Is Trump Destroying-- Or Has He Already Destroyed-- U.S. Foreign Policy And Trade Consensus?

The week started with Señor Trumpanzee announcing an expansion of his trade war antics against Brazil, Argentina and France (and its only Wednesday!)-- followed by grandstanding self-destructive nonsense about trade with China that caused domestic and world markets to crash.

Bloomberg reporters Derek Wallbank and Jordan Fabian: "Stocks dropped in Europe and U.S. equity futures sold off as Trump’s comments indicated no urgency to reach a deal by Dec. 15, which U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday called a 'logical deadline.' The Trump administration has threatened to impose tariffs on more Chinese imports starting that day. Those levies would hit American consumer products such as smartphones, toys and childrens’ clothing just before the Christmas holiday... A flurry of U.S. trade moves in the past 24 hours has eroded investor optimism that Trump would ease up on tariffs that have slowed the global economy. Rather than ratcheting down trade tensions, Trump is indicating confidence that his import taxes are good for America... Speaking to reporters on a trip to attend a summit for the 70th anniversary of NATO, Trump suggested that in some ways, it might be better to wait until after the U.S. presidential election next November. 'I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now and we’ll see whether not the deal is going to be right. It’s got to be right,' he said. 'The China trade deal is dependent on one thing: Do I want to make it? Because we’re doing very well with China right now and we could do even better with the flick of a pen.'"

Trump's crude, manipulative attacks on Macron, just before his one-on-one meeting with Macron yesterday, were some kind of boorish justification for his threats to slap a punitive 100% tariff on French champagne, cheese, cosmetics and handbags worth around $2.4 billion. Trump says he's retaliating against a digital services tax he claims hurts Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. (Italy, Austria and Turkey have the same tax.)

Tuesday morning Reuters reported that the EU would retaliate if Trump levied the tariffs against France. Does Putin give Trump bonuses for this kind of behavior?

Ivan Krastev, author of The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, penned an OpEd for the New York Times yesterday, Will Europe Ever Trust America Again?. My guess is yes-- as soon as the whole world breathes a collective sigh of relief on November 4, 2020, but Krastev seems less sanguine. He wrote that "Trump has insulted international institutions and abandoned allies from Syria to the Korean Peninsula, policymakers on this side of the Atlantic have found themselves trying to walk a fine line: On the one hand, they want to hedge against Washington turning its back on Europe; on the other, they want to ensure that their hedging doesn’t push the Trump administration even farther away. Consequently, European policies toward the United States have been oscillating between grandstanding about our ability to do everything on our own and panicked pretending that everything is as it used to be. See, for example, when President Emmanuel Macron of France recently proclaimed that NATO was experiencing 'brain death' and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany quickly responded by insisting that 'NATO remains vital to our security.'"

As the leaders of NATO countries meet this week in London, much attention will focus on the disagreements between Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel. But beneath the surface, a new European consensus on trans-Atlantic relations is emerging and it represents a huge change. Until recently, most European leaders’ hopes were bound up with the outcome of America’s presidential elections. If Mr. Trump were to lose in 2020, they believed, the world would somehow return to normalcy.

All of that has changed. While Trump-friendly governments in Europe, like Poland’s and Hungary’s, still follow the polls and cross their fingers that Mr. Trump will get four more years in office, European liberals are giving up hope. It is not that they are no longer passionate about American politics. On the contrary, they religiously follow Congress’s impeachment hearings and pray for Mr. Trump’s defeat. But they have finally started to realize that a proper European Union foreign policy cannot be based on who is in the White House.

What explains this shift? It is plausible that European liberals are unconvinced by the foreign policy visions of Democratic hopefuls and detect isolationist tendencies in the party as well. Europeans are still struggling to understand how it was that Barack Obama-- probably the most European-minded American president and one most loved by Europeans-- was also the one least interested in Europe. (At least until Mr. Trump came along.)

Europeans are also scared by the prospect of a Cold War-style clash between the United States and China. A recent poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that in conflicts between the United States and China, a majority of European voters want to remain neutral, finding a middle way between the superpowers. There’s good reason for this: Europe remains economically tied to China in ways that Washington doesn’t seem to appreciate, as evidenced by the recent spat over the Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s plans to build 5G networks across the Continent.

But putting that aside, I believe there is a more fundamental change: European liberals have come to understand that American democracy no longer produces a consensual politics with a predictable foreign policy. The change of the president means not only a new figure in the White House but also, in fact, a new regime. Were the Democrats to triumph in 2020 and a Europe-friendly president to take the helm, there is no guarantee that in 2024 Americans will not elect a president who, like Mr. Trump, will see the European Union as an enemy and will actively try to destabilize relations with Europe.

The self-destruction of the American foreign policy consensus was powerfully demonstrated not only during the recent impeachment hearings, which have seen the politicization of policy toward Ukraine, but also by the fact that the specter of Russian subversion did not provoke a bipartisan allergic reaction. When Trump voters were told that President Vladimir Putin of Russia supported their candidate, they started admiring Mr. Putin rather than abandoning Mr. Trump.

For the past 70 years, Europeans have known that no matter who occupies the White House, America’s foreign policy and strategic priorities will be consistent. Today, all bets are off. Although most European leaders were appalled by Mr. Macron’s derisive comments about NATO and the United States, many still agree with him that Europe needs more foreign policy independence. They want Europe to develop its own technological capabilities and to develop the capacity for military operations outside of NATO.

Could this week’s NATO summit change Europe’s current state of mind when it comes to the future of trans-Atlantic relations? It is easier to hope for than to bet on. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Vice President Dan Quayle promised Europeans that “the future will be better tomorrow.” He was wrong. And Europe’s leaders are coming to realize that the future was actually better yesterday.

With Pompeo about to bail from his job heading the State Department so he can prevent neo-fascist crackpot Kris Kobach from losing the Kansas Senate seat to newly minted Democrat-- another Schumer special, a Republican pretending to be a Democrat-- Barbara Bollier, the completely demoralized and decimated department, is in for more turmoil. When Rex Tillerson became secretary of state in early 2017, he set about slashing the ranks of the State Department, both through attrition and through proposed budget cuts. The first few months of Tillerson’s tenure was marked by an across-the-board hiring freeze and an exodus of senior, high-profile foreign service officers.

