DISPATCHES

STEEL TARIFF TALK CAUSES KOREA TO YIELD

The opening shot of Donald Trump’s trade war — tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum — already has gained concessions, says Leo Gerard, president of United Steelworkers union. Gerard wrote that the tariffs helped secure a new trade deal with South Korea that reduces by 30% the amount of steel and drilling pipe the Asian country can export to the US.

In 2011, US Steel invested more than $100 million to expand its Lorain, Ohio, mill to produce oil pipe called Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG), creating 80 jobs and securing another 508. At the same time, Republic Steel spent $85 million at its nearby Lorain mill, creating 450 jobs. This also was in response to the rush of drilling in the nearby Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania Marcellus shale fields.

But then it fell apart. American steel mills were hurt when low prices for oil and gas deflated the drilling boom, reducing demand for steel, at the same time unrealistically low prices for steel generally and underpriced drilling pipe from South Korea specifically made US Steel and Republic Steel mills in Lorain uncompetitive..

“Over the next two years, the two steelmakers’ Lorain facilities would struggle. Republic idled its mill that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US Steel plant along the Black River. Republic laid off workers in groups of 50 and 200 until the mill that had employed 1,200 in 2015 went quiet in 2016. US Steel announced in 2015 that it would idle its Lorain plant and furlough 614 workers there. But it managed to keep the doors barely open, with 220 workers on the job …

“In addition to the decline in drilling, Lorain and its steelworkers were struck down by two factors. One is China’s massive overproduction of state subsidized steel. With government grants of free land, underpriced raw materials and cut-rate electricity, China’s steel companies can charge prices that are below production costs. When steel is exported at those artificially-low prices, it’s called dumping, and that violates international trade law. As a result, the United States has penalized China by charging tariffs on its steel for years. China sells the cheap steel elsewhere anyway, and that depresses the price worldwide.”

The other factor is South Korea’s use of Chinese steel. South Korea is the largest importer of that underpriced Chinese steel. And South Korea is the third-largest exporter of steel to the United States. Much of that has arrived in the United States in the form of OCTG – the very pipe that US Steel invested $100 million in Lorain to produce.

South Korea agreed to export limits in exchange for an exemption from the new 25% tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on all steel imports.

Back in Lorain, Gerard noted, Republic announced shortly after Trump imposed the new 25% steel tariffs that the company may begin rehiring 1,000 steelworkers. Lorain City Councilman Angel Arroyo said, “This right now is the best news our city has gotten in a long time.”

However, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said the limitation on steel imports and a 20-year extension of the US truck tariff in the Korea trade agreement pale in comparison to the deal’s failure to address labor rights. “It falls far short of any acceptable standard by disregarding the tangible, human impacts of trade. Any deal that ignores the economic and human needs of working people is ultimately destined to fail,” he said in a statement (3/29).

TRUMP’S STORE DUCKS SALES TAXES. Donald Trump railed against Amazon, falsely claiming the online merchandise distributor fails to pay state and local sales taxes on online purchases. But, in fact, Amazon collects sales taxes for the 45 states that charge sales tax, while the Trump Organization retail website collects sales taxes only on goods shipped to two states.

The TrumpStore.com website sells Trump-labeled glassware, baseball caps, luggage tags, spa slippers and key chains, among several other items. It collects sales tax only on orders shipped to buyers in Florida and Louisiana, according to reports (4/6)

TrumpStore.com, which touts itself as the “official retail website of the The Trump Organization,” doesn’t even pay sales taxes on its online shipments in New York, according to the information on its site. Its physical store and headquarters are located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mary Papenfuss noted at HuffPost.com (4/7).

Trump, who maintains ownership of the Trump Organization even while president, has been slamming Amazon on Twitter for dodging sales taxes. He has called it a “no-tax” company and has blasted Amazon for paying “little or no taxes to state & local governments.”

IMPEACHMENT IS THE LATEST GOP BOGEYMAN. Republican leaders scrambling to stave off a Democratic wave, or at least mitigate their party’s losses in November, hope to energize conservatives and drive a wedge between the anti-Trump left and moderate voters by warning that Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump if they capture the House, Jonathan Martin wrote in the New York Times (4/8).

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, said, “The threat of impeachment is something that unifies everybody in the party, even if you’re not a big Trump supporter.”

Democrats are divided on how to respond to the charge. Many top Democrats in the capital fear it is a political trap that would distract from their core message and possibly even boomerang to harm them in November. But other more progressive figures see impeachment as a rallying cry to galvanize the left’s anti-Trump base.

