贸易战之七：无知之祸

有党的高官将中美关系美滋滋的描述为夫妻，矛盾归结为同床异梦，而且还是老夫妻之间的那种来自各自的固执己见。在美国生活的若干华裔高知，也乐颠颠的使用类似的词汇，老年夫妻什么的，只是没有说，是不是需要再来点威哥助助威。

无论从哪个角度，我怎么听、读都觉得恶心呢？为的是这些中国人的心态，这些华裔的思考逻辑上的愚昧，还是党的高级官员见识的短浅。亦有对中国人传统性的一厢情愿，他们内心深处的自卑带来的哀求，总希望通过套套廉价的近乎，来获得点苟延残喘的生存机会。

我记住的，是一日夫妻百日恩；知道的，是夫妻之间至少曾经有过一段相互恩爱和肌肤之亲；看到的，是夫妻为了共同孩子的美好未来，都有毫不犹豫的自我牺牲和无私奉献。

而在中美关系之中，我看不到一样。我能够看到的是群狼共舞。

如果要细深纠缠，中美之间倒有几分让人感觉悲哀的童养媳和大老爷们的关系，至少美国人想这样处理和维持。中国就是那个任劳任怨，待遇底还老不受待见的童养媳，美国就是那个耍大男人臭脾气，享尽荣华富贵却身在福中不知福的老爷。如此比较下来，是不是更觉得别扭，很丢身份和自我尊严？如果非得将中美之间用男女间的关系来类比，我看，充其量就是爷们和妓女的，连爷们和小三的都谈不上。

国家之间没有友情，只有利益！如果一个国家的政府领会不到这点，只能说，她的领导者获得了太多不应该拥有的独权，不合理的占位时间太久，以至于忘了国家到底是谁的，他所代表的到底是谁的利益。忘记了身后无数没有发言权的苦逼民众的利益和诉求。

看看这段时间美国总统的所作所为和所收获的待遇，再看看中国政府高官那些类似于“夫妻同床异梦”之类缺乏知识、智慧的言论，估计对国人理解中国政治结构的内在问题有点帮助。中国普通民众会不会很羡慕、景仰？中国政府是不是该好好思过，想想政治制度上的改革和突破？

川普得意洋洋，有股小人得志的张狂：坐在的位置可是世界第一强国的最高权力宝座。他好想与众不同的，认真的，享受一下这个宝座带来的权力，特别是那种至高无上的感觉。于是乎，他做了在昔日总统看来想都不会想的大事：见谁不顺眼就炒了；见哪个国家不顺眼就叫着要用贸易战大棒敲打敲打。结果呢？他的幕僚们倒是只好一个个的卷铺盖搬离白宫，虽然离开很可能意味着是好事而非坏事。而他想用大棒敲打的国家对手，却似乎远没有他欺凌的内阁们听话好对付。

不仅如此，高调的叫了几声，不久才“惊讶”的发现，内外交困的是自己这个孤家寡人，结果很可能是无法收拾，最终既丢底子又掉面子。现在只是后院开始战火燃烧：短期看，他的私人律师被FBI抄了家（这在中国是不是不可想象？），而作为总统的他，只能气愤的叫嚣是对国家的攻击，磨磨嘴皮。他跑到正怨声载道的豆农那里，很弱智和自欺欺人的说，不要怕来自中国的压力，最坏的情况，只当你们是在为国家做出牺牲，我会想办法补偿你们的。他以为这些农民都是小孩子，哄了一次还会再有一次让自己耍的机会。

长远看，对内，他乐颠颠的大幅度砍税，意在通过制造一个更快速的经济发展来弥补损失的联邦收入，填补越来越大的赤子缺口，以为当年里根的成功经历可以再造。他似乎还是没有看到时代已经变化太大：他已经没有当年里根面对的那个良好的大环境。不出几年，他就会发现，由于他的任性，美国累积的问题变的越来越难处理。他将成为美国历史上最差的总统，很可能还没有之一！

川普先生，别再制造更多的笑话了。言多必失，深思熟虑再出手吧，这是对你好！

延伸阅读：

Deficit to top $1 trillion per year by 2020, CBO says

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) returns to his office. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)

By Jeff Stein April 9

America’s deficit is rising sharply and will surpass $1 trillion per year by 2020, a gap that has grown since Congress cut taxes and increased spending, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday.

The federal deficit — the gap between how much the government takes in and how much it spends — will hit $804 billion in fiscal 2018, up 21 percent from 2017, the CBO said.

“The federal budget deficit grows substantially over the next several years,” CBO Budget Director Keith Hall said Wednesday after his agency released the report. “Federal debt is projected to be on a steadily rising trajectory throughout the decade.”

The tax law that President Trump and congressional Republicans passed in December will cut government revenue by $1.3 trillion from 2018 to 2028, the CBO reported. When the costs of paying interest on that debt are included, the tax cuts’ total addition to the deficit comes to $1.9 trillion, the CBO said.

During debate on the bill, Republican leaders predicted that their proposal would spark massive economic growth that would limit — or even eliminate — additions to the deficit. But the CBO projected Monday that the bill would boost economic growth 0.7 percent over a decade — not enough to keep it from adding to the deficit.

Members of both parties further added to the deficit in March when they increased military and domestic spending by nearly $300 billion over the next two years.

