As the trade war drags on, China’s President Xi has Trump’s shriveled little raisins in his fist, but Trump still seems to think he has the upper hand. CNBC summarizes this morning’s tweet-negotiations:
President Donald Trump pressured China on Tuesday to make a trade deal with the U.S. in the near future, warning talks will get much tougher if he is reelected in 2020.
Trump said in a series of tweets: “We are doing very well in our negotiations with China. While I am sure they would love to be dealing with a new administration so they could continue their practice of “ripoff USA”($600 B/year),16 months PLUS is a long time to be hemorrhaging jobs and companies on a long-shot…And then, think what happens to China when I win. Deal would get MUCH TOUGHER! In the meantime, China’s Supply Chain will crumble and businesses, jobs and money will be gone!”
Meanwhile, Xi, who despite being president for life in an autocratic country and thus above petty concerns like fluctuations in popular support and elections, probably knows how to read polls. One recent poll shows Trump losing by double-digits to Biden, Harris, Sanders or Warren — and that’s in an economy where Trump’s mismanagement hasn’t yet resulted in widespread pain, though signs are on the horizon.
The real question is what Xi thinks is in his own and China’s bests interests. Is China better off with a belligerent idiot in charge of their most formidable geopolitical foe or not? We’ll find out soon enough.
Open thread!
ETA: Speaking of world’s greatest negotiators…
This was the moment Boris Johnson lost his majority in parliament https://t.co/j9uMkLTaQl pic.twitter.com/l9dwkIIzUi
— The Independent (@Independent) September 3, 2019
Jesus. What a pair of clowns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And does he need to coordinate with the Russians, Saudis and Israelis? Or just let them do the work for him?
Gravenstone
If they were so moved, Trump just gave China a prime reason to meddle in the 2020 elections against him. Given his current standing (underwater), I doubt they would seriously consider such action. But now that Putin has created the template for ‘how to undermine a competing democracy ‘ I wouldn’t blame them for at least running the numbers to see if it’s worth the risk.
Amir Khalid
I think China will be happy enough with any kind of idiot as POTUS, as long as he can be manipulated to suit their purposes.
chopper
china: well then, we’re good.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Has anyone on the Right woke up the fact that’s it quite possible for China fix the 2020 election to make sure Trump loses so they can get a better trade deal?
Belafon
China still needs the US market, and a competent president has dealt with China as a geopolicital force not as a subject to be bullied. The line Xi will walk is hurting Trump enough to keep him from being reelected, but not crash the world economy. The thing Xi can do is demand his people suffer in the short term.
Doug Gardner
One “tell” that Trump doesn’t write a particular tweet is the correct spelling of a word such as “hemorrhaging”. How would you like to be the aide who has to adopt Trump’s addled and bullying persona while simultaneously trying to make him look like a first-grader?
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Xi is in opposition to those states on this issue. And to Russia overall in regards to other issues. The question is whether Xi decides to involve himself in the 2020 elections. Xi has something else in his arsenal: a much, much, much more refined cyber operation. This is usually used as a way to enhance the PRC’s economic power, but he can just as easily use it to wage an information war for influence and effect to counter what the Russians, the Israelis, the Saudis, the Emiratis, and others will be doing to ensure Trump gets reelected and the Republicans keep the Senate.
Adam L Silverman
@Doug Gardner: Those tweets are done by Dan Scavino. Either after the President has dictated them to him or from a list of tweets that Scavino has prepared for the day, gotten the President’s approval on, and then Scavino tweets them.
MattF
I doubt that Xi really objects to the fact that the US has an idiot-president… the world is what it is, and you have to deal with that. I expect a patient, calibrated response.
ThresherK
@Doug Gardner: Spelling “hemorrhaging”? I don’t know if he actually uses it. This smacks of a word above his intellectual station.
(And let’s not even go into the English-English spelling, “haemorrhaging”.)
Chief Oshkosh
China wins either way. If Dolt 45 is re-elected, they just keep pushing him around and continue gaining regional and global influence. It just falls in their lap. As long as the current “parent” generation (i.e., 30-50 years old) doesn’t feel pain like their parents felt, Xi won’t even break a sweat. If, on the other hand, Dolt 45 loses, Xi will have a more rational, stable trading “partner” who enters the position in a new world where China is much less reliant on the US for the thing that is really important to China, and the thing that would get Xi overthrown if he fucked that thing up: FOOD.
