"Leadership is different from being a sucker and being a patsy."

Are you a trade or economic wonk? Sundance has videos of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in interviews and panel discussions in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum.

“Before we get into sticks and stones about free trade we ought to first talk about, is there really free trade or is it a unicorn in the garden,” said Ross. {{{ZING}}} Again, no response from the panel. Despite the tariffs Trump imposed this week on solar panels and washing machines, China is hoping for a “bumper year” for new trade deals, according to China’s own Commerce Ministry.

Another Rossism: … “We don’t intend to abrogate leadership, but leadership is different from being a sucker and being a patsy. We would like to be the leader in making the world trade system more fair and more equitable to all participants.” …

Read more here.

Leveraging economics to benefit our allies

Sundance reports at The Conservative Treehouse,

In Hamburg, U.S. President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chairman of Economic Policy Gary Cohn, are advancing bilateral trade deals within one-on-one discussions; including discussions with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May now that brexit has freed the U.K. from the collective European Union.

President Trump speaking trade with Prime Minister May is making the EU collective furious because, Germany’s Angela Markel is attempting to leverage/blackmail their own protectionist EU trade deal before allowing the United Kingdom to exit the union.

The U.S. trade team know how to leverage the economics of this issue to the benefit of their ally, the U.K. (and also to Poland, Hungary, and the Baltics etc.)

If a trade deal between the U.K. and the U.S. holds specific benefits not granted by the U.S. toward the larger EU collective, then European companies who want access to America may shift or open new operations in the U.K.

Regional location to take advantage of the economic pathway to the United States (the worlds largest market) is already a well known strategy. This approach makes the U.K. economy stronger and dilutes the larger EU trade economy by shifting economic activity out of the union and into the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, N-Ireland).

In essence European companies will predictably move to the U.K. in order to have better access to the United States market. This has Angela Merkel (Germany), Emmanuel Macron (France), and other EU leaders in fits of outrage. Thus the EU threats toward Prime Minister May and the U.K. that she (they) are not allowed to enter into trade deals with America until after she leaves the EU.

...Access to the $19 Trillion U.S. market is the golden ticket for any nation in economic trade. President Trump, Wilbur Ross, Steven Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer and Gary Cohn determine which nations get the ticket and at what level they will be granted access.

Removal, nullification or revocation of that golden ticket is also economic leverage holding multiple purposes, including national security.

The use of such dominant economic leverage to change behavior is the looming approach by the Trump administration to get China to stop enabling North Korea, and to change their militaristic behavior.

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"It's all about the money!"

At The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes, "It's all about money."

...Understanding that dynamic allows the reviewer to see how each nation participates based on their individual or granular need. Communists align in common cause (China/Russia); socialists align in common cause (Canada/Germany/France/EU writ large), and free-fair market nations align in common cause (USA/Japan/Poland/A.S.E.A.N./Australia).

...A “SME” (pronounced ‘smee‘) is a Subject Matter Expert. President Trump’s entire cabinet is an assembly of specific SME’s for a specific economic purpose.

...The MSM will sell visible and spoken differences of opinion, differences of political ideologies, and newly formed alliances around a narrative of nations being anti-Trump. The media like to focus on the cult of personality to create their discussion segments; but that’s nowhere near the full measure of what’s behind international alliances. The actual motives are the underlying economic determinations within each nation.

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North Korean economics

How does North Korea maintain economic relationships with many countries. Who buys what they export? Today's Wall Street Journal provides us with some answers.

Although it lags far behind China, India has been North Korea’s second biggest trade partner in the past couple of years, buying commodities including silver and selling it chemicals among other goods. Russia has exported petroleum products to North Korea and imported items such as garments and frozen fish. Last year, North Korea attempted to export military communications equipment to Eritrea via front companies in Malaysia, according to a recent U.N. report.

...More than 50,000 North Korean workers are employed abroad, according to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, many in construction or factory jobs. For these workers, wages are paid directly to North Korean officials, raising hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the state, human-rights groups say.

