Daily Archives: 27 August 2020

A Bilateral Trade Agreement

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Antony Phillipson, Great Britain’s Trade Commissioner for North America, offered an assessment of the current state of the trade negotiations occurring between the US and the UK in a recent Wall Street Journal Letter.

Among other things, Phillipson had this:

US tariffs on UK steel, aluminium, and significant exports like Scotch whisky raise prices for US consumers and are an unhelpful backdrop to negotiations. We are pushing for a settlement to the Airbus-Boeing disputes and removal of all retaliatory tariffs.

The Brits, along with the EU at large when they still were a member state, the OECD, and the G-7, were offered a completely tariff-free regime, years ago, by President Donald Trump.

The Brits, along with the rump EU, the OECD, and the G-7, have yet to respond to that offer.

So, Commissioner Phillipson, what is your answer?

“All of this has never happened before”

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The NLMSM, of which Chris Wallace is a prominent example, is whining over President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump speaking at the RNC Convention from White House property and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressing the convention from Jerusalem.

All of this has never happened before….

Chris Wallace bleated Tuesday night. He went on:

I don’t know what personal capacity a secretary of state has[.]

Because in his petty self-importance, if he doesn’t know the capacity, it perforce must not exist.

More important than Wallace’s or the NLMSM’s oblivious self-importance, though is this concept of “never happened before.” Precedence matters in law. Tradition can be—can be—a useful guide.

However, everything humanity, or any individual, has ever done at one point had never happened before, and subsequent to that—since traditions must have a first instance—everything new that’s ever been done has been a deviation from tradition.

If we never did anything for the first time, we’d still be knocking around the savannah competing with more powerful scavengers for predators’ left-overs. We wouldn’t even have any traditions from which to deviate.

It would be amusing, if it weren’t so sad, this pressman’s and these pressmen’s obsession with precedence.