Robby-D
If China’s smart they’ll negotiate their trade deal with Trump before 2020 is decided. Pretty much every negotiation he’s entered since becoming president has wound up with him on the losing side, except maybe USMCA which was essentially a draw with the best friends the USA has.
Gin & Tonic
@Chief Oshkosh: Part of why the Trump admin is so unnerved by Chinese investment in Ukraine.
MattF
Boris Johnson loses majority as MP moves across aisle during speech.
hells littlest angel
When investors in his real estate schemes expressed concern that things weren’t looking good, he would threaten to pull his own money out of the project (spoiler: he didn’t have his own money in the project) and cause the project to collapse unless the worried investors poured in even more money. It’s the only tactic he has ever had, and it worked — for a while — with greedy dipshits trying to get rich quick. It ain’t gonna work with the government of the largest nation on earth.
trollhattan
@MattF:
They love it because instability and chaos here helps their long-term objectives. Xi also knows we’re not going to do anything to stem their hegemonic activities in the western Pacific.
“Crumble” schmumble.
trollhattan
@MattF:
An actual aisle. Nice touch.
Are there cookies?
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: And Scavino probably uses autocorrect. Heck, I have trouble spelling hemorrhaging without it. I think it’s because of disuse because there was a time when I could.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I think we all know the answer to any question that starts that way.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: I’m thinking Xi might offer Trump a face-saving climb-down for that reason — no doubt China and everyone else, friend and foe alike, is running circles around Trump and his low-quality hires in every negotiation on any topic. But at some point, the instability that comes along with a fool like Trump is everyone’s problem. Not sure if we’re there yet or not.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: I edited the post to include that video. Extraordinary.
Trump’s
@Betty Cracker: Johnson had a majority of +1, he’s now at -1.
SFAW
@ThresherK:
Any polysyllabic word used by a reasonably intelligent fifth grader is above his intellectual station. Hell, I’ve known some second graders who spoke better, more coherently, and more intelligently than the Moron-in-Chief.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t understand this mindset of theirs or Putin. Isn’t putting a belligerent idiot in charge of the nation with the largest nuclear arsenal a stupid fucking thing to do? They’re playing god with the rest of us! What right do they have to risk the lives of billions, not to mention other life on this planet? The only known one in the universe to support life as we know it?
Mandalay
I wish those polls would go away. They are both meaningless and harmful.
They are meaningless because the election is over a year away, and as Hillary Clinton will tell you, simply getting more votes than Trump doesn’t mean you become president. In 2020, it’s possible Trump could win 5 million fewer votes than his opponent — and still win a second term.
And they are harmful because they push the notion that the Democrats have got this, and Trump has no chance of winning. Just like 2016.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Johnson had a majority of +1, he’s now at -1.
Kent
@MattF:
What does Boris Johnson actually think the UK is going to export to the US? Their three largest exports are cars, pharmaceuticals, and petroleum. Do they really think Americans are suddenly going to buy more Range Rovers? Do they think US pharma companies are going to switch over to UK-produced products? The current trend is increasing pharma imports from India. Can the UK compete with that? As for petroleum? The US is self-sufficient in petroleum. In point of fact, most of the UK’s biggest markets for its biggest products are all in the EU.
The only thing a new US-UK trade deal will do is pry open the UK market for US agribusiness more than it already is if the UK drops some of the stringent EU food standards.
These people are just too fucking stupid for words.
rp
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Yes, and the fact that, unlike Russia, China makes a ton of stuff that the US buys. Having a strong US economy helps them, so I doubt Xi wants an idiot in charge of the largest economy in the world.
