Economy

President Trump will be signing an executive order and implementing a series of new regulations that will temporarily halt specific types of guest worker visas and make permanent changes to the H-1B visa program. In April, Trump signed an executive order preventing the issuance of new green cards for 60 days. The new order extends that guidance through December 31, 2020 and also temporarily suspends the issuance of new visas through the H-1B and H-2B programs, as well as some visas through the J-1 and L-1 programs. The order intends to lower foreign competition for the tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans during the economic shutdown resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. The May unemployment rate dropped slightly to 13.3 percent from 14.

Republicans on the House Antitrust Subcommittee sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Tuesday urging deregulation of the meat industry. The members of the subcommittee argued that the consolidation of the industry has pushed out local meat processors and caused supply chain failures, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Spectator. Americans faced meat shortages during the COVID-19 outbreak because of large processing plants closing down after workers contracted the virus. Meat packaging in the United States is largely controlled by just a few big corporations, so one plant closing down has a severe effect on supply across the industry. The subcommittee members, Reps.

It is traditional that the serious statesperson should respond to a crisis such as COVID-19 by calling for a ‘new Marshall Plan’. The New York Democrat Chuck Schumer wants one for the domestic economy. The Texas Democrat Julián Castro wants one in Central America. A chorus of European leaders, some of them democratically elected, wants one for the European Union. It is only a matter of time before the Trump administration wants one too, but on its own terms, in order to counter the threat of China. Call it Marshall’s Law. Between 1948 and 1951, the Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program (ERP) transferred $12 billion (c. $130 billion in today’s money) to western Europe, most of it to Britain, France and Germany.

A staggering 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April and yet the US stock market had its best month for decades, with the S&P 500 up 13 percent. Since then job losses have continued to mount, and yet the market is still higher. How can US shares be doing so well when the evidence of economic devastation is overwhelming? Even odder, the US stock market (S&P 500, down 13 percent year to date) is doing far better than the UK (FTSE 100, down 23 percent YTD) and European indices (Eurostoxx, down 26 percent YTD), and yet UK and European governments have protected millions of jobs through various furloughing schemes.

China’s various human rights abuses, their treatment of women, their savagery toward religious people and their chokehold on Taiwan and Hong Kong, has long made them a target for economic boycotts by Westerners. But executing a successful one is exceedingly difficult to achieve. In 2003, disappointed that the George W. Bush administration reaffirmed their ‘One China’ policy in regards to Taiwan, I launched my own boycott of Chinese goods. It was difficult but felt worthwhile to spend extra time looking for the ‘made in’ label on goods I was buying. And then I needed a shower curtain. I visited store after store and could not find one made anywhere except in China. I lived without a curtain for months before giving in and buying a Chinese-made one.

‘Money for Nothing’ is more than just the name of a Dire Straits hit from 35 years ago. Today it’s the guiding principle of an increasingly wide spectrum of American political thought. Andrew Yang built his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on a call for a universal basic income — a $1,000 monthly payout from the federal government to every adult in the country. When Congress in March fumbled for something grand to do in response to the coronavirus crisis, a consensus quickly settled on sending out $1,200 checks to most Americans. But free money isn’t just an emergency measure or a faddish idea from the left.

Imagine you are in your late thirties living in Ohio working at a steel or other manufacturing plant in the late 1990s. You are the second or third generation of your family working at the local plant. Perhaps even your dad is still working at the plant as a union steward. You’ve already seen the impact the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement had on your plant and other parts of Ohio. Under President Bill Clinton, who you voted for and your union heavily backed, China did enough of what the experts and policymakers in Washington wanted it to do to gain entry to the World Trade Organization, which became final in December 2001.

The worst day of my childhood was in 1995 when my father lost his job. He worked close by as a cook in a local restaurant, just a mile or two from our modest home in Cranston, Rhode Island. I recall what it felt like when he broke the news:  I felt my legs start to go under me. I still see him walking up the small hill that led to our home: his head down, his spirit crushed. I still see the look on his face, a man whose purpose had been taken away. My mother cried. We had to sell our house. Nothing would ever be the same. I suspect many American families know what I’m talking about. Nearly 30 million have lost their jobs in just six weeks alone. Millions more will follow.

