Daily Archives: 7 October 2019

An Intelligence Strike

Posted on by
Reply

A second putative whistleblower is claimed to be coming forward with commentary on President Donald Trump’s telecon with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.  This one claims to have firsthand knowledge of the call.  This one also is claimed by others to be from the intelligence community.

I’ll ask the obvious question, knowing the NLMSM will refuse to answer: who’s leaking these things?  The whistleblower’s claims haven’t even been evaluated by the Intelligence Community Inspector General as such things are supposed to be before anything is done with that kind of complaint.

The other obvious thing is this warning by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) about a President daring to dispute with the intelligence community.

Let me tell you: you take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you[.]

This is against the backdrop of the drumbeat of smears and false accusations by ex-CIA Director John Brennan and the more sub rosa false claims made by the more genteel ex-DIA Director James Clapper, also known for his “not deliberately” done misstatements during a House hearing.

This “complaint” is the second intelligence community strike of which Schumer warned, coming after the first “whistleblower” strike was shown to have been coordinated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) (who lied about that coordination) and shown further to be foolish at best, consisting as it does of nothing but second- and third-hand rumors.

Having sent out that stalking horse and learned something of the nature of the counters, this on may well be of better manufacture.

Unfortunately, though, it’s no longer possible to take intel’s “whistleblowers” seriously, even were a complaint to turn out to coincide with truth, because of this history of dishonesty.  And especially since these are being rolled out serially, keeping the matter in the newspapers and talk shows, rather than coming out together as a package, so the matter could be addressed with some finality.

Look for a third strike, if this one plops, also.

WTO, Tariffs, and the EU

Posted on by
Reply

The WTO ruled in favor of the US regarding a 15-yr-old dispute over French subsidies of Airbus that directly harmed The Boeing Company, to the tune of $7.5 billion.  The ruling allows the US to impose those $7.5 billion as tariffs, and the Office of the US Trade Representative says that we’ll apply

a 10% tariff on aircraft imported from Europe and apply a 25% import tax on other agricultural and industrial items on October 18….

France says they’ll respond with retaliatory tariffs if we go through with this.  French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire:

If the American administration rejects the hand that has been held out by France and the European Union, we are preparing ourselves to react with sanctions[.]

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom agrees with Le Maire:

If the US decides to impose WTO authorized countermeasures, it will be pushing the EU into a situation where we will have no other option than do the same[.]

Couple things about that.  One is that the US has already proposed both no-tariff-at-all and no-tariffs-on-autos trade régimes, but the EU has refused to discuss either, despite then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s promise to take the matters up.

The other thing is that, under WTO rules, it’s illegal to apply retaliatory tariffs in response to tariffs applied pursuant to a WTO judgment.  The French and EU threats regarding the WTO-permitted tariffs on the Airbus affair clearly demonstrate EU (and French) bad faith by themselves. Coupled, though, with the Eu’s refusal to discuss the no-tariff offers already on the table, it’s clear that the EU has no intention at all in dealing honestly with us on trade.

Our own effort at good-faith negotiation is just as clear:

The WTO had approved up to 100% tariffs, but the US decided to limit the tax.