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One of the first questions by moderators in the Univision debate in Florida focussing on immigration issues related to the anti-immigrant sentiment fostered by Donald Trump. Trumps statements on Hispanics and Muslims came under withering criticism from Clinton and Sanders. Hillary Clinton stated in reference to the Trump campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" that you can't make America great by doing things that do not reflect America's values. She said she would continue to speak up against the anti-immigrant sentiment created by Trump's derogatory statements about immigrants.

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Bernie Sanders points out in this NYT op-ed the idea that Donald Trump could benefit from the same discontent among working class voters that helped the Leave campaign is a wake up call for the Democratic Party. He calls for global trade and a global economy that works for working class, middle class Americans.  Sanders is pushing for a Democratic Party that embraces the concerns of working class Americans, that understands the impact of factory closings and loss of jobs, of economic uncertainty, of declining incomes and shrinking opportunities.

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If John F. Kennedy were writing Profiles of Courage in 2024 he would have James Lankford as one of these Senators who showed courage to take the right stand in the face of opposition from his fellow Republican Congressmen and people in his state and the country who support loyalty to president Trump. Lankford says in this NYT interview that in December 2023 the immigration bill would have passed Congress into law. He has always seen that no one person is the boss. Trump is not the boss even as president. He is a co-equal branch, says Lankford. He sums it up saying- I work for the people of Oklahoma not the president.  Senator Lankford of Oklahoma is interviewed by Lulu Garcia Navarro of the NYT for his role in negotiating a immigration bill with Democrats in Congress and president Biden that would fix asylum policy and close the Border with Mexico. It is a tough bill says Lankford, and the Republicans held onto their position that there would be no citizenship for the immigrants who crossed the border illegally since 2024. If it came up in December 2023 it would have fixed the Border, says Lankford. It came up in February, and by this time the election nominee was Trump who decided not to support it, as it would take away the immigration issue that he hoped to run on against Democrats. It is still alive as Kamala Harris says it is her top priority to get the Lankford immigration bill passed into law. To know Lankford is to know that he ran the largest Baptist youth camp in the Nation at Fall Creek. He believes every person has value and worth and even if he disagreed with them that person has value and worth. His faith, he says, is something important for him, and not something you take off and put on.  The title should be The Men and Women who Solved Immigration for the Nation. This includes Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and Democrat Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Lankford for 22 years a youth Baptist minister from Oklahoma, Sinema immigration attorney from southern Arizona, and Murphy a lawyer from Connecticut. The man who selected Lankford to negotiate the immigration bill on behalf of the Republicans in Congress was Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. For the Democratic party Pat Schumer helped bring Democrats in Congress and president Biden behind a tough bill that reflected the consensus view that something serious had to be done about the US Border for a lasting solution. This opportunity may come again if Kamala Harris wins as she says it will be her top priority to get the Lankford -Sinema Bill passed. ...

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 U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, views China's response in trade negotiations as one of conducting extended negotiations that lead to little change. This has continued says Lighthizer for over a decade putting the U.S. at a serious disadvantage in trade. At a White House meeting in August 2017 Lighthizer convinced president Trump that China was in his words "tap, tap, tapping us along."  This confirmed president Trump's own instincts about the U.S. trading relationship with China. Lighthizer is a veteran of trade negotiations, having experience in the Reagan administration as the Deputy Trade Representative in 1983 in negotiations with Japan, when Japan was in a similar situation that China is today. At the time trade negotiations with Japan were getting nowhere. Lighthizer is said to have turned one Japanese response in negotiations into a paper plane and sent it flying right back. Lighthizer does not seek the limelight but is serious about his role having published op-eds in the NYT and WSJ since 2000 about how U.S. trading relationships were putting the U.S. and U.S. workers at an unfair advantage. Many of these op-eds are in the Lyrarc archive and a Search with the term "Lighthizer" would bring up these articles. This report in NYT shows how the role of Lighthizer was not anticipated by China when it sent Liu He to Washington in November 2017 to negotiate with the U.S. President Trump made certain Liu He and other Chinese leaders would have to talk to Lighthizer first. In a session with president Jinping laid out U.S. views that the past negotiations had accomplished little and new negotiations had to be undertaken very differently from negotiations in the past. Earlier in July trade negotiations conducted by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were "shut down" by president Trump because China continued to repackage earleir offers which meant little to the U.S. As a lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher LLP Lighhizer represented steel industry clients hurt by subsidized Chinese steel industry imports. Mr. Trump and Lighhizer have bonded well because their instincts have been the same- that the U.S. had not been well represented in earlier negotiations by lawyers who saw themselves as speaking for American exporters.  Lighthizer is also a seasoned trade negotiator and has waited for the right time and situation to tackle the unbalanced trading relationship with China. For 30 years Lighhizer represented American manufacturers as he practiced trade law at the Skadden law firm. His strategy has been to get the administration to unite behind a clear trade strategy. He says "I try to be friendly in trade negotiations. I am not the theatrical type. The art of persuasion is about knowing where the leverage is." At this time the leverage lies in the huge trade surplus of about $300 billion China has with the U.S. The U.S. goal is to bring this down by $100 billion through this new negotiating strategy as earlier negotiations have failed. ...