Citizen Alan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Honestly, I think Republicans would be thrilled if they could claim that any losses in 2020 were the result of Chinese interference. IIRC, they were threatening to impeach Gore if he won in 2000 because of that one time he called a Chinese donor and used the wrong phone.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Various news outlets send reporters into the Midlands (away from those London elitists) and the interviews all sound like better-behaved Trumpers, dreams of self-rule dancing in their heads after decades of being yanked around by Europe. They’re badly, badly delusional.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mandalay:
I’m just as equally tired of seeing articles like these. Yes, don’t take anything for granted, fight like hell for every vote, but can we please not dream up these doomsday scenarios of how Trump could somehow win via the EC in 2020? I mean, knock on wood, but what are the odds of that happening twice in as little as four years? There were a lot of factors in 2016 working in his favor, some of those no longer operative. No, his margins are too close for that to happen again. He pulled it off once. I doubt very much he’ll be able to again in just the right number of states with just enough votes
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: Well, whether they should or not, polls aren’t going away, and I don’t know any Democrat who thinks this will be a slam dunk. If anything, I worry we’ve internalized the lesson of 2016 so much that we’re overly intimidated by a weak, unpopular and incompetent president, wrongly conflating him with an electoral college juggernaut who can vanquish opponents with a single sneering tweet. The fact is, Trump needed (and received) a perfect storm of conditions to win the electoral college in 2016. I don’t think we should assume he’ll be easy to beat in 2020 for a lot of reasons, but there’s also a danger of fear making us too timid.
david
Biden tells NPR re: his gaffes: “Details are irrelevant in terms of decision making”
———-
Whew. 2021-2024 is gonna suck no matter which party wins. Forget Trump or Biden, the entire damn country is sundowning.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
A Charlie safari? [Since Cletus is probably not a popular name in the Midlands.]
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: Actually they don’t. Xi, as well as most Chinese, are socio-culturally neo-Confuscian. The preference is for order. It is why the leadership of the PRC looked at what was going on in the late 80s and the 1990s and made their own long, slow plan to move away from a purely Communist economy and system to a hybrid capitalist system that made sense within the Chinese socio-cultural context. The PRC leadership looked at the Soviet to Russian transition and it scared the daylights out of them.
And now the PRC has a plan to eventually emerge as both the largest economic power in the global system, as well as the hegemon in the global system. And that is all being jeopardized by the chaos that the President creates and, apparently, craves. The last thing they want is for this to go on any longer than it has too. Yes, they are taking advantages of opportunities opening up as a result of it, but they have a plan, they want to stick to it, and they’re having to improvise because the President is, to say the least, unconventional.
Peale
@trollhattan: Yeah, they dance around about to the tune “sovereignty” the same way the right blathers on about “freedom” in ways that make you think that they themselves would put crowns on their own heads November 1 if they could.
SFAW
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
That’s on a par with “It’s in the bag” and “Nothing can go wrong now.”
I thought we taught you better.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
What would this new world look like? Would the PRC become as interventionist as the US did, and frankly, pretty much every other great power in history has? Would they have an ideological drive to export their form of autocracy to other nations, including the West? The PRC scare the shit out of me
Kent
@SFAW:
Probably more likely a Nigel Safari.
Kraux Pas
@MattF: Thanks for that. I hadn’t grasped the full significance of what I was seeing there.
Steeplejack
Good and hard.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Range Rovers are no longer made by a British owned company. Neither are Jaguars or Minis.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@SFAW:
It’s not so much I think it’s in the bag, it’s I can’t imagine the US continuing to be the US as currently constituted if Trump wins a second term under those conditions. He’s deeply unpopular pretty much everywhere and I don’t think people are going to take a brazen, wire-thin, Trump EC win sitting down, especially if the economy takes a nosedive and he runs on his maximalist racism. That possibility scares the shit out of me.
So I don’t think the election is going to be easy or a sure thing by any means. I’m confident about our chances, but I awknowledge we can lose. I just don’t want to hear about doomsday scenarios because I already know what could happen if we lose
Mandalay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You shouldn’t be. That article explains in detail how Trump might win in 2020 with five million fewer votes. In contrast, polls announcing Trump losing by double digits to various opponents explain and conclude nothing, and are just clickbait at this stage of the game.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
Or Aston Martins, as I learned on the Grand Tour
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Very good. This election is a referendum on Trump and the battlespace is the Electoral College. 15 states are, overall, in play in regard to the Electoral College and 4 states, in specific, are the key objectives to take.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Look at the Belt and Road initiative, Xi’s machinations behind the scenes at home regarding it, and that’s what that world would look like. Lots of rules, lots of assertions that we all have to follow the rules, and then a lot of PRC machinations to manipulate and abuse the rules in their favor and in a way where everyone may know what is going in, but no one can actually be able to do anything about it.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
How do you think climate change would affect the PRC’s vision of this world?
