WCA March 2019

From the Americas

Media An impending battle over the Voice of America will spotlight the Trump administration’s free-press issues

Trade Falling hardest on lower and middle-income Americans, the Trump tariffs are seen as reducing economic output and employment “President Donald Trump’s trade battles are projected to hit middle-class families hard, according to a new study, especially if the president follows through on all of his threats.” The study cited by Bob Bryan, a policy reporter at Business Insider , is from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation and asserts that current tariffs will cause a squeeze for middle-class Americans as well as killing jobs. Mr Bryan said that the think tank also expects that the economic pain of the tariffs would get much worse in the event Trump follows through on his threats of further tariffs. (“Trump’s Trade War Could Cost Every Middle-Class American Family $453 and Could Eliminate 292,000 US Jobs,” 16 th December) As for current tariffs, through to the end of 2018 Mr Trump had been unwilling to drop the duties on imported steel (25 per cent) and aluminium (15 per cent) – even calling the measures a great success. Clearly of a strongly opposite view, the Tax Foundation identified these effects of the tariffs now in place, as reported by Mr Bryan:  A decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.12 per cent over the long run – the equivalent of $30.4 billion lost  The elimination of 94,300 full-time American jobs  A decrease in after-tax income of 0.3 per cent for all Americans – and a greater decline for the middle class. According to Tax Foundation analyst Erica York, for Americans in the middle quintile of income earners the after-tax wage decrease amounts to 0.33 per cent, or $146 per taxpayer But Mr Trump’s threatened tariffs on imported autos and on another $255 billion worth of Chinese goods would make things even worse. Here are a few of the downsides of his following through, according to the Tax Foundation study (“The Economic and Distributional Impact of the Trump Administration’s Tariff Actions,” published on 5 th December):  A decrease in GDP by 0.38 per cent over the long run – the equivalent of $94.4 billion lost  The elimination of 292,600 full-time American jobs  A decrease in after-tax income of 0.92 per cent for all Americans. For those in the middle quintile of earners, the after-tax wage decrease would be 1.04 per cent, or about $453  All prospective tariff increases were on hold in mid-December while the USA and China tried to work out their differences. A temporary truce struck on 1 st December between Mr Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina was scheduled to end on 1 st March. The two leaders had agreed to try to negotiate a broad trade deal on auto tariffs by that date

An article in the Los Angeles Times has indicated that a simmering debate over the future of the Voice of America may be about to boil over. The VOA is the USA government-owned news service that reaches an estimated 275 million people around the world by way of radio, Internet and television. It is, wrote the LA Times ’s Noah Bierman, a brand “honed during the mid-20 th Century Cold War era that President (Donald J) Trump idealises as a time of unquestioned American greatness.” Yet, two years into his administration and despite predictions that Mr Trump would transform it into “Trump TV”, the Voice of America has remained largely untouched. (“Trump Says He Wants a Government-Run Media Outlet. He’s Ignored the One He Has – So Far,” 14 th December) Mr Bierman’s impression that that may be about to change is prompted by two factors. Recent journalistic ethics lapses, by some staff members in its West African and Mandarin services, have embarrassed the VOA and attracted scrutiny of its foreign coverage. And, there has been an unremitting push by some elements eager to curb some of the VOA’s independence and engage the service more overtly in furthering Mr Trump’s “America First” agenda. There are signs that the potential value to him of the VOA takeover initiative may finally have caught the attention of the famously inattentive president. “VOA is a rotten fish from top to bottom,” Stephen K Bannon, the former leader of the conservative Breitbart news site, said in an interview with the LA Times . “It’s now totally controlled by the deep-state apparatus” [a fictitious entity that Mr Trump has often accused of undermining him]. Following a forced departure from the White House after seven months as Mr Trump’s chief strategist, Mr Bannon has kept up the fight against the VOA from the outside.  The opposition is concentrated in a bipartisan group arguing that independent reporting — including controversial stories about US politics — offers the best advertisement for American values abroad. In Mr Bierman’s view, the Voice of America’s reporting on the Trump administration is hardly distinguishable from that of commercial news outlets. “We’re America’s BBC,” said VOA director Amanda Bennett, a former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer who earlier won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal . “Without the cool voices.”  A showdown may be coming soon. Mr Bierman reported that, after a six-month stall, the Senate could give a hearing early this year to Mr Trump’s nominee to lead the Voice of America. He is Michael Pack, an ally and former film-making collaborator of none other than the president’s one-time strategist and provocateur, Stephen K Bannon.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2019