With National Security Council Shakeup, Steve Bannon Gets A Seat At The Table

We have now a lying President...a white nationalist in the NSC.... a natsec that threatens Iran and a SecDef who then walks him back and now we the taxpayer are paying the expenses of this President for his son to sell condo's still in the name of the this President who still has not removed himself completely from his companies thus this business trip might in fact qualify as a true conflict of interest and a daughter who has not so as well.....

How much worse can it get in the next four years.......

Taxpayers are super-honored to contribute $100,000 to the costs of Eric Trump’s trip to sell Trump condos in Uruguay.

REMEMBER when this President stood in front of a stack of papers claiming he has separated himself from his companies...no he has not as of 2/4/2017.....

Abraham Lincoln said,

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

This NSC will be extremely interesting to watch over the next four years if they survive as a team....

Flynn: we are putting Iran on notice.

Mattis: we're doing nothing unusual.

Fetch popcorn people, these 2 have started

http://reut.rs/2l7VZIL

Noticed that Trump natsec advisor Flynn and who is a NSC member claimed weeks ago to have shut own his consulting company and left twitter....I order to avoid any conflict of interest charges....

BUT WAIT...did not occur until JAN 30 2017....NOT weeks ago as he himself publicly stated it was already done

QUOTE
Flynn now deleted his feed & his firm's site.

WHEN the Trump WH...the Bannon/Flynn NSC are so degraded by a constant stream of lies also from Trump how can any nation state trust a single word...sentence...paragraph from both them and Trump?????

MORE Trump WH "alterantive facts which equals lies".......

Bowling Green massacre? Kellyanne Conway has taken alt facts up a notch | Marina Hyde
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/03/kellyanne-conway-… 

Is now CENTCOM attempting to protect the WH NSC who announced their planned raid into Yemen was a great success generating intelligence that was important....NOT the utter failure that many are pointing to.....

U.S. Central Command
✔
@CENTCOM
#alQaeda bomb making video captured in Jan. 28 raid on #AQAP operations/logistics hub in #Arabian Peninsula
http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/… 

BUT WAIT...from 2003 until 2010 QJBR...then AQI..then IS and the other mainline Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups....IAI....AAS....al Duri's Naqshbandi Sufi Order PUBLISHED literally tens of such IED bomb making videos and pamphlets in pdf format....AND no one seemed to have minded....TO INCLUDE videos on how to make explosives......they were making at time literally tons of HME......all on video....

NOW a single video makes headlines..why is that?????

Find it extremely interesting that Trump...Bannon...Flynn..work themselves into a frenzy over a cruise missile test....even to the Trump natsec doing a press conference....

BUT THEN somehow overlook the actions of the IRGC and their terrorists attacks against Sunni's in Syria and support the Assad genocide an war crimes...There is suddenly silence on the part of those above....

Senator Bob Corker
✔
@SenBobCorker
Today's sanctions make clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Iran’s destabilizing behavior.

NOTICE even he fails to mention Iranian actions in Syria and Yemen....

We already have a known and verified Breitbart.com white nationalist in the NSC SO why not have a known and verified Breitbart.com white supremacist who is banned from even Twitter in the WH Press Corp.....

White supremacist Milo, banned from Twitter, invited to attend WH Press Briefing (not the first time) today

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/far-right-writer-milo-yiannopo…

This particular white supremacist was attempting to give a public speech in USC Berkeley this week that has massively disrupted by the USC Berkeley students....

BUT THEN........
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Feb 2

More
If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?
 

WHY was the recording of the Trump Putin telephone call turned off and for what reasons....and there was not a detailed readout of the call and is customary......

Foreign policy insider: ‘No readout of Trump-Putin call because White House turned off recording’
http://ow.ly/1UIv308Cbw0

After yelling over the phone at the Australian PM......now Trump backtracks and still says BUT.......to cover his tracks of being what some would call a schoolyard bully.....

Trump will allow Australia deal over refugees to continue with extreme vetting - White House.
http://reut.rs/2klV1tb

Trust is built via respect....definitely many foreign leaders are no longer "trusting" a US President....

