Friday News Roundup — August 30, 2019
On Relationships with Allies; #NeverTrump Goldilocks; plus News You May Have Missed
Greetings from Washington, D.C., as we all hope that you have a pleasant long Labor Day weekend ahead of you. While the unofficial end of summer looms ahead of us, we find ourselves marveling at how quickly these past months have flown by. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the steady pace of the headlines. Be it the latest ministerial maneuvers regarding Brexit, tensions in the Persian Gulf, PLA troops rotating into Hong Kong, or the latest back-and-forth between Tokyo or Seoul, the international inbox is full of crises. Reading the domestic pages is no picnic either, as markets move up and down on the latest trade rumors, 2020 candidates rise and fall, and Hurricane Dorian churns towards Florida. Hopefully, you will all be able to unplug for the weekend — after reading this roundup, of course — enjoy the beach or barbecue, and avoid checking your phone — with exceptions made for college football and baseball pennant races.
Earlier this week, Dan provided his analysis in The Hill about how the trade tensions between the U.S. and China will not only determine the course of 2020, but also the future of the U.S.-China relationship that will define the geopolitics of the 21st century.
In this week’s roundup, Dan covers the events of the G-7 summit and the state of cooperation with our closest allies, while Chris looks at the GOP challengers trying to take on President Trump in the 2020 primaries. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
The Loneliness of Going It Alone
Dan Mahaffee
Last weekend, when President Trump joined the other leaders of the world’s major industrialized democracies at the G-7 summit in Biarritz, France, it was the first time in the history of the G-7 that the summit wrapped up without a joint communique from the summit’s leaders. With disagreements ranging from trade to climate to Iran — and the messy aftermath of the last G-7 summit in Canada still a fresh memory — this G-7 summit seemed to be more focused on making sure that the conference took place rather than putting forth any grand vision.
Much of the attention was focused on President Trump, but it is also worth remembering that many of the G-7 leaders have plenty on their plates at home. New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has his hands full with a restive parliament and public as the United Kingdom appears on a glideslope to a no-deal Brexit; Candadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces scandals over political favors for a major Quebecois firm; French President Emmanuel Macron is fighting for his political future following the unrest of the gilets jaunes; German Chancellor Angela Merkel is preparing the way for her successor as Germany teeters closer to recession; and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte attended the conference as Italian parties sought to find a new coalition to keep his government from collapsing. If you happen to find yourself envying Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after reading this, don’t forget that he also faces the prospects of an uncertain economic future—even as Japan experiences long-desired growth—all while dealing with a range of tensions in his neighborhood. Thus, if this G-7 summit served as an annual physical for the state of the world’s most developed democracies, the prognosis is hardly one of perfect health.
It is also worth remembering the history of the G-7. It was first formed in the 1970s, growing from what were informal meetings of U.S., European, and Japanese finance ministers to deal with the oil shocks of that decade. Following a flurry of political shocks including Watergate, a hung parliament in Britain, and still traditional instability of the Italian governments, U.S. President Gerald Ford, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing decided that a retreat summit of leaders was necessary to address the myriad challenges industrialized democracies faced — slowing economic growth, inflation, resource shocks, and geopolitical tensions — as well as to provide an all-important opportunity for the leaders just to get to know each other.
What this history tells us is how the G-7 serves not only as a forum for leaders but also an opportunity for the countries of “the west” to speak with one voice on the major issues facing the world. Similar to its genesis, the G-7 finds itself again dealing with the economic and political uncertainty roiling western democracy and the geopolitical tensions of increasingly assertive and revanchist authoritarian regimes.
Given the immensity of the global challenges we now face, no G-7 member nation can afford to go it alone, even the United States. Take the trade war with China for example: as Janan Ganesh notes in The Financial Times, “it is easy to imagine a US confrontation of China without Europe. It is harder to imagine a successful one.” One would think, given the importance of ensuring a fair and competitive trading relationship with China, that the United States and other major democracies would cooperate on this action. Yet, despite these shared interests, the Trump administration decided to embark on multiple trade wars at once. Many agree that the Europeans have long underspent on defense, but has browbeating our allies achieved the desired outcome?
