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On this trade deal, their interests are aligned

Editors note (December 11th): This article has been updated.

UNION LEADERS and Democratic lawmakers were cool at first towards the USMCA, a replacement for the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was signed by American, Canadian and Mexican trade negotiators over a year ago. But on December 10th, after months of further talks, they swung behind a reworked version. Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, Americas largest trade-union group, proclaimed a new standard for future trade negotiations. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, called it a victory for Americas workers.

The reversal may seem surprising. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed an American trade deal in nearly two decades, and Ms Pelosi is trying to get President Donald Trump, whose deal this is, impeached. According to polling data provided to The Economist by YouGov and published on December 11th, though 79% of Americans say that trade and globalisation are important to them, only 37% say the same of replacing NAFTA with the USMCA.

But both the politics and the content of the deal have led to unexpected alliances. Supporting the USMCA lets Democrats claim that they are not obstructing Mr Trumps agenda for the sake of it. And on trade, Mr Trump has more in common with the left wing of the Democratic Party than with his own Republicans. Many Democrats agree that previous deals made trade too free, with too few of the benefits going to American workers. And several of the changes secured by the Democrats are meaningful. Some are sure to be to Mr Trumps taste, too.

Among the revisions are an end to intellectual-property protections for biologics, a specific class of drug, and weaker patents for pharmaceuticals in general. Democrats say such protections stifle competition from generics and raise drug prices. Unsurprisingly, those changes went down badly with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobby. Its president said they amounted to an abandonment of protections for American companies.

Enforcement has been beefed up. Improvements to NAFTAs dispute-settlement system are probably the most important thing in the whole treaty, says Jess Seade, Mexicos chief negotiator. Under NAFTA, countries could block the appointment of arbiters to hear awkward disputes. This should no longer be possible.

The shared vision of the Trump administration and Democratic lawmakers is clearest when it comes to labour standards. The aim was to make it less attractive to move jobs from America to Mexico than had been the case under NAFTA by supporting Mexican workers employment rights. But in the first version of the USMCA, the AFL-CIO complained, the bar for proving a breach of the rules was too high and enforcement mechanisms were too onerous. Critics pointed to the only labour complaint ever to make it as far as a formal dispute as part of an American trade deal: a case against Guatemala in which arbiters agreed that the rules had been broken, but not that any harm to trade or investment had been demonstrated.

The new deal shifts the burden of proof regarding such harm. To avoid penalties, defendants will have to show that it did not happen. Moreover, accusations that manufacturers are breaking Mexican laws covering freedom of association and collective bargaining will be sent for speedy consideration to panels of independent labour experts. Rule-breaking will lead to penalties on exports. Overall, the revised labour provisions are good for Mexico, Mr Seade says, and will reinforce its governments own labour reforms.

The revised USMCA will restrict trade a bit more than NAFTA did. It will probably not live up to the hype. Even if greater use of collective bargaining raises Mexican wages, the USMCAs official impact assessment suggests that American wages would rise by just 0.27% in response. But for Mr Trump, his Democratic foes and their neighbours in Mexico, it counts as a win.

Read more:
Why the revised USMCA pleases both Democrats and Donald Trump - The Economist

"She has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change. She has offered a moral clarion call to those who are willing to act, and hurled shame on those who are not."

Thunberg was chosen among a group that included the Hong Kong protesters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump.

And it's the last name on that list who will be most aggrieved, not only because he was not chosen but also because Thunberg, well, was.

Start here: Trump has long had an obsession with Time's person of the year -- dating back long before he was President.

So, Trump cares a lot about who Time picks. (Why? Because the vast majority of his conceptions of success, fame and power were established in the 1980s. Being on the cover of a magazine -- particularly one like Time -- was a sign that you'd made it. And Trump likes visible signs that he's a big deal.)

Which brings us to Thunberg, who rose to fame when she began what she called "climate strikes" in her native Sweden to protest the lack of action by governments around the world to address the threat posed by climate change.

