Facebook at Face Value.

Facebook was headed for problems for a long time . First place Facebook played a role in helping (1.1)>>Trump win the election in 2016.  MARK ZUCKERBERG was trying hard to convince voters that Facebook had no nefarious role in this election. Right now there is a "on going " investigation by Robert Mueller on possible Russian meddling .  But according to President-elect Donald Trump's digital director Brad Parscale, the social media giant was massively influential—not because (1.2)>>it was tipping the scales with fake news, but because it helped generate the bulk of the campaign's $250 million in online fundraising.  Last year Facebook’s new fact-checking system labeled a Newport Buzz article as possible “fake news”, warning users against sharing it, something unexpected happened. Traffic to the story skyrocketed, according to Christian Winthrop, editor of the local Rhode Island website. Facebook was reeling in (2)>> growing criticisms that it may have helped Donald Trump get elected by allowing fake election news to outperform real news, and creating filter bubbles that facilitated the increasing polarization of voters. In response, Facebook announced that it would work to stop misinformation in part by letting users report fake news articles, which independent fact-checking groups could then review. AGAIN were was all the Fake News ? I don't think there ever was , but certainly Facebook reporting of it would have boiled over the brim if it was real. Now Facebook face is more about spying on you . That I think maybe "real news" . In many ways, of course Facebook is has been spying on you. There’s a lot about(3)>>Cambridge Analytica that doesn’t quite add up.A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower has suggested Facebook uses people's mobile phones to spy on them at home or at work.Christopher Wylie, a former employee of the scandal-hit firm, said companies like Facebook use the microphone on mobile phones to help tailor their adverts.He told a UK Parliament Commons committee on March 28th ,  he believes the social media giant is able to decipher whether someone is out in a crowd of people, in the office or at home. Rob Goldman, a vice president inside Facebook’s Ads team, rather ill-advisedly published a series of tweets that seemed to confirm the Trump administration’s allegations regarding the recent indictments of the "alleged"[ **Honestly I am skeptic that the Russians had anything to with the Trump win , but as we are told that **]  13 Russian nationals by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The "evidence" of Russian meddling is vary scarce , but the influence of paid ads by both American political parties on Facebook is vary strong . It's also vary probable that Facebook had a slant toward Trump . To wit, the that the online advertising campaign led by the (4)>>shadowy Internet Research Agency was meant to divide the American people, not influence the 2016 election. During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money. In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.

Conclusion .

Facebook might be up to something, but you are definitely leading the battle in providing data they can use to give you ads, Spend enough time on the internet and you’ll eventually see ads targeted specifically to you. I am not giving up on Facebook . It was through FB that I was able to get my blog into my FB friends feeds , expand my base of readership . While (5)>>many will opt out because of the spying accusations , maybe once and a while I'll post a personal picture of my life . 

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1.1)>>Trump win the election in 2016.  Besides Donald Trump . Facebook may helped re-elect Obama as well . Facebook's political aims have always been a kind of two faced on which part it flipped flopped .In contrast, the Obama campaign's use of Facebook was massive, and even more intrusive. About a million people let the campaign gather not only data on themselves, but on all their friends, who didn't know their data was being harvested as well — a number that could easily have reached 190 million, which, at the time, was about equal to every active Facebook user in the U.S.Obama's tech gurus were able to match this rich treasure trove of personal data — likes, dislikes, photos, etc. — with other databases, creating the largest and most detailed profiles on voters ever assembled.And the campaign aggressively used its unique access to influence millions of people the campaign identified as "persuadable," sending them highly targeted campaign messages that appeared to come from their Facebook friends, rather than the Obama campaign.(1.2)>>it was tipping the scales with fake news.  Regarding "fake news" , Donald Trump used the term accusing CNN reporting of spreading misleading reports on "him". Regarding the Leftist media , they also adopted the term fake news  applying the term to Russian trolls that were spreading again LOL fake news that was Pro- Trump during the 2016 election , that somehow influenced the election . I know its really ludicrous the way it sounds . I never saw a political ad on Facebook that I remember , during the election I did read a lot online . Factually I did read news from Russian sources like Sputnik and RT America that slanted toward Trump after he was interviewed on American TV about "getting along with Russia" . Right now the Russian news media is not saying anything nice about Donald Trump . The Idea of "fake news" is definitely Orwellian in nature . The notion of censoring opinions is more at work , when calling out any news media , or journalists as being the " Fake" . This makes you wonder just were is the REAL NEWS!.(2)>> growing criticisms that it may have helped Donald Trump get elected by allowing fake election news to outperform real news.  Interestingly Wired magazine had given a hint on who was " actually" spreading the Propaganda . *here's* what's really been influencing all those things that "Russia" got accused of. Russia doesn't run FB though, so it's back to square one for the investigating authorities who were so eager to find someone to blame for Trump winning the election, that a large number of former top US businesses - are now going to fail as a result of the "Witch Hunt". Please note , if it was the Russians , we must also assume that Republican National Committee was in collusion with the Russians :

