Aug. 6, 2019

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Baltimore’s blight cannot move off of the national agenda
And suddenly the squalor of Baltimore and our nation’s inner cities is off the news. But the people who live in the deteriorating parts of our nation’s cities remain even as we collectively look to El Paso and Dayton and the news coverage changes to the comfortable and predictable blame game. Last week, Baltimore was in the news and the failure of liberal policies which have dominated our inner cities for the past fifty years was on full display. Many in our nation were appalled at both the living conditions and the total collapse of public institutions within the poorest communities in “Charm City” which served as a proxy for other big cities around the nation. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson found himself in the spotlight as the leader in the effort to restore hope in American urban areas, but this week the attention shifts elsewhere.

Video: We all must denounce political violence in El Paso and Dayton from the right and the left
Leaders of both political parties need to stand against political violence, whether the right-wing, racist, white supremacist shooter in El Paso, or the left-wing, violent revolutionary pro-Antifa shooter in Dayton who thought his political opponents were Nazis. Both ideologies are wrong and rooted in misguided views of the world and of their opponents and must be denounced in the strongest possible terms.

China proves it manipulates currency with immediate yuan devaluation upon new 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of goods, rate cuts, Treasury acts with official designation
Immediately upon President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of goods shipped to the U.S. that came atop the 25 percent on $250 billion of goods, coupled with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, China has responded in kind with another devaluation of the yuan by another 2.6 percent. This comes atop the devaluation in May in response to the initial imposition by Trump of 25 percent tariffs on the first tranche of $250 billion of goods shipped to the U.S. Now, with the most recent move, the total devaluation rises to 4.8 percent since May. That is absolutely currency manipulation. Trump was right about Beijing.

ALG urges Congress and candidates for President to join President Trump in denouncing all political violence
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “While the nation grieves the senseless loss of life in El Paso and Dayton, President Donald Trump has rightly denounced the racist, white nationalist attack in El Paso and the attack in Dayton by a radical, pro-Antifa leftist who thought his political opponents were Nazis who deserved to die. There is nothing controversial about denouncing political violence, all of it, and we call upon Republicans and Democrats to do so, regardless of the political motives of the killers.”

Baltimore’s blight cannot move off of the national agenda

By Rick Manning

And suddenly the squalor of Baltimore and our nation’s inner cities is off the news. But the people who live in the deteriorating parts of our nation’s cities remain even as we collectively look to El Paso and Dayton and the news coverage changes to the comfortable and predictable blame game.

The CBS local affiliate In Chicago reported that this past weekend, seven were killed and another forty six were wounded in just an average weekend in the Windy City. Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. are still beset by rat infestations with the homeless populations in California continuing to grow in spite of, or because of, government attempts to help the homeless. Just under 1,000 Americans die every week from opioid overdoses, and no one except their grieving families will notice. And yes, students in Baltimore will soon return to schools where few if any will gain proficiency in math.

Last week, Baltimore was in the news and the failure of liberal policies which have dominated our inner cities for the past fifty years was on full display. Many in our nation were appalled at both the living conditions and the total collapse of public institutions within the poorest communities in “Charm City” which served as a proxy for other big cities around the nation.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson found himself in the spotlight as the leader in the effort to restore hope in American urban areas, but this week the attention shifts elsewhere.

It is incumbent that the President of the United States not allow our collective gaze to shift from the urban decay which has let Baltimore have a higher homicide rate than El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, three countries which America’s left have declared so dangerous that we need to open our borders out of compassion to those who wish to flee the violence.

The obvious question is where can the people of Baltimore or Chicago flee to escape their violence ridden neighborhoods?

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department seemingly travelled the country pushing consent decrees which effectively neutered police, ending the broken windows policies which were championed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In Baltimore, the political class found the police guilty of abuse even as a jury of their peers did not in the Freddie Gray case, effectively ending what was an overly aggressive, crime interdiction program, and replacing it with a policy which has had the effect of disengaging the police from crime fighting except in the most dire circumstances.

Even the liberal Baltimore Sun recognizes the violent crime explosion writing in a September 25, 2018 piece, “The grim news was the latest reminder of the sustained cycle of violence that has gripped the city since 2015, when the annual number of homicides soared above 300 for three consecutive years after the unrest that followed Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered in police custody.”

