Chris Hedges's Blog, page 233

Trump’s Threatened Tariffs on Hold After Deal With Mexico

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has put on hold his plan to begin imposing tariffs on Mexico on Monday, saying the U.S. ally will take “strong measures” to reduce the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.

But the deal he announced Friday night, after returning from a trip to Europe, falls short of some of the dramatic overhauls pushed for by his administration.

A joint declaration released by the State Department said the U.S. “will immediately expand” a program that returns asylum-seekers, while their claims are under review, to Mexico after they have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Mexico will “offer jobs, healthcare and education” to those people, according to the agreement.

Mexico has agreed, it said, to “unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration,” including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard throughout the country, especially on its southern border with Guatemala.

Trump put the number of troops at 6,000, and said in a tweet Saturday, “Mexico will try very hard, and if they do that, this will be a very successful agreement for both the United States and Mexico!”

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Twitter that “Thanks to the support of all Mexicans, the imposition of tariffs on Mexican products exported to the USA has been avoided.” He called for a gathering Saturday to celebrate in Tijuana.

Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump’s “threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy,” especially with “our close friend.”

The State Department said Mexico is taking “decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks.”

The agreement removes, for now, the threat of trade penalties that had elicited dire warnings from members of Trump’s own party about the potential economic damage, higher consumer prices and an imperiled update to a North American trade deal.

Mexico’s foreign secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, said he thought the deal struck “a fair balance” because the U.S. “had more drastic proposals and measures at the start.”

But Leticia Calderón Cheluis, a migration expert at the Mora Institute in Mexico City, said the agreement is essentially a series of compromises solely by Mexico, which she said committed to “a double clamp at both borders.”

Trump used social media to say he was “pleased to inform you” about the deal with Mexico and said the threatened tariffs “are hereby indefinitely suspended.” He cited Mexico’s commitment to “strong measures” intended “to greatly reduce, or eliminate” illegal immigration from Mexico.

It was a sharp reversal, given that earlier Friday, his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders had told reporters: “Our position has not changed. The tariffs are going forward as of Monday.”

The U.S. had announced in December that it would make some asylum-seekers wait in Mexico while their cases were being processed. But this move has been plagued with glitches, including incorrect court dates, travel problems and issues with lawyers reaching their clients.

Immigration activists in the U.S. have challenged the program in court, arguing it violates migrants’ legal rights. An appeals court recently overturned a judge who had blocked the program. And Pelosi expressed disappointment about what she said was an expanded policy that “violates the rights of asylum-seekers under U.S. law and fails to address the root causes of Central American migration.”

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security were working to spread the program along the border before the latest blowup. About 10,000 people have been returned to Mexico to wait for the processing of their immigration cases since the program began Jan. 29.

Any sizable increase may be difficult to achieve. At just the San Ysidro crossing in California, Mexico had been prepared to accept up to 120 asylum-seekers per week. But for the first six weeks, only 40 people per week were returned.

More than 100,000 migrants are currently crossing the U.S. border each month, but not everyone claims asylum and migrants can wait an entire year before making a claim.

Trump had threatened a 5% tariff on all Mexican goods entering the U.S. “until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.”

U.S. officials had laid out steps Mexico could take to prevent the tariffs, but many people had doubts that even those steps would be enough to satisfy Trump on illegal immigration, a signature issue of his presidency and one that he sees as crucial to his 2020 re-election campaign.

The 5% tax on all Mexican goods would have risen every month, up to 25% under Trump’s plan, and had enormous economic implications for both countries.

Americans bought $378 billion worth of Mexican imports last year, led by cars and auto parts. Many members of Trump’s Republican Party and business allies had urged him to reconsider — or at least postpone the threatened tariffs as talks continued.

From the moment Trump announced his threat, observers wondered whether he would follow through. They noted his habit of creating problems and then claiming credit when he rushed in to solve them.

In late March, Trump threatened to shut the entire U.S.-Mexico border if Mexico didn’t immediately halt illegal immigration. Just a few days later, he backed off that threat, saying he was pleased with steps Mexico had taken. It was unclear, however, what — if anything — Mexico had changed.

Talks in Washington had focused partly on changes that would make it harder for migrants who pass through Mexico from other countries to claim asylum in the U.S., according to those monitoring the situation. Mexico has opposed such a change but appeared open to considering a potential compromise that could include exceptions or waivers for different types of cases. The joint declaration, however, makes no mention of the issue

Trump has embraced tariffs as a political tool he can use to force countries to comply with his demands. Beyond Trump and several White House advisers, though, few in his administration had believed the tariffs were a good idea, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations. Those people had worried about the negative economic consequences for Americans and argued that tariffs, which probably would have drawn retaliatory taxes on U.S. exports, would also hurt the administration politically.

Republicans in Congress warned the White House that they were ready to stand up to the president to try to block his tariffs, which they worried would raise costs to U.S. consumers, harm the economy and imperil a major pending U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Colleen Long, Paul Wiseman, Lisa Mascaro, Darlene Superville and Padmananda Rama in Washington and Jonathan Lemire in Shannon, Ireland contributed to this report.

Long-Distance Trip: NASA Opening Space Station to Visitors

NEW YORK — You’ve heard about the International Space Station for years. Want to visit?

NASA announced Friday that the orbiting outpost is now open for business to private citizens, with the first visit expected to be as early as next year.

There is a catch, though: You’ll need to raise your own cash, and it won’t be cheap.

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A round-trip ticket likely will cost an estimated $58 million. And accommodations will run about $35,000 per night, for trips of up to 30 days long, said NASA’s chief financial officer Jeff DeWit.

“But it won’t come with any Hilton or Marriott points,” DeWit said during a news conference at Nasdaq in New York City.

Travelers don’t have to be U.S. citizens. People from other countries will also be eligible, as long as they fly on a U.S.-operated rocket.

Since the space shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA has flown astronauts to the space station aboard Russian rockets. The agency has contracted with SpaceX and Boeing to fly future crewed missions to the space station. Private citizens would have to make travel arrangements with those private companies to get into orbit.

“If a private astronaut is on station, they will have to pay us while they’re there for the life support, the food, the water, things of that nature,” DeWit added.

Depending on the market, the agency will allow up to two visitors per year, for now. And the private astronauts will have to meet the same medical standards, training and certification procedures as regular crew members.

The space station has welcomed tourists before by way of Russian rockets. In 2001, California businessman Dennis Tito became the first visitor by paying for a journey and several others have followed.

Friday’s announcement marks the first time NASA is allowing private astronauts on board. The space agency will not be selling directly to customers. Instead it will charge private companies, which can pass on the costs to visitors, NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said in an email.

The program is part of NASA’s efforts to open the station to private industries, which the agency hopes will inherit the orbiting platform someday.

Eventually, the space station will become too expensive for the government to maintain, said Bill Gerstenmaier, a NASA’s associate administrator. So the idea is to let the private sector start using the station now and perhaps eventually take it over, he said.

