Landslide in Ohio Shows GOP Path to Victory

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

The stunning landslide by underdog U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in the Ohio GOP primary shows the way for Republican victory throughout the all-important Rust Belt this fall. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and nearby Wisconsin can all be won with Moreno’s campaign theme: creating jobs for Americans.

Polling showed a too-close-to-call race between Moreno and the establishment-favored candidate, state senator Matt Dolan. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and the popular former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R) endorsed Dolan, who is the powerful state Senate Finance Committee Chairman.

Moreno is a former car salesman who campaigned that “for too long, the men and women who move Ohio forward, American workers, have been left behind by career politicians.” He was endorsed by Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who stated at a Trump rally that all of the net job growth under Biden’s presidency has gone to the foreign born, while during Trump’s presidency the job growth went to American citizens.

“I am so sick of Republicans that will say ‘I support President Trump’s policies, but I don’t like the man,’” Moreno declared to a cheering crowd. “This man wakes up every day fighting for us, fighting for this country.”

Trump’s rallies are a gold mine for our country and Republicans this year, without the Covid restrictions of 2020. From Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, 2020, the crucial period just prior to early voting, there were no Trump rallies in the key swing states of Michigan, Georgia, or Arizona, and only one in Wisconsin.

Trump’s Ohio rally boosted Moreno to victory, and more rallies like that in other Rust Belt states can work wonders. Emphasizing the issue of manufacturing jobs is a winner for all Republicans.

Tyson Foods just announced that it is laying off 1,300 workers in an Iowa city of only 8,000. Many suspect that Tyson will replace those workers with migrants, and a federal tax break called the Work Opportunity Tax Credit provides employers an incentive of up to $9,600 for each new hire from certain targeted groups, plus housing benefits.

A quarter of the new jobs during the Biden presidency have been government employment, which burdens taxpayers with no net benefit. Much of the remaining job growth consists of part-time second jobs and other low-wage work rather than well-paying manufacturing jobs.

Wage growth is sharply declining in the U.S. Many of the most desirable companies to work for have announced job cuts, including American Airlines, Alphabet (Google), Citigroup, UPS, and Amazon.

Winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia or Arizona is all Trump needs to retake the White House in 7 months. Michigan is more dependent on car manufacturing than Ohio, and last Wednesday Biden delivered a death knell to the auto industry.

Biden issued regulations through the EPA that will require most new cars and trucks to be electric vehicles or hybrids in less than a decade, by 2032. Unless reversed, the new rules will transfer hundreds of thousands of automaking jobs from Michigan to China, which is churning out electric vehicles more cheaply than anyone else.

Biden follows the lead of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has required that electric vehicles comprise most new vehicle sales by 2028, and by 2035 all sales of new cars, SUVs, and light trucks must be electric. Biden gave California a special waiver from the Clean Air Act to allow leftwing environmentalists to impose their own emissions requirements, and 11 additional states foolishly plan to adopt California’s unrealistic ban on gasoline-powered cars.

Biden’s pro-China car mandates will bankrupt Detroit’s auto manufacturers. EVs are immense money-losers for the “Detroit Three” companies, totaling less than 4% of sales by General Motors and Ford last year.

This issue can flip Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the Republican side, as it has already done for Ohio. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania depend on manufacturing jobs, and cold Wisconsin winters require gasoline-powered cars rather than the temperature-fussy EVs.

Biden’s campaign recognizes that he has a jobs problem. Immediately after the Ohio primary Biden traveled to the swing state of Arizona to announce an $8.5 billion handout and $11 billion in loans to support Intel’s new semiconductor facilities to make chips on which electric vehicles depend far more than traditional cars do.

Biden is also taking advice from Democrat Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), who is up for reelection, opposing the planned takeover of US Steel by a Japanese company. Left-leaning Politico reports that “Sen. Bob Casey and other Democratic Rust Belt senators have been pushing Biden toward ever-more-populist trade and economic policies.”

Biden’s gestures are too little, too late. His policy of opening the border to illegal immigrants hurts American jobs, and his war on Detroit automakers by mandating EVs produced by China is devastating to the American worker.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Free Trade Means No Free Speech in the NBA

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Once upon a time, professional sports were popular entertainment free of political correctness, where fans and players could be themselves and say whatever they liked. Colorful basketball stars like Dennis Rodman spoke their mind on and off the court, and fans loved it.

