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In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice. (nytimes.com)
Anonymous readers share a report: As President Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea to negotiate denuclearization, a challenge that has bedeviled the world for years, he is doing so without the help of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics. Mr. Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on technical matters ranging from nuclear warfare to global pandemics. As a businessman and president, Mr. Trump has proudly been guided by his instincts. Nevertheless, people who have participated in past nuclear negotiations say the absence of such high-level expertise could put him at a tactical disadvantage in one of the weightiest diplomatic matters of his presidency.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
(like a 270% tariff on dairy going into Canada, a very real and chilling fact about which I had no idea previously).
Then I suppose you also don't know that the US provides over $22 billion a year in direct subsidies to US dairy producers, accounting for over 40% of all dairy profits?
That's right -- American taxpayers are paying for >40% of all dairy production in the US. That has lead to a significant oversupply of milk and cheese products which the US can't sell domestically, so they want to be able to dump it on other countries well below market value (again -- it's government subsidized).
That is why Canada has a tariff on US dairy products. Canada doesn't subsidize its dairy industry at all. The tariffs came into effect because the US insists on subsidizing its dairy industry with more US tax dollars than the entire Canadian dairy industry is worth.
And you know what? Even with all that, Canada imports more dairy from the US than it exports (see above link).
Want to get rid of the tariffs? Get rid of your own market distorting subsidies first, then we can talk.
Yaz
Sorry for bringing logic to a shit-flinging party, can't help myself.
Unfortunately, you didn't. You have to look at absolute numbers, and not percentages, because the subsidies have a multiplicative effect. They not only change the profitability of milk, but they encourage overproduction (because the subsidies are based on production), which drives down prices.
Indeed, according to government numbers, the US has a 5-1 price edge against Canada in dairy pricing due to subsidies. That should call for a 500% subsidy to fully correct for, and yet we only charge a 270% tariff.
You'd expect if the tariffs were completely out-of-line that nobody in Canada would import dairy form the US, and yet in 2016 alone we imported more than $631 million in dairy from the US. For a population smaller than that of California.
Again -- talk to your own government first. I'd be more than happy to see both of our countries (and the EU, which has the largest dairy subsidies in the world) drop dairy tariffs -- but the unfair subsidies have to come down first. It's the subsidies that have caused the tariffs, not the other way around. Canada is hardly in some power position where we can drop our tariffs and hope for some form of "general goodwill" that the US will stop unfair subsidies and attempts at dumping. The Canadian Government has been clear in the past that if the subsidies go away, we won't need the tariffs anymore.
Yaz
The summit only exists because of Trump because he is the only one reckless enough to agree to it. This is what the North Korea's want, to be at the big boy's table, a respected and legitimate nuclear power, but what does it give us? Other presidents could have easily done if they wanted to, if they thought it would have accomplished anything for us.
I know we are in a 1984 post truth age and have always been at war with Eurasia, but the relationship with North Korea has always fluctuated up and down because they are duplicitous and skilled at using extortion to extract concessions. Trump's policy towards North Korea has been similarly schizophrenic, talking about "little Rocket man" and threatening with nuclear war, now switching back and forth to the nice nice, but what makes you think that if this doesn't provide the magic results that only those in the cult of personality seem to believe will occur that we won't go back to "fire and fury" on failure. John Bolton seems to have been brought in explicitly for the purpose of fire and fury.
The gratuitous f-bombs and hostility about posters on this subject suggest to me that the parent may just be a troll and treating it in good faith is a foolish endeavor, but if this what represents a widespread consensus of thought then we are in serious trouble.
and there's plenty to support Trump being anti-science. To wit:
His EPA chief is ignoring air and water quality research and reducing controls on water and air quality
He called Global Warming a Chinese hoax, despite the overwhelming condenses of peer reviewed science recognizing it
He opposes Net Neutrality and ignores studies that show eliminating it would have negative effects on the free exchange of ideas.
He and his VP support Abstinence based education even though it's been shown to be completely ineffective (again, by science).
Two words: Clean Coal.
Two more words: Betsy Devos
I could go on and on. The scientific position to take is that Trump is, in fact, anti-science. He doesn't believe in evidence and facts, preferring the "I substitute your reality with my own" school of thought. To call him anything but anti-science is itself anti-science. It's an attempt to ignore or refute reality itself.