“I’ve been urging members to refrain from discussing impeachment,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, adding: “I think we should let these investigations conclude and see what evidence is found.”

Charles P. Pierce thinks the impeachment talk is overblown. “This seems to be the handwring du jour for the punditariat, even though I can’t name a single Democratic candidate who is running specifically on this issue, or even one who’s running on the possibility of an impeachment. And neither, apparently, can the New York Times, which believes that all the serious people think that this non-issue is driving a good deal of the nascent congressional campaign.”

Pierce recalled that “In 1994, when the Gingrich revolution brought the Republicans the control of the House of Representatives for the first time in decades, the talk of impeaching Bill Clinton for something began almost immediately. (People who were on Capitol Hill at the time remember vividly aides to the Republican leadership arguing that impeachment was coming simply because they had the votes.)

“Republicans didn’t care what chaos they brought about as long as it was sufficient to keep a Democratic president from governing.

“Conservatives spoke quite plainly about their belief that impeachment always was meant to be ‘a political tool’—Ann Coulter even wrote a book on that subject—just one that had grown rusty from disuse. (Thomas Jefferson called it a scarecrow.) The impeachment of Bill Clinton, undertaken by the House Republicans full in the knowledge that it had no chance whatsoever in the Senate—was the ultimate political act in a series of political acts that began during the 1992 campaign, or even earlier, if Joe Conason and Gene Lyons are to be believed, and they are. And history has shown that, except for a blip in the 1998 midterms, the Republicans have paid no serious political price for what they did at all.

“So, when you hear Republican strategists talking about how the Democratic candidates are slavering at the chance to impeach this president*, know that these low moans are strategic in their purpose, disingenuous in their history, and almost utterly dishonest about the state of play in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans create phantoms like this all the time to frighten their base voters. Usually, though, these phantoms are black folks and foreigners, gay people and women. Now they’re trying to make scary monsters out of [congressional candidates] Amy McGrath and Randy Bryce. Boogedy-boogedy!”

GOP MULLS DOMESTIC SPENDING CUTS TO NIBBLE ON DEFICIT CAUSED BY BILLIONAIRE TAX CUTS. The US budget deficit will balloon over the next few years, mainly because of deep tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations approved in December by Republicans in the US Congress and President Donald Trump, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported (4/9).

Despite stronger-than-predicted economic growth ahead, the CBO said the deficit will grow to $804 billion in fiscal 2018, which ends on 9/30, up from $665 billion in fiscal 2017. The annual deficit will reach $1 trillion in 2020, two years earlier than previously forecast.

CBO forecast 3.3% growth in 2018 in gross domestic product, a broad measure of the economy, and 2.4% GDP growth in 2019.

In the next few years, deficits will “grow substantially” before stabilizing in 2023, resulting in a projected cumulative deficit of $11.7 trillion for 2018-2027, the CBO said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is talking about the need to address “entitlements,” such as Social Security and Medicare, to help counter the increase in the national debt.

Trump and House Republicans also reportedly are discussing reneging on the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill Congress passed in March, according to Roll Call. The Republicans would use an obscure provision in the 1974 Budget Act, which allows the president to propose and Congress to review a rescission resolution identifying appropriations — that the administration does not want to spend. The rescission resolution could be considered in the House and Senate with only a simple majority support, and is not subject to filibuster.

No details have been released on what might actually be cut, David Dayen noted at TheNation.com (4/5). But just comparing the omnibus to Trump’s budget requests shows that the programs on the chopping block would be ones that assist the most vulnerable people in society. Trump’s budget proposal would have slashed Head Start for needy elementary-school students and Pell grants for needy college students. It wouldn’t have increased a low-income housing tax credit that Democrats earned in exchange for fixing a glitch in the tax law. It would have suppressed the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health and would have transformed food stamps into boxes of food delivered to homes.

Republicans must proceed carefully, because the Senate is closely divided at 51-49, and with John McCain not expected back anytime soon, Republicans have no margin of error. It would be a direct assault on the working poor, just months before the midterm elections. Democrats, who already have seen Trump renege on deals, would have to be crazy to work with Republicans on a bipartisan bill ever again, knowing that no deal would be safe from a behind-the-back reversal. And it would give Democrats a road map to engage in rescissions of spending they don’t like when they regain control of Congress and the White House.

“I think the idea of Trump being a dictatorial president gets thrown around in a cavalier manner sometimes, but defying congressional spending authority by nullifying programs of national importance would certainly take us down that road,” Dayen wrote. “It would centralize practically all governing power in the hands of one rather unstable man. Democrats need to make this toxic scheme widely known, and fast.”

