UNPRESIDENTED: A World View of the US Election 2016
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The US presidential election results will have an impact worldwide for years to come. In this talk, Dr. Rosalind Warner will look beyond the personalities and ‘fake news’ to explore the deeper social, political and economic origins of the 2016 election result. Participants will discover what made 2016 different and why it matters to the world what happens next.
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UNPRESIDENTED: A World View of the US Election 2016
- 1. UNPRESIDENTED: A World View of the US Election 2016
- 3. Who am I? Rosalind Warner, PhD College Professor of Political Science Okanagan College Email: rowarner@okanagan.bc.ca Twitter: @rwarner23 Blog: http://rozwarner.wordpress.com/
- 4. I. 2016 Election Who Won? Why? II. Global Response III. Back to the Future IV. The State of the State V. The Great Unravelling Overview
- 5. I. Who won? Why?
- 8. Blue States went Red: • Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin • Women, Hispanics & Latinos lower support than 2012 • Blacks stayed away (compared to 2012) Why?
- 10. 5 ‘Black Swans’ in order of likelihood
- 11. Voter fraud or ‘rigged’ election in Hillary’s favour #5
- 12. Comey & Wikileaks #4 ‘Speak’ or ‘Conceal’
- 13. Changes in the Media Landscape #3
- 14. Breitbart media ecosystem …influenced mainstream coverage #3
- 15. Voter suppression & gerrymandering #2
- 16. Global trends…alienation, distrust and disaffection with elites #1
- 18. 1. Russian hacking & trolling • Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance; • Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures; • Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions; • Popularize Russian policy agendas within foreign populations; • Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction
- 19. 2. ‘Fake news’? Evidence that such deception is more sophisticated but may be becoming less effective
- 20. Cameron Harris invents a story and makes $5000
- 21. Pizzagate ……& news agencies are now using bots to publish stories …hackers are now including misinformation, including digitally manipulated data, in legitimately leaked dumps…
- 22. Not quite ‘fake news’ ..on the other hand…Increasing evidence that voters are not buying it…
- 25. New tensions with ‘friends’: China and Mexico
- 26. New warmth: Syria, DRC, Philippines, & Turkey
- 28. …Islamic State ISIL in Mosul
- 29. Russia
- 30. Britain A desperation after Brexit A New Anglo World?
- 31. Women
- 32. The Planet
- 33. III. Back to the Future
- 34. Trump’s Inaugural Speech: America First and ‘American Carnage’
- 35. President Trump’s political strategist, Steve Bannon, has said that he wants to ’make life as exciting as it was in the 1930s’.
- 36. The 1930s: America First • Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy • ‘Lend-Lease’ Bill debated in Congress • America First Committee formed • Feared a ‘crusade’ into Europe • Proposed a neutrality pact with Germany
- 37. The 1930s: ‘Blood and Soil’ Nationalism
- 38. IV. The State of the State
- 39. The Demise of State Capacity
- 40. 2 Trends are becoming evident Clientelism & Rent-Seeking
- 41. The Demise of State Capacity
- 42. The Demise of State Capacity
- 43. Rent-Seeking Case in point…
- 44. V. The Great Unravelling
- 45. US would gain… • Top currency status • Set the rules for the other players • No challenges from allies …in return, US would provide: • Security guarantees • Support for UN system & EU The art of the deal….A simple ‘deal’ was struck in 1945
- 46. 1.Democratic Consensus 3.Security 2.Movement of Capital & Goods World Order 101 Adapted from: Rodrik, D. (2007). “Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy.” http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
- 47. Freedom on the decline
- 48. V. The Great Unravelling Liberal Democracies vs. Illiberal AutocraciesLiberal vs. Illiberal Democracies?
