A18| Wednesday, September 11, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
President Trump’s Trade Policy Is Working
When it comes to giving the White
House trade policy advice, Robert B.
Zoellick has zero credibility (“The
Trade War’s Winners Don’t Include
Us,” op-ed, Sept. 5). As the U.S. trade
representative when and after China
entered the World Trade Organization,
Mr. Zoellick fiddled for years while
what would eventually be more than
75,000 American factories were shut-
tered and more than five million
American manufacturing jobs were
offshored.
As counterpoint to Mr. Zoellick’s
pontifications: The Trans-Pacific Part-
nership was a horrendous deal that
would have devastated the American
auto industry. The U.S. already has
trade agreements with six of the 11
countries in the Trans-Pacific Partner-
ship. Of the remaining five countries,
Japan accounts for almost 90% of
their combined gross domestic prod-
uct, and President Trump recently
completed a deal with Japan on the
first stage of negotiations. America
lost nothing from exiting the TPP.
The global supply chains moving
out of an authoritarian and protec-
tionist China will become more diver-
sified and resilient, not a cost burden
to America. China, not the American
consumer, is bearing the burden of the
tariffs by slashing its prices and deval-
uing its currency while the U.S. steel
industry is thriving behind the Trump
tariff shield.
The Trump tariffs are attracting
billions of dollars of foreign invest-
ment in manufacturing on U.S. soil
while the threat of tariffs incentivized
Mexico to do more in two days on bor-
der security than in the last decade.
The United States–Mexico–Canada
Agreement (USMCA) is the new stan-
dard both for trade agreements and
“rules for cutting-edge sectors.” It was
negotiated at a speed that Mr. Zoellick
could never have dreamed of.
President Trump’s record of success
includes the largest trade deal in his-
tory in the USMCA, significant im-
provements to a flawed South Korean
deal and the initial deal with Japan. The
only reason China is at the negotiating
table is because, unlike Mr. Zoellick’s
bosses, President Trump has the brains
and backbone to stand up to China.
PETERNAVARRO
Assistant to the president for trade &
manufacturing policy
WashingtonMr. Zoellick joins the chorus of
commentators excoriating President
Trump’s trade policy (if one can call it
that). While pointing out the obvi-
ous—to date all it has accomplished is
an uncertain environment for businessinvestment and reduced global trade—
he fails to offer an alternative.
It is relatively easy to point out the
flaws in any particular approach, but
far more difficult to develop workable
solutions. Being against something is
not a strategy unless you agree with
asymetrical tariff levels, market access
and theft of our intellectual property.
GORDONGOULD
Boulder, Colo.Regarding your editorial “Cut the
Trump Uncertainty Tax” (Aug. 22):
While the Trump administration has
pursued a number of laudable policy
objectives with great success, its Sec-
tion 232 steel tariff has produced per-
verse outcomes relative to the stated
objective of reinvigorating the steel
industry and has created enormous
uncertainty in steel markets. It makes
no sense whatsoever to apply a tariff
to hot-rolled steel raw materials used
to produce a multitude of finished
products while ignoring the down-
stream markets that consume these
tariffed products.
Offshore producers of hot-rolled
steel products that have been shut out
of traditional U.S. markets by the 232
tariff have shifted their production to
downstream products, effectively cir-
cumventing the tariff.
Today, importers of finished prod-
ucts are having a field day displacing
U.S. production by taking advantage of
lower world-market prices for raw
materials. Domestic companies are re-
ducing operating hours and incurring
losses, while imports year over year
have risen by more than 50%. Because
offshore competitors are likely selling
their goods profitably here, U.S. pro-
ducers are unlikely to prevail with tra-
ditional antidumping cases. Capital
expenditures are being curtailed by
U.S. steel purchasers and manufactur-
ers are redefining survival-mode tac-
tics as they determine whether they
can wait out the surge of imports.
Meanwhile, as domestic production
of steel products is displaced by im-
ports, guess who is not receiving the
traditional and expected orders for
hot-rolled steel: Our suppliers, which
are the very steel mills that were to
benefit from the Section 232 tariff.
They have seen the weakest market in
recent memory through the seasonally
strongest period of the year and many
have curtailed operating hours.
