Extortion by Tariff

Remember the Bush steel tariffs of 2002?  (Don't all raise your hands at once!)  They were abandoned after eighteen months, having done more harm than good.

Unlike Tr*mp, Bush genuinely wanted to help the American steel industry.  Tr*mp, along with the usual political pandering, is trying to use traditional Tr*mpian "negotiating" tactics to strong-arm concessions on other fronts from American allies.  Of course, those allies will be familiar with Tr*mp's history of paying his bills — so the tactics are likely to fail.

The administration is not even trying to disguise its attempt to gain advantage in the ongoing NAFTA talks; more threatening, though, are the concessions Tr*mp may hope to extract from major steel exporter South Korea.  President Moon Jae-in has been demonstrating far more independence than his right-wing predecessors; and you can be sure the White House is displeased.  Maintaining the threat of war with North Korea is far more important to America's military contractors than an increase in the price of steel: after all, their increased costs will be paid by the US government and its taxpayers.

Moon's domestic support is based largely on the prospect of rapprochement with the North: hopefully, Moon will hang tough.  North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, its hard-won protection against external aggression.  Having provided evidence of his offensive capacity, Kim Jong-un will be willing to stop testing bombs and missiles for a time.  The world's best hope is that the Kim-Tr*mp summit will lead to years of talks — years with no immanent threat of war.

Nobody seems to be talking about the country likely to be hurt most by the new tariffs: Brazil, a major exporter of steel to the US.  Even if there is something the US wants to extort from Brazil, Brazil's government is too tied up in corruption scandals to negotiate effectively.  Of course, a bit of corruption won't stop the Chinese from stepping in to fill any gaps the tariffs leave in the Brazilian economy.

The Tr*mp tariffs may last a little longer than the Bush tariffs, but not long enough to justify opening new steel plants; or even to reopen the older, inefficient plants that still can be made operational.  The steel companies will be content just to raise prices.  Some businesses that use steel, though, may decide it's time to offshore production.

North Korea

So Pence has been rattling Tr*mp's saber in another exercise in ball-swinging as foreign policy.  Sad to say, there are those in Washington dumb enough to think that may be an effective strategy.  Far more, I suspect, are not so optimistic.

Lots of Republicans are happy to revel in the short-term political popularity that chest-thumping inevitably elicits from all too many Americans, and plenty of Democrats just wish it were Hillary tweaking Kim Jong-un's button nose.  Wiser heads, though — people who actually have been paying attention since Kim came to power at the end of 2011 — are aware of a few basic truths:

• Kim has absolutely no reason to give up his nuclear weapons, and only major concessions will persuade him to suspend development of his missile program.  He will not disarm.

• China cannot "control" Kim Jong-un.  North Korea is a greater threat to China than to the United States, and its economy already is so dreadful that more Chinese sanctions cannot make it notably worse.

• The government of North Korea long has considered its citizens expendable in pursuit of ideological purity and political survival, so regime change only can be accomplished by total devastation — inevitably accompanied by similar devastation of South Korea and Japan, not to mention the American troops stationed there.

So what's to be done?  Not much.  We could hope for a political revolution, but those always begin with the middle class — and North Korea doesn't have one.  Anyway, Kim is enormously popular with his people, having elevated populism to levels Tr*mp only can dream about.

We could hope for a coup d'etat, but Kim started his political career by killing his uncle and anybody else in his government who might threaten his control.  Recently, he even took the trouble to eliminate his largely innocuous half-brother.

So here's an admittedly outlandish idea: we could work to fully integrate North Korea into the world system of trade, elevating living standards and raising popular expectations.  Interdependence works a lot better than sanctions when it comes to drawing a rogue nation into the international community — and at this point, it's the only strategy we haven't tried.

Short Subjects for Early April

The National School Shield
The NRA's idea for putting armed guards into every school is, of course, absurd.  The organization, sponsored by gun manufacturers, had to come up with something — and, needless to say, their solution had to involve more guns.  The NRA has offered to "train volunteers," but the cost of just insuring against the risks of some yahoo with a semi-automatic wandering around a school building probably would have to be offset by firing two teachers.

Marriage Equality
While we wait for the Supremes to act, here's a thought: I've always been in favor of Civil Unions.  If you want your marriage recognized by the state, go to a judge or a JP or some other state official.  If you want to get married by a religious personage, well, go do it — but don't expect the state to recognize that personage's authority.  On the other hand, if you think religious leaders should have the right to approve marriages, just let them decide who can get married — gay, straight, or interspecies.  As an ordained minister, I would hesitate to marry a man to a sheep, but if it looked like they really were in love...

North Korea
Well, it looks like Kim Jong Un is striving to outdo both his daddy and his granddaddy in the craziness category, but I suspect his real problem is nobody takes the North Koreans all that seriously these days.  The boy king with the bad haircut can beat his chest like Kim Kong, and nobody pays much attention.  "Okay," say the Americans, the South Koreans, the Japanese and, increasingly, the Chinese, "let him rant.  If the need arises, we can blow his ass right off the peninsula, and we're pretty sure he knows that."  On the other hand, I think we have kind of a moral obligation to keep some of those undernourished kids alive.

Atlanta Cheaters
Okay, the bail seemed kind of high to me for a batch of school administrators — I mean, where in hell are they supposed to go?  Will they join the Colombian rebels, or the Taliban?  Can they drain the "vast" profits from their administrator bonuses to flee?  I don't think so.  It is no secret that I'm not at all a fan of school administrators, but I suspect the main failure of the cheating assholes was less cheating skill and a little more hubris than other cheating assholes who are doing it in the white neighborhoods.