Chap 11: Taking Back Trump's America Serialization

Process Delayed, Diluted or Derailed is Trump Policy Denied

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Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.

Littlefinger, Game of Thrones ⁷⁴

Day Four – the first Monday and business day of the Administration – would turn out to be almost as bad for me as Day One’s Inauguration Day. For it was on this Day Four that President Donald Trump decidedly did not sign all of the Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda I had been working on during the transition. These actions included:

·         Branding China a currency manipulator;

·         Canceling the proposed U.S.-China Bilateral Investment treaty;

·         Renegotiating NAFTA;

·         Retooling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s equally toxic South Korea deal:

·         Immediately cracking down on the unfair trade practices of our major trading partners;

·         Levying tariffs – including those on China – to dramatically reduce the trade deficit;

·         Strengthening and expanding Buy American, Hire American in government procurement;

·         Stopping the offshoring of American jobs;

·         Imposing steel and aluminum tariffs in the interests of national security; and

·         Formally establishing the National Trade Council I was slated to direct.

As an oeuvre, these Executive orders and Presidential Memoranda were pure expressions of both Steve Bannon’s philosophy and strategy of Action, Action, Action and Donald J. Trump’s Populist Economic Nationalism.

By signing these orders, President Trump could have, in one historical swoop, fulfilled almost every single trade policy promise Candidate Trump had made.

Instead of this red letter day, I felt like the primary target in a Game of Thrones-style Red Wedding massacre. That is because when I finally tracked down Rob Porter in his Staff Secretary office early that day, he told me that all of the actions I had prepared were not ready for the President’s Resolute desk.

“Not ready?” I asked him: “How can that be?”

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