The NASA officials said some revenue from commercial activities will help the agency focus its resources on returning to the moon in 2024, a major goal of the Trump administration. The agency said this will also reduce the cost to U.S. taxpayers for this next lunar mission.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How Mining Corporations Plunder the Global South

This article was produced by Globetrotter , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.” —J. Paul Getty

The big driver of the world economy is a plundering process through which powerful corporations loot the natural resources of low-income countries.

These highly influential multinational corporations (MNCs) facilitate the expatriation of profits and natural assets from resource-rich but capital-poor countries by engaging in a wide range of morally egregious profit maximization practices, such as:

Intentionally establishing operations in countries where it is possible to exploit low-wage workers.
Investing in locations where it is possible to take advantage of regressive tax codes.
Ensuring business-friendly production-sharing agreements with local governments.

These predatory practices carried out by MNCs deprive developing countries from being able to benefit equitably from their own natural resource supply and ultimately undermine their pursuit of emancipatory economic development policies.

How do systematic underdevelopment and exploitation of developing countries and their peoples occur? Two common strategies of corporate plunder through global extractive industries are rent-seeking and wage exploitation.

Extractive Industries

Extractive industries are the starting point of the main drivers in the global economy. They deal with the development, extraction, and sale of exhaustible (nonrenewable) natural resources such as the mining of metals and minerals and the extraction of oil and natural gas, according to the Encyclopedia of Environmental Change, edited by John A. Matthews.

Global extraction of natural resources has increased with the onset of the process of capitalist industrialization, growing at an astounding rate in the past 50 years. Global extraction of primary materials more than tripled to 92 billion tonnes in 2017 from 27 billion tonnes in 1970, an annual average growth of 2.6 percent, according to a 2019 report conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme-hosted International Resource Panel (IRP).

For many countries in the Global South, extractive industries are an important aspect of their economy; yet, in many instances, low-income countries only retain a small fraction of the total wealth that is generated from their domestic natural resource production.

The highly capital-intensive nature of the extractive industry requires expensive upfront costs as well as ongoing investment to replace, modernize, and expand equipment and facilities, which forces communities and governments of poor countries to rely on foreign firms for financial assistance.

As a result, such countries are prevented from being able to fully absorb the financial returns generated from their national resource endowments.

The continent of Africa in particular has historically accounted for a significant portion of global extractive production and supply, serving as a catalyst for the economic development of the Global North through low-wage labor and corporate ownership of the region’s natural resources.

Who Controls the Global Extractive and Mining Industries?

Over the past several decades, multinational corporations have emerged as the primary actors in facilitating global trade and natural resource extraction, yielding tremendous profits.

Large corporations, which account for the bulk of international trade and resource extraction, have experienced rising rents under hyperglobalization, leading to heightened profits. This was confirmed by empirical analysis of the largest 2,000 MNCs, which revealed that the share of profits of extractive MNCs rose from 9.3 percent in 1996 to 13.3 percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, a separate study, which measured the influence of corporate power in the global supply chain (GSC), estimated that about 80 percent of global trade (in terms of gross exports) is linked to the international production networks of transnational corporations.

The trade, production and ownership of the extractive industries have become particularly concentrated among a small number of exporters, importers and MNCs.

Recent evidence of rising market concentration among MNCs within certain sectors of the extractive industry, particularly the mining industry, has prompted concerns among some economists regarding the links between increased market concentration, income inequality, and rent-seeking.

According to a 2018 study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) rent-seeking practices by MNCs on the rise in key sectors of the global economy have become a major driver of global income inequality.

The term “rent-seeking” is used by economists to describe a type of profit-making scheme, the sort made possible when individuals or corporate entities are granted exclusive or majority rights to natural and/or non-natural assets.

Thus, the phrase is frequently associated with monopoly (or quasi-monopoly) rent, a form of “unearned” income, which can be generated when large corporate entities exclude competitors from entering the market for the services or products that they supply.

Monopoly Rents in the Global Mining Industry

A potential entrant into the global mining market would have to invest at least several billion U.S. dollars to launch a competitive, large-scale mining operation.

Large-scale mining, which accounts for 95 percent of global mining production, is carried out by private corporations with various ownership structures (from publicly traded to state owned) and sizes: companies range from 150 or so “senior” mining companies with over $3 billion in assets to thousands of smaller “junior” companies.

The data above is largely consistent with the findings from a 2018 report carried out by global auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which showed that the capitalization threshold to rank among the world’s top 40 largest mining corporations is estimated to be at around $5.4 billion.

The capital-intensive nature of the industry poses significant barriers for entry into the market, causing a high degree of market concentration in the global mining sector.

This claim is further supported by a report conducted by Chatham House, which found that jointly, the four largest companies in iron ore, bauxite, and copper mining control 41 percent, 41 percent and 31 percent, respectively, of global mine production.

This data presents a pattern of quasi-monopolistic market patterns among a group of powerful MNCs in the global mining industry. This trend has limited the ownership over the share of rents generated from the global mining industry to a small number of powerful and highly profitable corporations.

Political Rents, the Rentier State and Corporate Rentiers

While a “significant proportion of [corporate] rents has… accrued through monopolies or quasi-monopolies,” as the UNCTAD study reports, some income (rents) can also be generated by what is referred to as “‘political rents’ derived from the ability to influence particular aspects and details of government policies in ways that disproportionately” favor corporate entities.

The recent growth in global corporate rent-seeking practices by MNCs is partially facilitated through what is referred to as the “rentier state,” which is comprised of various public institutions and legal policies, including: cheap exploration permits, flexible labor laws, and low tax rates that benefit the interests of “rentiers” (corporate investors).

Tax revenues, specifically from the mining industry, have tremendous potential to improve the quality of life of citizens, particularly the poorest segments of the population; however, corporate rentiers (MNCs) perceive tariffs and levies as a financial burden that will inevitably reduce their profit margins.

For instance, in 2011, the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) corporation, which is the “largest private employer in Zambia,” with an estimated 16,000 employees, only paid $105 million in taxes on “its $2.16 billion worth of production, amounting to an effective tax rate of less than 5 percent.”

Sadly, over the past several decades, many mineral-rich rentier-states have entered a downward spiral in an attempt to incentivize foreign investment, offering MNCs low tax rates and favorable production-sharing agreements.

The loss of developing countries’ capacities to retain earnings due to “political rents” accrued by corporate investors has been extensively documented and is particularly evident in the Zambian mining industry.

Wage Exploitation

While not strictly classified as rent-seeking, multinational mining companies engage in yet another form of corporate plunder, which takes place through wage exploitation.

Wage exploitation is a process that ensures increased profit margins for corporate owners and any potential company shareholders, at the expense of workers.

