US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7199

On March 26 2017 00:26 Doodsmack wrote:
Personally I would place blame on this with the Freedom Caucus. Which seems really odd that group elected as a reaction to Obamacare would be the ones responsible for it remaining in place.

Judge Andrew Napolitano may be temporarily sidelined at Fox News, but he’s been telling friends and associates that he could be in for a big promotion — to the Supreme Court.

After meeting with President Trump twice during the transition, first in December and again in mid-January, the Newark, N.J.-born television personality told several people that Trump said he was on the list of judges from whom he was selecting a nominee for the high court.

“He said, ‘Trump said I’m on the list,’” said a source who spoke with Napolitano shortly after one of his meetings with the then president-elect. “He’s been saying that since the transition.”

Friends warned Napolitano not to take the president too literally – or seriously. “He'll take your call and invite you to the Oval Office, but he just wants you to say nice things about him on TV,” the source says he told Napolitano at the time. But that didn’t sink the ambitious judge’s hopes.

Trump released a list of potential replacements for the late Justice Antonin Scalia before the election, vowing to select Scalia’s replacement from that list — and followed through, tapping Tenth Circuit judge Neil Gorsuch for the nomination in January. Napolitano’s name did not appear on any public list.

President Donald Trump was reportedly skimpy on the details of the now-failed American Health Care Act in a meeting with conservative Republicans Thursday, apparently telling them to "forget about the little shit," multiple unnamed sources told Politico.

The report described a meeting that Trump had with members of the Freedom Caucus, in which members pelted him with "wonkish concerns" about specific aspects of the Republicans' bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. Trump cut them off, according to the report, wanting to keep it simple.

"Forget about the little shit," Trump said, unnamed sources told Politico."Let's focus on the big picture here."

That reportedly did not sit well with members in attendance.

"We’re talking about one-fifth of our economy," an unnamed member told Politico's Tim Alberta.

The report is in line with others that have said Trump does not like to be bogged down with many details and prefers short intelligence briefings made up of bullet points.

Members of the Freedom caucus reportedly also took issue with Trump when he apparently "called out" Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) during a meeting earlier that week with the GOP conference, joking that he may have to "come after" Meadows if he didn't vote for the bill. He then reportedly said that he thought Meadows, a longtime Trump ally would "get on board."

"That was the biggest mistake the president could have made," an unnamed Freedom Caucus member told Politico. "Mark desperately wanted to get to yes, and Trump made it impossible for him. If he flipped after that he would look incredibly weak.

Ultimately, Freedom Caucus members, as well as some moderate Republicans, did not get on board with the legislation, which was pulled on Friday after not getting enough support.

On March 26 2017 02:04 farvacola wrote:
Writing good legislation is never easy.

MEXICO CITY — For more than two decades, free trade has been at the heart of Mexico’s relationship with America, responsible for pumping a stream of vehicles, audio components and avocados north and cheap corn, cattle and software south.

To the nation’s leaders, it was central, vital, nonnegotiable. At least until President Trump came along, promising to upend nearly $500 billion in annual trade between the two countries if it could not be re-engineered more in America’s favor.

Now, the Mexico’s leaders have a new priority: urging their American counterparts to hurry up and get on with it.

While free trade has long been an article of faith in Mexico, uncertainty over the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement is hitting the country hard.

There has been an abrupt slowdown in foreign investment, pinching off much-needed capital as investors wait to see how things shake out. Last year, such investment fell by 6 percent, a prelude to what analysts have predicted will be a 21 percent drop in 2017. Add to that a flagging peso, lowered growth expectations, rising interest rates and looming political headwinds, and the urgency becomes clear.

Mexico, and its investors, need certainty.

For the moment, the Americans are not giving it to them, and don’t seem in a rush to do so. This month, Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross said it would be later in the year before real talks even started — after a mandatory 90-day consultation period with Congress, which has yet to start.

The delay has irked the Mexicans, who didn’t want to renegotiate the pact in the first place.

“From the Trump and American perspective, this is purely an optional problem,” said Michael Camuñez, the president of ManattJones Global Strategies and an assistant secretary of commerce in the Obama administration. “They have taken one of the most productive trade relationships in the world and amazingly have turned it into a problem.”

Driving the pressure is an especially delicate political environment in Mexico. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s approval ratings are near single digits, and further delays in clarifying the future of Nafta could imperil not only growth, but also employment at a time when the government can least afford to lose support.

Adding to the uncertainty are midterm elections in the State of Mexico, the country’s most populous, from which the president hails. The state, a longtime center of power for Mr. Peña Nieto and his party, will hold elections on June 4, and it is far from clear that his party will win. A loss would be a devastating blow to the party, which has never lost there before, and would spell trouble in the 2018 presidential elections.