GOVS BALK AT SENDING GUARD TO BORDER. Donald Trump seemed excited about “doing things militarily” along the US/Mexico border. “Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,” the president said. “That’s a big step. We really haven’t done that before – certainly not very much before.”

In reality, Steve Benen noted at MaddowBlog.com (4/9), it’s not that big a step. The Bush and Obama administration used National Guard troops along the border, and in both of those instances, illegal border crossings were higher than they are now. In fact, given the total absence of a crisis, there’s no apparent substantive reason why Trump has made this decision.

In practical terms, however, the president isn’t simply dispatching 2,000 to 4,000 National Guard troops to the border; he’s actually requesting that governors agree to his request to deploy troops. Some aren’t.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) became one of the latest leaders to oppose the plan. His spokeswoman, Mary-Sarah Kinner, said in an email (4/6) that Sandoval does not believe the mission would be “an appropriate use” of the Nevada National Guard.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, has said she would deny Trump’s request.

The news wasn’t all bad for the White House, however. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced plans to send about 150 Guard members and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott first agreed to send an additional 250 Guard troops, then upped it to 1,000 (4/9) as part of an initial surge.

That’s a combined total of 1,250 people. What’s less clear, however, is exactly how Trump will cobble together 4,000 troops – his publicly stated goal. An Associated Press report added, “New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s office said (4/6) that it had not yet deployed any Guard members. The office of California Gov. Jerry Brown did not respond to questions about whether it would deploy troops.”

A CNN report (4/9) noted that it “remains unclear exactly what they will be there to do.” Border Patrol Assistant Chief Carry Huffman told CNN that some of the tasks the agency would like National Guard troops to do include flying aerial missions, monitoring surveillance feeds, vehicle maintenance and doing construction projects like building and maintaining access roads.

Benen noted, “I’m not suggesting there’s anything trivial about these tasks, but when Trump talks about ‘doing things militarily’ along the US/Mexico border, apparently that includes asking governors to send National Guard troops for things such as ‘vehicle maintenance.’”

People along the border in Texas remember in 1997 when US marines sent to to do surveillance along the Rio Grande for an anti-drug task force shot and killed Esequiel Hernandez Jr., an 18-year-old goatherd from the rural community of Redford, Texas, who was carrying a World War 1-era .22-caliber rifle to protect his goats and apparently had nothing to do with the drug trade.

According to the marines’ account, they were at the end of a three-day observation mission in the hills above the Rio Grande when, they said, Hernandez fired two shots in their direction with the .22-caliber rifle he had inherited from his grandfather.

But the marines had followed the youth for about 20 minutes through the hills, and his fatal bullet wound indicates that he was not aiming at the marines when he was shot by a 22-year-old marine corporal from a distance of about 230 yards, said James Jepson, the prosecutor in charge of the case, reported by Sam Howe Verhovek in the New York Times (6/29/97).

Investigators said if Hernandez fired at all in the direction of the camouflaged marines, he may well have had no idea that they were there but instead thought he was firing at a javelina or other wild animal that prowls the hills here and threatens livestock.

Investigators said they were disturbed that the marines had waited 22 minutes to radio for medical aid for the young man, had rendered no first aid other than to check his pulse as he lay dying and had initially told a deputy sheriff arriving at the scene that the youth had hurt himself by falling into a well, Verhovek reported. State and federal grand juries investigated the shooting but did not indict. In 1998, the US government paid the Hernandez family $1.9 million to settle a wrongful death claim.

FBI RAID TARGETS TRUMP’S LAWYER. FBI agents, acting on a search warrant obtained by the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, raided the office, home and hotel rooom of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s consigliere in New York (4/9), as the investigation broadened to possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, the Washington Post reported (4/10).

The raid included seizure of information about the payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election and it included communications between Cohen and Trump — meaning it included communication between a lawyer and his client, which means the bar for obtaining a warrant was higher.

An attorney for Cohen told the Post the search was related to an investigation referred to the Justice Department by special counsel Robert S. Mueller. In March, the Post reported Cohen had caught Mueller’s eye, with the special counsel’s team questioning witnesses about Cohen’s actions and requesting documents from Trump’s attorney.

The raid, though, was conducted at the direction of the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District, where the Cohen case apparently was referred by Deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein, and it suggests that Cohen is the subject or target of an investigation.

RICK SCOTT WANTS TO TAKE HIS BAD IDEAS TO WASHINGTON. Florida’s term-limited Republican governor, Rick Scott, launched his campaign for the US Senate (4/9) — painting himself as a Washington outsider despite his track record of policy ideas that fall right in line with the Trump administration’s priorities.