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During the presidential debates Donald Trump was asked about his proposal for a 45% tariff on imports from China to the U.S.. Trump's response was "if they don't behave." he would use this as a negotiating tactic against China. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas responded by reminding viewers of the high tariffs under Smoot-Hawley legislation that were one of the factors that created the Great Depression in the 1930's. Economist and former Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke is a student of the Great Depression, and says "it was highly counterproductive, it lengthened and deepened the Great Depression." Economist Peter Petri of Brandeis University in his study cited in this article, says that the tit for tat that starts with such a move could eventually cost the U.S. 1 million jobs. It might fix one problem the one of imbalanced trade with China his figures show, and create another huge problem the loss of markets for U.S. goods all over the world. Overall a 45% tariff would reduce U.S. merchandise imports by $383 billion and reduce U.S. merchandise exports by $658 billion, says Petri. Gordon Hanson, economist at the University of California, San Diego, who has actually shown how trade has affected different counties in the U.S., leaving some dependent on government assistance. Hanson sees this tariff as counterproductive, it makes the U.S. more self-sufficient but hurts U.S. exporters, would significantly hurt the tech boom, and reduce America's standard of living. The problem is that everybody can get into this in a tit for tat. France did this even before the Smoot Harley Act of 1938 was passed in 1930 with 60% increase in tariff on individual items, by higher tariff legislation in 1928. Close allies Canada followed quickly after Smoot Hawley increasing its tariffs, so did Great Britain. Unemployment went up significantly after 1931, worsened by weak banks and lack of support from the Federal Reserve. Trade with Mexico would come to a halt Petri shows, and the result would be more Mexicans trying to cross the border turning a relatively non existent problem of immigration in 2015 -with Mexicans preferring to remain home and net immigration dropping significantly following the 2008 financial crisis and the strict Obama policy of deporting illegal immigrants- into a real one. Trump says its just a threat, but it is likely to lead to a tit for tat response by China, then by U.S. allies, other trading partners. Consider that president Herbert Hoover opposed the Smoot Hawley bill for raising tariffs on industrial goods, and only proposed adifferent legislation reducing tariffs on industrial goods and increasing the tariffs on agricultural goods to give relief to American farmers. Politics intervened as Smoot from Utah and Hawley from Oregon, from mountain and agricultural states with a lack of understanding of how the international trading system works but as heads of two influential commmittes, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, let politics overrride and pushed their legislation through Congress. In 1932 Smoot and Hawley were defeated for reelection, but the damage had been done, and promises of better conditions for workers and farmers never kept. A significant reason for the U.S. standard of living is that it is a leader in the global trading system. Even in 1945 and the years following the end of the war tariffs were higher in Britain and other countries. In return for this leadership the U.S. enjoys the advantages of the dollar being the main global currency, and the advantages of a world leading technological sector that has large global markets. Hanson and Autor have pointed out how imbalanced trade has hurt some counties in the U.S. This is a very real problem for workers in the manufacturing sector, as shown by elections in the midwestern states, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and other parts of the country. The problem is compounded by the tech sector looking out for itself, the financial sector looking out for itself, and forgetting that we are all in the same boat. And that includes the Chinese who are in the same boat. China is doing a major shift in policy towards a consumer driven economy, and this needs to be accelerated for the benefit of ordinary Chinese. This makes the policy of a 45% tariff by the U.S. doubly unproductive because it hopes to add urgency to the problem of the U.S. trade deficit and manufacturing workers, but takes an approach that risks ending up damaging the global trading system by setting in motion a process that no one controls or can foresee the destination....

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A survey of 414 National Association of Business Economics (NABE) economists shows Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson with 15%, overtaking Trump at 14% on who would best manage the economy. On protectionist views only 9% support this. 15% said they have no opinion and 55% said Hillary Clinton would do the best job of managing the economy. About 62% say the election uncertainty is holding back growth. Some aspects of Hillary Clinton's economic plan are the $275 billion infrastructure investment over 10 years, taking action against companies that ship jobs overseas, a capital gains tax paln that encourages long term investments, supporting $15 minimum wage, making upward mobility a top priority, providing government financed access to public colleges for working class and lower income groups. Donald Trump's plan has suffered form lack of specifics, shifting comments, lack of careful study, and excessive use of slogans. Both candidates oppose trade agreements that shift jobs overseas. Trump's plan also suffers from lack of credibility overseas as this is important in a global business structure, with fears of protectionism increasing. and reminding people of the protectionism under Smoot-Hawley that increased the damage from the depression of the thirties. ...

