Thursday, March 22, 2018

Brief observations...

---The identical front page photo of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on March 21 was one of Trump, sitting with the Saudi Crown Prince, holding up a poster board showing examples of how much Saudi Arabia has spent on U.S. made weaponry.  Is the message that the U.S. is for sale.

---The "fake news" that H.R. McMaster was on his way out was confirmed as true, as he was replaced as National Security Advisor by John Bolton.  Bolton is a strident right wing nationalist who served as an often unofficial roving global ambassadorial trouble maker in the Reagan and Bush administrations.  A combination of Trump and Bolton should be of enormous concern to all stable people.

---Trump continues with his incoherent trade policy as he announced large new tariffs on Chinese goods to be determined in 15 days.  Why plan ahead?  The media continues to mostly follow Trump's lead of not drawing a distinction between services, where the U.S. is strongest, and industrial and consumer goods which are sourced globally, with Asia being a major trading partner.

---So as not to address that distinction, the Trump nationalists are using "national security" as a crucial rationale for a trade war.  Upon signing today's order, Trump said that this was "the first of many more, many more."  Financial markets seemed to believe him.




2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A reminder of Trump vocabulary, recalling "on all sides, on all sides" after the Charlottesville debacle.

10:58 AM  
Blogger Bruce Coltin said...

I am happy to have discovered an intelligent blog post, addrssing the trade war issue. I am sure there will more to come on Trump and his and his impact on world order, so I will be back.

6:20 AM  

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