Bloomberg news is asserting that President Donald Trump will soon announce his selection for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is Heather Nauert.

(Via Bloomberg) President Donald Trump has decided to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the decision.

Nauert, 48, is an unorthodox choice for the UN role given that she had little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News, including on the “Fox and Friends” show watched by Trump. Haley also didn’t have foreign policy experience when she took the UN posting, but she had twice been elected governor of South Carolina.

Nevertheless, Nauert has gained Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s trust after being excluded from the inner circle of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. She is also closely aligned with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner.

One senior administration official, who discussed the move on condition of anonymity, said that Nauert would make a great UN ambassador because she is a great communicator. (read more)

Background first:  There’s a massive shifting of manufacturing in the auto-industry and President Donald Trump is at the center of it.  The USMCA trade agreement is the newly constructed Trump fulcrum underneath the structure of all auto manufacturing.  POTUS Trump has shifted the location of this fulcrum through auto-tariffs; and the final determinations therein are still ongoing.

On Tuesday, POTUS invited the EU auto executives to the White House.  No doubt Trump, the executive businessman, was seeking to understand their position on how the EU crew will comply with a 75% USMCA rule of origin…. and feel-them-out over what leverage he could apply (tariff threshold) to enhance their manufacturing relocation decision.

Example: With tariff at 2.5% they won’t move anything just pay the duty; however at 10% or higher they might move engine building or transmission building to North America etc to get inside the rules of origin threshold.  Trump was likely exploring the Mercedes, VW and BMW perspectives while Angela Merkel was gnashing her teeth… “curse you villian”.

President/Businessman Trump is setting up a future for high-wage U.S. manufacturing workers.  POTUS is in apex predator mode… the combination of USMCA and tariff possibilities are like blood in the water surrounding: Dr. Dieter Zetsche (Mercedes), Dr. Herbert Diess (VW), and Dr. Nicholas Peter (BMW); while Trump asks questions.

Mike Manley the new CEO of Fiat Chrysler wants nothing to do with that scenario.  He ain’t about to get in the water.  Swimming with Trump? Oh, hell to the no:

(CnBC) Fiat Chrysler, riding a wave of strong truck and SUV sales, is planning to build a new final assembly plant in Detroit even as other American automakers scale back operations in the U.S., according to people familiar with the plan.

The assembly plant, an old Mack II Engine Plant that closed in 2012, will build a new three-row, Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV starting in 2020 as the automaker moves to keep up with strong demand for utility vehicles, the people said. A spokesperson for Fiat Chrysler would not comment on the report, nor confirm the automaker’s plans.

The move comes as the industry faces pressure from President Donald Trump to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and stands in stark contrast to the recent decision by General Motors to stop production and idle five plants in North America including four in the United States. (read more)

Fiat Chrysler’s Mike Manley watched legendary CEO Sergio Marchionne dealing with President Trump in 2017 during two sets of meetings with key auto leaders [Marchionne seated at Trump’s immediate left above].  POTUS and titan Marchionne got along great; both old school deal-makers.  Lots of respect between the two leaders.

No doubt Mike Manley took heed of Sergio Marchionne’s approach when he took over as CEO of Fiat Chrysler earlier this year due to Marchionne’s untimely death.

Meanwhile the German crew have Angela Merkel to deal with.  Not so good.  Trump is really close to leveraging massive tariffs on Fraulein Merkel’s primary industry. Oh yeah, this stuff is buckets of fun.

Geopolitical-strategy-Trump doesn’t care about delicate sensibilities, and Merkel is trying to have her cake and eat it too with NATO defense (U.S. pays) and self-serving energy contracts with Russia (Germany saves).  Chancellor Merkel’s economic slip is showing and she is totally exposed to the massive leverage President Trump holds.

I can only imagine Merkel sitting in her office wondering: “how exactly did we get ourselves into this position, and never notice while we were traveling here”?