Long before fakenews was a term, Hannah Arendt warned about the consequences of spreading lies
http://dw.com/p/2Wo5L
 

Open source survey of @realDonaldTrump's first special forces raid in Yemen

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/02/02/open-source-survey-of-t… 

Al Qaeda was ready and waiting for the SEALs on Trump's first raid — via @TaskAndPurpose
http://read.bi/2k5ft31

WHO did the poor NSC planning...little to no accurate intel...little to no support planning and no plan for the "what if"...
 

WHO in the hell made this decision inside the Trump...Bannon...Flynn NSC....the same very FSB/SVR responsible for hacking the US...and the announcement comes from the Russians.....

WHAT else did Trump tell Putin in their call that has not been made public....

QUOTE...taken from Russian propaganda media outlet...TASS today....

TASS
✔
@tassagency_en
Former #FSB head says easing of US #sanctions paves way for setting up anti-terror coalition
http://tass.com/politics/928745

Former FSB head says easing of US sanctions paves way for setting up anti-terror coalition
Russian Politics & Diplomacy February 02, 20:02 UTC+3
"This shows that actual joint work on establishing an anti-terrorism coalition is about to begin," former director of Russia's Federal Security Service said
Share
51

MOSCOW, February 2. /TASS/. By easing sanctions against Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Washington paves the way to setting up an anti-terrorism coalition, member of the State Duma (lower house of parliament), former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Kovalyov told TASS.

Read also

US eases sanctions against Russian Federal Security Service

"This shows that actual joint work on establishing an anti-terrorism coalition is about to begin," Kovalyov said. "This is the first step on the way leading to cooperation in the war on terror."
"Without easing these sanctions it would have been impossible to take the next step," the lawmaker said. "These practical actions indicate that US President Donald Trump has been consistent," he stressed. 
According to the General License No. 1 posted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury Department on Thursday, the US authorities have eased sanctions against Russia’s FSB.

"All transactions and activities" involving the Russian Federal Security Service, prohibited earlier by executive orders of the US President, are authorized with certain exceptions, the document reads.

SO is Trump rolling back the Russian sanctions on their 35 spys and hacking that Obama imposed on them..WAS this in fact the basis of the Flynn call on the same day that the sanctions were started...HAT he claimed was a Merry Christmas greetings....?????

REMEMBER when Trump keeps bashing NYTs and tweeting they are failing and should be sold...

This is pretty extraordinary. NYT now has the biggest readership of any US paper.

And doubling subscriptions in a yr is outrageous.
Trump is their greatest subscription driver....

AND that Trump ordered Yemen ST6 raid and ended badly in failure....

NOTICE he has not said anything nor has Bannon and Flynn....who lead the NSC.....

Intelligence Community defy @realDonaldTrump, say he didn't sufficiently think through Yemen operation that led to civ

NOW IC and DoD investigating why a high number of civilians were killed......

So convince me that all SWC readers/commenters feel this is a great thing????

Trump aide Sebastian Gorka says on NPR that Bannon's experience crushing "left-wing rivals" on Breitbart partially qualifies him for NSC:

SO crushing left wing rivals...the liberal dishonest press and just about anyone who disagrees with Trump...Bannon and Flynn qualifies him above say someone highly experienced in say IR..diplomacy...intelligence analysis....Russian politics and or say Russian oligarchs and Iranian inner politics....OR influence operations and Russian propaganda....

If the Australia...German and Mexican phone calls are any indicator...we The US is in serious trouble with this President who has absolutely no earthly idea what he the heck he or his white nationalist advisors are doing....

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-idUSKBN15H1RU?f…

QUOTE
U.S. President Donald Trump told a national prayer breakfast on Thursday that the world is in trouble, the United States is being taken advantage of, and that he was having "tough phone calls" as he worked to address issues.

"The world is in trouble, but we're going to straighten it out, OK? That's what I do - I fix things," Trump said after saying that freedom of religion was threatened.

"Believe me, when you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having - don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it," he said.

"We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore," he said.

Trump "has embraced a deeply suspicious view of Islam" promoted by Flynn & Bannon

https://nyti.ms/2jXu8uK

How #Trump's strategy advisor sees the world: Islam & Judeo-Christianity as geopolitical state-like actors
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/steve-bannon-donald-tru… 

Today, @realDonaldTrump is Tweeting up a storm, but guess what?

