Federal Judge Has Found Probable Cause to Hold Officials in Criminal Contempt

Federal Judge James Boasberg yesterday found probable cause to hold some Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for willfully disregarding his order to stop transferring deportees to El Salvador without due process. Contempt can be punished by fines or imprisonment. Boasberg did not specify which officials he has in mind.

Boasberg is not asking the administration to bring any prisoners home. He is demanding the information that he wasn't given the first time he asked, about exactly when some deportation flights took place, in particular before or after he ordered them stopped. Boasberg also said that if the government does not cooperate, he will order some officials to testify under oath. If he discovers anyone violated his orders, he will ask for them to be prosecuted.

We are now in a high-stakes game of chicken. If AG Pam Bondi stonewalls the judge, he may issue a subpoena to certain officials to get their testimony. If they refuse to come, or refuse to answer his questions, he could find them in contempt and hire an outside lawyer to prosecute them. That would raise the temperature by many degrees and could lead to a constitutional crisis. But we are not there yet. (V)

Chris Van Hollen Goes to El Salvador

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) went to El Salvador yesterday to plead for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lives in Maryland. Talk about impressive constituent service! Van Hollen asked to speak to President Nayib Bukele, but his request was refused. He did speak to Vice President Félix Ulloa, though. Van Hollen asked if Abrego Garcia has committed any crime in El Salvador and Ulloa said he had not. Then Van Hollen asked why El Salvador was holding him. Ulloa said that was because Donald Trump was paying the country to do that.

Van Hollen asked if he could see Abrego Garcia if he came back next week, and Ulloa refused to promise that. Nevertheless, somehow Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem got into the prison easily when she went down there for a quick photo-op. Van Hollen also asked the U.S. embassy if they have received any instructions from the Trump administration to help "facilitate" his release. The answer was: "No." Van Hollen is a Harvard graduate who has a J.D. from Georgetown University. He is whip smart and knows exactly what he is doing. The Supreme Court didn't order Trump to get Abrego Garcia released, exactly. But he was ordered to "facilitate" it. If it turns out Trump did nothing to facilitate the release, like asking Bukele to do it, for example, then he clearly defied the Supreme Court. Van Hollen understands that if he can show that Trump willfully defied the Supreme Court, that could affect public opinion. It could also be Article I of Trump's impeachment on Jan. 3, 2027, if the Democrats can flip four or more seats in the House.

Van Hollen was clearly not pleased with all the stonewalling he was getting. He noted that he was the first U.S. senator to visit El Salvador to plead for Abrego Garcia's release, but there would soon be more. This could put Bukele in a tough spot. Trump is paying the bills now, but Bukele certainly doesn't want to be caught in a battle between Trump and Congress. (V)

Trump Is Back for More

It is widely believed that when you make a deal with the Mafia, they honor it. If a Mafia figure says to someone: "Nice house you got there, it would be a pity if it burned down" and that someone asks how much fire insurance costs and pays the requested amount, the house is not burned down, and the Mafia guy doesn't come around next week with a new fire insurance quote. Donald Trump is clearly not a Mafia figure because he doesn't work that way.

In the past 2 weeks, Trump has extorted nine white-shoe law firms into doing a billion dollars of pro bono work for veterans and conservative causes. They agreed. Now Trump is coming back for the next round. He wants more—for example, justifying what the DOGEys are doing, or maybe even helping the DoJ. This is not what they understood they were signing up for.

It is not even clear if there are written agreements signed by the law firms, and if so, what is in them. Are there even any limits to what he can do with them? Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale, said of the firms: "They thought they made one-shot deals which they would fulfill. But the administration seems to think that they have subjected these firms to indentured servitude."

One lawyer involved in the deals said that Trump's additional demands could lead to the deals unraveling. If the firms refuse to accept new requirements, Trump could issue new XOs barring them from courtrooms, and more. At that point, all the firms might get together and sue the administration. If nothing was written down, Trump will have a hard time convincing judges and the Supreme Court that they had agreed to an open-ended deal to do whatever he wants whenever he wants it.

