SUMMARY: Workers, jobs and wages are central to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, in which the two countries have exchanged tariffs and threats recently. Though many Americans fear that they will be the ones to pay the price for the friction, Judy Woodruff talks to James Hoffa Jr. president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, about why he thinks the tariffs are a “good idea.”
SUMMARY: The economy, and the U.S. trade deficit specifically, is a major focus of President Trump’s agenda, driving his decision to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. But the latest data indicates the trade gap is actually growing, to its highest level in over a decade. Amna Nawaz talks to the Brookings Institution's David Wessel about rising American consumption and a healthy way to manage the deficit.
SUMMARY: President Trump is calling his agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping “an incredible deal” that could go down as “one of the largest deals ever made.” But what exactly does it include? Nick Schifrin is joined by the Hudson Institute’s Michael Pillsbury outside adviser to the Trump administration, to discuss who will be managing negotiations and what “monitoring” of China might be required.
SUMMARY: Friday’s jobs report showed a quarter of a million jobs were added to the U.S. economy in October. The unemployment rate remained at its lowest rate in decades. And wages, up 3 percent year over year, grew the most they have since 2009. Despite all the positive metrics, concerns still linger over tariffs and a volatile stock market. Amna Nawaz discusses with Heather Long of the Washington Post.
SUMMARY: President Trump turned a simmering conflict with Turkey to a boil, tweeting that he would double tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey was at economic war, as the country's currency tumbled as much as 20 percent to a record low. Already, U.S.-Turkey relations have been strained over an array of conflicts. Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: How are President Trump's tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum affecting manufacturers and workers? At two different Missouri factories, there are two very different stories. Mid Continent Steel and Wire, which makes nails, has already eliminated 100 jobs. But about 60 miles away at Magnitude 7 Metals, the reopened aluminum smelter is back up and running with hundreds of jobs. John Yang reports.
SUMMARY: After leaving the G-7 summit in Quebec early, President Trump withdrew from the group's joint statement on trade and blasted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as "dishonest" for criticizing the U.S. tariffs and moving to retaliate. As Lisa Desjardins reports, a key relationship for both sides is at risk.
SUMMARY: President Trump has grown frustrated with Canada on a lack of progress in crafting a new NAFTA agreement, says Marc Short, director of legislative affairs for the Trump administration. Short sits down with Judy Woodruff to discuss reactions to the G-7 summit, the President’s focus on Canada and more.
SUMMARY: President Trump came into office insisting that the U.S. wouldn't be taken advantage of, by allies or adversaries. What do we learn from the most recent rancor at the G-7? Judy Woodruff gets analysis on Trump’s trade complaints from Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group.
SUMMARY: Relations between the U.S. and Europe took another hit Thursday when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Trump administration would impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum. European Union Ambassador to the U.S. David O'Sullivan joins John Yang to discuss how the tariffs will affect the global economy and the alliance, plus the fallout from the U.S. withdrawing from the Iran deal.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the abrupt announcement that President Trump intends to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the tariffs imposed on imported steel and aluminum and a lawsuit against the President by actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): And now to the analysis of Shields and Parker. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker. David Brooks is away this week.
And welcome to both of you. Happy Friday.
Mark, two bold strokes by the President this week.
Let’s start with the one that we led the program with tonight, North Korea. Surprised, I think, a lot of people by saying he will meet, as long as North Korea meets certain conditions. Was this the right move?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: We will find out if it was the right move, Judy. It was a bold move. Make no mistake about it. And it disarmed his critics who had accused him of being — bellicose language, which was provable, and that he was risking the brink of war almost, and especially gratuitously belittling the North Korean leadership.
Judy Woodruff: Little rocket man.
Mark Shields: Little rocket man.
And then, miraculously, the North Korean — seemingly miraculously — said, I’m willing to negotiate and consider the possibility of removing my nuclear capability, which I think nobody above the I.Q. of room temperature believes.
