November 26, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Trump promises Jan. 20 executive order charging Mexico and Canada 25 percent and raise China tariff to 35 percent until border secured and fentanyl shipments stop

By Robert Romano

President-elect Donald Trump is wasting no time with implementing his trade, border, immigration policies and war on drug cartels, promising to levy a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada if they don’t secure their borders to prevent illegal aliens from crossing into the U.S. and to increase the tariffs on Chinese goods to 35 percent on $250 billion of goods and 17.5 percent on the remaining $300 billion of goods.

Those would come atop the 25 percent and 7.5 percent tariffs already in effect on Chinese goods that Trump implemented and that President Joe Biden never rescinded.

In a post on Truth Social on Nov. 26, Trump addressed the increase in the tariffs on China until the fentanyl and other narcotics shipments stop, “I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail. Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before. Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.”

And in a separate post, Trump also addressed the new tariffs for Mexico and Canada until they secure their borders to stop illegal aliens from crossing into the U.S. and similarly stop the fentanyl shipments, “As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before. Right now a Caravan coming from Mexico, composed of thousands of people, seems to be unstoppable in its quest to come through our currently Open Border. On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”

This is exactly the same approach Trump took in office in 2019, resulting in a June 7, 2019 deal between President Donald Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that avoided Trump’s threatened tariffs on May 30 that would have been 5 percent starting on June 10, 10 percent on July 1 and then up to 25 percent by October.

At the time, Trump wrote on Twitter (now X), “On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied… at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.”

Then the deal was cut days later, which included a Mexican military deployment to interdict the oncoming migrant caravan from Central America, as well as provision for asylum seekers to wait out pending hearings in Mexico without being allowed to cross into the U.S.

According to the text of the joint agreement, “Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border. Mexico is also taking decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks.”

In addition, the U.S. has expanded the Migrant Protection Protocols, per the agreement, “those crossing the U.S. Southern Border to seek asylum will be rapidly returned to Mexico where they may await the adjudication of their asylum claims… [And,] Mexico will authorize the entrance of all of those individuals for humanitarian reasons, in compliance with its international obligations, while they await the adjudication of their asylum claims.”

Immediately following the agreement, encounters on the southern border with Mexico decreased from 144,116 in May 2019 to 45,250 by Oct. 2019, a 68.6 percent decrease, showing the immediate impact of the tariff threat that never actually had to ever go into effect, because the threat alone resulted in an agreement and immediate actions by Mexico.

Now, Trump is broadening the scope of the tariff threats to get Canada and China into the mix as well as Mexico, to not only stop the illegal aliens from crossing into the U.S. — which now number in the millions thanks to President Joe Biden’s refusal to secure the border — but also to stop the shipments of fentanyl and other deadly narcotics, which kill about 100,000 Americans every year.  

In 2019, Trump’s critics predictably stated the policy could not possibly work.

At the time, the Wall Street Journal editorial board on May 31 had predicted, “The first problem here is that Mr. Trump is blaming Mexico for a mess it can’t solve… Perhaps it could better control its border with Guatemala, but the caravans north are often led by gangs that know how to bribe or avoid police.”

The Council on Foreign Relations on June 5 stated, “President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico can’t staunch the flow of people from his neighbors to the south.”

But that was all wrong. 

Now, the same critics are rearing their heads, suffering from amnesia about how Trump has successfully wielded tariffs in the past to achieve executive agreements with countries including Mexico, but also an executive agreement trade deal in 2020 right before Covid with China even while leaving the tariffs in place. Both of those things were supposed to have been impossible, per President Trump’s critics on trade. Tariffs would cause a trade war, they said. Instead they helped bring about a fair and reciprocal trade agreement.

Next, critics are resorting to a very dubious inflation argument around tariffs arguing that the 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 bout of inflation — for goods and services across the board — must have somehow caused by the tariffs Trump enacted in 2019. They want to argue tariffs will cause more inflation, and so it stands to reason they also think Trump’s tariffs from his first administration that Biden never rescinded also caused inflation.

If so, that’s just wrong. Covid caused the global economy to shut down, leading to production shortfalls that continue to this day, and the U.S. printed almost $7 trillion in response during and after the pandemic. It was too much money chasing too few goods.

Meanwhile, consumer inflation in 2019 averaged 1.8 percent. The tariffs had no impact. Similar arguments, only in reverse, were made about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression. Only they weren’t though to cause inflation but deflation. But the problem actually had to do with Great Britain and other countries leaving the interwar gold standard during the Great Depression, which cause the U.S. dollar to strengthen to untenable levels and unemployment skyrocketed.

The tariffs were an attempted offset, but the real fix came in 1933 when the U.S. came off the gold standard and allowed the dollar to weaken alongside other trade partners’ currencies, the deflation ended temporarily and unemployment dropped from 25 percent in 1932 to 11 percent by 1937.

This is very basic: if the dollar is too strong, it can cause deflation, and if it is too weak, it can cause inflation. This is why price stability is targeted by central banks, although some countries still use competitive weakening to boost exports. Regardless, tariffs impact how much tax is rendered on imported goods, not exchange rates.

But, maybe we should just leave it up to the “experts” to explain how tariffs are simultaneously guilty of the deflation of the 1930s and the inflation of the 1970s, 1980s and today — really to suit whatever economic malady the globalists wish to circumstantially blame on sound trade protection policies that Trump will be implementing. Whatever goes wrong, rest assured, will be blamed on tariffs.

