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White House Watch: Trade War!

By Michael Warren

President Trump is planning to announce a new round of tariffs on Chinese imports Thursday as the White House continues to crack down on what they term unfair Chinese trade practices and intellectual property theft. “Tomorrow the president will announce the actions he has decided to take on USTR’s 301 investigation into China’s state-led, market-distorting efforts to force, pressure, and steal U.S. technologies and intellectual property,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said Wednesday.

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The Wall Street Journal reports that China is already preparing retaliatory measures of their own, some of which are designed to put pressure on economic sectors, such as agriculture, that are politically important for Trump:

In response, China is likely to target U.S. exports of soybeans, sorghum and live hogs, according to the people with knowledge of the matter. The U.S. is among the top suppliers of these products to China, which imports around a third of soybeans that the U.S. produces, data from the two countries show. Any duties to be levied by China on those products would depend on how broad-based the U.S. tariffs are on Chinese imports, and plans could change based on what the Trump administration proposes, these people said.

When the White House announced new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports earlier this month, President Trump waved off concerns about retaliation from other countries, saying that “I don’t think we’ll have a trade war.”

On the President’s Schedule—According to the White House, President Trump will sign the memorandum creating the tariffs at 12:30 p.m.

Trump Tweets of the Day


The president’s insistence that congratulating Vladimir Putin on winning a sham election is part of an effort to “get along” with the Russian strongman reflects how Trump is willing and eager to go it mostly alone within his administration (and his party) on Russia. Indeed, a Wednesday report from the Washington Post notes that Trump’s promise to Putin on their most recent phone call to meet with the Russian president to discuss the “arms race” caught White House aides off guard.

But back to the question of the legitimacy of Putin’s reelection. Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, a Republican but frequent Trump critic, took to the Senate floor to call out the president and the administration for not condemning Putin’s denial of free and fair elections to his own people:

“Yesterday, when the White House refused to speak directly and clearly about this matter, we were weakened as a nation and a tyrant was strengthened,” he said. “The dodge on Putin broke with the basic American moral tradition. It broke faith with our core values. It broke trust with freedom seekers across the globe.” He continued: “To those who struggle, we have always said, ‘we see you, and we stand with you.’ These simple truths matter. The moral responsibilities of the office of the presidency matter, and when we don’t affirm these basic truths, it is a failure to who we are. It is a failure to do what we do, and it is a betrayal, not just to the millions of people who are denied free and fair elections in Russia this week, but it is a failure to people all across the globe who are struggling in darkness against tyrants.”

But Sasse’s discussion of “moral responsibilities” and “betrayal” of our values simply don’t factor into Trump’s own conception of America’s role in the world. For Trump, there are no moral precepts, only transactions. That view is at odds with that of the vast majority of elected Republicans. It’s a reason why Trump’s detractors from his own party are often the most vocal on foreign policy and why that’s not likely to change any time soon.

Columns of the Day—From Ross Douthat at the New York Times and John Podhoretz at the New York Post on the scapegoating of Facebook for the results of the 2016 election.

Here’s a question about the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe that no one at the Bureau or the Department of Justice seems able to answer in a satisfying way: Why was Attorney General Jeff Sessions the one to fire him?

I asked the FBI why McCabe’s firing, which was precipitated by an inspector general’s report looking into his handling of the Hillary Clinton email case and recommended by the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility, was carried out by the attorney general instead of FBI director Christopher Wray. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, instead referring me to the Justice Department.

Sarah Isgur Flores, the DOJ spokeswoman, provided me with the justification she had given other reporters: “Department Order 1202 (signed in 2013) dictates that the decision is made by the AG and it does not go through the director of the FBI.” What is Department Order 1202? Flores says it’s “not public” but that “it is the order laying out the disciplinary mechanisms for senior officials.”

Pursuant to this order, she added, the FBI director has no role in disciplining senior FBI officials. But who qualifies as a senior official? And why did the 2013 order (signed when Barack Obama was president and Eric Holder was attorney general) remove the FBI director from the disciplinary process? How many FBI employees have been fired by the AG rather than the director under this regime? Neither the FBI nor the DOJ has been able to answer those questions.

Must-Read of the Day—An incredible report from the New York Times about how a cooperating witness with the Mueller investigation “worked for more than a year to turn a top Trump fundraiser into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

Song of the Day—“Oh My Sweet Carolina” by Elton John

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