U.S. President Donald Trump continues to face a barrage of criticism for his contention that both white supremacists and counterprotesters were to blame for the deadly violence that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

On Wednesday, the president announced that he had dissolved two business advisory committees made up of top American corporate executives, after at least seven CEOs announced they were resigning from the councils because of his remarks.

Trump said that “rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople … I am ending both. Thank you all!” A day ago, Trump had branded those quitting the panels as “grandstanders” and said they could be easily replaced with more corporate chieftains.

In announcing her resignation from Trump’s manufacturing jobs initiative before he disbanded it, Campbell’s Soup CEO Denise Morrison said, “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottestville. I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Washington, D.C., that he condemns the “hate and violence” displayed on Saturday in Charlottesville, adding, “There is just simply no place for that in our public discourse.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speaking at an event in Miami, Florida, said, “In no way can we accept [or] apologize for racism, bigotry, hatred, violence, and those kind of things that too often arise in our country.”

Also Wednesday, two former U.S. presidents, George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the last two Republicans elected to the White House before Trump, said in a joint statement, “America must always reject racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred in all forms.”

The two former presidents added, “As we pray for Charlottesville, we are reminded of the fundamental truths recorded by that city’s most prominent citizen in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights,” a reference to Thomas Jefferson, one of the country’s Founding Fathers. “We know these truths to be everlasting because we have seen the decency and greatness of our country.”

President Trump’s remarks have been roundly criticized by a broad range of U.S. leaders, including top Republican party officials and business executives.  U.S. military commanders spoke out against racism following the death in Charlottesville.

As the violence unfolded last Saturday, Trump initially blamed it on “many sides.” By Monday, he condemned the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the racist Ku Klux Klan for their role in the unrest.

But on Tuesday, at a news conference in his Trump Tower skyscraper in New York, Trump reverted to his initial assessment of the violence that killed one woman and wounded 19 others when a Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” Trump said. “You look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it.” He said there were “fine people” among the white nationalists and counterprotesters at the rally 160 kilometers southwest of Washington.

David Duke, the one-time Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, immediately praised Trump’s remarks, saying, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists.”

U.S., global reaction

But key Republicans took immediate offense at Trump’s contention there was equivalency in who was to blame for the hours of street violence, as demonstrators squared off with makeshift clubs, engaged in fist fights, and fired bursts of chemical irritants at each other.

The leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, said, “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

Senator Marco Rubio, defeated last year by Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich, who also lost to Trump in 2016, said, “The president of the United States needs to condemn these kind of hate groups. This is about the fact that now these folks are apparently going to go other places and they think that they had some sort of a victory.

“There is no moral equivalency between the KKK, the neo-Nazis, and anybody else,” Kasich said. “Anybody else is not the issue. These folks went there to disrupt.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Senator Charles Schumer, said, “When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you’re doing it very, very wrong. Great and good American presidents seek to unite, not divide. Donald Trump’s remarks clearly show he is not one of them.”

Trump’s remarks also drew a rebuke from an ally, British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May said, “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them. I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”

Earlier this week, the German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the white nationalists at the rally. Her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said “there was outrageous racism, anti-Semitism and hate in its most despicable form to be seen, and whenever it comes to such speech or such images it is repugnant.”

He said the rally was “completely contrary to what the chancellor and the German government works for politically, and we are in solidarity with those who stand peacefully against such aggressive extreme-right opinions.”
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President Donald Trump is renewing his attacks on e-commerce giant Amazon, and he says the company is “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”

 

Trump tweets that “towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt — many jobs being lost!”

The president has often criticized the company and CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

 

Many traditional retailers are closing stores and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online. But the company has been hiring thousands of warehouse workers on the spot at job fairs across the country. Amazon has announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.

 

 
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The impact of the latest round of U.N. sanctions leveled against North Korea could be greater than the projected $1 billion cut in its export revenue if fully implemented, a high-profile North Korean defector told VOA’s Korean Service, and this would deal a significant financial blow to a regime intent on advancing its nuclear and missile programs.

“The new U.N. restrictions are perhaps the strongest sanctions ever imposed on Pyongyang because they demand a complete shutoff of markets for its most lucrative exports,” said Ri Jong Ho, who previously served various high-level roles in central agencies of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, overseeing the country’s overall production and trade and replenishing the Kim regime’s foreign currency reserves. “They certainly could threaten the Kim Jong Un regime’s lifeline.”

