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President Trump plans to introduce  tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminium. It is not clear whether this will be targeted at Countries flooding the U.S. market with cheap metals, or generally for all countries. Executives from the steel industry and aluminium industries met with Trump at the White House. This would fulfill one of the president's campaign promises.

There is a vigorous debate in the White House between advisors who advocate limiting the measures such as Gen Mattis at Defense, Gary Cohn at the Economic Council, on one side, and the Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro, on the other. 

Mr. Lighthizer has convinced the president of the need for strong action, yet he has hesitated in the past. Now president Trump says he wants "free, fair and smart trade," and will not let "American companies and workers be taken advantage of any longer."

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When Trump was four he lived in the Jamaica Estates area of Queens in New York. He later shifted to a different part of Queens. In the 1950 census the number of Latinos were so few no count was done of Latinos. 96% of Queens was white then. By the time Trump was 25 one in 13 were Latino, starting the gradual influx which by the 1980's led to a steady decline in whites. About 900,000 whites left New York and today only about 25% of Queens is white. Archie Bunker the famous TV program character who has attitudes typical of lower middle class Eastern European whites was famous in a TV program of the sixties and seventies. Archie Bunker was from this white community in Queens. And Archie Bunker is similar to Trump in his views. It is the sense of lost neighborhoods as immigration increased that has become a source of deep discomfort to this section of the white community.

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This editorial in the WSJ points to Bernie Sanders 15% lead over Donald Trump in a Jan. 2016 WSJ/NBC poll- with Hillary Clinton having a 10 point lead- as proof that Sanders should be taken seriously. It says that electability of Sanders is no longer an issue, especially because the 2016 election is coming up with many surprises, including a changed election environment. Other possibilities raised in the editorial- the possibility that an independent like Bloomberg might run if Trump is nominated, further increasing the chance for Sanders to be elected president. By splitting the Republican party a Trump or Cruz nomination could also put the House in jeopardy for the Republicans, removing the House as a check if a Democrat is elected president.

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Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor joins Mr. Trump's legal team for the indictment in New York. He spent nearly 10 years as the assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York. He joins Mr. Tacopina, another assistant US attorney for the Souther District of New York, and Ms. Necheles who was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn.

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Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winning economist points out an astonishing fact about the 2016 U.S. presidential election- U.S. television networks nightly news devoted only 32 minutes in 2016 to all policy issues combined. And these networks devoted 100 minutes to Clinton emails. He calls this "disgraceful."  For weeks at a time in September and October the main television networks lacked the integrity and courage to ask questions and persist on the major questions facing the country of the economy, correcting income distribution that has been skewed away from the middle and working class, infrastructure rebuilding, education and healthcare, and what the policy proposals of each candidate would do for the country. Krugman does not mention this but the media devoted hardly any time to the economic plan devised by Trump that respected economists and economic analysis showed would increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion, and lead to a short term temporary increase in growth followed by a sharp decline. The worst thing that could happen to middle and working class families struggling to recover from the blow to their finances from the last recession.  The cyber hacking of a U.S. presidential election by a foreign power never received the unanimous rejection that it deserved from the television networks, not just Fox News as Krugman points out, but by all the networks. The future landscape of the media needs assessment to bring in new ideas and new entrants to bring constructive improvements, and for older media organizations to rebuild after the loss of confidence among young people. Only about a quarter of young people in the U.S. have confidence in the large media organizations news coverage according to surveys done recently. There are other pressures coming from the tech world that make it imperative to do this. Many experts point to the destructive effect of social media in spreading rumors or information disguised as facts, which are spread instantly by Twitter and Facebook, without any obligation to check the facts. This is also dangerous with a public that is now divided between better educated and less educated along political lines, older more settled in their views people, and younger people quicker in looking for the facts and checking things out before believing them. ...

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Travelers landing at Schipol airport in Amsterdam book their flights at the airport to fly right back to the U.S. after president Trump announces a ban on flights from 26 European countries. President Trump did not wait to coordinate with other European countries. Only Britain and Ireland flights are allowed at this time. The ban restricts European travelers from 26 countries for 30 days beginning March 13 at 11.59 pm. U.S. citizens coming from these 26 countries will be required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in the U.S.