But then Nike, a liberal corporation based in Oregon, essentially took over the National Basketball Association (NBA). The $8 billion business of the NBA became beholden to the $40 billion business of Nike, as sports journalist Jason Whitlock astutely observes.

Nike makes sports shoes but it is so well connected that it became one of 30 companies invited to join the prestigious Dow Jones average on the stock market. Nike heavily promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and got Barack Obama and Joe Biden to line up in support.

Then Donald Trump won the presidential election by campaigning against the TPP and phony free trade.

But Nike continues to pander to China anyway, and that is what drives the NBA’s censorship of anyone standing up for democracy in Hong Kong. Even a CNN reporter was muzzled when she merely tried to ask two basketball players how they felt about this lack of free speech in the NBA.

“The NBA has always been a league that prides itself on its players and its coaches being able to speak out openly about political and societal affairs,” CNN journalist Christina Macfarlane began.

She next asked whether this was still true. An NBA official immediately cut her off and insisted on taking her microphone away.

Nike is behind this censorship, yet almost no one will admit it. Fortunately at least Jason Whitlock, the African American host of Speak for Yourself, is speaking out against Nike’s manipulation of the NBA.

"This is about a President that won't cooperate with what Nike wants done," Whitlock explained. "Nike is using the NBA and its leverage over the NBA to go after this guy because they disagree with him about his policies as it relates to trade in China. It's very simple."

LeBron James, who has an estimated $1 billion contract with Nike, said a Houston Rockets executive “wasn’t educated” when he tweeted out in support of democracy in Hong Kong. LeBron’s comment was baffling until one realizes it echoes the view of Nike, his lucrative sponsor.

NBA teams are now playing exhibition games in China, but players are prohibited by the NBA from speaking to the press at any time during the tour. Far from sports bringing two nations together, instead it is inflaming the tensions.

Free trade has resulted in censorship and less freedom. The justification of free trade with China was that it would make China more like us, but instead it has infringed on our rights of free speech which have been a cornerstone of our freedom.

Nike is the same company that funded ads featuring Colin Kaepernick and touting the importance of his right to express himself. Yet Nike insists that no one in the NBA express himself by criticizing China as millions of protesters in Hong Kong are doing.

In other words, it is OK in the view of Nike to criticize the American Flag and our President, but intolerable for anyone to criticize China.

Television ratings for NBA games are not even half of what they were in the 1990s, and perhaps executives see China as a market where the league might expand. The Brooklyn Nets were acquired by a Chinese billionaire and suddenly it appears that the entire league has to cater to the Communist state.

The expectation of the British when they agreed to give Hong Kong back to China was that, by now, China would be more like the free world. But the massive crowds of Hong Kong residents who are demonstrating against China show that it has not changed, at least not for the better.

Fifty years ago, “ping-pong diplomacy” was supposed to soften the communist dictators who have run the mainland since their violent revolution. After a half-century of no progress, now we have “basketball diplomacy” pushed with the same false hope.

Diplomacy is merely a charade if one side is not allowed to speak up for its values. With the immense income that the NBA players, owners, and league executives enjoy, one would think they could at least speak their mind a bit.

And yet Nike does not let them. This big promoter of free trade is an even bigger opponent of free speech, thereby siding with China against freedom in Hong Kong and censoring others who are beholden to Nike.

Nike protected its sale of shoes in China, but cannot appease the resultant anger against LeBron James in Hong Kong. His jersey is being burned in response to his, or Nike’s, siding with the Chinese tyrants.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Finally, a President Stands Up to China!

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump is the first to stand up to Communist China in almost 50 years. Beginning with President Nixon, who was then under the spell of Henry Kissinger, presidents of both parties have appeased China.
Once known as “Red China” to distinguish the mainland regime from the anti-communist Chinese who fled to Taiwan in 1949, the communist dictators have stolen our intellectual property for decades. This is the same tyrannical China against which millions of people in Hong Kong are protesting now.

Starting with George H.W. Bush, who began his rise to the presidency by acting as Ford’s liaison to China, politicians in both political parties embraced a phony “free trade” with China. Millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost, and China used its growing trade surplus to build a massive arsenal against which we must defend.

China exported a staggering amount of goods to the United States in 2018, totaling $539.5 billion, while allowing only $120.3 billion of American goods to be sold there. That created a record trade deficit of more than $400 billion.

Despite our massive patronage of Chinese companies, in 2018 the communist Chinese government cut back on the small amount of American goods allowed to be sold there. There was a nearly 10% drop in its purchases of American farm products, particularly corn and soybeans.