Methinks we might just see more Audi, VW, BMW and Mercedes auto plants. And I guarantee you we will see more Audi, Volvo, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota (Lexus), Honda (Acura) and Nissan (Infinity) SUV component plants…. [Just like the Fiat Chrysler announcement today.]

Audi (Q7, Q5), Volvo (XC-90) and additional Mercedes (SUV) component production and manufacturing assembly plants will likely be crunching the numbers based on their Tuesday meeting.

Oh, this stuff is buckets of fun.

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has been wearing two hats as both head of the Office of Management and Budgets and head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Democrats went bananas in 2017 when Mulvaney took over the source of their financial black-mail and fundraising scheme constructed by Elizabeth Warren.

Today the senate voted to confirm Mulvaney’s protege’ Kathy Kraninger to replace him.

Democrats are still going bananas.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 on Thursday to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. consumer watchdog despite opposition from Democrats and consumer groups who say she is unqualified.

Kathy Kraninger will serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), replacing acting chief Mick Mulvaney, after Trump signs a declaration approving her five-year term.

The banking industry and consumer groups will be watching to see whether Kraninger, who is currently a senior official at the White House budget office, will take on Mulvaney’s mantle and continue to aggressively curtail the CFPB’s enforcement and rule-writing agenda.  (read more)

If the latest reports are accurate, this is *not* good.  Remember, there are trillions at stake and Wall Street has spent hundreds-of-million on behalf of multinational interests lobbying to keep the current status with China unchanged.

There’s a deep financial motive within this dynamic to stop President Trump from resetting the trade relationship with China. Additionally, Canada is aligned in self-interest with Wall Street and Trump’s adversaries toward the same goal.

Apparently National Security Adviser John Bolton was aware the CFO of Huawei was going to be arrested in Canada.  However, President Trump was kept out of the loop.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said in an interview with National Public Radio that he knew in advance about the arrest of a top executive of the Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], according to an NPR reporter on Thursday.

Bolton said he did not know if the president was aware in advance of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in Canada on Saturday, the day Trump struck a 90-day truce on trade in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina, NPR reporter Steve Inskeep said in a tweet.

“I knew in advance. That is something we get from the Justice Department,” the tweet quoted Bolton as saying. (read more)

Here’s the alarming (if true) aspect:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump did not know about a U.S. request for the extradition of Huawei’s chief financial officer from Canada before he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping over dinner last weekend, a White House official said on Thursday.

Huawei Technologies Ltd’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 and faces extradition to the United States. The United States has been looking since at least 2016 into whether Huawei violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. (read more)

So while President Trump was sitting down with Chairman Xi to negotiate the framework of their ongoing trade discussions; Bolton knew a very geopolitical arrest, that would directly impact the relationship, was about to take place…. And he did not inform President Trump?

If true this is concerning because the Deep State would like nothing more than to scuttle any possible trade reset between the U.S. and China; and Canada would be more than willing to assist therein.

Canada benefits from the status quo.  Canada exploits their access to the U.S. market as part of their overall economic model.  Canada brokers Asian manufactured goods through their country, and assembles some parts into finished products therein.  This skirts any countervailing duties imposed on the originating Asian nation by the U.S.  This exploitation has been very lucrative for Canada.

Additionally, the Wall Street multinationals and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have paid U.S. politicians to allow maximum benefit to Chinese manufacturing.   The Big Club is opposed to President Trump; there are trillions at stake.

If Bolton knew of the location of a landmine that could have serious damage to the efforts of Trump’s economic team, and he kept it hidden, he could have intentionally positioned President Trump’s policy toward China for maximum collateral damage.

Not good.

Must watch this closely.

Suspicious cat needs more information.

According to a report in the Washington Post William P Barr is the leading candidate to replace Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General.   Barr previously served as AG under George HW Bush.  The other possible candidate is Rep. John Ratcliffe from Texas.

(Washington Post) Former attorney general William P. Barr is President Trump’s leading candidate to be nominated to lead the Justice Department — a choice that could be made in coming days as the agency presses forward with a probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

Barr, 68, a well-respected Republican lawyer who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, has emerged as a favorite candidate of a number of Trump administration officials, including senior lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, these people said. Two people familiar with the discussions said the president has told advisers in recent days that he plans to nominate Barr.

