President Trump Has Long Demanded Critical Manufacturing Return to the U.S. —

The Coronavirus Pandemic Outlines Why

The lack of independent control over critical healthcare products is highlighting exactly why Donald J Trump has been demanding U.S. manufacturing firms return production to this nation for years.  White House trade advisor Peter Navarro drove home the point yesterday:

[Transcript] – Q: Mr. Navarro, what’s the status of the “Buy American” executive order?

MR. NAVARRO: “One of the — one of the things that this crisis has taught us, sir, is that we are dangerously over-dependent on a global supply chain for our medicines, like penicillin; our medical supplies, like masks; and our medical equipment, like ventilators.

We have — right now as we speak, over 50 countries have already imposed some forms of export restrictions in their country against the rest of the world. And what we’ve — what we’re learning from that is that no matter how many treaties you have, no matter how many alliances, no matter how many phone calls, when push comes to shove you run the risk, as a nation, of not having what you need.”

“And if there’s any vindication of the President’s “Buy American, secure borders, and a strong manufacturing base” philosophy, strategy, and belief, it is this crisis — because it underscores everything that we see there.

So the “Buy American” order, which — which is going through process, would do a couple things. It would simply say, — not during this crisis, because we don’t want to disrupt anything. I want to be really clear about that. But going forward, after this is over, the VA, DOD, HHS, and this government buys American for essential medicines, our medical countermeasures, and the medical supplies and equipment we need.

At the same time, it will deregulate so we can get the FDA and EPA to facilitate domestic manufacturing. And then, innovate. Because the key here — the key here is having advanced manufacturing on U.S. soil that can leapfrog other countries so we don’t have to worry about competing against cheap sweatshop labor, lax environmental regulations, different tax regimes, and the massive subsidies of foreign governments who are actually directly attacking our industrial base.

So be patient with that, sir. It’s — the other priorities we have right now are to DPA and what the task force is doing. But if we learn anything from this crisis, it should be never again. Never again should we have to depend on the rest of the world for our essential medicines and countermeasures.” (read more)

From the outset of Donald Trump’s entry into the world of politics he espoused a series of key tenets around what he called his “America-First” objectives:

1. The U.S. needed to have control over our borders, and a greater ability to control who was migrating to the United States.  A shift toward stopping ‘illegal’ migration.
2. The U.S. needed to stop the manufacture of goods overseas and return critical manufacturing back to the United States.  A return to economic independence.
3. The U.S. needed to decouple from an over-reliance on Chinese industrial and consumer products.  China viewed as a geopolitical and economic risk.

Donald Trump was alone on these issues.  No-one else was raising them; no-one else was so urgently pushing that discussion. In 2015, 2016 and even 2017, no-one other than Trump was talking about how close we were to the dependence point of no return.

Given the status of very consequential issues stemming from the Chinese Coronavirus threat; and the myriad of serious issues with critical supply chain dependencies; wasn’t President Trump correct in his warnings and proposals?

In early 2017 President Trump and his administration coined the phrase: “economic security is national security”, and the economic team set about starting a very complex process to ensure the past three decades of trade policy was reversed.

One month after taking office, February 2017, President Trump met with labor unions and assembled a corporate manufacturing council, telling all of them they needed to change their thinking about manufacturing overseas.

The members of the council didn’t like the conversation; many of them were Wall Street multinationals who were themselves part of the historic shift in moving jobs to Asia and beyond.  Several months later the council disbanded amid the policy contention; but Trump persisted with the America First agenda.

President Trump, never wavered; he warned the corporate CEO’s they needed to adjust their thinking and bring back their manufacturing jobs.  Trump warned them to reorient their supply chains because they had become too dependent on China; and that dependency was manifesting as geopolitical risk if the U.S. and China were in conflict.

Time after time, conversation after conversation, in the background of events where few media were paying attention, President Trump spoke privately and publicly about the issue of over-reliance on Chinese products and critical goods from southeast Asia.

Then, after months of warnings, came the tariff hammer.

Those same manufacturing council executives and their Wall Street pundits screamed into every microphone they could find that President Trump was going to collapse the economy; that consumer prices would skyrocket; that Steel and Aluminum tariffs would mean everything from beer to soup would no longer be affordable.