- 49. The Clash of Civilizations Samuel P. Huntington 1993
- 50. The West vs. the Rest? (West vs. Islamic civilizations)
- 51. 1.Democratic Consensus 3.Security 2.Movement of Capital & Goods World Order 101 Adapted from: Rodrik, D. (2007). “Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy.” http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
- 52. “Between 1985 and 2007, trade grew at twice the rate of world GDP, but since the 2008 financial crisis, it has hardly managed to keep pace, at times even lagging behind” “Trade ain’t what it used to be.” V. The Great Unravelling ~Magnus, G. (2017
- 53. V. The Great Unravelling
- 54. V. The Great Unravelling
- 55. Petro-States vs. Green States V. The Great Unravelling So, if not liberal vs. illiberal states, the West vs the rest (clash of civilizations)….then what are headed into?
- 56. Russia-Saudi-US axis Petro-States vs. Green States • Account for 38% of total global oil output • US & Russia are two top producers of natural gas • Add Saudi Arabia, they account for 41% of global gas output
- 57. 1.Democratic Consensus 3.Security 2.Movement of Capital & Goods World Order 101 Adapted from: Rodrik, D. (2007). “Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy.” http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
- 58. US would gain… • Top currency status • Set the rules for the other players • No challenges from allies …in return, US would provide: • Security guarantees • Support for UN system & EU The art of the deal….A simple ‘deal’ was struck in 1945
- 59. Trump’s budget will mean an increase of $54 billion, which is equal to the former budget of the Department of State as well as the entire defense budget of Russia. US remains unmatched in capability… …but appears unable to strategize a coherent response to threats Carl Vinson incident 4,000 additional American forces to be deployed to Afghanistan, on top of the 8,400 already there.
- 60. Be worried
- 61. 1.Democratic Consensus 3.Security 2.Movement of Capital & Goods World Order 101 Adapted from: Rodrik, D. (2007). “Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy.” http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
- 62. V. The Great Unravelling What does it mean for Canada?
- 63. Canada is invested in the ‘old order’
- 64. Canada set adrift… What will a ‘New’ deal look like? • Fewer (or more conditional) security guarantees • More use of force, less diplomacy • Bilateralism in trade • Moral leadership?
- 65. I. 2016 Election Who Won? Why? II. Global Response III. Back to the Future IV. The State of the State V. The Great Unravelling Overview
- 66. Thank you for listening! Questions?
- 67. Benkler, Y., Faris, R., Roberts, H., & Zuckerman, E. (2017). “Study: Breitbart-led right-wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda” Columbia Journalism Review. http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard- study.php Cohn, N. (Dec 23 2016). “How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama- coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html?_r=0 CNN Election Results 2016 http://www.cnn.com/election/results I’m Not A Snowflake Or A Whiner, Math Is Why Trump Is #NotMyPresident. (Dec 29th, 2016.) http://modernliberals.com/math-notmypresident/ Fisher, M. (Feb 24 2017). “Stephen K. Bannon’s CPAC Comments, Annotated and Explained” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/stephen-bannon- cpac-speech.html BIBLIOGRAPHY
- 68. Fisher, M. (March 18 2017). “The Risks of Pre-emptive Strikes Against North Korea” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/world/asia/us-north-korea- weapons.html?_r=0 Giannini, N. (Feb 7 2017). “MAP: Freedom is declining as populism and nationalism surge.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/freedom-around-the- world-134000468.html Kendall-Taylor, A., Frantz, E., & Wright, J. (2016). “The New Dictators” Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09- 26/new-dictators Lewis, J. (March 9 2017). “North Korea Is Practicing for Nuclear War” Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/09/north-korea-is- practicing-for-nuclear-war/ Magnus, G. (2017). “Trumpeting a global trade war” Prospect Magazine. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/donald- trump-us-politics-global-trade-war Pramuk, J. (n.d.). Trump administration takes credit for Ford investment first announced in 2015. CNBC. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/trump-administration-takes-credit- for-ford-investment-first-announced-in-2015.html BIBLIOGRAPHY, CONT’D
