I have a friend who is a retired public school teacher. She is very likeable and in some areas an independent thinker. One day in conversation she brought up the terrible poverty and near-anarchy that prevails just on the other side of America’s southern border. It quickly became clear that she believed America was at fault, that America’s prosperity was somehow the cause of Mexico’s problems. When I asked her what the solution might be, she replied without hesitation that we should get rid of that border, and not stop there but get rid of all borders. Then, she said, people everywhere could live in peace.
If I could capture for you precisely how she said this, you would hear as I did John Lennon’s “Imagine” forming her thoughts:
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace…
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man.
The simplest explanation of what happened to the modern progressive Baby Boomers is that they found for themselves a new national anthem, one they like much better than that old and out-dated one that asked them to be brave if they expected to be free.
When John Kerry in a commencement speech told college graduates they will live in a borderless world, he made it clear his muddled Marxist thinking—like my friend’s—is of the Lennonist variety.
In conversations with my progressive friends, I find they see America as the problem. They place their hopes in the world beyond America’s borders. When Kerry said America needed France’s approval to conduct foreign policy, his assertion made perfect sense to Lennonists. When Bill Maher said if half the country wants Trump as president then the United Nations needs to intervene, he spoke for American Lennonists everywhere.
You have to admit that American Lennonism has a certain logic. If America is the problem, then getting rid of America’s borders is an important and even an essential step toward a better world. But if America is not the problem, if America deserves to live, if there are still many Americans who want America to live, then not so much. And if getting rid of America turned out to be a mistake, it would be a mistake impossible to undo.
If you doubt that Lennonism has a powerful hold on the thinking and the imaginations of many in America, please consider this: “Imagine” has become the more-or-less official anthem played in the United States on New Year’s Eve.
I prefer “The Star-Spangled Banner.” To me, nothing expresses America’s uniqueness better than the fact that, as it is traditionally performed, America’s national anthem ends with this question:
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
That question is actually a challenge. Our national anthem issues a challenge to every generation down to our own, reminding us of our responsibility to preserve the Founders’ gift.
I’ll ask you the same question: have we kept America the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Gov. Larry Hogan announced Friday he supports banning fracking, a surprise revelation that could make Maryland one of the first states to ban the controversial method of drilling for natural gas.
The Republican governor said passing legislation to prohibit fracking was "an important initiative to safeguard our environment.
"I urge members of the legislature on both sides of the aisle and in both houses to come together and finally put this issue to rest," Hogan said during a State House news conference.
Some Democratic lawmakers in the General Assembly and environmental advocates have pushed for years to ban fracking.
Supporters of the drilling say it would bring jobs that are needed to boost the economy in Western Maryland, where fracking could be used to extract underground natural gas from a type of shale. Opponents have countered that it could harm the environment and public health, threatening the region's tourism industry.
The House of Delegates approved a bill last week that would ban the practice and a companion bill is expected to move forward in the state Senate.
Environmentalists say Maryland would become the first state with natural gas that could be fracked from underground shale to pass a law banning the practice. New York, which also has shale gas, banned the practice by executive order. Vermont passed a law to ban fracking, but has no gas that could be fracked.
"This would be the most nationally significant environmental bill Maryland has ever passed," said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Thomas Meyer, a Maryland organizer for the national group Food and Water Watch, said Hogan's announcement should send a message to politicians in other states that banning fracking is a smart decision.
"It says to Republicans: This is the direction we need to be going in," Meyer said. "More importantly, it says to Democrats: You can't call yourself a progressive on climate issues if you're supporting fracking."
Hogan's announcement took fracking opponents by surprise. Advocates have been rallying for the fracking ban all session. About a dozen, including Tidwell, were arrested Thursday morning during a demonstration at the State House.
As environment and climate activists rejoiced in the unexpected boost to their cause, supporters of fracking expressed frustration.
Del. Wendell R. Beitzel, an outspoken opponent of the fracking ban, said in a Facebook post that he was disappointed by Hogan's announcement. Beitzel, a Garrett County Republican, did not respond to a request for comment.
"While campaigning for Governor, he implied to members of the Western Maryland Delegation he supports responsible natural gas development," Beitzel wrote of Hogan. "We were told that the 'war on Western Maryland was over.' It appears that the Governor has capitulated to the environmental community."
The oil and gas industry also panned the governor's announcement. Maryland Petroleum Institute director Drew Cobbs said Hogan is making a poor decision for political reasons.
"Maryland families and opportunities for job creation have lost out to the whims of a vocal minority — inconsistent with the governor's vision to create well-paying jobs in Maryland," Cobb said in a statement.
Sen. Bobby Zirkin, a sponsor of the fracking ban, joined Hogan at his announcement.
"There is simply no regulatory way to protect our citizens from the dangers of this technology," said Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat. "This is the right policy for the citizens of our state."
Zirkin said he's been lobbying the governor to ban fracking since approaching him at a Baltimore Ravens football game more than a year ago.
"I was working him over a Bud Light," Zirkin said. "And I've been working him ever since."
Not invited to the news conference was the ban's House sponsor, Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo.
"I'm happy to hear the governor has managed to see the light," the Montgomery County Democrat said. He said he was "surprised that nobody bothered to contact me."
A moratorium on fracking is due to expire later this year, and Hogan had proposed what he called "platinum" regulations to govern the practice. As recently as last week, Hogan's environment secretary, Ben Grumbles, touted those proposed regulations as "the most protective and comprehensive in the country."
Hogan said Friday that the regulations would have made it "virtually impossible" to engage in fracking, and he chided lawmakers for delaying their implementation.
When Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller suggested a long-term moratorium followed by a non-binding voter referendum, the governor said he decided to act. He said he "decided that we must take the next step, and move from virtually banning fracking to actually banning fracking."
