Arizona bloodshed stifles vitriol; Obama to press renewed trade agenda
Posted on Sun, Jan 9, 2011, 9:30 pm by Peter Morton
WASHINGTON – The attempted assassination Saturday in Tucson, Arizona, of Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has struck an unexpected chord in Congress with the realization that the increasingly heated partisan politics that has dominated the American landscape over the past decade, and particularly in the run-up to the November mid-term elections, may have finally boiled over.
Rep. Giffords, a three-term Congresswoman, won her re-election bid against Jesse Kelly, a Republican Tea Party candidate, who suggested supporters fire weapons in the air in protest of Giffords’ support for health care reform. Her office has also been vandalized in the past.
The shooting, which killed a federal judge and five others and wounded 13 more, has prompted serious discussion that the shrill and partisan rhetoric can have profound and unexpected tragic results far outside Washington’s Beltway.
Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva from Arizona told reporters the country must reverse its current course of “an atmosphere where the political discourse is about hate, anger and bitterness.” Obama called it “a tragedy for our entire country” while even Fidel Castro weighed in, writing in his state media the attack was “atrocious.”
“Even those of us who don’t share at all the politics and philosophies (of the Obama administration) sincerely desire that no children, judges, legislators or citizens of the United States die in such an absurd and unjustifiable way,” the former Cuban president wrote this weekend.
Added Jonathan Cowan, president of the Democratic group Third Way: “We now know that politics has become too personal, too nasty and perhaps too dangerous. Perhaps out of this senseless act some sense can return to our public discourse.”
As it did for almost everything, the shooting overshadowed last week’s moves by Obama to shuffle his top advisors in a bid to ramp up his re-election campaign for 2012 and rekindle his stalled trade agenda.
Robert Gibbs, the White house spokesman, and Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff, both stepped down to play larger roles in Obama’s bid for a second term. Stepping in is former commerce secretary and political heavyweight William Daley as chief of staff. The hard-boiled JPMorgan investment banker, whose family has dominated politics in Obama’s hometown of Chicago for decades, is seen as the man that can bridge the gap between the administration and the increasingly wary business community. Daley is also expected to reduce the antipathy between the administration and the rejuvenated Republicans.
Pete Rouse, the interim chief for the past three months, remains as a presidential advisor. Also included in the mix is Gene Sperling, a veteran of budget battles, as head of the National Economic Council. The U.S. government faces a debt ceiling of US$14.32 trillion by the end of March and already Republicans are demanding spending cuts to increase the ceiling.
The economy naturally remains at the top of the agenda. Although there have been signs of an albeit weak turnaround, the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.4 per cent. While the lowest since May 2009, it was largely seen not as a sign of a recovery but that more Americans are simply giving up looking for jobs. It should be noted that former President Ronald Reagan was elected when the unemployment rate was at what was then a record high 7.4 per cent.
What makes the Daley appointment compelling, however, is his often-overlooked role in U.S. trade relations over the past 20 years. He was a key driver behind NAFTA when he was commerce secretary to Bill Clinton. A free trader at heart, Daley is no pushover. He led efforts to catalogue the dumping of foreign steel into the U.S. market that ultimately led to the imposition of tariffs on imported steel during the early years of the administration of former President George W. Bush.
The trade agenda has largely been ignored by the former Democratic Congress which, as a group, are deeply suspicious of trade deals.
The U.S. has three outstanding trade agreements in need of ratification – Columbia, Panama and Korea. Since Congress has refused to give Obama trade promotion authority, better known as fast-track, those agreements still require approval by Congress.
As well, the U.S. is negotiating a Trans-Pacific Partnership with nine Asian countries (Canada has not yet been invited to join). And without fast-track, the U.S. Trade Representative can do little to spur the decade-old Doha Round at the WTO. In addition, Obama is pushing his new National Export Initiative in a bid to double U.S. exports by 2015 but then he has to deal with what is widely expected as another attempt by Congress to reign in China’s currency manipulation.
The first clue of a re-invigorated trade agenda may come as early as this week. The NAFTA trade ministers, including Canadian Trade Minister Peter van Loan, are meeting today in Mexico City. The discussion will focus on strengthening economic recovery by making trade rules more efficient by cutting red tape for exporters and importers, and facilitating the participation of small-and medium-sized enterprises in North American trade.
