According to the AP, Trump has repeatedly pressed his aides to consider invading Venezuela. Any claim that this could be about democracy or human rights simply is not credible. Regional stability? Venezuela’s neighbors seemed aghast at the suggestion. Oil? That must be it, although the former CEO of Exxon was Secretary of State at the time and was also aghast. We’re in year 2 and counting of the Trump presidency with no war – can we make it to the end?
Category Archives: Web Article Review
WTO withdrawal could spark recession…or not
Axios quotes economists who think a U.S. withdrawal from the World Trade Organization could spark a recession…and economists who do not.
Thus far, Trump has mostly damaged U.S. prestige with his anti-globalization actions, including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate agreement, as well as threatening to pull out of NAFTA. He’s also caused global stock markets to gyrate by imposing tariffs on Canada, Europe, and China; and oil prices to rise by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. But “the financial shock would be very, very large” should he withdraw from the WTO, said Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics…
“Business confidence in the system would be severely shaken,” Hufbauer told Axios, and there would be “quite a hit” to long-term investment in plants and equipment. “You don’t need much of a slowdown in these areas, and you have recession…”
The White House seems to be showing little understanding of the WTO’s history, originating in 1947 along with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as vehicles to prevent any future global war by buoying the economies of the world.
Not everybody likes the WTO, but it seems to be the best of many imperfect options for resolving trade disputes, and for not letting trade disputes escalate to be about more than trade.
Trumponomics – just plain made up
Trump claims recent economic growth is unprecedented. The claim is demonstrably false and just plain made up. According to Politifact:
Trump said, “Watch those GDP numbers. We started off at a very low number, and right now we hit a 3.2 (percent). Nobody thought that was possible.”
This is inaccurate two ways. First, the most recent saw GDP growth of 2.0 percent, not 3.2 percent. And second, exceeding 3 percent GDP growth in a quarter is not an unusual achievement — Obama accomplished it eight times. The real achievement would be a full year at 3 percent, which hasn’t happened under Trump yet.
We rate the statement False.
Much more interesting is that the U.S. has not managed a full year of 3% growth since 2005. Politifact has a much more interesting article here that explains why most economists think a sustained 3% will not be achievable in the foreseeable future. In summary:
- Growth in the working-age population is much lower than it was (political response: prevent willing workers from entering the country, oppose measures to provide childcare to working age adults…)
- Productivity growth has also slowed significantly (political solution: underfund infrastructure, education, research and development; although to be fair, some of the recent changes to corporate tax policy might help if companies choose to invest the savings in plants, equipment, research and development rather than just letting executives pocket them)
Red Queens and Black Queens
It sounds like a fantasy novel, but the Red Queen hypothesis is about species competing and co-evolving with one another over long periods of time. It is named after the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, who said “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” In other words, species have to constantly evolve and adapt, or they go extinct.
The Black Queen hypothesis is hard for me to understand, but it refers to
the queen of spades in the game Hearts, where the usual strategy is to avoid taking this card. Gene loss can provide a selective advantage by conserving an organism’s limiting resources, provided the gene’s function is dispensable. Many vital genetic functions are leaky, thereby unavoidably producing public goods that are available to the entire community. Such leaky functions are thus dispensable for individuals, provided they are not lost entirely from the community. The BQH predicts that the loss of a costly, leaky function is selectively favored at the individual level and will proceed until the production of public goods is just sufficient to support the equilibrium community; at that point, the benefit of any further loss would be offset by the cost. Evolution in accordance with the BQH thus generates “beneficiaries” of reduced genomic content that are dependent on leaky “helpers,” and it may explain the observed nonuniversality of prototrophy, stress resistance, and other cellular functions in the microbial world.
In other words, organisms can sort of help their rivals, and there can be some survival advantage to this over long periods of evolutionary time. I’m not sure I quite get it, but there it is.
Is the U.S. at war in Africa?
According to Politico, U.S. Special Forces are choosing, planning, directing and occasionally participating in missions in at least eight African countries.
A spokesman for Africa Command declined to say which African states host teams under the authority, but former special operations officers have identified eight countries as current or recent sites of the surrogate programs. They include well-known combat zones like Somalia and Libya as well as more surprising sites for American-directed commando raids like Kenya, Tunisia, Cameroon, Mali and Mauritania — and Niger, where the October mission that ended in tragedy involved one of two units that Green Berets run in the country under the authority…
After planning the mission based on U.S. intelligence and getting approval from higher headquarters, the Americans drive or fly with their local partners to the vicinity of the target, where they are required to hang back at “the last position of cover and concealment.” That is the military term for the last place where they can stay out of sight and are protected from gunfire by some sort of natural obstacle. But the former special operations officer pointed out that in the deserts and scrubland of northwestern Africa, “a lot of the time there really isn’t any cover or concealment to be had.”
There, the team “remotely commands and controls” the raid while monitoring feeds from drones and aircraft that eavesdrop on enemy phone calls. Afterward, the Americans move forward to check the raid site for intelligence — or, if something goes wrong during the raid and the African troops need help, they might move forward and join the shooting.
This is done with the full knowledge and participation of the host countries, apparently. Still, it raises questions. To what extent have the keys to U.S. foreign policy been turned over to the military, with little or no civilian involvement? What exactly is the return on the American blood spilled and taxes spent on this? To what extent are some of these people fighting simply because the U.S. is there in the first place?
our world in data
This video from OurWorldinData.org is a reminder of how much things have improved for human beings over the past couple centuries or even the past 50 years. It’s a reminder that the disspiriting reversals we are feeling over the past decade or two could be just a bump in the road when you take a longer-term perspective.
