Tag Archives: economics

Who Should Control American Foreign Policy?

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One answer is indicated by the Trump administration’s de-emphasis of the World Trade Organization as the primary arbiter of our international trade policy.  A draft policy document, if the leak of it is a legitimate one, and if it’s being accurately described in the NLMSM might represent a promising start.

The Trump administration is developing a national trade policy that would seek to diminish the influence of the World Trade Organization in the US and champion American law as a way to take on trading partners it blames for unfair practices, according to a draft document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The policy…represents a dramatic departure from the Obama administration, which emphasized international economic rules and the authority of the WTO, a body that regulates trade and resolves disputes among its members.

A welcome departure it is, too.  The WTO, and other international organizations, have important roles in our foreign policy, but those roles have been badly overemphasized over the last too many years.  American foreign policy, American national policy, must be our national policy and no one else’s.

The Trump administration just has to be careful not to go too far in the other direction.

A Bank Gets One Right

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The city of Seattle, WA, is upset with Wells Fargo because the bank is a lender to the Dakota Access Pipeline project.  They’re so upset, in fact, that they’ve advised Wells that Seattle won’t renew its financial services contract with the bank when it expires at the end of next year.

Phillip Smith, Executive Vice President and Head of Government and Institutional Banking at Wells Fargo, isn’t worried, though.  He responded to the city via letter, saying that

if the city really wants out, the bank will sever its contract with the city immediately, with no penalty, and will help the city find a replacement[.]

I agree with Wells.  Seattle shouldn’t let the door hit it in the fanny on the way out.

The outcome likely will be more expensive for Seattle, though: Wells won the financing contract (nearly 20 years ago; what won’t be renewed is the latest 6-yr installment) by competitive bid.  That means any replacement bank probably will cost the city, which is to say the good residents of the city, more.

Hysteria or Hypocrisy?

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You pick ’em.  The latest example of irrationality (which is a superset of both hysteria and hypocrisy) comes via V the K at GayPatriot.

Recall that the Progressive-Democratic Party that runs Philadelphia passed a massive sugar tax to be levied against soft drinks sold in the city.  Recall, too, the high school economics teaching that if you raise the price of something, demand for that something falls off.  Finally, recall that applying a tax to that something is the same as raising its price.

The [soda] tax is huge, amounting to a 45% to 100% increase in the final consumer cost of typically affected beverage products.

Last week the other shoe dropped.

Two months into the city’s sweetened-beverage tax, supermarkets and distributors are reporting a 30% to 50% drop in beverage sales and are planning for layoffs.

And

One of the city’s largest distributors says it will cut 20% of its workforce in March, and an owner of six ShopRite stores in Philadelphia says he expects to shed 300 workers this spring.

“People are seeing sales decline larger than anything they’ve seen up to this point in the city,” said Alex Baloga, vice president of external relations at the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association.

And

Sources with Teamsters Local 830 say that layoffs are “imminent” and that some workers have seen their take-home pay drop by 50 to 75% because they’re moving less product.

Restaurants are feeling the pinch, too. Josh Kim, owner of Spot Gourmet Burger, says sugary drink sales at his shop have gone down about 10 to 15%.

Naturally, the Progressive-Democrats, unable to confess to their economic illiteracy (I don’t think they’re economically illiterate, either; these are the party of Know Betters; economics is one of the things they Know Better than us petty commoners), are calling the supermarket and distributor management greedy liars.

We have no way of knowing if their sales figures and predicted job losses are anything more than fear-mongering to prevent this from happening in other cities,” said city spokesman Mike Dunn.
…
“I didn’t think it was possible for the soda industry to be any greedier,” [Philadelphia Mayor Jim] Kenney said in an emailed statement. “… They are so committed to stopping this tax from spreading to other cities, that they are not only passing the tax they should be paying onto their customer, they are actually willing to threaten working men and women’s jobs rather than marginally reduce their seven figure bonuses.”

Go figure.