Peter Morton is a Washington-based freelance writer.
Obama, GOP define their priorities, agree on one: National security
Posted on Sun, Jan 2, 2011, 8:30 pm by Peter Morton
WASHINGTON — This week, the 112th Congress officially starts work with a rejuvenated Republican Party back from walking in the desert for two years by retaking control of the House of Representatives and edging closer to control of the Senate.
The GOP has wasted little time in vowing to unring the Democratic bell by turning back President Barrack Obama’s health care reform, cut government spending, limit the role of non-elected bureaucrats in creating de-facto laws through regulations that never see Congressional eyes, overturn global warming initiatives and rewrite the tax code.
Obama, in his Saturday radio address, vowed to work with the Republicans who now have a 242-193 majority in the House (Democrats had a 255-179 majority for the past two years) but the president insisted he will fight any attempts to alter his health care reform.
The Republicans seem determined to stay their conservative course — for example they plan to inaugurate their return of control in the House with a full reading of the American Constitution on Wednesday. But the new Republican agenda may not be as easy to sell among Republicans as it appears.
Already, the Tea Party members of the GOP are vowing to go one step further. Freshmen such as Senator-elect Mike Lee from Utah and Rep.-elect Allan West from Florida say they will push for a balanced U.S. government and limit borrowing unless it threatens to undermine U.S. credit ratings and credibility around the world. The U.S. is $400 billion (USD) away from hitting its $14.3-trillion debt ceiling and if the Tea Party were successful in convincing Congress to refuse to lift the ceiling, it would lead to the first default in American history, according to the White House.
For his part, Obama also faces problems from within his own party. Despite what seems to be a remarkably successful “lame duck” session between the November mid-elections and the end of the year, Obama managed to repeal the “don’t ask-don’t tell” mandate in U.S. armed forces, extend former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts that include the wealthy as well as an extension of unemployment payments. He also managed to stick-handle a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
But Obama is paying a political price. Democrats are still furious with him for appearing to cozy up to the Republicans to get what he wanted. And there is every indication that he will, based on his pledge of compromise over the remaining two years of his first term, continue that strategy.
While the agendas of the two parties remain far apart, national security remains a key concern for both. The evacuation of a nearly empty Congress on Saturday and the scrambling of F-16 jets when a Piedmont Airlines pilot failed to radio-in while approaching Washington illustrates how acutely sensitive Americans remain to security.
President Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper are still expected to sign a tentative pact on border security that essentially trades information on Canadians crossing the border for an expedited commercial border crossing for Canadian truck traffic. Several of these initiatives have been tried in the past and they have all unraveled.
While Congress and the administration remains hyper-sensitive of security, it continues to ignore the Arctic. The U.S is one of five Arctic Nations – Canada, Denmark (through its territory Greenland), Norway and Russia are the other four. The U.S. participation is through Alaska.
There have been conflicting claims among the Arctic coastal nations with the most dramatic being the Russian insistence that it owns the gigantic underwater Lomonosov Ridge – giving Russia half the Arctic and control of vast natural resources from fisheries to minerals.
While there has been plenty of rhetoric, including from Ottawa, on resolving disputed land claims through diplomacy and negotiation, behind the scenes the scramble is on to build new polar-class icebreakers. Canada, Denmark and Russia have all launched programs to build new icebreakers.
Canada plans to build a new three-season icebreaker to replace the aging Louis S St. Laurent and Russia plans to launch construction of its “Project 22220” icebreaker this year. Denmark has said it plans to launch construction of a polar vessel this year as well.
But the U.S. is woefully behind. It has a fleet of three — the Polar Star, the Polar Sea and the relatively new but lightweight Healy. The Polar Star and Polar Sea are hopelessly outdated. Both are more than 30 years old. The Polar Star has essentially been mothballed and plans to refurbish the Polar Sea fell apart last June when the ship suffered a major engine failure.
The Coast Guard, which operates the fleet, estimates it would cost $500 million U.S. to update the two older ships. A new ship would cost about $925 million U.S..
Despite pleas and reports from the National Research Council that said the U.S. is at risk of supporting its national interests in the Arctic, Congress remains unmoved. No funds have been allocated, the Congressional Research Service said in a report to Congress late last year.
