Trump has a solid record, but he’s too busy making noise to tout it.
If a tree falls in a noisy circus, does it make a sound? If the Trump administration announces its largest deregulatory effort to date while the president is in the throes of a Twitter rampage, will anybody pay attention?
No, and thereon may hang the balance of Republican congressional control. It’s never clear where Donald Trump gets political advice, if he does at all. What is clear is that this White House is doing an able job of whiffing one of the best political messages in decades, a reality that is demoralizing administration insiders and GOP candidates alike.
.. The Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department released a plan—announced on the website of these pages—to ax the Obama administration’s car-emissions standards, saving consumers $500 billion. Dollarwise, it may be the biggest deregulation ever.
.. The Treasury has recommended rescinding the “payday lending” rule, which threatened to cut off the poorest Americans from viable credit.
.. The Internal Revenue Service lifted a political threat to nonprofits by allowing them to shield the names of their donors.
.. The Department of Health and Human Services finalized its rule allowing more non-ObamaCare insurance options to millions of Americans. The Senate sent a $717 billion defense authorization bill to the White House, increasing active-duty strength and providing troops their largest pay raise in nine years. The Senate also confirmed the 24th Trump circuit-court judge.
.. The Labor Department released new numbers showing worker compensation increased 2.8% year over year, the fastest pace in a decade
.. Republicans have long known they don’t get a fair hearing from the press, which is why they shifted to talk radio and other alternative media. Mr. Trump understands that better than most—thus his heavy use of Twitter, live rallies and press conferences.
.. The president is certainly focused on his base, though with an eye to whipping them up with rallies focused primarily on the polarizing issues of trade and immigration. His tweets revolve around the same issues—those and Mr. Mueller—and are often defensive or whiny.
.. If Mr. Trump makes those centrists believe this election is about family separation, Republicans lose. If he refocuses it on voters’ newly thriving prospects, Republicans have a shot.
.. One remarkable aspect of the Trump administration is its productivity. The cabinet set a pace of reform in its openings weeks that has never lagged. If Mr. Trump isn’t going to spend every day embracing, elevating and making this product of his own presidency the dominant discussion, then no one will. The press isn’t going to do it. Democrats sure aren’t. And no other Republican has that megaphone.
The Rules for Beating Donald Trump
Don’t argue with 4.1 percent growth.
.. don’t bet on bad news.
Why? Because it creates a toxic perception that Trump’s critics would rather see things go wrong, for the sake of their own vindication, than right, for the common good. That, in turn, reinforces the view that Trump’s critics are the sort of people whose jobs and bank accounts are sufficiently safe and padded that they can afford lousy economic numbers.
.. If working-class resentment was a factor in handing the White House to Trump, pooh-poohing of good economic news only feeds it.
While they’re at it, they might try to observe Rule No. 2: Stop predicting imminent disaster. The story of the Trump presidency so far isn’t catastrophe. It’s corrosion — of our political institutions, civic morals, global relationships and democratic values.
.. Democrats can make a successful run against the corrosion, just as George W. Bushdid in a prosperous age with his promise to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House after the scandals of the Clinton years.
.. Third rule: Stop obsessing about 2016.
.. The smart play is to defend the integrity of Mueller’s investigation and invest as little political capital as possible in predicting the result. If Mueller discovers a crime, that’s a gift to the president’s opponents. If he discovers nothing, it shouldn’t become a humiliating liability.
.. Tweets are the means by which the president wrests control of the political narrative from the news media (and even his own administration), whether by inspiring his followers, goading his opponents, changing the subject, or merely causing a ruckus... Fifth: Beware the poisoned chalice. We keep hearing that the 2018 midterms are the most important in all of history, or close to it. Why?
Democrats took control of the Senate in the 1986 midterms but George H.W. Bush easily defeated Mike Dukakis two years later. Republicans took Congress in 1994, only to become Bill Clinton’s ideal foil. Republicans took the House again in 2010 amid a wave of discontent with Barack Obama, and you know what happened. Get my drift?