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suspect it's more like they always built cars for the Canadian market in Canada, and with NAFTA, it makes economic sense to build one model in one plant and another in another. So the models built in Canada end up getting imported here and vice versa. But is there more to it?
There are a few reasons, including those that you've touched upon already: better educated population and universal medicare help, but so does cheap and reliable electricity (most of which is green in the main automative manufacturing centres due to our abundance of hydroelectric generation capacity), access to raw materials, and the lower Canadian dollar (which makes worker wages competitive). Automative in Canada actually has very strong unions, but even with that the manufacturers get highly educated talent that costs them less money to maintain.
Most automotive manufacturing in Canada tends to be mid-to-higher end lines; we don't have a wide variety of vehicle types, and don't make anything either compact or smaller, or in pickup truck form; Industry Canada has a list of passenger vehicles made in Canada in 2017 here (this list doesn't include military or commercial or mass transit vehicles, or anything that floats or flies).
One thing I will note, it isn't as if automotive manufacturers have been making a run on building assembly facilities in Canada. Most of the facilities in use have been around for decades. Thus, we can conclude that the value is sufficient to keep building vehicles with good sale values in these Canadian facilities, but not so much that manufacturing is leaving the US (or elsewhere) for Canada.
Yaz
correcting because your own farmers can't produce milk at the same price because they are more inefficient is very much protectionism
Canada has higher food quality regulations than the US does. We don't permit the use of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) in milk producing cows for one. We also don't permit the high levels of antibiotic use the US dairies are allowed to use in the US. The maximum Somatic Cell Count permitted in Canadian milk is nearly half that allowed in US milk.
So yes, in some ways Canadian dairy production is slightly less efficient, but only because we don't feed our cows growth hormones which are detrimental to both bovine and human health, and don't allow all the blood and pus and other non-milk cellular material the US permits in their milk products.
But again -- if US dairies are willing to meet our dairy requirements and stop with the subsidies worth more than the entire Canadian dairy industry is worth -- you'll find Canada ready to talk. Again -- the tariffs were in response to continued US Government subsidies, and not the other way around.
Yaz
NAFTA doesn't allow you to use food regulations to ban or add tariffs to products. If they meet the agreed-to standards per NAFTA guidelines (and rBST was not considered) then you cannot place a tariff on the product. Canada may have higher milk standards, but per the NAFTA treaty they cannot add tariffs on milk. Canada is actually violating NAFTA.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I suppose the bit where we didn't actually find any sign that they were producing weapons of mass destruction after deposing Saddam is lost on you? The worst they found were old gas weapons left over from the Iran-Iraq war a decade earlier and those were largely unusable. What we did find were a shitload of documents that confirmed that they'd given up trying to develop WMDs.
But hey, who cares about facts anymore. If a politician says it, it's your patriotic duty to believe it, right?
Actually, NAFTA does allow permit this for dairy products:
NAFTA, Annex 703.2, Section B, Part 7 states:
7. Notwithstanding paragraph 6 and Article 309:
a) the rights and obligations of the Parties under Article XI:2(c)(i) of the GATT and those rights as incorporated by Article 309 shall apply with respect to trade in agricultural goods only to the dairy, poultry and egg goods set out in Appendix 703.2.B.7; and
b) with respect to such dairy, poultry and egg goods that are qualifying goods, either Party may adopt or maintain a prohibition or restriction or a customs duty on the importation of such good consistent with its rights and obligations under the GATT.
Appendix 703.2.B.7 lists the specific items which qualify under this part.
Likewise, Article 712 states:
Right to Take Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
1. Each Party may, in accordance with this Section, adopt, maintain or apply any sanitary or phytosanitary measure necessary for the protection of human, animal or plant life or health in its territory, including a measure more stringent than an international standard, guideline or recommendation.
Right to Establish Level of Protection
2. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Section, each Party may, in protecting human, animal or plant life or health, establish its appropriate levels of protection in accordance with Article 715.
Scientific Principles
3. Each Party shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies is:
a) based on scientific principles, taking into account relevant factors including, where appropriate, different geographic conditions;
b) not maintained where there is no longer a scientific basis for it; and
c) based on a risk assessment, as appropriate to the circumstances.