While the City of Baltimore enjoys low unemployment at between 5 and 6 percent, and African-Americans enjoy some of the lowest unemployment rates in history, the sad truth is that increased economic opportunity alone is not solving the problems of a poor local education system, the despair of drug abuse and the street violence which it encourages, and government policies which create a cycle of dependency that have scourged our cities.

While the events of the past weekend are shocking, the real shock should remain that our own inner cities suffer from a despair and hopelessness wrought by policies which breed government dependency, and at the same time handcuff the police from enforcing the laws which allow civil society to work.

It is incumbent on the President to keep his administration focused upon working with local community leaders to find solutions to Baltimore and everything it represents while it is still fresh on our minds. Restoring hope in our cities is possible, but only if it remains a national priority.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Video: We all must denounce political violence in El Paso and Dayton from the right and the left

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlkdTlhYcnQ

China proves it manipulates currency with immediate yuan devaluation upon new 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of goods, rate cuts, Treasury acts with official designation

By Robert Romano

“China has a long history of facilitating an undervalued currency through protracted, large-scale intervention in the foreign exchange market. In recent days, China has taken concrete steps to devalue its currency, while maintaining substantial foreign exchange reserves despite active use of such tools in the past. The context of these actions and the implausibility of China’s market stability rationale confirm that the purpose of China’s currency devaluation is to gain an unfair competitive advantage in international trade.”

That was a statement from U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin officially designating China as a currency manipulator under 22 U.S.C. Section 5304(b), pointing to Beijing’s sharp devaluation of the yuan the past few months in response to tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

Prior to the announcement of the tariffs in May, the yuan-to-dollar conversion was 6.76, on Aug. 1, it was 6.87. Now, it stands at 7.05, the highest since 2008. Immediately upon President Donald Trump’s imposition by Trump of 25 percent tariffs on the first tranche of $250 billion of goods shipped to the U.S., China started devaluing, first by almost 3 percent.

And upon the announcement on Aug. 1 of a new 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of goods shipped to the U.S. that came atop the 25 percent on $250 billion of goods, coupled with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates, China has responded in kind with another devaluation of the yuan by another 2.6 percent.

That is absolutely currency manipulation. Trump was right about Beijing. China sets the value of the yuan on a fixed basis versus the dollar. When it wants to make the yuan cheaper, it does so arbitrarily. This is in opposition to floating exchange rates that are the norm in global economics.

Fortunately, now the U.S. Treasury is getting involved to officially make the determination under federal law, which provides that “The Secretary of the Treasury shall analyze on an annual basis the exchange rate policies of foreign countries, in consultation with the International Monetary Fund, and consider whether countries manipulate the rate of exchange between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.”

The Treasury pointed to a statement from the People’s Bank of China as an acknowledgement of its currency intervention which stated that it “has accumulated rich experience and policy tools, and will continue to innovate and enrich the control toolbox, and take necessary and targeted measures against the positive feedback behavior that may occur in the foreign exchange market.”

In other news, North Korea has lifted its veil and immediately has fired two missiles into the sea in response. This is no coincidence, in my opinion, it shows connective tissue between trade policy with China and the nuclear threat from Pyongyang. Is China using North Korea to engage in nuclear blackmail to maintain economic dominance? It sure looks that way.

The ostensible reason to devalue currency is to boost exports by reducing prices of goods in the importing country.

China has maintained an artificially cheap yuan vis a vis the dollar since the 1990s, the last time it was designated a currency manipulator between 1992 and 1994. And since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, U.S. manufacturing market share has dropped from 13.4 percent to 7.5 percent in 2017, according to World Bank data. China has risen from 5.3 percent to 16.6 percent in 2017, although their percent of global manufacturing market share has peaked in 2015 at 18.8 percent.

During that time, the U.S. economy has not grown above 4 percent since 2000, and not above 3 percent since 2005 on an annual basis as labor participation declined precipitously.

As China has increased it market share, it has also been able to gradually increase prices by revaluing the yuan, beginning at the time of the financial crisis. However, once the U.S. stood up and hit China with the tariffs and said enough is enough, China’s immediate reaction was to devalue once again, starting in May.