- 69. McCaskill, N. (2017). Key moments from Jim Comey’s Senate testimony - POLITICO. Retrieved June 18, 2017, from http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/james-comey-senate-testimony-key- moments-237925 Millhiser, Ian “New study confirms that voter ID laws are very racist.” (Feb 17th 2017) https://thinkprogress.org/new-study-confirms-that-voter-id-laws-are-very- racist-c338792c3f04#.pq60ce7yf Quinn, R. (Dec 22 2016). “Trump Appoints Peter Navarro to Head White House National Trade Council.” http://www.newser.com/story/235837/death-by-china- author-will-be-trumps-trade-chief.html Quinlan, C. (2017). Trump’s trade rhetoric was key to his campaign. Now it’s totally incoherent. https://thinkprogress.org/trump-trade-policy-aad708282c7a Rodrik, D. (June 7 2007). “Dani Rodrik’s weblog: The inescapable trilemma of the world economy.” http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html Silva, Alejandro & Urbina Alejandro “A Battle Plan for Mexico’s U.S. Trade War” Bloomberg View. (March 2, 2017) https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-02/a-battle-plan-for-mexico- s-u-s-trade-war BIBLIOGRAPHY, CONT’D
- 70. Weisburd, A., Watts, C., & Berger, J. (2016). Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy. https://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russia- is-trying-to-destroy-our-democracy/Wittes, Benjamin “Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trump’s Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas” Lawfare. (Jan 28 2017). https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence- trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas BIBLIOGRAPHY, CONT’D
Editor's Notes
- http://www.cnn.com/election/results
- The issue of the popular vote
- He did so by holding reliably “red” Republican states and making deep incursions into “blue” Democratic territory too, Clinton went into yesterday’s election with a supposedly formidable advantage: the “blue wall” of 18 states that had reliably voted Democratic since the 1990s. It included states in America’s declining industrial heartland like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, 65 per cent of Hispanics and Latinos supported Clinton—that’s actually lower than the 71 per cent who backed Obama in 2012. It’s also lower than the 88 per cent of African-Americans who supported Clinton. Republicans held onto their majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives, sustaining only slight losses in each chamber. Take Ohio, for example, which has supported the winner of every presidential election since 1964. went with trump by a nose
- A new set of emails had been discovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who at the time was the partner of Huma Abedeen, a close confidante of Hillary Comey opened up about why he sent his Oct. 28 letter about new evidence in the Clinton probe. It came down to “speak” or “conceal,” Comey said. “Speak,” he reasoned, “would be really bad. There’s an election in 11 days. Lordy, that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic, not just to the FBI but well beyond. And, honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, I said to my team: ‘We’ve got to walk into the world of really bad. I’ve got to tell Congress that we’re restarting this, not in some frivolous way — in a hugely significant way.”
- Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php Columbia Journalism Review
- early 19th century: from the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts + salamander, from the supposed similarity between a salamander and the shape of a new voting district on a map drawn when he was in office (1812), the creation of which was felt to favor his party: the map (with claws, wings, and fangs added), was published in the Boston Weekly Messenger, with the title The Gerry-Mander . The kind of fraud prevented by such laws is only slightly more common than elves. Zoltan L. Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi, and Lindsay Nielson explains what these laws do accomplish, however. According to Hajnal and his co-authors, turnout among Hispanic voters is “7.1 percentage points lower in general elections and 5.3 points lower in primaries” in states with strict voter ID laws. The laws also reduce turnout among African-American and Asian-American voters. White turnout, according to their study, is “largely unaffected.” “By instituting strict voter ID laws,” they explain, “states can alter the electorate and shift outcomes toward those on the right.” In states with such laws “the influence of Democrats and liberals wanes and the power of Republicans grows.” -especially important in Wisconsin, where the margin of victory was only 22,000 votes
- Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines Vladimir Putin Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the Brexit Debate
- -the point was not to elect Trump, but to saw confusion and disaffection among the electorate -When experts published content criticizing the Russian-supported Bashar al Assad regime, organized hordes of trolls would appear to attack the authors on Twitter and Facebook. Examining the troll social networks revealed dozens of accounts presenting themselves as attractive young women eager to talk politics with Americans, including some working in the national security sector. These “honeypot” social media accounts were linked to other accounts used by the Syrian Electronic Army hacker operation. All three elements were working together: the trolls to sow doubt, the honeypots to win trust, and the hackers (we believe) to exploit clicks on dubious links sent out by the first two.
