Friday News Roundup — June 7th, 2019: 30 Years Since Tiananmen Square; Theresa May Exits, Pursued by a Brexit Bear; Tariff Threat Prompts Head Scratching; Plus News You May Have Missed
Happy Friday from Washington, where we’re eagerly awaiting the start of the Women’s World Cup in France this weekend. This Thursday also marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the massive allied landing that began the liberation of Nazi-occupied France. Everyone who lives in freedom and yearns to build a better world owes a heavy debt to those men who made the perilous journey across the English Channel that fateful day and to those who there gave their lives in opposition to the scourge of Nazism. Their courage, determination, and unbreakable will is an inspiration to us all.
In the roundup this week, we take aim at issues around the world, and past, present, and future. Dan discusses the legacy of the Tiananmen Square Massacre 30 years out and China’s authoritarian backsliding. Michael watches Theresa May’s exit as Prime Minister and what it means for the future of everyone’s favorite Gordian Knot — Brexit. Chris analyzes President Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, along with a review of the historical pitfalls of high tariffs. This is also the first roundup to include work from our newest class of summer interns; we’re excited to welcome Sarah, Stephanie, Madison, and Crystal to the team!
Tiananmen — 30 Years Later
Dan Mahaffee
Everywhere except for where the bloody events of June 4, 1989, took place, this week the world openly commemorated a turning point in Chinese history when the Communist leadership sent the People’s Liberation Army into Tiananmen Square to disperse the student protesters calling for reform. At the time, it appeared that Communist regimes around the world were in retreat. Many, even in the highest levels of leadership, thought that even if the Chinese regime was willing to gun down thousands of its youth, how long could Beijing hold out against the march of history?
Thirty years later, we now see that the Chinese Communist Party is still in firm control of its 1.3 billion citizens, and its seemingly paradoxical model of a state-run market economy with absolute political control is eyed covetously by authoritarians and illiberal democrats around the world. On Tuesday, to mark the anniversary, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement condemning the atrocity and lamenting the past vision of a China that would be reformed by engagement with the world. This was met with the traditional denunciations by China’s foreign ministry spokesperson.
When one walks through Tiananmen Square today, they can clearly see the outcome of these trends. The Forbidden City stands, with Mao’s portrait and Communist propaganda on the facade, as the Communist regime links itself to the five millennia of those who have led the Chinese civilization. The square is flanked by the imposing architecture of the Communist bureaucracy, and the security presence is seemingly omnipresent. With skyscrapers dotting the skyline — if you can see it through the smog — and luxury cars clotted in Beijing’s notorious traffic, you can see the juxtaposition of economic growth and political repression.
In the years since Tiananmen, China’s growth has been remarkable, and it is a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity of the Chinese people. From my travels there, I’ve seen it firsthand, along with their hospitality and friendship. At the same time, their relationship with their government is complicated. Many have benefited from the economic growth and stability of the past decades — stability that is remarkable considering the past two centuries of Chinese history. And the world has joined in, benefitting from the growing Chinese domestic market as a source of revenue and integrating the ever-growing Chinese industrial base into global supply chains.
Still, as they speak in slang and code words to avoid censorship or hot button issues, you can tell that there is still yearning for the freedom of expression. And the threat of instability lurks beneath the surface, and the heavy hand of the state is always lurking. A nation that spends more on internal security than foreign defense does not enjoy a happy bond between citizen and state. This is the same state that places up to a million religious and ethnic minorities in reeducation camps, while building a techno-fascistic system to shape its citizens’ behavior down to the tiniest detail. It is a nation of lawyers, activists, and reformers tortured and jailed. This is the long shadow of Tiananmen — a state that knows no limit on, or consequence for, what it will do to maintain control.
…for the past thirty years we have sided not with the man, but with the tanks…
If Tiananmen’s shadow is not easily visible, there is the iconic image of the lone protester standing before the tanks — a lone man in front of the literal machinery of the oppressive state. Every time we see that image, we say that we are inspired by the bravery of the gallant individual, but ultimately China is where it is today because for the past thirty years we have sided not with the man, but with the tanks.
Thanks to recently released book, published in Hong Kong, we now have an insight into the thinking of the Chinese leadership during those fateful days in 1989. As the Politburo applauded the bloody crackdown on the students, there was concern about how the atrocity might affect foreign attitudes towards China, especially in terms of foreign investment. Wang Zhen — a strident Communist back to his time with Mao, and the then-Vice President of the People’s Republic — was perhaps the most prescient in his statement: “As for this fear that foreigners will stop investing, I’m not afraid…Foreign capitalists are out to make money, and they’ll never abandon a big market for the world like China.”