Non-Discriminatory Treatment
4. Each Party shall ensure that a sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies does not arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminate between its goods and like goods of another Party, or between goods of another Party and like goods of any other country, where identical or similar conditions prevail.
So in effect, dairy is exempt from most NAFTA rules, and setting human health standards for products is perfectly legal, so long as it is non-discriminatory.
Yaz
Yaz Said..
Sorry for bringing logic to a shit-flinging party, can't help myself.
Unfortunately, you didn't. You have to look at absolute numbers, and not percentages, because the subsidies have a multiplicative effect. They not only change the profitability of milk, but they encourage overproduction (because the subsidies are based on production), which drives down prices.
Indeed, according to government numbers, the US has a 5-1 price edge against Canada in dairy pricing due to subsidies. That should call for a 500% subsidy to fully correct for, and yet we only charge a 270% tariff.
You'd expect if the tariffs were completely out-of-line that nobody in Canada would import dairy form the US, and yet in 2016 alone we imported more than $631 million in dairy from the US. For a population smaller than that of California.
Again -- talk to your own government first. I'd be more than happy to see both of our countries (and the EU, which has the largest dairy subsidies in the world) drop dairy tariffs -- but the unfair subsidies have to come down first. It's the subsidies that have caused the tariffs, not the other way around. Canada is hardly in some power position where we can drop our tariffs and hope for some form of "general goodwill" that the US will stop unfair subsidies and attempts at dumping. The Canadian Government has been clear in the past that if the subsidies go away, we won't need the tariffs anymore.
Yaz
Great post Yaz. Very informative. Surprised someone is trying to mod you down.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
73% of US dairy farmers' revenue is from subsidies. https://www.realagriculture.co... so, fine to get rid of them, but get rid of crop insurance, Price Loss Coverage, Agricultural Risk Coverage, Stacked Income Protection Plan, Margin Protection Program for Dairy Producers, Dairy Product Donation Program. Then there is below cost (aka subsidized) water for irrigation, subsidized electricity to pump it. "The total value of irrigation subsidies provided by state and local government has been estimated at between US$10 billion and US$33 billion" so pot? meet kettle!
Trump has already spent more time on the links -- his links, at taxpayer expense -- than Obama did in 8 years.
Any other "alternative facts" for us today?
Trump is just the first President who doesn't mind calling countries out in public. He is challenging the status quo across the board but he will be gone in a few years and the next President should take office in a different political and economic era. The G7 countries are not upset because they think the current trade policies are fair they are upset because the trade policies are unfair and Trump is throwing a spotlight on the lopsided agreements that leave the US holding the shitty end of the stick. The economic well being of the US comes before the economic well being on any other country. The US doesn't have to bury or set out to harm another countries economy but the US shouldn't have to make any undue sacrifices either.
Oh please. The problem with Trump "calling out" other countries, is that he typically doesn't actually have a leg to stand on because he doesn't seem to know anything about anything. Take the Canadian Diary complaint. No-one seems to know where Trump pulled the 300% tariff untruth (do you call it a lie? A misunderstanding? It's so hard to tell with that idiot whether he's lying or actually believes the idiotic things he's saying). The fact is, Canada does have a protected market for dairy that keeps its dairy farmers in business. It appears to be set up that way mostly for domestic reasons rather than to prevent foreign trade. The US does not have a protected market for dairy. Instead, the US tries to keep dairy farmers in business with direct subsidies to the farmers. The US policy seems to result in dairy farmers failing left and right anyway, and also vastly overproducing milk. Trump is upset because Canada won't buy all the surplus milk instead of buying milk from their own dairy farmers. Now, the interesting thing here is that, when China subsidizes steel production and then Chinese steel producers sell steel to the US, the US government complains that it's product dumping and Trump implements tariffs. For some reason, when the US is trying to do the same thing to Canada with dairy, all of a sudden Trump takes the opposite position, and market protections are horrific abuse.
Also, consider this. Canada still imports 10% of its dairy from the US. The US, in contrast, caps imports of foreign dairy at 3%. So, who's abusing who here on dairy trade? The disturbing thing is that Trump supporters seem to have this absurd belief that Trump is a "plain speaker" who "cuts through the crap". Well, the reality is that the "crap" he cuts through is every bit of nuance involved in the situation. He focuses on one detail that, in isolation, seems like it should provoke outrage, but he ignores (by being a barely literate simpleton by all appearances) all of the other extenuating details.