"   Facebook proved to be a powerful way for Trump's team to hone the campaign's message with the kind of enormous sample sizes you can't get with traditional polling. "They have an advantage of a platform that has users that are conditioned to click and engage and give you feedback," says Gary Coby, director of advertising at the Republican National Committee, who worked on Trump's campaign. "Their platform’s built to inform you about what people like and dislike."Coby's team took full advantage of the ability to perform massive tests with its ads. On any given day, Coby says, the campaign was running 40,000 to 50,000 variants of its ads, testing how they performed in different formats, with subtitles and without, and static versus video, among other small differences. On the day of the third presidential debate in October, the team ran 175,000 variations. Coby calls this approach "A/B testing on steroids." The more variations the team was able to produce, Coby says, the higher the likelihood that its ads would actually be served to Facebook users.

 (3)>>Cambridge Analytica. But since it was revealed it harvested data from over 50 million users to aid Cambridge Analytica's election campaigns, other data issues have been brought into question.Facebook spying is reflected in research carried out by Internet charity DotEveryone. Their studies show seven per cent of people think Facebook listens to their phone conversations and five per cent believe it is capable of tracking their eye movements when they're looking at a screen. (4)>>shadowy Internet Research Agency. Despite  “selling your data,” most Facebook advertisers couldn’t care less about your Likes, your drunk college photos, or your gossipy chats with a boyfriend. What advertisers want to do is find the person who left a product unpurchased in an online shopping cart, just used a loyalty card to buy diapers at Safeway, or registered as a Republican voter in Stark County, Ohio (a swing county in a swing state).(5)>>many will opt out because of the spying accusations .If you decide that you don’t want Facebook to listen your conversations, then there is a way to opt out. All you need to do is go into your mobile device settings (this will be different from device to device), go to your Facebook App settings, and then remove Facebook’s access to your microphone. Once you remove the microphone access to Facebook, you won’t be getting targeted with conversation based ads any longer. However, you’ll still be targeted for conversations ads for up to 90 days for keywords you’ve said in conversation prior to removing microphone access.

Trump's coming STORM!

Remember Bill Clinton's storm : Monica Lewinsky.

The storm (s) had always hit Washington D.C. in the past  . I can't remember a good scandal like Bill Clinton's which had all disregard to ethics , morals , lying to congress over Monica Lewinsky. Former President Clinton was caught lying on tape as he addressed the nation back in 1998 . I always had my personal views about Clinton , he was a obvious womanizer , the "list" was extensive .  (1)>>His weakness perhaps , "in my theory" is  the Republicans laid a trap for him in the guise of Monica Lewinsky . The following below is what the news sources said about the affair . I interwoven it in my text . On January 1998, Lewinsky’s friend – (1.2)>>an older work colleague called Linda Tripp – invited her for lunch at a mall in Washington DC. Lewinsky was 25. They’d been working together at the Pentagon for nearly two years, during which time Lewinsky had confided in her that she’d had an affair with President Bill Clinton. Unbeknown to Lewinsky, Tripp had been secretly recording their telephone conversations – more than 20 hours of them. The lunch was a trap. When Tripp arrived, she motioned behind her and two federal agents suddenly appeared. “You’re in trouble,” they told Lewinsky. If the President of the United States was that gullible , it would not surprise me . Lewinsky was 22 when she began interning at the White House. She and Bill Clinton started flirting soon afterwards. One day she blurted out to him, “I have a crush on you,” and he replied, “Well, do you want to come into the back office?” Eventually, Clinton staffers noticed how much time she was spending in the West Wing, including at weekends, and so a deputy chief of staff had her transferred to the Pentagon, which was where she met Linda Tripp. Five days after the FBI sting, Lewinsky was outed by the online gossip site the Drudge Report, under the headline: “A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!” Bill Clinton called her a liar, denying he had had “sexual relations” with “that woman”. Lewinsky, who has often said she’d “do anything to have my anonymity back”, was forced to testify before a grand jury. The 3,000-page Starr report, which included mortifying details of their nine sexual encounters, was released to the world. No offence , I beg your pardons . I read the recent (1.3)>>Vanity Fair magazine where Monica has painted herself a "victim" of Bill's , the honest truth , 22 years later , it seems to me that Monica Lewinsky was a plant to basically seduce a man who had already issues with his martial life . Bill Clinton pretty much ended up like Samson with Lewinsky as Delila .  It was such a dirty sneaky game that now has become the norm in Washington politics . I can't help feeling anymore sorry for Lewinsky as much as Clinton . Who were both manipulated used like puppets , later thrown in the little dirty book of American scandals . Such a ploy now   is already brewing another "STORM".
Donald Trump's Storm : Stormy Daniels.

