Page 4A
East Oregonian
Saturday, June 23, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
It’s time for Trump to prove himself on trade
T
he sight of President Donald
Trump making nice with Kim
Jong Un, a sworn enemy of the
U.S. who has threatened to nuke our
nation along with Japan and South
Korea, provided a jolting contrast to
the president’s bizarre performance
at the recent G-7 economic summit,
where he thumbed his nose at our
strongest allies.
Confusion may be part of Trump’s
game plan, but he can’t seem to get
beyond that. Part of his negotiating
tactic is knocking the other parties
back on their heels by emphasizing
that he is willing to do anything,
including walk away.
Fair enough. Anyone who has ever
bought a used car knows that. The
thing is, we’re not negotiating for
an ’87 Buick. We’re talking about
multi-billion-dollar trade deals with
our allies that could make or break
U.S. farmers, ranchers and others.
Japan alone buys an average of $800
million worth of wheat a year from
U.S. farmers. Upwards of 90 percent
of the wheat grown in the Northwest
goes to Japan and other overseas
customers. Because Trump bailed
out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
Canada and Australia, both major
wheat producers, will have a $65 a
ton tariff advantage on wheat they sell
to Japan.
That’s just one example. Other
commodities face similar scenarios,
all of which spell trouble for farmers
Associated Press
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un reach to shake
hands at the Capella resort June 12, in Singapore. The president likes to talk about
making deals but can’t seem to get it done.
and ranchers, whose livelihoods are at
stake because they depend on trade.
Trump says his showboating has
worked for him in the past.
“My whole life has been deals,” he
said at a press conference last week.
“I’ve done great at it, and that’s what
I do.”
That being the case, we have to
wonder why he’s thus far failed to
negotiate new trade deals with our
most important allies. When he took
office, one of the first things he did
was tear up the TPP, which includes
three of our best trade partners, Japan,
Mexico and Canada. Then he went
after China and South Korea, two
other important trade partners.
Only in South Korea was his
administration able to renegotiate the
KORUS deal. Funny thing, because
it’s a lot like the original deal.
Trump said he would procure
bilateral agreements with our other
major trade partners.
It’s been 18 months, and we’re
still waiting. During that time, U.S.
farmers have seen overseas markets
they nurtured for decades put at risk,
they’ve seen retaliatory tariffs put on
their crops and products, and they’ve
seen zero progress from Mr. Big Deal.
In fact, they’ve seen the opposite
of progress. His tariffs on steel and
aluminum from overseas have only
resulted in retaliatory tariffs, many on
U.S. agricultural exports.
Trump has had plenty of time to
negotiate trade deals with Japan,
Mexico and Canada. He’s had plenty
of time to sit down with the Chinese
and the Europeans.
And we’re all still waiting.
Trump has done some good
things, mainly by reining in federal
regulations such as those governing
the Waters of the U.S. But trade is the
arena that will make or break nearly
every U.S. farmer and rancher.
Shaking hands with the North
Korean dictator was easy. The little
guy seemed thrilled by the photo
opportunity. We hope the meeting
leads to an actual disarmament
agreement of some type, but with
Trump’s growing track record of
failing to follow through on his
“deals,” we’re not holding our breath.
It’s been a year and a half since
Trump said he would negotiate
replacement deals for TPP and
upgrade the North American Free
Trade Agreement.
Time’s up, Mr. President. Quit
messing around with the sideshows
and get U.S. trade back on track.
OTHER VIEWS
Trickle down Trumpsters and language
O
OTHER VIEWS
Court punts on gerrymandering
The Register-Guard
G
errymandering — drawing political
districts to achieve a particular
result — is nearly as old as the
republic, but the U.S. Supreme Court
has never ruled on the practice except
in regard to minorities’ voting rights.
It ducked the issue again this week,
declining to rule in a pair of cases for
technical reasons.
But states and voters have an urgent
need for the court’s guidance before the
2020 Census triggers a national wave of
redistricting.
The urgency arises from the fact that
gerrymandering has been turbocharged
by technology and partisanship. Mapping
software and voter databases allow district
lines to be adjusted with fine-grained
precision. The widening ideological gulf
between the major parties has raised the
stakes when districts are drawn.
One of the cases rejected by the court
arose from Wisconsin, where in 2012
Republicans won 48.6 percent of the votes
but gained 60 of 99 seats in the Legislative
Assembly.
Yet defining impermissible political
gerrymandering won’t be easy. Voters
gerrymander themselves into like-minded
communities, and districts reflecting
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
such geographic sorting may be fairly
drawn. Districts drawn to perfectly reflect
the partisan makeup of an entire state’s
electorate could resemble the salamander-
shaped district drawn by Massachusetts
Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812.