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Thomas Frank describes how things went wrong in America by drawing the contrast between Martha's Vineyard and Decatur, Illinois. In 1946 he says a typical executive's salary was only 2 times that of a worker at a Caterpillar plant in Decatur, Illinois. By 2016 this had changed to where the top executive at Caterpillar was making over 400 times the wage of a typical worker at a Caterpillar plant. Democratic politicians he said had moved away from their working class base towards places like Martha's Vineyard. For Republicans the embrace of tax cutting, the deficit, and cuts in education and healthcare, entitlements, to the exclusion of everything else in a recession environment led to the rise of Trump and the rejection of stands on these issues- including amazingly the embrace of a $5.3 trillion increase in the deficit under the Trump plan estimated by economists and a recession after a temporary boost.  Inserted into this were the culture wars, immigration, with the change to mass deportation as a solution to immigration problems. ...

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Typical of so much of what is written about the World Health Organization and its role in the pandemic, this podcast in the WSJ fails to quickly convey the critical function of the WHO as an early warning system the world has depended on, including China. The H1N1 epidemic originated in Mexico. Asian countries including China and India depended on very quick response from the country where the epidemic originated  in allowing entry into the affected area for experts from advanced countries such as the U.S. The global response was then coordinated across countries quickly with complete transparency. The head of China's CDC himself faced a problem with transparency with the provincial authorites in Wuhan. 1.    Fundamentally this quick entry was denied the U.S. Request by U.S. to China was made on Jan. 6 for U.S. team to go to Wuhan, quick permission was denied and given only about 6 weeks later on Feb 16. This delay is the crux of the problem for the U.S.. Taiwan confirmed human to human transmission on Jan. 1, the WHO was saying this was not clear as late as Jan. 14. These costly delays are what the U.S.  letter is about.  The head of the CDC China Gao Fu called Dr. Redfield head of CDC in the U.S. on the next day after he suspected Wuhan provincial authorites were vague about what was happening. Gao Fu was alarmed when scanning the internet on December 30, 2019, about rumors of a vaguely worded lung disease in internal memos of Wuhan. He called Wuhan authorites and was not getting clear answers on that day, then deciding on December 31 to send his own team to Wuhan, as reported in German magazine Der Spiegel- Hackenbroch, Zand, 05/20/2020.  Der Spiegel says in its special report on the early period in Wuhan that Gao Fu was so alarmed about what was happening enough to be in tears in his series of calls with Dr. Redfield in the immediate days that followed. The date was shortly after the GAO Fu sent the team to Wuhan, December 31 and New Years Day 2020, as reported in Der Spiegel. See the link to Lyrarc gist of Der Spiegel's "A Failed Deception: The Early Days of the Coronavirus in Wuhan."  2.  President Trump points out the standards of the WHO- in the concluding point of his letter to WHO- when a three time prime minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland was head of the WHO during the SARS crisis of 2003. She acted quickly and decisively and no time was lost. It is this failure of the early warning system under the new president of the WHO after 2017 Dr. Tedros that alarms the U.S.  with about 100,000 deaths.  3.  This failure it can now be said was partly a result of a election in 2017 for the position of WHO president which was flawed. This was the first time a WHO head, an important position was put up for an election. The Executive Board was responsible for this appointment since the founding of the WHO as part of the UN, based in Geneva, Switzerland, after World War II. This system worked. The election was clearly a bad process for appointing the president of the WHO which should be done entirely on the capabilities of the person holding this position not on a flawed voting process. It is flawed because India and Bangladesh hit by a cyclone during the coronavirus have suffered greatly, as have other countries, but had only 2 votes for 1.5 billion people, when Barbados (385,000 population) and Laos (7 million) which had less than one  hundredth the population had the same number of votes. The U.S. had one vote. The election resulted in lobbying and a process in which many candidates stayed away because they simply would not go through such a process. The position was too important to the world- most of the advanced countries had forgotten about the danger of epidemics to let this happen by 2017, as shown in the way the austerity years led to cancellation of the preparations for pandemic in France and Britain. The austerity years and neglect of public health during these tech boom years in the western world made it possible for this to happen. 3.   Along with the 1 month ultimatum action is already being taken to restore the effectiveness of the importance of the Executive Board. The head of the health ministry in India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, has been appointed the new chairman of the Executive Board on May 22. This restores the voice of billions of people in Asia in the process, and brings the major countries with the greatest risk in a pandemic into the decision process for tackling the pandemic, this includes the rest of the world.     ...