The ultimate uncertainty is being
unsure whether your industry will ex-
ist in 2020 or 2021.
H.O.WOLTZIII
President & CEO
Insteel Industries Inc.
Mount Airy, N.C.LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters intended for publication should
be addressed to: The Editor, 1211 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10036,
or emailed to [email protected]. Please
include your city and state. All letters
are subject to editing, and unpublished
letters can be neither acknowledged nor
returned.
“I’m not ready for commitment—
I prefer ‘catch and release’.”THE WALL STREET JOURNALPepper ...
And SaltA High-Tech Schooling Guarantees Nothing
Regarding “Schools’ Tech Push
Meets Backlash” (Page One, Sept. 4): I
feel I have no recourse against dis-
tricts and schools that want to put
screens in front of my kids at school
and then send them home for more
screen time where homework is done
on YouTube. Google classroom hides
the books and homework assignments
from parents. I would so appreciate
paging through Chapter 4 to see what
my son is learning and being able to
go back a few pages. My 14-year-old
gained a near-zero foundation in
math in middle school partly becauseof my poor parenting skills, but
largely because there is so little
“working out” of problems on paper.
His printing is nearly illegible. But he
reads the Journal daily.
PAULCURRAN
Tustin, Calif.Instead of spending millions of dol-
lars on unproven technology, school
districts would be better off using
that money to raise their teachers’
salaries. Starting salaries for public-
school teachers in many states are
under $40,000 a year.
It is a given in the private sector
that to get the best people you have
to pay top dollar. But when it comes
to those entrusted with preparing our
children for the future, public-school
teachers are undervalued and under-
paid. Why?
JOHNE.STAFFORD
Rye, N.Y.Live human contact is important in
teaching and learning, indeed, in all
of life. The most motivating teachers
entertain their students, no matter
the course subject matter. The
teacher’s tone of voice, physical
movements, sense of humor, anec-
dotes, personal experiences, etc., mo-
tivate students to attend classes and
remain attentive, and to want to learn
the subject.
RONBURDA
Gilbert, Ariz.Uncertainty, Not Rates,
Explains Low Investment
Your criticism of Fed monetary
Vice Chair William Dudley’s com-
ments about Fed policy (“The Fed-
eral Reserve Resistance,” Review &
Outlook, Aug. 28) misses the point.
His point is that if Fed interest-rate
policy won’t ameliorate the negative
effects of President Trump’s erratic
and incoherent trade policies, then
further interest-rate reductions will
only create a sugar high and be dam-
aging in the long term. His point is
that Fed tools may be ill-equipped to
deal with the economic fallout
caused by those policies. He suggests
that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell
has reached that conclusion and ar-
gues that if he has, then the Fed, ex-
ercising its independence, should re-
spond accordingly by not cutting
rates. Mr. Dudley is right.
It seems clear by now that declin-
ing business investment is due not
to high borrowing costs but to un-
certainty about the contents of the
next tweet. Fed independence must
be preserved at all costs, but it ar-
gues in favor of avoiding futile ef-
forts to address a problem the Fed
cannot address effectively—espe-
cially where efforts to do so risk
creating asset bubbles that only a
real-estate developer can love.
DOUGLASM.SCHWAB
New YorkJohn Bolton Resigns
J
ohn Bolton resigned as White House na-
tional security adviser on Tuesday, which
must delight North Korea’s Kim Jong Un,
Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, Rus-
sia’s Vladimir Putin and Vene-
zuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Amer-
ica’s adversaries lost a rare
internal restraint on President
Trump’s inconstant and trans-
actional security instincts.
The world is now a more dangerous place.
Start with the fact that Mr. Trump didn’t tell
the truth about firing Mr. Bolton. “I asked John
for his resignation” due to policy disagree-
ments, Mr. Trump tweeted. The disagreements
were real. But Mr. Bolton says he offered to re-
sign Monday during a conversation with the
President on Afghanistan. Mr. Trump said
they’d talk again in the morning.
Mr. Bolton went home on what was the 17-
month anniversary of taking the job and de-
cided to resign. He submitted his resignation
letter Tuesday morning, even as the White
House announced he’d be briefing the media on
antiterror measures. Shortly thereafter Mr.
