Liz Peek, Former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company/Fox News
He came, he saw, and he took yet another step towards Making America Great Again.
President Trump scored major successes at the G-20 summit that concluded over the weekend in Argentina. Specifically, the community of nations agreed in their official communique to “necessary reform” of the World Trade Organization, a top White House priority, and recognized the decision of the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, and to still utilize “all energy sources and technologies, while protecting the environment.”
In addition, the Chinese promised to up their purchases of U.S.- made goods and to discuss other demands in exchange for postponing an expected hike in tariffs; President Xi also committed to designating the deadly drug Fentanyl as a controlled substance in China, and vowed to help with de-nuclearizing North Korea.
It was an all-round win-win for the president, who needed one. The White House has been buffeted anew by the ongoing Mueller investigation and also by threats of further inquiries and subpoenas from Democrats who are taking control of the House in the aftermath of the midterm elections.
Moreover, Trump’s signature efforts to reboot the tepid economy – efforts which have been by any standard hugely successful – have lately collided with his trade battles with China and other countries. The still-challenging landscape for manufacturing in the U.S. was highlighted recently by GM’s announcement that it would be laying off nearly 15,000 workers.
Investors, too, have shown their concerns over Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum. The stock market has been volatile, worried about rising costs, Federal Reserve rate hikes, and slowing global growth.
Bottom line: the G-20 produced some good news for the president, the country and markets. Over the past several months, anti-Trump hyperventilating by the left has obscured the progress the administration has made in boosting growth, hiring and wages. People in the U.S. are better off than they were, as shown by elevated consumer confidence and robust
spending.
Those workers at GM in danger of losing their jobs are at least being terminated when there are, according to the JOLTS survey, more than 7 million jobs currently unfilled.
Hanging over the booming economy, though, has been the ongoing battle over trade, which some describe as a self-inflicted wound by the White House. But President Trump is correct: the international playing field is not level and it needs to be fixed.There is no plausible reason why we charge imported European cars a tariff of only 2.5 percent, while the EU imposes a 10 percent tax on cars exported from our country.
There is no excuse for the fact that Europe imposes higher tariffs than the U.S. in 17 of 22 major consumer goods categories, as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross argued in an op-ed last year.
Our problems with the EU pale in comparison with the damage done to our country over time by China. It is impossible to detail the many ways in which the Chinese have cheated the U.S. From demanding that our companies operating there share their trade secrets to sending scientists to spy on our universities to hacking into our corporations’ most proprietary information, Beijing has engaged in a decades-long pursuit of our intellectual property, no holds barred.
They have also used subsidies of state-owned enterprises to crush international competition and thrown up endless barriers to companies wanting to compete in China.
The relentless quest for technology that allowed China to climb the value chain, to rise from manufacturing t-shirts to fighter jets, has been aided and abetted by our biggest businesses, and by the World Trade Organziation.
ultinational corporations have put up with Beijing’s cheating because they wanted access to China’s
growing consumer market.