A insana guerra comercial de Trump contra a China prejudica EUA, China e o resto do mundo

Quando um idiota econômico acha que vai reduzir o déficit bilateral a golpes de sobretaxas, pode apostar que todos vão perder

Guerra comercial causou prejuízos aos EUA e à China

Chineses perderam US$ 35 bi em exportações até junho, diz Unctad. Maior prejuízo à economia americana se deu pelo aumento dos preços de produtos importados

Por Assis Moreira — De Genebra

Valor Econômico, 6/11/2019

A guerra comercial entre os Estados Unidos e a China tem gerado perdas bilionárias para as duas maiores economias do mundo e desvio de comércio, segundo confirmado por um estudo da Agência das Nações Unidas para o Comércio e o Desenvolvimento (Unctad).

As perdas dos EUA estão amplamente relacionadas a preços mais elevados para os consumidores americanos, enquanto os prejuízos da China se refletem em perda significativa de exportações.

Segundo a Unctad, a sobretaxa de mais de 25% em importações procedentes da China imposta pelo presidente Donald Trump infligiu uma perda de US$ 35 bilhões nas vendas chinesas para os EUA no primeiro semestre. A queda nas vendas é de 25% em relação ao mesmo período do ano passado.

Por sua vez, dados americanos indicam que as exportações em geral dos EUA para o mercado chinês caíram US$ 15,1 bilhões, numa contração de 23,5% entre janeiro e junho. A Unctad não examinou o lado das exportações americanas, mas ao menos parte disso é resultado das sobretaxas chinesas adotadas em retaliação às medidas americanas.

Para o economista Alessandro Nicita, autor do estudo, no segundo semestre os prejuízos devem ser ainda maiores para as exportações das duas grandes economias, inclusive porque sobretaxas mais elevadas foram impostas.

Para a Unctad, o estudo serve como uma advertência global de que guerra comercial resulta em perdas para todos os beligerantes, além de afetar a estabilidade e o crescimento da economia global. Daí a expectativa quanto a um acordo, mesmo modesto, entre os presidentes Trump e Xi Jinping proximamente, para reduzir a escalada de conflito.

Dos US$ 35 bilhões de exportações chinesas perdidas ao mercado americano, cerca de US$ 21 bilhões (63%) foram ocupadas com desvio de comércio, ou seja, com importações de países não diretamente envolvidos na guerra comercial. Os outros US$ 14 bilhões foram perdidos por menor demanda dos EUA ou capacidade insuficiente de outros fornecedores.

Entre os parceiros mais competitivos que se aproveitaram da alta de tarifas contra a China, o estudo aponta Taiwan como o maior ganhador até agora. As exportações taiwanesas para os EUA cresceram US$ 4,2 bilhões no primeiro semestre, ocupando boa parte do espaço deixado pelos chineses nos setores de equipamentos para escritórios e de comunicação.

Também o México aumentou suas exportações para os EUA, em US$ 3,5 bilhões, principalmente no agronegócio, equipamentos de transporte e máquinas elétricas. A União Europeia (UE) vem em terceiro lugar, com ganho adicional de US$ 2,7 bilhões. O Vietnã ganha quase tanto quanto os europeus, com US$ 2,6 bilhões a mais de exportações, sobretudo móveis e equipamentos de comunicação.

O desvio de comércio beneficiou também Coreia do Sul, Canadá e Índia, com ganhos entre US$ 900 milhões e US$ 1,5 bilhão.

Para o autor do estudo, os consumidores americanos sofrem o maior impacto da alta de tarifas sobre importações procedentes da China, à medida que os custos adicionais são repassados na forma de preços maiores. 

No entanto, o estudo também mostra que as firmas chinesas começaram a absorver parte dos custos das tarifas, reduzindo os preços de suas exportações em cerca de 8 pontos percentuais.

A Unctad destaca também a competitividade de empresas chinesas que, apesar das sobretaxas, mantiveram 75% de suas exportações para os EUA.

Diplomacia bolsonarista: o Brasil completamente isolado, no mundo e na região - Hussein Kalout

Coluna | O retrato da indigência diplomática do Brasil na América do Sul

A política externa bolsonarista, que é radical no atacado mundial, consegue ser ainda mais extremada no varejo regional

Hussein Kalout

Época, 5/11/2019

Se a intenção da nossa atual diplomacia era quebrar paradigmas e destruir um legado secular da nossa presença diplomática na região, então é preciso reconhecer que o trabalho está surtindo efeito. Devemos exclamar: “chapeau”! De fato estamos inovando, mas não no bom sentido, longe disso. A política externa bolsonarista, que é radical no atacado mundial, consegue ser ainda mais extremada no varejo regional.

Basta ver a quantidade de vexames que a diplomacia brasileira vem colhendo em série na América do Sul. O resultado? Um isolamento auto-imposto que ameaça deixar o Brasil falando sozinho. Estamos virando aquele elefante destrambelhado numa loja de cristais. Só que o que estamos deixando em cacos não são copos, taças ou jarras, mas um patrimônio diplomático que chegou a ser invejável e amplamente respeitado. Estamos destroçando nossa influência e relevância, espezinhando nossos próprios interesses e gerando uma fatura salgada que será paga pela população.

A lista de embaraços é quase interminável. As referências pouco lisonjeiras ao pai da ex-Presidente Bachelet, do Chile, que foi morto sob torturas, obrigou o presidente Piñera a dissociar-se do “amigo” Bolsonaro. Como se não bastasse, as hostes bolsonaristas das redes sociais têm criticado o presidente chileno por fazer concessões às pressões da esquerda, que estaria por trás dos protestos massivos que vive aquele país. Querem, aparentemente, que o presidente chileno não ceda. Só que quem manda no Chile são os chilenos. E Piñera é um líder de direita com compromisso com a democracia.

O princípio da não-interferência em assuntos internos dos outros Estados, ao contrário do que talvez pensem os responsáveis pela nossa política externa, não é mais um conceito marxista imposto pelo fantasma do globalismo. Ele deriva do direito internacional e de uma tradição diplomática que sempre cultuamos, em benefício de nossos interesses e da preservação da paz na região. Esse princípio encerra uma sabedoria que sempre foi a nossa: podemos ter amigos e desafetos, mas o mais importante é manter as boas relações entre os Estados, em nome do interesse nacional, com o objetivo de avançar na integração econômica e da busca de soluções conjuntas para desafios comuns.

