Two Loud Boos

            I cheer when President Trump does things right. I boo when he doesn’t. His tax reform, deregulation, energy policy, and judicial picks get cheers. His healthcare debacle and his ill-advised tweets get boos. And now he gets another boo for his trade and monetary policies.

            It all started with Trump’s choice of investor Wilbur Ross to be his Secretary of Commerce. Ross made his billions on bankruptcies, not exactly the right background for being the administration’s leader on trade. Noted for falling asleep at Cabinet meetings, the 80-year old did poorly on trade deals with the Chinese and was replaced for all practical purposes by Robert Lighthizer as U.S. Trade Representative.  

            I don’t know to what degree he was influenced by Ross, but President Trump’s first bad move was to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a profitable arrangement with trading partners in Eastern Asia, exclusive of China. Trump, the master negotiator, thought he could do better by dealing directly with each former partner. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. The jilted countries formed their own partnership, excluding the U.S. while turning to China.

            Trump’s next bad move was calling NAFTA a terrible deal, because he judges everything on the basis of trade imbalances. The fact is that NAFTA is beneficial for all three NAFTA partners. If Trump kills NAFTA, many industries that trade with Canada and Mexico will lose. The biggest losers of all may be American farmers, whose support the President can hardly afford to lose.

            Then came Trump imposing high tariffs on Chinese solar panels and South Korean washing machines. The net effect is that American companies that rely on low-cost solar panels will have to hike prices to make ends meet; Whirlpool, meanwhile, has raised its prices on washing machines. The losers are not China and South Korea: it’s the American people who now have to pay higher prices for both products.

            Finally, the Trump administration is pushing for a weaker dollar to increase sales of American products overseas. The dollar has already fallen 8% in Trump’s first year. As a result, American consumers will pay increasingly high prices for imported products. So will American manufacturers who rely on foreign components and imported commodities.

            Protectionism and monetary devaluation are two bad plays. They both deserve a loud boo.

"It's the Economy, stupid"

            When Bill Clinton ran for President, the catchphrase that encapsulated his strategy was simple: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It worked, demonstrating that what voters care most about is their pocketbook. If this truth holds, Donald Trump, in spite of his multiple faults, will not only cruise to re-election in 2020, but will lead Republicans in Congress to even greater majorities in the November mid-term elections.

            Democrats are terrified. They and their sycophants in the media will do anything to divert voters’ attention from Donald Trump’s successes in his first year in office, especially the positive results of the tax reform bill.

            Nancy Pelosi warned that passage of the bill would lead to Armageddon. Well, this is what Armageddon looks like: led by AT&T, hundreds of companies have anticipated the benefits of tax reform by giving their employees raises and bonuses. Walmart, the largest employer in the country is not only giving out bonuses, but is also raising the minimum wage for their employees.

            Democrats warned that corporate tax reduction windfalls would only be used to enrich the people at the top. How wrong they were: many corporations have announced massive capital investments in new plants, while others are moving operations back to the States (ex, Chrysler relocating a plant from Mexico to Michigan).

            Hypocrite-in-Chief Chuck Schumer shed crocodile tears in predicting that tax cuts would add trillions to the national debt—this from a man who had no qualms about the previous administration’s doubling of the national debt. Not surprisingly, he was silent when Apple announced it would return $250 billion in cash that the company is holding overseas and pay a tax of $38 billion on the repatriated funds, in effect blowing a neat little hole in the national debt. We can expect that many of the companies holding some $2.5 trillion abroad will also do the same. While it was at it, Apple also announced a $2,500 bonus for its employees. And, by the way, Apple will invest some of the repatriated money to build a new campus that will employ 20,000 high-salaried people. Right here at home.

            Democrats don’t want to talk about the economy. They’d rather talk about DACA and the President’s vulgarity. But Americans know better: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The Wonders of Hubble

            The single greatest invention in the history of the world is the Hubble telescope. Since 1990, Hubble has taken over a million pictures of space that have absolutely revolutionized our knowledge of the universe. Before Hubble, scientists believed that the Milky Way was our entire universe. Now we know that the Milky Way, with its 100 billion stars, is only one of ten trillion galaxies. That calculates to around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 x 24 zeros) stars in the universe, many likely to have planetary systems capable of sustaining life forms. Hubble has also told us that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, which makes our life span on Earth but a tiny blip in time. How small we all are—and how humble we should all be.

            Meanwhile, newspapers, television, and social media tell us that we should be concerned with transgender rights, collusion with Russia, and the mental fitness of our President. We are told to take sides on global warming, genetically modified foods, medical marijuana, and off-shore drilling. We’re led to believe that life is all about sports championships, Golden Globe awards, and the consequence of elections, not to mention the economy, health care, illegal immigration, natural disasters, nuclear weapons, and terrorist massacres.

            How insignificant all of these matters become when measured against the universe brought to us by Hubble. Without getting too philosophical about this, we can begin to appreciate why hermits, ascetics, and monks throughout the ages have chosen a life of contemplation and meditation rather than social engagement. I’m not suggesting we should all head for the nearest monastery. But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for us to pause at the beginning of any new year to thank our Creator for one uniquely human gift: the ability to wonder.

Lists

            At the beginning of every new year we are treated to two familiar lists from media pundits. One is a list of prognostications, as if these seers think they possess an infallible crystal ball. Inevitably, many of them end up dining on humble pie at the end of the year, like The New York Times economics guru Paul Krugman who predicted that the stock market would collapse after Trump’s election to the presidency.

            The second list is the wish list. It is safer, if for no other reason that disappointment does not destroy belief in Santa Claus, irrespective of liberal convictions that big government is really Santa Claus in disguise. When it comes to politics, we don’t have to be experts to come up with our own wish list. I have one, but space restrictions imposed by our wonderful editor limits me at this time to just one item under the general heading of Draining the Swamp: Reforming the federal bureaucracy.

            There are approximately two million federal government employees. They earn an average salary of $100,000 a year. And that does not include automatic increases, bonuses, terrific benefits, and one of the most generous pension plans in the land. All told, these employees earn an estimated 61% more than workers in comparable private sector jobs. Outrageous? It gets better. Because federal employees belong to a union, they are covered by rules that make it practically impossible to get fired.       

            Decertifying federal worker unions would go a long way to draining this bloated government swamp. But that’s not going to happen, not as long as Washington’s most voracious swamp denizens are found under the Capitol dome. But maybe conservatives in Congress can begin to effect change. The current budget blueprint calls for a $5 billion cut in non-defense spending in 2018 and a $1.3 trillion reduction in domestic spending over the next 10 years. It’s not hard to find targets. For example, there are 92 anti-poverty duplicative programs administered by government agencies; eliminating the duplication would save $843 million a year.

            Will reform happen? The Republican-controlled House determines appropriations, but every measure it proposes will be opposed by Democrats who are owned by the unions and committed to big government solutions to every problem. That’s why a wish list is called a wish list.