Bill  and Lewinsky looked like the perfect political sabotage . As I explained above Bill was set

up . The perpetrators were the Republicans . While Lewinsky looked like the # ME TO innocent victim , she manipulated Bill using his weakness infidelity . Now Donald J Trump is another perfect patsy for the sane thing . For decades Mr. Trump had his pockets lined up with infidelity , cheating going back into the 1980s. He's no better than Bill Clinton , perhaps had more skeletons in the closest ,  than any wolf media outlet would love to surround him with , dig up dirt , perhaps get the same end result like Bill:IMPEACHMENT . Back in January, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and all-around fixer, had set up a shell company in Delaware in the fall of 2016 for the sole purpose of passing a (2)>>$130,000 payment to Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford). Soon after, In Touch magazine published an interview with Daniels in which she detailed how she and Trump had an on-again, off-again affair in 2006 that began in Lake Tahoe just after the birth of his son Barron, when his wife Melania was back home in New York. This  Sunday night when 60 Minutes airs a highly anticipated interview with Anderson Cooper. The sit-down concerns the affair she says she had with Donald Trump in 2006, and her lawyer has promised that it will reveal salacious new details about the dalliance. The "lurid" details are a bit laughable if you compare Clinton's cigar , stained blouse .  According to 2009 emails between political operatives who were at the time advising Daniels on a possible political campaign, the adult film actor and director claimed that her affair with Trump included an unusual act: spanking him with a copy of Forbes magazine. South Carolina congressman Mark Sanford is one of the few Republicans to comment. He told the Washington Post the claims are "deeply troubling". "If it was a Democratic president and hush money had been paid in the campaign, would there be a series of hearings going on?" Mr Sanford asked. "I think you could probably point to a fair number of indicators that suggest there would be."

Conclusion : 

Is Donald Trump being blackmailed ?
The First Lady don't look
happy .