R-Jud
@Kent: It’d be a Darren Safari.
Signed, Someone Who Lives in the Midlands
Kent
@Adam L Silverman:
No, of course not. The parent company Tata Motors is actually Indian owned. As far as I know, they are still made in the UK. But rumors are that they are looking to shift production to China and perhaps India.
But cars are still the largest export from the UK regardless of who actually owns the companies. The point is that there is no possible magic trade deal with the US that would suddenly make UK cars more attractive to US consumers over their Korean and Japanese and US-made alternatives.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good piece from Jonathan Chait on Pence’s Ireland g(r)ift to trump (and Pence’s cracker-jack staff is putting out the official story that trump didn’t order Pence to stay at his hotel, he merely suggested it)
always grotesquely interesting to see trump’s lizard brain at work
Marcopolo
Waiting for pre road trip car work to be done at the dealers & following live-tweet coverage of the House of Commons. Apparently, BJ is worse at being PM than May was. According to the tweeters it is looking like Johnson loses the anti-no deal brexit vote (it would rule out the leave w/ no deal option) later today with a possibility of him losing his job in a no confidence vote as well.
Glad to see politics is screwed up just about everywhere.
Mandalay
@Adam L Silverman: It’s even worse than that. Morgan, the last British owned car manufacturer of any size was bought out by an Italian investment firm earlier this year.
Sab
@Adam L Silverman: PRC was always Han Chinese facing out to the world, but quite multi-cultural facing in. It is, after all, a huge country with many ethnic groups and at least half a dozen languages. Xi’s government is Han Chinese facing in also. Only the Han Chinese count. This is a huge political change. I wonder how it will work out. Chinese emigrants I know from other parts of the country are kind of horrified by how much their local dialects have died out in China. They don’t mind Mandarin dominating national affairs, but they value their local culture and language, and Xi apparently does not.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: They have dumped a ton of money into R&D for alternative and green energy, especially for transportation. And what they couldn’t fund, they’ve stolen. They will control that world because they’re going to own the tech and they’re going to license it, for a nice price, to anyone else that wants to use it.
Another Scott
@Sab: The BBC has been covering the Uighur camps for months. It’s really quite horrifying. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Mandalay: To quote the commercial: “There’s grazi and not so grazi…”
Adam L Silverman
@Sab: They were multi-cultural looking in, but… And the but was that the non Han Chinese had to accommodate themselves to Han culture.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mandalay:
@Adam L Silverman:
I guess all we can do is fight like hell and get the votes out everywhere, but especially in the states we need to win in the EC. I’m still fairly confident we can beat Trump. I do think he’s vulnerable and the 2016 election had a lot factors he’s not going to have in his favor this time around. But I won’t take it for granted
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. Though, I meant more long-term. There are speculations that we’ve already reached the tipping point and large swaths of the Earth around the equator will become uninhabitable for human life and was wondering how that might throw a wrench in China’s grand plans or threaten their stability. But I suppose that isn’t really your are of expertise ^^;
Another Scott
TheHill: Manchin to stay in the US Senate and not run for WV Governor.
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Looks like Johnson will be the Scaramucci of PMs.
Mnemosyne
A few years ago, I read an interesting book called K Blows Top! about Nikita Khrushchev’s tour of the US. One of the really striking moments was when he went on a “whistle stop” train tour of California and was met by a large crowd in Santa Barbara. Like any other politician, he immediately waded into the crowd, shaking hands and kissing babies.
Politicians need to have the same skills all over, even if the only people who get to “vote” for them are their fellow aspiring dictators.
SFAW
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
16 months before he was re-elected as governor, now-Senator Voldemort was at 31 percent in the polls. (Don’t recall if that was “approval” or voting figures.) Mitch McConnell is allegedly “deeply unpopular” in Kentucky, but is still likely to win. And so on and so forth.
Being “confident” is for chumps, as Arnold Rothstein and Chick Gandil could tell you.
