Trump Sanctions, Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela Can Only Cause More Violence and Suffering [feedly]

Trump Sanctions, Regime Change Strategy in Venezuela Can Only Cause More Violence and Suffering
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/trump-sanctions-regime-change-strategy-in-venezuela-can-only-cause-more-violence-and-suffering

ark Weisbrot
The Intercept, February 2, 2019

See article on original site

Washington has been trying to topple Venezuela's government for at least 17 years, but the Trump administration has taken a more openly aggressive tack than its predecessors. Last week, administration officials kicked their efforts into high gear by anointing their chosen successor to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros in advance of any coup d'etat. The 35-year-old Venezuelan member of Congress Juan Guaidó announced that he was now president, and the Trump administration, along with allied governments, immediately recognized him — in accordance with a previously arranged plan.

It is clear that President Donald Trump's goal is regime change; his administration is not even trying to hide it. And his allies, like Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have long made it obvious what they are after.

It would be a terrible mistake to keep going down this road. Trump's policies have only worsened the suffering of Venezuelans and made it almost impossible for the country to pull out of its prolonged economic depression and hyperinflation.

A negotiated solution is necessary to resolve the political conflict in Venezuela, yet the Trump administration's commitment to extralegal regime change is rapidly precluding this option. Worse still, Trump's apparent strategy is to increase suffering through sanctions — more of which were just announced — until a fraction of the military carries out a coup to create a new, pro-Washington government.

The fairness of the 2018 presidential election, which the opposition boycotted, is up for debate, but the main problems with the regime change strategy have to do with other considerations. Venezuela is a polarized country and overthrowing the government — even if Washington were not involved in the fight — would only increase this polarization and the chances of greater violence or even civil war.

Consider the example of Nicaragua, where in 1990 the leftist Sandinistas and their U.S.-backed opponents agreed to settle their differences through an election. The sides had to agree on certain conditions so that the losers would not be persecuted: The Sandinistas kept control over the army after they lost the elections, and peace was maintained.

These sorts of necessary compromises would be impossible under the regime change strategy being pursued by the Trump administration.

Venezuela is polarized along political lines and has been ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and launched his Bolivarian Revolution. The opposition's attempt to overthrow Chávez in a military coup in 2002, aided and abetted by officials in the George W. Bush administration, as well as the opposition leadership's vacillating willingness to accept the results of democratic elections in subsequent years laid the groundwork for many years of distrust.

Venezuela's political polarization, however, also intersects with a great chasm that permeates most of Latin American society: a division by class and race. As in most of the Americas, the two are correlated. In the opposition protests that have occurred over the past decade, one could see these differences in the clothes worn by pro- versus anti-government protesters and in their skin tones. The opposition crowds and their leaders have been considerably whiter and from higher income groups than Venezuelans who supported the government. In the most recent protests, there has been an increase in anti-government actions in working-class and poor areas in Caracas, but the class and racial divide between Chavistas and opposition has not gone away.

Another line of Venezuelan polarization is the belief in sovereignty and self-determination. The Chavistas have made independence from the U.S. a centerpiece of their agenda, and their government, when it had money, pursued policies in the hemisphere that sought more independence for the region as well. The opposition and enemies of the Chavista governments, by contrast, have worked closely with the U.S. government for the past two decades — as can be seen in the coordination of this latest attempted coup. Washington's intervention aggravates the polarization along the lines of sovereignty, and opens the opposition to charges of alignment with a foreign power — and a power that has historically played a terrible role in the region. To appreciate the animosity that this would create, think of how much ill will has been generated in the U.S. by Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, and multiply that by a few orders of magnitude.

The polarizing impact of the Trump regime change operation is what makes it so dangerous. Inflation is probably over 1 million percent annually, and the economy is estimated to have shrunk by a Latin American record of 50 percent over the past five years. Millions have left the country to look for work. The opposition would almost certainly have won the last presidential election if they had participated and mostly united around a single candidate. (For the record, the U.S. reportedly threatened an opposition candidate who did participate, Henri Falcón, with personal financial sanctions if he ran for president.)

Though the government's economic policies have played a role in Venezuela's woes, the Trump sanctions have made things considerably worse since August 2017, decimating the oil industry and worsening shortages of medicine that have killed many Venezuelans. The Trump sanctions also make it nearly impossible for the government to take the necessary measures to exit from hyperinflation and depression.

Though the U.S. media is quiet on the matter, it's important to note that the Trump sanctions are both violently immoral — again, they kill people — and illegal. They are prohibited under the Organization of American States Charter, the United Nations Charter, and other international conventions that the U.S. is party to. The sanctions also violate U.S. law, since the U.S. president must state, absurdly, that Venezuela presents "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States in order to impose these measures.

