The Washington Post - 26.08.2019

MONDAY, AUGUST 26 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

biarritz, france

T

he clear imperative for the Western

world to come together and confront

China’s rising internal repression

and external economic aggression

should have been enough to overshadow any

differences between strained allies at this

weekend’s Group of Seven meetings. But no

such luck.

The members of the G-7 — which includes

the United States, France, Britain, Germany,

Italy, Canada and Japan — created this multi-

lateral mechanism to bring to bear their joint

economic power on the solution of great

challenges. China’s rapid economic expan-

sion, fueled by various unfair trade practices

and directly linked to the Chinese Commu-

nist Party’s political and strategic objectives,

is unquestionably the free world’s latest,

greatest test.

But with blame assignable to both the

Trump administration and European mem-

bers of this once-vaunted group, the best

anyone hopes for in this scenic French re-

treat is that the G-7 summit won’t devolve

into another diplomatic disaster akin to what

took place in Canada last year.

President Trump, in his typically undiplo-

matic way, hammered home his criticisms of

China’s economic aggression before he even

got on the plane, ordering U.S. companies to

start looking for ways to leave China, raising

tariffs on Chinese goods and calling out

Beijing on its rampant intellectual property

theft.

On Friday, Trump referred to his confron-

tation with China over its economic aggres-

sion as “more important than anything else

right now — just about — that we’re working

on.”

Here in France, most media reports fo-

cused on Trump’s offhand remark that he has

had “second thoughts” on everything, includ-

ing his trade war with China. But Trump was

not expressing regret or signaling a change in

policy. In the same series of questions, he said

about the trade war: “It has to happen.”

The president is escalating pressure on

China even though that puts his economic

accomplishments at risk. Make no mistake,

he’s committed to seeing this through.

Trump’s confused messaging, including

his outlandish threats to invoke emergency

powers to force U.S. companies out of China,

are counterproductive. But his basic thrust is

on point. China must change its predatory

economic and industrial policies, by persua-

sion or pressure. If the Chinese government

won’t play by basic international rules, West-

ern free-market democracies will have no

choice but to defend themselves through

disengagement and decoupling that will un-

doubtedly have negative collateral economic

consequences.

Any honest analysis must acknowledge

that the Chinese government has not yet

changed its behavior and that therefore

Trump’s strategy has not yet worked. But it’s

obvious the chances of success would rise

dramatically if European allies were on

board.

Yet despite the fact that Europe faces the

exact same threat from China’s economic

aggression, European leaders here in Biarritz

are saying that the onus for ending the trade

war is on Washington, not Beijing.

French President Emmanuel Macron said

he wanted to persuade G-7 leaders (meaning

Trump) to “avoid this trade war” and reduce

tensions. British Prime Minister Boris John-

son said he didn’t like tariffs and wanted

“trade peace.” European Council President

Donald Tusk warned that Trump’s use of

tariffs “as a political instrument” could cause

a global recession. None of them mentioned

China’s role in the dispute or its resolution.

Trump could blunt criticism of his China

tariffs by backing off his concurrent tariff

threats on our allies. The administration

should focus on persuading European coun-

tries to join the pressure campaign against

China, which is the real trade priority.

Privately, many European officials hope

their countries’ stagnant economies might

benefit from the U.S.-China fight, as compa-

nies from third countries pick up the busi-

ness American companies leave behind.

Also, European countries that want money

from China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

don’t want to anger the Chinese Communist

Party before their checks clear.

A more diplomatically savvy Trump ad-

ministration might point out to Europeans

that China’s economic aggression comes at

the expense of Europe’s own goals and inter-

ests, including confronting climate change,

promoting sustainable development and

protecting free markets.

The Trump administration also needs to

offer European countries more real alterna-

tives to Chinese development funds, which

almost always come with political strings,

corruption and ecological consequences.

According to White House read-outs,

Trump discussed Hong Kong and the tech-

nology giant Huawei with his G-7 counter-

parts. What’s missing is a Trump administra-

tion explanation of how China’s crackdown

on dissent and its predatory economic ex-

pansion are two parts of the same Chinese

Communist Party strategy, namely to under-

mine and eventually supplant the free and

open international order the United States

and European economies depend on.

The bottom line is that Trump and Europe

must make up and find a way to get along, at

least for the next year and maybe for four

more years after that. There will be no joint

statement at this year’s G-7 because there’s no

consensus on what the G-7 stands for. But

China’s economic aggression is exactly the

kind of generational challenge the G-7 was

designed to confront.