Despite years as a hardline Communist, Comrade Wang knew capitalism well. Investment flocked to China, and we assured ourselves that such engagement would ultimately bring about reform and democracy. Chinese tourists flocked to the west to buy luxury goods, and purchase real estate to serve as financial insurance. We opened our tech companies and universities to Chinese students, researchers, and venture capital, welcoming their largesse while ignoring their rapid advances to close the technology gap. Confucius Institutes blossomed as our schools welcomed the opportunity to cement ties with China, promote cultural understanding, and, perhaps most importantly, enroll full-paying foreign students. Yet, as this happened, there never was the opening of a “Madison Institute” or a “Bagehot Institute” on a Chinese campus to tell of the separation of powers, the rights of the individual, or an independent judiciary.
Now, when the editorial pages of the party-controlled press do speak openly about Tiananmen, they refer to that bloody day “As a vaccination for the Chinese society…greatly increas[ing] China’s immunity against any major political turmoil in the future.”
For China, and the Chinese political and economic elite, there have been no consequences for the nature of their regime. A zeal for profit, short-sighted thinking, and cultural naïveté all clouded our view of China. That haze may be lifting, as the economic and political contretemps between open societies and authoritarian regimes grows clearer. Still, if we aim to truly remember and honor the legacy of Tiananmen, we must remember our own complicity in denying justice for those murdered students — and the empowerment of the Chinese regime.
As May Comes to an End
Michael Stecher
President Trump’s State Visit to the United Kingdom closes the book on the service of Prime Minister Theresa May. May will continue on as Prime Minister until her replacement is in office, but she steps down as the leader of the Conservative Party today. Leading Tories have begun to campaign to be the new party leader and Prime Minister, a position that will be selected by the Tory Party rather than a general election. Thus far, eleven candidates are standing for election, a few have said that they are not in the running, and there are still a few more who could enter the fray. He or she will take over the heavy mantle of “delivering Brexit,” a task that has not gotten any easier — and may in fact be substantially more difficult — as a result of recent trends in both UK and EU politics.
Ms. May announced her resignation over — what else? — a failure of a proposed compromise measure for the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Specifically, she offered to hold a vote in Parliament for a second referendum on whether to leave the European Union, provided that the House of Commons pass the withdrawal bill. This reeked of desperation: many Brexiteers in the Conservative Party are steadfastly opposed to a second referendum because they think it is unfair for Brexit to have to win a public vote twice in order to succeed; or possibly that, having narrowly won a divisive plebiscite, they have suddenly realized how bad plebiscites are for determining policy outcomes. Ms. May had hoped to pick up enough votes from the opposition to get the withdrawal bill through, but her cabinet rebelled and she prepared to leave office.
Tory Members of Parliament will hold a series of votes to winnow down the field to two by the end of June, at which point a new party leader will be selected from those two by a mail-in ballot of the Conservative Party’s grassroots members by July 22. There are only around 160,000 eligible voters in this final tally, compared to over 13.5 million who pulled the lever for Tory candidates in the last general election and out of a total population of over 65 million people. Conservative party members tend to be older (44% over the age of 65) and more socially conservative (77% say that “young people don’t have enough respect for traditional British values” and 54% support the death penalty); they are also substantially more pro-Brexit, ⅔ support leaving a “no-deal” Brexit, compared to ¼ of the general public, which suggests that the next Prime Minister will take an even harder line towards Brexit than did Ms. May.
Lack of interest in compromise, however, appears to be the trend in the aftermath of last month’s European Parliament elections. Explicitly pro-Brexit parties — Nigel Farage’s new “Brexit Party” and Nigel Farage’s old United Kingdom Independence Party — won 35% of the vote, while pro-Remain/pro-Second Referendum parties — anchored by the Liberal Democrats and Green Party — won 40%. The Conservative Party was thoroughly trounced, winning just 9% of the vote, but it was the appalling performance of Labour that shocked observers. Voters appeared to punish Labour, the leading opposition party, and its leader Jeremy Corbyn for talking out of both sides of their mouths on the question of Brexit.
