President Trump has been facing a self-inflicted humanitarian crisis this week, as he deals with the massive public backlash to his administration’s decision to separate migrant children from their parents.

But despite that ongoing ordeal — one which appears to be far from over — The Donald still managed to find some time this week to fight to save his favorite shady foreign telecommunications company.

On Monday, the Senate passed its annual defense authorization bill by a bipartisan vote of 85-10. Included in the legislation was a provision that would ban Chinese telecom company ZTE from doing business in the United States. If enacted, that provision would reverse a controversial deal Team Trump made to save the company.

And Trump isn’t happy about the Senate's big move. On Wednesday, he met with key Republican lawmakers and urged them “not to scuttle his administration’s efforts” on ZTE. While no conclusion came out of the meeting, several Members of Congress in attendance told the New York Times that they hope a compromise between the White House and Capitol Hill will be reached.

In case you are just tuning in to this particular plotline of The Trump Show, here’s how we got here.

The Trump administration today announced a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, which it has identified as having profited from intellectual property (IP) theft.

This has been an expensive problem for years. The Obama administration went to work on it; President Obama and President Xi Jinping agreed in 2015 that “their governments would refrain from computer-enabled theft of intellectual property for commercial gain,” a year after it indicted Chinese military officers for engaging in industrial espionage against American companies.

With all due respect to that administration, it hasn’t worked. Chinese-sanctioned cyber-theft, either by hacking or of the "legal" variety – when foreign firms that want Chinese market access are forced to partner with a domestic company and share IP, for example – continues.

In comes the Trump administration, making good on a tariff threat it had telegraphed for months.

While that threat has been clear, Trump’s wider approach to his China trade policy has been muddy. Many observers focus on the erstwhile steak salesman’s preference for unilateralism, but what’s more concerning is his willing confluence of trade and security.

And it’s hard to say what we’re getting out of it. Remember a couple of weeks ago? When Trump went out of his way to bail out a Chinese telecom giant his administration had just banned from purchasing American technology? A telecom giant that repeatedly broke U.S. law and is considered by the American intelligence community to be a passthrough for China’s spies? That was an enormous bone thrown to President Xi (still around, now probably president for life) and it hasn’t resulted in anything useful – and increased soybean exports don’t count.

"The more robots we add to our fulfillment centers, the more jobs we are creating." —Tye Brady, Amazon's Chief Technologist 

That's just one outlandish example of the job-related hyperbole we've been subjected to. We keep hearing about the low unemployment rate and the "booming" economy. "Economic news has been staggeringly good," said Jared Whitley, associate director in the White House under George W. Bush. More hype comes from CNN Money, which talks about "opportunities for almost everyone"; and the windy Wall Street Journal, which claims that "Americans traditionally left behind...are reaping the benefits.." 

The super-capitalists want us to believe that they know what they're talking about. Part of their strategy, based on a neoliberal disdain for any government efforts to provide opportunities for average people, is to perpetuate the myth, as Milton Friedman said, that "the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people." Part of this myth is a job for everyone, or "full employment," which many economists believe we have attained with an unemployment rate under 4 percent. 

But "jobs for all" is a fantasy, if we're talking about family-sustaining, living-wage jobs, as we should. The facts make that clear.

Imagine yourself sitting in a corporate chief executive suite. You run a Fortune 500 corporation, and you’re facing the biggest decision of your career. Lawmakers have just enacted the largest corporate tax cut in world history. Hundreds of millions of unexpected dollars, maybe billions, will soon be pouring into your corporate coffers.

The immediate question for you, the CEO: What are you going to do with this incredible windfall?

You have options, plenty of options. You can invest your golden windfall in new plants and equipment. You can put money into R&D and create exciting new products. You can retrain your workers and reward them — with higher pay — for their increased productivity.

All reasonable choices. Which would you pick? Or would you choose some combination of all three?

In real life, America’s top corporate executives are facing exactly this same set of choices. And they’re picking . . . none of the above!

These execs are choosing instead to devote a huge chunk of their windfall to “stock buybacks.” Instead of investing in their corporate long-range future, they’re shelling out billions buying back shares of their own stock on the open market.

The internet is simultaneously laughing and crying at a new ad campaign by Domino’s offering to fix potholes that “cause irreversible damage to your pizza during the drive home.” That’s right. The pizza chain is literally partnering with townsto fill potholes in exchange for spray-painting their logo on the fresh pavement.

But actually, it’s not that far off from Trump’s infrastructure plan. Just like the president’s proposed corporate giveaway, it’s a photo-op meant to capitalize off of America’s crumbling roads, water pipes, schools, and other physical assets. It’s a sick joke made at the expense of children in Flint, Michigan, and all the people that rely on aging roads and transit to get to work.

Behind the flashy messaging around “rebuilding America,” Trump’s plan — which luckily has stalled thus far in Congress — encourages state and local governments to turn over America’s assets to Wall Street and global corporations. Like in many so-called “public-private partnerships,” private investors would then seek to extract high profits by charging tolls, taxes, and other user fees that would fall disproportionately on working and middle class families.

No wonder the private equity firm Blackstone has partnered with Saudi Arabia to invest $40 billion in privatized American infrastructure. There’s a lot of money to be made if the plan goes through.

That Domino’s is able to joke about our infrastructure crisis is a disturbing sign of the times. Governments at all levels have cut taxes so deeply for corporations and the wealthy in recent years that the rich are the only ones that seem able to afford building and fixing things. We’re in dangerous territory, especially with the recently passed Trump tax cuts. Even conservative hero, the 18th century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, argued that infrastructure shouldn’t be privatized: the government has the “duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain.”

If Domino’s really cares about the state of America’s roads, which its delivery drivers rely on, then they should start paying up.

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Reposted from Medium