Xi has been brilliant at playing Trump, plying him with flattery and short-term trade concessions and deflecting him from the real structural trade imbalances with China. All along, Xi keeps his eye on the long-term prize of making China great again. Trump, meanwhile, touts every minor victory as historic and proceeds down any road that will give him a quick sugar high.
What world are we in? One in which we’re going through three “climate changes” at once.
- We’re going through a change in the actual climate: Destructive weather events and the degradation of ecosystems are steadily accelerating.
.. while China hails globalization, it imposes a 25 percent tariff on imported cars (while America imposes only 2.5 percent) and 50-50 joint ventures and technology transfers for big companies that want to gain access to China’s giant market. But China gets away with it.
.. plowing government funds and research into commercializing 10 strategic industries while creating regulations and swiping intellectual property from abroad to make them all grow faster. These industries include
- electric vehicles,
- new materials,
- artificial intelligence,
- integrated circuits,
- biopharmacy,
- quantum computing,
- 5G mobile communications, and
- robotics.
.. And Trump? On the change in the climate, he’s promoting coal over clean energy, like wind and solar, and has appointed climate-change deniers to all of his key environmental posts. While China is run by engineers, Trump doesn’t even have a science adviser.
.. “This will be wounding to one of America’s gems,” its institutions of higher education, Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, said to me. And it’s basically being done to cut taxes for the wealthy.
.. the Chinese are focused on the giant winds of change, and Trump is betting on his gut and a grab bag of tax cuts based on no take on the world, other than dubious trickle-down economics.
.. When you don’t know where you’re going any tax cut will get you there, any replacement for Obamacare will get you there, any wall will get you there, any trade concession will get you there.
.. I’m certain our economic system is better than theirs — in theory.
But China, with its ability to focus, is getting 90 percent out of its inferior system, and it has brought China a long way fast. And we, with too little focus, are getting 50 percent out of our superior system.
Tillerson Balances Trump’s Goals With His Own
In interview, secretary of state reflects on his role in administration, warns China on trade and territory
“Most of the things he would do would be done on very short time frames. Everything I spent my life doing was done on 10- to 20-year time frames, so I am quite comfortable thinking in those terms.”
His solution: “Delivering the incremental wins,” he said. “Incremental progress is taking you toward the ultimate objective, which is, as I say is eight, 10 years down the road.”’
.. Mr. Tillerson said one of his top long-term priorities is shifting the balance of the trade and national-security relationship with China
.. Mr. Tillerson warned China that the U.S. has an arsenal of economic weapons to force Beijing to address trade imbalances and a continuing territorial dispute in the South China Sea.
.. “We can do this one of two ways,” Mr. Tillerson said during the interview, seeming at times to speak directly to his Chinese counterparts. “We can do it cooperatively and collaboratively, or we can do it by taking actions and letting you react to that.”Tools he might apply include tariffs, World Trade Organization actions, quotas and other mechanisms, he said.
.. “If I were a world leader—doesn’t matter who—I wouldn’t talk to Tillerson,” said Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, citing the public divide between the two men. “The president must feel that this person can do the work for him…this is not the case here. It’s becoming antagonistic.”
.. Mr. Trump has also disparaged his top diplomat, complaining that Mr. Tillerson doesn’t understand his “Make America Great” philosophy and has few original thoughts. “Totally establishment in his thinking,” he has told aides.
.. “I believe you solve a problem in Afghanistan not by just dealing with Afghanistan,” he said. “You solve it by solving a regional problem, and that’s the way we’re looking at the Middle East.”
.. said he spends the bulk of his time concentrating on North Korea, Iran, counterterrorism, China and Russia.
Why Most Economists Are So Worried About Trump
at the annual conference of economists last weekend in Chicago, the major theme was a sense of anxiety about the incoming Trump administration. This foreboding was evident in roughly equal measure among conservative and liberal economists. But it is in direct contrast with the feelings of small-business owners and Wall Street traders.
.. And partly this reflects Mr. Trump’s appointments. Few of his key economic advisers have any economics training, and the only official who identifies as an economist — Peter Navarro, who earned a Harvard Ph.D. in economics and will head up the newly formed National Trade Council — stands so far outside the mainstream that he endorses few of the key tenets of the profession.