Ao que tudo indica, essa lição não foi aprendida pelo nosso chanceler nos bancos do Instituto Rio Branco. Ou por alguma razão desconhecida foi desaprendida, talvez como forma de agradar os fiéis de sua desequilibrada balança diplomática no âmbito do olavismo. De fato, ao dobrar a aposta do presidente na reação à eleição de Alberto Fernández como presidente da Argentina, o chanceler disse que “as forças do mal” celebravam o resultado – na contramão, hilariantemente, o Departamento de Estado americano mandou mensagem celebrando a festa da democracia argentina e saudando o novo presidente. A postura brasileira contribui para fechar canal importante que poderia ser utilizado para auscultar as intenções do novo governo e preservar nossos interesses bilaterais. Vale sempre lembrar que a Argentina é nosso terceiro parceiro comercial, segundo comprador de nossos manufaturados e destino de importantes investimentos brasileiros. Só lembrando...

A besteira está feita. Os títeres da diplomacia nacional não pisarão tão cedo por Buenos Aires – e isso se é que já não foram declarados personas non gratas por ali. A carta dirigida pelo chanceler argentino, Jorge Faurie, à embaixada brasileira foi um gesto categórico de protesto e de condenação. Resta saber quem será o herói que irá à Argentina para tentar minimizar o estrago feito pelos bufões dessa diplomacia indigente.

No Uruguai, o vexame não foi menor, com o candidato preferido do governo Bolsonaro afirmando que não cabia a líderes estrangeiros se meter na eleição uruguaia. Como bem lembrou Lacalle Pou, de maneira elegante, cabe exclusivamente aos uruguaios escolher suas lideranças. O passa fora é apenas uma manifestação de bom senso, o chamado óbvio ululante. Que o candidato uruguaio tenha sido obrigado a dizer isso publicamente diz muito do amadorismo de nossa política externa ideológica. E o nosso embaixador em Montevidéu, não é para menos, foi convocado para tomar um pito de dar inveja em países de quinta categoria. Qualquer político sul-americano minimamente experiente sabe que precisa lidar com o vizinho, independentemente de quem seja o presidente, sua coloração partidária ou sua fé religiosa. O respeito aos processos políticos democráticos nos vizinhos era uma regra de ouro que infelizmente acabamos de quebrar na Argentina e no Uruguai.

Esses exemplos mais recentes se somam à propensão do atual governo de abrir mão de nossa capacidade de influenciar também na Venezuela. O Brasil se tornou o mais radical dos membros do Grupo de Lima, tendo de ser contido por elementos mais moderados. Com isso, virou uma espécie de menino de recados de outros países, flertando com medidas de força que talvez não tenham prosperado porque há setores racionais no governo (nesse caso, sobretudo, os militares) e membros do Grupo que não querem apostar em via que comporta altíssimo risco.

É pena que lições básicas de diplomacia estejam sendo deixadas de lado em nome de uma fé cega na ideologia extrema. O chanceler, em vez de moderar os ímpetos de seu chefe, parece adicionar mais gasolina à fogueira. Dessa forma, a lógica amigo-inimigo, que serve para pautar a estratégia do governo na política doméstica, foi transplantada para as relações exteriores, com consequências danosas para o país.

A América do Sul é esfera inseparável da segurança nacional do Estado brasileiro. Ações desmedidas, gestos descalibrados e diplomacia da tijolada minam gravemente a nossa liderança e credibilidade. Esse isolamento auto-infligido poderá levar décadas para ser superado. Afinal, quem confiaria em abrir sua loja de cristais novamente a um paquiderme desastrado?

Hussein Kalout é cientista político, professor de relações internacionais, pesquisador da Universidade Harvard e integra o Advisory Board da Harvard International Review. Foi Senior Fellow do Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) em Washington DC e Consultor da ONU e do Banco Mundial. Serviu como secretário especial de Assuntos Estratégicos da Presidência da República (2017-2018). Cofundador do Movimento Agora!, foi membro do Conselho de Ministros da Câmara de Comércio Exterior (Camex) e presidente da Comissão Nacional de Populações e Desenvolvimento (CNPD).

História econômica da China: melhor paper da lista - "John Stuart Mill and China"

Dear SHOE list,

The History of Economics Society is delighted to announce that this year's winner of the Best Conference Paper by a Young Scholar is Yue Xiao for her paper on John Stuart Mill and China: Peeking Behind China's Stationary State. The committee of Avi Cohen, Annie Cot, and Stefan Kolev found the paper original, well-structured, and elegantly written. In the paper, the author demonstrated her excellent knowledge of China's political, cultural, and economic history. The committee also wanted to share their delight that there are now young and talented historians of economic thought in China, which is excellent news for the discipline.

Yue Xiao completed her dissertation at the University of Illinois at Chicago with Joe Persky. She spent last year at the Duke Center for the History of Political Economy. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the School of Business Administration at Zhongnan University.

You can find her paper on the HES website at

https://historyofeconomics.org/best-conference-paper-by-a-young-scholar/

----------------------------
Marianne Johnson
Professor of Economics & Secretary of the History of Economics Society
College of Business
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Quando a New Yorker ataca a Economist: um debate sobre o liberalismo, velho e atual

Liberalism According to The Economist

Founded in 1843 to spread the doctrine of laissez-faire, the magazine has wielded influence like no other. But at what cost?

Pankaj Mishra

New Yorker, November 11, 2019 Issue

The magazine was founded in 1843, to disseminate the doctrine of laissez-faire.

Illustration by Mark Long

“Liberalism made the modern world, but the modern world is turning against it,” an article in The Economist lamented last year, on the occasion of the magazine’s hundred-and-seventy-fifth anniversary. “Europe and America are in the throes of a popular rebellion against liberal élites, who are seen as self-serving and unable, or unwilling, to solve the problems of ordinary people,” even as authoritarian China is poised to become the world’s largest economy. For a publication that was founded “to campaign for liberalism,” all of this was “profoundly worrying.”