“We have to all acknowledge that Washington’s a disaster. There’s a lot of tired thinking up there. Here’s what we shouldn’t be doing — we shouldn’t be sending the same types of people to Washington,” Scott said in Orlando.

Scott will challenge incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D), the only statewide elected Democrat in Florida and one of 10 Democrats running for re-election in a state that President Trump won in 2016.

Scott told Politico in an interview April 8 that he is not a “Donald Trump Republican,” though he has never shied away from his friendship with Trump, who owns a number of properties — including his “Winter White House” Mar-a-Lago — in Florida.

But Rick Scott’s actions in the eight years since he first took office fall right in line with the Trump administration, Rebekah Entralgo wrote at ThinkProgress (4/9).

Florida is in the middle of a decades-long battle to restore voting rights to convicted felons. Long seen as a relic of the past, Scott has been called “Florida’s Jim Crow” governor for maintaining the state’s system, which allows a state clemency board to decide who can have their rights restored and when.

Scott attempted to prevent Americans from accessing the ballot in 2011, when he ordered the state to purge all “non-citizens” from the voting rolls prior to the 2012 election. But the list of supposed “non-citizens” compiled by his administration was rife with errors — and more than 20% of the voters flagged as “non-citizens” in Miami-Dade County were actually citizens.

Florida voters during the 2012 election year endured chaos and marathon voting lines due to reduced early voting hours and voter registration restrictions pushed by Republican legislators and Gov. Scott. According to a report by the Palm Beach Post, several prominent Florida Republicans admitted the election law changes were geared toward suppressing the votes of minority and Democratic voters.

Scott also is just plain shady, making suspicious business deals even before he was a politician, Entralgo noted.

In 1997, as the CEO of health care giant Columbia/HCA , Scott oversaw one of the largest Medicare frauds in US history. He resigned as the CEO of the health care giant amid an FBI investigation into the company’s fraudulent billing practices which resulted in the company being charged with 14 felonies and paying $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud. According to investigators, Scott and other company executives violated federal law by offering financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals. Some Columbia/HCA employees claimed they were fired, punished, or forced to delete records for raising their concerns about the company’s practices with supervisors.

Scott claims he was never charged with a crime and never interviewed by the FBI.

As governor, Scott spent $700,000 in taxpayer funds to settle seven public records lawsuits alleging he and a number of his staff violated state laws by creating email accounts to shield communications from state public records laws.

Scott met with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in the days leading up to the announcement that Florida would be “off the table” for offshore drilling after it was previously announced the state would be subject to offshore drilling. Records obtained by Politico reaffirm the perception at the time that “the Trump administration’s decision to reverse course and remove Florida from the list was carefully choreographed to give Scott a political win.”

He continuously struggled with how to disclose his wealth and conflicts of interest while in office.

In short, he’ll fit right in in Washington, D.C.

SCOTT PRUITT HASN’T SAVED TAXPAYERS ANYTHING. As Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a growing number of scandals tied to his rental of a Capitol Hill condo co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist, allies have begun mounting a new defense. They are arguing that the administrator’s lavish spending habits are offset by his success in rolling back environmental regulations, Natasha Geiling wrote at ThinkProgress (4/9).

On *Meet the Press* (4/8), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) argued that Pruitt should keep his job because he has been effective in implementing the Trump administration’s far-reaching deregulatory agenda. Pruitt’s use of taxpayer dollars for things like first-class travel and office decorations, Rounds continued, was justified because Pruitt had saved taxpayers money through his deregulatory actions.

It’s a similar line of reasoning that Pruitt himself took up in January, when he cheered his agency’s deregulatory actions, claiming that they had saved the American public $300 million in regulatory costs.

As a member of Trump’s cabinet, Pruitt has certainly been effective in initiating a slew of environmental rollbacks, from beginning the repeal of the Clean Power Plan to convincing the Trump administration to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

In total, he has finalized 22 regulatory rollbacks, with 44 actions still pending. But regulatory rollbacks aren’t always immediately successful, and most of Pruitt’s actions have been met with a wall of resistance in both the public sphere and in courts.

The speed with which Pruitt has pursued regulatory rollbacks — often cheered by the president and Republican allies as a sign of his effectiveness — has left the agency little time to amass the body of evidence usually required for issuing a regulatory, or deregulatory, action. Already, a number of Pruitt’s rollbacks have been overturned in federal court on the basis of insufficient justification.

Still, even for the 22 regulatory actions that have been finalized under Pruitt’s leadership, the savings cheered by Trump and Republican allies are mostly compliance costs — meaning that they would have been shouldered by industry, not the American taxpayer.

