Monday was an “awake” day for narcoleptic Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, and he decided to spend some of his precious few conscious minutes chatting with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, who was curious about trade deals.
Of course, Bartiromo isn’t really curious. And even if she was, Wilbur wouldn’t be any help. At this point, TV cameos by Trump officials are only worth mentioning to the extent they either reinforce the willingness of ostensible public servants to lie to the public or else provide some comic relief.
Wilbur’s Monday remarks to Bartiromo were marginally amusing. Here’s Ross telling Bartiromo how the US and the UK can team up to screw the EU once Boris Johnson “explodes” out of the “manacles” binding his Brexit plan:
Got that? Here it is again:
We’ve made it very clear to Boris Johnson… we’re happy to do a deal very quickly with the UK. The issues between US and UK are far smaller than the issues between either of us and the EU. So that’s a natural deal. And it actually could in some way be better for us and the UK in that then, China -En-rr-Europe would have to deal with the combination of the US and UK.
“Yeah, that’s a good point”, Bartiromo responds.
No, it’s not a “good point”. Rather, it’s Wilbur discussing trade as though he’s talking about a US-UK military alliance against Europe. Everything is couched in confrontational terms.
It’s highly disconcerting that we’ve now become so accustomed to Trump’s way of speaking about global trade and commerce that nobody bats an eye when the Commerce secretary describes a prospective bilateral trade deal not in terms of how the two participating countries can benefit, but rather in terms of how that deal can be used as an economic weapon against their mutual allies.
Note also how, at the end of the clip, Bartiromo squeezes in a jab at Germany. “We should point out that Germany [sells goods to the UK] while using Huawei”, she said.
Don’t kid yourself, that is a total non sequitur, the only purpose of which was to rile up viewers and please any current US presidents who might be watching.
As far as the US-China “Phase One” trade deal is concerned, Ross didn’t have much to offer. “Phase 2 and Phase 3 is where the meat is”, he told Bartiromo.
so the US should take the screwing? – How should this be resolved Heis? China a developing nation really?
Clayton, no one forced corporate America to move production to Mexico or Asia. There were no Mexican or Chinese soldiers in US boardrooms. US companies made the decision to offshore to satisfy their shareholders, like you and me. And drive up the value of their options.
what “screwing”? sure, China’s trade practices are exploitative, but at the end of the day who cares? look what the US created in tech over these years and years that Trump swears China has been “robbing” us. Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and on and on and on.
and do you seriously think Beijing is ever going to be compelled to change their practices? if you do, then you don’t understand how things work over there. they can (and will) at any given time, simply decide where the A-share market goes, and if they can’t engineer a rally, they’ll just close the damn market and start arresting anybody who sells when it’s open. They can, at any time, stop capital outflows with draconian measures up to and including throwing people in prison. They can, and will, move the yuan wherever they want it to go. They can, and will, either allow defaults to liberalize the economy, or stop defaults altogether. They can, and will, build artificial islands in the middle of the ocean and put missiles on them. Etc. etc. etc.
the point being: There is absolutely nothing that the US can do about any of this. Not a thing. And you’re seeing that right now. Trump’s trade war has accomplished nothing. Think about what Trump is trying to do for a second: He’s fighting a trade war against a command economy with a beholden central bank, a managed currency, more than 3 trillion in FX reserves, a massive hoard of gold and a behemoth economy that serves as the engine of global growth and trade. The US (and this will be the same exercise in futility under any president) is trying to fight that battle while saddled with an independent central bank, a democratic system that forces presidents to pacify voters every 4 years, no leeway to dictate economic outcomes by decree, no capacity to close markets for weeks at a time if there’s a selloff, all manner of obstacles to forcing companies to bring back jobs, and a system based on checks and balances.
It. Is. Impossible. It is not a fight that can be won, because China is never (ever, ever, ever) going to play fair. And by virtue of their sheer size and clout, nobody can make them.
So, yes, the best course of action is to just maintain a cordial relationship with Beijing while China marks a painfully slow transition towards adopting international norms. It may take 100 years, but they’ll get there.
I’m not sure what it’s going to take for everyone to come around to this reality. Maybe when the US sinks into recession and the S&P dives by 20% while China continues to post 5.5-6% growth and rolls out the “National Team” to prop up domestic equities, it will dawn on folks that as frustrating as this is, we’re helpless.
And whatever you think should/shouldn’t be done about China, we definitely should not be alienating Europe and Japan. If those alliances crumble, China will have even more freedom to flout international norms.
Does Ross recall that you need to get trade deals through Congress? And on the UK side from what I understand the public is not that excited about eating chlorine washed chicken, hormone and antibiotic infused beef, and having to pay exorbitant prices for pharmaceuticals.