Like the weather in Mark Twain’s famous quip, everyone complains about China’s abusive trade practices but nobody does anything about them. No one, that is, until Donald J. Trump became president.

Trump adviser Peter Navarro explains that tariffs against China are needed to end its “cyber intrusion into our business networks, forced technology transfer in exchange for market access, intellectual property theft, dumping into our markets state-owned enterprises which are heavily subsidized, currency manipulation and killing Americans with fentanyl.” Fentanyl is a drug imported from China which causes half of all American deaths from overdoses.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both promised to take action against China’s exploitation of us in trade, but neither did. Both ex-presidents are now enjoying a comfortable retirement, with Obama having just purchased a $15 million beach house on Martha’s Vineyard as merely a summer vacation home.
But American workers have continued to lose ground in the global economy, and China is a big reason why wages have not improved in decades. The average American family is worse off as a result, due to the loss of better-paying middle class jobs.

China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, over the opposition of Phyllis Schlafly and others who defended American sovereignty against that international tribunal. The WTO has repeatedly ruled against the United States, and China has used the WTO to advance its anti-American goals.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is releasing his new film exposing the treachery of China, called “Claws of the Red Dragon.” It describes how Huawei, the communist-funded technology leader, is poised to dominate world telecommunications for “5G” and “6G,” which are the next-generation internet connectivity services.
The Trump Administration has prohibited federal agencies from doing business with Huawei, which Trump recognizes to be a national security threat to the United States. This Chinese company has so infiltrated the American economy that an additional 90 days had to be allowed to wind down business arrangements with Huawei.

Trump tweeted: “The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP.” When China announced last Friday that it is imposing $75 billion in new tariffs on American goods, Trump responded by tweeting, “This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States.”

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, complained to Trump that Apple’s exporting of iPhones will be hurt by a so-called tariff war, because Apple’s Korean competitor Samsung will not have to pay the tariffs. But Apple employs relatively few American employees compared with other large corporations, so it is difficult to see why Apple should be dictating our trade policy.

Apple has been making an estimated 50% of its iPhones in China, and earlier it announced moving a portion of this manufacturing to India instead. These are not American jobs that are at stake, but Asian ones.

Indeed, Silicon Valley where Apple is headquartered has enriched a few billionaires but largely failed to hold onto American technology secrets. Now China can manufacture smartphones using technology stolen from the West, probably using some engineers who returned to Asia after working in Silicon Valley on H-1B visas.

Liberals ridiculed Trump for saying he is “the chosen one,” but the American people did choose him to stand up to China. To make America great again requires, at a minimum, ending how China takes advantage of our massive consumer market while stealing our secrets.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

California versus Trump on Phony Net Neutrality

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

As part of its never-ending resistance to the Trump agenda, the California legislature has just passed a bill to reinstate the discredited concept of “net neutrality” for access to the internet. A bill described as the nation’s strongest form of net neutrality awaits the signature of lame duck Governor Jerry Brown.

Net neutrality is as phony as “free trade,” in that both are wonderful only for those getting the better end of the deal.  Google, Facebook, and other California companies have been getting a free ride on net neutrality because it enables them to avoid paying their enormous share of internet traffic.

Net neutrality is a fiction invented by Silicon Valley monopolies to stop cable companies from charging them for their huge amounts of traffic.  Yet these same monopolies do not believe in neutrality in how they conduct business, by censoring political content they dislike.

The many billions in profits flowing to the Silicon Valley companies is partly due to how they hog traffic on the internet for free, without paying their full costs.  They avoid paying, for example, the many billions of dollars needed to bring internet service to people’s homes.

Imagine a toll road where big trucking companies did not have to pay a dime.  This would result in overuse of the toll road by trucks, and underfunding of road improvements.

The free market would be far superior to the phony net neutrality that enriches only Silicon Valley, because the free market enables the owner to charge fees based on use of its property.  Free enterprise is also better in protecting free speech and preventing censorship.

Once the favoritism is ended, whether on the internet or roads, then better facilities would be built and more efficient usage would occur.  The internet could be light years ahead of where it is now, if net neutrality stopped giving billionaire companies a free ride.

Without net neutrality, the public would have far better and faster internet service than we have today, because cable companies could raise money from the traffic hogs to improve the service.  Instead, billions of dollars line the wallets of Silicon Valley executives who invest very little of it in improving internet service.