Call Them on Their Obstructionism

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Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, says go big or go home regarding Obamacare.  Republicans in Congress should quit dithering, should not play reconciliation games, and should simply put an Obamacare repeal and replace package up for vote.  This would force the Democrat obstructionists—especially those #NeverTrumpNoHow and #NeverRepublicanNotEver Progressive-Democrats in the Senate on the record as by-name blocking reform of the Obama program that is in its death spiral, the endpoint of which will leave millions of Americans without health coverage and without even coverage providers to which to appeal.  Especially put those 10 Progressive-Democrats pretending to moderacy in order to protect their precarious reelection chances in 2018 on the spot.

Now that insurers are acknowledging the death spiral, there’s an opportunity for bolder action. The House could use regular order, not reconciliation, to pass a bill that not only fully repeals ObamaCare—returning control of the private market to the states—but simultaneously puts into effect at least the core components of reform while including grandfathering and other provisions to smooth the transition to lower-priced options on the free market.

Such a bill could easily pass the House, putting pressure on the Senate. Would Minority Leader Chuck Schumer allow proper consideration of much-needed health-care reform? And with all the evidence that ObamaCare has been a disaster and—untouched by Republicans—is quickly unraveling, would Democrats, 25 of whom are up for re-election next year, vote to defend the status quo?

And

There would be two Senate filibuster points—the first, to allow consideration; the second, to allow a vote. Thinking through what would happen, the American public and Trump administration would be well served by this exercise of transparent democracy.
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If Democrats blocked consideration of the bill, they would do President Trump a favor by showing the public the parliamentary shenanigans of the anti-deliberation filibuster—call it the “Senatorial Full Employment Through Avoiding Tough Votes” maneuver.

And

If Democrats refuse to allow debate, Republicans should kill the filibuster against deliberation (as distinct from the filibuster to end debate and hold a vote). They can do so by simple majority vote, as Harry Reid showed when he ended the filibuster against most nominations in 2013. Either way, the Senate can actually have a vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act and reforming health care.

Republicans should heed this advice, and go for it.  If it fails, Republicans can always go the reconciliation route.

Of Course He Does

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California has an infrastructure failure problem that involves everything from its roads to its dams and other water control facilities.  Governor Jerry Brown (D) says it will cost $187 billion to fix its infrastructure, and he wants $12 billion per year of Federal funding to help with that.  In actuality, Brown doesn’t want Federal funding, he wants what Federal funding consists of: money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of financial straitened New York to help pay for his needs, he wants money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of nearly bankrupt Illinois to help pay for his needs, he wants money taxed by the Federal government from the good citizens of fiscally responsible and so flush Texas and Utah to help pay for his needs.

He doesn’t care that his State’s infrastructure is in such poor shape because he and prior administrations of both parties deferred maintenance they knew at the time was promptly needed.

When asked why California hadn’t spent more on infrastructure before, Mr Brown said it wasn’t seen as a priority before. “This is the way the world works,” he said. “The immediate takes precedence over the more fundamental.”

Leadership wouldn’t acquiesce so meekly to the immediate, though.  Leadership would push the matter and get his bosses, the citizens of California in the present case, behind the more fundamental.

Oh, and there is the “green” lobby, too.  Amid all the current plenty of water, all that’s happening is flooding (those badly maintained dams are part of this problem, to be sure), denial of that plentiful water to farmers, and routing of plentiful water that isn’t flooding straight to the sea.  For instance,

the Central Valley Project Improvement Act[] diverted 1.5 million acre-feet of water—roughly a fifth of the total water delivery—annually to wildlife and green hobbyhorses. That ultimately means flushing it out into the ocean. “Basically, they’ve now legislated a permanent drought in the San Joaquin Valley,” Mark Borba, a cotton farmer….

That’s still going on.  And this:

The San Joaquin River Restoration Program, the result of a 2006 settlement in a lawsuit over fish habitat, took away another some 225,000 acre-feet of water annually.

Progressive-Democrats are willing only to spend OPM; fiscal responsibility, discipline in spending their own money is an alien concept.

It’s certainly true that in a republican democracy all of the States are in the nation together, and all of the States need to, are bound to, support each other, as Brown and others have also claimed.  But a major part of that mutual support is each State not creating itself a burden on any of the other 49 through its own wanton profligacy.