Miller, a Calvert County Democrat, said he suggested a referendum to hear the opinions of residents in Garrett and Allegany counties, which have part of the Marcellus Shale formation where fracking is possible.
"I am not for fracking, never have been for fracking, never will be for fracking," Miller said.
"The advocates for fracking have claimed that the people of Western Maryland are for fracking, and I believed it was important to let those residents' opinions be heard," he said.
Hogan's support for the ban eliminates the need for fracking opponents to count votes in the Senate, where they were trying to get a veto-proof majority of senators to support the bill. Baltimore Sen. Joan Carter Conway, who chairs the Senate's environment committee, had previously said she wouldn't let the bill out of her committee unless there were 29 votes in the 47-member Senate — enough to override a veto.
But Conway said Friday she'd already made up her mind to allow the bill to advance to the full Senate.
"I have never said I was holding the bill, but that was the perception," she said.
Conway had sponsored a bill that would have set a long-term moratorium on fracking. She said she opposes the drilling practice.
"Do I think they should frack in Maryland? No, I don't," she said.
Hogan's announcement was welcome news for former delegate and gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur. The Democrat started pushing for a fracking ban in 2011 and continued even after she was no longer in office.
Mizeur spoke this month at an Annapolis rally for a ban. She was tipped off Friday that Hogan would make the announcement but said, "I didn't actually believe it until I saw it."
"I never doubted once that this day would arrive," Mizeur said. "I just didn't think we'd have Larry Hogan standing next to us — a change of heart on the most meaningful of issues."
It was a telling moment when China’s President Xi Jinping rose on January 16, 2017, to proclaim himself the new champion of free trade in the great conference hall of Davos, Switzerland, the citadel of globalization. This proclamation came just four days before the inauguration of the newly elected U.S. president, who has traditionally served as the leader of the globalization movement.
The symbolism was rich. As a result of comments by President Donald Trump that his new administration might take a tougher line on trade policy than all U.S. administrations since World War II, the Davos crowd was uneasy. The elite gathering of global billionaires, celebrities, scholars, bankers, heavyweight pundits, CEOs, and upwardly mobile government officials cheered as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party promised to take over from an apparently faltering United States and lead each Davos Man into the glorious nirvana of ultimate globalization. Xi’s remarks reassured them that with China, at least, it would be business as usual and that their lifestyles would be safe.
Globalization with Chinese Characteristics?
Yet, for the Americans who had elected Trump, and even for those who had voted against him but who had supported Senator Bernie Sanders, this business as usual was precisely the problem. And no leader symbolized this better than Xi. Here was the newly anointed “core leader” of the Chinese Communist Party appointing himself captain of the globalization team. But what is his approach to globalization?
Xi’s approach starts with a state-controlled and censored Internet. It means banning companies that offer freedom of information, like Google and Facebook, from the Chinese market. It means strict controls on foreign investment in China while Chinese corporations go on shopping sprees in the rest of the world. It means that, in order to enter the Chinese market, foreign companies are required to invest in China, to export from China, and to transfer technology to China. It means that the exchange rate of the Chinese yuan is managed by the government, not freely determined by the currency markets like the euro and the U.S. dollar. It means investment subsidies for a broad range of key Chinese manufacturers and exporters. It means warnings of possible problems for Samsung’s business in China if the South Korean government obtains an American anti-missile defense system. In short, it means nationalistic mercantilism. This is what the masters of the universe in Davos were actually embracing.
But it is precisely this kind of mercantilism that the post–World War II founders of the global trading system had sought to avoid. It is the ongoing lack of success in the battle against mercantilism that has created the constant gap between the promises and the results produced by generations of American trade negotiators. And it was to respond to this gap that American voters just elected Donald Trump to the presidency.
Although none of these points were included in any of the pundits’ dispatches from Davos, historians looking back from the future might well identify this moment—when the world elite embraced Chinese-style mercantilism—as the moment when the era of the liberal free trade movement finally ended.
From Bretton Woods to the Japanese Miracle
The free trade movement was, of course, rooted in the pre–World War II turmoil of stock market crashes, wartime debt hangovers, depression, mercantilist currency devaluations, and tariff increases. The establishment of a system to prevent a replay of this 1930s mercantilism began in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. To avert competitive currency devaluations, a system of fixed exchange rates was established with all other currencies valued to the dollar at a set rate and with the dollar valued at a set rate to gold. To avert financial crises, capital markets were essentially closed. And to avert protectionism, a doctrine of free trade was established along with a system for negotiation of continual reductions in tariffs and trade barriers and for the adjudication of disputes.
The goal of Bretton Woods was for the trade system’s members to remain in rough balance. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created to provide emergency financing and rescue plans for countries that might find themselves with large trade deficits and inadequate reserves of dollars and gold. At the time, the British representative to the discussions, John Maynard Keynes, argued forcefully that in addition to loans for deficit countries, the IMF should also be empowered to impose tariffs on the exports of countries with large, chronic trade surpluses. As the country with the then-largest surpluses, the United States was not receptive to this proposal, and it was not formally adopted. But it was expected that the member countries of the trading system would maintain roughly balanced trade accounts. Otherwise, trade-related unemployment might become a problem.
It all worked splendidly for about twenty years, during which time the United States enjoyed its greatest ever economic boom. This period also encompassed the German and Japanese economic miracles. By the late 1960s, however, the system was seriously out of balance. The exchange rates fixed in 1948 had not been changed despite the dramatic shifts in productivity that had occurred in many countries and especially in Germany and Japan as they recovered from the war. The United States began to have balance-of-payments problems with some countries and was continually shipping gold from Fort Knox to the likes of the United Kingdom and France. Then, in 1971, America accumulated its first trade deficit since 1888, in the amount of $2 billion. In 1972, with gold flowing out of the country like a big yellow river, President Nixon ended the fixed exchange-rate system by removing the dollar peg to gold and allowing its value to be determined entirely by market forces in the global currency exchanges. That resulted in a revaluation of the German mark and the Japanese yen along with other currencies and, for a while, provided relief to U.S. producers and Fort Knox. But by 1980, the U.S. trade deficit was back, and it was not $2 billion. It was $20 billion. Of course, a lot of things had been happening in the world of trade, including the introduction of roll-on-roll-off containerized shipping, the advent of jet travel, and the development of faster communications. In addition, major trading countries like Japan had adopted increasingly mercantilist policies.