These ties are under scrutiny as Pyongyang’s success at launching a missile that could reach Alaska is escalating the crisis over its weapons program. This week’s missile test took place on the back of a Chinese truck imported to North Korea for logging purposes, according to analysts.

...For the past five years, China has accounted for more than 80% of North Korea’s imports and exports, providing an economic lifeline even as political relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated.

Read more here.

“Climate” issues are the Trojan horse, the false ruse, the talking point, the scheme to get economic systems in place -yes, political systems- to control the distributive flow of larger economic wealth within all nations."

The Paris Climate Accord? No, the Paris Economic Accord. That is the view of Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse.

Every word we read, every corporate broadcast, every espoused punditry opinion, every angle that’s visible, everything surrounding the Paris Climate “Treaty”, All.Of.It., is driven by multinational banks and corporations who have a vested financial interest.

The Paris Climate Treaty has nothing to do with “climate” and everything possible to do with economics, globalism and the controlled redistribution of economic wealth as constructed through decades of advanced policies of multinational financial interests.

There are factually TRILLIONS of dollars at stake.

When you consider the pontificating pearl-clutching from the financial and industrial elites, ask yourself this very basic question:

If Elon Musk (Tesla), Tim Cook (Apple), Larry Page (google), Mark Zuckerberg (facebook), or any of the myriad of multinational executives really cared about “climate change”, then why are they doing business in China?

The primary concern for every affiliated entity surrounds economics, not climate. “Climate” issues are the Trojan horse, the false ruse, the talking point, the scheme to get economic systems in place -yes, political systems- to control the distributive flow of larger economic wealth within all nations. Period.

What ObamaCare was to your loss of healthcare individualism, so too is the Paris Treaty a political tool to deconstruct national economic individualism. FULL-STOP.

...President Trump is very smart about the long-term ramifications to this ‘treaty’. If the heavily influenced industrialized nations commit themselves to this agreement they will be anchoring their economic manufacturing base within a tiered system of ridiculously burdensome regulations and agreements.

The strategic benefit to the United States will stem from not participating in the regulatory stranglehold that accompanies the agreement. Obviously all nations that compete with the U.S on international trade agreements would, for once, be at a disadvantage; and our American manufacturing and industrial base would be able to take strategic advantage.

In larger terms Trump’s refocused policy objectives remove the political benefit from Wall Street and places it back with Main Street, reversing a three decade long shift. This approach is adverse to the interests of the globalists.

President Trump’s economic team are well aware of the strategic advantage in walking away from the Paris Climate Treaty. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and their entire economic team know what is needed to reverse the decades long construct and defeat the interests of the global elites.

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Trump critic Williamson criticizes Carrier deal

At National Review Kevin Williamson looks unfavorably at Trump's Carrier deal.

relieving someone of an ordinary expense incurred in the normal course of affairs — as opposed to changing general tax law — is a gift. This is true both as a matter of law and of our ordinary experience. If I am, for example, a car dealer trying to win influence with a politician, and I sell him a new car at $50,000 under the price that I charge other customers, then I have paid him a $50,000 bribe. People go to jail for that. You’ll recall that part of the Barack Obama–Tony Rezko scandal was the accusation that Rezko had arranged for the promising young politician to buy a house at $300,000 under its asking price. Rezko didn’t give Obama $300,000 in this scenario — he just saw to it that Obama didn’t have to spend that $300,000. That is why bribery laws generally specify “any pecuniary benefit” rather than a duffel bag full of cash.

For Carrier’s accountant, any pecuniary benefit will do. So far as the bottom line is concerned, a $7 million tax credit is the same as a $7 million check or $7 million in Apple stock or $7 million in gold. It’s all +$7 million on the line where you want it.