It was so easy to entrap former President Bill Clinton decades ago with Monica . For Donald Trump its extremely hard to hide anything  . Remember that Bill Clinton faced impeachment proceedings after lying about his affair with staffer Monica Lewinsky. The Trump lawsuit against Daniels is vary troubling . Here a sitting American Presdient paid off a woman to keep an affair from being made public . Daniels may face more than US$20 million in damages for violating a "hush agreement" that requires her to remain silent about an affair she alleges she had with US President Donald Trump in 2006 and 2007. This "hush money" has serious legal implications . The special counsel is specifically tasked with investigating potential collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, as well as "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation." Yet several white-collar crime experts told CNBC that Daniels' lawsuit, filed against Trump on March 6 over a deal barring her from discussing an alleged affair, raises questions and opportunities for the Mueller probe. Either way it has the hall marks of  blackmail . Daniels is blackmailing Trump right now; she wants to expose her version of what happened between them. She "claims" that Pres Trump did not sign their non-disclosure agreement. The combination of the Trump administration’s unwillingness to disclose sensitive information and its total incompetence is gravely dangerous. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s no longer about whether they’re above the law, whether they’ll go to jail. It’s about whether they are going to drag the rest of the country down with them. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1)>>His weakness perhaps , "in my theory" is  the Republicans laid a trap for him in the guise of Monica Lewinsky . Monica Lewinsky is what the CIA and the KGB used to refer to as a "honey trap" -a temptress that is used to blackmail the enemy. The only mystery surrounding Lewinsky is to what extent did she cooperate and to what extent was she manipulated by Tripp and Goldberg? Not surprisingly, the only "insider" who has gone public to talk about Lewinsky and Tripp is Goldberg, the old pro who has evidently survived a dirty trick or two under the tutelage of Richard Nixon. Like the Lewinsky affair, the consistent element of the Willey incident is the dirty tricks that produced it. One can rest assured that if the Willey incident was at all credible, Starr would have indicted Julie Hiatt Steel for perjury and then, he would have had a clear, unadulterated case of perjury against the President of the United States, who denied the Willey allegations under oath, without qualification. But Starr's office obviously knows that these charges are not credible or they would have been pursued even more aggressively than the relatively minor Lewinsky allegations. Indeed, simple logic betrays the frivolity of the Willey allegations, not to mention the secret dirty tricks of the Lewinsky matter. Is it not safe to assume that when Lewinsky is discouraged from speaking to the media, there is an ulterior motive at play or does anybody seriously believe that Starr's office is simply trying to spare the President the embarrassment? The truth ultimately surfaces and while cunning lawyers and liars can explain it all away, it invariably survives. The simple fact of the matter is that if the Willey allegations were serious, Isikoff would have promoted them so passionately, that he would have delivered the media fantasy to produce the Bob Woodward of the 90's. The public relations blitz to criminalize the President of the United States doesn't even pass the laugh test, and it cannot possibly be confused with a legitimate investigation which has no agenda beyond the determination to expose the truth. If we and most of the media were not in a position to judge the credibility of reports about the ******-stained dress, it is because most people had nothing to do with the scheming to produce a "honey trap". But let's not get carried away here and claim that the Willey allegations are any more credible simply because we are not privy to every single detail regarding the plot to destroy the Clinton Presidency. We may not know everything, but we stand firm on what is exceedingly obvious. (1.2)>>an older work colleague called Linda Tripp – Tripp may have helped trigger the Lewinsky scandal, but tales of her manipulations may now be key to Clinton's counterattack. Readers can turn to this old TIME MAGAZINE WEB PAGE for some startling allegations [ http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1998/09/28/clinton.starr.html ] Its far too long for me to process here , but it contains much to the point I am making.(1.3)>>Vanity Fair magazine where Monica has painted herself a "victim" of Bill's . Lewinsky writes about how she had come to view her affair with Clinton as “a consensual relationship” — and how all the women (and men) now speaking out about sexual misconduct have given her a “new lens” through which to see her own story. How can she be a victim? White House intern Monica Lewinsky was not the naive victim of Pres. Bill Clinton, but rather a victim of relentless sexual exploitation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.  (2)>>$130,000 payment to Daniels. This scandal isn’t her first brush with politics. Following revelations that Louisiana Sen. David Vitter hired sex workers, Daniels, a Louisiana native, in 2009 formed an exploratory committee to run against him the following year. She declared herself a Republican, and made the FairTax, a proposal to replace most federal taxes with a 30 percent national sales tax, the centerpiece of the campaign. But in June 2010 she dropped out of the race, saying, “like Gov. Palin, I have become a target of the cynical stalwarts of the status quo.”

Cambridge Analytica mystery

Cambridge Analytica mystery.

