John Bolton has been indicted for exactly the same issues as Mr. Trump. It appears that Mr. Trump sees no relationship between the two crimes other than his claim that as President, he is entitled to do whatever he wants. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court seems to be going along with him. We will see how this plays out over time and whether or not the Supreme Court ultimately will be very embarrassed by their decisions.
Mr. Trump appears to be gearing up to go to war with Venezuela, and it is hard to determine whether or not he is a peace maker or a war monger. I guess if you don’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, you decide to go in the other direction. Will the Republican House and Senate stand up to him on this issue since he clearly is declaring war, which is a power reserved only to the Congress.
The US and China announced a framework for a deal when Mr. Trump meets Mr. Zhi. The issues on the table are rare earth minerals, purchases, and the definition of ‘country-of-origin.’ The Chinese have stalled rare earth mineral sales, and I suspect they will through the meeting to keep their position, while the country-of-origin issue is going to be very complex as we see when we look at those same issues in the USMCA between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Country of origin issues are technical and tricky, but any deal with China will find China pushing for loose rules to keep their advantage.
Trump hit Canada with a 10% increase in tariffs to punish Canada for an anti-tariff advertisement based upon Ronald Reagan’s speech in the 1980s. By the way, Reagan was right, tariffs never work in the long term. As a member of the Canadian American Business Council’s tariff committee, I applaud President Reagan and the Premier of Ontario.
The DOJ has been having difficulty getting indictments arising out of immigration protests and now convictions as the information frequently provided by ICE to DOJ, or DOJ not investigating thoroughly is showing that the allegations made against the protesters are frequently inaccurate, if not downright untruthful. This is the best method for contesting this behavior, even more effective than protests and political statements.
Congressman Scott Perry made some ridiculous disparaging remarks about Democrats hating the military which echo Mr. Trump’s attacks. As someone who has served, and in fact knows a significant number of people who served who are Democrats, I find this to be another attempt by Republicans to create hostility against Democrats for bogus reasons. Knowing Scott Perry just a bit from my time in Congress, he is not someone in whom I would put much faith nor trust.
Car loans, particularly used car loans, are running higher delinquencies than they have in many years at about 6.5%, which began in January of this year. Repossessions have also swelled, and more and more drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than the amount still owing on them. This is not a good trend and the people who are falling victim to this situation are those who have the least resources and are incredibly important to the functioning of our economy because of the nature of the jobs that they fill. Do Republicans or Mr. Trump care? Obviously not.
China, after pulling the rare earth materials lever as we talked about earlier, in response to Mr. Trump’s threats are showcasing their significant factories and their ability to produce products for other than the US. These products are going to Europe and southeast Asia and in almost the same volume as they were coming to the United States. In fact, many of vendors were indicating that the United States was not as good a customer as their new customers. This may be some humorous, but clearly, the Chinese have not been cut-off at the knees as Mr. Trump thought he was going to do. The Chinese approach is clever but given the opposition they have a pretty low bar to get over.
The threat against Hakeem Jefferies I am sure will be pronounced by Mr. Trump to be a hoax and it is certainly the narrative he will stick to when unfortunately, the narrative should be that there are unbalanced people on both sides making these threats. Whether or not Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is to blame in some part obviously is open to debate, just as his claim that Antifa and other leftist radicals have caused a tax on Conservatives. One thing I would feel very comfortable in saying is that there are likely more guns in the hands of Conservatives than there are in the hands of “Liberals.”
It looks like Mr. Trump has yet again been outwitted by Mr. Putin as their proposed summit has now been put on hold, although Mr. Trump said that the reason they are not holding it was because there was “no point”, which means Mr. Putin is not prepared to deal and the pressure that Mr. Trump thinks he can bring on him appears to be nonexistent, similar to what is happening with the Chinese, although they may be somewhat smarter and have more reasons to deal.
The Australia/US agreement providing rare earth minerals sales to the US is certainly important. When you dig deeper into this arrangement, it appears it will take years, if not decades for the level of production to reach a point where they actually offset Chinese capacity. If, in fact, in the short term it provides some of our needs that is certainly a win, but it is not going to fulfill all of our needs both militarily and commercially.
The reality of health insurance costs increasing, if not skyrocketing, is hitting home with many consumers as I noted previously, much of that is happening in red states. The fact that this is a growing phenomenon should be important to Congress, and steps should be being taken to fix the problem.
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
