“Economic Security is National Security” ~ President Trump

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports,

Elections have consequences. On the same day the U.S. economy reports astoundingly successful jobs growth of 226,000 jobs and a drop in the unemployment rate to 3.5 percent; the Canadian state economic minister reports surprisingly terrible jobs losses of 72,200 jobs and a jump in unemployment from 5.5 to 5.9 percent.

The Canadian economy is roughly one-tenth the size of the U.S. So in equivalent terms the results from Canada reflect a comparative loss of 720,000 jobs on the same day the U.S. revises all figures upward to over 300,000 gains. A stunning economic contrast:

it was obvious in July of this year that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Justin Trudeau entered into an agreement of mutual benefit. Trudeau would hold back submission of the USMCA for parliamentary ratification, and left-wing political ideologues in the U.S. would help Trudeau win re-election.

At the time CTH forewarned of what this type of political arrangement really meant.

In essence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was willing to compromise the health of his own economy for stunningly political reasons. There was a perfect storm of negative economic dynamics clearly visible on the horizon…. but few were paying attention.

In combination with leftist economic policies on energy development that strangles economic growth through excessive regulation, the leftist government of Trudeau has dismantled the natural underpinnings of a market-based economy. The manufacturing base of Canada is compromised, perhaps to the point of no return.

For two decades liberal (left-wing) Canadian policy essentially transformed their economic model from manufacturing to “assembly." The goods-based production within the Canadian economy was structured to take advantage of the NAFTA loophole.

Goods production in Canada was reduced from full manufacturing to a process of assembling parts brought in from overseas and then selling them into the U.S. market. This process exploited the NAFTA loophole allowing foreign companies to ship parts to Canada and then assemble for transport into the U.S. without tariffs.

Over time the Canadian economy became more and more dependent on this system of brokering goods, while Canada simultaneously dismantled their heavy industry at the request of extreme environmentalists.

The Canadian assembly system for durable goods was always at risk of the NAFTA loophole being closed. When President Trump renegotiated the USMCA, primarily with Mexico, the loophole was closed. The USMCA rules on origination now require the parts to come from inside the North American manufacturing system.

Importing parts from Asia and simply assembling them in Canada is no longer permitted under the USMCA agreement. The majority of the parts -which require heavy industry to produce- must originate from North America. Canada has little capacity to take advantage of this economic opportunity because they dismantled their heavy industry.

As a consequence, if any multinational company wanting to invest in a manufacturing system, that avoids tariffs, to bring their end product to the massive U.S. market… well, Canada is no longer a viable option for that investment.

The multinational banks and investment groups who fund corporate manufacturing investment; and who are now no longer willing to underwrite Asian investment due to the impact of Trump tariffs; are focusing on where that investment can support the economic activity.

As with this latest report, when we see: “Canada’s goods-producing industries saw a decline of 26,600 net jobs, largely on manufacturing” leading the headline, this is a direct consequence of the economic dynamic identified above.

Elections have consequences; and those economic consequences are extraordinarily impactful in the era when U.S. President Trump is dismantling global supply chains; focusing on bringing high-wage manufacturing industry back to the U.S; and driving a process of profound consequence through economic nationalism.

“Economic Security is National Security” ~ President Trump

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Gardner puts discretionary federal marijuana enforcement above U.S. national security

Alfred S. Regnery reports in Breitbart,

John Demers, the man President Trump nominated last September to head Justice’s National Security Division, is waiting to be confirmed by the Senate because Cory Gardner, Republican Senator from Colorado, has a beef with Attorney General Sessions over enforcement of Federal marijuana laws in Colorado. Yes, you read that right. There is no permanent presidential appointee in charge of combatting terrorism at the Justice Department because a Republican senator has put discretionary federal marijuana enforcement above U.S. national security in his priorities.

...That one Senator is capable – and willing — to hold up the machinery of the federal government, particularly in an area as important as protecting the country from terrorism – is nothing short of irresponsibility, and is the worst kind of example of how politics dominates everything in Washington, including reason.