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This report in the Washington Post says the cancellation of the Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un of North Korea was the result of a lack of detailed planning and lower level meetings before a top level meeting. The more that Trump mentioned "Libya" the more North Korea turned hostile leading to the cancellation by president Trump. North Korea has long seen the Libyan route where Moammar Khaddafi of Libya closed all nuclear facilities as leading to the fall of the dictator and his government.  Experts say the Trump unconventional way of diplomacy is not entirely disproven, yet this shows it has its limits in what can be accomplished. It is also one of highs and lows, moving in one direction and then in the opposite direction in a short period.

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The sense of conflict in China and US relations may not have developed in the shaping of Xi Jinping's thinking till the emergence of Mr. Trump. Jinping comes into the China shaped by Deng and Zemin after the collapse of the purely Communist experiment with modernization without access to western technologies and capital, and the experiment with American help. It is only after the realization that the Communist party had lost its sense of purpose in these years leading to the Bo Xilai episode, and the rhetoric of Mr. Trump against China, that the idea of first friction and then conflict emerged. The initial idea for Jinping before Trump was that this has worked for China- the experiment with the cooperation of the US in modernizing China. Trump's rhetoric and the Republican party's rhetoric about China stealing American jobs and technology after 2015 may have been targeted to win the election but it had an unintended effect after the tariffs of shaping Jinping's thinking about the future for China. Between the Bo Xi Lai episode in 2012 when it appeared he would be attempting to manipulate the Communist party's direction in unknown and unpredictable ways, Bo's trial in 2013 and the anticorruption campaign and the 2015 election campaign of Mr. Trump in the US, there must have been much soul searching in the party that shaped Jinping's thinking about the future for China after all the tumult of the 20th century starting with the Boxer rebellion in 1901. Stability is highly prized in China particularly for modernization. This perspective is important to grasp for world peace to be preserved with different coexisting perspectives about the world based on national as well as shared interests in issues such as climate change. US after its own disastrous experiment with capitalism that led to widening inequality of the kind not seen since Lincoln in the 1850's, the 2009 crisis, and the shift of jobs to China under a purely capitalist idea of how economies should function, had its own national interests in jobs, local manufacturing and Made in the USA. Once this process was underway after 2016 and grasped by president Biden after 2020, and supply chain reconstruction made the goal after covid, the US and China were on divergent economic and political paths.   That rethinking by Xi Jinping is not over as it may still be going on. The war in Ukraine may even convince Jinping and China's No. 2 leader Li Keqiang who studied the US constitution and American urbanization under mentors when he was in college, that Russia's prolongation of the war in Ukraine does not serve the interests of China. That risking relations with the European Union as Russia prolongs the war and finds itself in the complex problems of  a war it started, is not in China's interests in setting its own course for the future. ...

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Germany holds the presidency of the G-20 in 2017. This provides chancellor Merkel an opportunity to provide German leadership on many issues. The ministerial conferences will lead to the summit in Hamburg in July 2017. Concern about the incoming Trump administration views on trade in international circles gives Germany and China a larger role in the meetings for 2017. Germany plans to put more focus on the real causes of migration and flight from poor countries and war zones.

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Mr. Trump's failure to set out the agenda for a second term is the subject of this editorial in the WSJ. The upsurge in the coronavirus in the south and west is also affecting the prospects of a V shaped recovery.

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A dangerous escalation in the rhetoric between president Trump and North Korea creates tension and concern in Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing.

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Donald Trump is acquitted in the second impeachment trial with a vote in the Senate of 53 in favor to 47 against. A two thirds majority is required to impeach a president. Senators Burr of North Carolina and Cassidy of Louisiana were Republicans who joined the expected ones to vote for impeachment- the Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The Republican defense lawyer insisted that Trump's speech to his supporters was not an intention to incite them on the day of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 but an expression of his rights to free speech guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution First Amendment. He made the point that the prosecution lawyers had selectively focused attention on the words "fight like hell" and taken them out of the entire context in which they were made, ignoring key parts of Mr. Trump's speech. The defense argued that the president had already left office and this made an impeachment unconstitutional. Seventy five million voters voted for Mr. Trump and he cited this as the most number of votes won by a sitting president. President Biden is shifting his attention to the president's agenda and needs Republican support to pass key legislation including financial help to households, unemployed, and business to recover from the pandemic. The U.S. health effort behind the vaccination drive and seeing the struggle in Europe to access key medical supplies of vaccine is also leading to new efforts to move beyond the rhetoric to the hard work ahead with support of all parties. As part of this the trial once it reached the Senate was quickly resolved in about 5 days. The defense used only a small fraction of the time allotted with bipartisan effort to not let the trial drag on, bipartisan effort to putting some statements simply on the record and not calling witnesses.   ...