In response to North Korea’s two tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles in July, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed another round of sanctions earlier this month — the seventh since the regime’s first nuclear weapons test in 2006. Many experts in Washington welcomed the measure, calling it the biggest diplomatic victory of the Trump administration, which has been seeking to build international pressure on North Korea.

“I think the latest U.N. resolution is yet another good, incremental step toward increasing pressure on North Korea,” said Bruce Klingner with the Heritage Foundation Asian Study Center. “Each U.N. resolution is better than its predecessor and each one is the strongest in history against North Korea.”

The sanctions call for, among other things, a total ban on the North’s principal exports, including coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. The goal is to slash a third of the regime’s annual revenue, which total about $3 billion by U.N. estimates in the August 5 resolution drafted by the United States.

Garment production

Ri said North Korea’s annual export earnings are in fact significantly lower averaging about $2 billion in recent years. Pyongyang’s garment production, which on the record brings up to $1 billion, actually yields $100 million at best, he said, covering only labor and costs incurred in maintaining production facilities and equipment.

Garment processing not included in the U.N. sanctions has been one of the country’s biggest exports, with many firms, particularly based in China, taking advantage of low-cost labor available in the North to produce various kinds of clothing. Suppliers often send fabrics and other raw materials to North Korean factories where garments are assembled and exported with a “Made in China” label.

From 2014 until 2016, Pyongyang exported some 15 to 22 million tons of coal and 2.5 million tons of iron ore per year, worth roughly $1.1 billion and $200 million respectively, Ri said, adding lead and lead ore exports in the same period averaged about $100 million and seafood sales $300 million a year.

If countries — including China, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of North Korean trade — “thoroughly implement the recent ban on these principal exports, addressing all the potential loopholes, the North may face up to $1.7 billion a year in losses — or more than 80 percent — not just a third — of its annual export revenue,” Ri said. “This is a country whose economy is heavily reliant on its exports of natural resources — a major source of hard currency for the regime — and banning its coal, iron and iron ore, lead and lead ore, and seafood exports is tantamount to a total blockade on all trade.”

Natural resources exports

The effects of sanctions aren’t limited to these key exports, Ri said. Prohibiting North Korea’s exports of natural resources would cut off its supply of foreign currency, with an anticipated resulting drop in imports of strategic goods including fuel, food and fertilizers as well as various other raw materials and equipment necessary to keep production and construction activities going, said Ri.

 

“In that case,” he added, “the North Korean regime will inevitably experience financial strains, which would put a damper on its pursuits” such as building a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the U.S mainland.

The new sanctions omit crude-oil supplies from Russia and China, which Ri said would be a crippling measure for the regime, one that Pyongyang’s traditional allies would not want to take. But because the current sanctions are expected to further diminish North Korea’s limited holdings of hard currency, the regime would be unable to purchase as much oil as it did before.

In an earlier interview with VOA, Ri said North Korea imports up to 200,000 to 300,000 tons of diesel from Russia and some 50,000 to 100,000 tons of gasoline from China every year. China also supplies the North with roughly 500,000 tons of crude oil by pipeline, all of which though goes toward Kim’s massive military, all of which is free of charge.

Ri added the sanctions could also result in an increase of the already rampant smuggling activities across China’s border and a fierce competition for survival within North Korea.

For three decades, Ri worked in “Office 39,” which the U.S. Treasury Department once described as a North Korean government branch that engages “in illicit economic activities and managing slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership.” His last posting was in Dalian, China, as the head of the Korea Daehung Trading Corporation.

Ri defected to South Korea in October 2014, and came to the United States in March 2016.

Jenny Lee contributed to this report which originated with VOA’s Korean service (www.voakorea.com ).
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The United States, Mexico and Canada are opening negotiations Wednesday to reform the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 1994 trade deal that was a major target in U.S. President Donald Trump’s run for office.

Trump has called NAFTA “the worst trade deal in history,” and one that has unfairly swollen the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico while allowing manufacturing jobs to migrate there.

Addressing the imbalance is a key U.S. goal in the talks, along with seeking to do away with a dispute mechanism the three countries use to resolve disagreements.

Negotiators will use multiple sessions to try to come up with reforms, with the aim of finishing their work before the end of the year. If the process stretches into 2018, there are concerns it could be complicated by a presidential election in Mexico and U.S. congressional elections.

Mexico and Canada

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said ahead of the talks, “We are looking forward to a productive, constructive conversation.”

She spoke alongside Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal before a meeting in Washington Tuesday.

