Five Eyes Leverage – Europe Imposes Steel Tariffs on China…


In November of last year the New York Post interviewed President Trump asking specifically why he was not declassifying “spygate” documents, and inquiring about the purpose for his reluctance.  President Trump responded: “Maybe it’s better that the public not see what’s been going on with this country.”  Many people were disappointed, but its always been President Trump’s primary MAGA agenda to focus on economic security.

As the president has repeatedly stated: “economic security is national security.”  And with that cornerstone as the foundation, any evidence of a ‘Five-Eye’ ally participating in the scheme against Trump becomes leverage.  Cue the example:

EUROPE – European officials said today they will make tariffs on steel imports to the region permanent to help stem the glut of supply sparked by Donald Trump’s trade war against China.

The move highlights that protectionism is spreading and Donald Trump’s trade war with China is entrenching itself into the global economy.

The EU will impose quotas on 26 product categories and levy a 25% duty on imports exceeding those quotas, the executive arm said on Wednesday. The move cements proposals laid out last July with the stated aim of protecting European steelmakers amid Chinese overcapacity.

[…] The European auto manufacturers association ACEA said it was “extremely disappointed” and called the measures protectionist, citing statistics showing that steel exports to the US had only dropped marginally, meaning little extra steel was being imported to Europe.

“These measures do not take into account the needs of downstream users of steel, such as the automotive sector,” it said in a statement.  (read more)

A reminder from last year.

[…] President Trump has fifty years of business skills in various predatory and adversarial financial deals.  Leverage, or the ability to force an opponent to take an action that benefits your position, is the most valuable weapon in deals; business or politics the same is true.

This type of leverage is extremely valuable and it’s not just against Democrats, Obama and the Never Trump alliance (ie. Sea Island group).  President Trump is in a fight against multiple enemies from all sides, across all aisles and political alignments.  The declassification leverage is like an atomic hammer that strikes everyone in a 360° blast radius.

And it is not limited to domestic adversaries.  This leverage has a geopolitical value.

Think about geopolitical trade deals with Five-Eyes allies.  Think about how President Trump may need an ally to take a position adverse to their preferred interests. The potential for declassification of intelligence documents showing complicit corruption within the U.K. and Australia could destroy politicians external to the U.S.

Think about an ally being asked to take a position on China (trade), Iran (sanctions), Russia (energy), etc.  Movement on any of these geopolitical issues, and many more, can be tilted -in part- based on the threat of sunlight or declassification. Leverage is a tool.

Getting particular democrats to support the USMCA; what’s that worth?

Getting a southern border wall and sensible immigration law; what’s that worth?

What does President Trump value?  What is important to him?

What part of the transactional relationship can be enhanced by leverage?   Pro-tip: it’s not personal; it is not leverage to benefit Trump personally; he doesn’t care about that shallow stuff… his view of the horizon is much longer, much further; much more consequential.

It annoys the heck out of many people, me included, that Donald Trump is willing to absorb so much inbound fire, unnecessarily; which, by extension, means that his supporters are forced to absorb so much inbound and unnecessary fire; but he is.

What is President Trump’s primary objective?   Save the U.S.A. through economics.

Economic security is national security.

I think much of our angst is because we look too short-term; and the media does a great job of convincing us President Trump is selfish.  Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps I’m wrong; but I see this leverage issue as something Trump views as important – obviously; or he wouldn’t approach it that way.

Would President Trump trade a $500 billion per year positive benefit to the U.S. economy in exchange for never outlining the fraud against him?

Would President Trump accept new jobs for a million Americans in exchange for never outlining the 2016 fraud against him?

Yeah.

He would.

Without question.

And he wouldn’t care if it meant he could never win in 2020.

He ain’t a politician.

Piss you off?

Probably.

That’s Trump.

All of those resistance “politicians” and their schemes, ploys, games and strategies are annoying gnats.  Nothing more.  President Trump’s MAGA agenda is the primary focus. That agenda is bigger, much bigger and far more consequential, than their obstruction.

All of the collective political gnat activity is less than.

 

President Trump Cancels Speaker Pelosi Overseas Trip…


President Trump stops military aircraft availability for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just minutes ahead of a previously scheduled foreign trip.  Read below:

I would expect the Democrats will use a DNC billionaire donors’ private fleet.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has Contracted Pneumonia


Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s while fighting cancer, has now contracted Pneumonia and is fighting for her life. From a purely cyclical perspective, there should be another appointment this year to the Supreme Court. Even on an average basis, since 1789 there have been 114 judges up to Brett Kavanaugh.That means at the very latest the next appointment would be in 2020. Ginsburg will fight til her last breath to try to deny Trump another appointment. That does not look to be plausible. She is 86 this year.