Free trade theory stipulates that countries should concentrate on producing and exporting what they did best while importing the rest. But Japan and some others chose not to accept that reasoning. As Naohiro Amaya, an architect of the Japanese economic “miracle,” once explained to me, “we did the opposite of what the Americans told us.” He pointed out that the key elements of the miracle model included the protection of domestic markets, export-led growth, government-guided investment in industries with economies of scale (steel, ship-building, autos, semiconductors, etc.), a managed currency undervalued versus the dollar, and technology transfer as a condition of foreign investment in the domestic market.
This was not Adam Smith’s famous “unseen hand,” nor was it free trade as imagined by Anglo-American economists, such as David Ricardo. It was mercantilist “catch up” industrial policy, and it worked so well that it was quickly imitated by Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and most other developing countries, as well as many developed countries, in various ways (e.g., Germany, Switzerland). The combination of these strategic trade policies plus growing international flows of finance and technology and the impact of international economies of scale negated some of the fundamental assumptions of the free trade system. What a country did best was not necessarily predetermined by resource availability. It could be changed for the better by clever policies.
This is what Naohiro Amaya meant when he spoke of rejecting American advice on free trade. He was not in the business of “unseen hands.” He was in the business of picking winners. It was by the government’s picking and strong backing of winners that South Korea (one of the world’s poorest countries in 1960 with no natural resources, no capital, and virtually no skilled labor) came to be a major player in the steel, auto, and semiconductor industries.
Theory and Practice in American Trade Policy
But the notion of government picking winners and losers with trade policy was contrary to the American suspicion of government intervention as well as to powerful U.S. geopolitical interests, not to mention established academic orthodoxy on free trade. When the U.S. trade deficit hit $50 billion in the mid-1980s, Treasury Secretary James Baker eventually concluded another agreement to revalue the Deutschmark and the yen in 1985. That again eased the pressure of the trade imbalances, but the American economic and foreign policy elite firmly maintained the orthodoxy that more and better free trade agreements were chiefly what was needed to ensure equitable trade. They continued to insist that trading partners were adhering to American assumptions and values regarding how international markets should work.
During succeeding administrations, free trade advocates pushed through a string of trade deals—including the Uruguay Round (1986–1994), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, the United States-Korea free trade agreement (KORUS FTA) in 2007, and, most recently, the proposed TPP. Not surprisingly, these deals resulted in a steady increase of the annual U.S. trade deficit from $20 billion in 1980 to approximately $500 billion today. Meanwhile, the offshoring of U.S. production continued—not only in labor-intensive industries but also in the capital- and technology-intensive industries in which America is supposed to be competitive. During that time, the gap widened significantly between the top one percent of earners and the rest.
However, as the elite persisted in its fixation with orthodox, Anglo-American free trade doctrine, the public and their politicians increasingly developed doubts. For instance, Congress voted 395-7 in support of the Tokyo Round free trade deal of 1979 and 366-40 for the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1988. By 1993, Bill Clinton was able to get NAFTA through the House by a margin of only 234-200 and was unable to obtain new approval for negotiating more trade deals. President George W. Bush was able to get the Central American Free Trade Agreement through the House by only two votes in 2005.
The difference between what trade proponents advertised and what actually occurred had become impossible for voters to ignore. Advocates of globalization repeatedly promised that trade would be win-win, that more and freer trade (and investment) would produce more jobs and rising wages even as it delivered lower consumer prices. Although they admitted that some workers might be displaced or disadvantaged, they invariably argued that there would be more winners than losers and that the winners would compensate the losers. In fact, however, as the U.S. trade deficit climbed inexorably, the gap between the top one percent of income earners and the rest also grew considerably. Consumer prices were kept low, but so also were the wages of most earners.
The final nail in the coffin of the conventional free trade doctrine’s credibility was the admission of China to the WTO. The Clinton administration argued that it would essentially be a unilateral opening by China, which would have to reduce its high trade barriers, while America would simply keep its low tariffs in place. Analysts predicted that the 2001 U.S. trade deficit of $83 billion with China would drop dramatically in the wake of the deal and that millions of good, new U.S. jobs would be the result. What occurred was quite the opposite. By 2015, the deficit had risen to $370 billion and millions of jobs had been lost while U.S. income inequality continued to rise.
Symbolizing the chasm between the promises and results of globalization is the adoption of Xi Jinping as the champion of Davos Man. President Xi and China have never been playing by the Anglo-American rules or assumptions. This is also true of many of the world’s leading and most rapidly growing economies such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Sweden. The failure of America’s elite to learn from experience and its obstinate adherence to a flawed set of theories contributed to the strong campaign of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination and the election of President Trump.
Achieving Balanced Trade
The overall objective of a new American trade and globalization policy should be to achieve roughly balanced trade over the long term while maintaining a strong, domestically based wealth-producing capacity. Such an approach would mean fully utilizing American human and capital resources, thus reducing or eliminating the inefficiencies resulting from today’s high rate of underemployment. U.S.-based producers, as a result, would enjoy higher profits which, in turn, would stimulate greater investment, R&D, and skills training. By eliminating the chronic trade deficit, balanced trade would lead to increased economic growth as domestic production supplied not only more of domestic demand but was also bolstered by growth in newly competitive exports. America would be able to stop borrowing abroad to pay for what it could produce domestically at competitive prices if exchange rates were properly established. Balanced trade would also mean more revenue for the U.S. government, even under a reduced tax rate regime, lower expenditures on both corporate and individual welfare, and smaller budget deficits. Moreover, research from former World Bank economist John Hansen indicates that balanced trade results in more equal patterns of domestic income distribution. Thus, fewer Americans would feel as if they are being left out of the American dream.
