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Goldman Sachs Has Been Very Good to Trump’s Top Economic Adviser

by AnnabelCorrigan Posted on April 1, 2017

Mother Jones

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump the tycoon railed against big banks, claimed he cared passionately about the little guy, and vowed to make the economy work for struggling middle-class Americans. But after winning, he placed the American economy in the hands of Gary Cohn, the chief operating officer and president of Goldman Sachs. In January, Trump named Cohn chairman of the National Economic Council, the president’s top financial and economic whizzes. Cohn would be the highest authority on the economy within the White House. He quit his Goldman Sachs gig, but he left with an estimated $285 million severance package and agreed to sell a $16 million-stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Cohn certainly lives in a different economic reality than most Americans, and thanks to financial disclosure forms released on Friday night by the White House—which cover 180 of its officials and staffers and detail their finances when they arrived at the White House—the public can see just how different.

In 2015 and 2016, according to the form for Cohn, he earned between $39 million and $45 million from Goldman Sachs. This includes salary ($1.8 million last year), annual $5.4 million cash bonuses, and tens of millions of dollars in stock options, dividends, and interest. This doesn’t count what he brought in via various Goldman Sachs-operated retirement accounts. Nor does it take into account the money he pocketed from his sprawling brokerage accounts, which included Goldman Sachs investment funds. Cohn also had millions invested in hedge funds, real estate properties around the country, and numerous companies, including that Chinese bank, a high-end cosmetic retailer, and multiple medical technology firms. All told, it appears Cohn earned as much as $75 million last year.

Cohn is not the only Goldman alum to join the Trump administration. Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury secretary, worked at Goldman for years, and last month Trump hired another former Goldman Sachs top executive to be Mnuchin’s No. 2 at Treasury. The bank has been wildly successful over the last two decades, but it also has become a symbol of Wall Street’s excesses. It played a key role in the 2008 financial crash that led to a nationwide economic meltdown. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton was slammed repeatedly—by both her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders and Trump—for giving paid speeches to Goldman executives. And before he wrapped up the GOP nomination, Trump attacked Republican rival Ted Cruz, pointing out that Cruz’s wife worked at Goldman Sachs and that he had received a loan from the firm.

Cohn’s full financial disclosure can be found below.

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Gary Cohn Financial Disclosure (PDF)

Gary Cohn Financial Disclosure (Text)

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Goldman Sachs Has Been Very Good to Trump’s Top Economic Adviser

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Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

by ITJIsla245 Posted on March 15, 2017

Mother Jones

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When a Chinese American businesswoman who sells access to powerful people recently purchased a $15.8 million penthouse in a building owned by President Donald Trump, the deal raised a key question. Was this a straightforward real estate transaction, or was this an effort to win favor with the new administration? The woman, Angela Chen, refused to discuss the purchase with the media. The White House and the Trump Organization would not comment on it. Further investigation by Mother Jones has unearthed a new element to the story: Chen has ties to important members of the Chinese ruling elite and to an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence.

Chen, who also goes by the names Xiao Yan Chen and Chen Yu, purchased the four-bedroom condo in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City on February 21. As Mother Jones first reported, Chen runs a business consulting firm, Global Alliance Associates, which specializes in linking US businesses seeking deals in China with the country’s top power brokers. “As counselors in consummating the right relationships—quite simply—we provide access,” Chen’s firm boasts on its website. But Chen has another job: She chairs the US arm of a nonprofit called the China Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2006 and has links with Chinese elites and the country’s military intelligence service.

The China Arts Foundation was created by Deng Rong, the youngest daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the iconic revolutionary figure and Chinese leader. Deng Rong is what’s known in China as a princeling—a term used for the sons and daughters of former high-ranking officials or officers in the Chinese Communist Party who now hold significant sway in business and political circles. Since 1990, Deng has also served as a vice president of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts, which is an affiliate of the intelligence and foreign propaganda division of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China experts say CAIFC exists to cultivate relationships with former leaders and retired military officials and diplomats of various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, in order to influence foreign defense policies toward China and the Far East.