This is How the USA Will Collapse – Congress is Incapable to Ruling the Country


Believe it or not, member of Congress continue to get paid even when there is a shutdown on the basis that Congress refuses to fund the government. Elizabeth Warren has come out and stated that she will donate her salary during the shutdown. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is paid $223,500 per year. The Democrats fought to include a new top bracket raising it from $250,000 to $500,000 to reach 37% tax rate. It was embarrassing when you are earning close to $250,000 and you keep demonetizing the rich.

Of course, Congress is excluded from Obamacare. They get their own golden deals of unlimited care. That is worth more than $50,000 annually which they do not include in a salary.

So any wonder why the member of Congress can let a shutdown go on and on? Easy, they still get paid when everyone else does not. Nancy Pelosi reiterated that Democrats will not agree to a border wall but joked that she’d give Trump $1 for it.

They believe they can make Trump look like the bad guy here and the shutdown can be a long one indeed. They have dug in their heels and it is hard to see how they can back down now without losing face. The fact that the wall would be $5.7 billion and one week’s interest bill to keep rolling the debt comes in at $6.7 billion. This is simply a political standoff demonstrating that Congress has lost all civility and is incapable of managing the country going forward. There is no reversal in sight and we simply cascade in this death spiral into 2032. Perhaps now we can see that indeed the United States will cease to exist as we know it after 2032. The USA will be prone to separatist movements as well after 2024. That appears to be the target for absolute political disintegration

Ashen and Conflicted – Senator Schumer Discusses Private Meeting With AG Nominee William Barr…


Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer met privately with AG nominee William Barr earlier today.  At the conclusion of the meeting Senator Schumer addresses the media.

Schumer appears conflicted and confused as to how to describe his own highly political desires with the answers he received from Mr. Barr.  It does not appear Schumer was pleased with his overall inability to leverage control over the nominee; and that comes out in the early part of his statement.  That’s a good sign.  Watch:

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The issue of how Mr. Barr would produce a summary document about the completed Mueller investigation is an aspect that deserves some clarity and discussion.

The best way to think about the Mueller report is to think about the local police department (detective or DA) doing an investigation on a subject and completing that task.

At the conclusion of the inquiry, if there is no determination of criminal wrongdoing, the investigator does not outline the investigation in a report to the general public.

The basic premise behind this standard process is simple.  Everyone is innocent unless they can be proven to be guilty.

If everyone who was ever investigated had the internal investigative material made public it would be profoundly unfair to the target.  It would be even more unfair if the investigator was allowed to frame a public report, with their own internal biases and innuendo, in lieu of their ability to find criminal wrongdoing.

Now amplify that simple fairness issue x 1,000 and consider how severely political federal investigators might produce such a document against their opposition.  It is easy to see how such a report can be weaponized for political benefit.  The weaponization and benefit is the goal of the current Democrat leadership.

However, specifically to address these issues, and in an attempt to remove the political weaponization possible within the special counsel statute, the DOJ framed the ending of a special counsel investigation such that a summary of investigative finding is delivered to the U.S. Attorney General, who then puts out a public statement (of sorts) describing the conclusion (the finding).

Pelosi, Schumer and the Democrats do not want William Barr to be able to write a summary, a public statement, based on the report delivered to him by Robert Mueller.

Instead, the Democrats want the report from Mueller, including all the investigative trails that were exhausted, so they can exploit aspects of the inquiry that were not able to be proven, and weaponize “innuendo” and “possibility” for political benefit.

Minority Leader Schumer is frustrated he cannot get Barr to accept that demand.

There is a slight parallel here to the position of those who are selling the honorable Rosenstein and Mueller origination angle.  This is where the “trust the plan” folks, align with the Epoch Times community of narrative engineers.

The Epoch Times engineering position, writ large, is that DAG Rod Rosenstein was seeking to protect President Trump when he appointed Robert Mueller.  It is into this engineering community where all the leaked congressional transcripts are being deposited.

In their Epoch collective opinion, after James Comey was fired, the highly corrupt Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was about to launch a retaliatory counter-attack against the President using a new focus for the ongoing counterintelligence investigation.  Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein saw what McCabe was about to launch and removed his ability to do it by appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel to take over the originating investigation.

According to this viewpoint, Rosenstein saved President Trump from the wrath of McCabe by appointing Mueller (May, 2017).

Following that perspective…. Seeing the overt weaponization of the FBI, the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was then guided to begin targeting inquiry toward Andrew McCabe and the “small group” more aggressively (June through November 2017).  This led to the December 2017 revelations behind the activities of the small group (James Comey, Jim Rybicki, Andrew McCabe, Jim Baker, Michael Kortan, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr etc.)

The parallel here is that William Barr’s current position, perspective and intent with the Mueller report; if you follow the ‘trust-the-plan’ crew;  is similar to the position, perspective and intent held by DAG Rod Rosenstein when he cut McCabe off at the knees.  [McCabe, Baker, Kortan and Strzok obviously fired; and Page quit.]

However, what this “honorable Rosenstein” view fails to reconcile is the predicate, the essential false underpinning of the entire Mueller probe.  Also, the ridiculous aspect of Russian indictments that Rosenstein knows are entirely manufactured for political optical value only.  [See: the Concord fiasco and the Russian woman posting memes.]