- At that point, one suspects, there will not only be thousands of fake-news articles floating around the Internet, but also countless fake videos and fake audio clips, too. If you combine those technologies with a president who is known to lie about even the most trifling matters, we won’t know what is real and what is fake any longer. If ever there was a time for the people creating technologies to keep in mind the impact of their creations, it’s now.
- Cameron Harris, a college bro, told The New York Times that he made up stories on a fake-news site that he created for $5. Harris, who concocted stories about voter fraud and Hillary Clinton, made as much as $1,000 an hour while millions of people clicked on his fabricated posts. “I spent the money on student loans, car payments, and rent,” he bragged to the Times.
- -story began in October 2016 as the NY police department were reviing the democratic party emails from John Podesta on Weiner’s computer, conspiracy claimed that the code word ‘cheese pizza’ was found there which stood for child pornography and referred to a nation-wide child sex ring and satanic ritual abuse running in the back rooms of restaurants and run by the democratic party, -from there it was picked up by notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and went viral, eventually linked the hapless restaurant Comet Ping Pong in DC -Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, found that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.[20] -story was also repeated in the foreign press, especially Turkey, where it was reprinted by government-run newspapers -enter 28-year-old named Edgar Maddison Welch December 4th 2016, began reading about a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., that housed young children as sex slaves in a devilish operation masterminded by the recently vanquished Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton. So Welch decided to drive the six or so hours up from his home in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Comet Ping Pong in northwest D.C., where he opened fire with an AR-15. Wibbitz USA Today has used this AI-driven production software to create short videos. It can condense news articles into a script, string together a selection of images or video footage, and even add narration with a synthesized newscaster voice. News Tracer Reuters’ algorithmic prediction tool helps journalists gauge the integrity of a tweet. The tech scores emerging stories on the basis of “credibility” and “newsworthiness” by evaluating who’s tweeting about it, how it’s spreading across the network, and if nearby users have taken to Twitter to confirm or deny breaking developments. BuzzBot An early version autopublished stories on the Rio Olympics; a more advanced version, with a stronger editorial voice, was soon introduced to cover the election. It works like this: Editors create narrative templates for the stories, including key phrases that account for a variety of potential outcomes (from “Republicans retained control of the House” to “Democrats regained control of the House”), and then they hook Heliograf up to any source of structured data—in the case of the election, the data clearinghouse VoteSmart.org. The Heliograf software identifies the relevant data, matches it with the corresponding phrases in the template, merges them, and then publishes different versions across different platforms. The system can also alert reporters via Slack of any anomalies it finds in the data—for instance, wider margins than predicted—so they can investigate. “It’s just one more way to get a tip” on a potential scoop, Gilbert says.
- And yet the fact that 30% of the Sun’s 1.6 million readers voted Labour, according to YouGov analysis, could be seen as evidence that its constant pounding of Corbyn had no effect. In 2015, 24% of Sun readers voted for Ed Miliband. Labour’s upswing was largely due to the decline of Ukip, which was backed by 19% of Sun readers two years ago and 3% in June. While many of these voters switched to the Conservatives, backed by 59% of Sun readers, a significant number backed Corbyn on the same day his head appeared in a dustbin under the slightly sad punning headline: “Don’t chuck Britain in the COR-BIN.”
- if Donald Trump is what democracy looks like, don’t sign us up for it. ---weakens the idea that it is worth adopting
- https://blueshift.io/international-trade.html What strikes me about the United States is how balanced its trade is with Canada and Mexico. To hear some of the recent rhetoric about Mexico, you would think the trade is completely one-sided — goods flowing in, money flowing out. In reality, America’s imports and exports with Mexico are roughly equal ($240 billion and $294 billion). The same is true of Canada ($312 billion and $347 billion).
