On the menu today: Is the news week slowing down as we approach Thanksgiving, or — as the retailers think of it — “Black Friday Eve”? Ha! This news cycle is more stuffed than the turkey your mom was supposed to take out of the freezer yesterday. President-elect Donald Trump announces his plan for new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China on Truth Social; Jack Smith drops the federal cases against Trump; and why there’s less to the buzz about Elon Musk buying MSNBC than meets the eye.
Tariff Worries
It feels like it was just yesterday that we were being assured that Trump’s selection of hedge-fund executive Scott Bessent to be his next Treasury secretary was a sign that this administration wouldn’t go full protectionist, and that his policies would reassure the markets:
Business leaders say they are relieved President-elect Donald Trump made a safe choice to lead the Department of Treasury after more unconventional selections to other cabinet posts. . . .
“There’s huge relief,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Institute. “Bessent is reasonable and pragmatic. . . .”
Sonnenfeld, known as “the CEO Whisperer” for his rolodex of business contacts, said the hope of Corporate America is that Bessent can moderate some of Trump’s more aggressive campaign promises that mainstream economists fear will reignite inflation.
Wait, that was literally yesterday. By Monday evening, Trump came out guns blazing, announcing a slew of new tariffs he intended to impose on Canada, Mexico, and China:
As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before. Right now a Caravan coming from Mexico, composed of thousands of people, seems to be unstoppable in its quest to come through our currently Open Border. On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!
I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States — But to no avail. Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before. Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.
If you’re wondering why Canada is getting grief over illegal immigration, for most of this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered between 14,000 and 19,000 individuals attempting to cross into the U.S. from Canada per month. (At the link, select “Northern Land Border” for a chart of the monthly figures.)
I think Scott Lincicome, vice president over at Cato and a one-man army in the cause of free markets and free trade, is correct in his assessment of the past pattern when Trump threatens sweeping tariffs:
Anyway, for those who don’t remember 2018-19, the general pattern was: 1) Trump tweets tariff threat 2) Everyone FREAKS 3) Govts, companies scramble to find a way for Trump to declare victory w/out big changes 4) Freakout ends w/out tariffs 5) Trump declares victory 6) MAGA gloats 7) Yrs later we realize it was a costly charade.
Lincicome notes that maybe this time will be different. I strongly suspect that the Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese governments are looking for some sort of policy concession that they can toss at Trump to avert another trade war. Threatening major tariffs may make sense as a negotiating tactic. It doesn’t make much sense as economic policy, particularly when the high cost of living is a huge factor that put Trump into the White House. The U.S. imports about $481 billion in goods and services from Canada, $493 billion from Mexico, and $562 billion from China. (Those are 2022 figures. The totals for this year will probably be higher.) New tariffs will make all those imported goods more expensive.
For what it’s worth, that CBS News poll from this weekend found that 59 percent of respondents believed “new tariffs on goods from other countries would generally make the prices of things you buy” higher; 18 percent said they expected prices to be lower.
By the way, the Mexican government did enact reforms that violate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in at least five different ways, but that’s not why Trump is enacting these tariffs.
Jack Smith Closes Up Shop
Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith formally asked that his criminal cases against Trump be dismissed Monday. Sure, these were dismissed “without prejudice,” so they could come back four years later, but do you really think in early 2029, when Trump’s an octogenarian and probably senile, they’re going to want to prosecute him for documents at Mar-a-Lago improperly taken in 2021? As for the January 6 case, our Andy McCarthy notes, “The events in the indictment occurred around the 2020 election. By 2029 they will be time-barred under the five-year federal statute of limitations.”
Besides, by January 2029, we’ll have four years’ worth of new scandals that Democrats will argue warrants the prosecution of Trump. You’ve already bought your tickets for the spring 2027 House impeachment trial, right?
Over at the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka propose, “During his inaugural address, President Joe Biden promised to put his ‘whole soul’ into ending what he called our nation’s ‘uncivil war’ and ‘bringing America together.’ He failed to deliver on that pledge. . . . Biden has one final chance to make good on his inaugural promise before he leaves office, and he can do it with a simple act: Pardon Donald Trump.”
In other news, I’d like the Jets to win the Super Bowl in my lifetime, never mind my dad’s lifetime. But none of us are going to get what we want.
I can see the argument that by reelecting him, the American electorate has given him a de facto pardon. But amidst so much Democratic insistence that the media and the general public must not “normalize” Trump, Biden giving him a pardon would be like giving him the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. A presidential pardon of Trump would be devastating to Democrats and make Biden go from disliked and resented to outright loathed within his own party.
Although, as Scott Jennings noted on a panel last night, Biden has given Trump a form of a political pardon by hosting him at the White House and having what seems like, so far, a normal orderly transition of power.
No, Elon’s Not Going to Buy MSNBC. Well, Not for a While, at Least
The first thing you should know about the recent buzz that Elon Musk is thinking about purchasing MSNBC is that MSNBC is not for sale, or at least not for a while and not separately. Comcast announced last week that it intends to spin off its NBCUniversal cable TV networks into a separate company — a package that includes MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, E!, Syfy, and Golf Channel. Bravo, NBC, and the Peacock streaming network would stay within the Comcast mother ship. It expected to take about a year for that process to play out. Conceivably, Musk, with his net worth of $326 billion or so, could purchase the whole cable-channel bundle, or he could make Comcast a phenomenal offer to buy MSNBC alone.
I guess the question is: What would Musk want to do with it? Run it as a lark? Does he want to turn it into Elon TV? Or are Musk’s current jokes about being tempted a sign he wants to relish taking Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid and Jen Psaki off the air? And if Musk does that, what would conservatives watch on Election Night when Republicans are winning?
An odd point of clearing up misinformation from last night’s panel, and the contention that “[social media] platforms are not regulated right now, which gives them carte blanche, whatever they want right now. Elon is not someone who likes to be regulated. And so, to buy MSN[BC], he would go under some federal regulations.”
No, he would not. The Federal Communications Commission does not regulate the content of cable news or cable programming at all. Never has, never will. It’s right there on the FCC website: “Over-the-air broadcasts by local TV and radio stations are subject to certain speech restraints, but speech transmitted by cable or satellite TV systems generally is not. The FCC does not regulate online content.” The FCC’s authority over broadcast networks is mostly but not entirely limited to indecency and obscenity; that’s why cable can show nudity and broadcast television cannot.
The FCC does not want you to come to them with complaints that a broadcast network is biased:
The FCC will only investigate claims that include evidence showing that the broadcast news report was deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners. Evidence may include testimony from persons who have direct personal knowledge of an intentional falsification of the news (for example, written or oral instructions from station management, outtakes, or evidence of bribery). Without such documented evidence, the FCC generally cannot intervene. The FCC does not investigate claims of collateral inaccuracy in news reports or differences of opinion over the truth or validity of aspects of a news program.
It does not matter how many times Trump threatens to “pull the license” of CNN or MSNBC; there is no FCC license for Trump to pull or revoke. And back in 2017, Trump’s own appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai explicitly stated the commission doesn’t have the power to revoke any station’s broadcast license over the content it produces: “The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment. Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”
ADDENDUM: Joe Biden has pardoned his last turkeys — the feathered kind, at least.