LyrArc Article Gist
Damian Paletta of the Washington Post says that credit goes to Gary Cohn a former Goldman Sachs president, and head of the president's National Economic Council for the way he has quietly built up a group of leading experts on major initiatives of the Trump administration such as tax reform, infrastructure plans. Compared to the infighting and other problems in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, Cohn is credited with building a core of ideas and experts that bring Trump more to the centre and with the prospect of winning Democratic party support. He has helped shift the president to set up a more balanced approach, less confrontational with China and not calling China a currency manipulator, getting support for the Export Import Bank, and more receptive to the Federal Reserve led by Janet Yellen. This report says an alliance of moderates is centering around Adviser Jared Kushner, Cohn, and in other reports Tillerson in foreign affairs is seen as being part of this group. On NAFTA the president has moved to a less confrontational approach with Mexico, which has helped the Mexican peso recover and improved prospects for the Mexican economy.  On infrastructure new ideas to find financing are needed and a plan to tax carbon emissions is intended to draw Democratic support as well as provide some of the funding. About $200 billion in taxpayer money and $800 billion from private investors is being discussed at the National Economic Council. This report says Cohn suffered from dyslexia in childhood, graduated from American University, and joined Goldman Sachs in an unconventional way. He shares a passion for deal making with president Trump, yet at the same time values the views of experts he has brought to formulate concrete plans for the way ahead. About 25 experts with extensive experience in government helped put together new tax changes, infrastructure plans, and international trade deal plans. His predecessor at the NEC, Gene Sperling, gives him credit for quietly pulling together the experts and doing the planning that the Trump administration now depends on. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Differences over Gaza policy in the ruling coalition in Israel lead to the reisignation of the defense minister Mr. Lieberman. The result could be early elections which Mr. Netanyahu called "irresponsible" considering the situation in Gaza and Israeli security.

LyrArc Article Gist
With the theme of championing the interests of the people left out in the last 2 decades under both Bush and Obama, left out my technolgical changes and world trade trends, left out by the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath of deep unemployment for older people especially white men, struggling economically, Hillary Clinton tells the Democratic convention, "I will carry all your voices and stories with me to the White House." She tells millions of Bernie supporters  that she has heard them loud and clear-  "your cause, is our cause." In this way Hillary Clinton sought to dispel any doubts about her in people's minds for not being forthright on questions related to a private email server and from earlier periods, and from overzealous fundraising. Telling people that on the things that really count and matter in people's lives, just as Bill Clinton did in his campaign at a similiar juncture- she will be there for them always, and always working to put their hearts up and centre, with her Methodist upbringing and her unmatched ability to work relentlessly in pursuit of worthy public goals. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Questions raised by Nicholas Kristof of the NYT on Russian hacking during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Kristof says the implausible or far fetched idea of foreign interference in U.S. elections is not as implausible as it may appear.

LyrArc Article Gist
Greg Ip cites the case of Texas, where businesses helped defeat anti-transgender  legislation, as an example of how businesses have decided it is best to cut reputational risk. Business now generally supports being friendly to gay, transgender, and domestic partners in their policies. This is because business generally favors stability and the status quo, says Ip. Business is known for staying away from extreme positions, being more open and tolerant as a way of doing business.   Where large business is located in big cities, gay and transgender, climate change, are seen as accepted changes, not as liberal causes. For this reason most of the CEO's on Trump advisory councils resigned after the president's controversial remarks critical of both sides in the Charlotte car attack. Ip cites the situation businesses in the South faced in the 1960's when their stores were boycotted after they opposed desegregation- most lost sales and customers with the negative publicity. The situation today is that business is now moving away from reflexive support of Trump or Republicans, says Ip. Mainstream Republicans are also distancing the party from the fringe elements in the party.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The U.S. Census Bureau shows incomes of American households, the median household income, surged in 2015 by 5.2%. This increased by $2800 to $56,500. This is the largest increase since 1967. It shows that steadily improving employment and hiring is leading to improvement in incomes for the middle and working class. Ris in minimum wage has also helped . The largest increase was for the lowest 20% of the income tiers. Full time working women did better than men, with increase annually of 2.7% for women, and 1.5% for men. Nocitizen incomes increased 10.5% to $45,100, native born households went up 4.4% to $57,200. The number of people without health insurance also declined from 33 million or 10.4% of the population to  29 million people or 9.1%. Another way the changes are helping lower income households is the decline of the official poverty rate to 13.5% in 2015 by 1.2 percentage points from 14.8% in 2014. Through a series of small incremental steps the path is being set for a recovery of household incomes for the middle class and working class. A bright spot is that the improvement has affected all age groups, household types, regions and ethnic groups, though among full time workers women did better than men. In this recession older white men have had more difficulties getting back into the workforce. This is reflected in the political scene in 2015-2016 for the election season. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Key donors to the Republican Party, the billionaires Charles and David Koch,  say they will conduct a grass roots campaign against the Trump administration's use of tariffs. Charles Koch is 82, and David Koch is 78 years old. The Koch brothers groups launching the campaign are - Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and the LIBRE Initiative. David Koch ran in 1980 as vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. Both brothers are free trade advocates.