Meaning, Trump was right all along. China manipulates its currency in response to trade relations and always has.

President Donald Trump blasted the devaluation on Twitter, writing, “China dropped the price of their currency to an almost a historic low. It’s called ‘currency manipulation.’ Are you listening Federal Reserve? This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time! Based on the historic currency manipulation by China, it is now even more obvious to everyone that Americans are not paying for the Tariffs – they are being paid for compliments of China, and the U.S. is taking in tens of Billions of Dollars! China has always... used currency manipulation to steal our businesses and factories, hurt our jobs, depress our workers’ wages and harm our farmers’ prices. Not anymore!”

Trump has got a point. By devaluing the yuan to offset the tariffs, China is losing profits while the American people are not paying the price. Consumer inflation is stable. In fact, the Fed just cut interest rates because it was below their target. The past 12 months, consumer inflation has come in at just 1.6 percent.

In the meantime, long-term the trade fight is hurting China, as it tells manufacturers they can move their factories to a country that is more stable and has better relations with the U.S., or just come back to the U.S. and then there’s no tariff. And it might be working, with Chinese economic growth now the slowest in 30 years.

President Trump would prefer that the Federal Reserve take a more aggressive and explicit stance against China and other currency manipulators who are attempting to boost exports. The interest rate cut notwithstanding, Trump wants the central bank to defend the dollar with competitive devaluation.

“What the Market wanted to hear from Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve was that this was the beginning of a lengthy and aggressive rate-cutting cycle which would keep pace with China, The European Union and other countries around the world,” Trump wrote on Twitter in response to the rate cut.

Trump added, “As usual, Powell let us down, but at least he is ending quantitative tightening, which shouldn’t have started in the first place — no inflation.”

Trump is not wrong. One of the deflationary forces playing on the U.S. economy today are the devaluations from China, Mexico and Europe, which make the dollar relatively too strong. Similar forces were at play in the mid-2000s when the U.S. economy began collapsing along with prices, and in the 1930s when countries were leaving the gold standard. We ignore these devaluations at our own peril, but for once, we have a President who is paying attention and is not going to take it. It’s about time.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

ALG urges Congress and candidates for President to join President Trump in denouncing all political violence

Aug. 5, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging members of Congress and candidates for President to join with President Donald Trump in denouncing all political violence:

"While the nation grieves the senseless loss of life in El Paso and Dayton, President Donald Trump has rightly denounced the racist, white nationalist attack in El Paso and the attack in Dayton by a radical, pro-Antifa leftist who thought his political opponents were Nazis who deserved to die. There is nothing controversial about denouncing political violence, all of it, and we call upon Republicans and Democrats to do so, regardless of the political motives of the killers.

“The Dayton attacker was an Elizabeth Warren supporter, yet none of the Democratic candidates for President have denounced the Dayton shooter's violent revolutionary leftist ideology that legitimizes Antifa, and they should do so immediately. Ignoring Antifa will not make them go away, it will only empower them and encourage further acts of violence. When a Bernie Sanders supporter shot up the Republican congressional baseball practice in 2017, he immediately denounced it. That is what leaders must do when violence is perpetrated in their names.

"We need to come together as one nation to denounce political violence of every stripe and all violent ideologies that contribute to it. Nobody should get a pass. The El Paso shooter was a racist ideologue who embraced the Christchurch mosque manifesto and wanted to kill immigrants and Hispanics. The Dayton shooter was a leftist who called the ICE firebomber in Tacoma targeting federal law enforcement a 'martyr,' embraced misguided comparisons of immigration enforcement to the Holocaust, the Gestapo and concentration camps, and promoted targeted violence against his perceived political opponents. Individuals can be radicalized on the left and on the right. Only denouncing political violence and terrorism on one side is no denouncement at all, it is empty partisan blindness that contributes to the problem. We call upon every member of Congress and candidate for President to join with President Trump in denouncing all of the violence and to join with him in confronting radicalism and extremism in our midst."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/08/alg-urges-congress-and-candidates-for-president-to-join-president-trump-in-denouncing-all-political-violence/