Under the superior, free-market-based approach adopted by President Trump, companies that carry internet traffic would be able to negotiate with the traffic hogs to compel them to pay their fair share of costs rather than freeload off others.  Google and Facebook would then no longer be able to discriminate against conservatives and shift their costs to us too.

The public who pays the cable costs could then insist on access to the content that they want, which they cannot do now as Silicon Valley censors it.

The Silicon Valley companies do not want any rules of neutrality to apply to them, of course, as they exclude conservatives to appease their liberal base.  They demand net neutrality only when it favors them, and oppose any requirement that they be fair to content with which liberals disagree.

The California legislators know who butters their bread, and their Democrat majority just passed a bill that interferes with President Trump’s better approach of allowing competition to rule the internet.  SB 822 is being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, and he has not yet said whether he will sign it by his deadline of September 30.

This new California law would prohibit cable companies and other internet service providers from charging high-traffic users more.  This ban is an encroachment on the rights of private property, because the owner of the internet service should be able to require traffic hogs to pay rather than freeload on the private property.

Under the California law, cable companies and their millions of customers could not tell Google and Facebook to stop discriminating against content that people want.  The California law inverts the internet by allowing Silicon Valley to dictate content on the internet, when internet users and internet providers should be able to tell Google to stop discriminating against Dennis Prager and other conservatives.

It is Google and Facebook that block access, and they want leverage to continue doing so.  That is backwards as Trump and his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recognize, and hopefully they will sue in federal court if California Governor Brown signs this ill-advised bill into law.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding a hearing this week to review San Francisco-based Twitter’s bias against conservatives.  The FTC could be investigating Google’s unfair business practices, Sen. Orrin Hatch points out.

Internet service providers may sue to overturn the California law, which would establish one system in that State which is different from most other States.  California is essentially trying to force its self-interest on the rest of us with respect to the internet, to which California has no special claim of right.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

End NAFTA, Starting with Mexican Trucks

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump’s bold action in renegotiating NAFTA with Mexico caught his critics and hostile Canadian officials off guard.  Short for the “North American Free Trade Agreement,” NAFTA has been a mistake plaguing us ever since the Clinton Administration pushed it into law in 1993.

The Canadian government has been pursuing an anti-Trump agenda, but now they are begging to be included in the new deal with Mexico.  Trump has responded that Canada will be allowed into the deal on terms that are good for America, but Canada will get slapped with tariffs if it insists on the favoritism that it received in the past.

Trump is reportedly limiting a massive loophole which has cost us auto manufacturing jobs.  He is requiring that 75% of a car’s value be made in North America in order to qualify for the exemption from tariffs, up from the lax 62.5% threshold allowed by NAFTA.

Trump is also properly insisting that cars contain a greater amount of American aluminum, steel and other essential parts.  The new deal will require that 40 to 45% of cars be manufactured by workers who are paid at least $16 an hour, which would reduce reliance on cheap foreign labor.

NAFTA has been a scourge on our country perpetrated the globalists, who hide behind the misleading term “free trade” to justify their destruction of American jobs.  Real wages in the United States have not improved for workers in many decades, and the offshoring of manufacturing under NAFTA is a big reason why.

It is not “free trade” to export American technology to foreign countries for manufacturing there, and to give away our American trade secrets as many companies have been doing with China.  Corporate executives enrich themselves with this approach and create a two-tier society having a massive gap between the rich and poor, as exists in Silicon Valley today.

NAFTA narrowly passed 234–200 in the House of Representatives despite opposition by both liberals and conservatives.  NAFTA fell far short of the two-thirds vote needed to ratify a treaty, but President Bill Clinton signed it into law anyway.

Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the Michigan Democratic primary for president in 2016 by pointing out that NAFTA and other disastrous trade agreements are what destroyed Detroit.  Then Donald Trump defeated Hillary in that same traditionally Democratic state to win the presidency, again by criticizing Hillary’s support of bad trade deals like NAFTA.

NAFTA has been a job-killer and worse.  NAFTA has flooded our communities with illegal drugs and illegal aliens, as far away from the southern border as New Hampshire and Iowa.

Due primarily to NAFTA, imports to our country from Mexico increased more than five-fold in the first two decades after NAFTA became law.  But it is inevitable that this massive increase in legal imports from the crime-ridden foreign country would bring in much that is illegal and harmful, too.

