Don't listen to what Trump says, but look at what he does

Trump Threatens Again Tariffs On $200 Billion Of Chinese Goods
By CHRISTOPHER DEAN HOPKINS

Donald Trump pumps his fist as he leaves a meeting Monday in the East Room of the White House in Washington.

In the latest move in a nascent trade war, Trump announced Monday evening that he was asking U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to "suggest" $200 billion worth of Chinese goods on which the U.S. could impose a 10 percent tariff.
The move comes just three days after the president detailed an initial $50 billion in imports that would be taxed an additional 25 percent, which he said was punishment for the theft of intellectual property from U.S. companies, as well as the trade gap between the two countries.
Later on Friday, China announced its own tariffs on American goods, including a wide range of seafood and agricultural products, many cars and trucks, petrochemicals and an array of medical equipment.

In a statement issued by the White House press office on Monday, Trump said, "I have an excellent relationship with President Xi, and we will continue working together on many issues. But the United States will no longer be taken advantage of on trade by China and other countries in the world."
Trump threatened to continue the economic escalation, saying that if China retaliates against the second round of tariffs more would be imposed.
In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of "an unprecedented level of larceny," NPR's Michelle Kelemen reports.
"Chinese leaders over these past few weeks have been claiming openness and globalization. But it's a joke," Pompeo said. 

"Let's be clear: It's the most predatory economic government that operates against the rest of the world today."
In a separate issue Monday evening, Senate Republicans pushed back against the Trump administration's lifting of sanctions on Chinese telecom firm ZTE, reinstating the penalties as part a defense bill. 

That measure isn't expected to make it through the House of Representatives, however.

Personal Interest

Trump did get something for agreeing to 'One China' policy—something for himself
By Mark Sumner

Workers inflated a giant chicken resembling Donald Trump in front of a factory in Jiaxing, China.

Donald Trump made a point of demonstrating a belligerent dismissal of the “One China” policy that the United States has maintained since 1979. 

One of his early calls to foreign leaders was to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, and in December Trump made it explicit.
Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to stick to its long-standing position that Taiwan is part of "one China," questioning nearly four decades of policy in a move likely to antagonize Beijing.
So when Trump abruptly changed directions last week, a lot of observers were both surprised and quick to declare that Trump had folded without securing any matching commitment from China. Some might even say that Trump showed he was … chicken.
But in doing so, he handed China a victory and sullied his reputation with its leader, Xi Jinping, as a tough negotiator who ought to be feared, analysts said.
But it’s not exactly true that Trump went home empty beaked … er, handed. 

Yes, Trump folded his position without getting anything for America, but that doesn’t mean Trump didn’t get a reward for playing along with Beijing.
The Chinese government has granted Trump and his business something they had been seeking for more than a decade: trademark protection for the use of the Trump name in the construction industry.
China actually began the process of moving the trademark to Trump after the election, but put it on hold until … coincidentally, Trump announced policy changes. 

In given the trademark to Trump, China violated its own laws.
When China awarded Donald Trump a long-coveted trademark of the “Trump” brand this week, it violated its own regulations. 

Chinese legal standards prohibit trademarks of the names of foreign leaders.
But Trump’s trademark deal, which may also be (say it with me) a violation of the emoluments clause, is just the tip of the potential iceberg. 

For a greedy guy who doesn’t believe in conflict of interest, how off base would it be to trade a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine for a nice building lot in Jerusalem? 

Why not toss an extra F-35 into that arms deal in return for rights to build an entirely classy, and very thirsty, golf course in Saudi Arabia?
And why not agree to stay out of Ukraine in exchange for, say, a bit of election help and a few videos staying conveniently invisible?

Presidential Greed: Trump Has Just Committed an Impeachable Offense

China successfully influence “One China” policy with emoluments
By Josh Voorhees

Trump during a press conference on Thursday at the White House in Washington.
China gave Donald Trump something this week that he’s been seeking for more than a decade: the rights to own his name in that country. 

The Chinese government announced Tuesday that it has awarded Trump a 10-year trademark on his last name for construction services, a development that the Associated Press described as a “surprise win” for our businessman-president. 

