Allied Approaches Archive (Page 7)

A new study released Tuesday shows just how insidious the Trump administration’s proposal to change the way the federal government measures poverty actually is. In short: millions could lose health and food benefits.

By way of background, in May, Trump’s budget agency sought public comment on updating the inflation rate used by the Census Bureau to determine the poverty line and estimate who’s poor. This technical change matters a lot because the federal poverty line is used to determine who’s eligible for government benefits like Medicaid, food stamps, and other assistance programs.

The administration floated a lot of options to replace what’s known as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is what the government currently uses to estimate the federal poverty line. But given the administration’s desire to slash benefits, as made clear over the years in proposed budgets and bills, it is likely to use a measurement that would redefine poverty in a way that cuts federal assistance to millions of low-income Americans.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analyzed the effects of one optionthe administration is likely leaning towards: “chained CPI” (or C-CPI), which was also used in the GOP tax bill passed in 2017. Chained CPI usually grows slower than traditional CPI, which means a lot of low-income people would be at risk of losing aid if the administration moves forward with this option.

The CBPP estimated that by the 10th year of calculating the poverty line using chained CPI, millions of people — including pregnant women and children — would become ineligible for or receive less help from various government programs.

You don’t need to be a civil engineer to notice that America’s infrastructure is one big hot mess. Our roads have potholes that rock your car so violently, it feels as if you’re off-roading on the moon; our bridges are so rusty, you risk getting tetanus just by looking at them; and driving through our tunnels, especially if you’ve ever traversed any of New York City’s underwater roadways, is an act of faith.

It’s a no-brainer that we need to do something about the sad state of our infrastructure. More robust infrastructure investment is the first logical step, and it carries the overwhelming potential to create jobs that are directly and indirectly related to these projects.

But how do we maximize those job-generating benefits? Tougher Buy America (not to be confused with Buy American) provisions in infrastructure spending legislation, which likely voters from both parties strongly support, are one way. A more permanent, systemic solution—coupled with Buy America provisions—is slashing the manufacturing trade deficit by two-thirds, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

Josh Bivens, EPI research director and the report’s author, found:

“The number of direct and indirect jobs supported by an increase in economywide spending depends in part on how much of this spending goes to purchase imports rather than domestically produced goods and services. In the case of infrastructure investments specifically, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs supported depends on the share of purchased manufacturing inputs that is produced domestically as opposed to being imported from abroad.”

The Trump administration’s own data reveal coal isn’t coming back.

Coal consumption in the United States is being blown away by wind, according to new analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). And Trump’s trade war may be starting to worsen coal’s downward spiral.

The EIA projected on Tuesday that coal production will hit a four-decade low in 2019 and drop again in 2020. At the same time, renewable energy generation will soar over the next two years, led by wind power.

In fact, the EIA projects that “annual generation from wind will surpass hydropower generation for the first time in 2019.” In 2020, wind will expand its role as the leading source of U.S. renewable power.

Despite telling West Virginians last August, “The coal industry is back,” President Donald Trump has presided over a faster rate of coal plant retirements in his first two years than President Barack Obama saw in his entire first term.

The administration has no answer to the economic reality that coal power plants have simply become increasingly unprofitable in the face of cheap fracked gas and the rapidly declining costs for wind, solar, battery storage, and energy efficiency.

The EIA projects that coal production will drop more 7% in 2019, and nearly 8% in 2020 — a result of more coal plants being shut down and renewable generation soaring.

On top of that, coal exports, which had briefly surged last year, have since dropped nearly 13% for the first four months of this year compared to last year. The EIA projects coal exports will ultimately drop 15% overall this year and keep dropping in 2020.

Earlier this month was World Environment Day, a global United Nations event defined as the “’people’s day’ for doing something to take care of the Earth.”

There’s a host nation each year for the event — this year it’s China, LOL — but also Dave Matthews is a celebrity ambassador, so it’s pretty legit.

In any case, the Alliance for American Manufacturing has long held that American companies and workers have a role to play in reducing carbon emissions and improving the environment. Many already are leading the way, from individual companies like Aardvark Straws, which is helping Americans ditch harmful plastic straws, to the 1,200 U.S. factories and 288,000 American workers who are building clean, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Then there’s steel company ArcelorMittal, which recently unveiled its Climate Action Report, the company’s game plan for cutting its global emissions in line with targets adopted by world leaders in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest producer of steel, and it has an extensive presence in the United States, employing more than 18,000 people at 27 operations in 14 states and Washington, D.C. As such, it’s a leader for the entire steel industry, which accounts for 7 percentof total global emissions worldwide (although it’s worth pointing out that China — which has a steel overcapacity problem to begin with — is driving quite a lot of those emissions).  

But I digress.

Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress keep crowing about the economy, when in reality Trumponomics has been a disaster. Here are its 7 biggest failures:

1. Trump promised to bring down America’s trade deficit “as fast as possible.” Instead, the trade deficit has hit an all-time high. The United States is now purchasing more goods and services from the rest of the world than we sell abroad than at any time in history.

2. As a presidential candidate in 2016, he said he could completely eliminate the federal debt in 8 years. Instead, the federal debt has exploded thanksto Trump and the GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They’re already using the growing debt to threaten cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

3. He promised to boost the wages of American workers, including a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family. Instead, wages for most Americans have been flat, adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, over the same period, corporate profits have soared and the rich have become far richer, but the gains haven’t trickled down.