In empirical research conducted by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we observed extensive levels of wage exploitation in the Zambian mining industry, which is one of the world’s most resource-endowed countries with vast mineral deposits.

Despite the county’s immense mineral reserves, our research revealed that in exchange for their labor, many Zambian copper miners are paid next to nothing for their services.

In order to get a sense of wage exploitation and the general labor conditions in the Zambian mining industry, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research spoke with three non-permanent contract miners working at the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) owned mine.

In our discussions, all three men reported that their current wages prevented them from being able to fulfill their own basic needs and those of their families.*

“The wages that we receive are well below the cost of the basic food basket” (defined by the World Bank as “the food bundle corresponding to a minimum caloric requirement”). “If you look at our salaries, we are earning no more than US$172 [per month],” Miner 1 told Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research in an interview conducted last January.

In 2018, Zambia’s monthly minimum wage stood around US$176.4, making it the fifth-highest average minimum wage in the Southern African region, according to statistics from the World Bank.

“So, we are actually earning less than the national minimum wage, which makes it nearly impossible to survive,” Miner 1 went on to say.

Technically, it is a legal offense not to meet minimum wage demands; however, penalties are rarely imposed on foreign multinational companies that violate the country’s national labor code.

These miners’ testimonies are largely consistent with the empirical research and the subsequent calculations that we carried out in order to determine wage exploitation in the Zambian mining industry.

Our calculations were based on two separate collective bargaining agreements, which detailed the monthly wages earned by KCM permanent contract employees and the monthly wages obtained by temporary contract workers.

Based on the empirical data collected, we observed an extraordinary gap in monetary compensation between the top executives of Vedanta (KCM’s parent company) and the average annual wages earned by KCM permanent contract miners and temporary contract hires.

For example, according to our research, in 2018 Chairman Anil Agarwal earned around 584 times as much as temporary contract workers and close to 164 times as much as a KCM miner with a permanent contract.

Labor strikes in Zambia’s mining sector are commonplace. In 2017, business operations for KCM in Chililabombwe were brought to a standstill after workers went on strike over salary adjustments.

“I think that most of us miners believe that companies like KCM are in fact stealing from us. They are stepping on our rights, and as a result we are living in abject poverty,” Miner 2 said when asked about his perception of the multinational mining firms operating in his country.

With nearly 60 percent of the country’s population living below the poverty line, it seems completely reasonable to suggest that Zambian people are deserving of a greater share of the lucrative financial returns generated by their country’s mining industry.

In summary, it is our hope that this research helped illustrate how the combination of both wage exploitation in the context of the Zambian mining industry along with corporate rent-seeking practices in the global extractive sector contribute to the larger pattern of underdevelopment in the Global South.

*For the sake of their physical safety and job security, the three individuals requested to remain anonymous. For the purpose of this text we refer to those quoted as miner 1 and 2.

Free Traders No More? GOP Warms Up to Trump’s Use of Tariffs

WASHINGTON — With President Donald Trump threatening to slap tariffs on goods from Mexico, his transformation of Republican Party trade policy is nearly complete.

Republican lawmakers usually don’t like tariffs. They’re viewed as a tax on consumers and unwanted government intervention in free trade. But many Republicans, unwilling to buck Trump, are prepared to follow the president’s lead and support 5% tariffs on Mexico in his dispute over illegal immigration.

It’s a crossroads for the GOP as the White House is taking the party in a confrontational new direction. The tariffs may, or may not, solve the border crisis. But as with Trump’s tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum and goods from China, the threat alone sending ripple effects into a jittery economy.

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“I’m a free trader but I want equal access,” said Georgia GOP Sen. David Perdue, a former Fortune 500 business executive and close ally of Trump.

“What we’re talking about here is trying to change behavior,” he said. “Here, we need the Mexican government to help us with this avalanche of people that’s coming.”

Said Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott, “I don’t like it, but I’m going to support the president. … I want border security.”

As Trump returned Friday from Europe, he was expected to assess the situation ahead Monday’s deadline for imposing the tariffs. Talks between U.S. and Mexican officials were underway all week.

Trump tweeted from aboard Air Force One there was “a good chance” a deal could be struck. But he said: “If we are unable to make the deal, Mexico will begin paying Tariffs at the 5% level on Monday!”

The administration says Mexico can prevent the tariffs by securing its southern border with Guatemala, cracking down on criminal smuggling organizations and overhauling its asylum system. But it’s unclear if any of the concessions so far will satisfy the president.

During negotiations in Washington, Mexican officials have agreed to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops to the Mexican border with Guatemala to help control the flow of migrants. However, one of the U.S.’s main demands, that Mexico agree to becoming a “safe third country” for asylum seekers, remained a key topic during Friday’s talks, those monitoring the situation said. Mexico has resisted that demand, which would make it difficult for those who enter Mexico from other countries to claim asylum in the U.S.

“That is being looked at,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday during his daily news conference, where he held out hope there was still time before Monday to strike a deal. “I am optimistic that an agreement will be reached.”

The debate is catapulting Republican lawmakers into new terrain, using tariffs not only as economic policy for trading outcomes but as a negotiating tool in an unrelated dispute over immigration policy. The tactic runs counter to long-held GOP views on trade — prioritizing free markets — and is pushing Republicans, particularly those who will be running for re-election alongside Trump in 2020, to fall in line.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he was prepared to support Trump if the issue comes to a vote. But he also hopes any tariffs are temporary — and don’t dramatically escalate.

“None of us would want to see a long-term tariff imposed,” Tillis said. “I think it’s fair to put it on the table. If it was a 50% tariff we’d be having a different discussion.”

Ever since President Ronald Reagan, there has been an “inexorable movement” within the GOP toward free trade, culminating in passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a pro-free market group backed by the Koch enterprise.

But that’s changing under Trump, and it’s scrambling traditional alliances between Republican lawmakers and America’s business community, putting both on uncertain footing. Trump wants to do away with NAFTA — the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal had been heading toward a vote in Congress but could be jeopardized by the tariffs — and he has shelved the Obama-era proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership with more than a dozen nations.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us to bring that orthodoxy back,” Phillips said.

To be sure, plenty of Republicans are resisting Trump’s transformation. Those from agricultural, manufacturing and border states are particularly opposed to the tariffs on Mexico. Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts called tariffs “a really awkward thing. And tariffs are like shattered glass. You never know where it’s going to end.”

In some ways, Trump’s approach is more in line with liberals, including potential 2020 rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, creating new political cross currents in the debate.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long the dominant business group in Washington, has been encouraging the White House and Republican lawmakers to steer away from the Mexico tariffs. The group is evaluating legal options to intervene if they are put in place.

“We do have a real crisis at the border,” said Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer. “But imposing a tax that’s going to be paid for by businesses and consumers won’t solve that problem — and if anything will make it worse.”

With Friday’s jobs numbers pointing to a slowing economy, Bradley said the administration needs to avoid missteps. “Imposing tariffs on everything we import from our No. 1 trading partner would definitely count as a misstep,” he said.

