Ana Swanson – immigrationcourtside.com

CHIEF CLOWN VOWS TO “MAKE AMERICA PAY” FOR HIS FAILURES: With His “Maliciously Incompetent” Immigration Policies in Shambles, Trump Promises To Punish American Consumers & Businesses With Tariffs On Mexico Having Nothing to Do With Trade!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/politics/trump-mexico-tariffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Annie Karni and Ana Swanson report for the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that he planned to impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that he said would “gradually increase” until Mexico stopped the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border.

The announcement, which Mr. Trump hinted at on Thursday morning and announced on his Twitter feed, said the tariffs would be in place “until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.”

In a presidential statement that followed, he said that tariffs would be raised to 10 percent on July 1 “if the crisis persists,” and then by an additional 5 percent each month for three months.

“Tariffs will permanently remain at the 25 percent level unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory,” the statement said.

Mr. Trump’s anger over undocumented immigrants has been steadily increasing since January, after he failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars to build his long-promised wall along the southwestern border. Since then, he has moved to cut off all foreign aid to countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and threatened to completely seal off the border with Mexico, in an attempt to punish countries he blames for the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States.

His growing frustration of his own administration’s handling of immigration issues this year led to a purge of the top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including its secretary, Kirstjen M. Nielsen.

Mr. Trump has previously threatened to tax cars flowing across the border with Mexico, saying in April that he would take such action if Mexico did not stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the United States.

“If the drugs don’t stop, or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars — the whole ballgame is cars. And if that doesn’t stop the drugs, we close the border,” he said at the time.

Mr. Trump’s announcement of tariffs came the same day that his administration told Congress it planned to seek congressional approval of the new trade pact with Mexico and Canada, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The president has used the threat of tariffs to try to pressure foreign leaders into taking a wide array of actions, like renegotiating trade deals as well as limiting the amount of metal or cars they ship to the United States.

In April, he threatened to place a 25 percent tariff on Mexican cars if the country would not take action to stem the flow of migrants through the southwestern border, walking back a promise he had made in the revised North American trade agreement to exempt Mexico from such a measure.

The president has told his advisers that he likes tariffs because they can be done immediately and unilaterally. But tariffs are typically used to counter trade-related violations.

Such a move would also risk derailing relations with Mexico and Mr. Trump’s revised North American trade pact, which preserves the ultralow tariffs the original deal put into place.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration started a congressional process on Thursday that both clears a procedural hurdle toward having Congress vote on the agreement and ramps up pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats who have called for substantial changes to the pact before it is ratified.

The White House sent a draft “Statement of Administrative Action” to Congress on Thursday. Under congressional rules, that clears the way for the administration to submit an enforcement bill to Congress after 30 days, which in turn starts a 90-day clock for an up-or-down vote on the pact.

That is likely to come as a challenge to Ms. Pelosi, who has recently told other lawmakers and union officials that Democrats are planning a study of the pact that could drag on well into the fall. In a statement, Ms. Pelosi described the move as “not a positive step. It indicates a lack of knowledge on the part of the administration on the policy and process to pass a trade agreement.”

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Wow! Just think of how far we have fallen as a nation. Let’s imagine that Obama, Bush, or Clinton proposed such idiotic, incoherent, nonsense, blatantly exhibiting something between total derangement and gross incompetence.

Journalists would be stunned, economists horrified. Politicians of both parties would be “talking 25th Amendment!”

Yet with Trump, it’s merely “ho hum, another day in nut-land” with only our country’s and the world’s future at stake. After all, he’s always threatening to take utterly insane, totally illegal actions. And, he only follows through about half the time.

Can we really survive this type of Clown Kakistocracy? Why won’t Mexico, China, Canada, India, and the EU just get together, negotiate some sound trade agreements based on real economics and sane diplomacy, and let the U.S. wander off into never-never land?

Yeah, I know, the economy continues to blaze away, markets are high, and unemployment low. But, remember the little warning line at the bottom of the prospectus of your most successful financial investment: Past results are not a prediction of future returns.

Well, there is some good news. At least there won’t be any suspense on who gets the “Courtside Five Clown Award” for this week. Who else but the Chief Clown! He’s earned it, and you can’t say that about much else in his tawdry life.

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

05-31-19

O CANADA: TRUMP POLICIES AID CANADIAN LOBSTERMEN AT THE EXPENSE OF MAINE! — CANADA BRACES FOR INFLUX OF “TPSers” FLEEING US!