The crisis in liberalism has become received wisdom across the political spectrum. Barack Obama included Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” (2018) in his annual list of recommended books; meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has gleefully pronounced liberalism “obsolete.” The right accuses liberals of promoting selfish individualism and crass materialism at the expense of social cohesion and cultural identity. Centrists claim that liberals’ obsession with political correctness and minority rights drove white voters to Donald Trump. For the newly resurgent left, the rise of demagoguery looks like payback for the small-government doctrines of technocratic neoliberalism—tax cuts, privatization, financial deregulation, antilabor legislation, cuts in Social Security—which have shaped policy in Europe and America since the eighties.

Attacks on liberalism are nothing new. In 1843, the year The Economist was founded, Karl Marx wrote, “The glorious robes of liberalism have fallen away, and the most repulsive despotism stands revealed for all the world to see.” Nietzsche dismissed John Stuart Mill, the author of the canonical liberal text “On Liberty” (1859), as a “numbskull.” In colonized Asia and Africa, critics—such as R. C. Dutt, in India, and Sun Yat-sen, in China—pointed out liberalism’s complicity in Western imperialism. Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, wrote, “Your liberalness, we see plainly, is only for yourselves.” (Mill, indeed, had justified colonialism on the ground that it would lead to the improvement of “barbarians.”) From a different vantage, critiques came from aspiring imperialist powers, such as Germany (Carl Schmitt), Italy (Gaetano Salvemini), and Japan (Tokutomi Sohō). Since then, Anglo-American thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr and John Gray have pointed out liberalism’s troubled relationship with democracy and human rights, and its overly complacent belief in reason and progress.

Yet the sheer variety of criticisms of liberalism makes it hard to know right away what precisely is being criticized. Liberalism’s ancestry has been traced back to John Locke’s writings on individual reason, Adam Smith’s economic theory, and the empiricism of David Hume, but today the doctrine seems to contain potentially contradictory elements. The philosophy of individual liberty connotes both a desire for freedom from state regulation in economic matters (a stance close to libertarianism) and a demand for the state to insure a minimal degree of social and economic justice—the liberalism of the New Deal and of European welfare states. The iconic figures of liberalism themselves moved between these commitments. Mill, even while supporting British imperialism in India and Ireland, called himself a socialist and outlined the aim of achieving “common ownership in the raw materials of the globe.” The Great Depression forced John Dewey to conclude that “the socialized economy is the means of free individual development.” Isaiah Berlin championed the noninterference of the state in 1958, in his celebrated lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty”; but eleven years later he had come to believe that such “negative liberty” armed “the able and ruthless against the less gifted and less fortunate.”

Cartoon by Liza Donnelly

Because of this conceptual morass, liberalism has, to an unusual degree, been defined by what it wasn’t. For French liberals in the early nineteenth century, it was a defense against the excesses of Jacobins and ultra-monarchists. For the free-trading Manchester Liberals of the mid-nineteenth century, it was anticolonial. Liberals in Germany, on the other hand, were allied with both nationalists and imperialists. In the twentieth century, liberalism became a banner under which to march against Communism and Fascism. Recent scholars have argued that it wasn’t until liberalism became the default “other” of totalitarian ideologies that inner coherence and intellectual lineage were retrospectively found for it. Locke, a devout Christian, was not regarded as a philosopher of liberalism until the early twentieth century. Nor was the word “liberal” part of U.S. political discourse before that time. When Lionel Trilling claimed, in 1950, that liberalism in America was “not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition,” the term was becoming a catchall signifier of moral prestige, variously synonymous with “democracy,” “capitalism,” and even simply “the West.” Since 9/11, it has seemed more than ever to define the West against such illiberal enemies as Islamofascism and Chinese authoritarianism.

The Economist proudly enlists itself in this combative Anglo-American tradition, having vigorously claimed to be advancing the liberal cause since its founding. In “Liberalism at Large” (Verso), Alexander Zevin, a historian at the City University of New York, takes it at its word, telling the story not only of the magazine itself but also of its impact on world affairs. Using The Economist as a proxy for liberalism enables Zevin to sidestep much conceptual muddle about the doctrine. His examination of The Economist’s pronouncements and of the policies of those who heeded them yields, in effect, a study of several liberalisms as they have been widely practiced in the course of a hundred and seventy-five years. The magazine emerges as a force that—thanks to the military, cultural, and economic power of Britain and, later, America—can truly be said to have made the modern world, if not in the way that many liberals would suppose.

In terms of its influence, The Economist has long been a publication like no other. Within a decade of its founding, Marx was describing it as the organ of “the aristocracy of finance.” In 1895, Woodrow Wilson called it “a sort of financial providence for businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic.” (Wilson, an Anglophile, wooed his evidently forbearing wife with quotations from Walter Bagehot, the most famous of The Economist’s editors.) For years, the magazine was proud of the exclusivity of its readership. Now it has nearly a million subscribers in North America (more than in Britain), and seven hundred thousand in the rest of the world. Since the early nineties, it has served, alongside the Financial Times, as the suavely British-accented voice of globalization (scoring over the too stridently partisan and American Wall Street Journal).

According to its own statistics, its readers are the richest and the most prodigal consumers of all periodical readers; more than twenty per cent once claimed ownership of “a cellar of vintage wines.” Like Aston Martin, Burberry, and other global British brands, The Economist invokes the glamour of élitism. “It’s lonely at the top,” one of its ads says, “but at least there’s something to read.” Its articles, almost all of which are unsigned, were until recently edited from an office in St. James’s, London, a redoubt of posh Englishness, with private clubs, cigar merchants, hatters, and tailors. The present editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes, is the first woman ever to hold the position. The staff, predominantly white, is recruited overwhelmingly from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and a disproportionate number of the most important editors have come from just one Oxford college, Magdalen. “Lack of diversity is a benefit,” Gideon Rachman, a former editor who is now a columnist at the Financial Times, told Zevin, explaining that it produces an assertive and coherent point of view. Indeed, contributors are not shy about adding prescription (how to fix India’s power problems, say) to their reporting and analysis. The pieces are mostly short, but the coverage is comprehensive; a single issue might cover the insurgency in south Thailand, public transportation in Jakarta, commodities prices, and recent advances in artificial intelligence. This air of crisp editorial omniscience insures that the magazine is as likely to be found on an aspirant think tanker’s iPad in New Delhi as it is on Bill Gates’s private jet.