You just THINK you do. It’ll almost-certainly be worse than what you think.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: Yup, and over the next couple of years we will have frequent occasions to remind ourselves, “fucking Manchin! but things would be worse without him”. I hope.
Credit where due: He tried to enact some gun safety legislation after Newtown, and I’m still a bit surprised he survived that.
Yarrow
Hoo boy, it’s all happening in the UK right now. I have so much I need to do and I can’t keep my eyes off live blogs and Twitter and so forth of what’s happening over there.
Reminder of what’s really behind Boris and his cronies being so desperate to leave the EU:
Yarrow
@Another Scott: That’s very good news. No big fan of Manchin but he’s a Dem and he’d likely be replaced by a Republican.
jl
@Robby-D: “every negotiation he’s entered since becoming president has wound up with him on the losing side, except maybe USMCA which was essentially a draw with the best friends the USA has.”
Trump didn’t really negotiate much USMCA is basically NAFTA with some confused and poorly drafted details added on. Whether the new, and confusing, minor gimmicks are a net gain or loss for the US depend on how some inconsistent language is interpreted by courts and trade authorities, and how international corporations, which include auto makers like Ford and GM, decide to handle the financial and regulatory risks.
So, UCMCA is no credit to Trump or the Trumpsters.
Brachiator
Translation
Trump’s phony trade war was always nonsense. The grievances against China were always overblown, and his goals were pointless. He may have disrupted some supply chains, but they are moving to Vietnam and other countries. Manufacturing is never coming back to the US on a large scale.
Meanwhile, Trump is screwing over American farmers, businesses and consumers with his tariffs and the Chinese reaction to his bumbling strategy.
China was always puzzled by Trump. His demands never amounted to anything that was reasonable. Now they are bringing the hammer down because his stupidity is too disruptive to be allowed to continue.
ETA. I guess that Boris Johnson is failing as a Trump mini- me.
Yarrow
Excellent symbolism here, Tories. Everything is fine.
Cermet
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Well, never say never but the chinese have never cared or attempted any such thing in the past. Tibet not withstanding. They do intend to dominate the south china sea for its oil and keep a strong economic hold on ag lands in Africa. But those are for survival, not expansion for either military or cultural reasons at all.
The Moar You Know
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Anecdata: every black person I know thinks he wins again in 2020. ALL of them.
I am not nearly quite that defeatist but have to acknowledge that we are running a pretty shitty string of candidates against an incumbent who will again be aided and abetted by criminal acts by foreign nations bent on the destruction of our nation. An election that will, as of yesterday, not be overseen by the FEC. An election that the Senate refuses to pass election security laws for. An election that the DOJ refuses to oversee or enforce laws regarding. I am still reasonably confident in spite of all this that we win this thing, but it is not a gimme and to treat it as something that “could never happen again” is, in fact, asking for it to happen again.
My pet peeve: again, where is the concerted, party-wide effort to retake the Senate?
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Yep, Brexit isn’t the crime, it’s the coverup!
trollhattan
@ThresherK:
Trump says bleeding, as in “You know, bleeding from the whatever.”
trollhattan
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
We all want Boris to do the fandango.
Cermet
@Adam L Silverman: That chinese belts and roads idea is pure economic suicide as energy becomes more expensive over and above the maintenance nightmare costs of any such vast system in desolate regions with AGW creating massive storms. Please china, start to build those rails and roads trough many thousands of miles of empty and near useless regions to tap markets that don’t really buy much from you nor offer much in the way of natural resources – that’ll keep that economic growth falling – lol. There’s a good reasons ships are the economic methodology to ship over vast distances and trains always work only in densely populated areas. The transsiberian has never been more than a method to hold the russian empire together and doesn’t exactly provide real economic benifits.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know:
I’m gonna stop you right there and ask WTF?
jl
@Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman:
I request a detailed post on how the PRC’s ambitions and goals, and how they plan to use their power should they be realized, are much different than how they were used by the US. And whether such use by PRC would produce more or less benefit to their average citizen than has been the experience in the US.
