Iran, Russia, and China have illegitimate systems and their government’s fear that their own people will want a system more like America’s. They can never live in full harmony with the United States because the U.S. represents an internal threat to their regimes even when the U.S. does nothing other than stand as another possibility for their people. Therefore, they try to undermine the U.S. and democracy in general in whatever way they can.
“For Washington, the question that really matters is Ishiba’s approach to the military relationship with America.
Here Ishiba has sounded more disruptive than either the Japanese or U.S. establishment would like. He approached one third rail by calling for the revision of the agreement on the deployment of U.S. forces here. He went for another in wanting to amend the constitutional provisions on Japanese pacifism. He has talked about an Asian version of NATO, which would take Japan from a security vassal of the U.S. to a peer, though still a close ally.
“He could be a problem for the U.S.,” says Gerry Curtis, the retired Columbia scholar of Japan who lives much of the year here. “He thinks the deal with the U.S. is outdated, has an occupation stink to it.” Ishiba is, as one of the preeminent Japan watchers in Washington Ken Weinstein texted me, “hardest for Americans to read of the major candidates.”
So what’s going on? A Japanese official who knows Ishiba offered the 60/40 theory over lunch the day after Ishiba’s victory. Every other similar status of forces agreement with the U.S., from Germany to South Korea to Italy, was revised in the last half century. Japan’s dates to 1960. Ishiba wants a deal to allow Japanese forces to base and train in the U.S. — in effect to become even more like a normal army than a self defense force. Abe took Japan down this road, and Kishida continued by boosting spending (Japan’s defense budget is the third-biggest in the world). But neither of Ishiba’s predecessors put the status agreement explicitly on the table the way Ishiba has. So 60 percent of Ishiba’s motivation is “to enhance deterrence and strengthen the alliance,” this official said. The other 40 percent? That’s about “restoring Japanese sovereignty,” and that’s the bit that makes Washington nervous.
Speaking after this victory, Ishiba said the time wasn’t right to raise any of these security questions. This will be a topic of discussion with the next U.S. president and shouldn’t even be mentioned before Election Day in November.
The other topic that will test bilateral relations is America’s more protectionist trade policies under both Trump and Biden administrations and the high cost to Japanese manufacturers of enforcing the U.S.-inspired restrictions on technology transfers to China. “Japan is hurting right now because of American policies,” says Koll.
The new Japanese prime minister is “a realist,” says Hiro Akita, the Japanese business daily Nikkei’s foreign affairs specialist, who knows him. Ishiba thinks that Japan has to adjust to a changing world, he says. The next prime minister is no Japanese Charles de Gaulle who’ll seek to push America back as the old French leader did there half a century ago, he adds.
But still, this at first undramatic leadership change in Tokyo does potentially bring chop to the waters of the Japanese-American relationship that have been especially placid of late.”
“”Former President Donald Trump’s proposals to impose a universal tariff of 20 percent and an additional tariff on Chinese imports of at least 60 percent would spike the average tariff rate on all imports to highs not seen since the Great Depression,” warns Erica York of the Tax Foundation.
Trump has actually been a little vague on the size of his universal tariff, first floating it at 10 percent while allowing “it may be more than that,” and then upping the ante to 20 percent. Either way, it’s a cost that ends up being largely paid by Americans in terms of higher retail prices and more expensive imported parts and materials for domestic manufacturing.
The Trump administration’s 2018 “tariffs resulted in higher prices for a wide variety of goods that U.S. consumers and businesses purchase,” the Tax Foundation’s Alex Durante and Alex Muresianu concluded.
Even when tariffs don’t directly affect the cost of imported goods purchased by consumers, they still drive up the prices of many things made in the U.S. The Cato Institute’s Pierre Lemieux points out that “a tariff on an input (say, steel) is paid by the American importer who will typically pass it down the supply chain to his customers and eventually to the consumers of the final good (say, a car).” Instead of boosting domestic production, that can do harm, instead.
“For manufacturing employment, a small boost from the import protection effect of tariffs is more than offset by larger drags from the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs,” Federal Reserve Board economists found when they researched the 2018 tariffs.”
“Check the U.S. Constitution, and you’ll see that Article 1, Section 8 clearly gives Congress sole authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises.” Unfortunately, Congress traded away much of that power during the 20th century, beginning in the aftermath of the Great Depression—which was considerably worsened by a series of tariffs passed by Congress—and continuing with various laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s, as the Cato report details.