As for NATO countries not meeting their financial responsibilities to NATO, what are you even talking about? Are you talking about the 2% on GDP? The actual NATO treaty never demanded that. NATO was mostly about letting the US have free reign militarily over most of Europe so that they could oppose the Soviet Union and other communist countries. Up until Trump, it has never seemed to be the desire of the US for the countries of Europe to be particularly strong militarily. Trumps claims about the other NATO members are pretty much garbage.
Trumps claims about most things are uninformed garbage. Look at his complaints about US troops stationed in South Korea. The fact is, South Korea pays for the bases and pays half of the costs for the soldiers. If they left South Korea, unless Trump was planning to fire all those soldiers, the cost to the US would actually increase rather than go down.
If Trump wants to close down US military bases around the world to stop other countries from supposedly sponging off the US for defence, why doesn't he pull out of Okinawa? Quite a few Okinawans would be very happy for that to happen. Or how about Guantanamo Bay? The US is outright illegally occupying the land in that case, paying a ridiculous ~$4000 per year in rent (paid by check,
For the leftists out there that's called capitalism. North Korea communist socialist shithole. South Korea a shining beacon of capitalist freedom. You get North Korea when you vote Democrats or the left.
Well, it seems to me that the Democratic Party is the more pro-business one these days as Republicans are regressing into protectionist alt-right populism, destroying stability, amassing debt, eroding the rule of law and damaging trade relations with the the world. Also blue states, on average, produce more private sector jobs and have more GDP per capita.
Trump ..., he will speak plainly
Except, he does not. When he speeks the sentences are so split up and often mixes in lots of unrelated things, and has a (lack of) flow that makes it is really hard to follow. In fact this is the one thing that is easy to make parody of Donald Trump, to mimic his form of speaking. To parody the actual content of what he is say is on the other hand very hard because of the crazy things he say. For instance "My nuclear button is bigger than his" would be a natural thing to try to parody him on except he acutally manager to say that himself for real...
For an excample of how he does not speaks plainly, consider this:
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”
While this is probably a cherry-picked example of worst cases there is, it is not exceptional and far of his average.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
The problem with Trump "calling out" other countries, is that he typically doesn't actually have a leg to stand on because he doesn't seem to know anything about anything. Take the Canadian Diary complaint. No-one seems to know where Trump pulled the 300% tariff untruth
https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/trade-commerce/tariff-tarif/2018/01-99/ch04-2018-eng.pdf
You're welcome.
Source: Am Canadian. We do tariff dairy, not just from the US, but from everywhere (France cheeses please!) so protect our own dairy farmer through a supply management scheme meant to garantee them to revenue. Welcome to Protectionism, it's ok when we do it, but somehow not when Trump does it. It's hypocritical. Trump is right as far as Dairy is concerned.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Sorry to point this out sparky, but the Bush administration never claimed Iraq had anything to do with 9-11. They claimed it was supporting terrorism.
You're right. They just claimed Iraq supported and armed terrorists, and left it to the public to draw the big fat line between Iraq and the terrorists that bombed the trade towers.
The U.S. stated that the intent was to remove "a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sorry to point this out sparky, but the Bush administration never claimed Iraq had anything to do with 9-11.
The Bush administration talked about it several times as a way to conflate in the publics' minds unrelated connections. Cheney reported several times that Mohammad Atta, the 9/11 field leader, met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague. Both the CIA and the FBI said no such meeting took place. Condoleezza Rice received intelligence estimates that there was little to no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Quaeda, he felt they were a threat to his power given that they don't respect country governance. Bush continued nonetheless claim that Hussein was "a threat because he's dealing with al-Quaeda."
The administration started debating internally an invasion of Iraq in the days after 9/11. Donald Rumsfeld wrote an internal memo in Nov 2001 to plan out how to sell an Iraq invasion, one of the bullet points reading "US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 attack?"
Bill Moyers correctly predicted that prior to a national press conference on the Iraq War that "at least a dozen times during this press conference he [the President] will invoke 9/11 and Al-Qaeda to justify a preemptive attack on a country that has not attacked America. But the White House press corps will ask no hard questions tonight about those claims."
If the goal was to reduce terrorism, then the 2003 Iraqi Invasion was a pretty big miscalculation.