When I read talk of the supposed big danger from China, and how they supposedly have superiority in being able to plan long term, and have been somehow underhanded, I have doubts. WTF does the US expect to happen if it has become so corrupt and sad that it has allowed crony capitalist corruption to hollow out its economy and public investment? If the US loses world leadership in diplomacy and economic power, much of that was the US’s decision to devote itself to corporate rent seeking for the benefit of the top 1 or 0.1 percent of the population.
trollhattan
@Kent:
For whom they’re making plans.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know if Trump would be smart enough to recognize an attempt to throw him a lifeline. He always wants to look like a winner. Even if you toss him a bone, he is likely to angrily fling it back at you later on.
The destructive effects of Trump’s incompetence are starting to accumulate. And he only knows how to double down with more foolish decisions. This is the same reckless losing strategy he has used with his businesses. He doesn’t seem to be capable of learning from his mistakes.
We may just have to ride it out until we can vote him out of office.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I request $100,000. Neither of us is going to be happy today.//
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Okay, interesting take. I have a hard time sifting through policy now, especially since the 4th constitution. It’s telling that the president and premiere leader have been the same about ’93.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I’ll gladly send you an email IOU!
@Cermet: That is a good point. As a plan for economic growth that benefits China in narrow economic terms, Belt and Road hasn’t met expectations, not even close. Not all long term fell and sinister plans hatched and nursed by authoritarians work out, despite panic mongering in the US.
Belt and Road might achieve some diplomatic and geopolitical goals, but so far nothing special economically.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I don’t take IOUs.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Citizen Alan: Sigh, yes your right; imagine the stupidest possible reaction and that’s reaction a conservative has; in this chase foreign governments hacking the election is great because now that means conservatives don’t have to admit their ideas suck the big one.
It’s Scooby Do LARPing; Old Man Winders dumb idea about dressing up like a ghost would have worked if it wasn’t for that van full of stoners.
Adam L Silverman
@Cermet: @jl: The point isn’t actually to create economic advantage. The point is to bind the “partner” states within the initiative to the PRC as clients. The actual objective here isn’t the one being waved around in public.
jl
@Brachiator: “The destructive effects of Trump’s incompetence are starting to accumulate.”
I saw a youtube clip of an interview with some small and medium size business owners explaining how the incompetent design of Trump’s tariffs, particularly starting the tariff war mostly with intermediate goods, make it almost impossible for them to adjust. And competent economists, such as Krugman, Stiglitz and DeLong predicted exactly what would happen.
So, gosh, starting a senseless trade war with incompetent tactics has not gone necessarily as they expected. Now they have to go to more tariffs on final consumer goods and have some dilemmas. I have to wonder how much of the incompetence and chaos is the results of Trumps’ advisors having to navigate around his ignorance. Does Trump really believe that an increase in tariffs means that the Chinese government has to send the US lots of hot sweet cash, and consumers don’t pay anything? Hard to believe, but maybe he does. So his advisors had to work around that little problem.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: “The actual objective here isn’t the one being waved around in public.”
I believe that is very likely true.
Immanentize
@Adam L Silverman:
Ask and you shall receive!
Immanentize
@Adam L Silverman:
ASK! And you shall receive.
Mandalay
@The Moar You Know:
What would that “party-wide effort” look like? I’m all for Dean’s 50 state approach in general, but for the Senate in 2020 shouldn’t the focus be on specific Republican Senators who are vulnerable, like Cory Gardner in Colorado? Given that, apart from financial contributions, what should the Democratic Party, or individual Democrats in states other than Colorado, be doing? (But I suspect I’m missing your point by a mile; if so, apologies in advance.)
chopper
@Kent:
don’t forget about british beefOH, RIGHT.
Bill Arnold
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They (the DJT admin and political team) been laying the groundwork to blame a R loss on Chinese hackers for a while now. IMO. Lots of talk and action about how the real hacker threat is China, for example. Which is, while not entirely BS, not true either.
Brachiator
@jl:
I thought that conservative or free market economists were against tariffs. Hell, even the original Adam Smith was against tariffs.
Apart from being ineffective, the tariffs undo the benefits of Trump’s tax cuts, hurting both businesses and consumers. On top of this, Trump’s tariffs are now starting to hit Christmas goods, magnifying the error of imposing tariffs in the first place.
But Trump is playing with other people’s money, so he doesn’t care. Doubling down on his stupidity costs him nothing.