- And Syria’s President Assad hailed Trump’s victory as “promising” and called him a “natural ally”. Moreover, some African despots – like Joseph Kabila of the DRC – have hinted that they just needed to cling to power long enough to see President Obama replaced by Trump. In Kabila’s view, Trump won’t care too much if an African leader violates term limits and overstays his time in power. Sadly, Kabila probably is right. Duterte was one of the first to congratulate Trump on his “well-deserved victory”. When Duterte was asked whether the two men would get along, he simply replied that he thought they would because “he [Trump] has not meddled in the human rights”. 2,500 killings by police and 3,600 by vigilantes. Agencies including Amnesty quote a total figure of more than 7,000 dead. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan want the extradition of Fethullah Gülen and continued security cooperation. “urgent extradition of Fethullah Gülen, the mastermind, executor and perpetrator of the heinous July 15 coup attempt who lives on US soil.”
- Putin sees Trump as a fellow leader who cares more about his country’s national interests than about ideologies. In Moscow’s view, a United States that is largely focused on itself is far more welcome than a United States that seeks to dominate the world and aggressively promote its values, norms, and principles in a borderless environment.
- May’s Washington trip left no doubt about London’s desperation to pursue a trade deal with the US, which is the UK’s biggest trade partner after the EU. Trump encouraged her in this hope. Both politicians have a political point to make to the EU. A quick deal would be a totemic win for Brexit supporters, but for the economy, speed matters less than the terms. What Trump means by “America First” is “buy American and hire American.” His administration will look to reduce the trade surplus with the US which the UK enjoys today. It will want access for its agricultural produce, pharmaceutical and financial services companies at a time when UK farmers, the NHS and the City are already facing various degrees of dislocation.
- 3m people in the US and millions around the world who marched against the program of the new administration
- Those who know their American history, however, were not so easily soothed. For “America First” was also the slogan of the isolationists during the 1930s, Trump has quickly given notice that the US would withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, and seek to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Canada and Mexico. He has made clear that he will punish countries that “violate” trade agreements. This is aimed largely, though not exclusively, at China, which Trump seems intent to weaken through trade issues.
- Daniel Kreiss, a University of North Carolina professor who studies political language, said Mr. Bannon’s phrases emerge from “a very defined cultural and ideological movement” that has grown out of populist online communities like Breitbart. That vernacular, he said, is used to articulate a “very coherent story about what America is, and what it should be, that is not reducible to a set of policy positions” — but only if you know how to hear it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?tid=a_inl
- Isolationism and America First involvement[edit] At the urging of U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, Lindbergh wrote a secret memo to the British warning that a military response by Britain and France to Hitler's violation of the Munich Agreement would be disastrous; he claimed that France was militarily weak and Britain over-reliant on its navy. He recommended that they urgently strengthen their air power to force Hitler to redirect his aggression against "Asiatic Communism."[125] In late 1940 Lindbergh became spokesman of the isolationist America First Committee,[131] soon speaking to overflow crowds at Madison Square Garden and Chicago's Soldier Field, with millions listening by radio. He argued that America had no business attacking Germany; he later wrote: Lindbergh speaking at an AFC rally In his 1941 testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs opposing the Lend-Lease bill, Lindbergh proposed that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany.[133] At an America First rally in September, Lindbergh accused three groups of "pressing this country toward war[:] the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration":[135] Interventionists created pamphlets pointing out his efforts were praised in Nazi Germany and included quotations such as "Racial strength is vital; politics, a luxury". Attitudes toward race and racism[edit] Lindbergh elucidated his beliefs regarding white race in a 1939 article in Reader's Digest: We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.[143]
- Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was actually signing the order itself. Yesterday, the Department of Justice gave a “no comment” when asked whether the Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed Trump’s executive orders—including the order at hand. (OLC normally reviews every executive order.) https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-trumps-horrifying-executive-order-refugees-and-visas
- -casual dinner meetings with clients at Mar-A-Lago, including the heads of international business concerns as well as state leaders, follow this pattern
- -Trump’s plans on deregulation of the financial sector, especially repeal of Glass-Steagall Act, as well as de-regulation of the energy industry and rollback on taxes
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-16/trump-adviser-carl-icahn-lobbies-for-rule-change-that-benefits-icahn Carl Icahn was named as a special adviser on regulatory issues, which the Journal notes has major implications in light of Trump's promises to get rid of 90% of federal regulations. Critics say there are clearly conflicts of interest in appointing a leading corporate investor to rewrite regulations affecting corporations, the New York Times reports. "The corrupt nature of this arrangement cannot be understated," a DNC spokesman said. "Voters who wanted Trump to drain the swamp just got another face full of mud." The Hill reports that the transition team says Icahn will be advising "in his individual capacity and will not be serving as a federal employee," meaning he will be exempt from conflict-of-interest regulations.
