good thing they’re in lockstep about their true priorities, ain’t it?


(by anthony freda)

‘House approves Trump’s flagship US-Mexico-Сanada trade deal, day after impeachment vote’, 19 Dec, 2019, RT.com

“The US House of Representatives has given the green light to a trade deal between the US, Canada and Mexico that would replace NAFTA, known as the USMCA, passing the bill on to the Senate for another vote.

The sweeping trade deal was passed in the House on Thursday 385-41 and is set for a Senate vote sometime after the new year. If signed into law, the deal would establish new rules for commerce between the three countries, supplanting the longstanding North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Effectively an update to the prior three-way agreement, which came into force in 1994, the USMCA looks to slash tariffs, alter labor and intellectual property rules and cut down barriers to trade between the three neighbors, built with a 16-year sunset clause which sets an expiration date for the deal.” [snip]

“If President Trump “wants to take credit for [the deal], so be it,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who has spearheaded the Democrat-led impeachment effort.

“This isn’t about him,” she said. It’s about American workers.”

After impeaching Trump and claiming he’s an “urgent threat” to America, Democrats refused to send the impeachment articles against him to the Senate for a trial and then passed a major trade deal he personally negotiated. Holy cognitive dissonance, Batman.”  https://t.co/b0GZEk87PX

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 19, 2019

It’s also a win for Democrats, who wanted to demonstrate they could pass legislation that benefits American workers while they pursued impeachment

— POLITICO (@politico) December 19, 2019

‘One day after impeachment: Democrats back Trump trade, budget bills’,  Patrick Martin, 20 December 2019, wsws.org

“The purpose of the measure is to tighten the coordination of economic and trade policy between the United States and its northern and southern neighbors, so as to constitute a stronger trade bloc directed against China in particular, as well as other capitalist rivals like Japan and the European Union.

In a further display of the collaboration of the Democrats with the Trump administration, the Senate took up and passed, by wide bipartisan margins, the two budget bills approved by the House on Tuesday. The vote on the first bill, appropriating $632 billion in domestic social spending, was 71-23. The vote on the second bill, appropriating $738 billion in military and national-security spending, was 81-11.

The military spending bill was opposed by a handful of liberal Democrats, adopting an antiwar posture that is thoroughly insincere, since there was no chance the bill would be defeated. The domestic spending bill was opposed mainly by Republicans opposed to maintaining even the abysmal current levels of support for healthcare, education, housing and other social programs. Four senators who are campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, did not attend the session and did not vote.

The passage of the trade and budget bills, by huge bipartisan majorities, confirms that on issues related to the basic class interests of the US financial aristocracy there is no difference between the two parties. Wall Street demanded passage of a full-year budget, rather than a series of continuing resolutions or a recurrence of last year’s partial federal shutdown, to avoid any shock to financial markets from the federal government failing to make debt payments on time.” [snip]

“As for the gargantuan military budget, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Tuesday, while the House appropriated the funds the same day. Then the Senate rubber-stamped the appropriations bill Thursday with only token opposition. Both parties support the use of military force all over the world to defend the global interests of American imperialism.

The military appropriations bill, like the NDAA, allows $1.375 billion in spending on Trump’s border wall and removes any restriction on Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional shifting of Pentagon funds to border wall construction.


(by anthony freda)

The differences that have led to impeachment revolve around one key area of foreign policy—confronting Russia in the Middle East, Ukraine and eastern Europe—where the military-intelligence apparatus, working through its front men (and women) in the Democratic Party, is opposing any shift from the hardline anti-Russia policy adopted during the second term of Barack Obama.

After the passage of the trade bill, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that there would be no more votes in the House until January 7, 2020. In effect, the Democratic leadership has postponed submission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and thus the Senate trial, for three weeks.

Under the Senate rules, impeachment must be taken up by the Senate within 24 hours after the articles of impeachment are submitted, and the Senate must conduct the trial six days a week until its conclusion.

By delaying the submission, Pelosi was allowing time for the Senate to take up and pass the USMCA, although it was not clear whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would do so. There is significant opposition to the USMCA among Senate Republicans who claim Trump’s chief trade negotiators, Lighthizer and Treasury Security Steven Mnuchin, made too many concessions to win the support of the Democrats and the AFL-CIO union federation.”

For deeper digging, rom Nick Beams, Oct. 9, 2018: ‘Key provision of USMCA trade deal aimed at China’, wsws.org.  Trust me: it ain’t about American Workers, it’s Trade as War.