4. His administration said that corporations would invest their savings from tax cuts. Instead, corporations spent more money buying back shares of their own stock in 2018 than they invested in new equipment or facilities. These stock buybacks provide no real benefit for the economy, but boost executive bonuses and payouts for wealthy investors.

5. He promised a tax cut for middle-class families. Instead most Americans will end up paying more by 2027.

In 2016, Donald Trump’s trade message was very simple: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the worst trade deal ever negotiated. He has renegotiated NAFTA, rebranding the deal as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). We never quite understood his objection to the original NAFTA, and we don’t understand how USMCA fixes it. You need to squint to see the difference between NAFTA and its replacement.

“I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump has said. His gut instinct said NAFTA was bad. Unfortunately, gut instinct is typically simplistic, often impulsive, and by definition not strategic or coherent.

We need to think of our domestic policy and trade policy together. Tariffs, like trade deals, make sense only as tools within a larger coherent strategy. Trade policy should reinforce the principles in our domestic policy. If trade policy is not working, it’s a fair bet that our underlying domestic policies aren’t either.

Since 1980, the prevailing political message has been, “Markets will solve all our problems. Government is the problem.”

The term for this is neoliberalism. “Neo” means new. In the language of economics, “liberal” means “liberated” or free from regulation. Neoliberalism “frees” markets by shrinking government, dismantling social programs, and cutting investment in education and research-and-development.

Many of our biggest problems — climate change, growing income inequality, health care, food safety, and workplace safety — are textbook market failures. Neoliberalism responds with its universal prescription — make business succeed and well-being will trickle down to the rest of us.

Two big manufacturing stories we’ve been following closely over the past few months are converging.

First, there’s the U.S.-China trade negotiations, which are… so not happening right now. President Trump, emboldened from his recent tariff spat with Mexico, is playing hardball with China, and the Chinese are not backing down, either.

That means that businesses are looking at long-term strategies on how best to survive a trade war between the two nations before things really get out of hand.

One of those companies is Foxconn, which makes a ton of tech but is perhaps best known for manufacturing iPhones in China. Most of the factories that produce the iPhone and its various parts are in China, and Foxconn employs 350,000 people to make them at a massive factory complex in Zhengzhou called “iPhone City.”

Working conditions there are just great and people are very happy.

But I digress. If Trump does indeed follow through on his current plan to place a 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports, the iPhone and other Apple gadgets would take a hit. As The Verge noted, one-third of Apple’s iPhone revenue comes from products imported to the United States from China, so it’s a big deal for the California-based company’s bottom line.

Apple would have to decide whether to pass the cost increase onto consumers, which could raise the price of the already expensive iPhone by up to 16 percent, according to Bloomberg. Demand for the iPhone could then decrease by up to 40 percent. Either way, Apple is in a bad place.

So Foxconn — which relies on Apple for about half of its revenue — is now looking at ways to make the iPhone outside of China and avoid the tariffs. Foxconn executives already have made a big deal about how it is “totally capable of dealing with Apple’s needs to move production lines,” possibly to plants in Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam or... Wisconsin? 

Congratulations on that nice pay raise you got last year, a 7% hike—wow!

Seven percent might not sound all that big, but after 40 years of stagnant wages, even a small uptick can help cover some of your old credit card bills or get an upgrade on your 10-year-old pickup.

Oh, wait ... You say you didn't get 7%? Oops, my mistake. It was the CEOs of corporate giants who reported to the Associated Press that they enjoyed a median jump of 7% last year. And as their paychecks were already king-size, that uptick amounted to an extra $800,000 in their take-home, for a median yearly income of $12 million each. Bear in mind that "median" means half of the corporate bosses grabbed more than 7%. For example, David Zaslav, honcho of the Discovery television network, had a 207% boost in pay, raising his total take in 2018 to $130 million.

These lavish payouts to top-floor bosses—combined with a miserliness toward rank-and-file employees who actually produce the corporate wealth—is creating an untenable income disparity in corporate America, stretching inequality in our Land of Egalitarianism to the snapping point. The pay gap between aloof CEOs and typical employees nearly doubled last year at a range of corporate giants, from PayPal to CVS Pharmacy, and it tripled at Discovery. AP's recent survey of 340 major corporations found that compensation inequality is now so extreme that a middle-wage employee would have to work 158 years to make as much as his or her chief executive was given last year alone. This separation is widening at warp speed, propelled by the boundless greed and narcissism of so-called leaders like Zaslav. To amass as much pay as he pocketed in 2018, a typical Discovery employee would have to work 989 years.

When you hear corporate chieftains and such corporate cheerleaders as Donald Trump gloat that our economy is "booming," ask yourself: A boom for whom?

Let’s talk about a few datapoints that, on the surface, have nothing to do with the Supreme Court — but that in reality could determine whose ox is gored by two upcoming partisan gerrymandering decisions.

The first is a recent Ipsos poll showing that President Donald Trump only receives between 36 and 38 percent of the vote against any of the Democrats named in that poll. Against former Vice President Joe Biden, the current frontrunner in the Democratic primary, Trump loses 50-36. And, while the Ipsos poll shows Trump performing worse than some others, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden winning by more than eight points.

Meanwhile, 3-month U.S. Treasury bonds recently started producing a higher yield than 10-year bonds. This phenomenon, known as a “yield curve inversion,” occurs when investors believe that the economy’s long term prospects bode ill, and so are willing to accept a lower rate of return for one of the safest investments on the planet — a long-term U.S. government bond.

