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Writer's pictureBob McKnight

No Mas, Mr. President


During the 2016 campaign for President, I recall a lady from Iowa saying in a television interview that although she did not like Donald Trump's sordid behavior, she felt his business experience would be important in world negotiations. After all, although he apparently doesn't read books, he did pay a writer to write one for him--and it was about negotiating.

So with that, it was a surprise to read a Wall Street Journal piece by Mary O'Grady about how Trump got played like a violin by Mexican President Nieto on paying for the wall and renegotiating NAFTA. The essence of the Journal Op Ed was there is a big difference between buying an office building and negotiating wall building among countries. She went further to say Trump appeared clueless on multi-country trade tariffs among volatile currencies, affecting thousands of businesses and millions of constituents. In fairness, it is pretty easy to see that Trump is impetuous and eager to succeed, so I was really not too surprised that he would jump the gun on Mexico. But, I would have expected his staff to give him better counsel before allowing our country to launch into such a train wreck in his first week in office. Maybe the staff were not in place yet.

But, here we are. Now it looks like Speaker Ryan is going to have to 'find' the $49 Billion dollars to build the face saving wall for the President, at the expense of who knows how many schools, hospitals, and tax relief in our country. As predicted in previous Commentaries, Senate Majority Leader McConnell is more worried about the scary deal Trump is cooking up with Putin and the Russians, so no help coming from the leadership in the Senate.

On NAFTA, it looks like the Administration has no Mas and will reload to try again.

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