Winston Churchill famously said, “there is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” The whole reason that the United States built the international order following the Second World War — binding the United States and its allies together in diplomatic, economic, and security arrangements — was to ensure that we would not have to fight another world war, and, if, God forbid, such a conflict did break out, that we would not be standing alone. Now, with politics pushing our leaders to break our shared institutions rather than rebuild and reform them, we find ourselves in danger of standing alone on many fronts.
What to Make of Weld, Walsh, and #NeverTrump
Chris Condon
The Republican Party of 2019 looks a lot different than the Republican Party of 2009. Back then, the party embraced low taxes, low spending, and the rule of law in opposition to newly-elected President Obama. Another key difference is that for most of 2009, Donald Trump was not a part of the Republican Party. Now that he’s in the Oval Office, President Trump has carried a Jacksonian agenda to the fore, championing heavy-handed government intervention in the economy (tariffs) and large spending increases to fund a populist agenda. Despite grassroots popularity, many in the “GOP establishment” were never happy with these changes, and are looking for a way to protect the foundations of the GOP from a new and unfamiliar challenge.
Senator Rand Paul recently expressed these fears by declaring the Tea Party dead following a gargantuan budget package passed by Congress with the support of President Trump. Seeking to revive it is former Congressman Joe Walsh, who recently entered the race as a Tea Party alternative to the more Jacksonian Trump. To those conservative pundits seeking a primary challenger to the president, one would think this would be welcome news. Following his announcement, however, Rep. Walsh met a chorus of groans; pundits painted him as a political opportunist and an extremist who was seeking limelight in a chaotic era. Walsh may be an extremist, but as Barry Goldwater said and the Tea Party embraced, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Regardless of personality, political wonks also dismissed Walsh as a former one-term congressman who has no serious chance to dislodge a sitting president.
What then of former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld? He announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination months ago, but very few know that he is even running. He has spent his time shaking hands and eating ice cream in New Hampshire this summer, hoping that his New England ties can propel him to success. Pundits, however, have again dismissed a Trump challenger. Weld is too old, too patrician, or too libertarian to capture the attention of the average Republican. Even though he was an extremely successful and popular Republican governor of a blue state, he is apparently still too minor to get ink from conservative thought leaders. Mark Sanford, a former South Carolina congressman and governor, has also met eye rolls from the political class. His unfortunate “trip on the Appalachian Trail” has evidently made him an a non-serious prospect in the eyes of Republicans.
So what do we make of this unwillingness of conservative political insiders to accept these choices? As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. While no “major” Republican figures are willing to stick their necks out to protect the old-school conservatism, or even the barely decade-old Tea Party Platform, they are happy to sit back and snicker at those who have. There is one thing that Weld, Walsh, and Sanford have in common: they all represent the old Republican revolutionaries. Each discusses the damage they believe Trump is doing to Republican Party and American institutions; citing Trump’s bombast, they attempt to provide a calm, collected alternative. They also advocate for the traditional Republican platform: low taxes, low spending, small government, and the rule of law. In a party which has acquiesced in the face of a massive challenge to its traditional values, these characteristics are apparently not enough to merit a second look.
Sitting presidents in the modern era have never been reelected if they face a serious primary challenge. When Lyndon Johnson won only a narrow New Hampshire victory against Eugene McCarthy in 1968, he retired rather than face a protracted primary contest. Gerald Ford faced Ronald Reagan in 1976, and had to slug it out on the floor of the Republican National Convention to secure the GOP nod. He was trounced by Jimmy Carter in the general election — who, in turn, lost his bid for re-election in 1980 following a primary challenge by Senator Ted Kennedy. In 1992, George Bush faced charges of insufficient conservatism from pundit Pat Buchanan, who mounted a credible challenge in the primary. Bush lost that November to Bill Clinton. For the crowd of establishment Republicans and true conservatives who hope for an alternative to the current administration, perhaps abandoning this nirvana fallacy is the most strategic course.