Yield curve inversions are often harbingers of recession.

Trump, in other words, could have to campaign with no major policy accomplishments besides a tax giveaway to the very rich, and he may need to do so while the economy is falling apart. Meanwhile, polls already suggest he’s an underdog, even with a fairly strong economy at the moment.

Which brings us back to Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek, the two Supreme Court cases challenging partisan gerrymandering.

Hit by a wave

The thing about gerrymandering is that, barring a well-timed electoral wave, it tends to perpetuate itself. Virginia’s House of Delegates is so rigidly gerrymandered to benefit Republicans that Democratic candidates won the statewide popular vote by more than 9 percentage points in 2017, yet Republicans kept a narrow majority in the statehouse. In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates won 54% of the popular vote in the 2018 state assembly races, yet Republicans control an astounding 63% of the assembly seats.

Thus, unless Democrats win the states of Virginia and Wisconsin in a crushing tidal wave that washes Republicans into the sea, the GOP will likely control the Virginia House of Delegates and the Wisconsin state assembly in 2020, when new maps must be drawn.

But early polling data suggests that such a wave is possible in 2020, as under-performing presidential candidates tend to drag down their entire party. And if 2020 is a recession year, a Democratic wave might be inevitable.

The American Medical Association (AMA) — one of the nation’s most powerful health groups — is warming up to policy ideas that expand the role of government-run health care, thanks to activists trying to change minds from the inside.  

Every year, the country’s largest physician group hosts a meeting to discuss its priorities. The top-line from this year’s annual conference is that the organization will continue its support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) while still opposing single-payer health care. “The ACA should be strengthened, not abandoned,” said the AMA, summarizing the conference on its website.

But on Tuesday, the AMA nevertheless came close to eliminating its decades-long position against single payer, or a system where everyone gets health care through one insurer run by the federal government. A day before, the AMA agreed to study public option approaches, where the federal government would expand access to existing public plans while leaving private plans alone. The growing support within AMA to at least neutralize its long-held position on the matter presents something of an internal tension, as the group is part of a coalition of organizations which are actively lobbying against these kinds of policies.

The AMA did not respond for comment.

The House of Delegates, the policy-making body within the more than 200,000 member organization, rejected a resolution introduced by the AMA’s own student caucus to put an end to its current stance on single payer. Many dismissed the vote as just another rebuke to Medicare for All, but it was the closest single-payer activists ever came to changing AMA’s position; the vote was 292 to 254, or 53% to 47%. Activists intend to try again.

We've written fairly extensively about the threat that Chinese state-owned companies like the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) and Build Your Dreams (BYD) pose to both good-paying jobs and our national security. AAM President Scott Paul even testified about it at a Congressional hearing a few weeks back.

Now you have a chance to weigh in!

In case you need to catch up, here's the deal. CRRC and BYD are owned and controlled by the Chinese government, which is seeking to systematically drive competitors out of the market and create a monopoly in both the rail (CRRC) and bus (BYD) production markets. CRRC has severely underbid competitors for contracts to build railcars in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, while BYD has nabbed contracts in Los Angeles and Albuquerque. 

China's goal isn't to make money, as companies that operate in a free and open market would. Rather, it wants to completely take over the entire production of America's rail and bus systems as part of its "Made in China 2025" plan. This, of course, creates a number of national security risks — from potential spying on passengers to hacking into transit systems — as well as big economic worries, as there are currently 90,000 good-paying jobs in the U.S. that depend on transit production.

Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to raise the value of the Chinese yuan and other currencies against the dollar is not getting good reviews in the media from economists. As can be expected, some of the arguments are pretty strange.

As the usually astute Noah Smith tells it in his Bloomberg piece, the problem with the trade deficit is:

“U.S. consumers are consistently living beyond their means, which seems unsustainable.”

The implication is that if the trade deficit were lower than we would be forced to cut back consumption. But the major problem the United States has faced over the last decade, according to many economists, is “secular stagnation,” which is an obscure way of saying, not enough demand.

Contrary to what Smith tells us, U.S. consumers are not living beyond their means, rather we actually need them to spend more money to bring the economy to full employment. To be more precise, we need them to spend more in the domestic economy, to increase demand here as opposed to in our trading partners. (We can also bring the economy to full employment by having the government spend more money on things like health care or a green new deal.)

Smith also disagrees with Warren’s mechanism for getting the dollar down, which involves a mixture of negotiations and threats of countervailing measures. The idea is that the biggest actor is China, who for some reason it is assumed would never agree to raise the value of its currency. CNN raises similar concerns. This view seems badly off the mark.

First, it is assumed in both pieces that China is no longer acting to deliberately keep down the value of the yuan against the dollar, even though most economists now concede that it deliberately depressed the value of its currency to maintain large trade surpluses in the last decade. (They did not acknowledge China’s currency management at the time.)

It is wrong to claim that China is not now acting to keep down the value of the yuan. While it is no longer buying large amounts of dollars and other currencies, it holds a stock of more than $3 trillion in reserves, which is well over $4 trillion if we add in its sovereign wealth fund.

This huge stock of foreign assets has the effect of depressing the value of the yuan against the dollar in the same way that the Fed’s holding of more than $3 trillion is assets helps to keep down interest rates. While few economists question that the Fed’s holding of assets leads to lower long-term rates than would otherwise be the case, they seem to deny that China’s holding of a large stock of foreign assets has similar effects in currency markets.