When this news broke out ,  that Facebook was spying on "us" using a third party app has given the trigger to the idea that any kind of meddling happened to our elections did happen,  in case you wonder that (1.1)>>Cambridge Analytica has anything to do with Russia with little evidence that it was an inside job  . Things will get more confusing .You have to read this carefully . AS what the news was reporting. Still no hit of Russian involvement .The board of Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that allegedly exploited information from 50 million (1.2)>>Facebook users to help Donald Trump's campaign, suspended CEO Alexander Nix on Tuesday for his comments secretly recorded by a British broadcaster. In a series of broadcasts by Britain's Channel 4, Nix was filmed making controversial statements about his firm's work on elections, including how Cambridge Analytica played a major role in Trump's presidential victory, including "all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting."The suspended CEO also suggested to a potential client that his company could portray politicians in compromising situations. Nix's suspension was effective immediately."Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the board of directors said in a statement. The broadcasts come amid questions about how Cambridge Analytica gained access to people's online profiles, as well as criticism against Facebook for its alleged inaction to protect users’ privacy. Nix, in the video shown Tuesday, also claimed credit for Cambridge Analytica's work with data and research that he said allowed (2)>>Trump to win the election with a narrow margin of "40,000 votes" in three swing states, giving Trump an electoral college victory, despite losing the popular vote.Since Trump’s election, Cambridge Analytica has flip-flopped over its role in the campaign. The company initially claimed credit for helping elect Trump, but Nix also sought to portray the firm's role as minimal amid investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.Channel 4's broadcast came a day after the network showed surreptitiously obtained video of Nix saying his company could entrap politicians. Monday night's broadcast in Britain showed one exchange in which Nix said the company could "send some girls around to the candidate’s house." Ukrainian girls, he said, "are very beautiful. I find that works very well." Since then, Facebook has suspended both the firm, as well as the whistleblower who let the cat out of the bag.The latest is even more shocking, as we’re seeing just how low this company is willing to go. It also shows how low the reality of the 2016 election really was.

 NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1.1)>>Cambridge Analytica . Cambridge Analytica has ties to both former Trump chief counselor Steve Bannon and Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale. Facebook suspended the company on Friday after finding that it had violated its data privacy policies, preventing it from buying ads or administer client pages.   (1)>>Facebook users to help Donald Trump's campaign,. In June 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to take over its data operations. We know from the reporting of Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim at the New York Times that Jared Kushner, who was charged with overseeing Trump’s digital operations, is the reason Cambridge Analytica joined the Trump campaign. Kushner hired a man named Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital expert who had worked previously for team Trump. According to Confessore and Hakim, Cambridge Analytica convinced Parscale (who has since agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee) to “try out the firm.” The decision was reinforced by Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, who is also a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica.It’s not clear to what extent Cambridge Analytica helped (Parscale denied that Cambridge was of any use in a recent 60 Minutes interview), but we do know that Trump’s digital operation was shockingly effective. Samuel Woolley, who heads the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford’s Internet Institute, found that a disproportionate amount of pro-Trump messaging was spread via automated bots and anti-Hillary propaganda. Trump’s bots, they reported at the time of the election, outnumbered Clinton’s five to one. (2)>>Trump to win the election with a narrow margin of "40,000 votes". It doesn’t cease to amaze me how quick American’s are to blame a myriad of entities before themselves when it comes to their own errors.  Just WHO Elected Trump? It was the Russians ?. It was social networks ?. Some people claim it was Bernie Sanders.Perhaps, just perhaps, this isn’t a new problem, and the US has been full of xenophobic, proud, emotional and irrational people all along. I know I did not vote for Trump . I saw an opportunity to cast my vote for Hillary , she lost . There has to have been other forces at work .  Perhaps, just perhaps, previous presidencies weren’t as great as you remember it to be, and a lot of people were mad at the banks got bailed out, or private corporations were given the freedom to move all their manufacturing abroad, and they didn’t vote cause they didn’t see any hope in either of the candidates. 2016 we had narrow choices , both Hillary and Trump were the least popular 

Trump's North Korean big gamble ?

Donald Trump has an extraordinary
opportunity to change
decades long policy on
North Korea , BUT will it
Happen?

