Over the last year I’ve run across the occasional report that those who work in the current Presidential Administration have discovered that their services are not in the same demand by the private sector as those who’ve worked in previous Administrations, a puzzling occurrence given the private sector plumbs ordinarily won by those who’ve labored in the White House for previous Administrations.
Equally true is that finding quality people to work in the Administration has also been difficult. Indeed, finding someone to fill the #3 spot at the Justice Department has been impossible, no doubt since, in the event of the current #2 leaving, who would be Rod Rosenstein, the #3 would become the target of President Trump’s ire over the Mueller probe.
Like most folks, I put this down to an extraordinarily incompetent and untruthful Administration. Why take a chance on someone who works there having the same incompetence and amateurishness when there are more qualified people walking the streets? The inability of the Administration to recruit quality people, as evidenced by those put forth for confirmation, makes the fate of those already in the Administration that much more likely.
So reading WaPo’s report concerning the Administration’s claims that its tariff threats lead to the building of a new aluminum plant is more or less the death rattle of Presidential advisor Peter Navarro’s reputation for integrity:
“Just last Friday, we had a plant, a groundbreaking in Ashland, Kentucky, the heart of poverty in America in Appalachia. $1.5 billion aluminum rolling mill because of the president’s tax and tariff policy.”
–White House aide Peter Navarro, interview on Fox News, June 4, 2018“This is a story that’s truly remarkable and Donald J. Trump has brought in tax cuts, deregulation and trade policies that are working for the American working people. And guess what, on Friday they opened a $1.5 billion groundbreaking aluminum rolling mill in Ashland, Kentucky.”
–Navarro, interview on Fox News, June 3The Trump administration, led by the president, is quick to claim credit for good news even if its policies may have had little to do with it. So our antenna went up when we saw Navarro, the White House director of trade and industrial policy, repeatedly attribute the building of a rolling aluminum plant in Kentucky to the president’s tariff and tax policies.
But …
But here’s the rub: Before Trump took the oath of office, the company had announced it had purchased 202 acres of industrial park land for the plant.
“As far as the original decision to build the mill, initial investigations began approximately in the last quarter of 2016, with the site and business case evaluation,” said Jaunique Sealey, Braidy’s executive vice president for business development.
Worse yet …
Since this is a rolling aluminum plant, not a smelting plant, the tariffs will actually increase the plant’s costs, as Bouchard acknowledged in a recent CNBC interview. “Our costs for an aluminum rolling mill in Ashland, Kentucky, will go up because expenditure for our prime input, prime aluminum, will go up,” he said. But he indicated the company would pass on the costs to consumers and said that overall the tariffs are a good thing because it will raise the overall price of aluminum.
Gibbs, however, noted that the tariffs will also likely increase the cost of building the plant.
And etc. So Mr. Navarro is complicit in trying to mislead the public concerning. I notice in his Wikipedia biography that he’s a professor emeritus, suggesting he’s retired, and he’s well outside the mainstream of thought in economics, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for an economist, but those who swim against the current do have to produce.
Lying through your teeth isn’t how you produce, Mr. Navarro.
And it makes his reputation much more fragile. It makes me wonder how intellectually honest he is being with himself as well as the President, although the latter is probably only minimally damaging, as the President apparently hardly ever takes any advice anyways.
The fallout from this Administration will include half a generation of potential leaders, perhaps, if we agree that Administration experience is an important part of the C.V. of a future leader.