The most important step toward establishing balance must be to establish an exchange rate system that fairly and continually reflects roughly the true value of the range of global currencies. To this end, the U.S. should reverse the Commerce Department’s policy of not applying countervailing duty remedies to currency subsidies. At the moment, the Petersen Institute’s C. Fred Bergsten estimates that a 25% tariff is levied on foreign imports of all American goods and services while a similar amount of subsidy is provided for all exports to America by the chronic overvaluation of the dollar. Not only would adjustment of this overvaluation contribute greatly toward achieving balanced trade, but it would also simplify negotiation of other elements of trade. Rules of origin, tariff rate adjustment, and rules for judging whether dumping is occurring would all be simpler to negotiate and of less importance if exchange rates were properly set and adjusted. Or consider interest rates: the Fed has been reluctant to raise rates, in part, due to fear that doing so could strengthen the dollar, increase the U.S. trade deficit, and thereby cause a slower recovery. The creators of the postwar global economic system understood that before they could even speak of trade, they had to establish a sensible currency system that would tend to keep trade roughly balanced.
In view of the failure of that system and the subsequent floating rate system, a new one must be developed. For the time being, the dollar may remain the principal global reserve currency, but U.S. trade must also remain in rough, long-term balance. In order to achieve such a balance, costs must be imposed on countries that accumulate chronic trade surpluses, as John Maynard Keynes recommended back in 1948. One efficient way of doing this would be to adopt a currency corrective such as the Market Access Charge (MAC) system, as Hansen has argued. This system can be thought of as a kind of “peak load pricing” mechanism similar to those used by electricity utilities, airlines, rental car companies, and hotel operators. At specified points, a charge would be imposed on capital investment entering the United States. For example, suppose the U.S. trade deficit exceeded one percent of GDP over the preceding twelve months. That would trigger automatic imposition of a MAC of, say, 50 basis points on the value of incoming foreign capital. The rate might increase if the deficit became larger or persisted for another six months. Of course, the rate would decline as the trade deficit declined so that it would again be zero once the trade deficit fell below one percent of GDP. The system would essentially be automatic and would be administered by the Fed.
A set rate for all capital inflows would discourage short-term speculation. But because such investment comes only once, stays put, and yields higher returns than speculative flows, it would impose only a minuscule burden on direct foreign investment. The charge would be collected electronically and automatically by the computer systems already existing in the banks that handle most cross border U.S. financial transactions. The funds would be transferred to the U.S. Treasury where they would be deposited into an American International Competitiveness Account (AICA) that would be dedicated to investment in R&D, the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, worker training, adjustment assistance programs. Such funds could also be used for infrastructure development, to offset costs associated with the enforcement of trade agreements, and to offset any increased costs of borrowing linked to MAC charges on the purchase of government debt obligations.
Because the U.S. trade deficit is a well-established and easily available objective statistic that directly reflects the misalignment of the dollar, it points to an easier path for identifying foreign currency manipulation. Currently, the designation of a foreign country as a currency manipulator depends on the difference between the market exchange rate and the “fundamental equilibrium exchange rate.” Under the MAC system, there would be no pejorative element in assigning the “manipulator” label, and thus there would be no need to consider a particular country’s strategic importance to the United States in taking action to balance trade. Furthermore, the MAC would be completely in accord with existing IMF and WTO rules and would act to reduce the number and intensity of anti-dumping and other trade disputes being adjudicated by that body.
The Offshoring Dilemma
The second major problem for the United States in the current global system is that of American foreign investment and the so-called offshoring of production and jobs. Often, countries with strategic economic policies use investment incentives as a way of causing the transfer of production from other countries to themselves, even when the original countries were perfectly internationally competitive. Destination countries may not have lower actual operating costs, but they may waive taxes for ten or twenty years, or provide free land for production and office facilities, provide utilities at a reduced rate, provide capital grants, and so forth. State benefits such as these have nothing to do with so-called comparative advantage and everything to do with indirectly subsidizing production in order to shift the location of comparative advantage to the sponsoring country. Although there is nothing illegal about this under WTO and IMF rules, it is at odds with the whole notion of competitive markets.
The United States is half in and half out of this game. It does not play at the federal level, but the individual states do play. Washington does not offer special benefits to, say, BMW, in order to persuade it to locate an auto assembly plant in the United States. But the state of Alabama or South Carolina may do so. The difference between these local benefits and an offer of investment benefits by another country like Ireland, Singapore, or France is that U.S. states simply do not have the resources or authority to make the kind of big offers that a national government can. For instance, Alabama cannot offer to suspend federal corporate income taxes nor does it have the resources to make the same kind of capital grants as a nation state. The United States, consequently, tends not to do as well in the game of attracting foreign direct investment and transfer of production as some other countries. Over time, this has the effect of creating a structural trade deficit for America and erasing what should be its natural centers of training and production.
On top of this, U.S. corporate tax rates are the world’s highest, and the United States is one of only two countries in the world that taxes the overseas earnings of its domestically incorporated companies. Thus GM pays U.S. taxes on its earnings in Germany, but BMW does not pay German taxes on its earnings in the United States. As a result, the big accounting firms make a bundle by dreaming up schemes with names like the “double Irish” and “Singapore Sling” to enable global U.S. corporations to hoard earnings in tax shelters abroad rather than investing in productive activity in America.