When Tillerson was fired by tweet and his successor, Mike Pompeo, vowed to bring the “swagger” back to the State Department, he reversed many of Tillerson’s slash-and-burn policies. Still, foreign service veterans say, the damage was done.

What’s more, the attrition continues unabated. Career foreign service officers work long hours in difficult conditions, making less money than they would in the private sector. Often, they are driven by their sense of mission-- say, promoting American values abroad-- but when President Trump began attacking the pillars of American national security and smearing diplomats by name on Twitter, “suddenly,” says one senior foreign service officer who was pushed out on a scheduling technicality, “the equation didn’t make sense anymore.” What had started as a trickle of people leaving at the highest levels-- often, people who were close to retirement-- has turned into a flood of mid-career and junior officers heading for the door. The departure of top talent, people who had decades’ worth of wisdom that could have passed on to people below them, as well as the exodus of mid-level officers who had years to go before their retirements, will continue to resonate for quite a while, says Nicholas Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That gap will show up years later,” he told me.

“What’s striking is both the decapitation of the State Department and the loss of people who should have been the next leadership of the department,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out. “It’s a hollowing out of the foreign service. You can’t replace those mid-level people easily at the numbers at which they’re losing them. That will take a generation to rebuild.”

Previously unpublished data from the AFSA shows that the foreign service is losing people at an alarming clip. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, nearly half of the State Department’s Career Ministers retired or were pushed out. Another 20 percent of its Minister Counselors, one rank level down, also left.

There are no official numbers yet for 2019, but one former career foreign service officer I spoke with offered a telling piece of data that speaks to the unease. Last December, this ex–foreign service officer created a Facebook group aimed at connecting fellow FSOs looking to transition out of the service and into the private sector. In less than a year, this former FSO told me, the group has accumulated over 1,000 members. In the two months since the impeachment inquiry began and Trump started smearing career FSOs like Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Jennifer Williams, more foreign service officers have begun looking for an exit. Another 100 FSOs have requested to join the Facebook group since the impeachment proceedings began, the source told me, asking other group members to help them dust off their résumés or meet them for informational interviews.

“We’re worried about the effect this can have on recruitment, where people say, ‘Is this what could happen to me?’ ” says Rubin. “People think, ‘I could be subpoenaed, I could be ruined with legal bills, I could end up vilified on TV when all I did was my job.’”

This comes on top of American diplomats feeling like the Trump administration has been even more focused on controlling foreign policy than past administrations, pushing foreign service professionals to the side using a variety of methods. “The administration’s strategy is to isolate career people from the policymaking process as much as possible, and where that’s not possible, to stifle dissent through character assassination and to let that have a chilling effect,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out, adding, “God, it makes me want to vomit. Because what country are we talking about?”

In fact, recruitment has already fallen off dramatically. Ten years ago, in 2009, about 21,000 people took the test to join the American foreign service. Today, according to AFSA’s analysis of internal State Department data, that number is just over 9,000-- less than half. And that was before the impeachment inquiry began.

All of this has created alarming gaps all over the world. Trump was slow to fill diplomatic appointments, and with time a clear preference has emerged for “acting” secretaries and ambassadors who are accountable not to the Senate but to him. According to AFSA, 20 ambassadorships remain unfilled. One-third of foreign service jobs in overseas U.S. embassies and consulates sit empty. The work of filling those jobs has ground to a halt because of impeachment proceedings.

There’s a hope that, if Trump doesn’t win re-election, many of the departed foreign service officers will return to the State Department. Elizabeth Warren’s plan for restructuring the State Department includes a provision to lure back diplomats who have left or were pushed out during the Trump years. “The practical reality is it’s hard to bring people back,” says a senior foreign service officer. “There’s a reason they left; they’ve rebuilt their lives. Some proposals, including Warren’s, are not realistic.”

Meanwhile, China continues staffing up across the world, including in Africa, where the U.S. has an especially high number of unfilled jobs. According to Australia’s Lowy Institute, which issues an annual Diplomacy Index, China just surpassed the United States in diplomatic muscle. The United States, which for decades after World War II had the highest number of embassies and consulates, has been outpaced by a rising adversary.

American diplomatic strength, foreign service veterans say, is further undercut by the high number of political appointees Trump has named to ambassadorships. While many political appointees are quick studies and do a good job of representing American interests abroad-- career FSOs point to Kay Bailey Hutchison, Trump’s ambassador to NATO, as an example of excellence-- many others are woefully unprepared for the job. Unlike career foreign service officers who are often experts in the country in which they are stationed, political nominees are usually top campaign donors and lack the knowledge of either the country to which they’re posted or the diplomatic protocols on which host countries insist. One foreign service officer described a politically appointed ambassador inquiring about the difference between the NSA and CIA.

And yet Trump has appointed more political allies to ambassadorships than any other postwar president. According to AFSA, 52 percent of America’s ambassadors are political appointees. This is the highest proportion since AFSA started keeping count in 1960. The last time the number of politically appointed ambassadors was this high was Ronald Reagan’s second term, when the proportion of political ambassadors peaked at 37 percent. “We are concerned that the percentage of political appointees is the highest it’s ever been,” says Rubin, the AFSA president. “This really hurts us overseas to carry out the president’s policy and to defend national security interests.”

After all, these political appointees, who are often diplomatic novices, are usually facing off against highly trained, disciplined, professional diplomats from countries like Russia and China, which don’t have any politically appointed ambassadors. “China has only professional, not political appointees, and our ambassadors are not always taken seriously,” says one current foreign service official. “We are very often outmatched and outgunned and frequently outmaneuvered these days.”

The political appointees are also usually President Trump’s ideological allies, who see the deep state everywhere. Before Ambassador Johnson called [deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, Lewis] Lukens in and fired him, Lukens told me that embassy staffers had heard the ambassador tossing the term “deep state” around, questioning the patriotism of employees he didn’t feel were sufficiently loyal to the president. Lukens was already suspect because, in June 2017, when he was the acting ambassador (Trump still hadn’t named anyone for the job), a terror attack hit London: A man with a knife and a truck mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge, killing eight and injuring 48 more. Trump immediately lashed out at Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, and Lukens used the U.S. Embassy Twitter account to send a message of support to Londoners and their mayor in fairly mild diplomatic language. “I commend the strong leadership of the @MayorofLondon as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack,” Lukens wrote. Breitbart immediately spotted the tweet, and Lukens says he was subjected to several days of virtual abuse.