But, at the same time, the problem with North Korea in the past has not been their willingness to meet or to negotiate or to agree. It’s just that North Korea has never kept its word. But the President certainly has taken a bold act. And it’s brought us back from the brink of war. And I think there’s an audible sigh of relief.
Judy Woodruff: Smart move, Kathleen?
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post: I just see it as very, very risky.
And it’s risky because, on the one hand, he’s giving Kim Jong-un this legitimacy that he has for so long wanted. You know, when the President of the United States says something, it’s always important, everybody listens, and when he does something, it’s always important. The markets go up and down when he opens his mouth.
When he — he can cause wars with his words. And when he now says he’s going to meet with North Korea, he is setting himself up for all sorts of problems, potential problems. But he’s also, because he’s Donald Trump, has lots of wiggle room to pull out of it at the last minute if he decides the circumstances aren’t right.
We don’t know exactly what those are. And it’s all been just odd, I think, to have had these — his messaging about what North Korea’s willing to do came from the South Koreans, who then also were the ones to present…
Judy Woodruff: They’re the ones who announced it.
Kathleen Parker: Who announced it in front of the White House.
And I was taken aback by that. I thought, well, is he out? Did he have a dinner date, so that somebody else had to talk about it? And at what point is Trump going to talk to the country about this very, very important and significant move?
Judy Woodruff: And, in fact, Mark, it was announced abruptly. The South Korean official who was at the White House was there.
He was going to meet with President Trump today. Yesterday, the President, we are told, it’s been reported that he heard he was in the White House, went to see him. The President stuck his head into the press room and said, we’re going to have an announcement about — that you will want to pay attention to.
So the way it was announced, the way it was handled raises some questions.
Mark Shields: It does raise questions, Judy. But the questions have been raised and continue to be raised.
As one Republican explained to me, you have to understand that every day is a new reality show. And there’s no continuity to this Presidency. And it’s winning the day. It’s changing the conversation. He’s changed the conversation.
What was the conversation? Gary Cohn, his economic adviser, was quitting because of his trade policy. What was the conversation? Stormy Daniels, the porn actress with whom the President allegedly had — or at least President’s people paid $130,000 to just before the election, was going to go public.
The disarray in the White House, that — you name it, Republican civil war, if not — civil war is strong, but at least Republican strife over his trade policy. This knocked it all off the front pages.
I did notice the South Korean National Security Adviser had mastered one of the great secrets of dealing with Donald Trump was, he began, continued and ended the entire conversation by praising President Trump for the meeting, that it was all due to his leadership, his strong, principled positions.
And so, you know, this worked for Donald Trump. It got the other bad stories away for at least 24 hours.
Judy Woodruff: Kathleen, how much attention should we be paying to the theatrics of this, the orchestration of it? How much do we learn by looking at that?
Kathleen Parker: Well, I don’t know that we learn anything from the theatrics, because it’s become sort of a template of his.
And you do realize you’re watching a reality show. But there are other troubling aspects of this. And that includes the fact that we really have no representation in that part of the world. We have no ambassador to South Korea.
And our special representative to North Korea has just left the building with mostly, probably, I’m not sure, but I think because of a disagreement with Trump about how he was — about his bellicosity.
But this fellow, Joseph Yun, was tending toward having these talks. And then to add to that we don’t have any real diplomatic involvement. Rex -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson -- is speaking publicly about how we’re nowhere close to talking to North Korea, and within the same news cycle, the President is making this announcement or accepting this invitation.
SUMMARY: Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn is stepping down -- another major White House resignation, this time over trade policy. As President Trump pushes ahead with his plan for tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, Republicans are increasingly sounding their concerns about starting trade wars, and urging the president to take a more ”targeted” approach. Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff for more.
SUMMARY: President Trump's promised tariffs on steel and aluminum imports have drawn mixed reaction from Washington, as well as American businesses. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Paul Czachor, CEO of the American Keg Company, the only domestic manufacturer of steel beer kegs in the country, about his company’s concerns that kegs made from low-cost steel from abroad will gain an even greater advantage.
