Thanks to President Trump, China’s Economy Is Rapidly Decelerating
“President Trump is exposing China’s economic vulnerability, showing that the communist nation cannot maintain its rapid growth without it patently unfair mercantilist trade policies,” former executive Andy Puzder writes in Fox News.
“For the first time in decades, the U.S. has openly challenged Beijing’s aggressive trade manipulations, slapping targeted counter-tariffs on Chinese goods and pressuring the Communist regime to change its protectionist policies. So far, the strategy has been remarkably successful, forcing Beijing to lower its tariffs on U.S. automobile manufacturers by 25 percent while continuing to negotiate with the White House on a potential trade deal.”
While President Trump’s trade policies are great news for American workers, they also have a hidden geopolitical component that mainstream media too often ignores. There is very little doubt that China seeks to become a regional hegemon and pursue geopolitical objectives in conflict with American interests. For example, by backing the North Korean regime and pursuing territorial ambitions in the South China Sea in recent years, Beijing has clearly demonstrated its desire to weaken Washington’s influence in Asia. There is very little doubt that China’s growing bellicosity is directly fueled by its powerful economy – as China’s GDP began growing at a staggering pace 20 years ago, so too did its military.
When President Trump first announced his intent to place counter-tariffs on China, it was hard to predict how the strategy would play out. At the time, many analysts speculated that China’s economy would turn out to be bulletproof and that U.S. tariffs would do more harm to our own economic growth than theirs.
Today, we know that such pessimism was misplaced.
By adopting a tough stance on trade with Beijing, President Trump was able to expose the weakness of China’s economy and demonstrate that its growth is far more fragile than it appears. In fact, the tariffs began worrying China’s elite last summer – a clear sign that Beijing was unprepared to cope with Washington’s pressure.
This week, President Xi Jinping even assembled the country’s top leaders, warning them of “serious dangers” and “tests” that will face the ruling Communist party. “The party is facing long-term and complex tests in terms of maintaining long-term rule, reform and opening-up, a market-driven economy, and within the external environment,” Xi said, striking a tone of urgency and concern about the regime’s future.
Meanwhile, Chinese lawmakers have been rushing through a new law designed to alleviate American concerns about intellectual property rights and forced technology transfers, something that President Trump has made a top priority.
All of this bodes well for the ongoing trade negotiations between the two countries, which could produce the largest trade deal in history once both sides agree to the terms.
56% of Registered Voters Say Government Is Doing ‘Too Little’ To Keep Illegal Immigrants From Coming To US
Lost amid the mainstream media’s coverage of the border security debate is this factoid from a recent ABC/Washington Post poll: “Most American voters believe the United States is doing ‘too little’ to keep illegal aliens from coming to the United States,” Timothy Meads reports for Townhall. That figure includes four in five Republicans, more than a third of Democrats, and a majority of independents, Meads adds.
The ABC/WaPo poll was taken prior to President Trump’s shutdown announcement yesterday but contains some surprising results in the face of the Democratic Party and legacy media narrative which encourages illegal immigration. According to the poll taken on “Jan. 21-24, 2019, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, with 65 percent reached on cell phones and 35 percent on landlines,” 56% of registered voters believe that the government is doing “too little” to curb unlawful entry into the country.
When poll participants are broken down into political parties, 36% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans, and 52% of Independents say the government is doing “too little.”Furthermore, 50% or higher of both women and men believe the government can be doing more to discourage undocumented immigration to the United States. As Girdusky pointed out, there are numerous options for curtailing illegal immigrations including building a wall along the southern border.
Trump right to recognize Juan Guaidó, not Maduro, as Venezuela’s president
“The Trump administration’s announcement Wednesday to recognize Venezuelan National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela amid the current popular uprising against the anti-democratic socialist Maduro regime was an act of brilliant statecraft”,The move has been followed by an international coalition of other countries including Canada and almost all South American countries. Meanwhile, Maduro has threatened to expel U.S. diplomats (a power which he no longer has in the eyes of the U.S. and its allies). Between sham elections and ruining Venezuela’s once prosperous economy, Maduro embodies the worst qualities of a socialist dictator. Taking over from socialist revolutionary Hugo Chavez after his death in 2013, Maduro continued the same legacy of intense Bolivarian socialism., Jon Hartley writes in Fox News.
“Thanks to the U.S.-led coalition endorsing Juan Guaidó as interim president, Venezuelans now have hope for a new leader who has promised to host free and fair elections,”, embodying a return to democracy for the country. Venezuela’s path back to a market-based economy will be critical to restoring its prosperity. President Trump, with the support of many in Congress (like senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott), has played a critical role in helping to move the country in that direction by creating hope for the restoration of economic and political freedom.
Days Before The Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trump Signs The Elie Wiesel Act
Yesterday marked the observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Forbes, Ewelina U. Ochab discusses the Elie Wiesel Act that President Trump signed earlier this month—“an act aimed at improving the US response to mass atrocities.” Among other measures, the act prioritizes the prevention of genocide as a matter of America’s national security interest.
The Act, as introduced in 2017, called upon the President to instruct the State Department to establish a Mass Atrocities Task Force, a new mechanism engaged with strengthening US efforts at atrocity prevention and response. Furthermore,
The Director of National Intelligence is encouraged to include in his or her annual testimony to Congress on threats to U.S. national security: (1) a review of countries and regions at risk of atrocity crimes; and (2) specific countries and regions at immediate risk of atrocity crimes, including most likely pathways to violence, specific risk factors, potential perpetrators, and at-risk target groups.”
However, this provision did not make it to final document.
Similarly, the provision establishing the Complex Crises Fund did not become the law. The provision was meant to:
enable the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to support programs and activities to prevent or respond to emerging or unforeseen foreign challenges and complex crises overseas, including potential atrocity crimes. Fund amounts may not be expended for lethal assistance or to respond to natural disasters.”
Despite being a lighter version of the document as introduced in 2017, the potential of the Act is great. As the Act will be implemented over the next months or years, one should bear in mind the words of Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg Trials, who, speaking on the Nazi atrocities, said that: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated…Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.”
The 21st century cannot afford more mass atrocities. The ongoing genocidal atrocities in Syria, Iraq and Burma are examples of the ambitious and indecisive response that Jackson warned against. Atrocities like genocide do not just happen overnight. Genocide can develop from mass atrocities, for example, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, this progression takes time and often happens with an attendant ignorance by the international community which gives the perpetrators license to continue.
Any failure on the part of states or the international community to act, and to act promptly, will often lead to the atrocities escalating until they reach the threshold of genocide. This may be why the international community hesitates to use the word “genocide”— as using the word means that the international community must accept its failure to prevent the escalation of mass atrocities into genocide.
On the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims, we should not only remember the victims of the Holocaust but also consider how to prevent similar atrocities from occurring. This includes scrutinizing the how the Nazi atrocities escalated to the Holocaust and how the legacy of the response to the Nazi atrocities could be used to assist in stopping or bringing to justice the perpetrators of the ongoing incidents of genocide. Civilization cannot tolerate these crimes either.
MEDIA HUKUM INDONESIA 