By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – The BLS Limo Group black vans are back at the Willard Hotel, this time carrying bureaucrats from China and as they mill about at 14th & F streets, a block from the Treasury and two blocks from the White House, they seem relaxed.
They are a low-security group, unlike some visitors from the Middle East whose comings and goings are typically shielded from public view by awnings and tent-like passageways into the hotel, while snipers guard from rooftops and streets are cordoned off.
The work of the deputies, helping set the stage for Thursday and Friday trade talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer is done and now they give way to the main actors.
China’s Central Bank Gov. Yi Gang will be there. Mnuchin has met him before at G-20 meetings and will see him after the trade talks at the G-20 meeting next week held while the IMF and World Bank hold their own semiannual meetings nearby the White House.
The senior members of China’s economic leadership will also include Vice-Premier Liu He. Although he doesn’t carry the additional title of trade envoy, his presence signals the seriousness with which China views the talks.
There will be dozens more officials from Beijing, a huge contingent, but still nothing like the army of officials who used to arrive for the various iterations of the semiannual Strategic and Economic Dialogues that Mnuchin ended.
People who may be relatives of the visitors can be seen over at Lafayette Square across from the White House, quizzically looking at the multicolored garbed man screaming that he’s the Savior, sitting under an umbrella and occasionally telling the onlooker why he doesn’t like the president.
The more sedate and permanent installation of protestors at their Lafayette Square tent, who want peace, an end to chemical and nuclear weapons and who predate the Trump administration by many years, were handing out free copies of Politico. It’s the Capitol Hill newspaper that like The Hill and Roll Call, try to sort out what often seems to an outside observer like a Brownian Motion of administration initiatives, tendencies, goals, disputes and mixed signals.
No need to Google. Brownian motion: “The erratic random movement of microscopic particles in a fluid, as a result of continuous bombardment from molecules of the surrounding medium.”
So Lighthizer, it seems, had nothing to do with the Commerce Department’s ban on Chinese high-technology firms, action that was described as retaliation for the firms’ support role in the suppression of human rights.
That citation, the very first administration sanction aimed at human rights violations, was as surprising to many as Monday’s decision by President Trump to remove a few dozen U.S. troops from the path of Turkey’s troops apparently was to some U.S. military leaders.
Tuesday, incidentally, Turkey’s forces dropped their first bombs near the Syrian border, aimed at cutting Kurdish supply lines.
It is not known if Treasury’s Mnuchin approved of the Commerce Department’s action or even knew about it before Reuters reported the Federal Register notice. It is unknown what is the state of his relations with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross whose own conduits to the White House seem to be at a different level than Mnuchin’s.
Likewise it is not known if Mnuchin was consulted before Trump Monday tweeted he would “obliterate” Turkey’s economy if those troops crossed some unspecified red line, perhaps killing Kurds or endangering any American troops.
The Commerce Department said the ban of U.S. transactions with the 28 entities, which now join dozens of others already on the prohibited China list, had nothing to do with the trade talks. The firms included advanced artificial intelligence and surveillance operations for their alleged support of the suppression of Muslim minorities in the country’s far western region, the Department said.
It is also not known if Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knew of or approved Trump’s invitation to Turkey’s Recip Tayyip Erdogan to visit the White House in November. The invitation seemed to obviate the thrust of the briefings Monday by senior White House and State Department officials. They wanted it understood that Trump told Erdogan the U.S. regarded the incursion into Syria as a bad idea that would not be endorsed by Washington. Yet Erdogan was rewarded anyway.
So arise the day’s set of questions. Would administration support of Muslim minorities suggest some explicit administration support of Hong Kong’s demonstrators can now follow, stronger than President Trump’s repeated appeal Monday for a “humane solution?” Meanwhile, who is coordinating the approach to China by the White House, USTR, the State Department, the Treasury and the Commerce Department?
Then there was China’s retaliatory ban of all mention of the Houston Rockets after the team’s general manager tweeted his support of the Hong Kong demonstrators. China also announced NBA preseason games would not be aired in the country.
After a response from the National Basketball Association that seemed close to an apology, its Commissioner Adam Silver came down on the side of the general manager. “The long-held values of the NBA are to support the freedom of expression and certainly freedom of expression by members of the NBA community,” Silver said at a news conference in Japan.
The U.S. stock markets reflected the bad vibes that continue to surround the runup to the trade talks, closing down from 1.2% for the DJIA, to 1.7% for the Nasdaq. The Treasury 10-year rallied a bit as the yield dropped to 1.533%. The VIX so-called fear index jumped more than 13% to 20.28.
At the end of the White House day, President Trump and Vice President Pence presided over the granting of a Presidential Medal of Freedom to former attorney general Ed Meese, nearly four decades after his White House service to President Ronald Reagan.
In thanking the president, Meese said he knows well what the administration is going through, having weathered a lot himself.
Anyone interested in what he was talking about can consult Meese’s lengthy Wikipedia entry. It speaks both of Meese’s accomplishments, which are many, and of two special counsels and investigations, one of them involving then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Rudy Giuliani. Meese back then declared at one point he had been vindicated. Then he resigned.
It all prompted some who watched the ceremony to ponder how many – if any – Trump administration officials will be getting their own Presidential Medals four decades from now.
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Contact this reporter at: denny@macenews.com