Team Trump, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and USTR Robert Lighthizer didn’t waiver.  President Trump accepted the criticism of “Tariff-Man”; he owned the downside and then expanded the tariffs even higher upon more goods.  The CEO’s shrieked louder, but eventually, reluctantly, some started moving supply chains out of China.

While Team Trump renegotiated trade with South Korea and Japan; and while Trump renegotiated NAFTA with Mexico and Canada; the president kept the pressure on those U.S. corporations and multinationals to return critical manufacturing to the United States.

Now, with the global pandemic known as Coronavirus, people are starting to awaken to the real dangers of our medicines, pharmaceuticals and critical health care products being made overseas.  Right now we see the clear reasons why President Trump was so adamant about a conversation no-one wanted, Wall Street hated, and few were paying attention to.

Heck, it is only now that most Americans realize just how many critical products are at risk…. and instead of thanking President Trump for the foresight, the incredible prescience he exhibited, the professional political class are criticizing him for over details around an issue they allowed to happen.

In many cases those who are now criticizing the weakness of our supply-chain are the same people who participated in creating a manufacturing system based on dependency, for decades.  The criticism is not only unreal to witness, it’s maddening in the scale of its hypocrisy.

It sure is blood-boiling to watch the media now. To see the media cheer-leading for a national health crisis -literally with smiling faces as they hope for an economic collapse- for the exact same gleeful reason they cheered the impeachment effort.   The level of U.S. media vitriol against President Trump is sickening.

The American mainstream media truly is the enemy of a prosperous and thriving America.

These times will never be forgotten.

God bless President Trump….

….And Thank You Prescient Trump.

We will never forget.

I'm Sick…

Sick of corrupt governments and the cowards who empower them.

As I've been reading through articles all over the web covering the Wuhan China Coronavirus and, more to the point, the hysteria over it, I've seen many lament a variety of problems. The totalitarian overreaction (or purposeful and opportunistic overreach) of state government in response to the virus, the complete ineptitude of governors who were not at all concerned about human life months ago when it came to passing legislation allowing the wholesale slaughter of babies in (and even outside of) the birth canal, the utter disregard for the economic impact of shutting down entire states, talking heads who are more concerned with covering their own hides or passing blame than actually defeating the virus, a doomsayer "news" media with a goal of causing mass panic and pinning it on the President whom they've been trying to illegally overthrow since before this outbreak began, the list goes on, and such topics can be found anywhere.

The purpose of this article however is to nail the most important issue (in my opinion), which is at the very heart of this matter, because I have noticed some of my fellow citizens behaving like defeated cowards, and I must address this issue.

I have found some authors have come close to broaching it but none of them have actually made the connection.

(Skip to the bottom for the TL;DR version)


The President's Response

First let me write that the President's response to the virus itself was absolutely perfect. He banned travel with China and other affected countries early on, even while democrats resorted to their tired old trick of false racism accusations. Trump warned the entire nation of the danger of Coronavirus in his State of the Union speech. You know, the one Nancy Pelosi ripped up. Seems like she didn't "take the virus seriously". Trump has taken it seriously, and he didn't act too late. He was on top of this from the start.

However, the President's response to the economic plunge (more like an attempted economic murder) as well as the ensuing state-level shutdowns has been abysmal and a complete disappointment. Trump seems to be caving to the very same liberals who attempted a coup against him even as the Kung-Flu was first taking off in Wuhan China. He's even gone so far as to publicly threaten GM for not moving fast enough on restructuring their workforce and assembly lines to produce ventilators. I don't expect Trump to have a conservative's reverence for the private sector, because I knew he wasn't a conservative when I voted for him, but as a businessman he should know better than to use government authority to issue threats to an American company that was already cooperating and willing to help overcome this crisis.

Another problem I have is how he has allowed these dictatorial state governors to steamroller the economy he helped build up right into the ground through unconstitutional shutdowns of businesses they deem "non-essential". Not only a violation of private property rights, but a blatant violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Every job is essential to the person working that job, a truth multiplied when that person supports family members through it.

And as a quick aside, how do you like having your job declared "non-essential" by the government even as it deems abortionists to be "essential"? This is on a federal level, mind you, regardless of whether your state closed you down or not. Just because your state didn't shut anyone down doesn't mean the government would see you as "essential" if it decided to invoke a shutdown order (i.e. Florida). Also amusing is how the same government that stubbornly defends the outright murder of innocent unborn life now sanctimoniously browbeats dopey millennials for putting the elderly at risk by facilitating the spread of a virus during Spring Break. Isn't their rationale to place the female's personal desires over the life of her unborn child? Well if it is then don't be surprised when said female puts the same desires over the lives of total strangers outside her womb as well.

