Category Archives: Trade

UPDATED: Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Already Saying, ‘Si Se Puede’

Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Trade, Welfare

“Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Already Saying, ‘Si Se Puede’” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

FOLLOWING Donald J. Trump’s sublime immigration address, critics—essentially all Big, Crooked Media—charged that Trump’s Arizona speech represented a sharp departure from the tone he took earlier that day, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. A reversal, if you will.

Nonsense. With President Nieto, Donald Trump was at once patriotic, forceful and diplomatic.

In close to two decades of analyzing American politics, I’ve yet to hear an American leader address his Mexican counterpart as forcefully as Mr. Trump addressed President Nieto. Trump came across as a man-of-the world, to whom interfacing with foreign dignitaries was second nature.

It’s always been the case that Americans in power collude with Mexicans in power to bully and manipulate a powerless American People into accepting the unacceptable: The imperative to welcome torrents of unskilled illegal aliens, at an incalculable cost to the safety of America’s communities, the solvency of its public institutions, and the sustainability of the environment.

Strolling through the ancient Mayan and Toltec ruins with President Vincente Fox, in 2006, George W. Bush was not talking-up American interests. He was plotting amnesty with an unholy trinity comprised of John McCain, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. Sly Fox was the silent partner.

Most memorably, Bush, who would wrestle a crocodile for a criminal alien, went on to indict and viciously prosecute two brave border-patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. For shooting a drug dealer in the derriere—in the process of defending their countrymen—Bush unleashed his bloodhound, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, on the two patrolmen and jailed them.

So what a pleasant surprise it was for this long-time political observer to witness a Mexican president, clearly cowed by The Donald, make no mention of America’s bogus obligation to take in Mexico’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning for U.S. welfare.

If President Nieto harbored the urge to make manipulative appeals to American “permanent values,” so as to lighten his political load—there was no evidence of it. It’s fair to infer that on that occasion, a show of unparalleled strength and patriotism—Mr. Trump’s—extinguished the bad habit. The biblical proverb worked:

Act like a fearless lion before an adversary, and the adversary will retreat. …

… Read the rest. “Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Already Saying, ‘Si Se Puede’” is the current column, now on Townhall.com.

UPDATE (9/3): About Comments to “Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Already Saying, ‘Si Se Puede’” on Unz Review:

Read them. Some are pretty disgusting. No matter. I usually ignore them, but sometimes you have to whack a worm or two. No problem. Anti-Semitism, small-man syndrome, and the impulse to belittle me qua woman—this has been part of the territory for 16 years. It’s all in a day’s work. (Written in 2006, “How Sexist Are Libertarian Men?” documents this. http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=156)

I appreciate Dr. Ralph Raico’s valiant defense. You won’t get that from most other libertarians. (But again, Who cares? And can smental midget muster a gallant or intellectually honest impulse worth hearing?)

Since The Unz Review Comments are not working, I’m posting a reply here to Ralph Raico’s comment, in which, among other things, he too expresses amazement “that some readers have inserted Israel into the discussion of Ilana’s excellent article.”

Dear Ralph Raico,

Whenever readers at the Unz Review see my name, like zombies tied to a psychiatric chaise longue they blurt out, “Israel, Zionist,” and worse. It’s not their fault. The Jews made them congenitally stupid.

Published by the Illuminati, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” recounts how Trump was “subjected to loud booing when he told a ?Jewish-Republican crowd he couldn’t be bought. If anything, Trump’s promise to be a ‘neutral guy’ in attempting to broker an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement [had] given ‘hawkish candidates room to pounce,'” during the primaries.

Best regards,
ilana

Donald Delivers Economic Expertise @ Free-Market Speed

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, libertarianism, Trade

No sooner had I penned “Trump And Trade,” questioning the slavish devotion of my own philosophical tribe, libertarians, to trade deficits, without considering that America’s trade imbalances occur in the context of debt—personal, corporate, state—than the magnificent Maria Bartiromo introduced, on Sunday Futures, the equally impressive Stephen Miller to speak to these matters.

Miller is a Trump Campaign senior policy adviser.

To comport with his earlier contention that, “We can’t have a service only economy,” Miller stated today (3/20):

It’s the donors vs. the voters. “The choice we have is between the national interests vs. the special interests.”

Mr. Trump’s has killed off the Cult of Megyn Kelly. Next on his to-do list: Replace crappy journo Kelly with pro Ms. Bartiromo.

Related:

“The Me Myself And I Megyn Kelly Production.”

“Trump And Trade.”

3/21/016:

UPDATED: TRUMP AND TRADE

Donald Trump, Free Markets, libertarianism, Regulation, Trade

“TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Mitt gives Mormons (whom I love) a bad name. I thought Mormons weren’t meant to bad-mouth others. Yet Mitt had nothing but bad things to say about Donald Trump, who is political tabula rasa and has never passed a law in his life.

Neither has Trump ever caused the death of a single Iraqi kid. But the religiously devout Romney called him evil for defiling the precious memory of someone who had caused many thousands of such deaths: Bush II.

The meme about Mitt Romney is that had he attacked Barack Obama with the vim and vigor he reserved for Trump, he might have made it to president.

(Likewise, if only Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League went after Muslims who lob bombs at Jews with the passion he reserves for gentiles who raise their right hand in a pledge of support for Trump. Poor Abe is seeing Nazi faces in the clouds again.)

Romney also claimed Trump would “propose 35 percent tariff-like penalties” and “would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America.”

I don’t know that Trump favors protective tariffs, import quotas or export subsidies.

I do know that we don’t have free trade.

What goes for “free trade,” rather, is trade managed by powerful bureaucracies – national and international – central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds do as they please.

My understanding is that Trump simply wants to make these agreements and organs work for the American people.

I know, too, who did support “labeling China a currency manipulator,” so that he could “put in place, if necessary, tariffs where … they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers.”

Mitt Romney in 2012.

When it comes to the glories of an aggregate, negative balance of trade, libertarian post-graduate cleverness deserves to be questioned. …

… READ the rest. “TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATED (3/15):

TRUMP And TRADE

Business, China, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, Trade

My 2011 “Sinophobia Trumps Common Sense,” unfairly called Donald Trump “megalomaniacal.” It fairly pointed out, however, that “Sinophobia is sanctioned among American opinion makers. The dislike for China falls within the realm of perfectly respectable economic theory.”

The business mogul is motivated by the sense that the nimbus of great power that surrounds the US is dissipating. It hasn’t occurred to him to search closer to home for the causes of America’s economic anemia—at Fanny, Freddie, and the Fed, for a start. Since Trump has no idea what’s potting, and is not eager to look in his own plate — he blames OPEC and China for the burdens of doing business in the US.

With his “Sorry Mr. Trump, the Chinese Aren’t ‘Crushing’ Us,” our friend, professor George Reisman, deconstructs the “killing us in foreign trade” Trumpism:

American job losses are not the result of freer trade and an excess of imports over exports, but of government policies that prevent capital accumulation in the United States, among them policies that limit imports. An essential part of any economic policy that would truly help to “make America great again” is to avoid preventing imports. …

… READ THE REST. “Sorry Mr. Trump, the Chinese Aren’t ‘Crushing’ Us” By George Reisman is on Real Clear Markets.