“Donald Trump will soon become the second president to serve non-consecutive terms. Naturally, this invites comparison between Trump and the first president to serve non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland. In one crucial respect that juxtaposition is both instructive and cruelly ironic.”
…
“When tariffs are too high, Cleveland argued, it means that corrupt politicians and businessmen are able to exploit consumers, often imposing severe hardships through price increases. Just as bad, it means that the government is failing to treat all citizens as equal before the law, instead picking winners and losers in the aforementioned “communism of pelf.”
This was the situation that existed in America during and after the Civil War, when politicians imposed weighty tariffs under the pretext of supporting the nation’s burgeoning business community. While American consumers initially accepted the additional taxation as a wartime necessity, the high rates persisted even after the nascent military-industrial complex had been wound down.
The problem was both simple and intractable: There were thousands of manufacturing, industrial, agricultural, and other business interests that profited from high tariffs. Each special interest group disregarded the national welfare to protect themselves, and as a result, the government accumulated massive surpluses—$113 million in 1886–1887 alone.
Despite this growing crisis, initially, Cleveland did not prioritize tariff reform. For the first two-and-a-half years after taking office in 1885, Cleveland concentrated on rooting out government corruption, which had reached such a nadir that in 1873 Mark Twain dubbed the post-Civil War era as a “Gilded Age.” To the extent that Cleveland’s anti-corruption agenda involved vetoing legislation he deemed financially wasteful, he indirectly picked off some of the rotten fruits that grew from the protectionist tree. However, it was not until 1887 that he shifted his attention to a need for sweeping tariff reform. When he did, he transformed the presidency and America in the process.”
…
“Cleveland’s tariff reform proposals passed the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but failed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Even worse, despite winning the popular vote, Cleveland lost the 1888 election to Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison amid Electoral College disputes in the key states of New York and Indiana. (Unlike Trump, Cleveland accepted his defeat with grace and peacefully ended his term in 1889.) The Republicans took office and passed a high tariff law (framed by future president William McKinley, then an Ohio congressman). The McKinley tariffs raised the average duty on imports by almost 50 percent, and as Dartmouth University economist Douglas Irwin demonstrated in 1998, these tariffs did little to stimulate the economy even as they imposed considerable suffering on low-income Americans.
This is why, just like Trump, Cleveland was able to comfortably get elected to a non-consecutive term by promising to lower prices. The key difference is that, unlike Trump, Cleveland proposed an intelligent solution to the problem—lowering tariffs, not raising them.
Unfortunately for both Cleveland and the Americans of his time, he would not live to see his vision for tariff reform realized. America plunged into an economic depression shortly after he took office in 1893, compelling Cleveland to confront a number of unrelated crises before he could get to tariff reform. By the time a tariff bill did reach his desk in 1894, special interest groups in both parties had diluted it almost to meaninglessness.”
…
“Tariff reform along the lines Cleveland advocated would not become the law of the land until the Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913, which was promoted with far more political effectiveness by Woodrow Wilson, the first Democratic president to serve after Cleveland’s administration. By then, Cleveland had been dead for five years.”
“only about 4 percent of plastic wastes are currently mismanaged in the United States. That figure rises to an average of 6 percent for developed countries.
Poorer countries are doing much worse: The figures for mismanaged wastes in China, India, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa are 27, 46, 42, and 64 percent, respectively. These same regions are responsible for the bulk of the plastic wastes flowing down their rivers into the oceans”
…
“There are two strategies for tackling such environmental open access tragedies: privatization or regulation. In the rich countries like the United States, most wastes, including plastics, are picked up and disposed by public or commercial garbage haulers in the $91 billion waste management industry. Most Americans take responsibility for their wastes by paying local taxes or fees to bury them in landfills, burn them, or recycle them. As a result, relatively little plastic from the U.S. ends up in the oceans. Bans on plastic bags and water bottles in this country are largely instances of symbolic moral preening.”
“Trump’s position on tariffs begins with his longstanding misconceptions about international trade, which he erroneously views as a zero-sum game with rules that are rigged against the United States. “We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune [of] over $100 billion a year,” he told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. “We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion.”
Trump was referring to U.S. trade deficits with those countries, which are about half as big as he claimed. Those gaps between exports and imports are not subsidies; they reflect goods that Americans voluntarily purchase, which means they get something of value in exchange for their money.
As Trump sees it, however, trade deficits are inherently bad, and he aims to eliminate them by imposing tariffs. Although that is feasible only if tariffs raise the cost of imports, making them less competitive with domestically produced alternatives, Trump contradicts that logic by insisting that tariffs do not raise prices.
“Americans are not paying for the Tariffs” on Chinese goods, Trump averred in 2019. “They are being paid for compliments of China.”
Trump, the self-described “Tariff Man,” clearly does not understand how tariffs work. They are taxes collected from importers, not from the exporting country.
In theory, exporters could respond by cutting prices, or importers could swallow the additional cost. But study after study has found that the cost of tariffs is paid mainly by American buyers of intermediate goods and finished products.”
“Taiwan has accused a Chinese-owned ship of severing a critical data cable off its northern coast on Friday.
Officials in Taipei discovered that four cores of an international submarine cable, which transmits data to America’s AT&T, were left ruptured early on Jan 3.
Tracking data revealed the Shunxing39 cargo vessel had dropped its anchor around the rupture site near the port of Keelung, according to Taiwan’s coast guard.”
…
“Another Chinese vessel, the Yi Peng 3, was accused of similar tactics in the Baltic in November.
Investigators believe the Chinese-registered bulk carrier deliberately severed two key cables by dragging its anchor along the seabed for more than 100 miles in a “sabotage” orchestrated by Russia.
Repeated incidents have caused concern among Western nations that Russia, with the help of China, is engaging in what the White House described as “hybrid warfare”, an accusation that the Kremlin denies.”
“the U.K. became the first new member to join the tongue-twisting Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since it was formed in 2018.
It’s also the first country that doesn’t at least have a coast fronting the region.”
“The U.S. and others suggest China’s navy is establishing a permanent base at Ream, which would give it easier access to the Malacca Strait, a critical shipping route between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Controversy over the Chinese activity at Ream initially arose in 2019 when The Wall Street Journal reported that an early draft of an agreement seen by U.S. officials would allow China 30-year use of the base, where it would be able to post military personnel, store weapons and berth warships.
Cambodia’s government has denied such an agreement or any intention to grant China special privileges at the base, though Beijing has funded its expansion.
In September, Cambodia’s Defense Ministry said that China is giving its navy two warships of the type it has had docked there for months. China is set to hand over two newly built Type 56 corvettes — smaller vessels typically used for coastal patrols — next year at the earliest, after Cambodia requested China’s support.”