Germany Is Now In the Trump Trade Crosshairs

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I see that Peter Navarro, one of our many new trade gurus, is taking a break from attacking China and is now attacking Germany. Why? Because it’s unfair that the euro area has lots of weak countries that have collectively produced a weak euro, which gives Germany an advantage in its export business. This is all true enough, and I’m no fan of 21st century German economic policy, but it’s a little pointless right now. The euro isn’t going away, and neither is the fact that Europe’s overall economy is in pretty poor shape.

Still, I’ve been wondering when Germany would come into the crosshairs of the Trump administration. There’s a pretty obvious reason to attack them:

Japan has mostly escaped Trump’s ire for some reason, but I imagine they’re next. After that, I guess Ireland is up to bat. None of this jawboning is likely to do any good, however. As long as the dollar stays strong, we’re going to have trade deficits. And so far it’s staying pretty strong:

Trump says he wants the trade deficit to decline. This means he wants our trade surplus to increase (from negative to zero), and for that to happen net national savings also have to increase. This is an accounting identity. Now, Trump very plainly has no plans to increase public saving by attacking the budget deficit. In fact, his tax plans will almost certainly explode the deficit to around the trillion dollar territory, which will reduce public saving. This means that private saving would need to increase by a trillion dollars or so for the trade deficit to go away. What are the odds of that?

Trump and his team can blather all they want. But if they want the trade deficit to decline, they need a weaker dollar and higher national savings. Nothing they’re doing points in the direction of either one of those things. Until that happens, it’s all just hot air.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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