To sum up: An influence-peddler who works with a princeling tied to Chinese military intelligence placed $15.8 million in the pockets of the president of the United States.

Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that focuses on national security policy with respect to Asia, says CAIFC’s leadership consists largely of retired (and some current) Chinese military and government officials. Stokes, who has written about Chinese political warfare, says CAIFC has become “an important channel of access to Chinese Communist Party princelings.” He adds that “by influencing perceptions” of China (especially in connection to controversial issues, such as China’s stance toward Taiwan), CAIFC hopes to “influence policies of foreign governments, particularly related to defense and national security.”

The China Arts Foundation bills itself as a promoter of cultural exchanges between the United States and China, often involving classical music. The group has a branch in New York, which is run by Angela Chen, and another in Hong Kong. Various members of China’s elite serve on the group’s board, including Wang Boming, one of the founders of China’s stock market; Hong Kong orchestra conductor Long Yu; and Marjorie Yang, a political power broker and textile magnate who’s nicknamed the “cotton princess.” (Yang is reportedly bankrolling the campaign of John Tsang, a candidate for chief executive of Hong Kong, the city’s highest office.) Li Zhaoxing, a former foreign minister, and Guo Shuqing, the chairman of China’s banking regulation commission, were named as board members in a promotional video posted on the website of the foundation’s American branch.

On Tuesday, after Mother Jones made inquiries, the website for the China Arts Foundation International went offline. (You can view an archived version of the site here.)

Angela Chen’s role with the China Arts Foundation has brought her into contact with prominent American and Chinese figures. In 2014, the foundation hosted its Chinese New Year gala at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant on behalf of Deng Rong, and the guests included billionaire Chinese real estate developer Zhang Xin, philanthropist and banker Steven Rockefeller, and Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire investor and CEO of the Blackstone Group. The Chinese consul general in New York, Zhang Qiyue, and former US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended a 2015 benefit dinner hosted by the foundation.

The promotional video indicates that there has been a working relationship between the China Arts Foundation and CAIFC. In it, Chen’s group takes credit for sponsoring numerous international summits, including a meeting of international business leaders and think tank experts called the Sanya Forum, which was organized by CAIFC. Several China experts tell Mother Jones that CAIFC engages in legitimate cultural exchange activities but that it has long been seen as part of the Chinese military intelligence apparatus. In a 2002 article published in the China Quarterly, a peer-reviewed British academic journal, George Washington University professor and China scholar David Shambaugh characterized CAIFC as an offshoot of the intelligence bureau of the People’s Liberation Army. He noted that CAIFC’s offices are located in a Beijing compound used by military units.

In 2012, the Republican National Committee considered a resolution expressing concern about a cultural exchange program organized by CAIFC because of the group’s ties to Chinese military intelligence. The resolution, which was not adopted, was fueled by a report from a congressional committee that studies US-China relations. The report labeled CAIFC “a front organization for the International Liaison Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Political Department.”

CAIFC has also prompted concerns at the US State Department. During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, an aide to Bill Clinton sought the State Department’s approval for the former president to make a November 2012 speaking appearance co-sponsored by CAIFC and the China Arts Foundation, according to government emails released through the Freedom of Information Act. An official at the State Department noted that CAIFC’s leadership included current and former Chinese government officials and wrote to Clinton’s aide, “I don’t believe we’ve approved Chinese gov’t entities in the past and so we will need to further consider this one.” In the end, Clinton’s aide told the State Department that the former president was backing out of the appearance.

In 2015, a high-ranking CAIFC official was detained as part of an anti-graft campaign by the Chinese army. A South China Morning Post story on the arrest described him as “the chief of a Chinese military intelligence agency.” The paper noted that the official “was in charge of overseas espionage and is better known to the West as the vice-chairman of the government-backed China Association for International Friendly Contact, which used to be the Department of Enemy Work.”