“There’s a higher level of mistrust from political ambassadors of career FSOs than I’ve ever seen in my life,” Lukens told me. “Many of Trump’s political ambassadors have an unfounded belief that government bureaucrats are overwhelmingly Democrats and liberals and working against Trump’s agenda, and that’s just not the case.”

It didn’t help that, when Trump attacked then prime minister Theresa May, Lukens also passed along a message to the White House from the highest levels of the British government. “The message was, ‘Can you guys cut it out?’ ” Lukens recalls. “The response from Washington was that, short of taking the president's phone away, we don’t really have anything we can do.”

More and more, American diplomats abroad find themselves cleaning up the fallout from the president’s tweets or off-the-cuff remarks. When Trump said he didn’t want any immigrants from “shithole countries,” several ambassadors in Africa were called in by their host countries’ foreign ministries and asked for an official explanation.

“We’re punching below our weight and not taken seriously,” says a senior foreign service officer. “We’re getting into squabbles with the host country, which is one thing if it’s Russia and China. It’s another if it’s our allies.”

Sharper Republicans Realize What's Headed Their Way-- And They Are Begging Us To Help Save Them.

A NY Fed study shows what anyone with any sense has long known, namely that Trump was full of shit last year when he claimed China would be paying for his trade war tariffs by cutting the prices on Chinese goods to absorb import taxes (as much as 25%) when the goods hit U.S. shores. That isn't the way trade wars go and "the prices Chinese firms charge have barely budged, meaning U.S. companies and consumers are paying the tariff costs, estimated at around $40 billion annually. As a result of the U.S.-China trade war, the government adds as much as 25% to the import price as Chinese goods enter the country. If Chinese companies were absorbing that cost, they would have to cut their prices as much as 20%-- a level that would allow U.S. retailers, manufacturers, or wholesalers to keep their own prices and profits stable. That is not what is happening. Import data from June 2018 to September 2019 shows Chinese import prices fell only 2%, the Fed study found, in line with price declines seen in many other nations as global trade slowed."

As with everything-- yes, every little thing-- Trump says, that was a lie. Yesterday, for example, CNN reported that Mulvaney's "Office of Management and Budget's first official action to withhold $250 million in Pentagon aid to Ukraine came on the evening of July 25, the same day President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone.

Tim Miller, writing for The Bulwark Tuesday, wanted to make sure his readers are aware that Trump’s Turkey Corruption Is Way Worse Than You Realize. Remember-- John Bolton said that he believes there's a "personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey"-- meaning that, at the very least, Trump's hand-picked national security advisor believes "the commander-in-chief made life or death national security decisions because of an active conflict of interest related to his business." That seems heavy, even for a (literate) Trump supporter, and Miller asserts it "would amount to the biggest scandal in the American presidency in half a century: The most senior security staffer, a man with unparalleled access to the president, believes that Trump acted in a way that is indistinguishable from double-dealing despots the world over."

One more Bulwark post, this one from yesterday by Laura Field on how the alt-right fringe because the mainstream of the GOP: Dear Republicans: Welcome to the New Establishment. "The Trumpists," she wrote, "became the GOP establishment the moment Trump won the nomination, or at least when he won the presidency. But it’s worth remembering that in the early days of the Trump era, anyone who supported Trump was decidedly fringe. His nomination happened in large part because everyone assumed the centripetal power of the establishment would hold. Throughout the 2016 primaries, the more mainstream Republican candidates tiptoed around Trump, believing that inevitably one of them would take the lead... Bannon, Gorka, and Miller are... the face of today’s conservatism and today’s Republican party."

So all this is going on and independent voters-- who will decide the 2020 elections-- are getting a sense of it. The latest CNN poll (yesterday) finds half the country (50-43%) says Trump should be impeached and removed. That's up from 37% in favor of impeachment and 59% against it at the end of April. 53% of us say he used his office improperly-- up from 48% in September-- and 56% say Trump’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate Biden's son Hunter was more for personal benefit than to root out corruption. Only 36% of voters are buying the bullshit about fighting corruption.

If Democrats turn out and take the lion's share of independent voters next year, Trump will be a one-termer. Dems do not need even one Republican, or, more likely, Trump will win a conservative or racist Democrat for every Republican he loses. That's fine. It doesn't matter. One Republican he'll never get its Max Boot's who's Washington Post column yesterday is more anti-Republican than most Democrats sound, and not just anti-Trump... anti-Republican. He wrote that "Republicans have turned their back on conservative principles to become a cult of personality for an aspiring authoritarian. All voters with a conscience should now turn their back on the Republican Party. For aiding and abetting the president’s egregious abuses of power, the Republican Party deserves to be destroyed from top to bottom. We need a center-right party in this country. What we have instead is a party with no fixed principles that is willing to do anything-- no matter how vile-- to serve its maximum leader, a.k.a. 'the chosen one.'"

Over at The Progressive yesterday, Bill Lueders tracked a few other #NeverTrump Republicans, George Will and Charlie Sykes. Lueders noted that Will wrote that "'aside from some rhetorical bleats, Republicans are acquiescing' as Trump makes public display of his 'gross and comprehensive incompetence.' He argues that if Trump continues to get away with insisting that 'the Constitution’s impeachment provisions are unconstitutional,' the instrument of impeachment will be rendered useless as a check on all future Presidents. There may also be a political price to pay, as Will notes in issuing a warning that to Democrats surely sounds like a dream: 'If Congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe-- losing the House, the Senate, and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and even Texas-- that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw. That conservatives like Will are at the forefront of opposition to Trump creates opportunities for alliances that were once unthinkable. MSNBC commentator Charlie Sykes, a conservative from Wisconsin, says in an interview for this editorial that Trump’s unfitness has the potential to unite the citizenry."

“I would like to think there’s a coalition of the decent out there who are just horrified by watching Donald Trump, by watching what he’s doing, but also what he’s doing to us,” Sykes says. “I would love to see the emergence of a coalition that would set aside ideological differences, at least temporarily, to deal with the current emergency.”