[email protected]

JOSH ROGIN

Trump and

Europe must

make up to

confront China

I

t’s getting harder and harder to write

these budget columns, because it must

be obvious to almost everyone by now

that hardly anyone in Washington (or

perhaps any place) cares about the budget

deficits. The assumption is that we can raise

spending and cut taxes forever — or until

some crisis occurs that forces us to do

involuntarily what we won’t do voluntarily.

There is a bipartisan consensus of sorts

that the presumed discipline of balancing

the budget — discarding the least useful

programs and increasing the least burden-

some taxes — has been overtaken by expedi-

ency. Why bother to curb budget deficits

when there seem to have been few, if any,

damaging consequences in letting them

continue? Worse, deficit reduction now

might raise the risk of recession.

Just for the record, it’s worth reciting the

basic facts in the latest report from the

Congressional Budget Office. It demon-

strates the nonchalance with which the

budget is now treated by both parties.

According to CBO estimates, massive

deficits stretch as far as the eye can see.

Between 2020 and 2029, the projected

deficits total $12.2 trillion, which is nearly

$1 trillion more than was estimated in May.

In every year after 2020, the deficit exceeds

$1 trillion and is more than 4 percent of

gross domestic product (GDP). By 2028, the

projected deficit will be 5 percent of GDP.

The actual deficits will probably be high-

er, even though the CBO projections assume

— unrealistically — that there will be no

recession during this period and that the

unemployment rate will remain near “full

employment.” But some existing tax cuts and

spending cuts will probably be reversed, as

they have been in the past. Passage of the

Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which was

mainly responsible for this year’s deficit

increase, was simply practice.

Among Republicans and Democrats,

there is little sense of embarrassment about

this. The Trump White House is said to be

searching for new economic stimulus pol-

icies, presumably further tax cuts, to bolster

President Trump’s reelection prospects. This

resembles Third World countries that pump

up the economy during election years,

because that’s what it is. Naturally, the

president is also pressuring the Federal

Reserve to reduce interest rates for the same

purpose.

The conspicuous cynicism of a president

trying to buy his own reelection with the

public’s money, especially when that money

is borrowed, is stunning. Of course, self-

serving efforts to boost the economy during

an election year are hardly unique to Trump,

but he has taken the practice to new lows.

Meanwhile, Democrats can’t brag. Their

presidential candidates have proposed a

heap of costly programs. Universal health

coverage. Free college. Subsidized jobs.

More child-care subsidies. The list runs on.

Democrats suggest implausibly that taxing

the rich and corporations will cover the

costs. This is dubious, but even if it

weren’t, it conveniently overlooks the

existing trillion-dollar deficit. Who’s going

to pay for these programs?

Democrats have been particularly dis-

graceful in not acknowledging that Ameri-

ca’s aging population requires new policies.

The elderly are healthier and wealthier than

in the past. By and large, Democrats have fed

the stereotype of all the elderly as poor and

decrepit. A sensible society would have

prepared for this predictable future by

gradually raising eligibility ages for public

programs and reducing benefits for the

affluent old. Social Security and Medicare

dominate the federal budget and are crowd-

ing out other important priorities.

The irony is that both Republicans and

Democrats are partially right. Presidents

and Congresses of both parties have delayed

for so long in addressing these problems

that there is no gentle way to push the

budget back toward balance without inflict-

ing real pain: deep spending cuts and higher

taxes. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a less

disruptive approach might have been possi-

ble. There were many warnings and almost

no action.

The best we could have expected is that

the president and Congress wouldn’t make

the problems worse. But they are. The

implicit hope of present policy is that the

world’s demand for “safe assets” — mainly

U.S. Treasury securities — means that we can

spend more than we tax, with the shortfall

being made up by perpetual borrowing.

This is a high-stakes gamble. The possible

ways in which a world sated with dollar

securities could trigger a financial or eco-

nomic crisis are many. The consequences of

a run on the dollar — the currency most held

by multinational firms, international banks,

investors and traders — would clearly desta-

bilize the world economy. A prudent society

would recognize this and take preventive

steps.

We are not prudent. We are just raising

the risks, seemingly determined to learn

how much we can test the bounds of our

ignorance.

