Category Archives: Foreign Policy

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 9, 2018: 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) released on Tuesday, fell into the same trap as so many other forecasters have: ignoring both the temporary nature of Trump’s tariff strategy and the incoming wave of repatriated funds that have been languishing overseas for years.

The chief apologist for the IMF, Maurice Obstfeld (on loan from the University of California, Berkeley, and a former member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors), in a note accompanying the WEO, said that world growth has “plateaued”:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 19, 2018: 

As talks begin again today [Wednesday] in Washington between top people from the United States and Canada over revisions to the inaccurately-named North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pressure is all on Canada. Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip, has about had it with Canada’s stalling. Negotiations have been taking place for nearly 14 months and essentially have been going nowhere. Said Scalise,

There is a growing frustration with many in Congress regarding Canada’s negotiating tactics. While we would all like to see Canada remain part of this three-country coalition, there is not an unlimited amount of time for it to be part of this new agreement.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland was adamant: “Any negotiator who goes into a negotiation believing that he or she must get a deal at any price — that is a negotiator who will be forced to pay the maximum price for that deal. No deal is better than a bad deal.”

On the Canadian side, pressure is building on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to repudiate Freeland’s non-negotiable position not only from Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario (the center of Canada’s auto industry), but also his trade minister, Jim Wilson. Said Wilson on Monday:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, September 14, 2018:  

The Chinese are different. When travelling to China, Greg Rodgers offers this advice: “The concepts of saving face and losing face guide daily life in Asia. Causing someone to “lose face” … is a serious infraction.” He advises travelers:

The abstract concept of face obviously has nothing to do with anatomy, but instead can be described as a combination of social standing, reputation, influence, dignity, and honor. Causing someone to lose face lowers them in the eyes of their peers….

In a communist government, losing face could cause one to lose his life.

So how would Mr. “Art of the Deal” Trump deal with someone who would rather give up his life than accede to his demands?

From a western perspective, the timing couldn’t be better.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 3, 2018: 

“Today the President notified the Congress of his intent to sign a trade agreement with Mexico — and Canada, if it is willing — 90 days from now,” President Donald Trump’s trade representative Robert Lighthizer said on Friday. He added that the accord is “the most advanced and high-standard trade agreement in the world.”

The operative phrase — “and Canada, if it is willing”— is the definitive statement on whether the agreement has two parties, or three. On Friday Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland made clear exactly where her country stands: “We’ve made some progress … we’ve done some work together. For us, the only priority is a deal that’s good for Canada and Canadians, and that protects Canadian interests and Canadian values.”

That same day Trump made off-the-record comments of his own concerning Canadian participation in the trade deal

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 16, 2018:

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (CBS), China’s economy slowed in the second quarter. Unofficial numbers show it slowed a lot.

The numbers coming from the country’s CBS have long been held as spurious, more wishes and hopes reflecting political policy rather than economic reality. For example, the agency has reported for at least the last two years that the country’s economic growth has stayed comfortably above the government’s stated target of 6.5-percent annual GDP growth. Imagine what’s happening behind the scenes at the bureau when it was forced to report a slight decrease in the country’s economic performance in the second quarter compared to the first.

The bureau is essentially the official voice of the communist government as it reports directly to the government’s State Council and is charged with the collection and publication of statistics related to the country’s economy, population and society. So not only must anything and everything reported by the agency be taken with a large dose of salt, it puts special pressure on those determined to find out what’s really happening behind those government numbers.

Officially the Chinese economy

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 2, 2018: 

Canada and the European Union retaliated when President Trump’s tariffs kicked in on July 1. The Canadian government began imposing tariffs on a long list of U.S. consumer goods, ranging from ketchup to pizza to dishwasher detergent to lawn mowers, totaling about $12.6 billion of U.S. exports into the country. Left-wing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged his citizens to “make their choices accordingly” when deciding whether or not to purchase American-made imported products.

On Monday, the European Union threatened retaliatory tariffs on nearly $300 billion of U.S. auto exports should the Trump administration go ahead with tariffs on European autos coming to the United States. It submitted its threat to the U.S. Commerce Department, claiming that Trump’s tariffs on automobiles could have a $13-14 billion negative impact on the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). This would be in addition to the retaliatory tariffs the EU levied against the United States after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from the EU.

Ironically, the EU seemed to ignore the fact that the EU exported $43.5 billion worth of cars to the United States last year, while U.S. automakers only were able to export $7.2 billion worth of cars to the EU, because of the EU’s enormously unfair tariffs on American made cars. Said Trump, “It’s terrible what they [the EU] do to us.… They send their Mercedes [into the U.S. but] we can’t send our cars [into the EU].”

In the grand scheme of things, the impact of these tariffs on the U.S. economy will likely not only be tiny, but temporary. And it’s that “grand scheme” that the mainstream media refuses to discuss, focusing instead on the potential economic impact on the country and disregarding and ignoring what the president is attempting to do: restore national sovereignty that trade deals have significantly and deliberately damaged.

While still a candidate, Donald Trump told his audience what he was going to do to make things fairer if he were elected president. In June 2016 he laid out his plans, and his purposes behind them, to a rapt audience in Monessen, Pennsylvania. It was a long speech, carefully crafted, and so just the most relevant extracts appear here: