João Micaelo, then the 14-year-old son of Portuguese immigrants, clearly remembered the Asian boy in a tracksuit and Nike shoes walking into 6A, a class of 22 students at his small public school in Bern,Switzerland, in 1998. The kids were already seated at their desks when the new boy was brought in and introduced as Pak Un, the son of North Korean diplomats. There was a spare seat next to João, so the new boy, who simply went by the name of Un, sat in it. The 12-year-old had a pudding-bowl haircut and the start of what would one day become a very pronounced double chin.
The pair soon became close, bonding because of their seat placement but also because neither was particularly academic. In sixth grade, classes were split into two streams, and both Un and João were sent to the group of academically weaker students. Un was embarrassed when he was called to answer questions in front of the class—not because he didn’t know the answers necessarily but because he couldn’t express himself. So João helped him with his German homework, while the newcomer helped his new friend with math. João remembers Un as quiet but said that he was very decisive and capable of making his point.
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It wasn’t until years later that João and his other schoolmates from Bern realized who the new kid was: Kim Jong Un, the future leader of North Korea.
When he was announced as his father’s heir in 2010, some analysts hoped that, having spent four years in Switzerland during his formative teenage years, Kim Jong Un would be a more open-minded leader of North Korea. That he might embark on reforms that, while not turning his family’s Stalinist state into a liberal democracy, might make it a little less repressive. After all, in many ways,Kim’s time in Switzerland reveals an adolescence and education that were not so different from typical Western ones: There was a love of basketball, a curriculum that required him to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, and a wardrobe packed with brand-name tracksuits (jeans were still out of the question).
But these formative years, of which this is the most complete account to date, might have had the opposite effect on the future leader. Kim’s years in Switzerland, during which he was enrolled in both a tony private school and a small German-speaking public school, would have taught him that if he were to live in the outside world, he would have been entirely unremarkable. A nobody. Far from persuading him to change his country, these years would have shown him the necessity of perpetuating the system that had turned him, his father and grandfather into deities. The years also reveal some of the same interests and temperamental characteristics that would come to define the man who is the biggest foreign-policy thorn in the United States’ side. For instance, the same Kim Jong Un who had his uncle and half-brother killed was also known as a teenager for lashing out at his classmates when they spoke in German, a language that he had struggled to master himself.
Kim Jong Un was still very much a child when he departed for Bern, the capital of Switzerland, in the summer of 1996 to join his older brother Kim Jong Chol at school. He found himself in a chocolate-box picturesque city that that felt more like a quaint town than an international capital. Bern was famous for its clock tower, known as the Zytglogge, which had led a young patent clerk called Albert Einstein to develop the theory of relativity some 90 years earlier. Einstein, riding home from work on a tram one evening in 1905, solved the mystery of “space-time” that had been bothering him for years.
The August that Kim Jong Un arrived in Switzerland, Mission Impossible was in theaters, and Trainspotting was about to open. Top-of-the-line personal computers used floppy disks and ran on MS-DOS.
The North Korean princeling emerged from his cloistered childhood into this new, open world. It wasn’t his first time abroad—he had traveled to Europe and Japan before—but it was the first time he had lived outside the confines of the North Korean royal court.
He joined his older brother, who had been living in Liebefeld, a decidedly suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Bern, for two years with their maternal aunt, Ko Yong Suk, her husband, Ri Gang, and their three children. “We lived in a normal home and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother,” Kim’s aunt told me when I tracked her down in the United States almost 20 years later. “Their friends would come over, and I would make them snacks. It was a very normal childhood with birthday parties and gifts and Swiss kids coming over to play.”
They spoke Korean at home and ate Korean food, and the boys’ friends didn’t know that Imo—as Jong Chol and Jong Un called her—was Korean for “Aunt,” not for “Mom.”
They enjoyed living in Europe and having money. Their family photo albums contain pictures of the future leader of North Korea swimming in the Mediterranean on the French Riviera, dining al fresco in Italy, going to Euro Disney in Paris—it wasn’t Kim Jong Un’s first trip there; his mother had already taken him a few years before—and skiing in the Swiss Alps. They relaxed at a luxury hotel in Interlaken, the swanky resort town outside Bern that is the gateway to the Jungfrau mountains and home to a famous amusement park.
All the members of the Kim family had carefully constructed identities to conceal who they really were. Ri was registered as a driver at the North Korean Embassy and went by the name Pak Nam Chol. Pak is one of the most common Korean surnames after Kim. Ko, in keeping with Korean practice whereby women keep their surnames after marriage, had paperwork naming her as Chong Yong Hye.
Kim Jong Chol was officially Pak Chol, and Kim Jong Un was Pak Un. But the aliases were not new. All of them had been accredited to the North Korean mission to the United Nations in Geneva since 1991, and these diplomatic documents would have allowed them to travel freely in Europe.
Under this identity, Kim Jong Un settled in Liebefeld, where the architecture is more ’70s concrete block than Alpine village. It is not dissimilar to the brutalist style of Pyongyang. Behind the main street in an “industrial alley,” as the sign puts it, next door to a large wine trading company that looks like a monastery, is No. 10 Kirchstrasse. This was Kim Jong Un’s home while he was in Switzerland. It’s in a three-story, light-orange sandstone building surrounded by hydrangeas.
The North Korean regime had bought six apartments in the building shortly after their construction in 1989 for a price of 4 million Swiss francs—a little over $4 million at the time—for the family and some of the other North Korean dignitaries living in the Swiss capital.
The apartment was more modest than he was used to back home, with no pictures on the walls, but the teenage Kim Jong Un had gadgets his classmates could only dream of: a mini-disc player, which was the cutting-edge way to store music in the years before iPods; a Sony PlayStation; and lots of movies that hadn’t yet been released in theaters. The few friends who went to his apartment loved watching his action films, especially those featuring Jackie Chan or the latest James Bond.
In Switzerland, Kim Jong Un could live a relatively normal existence. He joined his older brother at the International School of Berne, a private, English-language school attended by the children of diplomats and other expats in the capital. Tuition cost more than $20,000 a year.
No one batted an eyelid when Kim Jong Un, sometimes wearing the school T-shirt, complete with Swiss flag and a bear, the symbol of the capital, was delivered to school in a chauffeur-driven car. Many other diplomats’ kids arrived at school the same way.
The school, whose student population today spans about 40 nationalities, touts itself as being “perfectly situated in a neutral country.” Indeed, Switzerland, famous for its discretion about everything from bank accounts to the schooling of dictators’ children, was the ideal location for the secretive North Koreans.
When the news first emerged that Kim Jong Un would be the successor to Kim Jong Il, many former acquaintances, who had known both brothers under different names and were now unsure which one had been named the successor, reported tidbits of information that were in fact about his brother. Classmates recounted how the North Korean was introverted but was relatively fluent in English, but it turned out they were remembering the wrong North Korean, “Pak Chol” instead of “Pak Un.”
One snippet—a penchant for the films of Jean-Claude van Damme—did, however, appear to apply to the two boys, both of whom apparently loved to watch movies featuring the Belgian action star. In a coincidence that would play out later, van Damme co-starred in a Hollywood movie called “Double Team” with a certain basketballer named Dennis Rodman. The film came out in 1997, while Kim Jong Un was in Switzerland.
Kim Jong Un was obsessed with basketball. He had a hoop outside the apartment and would play out there often, sometimes making more noise than the neighbors would have preferred.
Every day at 5 p.m., when the school bell rang, Kim Jong Un would head to the basketball courts at his school or at the high school in the nearby city of Lerbermatt, less than a 10-minute walk away. He always wore the same outfit for basketball: an authentic Chicago Bulls top with Michael Jordan’s number—23—and Bulls shorts and his Air Jordan shoes. His ball was also top of the line: a Spalding with the official mark of the NBA.
Kim’s competitive side came out on the basketball court. He could be aggressive and often indulged in trash talk. He was serious on the court, hardly ever laughing or even talking, just focused on the game. When things went badly for him, he would curse or even pound his head against the wall.
From his base in Europe, he was even able to see some of the greats. He had been to Paris to see an NBA exhibition game and had photos of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.
It was his mother, Ko Yong Hui, who first sparked his interest in the sport. There’s an old tale that Korean mothers, North and South, like to tell their children: If you play basketball, you’ll grow taller.
Kim Jong Un was short as a child, and his father was not a tall man—he was only 5 foot 3, and famously wore platform shoes to try to compensate—so Ko encouraged her son to play basketball in the hope the tale was true. He grew to be 5 foot 7, so maybe it worked a bit.
She was thrilled to see her son taking to basketball, a sport that she believed would help him clear his mind and loosen his childhood obsession with planes and engines. Instead, Kim Jong Un’s mother and aunt soon saw that basketball had become an addiction, too—the boy was sleeping with his basketball in his bed—and one that came at the expense of his studies. His mother would visit Bern regularly to scold her son for playing too much and studying too little.
She arrived on a passport that declared her to be Chong Il Son, assigned to the North Korean mission at the United Nations in Geneva since 1987, but the Swiss knew exactly who she was. After all, she arrived in the country in a Russian-made Ilyushin 62 jet bearing the insignia of Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline. The plane, which bore the tail number P882, was for VIPs only. It even had a full bedroom onboard.
All sorts of bags and merchandise would be loaded on and off the plane, watched carefully by Swiss intelligence. They monitored Ko Yong Hui closely, keeping records of everything from her shopping expeditions on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most exclusive shopping avenues, to her hospital bills at fancy private clinics on Lake Geneva.
They also knew who her children were. In private conversation, they called Kim Jong Chol “the tall, skinny one” and Kim Jong Un “the short, fat one.” But the new Swiss attorney general, Carla Del Ponte (who would later become chief prosecutor in the international criminal tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda), had forbidden the Swiss authorities to monitor the children. In famously discreet Switzerland, they were allowed to just be children— even if they were the children of one of the world’s most notorious tyrants.
But two years into his stay in Switzerland, Kim Jong Un’s world was turned upside. His mother had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and was starting intensive medical treatment in France. Her prognosis wasn’t good.
The illness could also prove terminal for Kim Jong Un’s guardians, his maternal aunt and uncle.Their link to the regime, the relationship that had vaulted them into this privileged position, was becoming weaker by the day.
They decided to abandon their charges and make a dash for freedom.
So after nightfall on Sunday, May 17, Kim Jong Un’s aunt and uncle packed their three children into a taxi and went to the U.S. Embassy. Only their oldest, who was then 14, the same age as Kim Jong Un, knew what was going to happen next.
When they arrived at the embassy, they explained that they were North Koreans, that Ko was the leader’s sister-in-law, and that they were seeking asylum in the United States. The U.S. government didn’t know at that stage who Kim Jong Un was, so Ko and Ri didn’t initially mention that part. They were granted asylum in the United States and settled down in Middle America, started a dry-cleaning store like so many other Korean immigrants and watched their children flourish in their new environment.
Kim Jong Un’s mother lived for six more years, dying in a Paris hospital in 2004.
***
When he returned to Bern after spending the summer of 1998 in North Korea, Kim Jong Un did not go back to the private international school. Instead, he made a new start at the German-speaking public school in his neighborhood, Schule Liebefeld Steinhölzli. That way, he wouldn’t have to explain why his “parents” had changed.
The school was less than 400 yards from the apartment block where the North Koreans lived, a five-minute walk down the concrete staircase, past the supermarket and other shops, and around the traffic circle.
In the late 1990s, When Kim Jong Un attended the school, a cluster of two- and three-story functionally designed buildings, it had only 200 students and nine classes. The education department liked to have many small schools so that no student would have to travel too far each day.
When he first enrolled at the school in Liebefeld, Kim Jong Un started in a “reception” class for children who did not speak German, spending several months learning his lessons in German but at a slower pace with simpler instruction.
To find out more about what the young North Korean learned in school, I took the bus to Köniz one day and visited the municipality office. Marisa Vifian, head of the Köniz education department, pulled out a big white binder containing the school curriculum from the 1990s. There was the usual lineup of classes—German, math, science, health, foreign languages, music, art and sports—as well as units like “The World Around Us,” which taught world religions and cultures.
Once he finished in the preparatory reception class, Kim Jong Un joined the regular sixth-grade class.
While his friend João remembered Kim Jong Un as “ambitious but not aggressive,” according to an unpublished interview with a Swiss journalist, other students remember the new kid being forceful because he had trouble communicating. While lessons were in High German, the more formal variety of the language spoken in official situations in Switzerland, families and friends spoke to each other in Swiss German, former classmates recalled. This is technically a dialect, but to an outsider, it sounds so different that it might as well be Dutch. It was frustrating to Kim Jong Un, who resented his inability to understand. “He kicked us in the shins and even spat at us,” said one former classmate.
In addition to the communication problems, the other students tended to think of Kim Jong Un as a weird outsider, his school friends recall, not least because the North Korean always wore tracksuits, never jeans, the standard uniform of teenagers the world over. In North Korea, jeans are a symbol of the despised capitalists.
One classmate remembered him wearing Adidas tracksuits with three stripes down the side and the newest pair of Nike Air Jordans. The other kids in the school could only dream of having such shoes, said Nikola Kovacevic, another former classmate who often played basketball with Kim after school and estimates a pair cost more than $200 in Switzerland at the time.
A class photo from that time shows the teenagers decked out in an array of 1990s fashion, with chambray shirts and oversized sweatshirts, assembled under a tree in the schoolyard. Kim Jong Un stands in the center of the back row wearing a tracksuit, gray and black with red piping and big red letters reading “NIKE” down the sleeve. He’s staring unsmiling at the camera.
Another photo taken around this time shows Kim with a smile, wearing a silver necklace over his black T-shirt and looking like a typical teenager. Another reveals some fuzz on his top lip and a smattering of pimples on his cheek.
As he moved into the upper years at school, Kim Jong Un improved his German enough that he was able to get by in class. Even the girl whom he had kicked and spat at conceded that he “thawed” over time as he became more sociable.
Still, he remained introverted. At a time when teenagers are usually pushing boundaries, Kim Jong Un was no party animal or playboy in training. He didn’t go to school camp, parties, or discos, and he didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.
Kim Jong Un “absolutely avoided contact with girls,” the former classmate said, adding that she never had a substantial conversation with him. “He was a loner and didn’t share anything about his private life.”
His test scores were never great, but Kim Jong Un went on to pass the seventh and eighth grades and was there for a part of the ninth grade at the high school, the Köniz education authorities confirmed.
The education that Kim received in Switzerland presented a worldview very different from the one he experienced in North Korea. Kim Jong Un’s lessons included human rights, women’s rights, and the development of democracy. One unit was even called “Happiness, Suffering, Life and Death.” Students learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. There was a strong emphasis on cultural diversity; religious, ethnic, and social groups; the rights of human beings; and standing in solidarity with the disadvantaged.
It’s hard to know what Kim Jong Un thought during these lessons. No such rights existed in North Korea. But this might not have been as jarring to Kim as it sounds because he had encountered very few North Koreans and almost none in situations outside those that were carefully choreographed to show smiling citizens who beamed contentment at him. Kim could have told himself that his people didn’t need all those fine ideals because they were evidently very happy under his father’s leadership.
Anyway, Kim Jong Un didn’t stay at school for much longer.
One day, around Easter 2001, with only a couple of months to go until he completed ninth grade, Kim told Micaelo that his father had ordered him back to North Korea and that he would leave soon. He offered no explanation for his sudden recall.
Kim’s other friends received no such notice. The boy just stopped coming to school one day. Their teachers said they had no idea what happened to him, either.
Just like that, Pak Un was gone. His classmates wouldn’t see him again for almost a decade, when he would appear on the balcony of a majestic building in the middle of Pyongyang with his father, having been crowned The Great Successor.
The president’s son has agreed to answer questions on six topics, including the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in a closed-door hearing with the Senate Intelligence Committee; Catherine Herridge reports from Capitol Hill.
Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday he has “nothing to correct” as he returned to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Intelligence Committee, following a subpoena from the committee’s Republican chairman, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.
The president’s son is expected to field questions related to the committee’s Russia investigation.
Among other things, queries could address Trump Jr.’s knowledge of negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow before the 2016 election. During an earlier 2017 interview on Capitol Hill, Trump said he had only been “peripherally aware” of the possible deal. But President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who is currently serving a prison sentence for offenses including lying to Congress, said he spoke to Trump Jr. about the deal multiple times.
When asked Wednesday morning if he was going to correct any of his past testimony, Trump Jr. said there was “nothing to correct.”
Also a potential subject of questioning is the 2016 Trump Tower meeting that Trump Jr. set up between a Russian attorney and senior Trump campaign members. The campaign hoped that the meeting would result in them getting incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, but it was ultimately unsuccessful.
Wednesday’s closed-door hearing comes after Trump Jr. already testified for more than 20 hours and provided thousands of documents to Congress. Last month, President Trump supported his son, questioning the need for the additional testimony.
“I don’t know why. I have no idea why. But it seems very unfair to me,” the president said.
Some Republicans even said Trump Jr. should not comply with the subpoena, which is believed to be the first subpoena targeting a member of the president’s family.
Burr’s home state colleague, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., tweeted, “It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a GOP member of the panel, said he understood Trump Jr.’s frustration. Cornyn’s Texas colleague, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said there was “no need” for the subpoena.
Fox News’ Jason Donner contributed to this report.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that allows kids to run lemonade stands without fear of being shut down.
The law goes into effect in September and prohibits cities and neighborhood associations from implementing rules that block or regulate children trying to sell nonalcoholic drinks such as lemonade on private property, according to the Texas Tribune.
Republican state Rep. Matt Krause introduced the bill after police shut down a lemonade stand that was run by two daughters trying to raise money for a Father’s Day gift in 2015. The bill was unanimously passed in both chambers and Abbott signed the bill on Monday.
“Here’s a common sense law,” Abbott said as he signed the bill.
Abbott has signed multiple bills in recent days, such as one protecting free speech on college campuses and another allowing beer and wine to be delivered to a person’s residence.
Neither the U.S. nor Mexico has offered a detailed plan for how the counter-migration strategy will be implemented.
President Donald Trump’s deal with Mexico faces such huge logistical hurdles that neither country may be able to carry out its promises.
One key part of the deal is Mexico’s agreement to deploy its newly formed national guard to intercept and possibly deport migrants who cross its southern border. But Mexico may not have that force trained and ready to deal with a population of asylum seekers.
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The dealwill also expand the Trump administration’s policy of keeping migrants waiting in Mexico while their asylum applications are processed in the U.S. But Mexico is already struggling to handle more than 11,000 migrants who the U.S. has dumped back into that country since Trump rolled out the program in January.
Neither the U.S. nor Mexico has offered a detailed plan for how the counter-migration strategy will be implemented, even as both countries face a tight timeline to produce results. Officials from the two countries are expected to meet in 45 days to evaluate the effect on migrant flows, and the U.S. will monitor results daily.
But border watchers say they have no idea how Mexico will handle the joint demands, particularly as the massive case backloads in U.S. immigration courts could keep migrants waiting south of the U.S. border for months or evenyears.
“To try to imagine how they’re going to double or even triple those numbers over the next few months is kind of mind boggling,” said Chris Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. “I just literally don’t know where all those people are going to go.”
Here’s a closer look at obstacles to implementing the agreement:
1. Mexico’s capacity to absorb migrants
The most immediate pressure point will be on Mexican border communities. As part of the deal reached Friday, the U.S. vowed unilaterally to expand its “remain in Mexico” program — formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols — from targeted areas to the entire southwest border.
More than 11,000 migrants have been forced to wait in Mexico under the program since its launch in January, according to the Mexican government. But that’s just with it operating in Border Patrol’s San Diego and El Centro sectors in California, and its El Paso sector in Texas and New Mexico.
That number is poised to skyrocket in the coming weeks, even as U.S. immigration courts already face a massive case backlog that has worsened in recent years.
The Hope Border Institute, a pro-migrant group operating around El Paso, Texas, and across the border in Ciudad Juárez, has encountered migrants sent to Juárez with U.S. court hearings scheduled for April 2020 — nearly one year ahead.
“How do you house and feed and potentially gainfully employ those people if they’ve got a very long time to wait?” said Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico who resigned in May 2018. “I have no idea to what extent Mexican border cities and crossings are ready for that, although I suspect they’re not.”
Several Mexican officials — including the governors of Sonora and Chihuahua — have said they don’t have the resources to care for migrants.
2. Scaling up “remain in Mexico”
The Trump administration, too, will need to scramble to expand “remain in Mexico.”
The initiative currently operates out of border sectors and ports with courts and temporary holding facilities nearby. At more remote border outposts, the agency may need to procure space for courts and erect tents to house migrants. The U.S. also could face difficulties communicating with migrants forced to stay in Mexico during asylum proceedings.
Resolving those issues won’t be “an overnight kind of thing,” according to a Homeland Security Department official familiar with the program. “The system wasn’t meant to work this way.”
At the same time, Justice Department attorneys will be tasked with defending the program in court. In May the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed federal immigration officials to continue returning migrants pending its ruling on a challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
3. Mexico’s nascent National Guard
The second core component of the deal — Mexico’s deployment of its national guard to stem migration — could easily backfire.
It was only in February that Mexico’s Congress approved the creation of a national guard, and the legal framework to permit its operation was finalized just last month.
The initial force — which is set to reach 83,000 members by the end of the year —will consist of Mexican federal and military police officers, but it isn’t clear they will be trained adequately to deal with migrant families.
“Historically, we’ve seen in Mexico that the priority has been to detain and deport people, over ensuring that they are informed of their rights, including the right to seek protection,” said Maureen Meyer, director of the Mexico program at the Washington Office on Latin America.
The Mexican government pledged to deploy 6,000 guard members to its southern border and throughout the country.
Getting the numbers shouldn’t be a problem, since Mexico can draw on the Federal Police and Army and Navy police units. The greater difficulty will be whether the guard members will have the skills necessary to deal with migrant children, and to follow proper asylum procedures.
4. A sketchy aid commitment to Central America
The Mexican government considers funding for Central American development a major priority, but the agreement struck Friday doesn’t commit any new funds to the effort.
The Trump administration in March said it would slash hundreds of millions in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras over the inability of those countries’ governments to halt the outward flow of migrants. The agreement doesn’t restore those funds, either.
A joint statement issued by the U.S. and Mexico Friday spoke of addressing the root causes of migration only in general terms — with no funding commitments. The document said the two countries were devoted to “promoting development and economic growth in southern Mexico and the success of promoting prosperity, good governance and security in Central America.”
Speaking to reporters Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. didn’t agree to provide any aid money as part of the deal.
5. A complicated asylum deal
Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Monday that if the current set of measures fails to stem the northward flow of migrants within 45 days, the Mexican government will need to begin discussions over a regional asylum pact.
He said discussions would involve Guatemala, Panama and Brazil, three nations that are transit points or destinations for migrants.
Ebrard reiterated that aspect of the deal during a news conference Tuesday in Mexico City. Notably, he also said the U.S. — following a consultation with Mexican officials — would decide whether Mexico’s counter-migration efforts had been sufficient.
The task of finalizing a regional asylum agreement could be enormously complicated and require the approval of legislative bodies in multiple countries, including Mexico.
But a slow-moving process could benefit the Mexican government in its negotiations with Trump, who faces reelection next year.
“It diversifies and spreads the risk, and certainly slows the calendar,” said Jacobson, the former ambassador, “which is what they want to do.”
“Remember, in his 400-plus page report that everyone in America should read, everyone, Robert Mueller laid out 10 instances of apparent obstruction of justice, criminal obstruction of justice, potentially, by President Trump,” Smith said.
“The special counsel did not exonerate the president,” he added.
Mueller last month in his first public statement since the completion of his report said if his office “had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so.”
The special counsel pointed to current Department of Justice guidance that says a sitting president cannot be indicted, but noted in his report that Congress has the authority to conduct obstruction investigations.
Stewart made the comments in an interview Tuesday on “Shepard Smith Reporting,” telling host Shepard Smith 9/11 first responders and victims should be viewed as a priority beyond tweets and well-wishes.
“That drove me nuts,” the comedian said after being asked by Smith about the empty seats he saw on the Hill. “They kept saying it’s a ‘sub-subcommittee.’ There’s still people on the sub-subcommittee that aren’t here.
“Either 9/11 was a priority or it wasn’t. But, your deeds have to at some point match your tweets and your words. Today it didn’t.
“No amount of money is going to end the suffering and the grieving that these men and women have to endure. But they can stop making it worse. They can stop adding uncertainty and stress and financial hardship to the lives of these folks.”
The sparse attendance by lawmakers was “an embarrassment to the country and a stain on the institution” of Congress, Stewart said during the hearing, adding the “disrespect” shown to first responders now suffering from respiratory ailments and other illnesses, “is utterly unacceptable.”
Lawmakers from both parties said they support the bill and were monitoring the hearing amid other congressional business.
Ranking member Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., predicted the bill will pass with overwhelming support and said lawmakers meant no disrespect as they moved in and out of the subcommittee hearing, a common occurrence on Capitol Hill.
Stewart was unconvinced. Pointing to rows of uniformed firefighters and police officers behind him, he said the hearing “should be flipped,” so first responders were on the dais, with members of Congress “down here” in witness chairs answering their questions.
“Why is this so damn hard and takes so damn long?” he asked Johnson and the other lawmakers.
The Justice Department said in February the victims’ compensation fund is being depleted and benefit payments are being cut by up to 70 percent.
In his interview with Smith, the former “Daily Show” host said Congress can “stop making it worse” by removing future uncertainty and properly funding the victims’ compensation fund.
“I would say it’s the so-called fiscal hawks,” Stewart responded when asked who he believed is holding up proper funding.
“It’s irresponsible, it’s disingenuous.”
A spokesman for the subcommittee told Fox News all but two of its members attended today’s hearing, with Reps Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., those who were missing. The spokesman added that other empty seats seen could have been on account of members coming and going during the course of a hearing.
Democratic presidential frontrunner exchanges insults with the president; reaction and analysis on ‘The Five.’
Former Obama advisor David Axelrod expressed his concerns that former Vice President Joe Biden is “playing into the the caricature” made by President Trump that has questioned the Democratic frontrunner’s fitness to lead.
Both Trump and Biden exchanged harsh attacks between one another on Tuesday as they both made campaign stops in Iowa, with the president telling reporters outside the White House that the former VP is “weak mentally.”
Appearing on CNN, Axelrod cautioned that Biden’s light campaign schedule, when compared to those of other competitors in the Democratic field, left him open to such criticisms.
“The thing that I think is important for Biden is to run an energetic campaign that dispels any of these caricatures,” Axelrod told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “He hasn’t had a very heavy campaign schedule. He has sort of played into the caricature and I think he is going to have to come forward… with ideas and he going to have to campaign energetically.”
Axelrod, who is now a CNN host and political analyst, explained that ahead of the Iowa Caucus, people “expect to see you” and “want to interact with you,” stressing that candidates “have to be there.”
“You can’t do drop-bys and use them as a backdrop to attack the president,” Axelrod added. “You got to do much more than that so I think that’s very important.”
The comments came after Biden returned fire at Trump Tuesday.
In what could be a preview of next year’s general election campaign for the White House, Biden is set to blast the Republican president for threatening tariffs on global trading partners. Warning of the impact it’s had on American farmers and manufacturers, Biden plans to call Trump an “existential threat” to the nation.
“You know, Donald Trump and I are both in Iowa today. It wasn’t planned that way, but I hope Trump’s presence here will be a clarifying event,” Biden will say during an evening speech in Davenport, according to prepared remarks.
The former vice president’s remarks, released early Tuesday morning by his campaign, contain more than 40 mentions of Trump by name, including some of Biden’s most blistering attacks to date on the president.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
President Trump has threatened to take legal action if Democrats try to impeach him, musing that he’ll “sue.”He has peppered confidants and advisers with questions about how an impeachment inquiry might unfold.And he has coined his own cheeky term — “the I-word” — to refer to the legal and political morass that threatens to overshadow his presidency as he heads into his 2020 reelection campaign.
As Democrats struggle with how to handle calls from their liberal flank to impeach the president, Trump himself is eager to avoid such proceedings — while also fixated on his belief that Democrats can’t impeach him because he has done nothing wrong, according to interviews with 15 White House aides, outside advisers, Republican lawmakers and friends, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid conversations.
The president is intrigued by the notion of impeachment but wary of its practical dangers, one outside adviser said. Trump remembers how Republican impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s against President Bill Clinton seemed to boost Clinton’s approval ratings, and Trump is at his best when battling a perceived foe, several advisers added.
Yet he also views impeachment in deeply personal terms. He is less concerned about the potential historical stain on his legacy — Clinton and Andrew Johnson are the only presidents to have been impeached — and more about what he sees as yet another Democratic attack on the legitimacy of his presidency, according to an outside adviser and a White House aide.
The focus on impeachment comes as Democrats on Tuesday escalated their fight with Trump over congressional oversight, voting to go to court in an attempt to force Attorney General William P. Barr and former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoenas. Both are being sought for testimony related to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, which many Democrats believe provides a road map for how to proceed in impeaching Trump for as many as 10 potential instances of obstruction of justice.
Last month, Trump scrapped a planned infrastructure meeting with Democrats at the last minute after learning that House Democrats had recently met to discuss impeachment — calling an impromptu news conference in the Rose Garden to blast them for entertaining “the big ‘I-word,’ ” as he put it.
“All of a sudden, I hear last night, they’re going to have a meeting, right before this meeting, to talk about the ‘I-word,’ ” Trump said. “The ‘I-word.’ Can you imagine?”
Just over a week later, speaking to reporters on the White House South Lawn, Trump was similarly outraged by the mere mention of impeachment. “To me, it’s a dirty word — the word ‘impeach,’ ” he said. “It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word.”
Trump has also griped privately that if Democrats tried to impeach him, he would simply sue — a sentiment he has also occasionally expressed publicly.
In April, Trump wrote on Twitter, “I DID NOTHING WRONG” and warned, “If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
And in late May, asked by a reporter whether he thought the Democrats were going to move forward with impeachment, Trump also invoked the legal system. “I don’t see how they can,” the president said. “Because they’re possibly allowed, although I can’t imagine the courts allowing it.”
Trump’s assertions that he would sue to prevent impeachment have prompted some criticism in the legal community, with Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who has called for Trump’s impeachment, describing the idea as “idiocy” in a tweet. “Not even a SCOTUS filled with Trump appointees would get in the way of the House or Senate,” Tribe wrote.
But Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School and a frequent Trump ally, says the Supreme Court could intervene to avoid a constitutional crisis if it thought Congress had acted unconstitutionally in impeaching the president.
The process starts in the House, which can impeach a president with a simple majority vote. The president can be removed from office, however, only if the Senate then votes by a two-thirds majority to convict.
Dershowitz said in an interview that the status quo — Democrats pushing an impeachment message without actually moving ahead with proceedings — could be optimal for the president.
“The best-case scenario for the president both politically and legally is for the Democrats to continue impeachment talk, for 60 or 70 Democratic congressmen to demand impeachment and for, in the end, there to be no impeachment by the House,” Dershowitz said. “In that way, he gets the political benefit without the stigma. It’s a win-win.”
Some who argue the benefits of impeachment still ultimately oppose it. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, for instance, has expressed his belief to the president that Democrats would be viewed as leftist extremists if they proceeded down that path and would be punished by voters, a senior White House official said.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a Trump ally, said that “any impeachment effort would probably cause a tremendous backlash among undecided voters.”
“Impeachment, I think, is widely viewed as being harmful to our democratic process — that’s on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Meadows said. “It’s widely shared that impeachment, regardless of an acquittal, is not something that would be good for America.”
Nonetheless, questions of impeachment — both existential and shouted — continue to dog the president. On Monday, while greeting the champions of the Indianapolis 500 at the White House, Trump was asked again whether an impeachment inquiry might help his reelection prospects.
He acknowledged the theory (“I hear that, too”) before promptly dismissing the premise of the question (“You can’t impeach somebody when there has never been anything done wrong”).
Then, referring to President Richard M. Nixon, who resigned rather than face likely impeachment, Trump struck a defiant note.
“He left. I don’t leave,” Trump said. “There’s a big difference. I don’t leave.”
Protestors with umbrellas gather near the Legislative Council in Hong Kong. Kin Cheung/AP
With thousands of well-organized young people taking to the streets, many with umbrellas and masks, there are echoes of the 2014 mass democracy protests that became known as the Umbrella Movement.
For 79 days parts of the city were brought to a standstill as protesters, mainly students, occupied key areas including Harcourt Road — the site of today’s protest.
Since it was used to shield protesters from the tear gas and pepper spray deployed by police on the first day of the 2014 protests, the umbrella has became a ubiquitous sight on the frontlines, and gave the movement its name.
The protest sites were also known for how organized they were, with volunteers handing out food, water, medical supplies, and translation services for media.
Similarities with those protests can be seen in today’s gathering, with the use of umbrellas, a supply camp being set up, and protesters reportedly directing foot traffic to help those trying to get to work.
Jon Stewart testifies during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the reauthorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
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Jon Stewart testifies during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the reauthorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Updated at 3:11 p.m. EST
Comedian Jon Stewart slammed representatives on Tuesday at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, saying it was “shameful” that more of them did not attend.
“As I sit here today, I can’t help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to,” Stewart said in his statement. “Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders; and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress.”
Rep. Steve Cohen noted that the hearing was held before the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties and not the full committee.
“All these empty chairs, that’s because it’s for the full committee. It’s not because of disrespect or lack of attention to you,” the Tennessee Democrat said.
The hearing came just hours before the full House was set to vote on a civil contempt resolution against Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn.
Stewart spoke alongside Luis Alvarez, a retired detective and 9/11 responder from the New York Police Department who has cancer linked to the 9/11 attacks and the aftermath.
“Less than 24 hours from now, I will be serving my 69th round of chemotherapy,” Alvarez said. “I should not be here with you, but you made me come. You made me come because I will not stand by and watch as my friends with cancer from 9/11, like me, are valued less than anyone else.”
The fund has faced recent financial problems, including a spike in the number of claims ahead of its December 2020 expiration date.
In February, the fund’s administrator, Rupa Bhattacharyya, announced there was “insufficient funding” to “pay all current and projected claims at the same levels as under current policies and procedures” and said future claims would only be paid a fraction of their prior value.
Local, state and federal officials have rallied around the Never Forget the Heroes Act, which would provide funding for the victim fund through fiscal year 2090. The bill was introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., in October 2018, and reintroduced this year, but has since languished in the House.
When asked about the legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY., sidestepped the issue, saying he would have to look at the bill.
Stewart, the former host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, lambasted lawmakers for not showing up to the hearing, calling it “a stain on this institution.”
“You should be ashamed of yourselves, for those that aren’t here,” he said. “But you won’t be, because accountability doesn’t appear to be something that occurs in this chamber.”
Later in the hearing, subcommittee Chairman Cohen defended lawmakers’ attendance.
“My subcommittee, every single member on my side, which is eight of us, have been here today,” Cohen said, adding that other committee members were present in other committee meetings or visiting with constituents.
Stewart has been a longtime advocate for Sept. 11 victims and first responders, frequently appearing on Capitol Hill to push lawmakers to increase funding to aid those who suffered illnesses following the attacks.
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President Trump brandished a sheet of paper that had details of the deal written on it
US President Donald Trump has inadvertently revealed some details of his immigration deal with Mexico.
He refused to discuss the plans with reporters, saying they were “secret”.
But he said this while waving around a sheet of paper that had the specifics of the deal written on it – which was then photographed by news media.