Trump tried to spin the resignation as his idea
with his tweet.
None of this speaks well of the President,
who fears looking bad for having lost his third
NSC adviser in three years. James Mattis re-
signed last year as Secretary of Defense, only
to have Mr. Trump force him out two months
early out of spite. Mr. Trump ousted Rex Tiller-
son as Secretary of State via tweet after months
of publicly undercutting him. Mr. Trump is a
hard man to work for.
A President deserves advisers who will im-
plement his policies, but there’s no doubt Mr.
Bolton did that even when he disagreed. The
troubling implication of Mr. Bolton’s departure
is that Mr. Trump doesn’t really want to hear
opposing points of view. He says he does, but
he makes work intolerable for those who give
him contrary advice.
The difference isn’t the simplistic media
line—from the left and also on the isolationist
right—that Mr. Bolton is a hawk who prevented
Mr. Trump from pursuing peace around the
world. The real issue is that Mr. Trump thinks
every security issue can be boiled down to a ne-
gotiation, and that every other head of state
wants to do a deal like he does.
The terms matter less to Mr. Trump than the
art of the deal. Mr. Bolton had the thankless
task of telling Mr. Trump that a bad deal is
worse than no deal, and that strategic ground
must be prepared in advance and over time if
you want to get a good deal.
In this role Mr. Bolton saved Mr. Trump more
than once from his worst negotiating instincts.
Mr. Bolton was one of those
who argued in February that
Mr. Trump should walk away
from a bad deal with North
Korea’s Kim in Hanoi.
He also was a lone Adminis-
tration voice advising against
signing a deal with the Afghan Taliban. Mr.
Trump wants to withdraw all U.S. troops from
Afghanistan, and it was the President’s idea to
invite the Taliban to Camp David on the week
of the anniversary of 9/11. Mr. Trump spared
himself substantial embarrassment by cancel-
ling the talks at the last minute, thanks in part
to Mr. Bolton’s counsel.
For all of his tough talk, Mr. Trump doesn’t
seem to want a tough foreign policy. His desire
for deals is the reason he flatters dictators and
strongmen on the other side of the negotiating
table despite their records.
Mr. Trump has told his advisers to tone down
criticism of China’s Xi Jinping on Hong Kong
and the re-education camps in Xinjiang. Mr.
Trump is reluctant to impose sanctions on Tur-
key for buying Russia’s S-400 missile system,
despite a clear violation of NATO commitments.
He’d like to loosen sanctions on Mr. Putin’s Rus-
sia, and he’d be pleased to sit down with
Messrs. Rouhani or Maduro.
iii
As he heads into a difficult re-election cam-
paign, Mr. Trump should be sending a signal of
reassurance and steadiness. Instead the world
sees disarray inside the Administration and a
President given to policy-making as impulsive
as his Twitter feed.
The question now is what Mr. Bolton’s depar-
ture means for U.S. foreign policy for the next
14 months. The political pressure will build for
some foreign-policy achievement as Election
Day approaches. Yet to get North Korea, Iran or
Russia to agree may require concessions that
damage U.S. interests.
Another danger is that Mr. Trump’s behavior
is increasingly self-isolating. He thinks individ-
uals are expendable, but the advisers he has lost
represent constituencies that ought to be on his
side. Generals Mattis and H.R. McMaster, his
second NSC adviser, represent the military. Mr.
Bolton speaks for the Jacksonian wing of U.S.
foreign policy that believes in a strong defense
of American interests around the world. Mr.
Trump should be cementing these loyalties, not
undercutting them.The White House loses a
voice willing to disagree
with the President.
How to Think About Health Coverage
T
he number of Americans without health
insurance rose last year, the Census Bu-
reau reported Tuesday, and Democrats
say this justifies more govern-
ment control. Yet the reality
is more complicated—in par-
ticular, note that having a
Medicaid card is no guarantee
of great medical care.
The good Census news is
that real median earnings of men and women
who work full time and year round “increased
by 3.4% and 3.3%, respectively, between 2017
and 2018.” Some 2.3 million more Americans
are working full time. The poverty rate fell 0.
percentage points from 2017, to 11.8%, the
fourth annual decline in a row.