Earlier this fall, she spoke to the United Nations General Assembly, scolding the assembled leaders in blunt terms about their inaction on climate and what it would cost them -- and her.

"People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing," Thunberg told the UN audience. "We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth."

So the combination of being passed over (again!!) and Thunberg being Time's pick will annoy Trump. A lot.

Will he lash out via Twitter? I'm not a betting man, but, well, yes.

More:
Why Time picking Greta Thunberg will drive Donald Trump crazy - CNN

Back to the question of what makes U.S. Jews politically different. Much of the answer is historical memory. Most of us, I think, know that whenever bigotry runs free, were likely to be among its victims.

The Trump administration is, beyond any reasonable doubt, an anti-democratic, white nationalist regime. And while it is not (yet) explicitly anti-Semitic, many of its allies are: Jews will not replace us chanted the very fine people carrying torches in Charlottesville, Va. You have to be willfully ignorant of the past not to know where all this leads. Indeed, its happening already: anti-Semitic incidents have soared (and my hate mail has gotten interesting).

Jews arent the only people who have figured this out. Many Asian-American voters used to support Republicans, but the group is now overwhelmingly Democratic. Indian-Americans, in particular, are like American Jews: a high-income, high-education group that votes Democratic by large margins, presumably because many of its members also realize where white nationalism will take us.

In all of this, Republicans not just Trump, but his whole party are reaping what they sowed. Their strategy for decades has been to win votes from working-class whites, despite an anti-worker agenda, by appealing to racial resentment. Trump has just made that racial appeal cruder and louder. And one has to admit that this strategy has been quite successful.

But it takes, well, chutzpah, a truly striking level of contempt for your audience, to foment hatred-laced identity politics, then turn to members of minority groups and say, in effect, Ignore the bigotry and look at the taxes youre saving!

And some of the audience deserves that contempt. As I said, people are pretty much the same whatever their background. There are wealthy Jews who are sufficiently shortsighted, ignorant or arrogant enough to imagine that they can continue to prosper under a white nationalist government.

But most of my ethnic group, I believe, understands that Trump is bad for the Jews, whatever tax bracket we happen to be in.

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Donald Trump Is Bad for the Jews - The New York Times

Its not news that our degraded politics has made truth elusive. Yet even seasoned Trump haters may be surprised at how elusive it has become for Don Jr. He recounts a well-worn story about the night of his birth.

When my mother first approached him with the idea of naming me Don Jr., he writes, my father is rumored to have said, We cant do that! What if hes a loser? Again, no idea whether my father ever really said this. Ive provided the italics for Don Jr., because the source of this often-repeated anecdote is a book called Raising Trump, which was written by his mom.

The alienation Don Jr. and his troops feel from the liberal culture that surrounds them forces them to a poignant furtiveness. They want us to know that while they live in the world that liberalism has made, they are not of it. Or so they believe. In reality they dart in and out, as convenience allows.

The liberal press is thoroughly corrupt, Don Jr. tells us, irredeemable, essentially useless except as a contrary indicator of actual fact. Meanwhile, he is careful to support a large number of his anecdotes and assertions with footnotesfootnotes that cite The Washington Post, Time magazine, USA Today, and other enemies of the people. (We modestly note that The Atlantic alone earns five footnotes.) So, too, Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation, which was a Democratic sham from first day to last. Yet Don Jr. is adamant that any suggestions that he was involved in Russian collusion have been definitely disproved. Dont take his word for it, he says. Read the Mueller report.

Mueller, in Don Jr.s estimation, is a feeble old fool. He makes this pronouncement several sentences before he writes: I would actually like to think of this book as offering a reasoned antidote to all the hysterical bullshit thats flying around right now. That used to be called discourse.

Precisely when those good old days of discourse began, and when they came to an end, Don Jr. leaves unspecified, but a revealing, and by now legendary, moment in this regard came early on in his promotional tour for Triggered. He and his girlfriend, a former mid-list Fox News personality named Kimberly Guilfoyle, submitted to an interrogation with the hosts of ABCs The View. Trump held his own and managed to rassle the contest to a draw.