From the AAM

Father’s Day is the day of the year when we get to celebrate and thank all the dads, granddads, and other folks across the country who hold a special place in our hearts. If you are looking for a special way to celebrate your dad — and also support job creation and American makers — check out our list of 10 U.S.-made gift ideas, compiled by AAM's own Luke Ferguson and Joseph Swindal.

1. Allen Edmonds 

Is your dad in need of a new wardrobe? Check out Allen Edmonds, a U.S.-based manufacturer founded in Belgium, Wis. by Elbert W. Allen. To this day, Allen Edmonds is committed to creating quality, carefully-made products all across America. Although the company is most known for its high-quality shoes, it also sells a variety of American-made shirts, ties, and belts. Your dad will be the talk of the barbeque with an Allen Edmonds outfit; check out their Father's Day sale for big savings.

2. Craftsman Tools

That’s right, you’re reading it correctly: Craftsman is back, better, and Made in the USA! Stanley Black and Decker bought Craftsman in 2017 and immediately got to work moving the manufacturing of the well-known tools back to the United States. Likewise, they have regenerated their previously respected name. Although not everything in its line is made locally, Craftsman offers a variety of American-made tools any father would love to have. Whether it’s an addition to his shed or his workshop in the garage, Craftsman has got the tool that will help your father get the job done!

3. Cutco Knives

Knives are essential everyday items that prove to be great Father's Day gifts. Cutco is a knife company based in Olean, N.Y. and is committed to manufacturing all of their products in America — and by members of the United Steelworkers! The company sells kitchen knives, hunting knives, pocket knives —you name it. . 

4. Gibson Guitars

Is your father musically gifted? If so, this is the perfect gift idea for you! Gibson Guitars have been manufacturing some of the highest quality guitars in America since 1903. Based out of Nashville, Tenn., the famed company produces every variety of guitars you could imagine, all Made in the USA. Whether your dad likes to rock out on an electric guitar, or play some classic country tunes on an acoustic, Gibson offers the perfect guitar for you while maintaining a standard of American-made products.

By David Dyssegaard Kallick and Daniel Costa

After decades of advocacy, New York stands at the brink of potentially passing the Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act, a bill that would extend to the agricultural sector the right to organize and the right to overtime pay that most workers in other industries enjoy. Governor Cuomo has said he will sign the measure if it passes.

Democrats recently took leadership of the state senate and have a longstanding majority in the state assembly. Both chambers have an opportunity to take advantage of those majorities in a way that results in a historic improvement for the lives of workers who toil in difficult conditions for low pay in New York’s fields and dairies.

But victory is far from certain: plenty could happen between now and June 19, when New York’s legislative session ends. The New York Farm Bureau, unsurprisingly, is saying the bill “could dramatically change agriculture and hurt our rural economy.”

A new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) shows how the bill will help farmworkers, be manageable for farm owners, and offer tangible benefits to local communities.

The bill will most obviously be a gain for farmworkers in New York. On average, it will increase weekly earnings by between $34 and $95 per week. That’s money that will also be spent in the local economy, helping boost local businesses (and adding to sales tax revenues).

Other states have enacted laws requiring that at least some overtime be paid to farmworkers after a certain number of hours. In California—the largest agricultural state by far with over $50 billion in cash receipts going to farms and ranches—the legislature and governor enacted a law in late 2016 that gradually phases in overtime pay for farmworkers beginning this year.

Donald Trump has proven himself unfit for the presidency at nearly every twist and turn. The lengths he will go to circumvent the constitution, violate the rule of law, and sink to unthinkable depths of immorality are shamelessly on display.

These efforts are only possible because of a more insidious danger – a man who has conscripted the Republican party to destroy our democracy, and the institutions designed to protect it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is Trump’s most powerful weapon and one of the greatest threats to democracy, and the health and well-being of everyone in America.

This week, when asked about Democratic proposals including Medicare for All, McConnell said, “If I’m still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate. They won’t even be voted on. So think of me as the grim reaper. None of that stuff is going to pass. None of it.”

Let that sink in. McConnell wants to be known as the personification of death in the form of a cloaked skeleton wielding a large scythe.

McConnell wields his power in the Senate to diminish the checks and balances designed to protect our nation from autocratic rule. He’s determined to take away your health care, and he’s motivated to do whatever it takes to make sure that happens, just so he can demonstrate this power.

Remember McConnell’s repeated and failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, decrying all the while that entitlement programs cost too much and must go? Then he ushered through the GOP tax bill, handing tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy that are estimated to increase the federal debt by $2 trillion over the next 10 years, and triggering cuts to vital programs for middle- and low-income people.

Disguised as a tax cut, this tax giveaway to the rich destabilized Medicaid and crucial resources that offer assistance to our poor, elderly, and people with disabilities. It put Social Security that people have worked a lifetime for, and rely on in retirement, at risk by driving up the deficit. It reworked medical tax deductions and threatens 13 million people who could lose their health care by 2027, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

McConnell exerts his power to destroy the very institution he presides over, and stack the courts with ideologues. By bending the rules to his liking, he has rammed through a record number of judicial confirmations to the lower courts, many to lifetime appointments, and landed two arch-conservative nominees – both hand-picked and groomed by far-right judicial activists – on the Trump Supreme Court.