SUMMARY: Peter Navarro is one of the key White House figures who has made a case for imposing stiff new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. What ideas and philosophy drive Navarro? Economics correspondent Paul Solman revisits his profile of Trump's right-hand man on trade to consider what President Trump’s tariff announcement means for the global economy.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including a tumultuous week at the White House, President Trump’s surprise announcement of a tariff on imported steel and aluminum, and political polarization in Congress over gun control.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): It’s been one more whirlwind week in Washington, another high-profile departure from the White House, fresh scrutiny over the president’s son-in-law, and an escalation in the war of words between Mr. Trump and his own attorney general, all this as the President made surprise declarations on trade and gun control.
That brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Welcome, gentlemen.
So, so much going on this week, I barely know where to begin.
At the White House, Mark, the President’s closest aide announced she’s leaving. He has a son-in-law who is under a lot of scrutiny over alleged conflicts of interest. He has a chief of staff who is raising questions again about his — how he handled the firing of an aide over domestic abuse, and on and on.
The leaks seem to just be flowing a gusher every day. What matters in all of this?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: What matters is chaos in the White House is bad for the United States and bad for the world. There’s no rational order.
I mean, for example, what you have described, the morale at the White House, from every report, is just incredibly low. To work in any White House, Judy, is an act of both self-sacrifice and self-interest. You miss birthdays. You miss anniversaries. You miss your children’s recitals.
But there’s a sense of mission, a sense of history, a sense also that it’s special. You’re part of something special. You get status and recognition.
All that is missing here. This is a civil war in a leper colony. There is no sense of direction. The steel quotas being a perfect example. There was no preparation — tariffs, rather — there was no preparation politically, there was no preparation for making a case, there was no preparation for the press, there was no preparation within the White House.
There’s nothing organization. It’s all act on impulse and chaos and sort of the whim of the President himself.
Judy Woodruff: There’s almost a temptation, David, to look at this as some kind of sideshow. But there are real consequences, aren’t there?
David Brooks, New York Times: Yes.
I’m actually thinking — I’m trying to think of historical parallels, when we have had this much chaos in the American Presidency. Richard Nixon had some bad days at the end there, but he had a very high-quality staff around him. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke.
I’m going through the list. I can’t think of anything quite like this, where we have the combination of a semi-competent or a missing staff, and an emotionally and intellectually unstable President.
Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, said in an interview not long ago that, when you look from the outside, it’s actually 50 times worse from the inside. And we’re getting a glimpse of that.
And one thing that leapt out at me — and I think this is the key thing, the most important thing — that it has real-world consequences. We’re not just fighting over whether he has a military parade or not.
The steel tariff thing has real consequences. And the word that leapt out at me that one of his staffers said, one of his allies said, he made the decision because he became unglued.
And so we have a President makes a decision because he becomes unglued, a decision totally in avoidance of the entire process. And then to combine the chaos of it, he issues a tweet this morning which to me was a topper even by Trump standards that a trade war is good and easily won, a concept that no economist of any stripe and no historian of any stripe could possibly think is anything other than crazy.
And so it’s extremely disorienting right now.
Judy Woodruff: So, how do we process this, Mark?
It’s the headlines. Again, you could go in almost any direction every day over a new controversy or set of controversies at the White House.
Mark Shields: I honestly don’t know, Judy.
I mean, it’s just — it’s overload. It really is. The one consolation, the one defense that the President’s apologists and supporters say, he doesn’t mean what he says. That’s supposed to be the consolation. And don’t be so concerned.
One of the more plausible explanations for the impulsive imposition, keeping of a promise he’s made for 30 years on steel tariffs, was that the 18th District of Pennsylvania is up in two weeks, the special election for a Republican seat that the Democrats have not even contested in 2014 and 2016, that Donald Trump carried Southwestern Pennsylvania, blue-collar, by 20 points, and the Democrat, Conor Lamb, former Marine, former prosecutor, U.S. prosecutor, is even with the Republican nominee.
And a defeat here would send such panic. This is Trump territory. And this — was seen as standing up for American jobs. That’s the most plausible explanation politically. It’s not a defense, but it’s an explanation.