“I have always said that the negotiators cannot be unoptimistic, has to be realistic with a positive approach,” Villarreal said.

A U.S. trade official who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity said the U.S. is seeking a “more balanced, reciprocal trade agreement that supports high-paying jobs for Americans and grows the U.S. economy.”

Vow to cause no harm 

Gary Hufbauer, an economist with the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics told VOA that renegotiating NAFTA will not bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs.

“Most economists don’t think that’s possible, but obviously the president does and he’s the president,” Hufbauer told VOA.

He said the topics under discussion will be ones such as state-owned enterprises, digital commerce, labor and environment. He also said U.S. negotiators have promised to work in a way that will “cause no harm.”

“What that means is that if they’re doing anything which causes Mexico or Canada to limit for example U.S. agricultural exports, which are quite substantial to both countries, that would be harm. And that would be harm to red states. So that’s a line they don’t want to cross,” Hufbauer said.
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Negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the United States will kick off an ambitious first round of trade talks Wednesday as the countries try to fast-track a deal to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement by early next year. The key issues facing negotiators include:

RULES OF ORIGIN: NAFTA says that in order for a good to be traded duty-free within the three countries, it must contain a certain percentage of North American content, which differs for various products. The rule of origin is most contentious in the auto industry; cars must contain at least 62.5 percent American, Canadian or Mexican content. The United States wants to increase the content threshold for NAFTA goods in a bid to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, and the auto industry has conceded that the rules should be updated to account for auto components that did not exist when the original deal was signed. Canada has said it is prepared to discuss some strengthening of rule of origin in the auto sector, but that any change must apply equally to all three countries. Mexico is willing to look at strengthening rules, but warns that going too far will make the region less competitive.

DISPUTE RESOLUTION: The United States has sought to ditch the so-called Chapter 19 tool, under which binational panels hear complaints about illegal subsidies and dumping and then issue binding decisions. The United States has frequently lost such cases since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, and the mechanism has hindered it from pursing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against Canadian and Mexican companies. Washington also argues that Chapter 19 infringes on the sovereignty of its domestic laws. Canada has said Chapter 19 can be updated, but said a dispute settlement mechanism is its “redline” and must be part of any updated NAFTA. Mexico also says dispute settlement mechanisms are a vital part of the deal to give investors security.

SUPPLY MANAGEMENT: Quotas are a feature of NAFTA in several agricultural commodities including dairy and sugar, but Washington is seeking to eliminate non-tariff barriers to U.S. agricultural exports. Most notably, U.S. President Donald Trump has called Canada’s restrictions on dairy imports a “disgrace.” Although dairy was excluded from the original 1994 deal, the United States is seeking to eliminate nontariff barriers to its agricultural exports.

CURRENCY MANIPULATION: The United States is seeking a provision to deter currency manipulation. While Washington wants a mechanism to ensure the NAFTA countries avoid tinkering with exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, neither Canada nor Mexico is on the U.S. Treasury’s currency manipulation watchlist. Critics say the U.S. demand is an attempt to get currency manipulation into a global trade agreement to establish a precedent with other trading partners, including China.

GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT: The United States is pushing for national, state and local governments in Canada and Mexico to open up their tender processes to U.S.-made products but at the same time is defending existing “Buy American” procurement laws. The Buy American provisions have blocked the use of Canadian steel to build U.S. bridges, and Canada is pushing for a freer market for government procurement. Mexico says it expects government procurement, already included in NAFTA, to be part of the renegotiation.

INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTE SETTLEMENT: The United States has proposed minor tweaking of the NAFTA Chapter 11 provisions, which are designed to ensure firms that invest abroad receive “fair and equitable” treatment by foreign governments. As with Chapter 19, opponents of the provisions argue they infringe on sovereignty, which benefits multinational corporations. Canada wants to update the mechanism to allow governments to regulate in the interest of the environment or labor, as in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that Canada recently negotiated with the European Union.
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Brazilian lawmakers facing a dearth of financing for their re-election campaigns next year proposed on Tuesday creating a fund of 3.6 billion reais ($1.1 billion) in taxpayer money to help their parties foot the bills.

The Supreme Court banned corporate donations to campaigns in 2015, drastically reducing political fund-raising.

On top of that, a massive investigation into endemic corruption in the country has uncovered a web of political bribes and kickbacks that effectively shut off under-the-table payments that politicians also relied upon.

The taxpayer fund proposed by a special committee of the lower house of Congress is part of an effort to reform Brazil’s discredited political system by reducing the proliferation of parties and making politicians more accountable to voters.