Anyway, back to Trump. His only answer to this outrage thus far has been to support the largest ripoff of the American taxpayer in American history, even going so far as to blast a republican congressman for daring to request a recorded vote on it. A $2.2 trillion dollar bill, that some say has an extra $4 trillion tacked on, and with more wasteful spending bills on the way. All so that the Americans who were put out of work by the government to begin with can subsist on the crumbs that fall from their own money! Only about 10% of the stolen money will go to Americans, and even in this, some people who are not affected might get a check regardless!

Don't misunderstand me. Trump hasn't pushed me away just yet. I still intend to vote for him in November, assuming we're still allowed to vote. I would vote for him just on the sole fact that we need Amy Coney Barrett to take RGB's seat when she finally… retires. My criticism of Trump stems from the same source of my anger toward all those in government who are mismanaging, or outright exploiting, this crisis. And that source is this truth…

The U.S. Constitution, and the rights recognized therein, are the only truly essential things government should be protecting right now.

Trump took an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. In letting these governors force healthy people to stay in their homes, to close down their businesses and kick them into the unemployment line, to arrest them for holding church services, or for peacefully assembling in groups more than ten, Trump has failed in his duty to defend our rights. In signing these massive spending bills he has helped usher in socialism, when not that long ago he told us that America would never be a socialist country. And don't tell me his hands are tied, because he has already correctly overridden these governors on the prescribing of hydroxychloroquine. Yes, one such governor (of Michigan) went so far as to threaten doctors and pharmacists not to prescribe the medicine to those with Coronavirus. So much for "my body, my choice", right? Yeah, unless you want to take the medicine that actually has a chance of curing the virus afflicting you. In that case the government is solidly between you and your actual doctor.

Thankfully, President Trump overrode this order as well as other governors' attempts to declare gun stores "non-essential". Trump should declare all businesses nationwide to be essential, and use the Interstate Commerce Clause to enforce it if necessary. He has already proven he has the power to do this. Get the economy back to work Mr. President!

And here is where we approach the heart of the matter…


What to do?

"But, but, the government has to do SOMETHING, otherwise people will die! Is that what you want?"

I've seen this argument made even by the gullible electorate that has foolishly gone along with this farce, or worse, called for an even larger jackboot or a heavier iron fist. "Suspend Habeas corpus", they shout. "Those Christians should NOT be meeting in church at this time anyway", they muse. "The government has the right to take drastic measures in times of crisis", they excuse, all while completely forgetting that government is what declared this a time of crisis in the first place! As I've stated before, if they can take your rights away over a cold, they can take them away over a warming. No surprise then that the previous president has already gone on record blaming Coronavirus on "man-made global warming", which according the same "experts" threatens the lives of ALL HUMANITY. So, if government can force you to stay in your home and out of your church over a projected 2,000,000 deaths, how much more can they do when the whole world's population is on the line? Have fun marching straight into the gulag, lemmings!

No one is saying the government shouldn't do "something". The question is what. Violating the Constitution should never be on the table. And this is where the liberal mind dusts off one of it's oldest tricks and re-purposes it.

"If you don't support these radical measures, then you just want people to die."

This is merely a repackaged race card. "If you're not for affirmative action, you're racist." See how easy it is to make such a nonsensical point? Yet apparently, most of the country approves of this. Why are we going along with failed liberal ideas all of a sudden?

For most, it's a simple matter of the media instilling fear into them. They fear that which they can't control, so they turn to radical authoritarianism for the illusion of safety. To those people I would remind them of this quote…

"Those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for temporary/illusory security will lose both, and deserve neither." - (Paraphrased) Often attributed to Ben Franklin

Have some perspective. There are more than 40,000 automobile accidents each year in the U.S. that result in a fatality. Are we "quarantined" from our cars? It is estimated that about 90 Americans die in a car accident every day. And that's nothing compared to the number of injuries resulting from a car accident. Time to suspend the Constitution, right? And remember, car accidents affect healthy people too, unlike most cases of Coronavirus that are asymptomatic or mild.

Well why don't you wanna ban cars? You want people to die?

