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His executive order is full of loopholes designed to protect Wall Street and multinational corporationsat the expense of American workers.

Donald Trump speaks in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on April 18, 2017. (AP Photo / Susan Walsh, File)

There is a good argument to be made for so-called Buy American initiatives. Done rightas part of a national industrial policy that embraces smart regional development and fair-trade protectionsthey can play a real role in creating sustainable, long-term prosperity.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not doing it right. Hiscombination of crude nationalism and failed conservative economic calculations makes Buy American into a bumpersticker slogan on the back of a truck that is hurtling toward the economic low road.

During Tuesdaysswinginto the historic Midwestern manufacturing city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump restated the promises of his 2016 campaign without really taking action. Itwas a full-on populist spectacle. The president even brought along White House strategist Steve Bannonthe master manipulator of messaging for the Trump campaign who, despite the palace intrigue gossip of the moment, remains the populist puppeteer in the Trump White House. The main act was Trumps signing of a much-heralded Buy American, Hire American executive order.

But itwas mostly theater. As with Trumps campaign promises, the executive order is full of loopholes that are designed to protect Wall Street interests and multinational corporationsat the expense of American workers and communities. The biggest of those loopholes involves the fact that dozens of countries currently get waivers that allow them to avoid following Buy American policies.

When he claims to be making major moves but instead tinkers around the edges, Trump deceives voters who trusted him.

The administration cannot have a policy of Buy American, Hire American and simultaneously authorize American taxpayer funds to be offshored to buy goods made by workers in the 59 countries that currently receive Buy American waivers under our trade agreements,explains Lori Wallach, the director Public Citizens Global Trade Watch project. If President Trump is serious about strengthening Buy American and delivering on his pledges to create more American manufacturing jobs, he could immediately withdraw with 60 days written notice from World Trade Organization procurement rules with no penalty and invoke his executive authority to reverse all 59 trade pact Buy American waivers.

Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin and Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley have been urging the president to focus on exactly those issues. In a March letter to Trump, which highlighted a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of the WTOs Agreement on Government Procurement, the Democratic senators wrote: This report finds that our government allows foreign firms more opportunities to bid on US taxpayer-financed procurement than American firms receive in return from trade partner countries.

Baldwin and Merkley asked the Trump administration to suspend waivers that allow foreign firms to get around Buy American requirements until fairer procurement agreements are negotiated.

You promised the American people a Buy American, Hire American, trade policy. This report makes clear that our manufacturers are losing out in our trade deals. We are calling on you to honor your commitment by suspending Buy American waivers for foreign firms until government procurement chapters in our trade agreements are renegotiated. Absent such action, every government contract your administration signs risks sending hardworking Americans tax dollars abroad. Removing such terms from agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an important step to trying to reverse our large trade deficits and provide more demand for US made manufactured goods, the senators wrote in March.

Trump could have reviewed the Baldwin-Merkley letter and incorporated its proposals into his agenda before signing his executive order. He could have sat down with Baldwin, whose home state he was visitingand who since 1999 has been one of the most engaged members of Congress when it comes to debates on trade and manufacturing policy. The president clearly understands that Baldwin is a key advocate on trade and procurement issues; indeed, he suggested in a Tuesday interview that he agrees with the concept of legislation proposed by Baldwin that would require American iron and steel products to be used in water infrastructure projects. (Speaker Ryan and House Republican allies stripped similar language from a major waterways bill last year.)

Despite such talk, however, Trump appeared in Kenosha surrounded by Republican operatives and officials, a number of whom have for years sided with multinational corporations rather than workers in trade debates.

Trumps Buy American executive order is full of loopholes that are designed to protect Wall Street interests.

Wheres the disconnect here? Thats easy to explain. Trump has never been serious about the trade and procurementpolicies that he made central to his campaign. He has never tried to familiarize himself with the basic steps that could be taken to make good on his campaign promises. The ineptness with which most media outlets cover debates about trade and industry has allowed Trump to avoid scrutiny during the campaignas did the excuse of ignorance. But the campaign is over; Trump is president. At this point, when he claims to be making major moves but instead tinkers around the edges of the issues involved, Trump deliberately deceives voters who trusted him.

Thats frustrating for people who are serious about trade, manufacturing, and jobs. While todaysexecutive order is a step forward, Wisconsin workers cant wait for studies and reportswe need real action now,said Baldwin, who on Tuesday announced that: I am renewing my call for President Trump to suspend all Buy American waivers for foreign firms. The promises that have been made to our workers must be kept.

Trade and procurement policies should be reformednot with the purpose of isolating the United States but with an eye toward forging agreements that benefit workers, the environment, and human rights in all countries. Industrial policy and planning should be embraced so that haphazard development policies do not leave American communities and whole regions behindand so that the United States can finally begin to prepare for the future without resorting to the crude xenophobia, crony capitalist corporatism, and political gamesmanship that continues to characterize Donald Trumps approach to vital questions of how the United States will engage with a changing and challenging world.

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump's 'Buy American' Initiative Is a Lie - The Nation.

After a visit from Mike Pence, North Koreas Ambassador to the United Nations said that the Trump Administration had created a dangerous situation in which thermonuclear war may break out.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY SEONGJOON CHO / BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

I said, Look, we have ships headed there, President Donald J. Trump told the Wall Street Journal on April 12th, recounting the straight talk that he had handed to President Xi Jinping, of China, on the subject of North Korea. He says he knows it very well. I said not only are there aircraft carriers, we have the nuclear subs, which you have to let him know. Him was Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, whom Xi, apparently, was expected to intimidate with information that has now turned out to be false. Some degree ofdelusion always has to be factored in with Trump: when he referred to the aircraft carriers and, in another interview, with Fox Business, said that we are sending an armada, very powerful, he was widely understood to be referring to a single aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Vinson, and its support ships. In fairness, the Vinson would have been powerful and provocative enoughif it had, in fact, been speeding toward the Korean Peninsula, or the Sea of Japan, or even just the Pacific Ocean, which it was not. It was in the Indian Ocean, headed in the opposite direction, for exercises with what might be described as the Australian Armada. Just when you think you see the contours of Trumps phantom menace, he comes up with a Phantom Fleet.

Perhaps Xi knew that what he was being told was nonsense; the movements of a carrier group cant be so hard to conceal, except, perhaps, from the people in charge of Americas foreign policy. Trump wasnt alone on this one; its not a case of him just causing trouble with his phone and Twitter account, rambling about bad hombres. As the timeline makes clear, its even worse. (The Wall Street Journal and theTimes have good versions.)On April 9th, three days before Trumps Wall Street Journal interview, the Navy had said that it had ordered the Vinson to sail north; H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, reiterated that news on the same day, framing it as a response to North Koreas own provocative moves. Secretary of Defense James Mattis followed that up on April 11th by saying that the Indian Ocean exercises were off, and said that the Vinson was just on her way up there. That was false. The next day, the Navy said again that the Vinson had been ordered north; it added that the effects of that deployment on other previously scheduled activities are still being assessed during the transit. The Pentagon is now trying to sell that last bit as a quiet correction of Mattis, which the press mysteriously missedbut that is, simply put, ridiculous. For one thing, theres the phrase during the transit, which assumes that transit had begun. Or is the idea that the Vinson was on its way to the Sea of Japan, in the sense that we are all on our way from cradle to grave, or that Trump is in transit from the Oval Office to choosing items for the gift shop in his Presidential library? A lot can happen in between.

And, even if the Navy meant to correct Mattis and McMaster, it might have noticed that the President also got it wrong, and that various Administration officials, including, inevitably, Sean Spicer, responded to questions about the Vinson not with clarifications of its movements but with mini-discoursesin Spicers case, about how the North Koreans should not be allowed to ever have a bomb that they already do have. The most Trumpian response may have come from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who, as the Washington Post noted in a roundup, said, at a press conference in Moscow, that the Vinson was routinely in the Pacific, but that was just because the Pacific was the kind of place it tended to be, because it sails up and down, and that there is no particular objective in its current courseas if carrier group commanders were meandering mariners on pleasure cruises. Tillerson added that he would not read anything into the Vinsons current locations; that was on the same day thatTrump, in his interview, demanded that all too much be read into the ships location.