Chen’s purchase of the penthouse unit from Trump was the first deal consummated by Trump’s company since he became president. Prior to taking office, Trump claimed he would remove himself from the daily operations of his business empire, but he remains the owner of the limited liability company that sold Chen the unit. How the deal went down remains a mystery. Chen apparently paid cash, and the apartment she purchased, unlike other penthouse units in the Trump Park Avenue building, was not publicly listed for sale. Chen currently lives in an apartment on a lower floor of the building and uses the unit as a mailing address for the China Arts Foundation and her consulting company. Before moving to Washington, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived in the same building. (They are currently trying to sell their apartment.)

Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who, along with Trump’s two adult sons, was handed the task of running Trump’s business empire while he is in the Oval Office, signed the sale documents with Chen. He did not respond to a request for comment. Chen also did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the apartment deal or her relationship with Deng Rong and CAIFC. CAIFC did not respond to an email seeking comment.

When Trump became president, the Trump Organization enlisted an ethics adviser, attorney Bobby Burchfield, to vet potential business deals involving Trump. Burchfield declined to comment about the Chen transaction or explain the vetting process for her purchase of the Trump Park Avenue penthouse.

Norm Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s lead ethics lawyer, says the links between Chen, the foundation, CAIFC, and the Chinese government and military raise “a series of very profound and troubling questions.” He notes that there is no transparency regarding the vetting of business deals benefiting Trump. Without such a process, he points out, there are well-founded questions about the true source of the funds used to buy the $15.8 million condo. “When, as here, the public interest is implicated, we’re left at a loss,” Eisen says. “You shouldn’t be asking these questions about a president.”

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Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

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The Economy Is Not Booming

by UPNKatia977560 Posted on March 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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Neil Irwin writes about the fabulous Trump economy:

The stock market reached yet another new high on Wednesday, the latest development to make a mockery of what savvy economic commentators thought they knew about the world.

Consider how things looked one year ago. The world economy seemed hopelessly trapped in a cycle of low growth and inflation. Markets recoiled at the mere possibility that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates. Populist political insurgencies seemed to threaten yet more financial market chaos.

Now, interest rates and inflation forecasts have risen substantially from last winter’s lows; financial markets are shrugging off — or even rallying at the possibility of — imminent Fed rate increases; and it is all taking place during Donald J. Trump’s presidency.

Why do we keep hearing this? Once again, here’s the S&P 500 since the end of the Great Recession. I’ve even adjusted it for inflation just to be super fair:

There nothing there. The stock market is growing at precisely the same rate as it has for the past eight years. If you zoom in and take look at the S&P 500 just since Election Day, you see the same thing: it’s been bouncing tightly around a trend line the entire time. There has been no rally at the possibility of interest rate increases from the Fed.

As for inflation, I’ve already dealt with that today. It’s been closely following a trendline too, and literally nothing new has happened since the election. However, it is true that inflationary expectations started rising last June—though a little context helps here:

If you start your chart in mid-2016, you can make it look like inflationary expectations are taking off like a rocket. But in reality, we’re still nowhere close to where we were five years after the end of the Great Recession, and expectations have flattened out in the past couple of months.

Finally, economic growth. You can talk about animal spirits all you want, but GDP growth in the US has been running steadily between 1 percent and 3 percent since 2010. Last quarter it was 1.9 percent, and there’s no particular reason to think it’s about to take a sustained jump. As for the rest of the world, the IMF doesn’t seem especially optimistic:

US growth might be a little sluggish, but it’s still a lot better than China and Europe, which are projected to decline in 2017 and 2018. The rest of the world will do a little better, but only a little.

However, there is one part of the economy that has unquestionably been booming since Trump was elected: big Wall Street banks.

Wall Street has been kicking major ass since November 8. And why not? The economy may or may not be booming, but they’re pretty sure that Trump is going to lower their taxes and ease up on all those pesky regulations that Obama tried to force on them. If I were a big bank, I’d be pretty excited too.