It seems this virus is fiercely contagious but far less lethal than first supposed. The argument now is whether we should be emerging from lockdown and getting back to the business of business. The Trump faction, some 50 percent of our country, are straining at the bit to go back to work. Democratic leadership and the left-leaning media are against breaking lockdown. Why? It’s the usual knee-jerk ‘Orange Man Bad’ anti-Trumpism and a shivering fear that Trump can rebuild our economy in time for the coming election. But the economy cannot be fully restored without addressing the most complicated question: what to do about China? Twenty years ago China was a developing nation, albeit one shaking a military fist externally and crushing dissent internally.

‘This is a good day for America,’ said President Bill Clinton on May 24, the Year of Our Lord 2000. ‘In 10 years from now we will look back on this day and be glad we did this.’ Clinton was talking about the House of Representatives’ vote to award normal trade relations to China. And he was right. By 2010, despite the crash of 2008, the knowledge class still largely considered the decision to support China’s entry into the World Trade Organization as a great boon. China’s rise had turbocharged globalization and made us all richer — never mind the stupefying sovereign debts. Labour unions had opposed it, but leaders and corporations were still enthralled by the gargantuan consumer markets.

President Trump’s decision to set the United States back on the path to work will be decried as mere politics, but it is the right decision. It is the task of politicians to consider the general welfare. This consideration sets the current emergency against the coming one, the need to reduce deaths from COVID-19 against the need to forestall the human cost of an economy in open-ended limbo. The data on COVID-19 remains insufficient and will probably remain so. The economic prognosis is, however, clearer, and we have the data too.The IMF is warning that a prolonged shutdown will lead to a Thirties’-style Depression.

The coronavirus has devastated many small businesses. Historically, ownership offered a solid if not prosperous choice for many white males, particularly in the postwar period. You can see evidence of their successes on golf courses, in retirement communities and on cruise lines. While white men still dominate the business-owning class, other demographic groups have a strong small business presence, particularly in immigrant-rich cities like New York. These groups are especially vulnerable to the economic impact of the coronavirus lockdown.The black business community has expanded substantially in recent years. The latest comprehensive government statistics, from 2012, estimate that there was a one-third increase from the census of 2007.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is hitting back at a group of Big Pharma lobbyists, medical organizations, and free trade groups for opposing President Trump's proposed 'Buy American' executive order reshoring the medical supply chain. Navarro, the assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing, told The Spectator that Big Pharma's opposition to the executive order, which would require government agencies to purchase pharmaceutical products made in the US, because it wants to 'preserve its offshore oligopoly'. 'All the EO would do is ensure that government agencies, including the VA, HHS, and DoD, Buy American,' Navarro said.

The Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM), a trade association for major pharmaceutical manufacturers such as 3M, is drafting a letter to send to President Trump opposing his proposed ‘Buy American’ executive order reshoring medical supply chains. The letter currently has over 40 signatories, including PhRMA, a Big Pharma lobbying organization, dozens of medical nonprofits, and free market-oriented organizations, indicating the president will face immense pressure across the political spectrum for trying to reduce US medical dependence on China. AAM claims that signing the 'Buy American' executive order during the coronavirus crisis will harm efforts to provide doctors and hospitals with the equipment and medicines they need to stop the spread of COVID-19.

We are living through a gruesome case study in the irrationality of elites. COVID-19 is a serious disease, but the question of just how serious it is has hardly even been posed correctly, let alone answered intelligently. Yet already our leaders have assumed dictatorial airs and enacted policies that threaten to plunge the Western world into an economic crisis unmatched since the Great Depression. Eighty days into 2020, the official worldwide death toll from the coronavirus stands at somewhat over 10,000 lives. That includes fatalities from the final months of 2019 as well, when Chinese authorities initially tried to disguise rather than treat the outbreak of the new disease. The world was utterly unprepared for the virus as it spread from Wuhan.

The first casualty of informational war is truth. The first American casualty of COVID-19 was the myth that the United States can ‘manage’ the rise of China as a world power through mutual interest. That mutual interest was only ever economic. Naturally, most of our politicians, business leaders and commentators explained it as strategic too: as technocracy calls GDP the index of human happiness, so it identifies strategic interests with economic ones. The coronavirus crisis has, however, exposed an essential strategic antagonism between the United States and China.'‘What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta,’ Thucydides wrote in History of the Peloponnesian War.