Still, not one word about Russia's offensive in Ukraine coming out of the Trump/Bannon/Flyn NSC...just how strange is that....

War is ongoing in Central Europe LED by Russian active duty Commanders and using Russian paid/equipped/trained mercenaries.....

AND all he is worried about is Iran firing a missile that was within UNSC limits and Berkeley demonstrations against him....

MUST be Trump/Bannon/Flynn tacit approval for Putin.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 3h
3 hours ago
Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 3h
3 hours ago
Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 3h
3 hours ago
If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 11h
11 hours ago
Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 11h
11 hours ago
Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the U.S. has squandered three trillion dollars there. Obvious long ago!

Wow...even the Russians "get it"..........

One Russian paper launches blistering attack on Trump: "He creates problems out of nothing..PR catastrophes...total lack of professionalism"

BUT WAIT....appears Russian are correct....

Time magazine: Bannon's awesome "disruptions" are irking Trump, who now wants everything run through Priebus:

http://time.com/4657665/steve-bannon-donald-trump/ 
…

This man has absolutely no idea about what International Relations is and or what diplomacy is and truly believes he can force others to accept his views....trust cannot be forced...it has to be earned and Trump is losing that fight almost daily now....

AND his Bannon/Flynn NSC reacts accordingly....

BLUF....right now there APPEARS to be a serious disconnect between what the WH states was talked about in his conversations and what leaders talking to him actually state...SOME might say the WH is definitively lying....

EXAMPLE
In the Merkel conversation Trump WH announced Merkel stated that yes NATO must pay more for their defense....

BUT WAIT....hours later the Germans released in EN and GM....the call read out and now where was NATO costs mentioned...stated or printed...SO Trump WH basically spun the call to their own statements to show his voters he is backing up his demands on NATO....

THIS now confirms this sorry WH trend....

QUOTE:
Referring to the Australian PM call with Trump...and Australia is a FIVE EYES member and a long time US ally....

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A senior administration official acknowledged that the conversation with Turnbull had been hostile and charged, but emphasized that most of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders — including the heads of Japan, Germany, France and Russia — have been both productive and pleasant.
Trump also vented anger and touted his political accomplishments in a tense conversation with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, officials said. The two have sparred for months over Trump’s vow to force Mexico to pay for construction of a border wall between the two countries, a conflict that prompted Peña Nieto to cancel a planned meeting with Trump.
Even in conversations marred by hostile exchanges, Trump manages to work in references to his election accomplishments. U.S. officials said that he used his calls with both Turnbull and Peña Nieto to mention his election win or the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
One official said that it may be Trump’s way of “speaking about the mandate he has and why he has the backing for decisions he makes.” But Trump is also notoriously thin-skinned and has used platforms including social-media accounts, meetings with lawmakers and even a speech at CIA headquarters to depict his victory as an achievement of historic proportions, rather than a narrow outcome in which his opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote.
The friction with Turnbull reflected Trump’s anger over being bound by an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world.
The issue centers on a population of roughly 2,500 people who have sought asylum in Australia but were diverted to facilities off that country’s coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Deplorable conditions at those sites prompted intervention from the United Nations and a pledge from the United States to accept about half of those refugees, provided they passed U.S. security screening.
Many of the refugees came from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia, countries now listed in Trump’s order temporarily barring their citizens entry to the United States. A special provision in the Trump order allows for exceptions to honor “a preexisting international agreement,” a line that was inserted to cover the Australia deal.
But U.S. officials said that Trump continued to fume about the arrangement even after signing the order in a ceremony at the Pentagon.
“I don’t want these people,” Trump said. He repeatedly misstated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, and told Turnbull that it was “my intention” to honor the agreement, a phrase designed to leave the U.S. president wiggle room to back out of the deal in the future, according to a senior U.S. official.
Turnbull told Trump that to honor the agreement, the United States would not have to accept all of the refugees but only to allow them each through the normal vetting procedures. At that, Trump vowed to subject each refu­gee to “extreme vetting,” the senior U.S. official said.
Trump was also skeptical because he did not see a specific advantage the United States would gain by honoring the deal, officials said.
Trump’s position appears to reflect the transactional view he takes of relationships, even when it comes to diplomatic ties with long-standing allies. Australia has sent troops to fight alongside U.S. forces for decades and maintains close cooperation with Washington on trade and economic issues.
Australia is seen as such a trusted ally that it is one of only four countries that the United States includes in the “Five Eyes” arrangement for cooperation on espionage matters. Members share extensively what their intelligence services gather and generally refrain from spying on one another.
There also is a significant amount of tourism between the two countries.
Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5 p.m. Saturday from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.
“These conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately,” Turnbull said at a news conference Thursday in Australia. “If you see reports of them, I’m not going to add to them.”
UNQUOTE