I’m not especially trying to badmouth the economy here. It’s doing fine, if not great. Growth is decent, wages are showing signs of life, we’re getting close to full employment, and inflation is under control. As labor markets tighten, we might even some real improvement in wages and living standards. That’s not bad, especially compared to the rest of the world. But there’s really not much evidence that we’ve been in any kind of boom times since November. Growth is steady, the stock market is steady, employment is steady, and inflation is steady. Just because Wall Street is excited doesn’t mean they know something we don’t.

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The Economy Is Not Booming

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Scott Pruitt is making nice with EPA employees, but big changes are to come.

by JeffereTbl Posted on February 21, 2017

In December, when Musk got stuck in traffic, instead of leaning on the horn or flipping off the other drivers, he decided to build a new transportation system. An hour later, Max Chafkin writes in Bloomberg Businessweek, “the project had a name and a marketing platform. ‘It shall be called The Boring Company,’” Musk wrote.

Musk told employees to grab some heavy machinery and they began digging a hole in the SpaceX parking lot. He bought one of those machines that bores out tunnels and lays down concrete walls as it goes. It’s named Nannie.

Musk is the grown-up version of the kid who decides to dig to China: He doesn’t pause to plan or ask what’s possible, he just grabs a stick and starts shoveling. Maybe that’s the approach we need. As Chafkin points out, “Tunnel technology is older than rockets, and boring speeds are pretty much what they were 50 years ago.” And Bent Flyvbjerg, an academic who studies why big projects cost so much, says that the tunneling industry is ripe for someone with new ideas to shake things up.

Musk is a technical genius. But the things that make tunnels expensive tend to be political — they have to do with endless hearings before local government councils and concessions to satisfy concerned neighbors and politicians. For that stultifying process, at least, Musk’s new company is aptly named. If Musk figures out how disrupt local land-use politics, it would mean he’s smarter than anyone thinks.

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Scott Pruitt is making nice with EPA employees, but big changes are to come.

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Social Media Is Best Used for Distraction, Not Argument

by VickiM34qg Posted on January 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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The Chinese government is the acknowledged expert at authoritarian use of social media to promote party goals. So how do they do it? Alex Tabarrok points today to a new paper that engaged in a ton of ground-level research to come to a conclusion that shouldn’t surprise anyone. They don’t waste their time trying to change minds:

We estimate that the government fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year. In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We infer that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime.

As the chart at the top of this post shows, the government’s social media army leaps into action at all the appropriate times, but instead of defending the party or the government, they just spend their time distracting attention onto other subjects.

I hardly need to mention that this strategy should remind you of someone.

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Social Media Is Best Used for Distraction, Not Argument

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Julian Assange Didn’t Say WikiLeaks Gives Russia a Pass Because It’s Already Open and Transparent

by Essie46Beeht Posted on December 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Readers who are extremely long in the tooth will remember a blogger named Steven Den Beste from back in the day. He was a gung-ho warblogger who wrote very long, very nerdy pieces about the urgent need to invade Iraq (with occasional forays into cell phone standards), so one day Daniel Davies decided that what we all needed was Shorter Steven Den Beste. Davies’ version was usually a withering sentence or two.

Today, things have changed. I can think of all too many folks who could stand to cut their word count in half, but for now I’d settle for Shorter Glenn Greenwald. Yesterday he wrote this:

The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False

According to Microsoft Word, the article clocks in at 2,645 words, so here’s the nickel version. A few days ago Julian Assange gave an interview to Italian reporter Stefania Maurizi. (It is illustrated with the photo on the right, which I hope they don’t mind me re-using since it makes me like Assange a little better than I usually do.) Here are the relevant sections:

Most of WikiLeaks’ biggest revelations concern the US military-industrial complex….Why aren’t human rights abuses producing the same effects in regimes like China or Russia, and what can be done to democratise information in those countries?

In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as Alexey Navalny are part of that spectrum…..In Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks, and no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian….WikiLeaks is a predominantly English-speaking organisation with a website predominantly in English. We have published more than 800,000 documents about or referencing Russia and president Putin, so we do have quite a bit of coverage, but the majority of our publications come from Western sources….The real determinant is how distant that culture is from English.

….What about Donald Trump?…What do you think he means?