The constitutional amendment is expected to face the first of two floor votes next week in the lower chamber. It must also be approved twice by two-thirds of the Senate.

Creation of the fund was backed by most parties, despite public criticism that lawmakers should not be appropriating public money for campaigning in the midst of a budget crisis and deep recession.

The proposed legislation includes replacement of a proportional system for electing congressmen based on party lists by one where candidates with the most votes get elected.

Smaller parties opposed the change, saying it will favor the bigger established parties and the re-election of better-known politicians, while hindering the emergence of fresh faces in Brazilian politics.

Backers of the so-called “district” system say it would stop highly popular candidates from pulling in unknown politicians by party lists.

Another reform bill that has already passed the Senate establishes a minimum of votes that parties need to continue existing, a move to reduce the number of parties, now at 35.

The proliferation forces governments to forge complex coalitions to stay in power by distributing jobs, influence and pork barrel projects, which critics say is fertile ground for graft.

The proposals must be approved in Congress by Oct. 7 to apply for next year’s elections.

Individual campaign donations are allowed, but lawmakers are discussing limits of self-financing to even out the playing field and avoid rich Brazilians getting elected with their own money as millionaire Sao Paulo Mayor Joao Doria did last year.
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Herbie Mays is 3M proud, and it shows — in the 3M shirt he wears; in the 3M ring he earned after three decades at the company’s plant in suburban Cincinnati; in the way he shows off a card from a 3M supervisor, praising Mays as “a GREAT employee.”

But it’s all nostalgia.

 

Mays’ last day at 3M was in March. Bent on cutting costs and refocusing its portfolio, the company decided to close the plant that made bandages, knee braces and other health care supplies and move work to its plant in Mexico.

 

At 62, Mays is unemployed and wants to work, though on the face of it he has plenty of opportunities: Barely 10 miles from Mays’ ranch-style brick home in this blue-collar city, GE Aviation has been expanding — and hiring.

 

In the state-of-the-art laboratory in a World War II-era building the size of 27 football fields, workers use breakthrough technology to build jet engines that run on less fuel at higher temperatures. Bright flashes flare out as GE workers run tests with a robotic arm that can withstand 2,000 degrees (1,090 Celsius).

 

The open jobs there are among 30,000 manufacturing positions available positions open across Ohio. But Mays, like many of Ohio’s unemployed, lacks the in-demand skills.

 

“If you don’t keep up with the times,” he said, “you’re out of luck.”

 

This is the paradox of American manufacturing jobs in 2017. Donald Trump won the presidency in great measure because he pledged to stop American jobs and manufacturing from going overseas, winning Rust Belt votes from Mays and other blue-collar voters.

 

It’s true that many jobs have gone overseas, to lower-wage workers.

 

But at the same time, American manufacturers have actually added nearly a million jobs in the past seven years. Labor statistics show nearly 390,000 such jobs open.

The problem? Many of these are not the same jobs that for decades sustained the working class. More and more factory jobs now demand education, technical know-how or specialized skills. And many of the workers set adrift from low-tech factories lack such qualifications.

 

Factories will need to fill 2 million jobs over the next decade, according to a forecast by Deloitte Consulting and the American Manufacturing Institute. Workers are needed to run, operate and troubleshoot computer-directed machinery, including robots, and to maintain complex websites

 

Last year, software developer was the second-most-common job advertised by manufacturing companies, behind only sales, according to data provided by Burning Glass Technologies, a company that analyzes labor market data.

 

Yet the United States for now remains a follower, not a leader, of the trend. Workers in many European and Asian countries are more likely to be working with robots than U.S. workers, studies show. In such countries as Japan and Denmark, robotics and advanced automation have created solid jobs while increasing efficiencies for manufacturers.

Trump continues to make promises about adding U.S. manufacturing jobs. In blue-collar Youngstown, Ohio, he talked about passing by big factories whose jobs “have left Ohio” on his way to a July 25 rally, then told people not to sell their homes because the jobs are “coming back. They’re all coming back.”

 

But Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and a former U.S. trade representative, conceded in an interview: “We’re not going to see the kind of manufacturing renaissance that we all want in this country unless we focus on skills training.”

 

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, in a visit to a Detroit factory in June, acknowledged the need to address the skills gap by developing advanced computing skills. And when Trump visited Pewaukee, Wisconsin, in June, he touted the value of training while doing.

 

“Apprenticeships teach striving Americans the skills they need to operate incredible machines,” Trump said. “This is not the old days. This is new and computerized and complicated.”