One person familiar with the discussions cautioned that while Barr is the leading candidate, the decision is not final and the president could decide to pick someone else.  (read more)

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attended two Hanukkah receptions today, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  The video below are the remarks during the first reception. The President and First-Laady marked Hanukkah Thursday evening with a reception including eight survivors of the Holocaust.:

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Halley was visiting President Donald Trump in the White House today, ahead of a report she has sold her home in South Carolina home and will remain in New York after she departs from the cabinet at the end of the year.

My hunch is Haley has met, briefed and interviewed possible replacement John James on the U.N. position, and is debriefing POTUS Trump therein. Again, just a hunch….

COLUMBIA — Former Gov. Nikki Haley is not coming straight back to the Palmetto State after she leaves the United Nations at year’s end.

She plans on staying in New York where her son attends high school.

“South Carolina will always be home for Ambassador Haley and her family, and they look forward to returning to their friends and family in the Palmetto State after her son finishes high school,” Haley spokeswoman Chaney Adams said in a statement.

The return will be long enough away that Haley and her husband, Michael, recently sold their Lexington home.

Haley, 46, has not revealed what she will do when she leaves the United Nations after two years.  The Post and Courier has learned a second book is the works, per several sources who asked to not to be identified because they were not authorized to reveal the news. (more)

 

In the grand scheme of things, the move of U.N. Secretary Nikki Haley to resign is a typical move of a professional politician on the establishment side of the GOPe political continuum.

Ms. Haley comes from the political house of Bush; hence the original Rubio support in 2016 etc. She is a political animal from the establishment wing.

Within the traditional political class the customary approach to a White House run is to gain about five years of wealth in advance of a presidential run. Haley would be following a wealth process for a 2024 presidential run.

During this wealth accumulation period the cocktail party circuit (the billionaire crowd) will front-load wealth, purchase homes and all expenses etc, for the future candidate. This ‘Five Year Plan‘ was the same historic approach done for Ronald Reagan.

With a candidate in the private sector, the professional donor-class make investments in the candidate while it is legal to do so. The investments are made in anticipation of future influence.  This is simply how money influences politics.

With the “Me Too” movement in high political value, the currency of Nikki Haley, as an investment candidate, is at the apex.  Haley checks the right boxes; she is making a predictable move to capitalize on that process, politics and timeliness.

The U.N., as an institution, is also in alignment with the high-brow Prescott Bush clan. Ms. Nikki Haley is regarded by this clan as a very valuable commodity. If they can’t get Jeb, or another Bush (ie. Rubio) over the finish line, they will be much better positioned with investments in Nikki Haley.

It goes without saying the U.N. is not MAGA. In many ways the interests of the U.N. run counter to the more nationalistic MAGA movement.

Hence, it was smart for President Trump to put a non-MAGA ambassador into the U.N. while simultaneously, and smartly, using the position to keep the globalists from attacking MAGA policy.

It was a strategic move when it was done and the benefits have been visible.

Moving forward, despite the success of President Trump in taking over the Republican party, the political apparatus still has factions (ie. Never Trump etc.). Those GOPe types will back Nikki Haley in 2024 as they did Jeb in 2016. The outlooks are same/same. This is all entirely predictable.

Due to the increasing success of the MAGA or Trump Republican apparatus, Haley will need to carefully position herself as a stealth Decepticon and not upset the vulgarian hordes; ie. the new republican party base voter. As a smart and tactical politician Haley will invest heavily in the optics of supporting the MAGA movement; and embrace President Trump to avoid any conflict.

Much like the primary of 2016 (w/ Jeb), the primary race of 2024 will determine if Haley can con enough people into not seeing her elitist Decepticon position.

The Bush clan and professional political cocktail circuit was rebuked in 2016, so we can anticipate their strategy in 2024 will be with those strategic lessons at the forefront.

/End.