Hillary Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States. Donald Trump is not a DC insider, he is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities. They do not by themselves form an existing structure, so it is a weak structure which is displacing and destabilising the pre-existing central power network within DC. It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly, but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better.

The Guardian’s piece, written by Ben Jacobs, made several claims: (1) Assange “long had a close relationship with the Putin regime,” (2) Assange said there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia “because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there,” and (3) Assange gave “guarded praise” of Trump.

The first is unfounded, and the Guardian has now retracted it. The second is false as well. Whether you choose to believe him or not, what Assange said is that WikiLeaks isn’t a local player in Russia and mostly appeals to English-speaking leakers. The third is hazier. Personally, I’d say Assange is wildly naive about Trump not representing an “existing power structure,” and disingenuous in calling part of Trump’s inner circle “idiosyncratic personalities.” That said, “not a DC insider” plus “destabilising the pre-existing central power network within DC” plus “change for the worse and change for the better” could reasonably be described as “guarded praise.” Those are all things that Assange pretty clearly views favorably.

This is a lot more than two sentences, but I’m not as witty as Dan Davies. In any case, I agree with Greenwald about two out of three of these things, and hopefully corrections will go as viral as the initial article. That’s how things usually work in social media, right?

Link: 

Julian Assange Didn’t Say WikiLeaks Gives Russia a Pass Because It’s Already Open and Transparent

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Fake news is old news to climate scientists

by c7u433n Posted on December 26, 2016

Think fake news is a recent plague, borne of the presidential election? It’s not.

“The notion of ‘fake news’ is hardly new to climate scientists like myself,” Penn State climatologist Michael Mann told Grist. “We’ve known about it (and written about it) for years.”

Thanks to researchers like Mann — the originator of the famed “hockey stick” chart and a frequent target of fake news himself — the science behind climate change is settled. And yet there remains a vocal contingent of ideologues who refuse to accept the connection between carbon emissions and a warming planet. For example, Donald Trump and a good portion of his proposed cabinet. For years, right-wing news organizations like Breitbart, Infowars, the Daily Caller, and Climate Depot have fed their denial, publishing stories that misinterpret, misrepresent, or distort scientific findings — or just outright lie.

This kind of fake news has set progress back years, if not decades, Mann said. It’s a “crime against the planet,” he told Grist, and a “crime against humanity.”

All the news that’s unfit to print

There are many flavors of fake news. Some of these stories push the idea that, yes, the climate is changing, but it’s just a natural effect of changes in the sun’s activity and humans have nothing to do with it. This theory has been a favorite of deniers for three decades, and even though it’s been widely discredited, Breitbart reported it in again in 2014, under the headline, “Solar Activity Could Cause Global Warming, New Paper Says.” Of course, this runs contrary to actual science, but Breitbart never lets that stop them.

Other fake stories claim that carbon dioxide is good because it increases plant growth, as the ever-optimistic Breitbart declared again last year. But while it’s true that CO2 can be beneficial for plants, it doesn’t outweigh the fact that increasing concentrations in the atmosphere are toasting our home planet. Good for plants does not equal good for people.

Bogus climate stories also allege that a so-called “pause” in global warming undermines established climate science. Although climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that temperatures are rising and climate change is real, there has been debate over whether the rate of temperature increase slowed in the early 2000s — which climate deniers refer to as the “pause” or “hiatus.” Fake media outlets have seized on this debate and tried to spin it as proof that climate change isn’t real: Breitbart even claimed that Mann jumped on the pause bandwagon, deserted his scientific colleagues, and decided that there’s been no global warming since 1998. This was likely news to Mann himself.

There’s also the classic seasonal variety of stories alleging that cold, snowy weather disproves climate change. This reached a fever pitch in 2015, when Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe threw a snowball on the Senate floor. What Inhofe and his fellow deniers don’t get is that weather is not climate. Climate change is about long-term warming trends, not individual weather events, and so snow and climate change just aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, a warming climate could actually lead to an increase in snowfall in some places as melting sea ice in the Arctic alters jet streams.