Zevin, having evidently mastered the magazine’s archives, commands a deep knowledge of its inner workings and its historical connection to political and economic power. He shows how its editors and contributors pioneered the revolving doors that link media, politics, business, and finance—alumni have gone on to such jobs as deputy governor of the Bank of England, Prime Minister of Britain, and President of Italy—and how such people have defined, at crucial moments in history, liberalism’s ever-changing relationship with capitalism, imperialism, democracy, and war.

A capsule version of this thesis can be found in the career of James Wilson, The Economist’s founder and first editor. Wilson, who was born in Scotland and became the owner of a struggling hatmaking business, intended his journal to develop and disseminate the doctrine of laissez-faire—“nothing but pure principles,” as he put it. He was particularly vociferous in his opposition to the Corn Laws, agricultural tariffs that were unpopular with merchants. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, three years after the magazine first appeared, and Wilson began to proselytize more energetically for free trade and the increasingly prominent discipline of economics. He became a Member of Parliament and held several positions in the British government. He also founded a pan-Asian bank, now known as Standard Chartered, which expanded fast on the back of the opium trade with China. In 1859, Wilson became Chancellor of the Indian Exchequer. He died in India the following year, trying to reconfigure the country’s financial system.

During his short career as a journalist-cum-crusader, Wilson briskly clarified what he meant by “pure principles.” He opposed a ban on trading with slaveholding countries on the ground that it would punish slaves as well as British consumers. In the eighteen-forties, when Ireland was struck with famine, which was largely caused by free trade—the British insisted on exporting Irish food, despite catastrophic crop failure—Wilson called for a homeopathic remedy: more free trade. With Irish intransigence becoming a nuisance, he advised the British to respond with “powerful, resolute, but just repression.” Wilson was equally stern with those suffering from rising inequality at home. In his view, the government was wrong to oblige rail companies to provide better service for working-class passengers, who were hitherto forced to travel in exposed freight cars: “Where the most profit is made, the public is best served. Limit the profit, and you limit the exertion of ingenuity in a thousand ways.” A factory bill limiting women to a twelve-hour workday was deemed equally pernicious. As for public schooling, common people should be “left to provide education as they provide food for themselves.”

“And, for being careless with the environment, put tiny, hard-to-remove stickers on all their fruit.”Cartoon by Corey Pandolph and Craig Baldo

The Economist held that, “if the pursuit of self-interest, left equally free for all, does not lead to the general welfare, no system of government can accomplish it.” But this opposition to government intervention, it turned out, did not extend to situations in which liberalism appeared to be under threat. In the eighteen-fifties, Zevin writes, the Crimean War, the Second Opium War, and the Indian Mutiny “rocked British liberalism at home and recast it abroad.” Proponents of free trade had consistently claimed that it was the best hedge against war. However, Britain’s expansion across Asia, in which free trade was often imposed at gunpoint, predictably provoked conflict, and, for The Economist, wherever Britain’s “imperial interests were at stake, war could become an absolute necessity, to be embraced.”

This betrayal of principle alienated, among others, the businessman and statesman Richard Cobden, who had helped Wilson found The Economist, and had shared his early view of free trade as a guarantee of world peace. India, for Cobden, was a “country we do not know how to govern,” and Indians were justified in rebelling against an inept despotism. For Wilson’s Economist, however, Indians, like the Irish, exemplified the “native character . . . half child, half savage, actuated by sudden and unreasoning impulses.” Besides, “commerce with India would be at an end were English power withdrawn.” The next editor, Wilson’s son-in-law Walter Bagehot, broadened the magazine’s appeal and gave its opinions a more seductive intellectual sheen. But the editorial line remained much the same. During the American Civil War, Bagehot convinced himself that the Confederacy, with which he was personally sympathetic, could not be defeated by the Northern states, whose “other contests have been against naked Indians and degenerate and undisciplined Mexicans.” He also believed that abolition would best be achieved by a Southern victory. More important, trade with the Southern states would be freer.

Discussing these and other editorial misjudgments, Zevin refrains from virtue signalling and applying anachronistic standards. He seems genuinely fascinated by how the liberal vision of individual freedom and international harmony was, as Niebuhr once put it, “transmuted into the sorry realities of an international capitalism which recognized neither moral scruples nor political restraints in expanding its power over the world.” Part of the explanation lies in Zevin’s sociology of élites, in which liberalism emerges as a self-legitimating ideology of a rich, powerful, and networked ruling class. Private ambition played a significant role. Bagehot stood for Parliament four times as a member of Britain’s Liberal Party. Born into a family of bankers, he saw himself and his magazine as offering counsel to a new generation of buccaneering British financiers. His tenure coincided with the age of capital, when British finance transformed the world economy, expanding food cultivation in North America and Eastern Europe, cotton manufacturing in India, mineral extraction in Australia, and rail networks everywhere. According to Zevin, “it fell to Bagehot’s Economist to map this new world, tracing the theoretical insights of political economy to the people and places men of business were sending their money.”

The pressures of capitalist expansion abroad and rising disaffection at home further transformed liberal doctrine. Zevin fruitfully describes how liberals coped with the growing demand for democracy. Bagehot had read and admired John Stuart Mill as a young man, but, as an editor, he agreed with him on little more than the need to civilize the natives of Ireland and India. To Bagehot, Mill’s idea of broadly extending suffrage to women seemed absurd. Nor could he support Mill’s proposal to enfranchise the laboring classes in Britain, reminding his readers that “a political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects, is an evil of the first magnitude.” Not surprisingly, The Economist commended Mussolini (a devoted reader) for sorting out an Italian economy destabilized by labor unrest.

Nonetheless, by the early twentieth century, the magazine was groping toward an awareness that, in an advanced industrial society, classical liberalism had to be moderated, and that progressive taxation and basic social-welfare systems were the price of defusing rising discontent. The magazine has since presented this volte-face as evidence of its pragmatic liberalism. Zevin reveals it as a grudging response to democratic pressures from below. Moreover, there were clear limits to The Economist’s newfound compassionate liberalism. As late as 1914, one editor, Francis Hirst, was still denouncing “the shrieking, struggling, fighting viragoes” who had demanded the right to vote despite having no capacity for reason. His comparison of suffragettes to Russian and Turkish marauders—pillaging “solemn vows, ties of love and affection, honor, romance”—helped drive his own wife to suffragism.