In our daily lives, as anyone who keeps a household budget can attest, the unexpected happens all the time. A refrigerator motor fails. Some part on your car you never realized existed breaks down. A loved one passes away and you have to — you want to — be at the funeral a thousand miles away.

“Unexpected” expenses like these will, sooner or later, hit all of us. But all of us, says new research out of the Federal Reserve, can’t afford them.

In fact, just under 40 percent of Americans, says the Fed’s sixth annual household economics survey, “would have difficulty handling an emergency expense as small as $400.”

A fifth of American adults, the new Fed study adds, had major unexpected medical bills last year. An even larger share of Americans — one quarter — “skipped necessary medical care in 2018 because they were unable to afford the cost.”

Meanwhile, 17 percent of American adults can’t afford to pay all their monthly bills, even if they don’t experience an unexpected expense.

The new Fed report offers no anecdotal color, just waves of carefully collected statistical data. For a sense of what these stats mean in human terms, we need only look around where we live, particularly if we live in one of the many metro areas where inequality is squeezing millions of Americans who once considered themselves solidly “middle class.” Places like the Bay Area in California.

San Francisco, recent research shows, now has more billionaires per capita than any other city in the world. By one reckoning, San Francisco also has the highest cost of living in the world, as all those billionaires — and the rest of the city’s ultra rich — bid up prices on the most desirable local real estate.

But the Bay Area squeeze goes beyond the confines of San Francisco. Nearby Oakland and Berkeley are facing enormous affordable housing shortages as well. The Bay Area as a whole now has more than 30,000 homeless.

Federal worker unions are praising proposed House legislation that would give all 2 million U.S. government workers a 3.1% general raise on Jan. 1. President Donald Trump declared he’d give them zero.

Not only that, but Trump wanted to dismantle the Office of Personnel Management – in essence the government’s human resources department – and transfer its functions to an unaccountable political appointee within the White House. The House legislation would bar  that scheme.

Killing OPM would have been a long step back to the old spoils system of the 19^th century and just what Trump and his anti-worker, right-wing ideological backers in and out of the White House wanted, said J. David Cox, president of the Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal workers union.

But the Democratic-run House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government subcommittee bounced Trump’s anti-OPM plan. Lawmakers inserted a flat ban on the “reckless and potentially dangerous” idea, Cox said. Then, in their June 3 late-afternoon work session, the subcommittee unanimously passed the legislation providing raises.

Both Trump moves that the panel discarded are part of his ideological war against workers, especially federal workers, and their unions. The war also includes Trump’s executive orders evicting unions from their small spaces within federal office buildings, seizure of phones, fax machines and computers that union representatives used to help protect workers, and forcing the reps to do so on their own time and on their own dime.

Trump also barred the feds from communicating with lawmakers.

A federal judge in D.C. overturned most Trump moves last year as both unconstitutional and violating federal law governing union-management relations. But several Trump political appointees, notably the Secretaries of Education and the Department of Veterans Affairs, are following Trump’s orders – and defying the judge.

The Democratic-run House panel appears to be coming to the workers’ defense.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would decide whether to impose a new round of tariffs on $325 billion worth of Chinese goods following the G20 summit in Osaka at the end of June.

Trump’s comments came during a joint appearance with French President Emmanuel Macron, not long after the U.S. president announced he might ratchet up his trade war with China to “at least $300 billion” on Chinese goods.

“Our talks with China, a lot of interesting things are happening. We’ll see what happens… I could go up another at least $300 billion and I’ll do that at the right time,” he said earlier. “But I think China wants to make a deal […].”

During his joint press conference with Macron on Thursday, Trump was asked when he might impose those additional tariffs on China.

“When am I going to? I will make that decision I would say over the next two weeks. Probably right after the G20. One way or the other, I will make that decision after the G20. I will be meeting with President Xi and we’ll see what happens. But, probably planning it sometime after G20,” he said.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned Republicans lawmakers not to try and stop his new 5% tariff on Mexican imports, saying it would be foolish to try and intervene.

“I don’t think they will do that,” he said, speaking to reporters during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

The tariff is set to take effect next week, Trump said, noting that they “haven’t really started yet.”

“I don’t think they will do that, if they do, it’s foolish,” he added. “There’s nothing more important than borders.”

Trump announced the 5% tariff at the end of last month, tweeting on May 30 that the percentage would “gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied.” The rate would hit a maximum of 25% by October if he followed through on his threat.

The Washington Post, along with several other outlets, reported on Monday, however, that there was an uprising among Republicans unhappy with Trump’s decision, noting they had “begun discussing whether they may have to vote to block President Trump’s planned new tariffs on Mexico.”

CNN reported on Monday that talks were still shaky, with “no clear path forward.” GOP senators were still considering legislative options.

GM Lordstown workers rally outside the GM Lordstown plant on March 6, 2019 in Lordstown, Ohio. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

The vacant Lordstown General Motors facility is a frightening sight—6.2 million square feet of modern industrial might spread over 900 acres doing absolutely nothing except depressing the regional economy and the spirits of northeast Ohio. Just a few months ago it produced the Chevy Cruze and provided thousands of good paying industrial jobs with excellent benefits. Now it's gone, and unless the Democrats have something meaningful to say about it, they too may be gone.

Lordstown is the poster child for modern financialized capitalism and runaway inequality. It symbolizes the kind of system in which the super-rich reap the rewards and the rest of us pay the price.