 

Of the 146 million jobs in the United States, only about 0.35 percent were filled by active apprentices in 2016. Filling millions of open jobs through apprenticeships would require a substantial increase in government resources. So far, the Trump administration has called for more funding but hasn’t made any progress securing the funding from Congress.

Apprenticeships are much more common at some European companies, notably German firms. At Germany-based Stihl Inc.’s plant in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for example, A.J. Scherman is learning to be a “mechatronics technician.” Mechatronics combines electrical and mechanical engineering as well as computer skills.

 

Stihl makes chain saws, leaf blowers and weed trimmers at the factory. Once he’s completed his final year in Stihl’s four-year apprenticeship program, Scherman will read diagnostic software on computer screens attached to each robot to repair and upgrade them. If necessary, he’ll hook up a laptop to program changes.

 

Scherman, 37, is also earning a college degree as part of the apprenticeship. Thanks to financial aid from Stihl, he’ll finish with zero debt.

 

Skip Johnson, Stihl’s apprenticeship coordinator, said it’s critically important to bring bright students into the plant, where they can see that the grime and dust they associate with factories are giving way to clean operations using futuristic technology.

 

“They just come in here, and they’re wide-eyed,” Johnson said.

 

U.S. manufacturing workers, excluding managers, make an average of $44,000 a year, according to government data. That’s just 2.8 percent higher, adjusted for inflation, than a decade ago after years of shifting of jobs overseas or to nonunion states. And it compares with a much higher 8 percent gain for the labor force as a whole over the past decade.

 

But a typical mechatronics engineer with a four-year degree can earn $97,000 a year; a typical software developer makes just over $100,000.

 

Festo Didactic, the education arm of Germany-based Festo, last year launched two-year mechatronics apprenticeship programs in Ohio with Sinclair Community College, and is already expanding its U.S. apprenticeship offerings. At Festo’s plant in Mason, workers monitor a robotic distribution system that self-adjusts its work flow to prevent backups.

 

“This kind of factory has nothing to do with the factory we knew in the 1960s or 1980 or even 2000,” said Yannick Schilly, who heads global supply for Festo’s North American business.

 

But there’s not much demand locally these days for the kind of repetitive tasks done in those factories by workers such as Herbie Mays.

 

He acknowledged that there are “plenty of jobs out here.

What you have to do is get training or education.”

 

 

 
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Amazon.com Inc is rolling out pickup points in the United States where shoppers can retrieve items immediately after ordering them, shortening delivery times from hours to minutes, the company said on Tuesday.

The world’s largest online retailer has launched “Instant Pickup” points around five college campuses, such as the University of California at Berkeley, it said. Amazon has plans to open more sites by the end of the year including one in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Shoppers on Amazon’s mobile app can select from several hundred fast-selling items at each site, from snacks and drinks to phone chargers. Amazon employees in a back room then load orders into lockers within two minutes, and customers receive bar codes to access them.

The news underscores Amazon’s broader push into brick-and-mortar retail. The e-commerce company, which said in June it would buy Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion, has come to realize that certain transactions like buying fresh produce are hard to shift online. Its Instant Pickup program targets another laggard: impulse buys.

“I want to buy a can of coke because I’m thirsty,” said Ripley MacDonald, Amazon’s director of student programs.

“There’s no chance I’m going to order that on Amazon.com and wait however long it’s going to take for that to ship to me.”

“I can provide that kind of service here,” he said of the new program.

Instant Pickup puts Amazon in competition with vending machine services. Yet the larger size of the Amazon sites means they are unlikely to pose a threat to those selling snack and drink vending machines to offices and schools. MacDonald said Amazon considered automating the Instant Pickup points but declined to say why the company had not pursued the idea.

Amazon’s ability to shorten delivery times has been a sore point for brick-and-mortar retailers, who have struggled to grow sales as their customers have turned to more convenient online options. Until Instant Pickup, Amazon shoppers could expect to have their orders within an hour at best via the company’s Prime Now program, or within 15 minutes for grocery orders via AmazonFresh Pickup. Amazon has made two-day shipping standard in the United States.

Instant Pickup prices may be cheaper than those on Amazon.com, MacDonald said. He declined to detail how the items are priced, however.

Other locations in the program now open include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Columbus, Ohio and College Park, Maryland.
…

First it was the leader of a major U.S. pharmaceutical, then the CEO of an athletic gear company, and before the day had ended, the chief executive of a $170 billion tech giant. Three of the nation’s top executives resigned from a federal panel created years ago to advise the U.S. president.