... He believes Trump “poses an existential threat to a lot of the democratic norms that we have right now, and I do think those cross party and ideological lines.”

To this end, Sykes argues, “progressives ought to be willing to make common cause with Republicans and conservatives who are willing to break with Trump. That’s not a surrender of principle. It doesn’t mean that we don’t disagree about things, but it means that at this particular moment in time, it’s more important to be allies than to dwell on what we disagree about. We can go back to debating the tax rates later, but if we want to get past this moment in history, there’s going to have to be this alliance that recognizes the unique emergency that the country faces.”

It’s an intriguing possibility. While Trump’s impeachment now appears certain, it will result in his removal from office only if twenty Republican Senators join Democrats in voting for it. This is unlikely, given the devotion that most Republicans have shown thus far, but it’s not impossible.

The impeachment inquiry has churned up massive new evidence of Trump’s shocking and illegal conduct, as career civil servants reveal the extent to which he has sought to use the power of the presidency to his personal political advantage.

...As Sykes frames it, the question for Republicans is how much more pure humiliation they are willing to take.

“What Republicans right now have to be asking is: Do they really want to support five more years of this? We’re talking about five more years of Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief. Five more years of defending and enabling Donald Trump, particularly as he becomes more and more untethered, more and more unhinged, more and more contemptuous of the truth and of the law.”

There can be little doubt that Republicans are driven largely by political self-interest, as are many Democrats. But that means some of them might still be persuaded to abandon Trump. Sykes, while “immensely disappointed at the degree to which [Republicans] have rationalized and enabled Donald Trump,” has not given up hope that they will turn against him. If a few Republicans do so, a few more will likely follow.

And progressives can be a part of this, as long as they can get beyond blaming their fellow citizens for having the bad judgment to support Trump and instead encourage them to honestly ask: “Do you really want to be part of this anymore?”

The answer, for a broad and growing swath of the American public, is no.

No, we do not want a President who constantly embarrasses us on the global stage.

No, we do not want a foul-mouthed bigot to be America’s face to the world.

No, we are not OK with separating children from their families and locking them in cages.

No, we don’t want a President who doesn’t know the name of his own Defense Secretary, refers to members of his party as “Rupublicans,” and thinks Colorado is on the Mexican border.

No, we will not normalize Donald Trump, his ignorance, his crudeness, his impulsiveness, his meanness of spirit, his contempt for the very notion of Constitutional checks and balances, his open corruption and gross incompetence.

Yet Republican politicians will never abandon Trump as long as they perceive that this will cost them politically. As of midautumn, nine in ten Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents opposed impeachment. But that may change.

To secure the deserved ouster of this President, we need to win over a critical mass of ordinary Trump supporters. That may happen just from the open Congressional debate over impeachment and the weight of daily mounting evidence as to the President’s criminality.

To date, the President’s every response to the possibility of impeachment underscores its necessity. He has set out to obstruct the process, even ordering public officials to refuse to testify about his misbehavior. It is getting clearer that anyone who stands with him stands in opposition to the rule of law.

In the end, there will be some Republicans who will support impeachment-- perhaps not enough to oust Trump from office but enough to more plausibly put the lie to the notion that the push for impeachment is a Democratic plot. There will be more defections of principled conservatives and constituencies that realize, however belatedly, that Trump has been conning them. And the majority of Americans who oppose this President will continue to grow.

What a delightful irony it would be if, in the end, this most determinedly divisive of Presidents ended up bringing the people of this country together.

Damage Control by Nancy Ohanian

How Badly Is Trump Treating Rural America?

It surprised me to see Trump's coalition in the Midwest falling apart. In the most recent Morning Consult state-by-state Trump tracker, it doesn't look like rural America will be coming to his rescue in 2020. His net approval in state after state he won in 2016 in underwater:

• Iowa- minus 14
• Wisconsin- minus 11
• Michigan- minus 10
• Ohio- minus 5
• Nebraska- minus 2

And even in the states he's still ahead in, his numbers have collapsed. Indiana is just +2. North Dakota and South Dakota, states Trump took in landslides in 2016, are each +1. Kansas is +4 and Missouri is his only safe seat in the region: +5. Trump's numbers in Iowa are seriously endangering freshman Senator Joni Ernst. Michael Franken is the non-Schumer candidate for Ernst's seat. This morning he told me that "The ample amounts of unsold ethanol in storage, the lag in recovering in the China marketplace, and the contracts already let for this year's crop will offer no salvation to Midwest farmers if Trump and Xi cut a deal. A promise of better markets next year won't help Ernst since her Iowa farmers have been betrayed before, repeatedly."

And J.D. Scholten is running for the last Iowa House seat occupied by a Republican-- and in this case, that Republican is neo-fascist lunatic Steve King who even the GOP was so disgusted by that they kicked him off the Agriculture Committee-- which is exactly where J.D. will be serving once he wins the seat next year. "IA-04," he said this morning, "is the 2nd most ag-producing district in America. Farmers are being hit with a trade war that has cost this district $558 million alone. Also, this administration’s abuse of the Renewable Fuel Standard which is directly depressing corn prices, closed or idled plants and lost good rural jobs. All the while, Ag monopolies are squeezing farmers on both the input and output sides. Farmers are looking for solutions, giving Democrats a huge opportunity in November 2020 but we have to go out there and earn it."

Last week, the Council on Foreign Relations published a blog post by Benn Steil and Ben Della Rocca, China’s “Massive” Trade Offer Leaves U.S. Farmers $7 Billion Worse Off. Does Trump know what the word "massive means? He's been "talking up the “massive” trade deal he expects to sign with President Xi in November," wrote Steil and Della Rocca. 'China,' he said, will soon be 'buying much more farm products than anybody thought possible.' But is this true?" Trump said it, so you would be pretty safe betting the farm that it isn't true; after all, virtually nothing he ever says is.

The latest news from China indicates that it will “aim” to buy $20 billion in U.S. farm goods in the first year of an initial deal. It also says that such purchases “could” eventually rise as high as $40-50 billion. Trump is hailing the latter suggestion as an “incredible deal for farmers,” though he fails to note that the numbers have no empirical or analytical basis and are premised on his repealing all his punitive tariffs-- that is, ending the trade war.

