Hollywood Contemplates Looking in the Mirror, Then Turns Away

Last night’s Academy Awards featured a lot of generalities and not much inspiration or speaking truth to power.

Last night’s Academy Awards broadcast was Hollywood’s way of addressing the sexual-harassment scandal without really addressing it, discussing it without really discussing it, and assuring the public that all the worst stuff is in the past and that no one needs to worry about it anymore.

Yes, it was nice to see Ashley Judd and Annabella Sciorra again, up on stage alongside Salma Hayek. But no one involved in the ceremony could ever quite come out and say why those three were up on stage.

.. The president’s defenses of protectionism are incoherent babble that is just factually wrong; Trump insists that “our Steel and Aluminum industries are dead” when the U.S. Department of Commerce figures show that since the beginning of 2009, the six major U.S. steel companies have collectively reported net earnings for 20 quarters.
.. The president still hasn’t figured out that you can’t change government policy as quickly and impulsively as you type out and send a Tweet.

By midnight Wednesday, less than 12 hours before the executives were expected to arrive, no one on the president’s team had prepared any position paper for an announcement on tariff policy, the official said. In fact, according to the official, the White House counsel’s office had advised that they were as much as two weeks away from being able to complete a legal review on steel tariffs.

There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross’s team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House. 

.. By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. stock market had fallen and Trump, surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office, was said to be furious.

.. This reminds me of Steve Bannon’s “plan” to announce the immigration restrictions without any warning in the first days of Trump’s presidency. No one in the rest of the government was prepared to implement them; John Kelly, then the secretary of Homeland Security, learned from television that Trump had signed the order.

..  he’s flat-out wrong when he claims, “Maybe it’ll cost a little bit more, but we’ll have jobs.”

.. the decline of jobs in the steel and aluminum industries predates the competition with China by decades. Industry experts know that this is mostly because of innovation and industry consolidation. The era of labor-intensive metal production is over.

EU Looks to Familiar Playbook to Hit Back at Trump Plan

The European Commission will review an approach that led then-President George W. Bush to remove tariffs in previous dispute

“It’s actually a stupid process that we must to do this, but we have to,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday in response to Mr. Trump’s announcement. “We can also do stupid.”

.. The EU hopes to  erode support for Mr. Trump’s policies by taking its fight to his allies’ constituencies. Roughly 95% of all bourbon comes from Kentucky, home of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican. House Speaker Paul Ryan is a Republican from Wisconsin, home to Harley Davidson.

.. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Sunday dismissed the EU’s tariff threat as a “rounding error.”

.. The EU lastly is readying a challenge, with other trading partners, in the World Trade Organization against Mr. Trump’s national-security justification for the tariffs, EU officials said.

“We think that these are safeguards in disguise to protect American industries,” the EU official said.

.. A similar playbook was successful in a fight with former President George W. Bush. In 2002 he imposed tariffs ranging from 8% to 30% on steel imports to protect against a surge of imports, mostly from China. That move was cast as an industry safeguard, not a national-security measure.

Brussels responded by publishing a list of U.S. goods to be slapped with duties totaling $2.2 billion. The list included orange juice from Florida, where Mr. Bush’s brother was governor.

Trump Links Planned Steel Tariffs to Nafta Renegotiation Effort

President says steel tariffs will remain until new Nafta signed

President Donald Trump on Monday increased pressure on two top U.S. trading partners, saying he would lift planned tariffs on steel imports only if Mexico and Canada sign a new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta.

“Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed,” Mr. Trump said in a morning tweet.

 .. The Trump administration is seeking to update the original labor provisions with stronger rules aimed at lifting the salaries of Mexican manufacturing workers, whom many U.S. officials blame for taking American factory jobs.
.. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said tariffs would be “absolutely unacceptable,” given the integrated nature of the continental steel and aluminum sectors. Half of U.S. steel exports head to Canada, while 39% are shipped to Mexico.
“Disruptions to this integrated market would be significant and serious,” Mr. Trudeau said. “That’s why we are pressing upon the American administration the unacceptable nature of these proposals that will hurt them every bit as much as they would hurt us.”