Ana Swanson reports in the NY Times:

“When Americans think about lobster, Maine often comes to mind. But Nova Scotia has emerged as a fierce competitor in exporting lobsters, particularly to Europe. Last year, American lobstermen sold only slightly more to Europe than their Canadian counterparts.
That balance could soon shift given the Canadian-European trade pact, which eliminated an 8 percent European tariff on live lobster when it went into effect in September. Tariffs on frozen and processed Canadian lobster will be phased out in the next three to five years as part of the agreement.
The elimination of European tariffs is “the single most challenging issue” for the American lobster industry, said Annie Tselikis, the executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers’ Association, which represents companies that buy lobster from Maine fishermen. “This trade agreement does give Canada a huge leg up in the European marketplace,” she said.
Ms. Tselikis said the pact was encouraging American companies to invest in new facilities in Canada to qualify for the lower European tariff.
“If the argument is you’re not going to develop this trade policy because you’re worried about outsourcing jobs — well, here we are, potentially outsourcing jobs due to an absence of trade policy,” she said.”

Read the complete article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/business/trump-trade-lobster-canada.html

Meanwhile, Alan Freeman reports in the Washington Post that the Trump Administration might be on the verge of driving tens of thousands of American residents with useful job skills over our Northern Border:

“OTTAWA — In late October, starkly worded warning signs began appearing on the Canadian border with New York state and Vermont aimed at discouraging would-be asylum seekers fleeing the United States.

“Stop. It is illegal to cross the border here or any place other than a Port of Entry. You will be arrested and detained if you cross here.”

“Not everyone is eligible to make an asylum claim,” reads a second sign. “Claiming asylum is not a free ticket into Canada.”

As the Trump administration signals that it may soon remove the Temporary Protected Status designation from more than 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians, threatening them with deportation, Canadian officials are bracing for a new wave of asylum seekers flooding over the border.

Already this week, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke announced she was lifting protected status for 2,500 Nicaraguans, effective January 2019. And while she extended the same protection for 57,000 Hondurans until July 2018, she warned that protection may end at that time.

A new sign posted by Canadian authorities at the border between Canada and the United States. (Canada Border Services Agency)
The U.S. government decided to protect both groups from deportation following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and the measures were repeatedly renewed until this year. Duke said the original conditions justifying that protection “no longer exist.” Canada and its immigrant-friendly policies may be seen as a viable alternative for those reluctant to return to their countries of origin.

. . . .

Just last week, the government published a three-year plan aimed at accepting almost 1 million immigrants as permanent residents, with a clear bias toward economic migrants, who will make up 58 percent of the total. The balance will be shared between family and refugee classes.

Public reaction to the plan, which will see intake grow steadily from 300,000 in 2017 to 310,000 in 2018, 330,000 in 2019 and 340,000 in 2020, has been generally positive with many of the critics, including the government’s own council of economic advisers, saying Canada should be accepting even more immigrants.

Canada has an increasingly diverse population, with visible minorities making up 22.3 percent of the population in 2016, according to recently released census figures, compared with just 4.7 percent in 1981. By 2036, visible minorities are expected to make up 33 percent of the population.

“Canada is probably the best country in the world to be an immigrant because we give immigrants a chance to climb the ladder to success,” said Kareem El-Assal, senior research manager at the Conference Board of Canada, a think tank, where he specializes in immigration.

Assal said Canada’s immigration system works in part because the Canadian government helps newcomers integrate through language, skills and job training at a cost of almost a billion dollars a year. Furthermore, immigrants benefit from Canada’s universal health-care system and its good public education and reasonably priced universities.

Public opinion surveys continue to show that Canadians are pro-migration. A survey by the Environics Institute last spring showed that 72 percent of respondents agreed that “overall, migration has a positive impact on the economy.” Yet in the same survey, 54 percent said that “too many immigrants do not accept Canadian values.”

As for those border warning signs, Fortin, the union leader, says that asylum seekers are reading them and then crossing the border anyway.

“It doesn’t seem to have a very big dissuasive effect,” he said.”

Here’s a link to the complete article:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/canada-fears-a-huge-rush-of-asylum-seekers-if-their-us-protected-status-is-lifted/2017/11/12/9464645c-c4b1-11e7-9922-4151f5ca6168_story.html

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Maine needs all the economic help it can get. And, I had lots of successful “TPSers” pass through my courtroom in Arlington. Good folks, industrious with useful job skills in the types of positions that we need but most Americans don’t want to do: child care, home health care, roofing, drywalling, cleaning, washing, making beds, waiting on tables, brewing coffee, making sandwiches, landscaping, pouring concrete, building things, meat processing, running convenience stores, etc. And, the vast majority had kids who were US citizens or in the DACA program. Our loss is likely to be Canada’s gain. The concept that there are lots of Native-born Americans out there (at a time of effectively full employment) waiting to take these jobs is a restrictionist fairy tale. But, if and when these folks leave, Americans who depend on them for essential services (like child care and Home improve,wants, for example, or restaurant and hotel owners) are going to find themselves out of luck.

So far, overall incompetence has saved us from the full adverse effects of Trump’s “Make America (Not So) Great” policies. But, if they ever do go into full effect, it will be bad for most Americans, including those gullible enough to have voted for Trump.

PWS

11-13-17

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