Yet 8.5% of Americans lacked health insur-
ance in 2018, up from 7.9% in 2017, the first in-
crease since the recession, and this figure is
getting all the media attention. Much of the de-
cline comes from a dip in Medicaid coverage,
and as a general rule you’d expect fewer folks
to qualify for Medicaid as the economy im-
proves and poverty declines.
But Census notes that overall coverage fell
one percentage point for people in families that
earn 300% to 399% of the federal poverty line,
and 0.8 percentage points for folks above
400%. “During this time,” Census notes, “the
overall health insurance coverage rate did not
statistically change for any other income-to-
poverty group.”
These are the folks we’ve written about
many times: Americans who earn too much to
qualify for ObamaCare subsidies but may have
few alternatives. The left’s solution is to rein-
state ObamaCare’s individual mandate that
forces the middle class to buy the product any-
way. This shows that merely having access to
insurance doesn’t mean it’s valuable.
The decline in Medicaid coverage doesn’t
appear to be due to folks picking up insurance
at a job, and the left is blaming the higher unin-
sured rate on Trump Adminis-
tration policies including its
rules on association health
plans and short-term insur-
ance options. But the point of
association health plans is to
make it easier for more small
businesses to offer insurance to more workers.
The rule is ensnared in court in any case.
The left is also flogging that uninsured rates
are lower in states that expanded Medicaid un-
der the Affordable Care Act than in those that
didn’t. This is presented as a reason to expand
Medicaid.
Yet our contributor Brian Blase notes that,
according to the Census report, the uninsured
rate increased from 2017 to 2018 in states that
expanded Medicaid among those who earn less
than 100% of the poverty line. That means
some who are eligible for Medicaid declined to
sign up. Mr. Blase and Aaron Yelowitz also ex-
plained last month in these pages how Medic-
aid expansion has unleashed a surge of im-
proper enrollment by Americans who don’t
qualify.
The larger point is that the only conversa-
tion the left wants to have about health care
is how many Americans are insured, and that’s
so they don’t have to answer for failures like
Medicaid’s narrow provider networks, high
emergency room use rates, and more.
Democrats running for President talk about
proposals like Medicare for All exclusively as
“universal coverage,” not about, say, how
quickly you’ll be able to see a specialist. Having
that insurance card in your wallet will be small
consolation as you wait for a knee replacement
allocated by political discretion.New Census data show
thepovertyratefellforthe fourth year in a row.
Big Labor’s Minimum-Wage Remorse
B
ig Labor has had big success getting poli-
ticians to raise the minimum wage, de-
spite warnings that it could lead to more
automation. Well, what do you know, now the
Oregon AFL-CIO wants voters to limit self-check-
out kiosks in grocery stores.
The union still needs the attorney general’s
sign-off on the paperwork it submitted last week
and 112,020 signatures to get this initiative on
the 2020 ballot. But under the proposed Grocery
Store Service and Community Protection Act,
Oregon groceries could operate no more than
two self-service checkout stations at a time. Vio-
lators would pay hefty fines.
The draft initiative claims “grocery stores
provide many people with their primary place
of social connection and sense of community,”
but self-service checkouts add “to social isola-
tion and related negative health consequences”
for shoppers. It claims the kiosks “contribute to
retail workers feeling devalued” and heighten
the risk of everything from shoplifting to under-
age drinking. Oh, and self-checkout stations also
intensify “efficiency pressures on workers.”
In 2016 Oregon passed one of the country’s
most aggressive minimum-wage laws. The new
rate varies by region, but by July 2022 it will rise
to $14.75 an hour in Portland—one of the na-
tion’s highest. This added to store costs in a low-
margin business already facing competition
from online retailers. Ergo, self-checkout.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local
555, an AFL-CIO affiliate, is now piggy-backing
off the minimum-wage hikes to demand even
higher pay for some 22,000 workers in Oregon
and Southwest Washington. The threat of the
ballot initiative will be political leverage during
these negotiations. Big Labor wants higher man-
dated wages but ignores the job losses that are
the inevitable result.REVIEW & OUTLOOK
OPINION