Now, others are pushing for more executives to refuse to serve President Donald Trump after what many believe to be an inadequate response to a rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one dead and dozens injured.

 

Announcing his resignation Monday, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier cited the president’s failure to explicitly rebuke the white nationalists.

He wrote on Twitter that “America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy, which runs counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal.”

The response from the president was swift, throwing a jab at Frazier, a highly respected executive and one of only four African Americans to head a Fortune 500 company, according to the Executive Leadership Council.

 

Trump tweeted that at least Frazier will now “have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!”

The response, and the speed in which it arrived, caught many off guard.

 

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he couldn’t “think of a parallel example” of any president responding as viciously as Trump to a CEO departing an advisory council.

 

“Usually, certain niceties are observed to smooth over a rupture,” said Galston, who served as a domestic policy aide in the Clinton administration.

 

Within hours, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, who has felt some blowback for his support of the president, resigned from the same panel, saying his company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics.”

Plank did not specifically mention Trump or Charlottesville, but said his company will focus on promoting “unity, diversity and inclusion” through sports.

 

But Intel CEO Brian Krzanich was more specific when he resigned a short time later, writing that while he had urged leaders to condemn “white supremacists and their ilk,” many in Washington “seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them.”

The president followed up later in the day, tweeting that Merck “is a leader in higher & higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the U.S. Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!”

 

Drugmakers have come under withering criticism for soaring prices in the U.S., including by Trump, though he has yet to act on a promise to contain them.

 

The exchange lit up social media, with many people lauding Frazier and blasting the president. There was also a push online seeking more resignations from the remaining executives on the same panel, just over 20 of them.

 

Trump eventually made a statement condemning bigotry Monday afternoon at a press conference, but already, other executives came to Frazier’s support.

 

Unilever CEO Paul Polman wrote on Twitter, “Thanks @Merck Ken Frazier for strong leadership to stand up for the moral values that made this country what it is.”

Frazier was not the first executive to resign from advisory councils serving Trump.

 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk resigned from the manufacturing council in June, and two other advisory groups to the president, after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Walt Disney Co. Chairman and CEO Bob Iger resigned for the same reason from the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, which Trump established to advise him on how government policy impacts economic growth and job creation.

 

The manufacturing jobs council had 28 members initially, but it has shrunk since it was formed earlier this year as executives retire, are replaced, or, as with Frazier, Musk, Plank and Krzanich, resign.

 

“We’ve learned that as president, Mr. Trump is behaving exactly as he did as a candidate,” Galston said. “He knows only one mode: When attacked, hit back harder.”

 
…

The first round of negotiations between the US, Canada and Mexico begins this week on what President Donald Trump has called “the worst trade deal ever.” He blames the 2-decades-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs in the US. Trump has vowed to scrap the agreement, unless the US gets a ‘fair deal.’ But trade experts warn that failure is not an option, especially when the stakes are so high. Mil Arcega reports.
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A decision by the United States to investigate China’s trade practices is a unilateralist “baring of fangs” that will hurt both sides, China’s state news agency Xinhua said Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday authorized an inquiry into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property that administration officials said could have cost the United States as much as $600 billion.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will have a year to look into whether to launch a formal investigation of China’s trade policies on intellectual property, which the White House and U.S. industry lobby groups say are harming U.S. businesses and jobs.

“While it is still too soon to say that the United States intends a showdown with China on trade, it is no exaggeration that the latest baring of fangs on Washington’s part against China, like all the other unilateral moves by Washington, will hurt not only China, but the United States itself in the long run,” Xinhua said.

Xinhua said while Chinese exporters could be the first to suffer from trade sanctions, the pain would soon spread to U.S. industries and households, adding that China was willing to resolve any disputes between the two sides through dialogue. 

The investigation is likely to cast a shadow over U.S. relations with China, its largest trading partner, just as Trump is asking Beijing to put more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

Ken Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said in a statement Tuesday that trade and North Korea should not be linked, and said the investigation was a sign of growing U.S. discontent with Chinese trade practices.

“The president’s executive order reflects building frustration with Chinese trade and market entry policies, particularly those that pressure American companies to part with technologies and intellectual property in exchange for market access,” he said. “Chinese companies operating in the United States do not face this pressure.”

“We support actions that recognize the importance of U.S.-China commercial ties but which also encourage progress toward a more equitable trading relationship,” he said.
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