I don’t think he listens to his advisors at all. Plus, he expects that they will lie for him.
Equally bad, conservative pundits and reporters are willing to lie for him as well.
A recent story about CNBC business commentator Jim Cramer illustrates how crazy this is.
This is nonsense, bordering on malfeasance. Investors should rely on the most accurate and reliable information available. It’s absurd to suggest that they should blindly trust anyone.
Trump convinced the rubes that he had world class negotiating skills. Allies felt that they had to placate him because the US is big and powerful. China is looking out for their own interests. They don’t have to defer to Trump or play his game.
TenguPhule
@jl:
Han Chinese Overlords are bigger assholes then White American Overlords. They’ve had more time to practice.
Matt
Depends on if you believe the actual strategy of Vote Leave was its publicly-stated strategy. Certainly it’s a failure in that case.
OTOH, if you believe the actual strategy of Vote Leave was to crater the country’s economy and let the Tories sell off everything from the NHS to the Crown Jewels then it’s working PERFECTLY.
You can’t have meaningful policy compromise with saboteurs and suicide bombers.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: My opinion and it doesn’t have to be yours. This slate of Dem presidential candidates is crap. Weakest I’ve seen in my lifetime and that’s saying something.
debbie
@The Moar You Know:
If you’ve been around long enough to remember Mondale or Dukakis, then I have to say you are very, very wrong.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know:
Whew, that’s a relief!
Dev Null
@Bill Arnold: laying the groundwork to blame a R loss on Chinese hackers for a while now.
Two questions:
1) Per your scenario, what happens when Trump loses and blames the Chinese? Turning it around, could Trump could find a way to hold onto the office should he lose the election?
2) why just the Chinese? Why not an international free-for-all?
I mean: the Iranians have skin in the game. Israel has skin in the game, at least if Netanyahu remains PM. KSA and UAE have prior skin in the game. Russia. Probably other nations I’m not thinking of at the moment.
Why not a hackfest in which our elections are won by the (foreign) coalition with the best hackforce?
Analogous to the shenanigans which led to the partitioning of Poland back in the 1700s. The US won’t be absorbed by Austria / Russia / etc … but a break up of the US into successor states might serve the interests of several strategic adversaries.
I gather that the phrase “Polish Parliament” celebrates the dysfunction of the Polish legislature, which (I further gather) led more-or-less directly to the dismemberment of Poland. Not that I’m reminded of the Republican Senate, mind you. Nope. Not at all. Just an idle thought.
Not saying any of this is inevitable or even likely; I have no idea. But an international hackfest of American elections doesn’t strike me as a priori impossible. After all, if you’re an adversary, you don’t have to ensure that your candidate wins. It should be enough to arrange that no one believes that the vote was fair.
Brachiator
@Dev Null:
This is fun. Trump could not declare himself the Victor. The Constitution currently does not provide for do overs or dealing with hacking.
A case could be made that the House of Representatives would be empowered to determine who should be president. They currently have some power should no candidate receive the necessary number of electoral votes.
Dev Null
@Brachiator:
Assumes facts not in evidence. (Hey, I could declare myself the winner…)
For the sake of argument: if Trump declared himself the winner, could he make his declaration stick?
IIRC (and I’m not sure I do), the Constitution provides for situations in which no candidate gets a majority. I don’t think that provision could easily be stretched to cover a case in which there’s evidence (real or invented) that the polls were hacked.
And SCOTUS would never give us a one-off do-not-use-this-again 5-4 decision, amirite?
But just for the sake of argument, would the country accept said 5-4 decision?
So, chaos.
I think. And a lot of strategic adversaries would be fine with that.
Peasblossom
I think Brits are gonna be drinking a lot of witches brew come October 31st.
Dev Null
@Dev Null: Just to make it more interesting …
… suppose the hacking weren’t limited to the presidential race. Presumably strategic adversaries could target senators and key representatives.
And if strategic adversaries collaborate, they could leave all sorts of faked evidence trails, e.g. the Iranians might plant evidence pointing to the NORKs, the Chinese could plant evidence pointing to the Israelis, on and on.
S’pose #MoscowMitch loses a close race, and there’s (possibly planted) evidence that points to Chinese hacking. Will #MoscowMitch go quietly into the night?