At the same time, it’s not at all clear the tariffs would check the rising number of migrants at the border, a crisis that has vexed the White House. The Department of Homeland Security said this week that U.S. apprehensions of migrants illegally crossing the border in May hit the highest level in more than a decade: 132,887.

Frank Sharry, executive director of the advocacy group America’s Voice, said Trump is taking a “sledgehammer” to a complex migration and refugee problem, which stems from conditions in Central America and is fueled by smugglers capitalizing on the president’s own threats to shut the U.S.-Mexican border.

“This is a regional refugee crisis caused by violence and drought in Central America that has been so thoroughly mismanaged by the failing and flailing Trump administration that they’ve created a humanitarian crisis at our border,” he said. Trump, he said, is “quadrupling down on a failed strategy.”

Warning Trump off the tariffs, some GOP senators have pledged to vote against them in a measure of disapproval that would send a stiff rebuke from his own party.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not promised to bring a vote forward, and others monitoring the situation doubt he ever will.

And that may be fine with many lawmakers, too. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he understands the president’s frustrations and is willing to consider options.

“You’ve got to fight the fight differently,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re against free trade. It just means you got to take the long view of what free trade looks like.”

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Matthew Lee and Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington contributed to this report.

Bowe Bergdahl’s Story Lays Bare the Tragedy of Our Forever Wars

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“American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan”
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“American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan”

A book by Matt Farwell and Michael Ames

In Book IX of Homer’s “Odyssey,” the reader finds Odysseus recounting the early days of what will become his 10-year voyage home from the Trojan War. Trapped in the Cyclops’ cave, the Greek warrior devises an audacious plan to escape. He blinds the Cyclops and sneaks out of confinement with his crew. As they row out to sea, the sailors hear the rage-fueled cries of the blinded Cyclops as the creature demands to know the author of his fate.

Unable to resist, Odysseus taunts him: “[I]f any man on the face of the earth should ask you / who blinded you, who shamed you so—say Odysseus.” And he does, raising a curse to Poseidon, “god of the sea-blue mane who rocks the earth,” asking that Odysseus “find a world of pain at home.” Odysseus’ life thereafter is complicated by this act of hubris, the reckless decision to reveal his identity to the Cyclops.

While returning home from modern war is considerably faster, it can feel Odyssean. For American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, the journey can take weeks. First, a trip from a small outpost to a larger one, where a unit consolidates and soldiers wait for a helicopter to take them to Bagram, the largest American air base in the country. More waiting at Bagram, this time for a flight to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. From there a bus to another camp in Kuwait. More waiting. Then a bus back to Ali Al Salem. More waiting. Finally, the flight home. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go, but nothing ever seems to move so smoothly. At the start of the surge in Iraq, to note a notorious example, some units waiting for flights home from Kuwait were ordered back to Iraq for more months of combat, only to begin the whole return process anew.

But for Bowe Bergdahl, the Cyclops’ curse—calling for Odysseus to “come home late […] alone in a stranger’s ship”—became all too real. Bergdahl, the longest-held American POW in the United States’s longest war, has been the subject of renewed public interest, owing in part to the popularity of the Serial podcast series, which devoted its second season to Bergdahl’s ordeal. Much of the attention in the popular press, however, has focused on one central question—why did this young soldier walk off his post and disappear into the Afghan night 10 years ago this June? Matt Farwell and Michael Ames, in their new book “American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan,” broaden the story beyond this decision. Bergdahl’s odyssey, in Farwell and Ames’s account, is far more complex than his solitary journey may suggest. The young soldier’s ordeal, the authors contend, offers a glimpse into the dysfunctional and unending prosecution of the United States’s longest war.

Click here to read long excerpts from “American Cipher” at Google Books.

US Army Private Bergdahl arrived in Afghanistan by a circuitous route. Bored and listless in Idaho, the young man yearned for a life of adventure, but his enthusiasm occasionally outstripped his capacity. Seeking a romantic life of action abroad, Bergdahl traveled to Paris and attempted to join the French Foreign Legion. His thirst for adventure may have gotten the better of him. He failed to enlist and found himself astonished by life abroad. “He hadn’t anticipated, for instance, that everyone would be speaking French.” A disastrous 26 days in the US Coast Guard followed. Undeterred, Bergdahl enlisted in the Army as an infantryman, and found himself deployed to Afghanistan’s restive Paktika Province in May 2009. But like Bergdahl’s brief trip to France, the war in Afghanistan didn’t quite match his expectations. He found himself frustrated with his leaders and confused about the war’s ultimate purpose.

Angered by what Farwell and Ames accurately call the “impossible contradiction” that characterizes American counterinsurgency doctrine, Bergdahl decided to walk away from his post. “This wasn’t the war story Bergdahl had written for himself, so he decided to write his own.” After slipping into the Afghan night on June 29, 2009, he would not see another American until his release five years later.

Bergdahl was fated to become the subject of a series of competing and often contradictory narratives, and much of “American Cipher” works to unbraid the tales. Members of Bergdahl’s unit had their story, American politicians had another, the Taliban yet another. Then a new narrative emerges: competing American military and intelligence agencies, each seemingly more interested in self-aggrandizement than cooperation. Time and resources are wasted searching for Bergdahl in Afghanistan even as the best available intelligence suggested he had been moved across the border into Pakistan. Instead of acknowledging this reality and as “the searches carried on past the time when military and government leadership knew that Bergdahl was almost certainly in Pakistan,” Farwell and Ames note, “the Army began focusing on information control.”

Certain outlets of American political media pushed a different story: Bergdahl had joined the Taliban. Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters took to the Fox News airwaves and accused Bergdahl of desertion, claiming that he was “collaborating with the enemy.” Neither of these claims were true. Rumor filled the void of the unknown.

Captured and turned over to the Haqqani network, a terrorist syndicate that operates in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bergdahl endured torture for most of his time in captivity. Far from joining the enemy, Bergdahl made several attempts to escape, each resulting in harsher treatment from his furious captors. Meanwhile, Bergdahl’s father began his own search for his son. As Telemachus’ hunt for his father Odysseus took the young man to the courts of Nestor and Menelaus, places where he heard stories of his absent father, Robert Bergdahl spent years of his life collecting stories about his son. The elder Bergdahl would listen to anyone who might be in a position to offer help, an openness that put him occasionally at odds with authorities in Washington. In Farwell and Ames’s account, Robert Bergdahl emerges as a relentless searcher, calm in almost unbearable situations. He was traveling to Kabul during a critical stage of the secretive final talks to secure his son’s release and was ordered back to the United States before he inadvertently complicated the negotiations. Unaware how close he was to reuniting with his son, Robert Bergdahl returned in despair. He thought he had “abandoned Bowe.” But American Cipher’s praise for Robert Bergdahl’s dedication and Bowe Bergdahl’s bravery in captivity is inseparable from its condemnation of the bureaucratic infighting that has, the book implies, encouraged the war to continue without a defined purpose or robust political debate.