NOTICE the similar refugee attack on the Australians as Trump did on Merkel.......

KKK agenda is same as Trump's: "Everything I've been talking about for decades is coming true and the ideas I've fought for have won"–DDuke

.@fmkaplan writes that elevation of Steve Bannon to NSC Principals Committee is in violation of federal law.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/02/ste… 
…

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn says Iran ballistic missile launch violated UN resolution 2231.
“Condemn actions [&]..we are putting Iran on notice”

Of note: Russia had said it didn't.

More Bannon and NSC.......

Bannon's "Strategic Initiatives Group" a New Node of Power in the White House
http://thebea.st/2jTVSmg

Bannon, now on the NSC, predicts war with China rather soon, eg SCS conflict resulting in war. Seems important.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-steve-ban…

Good read on Bannon from @Fahrenthold. Odd he compares himself to Cromwell, famously executed for treason.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-explained-his-worldview-… 

First apparent move by the Bannon...Trump and Flynn NSC on Ukraine in order to appease Putin.....first signaled in the Republican Party platform changed pushed by Manafort....

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/ukraine-clashes-leave-sev…

Since the Russian troop commanded Russian mercenaries started their attack immediately after the Putin/Trump telephone call...19 UAF KIAs...and 55 WIAs...and the fighting is unusually heavy....

Parts of east Ukraine are on the brink of a humanitarian crisis as the worst violence for a year in the conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed separatists has left up to 19 dead and thousands of people without water and heating in freezing temperatures.

The violence is an early test of Donald Trump’s stated desire for better US relations with Russia. Kiev has watched nervously as Trump has repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin and floated the idea of lifting sanctions.

The conflict in Ukraine has raged for nearly three years and cost more than 10,000 lives. A ceasefire was agreed in Minsk two years ago, and although little progress has been made since on a political solution, large-scale clashes have been rare over the past year.

However, in the last few days both sides have accused the other of using Grad systems, imprecise weapons that rain down multiple rockets over a wide area.

On Wednesday the Ukrainian military said three soldiers had died overnight, and separatist authorities claimed four civilians had been killed.
'It's a pretty disturbing time for Ukraine': Trump's Russia ties unnerve Kiev

In a clear sign that US policy towards Russia could indeed be heading for a sharp change of course under Trump, the state department made no criticism of Russia or the separatist side, in contrast to most of its statements in response to similar spikes in violence in the past.
The acting state department spokesman Mark Toner said the US was “deeply concerned” by the violence and called for “an immediate, sustained ceasefire”.
However, the statement stopped short of apportioning blame.
Russia’s state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta excitedly noted the change in tone. “Washington is not blaming the unrecognised republics for breaking the ceasefire, is not stating any support for Kiev, is not saying a single word about the role of Russia …

Different variations of these elements were, as a rule, a key part of all statements of Ukraine under Barack Obama’s administration.”

The state department statement was markedly different in tone to comments from the US mission to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is staffed by career diplomats and may be out of step with the new mood in Washington.

“Russia and the separatists initiated the violence in Avdiivka,” said the US chargé d’affaires to the OSCE, Kate Byrnes. “We call on Russia to stop the violence, honour the ceasefire, withdraw heavy weapons and end attempts to seize new territory beyond the line of contact.”

There are several rounds of US and EU sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and actions in east Ukraine. Trump has suggested it could be time to lift them, and has spoken of the potential for a grand deal with Putin. The two leaders spoke by telephone at the weekend and agreed to meet soon.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said during a meeting with security officials on Tuesday: “The shelling is massive. Who would dare to talk about lifting the sanctions in such circumstances?”