Conor Friedersdorf: Why the trolls booed at Don Jr.s event

We should stipulate that as an intellectual exercise, a guest turn on The View, confronting the combined exertions of Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Meghan McCain, is not exactly a dissertation defense at the Sorbonne. We are not talking about a graduate seminar with Stephen Hawking. What young Trump proved was that he could easily meet the hosts on their own level, bearing the same contempt for them that they held for him. When they brought up unflattering episodes from his fathers life, he brought up unflattering episodes from theirs. When they interrupted him, he interrupted their interruptions. When they got loud, he got louder.

Continued here:
Triggered by Donald Trump Jr. - The Atlantic

BEAVER COUNTY (KDKA) Vice President Mike Pence shared his feelings about the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump during a visit to Beaver County.

Vice President Pence made a stop at VFW Post 128 in Rochester on Tuesday morning and was greeted by a crowd of 250 veterans.

The stop at the VFW came as the U.S. House of Representatives moves forward on articles of impeachment against Trump.

(Photo Credit: KDKA)

Whats happening in Washington, DC today is a disgrace, Pence said. Its nothing short of a partisan impeachment. But men and women of Pennsylvania, were still winning.

In 2016, the Trump-Pence ticket carried Beaver County by 18 1/2 points, and Vice President Pence wasted no time asking for continued support in 2020.

Im here for one reason and one reason only. Pennsylvania and America need four more years of President Donald Trump in the White House, Pence told the crowd.

From the VFW post, Pence started a bus tour to Hershey, where he joined President Trump at a rally on Tuesday night.

Pences first stop on the bus tour was an unannounced visit to a local restaurant.

Vice President Pence chatted with patrons and posed for pictures.

WATCH: KDKAs Jon Delano Reports On Vice President Mike Pences Visit To Beaver County.

I was very, very surprised. Hes a special man. He really is, said Virginia Mihalik of Raccoon after meeting Pence.

This visit of Vice President Pence to Kings Family Restaurant in Monaca was certainly a surprise, not only to the folks who were eating here, but even to the staff as well.

Kings server Heather Hinzman had a bit of a heads up.

Hinzman: Yesterday, I waited on two gentleman and they told me they were coming in with a party of about 20 people for tomorrow. But it was just for a group of people. They didnt tell me exactly who was coming, so we had a nice surprise today.

Delano: They didnt tell you it was the vice president and a bunch of reporters?

Hinzman: They did not. They told me it was a bunch of foreigners.

Hinzman said the gentleman apologized for lying to her, but she was not upset, saying she had a good chat with Pence.

The visit to the restaurant was a real surprise to most.

All of a sudden, I was blown away, seeing all these police officers, said Sindy Diaz of Greensburg.

Customers were taken by surprise when Pence starting working the tables.

When someone told us, I was, this cant be real . . . such an honor, noted Diaz.

WATCH: KDKAs Jon Delano Reports On Vice President Mike Pences Visit To Beaver County.

When Pence dropped by her table, Heather Cordial told him shes been in the Air Force Reserves for 21 years.

He gave me his Vice President coin, which is super awesome. He was such a nice, down to earth man, and I couldnt be happier to have met him and have his coin.

But before chatting up and taking selfies with the crowd at Kings, the vice president gave more formal remarks 10 minutes away at a VFW post in Rochester.

Noting Pennsylvanias importance for reelection, Pence recalled that every time a state win came in back in 2016, Trump hit Pence on the shoulder.

Seriously, hes going boom North Carolina great, good boom. But Im telling you when Pennsylvania came in, he almost knocked me over.

The Presidents frequent visits to this region including two in recent months to the Shell cracker plant and a Marcellus shale conference along with Pences visit, add up to this request.

Let your voice be heard.

All the good that is happening in Pennsylvania and across this country and how much more we can do with four more years with President Donald Trump in the White House, Pence said.

(Photo Credit: KDKA)

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Pennsylvania And America Need 4 More Years Of President Donald Trump In The White House: VP Mike Pence Talks Reelection And Impeachment Inquiry During...