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Leonhardt points out in the NYT that Hillary Clinton actually won in the popular vote by a substantial margin, by more than 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points. He says that Democrats need to pay more attention to the working class in midwestern states- the job losses, crumbling infrastructure, and the plight of communities such as Detroit, Michigan which suffered through the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM, and again with the foreclosure crisis, the financial crisis of the City of Detroit. With a similar situation in the neighboring states of Wisconsin and Ohio, in places like Toledo and other parts of communities facing industrial decline. While the Silicon Valley centred region powered the economy in California, and the financial industry and real estate powered New York, older midwestern communities never really recovered from a long decline stretching over 2 decades. The result was the loss of faith in Democrats among union workers and young people, leading to the loss of Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. For most of its history the Democratic Party was based on its union and working class base including a large number of white voters. Only under Obama because of his unique candidacy was the coalition so dependent on the minorities vote. Before minorities were part of the Democratic coalition, but not in the way under the Obama candidacy. A return to its historic and normal base among whites in unions and working class communities, liberals, minorities, is a way to go back to the historic and natural base of Democratic support. In a sense dependence on tech communities for election funding and the tech booms, globalization, may have distorted Democrats sense of their historic role as champions of the working class and middle class communities throughout the country. There is now an opportunity to restore this lost mission of protecting the interests of the middle and working class who have seen huge drop in net worth as reported by Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve at the Inequality Conference on October 17, 2014-"62 million households with a net worth of $11,000 for the year 2013." Poorly covered in the media and not made the utmost priority by Democrats (or Republicans). In the words of Janet Yellen, this was in the past several decades "the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality since the Great Depression." She added the shocking words "by some estimates, income and wealth inequality near their highest levels in the past hundred years, and probably much higher than much of American history before then." Even discussion in the media goes back to the Obama coalition and treats it as a way forward for Democrats, when history shows it was different and the situation described by Yellen calls for a serious response. ...

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With Obama's popularity rating in 2016 similar to Reagan's in his last year in office at 51%, he announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president. Obama is likely to campaign in 2016 for Hillary to reunite the Democratic Party, bring Bernie Sanders and Sander's supporters behind the Democratic nominee, including younger women.

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This report by Martin in the NYT points out that Ohio no longer plays a critical role in U.S. presidential elections. It was critical for a Bush win over Gore, and president Obama carried it by 2 points against Romney in 2012. It is critical for Trump to win. For Hillary Clinton other states are gaining importance as they better reflect the demographic changes in the U.S. and the mix with minorities- states such as Georgia, N. Carolina, Colorado and Florida. Ohio has not seen an influx of Hispanics as other states, and is now more white, more evangelical voters, and reflects a mix that was prevalent earlier. 

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A German reporter questions the value of the G20 meetings following the violence on streets at the last Hamburg meeting. He says the first G20 during the global financial crisis was useful but later meetings have not lived up to the hope for discussion and search for solutions to world problems. Global trade is at the top of the agenda following the tariffs dispute between China and the U.S. Divergent interests of participants are a problem. Would going back to G-7 in private meetings be a solution asks this reporter.

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This editorial in the WSJ points out the dangers to the Republican party in taking the stand on immigraton along the lines suggested by Donald Trump in August 2015- deportation for all illegal immigrants, no birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, and no remittances allowed for illegal immigrants to their home countries. It points out that remittances actually improve the economies of the countries south of the U.S. border in Latin America and reduce illegal immigration. There is a need for seasonal workers in farm areas where there is a severe shortage of workers even at $17 an hour. Reducing immigration is better accomplished by more guest worker programs. A likely result would be the move of farms and factories to regions with low cost labor in Latin America or other countries. For the Republican Party this type of policy would bring back the period of the 1920's, says the WSJ, when Irish and Italian immigration was opposed by the party, alienating the two ethnic groups till they were won back in the Reagan period- a sure way to lose in 2016....

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Galston of the Brookings Institution says globalization has hurt workers in manufacturing with job losses and declining incomes. It has produced outcomes that have favored some industries such as tech, and not others such as automobiles which in the past helped create the broad middle class by offering good paying jobs to people with less than a college education. Immigration has created an issue that political leaders outside of the main parties have appealed to in France, the U.S. and Britain. The result is a polarization in the voters that has rarely been seen to this extent before. The middle class in the period from the 1950's to the 1980's is not the middle class that we see today in Europe and the U.S. The 2008 financial crisis added to the problems with the slow and uncertain recovery for some groups such as white men, the less educated, students, and people on minimum wage.