Tag Archives: free trade

business news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

So much for principle, yes, Mr. Speaker?

trade

I guess you could have predicted this switcheroo.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich has performed a 180-degree flip on free trade. He now agrees with the Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Free trade is a bad thing, Trump says. It steals jobs from American workers and ships them out to places like China and Mexico, he says.

Gingrich, though, was one of the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which opened the door wide to free trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Then the party’s presumed nominee came calling with a possible vice-presidential selection in mind.

Now it’s the former speaker who says he agrees with Trump on trade.

This kind of switch isn’t new, of course. Politicians do it all the time.

My favorite switch involved one of my favorite Republicans, a man I admire very much. George H.W. Bush once was considered a tried-and-true pro-choice Republican on abortion. Then the party’s nominee tapped him on the shoulder in 1980 and said, in effect, “If you want to run on our ticket, you have to become a pro-life guy on abortion.”

Bush did and he joined Ronald Reagan on the GOP’s winning 1980 ticket.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/newt-gingrich-trump-trade-vice-president-225035

Trump has accused U.S. political and business leaders of “stupidity” in allowing free trade to pilfer U.S. jobs. Does that include Gingrich?

I guess not.

It’s interesting nevertheless because Gingrich always has struck me as a politician dedicated to core principles and to partisan orthodoxy. Free trade is part of the Republican mantra, while Trump’s view of GOP trade policy has angered many within the party’s establishment mainstream.

Go figure.

Let’s be sure to check in with Gingrich if Trump picks someone else to run with him.

business news, national news, political news

Incoherence on trade policy …

Free-Trade

Donald J. Trump’s campaign rally today in Bangor, Maine featured a remarkably incoherent riff on trade policy.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was ranting about trade agreements. He opposes free trade. Or does he?

He launched into a strange and utterly nonsensical series of descriptions of what constitutes a “good” trade agreement.

He began his trade tirade by saying he was “all for free trade.” Then he said he was opposed to it. Huh? What … ?

He didn’t care if it was “horrible.” He didn’t care if it was “fair.” He didn’t care if it was “great.”

Trump then said something about negotiating trade agreements differently than the way they’ve been negotiated previously.

Horrible, fair, great, bad? Donald Trump doesn’t care about any of those aspects of a trade agreement.

I need help understanding how any of that makes sense.

And this guy wants to be president of the United States of America?

national news, political news

Bernie has won the war of ideas … if not the nomination

berniesanders-61515-1434466786

So much of our national attention has been focused during this political season on the Republican Party presidential primary campaign.

After all, it features a glam king, TV personality, real estate mogul and showman who appears headed for the Republican presidential nomination.

Donald J. Trump has broken all the rules of normal decorum, good manners, class and grace.

Oh yeah! There’s a primary in the other party that’s taking place, too.

Democrats are fighting with themselves over whether to endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton or U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The dynamic there also has been somewhat unconventional, albeit not to the degree the GOP race has become.

Sanders is getting his clock cleaned in primary states. He’s been close in many states and he did win Michigan and New Hampshire’s primaries. However, Clinton is now — once again — the shoo-in for the Democratic nomination. To get there, though, she’s had to do something quite extraordinary: She’s had to change her positions on issues to where she now agrees with Sanders.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership? Clinton once favored this trade agreement; now she opposes it.

The Keystone XL pipeline? She once favored it; today she opposes it.

The Iraq War? She voted for it in 2002; she says now that she has changed her mind.

Sanders opposed all those issues from the beginning.

Clinton now has taken up the cause for wage inequality. She’s vowing to take on the big banks. She is sounding more populist than mainstream than when the campaign started.

By golly, she’s sounding like Bernie!

Has Sanders won the war of ideas in the Democratic primary? It’s sounding as though he can declare victory. He well might do that — but he won’t go home quietly.

All this change of mind/heart, of course, brings to mind the issue of Clinton’s authenticity. It has become the source of “Saturday Night Live” skits that skewer the former secretary of state, first lady and U.S. senator over the manner in which she crafts certain images to please whatever audience to which she is speaking.

Sen. Sanders has no serious hope of becoming the Democratic nominee. He does have some hope, though, that the message he’s sought to convey has become part of his opponent’s campaign.