Finally: People want leaders. Not ideologues. Not people whose life experiences have been so narrow that they’ve been able to maintain the purity of their youthful ideals.
.. governors. John Hickenlooper. Deval Patrick. Maggie Hassan. Andrew Cuomo. Want to defeat Trump? Look thataway.
The Conference Call That Shook Investor Faith in Facebook
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg opened the call just after 5 p.m. Eastern time by saying the company had“a solid quarter.” He crowed about Instagram, calling it an “amazing success” and said he believed that the unit grew twice as quickly under Facebook than it would have solo. About 12 minutes into the call, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg chimed in, providing her usual litany of examples of how advertisers were adopting its various ad tools.
There were few signs that anything major was amiss.
And then around 5:20 p.m., Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner addressed analysts and dropped one bombshell after another, rattling investors and raising red flags about whether Facebook’s powerful moneymaking machine is starting to sputter.
First he said the advertising revenue growth slowed down more in Europe than anywhere else in the world partly because of new privacy laws there. That was a bit jarring, as most investors had come to believe the new law that went into effect in May would have minimal, if any, impact.
Then, he noted that the overall revenue growth rate wasn’t just slowing in the second quarter, but would continue to do so in the third and fourth. He partly blamed “currency headwinds” and new privacy options for users but also revealed that new ad formats such as those within Instagram Stories weren’t pulling in the same amount of money as ads shown in the Facebook and Instagram feeds.
Operating margins, Mr. Wehner added, would fall to the “mid-30s” from about 44% currently over the next few years, stemming in part from investments in security and safety.. Mr. Wehner and Ms. Sandberg noted that Facebook had yet to feel the full effects of the new European privacy laws. Mr. Wehner pointed out that Facebook would see a hit to revenue growth owing to changes to its products that would boost privacy.
“The question is will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed?” Ms. Sandberg replied to one question about the moneymaking potential of Stories. “And we honestly don’t know, we’ll have to see what happens.”
.. Ms. Sandberg replied: “I mean, even at decreasing growth rates, we are still growing and predicting growth at very healthy rates.”
.. they must grapple with the question of whether Facebook, too, has limits.
.. “While the company is still growing at a fast clip, the days of 30%+ growth are numbered.”
Trump did a bunch of stuff to strengthen the dollar; now he’s upset about the strengthening dollar
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>China, the European Union and others have been manipulating their currencies and interest rates lower, while the U.S. is raising rates while the dollars gets stronger and stronger with each passing day – taking away our big competitive edge. As usual, not a level playing field…</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1020287981020729344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>And yet, both his tax cuts and trade war are contributing to these dynamics.
- You juice the economy at full employment with a deficit-financed, $2 trillion tax cut, and the Fed’s naturally going to ramp up their concerns about overheating.
- At the same time, the extra fiscal impulse is leading to stronger U.S. growth, relative to that of our trading partners, and that, too, puts pressure on both the dollar and the trade deficit.
- Meanwhile, tariffs tend to reduce the circulation of dollars in foreign exchange markets, yet another pressuring factor of the value of the greenback.
The figure below, an index of the value of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies, shows the dollar beginning its most recent appreciation around when the first salvos of the trade war hit. Relatedly, as Trump’s tweet mentions, the Chinese yuan is falling sharply against the dollar, down about 7 percent since April, a movement that directly offsets that same amount of Trump’s tariffs.
In other words, the president has a point. But while part of this is what he gets from inheriting a strong economy — something I suspect he wouldn’t trade — part of it is because of his and his party’s actions.
.. The Fed is different, as its independence from politics is so vital. There are many sad examples of countries whose economies did a lot worse than they should have because their central banks became an arm of the government.
.. That said, I’m not reaching for the vapors. I really wouldn’t want to see Trump ratchet up his Fed critiques to a regular feature of his daily rants.
.. So, if you’re listening, Mr. President, no point in whining about a currency appreciation to which you’re contributing. Whine as you might, you can’t have a “great economy” closing in on full employment, an independent Fed, a big tax cut, a trade war — and a falling dollar.