So is the U.S. now really “winning,” as Trump likes to say?

Let us focus first on what China actually has on the table: an offer to buy $20 billion in ag goods in return for Trump killing his planned October tariff increase, from 25% to 30%, on $250 billion in imports, as well as abandoning new 15% tariffs on a further $112 billion in imports scheduled for December. Is this a good deal?

The right way to evaluate China’s offer is to ask how much U.S. farmers would have exported to China in 2020 had Trump never started his trade war. In the graphic above, the dotted blue line projects such sales by assuming that, after 2017, China’s purchase volumes of each type of agricultural good would, absent Trump’s trade war, have continued growing at the rates seen since 2010. As the yellow marker highlights, China’s 2020 purchases would have exceeded $27 billion. That is, China would have bought over $7 billion more than what it is now offering. And this is a conservative estimate, given that the projections assume prices stay fixed at last year’s trade-war-depressed levels.

As regards China’s tease that a complete end to the trade war could push its U.S. ag purchases up to $40-50 billion, this is wholly implausible. As the dashed line above shows, Chinese ag imports before the trade war had barely been on pace to reach $30 billion by 2022.

In short, if Trump accepts what he is calling a “massive” deal with China, he will actually be leaving American farmers at least $7 billion worse off than they would have been without his policies. As for China’s hints of a far-off bonanza for U.S. farmers, these should be taken with a grain of soybean.

Trump Is Stealing Taxpayer Money For His Personal Priorities

Without consulting Congress, Trump started a disastrous trade war with China that has, for example, destroyed the American soy bean sector-- likely forever. The economies of rural counties across the country are already in recession. Dairy farms, corn farmers, wheat farmers... are all suffering from Trump's policies as well. Last month, the Nebraska Corn Board and the Nebraska Corn Growers Association sent out a scorching press release-- and it was Trump who got scorched. Trump did very well in Nebraska in 2016. He won 91 of Nebraska's 93 counties and beat Hillary 495,961 (58.75%) to 284,494 (33.70%). It was even better for Trump in the most rural counties. The massive 3rd congressional district takes up over three quarters of the state and is bigger than New York state.-- and it's 86% rural. Trump won NE-03 with 74.9% of the vote, one of his biggest wins anywhere in the country. Those corn farmers bought into the Times Square hustler hook line and sinker. "As harvest approaches after an extremely difficult year for agriculture," wrote the Nebraska Corn Board team, "many Nebraska corn farmers are outraged by the Trump administration’s lack of support for the American farmer. The Nebraska Corn Board and the Nebraska Corn Growers Association call upon the administration to fulfill its promises..." NE-03 isn't going to abandon Trump in 2020. He'll win that district and ridiculous closet case Adrian Smith (R) will be reelected to Congress. But NE-01 is probably lost to the GOP and NE-02 is teetering."

Trump's subsidies-- $16 billion-- will mostly make already wealthy farming operations even wealthier. Struggling family farms will get very little. And the geriatric and less-than-capable House leadership has done nothing about it but rubber-stamp Trump's outrageous behavior. House Democrats were frightened off my Kevin McCarthy's (and other Republicans') tweet storms.

Pelosi and Hoyer and their lame, incompetent team, are falling into the same trap with the Defense Budget. They funded billions of dollars in military projects, only to see the Pentagon illegally hand that money over to Trump's vanity wall project-- and then blame congressional Democrats for not funding "essential projects." Pelosi (79) and Hoyer (80) are too old and tired to fight back effectively. The military has wasted millions of dollars at luxurious Trump properties and the House Democrats do nothing about it but whine.

Yesterday, Aaron Gregg and Eric Werner of the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is already screaming about dire outcomes if Congress doesn't fund the same projects that it already funded! "The Pentagon warned of dire outcomes unless Congress paid for urgently needed military construction projects nationwide-- the same projects that have now been canceled to fund President Trump’s border wall. The warnings are contained in Defense Department budget requests sent to lawmakers in recent years. They include potentially hazardous living conditions for troops and their families, as well as unsafe schools that would impede learning. In numerous cases, the Defense Department warned that lives would be put at risk if buildings don’t meet the military’s standards for fire safety or management of explosives."

Michael Franken is a progressive Democrat running for the Democratic nomination to take on reactionary Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa. She's just another Trump enabler. Franken is far from that. When I asked him how he plans to deal with this kind systemic GOP corruption, he shot back the need for Congress to "Vow and follow through with axing other projects dear to the prez and freeze EVERY political appointment... starve him of every luminary and personnel confirmation across all the exec branch. Then, never go in recess... and starve his party members from significant time at their respective home states."

Teresa Tomlinson, the former mayor of Macon and progressive Democratic running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Georgia is also eager to deal with this kind of a situation enabled by Trump rubber stamps like David Perdue, her opponent. "The money spent that lines Trump’s pocket can be identified through an equitable accounting by Congress and a Disgorgment process," she said. "Money shifted through budget adjustment has to be challenged in the courts or altered by legislative process."

Trump's Agenda-- And Personal Insecurities-- Are Hammering Rural Voters From Every Angle

Jason Butler is the newest candidate Blue America has endorsed. He's running for a North Carolina seat (NC-02) that is about half suburban and half rural. The incumbent, George Holding, is just a good-for-nothing corporate shill and Trump rubber-stamp and enabler. Butler was fuming the other day because Holding had voted against HR 265, this year's Agricultural and Rural Development Appropriations Act. The Act includes:

• Appropriates $1.3 billion to the Agricultural Research Service for salaries and expenses (Title I).
• $2.8 billion for guaranteed farm ownership loans
• $1.5 billion for farm ownership direct loans
• $1.9 billion for unsubsidized guaranteed operating loans
• $1.5 billion for direct operation loans
• $37.7 million for emergency loans

"Trump," said Butler, "doesn’t seem to understand that he’s not on a television show any more-- this is a real life reality show and he’s killing the American farmer with his reckless ego competition with the Chinese. That’s because he’s completely out of touch with the reality of hard working Americans. He’s lived in a penthouse his whole life. His local minion, George Holding, is no different. Holding recently voted against that Agriculture and Rural Development legislation which allocates desperately needed funds to agencies which directly assist our American farmers. Half of Holding’s district is rural farming communities. It seems these two won’t stop at anything until all the wealth in America belongs to the rich."

