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Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump attend a welcoming ceremony November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. (Photo: Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)
Donald Trump's trade guy, Peter Navarro, proposed that America should spend roughly $2 trillion to bring manufacturing back to the United States from China.
Doing this would both strengthen American national and domestic security, and create an explosion in what could be very good-paying jobs for American workers.
While this would seem to be absolutely consistent with the positions Donald Trump campaigned on, it turns out his administration is actually opposed to it. Which has everybody scratching their heads.
Why would Trump tell Americans, over and over again for five years, that he wants to bring jobs home, and then reject a reasonable effort to do just that?
Is it because offshoring was always a Republican thing? Nixon, after all,opened us up to China, Reagan and HW Bush negotiated NAFTA, and the historic opposition to outsourcing has come from Democrats like
Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders.
So is Trump just returning to Republican orthodoxy?
Or is there some other reason why he doesn't want to do anything genuinely proactive about bringing jobs back to America?
John Bolton's new book seems to put all this in context.
When you consider Trump's opposition to bringing manufacturing home to his requesting that President Xi of China help him in the 2020 campaign the way President Putin did in the 2016 campaign, it suddenly makes perfect sense.
Trump is hoping that China will mobilize its vast and sophisticated Internet capabilities, along with its extraordinary economic power, to make him look good, hurt Joe Biden, and help Donald Trump get reelected.
Therefore, he's not willing to risk upsetting China right now.
He is not only betraying our country and the values that underpin a democratic republic, but he is also selling out the hopes and dreams of the American working people.
Trump's craven and cowardly outreaches, in 2016 and now, to foreign governments asking for their help in corrupting an American election, is nothing short of treason.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Donald Trump's trade guy, Peter Navarro, proposed that America should spend roughly $2 trillion to bring manufacturing back to the United States from China.
Doing this would both strengthen American national and domestic security, and create an explosion in what could be very good-paying jobs for American workers.
While this would seem to be absolutely consistent with the positions Donald Trump campaigned on, it turns out his administration is actually opposed to it. Which has everybody scratching their heads.
Why would Trump tell Americans, over and over again for five years, that he wants to bring jobs home, and then reject a reasonable effort to do just that?
Is it because offshoring was always a Republican thing? Nixon, after all,opened us up to China, Reagan and HW Bush negotiated NAFTA, and the historic opposition to outsourcing has come from Democrats like
Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders.
So is Trump just returning to Republican orthodoxy?
Or is there some other reason why he doesn't want to do anything genuinely proactive about bringing jobs back to America?
John Bolton's new book seems to put all this in context.
When you consider Trump's opposition to bringing manufacturing home to his requesting that President Xi of China help him in the 2020 campaign the way President Putin did in the 2016 campaign, it suddenly makes perfect sense.
Trump is hoping that China will mobilize its vast and sophisticated Internet capabilities, along with its extraordinary economic power, to make him look good, hurt Joe Biden, and help Donald Trump get reelected.
Therefore, he's not willing to risk upsetting China right now.
He is not only betraying our country and the values that underpin a democratic republic, but he is also selling out the hopes and dreams of the American working people.
Trump's craven and cowardly outreaches, in 2016 and now, to foreign governments asking for their help in corrupting an American election, is nothing short of treason.
Donald Trump's trade guy, Peter Navarro, proposed that America should spend roughly $2 trillion to bring manufacturing back to the United States from China.
Doing this would both strengthen American national and domestic security, and create an explosion in what could be very good-paying jobs for American workers.
While this would seem to be absolutely consistent with the positions Donald Trump campaigned on, it turns out his administration is actually opposed to it. Which has everybody scratching their heads.
Why would Trump tell Americans, over and over again for five years, that he wants to bring jobs home, and then reject a reasonable effort to do just that?
Is it because offshoring was always a Republican thing? Nixon, after all,opened us up to China, Reagan and HW Bush negotiated NAFTA, and the historic opposition to outsourcing has come from Democrats like
Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders.
So is Trump just returning to Republican orthodoxy?
Or is there some other reason why he doesn't want to do anything genuinely proactive about bringing jobs back to America?
John Bolton's new book seems to put all this in context.
When you consider Trump's opposition to bringing manufacturing home to his requesting that President Xi of China help him in the 2020 campaign the way President Putin did in the 2016 campaign, it suddenly makes perfect sense.
Trump is hoping that China will mobilize its vast and sophisticated Internet capabilities, along with its extraordinary economic power, to make him look good, hurt Joe Biden, and help Donald Trump get reelected.
Therefore, he's not willing to risk upsetting China right now.
He is not only betraying our country and the values that underpin a democratic republic, but he is also selling out the hopes and dreams of the American working people.
Trump's craven and cowardly outreaches, in 2016 and now, to foreign governments asking for their help in corrupting an American election, is nothing short of treason.