Tariff on Mexico will turn back the clock

Originally published in the Batesville Daily Guard

Well, it looks like there’s a plan to build “the wall.”

By “the wall” I mean the one proposed by President Trump to run the length of the border with Mexico.

Trump promised to make Mexico pay for it. Mexico, of course, responded by saying “as if!”

That threw a ratchet into the gears of the plan, though I’m not sure who expected the Mexican government to say “OK, we’ll do it!”

Up until a week ago, a lot of people believed the whole deal with the wall was going to be dropped. After all, it would be very expensive, $15-$25 billion and up to $16 million for each mile, and Mexico wasn’t going to pay for it. Most American also don’t favor it, with both Pew and Gallup finding that support from Americans as a whole was below 40 percent.

So, realistically, the wall could’ve been dropped with little repercussion to Trump. It might have actually been a chance for him to gain some ground in public opinion, which has so far shown him to be rather unpopular.

But he persisted and now he’s come forward with a plan. A plan to tax all imports from Mexico by 20 percent. Despite his claims though, Mexico still won’t be paying for the wall.

Instead, American importers will. That, in turn, means American consumers, also known as you and me.

Now, I hear some people saying “Well, we can just stop buying stuff from Mexico.”

And I’ll say, “No, you can’t.”

Mexico is our third-largest trading partner. While you many not see as many “Made in Mexico” labels as you do “Made in China” we do import billions and billions of dollars worth of goods from Mexico that we can’t avoid.

In 2015, the U.S. imported $74 billion in vehicles, $63 billion in electrical machinery, $49 billion in machinery, $21 billion in agricultural products, $14 billion in mineral fuels (especially oil) and $12 billion in optical and medical instruments. That’s only the biggest, there is lots, lots more. You know, what you’d expect from a neighbor who happens to be your third-biggest trading partner. 

So, enjoy your avocados while you can before they double in price.

Realistically, those jobs won’t “come back” (many of them weren’t here in the first place) to the U.S. Instead, they’ll just move to other countries where even a 20-35 percent tariff won’t make the imports more expensive than American goods. Americans will just keep paying more.

Plus, it would actually cost many Americans their jobs. If stores like Walmart and Costco have to pay more on imports, then they will make up the cost by cutting jobs or lowering salaries. The consumers will just wind up paying more, meaning that other parts of the economy will be hurt.

Also, trying to make Mexico fund the wall will likely result in more people trying to cross the border illegally. From 2007 to 2014, the number of undocumented people, not all of them Mexican of course, has fallen by more than a million people. Mexicans are leaving the U.S. for Mexico.

Why? Because wrecking a country’s economy can do that. 

What our president and many of his supporters don’t seem to realize is that immigration of Mexican people has actually reversed over the last few years. 

Why would they go back to Mexico, a place the president has painted as slightly more Mad Max than he has the U.S.?

Well, two reasons: The Great Recession of 2008 and the growth of the economy in Mexico. Thanks to Mexico’s growth, many Mexicans are living at a similar standing as their American counterparts across the border. 

This isn’t to say we don’t have an issue with illegal border crossings. Thousands of people make their way through Mexico from Central America (particularly Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) every year. Some are seeking opportunity but many are fleeing crime and violence. It’s been an issue we’ve been working with Mexico on in regards to the issue because it means that they have an undocumented immigrant problem there too. This adds up to “Mexico stops working with us, both American and Mexican law enforcement lose cross-border assets and crime goes up.”

If we continue down this road, what will be the result? We’re not only going to have to pay for a wall, but we’re going to also have to expand our border patrol too because if Mexico stops working with us, we will have to pick up the slack. 

At the end of the day, though, and like the now much-circulated meme says “Problem: A $25 billion wall. Solution: $36 ladder.”

So, is it really worth it?

Note: On Thursday Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the 20 percent tariff was just an “option.” — JP

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Changes – Politics move like a see-saw

Originally published in the Batesville Daily Guard

We are going to see a lot of changes in 2017 — changes that are going to make some people very happy, some very unhappy and others just frustrated with the process in general.

Over the last few decades, our government has become a see-saw of sorts as the two big parties, Democrats and Republicans, move away from the middle and embrace more narrow ideals of what is considered “liberal” and “conservative.” The election of 2016 drove that home with two huge personalities, President-elect Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, essentially becoming the human embodiments of the bases, or at least the most enthusiastic, of their respective parties.

People who live and breathe politics, particularly those who think in terms of “right vs. left” don’t have a problem with this. For them, it’s more a battle of good vs. evil and shaping the government to fit a vision instead of filling the potholes and making sure the trains run on time. It’s sort of like the “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” cliché, except instead of throwing the baby out, the argument is to either give the kid a bath in a frozen lake or a boiling kettle.

That sounds a little extreme, but we seem to be in pretty extreme times, at least politically. It seems we are rapidly approaching a chaotic time when we are going to see things built up in one election thrown out in the next and then the things built during that government are thrown out with the next. That’s not what anyone would call stability. It’s just a mess.

There’s always the talk about the need of people to support a third party, but the minor parties of the U.S. tend to have even more extreme philosophies. Americans constantly poll that they do want a third party, but none that exist really seem to offer what they want.

What do they want?

Probably some sort of calming influence, a balance of sorts.

In most democracies, there are two major parties like ours, usually center-left and center-right and a lot of fringe parties. But there are also often third parties who may not be the same size as the big two, but not as small as the fringe, that take more moderate positions and make themselves necessary for the larger parties to form a governing coalition. In a way, acting as sort of a middle weight that slides slightly to balance the board and keep it from becoming a seesaw of back and forth policies — stability you could say.