All along, Sanders has sought to tell his party’s base that the campaign “isn’t about me.” If he believes it, then his campaign has been about his ideas.

Stand tall, Sen. Sanders! You’ve won!

national news

Obama finds friends in GOP

Republicans have made it their mission — a lot of them, anyhow — to trash Barack Obama as some sort of wacked-out Marxist/socialist who is intent on the destruction of the country that elected him as president of the United States.

So, what does the president do? He locks arms with Republican members of Congress and decides it’s really all right to support a free-trade agreement with a dozen Asian nations — which runs counter to where the base of his Democratic Party stands, or so it appears.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/trade-bill-clears-senate-hurdle-118178.html?hp=t4_r

The GOP-led Senate has just shut down a filibuster that had stalled the fast-track legislation to get the free trade agreement approved and sent to the president’s desk.

Obama’s major allies in this deal happen to Republicans. The Senate was acting chaotically as senators scrambled between discussion groups to hammer out some kind of deal.

What’s up with that?

I happen to believe in a freer trade than what we’ve had for so long. The world is shrinking and nations or even continents no longer can shield themselves from influences of other nations and continents.

So the free trade agreement likely now will get approved. It will end up on the president’s desk. He’ll sign it.

I’m hoping to see a lot of Republican lawmakers — along with centrist/moderate Democrats — standing with the president when he puts pen to paper.

It’s a scene we haven’t witnessed too much during the Obama administration, but which used to be a regular occurrence during the past presidencies of, say, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Government works better when both parties can find common ground. So help me, it works almost all the time.

 

 

national news

Not exactly Felix and Oscar, however …

The Hill calls them Washington, D.C.’s newest “odd couple.”

They are Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Barack H. Obama, the Democratic president of the United States of America.

McConnell has been saying nice things about the man he once pledged to make a “one-term president.” The one-term notion didn’t work out, as Obama was re-elected in 2012. But hey, life goes on.

Washington’s new odd couple: McConnell and Obama

I rather like the idea of these men becoming “friends,” even if it’s a relationship of convenience.

They aren’t the first national political leaders to link arms and find common ground in an Oscar Madison-Felix Unger sort of way.

Let’s go back to the 1960s, when Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen teamed up to help enact the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts. How about when Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill would bash each other in public, but then toast each other over whiskey after hours? Democratic President Bill Clinton and GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich worked together to balance the federal budget. Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy found common ground in pushing education reform through Congress.

See? It can be done, ladies and gentlemen.

McConnell and Obama are on the same page regarding international trade. The president, in fact, is finding his stiffest opposition coming from the left-wing base of his own party. But he’s got a pal on the other side of the aisle.

The arrangement doesn’t surprise some Capitol Hill hands. “It validates what McConnell has been saying for the last six and a half years. If the president wants to join us on something that’s good for the country, we will work with him. This is an example of that,” said Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman.

Well, for what it’s worth, some of us out here in the Heartland are surprised.

And pleasantly so, at that.

 

national news, political news

Intraparty squabble good for political soul

1 Comment

President Obama says Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., “is wrong” to oppose him on a free trade proposal with a dozen Asian countries.

OK. So, the Democrats are now squabbling.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates for president are taking pot shots at each other over a wide range of issues, with tax policy and immigration leading the way.

There. Now the Republicans are fighting.

Is this bad? Do these intraparty squabbles harm our form of government?

Not in the least.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/why-obama-is-happy-to-fight-elizabeth-warren-on-118537612596.html

So far it’s been mostly a GOP fight. Democrats have been fairly quiet in assessing each other.

Until now.

Warren has emerged as the far left’s champion — oh, maybe co-champ, along with independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ‘s running for president as a Democrat. A lot of lefties want Warren to run. She’s said everything but the categorical refusal to run for president in 2016. She keeps couching her intentions in the present tense — “I am not running” or “I have no interest” in running. None of those responses eliminates the possibility of her changing her mind.

She disagrees with a free trade deal with Asian nations. The president stands by his insistence that freer trade with our Pacific partners is a good deal for the country.

So, let’s continue to debate this issue.

It strengths our political process to have these fights within our respective major parties.

It’s going to test the mettle of the parties’ nominees when they emerge from their party fracases.

And, yes, that includes you, too, Hillary Rodham Clinton.