While Farwell and Ames take care to credit some of the painstaking work—of diplomats, intelligence officers, and military service-members—“American Cipher” paints a dark picture of American military and intelligence services as interested in controlling their own image, regardless of truth, as they are in finding Bergdahl or ending the war.

The misinformation about Bergdahl’s story continued long after his release. After a number of missed opportunities to secure his freedom, the Obama administration authorized a prisoner swap, releasing five detainees from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay without notifying Congress. The political reaction was both immediate and predictable. Smelling a scandal, right-wing media outlets worked overtime to portray the prisoner swap as an illegal executive action that endangered the American homeland. Amid a subdued homecoming for Bergdahl, Farwell and Ames note that the “GOP strategy to leverage Bergdahl and his family against Obama was working as designed.” Weeks after the soldier’s release, they observe, Obama’s disapproval ratings reached “55 percent, the highest of his presidency.” So lasting was the public mistrust sewn by political opportunism that Bergdahl’s release became an issue in the 2016 Republican campaign. “In the old days, when we were strong and wise, we shoot a guy like that,” then-candidate Donald Trump declared with his expected machismo, but no serious discussion of ending the United States’s longest war emerged from any of the televised presidential debates.

While Farwell and Ames offer a humane depiction of a young American enmeshed in a net of contradictory American values and practices, they have little sympathy for the architects of American policy in Afghanistan. Like Odysseus’ taunts to the cyclops, Bergdahl’s act was the mistake of a moment. The strategic mistakes, meanwhile, continue unabated and undebated. While Bergdahl is safely home, the larger calamity documented by “American Cipher” continues, and the authors lay responsibility for its continuation at the highest levels of America’s political, military, and intelligence organizations. There’s enough blame to go around. The United States’s longest war—nearly absent, Farwell and Ames note, from the political conversation during the 2016 presidential election (a judgment the pair might also apply to the 2018 election cycle)—shows no sign of ending any time soon. The war perpetuates itself out of bureaucratic inertia, a reality “American Cipher” exposes unreservedly.

Nick Utzig is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Harvard University. He is a former US Army major and an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran.

This review originally appeared on the Los Angeles Review of Books

U.S. Hiring Slows Amid Trade Rifts and Weaker Global Economy

WASHINGTON — U.S. hiring stumbled in May as employers added just 75,000 jobs, a sign that businesses have become more cautious in the face of weaker global growth, widening trade conflicts and perhaps some difficulty finding enough workers.

Last month’s modest job gain followed a much healthier increase of 224,000 in April. The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate remained at a nearly 50-year low of 3.6%.

The tepid job growth, along with rising pressures on the economy, makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will cut rates in the coming months. Bond yields fell after the jobs data was released, signaling expectations for lower Fed rates. Stock investors, too, signaled their approval, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up nearly 300 points in late-day trading.

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On Friday, the government also revised down the economy’s hiring gains for March and April by a combined 75,000. In the first five months of the year, job growth has averaged 164,000 a month, a solid pace that is enough to lower the unemployment rate over time. Still, it’s below last year’s pace of 225,000.

Last month, President Donald Trump announced an increase in tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports from 10% to 25%. And last week, he threatened to impose 5% tariffs on all Mexican imports to the United States beginning Monday. Those taxes would rise each month until they reach 25% in October unless the Mexican government cuts off a flow of Central American migrants entering the United States from through Mexico.

The economy is showing signs of sluggishness just as the expansion has reached its 10th anniversary. Next month, it will become the longest period of uninterrupted growth on records dating to 1854. Yet consumers have turned cautious about spending, and companies are scaling back their investment in high-cost machinery and equipment.

Economists cautioned that May’s job figures cover just one month and that broader trends indicate that hiring remains steady. They also noted, though, that May’s weaker hiring data preceded Trump’s threat last week to impose 5% tariffs on Mexico. So the full impact of the trade fights will likely show up in coming months.

“This looks like an economy that is slowing down, which does not mean that we’re necessarily entering a recession,” said Martha Gimbel, director of economic research at the job listings site Indeed. “Coming in the context of tariffs and other economic headwinds makes this number more worrisome.”

The economy expanded at a healthy 3.1% annual rate in the January-March quarter. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that annual growth will slump to 1.5% in the April-June quarter.

The deceleration in hiring could mean that some employers are just having trouble finding the workers they need, given that the pool of unemployed is comparatively small. Yet wages should be rising faster than they are as employers compete for workers.

Average hourly pay rose just 3.1% in May from a year earlier, down slightly from last month’s year-over-year gain of 3.2%. That was the smallest such annual increase since September. Smaller raises, combined with slower hiring, could diminish consumers’ willingness to spend in the coming months.

Hiring was weak across a broad range of industries in May. Manufacturers added only 3,000 jobs, a fourth straight month of anemic gains. Construction companies hired just 4,000, financial services only 2,000.

Employers in several industries cut payrolls. Retailers shed workers for a fifth straight month as stores struggle with online competition. A category that includes telecom, publishing, and media shed 5,000 jobs. Federal, state and local governments cut a combined 15,000.

Software and technology firms remain a bright spot. Paul McDonald, a senior executive at the staffing firm Robert Half International, said that mobile app developers, data analysts, coders, and senior financial analysts are still typically receiving multiple offers and strong pay gains.

“It’s still a job seeker’s market,” he said.

Keeper Security, a cyber-security firm, said last month that it would expand its Chicago headquarters and add 130 jobs over the next six months to its roughly 160 current staff.

CEO Darren Guccione said his company hasn’t had much trouble finding candidates to fill its programming, sales and marketing jobs. The company hires software developers in its Sacramento office, and is able to attract employees who are tired of the high cost of living in San Francisco.

“We’re seeing great pools of candidates,” he said.

Trade conflicts have had no impact on the company, Guccione added.

The tariffs have affected manufacturing and retail firms more than they have software companies and have become a growing threat to the economy.

The higher costs from the import taxes — and the potential for more — are causing some companies to scale back plans for spending, investment and expansion. A strong dollar, which makes U.S. goods costlier overseas, has also slowed the production and export of manufactured goods. Factory output fell 0.5% in April, according to a Fed report.

Automakers are cutting jobs and production as U.S. sales have declined. Analysts expect auto sales to fall below 17 million this year after four years above that level.

The Wall Street Journal’s Disgraceful Defense of Gina Haspel

A Wall Street Journal report (5/25/19) by Warren Strobel whitewashed CIA Director Gina Haspel’s career and put a positive spin on the CIA’s insulation from public accountability with its turn towards its greatest opacity “in decades.”

While one might expect CIA officials to support greater secrecy around the organization, it’s odd that ostensibly independent journalists—with a mission to hold official organizations accountable by informing the public—would treat less information coming from the agency as a positive development.