As more people acquired the right to vote, and as market mechanisms failed, empowering autocrats and accelerating international conflicts, The Economistwas finally forced to compromise the purity of its principles. In 1943, in a book celebrating the centenary of the magazine, its editor at the time acknowledged that larger electorates saw “inequality and insecurity” as a serious problem. The Economist disagreed with the socialists “not on their objective, but only on the methods they proposed for attaining it.” Such a stance mirrored a widespread acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic that governments should do more to protect citizens from an inherently volatile economic system. Since the nineteen-sixties, however, The Economist has steadily reinstated its foundational ideals.

In the process, it missed an opportunity to reconfigure for the postcolonial age a liberalism forged during the high noon of imperialism. The emergence of new, independent nation-states across Asia and Africa from the late forties onward was arguably the most important development of the twentieth century. Liberalism faced a new test among a great majority of the world’s population: Could newly sovereign peoples, largely poor and illiterate, embrace free markets and minimize government right away? Would such a policy succeed without prior government-led investment in public health, education, and local manufacturing? Even a Cold War liberal like Raymond Aron questioned the efficacy of Western-style liberalism in Asia and Africa. But The Economistseemed content to see postcolonial nations and their complex challenges through the Cold War’s simple dichotomy of the “free” and the “unfree” world. In any case, by the seventies, the magazine’s editors were increasingly taking their inspiration from economics departments and think tanks, where the pure neoliberal principles of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were dominant, rather than from such liberal theorists of justice as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen.

In the nineteen-eighties, The Economist’s cheerleading for Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s embrace of neoliberalism led to a dramatic rise in its American circulation. (Reagan personally thanked the magazine’s editor for his support over dinner.) Dean Acheson famously remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” No such status anxiety inhibited The Economist as it crossed the Atlantic to make new friends and influence more people. After the Second World War, when the U.S. emerged as the new global hegemon, the magazine—despite some initial resentment, commonplace among British élites at the time—quickly adjusted itself to the Pax Americana. It came to revere the U.S. as, in the words of one editor, “a giant elder brother, a source of reassurance, trust and stability for weaker members of the family, and nervousness and uncertainty for any budding bullies.”

This meant stalwart support for American interventions abroad, starting with Vietnam, where, as the historian and former staff writer Hugh Brogan tells Zevin, the magazine’s coverage was “pure CIA propaganda.” It euphemized the war’s horrors, characterizing the My Lai massacre as “minor variations on the general theme of the fallibility of men at war.” By 1972, following the saturation bombing of North Vietnam, the magazine was complaining that Henry Kissinger was too soft on the North Vietnamese. A policy of fealty to the giant elder brother also made some campaigners for liberalism a bit too prone to skulduggery. Zevin relates colorful stories about the magazine’s overzealous Cold Warriors, such as Robert Moss, who diligently prepared international opinion for the military coup in Chile in 1973, which brought down its democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende. In Moss’s view, “Chile’s generals reached the conclusion that democracy does not have the right to commit suicide.” (The generals expressed their gratitude by buying and distributing nearly ten thousand copies of the magazine.) Zevin relates that, when news of Allende’s death reached Moss in London, he danced down the corridors of The Economist’s office, chanting, “My enemy is dead!” Moss went on to edit a magazine owned by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua’s U.S.-backed dictator.

After the fall of Communist regimes in 1989, The Economist embraced a fervently activist role in Russia and Eastern Europe, armed with the mantras of privatization and deregulation. In its pages, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who was then working to reshape “transition economies” in the region, coined the term “shock therapy” for these policies. The socioeconomic reëngineering was brutal—salaries and public services collapsed—and, in 1998, Russia’s financial system imploded. Only a few months before this disaster, The Economist was still hailing the “dynamism, guile and vision” of Anatoly Chubais, the politician whose sale of Russia’s assets to oligarchs had by then made him the most despised public figure in the country. In 2009, a study in The Lancet estimated that “shock therapy” had led to the premature deaths of millions of Russians, mostly men of employment age. The Economist was unrepentant, insisting that “Russia’s tragedy was that reform came too slowly, not too fast.”

“Who can trust Trump’s America?” a recent Economist cover story asked, forlornly surveying the ruins of the Pax Americana. The political earthquakes of the past few years perhaps make it lonelier at the top for the magazine than at any other time in its history; the articles celebrating last year’s anniversary were presented as a manifesto for “renewing liberalism.” Ten years before, when the financial crisis erupted, the magazine overcame its primal distrust of government intervention to endorse bank bailouts, arguing that it was “a time to put dogma and politics to one side.” It also continued to defend neoliberal policies, on the basis that “the people running the system, not the system itself, are to blame.” Now, finally chastened, if not by the financial crisis then by its grisly political upshot, the magazine has conceded that “liberals have become too comfortable with power” and “wrapped up in preserving the status quo.” Its anniversary manifesto touted a “liberalism for the people.” But soul-searching has its limits: the manifesto admiringly quoted Milton Friedman on the need to be “radical,” resurrected John McCain’s fantasy of a “league of democracies” as an alternative to the United Nations, and scoffed at millennials who don’t wish to fight for the old “liberal world order.” A more recent cover story warns “American bosses” about Elizabeth Warren’s plans to tackle inequality, and revives Friedmanite verities about how “creative destruction” and “the dynamic power of markets” can best help “middle-class Americans.”

The Economist is no doubt sincere about wanting to be more “woke.” It seeks more female readers, according to a 2016 briefing for advertisers, and is anxious to dispel the idea that the magazine is “an arrogant, dull handbook for outdated men.” Whereas, in 2002, it rushed to defend Bjørn Lomborg, the global-warming skeptic, this fall it dedicated an entire issue to the climate emergency. Still, The Economist may find it more difficult than much of the old Anglo-American establishment to check its privilege. Its limitations arise not only from a defiantly nondiverse and parochial intellectual culture but also from a house style too prone to contrarianism. A review, in 2014, of a book titled “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” accused its author of not being “objective,” complaining that “almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.” Following an outcry, the magazine retracted the review. However, a recent assessment of Brazil’s privatization drive—“Jair Bolsonaro is a dangerous populist, with some good ideas”—suggests that it is hard to tone down what the journalist James Fallows has described as the magazine’s “Oxford Union argumentative style,” a stance too “cocksure of its rightness and superiority.”

