Trump suggested repeatedly that raising the age limit was a matter of political will and doing the right thing, even if the NRA doesn’t like it. Now Sanders is suggesting it might be too difficult — despite a CNN poll this week showing 71 percent of Americans favor the change
.. MURPHY: Ninety-seven percent of Americans want universal background checks. In states that have universal background checks, there are 35 percent less gun murders than in states that don’t have them. And yet, we can’t get it done. There’s nothing else like that, where it works, people want it, and we can’t do it.
THE PRESIDENT: But you have a different president now.
SENATOR MURPHY: Well, listen —
THE PRESIDENT: You went through a lot of presidents, and you didn’t get it done. You have a different president. And I think, maybe, you have a different attitude, too. I think people want to get it done.
.. “You have to [be] very, very powerful on background checks; don’t be shy.” He also said he wanted something “really strong on background checks.”
.. he didn’t announce those percentages until the end of an event, when reporters asked him about it. That led to suggestions that maybe those numbers weren’t ready for public consumption. And judging by Sanders’s comments — including at Thursday’s press briefing, in which she said of the 25 percent figure, “I think that’s the intent” — that may be the case.
But here’s the thing: This announcement sent the markets plunging. It inflamed tensions with China and the European Union. And now Sanders is suggesting there’s a possibility — however small — that it might not be ironclad. That’s a hell of a way to do business.
The real reason Trump wants to start a trade war
On most policy issues, when President Trump states his position, you can tell that he’s blurting out an unformed idea that is always subject to change. No one is really surprised when, a day or an hour later, he says the exact opposite, because when it comes to policy, generally speaking, he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care.
There is one exception, however: trade.
.. Free trade has widely distributed benefits and concentrated costs, while a tariff like this one that is meant to help a particular industry has concentrated benefits and widely distributed costs... There have always been two core ideas underlying his beliefs on trade. The first is that trade is a zero-sum contest in which the only goal is exporting goods. If we import something from another country, even if comparative advantage makes it perfectly reasonable for us to do so, then the other country has “won” and the United States has “lost.”.. Trump’s second idea about trade is that it represents a kind of contest of pride, even manhood. When he talks about trade he nearly always says that other countries, particularly China, are “laughing at us.” When we, say, buy cheap consumer goods from abroad, it means we’re the sucker, the sap, the patsy... Yet you’ve never heard Trump say exactly which provisions of NAFTA he dislikes or what he would change, probably because he doesn’t know himself. He just thinks that trade wars are good, and easy to win... Gary Cohn, the president’s chief economic adviser, tried to argue to him that increased tariffs would hurt the economy by raising prices on goods that contain steel and aluminum, to which Trump replied that it’s “a small price to pay.” Since he sees this issue to be about not just jobs but even more importantly about pride and dignity, that won’t persuade him.From where Trump stands, imposing the tariffs is an end in itself. It shows those foreigners that we won’t be taken advantage of, that we’re big and strong, that nobody’s going to laugh at us and get away with it. It’s “winning.” Even if we wind up losing.
The Daily Shot: The White House Defends Archaic Industries at the Expense of Value-Added Manufacturing
The decision to tax steel and aluminum imports was a political move that should, in theory, play well in races such as Pennsylvania’s district 18 special elections. The larger question, however, is whether the US wants to compete in the industrial commodities businesses that had peaked decades ago. Boosting these industries will be at the expense of value-added manufacturing, which has rebounded in recent years. Even China is now shifting out of these “old economy” sectors (#2 here). Ironically, higher import prices for industrial materials may encourage some firms to move more production outside of the US.
From the consumer’s perspective, these tariffs mean higher prices on thousands of products – from US-made cars to beer cans.
The Economics of Dirty Old Men
About washing machines: The legal basis of the new tariff is a finding by the United States International Trade Commission that the industry has been injured by rising imports. The definition of “injury” is a bit peculiar: The commission admitted that the domestic industry “did not suffer a significant idling of productive facilities,” and that “there has been no significant unemployment or underemployment.” Nonetheless, the commission argued that production and employment should have expanded more than it did given the economy’s growth between 2012 and 2016 (you know, the Obama-era boom Trump insisted was fake).
.. Everything we know about the Trump administration suggests that hurting renewables is actually a good thing from its point of view. As I said, this is an administration of dirty old men.
.. Over all, there are around five times as many people working, in one way or another, for the solar energy sector as there are coal miners.
.. Last fall, Rick Perry, the energy secretary, tried to impose a rule that would in effect have forced electricity grids to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. The rule was shot down, but it showed what these guys want. From their point of view, destroying solar jobs is probably a good thing.
.. what’s good for the Koch brothers may not be good for America (or the world), but it’s good for G.O.P. campaign finance. Partly it’s about blue-collar voters, who still imagine that Trump can bring back coal jobs. (In 2017 the coal industry added 500, that’s right, 500 jobs. That’s 0.0003 percent of total U.S. employment.)
.. It’s also partly about cultural nostalgia: Trump and others recall the heyday of fossil fuels as a golden age
.. But I suspect that it’s also about a kind of machismo, a sense that real men don’t soak up solar energy; they burn stuff instead.
.. You shouldn’t even call it protectionism, since its direct effect will be to destroy far more jobs than it creates. Plus it’s bad for the environment. So much winning!