In 2015, despite the failure of a pilot test program, President Obama extended NAFTA to allow Mexican trucks to carry loads deep into the United States with drivers having only a Mexican, not American, driver’s license.  This has harmed towns near the border that had nice businesses to transfer truckloads of Mexican shipments to qualified American drivers for delivery throughout the United States.

President Trump should completely end the invasion of Mexican trucks in the United States, and not merely modify it.  Mexican trucks are not as safe as American ones, and Mexican drivers have been involved in horrific crashes possibly caused by their limited English ability.

One can only guess at how much in illegal drugs flows into our Nation from Mexico due to NAFTA, because only a tiny fraction of all incoming containers are actually inspected.  Moreover, drugs are cleverly concealed in other shipments such that they can escape detection even when their containers are the subject of inspection.

The rise in vicious drug lords and gangs that render Mexico so dangerous today coincided with NAFTA and the increase in drug importation into the United States.  It is a myth perpetrated by globalists in claiming that NAFTA has been beneficial to Mexico, when in fact it has resulted in uncontrollable murders by drug gangs there.

Few remember presidential candidate Ross Perot, but in 1992 he attracted 19% in the presidential election by talking about the “giant sucking sound going south” if NAFTA became law.  The loss of manufacturing jobs has indeed resulted, as American companies used NAFTA to move good jobs to Mexico.

Now many of those jobs should be coming back, thanks to President Trump’s tough approach to negotiations with Mexico and Canada.  If he can also keep the Mexican trucks off our interstate highways then that will be an added bonus for all Americans.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Winning the ‘Trade War’ with China

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

From the day he announced for president, Donald Trump spoke of how the United States was losing ground to other countries, especially China, in international trade.  We’re not winning anymore, Trump complained throughout the campaign, and he promised to change that.

Trump has fulfilled every expectation on the trade issue.  Unlike most politicians who promise one thing and then do another after the election, Trump has followed through on his campaign promises on trade.

As Trump tweeted last Saturday:  “The United States hasn’t had a Trade Surplus with China in 40 years.  They must end unfair trade, take down barriers and charge only Reciprocal Tariffs.”

“The U.S. is losing $500 Billion a year, and has been losing Billions of Dollars for decades,” Trump added.  “Cannot continue!”

Trump tweeted again on Monday, April 9:  “When a car is sent to the United States from China, there is a Tariff to be paid of 2 1/2%.  When a car is sent to China from the United States, there is a Tariff to be paid of 25%.”

“Does that sound like free or fair trade.  No, it sounds like STUPID TRADE - going on for years!”

With his new actions on trade with China, President Trump has brought the era of bipartisan pusillanimity to an end.  Trade wars always exist, and now our side is finally going to fight back.

For at least two decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have known about and tolerated China’s systematic violations of trading rules that the United States observes.  Our leaders have refused to do anything about China’s lawless behavior, primarily because the Wall Street donors who finance both parties have fomented fears about a trade war.

The China problem emerged in the year 2000, when Republican Congressional leaders (including the future Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and the future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) conspired with President Bill Clinton to give China preferred access to the American consumer market.  Normal trading privileges paved the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, despite its failure to meet basic requirements for membership.

Phyllis Schlafly strongly opposed the trade giveaway to China, which never would have attained the 2/3rds vote required by the Treaty Clause in the Constitution in order to pass.  So instead this handout to China was passed as a non-treaty.
One-fourth of House Republicans voted against their leadership in 2000, while two-thirds of House Democrats voted against their president. The naysayers were proved right as China continued to flout the rules for the next 18 years and still shows no sign of real reform.

In its early years of access to the American market, China profited by paying extremely low wages to people making ultra-cheap products.  Now China is rapidly moving up the food chain to sell us high quality products containing innovative technology that was created and developed in the United States.

How did the Chinese get their hands on the latest American high tech know-how?  First, by stealing it:  China’s commercial espionage is estimated to cost U.S. companies over $20 billion a year, with a cumulative total of $600 billion over 20 years.

China also forces American companies to share their technology as the price of access to the Chinese market.  Such requirements are supposedly prohibited by the WTO, but with no one stopping them, the Chinese trade surplus in goods reached a new all-time record of $375 billion last year.

“We have a tremendous intellectual property theft situation going on,” the president said on March 22 as he signed an order that could eventually impose tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products.  As Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, explained, “What the United States is doing is strategically defending itself from China’s economic aggression.”

Even long-time free-traders are starting to see the light.  Last Sunday Lawrence Kudlow admitted that “the whole world knows China has been violating trade laws for many years” and “President Trump is the guy calling them on it, and he’s right.”