This insouciance, bred by the certainty of having made the modern world, cannot seem anything but incongruous in the rancorously polarized societies of Britain and the United States. The two blond demagogues currently leading the world’s two oldest “liberal” democracies bespeak a ruling class that—through a global financial crisis, rising inequality, and ill-conceived military interventions in large parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa—has squandered its authority and legitimacy. The reputation, central to much Cold War liberalism, of England as a model liberal society also lies shattered amid the calamity of Brexit.

For the young, in particular, old frameworks of liberalism seem to be a constraint on the possibilities of politics. It should be remembered, however, that these new critics of liberalism seek not to destroy but to fulfill its promise of individual freedom. They are looking, just as John Dewey was, for suitable modes of politics and economy in a world radically altered by capitalism and technology—a liberalism for the people, not just for their networked rulers. In that sense, it is not so much liberalism that is in crisis as its self-styled campaigners, who are seen, not unreasonably, as complicit in unmaking the modern world. ♦

Published in the print edition of the November 11, 2019, issue, with the headline “The Influencer.”

Os "porcos" do jornalismo (da Globo) e os porcos que os atacam: carta de Ali Kamel (Globo)

Sem comentários. A carta de Ali Kamel diz tudo o que é preciso dizer.
Ou apenas um comentário, que vai por minha responsabilidade.
Creio que tudo está sendo preparado para paralisar a investigação sobre o caso Marielle, assim como já foram paralisadas várias outras investigações sobre a Bolsofamiglia.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

CARTA DE ALI KAMEL, DIRETOR GERAL DE JORNALISMO DA GLOBO

Rio de Janeiro, 3 de outubro de 2019

Há momentos em nossa vida de jornalistas em que devemos parar para celebrar nossos êxitos.

Eu me refiro à semana passada, quando um cuidadoso trabalho da editoria Rio levou ao ar no Jornal Nacional uma reportagem sobre o Caso Marielle que gerou grande repercussão. A origem da reportagem remonta ao dia 1° de outubro, quando a editoria teve acesso a uma página do livro de ocorrências do condomínio em que mora Ronnie Lessa, o acusado de matar Marielle. Ali, estava anotado que, para entrar no condomínio, o comparsa dele, Elcio Queiroz, dissera estar indo para a casa 58, residência do então deputado Jair Bolsonaro, hoje presidente da República. Isso era tudo, o ponto de partida.

Um meticuloso trabalho de investigação teve início: aquela página do livro existiu, constava de algum inquérito? No curso da investigação, a editoria confirmou que o documento existia e mais: comprovou que o porteiro que fez a anotação prestara dois depoimentos em que afirmou que ligara duas vezes para a casa 58, tendo sido atendido, nas palavras dele, pelo “seu Jair”. A investigação não parou. Onde estava o então deputado Jair Bolsonaro naquele dia? A editoria pesquisou os registros da Câmara e confirmou que o então deputado estava em Brasilia e participara de duas votações, em horários que tornavam impossível a sua presença no Rio. Pesquisou mais, e descobriu vídeos que o então deputado gravara na Câmara naquele dia e publicara em suas redes sociais. A realidade não batia com o depoimento do porteiro.

Em meio a essa apuração da Rio (que era feita de maneira sigilosa, com o conhecimento apenas de Bonner, Vinicius, as lideranças da Rio e os autores envolvidos, tudo para que a informação não vazasse para outros órgãos de imprensa), uma fonte absolutamente próxima da família do presidente Jair Bolsonaro (e que em respeito ao sigilo da fonte tem seu nome preservado), procurou nossa emissora em Brasilia para dizer que ia estourar uma grande bomba, pois a investigação do Caso Marielle esbarrara num personagem com foro privilegiado e que, por esse motivo, o caso tinha sido levado ao STF para que se decidisse se a investigação poderia ou não prosseguir. A editoria em Brasilia, àquela altura, não sabia das apurações da editoria Rio. Eu estranhei: por que uma fonte tão próxima ao presidente nos contava algo que era prejudicial ao presidente? Dias depois, a mesma fonte perguntava: a matéria não vai sair?

Isso nos fez redobrar os cuidados. Mandei voltar a apuração quase à estaca zero e checar tudo novamente, ao mesmo tempo em que a Editoria Rio foi informada sobre o STF. Confirmar se o caso realmente tinha ido parar no Supremo tornava tudo mais importante, pois o conturbado Caso Marielle poderia ser paralisado. Tudo foi novamente rechecado, a editoria tratou de se cercar de ainda mais cuidados sobre a existência do documento da portaria e dos depoimentos do porteiro. Na terça-feira, dia 29 de outubro, às 19 horas, a editoria Rio confirmou, sem chance de erro, que de fato o MP estadual consultara o STF.

De posse de todas esses fatos, informamos às autoridades envolvidas nas investigações que a reportagem seria publicada naquele dia, nos termos em que foi publicada. Elas apenas ouviram e soltaram notas que diziam que a investigação estava sob sigilo. Informamos, então, ao advogado do presidente Bolsonaro, Frederick Wassef, sobre o conteúdo da reportagem e pedimos uma entrevista, que prontamente aceitou dar em São Paulo. Nela, ele desmentiu o porteiro e, confirmando o que nós já sabíamos, disse que o presidente estava em Brasília no dia do crime. Era madrugada na Arábia Saudita e em nenhum momento o advogado ofereceu entrevista com o presidente.

A reportagem estava pronta para ir ao ar. Tudo nela era verdadeiro: o livro da portaria, a existência dos depoimentos do porteiro, a impossibilidade de Bolsonaro ter atendido o interfone (pois ele estava em Brasilia) e, mais importante, a possibilidade de o STF paralisar as investigações de um caso tão rumoroso. É importante frisar que nenhuma de nossas fontes vislumbrava a hipótese de o telefonema não ter sido dado para a casa 58. A dúvida era somente sobre quem atendeu e só seria solucionada após a decisão do STF e depois de uma perícia longa e demorada em um arquivo com mais de um ano de registros. E isso foi dito na reportagem. Quem, de posse de informações tão relevantes, não publica uma reportagem, com todas as cautelas devidas, não faz jornalismo profissional.