Things can only get stranger for the Trump Administration . While sitting on edge of the possibility of a new war with North Korea , the exchange of threats , tweets and  ‘They will be met with fire and fury’ and the laughing out loud " Rocket man" at the UN speech . (1)>>North Korea turned around and pulled a fast one on the Trump administration , what happened even has the Secretary of the State in confusion . AS it appears , North Korean leader is vary smart , we underestimated him . North Korean leader Kim Jong Un extended an invitation to meet with Trump, which the President quickly accepted. I think it's no coincidence ,something is going on. Trump’s left-field play isn’t surprising when you consider he sees himself as a rule-breaking, deal-making, history-shaker who alone can achieve what the establishment figures who underestimate him cannot: a Nixon-goes-to-China breakthrough. It’s also TV ratings gold: a headline-grabbing distraction from the Mueller investigation that keeps Stormy Daniels in a teacup. North Korea has reportedly agreed to halt nuclear and missile testing and has not demanded that the US and South Korea stop their joint military exercises.  Summoned to the Oval Office on the spur of the moment, the South Korean envoy found himself face to face with President Trump one afternoon last week at what he thought might be a hinge moment in history. Chung Eui-yong had come to the White House bearing an invitation. But he opened with flattery, which diplomats have discovered is a key to approaching the volatile American leader. “We could come this far thanks to a great degree to President Trump,” Mr. Chung said. “We highly appreciate this fact.” Extraordinary because few thought this

realistically could happen. Trump has said in the past that he would be open to meeting with Kim, but on Tuesday, when asked about the possibility, he was noncommittal. "We're going to see what happens," he said.The surprise nature of the announcement gave the impression of an ad hoc gambit rather than a careful, well-thought-out approach to dealing with an unpredictable nuclear regime.Trump’s decision to meet with Kim stunned everyone involved, according to a report from Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun at the New York Times. He accepted Kim’s invitation from a South Korean envoy on the spot, brushing aside warnings from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Adviser HR McMaster that he proceed with caution. He kept Secretary of State Rex Tillerson out of the loop. Trump's aides have been wary of North Korea's diplomatic overtures because of its history of reneging on international commitments and the failure of efforts on disarmament by the administrations of President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Previous attempts by the North to get such a meeting have been dismissed out of hand. Now, with the North in possession of a nuclear arsenal, agreeing to such a summit represents a moment of great peril for Trump and his team.For the North, it’s both a reward and a chance to secure international legitimacy – something the US has previously fiercely blocked. “Right now, [Kim Jong-un] is setting the agenda and the pace, and the Trump admin is reacting. The admin needs to move quickly to change this dynamic,” Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America think tank, wrote on Twitter. “This appeals to Donald Trump’s ego,” adds Coleman. “He wants to be seen as the person behind this, which of course he’s not.”

NOTES AND COMMENTS:
(1)>>North Korea turned around and pulled a fast one on the Trump..Recognizing that Kim is dictating terms to Trump is not defending Kim, genius. It is an observation that anybody with at least half a brain can see. When Trump vacates the Oval Office, we do not get to pretend he was never there...just like we could not do when GWB left office.  President Trump has yet again done something no other president has done and scheduled a diplomatic meeting to broker some kind of peace deal. This president is going to go down in history with amazing accomplishments. And yes, some failures.

A Little "History" of Tariffs .

The Republican Party was born
for tariffs , as this old
illustration shows.