There are actually rather straightforward solutions to these problems. One is to stop taxing the foreign earnings of U.S. corporations, and the other is to reduce U.S. effective corporate tax rates from the current 39 percent to somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. This may look like a big tax cut for the global corporations, but as a practical matter, it would actually increase tax revenue by negating all the tax avoidance schemes that now keep actual (as opposed to potential) corporate tax revenue at very low levels. A move by the U.S. in this direction would put enormous pressure on virtually all other countries to adopt similar rates. Washington should, therefore, use this kind of a tax law shift to negotiate a global agreement on corporate tax rates under the WTO.
The second solution is for Washington to establish a war chest with which to respond in kind to the investment incentive offers of other countries. There is precedent for this. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States countered foreign export subsidies by creating a fund and striking back in kind. Simultaneously, Washington led an initiative for a global agreement limiting export subsidies that eventually was adopted as part of the creation of the WTO. Exactly the same kind of effort is now called for to solve the problem of investment incentives.
A third issue of this kind is that of investment driven by conditional market access. Some countries effectively pressure global corporations to transfer technology and production to them as a condition of market access. Of course, this is not a matter of law because any such law would be illegal under WTO rules, but it is a matter of practical and political reality. Washington should closely monitor investment in such jurisdictions and apply counterpressure when conditional market access measures are detected. Such counterpressure could include the withholding of certain export licensing permits on high technology relating to national security, or quid pro quo measures imposed on the corporations of the country in question.
Another major tax issue is that of value-added taxes (VAT). Although the United States does not have a VAT, almost all of its trading partners do. A VAT works by imposing a tax on the value added to a product or service at each step of production. Typically, it amounts to about 20 percent of the end value of the product. In effect, it is a kind of sales tax that is generally rebated to the producer on exports and imposed on imports. Instead of a VAT, the United States imposes an effective tax of about 39 percent of corporate income on American companies. Under WTO rules, this kind of a tax cannot be rebated on exports or imposed on imports. While other countries also have corporate income taxes, the rates are usually much lower than those of the United States. Thus, in practice, the VAT imposed by foreign countries tends to function as a kind of tariff on imports from the U.S. while their VAT rebates function as a subsidy for exports. For years, Washington has tried to persuade its trading partners to accept various remedies, but all to no avail. Since it cannot beat its trading partners in this arena, Washington should join them. The United States should adopt its own VAT system. Not only would this be a major step toward balancing U.S. trade and creating increased investment and jobs in America, it would also raise domestic revenue and be a major step toward balancing the federal budget.
The U.S. might also consider unbinding specified import tariffs. Immediately raising any tariff could give rise to outcries of “trade war,” counter-threats, and eventually legal retaliation. By contrast, simply unbinding tariffs could open the door to a series of renegotiations of multilateral, bilateral, and regional agreements without any immediate downside. In this way, the U.S. could redress specific grievances (such as Canadian dairy protectionism, back-door imports of third country beef cattle, and inadequate protection of intellectual property), raise existing legal standards (e.g., on labor, health and environmental standards, industrial subsidies, and the functioning of state-owned enterprises), and, for the first time, achieve effective, enforceable restrictions on issues such as currency misalignment.
Another part of this trade and globalization reform package would be a program to deal actively with the excess capacity and dumping that inevitably arise from the industrial and export led growth policies of key U.S. trading partners. The U.S. secretary of commerce should initiate investigations under Section 232, the national security clause of the trade law, to determine when U.S. industries are being damaged by global excess capacity and should impose charges to halt such activity. At the same time, the secretary should be actively negotiating with the countries having such policies to restrain new investment in industries already suffering from gross excess capacity—such as the steel industry, in which China alone has enough capacity to supply most of the world’s needs. In extreme situations, the U.S. could declare an emergency under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. This approach would involve setting targets for a reduction in the U.S. current account deficit (perhaps on a semiannual basis) and authorizing the application of import tariffs in the event that the targets are not met.
Finally, there is the issue of foreign investment in the United States. In principle, investment is a good thing that creates jobs, rising productivity, and technological advance. But investment can also be predatory. It can be used by state-owned or guided enterprises to strip out technology, transfer production, and shift so called comparative advantage. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States should carefully monitor foreign investment from countries or corporations with significant industrial policies and state influence over investment to prevent any such predatory kinds of investment.
Together, these measures would dramatically change the course of America and of the world. They would greatly increase the growth, productivity, and dynamism of the U.S. economy. They would also end the dependence of America on continued borrowing from China, Japan, and other countries. In short, the United States would become richer, more secure, and more independent.
March 2017 is an uncomfortable time to be a European. Almost wherever you look, traditional certainties are unraveling in the face of a perfect storm of crises.
This week Britain will trigger Article 50, firing the starting gun on its departure from the European Union. A second referendum on Scottish independence will likely follow, with speculation growing that Northern Ireland might now be more open to leaving the UK and joining with the Irish Republic.
In Holland, right-winger Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party may get the largest share of the vote in the general election, even though the collaboration of more mainstream Dutch parties will likely keep Wilders out of power. In France, Marine Le Pen and her National Front will almost certainly finish second in the first round of presidential elections this spring, although centrist Emmanuel Macron looks set to beat her in the second round.
Further east and north in Europe, worries about an increasingly assertive Russia still dominate. Sweden this month announced it is reintroducing conscription – abolished in 2010 – to bolster its military against the perceived threat from Moscow. Finland – which has maintained it throughout – is conducting military exercises aimed at pushing back against hybrid warfare techniques. In the Baltic states, NATO is in the midst of its largest European deployment since the Cold War.
Nor has the crisis for the European single currency gone away – indeed, having struggled along ever since the financial crisis of 2008, it may be entering a new and volatile stage. The next Italian election – perhaps as soon as June – could well hand the balance of power to political parties hostile to remaining in the currency bloc, which many Italians blame for years of slow growth and rising unemployment.
