It’s still Hot Stove League season, so here’s the diplomatic equivalent: China agrees to cut off all oil supplies to North Korea, and to try to engineer a coup, in exchange for an end to US arms sales to Taiwan.
It’s not Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees, but it has sizzle, no?
The Taiwanese are worried that Trump plans to use them as a bargaining chip in his dealings with China. Since there is no moral dimension to “America First” (morality is for suckers, after all), they have good reason.
So let us give praise to Mikaela.
You knew that she just wouldn’t fail-a.
No matter what race
Not for her, second place.
Count on her to deliver the mail-a.
I’m not a big X Games guy, but I have to admit that watching Shaun White win on the halfpipe last night was pretty exhilarating. You could view it as an exhibition of American individualism at its finest.
It’s a mistake to think that the Chinese are automatons, because they’re anything but. However, the emphasis on the collective over the individual that is baked into Chinese culture makes it impossible for me to imagine a Chinese version of White.
There is a lesson in geopolitics there: play to your strengths, and ours is the joy of individual freedom.
Three comments on the Trump budget:
As I’ve noted previously, Trump had two options with infrastructure. The first was a bipartisan plan with lots of new federal money that the CLs would hate; the second was a small CL-friendly plan focusing on privatization and state and local funds that the Democrats would hate.
The plan is Option B. To sum it up from Trump’s perspective, you build a bridge, I provide a small sum of money for it, and you name it after me.
It’s hard to see why he would even bother to do this. The plan isn’t going anywhere, the public isn’t impressed, and he’s not going to be able to run on it.
Donald Trump was treated to a big extravaganza inside the Forbidden City while I was in China. The flattery clearly worked. He took it as an affirmation that the Chinese government thinks he’s as great as he does.
Both he and the MSM missed the point. By holding this event in the Forbidden City, the Chinese government was sending the message that they were at the center of civilization and their guest was a barbarian, albeit an unusually important one.
Of course, they were right about the barbarian part.
As I’ve noted before, the “Chinese dream” and the “American dream” are fundamentally different. The latter revolves around limited government and the legal and moral right of the individual to pursue happiness in any way that doesn’t negatively impact society; the former is based on the wealth and power of the collective, which presumably trickles down in some manner to each individual.
The policy elements of the “Chinese dream” are as follows:
1. Mercantilism: The Chinese government imposes tariffs, controls the value of its currency, subsidizes industries it considers of national importance, and requires foreigners to turn over technology in exchange for access to its markets.
2. Political stability: In every dynamic economy, there are bound to be winners and losers. The Chinese government uses every tool at its disposal to make sure that the losers don’t endanger the stability of the state.
3. Increased military power: This focuses on control of the area immediately outside of the country’s borders. The militarization of the South China Sea is part of a plan to guarantee access to raw materials during wartime, while threatening to cut off those materials to South Korea and Japan.
4. The war on corruption: In the absence of a multi-party system, a free press, and an apolitical criminal justice system, the only hope of keeping corruption under control, and thereby maintaining support for the regime, is by applying continuous pressure from the top.
The American response to this, in a nutshell, can either be to beat ’em or join ’em. Traditionally, we have competed with Communist countries by emphasizing the great benefits that come from an open society with limited government and the rule of law. Trump doesn’t appear to believe in any of that; he seems to want to turn our country into a second-rate version of an authoritarian state which features tariffs, walls, and a strong military. The rest of the world is not impressed. As a result, Chinese power is on the rise.
Here’s how the factions would rate Trump to date:
CLs: Positives: Deregulation efforts; tax cuts; no major protectionist actions so far; eliminated the individual mandate. Negatives: Signed off on a budget plan with lots of new spending. Grade: B.
Reactionaries: Positives: Gorsuch; work requirements for Medicaid; daily tweets triggering liberals; Muslim ban; no amnesty. Negatives: Filled his cabinet with Wall Street plutocrats; tax plan favored the wealthy; no real protectionist actions yet; showing some flexibility on immigration. Grade: B.
PBPs: Positives: Delivered on tax cuts and deregulation; no real protectionism to date. Negatives: Looks like a corrupt, incompetent bozo, which ultimately endangers our tax cuts; protectionism could be on the horizon. Grade: B.
CDs: Positives: Some needed social spending in the budget; Gorsuch. Negatives: Tax plan favors plutocrats; tweets are tearing the country apart; incompetent and corrupt. Grade: D minus.
What this shows you is that the CDs are gone, but the rest of the GOP will stand behind him, barring a disaster.
Here’s how the factions responded:
CLs: Bleah! Bleah! The beast is gorging, not starving!
Reactionaries: We didn’t grant amnesty for illegal immigrants, and there are no new programs for the undeserving poor, so OK.
PBPs: Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. Keeping the government open makes the GOP look responsible and thus helps us keep our tax cuts and deregulation.
CDs: Providing money for social programs is a good way to help the poor.
And so, the CLs have been routed, but they have nowhere else to go, politically. Welcome to the era of “Funhouse Reagan.”
The opening was restrained, tasteful, and poignant. The poignant part, alas, comes from the fact that there is a reasonable chance that South Korea, as we know it, won’t exist at this time next year.
That’s up to Donald Trump. Koreans have good reason to be worried.
It would be fair to say that the Winter Olympics are the blue state games. Red states are generally too hot and too flat for winter sports.
Nevertheless, people in red states have traditionally rooted hard for American athletes at the Winter Games. Nationalism in sports is common to red and blue people alike.
Will that continue, or will Trump find a way to make the Olympics part of the culture wars, too? We’ll see.
The GOP has shown once again that, as Dick Cheney once said, “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” As a result, we now know that my prediction for the economy was right; we will have “Funhouse Reagan,” not “Reverse Robin Hood.”
The remaining question is, will “Funhouse Reagan” evolve into “Trade Warrior?” Fortunately, Trump’s fixation with the stock market has prevented him from engaging in any real trade wars yet. There’s no guarantee that will continue.
During the campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly assured us that the American economy was a shambles due to the predatory behavior of the Chinese. Today, he tells us that the economy is in great shape. The trade deficit with China in 2017 was the highest in history.
Is he an economic illiterate, or a liar? You decide.
I composed this yesterday after reading one of the articles about Trump and the parade. I barely had to change the original lyrics to make it work.
American Putin
American Putin
Stay away from me.
American Putin
Won’t you set me free.
Don’t want you hanging around my door.
Don’t want to see your shadow no more
I don’t need your war machines.
Don’t need American carnage scenes.
Now Putin
Get away.
American Putin
Listen to what I say.
Parody of “American Woman” by the Guess Who.
Trump’s fascination with military parades shows off many of his worst qualities: his bluster; his authoritarian impulses; his childishness; his egotism; his lack of understanding of our country’s values and political roots; and his mindless love of spectacle. He’s approaching this as if he were a young boy playing with plastic tanks and army men in his sandbox.
There are two things about it that are really frightening. First, he obviously has no objection to emulating Xi, Kim, and Putin; and second, he has no awareness of what war is all about. For him, as I put it in a previous post, a war is a bomb, a parade, and a statue, not destruction, death, and misery.
There’s an interesting article on Vox.com today about what a war in Korea would really be like. It focuses largely on the damage Kim could do with chemical weapons. It’s sobering, and well worth your time.