- Number of states with a declining freedom index exceeds the number that have improved for the last 11 years
- After a public showing on May 25 in which Trump refused to endorse NATO’s collective defense clause and famously shoved the Montenegrin leader out of the way, leaders of the 29-member alliance retired to a closed-door dinner that multiple sources tell Foreign Policy left alliance leaders “appalled.” Trump had two versions of prepared remarks for the dinner, one that took a traditional tack and one prepared by the more NATO-skeptic advisors, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. “He dumped both of them and improvised,” one source briefed on the dinner told FP. During the dinner, Trump went off-script to criticize allies again for not spending enough on defense. (The United States is one of only five members that meets NATO members’ pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.) Several sources briefed extensively on the dinner say he said 2 percent wasn’t enough and allies should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense, and he even threatened to cut back U.S. defense spending and have Europeans dole out “back pay” to make up for their low defense spending if they didn’t pony up quickly enough. Two sources say Trump didn’t mention Russia once during the dinner. “Oh, it was like a total shitshow,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss the closed-door dinner. -Trump is eroding the unity fo the Western alliance, exactly what Russia needs---
- World trade of goods and services was, until fairly recently, at the leading edge of globalisation.. In the last five years, it has grown at about 3 per cent annually, which is less than half the rate of growth over the previous 30 years. There are few historical precedents in the last 50 years for such weak performance, and none for such prolonged sluggishness.
- The U.S. auto giant on Tuesday outlined new details of its planned $9 billion in U.S. facility investments through 2019. The company said it planned to create or retain 8,500 jobs as part of its 2015 contract with the United Auto Workers.
- This grand strategic design is evident in virtually everything Trump has done at home and abroad. Domestically, he’s pulled out all the stops in attempting to cripple the rise of alternative energy and ensure the perpetuation of a carbon-dominated economy. Abroad, he is seeking the formation of an alliance of fossil-fuel states led by the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, while attempting to isolate emerging renewable-energy powers like Germany and China. If his project of global realignment proceeds as imagined, the world will soon enough be divided into two camps, each competing for power, wealth, and influence: the carbonites on one side and the post-carbon greens on the other.
- From this perspective, an alliance of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States makes perfect sense. As a start, authoritarian-minded leaders who detest liberal ideas and seek to perpetuate the Age of Carbon now run all three countries. They, in turn, exercise a commanding role in the global production of energy. As the world’s three leading producers of petroleum, they account for about 38% of total global oil output. The U.S. and Russia are also the world’s top two producers of natural gas. Along with Saudi Arabia, they jointly account for 41% of global gas output.
- the United States is the only country in the world with a global military presence that can project air and naval power to every far corner. The Russian navy is an operational backwater, and the Chinese navy is a regional one, not global. There is no air force to rival the U.S. Air Force, and no other country has huge mi It was the source of an embarrassing, if overhyped, mishap when the Donald J. Trump administration announced on April 8 the carrier was being ordered to the Korean peninsula amid a bout of escalating tensions with Pyongyang. You can imagine the uproar when the Carl Vinson was spotted sailing away from the Korean Peninsula more than a week later.litary bases the world over or even access to countless ports and anchorages. So far, Trump has offered little clarity about whether he might approve more forces for Afghanistan, where some 8,400 U.S. troops remain more than 15 years after the Islamist Taliban government was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces. The Pentagon will send almost 4,000 additional American forces to Afghanistan, a Trump administration official said Thursday, hoping to break a stalemate in a war that has now passed to a third US commander in chief. The deployment will be the largest of American manpower under Donald Trump's young presidency.
- The age group of what will then be persons in the 18 to 45-year-old bracket, including the entirety of the millennial generation for the first time, is expected to represent 40 percent of the United States' eligible voters in 2020.[2]