In theory, handing over those powers made sense. Lawmakers were more likely to be influenced by parochial interests and would favor protectionism that benefited some local industry, even if it came at the expense of the nation’s economy as a whole. Presidents, it was assumed, would take a more expansive view of the benefits of trade and would use those powers to reduce barriers like tariffs.
For a long time, that was true. It no longer is. Both Trump and President Joe Biden have favored protectionism, and have faced scant opposition from Congress or the courts.
If Trump returns to the White House in 2025, he would assume huge power over the flow of goods into the United States “without substantial procedural or institutional safeguards” due to the “broad and ambiguous language” included in many of those trade laws passed decades ago, Packard and Lincicome write.
The tariffs that Trump imposed during his term in office took advantage of many of those same powers.”
“NATO plans to coordinate the transport of a large number of wounded troops away from front lines in case of a war with Russia, potentially via hospital trains as air evacuations may not be feasible, according to a senior general.
The future scenario for medical evacuations will differ from allies’ experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, the head of NATO’s logistics command, told Reuters in an interview.
In a conflict with Russia, Western militaries would likely be faced with a much larger war zone, a higher number of injured troops and at least a temporary lack of air superiority close to the front lines, the German general said.
“The challenge will be to swiftly ensure high-quality care for, in the worst case, a great number of wounded,” he said without specifying how many injured troops NATO would expect.
The planning for medical evacuations is part of a much broader drive by NATO, prompted by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to overhaul and boost its ability to deter and defend against any Russian assault.”
“The signature policy proposal of Donald Trump’s third campaign for the presidency is a tariff: a tax of 60 percent imposed on all imports from China and 10 percent on imports from any other country. Not only does he want this tax hike, which would raise about $291 billion or 1 percent of GDP when fully implemented, but he says he’ll do it unilaterally. “I don’t need Congress, but they’ll approve it,” Trump declared at a September 23 rally. “I’ll have the right to impose them myself if they don’t.”
This is a rather enormous policy change for a president to undertake unilaterally, and one of dubious legality. For comparison, the hike Trump is considering is over twice as large as the tax increases used to fund Obamacare. (And make no mistake — tariffs are tax increases.) Experts like former World Trade Organization (WTO) deputy director-general Alan Wm. Wolff have argued that no law passed by Congress gives the president the power to levy across-the-board tariffs along the lines Trump proposes.
Even so, Congress has given the executive branch a remarkable amount of flexibility to set tariffs. This is a mistake. Members of Congress, whether or not they support Trump’s tariff plans, should be able to agree on this much: As the Constitution lays out in the taxing clause, it’s Congress’s job to set taxing and spending policy for the United States. It’s been that way for the US’s whole history, it’s the traditional role of legislatures in all democratic countries, and putting this power instead in the president’s hands cuts the people’s representatives out of the process of determining how they are taxed — a concept that goes back to before the American Revolution.”
…
“The presidential power to impose tariffs does not originate from a simple bill or program; rather, it slowly accreted over time, with a particular expansion over the past decade as the Trump administration rediscovered authorities in old laws that enabled it to wage a trade war with China and protect the steel industry.
Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, for instance, gives the president the right to levy tariffs upon the secretary of commerce’s recommendation without asking Congress. This was the authority Trump used to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum back in 2018, tariffs which Biden recently expanded slightly.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives a similar power to impose tariffs based on unfair trade practices by foreign nations on the advice of the Office of the US Trade Representative. Trump used this power to impose sweeping tariffs against China. Biden has made liberal use of this power, too, expanding tariffs on steel, batteries, solar cells, and electric vehicles from China.
Finally, there’s Section 201 of that same 1974 law, which allows tariffs against imports that “seriously injured or threatened … serious injury” to domestic companies. Trump and Biden have used this to justify tariffs on washing machines and solar cells from most countries.
Even if Trump couldn’t implement a full 10 percent tariff on all imports with his executive powers — because the previous authorities apply only to specific industries or specific countries — he could make a lot of progress toward that goal. His 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, for instance, may very well be possible because it’s narrowly targeted at one nation. He and Biden have proven that the president can, without Congress, raise taxes on imports very significantly.
I happen to think most of both Trump and Biden’s tariffs were wrongheaded and that Trump’s plan for more sweeping tariffs amounts to a significant tax increase on the poor and middle class that would hurt US exports, invite retaliation from other countries, harm America’s international reputation, and fail to create any jobs for people who need them. (Vice President Kamala Harris has attacked the Trump tariff plan as a “sales tax” but hasn’t disavowed Biden’s tariff policies.)”