November 08 2024

FLASH…FED CUTS INTEREST RATES BY 0.25%….
…TRUMP SELECTS SUSIE WILES, CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR AND FL POLITICAL OPERATIVE AS CHIEF OF STAFF…FIRST EVER WOMAN…
1. Trump's Government Staffing Overhaul May Strip Federal Worker Protections
2. Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Mexico Imports Over Border Security Issues
3. The Dangerous Transition Period Amid Rising Global Tensions: China
4. The Dangerous Transition Period Amid Rising Global Tensions: Russia/Ukraine Update
November 8, 1994: The Republican Revolution

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 10a CST.

FLASH…FED CUTS INTERNET RATES BY 0.25%….

…TRUMP SELECTS SUSIE WILES, CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR AND FL POLITICAL OPERATIVE AS CHIEF OF STAFF…FIRST EVER WOMAN…

1. Trump's Government Staffing Overhaul May Strip Federal Worker Protections

Donald Trump…is poised to spur the most dramatic reimagining of the staffing of government in more than a century. That’s because Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F, a controversial abortive effort at the end of his first term to strip the civil service protections of potentially tens of thousands of career federal workers in “policy-related” positions, effectively making them at-will employees. Trump and many of his former staffers have frequently bemoaned that “rogue bureaucrats” inhibited his policymaking power during his first stint in the White House. “Of course, any effort to try to launch Schedule F again would immediately be met with an effort to stop it in courts,” Donald Kettl, a well-known expert and author on government reform, told Government Executive in September. “But my conclusion is that it is probably constitutional. If unions and Democrats challenge it, they will probably lose. That path also would require finding a plaintiff with standing—someone who can prove they’ve been injured. It would take time to find the right plaintiff and to wait for the Trump administration to take action that frames the issues in just the right way . . . and then it goes through a tremendous maze of a process. It would probably take at least two years to resolve the constitutional questions, which at that point, even if Schedule F loses, it would provide two years for the administration to establish a new pattern of practice.”

Article Source: Gov Exec

2. Trump Threatens 25% Tariff on Mexico Imports Over Border Security Issues

Policy commitments made by President-elect Donald Trump often lack precision. Not so on November 4th, the final day of campaigning, at a rally in North Carolina. Mr Trump kicked it off by announcing that one of his first calls as president would be to Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum. “I’m going to inform her, on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I am going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America.” Mr Trump’s policy could not have been much clearer. “You’re the first ones I’ve told it to,” he told the cheering crowd. There is little to suggest that his threat this time is not serious. Ending illegal migration across the United States’ southern border is one of the chief promises that led to Mr Trump’s historic re-election. In his victory speech on November 6th he declared that “nothing will stop me from keeping my word”.

Article Source: Economist

3. The Dangerous Transition Period Amid Rising Global Tensions: China

Editors note: With the election concluded, half of America is celebrating, while the other half is adjusting to the reality of a second Trump presidency. Yet, there remain 72 days until Trump’s inauguration. As global tensions rise, this transition period—where the current administration holds limited power as a lame duck—could prove to be highly dangerous for both America and the world.  

The 1968-1969 transition from President Lyndon B. Johnson to President Richard Nixon is worth remembering. The Vietnam War had deeply divided the American public, leading to widespread protests, particularly after the Tet Offensive in early 1968 shattered perceptions of imminent victory. Johnson’s efforts to negotiate peace talks with North Vietnam faced setbacks as the U.S. continued its bombing campaigns, and the North Vietnamese remained intractable. Meanwhile, tensions with the Soviet Union, China, and other global powers persisted as the Cold War influenced conflicts worldwide. Nixon’s incoming administration inherited this complex and volatile situation, along with an American public increasingly frustrated by the war and demanding change. The difficulty of achieving a peaceful resolution to the Vietnam War during this lame-duck period underscored the challenges that can arise when foreign conflicts continue to escalate amid a domestic leadership transition.   

