WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2016 - Donald Trump is shifting sharply
on the immigration issue, but he isn’t pulling his punches on trade policy.
During a speech in
Tampa, Fla., yesterday, he laid out a seven-step trade plan that includes
withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, renegotiating the North
American Free Trade Agreement and going after China with trade enforcement
actions.
Trump specifically promised to label China as a currency
manipulator, and he repeated his threat to impose tariffs on Chinese
exports.
“I’m going to use every lawful presidential power to remedy
trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with federal
law …. They have to understand we're not playing games any longer,” Trump
said.
Vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, as usual, takes a
softer approach on the issue. He assured an audience in Charlotte, N.C., that
Trump wasn’t interested in “walking away from free trade.” What Trump is
talking about, Pence says, is “having tough negotiators and holding our trading
partners to their word and their commitments.”
Trump effect: GOP voters turning hard against trade. That
said, supporters of the TPP and of U.S. trade policy generally have to be
very concerned about the growing skepticism about trade deals among Republican
voters. According to a Pew
poll conducted this month, 58 percent of Trump’s supporters now see
the TPP as bad for the United States, while 55 percent of Hillary Clinton’s backers
think it would be a good thing.
The poll also found that Republican opposition to free trade
agreements has increased significantly over the past year. In May 2015, a
month before Trump announced his candidacy, and just before a series of
congressional votes on trade promotion authority, 51 percent of Republicans
said free trade agreements were good for the country. Only 39 percent said they
had been bad. Now, 61 percent of GOP voters say trade deals hurt the country.
That’s a stunning turnaround, clearly attributable to the
Trump campaign. Republican lawmakers are going to be hard-pressed to ignore
those numbers.
Trump open to letting illegal immigrants stay. Trump
appears to be reversing himself on the issue of deporting illegal immigrants.
In the second part of an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired last
night, Trump indicated he was open to allowing illegal immigrants to stay in
the country. “They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes … there’s no
amnesty, but we work with them,” Trump said.
He ruled out a path to citizenship, but the position he
described is very similar to what Jeb Bush and other rivals were proposing
during the GOP primaries.
During an earlier interview with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Trump
suggested he would generally follow President Obama’s deportation policy.
“We’re going to go through the process like they are now, perhaps with a lot
more energy,” Trump said.
Obama’s policy has largely been good for agriculture in
recent years because he has shifted enforcement resources away from the U.S.
interior to the border.
Trump pivot met with skepticism. Latino and immigration
reform activists say they aren’t buying Trump’s new tone on deporting illegal
immigrants. “There were no new policies that he put forward. … He just
changed the way that he talked about it,” said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director
of the advocacy group America’s Voice.
Rocio Saenz, international executive vice president of the
Service Employees International Union, told reporters that “nobody should
believe” that Trump is rethinking his policy. “We all know what he said about
immigrants and mass deportations.”
USDA, EPA offer broadband aid to coal towns. USDA and
EPA are spending $400,000 to help expand broadband service in towns hurt by the
steep downturn in the coal industry. The “Cool and Connected ”
initiative is part of a broader plan announced by the White House to target
nearly $40 million in new aid into struggling parts of Appalachia.
The announcement comes as Hillary Clinton is struggling to
overcome accusations that Democrats have been carrying on a war against coal.
The 10 towns targeted by the USDA-EPA initiative include four communities in
Pennsylvania and Ohio, two states that Trump has targeted. A fifth community is
in Virginia, another swing state.
Tackling food safety with - a poem. USDA is circulating
an employee-written poem that the department hopes will encourage kids to keep
their hands clean and avoid food-borne illnesses. Or getting sick at all.
The poem, “My Favorite Class
is Lunch,” includes the message that “soap and warm water get rid of germs
and disease; I count to twenty when I scrub or I sing the ABC’s.”
But the poem is clearly aimed at parents, not just kids,
with a not-so-subtle message about the need to make sure their lunch meat stays
cool: “I open up my lunch box, chicken sandwich—I’m thrilled! And Mom threw in
an ice pack to keep all my food chilled.” (Your Daybreak editor wonders how
often parents actually do that.)
The poem, written by Janell Goodwin, a technical information
specialist with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, also is being made
available inposter
format.
He said it. “They'll like us better than they do now.
They don’t like us.” - Donald Trump, on how China will react to his promised
trade enforcement actions