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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Lily O Lady's picture

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

wendy davis's picture

@Lily O Lady

us when we dissent; then: send in the militarized police machine, and call us terrorists, even jail us without trial in so many cases.

they do know us collectively, if unconsciously, by the fruits of our labor, though; sometimes even when we strike. but that momentum stalls in fits and starts as well, often due to union bosses who sell out labor. at least according to wsws...

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"Both parties support the use of military force all over the world to defend the global interests of a handful of people.

I think it useful to remember there are no mysterious forces guiding history. There's nature and the character and motives of people.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

wendy davis's picture

@jim p

understand your 'might read...a handful of people' better with further explanation, but when i think about how many people and corporations benefit by US War, Inc. (including for resources), NATO, Africom, and the Amerikan Empire and her many (if changing now and again) Puppet Allies...the number seems staggeringly high to me.

i'd just seen notification that Mexico has discover a huge amount of lithium, and a wag on twitter had noted: 'a regime change is coming'. (even though i'm still agnostic as to how 'left' AMLO really is.)

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@wendy davis where I changed to the bolded phrase. It's true that the chief enemies of humanity (and democracy, truth, decency, and the American People, and etc etc) have countless employees to work their Imperialist ambitions, but were that "handful" -- the power holders -- decide the priority was to, say, reclaim deserts, provide potable water and fertilize the land everywhere.... Well that's what their apparatchiks would be doing. Things as we have them -- that's a handful of people setting the direction.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

wendy davis's picture

@jim p

and sorry to have been so long. i'd been on a mission to discover what julian assange might have testified to the spanish judge in his case against morales of UC global, an had found nothing but background. this morning thomas scripps at wsws is reporting that no one from the public nor the press was allowed inside. but even the background originally at el pais and some of what stefania maurizi has brought...depressed the hell out of me all over again.

anyhoo: technically it was patrick martin who'd used "American Imperialism", and well said on what the true power holders might be doing instead, but i highly disagree that there are just a few who hold the power of Imperial militarism. allow me to satirize the red queen: "it takes a village to so ruthlessly pillage the enemies of the Empire".

thanks for explaining further, jim p. the list of those who profit is vast.

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wendy davis's picture

but after i'd read nick beam's Oct. 9, 2018: ‘Key provision of USMCA trade deal aimed at China’, wsws.org, including these passages:

“The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade that was concluded last week contained a clause which makes clear that one of its essential aims is the economic isolation of China, as the US steps up its trade war against Beijing.
The clause, contained in article 32.10 of the agreement, stipulates that: “Entry by any Party into a free trade agreement with a non-market country, shall allow the other Parties to terminate this Agreement on six-month notice and replace this Agreement with an agreement as between them (bilateral agreement).”
China was not specifically named but there is no doubt it is the target, with the US having designated it a “non-market” economy.

International experts have said that nothing like this clause has ever been seen in previous trade deals. According to Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the clause is “completely novel in a trade agreement.” He described it as the “latest strand in the Cold War that the [US] administration has launched against China.”

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Reuters the clause was “logical” and a “kind of poison pill.” The US insisted upon it during the negotiations with Canada after raising concerns that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was exploring the possibility of a free trade deal with Beijing.

The provision is intended to go far beyond Canada and Mexico and become the template for the bilateral trade agreements the US is seeking with its major trading partners, in particular the European Union.”

i was reminded of this just about a year ago: ‘why was Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou arrested in canada?, 12/12/2018

Andre Damon has called it ‘a kidnapping’, and gives some background. On Dec. 1 she was arrested at the Vancouver airport while changing planes to head to Mexico at the behest of the US justice department, and stuck in jail. She’s been charged with two counts of fraud for breaking sanctions against Iran by way of a Hong Kong-based company Skycom sometime in the past (the Guardian had reported 2009-2014) that US officials allege to be a shell company of smart phone giant Huwawei’s. Her arrest hadn’t been announced until Dec. 3, with reports that the US wants Meng extradited so that he can be tried for crimes whose sentences could amount to 60 years. But that it’s not the issue, just the cover story, will become clear.

Damon reported that the NYT published this ‘bombshell’ the day after Meng’s arrest had stunned the world:

“As Donald Trump was sitting down to dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping last Saturday [at the G20 in buenos aries] to arrange a “truce” in the US-China trade war, the US president was unaware that the unprecedented arrest was about to take place.