Here's the sad truth folks. You are going to die. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. Maybe not from the Coronavirus, or maybe so. But you will die someday. Everyone will die someday. The only thing that we have the power to sustain through the ages is the concept of our God-given rights, as recognized in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

This leads me, finally, to the heart of this issue, which no one has touched on as far as I know. There's one argument I've heard that comes close, but misses the mark. I have heard the projected Coronavirus death toll in the U.S. compared to the number of those who died in the Vietnam War. This point is either made to scare people into compliance, or to try and smear Trump with a "This is his Vietnam, dur hur hur" argument.

But the truth people don't seem to realize is this, and I will illustrate it below.


Liberty's Death Toll

1,064,664+

One million, sixty-four thousand, six-hundred and sixty-four, plus.

Do you know what that number represents? It's the number of people who died in all American wars on the American side (it excludes Confederates, another 290,000, many of whom believed they were fighting for states' rights).

Here are some of the wars with the highest number of deaths…

War                 Year        Deaths   Deaths per day

World War II    1941–45  405,399  297

World War I     1917–18  116,516  279

Revolutionary   1775–83  25,000   11

Mex–American  1846–48  13,283   29

Compare these to the "kill count" that the fake news media has on blast 24/7, and you'll see how absurd it is to be taken in by such numbers.

"Oh but what about all the American citizens who are dying from Coronavirus? More will die if we don't sacrifice our Constitutional rights!"

To that I remind you of another quote…

"Give me liberty, or give me death." - Patrick Henry

And thus we arrive at the main point. TL;DR version…

Look back at all the Americans, and also many foreign allies such as the French, who sacrificed their lives so that we the future generations could enjoy our freedoms and liberties. These great patriots sacrificed it all, and many more sacrificed limbs as well as their time and effort, to ensure that our God-given rights would endure through the ages.

What kind of people would we be if we discarded everything they did for us, and ignored all the deaths that secured our liberties? How can we as a nation, which we claim is the most exceptional in the world, just surrender all of those freedoms and liberties out of cowardice over a mild illness?

Switch Coronavirus with terrorism. Would we accept being locked in our own homes over that? Of course not. We'd say, "don't let the terrorists win".

Wake up fellow countrymen. The rights, freedoms, and liberties that so many fought and died for are being stripped away over an overblown crisis! They call this a war against a virus. But if this is a war, then shouldn't we the citizens be willing to die for our Constitution and our country as so many of those before us have already done? If not, then their deaths were for nothing. They died in vain, and so will our country with the precedent being set by recent government actions. We have no reason to continue in that case.

But if you are willing to take that 1% risk of your life against a virus to preserve our liberties, then speak out and tell those who are supposed to represent you that these draconian actions will not be tolerated, and will indeed be resisted by any and all means necessary, starting with the most peaceful solutions first. We will vote them out!

Personally, I would rather fight a virus than a fascist government.

Believe it!

Outside... is shut down!

OAN Flap Demonstrates some flaming....

Monica Showalter for American Thinker

OAN flap demonstrates 

some flaming White House press corps hypocrisy

The press has been publishing negative stories about One America News correspondent Chanel Rion for quite some time now. She's young, she's conservative, she was homeschooled, she's bright, she's not perfect (any more than they are -- she occasionally gets stories wrong or follows the wrong rabbit holes) and she certainly isn't part of their 'in' crowd. A CNN denizen calls this competitor network "a fringe outlet." Another CNN denizen claims that Rion promotes 'conspiracy theories' which sounds kind of funny coming from the network that spent years promoting the Russia collusion conspiracy. Worst of all, she's liked by President Trump. 

So now they've finally put a stop to her, piously citing coronavirus public health concerns.

According to the Washington Post, which to judge by its extended Chanel Rion coverage, really doesn't like her:

On Wednesday the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) issued a statement saying, in part: “We are writing to inform you that the WHCA Board has voted this evening to remove a news outlet from the rotation for a seat in the briefing room. We did this because a reporter for this outlet twice attended press briefings in contravention of this policy.”

“This policy” refers to steps taken by the association to ensure social distancing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, the venue where Trump and his colleagues hold their daily coronavirus news conferences.

Though the correspondents’ association announcement didn’t specify the ousted organization, it is in fact OANN. The association, whose president is Jonathan Karl of ABC News, made its decision based on the allegedly unauthorized presence of Rion in the briefing room twice this week, in violation of the social-distancing rules that the WHCA instituted to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.

