O mundo se cansou de Trump, e não espera nada dos Democratas - David Ignatius

Analysis & Opinions 

The Rest of the World is Preparing for Four More Years of Trump

• David Ignatius
 

The Washington Post, Feb. 20, 2020

Many commentators have argued that the big winner in Wednesday’s poisonous Democratic Party debate was President Trump. But as the world assesses the United States in this 2020 election season, the long-term political beneficiaries may be foreign rivals such as China’s President Xi Jinping.

The circular firing squad in Las Vegas probably raised expectations abroad that the Democrats won’t unite behind a candidate with wide popular appeal who can beat Trump. People throughout Eastern Europe and Asia who have struggled to escape from socialism must find Sen. Bernie Sanders’s enthusiasm for it — and the fact that the Vermont independent is leading the field — especially bizarre.

The Democrats’ lack of interest in the world will also be noted. Foreign policy was barely mentioned in Las Vegas. As the candidates shouted at each other, they seemed unaware that voters would be judging them in part on their fitness to be commander in chief. Rather than discuss rational global climate policies, such as a carbon tax, they talked about putting U.S. energy executives in jail.

But the world moves on. If a sensible, moderate Democrat seems unlikely to emerge from the scrum, then U.S. allies and adversaries will prepare for the likelihood of four more years of the erratic, bullying, “America First” incumbent. Countries will hedge their bets, knowing that Trump’s promises are unreliable. Even for the closest U.S. allies, friendship is not a suicide pact. They will adjust, accommodate and distance.

This concern about a United States adrift from its traditional leadership role was evident last weekend at the Munich Security Conference. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke for many at the conference when he complained: “Our closest ally, the United States of America, under the current administration, rejects the very concept of the international community.”

Europeans are realizing, too, that the United States’ turn inward goes much deeper than Trump. Steinmeier bemoaned Trump’s retreat from transatlantic ties, but he recognized, “We know that this shift began a while ago, and it will continue even after this administration.”

A former top national security official in Republican and Democratic administrations summed up the implications of the U.S. political morass for foreign allies: “They understand now that waiting it out is not a good strategy. They know that the backstop is no longer there.”

Europeans feel a nostalgia for the old order, summed up in the “Westlessness” theme of the Munich conference. But there’s opportunism, too — a desire to expand influence as America’s contracts. You could see the gleam in the eye of French President Emmanuel Macron as he discussed onstage with Wolfgang Ischinger, the conference’s chairman, the possibility that Germany might soon look to France’s nuclear deterrent, rather than depending solely on U.S. pledges.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acted as though this European disaffection doesn’t exist. “I’m happy to report that the death of the transatlantic alliance is grossly overexaggerated,” he told the conference. “The West is winning, and we’re winning together.” That bland reassurance didn’t find much traction, even among Americans in the audience.

What puzzles Europeans is that the United States seems to want to have it both ways. “America wants to retrench, but it also wants to remain a hegemon and tell people what to do,” says a former senior European intelligence official. “That isn’t going to work.”

Anxiety abroad about Trump’s reelection was probably augmented by Wednesday’s announcement that he would appoint Richard Grenell, ambassador to Germany and a ferocious political loyalist, as acting director of national intelligence.

Allies worry that Grenell’s appointment signals an expanding campaign to control the intelligence community and retaliate against Trump’s perceived enemies. If allies decide that a second-term Trump will compromise the independence and professionalism of U.S. intelligence agencies, they may begin to reconsider their liaison relationships.

Who benefits in a world where Republicans trumpet “America First” and Democrats don’t even debate foreign policy? The answer is painfully obvious to foreign officials. As the United States retreats, China steps forward. Since Xi’s accession in 2013, China has advertised its plans to dominate global technology and business.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper talked in Munich of making the world choose between being America’s technology partner or China’s. But he isn’t going to like the answer: Even Britain, the United States’ closest ally, has said it plans to continue its relationship with Huawei, China’s flagship technology company.

The Democrats seemed poised on the edge of a cliff Wednesday night, heading toward nomination of a candidate who could be as polarizing as Trump. Maybe the Democrats will find a way back from the brink and pick a winner. But the world is adjusting to the prospect that Trump’s version of America may be here a good while longer.  – Via The Washington Post.

For Academic Citation: Ignatius, David.“The Rest of the World is Preparing for Four More Years of Trump.”  The Washington Post, February 20, 2020. 