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Engaged

Newt Gingrich writes,

Would you believe that during his first year as Commander in Chief, President Donald Trump hosted 43 world leaders at the White House. In total, he engaged or met with 149 world leaders in 2017. In 183 calls, the President spoke with leaders from 51 countries. Not exactly the lack of connectivity his critics expected a year ago.

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Russian collusion? Yes, with the Obama administration!

Sean Hannity was on fire tonight. He asks why Obama signed off on the sale of US uranium to Russia, when he had evidence of Russian bribery going back to 2009!

A kickback of 140 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation! Attorney General Holder knew about the kickbacks, bribery, extortion but hid the information! A trucking company that moved American uranium was involved.

Which will it be?

Rubio attacks Cruz

Marco Rubio is going after Ted Cruz:

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the Florida senator attacked his Texas colleague for being weak on national security. Rubio was referring to Cruz’s vote to limit government surveillance in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations (and it’s only fair to say, Cruz was one of 67 senators to support the USA Freedom Act’s reforms). “There are Republicans, including Senator Cruz, that have voted to weaken those programs. That is just part of the record, it is nothing personal,” Rubio said on “Fox News” yesterday. He repeated his comments after a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing.

Cruz fired back on the Hugh Hewitt show, taking aim at Rubio for his support of the 2013 Senate immigration bill. “I think the reason that Rubio’s allies have resorted to false attack ads is they are very, very nervous about our surge in the polls, about the fact that conservatives are uniting behind our campaign, and they’re even more nervous about all the scrutiny that people are focusing on Marco Rubio’s longtime partnership with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer pushing a massive amnesty plan,” Cruz barbed.” And so I think they were looking to change the subject, and they believed that launching a false attack based on the USA Freedom Act was the way to do it.”

Cruz defended his opposition to the government collecting metadata for national security reasons, saying “it is not necessary” to protect Americans by violating the “Constitutional rights of millions of law-abiding citizens. I don’t believe the federal government needs to collect in bulk and maintain your and my phone records. That does not further national security. But the second thing the USA Freedom Act does is it strengthens the tools for going after the terrorists.”

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Are we now forced to rebuild a good deal of our intelligence capabilities from the ground up?

Arnold Ahlert writes at Front Page Magazine about Hillary's emails and our national security:

The Daily Beast’s John R. Schindler, who wonders if other officials in the Obama administration, including the president, will be burned by this scandal, notes that many counterintelligence officials now assume Clinton’s emails have been read by foreign intelligence officials in Russia and China because her server was “wholly unencrypted for months.” A Department of Defense counterintelligence official was so certain of that reality he insisted that anyone working for the Chinese or Russians would be fired if they couldn’t explain why "they didn’t have all of Hillary’s email.”

As if on cue, RadarOnline.com revealed a person claiming to be a computer specialist allegedly has 32,000 emails from Clinton’s private server, and is putting them up for sale for $500,000. "Promising to give the trove of the former Secretary of State’s emails to the highest bidder, the specialist is showing subject lines as proof of what appear to be legitimate messages,” the website states.

The website’s source warns that if the 32,000 emails enter the public domain, "not only is Hillary finished as a potential Presidential nominee, she could put our country’s national security at risk.”

She already has, and the National Review's Stanley Kurtz reveals the unassailable logic behind that assertion. Even if Clinton was extraordinarily lucky, and the Russians and Chinese haven’t accessed some or all of her emails, it is nonetheless incumbent on the nation’s entire security community to behave as if they did. "Doesn’t that mean that we are now making massive changes to the sources and methods of our intelligence?” Kurtz asks. "Are we now withdrawing valuable agents? Are we trying to replace methods that cannot be easily replicated? Are we now forced to rebuild a good deal of our intelligence capabilities from the ground up? Are we not suffering tremendous intelligence damage right now, regardless of what foreign intelligence services did or did not manage to snatch from Hillary’s server — simply because we are forced to assume that they got it all?”