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Trump takes action against Mexico, China and Canada for illegal flows of fentanyl and migrants across US borders. It is specific targeted and excludes EU, India, Japan, South Korea trading partners. For a decade some countries acted with impunity and American leaders did not respond to protect the people from illegal flows across borders. This action did not come in the first DJT term in 2016-2020 though tariffs were placed. Free trade has to be clean trade where such illegal flows are not in the picture or acceptable.

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Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa are two judges Mr. Trump is considering for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Ginsburg, as he proceeds to nominate a Justice "without delay." 

Barrett is a Judge who has served for 2 years on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a devout Roman Catholic and a legal scholar from Notre Dame University in Indiana. Lagoa is a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the first Latina on the Florida Supreme Court. Trump's nominee is likely to be confirmed quickly by the Senate as Republicans have 53 members in the Senate from a total of 100 members. Democrats want the nomination to be done after a president is elected in January 2021.

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The difficulty of protecting vital petroleum facilities in the Gulf region from drones and missiles even with existing advanced Patriot systems is likely to result in fresh thinking about the tight sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Iran. American pressure on Asian buyers of Iranian oil, Japan, China, India, and South Korea, has resulted in cutbacks of oil imports to Asia from Iran, reducing Iran's oil output and damaging the economy.  The election of a new government in Israel led by Mr. Gantz, departure of Mr. Bolton, Mr. Trump's flexibility to meet with Mr. Rouhani of Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal, and America's effort to remain in control of its policy in the region consistent with avoiding entanglements in foreign conflicts, all point to a reappraisal of current policy. 

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More evidence in Commerce Department trade figures that president Trump's strategy of imposing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods and renegotiating trade pacts with Canada, Mexico and South Korea was not sufficient to reverse the huge U.S. trade deficit. The international trade deficit in goods and service increased 19% in December from prior month to $59.8 billion. Excluding services that U.S. sells to foreigners such as tourism, intellectual property and banking, the deficit grew to $891 billion the largest on record.

Mr. Trump's tax policy of increasing the fiscal deficit increased growth in the U.S. at a time when the rest of the world economy was slowing leading to higher demand for imports, and the 4 increases in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve helped strengthen the U.S. dollar that pushed up imports.

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President Trump has taken a careful response to events in Hong Kong so that the situation does not affect U.S. China trade talks and tariffs negotiations. For the first time he tweeted that China's restraint would be reciprocated by the U.S.

Mr. Trump has described the Hong situation as "a tricky situation," and has called for the protests to be handled "humanely." He tweeted- "I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a 'tough business.' I have ZERO doublt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem he can do it." Concluding "Personal meeting?"

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A Washington Post Univision poll in Feb. 2016 shows 8 of 10 Hispanic voters with a negative impression of Donald Trump, and 7 of these 10 having a "very unfavorable" impression of him. The poll shows Trump's standing with Hispanic voters deteriorating, with a Univision survey in summer 2015 showing 7 in 10 with a negative view, and 6 in 10 "very unfavorable." This is in line with Trump's increasing anti-immigration rhetoric and calls for a wall at the border paid for by Mexico, upping the anti-immigrant rhetoric in 2016.