It described a plan to designate Mexico a “safe third country”, among other plans that had already been revealed by Mexico’s foreign minister on Monday.
If Mexico were to be a safe third country, migrants’ asylum applications would be processed there rather than in the US.
Image copyright Reuters
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Some of the details of the deal could be read on the sheet of paper
The document said Mexico had committed to immediately examining its laws in order to enable it to become a safe third country if need be.
It also contained references to a regional asylum plan, which would involve several Latin American countries processing migrants’ asylum claims in order to stave off US tariffs, and to “45 days”.
What has Mexico said about the deal?
Mr Ebrard said that Mexico had 45 days to show it was able to stem the flow of US-bound migrants by strengthening its southern border.
It is now deploying 6,000 National Guard personnel to the border with Guatemala.
“You go to the south and the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘Right, where’s the border?’ There’s nothing,” he said on Tuesday. “The idea is to make the south like the north as far as possible.”
Media captionA look at the steps Mexico is taking to deal with migrants
If this plan fails, the foreign minister said, Mexico has agreed to be designated a safe third country – something that has been demanded by the US before, but has long been rejected by Mexico.
Mr Ebrard earlier said the US had been insistent on this measure, and that they had wanted this to be implemented straight away.
But he said: “We told them – I think it was the most important achievement of the negotiations – ‘let’s set a time period to see if what Mexico is proposing will work, and if not, we’ll sit down and see what additional measures [are needed]’.”
“They wanted something else totally different to be signed. But that is what there is here. There is no other thing,” he said.
Image copyright Reuters
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Migrants from Honduras attempting to cross the Rio Bravo river in order to request asylum in El Paso, Texas
If Mexico fails to curb migration in 45 days, other countries will be drawn into the matter.
Discussions would take place with Brazil, Panama and Guatemala – the countries currently used by migrants as transit points – to see if they could share the burden of processing asylum claims.
Mr Ebrard also said US negotiators had wanted Mexico to commit to “zero migrants” crossing its territory, but that was “mission impossible”.
“In here is the agreement,” Trump said, pulling the paper from a coat pocket and repeatedly holding it up as he spoke to reporters. “Right here is the agreement, it’s very simple. In here is everything you want to talk about, it’s right here,” he said, without opening it up.
Leah Millis/Reuters
President Donald Trump holds up what he described as proof of a deal with Mexico on immigration and trade as he speaks to the news media prior to departing for travel to Iowa from the South Lawn of the White House, June 11, 2019.
“This is one page. This is one page of a very long and very good agreement for both Mexico and the United States,” Trump said.
“Without the tariffs, we would have had nothing,” the president said.
“Two weeks ago, I’ll tell you what we had: We had nothing. And the reason we had nothing is because Mexico felt that they didn’t have to give us anything. I don’t blame them. But this is actually ultimately going to be good for Mexico, too. And it’s good for the relationship of Mexico with us,” he continued.
Trump said he couldn’t show reporters what was on the paper. “I would love to do it, but you will freeze action it. You will stop it. You will analyze it, every single letter. You’ll see. But in here is the agreement.”
The president said that it’s his “option” as to whether the undisclosed agreement will go into effect.
“It’s not Mexico’s, but it will go into effect when Mexico tells me it’s okay to release,” Trump said, adding that first Mexico has to ratify whatever agreement they’ve made. “It goes into effect at my option.”
Washington Post photographer Jabin Botsford captured and tweeted a photo of the piece of paper, a portion of which can be read to say “the Government of Mexico will take all necessary steps under domestic law to bring the agreement into force with a view to ensuring that the agreement will enter into force within 45 days.”
Despite the president’s insistence that there is a secret deal, the Mexican government has denied that there are any undisclosed parts of the U.S.- Mexico deal.
“Outside of what I have just explained, there is no agreement,” Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Monday.
Despite earlier threats and a recommendation from the Judiciary Committee, Democrats stopped short of formally holding either Mr. Barr or Mr. McGahn in contempt of Congress for now, forgoing an accusation of a crime in favor of what they hope is continued leverage to force cooperation. The decision appears to be based, at least in part, on new signs of compromise from the Justice Department, which on Monday agreed after weeks of hostilities to begin sharing key evidence collected in Mr. Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.
The committee had demanded that Mr. Barr and the Justice Department hand over the full text of the special counsel’s report and the evidence underlying it, and that Mr. McGahn testify in public and produce evidence that he had given Mr. Mueller.
Neither the Justice Department nor lawyers for Mr. McGahn immediately commented on the vote.
The House Democratic leaders called the vote a vital step in their methodical march to expose Mr. Trump’s behavior and pressure the Trump administration to cooperate with congressional oversight requests. They also clearly saw it as a means of holding off calls within their ranks to quickly move to impeach the president, arguing that it showed there are other ways of using their power to hold him accountable.
“The responsibility the speaker and I have is to try to move ahead in a measured, focused, effective way to garner the information that the American people need to make determinations, and for us to make determinations, and I think we’re doing that,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, addressing lawmakers on the House floor shortly before the vote, framed the court authorizations as a step toward upholding the principle that Congress was “constitutionally obligated and legally entitled to access and review materials from the executive branch.”
(CNN)Former late night host and 9/11 first responders advocate Jon Stewart choked up Tuesday while slamming Congress over health care for responders to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is acting like he’s the presidential nominee and is already engaged in a general election campaign against President Trump; says Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume.
Joe Biden is a man with a plan in Iowa, and while it’s working for him at the moment, there could yet be a sting in the tail.
“He’s ahead in the polls. He has held the most senior office of anybody in the field having been vice president,” Hume said.
“So, he’s going around acting like he’s the nominee and is engaged in a general election campaign in the fall against President Trump. It’s, I guess, nice work if you can get it. I don’t know how long it can last.
“My sense is he can’t go on forever ignoring the rest of the Democratic field, but I don’t blame him for trying to make it last as long as he can.”
Biden and President Trump will both duke it out in Iowa in separate speeches — an agricultural state the president won handily in the 2016 election. This after he skipped an event with other Democratic contenders this weekend.
