Tag Archives: foreign policy

Shocked

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I’m shocked, shocked, to find that diplomacy is going on in here. The lede and a subsequent paragraph expose the matter.

President Trump’s threat for a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports expanded his use of punitive duties over matters that have nothing to do with trade, breaking with more than a half-century of global economic precedent.
…
It is one of the latest…example of Trump using tariffs as a cudgel for political priorities outside of trade.

And

The president is betting the threat of reducing access to the American consumer will force nations to capitulate on his political priorities.

Other examples:

  • tariffs on Colombia over repatriation flights for migrants back to that country
  • steep duties on Canada, Mexico, and China over their role in the fentanyl trade
  • tariffs on countries that buy oil from Venezuela
  • threat of tariffs to attempt to secure more military spending from Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea.

The news writers at the link noted this bit of history:

Although often controversial and sometimes volatile, such as when the Smoot-Hawley Act hiked U.S. tariffs in 1930, tariffs have generally been motivated by economic or domestic political goals.

There is no more important domestic goal than national security, which necessarily is centered on the global stage.

Ricardo was right as far as he went, in that nations should specialize in those goods and services they do best and import other goods and services from other nations that the importer does poorly. But that’s pure economics. It ignores the diplomacy aspects of international trade—using exports of those specialized goods and services and imports of other goods and services as tools with which to influence other nations’ behavior across a range of milieus.

That foreign policy influence centers on matters of national security, of which domestic economics is a critical, but not sole factor. Other, equally critical, factors include providing opportunities for domestic producers to do better in those weak areas. Specialization, after all, is not the same as producing only those items with no thought to expanding into other areas for specialization.

International trade as diplomacy also includes limiting enemy nations’ access to those goods and services that a nation Ricardo-specializes in that are important to enemy nations’ own foreign adventurism, as well as limiting domestic market access by enemy nations as a means of weakening their economies and so their ability to mount those foreign adventures.

The WSJ‘s editors tacitly understand this, though they don’t seem to have made their understanding overt, even to themselves.

The US will need to mount a united front with allies to confront Beijing’s predatory practices and ensure the world isn’t dependent on China. One idea is a critical minerals alliance.

This is explicitly the use of international trade in its foreign policy/national security role and as a way to counter the People’s Republic of China’s own use of international trade to further its own foreign policy aspirations.

The news writers appear surprised find that an American President understands that international trade, and all of its tools, have very little to do with economics and very much to do with foreign policy. Sadly, they’re not alone. It would behoove all guild members to review their high school economics class notes.

Mistake

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In their piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors wrote about President Donald Trump’s decision to continue sending weapons to Ukraine because [t]hey have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.

Unfortunately, the editors wrote this near the end of their bit:

What matters is giving Ukraine enough firepower to change Mr Putin’s cost-benefit calculation about continuing the war.

This isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply immoral. Arming Ukraine enough to change the barbarian’s cost-benefit calculation is just a means to keep Ukrainian soldiers in the field fighting, being maimed, and dying and to keep Ukrainian women and children available as targets for the barbarian.

Putin has already made his cost-benefit calculation: he doesn’t care about the cost, even having decided that his soldiers are nothing more than consumables on a par with fuel and ammunition. No amount of continued Ukrainian resistance, no matter how effective and costly (in the editors’ eyes) the war continues to be for Putin, he sees the benefit—conquering and occupying Ukraine, erasing it from the list of sovereign nations—as well worth the expenditure, whatever its size.

It isn’t enough to arm Ukraine enough that it can continue the war. Ukraine must win the war outright. That requires sending it the offensive and defensive weapons systems the UA needs in the numbers and in the timing that the UA needs them. Naysayers in government and Timid Tesses like these editors and their brethren elsewhere in the news media gallery need to get out of the way of that.

A Start

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President Donald Trump (R), after the latest telecon with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which came after the his latest telecon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who followed that telecon with a large drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s civilian housing and infrastructure, has said defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine will resume.

It’s a start, but it’s insufficient. The best defense is a good offense, and that’s even more true in combat than it is in football. With the barbarian forced to defend, to react to Ukrainian moves—at the least to divert resources away from offense to reaction and defense—the barbarian’s attacks will at the least lessen.

From that, we—the US and Europe’s nominally West-aligned nations—need to send Ukraine offensive weapons, also, in the numbers and at the rates the UA says they need them. If Ukraine can reach inside Russia at depth and strike railroad nodes and naval ports, ammunition and fuel supplies, troop massings, bomber and fighter bases, the barbarian will have a much harder time moving those troops, aircraft, and consumables (keeping in mind the redundancy, in Putin’s mind, of troops and consumables) into positions from which to attack.