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This report in the WSJ provides details on the groundwork that was laid by the Trump administration as it worked to find a solution to the problems facing Venezuela with refugees and economic crisis, and months of protests. The plans were set in the days before Nicholas Maduro took office for the second term as president. The night before Juan Guaido, head of the National Assembly, declared himself president, U.S. vice president Mike Pence stated that the U.S. would support him if he took the reins of government from Maduro by invoking a clause in the Venezuelan Constitution that makes the head of the National Assembly take the office of president if the existing president is declared illegitimate taking office unlawfully. About 60 nations did not recognize the elections that gave Maduro a second term. On Jan 2 Mr Trump who feels deeply about the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and rising poverty, the suffering of the Venezuelan people, met with presidents of Brazil and Colombia. Colombian president Ivan Duque and Trump hinted at a plan to cooperate to help people fleeing Venezuela and respecting its democratic heritage. Mr Pompeo spoke to allies of the U.S. The National Assembly laid out its plans on Jan 15, for using a constitutional mechanism that allows the head of the Assembly to lead an interim government till new elections are held if the existing president is declared illegitimate. A leading Republican senator of Cuban origin Mr. Rubio supported the move. On the eve of protests in Venezuela Rubio and two other senators from Florida met Mr. Trump and Pence at the White House. Also present were Bolton, Pompeo, Ross and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. Mr. Trump then decided to do it. He placed a call to Mr. Guiado  to tell him that if the National Assembly invoked Article 233 the U.S. president would back him.  The U.S. believes the rank and file in the military are with the opposition even though its leaders back Maduro. After the U.S. action, the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, backed the move for an interim government. The European Union called for free and credible elections. Russia and Mexico supported Maduro.  The State Department instructed the U.S. Federal Reserve about Guiado government as the sole representative for Venezuelan assets in banks. Sanctions could be placed on Venezuelan oil exports as backup efforts proceed to support the interim government. ...

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Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Muchin of West Virginia were key votes in the Senate to pass much needed climate and infrastructure legislation. Sinema is retiring. Rep. Ruben Gallegos a Democrat faces Kari Lake a Trump Republican. Politico says voters in Arizona are veering to the moderate positions. Sinema had her base in the Democratic party and her moderate voters are seen as critical in 2024.

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A Dreamers deal between president Trump and Democrats looks less likely now after meetings between the two parties show Democrats and Republicans have little they agree on. A meeting on January 11, 2018 was convened to discuss a proposal from Senator Durbin, Senator Graham and four other senators that would allow children who arrived in the U.S. with their parents (the Dreamers in the DACA Act of president Obama) to stay in the country with a path to citizenship, give $1.6 billion for a wall or fence on the U.S. southern border with Mexico, and change the diversity visa lottery to move to a merit base system.  President Trump's remarks at the meeting disputed by the president and confirmed by some senators have created added animosity. Trump is reported to have made some remarks derogatory to immigrants from Haiti, while saying why not get more immigrants from Norway, as Trump prefers a merit based system. The remarks have alienated African countries and were refuted in Norway. This also complicates the situation for the U.S. image overseas as diplomats struggled to represent the U.S. in a different light. In Congress the presidents remarks make it more likely that Democrats and some Republicans will make it harder to pass spending bills including on defense. As a result short term spending approval action will be taken, and there will be a prospect of government shutdown. ...

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Some of the crude rhetoric at Donald Trump rallies, and use of coarse language, according to the NYT. Working class and older Americans show their anger at a system that appears to have left them behind with slogans, stickers, T-Shirts. The idea of the wall figures in much of this and shows that the wall has become not jut about Mexico but a metaphor that captures this anger, that reflects this anger. Another aspect of the 2016 campaign is that those most vulnerable and most in need of help have not sought the comfort of knowing about programs to improve middle class and working class wages, incomes, to build infrastructure, create jobs, stop companies from shifting jobs overseas, plans for improving accesss to health care and education, to ask for specifics and delivery. This is the supreme irony of the 2016 election campaign that not enough attention is going to what will be done for the middle and working class, and what specifics will be delivered, in what time frame- which is essential for restoring the condition of the American middle and working class to where it was in the 2 decades after the Second World War. ...

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In this WSJ op-ed essay William Galston says U.S. prestige and influence in the world has suffered under the presidency of Mr. Trump. The special relationship with Britain and Europe is at risk. Neighborly relations with Mexico are a thing of the past. Embracing questionable regimes is seen as failing America's respect for democracy. Squandering the moral authority and prestige of the U.S. will have long term consequences as China and Russia have increased their influence, says Galston. He points to Trump's attitude of indifference, he probably does not care, says Galston.

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The Trump administration is canceling about $1 billion in funding for California high speed rail project. About $2.5 billion in federal funds are already spent. California voters approved a $10 billion bond in 2008 to fund the project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles  and the federal government approved $3.5 billion in grants. The state hopes to complete the section from Bakersfield to Merced in this phase.

The move by the Trump administration was seen as a response to the Democratic party in Congress limiting funding of a border wall with Mexico.