LyrArc Article Gist
Texas is becoming a swing state for 2024 The deep divisions in the Republican party in Texas with one faction supporting former Governor Rick Perry who was the longest serving Texas governor 2000-2014, and the Bush family and the other faction supporting Mr. Trump. Attorney General Ken Paxton who supports Mr. Trump faces impeachment by Republicans who support Perry-Bush. Texas is the home of Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) who was John F. Kennedy's vice president and then president, and also of the 2 Bush Republican presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush. It is also a state that has swung to Republicans since 1976, but has a history of Democrats under LBJ.

LyrArc Article Gist
In his second part of the series on Capitalism and Globalization Schieritz says Trump's arguments have backing, and goes back to the studies done by David Autor of MIT on the adverse impact of free trade on communities across the U.S.. Lyrarc has covered this issue since 2006, and the reality is that this issue was brought up long before the Autor study gained prominence. On Nov. 12, 2010 Robert Lighthizer, Deputy Trade Representative under U.S. president Reagan wrote an op-ed in the NYT titled "Throwing Free Trade Overboard," that made a strident and strong case for what Trump says 5 years later, and from no less than a top trade official under Repubican Reagan.Trump comes late to this in 2015 when it was already amply clear what was happening. It is not so much Trump having discerned this, than others who should have paid attention, including Lew and leaders in both parties, and the business community,  who for too long ignored it. Or as Hilsenrath in a recent WSJ report says, simply said we have seen this before with Japan's entry into the American market, not realizing the speed and widespread impact of the changes in trade with China, that are unprecedented in history- evident just from the great speed of urbanization and manufacturing work force growth in China, policy rapidly impacting vulnerable communities across the U.S. The corrective course has to be credible which is why it has to come from a a reawakening among leaders such as May, Merkel and Clinton, who are keen students of change, and capable of designing and executing a corrective course of action, and winning the popular support and patience needed to stay the course which could run for most of the next decade. It would also provide leadership and show the way for societies in Brazil, China, India and other countries facing similar problems.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In this WSJ report a top American Defense Department official before resigning says- "I have no problem with feeding China or trading with China. I have a problem with arming China." Advanced or sensitive manufacturing technology is still being approved for export to China says this report in WSJ, even as the US perceives this to be a national security threat. Experts say the Commerce Department report approval process needs overhaul and the US needs close coordination with the European Union on this process. Of the total US $124 billion in exports to China in 2020 only half of one percent needed a license Commerce Department data reviewed by WSJ shows. Of that small fraction of one half percent Commerce Department approved 2562  applications or 94%. This even includes array of semiconductors, aerospace components, artificial intelligence technologies that could be added to China's military. This means that even towards the end of the Trump administration with its talk about national security threats, through the four years 2016-2020, nothing much happened in this important field.  The difficulty that the Trump administration faced and America faces is putting company and business interests first or American security interests and retaining competitive technological advantage interests first. American administrations and business have consistently failed to follow what plain ordinary Americans understand by America first. Even when it is clearly evident that America is handing over sensitive advanced technologies with very little in return, and creating out of nowhere competition that poses serious risks for the national interest, business and administrations operate indifferent to the national interest. Even right into the period when this is making the world a riskier and more dangerous place.   This is the state of affairs today, and the situation is not about Congressmen visiting Taiwan or ships going through the seas in that region, or international law. All that is American policy  and is well known and well understood. What is missing is the right action and the right determination behind other action that is sending a different message at the same time -that the US is oblivious to its own interests. That administrations, even those such as the recent Republican one under Mr. Trump, see a higher priority in following American business wherever it goes in pursuit of individual company interests alone, even if it does not accord with the national interest. Lobbying groups distort what policy should be in the public interest and in the interest of both countries, leading to a breakdown in the whole process itself whenever governments surrender their role of protecting the public interest.  Outshoring manufacturing was bad economically at the level of communities across the US, leading to divisions that weakened the country in the last decade, it was also bad for the economy of the country with loss of the best manufacturing jobs, beyond what economists in their ignorance of the big picture sought to show was the consumer- often the same person who lost a job or stopped seeking work- paying less. It was bad also for China as it created the hyper growth that rapidly contaminated land, air and water and created an inherently unstable relationship in trade with destruction of jobs at a pace that America had not faced with Japan and with which it could not cope. Could a pace that worked for both nations have worked? At the root is the notion that business knows best even if it is in plain sight to every plain American that the country's most advanced technologies are being shipped out. Governments do not fulfill their responsibilities and fail when they fail to tell business what rules are in the public interest, as it was never in the first role of business to protect the public interest. That the European Union has simply followed the US in this has created a problem for both the US and the European Union of deviating from what plain Americans or Europeans see as abundantly clear.  Even in plain dollars and cents business and economists fail to grasp the true cost for the whole country or whole people compared to the benefit for an individual or an individual company. The cost of wars even small wars can be be trillions of dollars which are borne by the whole country or people, and most of it by the middle and less economically well off classes in a country. Creating a belligerent competitor in world affairs and the risk of conflict and war is to lose trillions of dollars when the benefit to an individual, groups, or individual companies is no more but a tiny fraction of that trillion dollar cost, not including what all the plain people pay in human lives. It is not that anyone benefits as the people in the belligerent competitor country follow the same pattern of loss that would happen in the US. One should ask is it not a loss for China also? The example of Imperialist Japan is not so far off in time for Americans or Asians including the Chinese and Japanese people who suffered so greatly to forget. Business remains oblivious to the public interest not just for America but for the world, individual companies do not see it as their role beyond that of pursuing individual company interest. Is it not then for the government to set the rules. Is it alright for government to not fulfill its responsibilities? Even when this pushes the world faster to into conflicts as technologies take the place of exercise of wisdom in conflict, and even when there are unmet challenges such as climate change that affect the whole planet.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
There are similarities in the Republican and Democratic party platforms in 2016. One area of agreement is in the reinstatement of Glass Steagall Act. That legislation made in the Depression period to separate commercial banking from investment banking was changed  when president Clinton made changes in a deal with Senators Phil Gramm and Jim Leach in 1999. The too big to fail problems of banks and the problems of investment banks during the 2008 financial crisis are attributed to the lack of Glass Steagall protections for financial stability and safety. The result is that in the post 2016 environment banks can expect a tougher regulatory environment. Another are is in trade where both parties are expected to take tougher positions to protect U.S. interests. The Republican platform calls for "better negotiated trade agreemets that put America first."