If Rosenstein was aware what the corrupt crew of DOJ and FBI officials were doing, he damned sure didn’t do anything about it, quite the opposite.  If he was aware of how corrupt FBI officials were targeting their political opposition… why did Rosenstein direct all attention away from that truth?  Why permit the DOJ and FBI to redact text messages between Page and Strzok when there was/is no legal basis to redact the text messages between Page and Strzok (merely one example).

I can find no action by FBI Director Chris Wray (Rosenstein selection), Deputy Director David Bowdich or Legal Counsel Dana Boente, that has addressed the internal corruption identified throughout their institution.  Quoting the IG Report:

Instead of exposing the issues, what we can clearly see is an effort to avoid discussing and exposing that corruption at all costs.

Chairman Lindsey Graham Has Every Confidence in AG Nominee William Barr…


Chairman Graham is very happy with the nomination of William Barr as U.S. Attorney General.  It would appear purposeful Barr will re-balance the DC interests, and return the DOJ to a more ordinary level of corruption.  In this way Barr pushes back the fulcrum tilting the DOJ away from the more violent weaponized lean in the past eight years.

 

AG Nominee William Barr Testimony to Judiciary Committee…


President Trump’s AG nominee William Barr testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his legal views and perspectives.  Overall post-testimonial punditry converges on the outlook Mr. Barr will be easily confirmed with broad bipartisan support.

Rather than agree or disagree with various opinions CTH is providing a full video of the Barr hearing below with a recap video as presented by Global News:

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My own personal view is that William Barr will likely reset the DOJ ‘status quo‘ to the institutional construct that existed prior to the Obama DOJ (Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch) era. That is to say: Barr will attempt to remove obvious weaponization and overt political motives behind every action taken by the U.S. Justice Department.

However, it also appears the most purposeful goal for Mr. Barr, in direct alignment with his close personal friend Robert Mueller, will be the preservation of the DOJ institution as a historic apparatus. That “preserve-the-institution” at all costs means Barr will necessarily have to bury any/all systemic corruption to achieve a larger institutional goal.

I Do not anticipate Barr will deliver any sunlight to expose how badly corrupted the DOJ has become. Instead he’ll likely apply bondo to cover the rot and apply a fresh coat of paint.

Here is the full nomination hearing. As a point of advice, I would recommend paying close attention to the segments of questions from Senators who we already know were participating in the 2015/2016/2017 operation against Donald Trump (ex. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse).

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“Bondo Barr”

“Bondo Barr recommendation”

“Bondo Barr assurances”

BUILD THAT WALL MR PRESIDENT


The All American “Gilets Jaunes” Presidency….


Love this. I especially love how much this draws out the elitist pontificating opposition; now tone-deaf giddy as they try and ridicule ordinary All American fast food.

POTUS Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.

Please Democrats; please media; please make fun of this….

Remember the “Freedom Fries“?…

This is how you do it Macron !!

It’s called “authenticity”.

Take notes, stat!

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That’s our people’s President.

That’s OUR President.

Volkswagen Announces Additional Plant with 1,000 New Jobs in Chattanooga, Tennessee – $800 Million Investment in New Production Line…


{{{snicker}}} Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Oh, remember that White House meeting with the big four German automakers [back on December 4th, 2018] that mainstream media ignored amid the fury of the, well, more popular ‘resistance’ narrative?   Yeah, THAT one.

Well, combine that US/trade White House meeting with the details within the USMCA auto-sector; mix it up a little with the initiatives and incentives for Trump’s industrial vocational apprenticeship training; give the auto actuaries a little time to crunch the numbers; let the executives settle in…. Then, fast forward a month and currently the big Detroit auto-show is happening.

Voilà!… what does Volkswagen announce?  Ahem:

TENNESSEE – Volkswagen to create 1,000 new jobs in Chattanooga expansion:

Volkswagen announces Chattanooga will be the home to the company’s first electric vehicle manufacturing facility in North America. This will be the company’s second U.S. facility.

The automaker made the announcement Monday morning at the Detroit Auto show. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, and Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger were all in Detroit for the major announcement.

The project represents an investment of $800 million by Volkswagen and the creation of 1,000 jobs in Hamilton County.  “As one of Hamilton County’s top employers, these additional 1,000 jobs will have a lasting impact on the region. I thank Volkswagen for its partnership and also applaud the company for its ongoing commitment to education and workforce alignment, which helps Tennessee build a pipeline of talent for years to come,” Haslam said.  (read more)

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Embedded video

Volkswagen USA

@VW

Investing in electric vehicles – and America.

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Tariffs Work !

….”complicated business  folks, complicated business”…

USTR

@USTradeRep

Our economy added 284,000 manufacturing jobs in 2018, the largest increase in U.S. manufacturing jobs in 21 years. This has always been a priority for @realDonaldTrump. Our trade policies are working!

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