Venezuela cannot exit from this political crisis by one side vanquishing the other, as the proponents of regime change assume. The Vatican played a role as mediator in 2016, and Uruguay and Mexico — who have remained neutral in the political conflict — offered this week to help mediate. But the Trump team is a powerful influence on the opposition, and they have so far shown no interest in a peaceful solution.

---

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of "Failed: What the 'Experts' Got Wrong About the Global Economy" (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Larry Summers: No trade deal can dictate our relationship with China [feedly]

No trade deal can dictate our relationship with China
http://larrysummers.com/2019/02/05/no-trade-deal-can-dictate-our-relationship-with-china/

As the United States and China continue to joust over trade and technology, the U.S. policy debate contrasts two views of the primary problem.

A first view expressed often in President Trump's tweets locates the key issue in the bilateral trade deficit that the United States chronically runs with China. On this theory of the problem, a solution is relatively easy: The Chinese could rearrange their imports of soybeans, fossil fuels and other products so more of them come from the United States, while countries now supplying China could export instead to nations now importing from the United States. This is what the Chinese keep offering since it means almost no real change in their economy. Neither levels of employment, output or total trade deficits and surpluses are likely to change much in either the United States or China.

A second view, held by more serious alarmists about the U.S.-China relationship, such as U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, emphasizes problematic Chinese practices in key technological sectors. These range from theft of U.S. technologies to requirements that U.S. firms wishing to do business in China — chiefly in the development of key technologies, such as artificial intelligence — must form joint ventures with Chinese firms, especially those with connections to the Chinese government.

Such technological alarmists in and out of the administration hold that we can wall off U.S. technologies with sufficiently aggressive policies so China cannot steal them, or that we can pressure China to the point where it will give up government efforts at industrial leadership. Neither of these prospects is realistic.

In many ways, U.S. concerns over China and technology parallel concerns over the Soviet Union in the post-Sputnik missile gap period just before President John F. Kennedy's election in 1960. Or over Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was often joked that "the Cold War is over and Japan won."

When atomic weapons were our most sensitive military secret, their creation required extensive sophisticated infrastructure. Yet the United States and Russia essentially had no normal interchange, so we were able to maintain a lead of three or four years with respect to both fission and fusion weapons.

Technology for artificial intelligence in development today, however, can be operated on widely available equipment. And there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens studying in the United States or working for U.S. companies that develop such technology. Keeping U.S. knowledge out of Chinese hands for substantial lengths of time is impracticable short of a massive breaking of economic ties.

Nor is it likely for the Chinese government to halt its support of technology development. How would the United States react if other countries demanded that we close down DARPA, the Defense Department's advanced research agency, because it represented unfair competition? Or if trading partners argued that U.S. support for private clean-energy companies, such as the subsidies provided by the Obama administration, was an unfair trade practice? Much of our current information technology and communications infrastructure comes directly or indirectly out of Bell Labs, which was financed out of the profits of a government-regulated and -protected monopoly. Would the United States have responded constructively to demands from other countries to dismantle the Bell system?

A focus on resisting the Chinese economic threat will likely not only be ineffective but may also be counterproductive if it diverts private and public energy from more productive pursuits. I remember well from the early Clinton administration that the great symbol of efforts to constrain unfair Japanese practices was Kodak's case against Fuji, the Japanese photographic film company that attracted massive attention from Kodak's senior management and U.S. policymakers. Perhaps if Kodak had instead focused on the digital photography ideas its scientists had developed, it would still be a significant company.

Where we can mobilize international support, we should, of course, push China to live up to its trade obligations and seek to modify rules in the World Trade Organization where they do not cover problematic practices. But in reality, our competitive success over the next generation will depend much more on what happens in our economy and society than at any international negotiating table.

Will our national investment in applied scientific research continue to languish to the point where even the most brilliant young scientists cannot get their first research grants until they are in their 40s? Will public officials who surely know better continue to allow creationism to be taught as serious science in U.S. public schools in a century with so much progress in life sciences? Will public policy concern itself with the strength and competitiveness of U.S. information technology companies as well as with their marketing practices? Will a national effort be made to improve the dismal performance of U.S. students at every level in international comparisons of mathematical and scientific achievement?

These questions and others like them, much more than any trade negotiation, will determine how the United States competes over the next generation. The Russian and the Japanese challenges pushed us forward as a nation in very constructive ways. So can the Chinese challenge if we seize the opportunity it represents.