In Moscow, officials accused Kiev of provoking the fighting to derail the rapprochement between Putin and Trump. “Kiev is trying to use the fighting it provoked itself as a pretext to refuse to observe the Minsk agreement and blame Russia,” the foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday.

Fighting has centred on the town of Avdiivka, which lies a few miles from the separatist capital, Donetsk, but is controlled by Ukrainian authorities. The violence has come during a cold snap, with temperatures falling as low as minus 18C.

East Ukraine: on the frontline of Europe's forgotten war
Giovanna Barberis, Unicef’s representative in Ukraine, said: “Not only are the lives of thousands of children in Avdiivka, and on all sides of the conflict, at risk, but to make matters worse the lack of water and electricity means that homes are becoming dangerously cold and health conditions deteriorating as we speak.”

Also on Wednesday, Ukraine’s defence minister, Stepan Poltorak, claimed a Ukrainian military cargo plane had been shot at from a Russian-held gas rig on the Black Sea. “The shot damaged the plane. The crew were not hurt,” he wrote on Facebook.

So far there has been no comment on the increased violence in Ukraine from Trump’s inner circle. The new US president has repeatedly made favourable statements about Russia and Putin and signalled a very different approach towards Moscow. This month Trump tweeted: “Both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”

Diplomats who served during the Obama administration have cautioned against making deals with Russia. “For almost three years the United States has worked closely with our European partners to support a peaceful resolution to the conflict through full implementation of the Minsk agreements, including by using sanctions to encourage Putin to comply,” said Dan Baer, formerly the US ambassador to the OSCE. “This should continue to be US policy going forward; anything else would be irresponsible.”

What we do not see are Americans attempting to place this Trump...Bannon...Miller NSC EO Muslim ban into perspective.......why is that?

Number of Americans killed by......for 2016

Islamic jihadist immigrants 2
Far right wing terrorists 5
All Islamic terrorists including Americans 9
So called "armed toddlers" 21
Lighting 31
Lawnmowers 69
Being hit by a bus 264
Falling out of bed 737
Being shot by another American 11,737

BUT anyone killed in the US recently by a 5 year old handcuffed immigrant with a US embassy issued valid immigrant visa.......ZERO

There is an interesting development within the Bannon/Flynn NSC driven FIRST Trump AQ raid that if successful he would have clearly boasted about......

BUT WAIT....did we hear out of this Bannon/Flynn NSC anything concerning the raid...nothing until it was leaked via MSM.....

AND did Trump even recognize in personal comments the death of a ST6 member and the injuries of other ST6 members....IT took the SecDef to honor them....

Notice not a single tweet to honor the SEAL....

IF one takes the Yemen number of killed civilians it is in excess of 50...granted we could say who trusts Yemen numbers BUT lately when the US airstrikes in Syria against IS actually kill large numbers of civilians what we get from the DoD is..."we will investigate" and then let everything drop unless social media investigative source confirm those numbers THEN DoD gets active again....

So until DoD can confirm the opposite 50 civilians were in fact killed...AN unusually large number.....

Has the ROE been changed and if so by WHOM?

SO now during resulting failure period of this Yemen raid what did we get from Trump and Bannon.....a total series of FUBARs all designed to distract from the ST6 raid....Muslim ban......bashing Democrats....firing the Acting AG.....Marshall Service disobeying a Federal court order....and now the decision for the SC pulled forward several days earlier than planned......

BUT anything about the raid coming out of the Trump/Bannon WH.....absolutely totally nothing....

Foreign Policy
✔
@ForeignPolicy
Trump cutting a deal with Putin would sell America’s hard-won leadership, and sell it for cheap, writes @danbbaer
http://atfp.co/2kcm36q

NOW Bannon has thrown via the NSC outside written EO Muslim Ban the US into a Constitutional crisis.....

QUOTE:
Reports from LA that US Marshals are refusing to enforce fed court orders against CBP. They've been instructed to take orders from US Atty.
UNQUOTE

So now the DHS has no authority on any security services that report to it....

BUT WAIT...I thought the Us operated under the concept of the rule of law.....

There are in fact FOUR standing Federal Court rulings ordering CBP to allow Green Card holders into the US and some categories of visas as well and dual citizens.....

