Or were they worried about China's economy more?                                                    
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Oct. 10, 2019

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

With a trade deal with Japan and a strong U.S. economy, where is the trade depression the Smoot-Hawley alarmists predicted?
In the 2016 election pundits were tripping over themselves to predict that if President Donald Trump won and implemented his planned trade agenda, which included tariffs, why, we’d have a global recession perhaps even as bad as the Great Depression. Well, Trump went through with the tariffs on China, so where’s the trade depression some were warning about? 2018 as it turns out had the strongest economic growth since 2005 at 2.9 percent. Unemployment is now at a 50-year low at 3.5 percent, whereas in the Great Depression it hit a high of more than 25 percent. And now with the first step of a free trade deal with Japan finalized with reciprocal tariff reductions on agriculture and digital trade — plus other deals with South Korea, Mexico and Canada — bold predictions of an all-out trade war with the rest of the world have proven to be greatly exaggerated. Even on China, where trade talks continue, Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate for reciprocal tariff and non-tariff reductions that his critics alleged the President was incapable of. Were the doubters just wrong about everything?

Video: Ukraine started Burisma-Bidengate probe in 2018, so where's the quid pro quo? In a time machine?
Ukraine initiated its Burisma-Biden investigation in 2018, long before current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in April 2019 and long before President Donald Trump’s July 25, 2019 conversation where Zelensky confirmed the investigation. How can there be a quid pro quo?

Pelosi's impeachment is about entrapping Trump officials
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “We spent three years with the Mueller investigation where people who supported Donald Trump were prosecuted had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers on completely fictitious grounds, a conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign worked with Russia, and to subject Trump officials to similar costs and liabilities without them being afforded basic legal protections is a travesty of justice. It is clear that there are no grounds for impeachment and that this Speaker-driven kangaroo court is designed to create those grounds through claims of obstruction of justice. This is not dissimilar to Mueller's witch hunt, whose investigation was what generated the prosecutions on process crimes unrelated to the original inquiry. America deserves better than a politically driven attempt to remove the President from office and President Trump is right in protecting those who work for the executive branch and him from a transparent attempt at entrapment."

Walter Williams: Idiotic environmental predictions
“The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, "Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions." Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?Today's wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear's. The major difference is today's Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we'll be much poorer and less free.”


 

With a trade deal with Japan and a strong U.S. economy, where is the trade depression the Smoot-Hawley alarmists predicted?

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By Robert Romano

Readers will recall that in the 2016 election and since then financial and political analysts were tripping over themselves to predict that if President Donald Trump won and implemented his planned trade agenda, which included tariffs, why, we’d have a global recession perhaps even as bad as the Great Depression.

Well, Trump went through with the tariffs on China, so where’s the trade depression some were warning about?

For example, one headline on CNBC in May 2016 blared, “Trump trade plans could cause global recession: Experts”.

That piece quoted Caroline Freund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics saying, “If you take (Trump’s) position as real, that we would do this, then it would take the world down the road that we saw in the 1930s that we saw with the Smoot–Hawley Tariff.”

Freund added, “The world would definitely fall into a recession.”

Definitely? Still waiting.

The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson wrote in June 2018, “The ghost of Smoot-Hawley seems to haunt Trump,” after Trump levied tariffs on steel and aluminum, with Samuelson warning, “By slowing economic growth, it darkens the outlook and reduces the ability of debtors to repay their lenders. So much for the lessons of history.”

Yes, so much for those lessons. In fact, instead of slowing economic growth, 2018 as it turns out had the strongest economic growth since 2005 at 2.9 percent. Or maybe they were worried about China's economy more?

Unemployment is now at a 50-year low at 3.5 percent, whereas in the Great Depression it hit a high of more than 25 percent.

And now with the first step of a free trade deal with Japan finalized with reciprocal tariff reductions on agriculture and digital trade — plus other deals with South Korea, Mexico and Canada — bold predictions of an all-out trade war with the rest of the world have proven to be greatly exaggerated.

Even on China, where trade talks continue, Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate for reciprocal tariff and non-tariff trade barrier reductions — including dealing with China’s competitively devalued currency the yuan — that his critics alleged the President was incapable of.

Which, think on that aspect. If Trump were to succeed with a deal with China, that would still be closer to free trade than what the defenders of the status quo were advocating, which was to do nothing or to unilaterally eliminate tariffs, because then both sides would be lowering trade barriers instead of just one side.

That is because the surest path to free trade has always been fair and reciprocal reductions of tariffs and non-tariff barriers. It is only way to sustainably do it both economically and importantly, politically.

Which, the failure here on the part of the punditry might have to simply do with a lack of listening comprehension. All Trump was ever saying was that it was a bad idea to unilaterally give away something for free, that a better deal could be had and that, as president, he would pursue better deals.

As for policymakers in Washington, D.C. and other capitals for years there was simply a failure to negotiate. Others would have preferred the Trans-Pacific Partnership multilateral deal to somehow lure China into a trade deal. Trump prefers the bilateral approach and he is apt to use confrontation to get trade partners’ attention.

The idea that Beijing was desperate to get in on the Trans-Pacific Partnership was always speculative when the U.S. was giving China access to it our markets in return for almost nothing. Where the TPP globalist hoped something might happen in the future, Trump increased the ante.

To bring Beijing to the table Trump did indeed threaten tariffs. And he levied them. Now there are talks where once there were none. Whether they will ultimately succeed is another matter, but initiating the discussion in itself is a win.

All of which is a far cry from the Great Depression, which back then we were a net exporter. Now we’re a net importer looking for ways to expand U.S. producer access to foreign markets and ways to boost domestic production. The U.S. always had more to gain from Trump’s tough trade stance, and China the most to lose, and with the trade deals with Japan, Canada, Mexico and South Korea in the bag, plus a strong economy and best labor market perhaps ever, it turns out Trump was right after all.

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


Video: Ukraine started Burisma-Bidengate probe in 2018, so where's the quid pro quo? In a time machine?

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To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxp0gj4z2bs


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Pelosi's impeachment is about entrapping Trump officials

President Trump is right in protecting those who work for the executive branch and him from a transparent attempt at entrapment.

Oct. 9, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in support of White House Counsel Pat Cippolone's letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calling out the impeachment inquiry as lacking basic due process protections for the accused and witnesses:

"We spent three years with the Mueller investigation where people who supported Donald Trump were prosecuted had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers on completely fictitious grounds, a conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign worked with Russia, and to subject Trump officials to similar costs and liabilities without them being afforded basic legal protections is a travesty of justice. It is clear that there are no grounds for impeachment and that this Speaker-driven kangaroo court is designed to create those grounds through claims of obstruction of justice. This is not dissimilar to Mueller's witch hunt, whose investigation was what generated the prosecutions on process crimes unrelated to the original inquiry. America deserves better than a politically driven attempt to remove the President from office and President Trump is right in protecting those who work for the executive branch and him from a transparent attempt at entrapment."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/10/pelosis-impeachment-is-about-entrapping-trump-officials/


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ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from Townhall, Walter William reminds readers of all the alarmist predictions by radical environmentalists over the decades that turned out to be completely wrong:

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Idiotic environmental predictions

By Walter E. Williams

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, "Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions." Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: "The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you're dead. We must realize that unless we're extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years."

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia's climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is." In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos."

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. ... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine."

Ecologist Kenneth Watt's 1970 prediction was, "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000." He added, "This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."

Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan's Flint campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970. This time it's not about weather. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate ... that there won't be any more crude oil."

There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day, too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous energy claims, in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That's enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.

Today's wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear's. The major difference is today's Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we'll be much poorer and less free.

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