Yet that’s exactly what the Journal report did, depicting Haspel’s strategy of avoiding backlash from the Trump administration by not publicly contradicting its dubious claims as “protecting the agency” from “the domestic threat of a toxic US political culture.”

“She and her agency have adopted their lowest public profile in decades,” Strobel writes—just before summing her up as a “CIA director who has been warmly received by the workforce she has spent her life among.”

In other words, for the Journal, a public intelligence agency sharing its intelligence with the public is a bad thing, unless it supports US foreign policy by agreeing with whatever the Trump administration is saying. This position is echoed in the piece by official sources, like former CIA official and staff director of the House Intelligence Committee Mark Lowenthal, who assures us, “It’s not going to be any good for her [Haspel] to be out there attracting lightning bolts.”

However, the most egregious part of Strobel’s report is its whitewashing of Haspel’s disturbing record in the CIA by uncritically transmitting glowing endorsements by other CIA officials:

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said he is absolutely confident that Ms. Haspel will push back if policy makers ask the agency to do something it shouldn’t.

“I was told that somebody asked that the agency do something that was inappropriate. Her response was, ‘No. And don’t ask again,’ ” said Mr. Morell, who hosts the Intelligence Matters podcast. He said he did not have details of the incident.

Strange: That’s precisely the opposite of what Haspel did when she was asked to violate domestic and international law by torturing post-9/11 prisoners (euphemized by Strobel as “controversies” over “treatment of detainees”), and peddling lies about torture’s effectiveness (National Security Archives, 4/26/18).

Nor did Haspel say “No. And don’t ask again,” when told to destroy videotape recordings of the CIA inflicting torture on its captives, which was condemned as “obstruction” by 9/11 Commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean (Intercept, 3/13/18; New York Times, 1/2/08).

Haspel actually supervised Detention Site Green in Thailand, one of the US’s notorious “black sites” where suspects were sent to be tortured after being kidnapped and held in another country to evade legal accountability in the US (Washington Post, 11/2/05). Sondra Crossby, a US Navy Reserve doctor with extensive experience treating torture victims around the world, described one of Haspel’s prisoners as “one of the most traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

John Kiriakou, a former CIA official not cited in this laudatory profile, said that Haspel was known to other colleagues as “Bloody Gina” because people like her “tortured for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information” (Democracy Now, 3/14/18).

Many of Haspel’s champions have offered the irrelevant and unacceptable “Nuremberg Defense” of “just following orders” to shield her from criticism. Morell himself is one of those people, as he praised her nomination as deputy director specifically because she obediently follows immoral orders (Cipher Brief, 2/2/17):

Haspel does not shy away from the toughest jobs; in fact, she gravitates toward them.  Some of the assignments that she took on have later come under political fire, but in each case she was following the lawful orders of the president.

Morell, as FAIR (10/29/13) has noted, is a propagandist who denies that the CIA engaged in what is indisputably torture, and echoes CIA lies about drone strikes being a “very precise weapon,” with “very low” collateral damage. Such dishonesty is par for the course for CIA higher-ups (Guardian, 1/7/13).

Strobel presumably knows this, as FAIR (Extra!, 4/06) has also noted that Strobel provided some of the most critical reporting on the Bush Jr. administration’s WMD hoax in real time, as Morell was doing his best to advance it. That Morell would defend Haspel is predictable, given that he conducted an internal investigation “clearing” her of any wrongdoing (Intercept, 5/14/18).

Since Strobel’s report depends on current and former intelligence officials as sources, it’s unsurprising that Haspel is considered to be “a good steward” of the CIA precisely because she won’t be a “transformational leader” who would dare to do radical things like respecting the US Constitution’s rejection of “cruel and unusual punishment” and international humanitarian law. The piece downplays the CIA’s illegal activities as mere “controversies,” and presents Haspel and the CIA’s attempts to avoid scrutiny and accountability as “no small accomplishment.”

Perhaps if outlets like the Wall Street Journal provided less adulatory coverage of the CIA’s leaders and the organization’s illicit activities, it would be harder for its members like “Bloody Gina” Haspel to get away with lying. Perhaps instead of getting promotions, they’d face accountability for their actions (FAIR.org, 5/20/09; NBC, 2/9/11).

America’s Global Hegemony Could Be Coming to an End

What follows is a conversation between Institute on New Economic Thinking President Rob Johnson and Paul Jay of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

Big power rivalry is heading into very dangerous waters. The rise of China as an economic and military superpower is threatening the global hegemony of the United States. Russia has been pushed into an increasingly tighter relationship with China to balance the attempts by the West to isolate it. President Trump, representing the most aggressive sections of American capital, is responding with a trade war, and an unparalleled massive peacetime military budget that was justified by his Secretary of Defense Shanahan with three words: China, China, and China. Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said in a briefing note that taxing all trade between the world’s two largest economies would cause some $455 billion in gross domestic product to evaporate. The report said this would be a loss larger than South Africa’s entire economy.

In a recent meeting between Russia’s President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, apparently the 29th such meeting in the last few years, it was announced with the two leaders looking on that the Chinese tech company Huawei has struck a deal to build Russia’s first 5G wireless network. This is the same company that Trump has banned from developing the 5G network in the United States, and is pushing Europe to do the same.

This is clearly just the early stages of what is already the defining big power contention of the 21st century. When the two countries should be focused on the climate crisis, it’s looking more like the years before World War I. Of course, there were no nuclear weapons in 1914.

Now joining us to discuss the Chinese, Russian, and American rivalry is Rob Johnson. Rob is the president of the Institute on New Economic Thinking. He was formerly a banking associate of George Soros, and he’s now leading the Commission on Global Economic Transformation, a project of INET, co-chaired by Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Mike Spence. Thanks for joining us, Rob.

ROB JOHNSON: Pleasure.

PAUL JAY: So just how dangerous is this trade war? When you listen to the, sort of the business media, it goes anywhere from, well, they’re all going to sort it out at a meeting in June, to this is just the beginning of something that’s going to get extremely messy.

ROB JOHNSON: I would say we can’t know whether things will be what you might call mended back together, or whether we’re opening a very, very big and contentious hole in the design of the world system. I was recently at a conference run by a man named John Mallery at MIT, which was an outstanding collection of people from intellectual property rights, trade representatives, artificial intelligence, machine learning experts, and from the intelligence community.

And in that context we talked about how in the natural sciences one tends to have a sense of wonder, but in the political science of arms control and disarmament, or in this case, the relationship between cybersecurity and commerce, one tends to worry. So it’s between worry and wonder. And I think the consensus of that meeting, where I was one of two economists in attendance, is that it’s time to worry.