This new version of capitalism burst onto the scene when Wall Street deregulation took hold in the early 1980s, but it really came into full view when Wall Street's insatiable greed took down the economy in 2007. The financial crash put GM on life support, and it quickly became crystal clear that textbook capitalism was a fiction.

Under the supposed rules of free-markets, the corporations that cannot compete successfully should perish—what Schumpeter called creative destruction. In 2007, most of Wall Street's big banks—as well as GM—would have gone down, but their size and the centrality of these mammoth institutions meant that their rapid demise (without government intervention) would crater the entire economy. They were, instead, the beneficiaries of taxpayer bailouts.

The mythical capitalism of creative destruction is long gone. There are new rules for financialized capitalism. One demands that we the taxpayers must bailout both the biggest Wall Street banks and the largest corporations, like GM, because they are far too big to fail. It's the ultimate blackmail. Either we pay or we are all economically devastated.

A second new rule of the new capitalism dictates that not only must we bail them out, but we are not permitted to ask for anything substantial in return.

Unlike private investors who provide capital to distressed companies, we taxpayers do not get any ownership rights with our investment, nor do we get a high rate of return on our money. We also do not have a say in how the bailout enterprises do business, nor are we able to remove the predatory executives (and jail the ones who broke the law.) In exchange for our financial guarantees, we are not permitted to demand that a corporation like GM must keep its jobs in the U.S., nor may we insist that they refrain from giving future revenues via stock buybacks to their super-rich investors (who would have earned nothing without our largess). Instead these bailed-out entities are returned to their private owners as soon as possible so that they can again be run by and for the wealthy.

Rev. Dr. William Barber is on trial in North Carolina for leading a protest calling for Medicaid expansion in the state’s legislative building two years ago.

Barber, then-head of the state NAACP chapter and leader of the progressive grassroots movement “Moral Monday,” was arrested on May 30, 2017, after he led a group of more than 30 people to the legislative building in Raleigh to to discuss health care with lawmakers. Barber and others in the group were later charged with second-degree trespassing — a Class 3 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 20 days in jail and a $200 fine — for refusing to leave the building when they were told to do so by General Assembly Police.

The trial began Tuesday, and Barber’s legal team is arguing in court that the case is fundamentally about the right to free speech and the access that people have to their legislators.

Barber told ThinkProgress that on the day of the protest two years ago, a coalition of groups — including the NAACP, health advocates, and others — went to speak to legislators and deliver letters on “the damage they were doing by denying health care in North Carolina.”

North Carolina still has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, which would allow people earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level to get health care.

There remains a wide coverage gap in the state, involving an estimated 500,000 peoplewho currently make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but are too poor to qualify for ACA premium tax credits. Nine percent of people stuck in such coverage gaps nationwide reside in North Carolina, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Barber said that when he and other activists went to the legislature to discuss this issue, they were told there were no lawmakers with whom they could speak.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) brought his battle for a $15 minimum wage and workers’ rights to Walmart’s annual shareholders meeting in Arkansas on Wednesday.

The Walton family controls just over 50% of the company’s stock. They are the richest family in the United States. Sanders has called out the Walton’s refusal to raise wages for its workers, asserting that it is “outrageous that the Walton family makes more in one minute than a Walmart worker earns in a year.”

At the invitation of Cat Davis, a longtime Walmart employee, Sanders went to the meeting to issue his demands in person: raise hourly wages from $11 to $15, put an employee representative on the company board, grant part-time workers the opportunity to work full-time, and stop obstructing workers’ efforts to unionize.

Today, I say to the Walton family of @Walmart, with all due respect:

Pay your workers a living wage.

Give your hourly workers a seat at the table.

Give part-time workers the chance to work full-time.

And stop blocking them from joining a union.#BernieAtWalmart

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 5, 2019

Sanders documented his day with Walmart on Twitter, from his ride to the meeting to the rally he held when it was over, under the hashtag #BernieAtWalmart.

We're in the car heading to the Walmart shareholders' meeting. We are going to demand that the owners of Walmart pay their workers a living wage and give hourly workers seats on the board. #BernieAtWalmart https://t.co/NHPuKFA0gC

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 5, 2019

By Emily Peterson-Cassin
Project Coordinator, Bright Lines Project

Today, our democracy is out of balance, which makes it harder to solve the big problems facing our country and our communities. Our current system allows powerful corporate and wealthy interests to regularly defy the foundational principles of fairness, equity, ethics, accountability, and respect for the rule of law, with the unfortunate result being a government that is more responsive and accountable to wealthy political donors than to the public. In order to restore balance to our democracy we need to use all of the tools at our disposal, which is why the House of Representatives made HR 1, the For the People Act, their top priority.

The For the People Act is an essential set of measures to increase government accountability and ethics, beef up voting rights, and reform the way our elections are financed. Unfortunately, Senator Mitch McConnell has vowed it will never get a vote in the Senate.

Luckily, the House can do something concrete to keep the promise of HR 1 by removing three poison-pill legacy riders hiding in old language of appropriations bills.  These riders are keeping agencies from making rules to increase transparency and abuse Worse, the riders are keeping voters from finding out information that could be critical to their ballot-box decisions.

The first rider stops Treasury and the IRS from making rules clarifying what counts as political activity for nonprofits. The rider bans the Treasury department from fixing the broken rules around 501(c)(4) organizations that do electoral work, rules that are especially needed given the rise in dark money spending from (c)(4)s over the past several years. The vagueness of the current rule is partially to blame for the steep decline in enforcement for nonprofits that break the rules.