February 5, 2019

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

ePI: The state of American manufacturing: The failure of Trump’s trade and economic policies [feedly]

The state of American manufacturing: The failure of Trump's trade and economic policies
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-state-of-american-manufacturing-the-failure-of-trumps-trade-and-economic-policies/

Separating fact from fiction is always tough when listening to President Trump, who lives in his own, fact-free fantasy-world. This is particularly so when it comes to trade and manufacturing. Here are a few key points on that topic to keep in mind when listening to his State of the Union address. There's a lot that can be done to create millions of good manufacturing jobs for working Americans, but not the way this president is going about it.

• The trade deficit is growing more than twice as fast as the overall economy, because of the Trump administration's trade and economic policies. The total U.S. goods trade deficit has increased 18.1 percent since 2016, and our trade deficit with China has grown even faster, 20.5 percent in the same period (annual estimates, based on year to date trade through October). Growing trade deficits over the past two decades are the single largest causeof the loss of roughly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs.
• The Trump administration has failed to end currency manipulation and dollar misalignment, despite Trump's promise to name China a currency manipulator on day one upon taking office. Currency misalignment is the single largest cause of growing U.S. trade deficits. U.S. trade can be rebalanced, creating millions of good manufacturing jobs, by lowering the value of the dollar by about 25 percent. The failure to end currency misalignment is a major cause of GM's recent decision to close 5 manufacturing plants and outsource production, eliminating 12,000 jobs, and Ford's plan to reduce its workforce by 12 percent, eliminating 24,000 jobs.
• Trump's massive tax cuts (for corporations and the wealthy) and spending increases are expanding the federal budget deficit, pushing up the value of the dollar and the U.S. trade deficit. The dollar has increased 20 percent since 2013, including 5 percent in 2018 alone. As a result, the IMF now predicts that the broadest measure of the U.S. trade deficit will nearly double between 2017 and 2022. Growing trade deficits will decimate manufacturing over the next few years, and could push the United States into a recession.

• Trump's trade deals with Mexico and Canada and the negotiations with China will not fix our trade problems. The new tax bill encourages firms to outsource more jobs by reducing taxes paid when firms outsource production. The labor and environmental restrictions in the new NAFTA deal must be made strictly enforceable, or it will simply encourage more outsourcing. And the NAFTA deal grants drug-makers new powers to block generic competition and to lock in high medicine prices.
• Negotiations with China also seek to lock down increased protections for the intellectual property and profits of U.S. multinationals, but this will just encourage them to outsource more production to China. And China has already played its ace-in-the-hole in the trade war with the United States, lowering the value of its currency by 10 percent since April of 2018, more than offsetting the impacts of Trump's tariffs on trade flows. As a result, the U.S. trade deficit with China recently reached an all-time high, despite Trump's China tariffs.
• The most important cause of growing U.S. trade deficits and manufacturing job losses is not faulty trade deals, but a misaligned dollar. A handful of countries with substantially undervalued currencies have been running large, structural trade surpluses for several decades. This hurts workers in many countries that have persistently large trade deficits, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico as well as the United States. The surplus countries are China, the European Union (especially Germany and the Netherlands), Japan, and Korea, plus a handful of countries that have engaged in persistent currency manipulation including Denmark, Singapore, Switzerland, and Taiwan.

So what should the United States be doing instead?

The single most important step we can take to rebuild manufacturing is to rebalance trade by realigning the U.S. dollar. There are several ways this can be achieved. In 1985, the last time this was done, Congress worked with the administration to encourage our trading partners to negotiate the Plaza Accord, an agreement to realign currencies. If a similar effort were to fail, Congress could authorize the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve to sell dollars in global markets to reduce the currency's value to a competitive level. Or, we can impose a tax on purchases by foreign governments and investors of dollar-denominated financial assets.

Lastly, Congress should not be pressured into approving trade deals unless they achieve enforceable labor and environmental standards that can be quickly implemented. Likewise, new agreements should not be approved if they increase the incentives to outsource production from the United States. It is time for a new approach to trade, one based on a clear assessment of its implications for jobs and production in the United States.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Progress Radio:Progress Diner is On the Air -- SOU Response

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Progress Radio
Post: Progress Diner is On the Air -- SOU Response
Link: http://progress.enlightenradio.org/2019/02/progress-diner-is-on-air-sou-response.html

--
Powered by Blogger
https://www.blogger.com/

Welcome to HelloFax, Here is Your Fax

The fastest way to sign and send faxes online Dear Client, You have received a HelloFax Date and Time: 02/05/2019 08:18 AM Number of pages: 1 Reference number: MGH647348K. See Your Fax Thank you for going paperless! - HelloFax Community