.. Over three days of intense discussions, I didn’t encounter a single economist who expressed optimism that Mr. Trump’s administration would be good for the economy. The optimists were those who thought Mr. Trump would not have the energy to actually implement his agenda; the pessimists’ thoughts veered toward disaster.
.. It also puts economists at odds with the judgments of small-business owners.
.. One possibility is that Mr. Trump remains something of an unknown, and each group is filling in the blanks differently. Small businesses, pleased to see a businessman in the White House, might be tempted to believe the best.
.. Mr. Trump’s anti-regulatory zeal may help businesses but hurt workers; his anti-trade agenda could help sellers but hurt buyers; and his instincts to protect existing jobs may advantage existing businesses at the expense of the next generation of entrepreneurs.
.. Or perhaps the optimism of small-business owners is about what they think is most likely to happen, particularly in the short run. My conversations with economists revealed them to be more focused on the long run, particularly on the risk of really bad outcomes. By this view, the short-term optimism may be well placed, but should be juxtaposed with the possibility of a trade war, a catastrophic economic decision like defaulting on the national debt or a foreign policy disaster.
.. Mr. Trump’s populist pose assigns less value to economic expertise, while also creating the conditions under which it’s most likely to be needed.
When Republicans Take Power
the conservative ideology that pervades much of the party is based on the belief that government is the enemy. What will Republicans do with their newfound power? And how will the exercise of that power change the party?
.. It doesn’t require a huge stretch of the imagination to envision Mr. Trump’s trying to use the power of the presidency to punish his enemies, withdraw from military and diplomatic alliances, start trade wars, and engage in a wide-scale roundup of illegal immigrants that would call to mind Operation Wetback in the 1950s crossed with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. However, such a divisive policy inevitably would split the country and the Republican Party as well, leading to a crushing loss in the 2018 midterm elections.
.. anti-deportation protections for the children of undocumented immigrants. (Mr. Trump may not pursue those children, but he won’t protect them.)
.. Party strategists are well aware that the G.O.P. has now lost the popular vote in six of the last seven elections. Despite Mr. Trump’s ability to maximize the white vote, and his more surprising ability to bring some minority voters along, it’s still not in the party’s long-term interest to write off the minorities, particularly Hispanics, who are a growing part of the country’s population.
.. The demands of the G.O.P.’s constituents may force a revision on issues such as trade and climate change, particularly if the waters continue to rise in coastal red states like South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
.. Republicans in Congress have voted more than 60 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they’ve spent far less time thinking about how to replace it. Would the 20 million Americans who have gained health insurance lose it? Would a Republican version of the law retain its prohibitions against insurance companies’ denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions?
Throughout the Obama administration, the G.O.P. has had the mind-set of an opposition party, condemning policies without thinking deeply about how to reform them.
.. Now that the common enemy has been vanquished (at least temporarily), the rival conservatives will be tempted to go to war with one another.
Rogue Republican factions in Congress like the House Freedom Caucus could even use the threat of a government shutdown or debt default against their own administration.
The need to keep order in his ranks may encourage Mr. Trump to become a Richard Nixon-style leader, pursuing an agenda that gives enough to each faction that it remains sullen but not mutinous.
.. The establishment may now be forced, at long last, to stand up to those on the right who are calling for Republicans to repeal the institutions of the New Deal and the Progressive era.
.. Those who anticipate only a two- or four-year window will press for the rapid enactment of a maximalist conservative program, even at the risk of an intense backlash. Others, however, will focus on the long game.
.. Mr. Trump will not be able to bring back the manufacturing jobs he promised, but he could put his supporters to work building roads and bridges instead.
.. Other policies aimed at improving life for working-class Americans could include efforts to combat the epidemic of opioid addiction and improve our mental health system.
.. Mr. Trump could invoke the tradition of national greatness by asking Americans to join him in pursuing a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, which may present the single greatest threat to our physical and fiscal health in the 21st century. Or he could rally our national energies around the construction of the world’s first driverless highway
.. The success of Mr. Trump’s administration ultimately will be determined more by its ability to persuade than compel.