There’s also a very, very severe what you might call scenario, where the architecture of our global financial system and credit allocation is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack. And something that did that vigorously and powerfully could start an unraveling of credit allocation, as everybody hunkered down out of fear that the integrity of the system itself would be questioned. Or, if you will, wealth and so forth could be expropriated or diverted in directions that cause tremendous harm to the banks, the banking system, and the confidence of the what I’ll call global commercial public.

So it’s very daunting. But I think the relationship between military concerns and commerce is almost unsolvable at present. And it’s scaring lots of people, because you don’t know who’s hacking you, you don’t know where they’re coming from. And it’s hard to create what you might call rules of fair play between U.S. and China and then have somebody hack into the system, and not know whether it’s your counterpart that’s cheating, or a third party pretending, say, to be from Wisconsin, or to be from Shanghai, intruding on system, when they might be in Albania or Latin America. So it’s a very, very treacherous environment. Almost every expert that I’ve encountered as I’ve tried to become familiar with this says it get used to it.

PAUL JAY: It seems to me the underlying issue here is is the U.S. oligarchy–and that’s not monolithic by any means. There’s very different interests within the most powerful circles, economic circles in the United States. But are they willing to accept this is going to be a multi-superpower world, certainly at the very least China and the United States? I would say within a few decades it’s not out of the question a country like India might even enter those kinds of circles, when you start having populations of a billion and you start having this technological evolution that’s taking place in China. But there certainly seems to be circles within United States that do not accept the idea that this will be anything but a single-superpower world, and they’re trying to do something about it.

ROB JOHNSON: Well, I think there is a big–you spoke of the awful geopolitics in the introduction. And we’re in a very treacherous and difficult place, which is you have two cultures, the United States and China, that represent, essentially, Western Cartesian enlightenment and the Confucian or Daoist traditions. The theories of how to deal with change, how you deal with unknowns, theories of governance in these two cultures are at odds with one another.

When we had the changing of guard from the British to the American leadership of the world, as Charles Kindleberger, my former teacher, wrote about in The World of Depression. You still had stumbling. You had things fall between the cracks. You didn’t have what Kindleberger called the hegemon that provided global public goods. I don’t know that there’s a transition from the United States to China, or whether there’s just the growth of China and things are multipolar now. But these two traditions don’t see through the same lens, through the same ideas. And that makes it more difficult. The United States officials that you referred to thought China would fall into the global trading system and evolve into a–what you might call a Western-like commercial entity. They thought that the financial systems would become integrated and open to the West. They thought they would eventually privatize and stop using state credit allocation to subsidize state-owned enterprises that compete with private enterprise. Places like the World Trade Organization, so-called WTO, would bridge the differences and bring things to a healing point. And that doesn’t appear to be where we’re going.

I also would say empires that are used to being in charge start to, what you might call, experience a great deal of dread when somebody else challenges. And the Chinese themselves were very wounded from the opium war, from the Japanese invasion. There’s a very strong sense of national identity that I think their leader Xi Jinping draws upon, but also the people yearn for. I would say the same would be the case in Putin’s Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There’s some woundedness that’s in repair that gives them what I’ll call nationalistic resolve.

And so this is a hard game. And the Chinese, circa 2001, were supposed to fall into line. They were supposed to become part of our trading system. And that’s not–that’s not the case. And with the advent of digital commerce, with the announcement of China 2025, they are replacing, what I’ll call, as they move up the value chain, the more complex activities. They’re not falling into line in a U.S.-led system where they make Nike tennis shoes or assemble iPhones with low-cost labor or low environmental protections. They’re not moving into what I’ll call changing their comparative advantage, because it’s not based on what’s buried in the ground. It’s based on human capital and evolution and training and R&D.

The other final thing where I think the United States has some real concern is we have been talking about how the government doesn’t play a role. We’ve been cutting government support to things like basic science very drastically over the last 20 years as a percentage of GDP. The Chinese ultimately will have a population four to five times the size of America’s. They continue to develop their science budgets. And what you might call the locus of innovation may shift from the United States in places like Silicon Valley to a place like Shenzhen in China.

So I think the Americans are, you might call it, ostrich-like. They don’t think this challenge is going to be for real.

PAUL JAY: The global trading system, as you said, led by the United States, and also in practice, is the various countries, part of it, play to some extent a subordinate role within that system. And China is clearly positioning itself to be a direct competitor in many markets. In Latin America and other places China has actually supplanted the United States as the major trading partner. It’s a fact of life. This is–I don’t see how this is going to change. But the way Trump’s approaching this, the trade war and such, it’s all being done in the name of being good for American workers. It’s being–it’s all about American jobs. Is it?

ROB JOHNSON: Well, this is my biggest concern. You hit the nail on the head, as far as I see. The problems were originally that American-based multinational corporations, and for that matter multinational corporations in Western Europe, moved in with foreign direct investment in China, and then sold things back to the United States, whether through Toys R Us, or Wal-Mart, or other things; consumer products or telephones. And that system imposed a real adjustment on a very large portion of the American workforce. So firms didn’t go out of business, they responded by automating. But the pressure on labor intensive activity, the downward pressure on wages, is very real. But what a Chinese leader would tell you, and I go over there two, three times a year to meet with them, yes, those adjustments took place. But the responsibility to alleviate that suffering belongs with the American government. The transfers that–what I’ll say, leaving orthodox economists probably said free trade is great, because you can compensate people and nobody’s worse off and some people are better off. The problem is we don’t have a political economy in America that’s set up to make those transfers. So the losers lose bad and the winners lobby to get their own taxes cut and keep their money offshore.

And so the, you might call it divisiveness, or the unsustainability of the narrowing of prosperity is a problem in the United States which Donald Trump, what you might call his genius, was to call that out when both Democrats and Republicans were hiding from it. And people felt like they’d heard the truth for the first time in a long time. But Trump’s diagnosis is now being used, what you might call, as a prescription to beat on the Chinese or the Mexicans or whatever, is a rallying cry for the people who support him to get re-elected. And I think we’re entering into very destructive and treacherous waters if we stick to this path. And he’s not redressing the problems of those people who were in such pain that voted for him. The people who suffer from what are so-called the diseases of despair.

PAUL JAY: And one of the sort of not real secrets, but sort of a dirty secret, because people don’t talk about it very much, is one of the things that in fact has been subsidizing American workers as their jobs flee, both through going to China and such, and also through automation, has been such incredibly cheap products coming from China. I mean, you go to Wal-Mart and you can buy, you know, a dozen socks for, like, $3. That’s a kind of subsidy from cheap Asian labor for American workers which, one, the tariffs are going to eliminate, and two, in the long term, American workers are going to be replaced by automation and they’re going to lose the cheap products from China.

ROB JOHNSON: Yes. Well, what I would say is cheap products from China are fine as long as you have a trust fund. If you don’t have a trust fund they can be as cheap as whatever; making zero income you still can’t buy them. And I think in the United States what I’ve talked about transfers was income support and retraining support for people to evolve as, you might all it, the shock of the development of China reoriented the pattern of trade.