Particularly at a moment when a substantial fraction of the British public want to be “out of the bloody thing,” most Britons made this vote about Brexit. Their representatives heard this and will aim to deliver the same thing, only more so. Several major Tory figures believe that the only way to handle Mr. Farage’s success last month is to out-Brexit the Brexit Party (which is, of course, how the initial Brexit referendum and all the attendant mishegas got started in the first place). Former Foreign Secretary and presumed front-runner Boris Johnson has said that he is willing to play the brinkman with a no-deal Brexit to get a “better” deal from Brussels, as has former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, who called a no-deal Brexit “manageable.” Most of the candidates have also suggested that they would get the European Union to make substantial revisions to the Withdrawal Agreement, despite an explicit statement from the European Council that “there can be no opening of the Withdrawal Agreement,” about which the Europeans have been very consistent.
The leaders of the European Union have appeared quite resolute in the face of Brexit, certainly compared to the querulous infighting in Westminster, but that may be coming to an end. Last month’s European Council meeting that granted the UK an extension until October 31 saw the first major cracks in EU unity. French President Emmanuel Macron argued that the Brexit rigamarole needed to stop, one way or the other, as opposed to several other EU leaders who favored giving Britain more time. Unfortunately for Her Majesty’s next Prime Minister, that may not mean better terms. It is quite likely that divisions in the EU will lead to stasis in policymaking: having announced that it does not wish to be in the game anymore, the UK may find itself without chips to trade in the power struggles that play out in Brussels over the next few months. And, of course, the next Prime Minister will also continue to lack a majority in the House of Commons and an opposition who took last week’s results to mean that their supporters want a second referendum, not a compromise with the Tories. The Economist called Brexit a “stick of constitutional dynamite” and an incipient constitutional crisis. They are not wrong: the fuse is getting shorter and the UK government will spend the next 6 weeks arguing who will “deliver Brexit” the best as opposed to doing any actual work to contain or prevent the blast.
Tariff Man Strikes Again
Chris Condon
Tariffs are one of President Trump’s favorite policy tools. On Twitter, he once described himself as a “Tariff Man” and has weaponized them in his ongoing economic squabbles with China (a favorite boogeyman of his). Last week, however, the president ventured onto the road less traveled when he announced his intention to place a 5% tariff on all goods entering the United States from Mexico. He went further in declaring his reasoning behind the sudden move, citing inflows of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers as evidence of Mexico’s lack of will concerning their own border security. In order to “incentivize” them to crack down on flows of people and illicit substances through their country into ours, the president seeks to impose economic penalties on our southern neighbor. There is just one small problem with this strategy (or lack thereof): tariffs are an antiquated mechanism that have never achieved their desired outcome. Congressional Republicans are right to oppose him in this venture.
Utilizing economic weapons to affect governmental policies in other nations has deep roots in American history. During the course of the Napoleonic Wars, British and French ships often harassed American ships on the high seas, infuriating members of the U.S. government and stoking the embers of war. President Thomas Jefferson, seeking to avoid a costly military endeavor, advocated instead for commercial warfare and the use of American economic might. Thus, the Embargo Act of 1807 was born, which banned trade with Britain and France until the practice of harassment of American ships and impressment of American sailors was ended. With this, America learned its first lesson in economic warfare: it hurts more than it helps. Not only did Britain and France continue the practices the bill sought to curb, but nearly all American exports suffered greatly. Especially in rural areas (chiefly the South), farmers were unable to sell their goods abroad, and shipping in the northeast nearly ceased to exist. The embargo was a complete and utter failure.
If that example is too distant for you, consider the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. As the world slid into the Great Depression in 1929, members of Congress sought to “protect” American industry from foreign competition and shield American workers from the impact of the economic downturn. The method was simple: place prohibitively high duties on foreign goods imported into the United States to incentivize Americans to buy goods produced in America (sound familiar?). The tariff had exactly the opposite effect; In retaliation for placing tariffs on their goods, our largest trading partners imposed retaliatory tariffs on American exports, resulting in calamity for American industry and farmers who exported large portions of their products abroad. Unable to continue this practice, many of these businesses were forced to lay off portions of their workforce, exacerbating the Depression and producing the opposite result of what Congress intended. Smoot-Hawley was a complete and utter failure.
In the modern era, President Trump’s desire to slap tariffs on one of our largest trading partners shows a level of policy illiteracy similar to that displayed in 1807 and 1930. First, tariffs are taxes on American consumers; tariffs will simply cause foreign producers to pass along the cost of the tariffs to consumers and domestic producers will raise their prices to match. This makes goods more expensive, and suppresses the ability of Americans to afford goods they would otherwise be able to purchase if no tariffs were in place. Applied to Mexico for the reason Trump asserts, tariffs make even less sense. Especially when imposed by such an economically powerful nation (the U.S.) on a more precarious economy (Mexico), tariffs can have devastating effects. Not only is Mexico an ally, but inflicting economic hardship on them will only cause more people to flee to the United States rather than curbing the flow of immigrants. In essence, we will be creating economic refugees to supposedly encourage Mexico to stop people from coming to America. It would be a complete and utter failure.