The second rider prohibits the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring public companies to disclose their political spending. In Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that opened the flood gates for unlimited corporate spending in our elections, Justice Anthony Kennedy assumed that prompt disclosures would be the norm. However, this rider stops the type of critical disclosure regime Kennedy envisioned from being implemented and deprives investors and the public of critical information on corporate political activity.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan wasn’t able to articulate how or when the White House will end its tariffs on Mexican goods.

McAleenan appeared on cable news to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to impose new tariffs on Mexico as a means to address migration to the United States. The longer apprehension rates along the U.S.-Mexico border continue to rise, the higher the tariffs.

As the White House announced last week, a 5% tariff is set to go into effect on June 10 if Mexico does not step up immigration enforcement measures. The tariffs would gradually increase — an additional 5% on the first day of each month for four months — to a maximum of 25% by October, unless “the illegal immigration problem is remedied.”

Tapper asked McAleenan at what point would the administration consider lifting the tariffs, but McAleenan had no concrete response.

“I guess one of the questions I would have is assuming these tariffs go through, and right now it’s just a threat, what specific benchmark are you going to be looking at to see if Mexico is actually doing what you want them to do?” Tapper asked.

“I think what the president said, we need a vast reduction in the numbers crossing,” McAleenan replied.

According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there were roughly 100,000 apprehensions in April — so what would a “vast reduction” look like to the administration? McAleenan couldn’t answer that either.

Instead, McAleenan recommended the administration ask the Mexican government to enforce its own southern border with Guatemala, put an end to the organizations that help transport migrants across Mexico, and work with the United States on creating new asylum policies.

“MAGA,” blusters Donald Trump – Make America Great Again! America’s ranching families, however, would like Trump to come off his high horse and get serious about a more modest goal, namely: Make America COOL Again.

COOL stands for Country-of-Origin-Labeling, a straightforward law simply requiring that agribusiness giants put labels on packages of steak, pork chops, etc. to tell us whether the meat came from the USA, China, Brazil… or Whereintheworldistan. This useful information empowers consumers to decide where their families’ food dollars go. But multinational powerhouses like Tyson Foods and Cargill don’t want you and me making such decisions.

So, in 2012, the meat monopolists got the World Trade Organization to decree that our nation’s COOL law violated global trade rules – and our corporate-submissive congress critters meekly repealed the law.

Then came Donald Trump and his Made-in-America campaign, promising struggling ranchers that he’d restore the COOL label as a centerpiece of his new NAFTA deal. Ranching families cheered because getting that “American Made” brand on their products would mean more sales and better prices.

But wait – Trump has now issued his new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and… Where’s the beef? In his grandiose, 1,809-page document, COOL is not even mentioned!

Worse, slaps America’s hard-hit ranching families in the face for it allows multinational meatpackers to keep shipping foreign beef into the US market that does not meet our food safety standards! Aside from the “yuck” factor and health issues, this gives Tyson and other giants an incentive to abandon US ranchers entirely.

To stand with America’s farm and ranch families against their betrayal by Trump and the Big Food monopolists, contact the National Farmers Union: NFU.org.

***

Reposted from the Hightower Lowdown

As you know if you’ve looked at any morning paper, the Trump administration has proposed an escalating tariff on all imports from Mexico, starting at 5 percent on June 10th and rising by five percentage points each month until it reaches 25 percent. The tariffs are intended to force Mexico to take actions to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S. Trump said the tariffs will remain in place until Mexico “substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.”

Here’s a Q&A on this proposed action. Initially, it may not look like a big deal for us (much more so for Mexico). But if it doesn’t fizzle quickly, and I don’t think it will, it could turn out to be important along various dimensions.

Q: Isn’t this is an unusual use of tariffs?

A: It is. The majority of tariff cases stem from countries arguing about trade, as is the case with China. Country A objects to country B “dumping” a specific export (“rubber tires, grade c”) at below cost in order to corner market share and Country A imposes a “countervailing duty” to level the playing field. Or, as with China, we object to their trade practices (though I’ve argued this attack is somewhat overblown).

Yes, tariffs have been used as a geopolitical tactic, to protect what Hamilton called “infant industries,” and to support the buildup of domestic industries to achieve import substitution (tariffs were also the main source of government revenue in early America). But I’m not aware of a case where tariffs have been used to block immigration.

Q: Ok, it’s an unusual idea. But is it a bad idea?

A: Yes, for two broad reasons. First, I have the same objection to this tariff as to any other sweeping tariff (versus the more targeted “dumping” example above): by disrupting broad trade flows and indiscriminately raising costs on swatch of industries and consumers, it is a blunt policy tool that may have been useful in Hamilton’s day but is no longer so. Trump envisions widespread import substitution, but his vision is atavistic. Trade flows and inter-country commerce is too far advanced to be wholly rewired. I don’t think the globalization omelet can be unscrambled but even if it could, the victory would be a Pyrrhic one on all sides of the borders.

We’re especially integrated with Mexico. The WSJ reports that “about two-thirds of U.S.-Mexico trade is between factories owned by the same company.” Those are largely auto manufacturers, as we import $93 billion in cars and parts from Mexico (as a share of our imports, that’s 5x our China share), computers, food, and hundreds more goods. According to Goldman Sachs researchers, 44 percent of our air conditioners and 35 percent of our TVs are imported from Mexico. After China, Mexico was our largest source of imports last year (we imported $350 billion from them last year, and exported $265 billion).

