Posted on 11/16/2016 4:04:25 AM PST by gaggs
Operation Drain the Swamp has begun. Vice President-elect Mike Pence reportedly ordered the removal of all lobbyists from president-elect Donald Trump's transition team.
(Excerpt) Read more at commonsenseevaluation.com ...
Is that better?
Who assigned lobbyists to Trump’s transition team? Gads. Thank god for Pence.
He is already showing he is one powerful VP.
Although, Trump probably told him to do it.
“Mike Rogers, among others, did not align with the mission statement of the Trump team to ‘Drain The Swamp.’ Sources report that every single person brought in by Chris Christie was being ousted, perhaps a strategy that was used to identify and rid the team of political insiders and lobbyists. Gone now are the members of his transition team with ties to Wall Street firms and other corporations.”
http://regated.com/2016/11/mike-pence-removes-lobbyists-transition-team/
No, I am a former fan and no longer listen nor watch Levin.
I stopped listening to him when he stopped listening to his listeners.
Here is really the only thing that needs to be said:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php
“Government spending in the United States has steadily increased from seven percent of GDP in 1902 to almost 40 percent today.”
Here is a question to consider. Could Trump/Jared Kushner have just made a Mafia type play on Christie. COuld they really be that ruthless. I don’t think this is what happened but you can’t discount the fact that Christie put Jared’s father in jail.
Christie gets put in charge of transition team. Puts in the lobbyists and they are all outed. Christie gets shut out. Pence cuts the throat of them all.
Perhaps Charles Kushner is quietly laughing with a quote about Revenge....
If you voted for Trump(and I doubt it) then you voted for someone talking seriously about ditching NAFTA and raising import tariffs. You voted against your religion of free trade and that makes you a hypocrite. But then again you probably voted for Gary Johnson.
“Even where we are up against foreign courts who may be be biased...”
Why does the United States, supposedly a sovereign nation, agree to submit its economy to foreign courts empaneled with judges who know nothing about trade and care nothing about the best interests of the United States?
I am also against lead based dog food. Oh and mercury based fish.
Chris Christie apparently had an outsize influence in picking the people that have now been removed.
Christie was head of the Republican governors group and excelled at raising money for other governors. The money came from those seeking favors, of course. But it did build a good rep for Christie among traditional insiders.
We have been in a Trade War for the last twenty years and our manufacturing infrastructure has been decimated.
We actually have surprisingly little to lose, even in a Smoot Hawley type scenario
Our trading partners have everything to lose and China is no position to start a trade war with us
This will not be the case 5-10 years down the road of we keep going the way we are going.
If we don't correct now, the future is lost for this country
Economists like Milton Friedman would say both sides prosper by consuming from the most efficient producer of the commodity. But if the cement industry comes to Congress and says, "don't tell the beef producers but we want you to slap a tariff on cement to protect us" then we have a problem. The beef producers might have serious objection.
Now come the cement Manufacturers of America saying yes but the Chinese can produce cement so cheaply that we can't compete. The beef producers say, the Chinese cannot compete with our beef, so what?
The cement producers say, but they are cheating they are subsidizing their cement industry, they are devaluing their currency, they are using slave labor or the equivalent, they are dumping. Now the beef producers say, if you take steps against the cheating Chinese they will, justly or unjustly, impose tariffs against our beef.
Congress says, "eni mini mini mo" in private you cement manufacturers have contributed more to our campaigns therefore you win, or they conclude the other way for about the same reason.
We make these decisions either by our trade representatives or our congressmen or our Commerce Department based on many factors and few of those factors persuasive to these people are the interest of the consumer, the real facts of the matter, the overall impact on our economy.
I am not calling for us to become or even to remain the trade punching bag we have become, but I am calling for a data based approach, an acknowledgment that too often trade deals are a zero-sum game inevitably hurting one segment of our economy in order to protect another segment. The deals are struck without reference to the data, without a full airing to the public, without knowing whether it is our regulations and taxes rather than Chinese dumping that is the problem. Finally, we do not employ our resources short of tariffs, such as jawboning, litigating etc. to the full extent possible.
I applaud Trump's proposed harder line, but I fear that he might actually be serious about 35% tariffs and not using that threat merely as the opening gun in a negotiating session.
Wrong. As usual. Eco-freaks and other leftists imposing unnecessary burdens on American industry need to be destroyed first.
Yes. That’s where to start for sure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.