LyrArc Article Gist
Max Fisher of the NYT points out the unique approach taken by Canada in the U.S.-Canada relationship - to cultivate a grassroots network of Americans in legislatures, business, and at different levels of government. This has enabled the Trudeau government to build a relationship with president Trump, and at the same time have relationships at different levels of government and with business in the U.S. to tackle issues where the Trump administration has acted in ways unfavorable for Canada. Provincial governments in Ontario and Quebec lobbied against a New York state government provision for Buying American on state contracts worth over $100,000. By emphasizing the $10 billion in exports from New York to Ontario this lobbying persuaded the New York legislature to cancel the provision. Premier Trudeau's popularity helps and the proximity to the U.S. means Canadians can visit quickly and understand the U.S. as a close neighbor. Still Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario says Canadian businesses are nervous about the uncertainty from the Trump administration.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A WSJ/NBC poll in April 2017 shows about three quarters of Americans disapprove of Congress's job performance, up 12 percentage points since Feb, and one fifth approve- down nine percentage points. Congress has had a low rating in the 20% point range since 2011. Speaker Ryan is viewed negatively by 40%, compared to 22% having a positive view.

LyrArc Article Gist
Philip Rucker of the WP provides this exceptional account of people on the Staten Island Ferry in New York. Construction workers who like Tump's toughness to tackle terrorism, jobs, and other issues. Others who sees Trump's name on properties all over Manhattan, and think he will bring prosperity. And the female worker at a food pantry who says she sees too many immigrants and looks to Trump to fix this. Staten Island is one of New York's boroughs with a population of 500,000 mostly white people that is not connected to city by subway, is heavily Republican, with new immigrants creating community tensions.