And, of course, some deniers claim that this whole thing is a vast conspiracy perpetrated by scientists hungry for government research money. (They have never, apparently, seen what climate scientists drive.) Others — like our president-elect — say it’s a hoax created by China to crush U.S. manufacturing. Still other deniers insist that it’s a scheme cooked up by Al Gore to make himself rich — but, not to worry, they also tell us that Al Gore was sued by 30,000 scientists for his global warming fraud.

Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are hard to combat. Research shows that when presented with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, instead of reconsidering those beliefs, we humans tend to double-down on our preconceived notions. So if you already believe climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public or that the Earth hasn’t warmed in 17 years or that this is all a big Communist plot, it’s unlikely that evidence to the contrary will dissuade you.

Some deniers — perhaps those who really believe Al Gore was sued by 30,000 scientists — think climate science is a lie because of the misinformation they absorb every day on TV and through social media. But other deniers have a more base motivation: money. The most high-profile deniers — people like Inhofe and Climate Depot’s Marc Morano — are backed by the fossil fuel industry. Exxon alone spent over $30 million to fund climate-denying organizations between 1998 and 2014, and an investigation by Carbon Brief found that nine of the 10 most prolific authors of papers skeptical of climate change have ties to Exxon. The industrialist Koch brothers, too, have spent a fortune on climate denial, donating nearly $50 million between 1997 and 2008 to groups that work to undermine climate science.

The money, it seems, was well-spent. Right-wing media outlets spread those groups’ misleading messages far and wide. So while the rest of the world has long since accepted the reality of climate change and humanity’s role in causing it, in the U.S., not only are we still debating its existence, but a climate change denier is about to occupy the White House.

Reality strikes back

Soon, however, there may be a cost to spreading misinformation about climate scientists, if not about climate change itself. The D.C. Court of Appeals recently ruled that Mann can proceed with a defamation suit against two bloggers who called his work fraudulent — and worse.

“Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” wrote Rand Simberg in a 2012 post on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s blog, “except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in service of politicized science that could have dire consequences for the nation and planet.” The National Review’s Mark Steyn then quoted these comments in a post of his own, writing that Simberg “has a point” and calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.”

For this, the court has ruled that Mann can sue both bloggers as well as their institutions — but you wouldn’t know that from the headlines in the climate-denying press. Climate Depot reported, “Court dismisses Michael Mann defamation lawsuit against National Review.” This is a clear manipulation of the truth: While the court did dismiss Mann’s claims against one National Review editor, its ruling clearly says that Mann can proceed with his suit against Steyn and National Review itself. But if we learned anything from the election of 2016, it’s that truth no longer carries much weight.

In the court’s ruling, Judge Vanessa Ruiz wrote, “Tarnishing the personal integrity and reputation of a scientist important to one side may be a tactic to gain advantage in a no-holds-barred debate over global warming.” It’s not a new tactic, but tarnishing reputations and publishing lies has proved to be an effective one. As for how destructive, we’re soon to find out.

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Fake news is old news to climate scientists

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Peter Navarro: Genius or Idiot? Or Neither?

by AdolfoLipinski Posted on December 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Tyler Cowen says that UCI professor Peter Navarro is “one of the most versatile and productive American economists of the last few decades.” Matt Yglesias says Navarro is an idiot. Who’s right?

I think there’s a category error here. Back in September, Navarro co-authored a paper about Donald Trump’s trade policy. Roughly speaking, Navarro relied on the following accounting identity:

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Trade Balance

So if our trade balance goes up from -$500 billion to $0, Navarro said, GDP will go up $500 billion and the government will collect a lot of extra taxes. Hooray! But as Yglesias points out, this is comic-book-level nonsense.1 Let me offer an analogy:

Corporate profits = Revenue + Investment Income – Labor Costs – Other Costs

So if I cut labor costs in half, corporate profits will go up. Right? I think you can see that this is unlikely. If you fired half your workers, you probably could no longer produce anything and your company would go bust. If you cut everyone’s wages in half, you’d suffer a steady exodus of your best people and probably end up far less profitable. If you replaced half your workers with machines, profits might indeed go up, but not by the amount of payroll you save. You’d have to account for the capital cost of the machines—which would probably reduce investment income—and the cost of maintenance—which would increase other costs. Bottom line: depending on how you do this, lots of different things could happen.