ROBERT J. SAMUELSON

America’s

high-stakes

deficit gamble

BY KATE COHEN

G

reta Thunberg puts most

of us to shame. The 16-

year-old Swedish climate

activist is en route to the

U.N. Climate Action Summit in

New York, on a two-week, comfort-

free journey by solar-powered sail-

boat. She doesn’t fly, because flying

is bad for the climate. She helped

popularize the Swedish movement

of flygskam, or flight shaming,

which asks Swedes to travel ac-

cording to their beliefs.

Greta’s also a vegan. Her parents

are vegan, too, after what sounds

like a daunting kitchen-table cam-

paign of repetition plus guilt. “I

kept showing them articles and

graphs... they always had excus-

es,” Greta told an interviewer. But

“I kept telling them that they were

stealing our future and they cannot

stand up for human rights while

living that lifestyle.”

Greta’s like an emissary from the

future calmly stating that now is

the time to panic. Who could argue

with that? Not me. I recently swore

off plastic straws on account of my

own 16-year-old’s disapproval,

even though his straw-shaming

(sugrörskam?) consisted only of a

single, sharp “Mom!” and a slow,

disappointed head shake as I

plucked my absolute-last-plastic-

straw-I-swear from a coffee shop

counter. If Greta were my kid, I’d

be a vegan now, too.

But she’s not my kid. So al-

though I believe that climate

change is an urgent threat, I travel

and eat without thinking much

about my carbon footprint. Ac-

cording to Greta, I’m probably not

evil; I just don’t know better:

“People keep doing what they do

because the vast majority doesn’t

have a clue about the actual conse-

quences of our everyday life.”

That’s not quite right; we do have a

clue. But believing one thing and

doing another is how most of us

behave.

When my father bought an SUV

many years ago, I shook my head

slowly in disappointment and

nicknamed his new car “OPEC.” He

argued he needed four-wheel-drive

to traverse his steep driveway in

the snow. He lives in Virginia. I

pointed out that on the three

occasions per year when he might

be snowed in, he could call a

neighbor or just stay put. Didn’t he

care about the environment?

The thing is, he does. He knows

gas-guzzlers are bad. He thinks

that mileage standards should be

higher and that no one should be

able to buy a car that gets as few

miles to the gallon as the one he

bought. He would happily vote for

someone who would make it illegal

for him to buy an SUV. But until the

laws changed, he was sticking with

OPEC.

What a hypocrite!

Eventually, though, I let the

SUV-skam go. Children and vision-

aries (and especially child visionar-

ies) abhor hypocrisy, but I was old

enough by then to appreciate it. I’d

rather my father be a hypocrite

than be wrong.

True, his purchase did not match

his politics. But would it be better if

his politics matched his purchase?

If he decided, because he wanted

an SUV, that maybe they weren’t so

bad after all? Of course not. Better

he should have the right values,

which one day might change what

he chose to drive.

Even if my father never lives up

to them, those values shape his

politics. And they shape his daugh-

ter, too. He has raised someone

who wouldn’t dream of buying an

SUV. I’ve raised kids who wouldn’t

dream of using straws or bottled

water. With luck, one day they’ll

raise kids who will shame them for

... something. Swing sets? Surfing?

When you look at it this way,

hypocrisy in well-meaning people

is just the lag time between belief

and action. It’s a refusal to accept

that how we behave now is as good

as we can expect from ourselves,

from others and from the future.

And it’s a reflection of the fact that

most of us need help (regulations,

laws, incentives, shame) getting to

where we know we should be.

Failure to live according to

your stated beliefs is one thing, of

course; it’s quite another to insist

that others live by rules that you

yourself don’t keep. Flying after

making everyone else brave the

seas. That’s the ugly kind of

hypocrite.

Greta Thunberg is neither kind.

If anyone lives according to her

convictions, she does.

But as much as I admire her

consistency, I don’t dismiss climate

activists who live in mansions or

even fly private jets to climate

conferences. Their advocacy will

help shape a new generation,

which will then turn around and

judge their personal behavior as

hopelessly retrograde.

Every generation is the hypocrit-

ical generation for the one that

follows. It may feel like karma, but

it’s actually progress. Is it moving

fast enough to save the planet? I

bet I know what Greta would say.

Kate Cohen is a writer in Albany, N.Y.

On climate change,

hypocrisy may be progress

KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg on the Malizia II boat in Plymouth, England, on Aug. 14.