Right now, it would seem an opportune time for such a thing. The 2016 election saw the lowest voter turnout since 1996. In 1996, only 53.5 percent of voter-age Americans turned out for the election. In 2016 that number was 55 percent, much lower than 64 percent of voter-age Americans who cast ballots in 2008. Those numbers say people are either indifferent or just turned off by the current offerings.

And really, who can blame them? With people on both sides of the political aisle more interested in making pronouncements or condemnations, those who want to be outside of partisan fights are either ignored or attacked. That does not get them interested in turning out for the polls.

Of course, a viable third-party probably won’t happen anytime soon. In the U.S., third parties have a habit of not going for modest goals — like running for local, state and congressional offices — but instead seem to center around capturing the presidency.

Sure, capturing the presidency is probably the ultimate goal of any political party, but sometimes four or five people in Congress can make as big of a difference when it comes to things that affect people’s lives as well as balancing partisan ideology.

It may only be a pipe dream, but I do hope to one day see a government where there are some adults in the room.

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Primaries test endurance, patience

By Joseph Price • June 22, 2016

You could say the worst is over.

Originally published in the Batesville Daily Guard

General election season is upon us. Pretty soon, we’ll be bombarded by nonstop advertisements — not only from the Clinton and Trump campaigns, but also the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state, county and municipal campaigns.

Sure, we’ll get a short break once the election is over with, but probably not for long. It seems that campaigns start earlier and earlier every cycle. This time around, we had candidates forming exploratory and political action committees as soon as November 2014 for this election.

The first official candidate for the 2016 presidential election, Ted Cruz, declared his candidacy on March 23, 2015. That’s 596, or 1.6 years, before the election! That early start didn’t pay off for him as no one is bothering to talk about him since he ended his campaign in May.

Of the remaining major party candidates, Hillary Clinton has been at it the longest, declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on April 12, 2015, or 436 days ago, and Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination June 16, 2015. I might as well mention Sanders because he’s not officially ended his campaign; he’s been in it since April 30, 2015.

Of the two larger, so-called minor parties, Gary Johnson declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party on Jan. 6, 2016, and Jill Stein declared hers for the Green on June 22, 2015.

Before this action, if that’s what you want to call debates and speeches, kicked off, potential candidates were busy behind the scenes trying to round up donors and support. Our system of election still relies on money, like most other developed countries, so we’re not unique in that. What sets us apart is that we have a system that limits donation limits but not spending limits.

Of course, there are loopholes in regards to that spending, best known as Super PACS which raise and spend as much money as they want as long as they don’t give it directly to a candidate or other political committees that give directly to candidates, nor coordinate how it spends its money with a federal candidate.

But that’s behind the scenes. The money exchanging and handshakes aren’t really that interesting to people, unless of course, somebody shines a light on some excess or finds contributors with some particularly interesting baggage.

I really lay a lot of blame on the broadcast media for making these election seasons feel so long. They’re holding the first of their numerous debates earlier and earlier every year. This year, Fox News kicked off the debate season on Aug. 6, 2015, with its Republican debate. There was so many candidates that they divided it into an opening act, featuring lower-polling candidates and a main event featuring the Top 10.

With 16 total candidates, it was the equivalent of a mosh pit where any new arrivals would find the circle too crowded to push their way to the spotlight, being shoved to the peripheral instead.

The Democrats were able to avoid much of this. They still had room on the stage when they held their first debate on Oct. 3, 2016, with just five candidates. Within just a couple of months, it was down to just two.

For me, the debates were one of the most excruciating parts of the process. Honestly, I’m hard-pressed to find one debate interesting enough to watch, let alone five or six. But, big media and political pundits love sound bytes and they got plenty of them by digging out a few minutes from each of these snoozers.

And finally, the big culprits are the primaries themselves. It seems that the states that are not Iowa, New Hampshire, Carolina and Nevada keep trying to one up each other for who can be earliest, though they can’t ever be scheduled before March. The earlier your primary, the more influence your state has after all.

So instead of having these primaries arranged in some orderly fashion that makes sense, they’re held on different days of the week, are sometimes caucuses, sometimes open or closed — just all over the place. All that seems to be for sure is that California is the last one for Republicans and Washington, D.C., is the last for Democrats.

After all, it’s pretty rare that you hear, “It’s down to what California decides!”

But admit it, by the time it’s over in June, you probably stopped paying attention. Your state primary was in March after all.

Personally, I’m not a fan of primaries. This year was a primary example (yuk yuk) of why that’s the case. It’s one of the examples of where I’d prefer either reform or things go back to the “good old days.”

By the “good old days” I’m referring to those smoke-filled back rooms where deals were made between party bosses or those battles on the convention floors between delegates who were actually members of the party.

Sure, the open primaries may be more democratic, but it’s become pretty obvious that often what the voters who turn out want and what party leaders want are often different.

It was not more obvious this year. The establishment by and large wanted someone that was not Donald Trump, while the people who turned out for primaries, who were not all card-carrying Republicans, did. There was a similar story with Clinton, the establishment wanted her, the primary voters made it not-so-clear cut.

So I often want to ask party leaders “if you don’t want these candidates then why do you let them run? If you’ve already got your preference, then why bother with a primary?”

Looking ahead, do we want this same endurance challenge in 2020 and 2024? Instead of this exhausting and boring primary season, can’t we just let the parties battle it out at their respective convention?

Maybe we can talk about that before the 2020 primary season starts Nov. 9.