 The White House's spending priorities for 2018 renege on President Trump's promises to lower the deficit and keep Medicare and Medicaid spending without cuts.(Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The CBO reported that from 2021 to 2028, deficits will average 4.9 percent of the total American economy — higher than at any point since World War II other than during the recession in 2008 and 2009.

Annual deficits topped $1 trillion from 2009 to 2012, because of greater spending on social safety net programs and economic stimulus, as well as slumping tax receipts as the economy cratered. But the current deficit increases come amid steady economic growth and low unemployment, a time when many economists recommend paying down the deficit.

“The timing of this is really concerning because we’re not coming out of a recession,” Hall said Monday.

The ballooning deficits reflect a growing gap between the level of military services and social spending the government is promising and how much it’s willing to tax Americans to pay for them. The current national debt, including projected future spending on social programs, totals more than $20 trillion.

“We’ve had a big tax cut and a big spending increase, and they’re showing up here,” said Benjamin Page, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Republicans and Democrats alike bemoaned the growing deficits Monday but offered opposing suggestions for how to deal with it.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) blamed the new tax law.

“The CBO’s latest report exposes the scam behind the rosy rhetoric from Republicans that their tax bill would pay for itself,” Schumer said in a statement Monday. “From day one, the Republican agenda has always been to balloon the deficit in order to dole out massive tax breaks to the largest corporations and wealthiest Americans, and then use the deficit as an excuse to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said the tax bill had helped stimulate growth, but that reining in the deficit would require slowing down increasing spending on social programs.

“To address our federal debt, we must slow the growth of entitlement spending, increase revenues with a growing economy, and make responsible spending cuts,” Lankford said in a statement. “The economy is improving, with the help of tax reform, but we now must get serious about spending reform and cuts.”

House Republicans are also expected to vote this week on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, which would force federal revenue and spending to balance. That plan is widely viewed as a symbolic measure with little chance of passing Congress or winning the necessary ratification from the states.

Ultimately, neither party appears to have a deficit-reduction proposal that could get enough support from the other to pass.

If Congress continues to let deficits balloon, it faces several long-term risks. Deficits can snowball, as larger deficits require larger interest payments, pushing the government to borrow more and more money to close the gap.

The government has been able to finance its debt relatively cheaply because of a decade of historically low interest rates since the recession. But now the Federal Reserve is raising rates, meaning the government’s borrowing costs are projected to increase.

And as the government borrows more, it risks crowding out private investment that would have stimulated more economic growth, the CBO warned.

There is a nightmare scenario in which borrowers lose faith in the country’s ability to pay back its debts, demanding higher interest rates on their loans and setting off a spiral of larger deficits and still-higher rates.

“The bigger the debt, the bigger the chance of a fiscal crisis,” Hall said Monday. “The longer you wait, the more draconian the measures have to be to fix the problem.”

Still, some economists are skeptical of the peril posed by deficits, noting that during the Obama administration many deficit hawks warned of a fiscal crisis that has so far failed to materialize. Deficit hawks also predicted runaway inflation, but the growth in prices has been muted thus far.

“It’s all hand-waving and conjecture: There’s no grounding in valid economic principles that this is a debt crisis,” said Stephanie Kelton, a left-leaning economics and public policy professor at Stony Brook University and a former economic adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “It’s just conjecture.”

America last ran annual budget surpluses from 1998 to 2001, amid healthy growth in the economy at the end of President Bill Clinton’s administration. Those surpluses turned to deficits after tax cuts under President George W. Bush, as well as sharp increases in military spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump blasts FBI raids on his lawyer as 'disgraceful situation'

By JOSH GERSTEIN ， 04/09/2018 05:13 PM EDT

President Donald Trump reacted angrily Monday after the FBI seized records from his longtime personal attorney, calling the law enforcement actions "disgraceful" and part of "an attack on our country."

An attorney for Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, said earlier Monday that federal investigators had executed a series of search warrants and seized records. The attorney, Stephen Ryan, said the New York action was taken following a "referral" from special counsel Robert Mueller.

"I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man," Trump told reporters at the White House. "It's a disgraceful situation...I've been saying it for a long time. I have this witch hunt constantly going on.”

"It's an attack on our country," Trump said. "It's an attack on what we all stand for."

The FBI action Monday came amid a swirl of questions about Cohen's role in a variety of matters related to Trump, including a pre-election payment of $130,000 to an adult film star who claimed to have had an affair with the real estate mogul a decade earlier. Cohen's activities have also come under scrutiny by congressional investigators probing alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The full range of locations the FBI raided Monday looking for Cohen's records was not immediately clear. Press reports said Cohen's Rockefeller Center law office was raided, as well as his Park Avenue apartment. Vanity Fair reported that agents entered a hotel room Cohen had been using at the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan.

In addition, a Washington law firm Cohen had been working with until recently — Squire Patton Boggs — told POLITICO that relationship has ended. Investigators also contacted the firm about a search warrant for Cohen's records, the firm confirmed.

"The firm’s arrangement with Mr. Cohen recently reached its conclusion, mutually and in accordance with the terms of the agreement," a statement from the firm said. "We have been in contact with Federal authorities regarding their execution of a warrant relating to Mr. Cohen. These activities do not relate to the firm and we are in full cooperation.”

In his statement, Cohen's attorney faulted the use of search warrants to seize attorney records — an unusual tactic because of the danger of intrusion on material protected by attorney-client privilege.