C

omplaining about government

— its failures, its corruption

and, in the worst cases, its

capacity to oppress — is both

an American pastime and a right to be

treasured.

But a wholesome desire to preserve

ourselves from foolish or tyrannical

rule often devolves into disdaining

government altogether. The underly-

ing assumption (I exaggerate only a

little) is that everything government

undertakes is doomed to be less effec-

tive, less beautiful, less innovative and

less useful than the work of the private

sector.

Yes, there are plenty of horror sto-

ries about the misdeeds of public

bureaucracies. We hear such tales es-

pecially from people who run small

businesses and find government rule

books and the people charged with

enforcing them to be, well, less than

user-friendly.

Let’s assume all of these stories are

true. And then consider another truth:

Nearly everyone also has a horror story

about dealing with a private bureau-

cracy — say, a cable or insurance

company, a phone service provider or a

bank.

When a government bureaucrat

fails us, the response is often along the

lines of: “Typical government.” But

when a private sector bureaucrat fails

us, almost nobody says: “Typical pri-

vate sector.”

This habit is one of the victories of

ideological conservatism. We rarely

notice the moments when our free,

democratically elected government

enhances individual freedom. It did so

with civil rights laws on behalf of

excluded minorities and for large

groups of Americans whose freedom

was hemmed in by a shortage of

income. Just start with elderly Ameri-

cans on Social Security and Medicare

and move on from there.

We don’t associate government

with beauty, but what other word

describes our national parks or so

many of our great public universities?

We rarely say the words “government”

and “innovation” in the same sen-

tence. But the technology behind the

Internet, through which many will be

able to read this column, grew out of

government-sponsored research and

development. And ponder how many

lives have been saved or improved

thanks to the brilliant minds at the

National Institutes of Health.

We should worship neither the state

nor the private sector. But after dec-

ades of reflexively running down gov-

ernment, we need to rediscover what it

actually does, and can do.

For this reason, I hope every 2020

presidential candidate — yes, I’m be-

ing optimistic about President Trump

— reads the policy book of the summer,

“The Public Option: How to Expand

Freedom, Increase Opportunity and

Promote Equality,” by Ganesh Sitara-

man and Anne Alstott. The two law

professors are not interested in gov-

ernment taking over everything. On

the contrary, what they seek is to

expand choice.

A public option, they write, “pro-

vides an important service at a reason-

able cost, and it co-exists, quite peace-

ably, with one or more private options

offering the same service.” Thus: You

can use the post office, or ship with

FedEx or UPS. You can stay in a

national park or go to a private resort.

You can use a public library or buy a

book. You can head down the fairway

at a municipal golf course or join a

country club.

Notice that while public options are

available to everyone, they’re especial-

ly useful for those who don’t have a lot

of money. Sitaraman and Alstott sug-

gest new areas where they could be

helpful: for health insurance, where

the idea is already popular; for child

care; for retirement savings to supple-

ment Social Security; and for basic

banking. The last could address the

needs of roughly 14 million Americans,

many with low incomes, who have

neither checking nor savings accounts.

The authors are under no illusion

that every public option will work well

all the time, and they acknowledge the

difficulties faced by public schools and

public housing. But they also rightly

insist that the problems facing both

are aggravated by “America’s intense

residential segregation by race and by

class.”

Critics of public options might call

them socialism. But as Sitaraman and

Alstott note, “public options can ben-

efit the private sector.” They can create

a more fluid labor market by provid-

ing health insurance and retirement

coverage that individuals can take

with them from one employer to

another, thus easing “job lock.” They

can also introduce more competition

into concentrated markets. Munici-

pally provided broadband, for exam-

ple, might provide a consumer-friend-

ly alternative to a monopoly provider

of high-cost, poor-service Internet

connections.

“We think it’s not only possible but

critical to take a pragmatic look at

what government can do well,” they

write. Such practical hopefulness

would be an excellent antidote to the

poisonous election campaign we’re

about to endure.

Twitter: @EJDionne

E.J. DIONNE JR.

How government can expand freedom

CORRECTION

Andy Puzder’s Aug. 21 Wednesday Opinion

column, “Warren is the real economic

threat,” misstated the percentage that em-

ployee compensation increased in 2015; it

grew by 4.9 percent. The column also incor-

rectly reported on relative growth in em-

ployee compensation. Employee compensa-

tion grew in the first two years of the Trump

administration by $281 billion more than it

grew in the last two years of the Obama

administration.