Economic Storms Gather in Swing States

Abandoned factory.

As approval of the impeachment inquiry continues to rise, Donald Trump has continued his standard approach to everything: lie and and try to distract, even lying about knowing Rudi Giulian's newly arrested Russian cohorts. Meanwhile, his self-created trade wars are wreaking havoc on the economies of the swing states critical to Trump's re-election hopes: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Particularly hard hit are manufacturing - which Trump promised to restore - and, of course, farming which is being further damaged by climate change in the Mid-West, a phenomenon that Trump claims is a Chinese hoax. A piece in Politico looks at the growing economic storm clouds hanging over states that, if they reject Trump, could end in his defeat in 2020, assuming his isn't removed from office before then.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump shocked the world and won the White House in 2016 on bold promises to bring greatness back to the industrial Midwest.

But his promise now faces a brutal reality: The U.S. manufacturing sector is spiraling into recession, victimized by Trump’s trade wars and sagging confidence among corporate executives who have little idea how to plan for an uncertain economic future.

Unless Trump can ram his revised North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress and cut a deal with the Chinese to erase historically high tariffs, he may find it difficult to repeat wins in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that drove him into office in 2016 by the narrowest of margins.

“Manufacturing is in recession right now. This is what all the data show,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “And everywhere I go in the world, the fear I hear is that we are going to be driven deeper into recession because this is all about uncertainty caused by the trade war.”

Broad national gauges of manufacturing are already troubling, countering some of the president’s claims of success. The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing survey . . . . has shown a declining sector two months in a row, recently hitting a level not seen since the end of the Great Recession due to a sharp drop in new export orders. Respondents to the survey blamed a trade war that has reduced export demand and increased costs for parts used in manufacturing.

At the county and state level, the environment looks even darker for Trump.

The negative news on manufacturing comes as senior Chinese officials arrive in Washington for another round of talks aimed at reaching a deal with Trump that would reduce heavy tariffs that have imposed significant economic costs on both sides.

It’s unclear whether Trump would accept such a deal that could eliminate tariffs and relieve some of the pressure on the manufacturing sector, and he told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t think China was lowering expectations for a trade deal.

It’s not certain that even such a deal will reverse negative trends in the manufacturing sector, which overall is a small slice of the American economy but an important part of overall corporate profits. Manufacturing also supports all kinds of ancillary service-industry jobs that suffer whenever factory work declines.

Overall, the growth in manufacturing jobs — one of Trump’s biggest promises — has essentially vanished. After adding as many as 25,000 new manufacturing jobs per month last spring, the numbers began to decline as the trade war with China intensified. In September, the sector lost 2,000 jobs. That number could grow for October when striking GM workers are included.

“To the extent that the manufacturing slowdown continues unabated, which is likely unless there is a de-escalation in trade tensions, the electoral map could be more difficult for President Trump and Republicans in 2020,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report this week.

The still-strong national employment numbers, with a jobless rate at a half-century low of 3.5 percent, can also tell a misleading political story. . . . But dig deeper and large numbers of the jobs are coming from uncontested states like California. States that make up Trump’s coalition are not doing quite as well.

“It’s an existential political risk,” said Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. “He won the election based on carrying Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and appealing to those voters who work in manufacturing or related industries. He promised he would bring manufacturing jobs back and his policies are doing the precise opposite. Jobs losses are mounting, particularly in those states.”

Trump’s trade battle with China has also slammed rural states where farmers have been unable to sell soybeans and other products into one of their biggest markets. Trump has responded by moving to dole out $30 billion in bailout money and praising “patriot farmers.” Many of the states hit by the drop in agriculture exports like Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas are solid Trump country. Others like Iowa could be a problem for the campaign.

Trump is also trying to make inroads in Minnesota, where he narrowly lost in 2016, and plans to hold a rally there Thursday night. But Minnesota is feeling pressure both in manufacturing and agriculture, as are states like Iowa and Pennsylvania.

And it’s not clear that even a quick and limited deal with the Chinese could reverse some of the major negative trends in manufacturing.

Ultimately, Trump’s reelection could come down to three states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where manufacturing trends are working against him and where he will need a sharp turnaround. “In those three key states, the economies are weakening. Unemployment is low but rising,” said Zandi. “If it continues to rise between now and Election Day it will be very difficult for him to recover. The trend lines don’t look good.”

