
“I happen to think that today [Monday] was the most important day of Donald Trump’s presidency,” Bannon told Dobbs. “He’s president of the United States because of the rejection of working-class people and middle-class people, about the managed decline of our country at the hands of people like Hillary Clinton. The Clinton global initiative, the whole Clinton apparatus. These globalists and elitists were very comfortable with the managed decline, particularly vis-a-vis the rise of China. And Donald Trump confronted that, particularly in the upper Midwest. This is the reason he won states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. People understand […] the factories went to China, the jobs went to China, and the opioids came in. So I think that Trump understands that tariffs are more than taxes. They’re more about self-empowerment of the working class.”
…What’s more, Bannon said, these moves by Trump aren’t aimed at the Chinese people, but at their authoritarian rulers, who use their power and influence to enrich themselves, their family and their friends, while the average Chinese citizen continues to struggle (and is forced to keep his mouth shut about political issues — or else).
In other words, American lobbyists and Wall Street investors — who are putting pressure on Trump — are actually helping an enemy of the American and of the Chinese people, namely the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s pretty obvious (at least to me) that, as Michael Pillsbury states in this Fox Business interview with Lou Dobbs, that China seriously underestimated both the President’s long-held and widely known, and his negotiating team’s grim determination, to once and for all recalibrate the economic relationship between China and the U.S. As Sundance writes at The Conservative Treehouse:
President Trump has begun a process for less dependence on foreign companies for cheap goods, (the cornerstone of a service economy) and a return to a more balanced U.S. larger economic model where the manufacturing and production base can be re-established and competitive based on American entrepreneurship and innovation.
No other economy in the world innovates like the U.S.A, President Trump sees this as a key advantage across all industry – including manufacturing.
The benefit of cheap overseas labor, which is considered a global market disadvantage for the U.S., is offset by utilizing innovation and energy independence.
The third highest variable cost of goods beyond raw materials first, labor second, is energy. President Trump unleashed the U.S. energy sector and slashed regulations; as a consequence the U.S. manufacturing price of any given product now allows for global trade competition even with higher U.S. wage prices.
In addition the U.S. has a key strategic advantage with raw manufacturing materials such as: iron ore, coal, steel, precious metals and vast mineral assets which are needed in most new modern era manufacturing. Trump proposed we stop selling these valuable national assets to countries we compete against – they belong to the American people, they should be used for the benefit of American citizens. Period.
…As the wage rate increases (it is), and as the economy expands (it is), the governmental dependency model is reshaped and simultaneously receipts to the U.S. treasury improve. More money into the U.S Treasury and less dependence on welfare programs have a combined exponential impact. You gain a dollar, and have no need to spend a dollar. That is how the SSI and safety net programs are saved under President Trump.
When you elevate your economic thinking you begin to see that all of the “entitlements” or expenditures become more affordable with an economy that is fully functional.
As the GDP of the U.S. expands, so too does our ability to meet the growing need of the retiring U.S. worker. We stop thinking about how to best divide a limited economic pie, and begin thinking about how many more economic pies we can create.
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out, but it’s obviously clear that President Trump’s commitment to the American worker and confidence in American ingenuity and being the charters of our own destiny is light years from Barack Obama’s self-defeating and self-depressing concept of America’s economic future. The same holds true with the Democrats’ embrace of European socialism as a way to level the playing field for all concerned. By walking away from China and letting them stew for a few weeks until they inevitably return to the negotiating table, Donald Trump is placing all his chips on unbridled American capitalism as a way to expand economic opportunity to everyone through jobs, increased wages, and an expanding economy that will inevitably fill the federal government’s coffers with increased revenues that can ultimately be used to pay down our national debt and save programs like Medicare and Social Security. It’s not going to happen overnight, obviously, but, compared to the direction we’ve been headed since Ronald Reagan was president, it’s well worth trying.
Donald Trump is placing his bets on the American people, American know-how, and capitalism as a force for lifting all boats on a rising tide of unbridled economic opportunity. Those who seek to get in his way for purely partisan political purposes (the four “Ps”!) do so at their own peril.