Not everything is collapsing quite as fast as naysayers might suggest. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party has certainly grown fast, particularly in parts of the deeply frustrated East. But it still seems unlikely to grab genuine political power in the German federal election in September. The latest polls predict it winning barely 11 percent of the vote, compared to 34 percent for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and 32 percent for her rival Social Democrats and its challenger for the chancellorship, Martin Schulz.
It’s a reminder of just how much Europe’s hard right is struggling. Europe's left remains in disarray – witness the travails of Britain’s Labour Party, or the chaos around scandal-hit French socialist presidential challenger François Fillon. Still, only two European countries – Hungary and Poland – have governments that could be described as seriously right-wing. And even they have often struggled to win battles many thought would be easy. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called a referendum on banning further migrants from outside Europe in October last year, he failed to get a high enough turnout to make the results binding.
Europe may not be unraveling, but it does seem in a state of semi-permanent crisis. For almost a decade, European “crisis summits” – in which leaders convene over a weekend to talk over issues such as the single currency or EU reform – have been the norm, and few have produced particularly incisive results.
Much seems a matter of leadership. At both a national and regional level, Europe’s leaders appear to be suffering a crisis of confidence, popularity and – at worst – political legitimacy.
Europe’s state of uncertainty is something Russian President Vladimir Putin has been more than happy to exploit. There are plenty within the national security establishments of both Europe and the United States who believe Russia’s intervention in Syria was partly designed to ramp up the refugee crisis, straining Europe’s politics to its limits. At the very least, Russian-backed media outlets have been happy to fan the flames of instability and extremism, sometimes making up stories, sometimes merely exaggerating them and exacerbating already growing tensions.
Events in the United States have arguably added to that uncertainty. In an interview with Reuters last month, President Donald Trump surprised some Europe watchers by expressing his support for the European Union and its institutions. That’s a view shared by much of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, if only because they fear the consequences if the EU unravels. Some of those around Trump, however – particularly the ideologues such as chief strategist Steve Bannon – view the EU as anathema to their worldview, and would love to see it fail.
The rest of the world isn’t helping, either. The growing row between the Turkish and Dutch governments over a canceled Turkish political rally in Rotterdam – which saw Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan compare the Dutch to Nazis – is seen to have only strengthened support for Wilders. Terror attacks in Brussels, Nice, Berlin and elsewhere – or even simply reports of suspected potential attacks such as one in Germany this week – fuel a sense of division wildly out of proportion to the threat.
The real question is whether that narrative becomes entirely self-fulfilling. Right now, Europe’s institutions have the distinct smell of collapse around them, but their resilience – so far at least – remains striking.
The various European projects now under pressure – the EU, NATO, the single currency, even the basic political institutions and establishments that administer each country – are imperfect. But they have also delivered some remarkable results, not least keeping the peace on the continent for more than six decades and – broadly, at least – delivering effective welfare and rights to their people.
European liberal democracy is often hypocritical, and sometimes ineffective. But by and large, the citizens of EU countries have spent recent decades protected from some very bad things, in particular excesses of state power, something not true of Putin’s Russia – let alone the fascist regimes of the thirties or Soviet-dominated governments that ruled Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War.
Europe is certainly becoming a less friendly continent, particularly for those who are different – as refugees now held in increasingly horrific conditions in the EU border states such as Serbia have noticed. So have migrant communities across the EU.
It’s hard to say where things go from here. While the institutions of European integration offer the best hope, countries can hardly be blamed for taking matters into their own hands when it comes to defending themselves. An article in the Economist last week asked whether Germany might be willing to break one of its last and greatest taboos, and launch its own nuclear weapons program to protect itself against an ever more uncertain future.
Somehow, Europe has to convince itself things are not quite as bad as they look and find some optimistic route forward. Otherwise they might get worse than anyone is willing to contemplate.
Earlier this week, when we discussed Peter Navarro's jarring op-ed in the WSJ in which he alleged that the persistent US trade deficit "would put US national security in jeopardy", we said that "a better question than what is Navarro's purpose by writing it, is why he is writing it, and does his use of a public forum like the WSJ mean that there is friction between him and Trump camp, especially since in recent weeks it appears that a core pillar of Trump's trade policies, namely the border adjustability, appear to no longer be on the docket of actionable items."
As it turns out, that was precisely the correct question, because as the FT reports, "a civil war has broken out within the White House over trade, leading to what one official called "a fiery meeting" in the Oval Office pitting economic nationalists close to Donald Trump against pro-trade moderates from Wall Street."
More notably, the person at the center of this "civil war" is none other than Navarro, who as we expected is now said to be losing influence, and as a result he resorted to using the WSJ as a means to appeal directly to the general public. It may have been a prudent gamble: the WSJ op-ed may have helped Navarro salvage some of his credibility with Trump, according to the FT:
The officials and people dealing with the White House said Mr Navarro appeared to be losing influence in recent weeks. But during the recent Oval Office fight, Mr Trump appeared to side with the economic nationalists, one official said.
Facing off the "hardline group" of Navarro, and other "nationalists" such as Steve Bannon, is a a "faction" led by former Goldman COO Gary Cohn, a career globalist, who leads Mr Trump’s National Economic Council.
But what is just as important, is that if the FT is right, then allegations that Trump has "sold out" to his Goldman advisors may be premature: in fact, if anything, Trump appears to be playing off one camp, the "nationalists", against its polar opposite, the "Goldman globalists":
The battle over trade is emblematic of a broader fight on economic policy within the Trump’s administration. It comes ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Ms Merkel, the German chancellor, and amid preparations for a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Germany next week at which allies’ concerns over protectionism are likely to be high on the agenda.