...Considering the stakes—as well as the reality there have been massive hacks at Office of Personnel Management, networks of the Department of Defense (DOD), the IRS, the State Department (called the “worst ever”), and the White House, compromising the personal data of million of Americans—the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Yet arrogant as ever, Hillary completely dismisses the possibility her emails were hacked, insisting in March her private system "was set up for President Clinton's office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.”

...What the FBI knows and what the FBI does may or may not coincide. And while Clinton supporters and their media enablers have long been able to stomach a trail of sleaze, from lucrative cattle futures and missing Whitewater and Rose Law firm records, to foreign cash donations for Russian uranium mines and other dubious deals reeking of quid pro quo that emanate from the swamp known as the Clinton Foundation, it remains to be seen if they’ll countenance a national security disaster precipitated by nothing more than Hillary’s Clinton’s penchant for self-protection. It is one thing to elect a president and subsequently discover his or her flaws. It is quite another to knowingly place a congenital liar in the White House. One who has undoubtedly placed this nation’s security at considerable risk. Rabid partisanship is one thing. Intellectual and moral bankruptcy is quite another.

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Thanks to Curt Dale

Keep trying, Katie

We live in an uniquely perilous time

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review,

...Many of the sanctions and understandings Obama’s Iran deal aims to undo were not adopted to block Iran’s nuclear program. They were adopted to combat Iran’s promotion of terrorism, and its acquisition and proliferation of weapons. Moreover, even with respect to the sanctions and understandings that were directly related to nuclear activity, Congress and the public were led to believe that the administration was negotiating to deprive Iran of nuclear capabilities. The president, in stark contrast, has struck an agreement that obliges the United States and other nations to build up Iran’s nuclear capabilities. That is not just outside the scope of what Obama led Congress to believe he was doing; it is the opposite of what he said he was doing – and patently unacceptable.

The president is recklessly compromising national security, materially supporting the world’s leading sponsor of jihadist terror, undermining the Constitution he is sworn to uphold, and grossly eroding American sovereignty by transferring to Putin, the Chinese, the Europeans, and the mullahs decisions about American defense requirements that belong to the American people.

...Administration officials are already out in the media claiming that, if it disapproves of the Iran deal, Congress would be in violation of international law. That is absurd. The administration would be in violation of American law. So-called international law does not obligate the United States to do anything unless it has been crafted under our constitutional requirements.

Congress is plainly loath to broach impeaching Obama for betraying the Constitution and American sovereignty in order to empower a terrorist enemy that continues to target the United States. For the framers and throughout most of American history, such perfidy would so patently have warranted impeachment that no president would have tried it – truly, the country would never have elected a manner of man who would consider trying it. We live, however, in a uniquely perilous time, when Congress is as determined to abdicate its constitutional responsibilities as Obama is to violate his. Consequently, we have to seek a solution that minimizes the damage.

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Egyptians try to figure out our president

Thanks to Curt Dale

Climate Change = National Security?

Elizabeth Price Foley writes at Instapundit,

...the liberal/progressive forces are gearing up to scare LIVs (Low Information Voters) into believing global warming climate change is a national security risk.

So now, if one rejects massive economic reorganization based upon ever-changing evidence of cyclical, fluctuating global temperatures, one is not merely a “science denier,” but also putting U.S. national security at risk. Ironic, given that this accusation is coming from the same people who are so intimidated by ISIS that they dare not insult Mohammed, and think that talking about “radical Islam” is discriminatory because hey, as President Obama said, “Islam is a religion of peace.” But global warming climate change!– now that’s a real security risk!

These radical climatists don’t want to hear about contrary evidence, of which there is plenty. And indeed, if someone dares to publicly disagree with the progressive orthodoxy on global warming climate change, he is likely to be branded a heretic.

I hope the Republican candidates for President are readying themselves to punch back twice as hard when the mainstream media and Queen Hillary hit them with this “national security” accusation.

Instapundit Commenter Libby2 adds,

Seems the only war Obama won't engage in is one with America's enemies.

I'm sure ISIS/AQ/Taliban/Boko Haram, Iran, and Russia are thrilled we'll be diverting more money toward an imaginary foe instead of focusing on them.

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