Hoje sabemos que o advogado do presidente, no momento em que nos concedeu entrevista, sabia da existência do áudio que mostrava que o telefonema fora dado, não à casa do presidente, mas à casa 65, de Ronnie Lessa. No último sábado, o próprio presidente Bolsonaro disse à imprensa: “Nós pegamos, antes que fosse adulterada, ou tentasse adulterar, pegamos toda a memória da secretária eletrônica que é guardada há mais de ano".

Por que os principais interessados em esclarecer os fatos, sabendo com detalhes da existência do áudio, sonegaram essa informação? A resposta pode estar no que aconteceu nos minutos subsequentes à publicação da reportagem do Jornal Nacional.

Patifes, canalhas e porcos foram alguns dos insultos, acompanhados de ameaças à cassação da concessão da Globo em 2022, dirigidos pelo presidente Bolsonaro ao nosso jornalismo, que só cumpriu a sua missão, oferecendo todas as chances aos interessados para desacreditar com mais elementos o porteiro do condomínio (já que sabiam do áudio).

Diante de uma estratégia assim, o nosso jornalismo não se vitimiza nem se intimida: segue fazendo jornalismo. É certo que em 37 anos de profissão, nunca imaginei que o jornalismo que pratico fosse usado de forma tão esquisita, mas sou daqueles que se empolgam diante de aprendizados. No dia seguinte, já não valia o sigilo em torno do assunto, alegado na véspera para não comentar a reportagem do JN antes de ela ir ao ar. Houve uma elucidativa entrevista das promotoras do caso, que divulgamos com o destaque merecido: o telefonema foi feito para a casa 65, quem o atendeu foi Ronnie Lessa, tudo isso levando as promotoras a afirmarem que o depoimento do porteiro e o registro que fez em livro não condizem com a realidade. O Jornal Nacional de quarta exibiu tudo, inclusive os ataques do presidente Bolsonaro ao nosso jornalismo, respondidos de forma eloquente e firme, mas também serena, pela própria Globo, que honra a sua tradição de prestigiar seus jornalistas. Estranhamente, nenhuma outra indagação da imprensa motivada por atitudes e declarações subsequentes do presidente foi respondida. O alegado sigilo voltou a prevalecer.

Mas continuamos a fazer jornalismo. Revelamos que a perícia no sistema de interfone foi feita apenas um dia depois da exibição da reportagem e num procedimento que durou somente duas horas e meia, o que tem sido alvo de críticas de diversas associações de peritos.

Conto tudo isso para dar os parabéns mais efusivos à editoria Rio. Seguiremos fazendo jornalismo, em busca da verdade. É a nossa missão. Para nós, é motivo de orgulho. Para outros, de irritação e medo.

O Departamento de Estado num nova era de macartismo - Foreign Policy

Um outro ministério das Relações Exteriores sofrendo pela extrema politização e ideologização das relações de trabalho, aliás um do mais importante aliado estrangeiro da tropa bolsonarista, que também trata as relações exteriores do Brasil como um assunto de família ou de preferências políticas.
Muitos diplomatas de carreira já desistiram e abandonaram o Department of State, frustrados com o ambiente extremamente negativo ali prevalecente. Diplomatas brasileiros também estão intimidados pelo clima atualmente reinante na Secretaria de Estado, em vista de algumas loucuras sendo propagadas na Casa de Rio Branco.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Fear and Loathing at Pompeo’s State Department

Career diplomats feel betrayed as the secretary of state stays silent on the Ukraine inquiry. But Pompeo remains a star in Republican circles as he eyes a possible Senate run.

Robbie Gramer

Foreign Policy, November 1, 2019, 6:21 PM

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to reporters at the State Department in Washington on March 15.  Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

In 2018, Mike Pompeo was welcomed to the U.S. State Department with open arms by diplomats eager for a secretary who wanted to engage with them and boasted a close personal relationship with the president. Now that very relationship with the White House—and the Ukraine-related impeachment inquiry that is tangled up in it—is driving a wedge between career foreign service officials and a secretary of state who appears to be halfway out the door and possibly eyeing his own future political career.

One by one, senior U.S. diplomats have seen their careers damaged or potentially destroyed as they’ve been compelled to give testimony before Congress over President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to leverage U.S. foreign policy for political gain—while Pompeo has remained largely silent. The latest was Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who was grilled on Capitol Hill this week over his role in removing former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. 

In his confirmation hearing to be the next U.S. ambassador to Russia, Sullivan confirmed that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associates engaged in a concerted campaign to oust Yovanovitch over her resistance to Giuliani’s “shadow” foreign policy, and that he was the one who informed her she was being removed despite serving “admirably and capably.”

“I like John personally, but I think he willingly closed his eyes to the corruption that was happening at the State Department,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told several reporters after the hearing on Wednesday. “I think that’s really unfortunate. He’s a good person, and he should’ve been speaking out.”

Pompeo has declined to defend Yovanovitch in numerous press interviews in the weeks since the impeachment probe started, saying he would not publicly discuss internal personnel matters.

Michael McKinley, a career diplomat and former advisor to Pompeo who recently resigned, reportedly testified that he pushed the secretary to show support for Yovanovitch, but Pompeo declined to do so. McKinley also reportedly testified that Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine, coupled with other unaddressed mismanagement issues at the department, drove him to resign. 

Scrutiny over Pompeo’s handling of the State Department comes as it deals with the fallout from several scandals involving political appointees mistreating or abusing staff. Together with the impeachment probe, these issues have exacerbated the atmosphere of unease and mistrust within the department, according to more than a dozen current and former State Department officials, some of whom spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity.

William Burns, a former career diplomat who served in senior roles in Republican and Democratic administrations, likened the current atmosphere in Foggy Bottom to the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s, considered a historic low point for the State Department in the Cold War. 

Daniel Fried, who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the George W. Bush administration, agreed that the divisions between the White House and State Department were undermining U.S. foreign policy. “In his treatment of Masha Yovanovitch, not only is [Pompeo] failing to protect his people, he’s not protecting the president, as he’s allowing him to make decisions based on misinformation or disinformation,” said Fried. “If the president makes decisions based on what he hears on parts of Fox News, you’ve just made the Kremlin’s job easier.”

Pompeo has pushed back on reports of morale issues. “I see these stories about morale being low. I see things precisely the opposite. I see motivated officers. I’ve watched them perform in Syria this week. I’ve watched them perform in difficult situations during my year and a half as secretary of state,” Pompeo told ABC News in a televised interview on Oct. 20. “I’m incredibly proud of the work they’ve done, and I will always defend them when it’s appropriate.”