The Nebraska Corn Board and the Nebraska Corn Growers Association sent out a scorching press release this week-- and it was Trump who got scorched. Trump did very well in Nebraska in 2016. He won 91 of Nebraska's 93 counties and beat Hillary 495,961 (58.75%) to 284,494 (33.70%). It was even better for Trump in the most rural counties. The massive 3rd congressional district takes up over three quarters of the state and is bigger than New York state. It is 86% rural. Trump won NE-03 with 74.9% of the vote, one of his biggest wins anywhere in the country. Those corn farmers bought into the Times Square hustler hook line and sinker. "As harvest approaches after an extremely difficult year for agriculture," wrote the Nebraska Corn Board team, "many Nebraska corn farmers are outraged by the Trump administration’s lack of support for the American farmer. The Nebraska Corn Board and the Nebraska Corn Growers Association call upon the administration to fulfill its promises and to abide by the law and uphold the integrity of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)." NE-03 isn't going to abandon Trump in 2020. He'll win that district and ridiculous closet queen Adrian Smith (R) will be reelected to Congress. But NE-01 is probably lost to Trump and NE-02 is teetering.

President Trump’s administration continues to erode the RFS by granting 31 unjustified refinery waivers, destroying demand for corn and ultimately choosing to bail out the oil industry rather than helping American farmers. Corn farmers are already suffering from ongoing trade disputes, uncertain weather and continued low prices.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said David Bruntz, chairman of the Nebraska Corn Board and farmer from Friend. “All we’re getting is lip service. At one moment, we think President Trump is on our side, and then the refinery waivers come through. It’s truly a slap in the face. Farmers are hurting and it just keeps getting worse.”

Along with undermining the RFS, the U.S. has made little progress in trade. A new deal between the U.S., Mexico and Canada still has not been reached and tensions continue to escalate between the U.S. and China.

“Many of our corn farmers have stood with Trump for a long time, but that may soon change” said Dan Nerud, president of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association and farmer from Dorchester. “Trump needs to uphold the law and his commitment to our nation’s corn farmers by making the RFS whole and bringing trade agreements to the finish line.”

Nebraska Corn urges you to stand up for our state’s corn and ethanol industries by telling the Trump administration to stop stripping the RFS. Rural America is under attack and now is the time to act.

One of the few congressional districts as Trumpified as NE-03 is the equally rural south east Missouri district occupied by-- what a coincidence-- another closet case, Jason Smith. Progressive activist Kathy Ellis is taking him on this cycle and this morning she told me that "In the past year, Missouri has seen a 96% increase in farm bankruptcies. Our local economy is suffering in the 8th District, and while Jason Smith visits farmers and takes pictures on his 'farm tour,' he isn't working towards any real, sustainable solutions for our agricultural economy. Perhaps Rep. Smith could have less photo opps and instead ask farmers what they'd like to see change in the district. They know best, and Smith has continually ignored them to instead be a rubber stamp for Trump's damaging policies."

J.D. Scholten is running in the Iowa equivalent on NE-03, Steve King's beleaguered IA-04. The district is 75% rural and gave Trump a 60.9% to 33.5% win over Hillary. Last year, though, rural communities were beginning to catch on. J.D. made a persuasive, progressive case against Trump and King and-- with no help from the DCCC whatsoever-- came close to winning, holding King down to just 50.4% of the vote. Of the 39 counties in the district, J.D, won 5 and fought King to a tie in 5 others. J.D. won the first, second, third and fifth most populated counties: Story, Woodbury, Cerro Gordo and Webster and came within a tiny handful of voters in some of the most rural farming counties in the state, like Buena Vista, Hamilton, Winnebago, Greene, Emmet and Audubon. The soy bean farmers in these counties know Trump has destroyed the soy bean market forever and that it's never coming back. They voted for Trump and he ruined their lives.

J.D. told us that "King has left behind the renewable fuel folks for years. It didn’t shock anyone when he endorsed one of the biggest anti-ethanol folks in D.C., Ted Cruz, for president in 2016. The corn growers and the renewable fuels industry are looking for solutions and leaders. If we are going to get carbon-neutral or decarbon, renewable fuels are a part of that equation. But instead, Trump’s EPA is rewarding oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron with RFS waivers, saving them hundreds of millions of dollars while corn growers and folks who work in the renewable fuels industry are struggling just to get by. Trump and his cronies like King will keep lining the wallets of the oil industry at the expense of our farmers."


Audrey Denney's opponent is Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa in the northeast corner of California, one of the most rural districts in the state. Today she told us that "the Trump Administration policies are directly hurting farmers all over the country. According to the American Farm Bureau, farm bankruptcy filings for 2019 through June were up 13 percent from 2018 and loan delinquency rates are on the rise. North State farmers are asking for trade policies that expand markets and immigration reform that helps them get the labor they need. Congressman LaMalfa-- a farmer himself-- has failed to be an advocate for the industry he represents. I’ve worked in agriculture education my entire career and can’t wait to fight for North State farmers and ranchers when they send me to DC."

But rural support for Trump isn't just about soybeans and corn. In his Washington Post column yesterday, Michael Gerson wrote about why white evangelicals should panic. "Much white evangelical support for President Trump," he wrote, "is based on a bargain or transaction: political loyalty (and political cover for the president’s moral flaws) in return for protection from a hostile culture. Many evangelicals are fearful that courts and government regulators will increasingly treat their moral and religious convictions as varieties of bigotry. And that this will undermine the ability of religious institutions to maintain their identities and do their work. Such alarm is embedded within a larger anxiety about lost social standing that makes Trump’s promise of a return to greatness appealing... But this is not, by any reasonable measure, the largest problem evangelicals face. It is, instead, the massive sell-off of evangelicalism among the young. About 26 percent of Americans 65 and older identify as white evangelical Protestants. Among those ages 18 to 29, the figure is 8 percent. Why this demographic abyss does not cause greater panic-- panic concerning the existence of evangelicalism as a major force in the United States-- is a mystery and a scandal. With their focus on repeal of the Johnson Amendment and the right to say 'Merry Christmas,' some evangelical leaders are tidying up the kitchen while the house burns down around them."

