Fear by Bob Woodward

[Benjamin Frank]

I'll break this into three sections
1.Economics
2.The national security state
3.The overall impression of Trump and the people around him.

Fear is the first book of what turned out to be Woodward's triology of the Trump Presidency.

I'm covering economics first because it's good practice for getting back to teaching tomorrow.

The interesting thing in the book is what can be perceived as Woodward's growing sophistication in economics. I'm not sure if that was the case, or if Woodward was just presenting the arguments as told to him by the people in the White House at these different times.

There are three major sections where economics is discussed, in order:
1.NAFTA
2.Steel Tariffs
3.Copper in Afghanistan

1.NAFTA
There are people who think that finance and economics are the same thing. Even though they can be related, they are two separate disciplines. The book discusses NAFTA from the point of view of finance: pulling out of NAFTA would be a disaster because it would roil the money markets and the stock markets. I'm not an expert in finance, would it have done these things? I have no idea and I don't even know if I care or if it matters.

There is a truism in economics (and other social sciences I believe) that 'negative impacts are overstated in the short run and understated in the long run.' I think this notion that the money markets and the stock markets would have been roiled is a melodramatic example of impacts being overstated in the short run.

The real problem is, interestingly enough, what Woodward reports in the other two areas. In fact, tariffs with Canada had already been reduced prior to NAFTA with the FTA and tariffs had been coming down for a long time anyway due to the WTO (and GATT before that.) (The real issue in trade these days is government subsidies which neither NAFTA nor the FTA cover, and the WTO addresses only marginally.)

Part of the issue is that it's not governments by and large that engage in trade, but private companies. Likely in the short run, these private companies would have tried their best to work around the abrogation of NAFTA by working out their own rules with their suppliers. However, I'm sure that and the loss of the movement of workers under NAFTA rules would have steadily become more difficult for the companies involved. We have seen what happens when supply chains break down with both Brexit and Covid.


2.Steel tariffs
Rather than this stuff about financial markets melting down, Woodward's reporting gets much more precise.

There is a debate before Trump presented in the book between Peter Navarro and Chair of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, in which Cohn presented to Trump the evidence from what happened when George W Bush imposed steel tariffs over 2002-03. "Tens of thousands of U.S jobs had ben lost in industries that consumed steel, Cohn said, and produced a chart to prove it.

Navarro said that the data did not include the jobs created in the steel mills.
"You're right" Cohn said. "We created 6,000 jobs in steel mills."

Later, is presented a debate between White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter.

"Porter said Navarro's belief that tariffs would be met with widespread acclaim was 'just dead wrong.' Many businesses would oppose tariffs because they were buyers and consumers of steel.

"The automakers are going to hate this," Porter said "They have narrow margins, and this is going to raise their costs."  "And the unions, Well, that's crazy. Sure, the steel union is going to love this, but the United Auto Workers isn't going to like this. The Building and Construction Trades isn't going to like this. It's going to up their costs."

Not mentioned, unfortunately, but certainly implied is that the higher costs of steel inputs for U.S producers would have made U.S exports costlier and therefore less competitive in international trade.

3.Copper in Afghanistan
The President of Azerbaijan told Trump at a reception that Chinese were mining substantial amounts of copper from Afghanistan. The Department of Commerce under Wilbur Ross conducted an investigation that determined this was 'fake news.'

The discussion in the book though, again, was based on supply chains and logistics.

President Trump asked Gary Cohn "Why aren't we in there taking it?" To which Cohn replied "Who's we?"

Woodward then added "We should just be in there taking it." Trump said, as if there was a national mining company to move into Afghanistan."

Cohn had also told Trump: Sir, It's not like 'we' just walk in there and take the minerals. They have no legal system, no land rights." It would cost billions of dollars to build the mining infrastructure, he added."

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I don't think any of this seems out of character for Trump.

[Benjamin Frank]

I've gone on to read another book on Charles Manson since posting this, so my memory might need to be refreshed, but since I did promise, the part on the national security state (aka the Foreign policy establishment) is fairly easy, though I'll have to check to make sure I got all the details correct.

I'm pretty sure Steve Bannon if not others refer to the Defense Department, the State Department, the CIA the defense industry... as the national security state, it's also been known as the foreign policy establishment for a long time and as the Permanent Government by people in the Nixon Administration if not elsewhere.

For me, this is somewhat the case of politics making strange bedfellows. Steve Bannon, who is an opponent of the national security state, says that he and people like him aren't isolationists, I'm not sure what he believes, but I'll take him at his word. I agree with him on a number of points regarding the foreign policy establishment though, I'm certainly not an isolationist.

The book goes into Afghanistan under Trump. Early in his Presidency, Trump ordered the removal of all U.S forces in Afghanistan. Of course with Trump, there was no concern with how this would occur or the ramifications for American allies in Afghanistan, it was simply "Why the (expletive) are we in Afghanistan? We're getting out completely."

However, the interesting thing was the response from the national security state. They (Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and some advisors, the book mentions how Mattis and Tillerson especially sidelined H.R McMaster, with Woodward explaining that is fairly normal, for some reason there is often a power struggle in the White House between State/Defense and the NSA) took the President's order and said "We have three options

1.A mini surge of 15,000 additional troops
2.Stabilize the situation with 4,000 additional troops
3.Implement the President's order and pull out entirely"

They decided that the President's direct and clear order would best by met by stabilizing the situation with 4,000 additional troops.

At one point in the book, Bannon expressed my position exactly that the National Security State believes that the bottom line doesn't apply to it. They do spend their resources as efficiently as possible (excluding some discretionary demanded Congressional defense spending) but, when it comes to spending what they think is necessary, they think they have a bottomless pit.

Anyway, this reinforces my view that President Biden was both right and courageous in defying the foreign policy establishment in demanding and getting a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan.