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发帖数: 38600 | | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 2 A civil war has broken out within the White House over trade, leading to
what one official called “a fiery meeting” in the Oval Office pitting
economic nationalists close to Donald Trump against pro-trade moderates from
Wall Street.
According to more than half a dozen people inside the White House or
dealing with it, the bitter fight has set a hardline group including senior
adviser Steve Bannon and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro against a faction
led by Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who leads Mr Trump’s
National Economic Council.
At the centre of the debate is Mr Navarro, a firebrand economist who has
angered Berlin and other European allies by accusing Germany of exploiting a
“grossly undervalued” euro and calling for bilateral discussions with
Angela Merkel’s government over ways to reduce the US trade deficit with
Europe’s most powerful economy.
The officials and people dealing with the White House said Mr Navarro
appeared to be losing influence in recent weeks. But during the recent Oval
Office fight, Mr Trump appeared to side with the economic nationalists, one
official said.
The battle over trade is emblematic of a broader fight on economic policy
within the Trump administration. It comes ahead of a visit to Washington
next week by Ms Merkel, the German chancellor, and amid preparations for a
meeting of G20 finance ministers in Germany next week at which allies’
concerns over protectionism are likely to be high on the agenda.
The White House declined to answer specific questions about the internecine
dispute. In a statement, a spokeswoman said: “Gary Cohn and Peter Navarro
are both valued members of the president’s economic team. They are working
together to enact the president's economic agenda, protect American workers
and grow American businesses.”
According to people familiar with White House discussions, Mr Cohn and
others have seized on Mr Navarro’s public comments — and widespread
criticism by economists of his stand on trade deficits and other matters —
to try and sideline him.
That has led to discussions over moving Mr Navarro and the new National
Trade Council he leads out of the White House and to the Commerce Department
, headed by another Wall Street veteran, Wilbur Ross.
Mr Cohn has also been featuring more prominently in discussions over the
renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and
Mexico, one of Mr Trump’s top trade priorities.
After a meeting with Mr Cohn and other White House officials on Thursday,
Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, said the goal was to wrap up
talks quickly and by the end of this year. That contradicted Mr Ross, who
has called for deeper and potentially longer talks that could drag well into
next year.
Mr Navarro’s case has not been helped by his interactions with Republicans
in Congress. He was criticised for being ill-prepared and vague at a closed-
door briefing he held with Senators last month to discuss Mr Trump’s trade
agenda and angered some Republicans as a result.
People familiar with the White House battle over trade said that Mr Navarro,
who did not respond to a request for comment, was cutting an increasingly
isolated figure in the administration.
He has been operating with a very small staff out of an office in the Old
Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, while Mr Cohn has
been adding staff to his NEC base inside the president’s residence itself.
Among Mr Cohn’s recent appointments has been Andrew Quinn, a respected
former diplomat and trade official who served as a senior negotiator during
the Obama administration’s push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan
and 10 other countries.
Mr Trump has pulled the US out of the TPP but the White House last month
announced Mr Quinn would serve on the NEC as a “special assistant to the
president” for international trade.
The appointment of Mr Quinn drew a howl of protest from Breitbart, the
rightwing web site Mr Bannon used to lead. It labelled the career official
an “enemy within” the Trump administration earlier this month.
“[Mr] Quinn’s support for not just the TPP but for multilateralism, in
general, is diametrically opposed to the . . .
approach [on trade] that helped Donald Trump get elected,” Breitbart wrote.
But his appointment and Mr Navarro’s apparent sidelining have helped
ease some foreign officials’ concerns about the prospects of the Trump
administration acting on campaign threats to raise tariffs and take other
aggressive steps that could lead to a trade war.
Officials from some countries seeking meetings with Mr Navarro have been
steered to Mr Cohn’s staff instead. Others have begun speaking directly to
Mr Cohn or other senior officials like Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law
, on issues such as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade
Agreement.
“The situation is less worrying than it was two months ago because [Mr]
Navarro seems to be more and more marginalised,” said one European official
. “His influence seems to be diminishing quickly.”
Thea Lee, a top trade official at the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest union, and
a member of the president’s recently-appointed manufacturing council, said
that Mr Trump appeared to be bending to the growing influence of the
administration’s Wall Street veterans and walking away from his campaign
promise for a fresh approach to trade.
“At the moment it appears that the Wall Street wing of the Trump
administration is winning this battle and the Wall Street wing is in favour
of the status quo in terms of US trade policy,” Ms Lee said.
Follow Shawn Donnan on Twitter: @sdonnan
Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter: @Dimi | b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 3 Let's hope the free traders win. I suspect Trump played the protectionist
card to get elected, because a lot of people believe their economic woes are
a result of foreigners, rather than the politicians we elected, the high
corporate tax they've given us (which puts US producers at a disadvantage
and leads to jobs moving overseas), and the high level of regulations (which
does the same). Trump can always pivot to better trade deals: i.e., ones
that protect US producers from counterfeiters, that recognize US patents and
copyrights, and that reduce foreign protectionism and keep US products out
of other countries.
Or perhaps, Trump being a quick study, has learned that protectionism doesn'
t work. Consider the history of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Rather
than helping the US produce more, US GDP fell by nearly half within 3 short
years before the act was repealed. And Smoot and Hawley (both Republicans)
lost their seats in Congress. The Boarder Adjustment Tax was a setup by the
RINOs and Democrats, to get rid of Trump in 2020 by tanking the economy (the
politicians' personal bank accounts being just fine). | y********l
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