We think the office can be paper-less! HelloFax Send Documents Online HelloSign Sign your Documents Online HelloSign for Gmail Sign via Gmail 202 Amelia Avenue, Suite 340 San Francisco, CA Add us to your address book

HelloFax, Here is Your Fax

The quickest way to sign and send faxes online Dear Customer, You have received a HelloFax Date/Time: 02/05/2019 09:02 AM Number of pages: 3 Personal reference ID: MSD646347L. Get Fax Now We appreciate you going paper less! - The HelloFax Team

We believe your office can be paper-less! HelloFax Fax Docs Online HelloSign Sign Documents On-line HelloSign for Gmail Sign from Gmail 504 Howard Avenue, Suite 240 San Diego , CA Add us to your list of contacts

Bary Riholtz: The Plural of Anecdote IS Data [feedly]

The Plural of Anecdote IS Data
https://ritholtz.com/2019/02/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/

One of the key lessons of behavioral economics is the danger of not examining your own beliefs. Failing to consider the reasons that underlie our decision-making increases the risk of error. Although we can operate in our daily life on autopilot, other situations are not so forgiving. When we put capital at risk, the danger of not understanding what influences our decisions can be monetary losses, career risk or worse.

In this context, let's consider the aphorism, "the plural of anecdote is not data." This is the idea that a single example should never be used to extrapolate a broader rule about, well, anything. This applies to stocks, the economy, politics, Brexit — just about any situation where a compelling narrative might influence your views in spite of a dearth of evidence.

The truth of this statement is so self-evident that there seems to be little reason to have to investigate whether the quote is accurate or not. We tend to use it almost reflexively, usually in an attempt to refute a conclusion that cites a data point. Anecdotal evidence is not mathematically or scientifically sound. When our sample set consists of a single example (N = 1), our conclusion will have a margin of error of plus or minus 100 percent. In other words, as the fine print states, it is statistically insignificant.

We have learned the problem with extrapolating from single examples thanks to the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.1 In 1973, they were studying various mental shortcuts that people rely on when making decisions with incomplete information. How easily an example might come to mind — including anecdotes or random examples — might not be representative of the real world. Thus, the "Availability bias" was discovered.

Perhaps the best real-life example of the availability bias are shark attacks. Most of the time, interactions between humans and sharks occur without harm to the humans, but when they are to someone's detriment, lots of media coverage tends to follow.2

But the reality of the danger is very different. More people were killed by mosquitoes last year than have been killed by sharks in the past 100 years.  Indeed, annual deaths from selfies exceed yearly shark fatalities. In reality, you are much more likely to die from a medical error, which is the third largest cause of deaths in the U.S., than from a shark attack. What else is more deadly than sharks? Try armed toddlers  — young children who happen to get their hands on a firearm. But shark attacks are more memorable and dramatic, and therefore readily and easily recalled.

Which brings us back to anecdotes: As it turns out, the original quote about anecdotes had a very different context, and a much more nuanced meaning. It is attributed to Ray Wolfinger, who was a political scientist at the University of California-Berkeley.

Wolfinger's original statement was quite literally the very opposite of what we all have been using. He had actually said "the plural of anecdote is data." This should might affect the way we think about and use data.

The earliest discussion I could track down of the original quote was via the American Dialect Society.  Fred Shapiro, former editor of the Yale Dictionary of Quotations, had an email exchange with the professor about the statement's origins. Wolfinger recalled responding to a student's dismissal of a factual statement as a mere anecdote, told Shapiro: "It was meant to suggest that data does not have an immaculate birth, and that anecdotes lead to deeper research and then data."

The professor's take was not a warning against extrapolation or anecdotal evidence. If anything, he was encouraging data scientists to delve deeper into their experiences to discover fertile new areas of research and exploration. To the alert observer, a compelling anecdote should start the process of digging into the data to determine if something is merely an intriguing one-off or emblematic of a broader trend. A good story should be considered preliminary evidence, the start of a more serious inquiry.

In other words, the plural of anecdote, to be more precise, might be valid data leading to a potentially significant conclusion. For that reason, when an unusual anecdote capture one's attention, it shouldn't be casually dismissed, lest a deeper truth be missed.

Consider the ramifications of this for how analysts, economists, fund managers do their jobs. Algorithms are increasingly replacing repetitive tasks, and for people who work in finance, this is potentially an existential risk to their careers. The ability to identify something via an anecdotal observation, then use data to discover a new idea or concept might be relatively immune from the machines coming to replace you. So take heart: It might be a while — if ever — before AI and big data are sophisticated enough to do just that.

 

_______

1. Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Oregon Research Institute, Cognitive Psychology 5, 207-232 (1973)

 -- via my feedly newsfeed