Of course, what Congress is missing is that the race to the Arctic is about being able to help commercial traffic. There are two (of four) viable passages through the North – Canada’s Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northeast Passage.
Although many experts believe the Northeast Passage will be the first to be viable, the U.S. continues to lay claim to passage through Canada’s Northwest Passage through the international Right of Innocent Passage under the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty which allows non-threatening ships to move through passages such as these. Ironically, the U.S. refused to ratify the treaty claiming it undermined its sovereignty and national security.
The new Arctic reality is that whoever gets their first with the best icebreaking capability will have the upper hand in controlling what goes on there.
Perhaps because there are few votes for Congress in pushing through icebreaker funding — Alaska excepted — it appears likely the U.S. will be the last one to the Arctic party.
Peter Morton is a Washington-based freelance writer.
Dec.20, 2010
At the same time the Harper government is moving to quiet the flap over revelations that it was secretly negotiating a seamless border initiative with the U.S., political forces here are being quietly marshalled in Congress to help ensure a quick passage if the opportunity arises.
President Barrack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have penciled a pact called Shared Border Vision that ostensibly will make the movement of both goods and people across the world faster, more transparent, and less painful. They plan to put it to ink sometime next month.
According to Ottawa, the deal brings into play “in a partnership to enhance our security and accelerate the legitimate flow of people and goods between our two countries.”
Said Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon just ahead of last week’s meeting of the three North American foreign ministers: “We need to go on working together to ensure the security and well-being of our citizens, as well as the economic recovery and continued prosperity of North America.”
In the U.S., few other than the cadre of Canada watchers paid any attention – at least publicly. But behind the scenes, of some of most influential and perhaps unlikely senators are being teed up.
They include Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont. Leahy is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a senior member of both the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees -- among the biggest three, law food and money. He also ranks second in seniority in the Senate. His wife, Marcelle Pomerleau, is from Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Also on the list of who to watch is Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and once and perhaps always a presidential hopeful, and a renowned security hawk.
And even from the Deep South, there is Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, who is poised to be the next co-chair of the U.S. Senate Aerospace Caucus. He knows Canada, largely through his chairmanship of the Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management. He was also on the Senate Intelligence Committee, a very secretive and influential committee.
There are other key senators as well who also have a good read of Canada, having been in the country at a recent Halifax security conference and toured the Alberta oil sands.
But as Canada’s business community can only lament, there have been several attempts in the past to strive for a faster border crossing. One, during the time of Jean Chretien, the former prime minister, fell apart in 2001 prompting the Americans to take on a two-prong approach that included a massive investment in border technologies and efforts to establish essentially a perimeter around North America as the second ring with merged terror watch lists and what is called the Container Security Initiative.
Then, in 2005, Paul Martin, the former prime minister, and George W. Bush, the former president, and Vicente Fox, the former Mexican president, signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership. According to Canadian officials then, it was designed to address “diverse issues, such as border facilitation, the environment, food and product safety, and includes measures to improve overall North American competitiveness.”
That initiative went nowhere.
The reality is that the Canadian business community, at least those which export to and import from the U.S., is basically fatigued and somewhat cynical. They have seen these initiatives come and go and they usually only point at increasing the access of information people to American border security and not necessarily streamlining.
From the American political perspective, however, the story is a bit different. The U.S. administration was – as it always seems to be – surprised when the leaks of the latest border initiative poked Canada’s nationalist sensitivities.
As a result, the Obama administration and Congress is now taking a sit-back approach to this latest efforts to streamline the border processes. The two, which operate quite independently, plan to wait and see what the popular reaction will be when Harper and Obama actually sign a pledge next month (that may, or may, not need Congressional approval.) As Scotty Greenwood, who was in the White House press office with former president Bill Clinton – and now head of the Canadian-American Business Council points out - “If Canada leads, the U.S. Congress will follow.”
The reality, though, is that no matter what pact is signed and eventually implemented, the border will never be truly seamless, especially in trade terms.
While the physical passage of goods may be marginally faster, the economic border will simply move 800 kilometers south to K Street, here in Washington, where there are dozens of trade lawyers ready and, in these lean litigious times, quite keen to launch any new trade dispute with Canada.
Behind them, there are at least as many protectionist-minded senators and representatives, always on the prowl for votes, who will howl that Canada is an unfair and government-subsidized trading partner.