“This is a problem caused by China, not a problem caused by President Trump.  I would go so far as to say Trump is there to fix the problem,” Kudlow explains. 

“His argument, and it’s a good one” is this:  “You can’t have free trade unless China brings down its barriers, opens up its markets, and stops this technology steal that they’re doing,” Kudlow adds.

Peter Navarro properly observed last Sunday, “What we want from China is very clear.  We want fair and reciprocal trade.” 

“We want them to stop stealing our stuff.  We want them to guard intellectual property, not take it from us,” Navarro concluded.

China has far more to lose in a trade war than the United States does.  Indeed, our job market would improve if tariffs reduced our massive trade imbalance with China, and Trump is right to take strong steps toward that goal.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously in 2016. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

How Trump Wins on Trade

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

When President Trump announced he would protect American jobs by imposing tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum, naysayers of both parties rushed to the nearest microphone or TV camera. Pundits and politicians alike pretended to be “shocked, shocked” that Trump meant what he said as a candidate, and that he actually means to deliver what he promised during the campaign.

The Swamp, in short, is not happy.  But cheers rose from the manufacturing belt that runs through the states that put Trump in the White House:  Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

“This is a good thing for the steel industry and for our country,” said Tim Timken, the fifth-generation leader of TimkenSteel, which has 3,000 employees in Ohio.  “We’re standing up to our foreign competition and essentially saying enough is enough,” he added.

While foreign lobbyists warned of a new “trade war” in which other countries retaliate against the United States, U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt pointed out that “We are, and have been, in a trade war for decades.   Countries which have economically prospered by creating our current trade imbalance will face repercussions to their own economies if they choose the path of retaliation.”

Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, debunked the notion that the United States could lose a trade war with Europe or Asia.  “We are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world. We have the lowest tariffs in the world, we have the lowest non-tariff barriers, we are the free-tradingest nation in the world."

“And what do we get for that?” Navarro asked.  “We get every year a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit that transfers our wealth to other countries and basically offshores our jobs and our factories. All we are asking for is fair and reciprocal trade.”

The rest of the world wants unlimited access to the American consumer without complying with American regulations and without paying American taxes.  “Under my administration,” Trump boasted in his speech to CPAC last month, “the era of economic surrender is over.” 

“We’re renegotiating trade deals that are so bad, whether it’s NAFTA, whether it’s the World Trade Organization, which created China.  China has been like a rocket ship ever since, and last year we had almost a $500 billion trade deficit with China” ― money that finances the growing Chinese military. 

Critics are exaggerating the cost to consumers by adding a tax to foreign-made steel and aluminum.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross ran the numbers and found that the aluminum tariff would add just six-tenths of a cent to the cost of a soup or beer can, while the steel tariff would add about $175 to the cost of a $35,000 car.

Tariffs are much like the out-of-state tuition that state colleges charge students whose families have not supported the college through taxes.  Most state colleges require out-of-state students to pay more, and most people fully support that sensible requirement.

Similarly, tariffs help level the playing field between offshore manufacturers that escape the extra burdens and costs of operating a business in America and providing jobs to Americans.  Requiring those foreign companies to pay more for the privilege of selling to American consumers is perfectly logical given how the foreigners have not been paying American taxes or complying with our regulations.

The resistance to tariffs comes from the same never-Trumpers who assured us that Trump could never be nominated or elected.  Peter Navarro noted that nearly all the other presidential candidates opposed Trump on trade, but “guess what?  He beat them.”

Thirty years ago, when Donald Trump was in his early 40s, his views on trade were much the same as they are now.  He told Larry King that he was “tired of watching other people ripping off the United States.”  He told Oprah, “I’d make our allies pay their fair share.”  

Trump told Letterman that nations such as Japan have “totally taken advantage of the country. I’m talking about the [trade] deficits. They talk about free trade [but] they dump the cars and everything else.”

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who supports the Trump tariffs, observed that “Free trade hasn’t worked well for West Virginia.” Maybe that explains why Trump carried West Virginia with 69 percent of the popular vote, a whopping 42-point margin over Hillary Clinton in that formerly Democratic state.

Just as entrenched politicians in D.C. have blocked Trump’s efforts to build a Wall, they also protest too much at his effort to impose a few tariffs.  Yet the approach of a tariff-less society has been a catastrophic failure for the American worker, so it is time to try the approach that originally made our country great.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously in 2016. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.