It might be possible for the court to
judge the fairness of political districts
by examining the process rather than the
result. Some states, including Washington
and California, have established non-
partisan redistricting commissions. Oregon
Secretary of State Dennis Richardson has
appointed a committee to study the state’s
redistricting process.
Oregon’s current districts were
drawn by the Legislature in 2011, aided
by the fact that the state House was
evenly divided between Democrats and
Republicans that year. In several preceding
decades legislature deadlocks caused the
job to fall to the secretary of state. The
secretary of state is a partisan official, but
his or her work has tended to be politically
neutral in this area.
Even so, both the Legislature and
the secretary of state would benefit
from a clear court ruling on partisan
gerrymandering — Oregon can’t presume
to be permanently immune to the overtly
political redistricting that has occurred in
other states.
n Father’s Day last week, the
doesn’t exist. And on Wednesday,
highest-paid employee of
Trump signed an order trying to
resolve a crisis that he created, after
Washington State University
saying earlier he couldn’t stop it
tweeted out a video of a 2014 speech
because it was the fault of others,
by Barack Obama that was altered
even if it did exist.
to make him sound like a one-world-
After a while, people come to
government tyrant.
“believe everything and nothing,
When called on the fraud, Mike
Timothy think that everything was possible
Leach, the head football coach and
Egan
and that nothing was true,” wrote
$3.5 million a year representative
Comment
Hannah Arendt, the German-born
of the same school that gave us
philosopher, in describing how
legendary newsman Edward R.
truth lost its way in her native land.
Murrow, said, “Prove it.”
Everyone laughed when the North
It was easily proven as doctored. But
Korean news agency reported that the
instead of apologizing, and owning up
late Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, scored five
to his dissemination of a fake conspiracy
holes-in-one while playing a round of golf.
video, he then wrote, “What is a fact?” Of
But how is this any different from Trump
all the things President Donald Trump has
done to destroy civil norms, his debasement saying this week that crime is “way up” in
Germany when it just recorded the lowest
of language is the most chilling and
year for crime in nearly three decades? Who
poisonous. For it has now reached down
is left to call him on this? The press, which
to every level, allowing people who are
he’s labeled the “enemy of the American
supposed to be societal pillars, or even
people”?
role models, to act as if reality has no
In North Korea, the masses are forced to
foundation.
believe the lies, something Trump clearly
Trump’s frightful legacy is not just the
epidemic of everyday incivility in daily life. envies. “He speaks and his people sit up in
Nor is it his practice of using dehumanizing attention,” he said of Kim Jong Un. “I want
language to justify cruelty. The worst of the my people to do the same.”
My larger concern today is this: How is a
trickle-down Trump effects is the way he’s
fact-based democracy supposed to function
opened the door for other public figures
when the Trump toxins have gotten deep
to get away with making things up. When
into the national bloodstream?
a president is applauded for lying, why
When Mike Leach was caught in his
should a head football coach, or a Cabinet
video lie, his university did not set the
secretary, feel any shame for doing the
record straight. Washington State issued a
same thing?
meaningless statement backing its coach’s
To authoritarians, language is a weapon,
right to his “personal opinions.” And Leach
usually deployed in the service of an
emotional half-truth: something you believe himself said the actual words spoken by
Obama are “irrelevant anyway” because
to be true even if it isn’t. Truth has to
“we are discussing ideas.” All of this from
become meaningless — “What is a fact?”
an institution of higher learning.
— in order for this strategy to work and
And where did Leach get this mush, an
morality to become a shapeless thing.
excuse that would be laughed off the field if
We saw it when Vice President Mike
one of his players tried it with him?
Pence called former Arizona Sheriff Joe
From the top. Remember when Trump
Arpaio a champion of “the rule of law.”
retweeted a video purporting to show
Arpaio is a convicted criminal later
a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch
pardoned by Trump.
boy on crutches? After authorities in
And we saw it in graphic detail over the
the Netherlands said the assailant was
last week with the Trump administration
neither migrant nor Muslim, White House
policy of ripping migrant children from
spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders
their parents. The cages holding weeping
kids are “essentially summer camps,” in the said the truth didn’t matter.
“Whether it’s a real video, the threat is
words of Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
real,” she said. In other words, “What is a
Worse, Homeland Security Secretary
fact?”
Kirstjen Nielsen said the administration’s
■
zero tolerance policy that led to 2,300
Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a
children being taken from their parents
writer for The New York Times, first as the
doesn’t exist — “period.” A day after
Pacific Northwest correspondent.
saying this, she defended the policy that
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