Which presents yet another paradox: The longer the Americans wait on Nafta negotiations, the more political pressure it places on Mr. Peña Nieto, reducing the flexibility he has to accommodate demands, or surprises, from Mr. Trump’s team.

For instance, if job losses begin to mount within the next six months, as some economists predict, the public pressure on the president may be so immense he could have a much harder time selling a revised agreement to Congress and Mexicans at large.

“The longer we wait, the harder it is going to be for Trump to get what he wants because the nationalist pressure on Peña Nieto will be cumulative,” said Pamela Starr, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. “The longer he is in the presidency, from today forward, the more of a lame duck he is.”

All of this means that the leverage Mr. Trump is looking for could start to diminish.

Already, the Mexican government has grown more stridently critical of the Trump administration’s stance on Nafta. The Mexican economic minister has said the nation will walk away from any deal that does not suit the country’s needs, and even proffered a list of deal-breakers: any sort of discussion of paying for a border wall, taxing remittances or carrying out a so-called border adjustment tax.

At the same time, there is a growing awareness that dealing with Nafta, a campaign priority for Mr. Trump, has suddenly taken a back seat to more pressing battles. And Mexicans have taken note.

“It is clear that Trump’s priority right now in terms of his agenda is to try to pass Trumpcare, and we know how long that takes,” said Carlos Elizondo, a professor at the School of Government at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. “The outcome of that debate and process in the U.S. Congress will undoubtedly affect every other item on his list, including, of course, Nafta.”

That could be a saving grace. Those reading the tea leaves of an eventual negotiation are hopeful that with Mr. Trump distracted, administration officials, including Mr. Ross, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and others will take control of the talks. Both men have run global businesses in complex industries, and many here hope that will give them a more nuanced view of trade.

An evolving belief in the realm of business people, academics and even officials is that members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet will understand the importance of Nafta, and move to preserve and expand it — not tear it apart.

“When you know the kind of value chain that we have, you understand that it is a very difficult world to destroy, almost impossible,” said Juan Pablo del Valle Perochena, the chief executive of Mexichem, a Mexican chemical and building materials manufacturer. “There is so much at stake, of course, more for Mexico than the U.S., but there is a lot of value already in place. And when people understand that, they don’t worry so much.”

Still, the uncertainty has had a clear impact on the Mexican economy. The peso has dropped by double-digit percentages since Mr. Trump’s election, forcing the central bank of Mexico to raise interest rates in February to an eight-year high to anchor inflation and bolster the currency.

Expecting further pressure from the tense relationship with the United States, economists from an array of institutions have revised downward the expected 2017 growth for Mexico. Bancomer, a Mexican bank, for instance, revised its growth expectations for the Mexican economy to 1.0 percent for the year.

Delays that might bleed into 2018 will place negotiations in the middle of a presidential election year in Mexico. Indeed, some analysts suggest that Mr. Peña Nieto could kick the decision to his successor if negotiations go on too long. That, according to some, could be disastrous for those hoping to preserve Nafta.

The leading candidate, for now, is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a populist whose candidacy has been given a major boost by the election of Mr. Trump. Mr. López Obrador, a two-time candidate who nearly won the election in 2006, has promised to end a relationship of “subordination” to the United States, while focusing on domestic issues.

It is unlikely that Mr. López Obrador will take as conciliatory a line in negotiations as the current administration.

“The temptation to simply delay the negotiation until it becomes the next president’s problem is real,” Mr. Elizondo said.

On March 26 2017 02:14 farvacola wrote:
That's total nonsense that has to come from a place of ignorance zlefin. Have you ever actually worked on legislative white papers, draft legislation, or even basic legal memoranda? This idea that you can sanitize the political process and then easily draft "good" legislation ignores some glaring fundamentals relative to the problems of interpretation, consensus-building, and ethics, among a host of others.

On March 26 2017 01:56 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
also tax reform is not going to be much easier

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/845676536061743108

The Trump administration has a clear desire to bring that money back home, though it's unclear to what extent companies would take advantage of a one-time holiday. Goldman Sachs' chief equity strategist, David Kostin, estimated some $200 billion would be repatriated, with about $150 billion used for corporate buybacks.

Both parties in Congress have sought to bring that money back to the U.S., but they disagree on what program it should fund: Democrats have sought to use a one-time repatriation holiday to fund infrastructure plans; a current House Republican tax plan uses the funds from repatriation to cover lower rates across the board.

Business Roundtable surveyed its 200 CEO members on which single policy would have the most pro-growth effect on their business. Tax reform was the overwhelming result.