September is when Presidential races really get started, although Trump has really been running since 2020. Harris? Much more recently, in a historic sense, very recently. Still, polling wise she’s in an effective polling tie with Trump, running on joy and Brat energy.
Oh, and with a little help from almost every institution in the country, including the government and of course, as ABC’s “debate” so amply demonstrated, the media.
I used to make frequent predictions on this site, testing my view of the world with the actual world, but this year I only made one prediction. Back in January I said, “I feel confident though in saying that Trump won’t be President, no matter how the “election” goes.” Since that time nothing much has changed to make me reconsider my conclusion, even though almost everything else has changed; A debate that destroyed Biden, leading to the soft coup to remove him, an assassination attempt (and now another one) on Trump, and a switcheroo at the DNC leaving the nominee to save democracy as someone that no primary voter actually voted for.
That’s a lot of history in a short time. But history still seems to be on a linear course.
Regardless of who actually becomes President, whether by fair means or foul, I’m still endorsing and voting for Donald Trump. He’s the anti-establishment candidate, and Harris is the establishment candidate (or sock puppet candidate, much as Biden was). But simply saying “establishment” is a little too facile for a real understanding of why I support Trump and his movement, so let me break it down like this:
My premise of US politics since the end of the Cold War is that in both domestic and foreign policy, American leadership has made the wrong choice in nearly every decision, leaving us a generation later, as a pale reflection of the country and power that we were. Every opportunity was squandered, and every path taken was the wrong one, so that we are now a nation in decline.
In foreign policy, 1991, at the conclusion of the Gulf War, left us as the most powerful military in the world, and without question the most powerful military in history. We had just finished deploying 470,000 troops to the Middle East within a few months; an amazing logistical feat. But with the cold war over and the American military victorious (yes, I know there was a coalition, but seriously, it was us) we immediately began a major downsizing of the US military, shrinking troop numbers, units, and bases. And why not, the Cold War was over.
But…we didn’t actually shrink our commitments to match our new smaller force. It’s not that we kept it the same, we actually expanded it, adding multiple nations to NATO. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t make much sense to expand your military commitments while at the same time shrinking your ability to fulfill your military commitments. But shrink we did, in pursuit of an ever elusive “peace dividend.” Of course, at that time, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia entered a decade long period of political and economic disarray. So, what did we do? We decided to create a new enemy: China.
If China had decided to attack Taiwan at any time during the 90’s or early 2000’s, it would have been a bloodbath for the Chinese military. We still had an overwhelming Naval presence in the Pacific and given the technological level of the Chinese military at the time vs ours, there would have been no question of US victory. Now? That’s very much up in the air. There have been multiple wargames over this scenario, and some show the Chinese winning, and some show the US winning at great cost (the loss of thousands of American lives and the loss of our Pacific fleet). China is a major power, you could even say a superpower, and we did that. That sort of runs into…
Domestic Policy.
In 1988 the US and Canada signed a free trade agreement. The US and Canada are like economies, so the economies of scale made a lot of sense to me. However not content to rest on their laurels (or pursue freer trade with other first world economies, we decided to open up our economic borders to Mexico. Mexico had always been a corrupt kleptocracy, but I suppose the thinking was that exposed to the US and Canadian market, they would magically transform into an Anglo-esque, free market democracy. So, in 1994 NAFTA was born. There were a lot of naysayers to this idea; you know, your H. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan types, but free market ideology and some spreadsheets said otherwise, so the United States rolled the dice on its massive industrial economy that was the envy of the world.
So how did that bet turn out? Mexico is still a corrupt kleptocracy and due to the overwhelming power of drug cartels, a failed state as well. It does have more jobs though. These jobs were donated by the good people of the American heartland, as this study demonstrates:
“The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that the rising U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada under NAFTA had already eliminated about one million net jobs in the United States by 2004. EPI estimates that about one third of the jobs lost due to the rising trade deficit under NAFTA’s first decade were in non-manufacturing sectors of the economy, including service sector jobs, which suffered as closed factories no longer demanded services. EPI further calculated that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about 850,000 net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2013.12 This toll has likely grown since 2013, as the non-fossil fuel U.S. trade deficit with Mexico has risen further. Moreover, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that nearly 4.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect.“
And then of course there’s China.
Not content to ship industrial US jobs south of the border, our leadership decided to ship them across the International Date Line as well. By the 80’s China was already our 14th largest trading partner. Not waiting for China to join the World Trade Organization, Congress granted them Most Favored Nation trading status on a year-by-year basis to allow China to begin raping the US industrial base early, which finally culminated in President Clinton signing the bill to make it permanent.
In a stunning victory for the Clinton administration and corporate America, the House today swept aside economic restrictions on China that were part of anti-Communist policy for two decades.
By a surprisingly wide margin, 237 to 197, lawmakers voted to give Beijing permanent normal trading privileges after months of fierce lobbying that pitted business against organized labor. A larger-than-expected Republican majority delivered President Clinton’s top remaining legislative priority: three out of four Republicans voted in favor; two out of three Democrats voted against.
Interesting the party breakdown would be almost opposite of that today. Senator Cotton introduced a bill to end China’s normal trade status last year:
Washington, D.C. – Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), along with Sens. Rick Scott (R-Florida), Ted Budd (R-North Carolina), and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) today introduced the China Trade Relations Act to strip China of its Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status.
This legislation would require China to obtain Most Favored Nation (MFN) status through annual presidential approval, per the requirements of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. The bill would also expand the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to include human rights and trade abuses as disqualifying factors for MFN status.
Being tough on China trade is strictly a GOP issue now.
The economic results to the US have been severe.
Since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the massive growth of trade between China and the United States has had a dramatic and negative effect on U.S. workers and the domestic economy. Specifically, a growing U.S. goods trade deficit with China has the United States piling up foreign debt, losing export capacity, and losing jobs, especially in the vital but under-siege manufacturing sector. Growth in the U.S. goods trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2013 eliminated or displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs, 2.4 million (three-fourths) of which were in manufacturing. These lost manufacturing jobs account for about two-thirds of all U.S. manufacturing jobs lost or displaced between December, 2001 and December 2013.
So that’s it in a nutshell. Every major decision made in the last generation by our “best and the brightest” have been disastrous. But even so, the Democrats and some good portion of the actual GOP elected officials are intent on continuing this destructive path, and Trump is among the very few political leaders who want to reverse it.
I want to reverse it too, so that’s my vote.
Mike Street Station 