Previous attempts to wrest control of his naming rights from a Chinese man who had beat Trump to the punch in registering the name by two weeks repeatedly failed.
Trump’s reversal of fortunes raises a number of important questions, chief among them: Is China attempting to curry favor with Trump because he’s president? 

Would Trump have received his coveted trademark even if he weren’t president? 

Would we need to be asking these questions if the president had followed ethics experts’ advice and divested himself of his financial interests in his business empire? 

In short order: most likely, probably, and certainly not.
First, the backstory: Trump had spent years trying to get this particular trademark with no avail. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s last setback in the matter came in May 2015, when a court denied his then-newest challenge to the existing trademark held by a man named Dong Wei. Nearly one year later, in April 2016, Trump’s lawyers asked Chinese officials to reconsider their decision, which they did, ultimately voiding Dong’s trademark on Sept. 6. 

The bureau then formally announced Trump’s competing claim to the trademark on Nov. 13, which began a three-month–long bureaucratic process that was completed on Valentine’s Day with the formal awarding of Trump’s trademark for real-estate construction.
It’s important to note that China isn’t giving Trump something that he didn’t already have some claim to, or that he wasn’t likely to get before he became president. 

Dong only managed to snag the Trump name in the first place thanks to China’s first-come-first-serve trademark policy. 

In recent years, though, Beijing has taken steps to tighten its trademark laws and intellectual-property rights to bring them closer to those in the West. 

In December, for instance, the Supreme People’s Court ruled in favor of Michael Jordan in a dispute over a trademark for the Chinese word Qiaodan, which sounds like Jordan in Mandarin. 

The following month the high court issued guidelines for trademark cases that specifically bar the use of the names of public figures in areas including politics, economy, culture, and religion. 

It’s reasonable to believe, then, that Trump would have been granted this particular trademark even if he had never been elected president. 

But, of course, Trump was elected president.
If you overlay the timeline of Trump’s quest for the trademark with that of his political career, all those dots start to look like a straight line. 

Trump’s complaints fell on deaf ears for years before he launched his presidential campaign; China agreed to revisit the matter after he jumped in the race; trademark officials sided with him for the first time shortly before he was elected and then again days after he won the presidency; and finally, China officially awarded Trump’s trademark less than a month after he took the oath of office. 

None that proves causation, of course, but it creates the appearance of favor trading, something that could have been avoided altogether if Trump had left his business behind when he headed to Washington.
The trademark case also raises the related issue of the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars Trump from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign state. 

The aim of that language wasn’t to prevent bribery—which is, after all, explicitly barred elsewhere in the Constitution—but instead to prevent public officials from being influenced in more subtle ways. 

As conservative legal scholar David Post has put it, “accepting an emolument introduces an improper element—personal gain—into the decision-maker’s calculus, less obviously and overtly than in cases of actual bribery, but no less serious for that.”
It’s easy to spot areas where Trump’s worldview could have been shaped by his business in China. ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum pointed out Wednesday night, for example, that Trump went from questioning the United States’ “One China” policy to affirming it in the days before his trademark was finalized. 

To my eye, Legum may be oversimplifying the timeline a bit. 

Trump’s original comments on the matter came after he was already well on his way to getting his trademark, though it is conceivable China was willing to use the trademark as leverage by threatening to derail the process at the last second if Trump didn’t reverse himself. 

Regardless, Legum’s larger point about the appearance of conflict is a crucial one. 

As long as Trump is both businessman and president, his own financial interests will unavoidably hang over his presidential decisions.
This trademark decision isn’t a one-off event either. 

Donald Trump has 49 other trademark applications still pending in China, along with scores of current ones that will come up for renewal during the next four years. 

Regardless of whether Trump deserves those trademarks, China is now in a position to use each of them as bargaining chips in matters of state. 

The president, then, is negotiating with a foreign power that has the ability to directly help or harm his own personal financial fortunes. 

Both Trump and China know that—and they also know that Trump is already on record that he believes his naming rights rise to the level of geopolitical importance. 

Back in 2011, Trump wrote then–Commerce Secretary Gary Locke asking him to intervene on his behalf in his quest for an exclusive trademark in China. 

“My appeals lawyer said that while we should win the case 100%,” Trump wrote, “we won’t because the cards are stacked against Trump.” 

Now that he’s president, it’s clear they no longer are.