The ethical question is more complicated than the pop-cons let on, too. Our government runs deficits, which means that a federal tax credit of $1 million given to Smith is $1 million in taxes that eventually will have to be paid — by Jones, and Wilson, and Humperdink — with interest. Carrier is a division of United Technologies (the Otis elevator and Pratt & Whitney engines people), which is first and foremost a government contractor, a firm that derives at least a quarter of its revenue from government contracts, and 10 percent of it from Pentagon contracts alone. It is a company that has competitors — competitors who employ Americans and pay taxes, just as Carrier does. These firms and their employees are put at an economic disadvantage by the subsidies paid to Carrier thanks to Trump and Pence. That means that some of these companies probably will be less profitable, and that they will not hire people they otherwise would have hired. But you’ll see no Trump press conference celebrating that. This is a case of Frédéric Bastiat’s problem of the seen vs. the unseen. The benefits are easy to see, all those sympathetic workers in Indiana. The costs are born by sympathetic workers, too, around the country, and by their families and by their neighbors. But those are widely dispersed, so they are harder to see and do not hit with the same dramatic impact.

But the math is the math is the math. Trump and Pence are trying to sell you a free lunch, the same way the Keynesians and their magical spending multiplier do when they promise that government stimulus programs (Trump is pushing one of those, too) will somehow magically pay for themselves.

There is no magical revenue fairy. And, as a budgetary matter, targeted tax benefits are identical to spending, both for the government and for the beneficiary. This is not a question of ethics but a question of accounting. Somebody always has to pay the bill, eventually. It probably won’t be the pop-con on the radio telling you that we can make money by giving it away, so long as we give it away to the right sort of people: Solyndra bad, Carrier good.

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Who would be best to lead America in a time of global crisis?

At PJ Media Richard Fernandez asks what kind of leader will the United States need in February 2017. He presumes that it will be a time of global crisis in terms of security and probably also economic.

The requirements of a crisis leader turn out to be surprisingly different from those best suited to times of peace.

...For the sake of discussion, let me suggest that only four things matter in selecting a man to face a challenge whose present dimensions cannot be predicted. For purposes of debate, let these four qualities in descending order of importance be:

An ability to face the facts, however unpleasant they may be. The most important quality of the next president should be a lack of self-deception and a willingness to see things as they truly are, even if he or his ideology wish them to be otherwise. This is so important that it trumps the next item.

...An unswerving patriotism. This is not the same as a sincere feeling of love or empathy for America, though that is good. In this context it means the willingness to share the fate of the principals of which he is an agent.

...Nerve. This is the quality of grace under pressure who no one, unless he has the misfortune to be tested, can be sure he possesses.

...Intelligence. This is important, because it determines basic competence. But it surprisingly the least important attribute in this list. Intelligence, though rare, is not nearly as hard to find as the 3 characteristics above. You can find staffers who can give you intelligent advice. You cannot find staff to give you a character that you do not possess.

Once the presidential hopefuls are examined through the prism of who can be "chief of men, through a cloud" they will look surprisingly different. Try to imagine Bernie, Hillary, Donald, Ted, Marco, Ben or Carly facing what might likely have to be faced. The criteria may or may not change your original choice of the best candidate.

It is perhaps symptomatic of the problem that the campaign highlights other desirable, but in this context inessential, qualities. We are shown personability, physical attractiveness, sharpness of wit, familiarity with policy, even entertainment skills of the various contestants. These are important, and perhaps all-important in selecting the leader of a boring, crisis-less world. They would be vital in another time; the question is whether they are vital for 2017.

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When will someone offer specifics on economics?

I listened to parts of the Larry Kudlow show tonight on the radio. Although he said Donald Trump had always been nice to him, he was very critical of Trump on economics. He is afraid Trump's policies will be protectionism, trade war, and tariffs, because of Trump's comments about China and Mexico. Kudlow was positive about the fact that Bush, Rubio, and Kasich at least talked about growth, but where are the specifics? He mentioned Ronald Reagan and JFK as two presidents who were outstanding on economics.

Economics, freedom, and feminism

Captain Capitalism believes that feminism is a trojan horse for communism.

The furthest, most deepest front lines of this economic war between communism and freedom is where The Manosphere and feminism are duking it out.

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