If  a Trade war is looming. President Donald Trump can learn a little from Henry Clay , I will explain that as we read on . BUT NOW ,  US President Donald Trump on Thursday approved the levies of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on imported aluminium despite warnings of a global trade war and protests from allies in Europe and home.As he signed off on contentious (1.1)>>trade tariffs, Trump declared the American steel and aluminium industries had been “ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices”. Trump was apparently referring to excessive imports and global production overcapacity driven partly by Chinese government subsidies.  American history over 200 years has been a subject of tariffs since its first day . (1.2)>>The 1st United States Congress, wanting a straightforward tax that was not too onerous and easy to collect, passed the Tariff Act of 1789. The goal of using higher tariffs to promote industrialization was urged by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and after him the Whig Party. They generally failed because Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats said the tariff should be only high enough to pay the government's bills; otherwise, it would hurt the consumers. The Republicans, however, made high tariffs the centerpiece of their economic policy beginning in 1861, and as late as 1930. Since 1930, tariffs have not been a major political issue.  Trump's plan can go both ways . There was a lot of discussions about the pros and cons of this deal . Trump has stood by the tariffs, despite resistance from his fellow Republicans and other countries, which have vowed to respond with levies of their own. On Thursday, Trump pressed ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent for aluminum.   The ultimate irony: by acting ostensibly to protect U.S. steel jobs with sweeping tariffs, The tariffs are good for steel producers that melt and produce their own steel. But for those which is reliant on imported raw materials, they could prove catastrophic.  Trump will also kill off some steel jobs.Trump, however, is ignoring the W.T.O., which he dismisses as biased against the United States. That’s one reason it is important not to discount history, or the possibility of further repercussions. The rest of the world could interpret Trump’s tariffs as a signal that the United States is retreating from leadership on trade, and, indeed, retreating from a basic commitment to play by the rules that previous U.S. Administrations did so much to create. In the long term, as The Economist points out in its latest issue, such a perception could prompt other countries to react in kind, thereby undermining the entire system, much as the (2)>>Smoot-Hawley Act did in the thirties. Last April, Trump ordered the Department of Commerce to investigate steel imports under a little-known part of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Section 232, which allows the executive branch to place import restrictions or tariffs on steel for national security reasons.  More broadly, Trump’s move risks undermining international order built on mutual trust in the World Trade Organization, the multilateral system of dispute settlement designed to keep trade fair. In invoking “national security” as the basis for tariffs, (3)>>Trump is essentially acting outside the WTO. Trump’s “smart” trade action, then, might spark a trade war, hurt the auto industry, bleed jobs from the Rust Belt, and anger American allies around the world.    President Donald Trump can learn a little from Henry Clay , strangely enough last year President Donald Trump sang the praises of “the great 19th century statesman” Henry Clay, the former Speaker of the House, U.S. Senator and Whig Party co-founder. “Henry Clay believed in what he called the ‘American system,’ and proposed tariffs to protect American industry and finance American infrastructure,” Trump said. “Like Henry Clay, we want to put our own people to work… Clay was a fierce advocate for American manufacturing. He wanted it badly, he said, very strongly, free trade… He knew all the way back, early 1800s, Clay said that trade must be fair, equal, and reciprocal. Boom.” Experts say that Trump’s assessment of Clay’s belief that the country would prosper when industry at home grew is correct, yet Clay’s ideas weren’t based on helping American workers. The way to keep the material within the U.S. and benefit textile producers here, Clay reasoned, would be to tax British imports, to encourage people to want to buy fabric produced domestically rather than from overseas. But, though Clay’s ideas were intended to support the U.S. as a great commercial nation.   In that sense, he diverged from the populist idol who has been a frequent touchstone for Trump: Andrew Jackson, whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office. And so for the Trump  administration, a key test will be its willingness to go toe to toe with Wall Street .  Senator McConnell left no doubt — and issued a veiled warning  to the White House, that he sides with those in his party who fear Trump’s action could spark a global skirmish.“There is a lot of concern among Republican senators that this could metastasize into a larger trade war. We are urging caution,” the senator said Tuesday, his first public remarks since Trump announced his trade plans last week.

NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1.1)>>trade tariffs. . A tariff – A tariff is a tax on imported goods. It made European goods more expensive and encouraged Americans to buy cheaper products made in America. The tariff also made the country money, which would be used to improve things. (1.2)>>The 1st United States Congress. The U.S. Constitution of 1789 gave the federal government authority to tax, stating that Congress has the power to "... lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." and also "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."Tariffs between states is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, and all domestically made products can be imported or shipped to another state tax-free. (2)>>Smoot-Hawley Act. Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which sharply raised tariffs on more than twenty thousand goods produced overseas and exported to the United States, didn’t cause the Great Depression, but it did accentuate it. As other countries retaliated with import duties of their own, the volume of world trade spiralled down. At the start of 1930, world trade had been about $2.7 billion. By the beginning of 1932, it was less than $1.3 billion. Among the countries that imposed new duties on American exports were Australia, Canada, Cuba, France, Mexico, Spain, and New Zealand.(3)>>Trump is essentially acting outside the WTO.  World Trade Organization  U.S. President Donald Trump did not single-handedly kill the WTO yesterday by announcing he would impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. It had been dying a slow death for a long time. China in particular never accepted the norms of the WTO, and its spectacular economic success pursuing policies that too often defied the organization’s market-based principles did more than any other country to weaken the legitimacy of the system. The WTO is already on the verge of paralysis because the United States has vetoed new judicial appointments, letting the number of trade judges dwindle to four from the usual seven. A trade war triggered by safeguard tariffs would open a new wound in the global trading system, because it would unravel almost a quarter of a century of discipline and dethrone the WTO as the arbiter of global trade and a check on protectionism.