This had been part of the problem from the start: even if the Vinson had been where the White House said that it was, the Administration spoke about its mission in ways that were incoherent. The contradictions, the infighting, the muddling of motives, and the diplomatic recklessness of the Administration can be so distracting thatit is possible to miss the fact that a fleet is in the wrong ocean. Where does the triage beginwith the facts or the follies? And, meanwhile, what, exactly, was Xi supposed to tell the Koreans? The White House and the Pentagon were either deliberately deceiving the American people and setting up our partners, and potential partners, for a shared mortification, or they just dont know what they are doing. Or both. This was a group effort in humiliation.

The real location of the Vinson finally became clear on Tuesday, not because the Administration decided to treat the American people like adults and correct the story head-on but because Defense News, a specialized publication, noticed that the Navy had put out a picture of the Vinson crossing theSunda Strait, between Java and Sumatraand thirty-five hundred miles from the Korean Peninsulawith a dateline of April 15th.Defense News confirmed the position and the date with its military sources, and noted, Off the record, several officials expressed wonderment at the persistent reports that the Vinson was already nearing Korea. Indeed, at that point, there were persistent reports that the United States and North Korea were nearing a shooting war. And is that any wonder?

The Vinson now really, truly is sailing toward the Korean Pacific, or at least the Western Pacific. Vice-President Mike Pence has spent the past few days in the region, and on Monday, wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, accessorized with what appeared to be military patches, he inspected the demilitarized zone between the Koreas. A few hours after hisvisit there, North Koreas Ambassador to the United Nations said that the Trump Administrations recent moves, including its supposed naval maneuvers, had created a dangerous situation in which thermonuclear war may break out at any moment on the peninsula. When CNNs Dana Bash asked Pence about that on Tuesday, in Tokyo, he said, For my part, in some odd way, its encouraging that theyre getting the message. That message is a bit confused. Trump may believe that carrier movements are no different from marketing ploys, and require as little truth-telling, but North Korea is a real and dangerous country. The Trump Administration is dealing with a regime whose capacity for self-deceiving self-aggrandizementexceeds its own.Each may play on the others daydreams, and each can make them explode.

Read more:
Donald Trump, North Korea, and the Case of the Phantom Armada - The New Yorker

BBC News

How might Donald Trump do a deal with North Korea? BBC News The world has been consumed by the fear of war in Korea over the past week - everywhere, it seems, except Korea. The BBC's correspondent in the South Korean capital says there is a disconnect between the hyped-up atmosphere and the reality on the ... Opinion: Donald Trump has gone back on his promise to put American jobs firstMarketWatch Donald Trump May Not Actually Know Who's Running North KoreaHuffington Post Donald Trump's North Korea 'armada' gaffe was dangerous buffooneryThe Guardian The Independent -Gizmodo -Quartz all 6,932 news articles »

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How might Donald Trump do a deal with North Korea? - BBC News

Breitbart News

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Donald Trump signs extension of veterans' choice health care bill - Washington Times

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One-third of the votes in the Sixth District contest have yet to be tabulated, but Democrat Jon Ossoff is now leading the field with 48.6 percent of the vote.

Now, back in November, Trump received 48 percent of the vote in this same congressional district, to 47 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Karen Handel, the Republican who will face Ossoff in a June 20 runoff, declined to mention the words Donald Trump in her 10 minute victory speech.

Trump loyalists in the Sixth District contest fared poorly:

Bob Gray made allegiance to Donald Trump the cornerstone of his campaign, and he may have suffered for it. He got about 10 percent of the vote and came under a barrage of criticism over his pro-Trump bona fides.

And Bruce LeVell, head of Trumps diversity coalition, got less than 1 percent of the vote. He also put Trump at the center of his campaign, and even made a last-minute trek to the White House to visit with the president, who didnt endorse any candidate in the race.

Nonetheless, President Trump claimed victory a few minutes ago:

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Donald Trump to Georgia Republicans: You're welcome! - Atlanta Journal Constitution (blog)