boutons_deux
08-17-2017, 06:04 AM
According to Axios’s Jonathan Swan, Bannon did not realize that he had agreed to an interview (https://www.axios.com/bannons-colleagues-disturbed-by-interview-with-left-wing-publication-2473835346.html): “Apparently Bannon never thought that the journalist might take his (very newsworthy) comments and turn them into a story.”
“Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element.
I think the media plays it up too much, and
we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more. These guys are a collection of clowns.”
It’s a big shift for Bannon, who just last summer proudly declared Breitbart, which he used to run, the “platform for the alt-right.” (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news/)
Bannon told Kuttner he'd "followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in same boat when it comes to China." Bannon's not wrong there. Kuttner is a vocal critic of international trade deals and in particular of China’s trade behavior. “If the Western democracies had a realistic conception of their long-term interest, they would add high tariffs to Chinese goods until China began behaving like a normal commercial nation,” Kuttner wrote in 2009 (http://prospect.org/article/playing-ourselves-fools-0). “The proceeds could be used to rebuild our own industry.”
“To me,” Bannon said,
“the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover.”
Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”
The Trump administration might want to stay on China’s good side to try to push North Korea to stop missile tests and slow its nuclear program.
But Bannon suggests that for him, at least, this is not a priority:
Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote.
Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.
Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it.
Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.
He was forthright with Kuttner about
the resistance he’s received to his protectionist views on China from people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn:
"That’s a fight I fight every day here. We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”
He said he was planning to oust several lower-down State and Defense Department officials who might object to economic war with China;
While Bannon dismissed his would-be allies in the alt-right or ethno-nationalist right, he still argued for the importance of focusing politics around race: "The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
he’s given us a surprisingly detailed a revealing glimpse into his thought process, and the policy agenda that at least some of the White House is interested in pursuing.
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/16/16159668/steve-bannon-china-economic-war-north-korea-charlottesville-american-prospect
“Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element.
I think the media plays it up too much, and
we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more. These guys are a collection of clowns.”
It’s a big shift for Bannon, who just last summer proudly declared Breitbart, which he used to run, the “platform for the alt-right.” (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news/)
Bannon told Kuttner he'd "followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in same boat when it comes to China." Bannon's not wrong there. Kuttner is a vocal critic of international trade deals and in particular of China’s trade behavior. “If the Western democracies had a realistic conception of their long-term interest, they would add high tariffs to Chinese goods until China began behaving like a normal commercial nation,” Kuttner wrote in 2009 (http://prospect.org/article/playing-ourselves-fools-0). “The proceeds could be used to rebuild our own industry.”
“To me,” Bannon said,
“the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover.”
Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”
The Trump administration might want to stay on China’s good side to try to push North Korea to stop missile tests and slow its nuclear program.
But Bannon suggests that for him, at least, this is not a priority:
Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote.
Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.
Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it.
Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.
He was forthright with Kuttner about
the resistance he’s received to his protectionist views on China from people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn:
"That’s a fight I fight every day here. We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”
He said he was planning to oust several lower-down State and Defense Department officials who might object to economic war with China;
While Bannon dismissed his would-be allies in the alt-right or ethno-nationalist right, he still argued for the importance of focusing politics around race: "The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
he’s given us a surprisingly detailed a revealing glimpse into his thought process, and the policy agenda that at least some of the White House is interested in pursuing.
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/16/16159668/steve-bannon-china-economic-war-north-korea-charlottesville-american-prospect