Republicanos ortodoxos, democratas gastadores: as sauvas dos EUA

Este economista sensato explica como, sob quais condições, chegar a um consenso sobre a divisão que paralisa atualmente o governo americano: republicanos que não aceitam nenhum aumento de impostos, democratas que querem aumentar impostos e continuar gastando...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Opinion

The Problem With ‘No New Taxes’

By TYLER COWEN

The New York Times, October 1 2011

IN a debate in August, Republican presidential candidates were asked whether they would support a budget deal that bundled $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. All said no. They rejected any deal that involved raising taxes.

Curiously, though, if this approach actually were to become government policy, it would have a surprising effect: it would surely lead to higher rather than lower taxes.

Consider the example more closely. Cutting $10 in spending for every $1 in tax increases would result in $9 in net tax reduction. That’s because lower spending today means lower taxes tomorrow, and limiting the future path of government spending does limit future taxes, as Milton Friedman, the late Nobel laureate and conservative icon, so clearly explained. Promising never to raise taxes, without reaching a deal on spending, really means a high and rising commitment to future taxes.

Furthermore, this refusal to contemplate a tax increase — which I’d characterize as an extreme Republican stance — has brought what seems to be an extreme Democratic response: President Obama’s latest budget plan is moving away from entitlement reform and embracing multiple tax increases on the wealthy. We may be left with no good fiscal options.

The problems with a no-new-taxes stance run deeper. Because it’s unlikely that spending cuts alone can balance the budget, politicians who espouse extreme antitax views often end up denying the scope of our long-run fiscal problems.

The reality is that a mix of our aging population and rising health care costs will create acute budgetary pressures in about 10 years. If Medicare costs rise, say, 5 percent a year, such costs will roughly double in 14 years. Imagine that Congress freezes spending generally. Doing that for Medicare would, in essence, cut the size of the program in half over that period. Since the number of older Americans is rising, the per capita Medicare benefit would fall even more, with increasingly drastic results as the years pass.

That’s politically unlikely, and insisting upon it, or refusing to acknowledge that this is what a spending freeze means, ends up as another way of running away from fiscal reform. Focusing on cutting discretionary spending, a common political tactic, isn’t enough to balance the books.

Another conservative economist and Nobel laureate, James M. Buchanan, emeritus professor of economics at George Mason University, argues that deficit spending leads to yet more spending, and higher future taxes, compared with a pay-as-you-go approach. A move toward balancing the budget may mean some tax increases up front, he says, but future taxes as well as government spending will be lower than they would be otherwise.

In other words, the current antitax strategies advocated by the Republican candidates are unlikely to lead to fiscally conservative ends.

Conservatives may distrust the idea of making a grand fiscal bargain with President Obama. Some may believe that the balance of political influence is shifting in their favor anyhow. Yet from a 10-to-1 starting point, or even from 6-to-1 (one of the deals rumored to be on the table a few months ago) the bargain cannot improve all that much more in favor of spending cuts over taxes. Refusing such a bargain also requires an extreme estimate of how much American public opinion will swing in the conservatives’ direction. Keep in mind, too, that once Republican politicians are in power, they are often less keen to cut spending.

Of course, it may be rational to worry that a grand fiscal bargain isn’t much of a bargain at all. A prudent deal may postpone much of the spending reductions until the economy picks up. Perhaps we’ll end up getting the tax increases up front, and the promised spending reductions will never materialize. Congress may break its word and not make those cuts in future years, or maybe a national emergency — real or fabricated — will bring a completely new fiscal plan. Even so, it’s hard to see the harm in having tried to reach a deal, and taxes will eventually go up in any case, because they must.

What’s more, a vote for a grand fiscal bargain, in which both Republicans and Democrats have at least once endorsed a common vision of reducing entitlement spending, would increase the chance that reform would stick.

The more cynical interpretation of the Republican candidates’ stance on taxes is that they are signaling loyalty to a cause, or simply marketing themselves to voters, rather than acting in good faith. It could be that candidates are more worried about having to publicly endorse tax increases than they are about the tax increases themselves. If that’s true, it is all the more reason to watch out for our pocketbooks; it means that the candidates are protecting themselves rather than the taxpayers.

The final lesson is this: Many professed fiscal conservatives still find it necessary to pander to voter illusions that only a modicum of fiscal adjustment is needed. That’s an indication of how far we are from true fiscal conservatism, but also a sign of how much it is needed.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.