“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
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Paul Krugman: On The US-Germany Imbalance
Trump’s tweet on German-US trade was, it goes without saying, deeply stupid and destructive. He obviously doesn’t get how the EU works – it’s a customs union, so there is no such thing as bilateral trade policy. He also thinks that bilateral trade balances are the test of fairness, which is all wrong. Somewhat annoyingly, there is a real issue lurking behind all of this: Germany’s excessive overall surplus, the consequence of inadequate spending and reflation in the aftermath of the euro crisis. But insulting a key ally on obviously fallacious grounds is no way to help with that issue.
But never mind all that. I found myself wondering about the causes of the underlying fact: Germany does indeed have a huge bilateral surplus with the US, exporting about 2.5 times as much to us as we sell in return. Why?
Somewhat surprisingly, there’s not a lot of economic literature on the causes of bilateral trade imbalances. Davis and Weinstein (DW) had a nice empirical examination, which concluded that the standard explanations didn’t explain much, that overall there was a lot more imbalance in the world than there “should” be. Still, I think it’s interesting (although maybe not important) to ask what we can say about the reasons for this particular imbalance.
Steve Rattner: rump’s Budget Cuts? More Like Radical Surgery
With a week to sift through the Trump administration’s first full-fledged budget proposal, two inescapable realities have come into sharper focus: the enormous magnitude of the desired cuts in many domestic programs and an utter disdain for numerical integrity.
First, no budget in my 40 years of following fiscal policy has attempted to reallocate outlays as radically as this budget does. Most of the commentary has focused on the cumulative spending changes over the next decade; look instead at the proposed outlays for 2027 to understand the full extent of the proposed shifts. [..]
Not all of the reductions are immediately evident in the document released by the Office of Management and Budget.
In particular, much has been made of the $616 billion of Medicaid cuts. What the press has sometimes missed (because the Trump administration hid the numbers) is that the $616 billion is on top of $834 billion of Medicaid reductions in the Republican health care legislation.
That means that President Trump, who vowed during the campaign not to touch Medicaid, now wants to cut it in half by 2027. He must really, really not like the poor.
Gail Collins: Oh Dear. The Trumps Keep Multiplying.
The kids are not alright.
Let’s see now. Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is under investigation for weird cloak-and-daggerish meetings with the Russians. Ivanka just took a bunch of money from the Saudis for her favorite charity. Eric and Don Jr. are traveling the world to promote Trump hotels and golf courses while being looked after by the Secret Service on our dime.
Tiffany is going to law school. If only the others were in law school.
Pop question: Who’s your favorite mini-Trump? I’m sort of attached to Eric, the one who compared waterboarding to a fraternity hazing.
In theory, Eric and Don Jr. are supposed to be totally unconnected to the government, running the family business in a manner so separate from the president that they might easily be working in a totally different dimension.
Hahaha.
Charles M. Blow: The Complexities of James Comey
There is no other way to put it: Former F.B.I. Director James Comey tragically botched the investigation into Hillary Clinton, no doubt playing a part in her losing and Donald Trump’s being elected.
But it is also true that Comey may be a linchpin in undoing the mistake he made.
Trump was completely out of bounds when he fired Comey — the man who was leading an investigation into connections between Russia and the Trump campaign — and then bragged to the Russians about the firing.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump asked Comey “to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.”
“ ‘I hope you can let this go,’ the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.”
The question of whether Trump’s ask, Comey’s continuance and Trump’s subsequent firing of Comey constitutes obstruction of justice looms large.
Bruce Bartlett: Donald Trump’s incompetence is a problem. His staff should intervene
The evidence is becoming overwhelming that Donald Trump lacks the temperament, basic knowledge or intelligence to be a minimally competent president. There are ways he can deal with this and compensate for it, but first he must become aware of it, and there is no evidence that anyone in his inner circle is going to tell him. The White House staff, the cabinet, and Republicans in Congress must learn how to adapt to this reality. [..]
Having worked in politics for many years, including at the White House, I know perfectly well that our elected representatives aren’t always the sharpest knives in the drawer. But many were, nevertheless, competent leaders and legislators. That is because they were aware of their limitations and compensated for them by hiring good staff, giving them a lot of latitude to act in their name, and avoiding extemporaneous statements on complicated issues.
Trump has a huge staff at his beck and call. He should use them to research issues for him rather than getting his briefings from Fox & Friends. He should let his staff draft statements for him and let them go through the normal vetting process, including fact-checking. And he must resist the temptation to tweet or talk off the top of his head about policy issues, and work through the normal process used by every previous president.
Trump may not get any smarter any time soon, but he can act a lot smarter very quickly if he simply uses the resources at his disposal.
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