“We do not take this action lightly. This is a matter of public safety,” the association’s memo continued.

Which sounds a little disingenuous, given that the WaPo video showing Rion in the briefing room in the back, in this same story, clearly has her more than six feet away from other reporters. (Update: The video I saw doesn't seem to be there anymore and it may have been replaced with an unrelated hairstyling video.)

Something says this expulsion might not be about the coronavirus.

At the White House, the press reports as a group, and the White House Correspondents Association issues rotation spots, yet they are not all doing the same thing. Some are TV, some are radio, some are print, some are wire and Internet. Some might be really trying to cover the news impartially and keep their own politics out of it. Some have an undeclared slant. Some honestly declare their slant. OAN seems to be in the last category, same as Buzzfeed on the left, and other outlets. They all say they're there to tell the truth, and who gets truth moves on a continuum, actually based on what audiences respond to. Bottom line, all of it amounts to valid free speech.

But the White House Press Corps seems to be acting as a cartel, actually, seeking to enforce a common groupthink in coverage or non-coverage.

Start with this question: Why would the White House invite Rion in to cover the press conferences in the first place?

The answer seems pretty obvious:

Some of the networks actually vowed to not cover the briefings Trump was putting on. They hated that those direct addresses of Trump's to the general public, comforting them at the time of a pandemic, and driving his poll numbers higher. Yet at the same time, they apparently held places in the WHCA press rotation, taking up seat space for the very briefings they said they wanted to keep out of the news. 

Here's Deadline's April 1 piece:

CNN and MSNBC each turned away from President Donald Trump’s coronavirus briefing after it started with an announcement — about a new advanced counter-narcotics operation.

The networks found it off-topic, particularly as Trump began to talk about progress of the construction of a wall along the southern border, a signature campaign promise.

CNN’s John King expressed his annoyance.

“When you are an incumbent president, to bring that into a briefing in the middle of a pandemic, the day after the incredibly sobering news the administration rightfully delivered to the American people yesterday, is shameless and it’s political,” he said on-air. “The president has other opportunities to do this. There are 24 hours in a day. He has all the buildings of the government still at his disposal.”

Which is hypocritical right on its surface because the press itself asks off-topic questions at dedicated briefings all the time. I've seen this firsthand myself as a correspondent in those White House pools. Several years ago, I accompanied then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a congressional delegation to Colombia to write about free trade and at one point, the reporters were to agree on pitching three questions. One of the reporters insisted on wasting one of those questions on a Middle East issue to finish up some previous story she was on and I objected so strenuously (given that I had flown from Los Angeles to Washington to Colombia for this) that I know I made myself unpopular. The compromise we reached was to cheat on that three-question rule and jam in an extra question from the last reporter, something I give the Agence France-Press correspondent credit to for peacemaking. 

But more deeply, the declaration that the briefings not be covered because of "propaganda" and off-topic remarks from the president (normal people would skip covering the off-topic remarks and carry on) is problematic itself. That's especially for press organizations supposedly devoted to casting daylight to the public. If they don't want to cover the news, they need to give their seats to someone else who wants to. They can't be placeholders to ensure news suppression, and they sure as heck don't own those seats.

Sure, young Rion seems probably too close to White House officials, and maybe too eager to repeat heir talking points. But to hear such complaints from the people who by email coordinated with the Obama administration White House - ever heard of JournoList, run by then-Washington Post columist Ezra Klein - is kind of hypocritical, too

Here's a second problem: According to this March 31 piece by the Washington Post, some of them weren't even showing up to the briefings at all. They didn't want to go, they didn't want to write about it, and that is their prerogative, but it's weird stuff for them to somehow not want anyone else to cover the briefings, either, as is the case with OAN. Which incidentally has proven a ratings bonanza for them.

With that kind of thing going on, why wouldn't the White House want to create some kind of space for someone who really wanted to cover Trump's press briefings? Based on the childish behavior seen, and the fact that the public really does want to see the press briefings covered, the WHCA is effectively acting as a cartel, not just trying to halt coverage of the news, but objecting to any competitor who does. 

As long as they are going to either threaten to not cover, or actually not cover the news, the White House has a perfect right to invite young Chanel Rion into the briefings.

Hypocrisy bites.