However, we shouldn’t just assume that doing more of what we have done in the past 50-200 years is the way to keep the trend going for another 50-200 years, because it may not be. Part of the trend is about a few key technological breakthroughs, such as vaccines, electricity and water disinfection. If we want more of those, we have to invest in R&D, infrastructure and human capital, and we are underinvesting in all of those. Part of the trend was due to mining of natural capital, and fossil fuels in particular. We know that we can’t just keep mining more and dumping more forever without eventually hitting a plateau or worse, triggering a major reversal in our fortunes.
Nonetheless, we should take a moment to celebrate this progress.
10 million Yemenis could face starvation
The UN is warning as many as 10 million people in Yemen could face starvation by the end of 2018 due to the ongoing invasion by Saudi Arabia. There is no food there, no ability to grow food, and no food able to go in because of the war.
This is staggering, approaching the body count of the worst crimes against humanity in history including the Holocaust, deliberate mass starvation in eastern Europe under the Soviet Union, and the massive rural starvation in China triggered by misguided Communist policies.
The Guns of August (2018)?
According to NBC:
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News…
Joel Wit, who negotiated a 1994 nuclear agreement with North Korea, said the U.S. always believed North Korea had two facilities to enrich nuclear material: Yongbyon and a second site the U.S. is aware of but whose name has not been disclosed…
The latest U.S. intelligence assessment concludes that there is more than one secret site, officials tell NBC News. The question is whether Kim will be willing to admit it.
This is the kind of deal that would work. We know North Korea would like to feel safe from U.S. attack. We can offer them that, along with eventual normal diplomatic and economic ties, in exchange for giving up their nuclear program. Giving up their nuclear program means first they have to declare everything they have, then let weapons inspectors in without restrictions to verify that what they said is true. Once they meet those commitments, the long process of dismantling and removing the materials and equipment can begin. Each time they fulfill a commitment, they can get something in return. This process was working pretty well in Iraq until George W. Bush messed it up. It was starting to work in Iran until Trump messed it up. Now Trump has been duped into a non-deal with North Korea when the Iran deal he was against is actually the kind of thing that could work with North Korea.
I don’t like the U.S. leadership looking stupid, ignorant and incompetent, but let’s face it, at this point that ship has sailed. The biggest risk here is actually that Trump will realize he was duped and overreact by doubling down on his earlier threats. North Korea would probably respond with threats of their own against the U.S. and its Asian allies. In the worst case it could escalate to one side or the other launching some kind of limited attack, followed by a larger retaliation, followed by regional alliances being triggered, and then the downward spiral to 2018 looking more like 1918. Let’s hope this is just my imagination getting away from me.
Who’s really crossing the U.S. border?
This article is from Lawfare, and the answer is interesting.
First off, while the current administration has tried to tie Central American migrants to MS-13, government data reveals that gang members crossing irregularly are the rare exceptions. Since the Trump administration took office, the Border Patrol has detected fewer gang members crossing irregularly than during the Obama administration. In FY2017, these detections amounted to 0.075 percent of the total number of migrants (228 MS-13 members out of 303,916 total migrants). When combined with MS-13’s rival, the Barrio 18 gang, the number rises only slightly to 0.095 percent. This is far from the “infestation” of violent gang members described by the president…
The face of migration has also changed. Back in 2000, Mexican nationals made up 98 percent of the total migrants and Central Americans (referring to Honduran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran migrants) only one percent. Today, Central Americans make up closer to 50 percent.
A declining Mexican birth rate, a stable economy, and the U.S. border buildup have all contributed to the decrease in migration from Mexico. But as Mexican irregular migration has plummeted, Central American migration has simultaneously picked up. Until 2011, Central Americans constituted less than ten percent of total U.S.-Mexico border apprehensions, but by 2012 they constituted 25 percent, and by 2014 they numbered half of all illicit border crossers. While migration from each country within the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) has fluctuated over time, each country has sent roughly similar numbers of people in the aggregate. From FY1995 to FY2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended around 500,000 citizens from each country. In other words, it’s not a coincidence that most recent news stories about migrant parents separated from their children feature families from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
People from Honduras and El Salvador are often fleeing urban gang violence, while those from Guatemala are often fleeing rural poverty.
new political push for carbon tax in the U.S.
There is a new emerging push for carbon taxes in the U.S., led by Republicans and using pro-business language. According to Bloomberg:
The campaign, dubbed Americans for Carbon Dividends, aims to bolster a carbon tax-and-dividend plan advanced by prominent Republicans a year ago, using more aggressive lobbying and advertising to line up support with hopes of winning congressional passage after the 2020 elections.
Under the Climate Leadership Council’s blueprint, every ton of carbon dioxide would be hit with a $40 tax, with the price rising over time and revenue redistributed to households in the form of quarterly dividend checks. In exchange, regulations aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions — and much of the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate them — would be eliminated.
Companies that emit greenhouse gas emissions also could win liability protection insulating them from litigation over the costs of climate change — a potentially enticing sweetener as lawsuits mount…
So, nominally anti-tax, anti-deficit politicians would get a revenue neutral program, anti-regulation politicians would get to trade away regulations in favor of taxes, and even the fossil fuel industry would get some liability protection. The other implication here seems to be that at least some Republicans in Congress are starting to think about a post-Trump world after 2020, and/or are willing to look for issues where a veto-proof super-majority could be possible.