In any event, it might not even be necessary for Trump to levy the tariffs: All Mexico, Canada and China have to do is secure their borders and ports and stop the illegal aliens and fentanyl, and then there won’t be tariffs. Trump kept his word in 2019: he made the threat, but Mexico responded, and the tariffs were not levied. Funny how that works.

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

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/trump-promises-jan-20-executive-order-charging-mexico-and-canada-25-percent-and-raise-china-tariff-to-35-percent-until-border-secured-and-fentanyl-shipments-stop/

Cartoon: Winds Of Change

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

Bradley Devlin: This Trump Pick Can Silently Strangle the Deep State

By Bradley Devlin

The Office of Management and Budget is a less well-known entity within the executive branch, but few are as critical for ensuring the implementation of the president’s agenda. President-elect Donald Trump has once again placed that awesome responsibility in Russ Vought’s hands.

The previous Trump OMB director will return to the White House, where he says there is “unfinished business on behalf of the American people.”

Trump released a statement announcing Vought’s nomination as OMB director on Friday evening. “I am very pleased to nominate Russell Thurlow Vought, from the Great State of Virginia, as the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget. He did an excellent job serving in this role in my First Term – We cut four Regulations for every new Regulation, and it was a Great Success! Russ graduated with a B.A. from Wheaton College, and received his J.D. from the Washington University School of Law,” Trump’s statement read.

“Russ has spent many years working in Public Policy in Washington, D.C., and is an aggressive cost cutter and deregulator who will help us implement our America First Agenda across all Agencies. Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government, and he will help us return Self Governance to the People. We will restore fiscal sanity to our Nation, and unleash the American People to new levels of Prosperity and Ingenuity. I look forward to working with you again, Russ. Congratulations. Together, we will Make America Great Again!”

Thank you @realDonaldTrump! There is unfinished business on behalf of the American people, and it’s an honor of a lifetime to get the call again. https://t.co/iqxO733w63

— Russ Vought (@russvought) November 23, 2024

OMB is not just the president’s budget division. While OMB oversees the structure and execution of the budget, it also has oversight powers over federal agencies and federal regulations to ensure the commands of the president, bestowed executive powers by the American people, are being followed.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Vought explained how OMB can use those powers to kill the deep state—a death by a thousand cuts.

“OMB is the nerve center of the federal government, particularly the executive branch,” Vought told Carlson. “Office of Management and Budget has the ability to turn off the spending that’s going on at the agencies. It has all the regulations coming through it to assess whether it’s good, or bad, or too expensive, or could be done a different way, or ‘What does the president think?’”

In short, “presidents use OMB to tame the bureaucracy,” Vought said.

“It is the President’s most important tool for dealing with the bureaucracy, the administrative state,” he reiterated. “And you know, the nice thing about President Trump is he knows that, and he knows how to use it effectively.”

Vought was previously atop the OMB, first in an acting capacity and then confirmed by the Senate, for the second half of Trump’s first term. His foremost achievement as OMB director was helping lay the groundwork for Trump’s most important campaign promise; namely, the construction of a wall along the southern border.

While Trump issued an executive order instructing the federal government to build the wall his first week in office, actually getting the government to fund and construct it—whether because of Congress, the courts, or rogue bureaucrats—proved difficult. Trump, in consultation with Vought and others, used the transfer authority (provided by Congress in appropriations) and assumed emergency powers to construct hundreds of miles of border wall.

“We at OMB gave him a plan to be able to go and fund the wall through money that was in the Department of Defense, and to use that because Congress wouldn’t give him the ordinary money at the Department of Homeland Security,” Vought told Carlson of the fight over the wall.

In Vought, Trump has found a rare talent with the ability to articulate a vision to return government to the people with the technical knowledge to implement it.

“The left has innovated over 100 years to create this fourth branch of an administrative state—you and I might call it the regime—this administrative state that is totally unaccountable to the president,” Vought said in his interview with Carlson. “The Left stopped talking about constitutional amendments because they innovated to this new fourth branch, which is totally different than anything the Founders would have ever understood.”

“[When] Republicans that take office,” Vought continued, “you find that it’s incredibly difficult to wield power to get them to deal with all of that muscle memory, to get them to do what you want.”

What’s needed, Vought added, is “a president kind of steps in and says, ‘I am fully aware of where I sit in the Constitution. I am fully aware of the tools at my disposal, and I’m going to use them on behalf of the American people, because I just won a massive agenda-setting election, and I’m going to go do what I said I would do.’”

As Trump and Vought prepared to depart the White House in 2021, Vought told the president of his intention to start the Center for Renewing America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that sought to keep Trump’s policy vision alive in the nation’s capital. Trump was supportive of Vought’s endeavor, and the pair remained in close contact while Trump was out of power. 

Vought’s fingerprints have been all over Republican politics and the conservative movement for the past four years. He wrote the Project 2025 chapter on how to reform the Executive Office of the President of the United States. In the media, he was an outspoken proponent for “draining the swamp” by making the federal agencies once again accountable to the president and the American people. And, over the summer, Vought lead the Republican National Convention’s policy platform committee.

Now, his fingerprints will be all over bringing the bureaucracy to heel.

To view online: https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/11/25/this-trump-pick-can-silently-strangle-deep-state/