Gerson further explains that there is, ironically, an allergic reaction to the religious right. One of the main rationales for the very existence of this movement was to assert the role of religion in the public square in America. And, instead, what’s happening in that very movement has actually driven an increasing share of Americans out of religion. This alienation preceded the current president, but it has intensified during the Trump era.

If evangelicals were to consult their past, they would find that their times of greatest positive influence-- in late-18th-century and early-19th-century Britain, or mid-19th-century America-- came when they were truest to their religious calling. It was not when they acted like another political interest group. The advocates of abolition, prison reform, humane treatment of the mentally disabled and women’s rights were known as malcontents in the cause of human dignity.

Today, far too many evangelicals are seen as angry and culturally defensive, and have tied their cause to a leader who is morally corrupt and dehumanizes others. Older evangelicals-- the very people who should be maintaining and modeling moral standards-- have ignored and compromised those standards for political reasons in plain view of their own children. And disillusionment is the natural result.

A Raving Lunatic Is Doing Something Terrible To Our Country

He says he's "The Chosen One" and maybe he is-- but not God's Chosen One, Putin's and Franklin Graham's

Immediately after Trump occupied the White House Elizabeth Mica warned that "What we know about malignant narcissists is that they psychologically decompensate once they achieve the ultimate position of power. They worsen in every possible way: become more grandiose and paranoid, more aggressive and demanding, and progressively less in touch with reality (and Trump has never been fully in touch with it). We can expect his narcissistic rage to intensify in proportion to his increasing grandiosity and paranoia. His handlers will have to resort to increasingly more “creative” ways to placate and subdue him-- and it will work, for a while, until it doesn’t. There’ll be blood, symbolic, if not literal, as he’ll fire and destroy his previously 'trusted' associates, maybe even in rapid succession and without any rhyme or reason."

She continued that "His demands for adulation will also become increasingly intense and bizarre, and we’ll be witnessing idiotic and quite possibly dangerous displays of his 'superiority' and might, likely military as well. This is where the possibility of him starting a war or two just to satisfy his ego becomes quite real. It’s not only that he will never get better, but it is certain that he will get worse. There has never been a case of a malignant narcissist in power whose pathology improved, or even remained stable: they always deteriorate, and often rapidly, as they become drunk on (what they see as) now unlimited power and adulation."

Lance Dodes is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He was a guest on Lawrence O'Donnell's show a month after Elizabeth Mica's post. At the time, psychologist John Gartner said "If we could construct a psychiatric Frankenstein monster, we could not create a leader more dangerous mentally ill than Donald Trump. He's a paranoid psychopathic narcissist who's divorced from reality and lashes out impulsively at imagined enemies." Dodes responded that Trump "lies because because of his sociopathic tendencies that Dr. Gartner was talking about. He lies in the way that anyone who scams people does. He's trying to sell an idea or a product by telling you something that's untrue. There's also a kind of lying that he has that is, in a way more serious, that he has a loose grip on reality."

This week O'Donnell had Dodes back for another look at how things have been going for Putin's pick for the presidency of the United States. He said Trump's mental illness has gotten worse since he's occupied the White House. Watch the video... if you dare:





Trump, he explained, can't stand challenges. "It was predictable once he got into a position where people would challenge him-- there are two parties-- he would become more unhinged... The more you challenge him, the more unhinged he becomes, there paranoid and the more violent, potentially."

In his New York Magazine column yesterday, Jonathan Chair noted that the main reason Trump is melting down is because China won't give in to him on trade. (Denmark is still refusing to sell him Greenland and China is responding to his latest onslaught of tariffs against them with more of their own; that's how a trade war works. In response, the U.S. stock market crashed yesterday, the Dow sinking 522.70 points.)

Trump is in the midst of a public meltdown that is humiliating, scary, and banana republic–y even by Trumpy standards. The reason is that Trump started a trade war and China refuses to back down, having announced this morning that it is imposing retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods.

Trump has picked fights with lots of countries. Usually they either placate him or try to give him a face-saving way of de-escalating (e.g., Mexico, which is never going to pay for the wall but doesn’t talk about the fact that it’s never going to pay for the wall anymore). Sometimes they get Trump to fold by stroking his ego (the North Koreans have carried out the most over-the-top version of this tactic).

China is playing it differently. Trump is pressuring China with tariff threats, on the theory that China, which is more export-dependent than the U.S., has more to lose from a trade war. China, apparently, calculates that it is Trump who has more to lose from a trade war, since he is facing reelection next year and Chinese president Xi Jinping is facing reelection … never. What’s more, China has little incentive to cough up permanent concessions in its trade relations with the U.S., given that there’s a better-than-even chance Trump will lose and it can just wait for the next president.

This has provoked one of Trump’s wilder public tantrums. First, he has lashed out at Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell, who has become Trump’s scapegoat for bad economic news despite the fact that it was Trump who appointed him to the job. (“Trump installed a Fed chair who is singlehandedly destroying the economy” sounds like an attack on Trump, but oddly enough it is Trump’s own argument.)

Trump wants Powell to aggressively, quickly, and smoothly reduce interest rates to mitigate the economic harm Trump is inflicting on the economy. As Powell has pointed out, this is hard. “Because the most important effects of monetary policy are felt with uncertain lags of a year or more, the committee must attempt to look through what may be passing developments and focus on things that seem likely to affect the outlook over time or that pose a material risk of doing so,” the Fed chairman said today. “But fitting trade-policy uncertainty into this framework is a new challenge.”

Translation: Monetary policy is always hard, but it’s really hard when the president is erratic.

Trump has accordingly added Powell to his list of Enemies of the People. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?,” he tweeted, a message that is unlikely to calm the waters.

Trump followed up that crazy tweet with a series of even crazier tweets, in which he ordered American firms to “immediately start looking for an alternative to China.”

He added a “hereby” to the order, giving it the ring of a presidential decree. Trump does not actually have the power to unilaterally order private firms to redesign their global business models at the drop of a hat just because he is mad online.