The trend lines may not look good for Trump, but are a net positive if they end up removing the orange cancer from the White House. 

Impeachment Spotlight Will Snare Trump's Sycophants

Over the last two and a half years it has been amazing to see how willing so many Republicans with one time decent - if not stellar - reputations have been willing to prostitute themselves to Donald Trump and set the stage for history to remember them in a light similar to that of Nixon's Watergate co-conspirators and sycophants. A few in the GOP have refused to destroy their reputations and throw honor and the truth to the wind, but they have been the exception rather than the norm.  Now, some of those willing to make cheap whores look virtuous in their effort to give Trump political fellatio may rue the day they sold their souls for the political equivalent of pieces of silver, both due to the legal expense they will incur and because at the end of the day, their reputations may be destroyed for all time.  Leading this group are Rudi Giuliani and William Barr, each of whom has chose to act akin to Mafia consiglieres rather than defenders of the law.  A piece in Politico looks at the coming storm approaching these shameless Trump sycophants.  Here are highlights: 

Trump has done it again: He’s dragged some of his closest aides and advisers into a scandal packed with potentially devastating personal consequences. That’s good news for white-collar lawyers who charge by the hour.

But an investigation into allegations that Trump pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden is hardly the kind of thing to be embraced by the wider world around Trump, a growing list that includes Vice President Mike Pence; some of his most important Cabinet officials such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, attorney general Bill Barr and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; and his own personal attorney at the center of it all, Rudy Giuliani.

They all face a long road ahead with the prospect of hefty legal bills, reputational scars and damaged political prospects hanging over them for years.

Watergate, of course, popularized “All the President’s Men” for the sheer breadth of people swept up in President Richard Nixon’s ultimate downfall.

“While it’s not quite Watergate, which is where Nixon got drawn into it by his senior staff, this is a situation where I think even more offensively [Trump] the president seems to have embroiled his close confidants in his own mischief,” said Philip LaCovara, a former top prosecutor on the special counsel team that examined Nixon’s conduct.

For starters, all of the people in the president’s world with ties to the Ukraine scandal can expect to get hauled up for congressional hearings — where the questioning in a Democratic-led impeachment investigation is sure to be anything but friendly.

Here’s a look at some of the key players surrounding the president who will be among the first to face a punishing spotlight as the impeachment inquiry ensnares Trumpworld.

Mike PenceFew are more important in Trump’s orbit on foreign policy than the the vice president. Pence is Trump’s right hand man when dealing with fellow world leaders. He’s often piped in for phone calls. And the two strategize about it all at their weekly lunches.

It’s with that pedigree that the president dispatched Pence earlier this month to cover for him in Poland on a trip that included a face-to-face meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. In response to a direct question from a reporter whether they’d discussed Joe Biden, Pence acknowledged that the conversation covered U.S. financial support for the eastern Europe country and “corruption.”

During a Wednesday press conference where the threat of impeachment loomed, [Trump] the president pretty much tossed his No. 2 directly to the wolves. “I think you should ask for Vice President Pence's conversations, because he had a couple conversations also,” Trump said.

Bill BarrThe attorney general has seen his reputation savaged since joining the Trump administration at the start of 2019. He ran afoul of his longtime friend Robert Mueller over how he handled the end of the special counsel’s Russia probe. In July, his defiance alongside Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross of congressional subpoenas prompted a House vote to hold them in criminal contempt — the second time in U.S. history that’s happened to a sitting Cabinet member.

Now there’s the Ukraine mess. . . . . A DOJ spokeswoman said Trump never directly asked Barr to begin a Biden probe, though that hardly quelled the concerns from Democrats. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said Barr needs to recuse himself from the issue. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, called the attorney general a “witness that will be called to testify” in the impeachment investigation.

Mike PompeoPompeo has been careful to always eliminate any perception of daylight with the president. . . . Some of his larger trouble could come via the president’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, who says he was tasked by the State Department to engage with Ukrainian officials. It’s not clear what role Pompeo played in it all, though he has been a willing defender of the president on television. House Democrats are likely to seek clarity about his involvement in the coming months.

Mick MulvaneyThe president’s acting chief of staff has spared himself from the ever-present Trump axe in part by letting Trump be Trump. That could become a problem now.

His role in the West Wing puts him at the center of every major Trump engagement, including with foreign leaders. His continuing role as [Trump's] the president’s budget director puts him at the center of every major spending decision, including the holdup of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.