While the White House was non-committal, providing the FT with the following brief statement:
“Gary Cohn and Peter Navarro are both valued members of the president’s economic team. They are working together to enact the president's economic agenda, protect American workers and grow American businesses.”
... the "globalists" led by Cohn and others "have seized on Mr Navarro’s public comments — and widespread criticism by economists of his stand on trade deficits and other matters — to try and sideline him."
That has led to discussions over moving Mr Navarro and the new National Trade Council he leads out of the White House and to the Commerce Department, headed by another Wall Street veteran, Wilbur Ross.
And, if the FT is correct, it appears that the Goldman-led faction is winning:
Cohn has also been featuring more prominently in discussions over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of Mr Trump’s top trade priorities. After a meeting with Mr Cohn and other White House officials on Thursday, Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, said the goal was to wrap up talks quickly and by the end of this year. That contradicted Mr Ross, who has called for deeper and potentially longer talks that could drag well into next year.
Cohn's sidelining of Navarro has only picked up recently, and in an attempt to alienate him from Trump, he has become "an increasingly isolated figure in the administration. He has been operating with a very small staff out of an office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House while Mr Cohn, who has been adding staff to his NEC base inside the president’s residence itself."
Meanwhile, Cohn has been beefing up his staffing ranks with more, like-minded "globalist" supporters, such as Andrew Quinn, a former trade official who served as a senior negotiator during the Obama administration’s push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other countries. In other words, someone who is desperate for much more, not less, global trade alliances. The White House last month announced Mr Quinn would serve on the NEC as a “special assistant to the president” for international trade. Quinn's appointment led to an outburst from Breitbart, which labelled the career official an “enemy within” the Trump administration earlier this month.
The bottom line, however, is that the fate of Trump's trade policies may rest in the fate of Navarro, and to a lesser extent Bannon: the two are the last bastion to push for Trump's initial protectionist policies; should they fade, it will be the policies of "Goldman" that end up being enacted. As the FT further notes, "Mr Navarro’s apparent sidelining have been helped ease some foreign officials’ concerns about the prospects of the Trump administration acting on campaign threats to raise tariffs and take other aggressive steps that could lead to a trade war."
“The situation is less worrying than it was two months ago because [Mr] Navarro seems to be more and more marginalised,” said one European official. “His influence seems to be diminishing quickly.”
And while Navarro's ultimate fate remains unclear, a new, and more interesting "civl war" may emerge should he lose all influence: American trade unions vs "Goldman Sachs."
Thea Lee, a top trade official at the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest union, and a member of the president’s recently-appointed manufacturing council, said Mr Trump appeared to be bending to the growing influence of the administration’s Wall Street veterans and walking away from his campaign promise for a fresh approach to trade.
“At the moment it appears that the Wall Street wing of the Trump administration is winning this battle and the Wall Street wing is in favour of the status quo in terms of US trade policy,” Ms Lee said.
In retrospect, those who said Trump will ultimately do Wall Street's bidding, may have been correct all along.
Comrades pick your arms
The long arm of the lawn is indeed in charge
I won't talk to nice people if they look rich
I know it's not on mate, I'm such a fuckin bitch
Surfing comments
Lookin' at the likes
Whilst the coppers chase bandits through the top valley skies
To disagree on social networking sites
Is to kill the counter-culture
The overturn has died
We pander to the camera
And we want to be observed
We dont get what we ask for
We get what we deserve
Stale flags hang on my clothes like indie band badges
As I remember last night ignoring people I don't like
Trying to buy a pint
And what does it matter
What if I rot inside a care home
With eight of the bastards
Immobile with crap banter
Oh look there's Angry J - wah heeeey!
Give us a tinkle on the rattling joanna (JOANNA IS COCKNEY SLANG FOR PIANO.), mate
Under the plastic and NCT
Of grained handmarks devour me
Under the general weight of it all
Exist impossible visions of you
It's one of them innate
The violent exit
Let's fuckin' bin it
Ryvita existence
A pointless opposition to the fat
Of pointless State resistance
And the State is no longer your voice
The mechanics hijacked by the lies
In false choice of a false fuckin' choice
Tied up in death
I hate the terror
The horrible fear
Whilst life knifes you as it screams:
"You got fuck all left!"
Under the plastic and NCT
Of grained handmarks devour me
Under the general weight of it all
Exist impossible visions of you
People might be in groups willingly
Let 'em get on with it
You can't expect people to listen to your fucking
Mouth just because you don't believe in it
Thousands of Saturday lager bellies punching the air
Denouncing the value of somebody else's flag
Whilst viciously believing in theirs
Fucking useless this well-trodden street
Vague notions about the so-called elite
And that moulds spit Trent Bridge chaos
It's not really is it?
Cardboard heavies
Drones to the delusions of a never-never land
Where the cross rings out the orders
Don't let the mechanics of beer
Trick you into thinking you are some kind of warrior
Eating barbwire on the wave of violent disorder
Three words:
Cage, Wheel, Hamster
'ere, here's a bit of cheese
- nibble the bastard!
Under the plastic and NCT
Of grained handmarks devour me
Under the general weight of it all
Exist impossible visions of love
Google and Facebook will be working with the mainstream media to tell voters “what and who to trust”, including “memes, comment threads and news sites”, in the lead up to the French elections.
The two Tech giants, who have been accused of a “liberal bias”, will set up the “coalition news verification project” with 37 French and international media outlets including the BBC, AFP (Agence France-Presse), and BuzzFeed News.
On an official blog post, Google claimed “CrowdTangle” had been set up “with a goal of helping the French electorate make sense of what and who to trust in their social media feeds, web searches and general online news consumption in the coming months…”
The first round of the French presidential election is due to be held in April, and polls suggest right wing populist Marine Le Pen could come out on top.
Following the January election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president – another right wing populist challenging the establishment – many liberal media outlets claimed voters had been tricked by so-called “fake news” and the result could be discredited.