This is also true–this isn’t an American problem only. There’s a wonderful book called Everything Is Broken Up and Dances by Edoardo Nesi in Italy about how the textile industry, of which his family was an owner, got devastated by the entrance of Chinese textiles. And in Germany and the Eurozone, problems have been Germany makes capital goods and high what you might call inputs to production. They sell a lot of new exports to China, helping them develop, while Southern Europe is largely labor intensive. And after the Lehman crisis everybody wants austerity, so you can’t use the fiscal button to transform, so you just sit in stagnation for the better part of a decade. Very many parts of Europe, particularly southern Europe are doing worse now since 2008 than they did in the 1930s, the depression. And so these are very substantial, powerful forces. America is not handling them well, the eurozone is not handling them well. And the stagnation–this is kind of the irony–the stagnation of demand in places like Europe and to some degree America has been a source of why the Chinese have changed to go inward and move to higher value-added products.

PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks for joining us, Rob. Let’s pick this up again. I know you’re about to leave on a trip, but when you come back let’s talk about what alternatives look like.

ROB JOHNSON: Very good. Thank you.

PAUL JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Robert Reich: Ignore the Socialist Scaremongering

I keep hearing a lot about “socialism” these days, mainly from Donald Trump and Fox News, trying to scare Americans about initiatives like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal child care, free public higher education, and higher taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for these.

Well, I’m here to ask you to ignore the scaremongering.

First, these initiatives are overwhelmingly supported by most Americans.

Second, for the last 85 years, conservative Republicans have been yelling “socialism” at every initiative designed to help most Americans.

It was the scare word used by the Liberty League, in 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed Social Security.

In 1952, President Harry Truman noted that “Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years….”

Truman went on to say, “Socialism is what they called public power … social security … bank deposit insurance … free and independent labor organizations … anything that helps all the people. Truman concluded by noting “When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan ‘Down With Socialism’ … what he really means is, ‘Down with Progress.’ ”

Third, if we don’t want to live in a survival-of-the-fittest society in which only the richest and most powerful can endure, government has to do three basic things: regulate corporations, provide social insurance against unforeseen hardships, and support public investments such as schools and public transportation.

All of these require that we pool our resources for the common good.

Regardless of whether this is called democratic socialism or enlightened capitalism, all are necessary for a decent society.

Fourth and finally, America spends very little on social programs compared to other industrialized nations. As a result, almost 30 million Americans still lack health insurance, nearly 51 million households can’t afford basic monthly expenses including housing, food, child care, and transportation. And we’re the only industrialized nation without paid family leave.

Our infrastructure is literally crumbling, our classrooms are overcrowded and our teachers are paid far less than workers in the private sector with comparable education.

We can and must do more.

So don’t let them scare you with words like “socialism.” These policies are just common sense.

Joe Biden Reverses Position on Federal Dollars for Abortion

ATLANTA — After two days of intense criticism, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reversed course Thursday and declared that he no longer supports a long-standing congressional ban on using federal health care money to pay for abortions.

“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment” that makes it more difficult for some women to access care, Biden said at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Atlanta.

The former vice president’s reversal on the Hyde Amendment came after rivals and women’s rights groups blasted him for affirming through campaign aides that he still supported the decades-old budget provision. The dynamics had been certain to flare up again at Democrats’ first primary debate in three weeks.

Biden didn’t mention this week’s attacks, saying his decision was about health care, not politics. Yet the circumstances highlight the risks for a 76-year-old former vice president who’s running as more of a centrist in a party in which some skeptical activists openly question whether he can be the party standard-bearer in 2020.

And Biden’s explanation tacitly repeated his critics’ arguments that the Hyde Amendment is another abortion barrier that disproportionately affects poor women and women of color.

“I’ve been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents,” Biden said, opening a speech dedicated mostly to voting rights and issues important to the black community.

“I want to be clear: I make no apologies for my last position. I make no apologies for what I’m about to say,” he explained, arguing that “circumstances have changed” with Republican-run states — including Georgia, where Biden spoke — adopting severe restrictions on abortion.

A Roman Catholic who has wrestled publicly with abortion policy for decades, Biden said he voted as a senator to support the Hyde Amendment because he believed that women would still have access to abortion even without Medicaid insurance and other federal health care grants and that abortion opponents shouldn’t be compelled to pay for the procedure. It was part of what Biden has described as a “middle ground” on abortion.

Now, he says, there are too many barriers that threaten that constitutional right, leaving some women with no reasonable options as long as Republicans keep pushing for an outright repeal of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

The former vice president, who launched his 2020 presidential campaign in April, said he arrived at the decision as part of developing an upcoming comprehensive health care proposal. He has declared his support for a Medicare-like public option as the next step toward universal coverage. He reasoned that his goal of universal coverage means women must have full and fair access to care, including abortion.

A Planned Parenthood representative applauded Biden’s reversal but noted that he has been lagging the women’s rights movement on the issue.

“Happy to see Joe Biden embrace what we have long known to be true: Hyde blocks people — particularly women of color and women with low incomes — from accessing safe, legal abortion care,” said Leana Wen of Planned Parenthood, the women’s health giant whose services include abortion and abortion referrals.

Other activists accepted credit for pushing Biden on the issue.

“We’re pleased that Joe Biden has joined the rest of the 2020 Democratic field in coalescing around the Party’s core values — support for abortion rights, and the basic truth that reproductive freedom is fundamental to the pursuit of equality and economic security in this country,” said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL, a leading abortion-rights advocacy group.

Repealing Hyde has become a defining standard for Democrats in recent years, making what was once a more common position among moderate Democrats more untenable, particularly given the dynamics of primary politics heading into 2020. At its 2016 convention, the party included a call for repealing Hyde in the Democratic platform, doing so at the urging of nominee Hillary Clinton.

At least one prominent Democratic woman remained unconvinced.

“I am not clear that Joe Biden believes unequivocally that every single woman has the right to make decisions about her body, regardless of her income or race,” said Democratic strategist Jess Morales Rocketto, who worked for Clinton in 2016. “It is imperative that the Democratic nominee believe that.”

Republicans pounced, framing Biden’s change in position as a gaffe.

“He’s just not very good at this. Joe Biden is an existential threat to Joe Biden,” said Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

A senior Biden campaign official said some aides were surprised at the speed of the reversal, given Biden’s long history of explaining his abortion positions in terms of his faith. But aides realized that as the front-runner, the attacks weren’t going to let up, and his campaign reasoned that the fallout within the Democratic primary outweigh any long-term benefit of maintain his previous Hyde support.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Biden’s decades-long position first gained new scrutiny several weeks ago when the American Civil Liberties Union circulated video of the candidate telling an activist who asked about the Hyde Amendment that it should be repealed.

His campaign later affirmed his support for his fellow Democrats’ call for a federal statute codifying the Roe v. Wade abortion decision into law.