Morton is a Washington-based freelance writer.
December 12, 2010
A review of the Great Canadian Debate over the latest initiative to closer link the Canada-US borders
Defining the Canada-U.S. relationship has always been difficult, bordering on impossible. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau came the closest during the halycon years of America when he told the National Press Club here in March 1969 that “living next to you is some ways like sleeping with an elephant. . . “
Times have changed and now there is no better illustration of the acute Canadian sensitivity to perceptions of American pushiness is the latest draft agreement on closer border co-operation called Beyond the Border Working Group.
What Americans chose to ignore – often they seem have the seven-second memory of goldfish, going around the same bowl saying “Oh there is Canada, I forgot it was there” – is that seeming to prod Canadians with a sharpened sovereignty stick is like poking a black bear heading into hibernation. It is bound to provoke an immediate and surprisingly cranky response.
Those who follow Canada-U.S. issues here – and there are not that many – say the U.S. administration was completed taken back to the suggestion that Canada and the U.S. would somehow move politically closer through this draft agreement. Although the proposal has been dressed up in Ottawa as a way to streamline cross-border trade flows, the reality of the draft agreement goes back to 2001 when Jean Chretien was prime minister.
“The short version is that the Chretien government choked in 2001/2002, rejecting the perimeter approach the US proposed,” said one Canadian observer here over the weekend. “As a result, the US took a two-prong approach: concentric rings of defense and a massive and overdue investment in US border infrastructure, personnel and technology; and efforts to establish a de facto perimeter around North America as the second ring, with . . . merged terror watch lists, the Container Security Initiative, etc.”
The reality is that what the Americans want is a more efficient way to track, mostly people, leaving their country. It would be convenient if the Canadians handed over entry information, especially on land crossings, to the Americans since they never have the capacity or budget to do exit visas.
However, the apparent public outrage in Canada when the agreement popped out in Canadian media – not a peep down here - stunned the American administration. “They (the U.S. administration) were bewildered that this was being portrayed as something larger,” said one source here. “But it is often the case that Washington doesn’t get why routine items in the relationship make headlines in Canada.”
Today (Monday Dec. 13), Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, will hold a press conference on the North American Foreign Ministers Meeting in Wakefield, Que. with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa. They said they will take questions from media.
Because this is a “lame duck” Congress for the new two years, there is an incredible amount of infighting and the oddest part of this duck is that Democrats are turning on their own president, Barack Obama. Because President Obama made some seemingly politically unholy deal to extend tax credits to the rich given out by former Republican President George W. Bush.
Critics complained this week that the extension of tax cuts, reduction of social security payments and adding many more weeks to unemployment payments will add US$501 billion to the already large US$1.3 trillion government deficit.
Even Finance Minister Jim Flaherty stepped in, telling Reuters in New York on Friday that the simulative effect of cuts for the wealthy were “questionable.” But he admitted that: “We realize our economy won’t have substantial recovery without recovery in the United States.’
Yet the sad reality is that the U.S. economy is still flat on its back. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S central bank, has no real place left to go to try to jumpstart the economy. The Obama administration was even blunter to extend the tax cuts.
“We felt there was a sense of urgency,” David Axelrod, a senior White policy advisor and apparent new front man, said on ABCthisweek on Sunday. (The fact that Obama felt compelled to drag out Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president, to help promote the tax extension speaks more to the quickly diminishing public appeal Obama must be feeling.)
On the Mouse that Roared Front (Peter Sellers, 1959):
Sandy Moore from Segrest Farms in Florida – a major U.S. ornamental fish exporter – reported last week that business with Canada has gotten back to normal. About 3% of the 1 million tropical fish it ships each week goes to Canada.
Five years ago, Ottawa imposed a 15% import duty on “ornamental fish” – guppies and the like – in a bid to punish the American for the Byrd Amendment, named after former Sen. Robert Byrd who convinced Congress to divert millions of dollars import duties on foreign steel and other products back to U.S. companies. This was seen as illegal under World Trade Organization rules.
Congress ultimately back down and repealed the amendment in 2006. Canada subsequently dropped the import duty on American fish-tank fish. No one seems to know how much was ultimately collected by Ottawa from the fish tax. At the time, Ottawa argued they want to find a way to punish the Americans but not actually hurt trade. Hence the ornamental fish tax.
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