A. Xi Jinping Doubles Down on Repression to Avoid Soviet-Style Collapse 

Xi Jinping, like me, is a student of the Soviet collapse. He spent a great deal of his time and resources figuring out why that happened in the Soviet Union and why it would never happen in China. And they teach it at the communist party schools, the Chinese communist party schools. He talks about it in public very frequently, and it's uppermost in their minds. Why? And the reason is just as the arguments that I made in "Armageddon Averted" and other volumes, communism is an all or nothing proposition. You can't be half communist. Either you have a monopoly on power or you don't. And so when you attempt to reform communism, politically, you can open up the economy as they do sometimes with quasi markets. But when you liberalize politically and you allow discussion within the one party, within the communist party, it turns out that people wanna have discussions about other parties and maybe they wanna establish other parties. And so you can't contain the liberalization within the one party monopoly. In fact, when they did this in Hungary in 1956, under Imre Nagy, the whole thing unraveled really in days. The Prague spring in 1968 and of course Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, every time they've attempted to open the system up to get some quote "democracy" or liberalization within the one party monopoly, they've discovered that people want other parties and people don't wanna stay within the communist monopoly. And so there's no reform equilibrium. There's no spot where you begin political reform and you stabilize it at some point, there's only complete unraveling. So you pull a thread in the sweater and that one thread and the entire sweater unravels. So you don't politically liberalize a communist system unless you want to commit suicide. This is the argument that I made in "Armageddon Averted" and it is the motto of Xi Jinping's life.   

B. The US could lose a war with China  

The nontrivial chance of a great-power war breaking out in the Pacific theater in East Asia—a war that the United States could lose, which is something we as a nation haven’t talked about in a long time. I’m not defeatist by any means; I’m not suggesting we would lose. But the mere fact that it’s thinkable is a big change. And to put it bluntly, we don’t have the people to die in a war at that scale. Everyone talks about the demographic problem the Chinese face. But they have 50 million 18-to-24-year-old men. [Editor’s Note: There are around 12 million American men between 20 and 24 years old.] So even if a lot of young Chinese men go down to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait, a lot more can be sent into action.  

C. CCP unleashes economic economic stimulus to preempt Trump trade war 

…THIS MORNING…China has announced a Rmb10tn ($1.4tn) fiscal package to bail out local governments and help shore up its faltering economy, as it braces for increased trade tensions with the US under Donald Trump.

Article Source: Hoover, Foreign Affairs, FT

4. The Dangerous Transition Period Amid Rising Global Tensions: Russia/Ukraine Update

A. Russia advances in east, drones terrorize Kyiv  

As Russian troops march relentlessly forward with fierce assaults in Ukraine’s east, Moscow is unleashing a different form of terror on civilians in towns and cities: a wave of long-range drone strikes that has little precedent in the 32-month-old war. Over the past two months, there was only one night when Russia did not launch swarms of drones packed with explosives at targets far from the front, including near-nightly attacks aimed at Kyiv, the capital. In October, the Ukrainian military said it tracked a record 2,023 unmanned aircraft against civilian and military targets, with the vast majority shot down or disabled by electronic warfare systems. Night after night, the explosions echo across Kyiv, with tracer fire lighting up the sky as spotlights search for the triangle-shape drones flying over residential neighborhoods.  

Editors note: Russia is going to win the war on the ground in Ukraine if it continues, full stop. It's only a matter of time. There is no amount of aid short of involving U.S. or NATO forces directly in Ukraine that can stop Russia's advance. Now the question is, can the new Trump administration achieve any sort of diplomatic agreement that stops the bloodshed?  

B. Trump transition leaks peace proposal  

One idea proposed inside Trump’s transition office, detailed by three people close to the president-elect and not previously reported, would involve Kyiv promising not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter a future Russian attack.  Under that plan, the front line would essentially lock in place and both sides would agree to an 800-mile demilitarized zone. Who would police that territory remains unclear, but one adviser said the peacekeeping force wouldn’t involve American troops, nor come from a U.S.-funded international body, such as the United Nations. 

C. Betting markets: “Trump ends Ukraine war by first 90 days?” - 47% yes

Article Source: NYT, WSJ, Polymarket

November 8, 1994: The Republican Revolution

For the first time in 40 years, the Republican Party wins control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm congressional elections. Led by Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who subsequently replaced Democrat Tom Foley of Washington as speaker of the House, the empowered GOP united under the “Contract with America,” a 10-point legislative plan to reduce federal taxes and dismantle social welfare programs established during six decades of mostly Democratic rule in Congress.

Sources

3. https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/what-trumps-win-means-federal-workforce/400870/

4. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/11/07/donald-trump-is-poised-to-smash-mexico-with-tariffs

5. A https://www.hoover.org/research/5-questions-stephen-kotkin-1
B https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-and-future-american-power-stephen-kotkin
C https://on.ft.com/3YCnrCV

6. A https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/world/europe/ukraine-russia-drones.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
B https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-presidency-ukraine-russia-war-plans-008655c0?st=gEyJAy&reflink=article_copyURL_share
C https://polymarket.com/event/trump-wins-ends-ukraine-war-in-90-days?tid=1731071976498