On Burns’s assessment, Pompeo responded: “I think Bill Burns must be auditioning to be Elizabeth Warren’s secretary of state.”

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But if diplomats are becoming increasingly disaffected, the person who matters most to Pompeo’s stature in the administration—Trump—is not. 

Unlike other former Trump officials, Pompeo has thus far weathered the chaotic world and revolving door of Trump’s Washington, where scandals and abrupt sackings have taken out a slew of cabinet officials before him. 

In stark contrast to his predecessor, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Pompeo has always remained in lockstep with the president and, perhaps just as importantly, never found himself on the wrong side of a Trump tweet. “I argue with everyone,” Trump said in an interview with New York Magazine last year. “Except Pompeo … I don’t think I’ve had an argument with Pompeo!”

His close relationship with the president signals a bright political future—including nagging rumors he will run for Senate in Kansas in 2020—even if his popularity inside the Beltway has taken a hit. 

Though the impeachment scandal has dragged the State Department into the fiercest hyperpartisan battle yet in Trump’s presidency, Pompeo has steadfastly defended the president and denied Trump did anything wrong in pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate potential Democratic rivals. 

Despite multiple State Department employees testifying about Trump’s pressure campaign toward Ukraine, there is no evidence that it has damaged Pompeo’s personal relationship with the president, according to a source close to the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the two men’s relationship. Indeed, the continued strength of that relationship has important political implications for Pompeo. 

“He’s inner circle with the president and clearly that bolsters his credentials with the base,” the source said. 

And if Trump has stoked tensions and rifts within some factions of the Republican Party, Pompeo has not. “Conservatives have a great deal of trust in Secretary Pompeo. He is very well respected and well liked in all elements of the Republican Party,” said Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. “He’s proven to be one of the president’s most trusted and closest advisors at the cabinet level.”

For months, top Republican figures have pushed Pompeo to run for Senate in his adopted home state of Kansas in 2020, a potential stepping stone to a future presidential race. Pompeo has repeatedly denied he would run and said he is focusing on his current job. But he has made four trips to Kansas this year, some ostensibly on official secretary of state duties and apparently on the State Department’s tab. Pompeo was in Kansas last weekend during the raid on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for a wedding of a close family friend.

The trips to Kansas have fueled rumors that he is still considering a Senate run, and by doing interviews with local TV and radio stations, it’s obvious Pompeo is trying to stay a familiar face to Kansas voters. 

Republican strategists expect that if Pompeo runs, he will clear the Republican field in the state, perhaps with the exception of Kris Kobach, Kansas’s lightning-rod former secretary of state who Democrats believe could hand them a victory in the traditionally Republican state. Pompeo, on the other hand, would likely win the state easily. 

And there are good political incentives for Pompeo to leave the Trump administration, as it would put his political destiny in his own hands, regardless of whether Trump wins reelection in 2020. “He’s an incredibly ambitious person who clearly has plans for himself beyond even the secretary of state’s office,” said one Senate Republican strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

“If Trump wins, [Pompeo] can be one of the administration’s biggest allies and supporters in the Senate,” the strategist said. “If Trump does not win reelection, then he has a hub, a safe landing spot, and a position of relevance where he could plan a run for higher office.” 

While a slew of career officials have been subpoenaed to testify before lawmakers in the ongoing impeachment probe, Pompeo has thus far been able to keep himself at arm’s length from the rapidly escalating investigation, even as questions loom as to what he knew and whether he made any efforts to curb the back channel to Ukraine that was carved out by the president and his allies. 

Pompeo was made aware of Giuliani’s efforts to push unproven allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s role in corrupt practices in Ukraine as early as March of this year, when Giuliani sent the secretary of state a packet of documents outlining his allegations. Giuliani told Foreign Policy that, in a follow-up phone call with Pompeo, the secretary said he would pass them on to the appropriate people to investigate. 

William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine after Yovanovitch was removed, testified that he and other officials were alarmed by the push to withhold aid from Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to investigate the Bidens. The White House press secretary lashed out at Taylor in response, saying “far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats” were driving the impeachment process.

Pompeo has yet to affirm or reject the White House’s characterization of Taylor as a radical unelected bureaucrat. 

The State Department did not respond to several requests for comment for this story. 

Rep. Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says the Trump administration is mistreating career diplomats and lays the blame for the current climate in the State Department squarely at the feet of Pompeo, who once pledged to restore the department’s “swagger.” 

“For all of Secretary Pompeo’s blustery talk of swagger, I’ve never seen an administration treat our diplomats and civil servants so poorly. Since day one of the Trump presidency, the White House has tried to gut the budget for diplomacy, and State Department personnel have been targets for abuse, harassment, and retaliation,” Engel told Foreign Policy. “Rather than putting a stop to it, Secretary Pompeo has permitted a culture of impunity to fester and even tried to intimidate witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.”

Pompeo’s future political ambitions have also drawn fire from lawmakers overseeing the State Department and even some officials within the department. They charge that the secretary is more focused on the next job than his current one at a time when the department is in the crosshairs of a political firefight.

Pompeo has repeatedly denied the rumors and said he is focused on his job as secretary of state. He has also said he is unfazed by the impeachment inquiry, which he has criticized as being unjust and unfair to the president. “Whatever the noise is in Washington or whatever some journalist wants to ask about some storyline that’s going on, the American people should know that the State Department will continue to do its mission,” he told the Wichita Eagle during his latest visit to Kansas on Oct. 24. 

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, believes Pompeo is improperly mixing business with politics. On Oct. 29, Menendez sent a letter to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency, requesting that it investigate whether Pompeo violated regulations that prohibit federal employees from using their post in government for partisan political activities. 

Pompeo fired back at the accusations in an interview with the Mid-America Network news outlet on Friday, calling Menendez’s letter “just all silliness.”

“I think in Senator Menendez’s mind it’s probably hard for him to imagine why anybody would want to go to Kansas. It’s the kind of left-coast, elitist liberalism that can’t understand how someone would want to go to the amazing place like Kansas,” Pompeo said.

Staff writer Amy Mackinnon contributed to this report. 

Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer

Colum Lynch is a senior staff writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @columlynch

Elias Groll is a staff writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @EliasGroll