Axios: Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin Are Blocking America First Trade Reform

Isn’t this just perfect?

So, it turns out President Trump is serious about the MAGA trade agenda. He wasn’t kidding about that. He keeps wanting to impose “massive tariffs against entire countries, industries and product categories,” but Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn are defending the status quo:

“Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin successfully kept President Trump from making any disruptive trade actions during the tax reform fight. Now that tax reform is done — and Trump remains hell-bent on tariffs — they’re making new arguments to try to mellow his hardwired trade-warrior impulses.

Cohn and Mnuchin are now appealing to Trump’s obsession with the record-breaking run of the stock market under his presidency, according to four sources with direct knowledge.

They’re telling him the stock market is at an all-time high, and that new tariffs on whole industries like steel and aluminum would hurt it.

They’re also telling him — and others are joining them in making this argument directly to the president — that he’s just given the middle class a tax cut, and that any tariffs making consumer goods more expensive would undo the pay raise he just gave them.

Why this matters: Sources who’ve spoken with the president say he’s often said he wants to slap massive tariffs against entire countries, industries and product categories. They worry that doing so would roil global markets, start a costly trade war, and harm America’s relationships with allies….”

BTW, it was also Steve Mnuchin who helped save the carried interest loophole.

Wall Street won’t like tariffs on Chinese steel, Dahnald. The middle class won’t like more expensive products at Walmart, Dahnald. You need to keep that carried interest loophole, Dahnald. You need to denounce those Nahtzis who marched in Charlottesville, Dahnald.

I said from the beginning that Gary Cohn was going to be a disaster. At the same time, I said that Peter Navarro and Robert Lighthizer were good picks and would be a good team. A year later, I was right on both counts as Navarro and Lighthizer have lined up against Cohn and Mnuchin. Navarro has been sidelined in the White House and put under Gary Cohn’s NEC.

To whom do we owe the misfortune of Gary Cohn?

“The timing was perfect for Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, to pounce. He approached Cohn, supposedly at the suggestion of mutual friends. “Jared Kushner has always been a little starstruck with Goldman Sachs people,” says a former Goldman partner who knows him well. “He’s always liked that sort of promotional edginess that Goldman Sachs has had, and he’s always liked the reputation that Goldman Sachs has the best people, quote unquote, the smartest, savviest people. The idea, by the way, that Jared was suddenly in a position where he actually had the power to call on and hire and lure a number of people like that to the bench side, if you will, was a very, very intoxicating, enticing, and really kind of exciting thing to him,” the former partner continues. “This was an incredibly sort of convenient and opportune kind of thing that came along for Gary because—whether he was going to Washington or not—Gary was out.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Jared Kushner was probably also behind the Shlomo Rubashkin decision. He is the common thread that runs through all bad decisions. These MAGA people think the Alt-Right dwells too much on the Jews. The opposite is true. There isn’t enough focus on how Jewish power and influence has subverted the Trump White House.

Note: Steve Bannon is right about one thing. January is going to be a do-or-die moment for the Trump White House on DACA, the border wall and trade.