A copy of Biden’s prepared remarks in Davenport, Iowa, was released to Fox News from a source at his campaign. He said farmers have been “crushed” by the president’s tariff war with China. Biden also says that the president makes the wrong choices and is “motivated by the wrong thing.”
“He thinks he’s being tough. Well, it’s easy to be tough when someone else is feeling the pain,” Biden said.
The president predicted he would win Iowa, Texas, and Pennsylvania by “a lot.” He won Iowa in the 2016 election. He plans to respond to Biden’s remarks in his speech in West Des Moines later Tuesday evening.
The pilot killed Monday when his helicopter slammed into the roof of a New York City skyscraper was not authorized to fly in limited visibility, according to his pilot certification, raising questions about why he took off in fog and steady rain. Tim McCormack, 58, was only certified to fly under regulations known as visual flight rules, which require generally good weather and clear conditions, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The rules require at least 3 miles of visibility and that the sky is clear of clouds for daytime flights. The visibility at the time of Monday’s crash was about 1 1/4 miles at nearby Central Park, with low clouds blanketing the skyline.
McCormack was not certified to use instruments to help fly through cloudy or bad weather, the FAA said.
The crash in the tightly controlled airspace of midtown Manhattan shook the 750-foot AXA Equitable building, obliterated the Agusta A109E helicopter, sparked a fire and forced office workers to flee.
It briefly triggered memories of 9/11 and fears of a terrorist attack, but authorities said there is no indication the crash was deliberate. At a National Transportation Safety Board briefing Tuesday, air safety investigator Doug Brazy said that McCormack had arrived at a heliport on New York City’s East River after a trip carrying one passenger from nearby Westchester County.
The passenger told investigators there was nothing out of the ordinary about the 15-minute flight, Brazy said.
Firemen are seen after a helicopter crash-landed on top of a building in midtown Manhattan in New York on June 10, 2019.
Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty
McCormack waited at the heliport for about two hours and reviewed the weather before taking off on what was supposed to be a trip to the helicopter’s home airport in Linden, New Jersey, Brazy said.
That trip would have taken the helicopter south, over the city’s harbor and past the Statue of Liberty.
Investigators were reviewing video posted on social media Monday afternoon showing a helicopter that investigators believe is the doomed chopper pausing and hovering a short distance south of the heliport, then turning and making an erratic flight back north through rain and clouds.
The helicopter hit the Manhattan tower about 11 minutes after taking off, in an area where flights aren’t supposed to take place.
A flight restriction in effect since President Trump took office prohibits aircraft from flying below 3,000 feet within a 1-mile radius of Trump Tower, only a few blocks from the crash site.
Helicopters going in and out of the heliport, on East 34th Street, are only allowed to fly in the restricted area if they have permission and are in constant communication with air traffic control.
Brazy said the pilot never made such a request and didn’t contact air traffic control, although investigators were trying to verify reports that McCormack had made radio calls to someone just before the crash. Brazy said McCormack’s planned route to Linden wouldn’t have required him to contact air traffic control.
Asked if the weather may have played a factor, Brazy said “it is certainly one of the most interesting concerns we have.”
“Should the helicopter have been flying? I do not know yet,” he said.
Brazy said the helicopter was not equipped with a flight data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder.
McCormack was a former fire chief in upstate Clinton Corners, New York. With 15 years of experience flying helicopters and single-engine airplanes, he was certified as a flight instructor last year, according to FAA records.
The East Clinton Volunteer Fire Department posted on Facebook that McCormack’s “technical knowledge and ability to command an emergency were exceptional.”
Linden airport director Paul Dudley described McCormack as “a highly seasoned” and “very well regarded” pilot.
Brazy said a salvage crew expected to start removing the wreckage from the roof by Tuesday evening, possibly by taking pieces down the stairs and elevator. It will be moved to a secure location for further examination, he said.
“The location — within the city and on top of the roof of a building — is probably the biggest challenge in the investigation,” Brazy said.
President Donald Trump’s restrictions on Chinese telecom giant Huawei are comparable to “murder,” the president of the U.S.-China Business Council said Tuesday.
The administration blacklisted Huawei last month amid the escalated trade war, effectively halting its ability to purchase American-made chips and forcing U.S. companies to cut ties with the Chinese giant.
“If we want to keep it out of our network, it’s easy to do. Let’s just ban them. But putting them on the entity list and prohibiting U.S. companies from dealing with them, it’s more like murder. It’s trying to put an end to them,” said Craig Allen, president of the council, at CNBC’s Capital Exchange summit. The council represents about 200 American companies that do business with China.
He added, “If a stranger knocks at your door, you don’t have to let them in, but do you have the right to take a gun and shoot them?”
The trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies has continued to intensify after both sides slapped tariffs on billions of dollars worth of each other’s goods. China has threatened to cut off its rare earth mineral supply to the U.S. and reportedly stopped ordering U.S. soybeans.
“We are paying a short-term cost but the long-term cost would be yet greater,” Allen said. “Will China not invest in soybeans in Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine? Of course they will. Not everything is a transaction. We have to consider this over the long term. … At the end of the day, we have to deal with the Chinese if we want to get there.”
On the same panel, Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, strongly condemned Trump’s use of tariffs in negotiating a trade deal.
“Trump is using that tool (tariffs) too haphazardly, and in a way he’s not sending clear messages to either business communities or to trading partners,” Lee said at the summit. She added, “He’s burning bridges with a lot of trading partners, which is going to cost us over the long run.”
“If a tariff is used strategically and surgically to address an unfair trade practice, you have this short-term disruption and short-term inconvenience and higher prices along the way, but ultimately in service of addressing a problem. That’s what I don’t see this current administration doing … it’s more like a battle of egos and a battle of wills,” she added.
Trump has not only used tariffs in the trade war with China, but he also threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican imports unless that country took action to control migration across the border with the U.S. The Mexico tariffs were eventually avoided after the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement on immigration issues.
For more on the convergence of business and politics, join CNBC at our upcoming Capital Exchange summits in Washington DC (for candid conversation featuring business and government leaders exploring how they can work together to spur growth).
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