In fact, the president now faces a similar landscape to George Bush in 1992. First, conservatives turned against Bush when he signed tax increases even after his infamous “read my lips” pledge. President Trump’s difficulty is in the trade realm, where he promised a speedy revamping of NAFTA and a swift rebalancing of trade with China. In practice, the USMCA looks a lot like the old NAFTA, and our trade war with China has been ongoing for 18 months to the detriment of farmers and consumers alike. In fact, no matter who you claim is paying for the tariffs, the effect of $200 billion in tariffs is essentially a sizeable tax increase.
However, these circumstances alone may not alone prove enough to rattle a sitting president. President Bush also faced a substantial recession over the course of 1991, which spurred his challengers and hurt his candidacy. Although the economy has done well since President Trump’s inauguration, economists warn of an imminent recession following the recent inversion of the yield curve. If these circumstances hold, the only thing left for the remaining #NeverTrump Republicans is to coalesce around a challenger.
News You May Have Missed
Changes to Immigration Policy Affect U.S. Servicemembers & Migrants Receiving Medical Treatment in the United States
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, issued new guidance on citizenship and immigration rules, adding to confusion about citizenship for the children of U.S. servicemembers and diplomats born overseas, while also changing the rules to speed deportation of immigrants who are receiving lifesaving medical treatments, or have a family member receiving such treatments. Regarding the former measure, White House officials stated that the measures would only affect a few servicemembers or diplomats, as well as Americans who adopted overseas, but the change raised concerns given that USCIS officials could now deny or delay citizenship for the children of those sent overseas during the course of their service to the U.S. government. As for the latter measure, officials at USCIS and ICE are scrambling to meet this new guidance, issued from the White House, while many immigrants receiving medical care — including some in medical trials for rare diseases — now fear a deportation that could be an effective death sentence.
City of Chicago Faces $838 Million Budget Deficit
Speaking at a televised “State of the City” speech, newly elected Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot soberly addressed the looming $838 million deficit in the city’s FY2020 budget. Facing a shrinking tax base and growing pension obligations, many have long raised the alarm about the state of Chicago’s finances. A microcosm of the country as a whole, politics in Illinois finds itself divided between rural constituencies in downstate Illinois versus those in the Chicago area. While the city hopes that the state might be able to help with quick legislative action to assume some of the city’s liabilities, expedite the development of a Chicago casino, and share the revenue from next year’s cannabis legalization, Mayor Lightfoot didn’t rule out further tax increases.
DARPA Asks for Secret Underground Lair
This week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tweeted the following: “Attention, city dwellers! We’re interested in identifying university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels & facilities able to host research & experimentation. It’s short notice… We’re asking for responses by Aug. 30 at 5:00 PM ET.” As a government agency responsible for much of the DoD’s research programs, they raised suspicion when tweeting about mysterious underground facilities. Although Twitter users lampooned the request, the agency asserts that the facility is for the agency’s Subterranean Challenge, a competition to assist the military and other agencies in navigating underground environments. Either way, keep a look out for monsters emerging from your local sewer grates.
Texas Municipalities Latest to Face Cybersecurity Threat
After the latest cyber attack on Baltimore, many cities have been on edge in the face of a possible similar situation. This week, the target was Texas, as 22 cities fell under the virtual sword of unknown ransomware peddlers. Apparently the attackers have demanded $2.5 million to unlock the files that they are holding hostage, including utility billing records and other government documents such as birth and death certificates. A representative for the FBI said that they did not yet know whether municipalities had paid the requisite ransom or would resist. Regardless, it is clear that municipalities face a challenge that must be solved with more resources dedicated to cyber security.
The views of contributors are their own, and not that of CSPC.