The stock market has indicated that businesses have not exactly been enjoying Trump’s anti-China bluster, but their panic has been bounded by the expectation that he will ultimately back down, as he has in his other international confrontations. Surely Trump won’t escalate the trade war to the point where he tips his own economy into recession, right?

The normal rule is that presidents who run for reelection in the midst of a recession lose. Trump may not believe the normal rule applies to him. The Washington Post reported that Trump has been briefed on the ominous economic news but “has told aides that he thinks he can convince Americans that the economy is vibrant and unrattled through a public messaging campaign.” Maybe he thinks his propaganda apparatus can convince voters the economy is good even if it’s bad?

If Trump does believe this, then he might actually continue escalating his trade war with China-- not just with fake presidential decrees but with continued tariff increases. And maybe the assumption by business that this will all somehow end without too much collateral damage might turn out to be misplaced.

Foreign Correspondent: Trade War With China Is Not Going So Well For Trump

China has evolved from producing food and toys to creating sophisticated AI machinery and 5G phone networks. Here a Chinese chocolate factory. Photo: Reese Erlich

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

China is coming after us! Time to steel ourselves for battle against the human-rights-violating, currency-manipulating, job-grabbing, intellectual-property-stealing, missile-launching evil doers. Or so Washington, D.C. would like us to believe.

Washington’s list of grievances is long, but they all boil down to this: China unfairly competes with the United States economically and poses an increasingly dangerous military threat. We have to stop them before the danger gets worse.

That’s the cover story. In reality, Washington is angry that China has rapidly advanced to become the world’s second-largest economic power. Capitalist ideology tells us that a socialist country led by a Communist Party is inefficient, lacks initiative, and only produces poverty. So when reality conflicts with ideology, well, reality must be wrong.

China can be criticized for many things, including its human rights record, burgeoning class divisions, and corruption. But China has flourished economically despite having to function under world trade rules set up to benefit the United States and its allies.

For the past year, the Trump Administration has, with grudging acceptance by high-level Democrats and Republicans, intensified economic warfare against China. As I predicted a year ago, the war hasn’t gone so well for the United States. In spite of tremendous Trumpian pressure, China hasn’t backed down.

In fact, Trump’s trade war has destabilized the US economy and led to a 5.5% drop in gross private domestic investment, according to David Kotz, economics professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an old friend.

“A trade war creates uncertainty so big business owners sit on their hands and don’t invest,” Kotz tells me. “If the economy continues on the current path, I think a recession is likely.”

Trade war begins

Last July, the Trump Administration announced plans to unilaterally impose 25% tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports, which may present a breach of World Trade Organization rules. (Reese’s Golden Rule: if China started the trade war with unilateral tariffs on U.S. products, wouldn’t that be against the rules?) But hey, when has illegality ever stopped Trump? The tariffs have raised prices in the United States as corporations passed some of their increased costs along to consumers.

In addition, Washington stopped some US companies from doing business with Chinese companies, declared phone company Huawei to be a national security risk, stopped giving visas to some Chinese graduate students, and pressured US universities to close Chinese government-funded programs teaching Mandarin and promoting Chinese culture.

China retaliated by imposing tariffs on US agriculture and other products, causing huge economic disruption to sectors of the US economy. The tariffs haven’t brought manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Corporations like Apple are looking to shift production to Vietnam and other developing countries.

Earlier this month, the Trump Administration upped the ante by threatening to impose 10% tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports, some $300 billion annually. In reaction, world stock markets plunged and China devalued its currency. The devaluation allows China to sell more goods abroad and undercut the impact of US tariffs.

Winner?

So who’s winning the trade war? The tariffs on China haven’t produced US jobs, but they have helped increase the US trade deficit. China’s economic growth has slowed. Chinese consumer spending is down. Some US corporations have moved out of China. The drop in China’s currency makes it much more expensive to pay back loans made in dollars.

“Both sides are hurting from the trade war,” says economist Kotz. “But so far, China has only agreed to things that don’t affect its core economic programs.”

China is willing to negotiate new trade agreements if they are fair to both sides, says pro-Beijing internet blogger Nathan Rich. However, he says, “if China views the treaties as forced or particularly unfair, it will not sign them.”





Significant business sectors continue to get mad at Trump, including agribusiness and companies in the industrial Midwest. David French, a senior vice president at the National Retail Federation, offers this prediction: “The tariffs will cause job losses and higher prices for everybody, but especially [Trump’s] base.”

Military threat exaggerated

Ordinary Americans don’t get too worked up over arcane tariff rules, so Washington hopes to spread fear by portraying China as a major military threat. President Barack Obama tried to “pivot to Asia,” which included beefing up the U.S. military presence near China. Now Trump’s White House continues the propaganda, criticizing China’s presence in the South China Sea and its development of ground based missiles.

Such fear-mongering always omits a few relevant details. China has only one military base outside its own territory. The United States has more than 800. China has 290 nuclear warheads, the United States has 6,185. China has pledged no first use of nuclear weapons; the United States has not. China’s military buildup is concentrated near its own borders; America’s is worldwide.

China is far weaker than the United States militarily, and that’s not likely to change for decades. However, China does pose a threat to those in Washington’s ruling elite who seek to impose their economic and military might on the world.



*****


I met Sheikh Mohammed al-Habib in eastern Saudi Arabia back in 2013 while covering Arab Spring demonstrations there. He was exactly the kind of centrist religious and political leader that Washington claims to support. As a Shia Muslim he advocated allying with Sunnis; he called for reform within the monarchy, not its overthrow; and he advocated nonviolence.

So what did the religious dictatorship of Saudi Arabia do? They arrested him in 2016, subjected him to torture, convicted him on trumped up charges and sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Mohammad bin Salman, the supposedly liberal Saudi leader, has carried out arrests, torture and murder of opposition activists. On August 25, Sheik al-Habib is scheduled to face a new judicial proceeding for supporting peaceful protests.

The State Department acknowledged Sheik al-Habib’s case in its International Religious Freedom Report, but has done little to actually get him released. This month the White House threatened the Swedish government if it didn’t release American rapper A$AP Rocky, who was accused of assault in Stockholm. The State Department should do no less for Saudi political prisoners.