Trump Gives U.S. Business the Ukraine Treatment Support him if you want a tariff break.
Trump Gives U.S. Business the Ukraine Treatment
Support him if you want a tariff break.
By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist at the NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/opinion/trump-apple.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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Consider, for example, what happened last week, when Trump toured an Apple manufacturing plant together with Tim Cook, Apple’s C.E.O. Trump used the occasion to make a political speech, attacking impeachment proceedings and falsely claiming that Nancy Pelosi has “closed Congress.” He also asserted that the plant, which has been operating since 2013, had just opened.
And Cook, far from correcting these falsehoods, expressed support, declaring that America has the “strongest economy in the world.”
Cook’s incentive to play along was obvious. Apple assembles many of its products in China; it’s seeking exemptions from Trump’s China tariffs. And there’s every reason to believe that the allocation of such exemptions is driven by politics, not the national interest.
For example, in 2018 a company owned by Oleg Deripaska — an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, who is supposed to be under U.S. sanctions for activities that include interference in foreign elections — received a waiver from aluminum tariffs. The waiver was withdrawn only after Democrats in Congress noticed it, with the Commerce Department claiming that it had been granted as a result of a “clerical error.” Uh-huh.
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