In sum, Nordstrom made a business decision not to do business with the president’s daughter because her clothing line was not selling well, and the president used his official position to attack the company for this decision.
.. The president’s tweet — posted on his personal account and then re-sent from his White House account — is an act of intimidation.
.. This is not the way free markets work, particularly in the United States. We fought a revolution in part against the mercantilism that prevailed in Britain, where the king and members of Parliament played favorites and people who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the government did business with companies in which powerful politicians had an interest (the South Sea Company and the East India Company were the two most notorious examples). Edmund Burke and Adam Smith railed against this type of corrupt relationship between business and government in Britain; similarly, the founders of our country did not want that type of abuse of power going on here.
The modern-day Tea Party movement arose in the aftermath of the Great Recession, a reaction to the perception that politicians were playing favorites in bailing out Wall Street banks and auto companies. The Republican Party for years has made a very strong case for an economy in which market actors make their own decisions free of government interference.
Trump’s Defense of Ivanka Reflects Approach That Could Hurt the Economy
Such actions, if meant to disrupt Nordstrom’s business, could be a signal to other retailers that it’ll be costly to cut off existing business relationships with the Trump family. This kind of bullying could have unintended consequences.
.. Even if you think her products are excellent, Mr. Trump’s outburst provides an incentive not to stock them. After all, if it doesn’t work out, who wants to be in the cross-hairs of an easily angered president with 24.3 million Twitter followers and the power of the regulatory state? It might be far safer to do business with someone else.
.. Mr. Trump’s strategy to protect his daughter’s business seems to mirror his strategy to protect American jobs. Just as he has made it more expensive for potential partners to sever business relationships with his daughter, the C.E.O.s of Carrier, General Motors and Toyota can attest that he has made it more expensive for them to sever their relationships with American workers.
.. The prospect of a costly Trump tantrum could give factory bosses reason to think twice before setting up shop in the United States. In the short run, perhaps Mr. Trump’s threats can slow a painful decline. But in the longer run, defending the status quo may do more harm than good.
Ivanka Trump could be the most powerful first lady ever
But unlike her predecessors who weren’t the wife of the president, Ivanka appears poised to be an adviser, advocate and hostess all at once. Which could revolutionize the role — and make her the most powerful first lady ever.
.. “Ivanka and Jared and Don Jr. are more influential than any Cabinet member,” a friend of the Trumps told me recently
.. When I interviewed Rosalynn Carter earlier this year, she clearly remembered the uproar over her decision to sit in on her husband’s Cabinet meetings, even though she did so without saying a word. Then, first ladies were expected to hide their influence. Ivanka, on the other hand, was at the table Wednesday (along with Don Jr. and brother Eric) when the president-elect met with tech CEOs. And she hasn’t done much to dispel the notion that she and her husband will be top advisers
.. I do think she is intrigued by the potential to serve as an envoy from President Trump to skeptical blue America.
.. One way to view Ivanka’s unapologetic assertion of herself as a policy adviser is that she’s already cleared the bar that Lady Bird warned her daughters about: “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t mind seeing on the front page of the newspaper.” Ivanka has lived her whole life understanding this maxim and is prepared for the White House in a way that presidential daughters who came before her, including Luci and Lynda Bird Johnson, Tricia and Julie Nixon, and Jenna and Barbara Bush, weren’t.
.. During the campaign she unwisely cut short an interview with Cosmopolitan’s Prachi Gupta because she said the reporter’s questions about conflicts between her statements on child care and her father’s statements years before had “a lot of negativity.” That’s an answer the media probably won’t accept from someone with West Wing influence.
.. in April, then-candidate Donald Trump described Melania’s reluctance: “We have such a great life. Why do you want to do this?” he said she asked him. He replied with his usual modesty: “I sort of have to do it, I think. I really have to do it.” Ivanka doesn’t share her stepmother’s reticence. She fits the mold of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, President Theodore Roosevelt’s first daughter, who described herself as “ecstatic” when her father became the 26th president
Al Gore just had ‘an extremely interesting conversation’ with Trump on climate change
“The world is on the cusp of either building on the progress and solving the climate crisis, or stepping back, washing our hands of America’s traditional role as the leader of the world and letting the big polluters call the shots,” Gore said. “The choice is that clear. It’s that stark.”