This was despite the fact that figures such as Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Richard Burr, as well as National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, were alerted to the arrest. Asked why he did not tell the president, Bolton, who was with Trump at the meeting with Xi, declared inexplicably, “we certainly don’t inform the president on every” notification from the Justice Department.”

Justin Trudeau had also known her arrest was imminent.

But part of Damon’s conclusions were that the US wants command and control of its allies and enemies alike, as in: ‘do our bidding, or you will end up like Meng, or worse. He’d also concluded that it had been down to the ‘Deep State’ to order her arrest given Herr Hair’s ignorance of her arrest. He’d narrated the many Very Important Figures (Ds and Rs alike) that agreed with Pence’s proclamations in an Oct. speech in which:

“Pence demanded that Beijing abandon its “Made in China 2025” plan, which Pence claimed was an effort to control “90 percent of the world’s most advanced industries, including robotics, biotechnology and artificial intelligence.”

Some applauded Weng’s arrest, noting that the Orange One hadn’t been hard enough on ‘the Great Competitor China’; some media was silent. The US trade rep scoffed at the notion that her arrest would stop the negotiations with China in their tracks, claiming this wasn’t a trade issue, but a law enforcement issue. Ho, ho, ho."

but part of it was that there were reports that china's huawei 5-G devices were NS-proof, so the US declared them 'a anger to our national interest', and legislation was introduced to prevent the US from selling parts to huawei that china hadn't been producing. but i remember seeing a headline a bit ago noting that china was either making their own chips, or another nation was doing so.

then i remembered having read this recently: ‘Canadian Opposition Parties Fill Anti-China Void Left by Freeland’s Ouster’, December 18, 2019, Mathew Ehret, strategic-culture.org

“The major political parties of Canada don’t agree on much, but they have found common ground on one policy: China is evil and any collaboration with this tyranny is an assault on Canadian values.
Previously, this anti-China agenda was reserved for Canada’s prize regime change fanatic Chrystia Freeland, who as Foreign Minister successfully alienated nearly every nationalist government on earth, to the point that China’s foreign ministry cancelled its Ambassador’s role in Ottawa and even ceased picking up Freeland’s phone calls.

Since Freeland’s ouster as Foreign Minister on November 20, a new effort to rebuild trust and business relations coincided with Francois-Philippe Champagne’s appointment to head Global Affairs, promising a fresh wave of dialogue and cooperation on private and security matters- not excluding Freeland’s commitment to extradite Huawei’s Meng Wangzhou to the USA. Other obstacles which this shift in power may finally resolve include China’s sanctions on Canada’s Soybean purchases now crippling Prairie economies, and the recently announced trial date of two Canadians (Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor) held in Chinese prisons on the accusation of spying and stealing state secrets.

No sooner had dialogue begun with a new Canadian Ambassador deployed to Beijing on September 4th and a new Chinese Ambassador in Ottawa on September 22, followed in short measure by the most important energy contract between Canada and China in years that insanity showed its ugly face in full force. This insanity first struck in the USA where extreme pressure bent the hand of President Trump who signed off on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act- essentially accusing China of all wrongs underlying the western-backed chaos spread across Hong Kong.”

then China’s response, etc.

This is the internal link to Freeland's Ouster (remember she wrote at the finacnial times for a long time?): A Sea Change for Canada Foreign Policy as Freeland Is Replaced by a Pro-Chinese Politico, also matthew erhet, November 30, 2019

he'd opened with:

In Chrystia Freeland’s 2012 book Plutocrats, Canada’s leading Rhodes Scholar laid out a surprisingly clear analysis of the two camps of elites who she explained would, by their very nature, battle for control of the newly emerging system as the old paradigm collapsed.

In her book and article series, she described the “practical populist politician” which has tended to be adherent to business interests and personal gain during past decades vs the new breed of “technocrat” which has an enlightened non-practical (ie: Malthusian) worldview, willing to make monetary sacrifices for the “greater good”.

She further defined the “good Plutocrats” vs “bad Plutocrats”. Good Plutocrats included the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos who made their billions under the free-for-all epoch of globalization, but who were willing to adapt to the new rules of the post-globalization game. This was a game which she defined in an absurd 2013 TED Talk as a “green New Deal” of global regulation under a de-carbonized (and depopulated) green economy. For those “bad plutocrats” unwilling to play by the new rules (ie: the Trumps, Putins or any industrialist who refused to commit seppuku on the altar of Gaia), they would simply go extinct. This threat was re-packaged by Canada’s “other” globalist puppet Mark Carney, who recently said “If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist.”

good riddance.

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