Rudy GiulianiWhere to even begin? The former New York mayor has relished his role on the Trump personal legal team, where he has served as an attack dog tarring the president’s investigators and a point man to go on friendly cable TV shows to uncork bad news in the best light possible. With the Ukraine-Biden matter, Giuliani has celebrated how he’s managed to get global press attention on a story that he hopes will undercut the current 2020 Democratic front-runner.

But Giuliani in the process has also made himself a potential witness, or more, over his months-long campaign — both behind the scenes and very much in the public eye — to get Ukrainian officials to commit to a Biden investigation. Trump in the phone call with Zelensky made it clear his lawyer was acting as his emissary on the issue. . . . . seven Democratic senators on Wednesday re-upped their own call — they first did it a year ago — to have the Justice Department’s National Security Division investigate whether Giuliani is in compliance with foreign lobbying laws.

All deserve a ruinous scrutiny and perhaps criminal charges of their own before all of this ends. I do not wish them even a shred of good luck in the coming days and weeks. 

Robert Mueller's Next Indictment Targets

With the midterm elections behind us, media attention has turned again to the Mueller Russiagate probe and Der Trumpenführer's obsession with killing the probe - something that should count as obstruction of justice in and of itself.   The near hysteria of Trump continues to run counter to the behavior of someone who is innocent.  Laughably, Rudi Giuliani - who has discredited himself in the eyes of anyone sane - whined that Mueller's questions to Trump were "perjury traps" ignoring the fact that if one doesn't lie (a difficult task for Trump) there is no risk of perjury.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the growing fear and paranoia among Trump and his sycophants who I suspect known damn well that they conspired with Russian agents and are thoroughly guilty.  Innocent people simply do not act they way these folks are behaving.  Here are article highlights:

After stepping out of the headlines and into the courtroom as part of a pre-midterms cease-fire, Robert Mueller appears poised to make his dramatic return to national politics with a new set of indictments centered around WikiLeaks and Roger Stone. According to multiple reports, the special counsel has been zeroing in on whether Stone or other Donald Trump associates had advance knowledge of Russia’s hacking of Clinton e-mails, which WikiLeaks later published.

If Mueller were to make his next move against Stone, he might also be expected to take action against Assange. So it is perhaps unsurprising that Assange’s name also surfaced this week, thanks to a slipup by the Department of Justice.

Exactly what charges Assange is facing remains unclear. In the past, prosecutors have considered conspiracy, violating the Espionage Act, and theft of government property. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department held back on going after Assange amid concerns that doing so was similar to prosecuting a news outlet. (Charging someone for publishing accurate information, Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollack told The Guardian on Thursday, is “a dangerous path for a democracy to take.”) The recently ousted Jeff Sessions, however, took a more Draconian stance on government leaks, and prosecutors were reportedly told over the summer that they could start compiling a complaint. So far, the D.O.J. has not offered further details.

Whether Assange will be charged as part of the Russia probe is also unknown, though it seems likely. Presumably, the mention of Assange’s name in legal documents has spooked Trumpworld, which is already on edge in anticipation of the next Mueller bombshell. According to Politico, the White House suspects more indictments are imminent, potentially targeting a cabal of Trump family members and associates for their connections to WikiLeaks.

On Wednesday, the special counsel delivered a one-page motion to a Washington judge stating that former Trump campaign deputy chairman Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the U.S. and making a false statement in a federal investigation, “continues to cooperate with respect to several ongoing investigations.” Then, on Thursday, Mueller’s office and Paul Manafort’s lawyers jointly requested a 10-day extension to file a report pertaining to the former campaign chairman’s sentencing.

Trump allies are feeling the pressure. Conspiracy theorist and commentator Jerome Corsi, a Stone ally, has said he expects to be indicted for perjury, and told The Guardian that Mueller’s team grilled him on Assange and Brexiteer Nigel Farage, the latter of whom has links to both WikiLeaks and Trump. Donald Trump Jr., too, is said to be bracing for a legal showdown . . . .

As paranoia, media scrutiny, and the hashtag #indictmentpalooza pick up, [Trump] the president, who has been working with lawyers on written answers to a series of Mueller’s questions, also appears to be on tenterhooks.

Nothing is more wonderful than seeing these despicable individuals sweating over getting indicted for things they knowingly did while viewing themselves above the law.  I hope the indictments come very soon.