EVEIDENTLY the US Marshall Service stands above the law and Federal Court decisions....

Appears that the Bannon led NSC seems to be spinning out of control....hiring out Congressmen to write EOs when the NSC cannot do it....

They COULDN'T TELL THEIR OWN BOSSES because Trump poached them & had them sign NDAs. Amazing.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/congressional-aides-secret… 

Trump EO Muslim Ban written outside the NSC process...HOW can that be????

NOW the Bannon directed NSC is lashing out against Germany using the favorite Trump drumbeat of currency manipulation that Trump threw against the Chinese via twitter....

Trump was about 12 years behind in his accusations against China and now his favorite trade expert is about 10 years behind in understand both the Euro and how the EU does trade business.....

AND the Chinese response...basically telling Trump to shut the heck up or go to war...they are not about to change anything simply for Trump.....

This so called trade expert has very little understanding of both the creation of the Euro nor of the current value of the Euro which is actually higher than a USD thus making US exports into Europe cheaper actually...

The Bannon led NSC has been supporting Trump in his bashing of both NATO...EU and especially in his recent press interview Germany and Merkel...

BUT WAIT...as Bannon works for Trump being paid by US taxpayer money...HOW is it he has his own companies working for the right wing nationalist parties in UK...France AND Germany..AT the same time...

NOW notice the sudden connection????

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/31/trump-trade-expert-rips-germany-for…

Trump Trade Expert Rips Germany for ‘Manipulating’ Euro
By Robbie Gramer
Emily Tamkin
January 31, 2017 - 12:16 pm

In his first week in office, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, thereby dealing a massive blow to U.S. trade relations with allies and partners in Asia. For week two, Team Trump has set its sights on wrecking U.S. trade with Europe.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro accused Germany of using a “grossly undervalued” euro, which he called an “implicit Deutsche Mark,” to steal an advantage on the United States in trade.

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back against Navarro’s claims during a press conference. “We won’t exercise any influence over the European Central Bank, so I can’t and I don’t want to change the situation as it is now,” Merkel said, speaking during her visit to Stockholm. “Beyond that, we strive to trade on the global market with competitive products in fair trade with all others.”

But Trump echoed Navarro’s claims on Tuesday. “Other countries take advantage of ours [pharmaceutical industry] with their money and their money supply and devaluation,” he said, referring after a meeting with pharmaceutical executives. He did not reference Germany in his accusation, but rather another important U.S. trading partner, Japan. “You look at Japan. They play the money market, they play the devaluation market, while we sit here like a bunch of dummies,” Trump said.

To be fair, Navarro’s currency claims are usually a good few years out of date. His beef with China — that Beijing keeps the yuan cheap — hasn’t been true since about 2011. And the Bundesbank, whatever its influence in the past, isn’t running the European Central Bank now.

“Anyone claiming that the euro is an ‘implicit Deutsche Mark’ has missed 5 years of ECB policies shaped against the will of the Bundesbank,” Maxime Sbaihi, a Europe economist for Bloomberg, said, referring to the German Federal Bank.

Brexit helped “kill” the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — a massive proposed free trade deal between the EU and United States — even before Trump was elected, Navarro said.

But he said Trump would kill it dead, in favor of bilateral deals, which take as long or longer to negotiate, but which deliver fewer benefits. “This is a multilateral deal in bilateral dress,” Navarro said.

Trump and Navarro’s “America First” approach to business (except for all the textiles Trump companies make overseas with cheap foreign labor) also apparently means repatriating global supply chains for U.S. companies, an effort to reverse decades-long economic trends that have helped create the modern global economy and dramatically boosted manufacturing output.  

“It does the American economy no long-term good to only keep the big box factories where we are now assembling ‘American’ products that are composed primarily of foreign components,” Navarro said. (The competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers depends, in fact, in large part on the efficiencies within the supply chain that Navarro wants to erase.)

With the U.S. turning its trade policy inwards, experts are left wondering if China will the driver’s seat of global trade.

“If the EU and the United States fail to clinch an accord on TTIP,” Carnegie Europe’s Judy Dempsey wrote, “then the chances are that they will have ceded to China the responsibility for setting trading rules, as Beijing seeks to replace the United States as the world’s biggest and most important economy.”