“With combined expertise from across media and technology, CrossCheck aims to ensure hoaxes, rumours and false claims are swiftly debunked, and misleading or confusing stories are accurately reported,” Google said.
“With the French presidential election approaching, journalists from across France and beyond will work together to find and verify content circulating publicly online, whether it is photographs, videos, memes, comment threads and news sites.”
The public will be encouraged to submit questions and links to news and social media content they wish to see investigated. The questions will then be listed alongside answers on the CrossCheck website, Google explained via its News Lab arm.
“Each participating newsroom will contribute their own experience, resources and regional knowledge to speed and strengthen the verification process, and to ensure that accurate reports reach citizens across the country and beyond,” the website adds.
In August 2016, Facebook fired its entire Trending News team, formerly responsible for curating the platform’s “Trending News” list, after Breitbart News and others reported accusations of progressive, liberal biases.
At the beginning of this year, Facebook launched their own features in Germany to counter fake news after authorities had claimed such stories could help populists in this year’s elections and threatened to sue unless unfavourable content was deleted quickly.
The social media site has been working with the European Union (EU) since December 2016 to censor “hate speech”, as well as help authorities “criminalise” “individual perpetrators” and “promot[e] independent counter-narratives” that the EU favours.
National governments are also interested in influencing online content. German officials have proposed creating a special government unit to combat fake news and the UK parliament is set to launch an inquiry this year, claiming the phenomenon is undermining democracy.
After the U.S. election, the left wing website Buzzfeed claimed that, overall, fake news accounted for 10.6 million of the 21.5 million shares, reactions, and comments on U.S. political stories on Facebook last year.
However, President Donald. J. Trump accused Buzzfeed of being “fake news” after the website published lurid and unsubstantiated claims about the then president-elect.
Despite publishing allegedly fake news, BuzzFeed is part of the CrossCheck project with Google and Facebook.
Marine Le Pen and France’s would-be Trumpiste insurgents could scarcely have wished for a nicer early Easter present. Their most potent opponent, the centre-right Francois Fillon, declared with admirable insouciance that he is to be investigated for corruption – but will still remain in the race for the Elysee Palace.
Of course, Mr Fillon has been convicted of precisely nothing so far, including the allegation that he created a “fake job” on the taxpayer for his British-born spouse. But that is hardly the point. As is already the case, Mr Fillon will be distracted and under constant media pressure until the first polling day, on 23 April, and, if he gets that far, right to the decisive run-off on 7 May, when he will almost certainly be opposing the National Front’s Ms Le Pen.
Ms Le Pen will make the most of this political windfall. If she had wanted a symbol of the decadence of the French political elite she could hardly have summoned up a more vivid symbol than Francois Fillon, the former prime minister, minister and career politician.
Mr Fillon is plainly gambling on the supposed certainty that whoever makes it to the second round of the election will be able to rally moderate voters on the left and right and defeat the Le Pen charge.
Voters, in this case of the left, will be asked to “hold their noses” and vote for the flawed Mr Fillon, to avoid the ultimate disaster of a Le Pen victory, with all that implies for French social cohesion and the future of the European project. This, after all, has happened before under the Fifth Republic; in 2002, when Jacques Chirac, a figure who was also compromised, saw off Marine Le Pen’s pere, Jean-Marie. Ms Le Pen is likely to come first in the first round, itself an indictment of the state of French society. She is also likely to do much better than her father did, perhaps 40 per cent of the vote rather than the 20 per cent or so he managed in the second round.
So Mr Fillon appears defiant and reluctant to bow out in favour of the next most credible conventional candidate, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, either before or after 23 April. If Mr Fillon does manage to beat Mr Macron then he will appeal to the French people to vote for him, warts and all, for fear of something worse. The “warts” include a policy platform reminiscent of Thatcherism, a word and a mindset that has no equivalent in the French language or culture.
Even so, Mr Fillon’s policy platform is more likely to peel away support from Marine Le Pen – even though it may also repel the traditional left, for whom abstention is a dangerously attractive alternative.
If Mr Fillon should lose out to Mr Macron for the opportunity to trounce the neo-Fascist Ms Le Pen, then it is by no means certain that Mr Macron’s undoubted charisma will be enough to persuade those on the right to put nation before ideology. It is perfectly possible that Mr Macron would stand a greater chance of losing to Ms Le Pen compared to Mr Fillon. It may be a risk that many in France would not wish to take.
Anything is preferable to rhetoric of Ms Le Pen – but will enough French voters agree? What’s more, there is also the terror that “shy” Le Pen supporters are conspiring to understate her showing in the opinion polls.
A “Popular Front” now, if that wasn’t such a heavily loaded phrase in French politics, is sometimes suggested the ideal answer to Ms Le Pen, where all the constitutional parties unite against her without delay. And yet that is in a way a denial of the normal democratic dialogue, and also merely serves to turn the presidential contest into a fight between a blob of an Establishment against the supposedly popular movement headed by Ms Le Pen. Besides, the parties just couldn’t agree.
Even if Ms Le Pen is thwarted this time, her very appearance on the ballot paper is a defeat for everything that the French republic has ever stood for. Her political influence will endure, backed by a substantial proportion of the electorate, who are choosing her and her vile policies entirely with their eyes open and with all the warnings at home and abroad ringing in their ears.
They are not being duped, in that sense, though Ms Le Pen’s programme is a fraud. They may or may not be inspired by Brexit and Trump, but they are deeply dissatisfied with what the French economy and political system is delivering for them – even though it is delivering far less for the children and grandchildren of the migrants that have become so demonised.
The National Front will continue to make progress in local assemblies, the European Parliament and the national assembly on the back of this discontent, and Marine Le Pen will stay on the scene. That is the political framework the new president will have to work within.
