My Critic: Once Again

 

My Critic: Once Again

In his praise of the president, a recent writer is obviously referring to Trump’s influence on the economy before the COVID-19 pandemic derailed his number one issue. Even on that, as another reviewer noted, Trump built on the Obama recovery, whose policy focus in 2009 provided the architecture for it, to which I see no evidence that Trump added anything of substance based on any policy orientation. Granted, the unemployment rate continued to fall under Trump, which had little to do with what he did. Moreover, I see no evidence of any contribution on his part to the expansion of per capita income or any resolution of long-term problems associated with the continuous decline of the nation’s manufacturing sector, one that is rooted in the substantial shift to an informational-based economy since the 1970s.

Trump’s effort to resolve the current economic crisis seldom goes beyond theatrics, his guttural instincts on trade wars, or his support of rich friends. On the latter, he downplays the significance of the coronavirus pandemic while bullying the meatpacking industry to reopen, even if conditions are not safe enough to do (New Yorker, 07-13-2020). He is attempting to do the same now for the schools, even as he has no power to mandate their full on-site opening in the fall, which many municipalities throughout the country will not be in a position to do so, unless serious precautions and restrictions are in place.

Instead of leading on the pandemic crisis, as the nation veers toward 4 million cases and 150,000 deaths, he plays politics. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world has coped with this crisis in a considerably more effective manner—in no small measure, by heeding the best available science and establishing policy accordingly. By contrast, this nation under Trump—in playing politics about the efficacy of wearing masks in public spaces, as well as that of testing and tracing—remains at the world’s epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s various trade wars and subsidies to the tune of $32 billion this year, distributed to farmers to compensate for the losses they experienced (Politico, 07-14-2020), can only be viewed as another reckless financial venture rooted in nothing other than Trump’s uninformed understanding of foreign trade. Moreover, the tax cut of 2017 inordinately benefited the top one percent and the corporate sector and needlessly expanded the deficit, which will be especially costly on the middle and working classes, particularly by the mid-2020s.  

Trump’s Korean policy is a sad joke based on nothing other than the conceit of his inflated ego that he, alone, could cut through normal diplomatic processes in negotiating a treaty based on North Korea’s willingness to unilaterally divest itself of its nuclear armament and ballistic capacities. It seems that the North Korean leader played Trump for a fool, with the president gushing about being in love with Kim while the brutal dictator continued to shoot off missiles and expand the country’s nuclear capacity. Kim’s sister, Kim You-jong, stated that the country will end nuclear talks with the US and that the deal between the two countries brokered in Hanoi in 2019 is no longer in force (Slate, 07-13-2020). 

Meanwhile in his uber nationalistic, “America First” obsession, Trump has gone a long way toward decimating the significant role the US has played in the international arena since World War II. This approach has included pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans- Pacific Partnership (a 12-nation agreement which would have blunted China’s influence the Pacific), and the multi-national Iran nuclear agreement deal. He has offered nothing to replace these, admittedly, less than perfect arrangements over concerns that can only be competently addressed at the international level, which he is temperamentally predisposed to reject out of hand.

Based on highly credible information, US intelligence sources concluded that Russia offered payment to Taliban soldiers to kill US military personnel in Afghanistan. That information was included in Trump’s Daily Presidential Briefing in February, but there is no indication that our commander-in-chief pushed back against Putin. Weeks after the story broke in the New York Times, which Trump has attributed to “fake news” (Washington Post, 07-01-2020), there is still no US response from the commander-in-chief.

Instead, Trump acted as cheer-leader-in-chief for reinstating the former Soviet Union to the Group of Seven (G7) and has plans to pull US troops out of Germany, which plays right into Putin’s hands of weakening NATO. Perhaps there is more than a little something to Nancy Pelosi’s charge that with Trump, all roads lead back to Putin.

I ask you, sir, where is the honor?

2020