The surprise that comes this week is that congressional Republicans are warning the president against his proposed tariff action. While members of the GOP tend to cower before Trump’s substantial political clout, it seems that a glimmer of economic conservatism can be seen in the shell of the party of Reagan. Even Mitch McConnell, one of the president’s most fervent allies of the president in Congress, told reporters that “there is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that’s for sure.” As the conference pulls towards free markets in this instance, a separation of powers issue comes to mind. Although it is all well and good for senators to criticize the president, it is another matter entirely to actually rein him in. Congress has ceded so much trade authority to the presidency in the past few decades that it may prove impossible for them to counter the move in any meaningful way. Hopefully this incomprehensible policy decision will spur Congress to reassert their power and kill this mistake before it begins.
News You May Have Missed
Parkland Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson Faces Charges
Sarah Weintraub
Scot Peterson, the sheriff’s deputy stationed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, faces seven charges of child neglect and perjury related to his conduct during the school shooting there. Mr. Peterson did not enter the school building or attempt to find and confront the shooter, as his training as an officer prescribed. He hid in a nearby building while 17 people died and 17 others were injured. Child neglect charges are almost always filed against parents and Peterson’s legal defense plans to argue that his position of school resource officer did not amount to that of a caregiver and that he, therefore, cannot be prosecuted based on the definition of one.
Deaths Total 100 Following Pro-Democracy Protest in Sudan
Stephanie Lizzo
In a tragic reflection of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, 100 members of the political opposition in Sudan were massacred by regime forces on Monday. These civilians sought to negotiate with Sudan’s current ruling body, the Transitional Military Council, in order to implement fair elections and democracy. Following this tragedy, General Burhan, the head of the TMC, repudiated the negotiations with the protestors and declared that elections would take place within nine months, which would not allow adequate time to eliminate corruption from the new government. The United States condemned the crackdown and publicly called out the Saudi leadership, who along with Egyptian and Emirati leaders met with General Burhan last week and are believed to have given a green light (or at least not a red light) for the move.
Arriving Soon: Rude Riders to Be Banned from Uber
Madison Howell
Uber recently announced that they will now ban riders with low ratings from using Uber and connected apps. While drivers have always had the ability to rate riders, there have been no punishments enacted. Uber says that riders will have the chance to salvage poor ratings before being permanently banned, but they have not said how or what even qualifies as a low enough rating. This is similar to an episode of Black Mirror (“Nosedive”), a techno-dystopian TV show, in which people can rate each other whenever they want, and higher-rated people are afforded greater privilege. This leads to fake personalities and discrimination that ruins peoples’ lives. Banishment from a taxi-service is clearly not the same as instituting a system of global oppression, but no rating system is free of human biases and could have unforeseen, adverse effects.
Saudi Arabia Expanding Missile Program with Chinese Assistance
Crystal Staebell
According to US intelligence officials, Saudi Arabia has been investing in its ballistic missile program, thanks to major assistance from China. When Congressional Democrats heard of this through outside sources, they were furious, concluding that they had been deliberately left out of important briefings. Congress and the White House already express different views toward Saudi Arabia, especially with regards to arms sales, the murder of Jamal Khasshogi, and the conflict in Yemen. Saudi missiles could threaten US effort to limit the diffusion of ballistic missile systems in the Middle East, and it increases worries from Congress over an arms race in the region. Furthermore, having the Trump administration remain silent on the issue raises concerns over their commitment to non-proliferation.
James Holzhauer Finally Loses on Jeopardy
Madison Howell
The American public has had mixed feelings over Jeopardy’s evil genius James Holzhauer, who was finally unseated this week by Emma Boettcher, a librarian from Chicago. With his winnings totaling $2,462,216, an average of about $77,000 per game, he becomes the second-winningest contestant in the show’s history, trailing only Ken Jennings, who won his $2,522,700 back in 2004. James did take the crown for highest single-game total in Jeopardy at $131,127. Plus, Ken Jennings had to win 74 times to get to his two and a half million, while James almost beat him less than half the time. Jeopardy producers are presumably champing at the bit to pit the two against one another, like the Game of Thrones series finale, but for charming and witty trivia.
The views of contributors are their own, and not that of CSPC.