In the case of GDP, it’s true that everything in the formula has to add up, since this formula defines what GDP is. But if the trade balance goes up, there are several obvious possibilities. Consumption might go down. Investment might go down. Government spending might go down. In fact, once all the dust has settled, overall GDP might ultimately go down, stay the same, or go up. The real answer is that you’d need to model out an actual plan and figure out where it reaches equilibrium. Navarro knows this perfectly well.

So what is Navarro? Brilliant economist or idiot? Neither one. He’s someone who used to be a versatile and productive economist and is now a China-obsessed fanatic2 willing to say anything for the chance of a job in the Trump administration. He hasn’t lost 50 IQ points, he’s merely become so fixated on the dangers of Chinese trade that he no longer cares about economics. He cares only about saying things that might build support for his preferred policies, regardless of whether they’re true.

In other words, he’s now just another dime-a-dozen political hack. Trump will keep him around as long as his PhD is useful and then toss him aside.

1No offense meant to comic books.

2Three of his five most recent books are: The Coming China Wars, Death by China: Confronting the Dragon, and Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World.

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Peter Navarro: Genius or Idiot? Or Neither?

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Trump hates wind turbines even more than he hates women he deems unattractive.

by gilbertoranieri Posted on December 21, 2016

No, it isn’t ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, named to serve as ambassador to China, is in favor of wind energy and policies that promote it. Like, really in favor.

“Our leadership in green energy not only makes us a leader in renewables but also powers job growth,” the Republican said in his 2016 Condition of the State address in Iowa. “Every wind turbine you see while driving across our state means income for farmers, revenue for local governments, and jobs for Iowa families.” As governor of the No. 2 wind state, he’s also in favor of federal incentives for wind energy like the production tax credit.

Branstad may experience some whiplash as he represents an administration that is particularly antagonistic to wind energy to a country that has invested billions of dollars in wind and solar.

On climate change, Branstad is not a denier but he buys into his party’s reasoning for not acting. “We need to recognize this climate change issue is a global issue,” he said in 2011. That’s the excuse many Republicans use to argue that the U.S. shouldn’t clean up its act until developing economies like China and India do.

But if he doesn’t know it already, Branstad will soon learn that China is doing plenty to fight climate change right now.

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Trump hates wind turbines even more than he hates women he deems unattractive.

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China Has Seized a US Navy Underwater Drone in the South China Sea

by ElvaGibbsta Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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China has seized an unmanned underwater US Navy research vehicle in the international waters of the South China Sea, Reuters reported Friday.

The underwater drone was seized on Thursday 100 miles off the port at Subic Bay in the Philippines, according to an unnamed US official who spoke to CNN. The vessel, called a “glider,” was testing water salinity and temperature, according to the BBC. The motivation behind the alleged action by the Chinese remains unclear.

According to CNN:

US Navy Ship Bowditch had stopped in the water to pick up two underwater drones. At that point a Chinese naval ship that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat into the water. That small boat came up alongside and the Chinese crew took one of the drones.

China asserts territorial claims over a string of islands in the South China Sea, where it has built military-grade airstrips and other infrastructure, dredged harbors, and sometimes created artificial islands in an area rich in oil and gas resources. China’s actions are opposed by neighboring countries—Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines—which also lay claim to the islands and archipelagoes. The United States calls China’s actions in the area provocative acts of militarization.

China claims its activities are purely civilian in nature. But this week a Chinese Defense Ministry statement appeared to confirm photos showing the country had installed military weapons, including anti-aircraft guns, on the islands. In November, China flew a nuclear-capable bomber over the South China Sea, according to Fox News. That action came after President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, breaking decades of US protocol.

This post will be updated as more details become available.

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China Has Seized a US Navy Underwater Drone in the South China Sea

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