That increases Ukraine’s ability to win the barbarian’s war rather than endlessly bleed from defending. UA’s successful attack on a number of bases hosting the barbarian’s strategic bomber fleet does seem to have lessened, at least relatively, the ratio of air-to-surface missiles to drones in subsequent attacks.

Trump and Ukraine

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President Donald Trump (R) says he’s “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the latest telecon between the two. Even, I don’t think he’s looking to stop his war. NSS.

Mr Putin added an exclamation point by hitting Kyiv with one of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war the same night as his conversation with Mr Trump.

Putin has followed prior telecons with Trump with heavy drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and residences.

Even so, Trump continues to dither regarding serious responses to Putin’s barbarism.

One possibility is that Trump is giving Putin every diplomatic opportunity to call off his barbaric invasion and war against Ukraine before Trump takes concrete action in Ukraine’s favor: serious sanctions against Russia and those persons, businesses, and nations that do business of any sort with Russia, coupled with unfettered arms deliveries to Ukraine in the amounts and times the UA says they need them.

That time is long past, though; Putin has responded militarily overtly negatively to those opportunities. It’s time to act.

The WSJ editors closed their piece with this:

Mr Putin thinks he can make President Trump look plaintive and weak, and then get away with it as Russia swallows Ukraine. If the Russian is right, much of the US deterrence benefit of the Iran strike will vanish.

That misstates the case. If Putin succeeds, all of our deterrence will disappear. And more: we’ll be actively inviting further moves by our enemies.

An Outline was Passed

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The House-Senate reconciliation bill has been passed. The bill contains a number of beneficial things and a number of suboptimal things, along with a couple of items that are no good at all (vis., a cut in real dollars on defense spending and an increase in deficit spending and so in national debt of highly dubious estimates, both in size and sign).

So now what?

President Donald Trump (R) offered to use his executive authority to limit spending beyond what’s in the Senate version of the bill, which is what the House passed last Thursday.

In the meetings, Russ Vought, Trump’s White House budget chief, also reassured lawmakers that the administration would use its authority to limit spending, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump and his advisers have argued that Trump has the authority to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress, a contention likely to be tested in court.

That’s nice, even if the courts uphold the specific actions (or most of them) Trump might take. At best though, these would be temporary measures, easily undone by a subsequent President.

Now what, then, are the 12 appropriations bills that the current crop of House Republicans have been promising to pass individually and on time for a couple of Congresses. The outline reconciliation bill represents ceilings on spending and tax rates, not floors, even though the Progressive-Democrats will howl that the levels are floors and so spending and tax rates still should go up.

The 12 appropriations bills are

  • Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Defense appropriations bill
  • Homeland Security appropriations bill
  • State Department and Foreign Operations appropriations bill
  • Interior and Environment appropriations bill
  • Legislative Branch appropriations bill
  • Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Energy and Water Development appropriations bill
  • Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill

These are where real spending and tax rate reductions (not formally part of appropriations, but easily enough included by amendment) can—and must this time—occur. Military construction needs to be focused on facilities for housing our soldiers and on bases—new or modified—for housing more of our weapons systems and for our new weapons systems as they come on line. The VA needs no spending increases, it even could stand spending cuts. I’ve argued for its elimination altogether, and this would be a good time to do that.

State, with its more focused foreign aid spending and more tightly controlled embassies and consulates, can absorb reduced spending. After that, all of the appropriations bills, save Defense and Homeland Security, should get 10% cuts in spending across the board. Defense needs, badly, a 10% increase in real terms, and Homeland Security, given the success of the Trump administration—so far—in resecuring our borders, needs a 5% (vice Defense’s 10%) increase.

With all of that, Congress—the House especially—would have some choices to make, any of which would be to the benefit of our nation: statutorily require the vast bulk of the resulting budget surplus go specifically to Treasury to pay down our national debt, further reduce individual and corporate income tax rates and make permanent the existing temporary tax reductions, or some combination of the two.

Congressmen in both houses need now to focus the energy they spent arguing over spending and tax rate maneuvers in the runup to passing the reconciliation bill on achieving real cuts in spending and tax rates via the appropriations bills. And they need to quit dithering about it this time. Pass the bills individually and on time—no more omnibus bills, no more continuing resolutions. Achievement of this would make arguing over the debt ceiling irrelevant by making the debt ceiling itself irrelevant.

Trump could exercise his executive authority in real, proven terms: announce that he’ll veto any omnibus bills and any continuing resolution, even if it means Congress shuts down the Federal government with its failure to perform. And then do so if Congress actually does fail and cause a shutdown.