Second, it is a well-documented fact that unauthorized immigration from the Mexico has declined in recent years. What’s gone up is asylum seekers from Central American countries torn by violence and gangs. In this regard, the “crisis” at the border is of the Trump administration’s own making. Suppose this tariff got Mexico to do more to shut its southern border to asylum seekers. On legal, humanitarian grounds, that should be no one’s definition of success.

Sorry, America’s middle class: President Donald Trump’s signature tax code overhaul has not generated any meaningful new economic growth that wasn’t already underway, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) has found.

The new numbers inject further complexity into a contentious and ongoing debate around the landmark tax legislation as to who actually benefited from its passage. But the study should also offer additional clarity: With hard numbers now available on the economy’s performance in the first full year of the legislation, it’s easier than ever to talk instead about who got what and how — and the answers, so far, aren’t pretty.

Large corporations with shiny accounting departments ended up being the largest beneficiaries of the tax bill’s largesse, with the rate of tax they actually pay dropping by half in 2018, according to the CRS analysis. But the vanishingly insignificant comparative break Trump’s law gave workaday people lays the game bare. This tax bill is already reshaping the real-world economy in ways that limit the prospects of ordinary people, potentially reinforcing the structural inequities that adversely impact democratic society.

Trump and his congressional allies had forecast massive jumps in GDP growth and working-family incomes from the package. None materialized in year one. Annual growth hit 2.9% – identical to the 2015 mark, well below the 3.3% the Congressional Budget Office forecast when it sought to predict the tax bill’s impact in April of 2018, and right in line with what the CBO had predicted the economy would have done without Trump’s corporate-tax munificence.

The report’s findings underscore the deceitful nature of the administration’s first-term sales pitch.

Working people were supposed to benefit from the slashed corporate income tax rate and related rules tweaks intended to lure offshored profits back into the U.S. economy. American companies weren’t hiding $3 trillion in profit outside the country out of malice, the argument went. Rather, they were afraid of seeing it taxed too sternly, and would happily bring it home to make productive and equitable use of it just as soon as they felt it was safe from the taxman.

By Eoin Higgins
Staff Writer, Common Dreams

One of Capitol Hill's most popular new Democrats on Thursday called for a total ban on the revolving door that allows lawmakers to jump from Congress into K Street lobbying firms as soon as they leave office.

In a tweet, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said that former members of Congress "shouldn't be allowed to turn right around and leverage your service for a lobbyist check."

"I don't think it should be legal at ALL to become a corporate lobbyist if you've served in Congress," said Ocasio-Cortez. "At minimum there should be a long wait period."

After the Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections, 44 federal lawmakers left office. A Public Citizen analysis, released Thursday, found that of those 44, 26 "were working for lobbying firms, consulting firms, trade groups or business groups working to influence federal government activities." 

Among those that made the switch are former Rep. Joe Crowley, the Democrat who Ocasio-Cortez unseated, and former Rep. Mike Capuano, a Suffolk County, Massachusetts Democrat whose progressive credentials weren't enough to stop now-Rep. Ayanna Pressley from besting him in the 2018 Democratic primary. 

Former legislators like Crowley and Capuano came in for criticism from Public Citizen president Robert Weissman. In a statement, Weissman took aim at what the revolving door does to Washington politics.

"No lawmaker should be cashing in on their public service and selling their contacts and expertise to the highest bidder," said Weissman. "Retired or defeated lawmakers should not serve as sherpas for corporate interests who are trying to write federal policy in their favor."

"We need to close the revolving door and enact fundamental and far-reaching reforms to our corrupt political system," Weissman added.

By David Hatch

What does it mean to move “from protest to power?” That’s the question People’s Action members like me asked at our national convention in Washington, D.C. two years ago. At that time, just a few months into the Trump administration, 72 grassroots leaders out of the more than twelve hundred gathered there took a pledge to take action by running for public office.

Many of these activists – and even more from our network across the country – have now made good on these commitments. They are part of the #PeoplesWave of officials we have helped elect. In all, 300 candidates endorsed by People’s Action got elected in midterm and municipal elections, and 150 of these are movement activists who rose up from the ranks of our own member organizations.

“On election night I didn’t win, WE won!” said Sarah Godlewski, Wisconsin’s newly elected State Treasurer, when she spoke to a gathering of these newly minted electeds last month, as People’s Action members gathered once again in D.C.

At this year’s convention, these leaders celebrated their victories and began to dig in on what it means to move from protest on the outside of government to power on its inside, and importantly, linking the two together.

Sarah had never considered running for office, but as a longtime member of Citizen Action of Wisconsin (CAWI), she was part of the fight in April of 2018 to save the State Treasurer’s office from former governor Scott Walker’s attempt to dissolve the office so he could put the state’s finances under his own control, to eliminate oversight.

Sarah and CAWI won that fight, and when no people’s candidate stepped forward to run for State Treasurer, Sarah put herself in the ring. Sarah has a financial and government background – she co-founded a socially conscious investment fund after working for the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense.

Now, as Wisconsin’s Treasurer, Godlewski has followed through on her commitment to co-govern. She regularly appears on CAWI’s weekly podcasts, and has jointly organized events to build community awareness about the ways she’s using the State Treasurer’s office to lower interest payments on student loans and to solve difficult public pension issues.