The Clean Power Plan, for instance, would have put limits on emissions from power plants and forced the shifting of electricity generation from emissions-intensive fuel like coal to more renewable sources of energy. Compliance costs from the Clean Power Plan would largely have been shouldered by coal or utilities, two sectors that lobbied hard against the rules and have cheered Pruitt’s steps to repeal.

Looking just at compliance costs also ignores the vast number of benefits — both economic and social — that regulations like the Clean Power Plan can have for society overall.

According to a 2017 analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law, for instance, costs of the Clean Power Plan would have been about $5.1 billion and $8.4 billion annually, while benefits would have been about $54 billion annually. This means that the Clean Power Plan would have created a net economic benefit of between $45.6 billion and $48.9 billion.

But those benefits are largely public health and environmental benefits — things like lower healthcare costs from reduced air pollution, or fewer missed work days due to respiratory illness. Compliance costs would still have been shouldered by industry — which explains why when it comes to accounting for regulation, Pruitt and Trump seem more concerned with the costs to industry than the benefits to public health.

In reality, Pruitt’s most effective legacy hasn’t been regulatory rollbacks to save money — it’s been in the cut-and-dry bureaucratic policy of the EPA, which has done more to undermine the agency’s ability to hold polluters accountable than save taxpayer dollars.

IOWANS GAIN RIGHT TO BUY WORTHLESS HEALTH INSURANCE. The Iowa Legislature has decided that Iowans have the right to buy worthless health insurance that very likely will not help them if they get sick.

According to the Des Moines Register, supporters contend Senate File 2329 would create a much-needed, low-cost option for Iowans who can no longer afford rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs on the individual insurance market. “All we’re trying to do is help those who can’t find insurance,” said Sen. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull. Feenstra said anyone excluded from the new plans because of a pre-existing health problem could buy policies from a carrier offering insurance that complies with the Affordable Care Act. But for others, he said, the new plans would offer a less expensive option. But critics fear the change would further destabilize Iowa’s already fragile health insurance market and undermine Affordable Care Act rules designed to protect consumers.”We’re going to be throwing a soggy life jacket to people that need our help,” said Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City … several Democrats noted the new coverage would technically not be defined as health insurance, and would not be regulated by Iowa’s insurance commissioner. “This just doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines.

Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, defended the legislation, saying it is an example of how health care was provided before Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act. “We have tried this before. This was how the system worked. In the past, we gave people choice. We said, ‘We trust you with your health care decisions,’” Chelgren said.

Meanwhile, Charles Pierce of Esquire noted that Iowa is also serving as the test track for the Medicaid system, with which Paul Ryan wants to bless the nation. This is not going well, as the Register explains:

“The casualties are patients like 4-year-old Tatum Woods of Vinton, Iowa, who for nearly six months was forced to crawl because a private Medicaid provider said it would pay less than a fifth of the cost of his $3,500 customized walker. It’s an experience multiple officials and lawmakers contend is widespread in Iowa, and it’s driving Medicaid patients and their families to new depths of frustration. ‘These kids shouldn’t have to fight to get their equipment,’ said Kristie Woods, Tatum’s mother. ‘They’ve already got enough struggles.’

“At issue is the reimbursement rate the private companies that manage Iowa’s $4.8 billion Medicaid program are paying to medical equipment providers for specialized equipment. Medical device providers say Iowa’s privatized Medicaid managers are willing to pay only pennies on the dollar — if anything at all — for the medical devices that doctors are authorizing for their disabled patients. It’s another example of what critics say is Iowa’s flawed Medicaid system since then-Gov. Terry Branstad turned over management to for-profit companies in April 2016 in an attempt to save money and, in his view, improve care.”

This story was part of a very good series by the Register on the consequences of privatizing Medicaid, which has brought about denial of basic needs, bureaucratic stonewalling, and corporate buckpassing, Pierce noted.

“Each of the medical equipment companies said they are experiencing problems from both of Iowa’s Medicaid management companies, Amerigroup and UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealthcare tends to limit claims or issue blanket denials, while Amerigroup incorrectly codes and underpays, they contend. ‘They’re trying to reimburse us well below our cost,’ said Jon Novak, CEO of Total Respiratory. ‘If we dispense the equipment at this cost, we would go broke.’”

In short, it’s brought back all the highlights of the American healthcare system for which some Iowa legislators seem so damn nostalgic, Pierce noted. “This is the next fight and, as silly as it sounds, they mean to bring us back to the system that everybody knew had failed. Forward, as the Firesign boys used to say, into the past.”

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2018

Populist.com