In addition to fighting with Trump, many of the firms have an internal problem. Many of the younger associates disagree strongly with management and could leave their high-pressure-but-lucrative jobs for less-lucrative-but-lower-pressure jobs elsewhere. The associates do much of the actual work, under supervision of a partner. But if enough of the worker bees depart, leaving only manager bees, the firm won't be able to function. So the most senior partners have to consider an internal revolt as a possibility as well. They are caught between what Trump demands and what their own employees want. (V)

Trump Orders IRS to Revoke Harvard's Tax-Exempt Status

Donald Trump ordered the top lawyer at the IRS to revoke Harvard's status as a tax-exempt organization. If that were to stick, it would be a much bigger hit than even losing federal funds. It would probably destroy the university. Then he could use the same gambit to destroy every university in the country that did not agree to his every demand—for example, letting his administration appoint half the professors in every department, to make sure that conservatives are well represented, regardless of their qualifications.

Federal law allows charitable, religious and educational organizations to avoid federal (and state) taxes as long as they do not engage in political activity. In court, Trump is likely to claim that student demonstrations, which the courts have generally held as protected First Amendment speech, are political activity.

Elon and the Muskrats are busy downsizing the IRS and Trump has replaced much of the leadership, so there is turmoil at the agency, right at the busiest time of the year. Whether the new leadership will follow through is not known, since the order arrived late yesterday. Needless to say, if the exemption is pulled, Harvard will fight to the death on this. Or try. What if they attempt to hire one of the top law firms and the Trump administration orders that firm to oppose Harvard, as part of its indentured servitude? What will the law firm do? Will Harvard be able to even find an outside lawyer? Of course, in a pinch, a group of professors from the Harvard Law School could do the job, but even a law school with a lot of famous lawyers might prefer outside counsel with a lot more actual courtroom experience than they have.

With Trump trying to crush the law firms, the universities, the media, and the judiciary into submission, we are already in an authoritarian state. This may not end well. The best-case scenario is that the economy really tanks (see below) and the voters get angry enough that the Republicans in Congress start looking to see where they have misplaced their spines. (V)

U.S. Attorney Pick Has Been on Russian Television 150 Times

Donald Trump has nominated Ed Martin to be the U.S. attorney for D.C., one of two top prosecutorial positions in the U.S. (along with the U.S. attorney for the SDNY). What could possibly go wrong? Well, before his confirmation hearing, Martin was given a questionnaire to fill out, like all nominees. Among other things, it asked for a list of all his media appearances in the past 10 years. It now seems that he "forgot" to mention the 150 times he appeared on Russian state television hawking pro-Russia, anti-America talking points. He also forgot another 200 events he attended. He is a busy man. You can't expect him to remember every interview he gives, after all.

After getting a J.D. from St. Louis University, he worked in private practice, including defending two Illinois pharmacists who refused to dispense the "morning after" pill to patients with a valid prescription. In 2006, he became chief of staff to Missouri's then-governor Matt Blunt (R). Shortly thereafter, Blunt fired his deputy general counsel, Scott Eckersley, for enforcing an e-mail-retention law that Blunt didn't like. During the investigation, it came out that Martin had misused his state position to help anti-abortion groups. He also destroyed some e-mails, in violation of state law. In response, he was elected chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, which led the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to editorialize that he was an unfortunate choice. He was later a conservative activist and part of the "Stop the Steal" movement who defended people who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including one Proud Boy, claiming the defendants were merely "rowdy."

Some senators are worried that a conservative activist who broke the law and who has no prosecutorial experience at the city, state, or federal level is not fit to be one of the top two prosecutors in the country. Now it turns out he had also peddled disinformation on Russian TV repeatedly. In his favor (as far as Trump is concerned) is that he has promised to prosecute lawmakers, protesters, journalists and others who he perceives as opposing Trump's political agenda.

National security officials have said that the U.S. attorney for D.C. should be alert to the threats from Russia, not someone who has actively tried to advance its propaganda aims. In addition, a letter signed by 10 members of the conservative Society for the Rule of Law has urged the Office of Disciplinary Counsel for D.C. to investigate Martin. These include former federal prosecutors, a former federal judge, and a former conservative Republican representative.

Martin's confirmation hearing should be, um, interesting. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has already received over 500 questions from committee members, an extraordinary number. Martin is the interim U.S. attorney in D.C., but having a hearing for a permanent confirmation may take a while as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has placed an indefinite hold on the nomination. Schiff said: "For the past nine weeks, Ed Martin has consistently undermined the independence and abused the power of the U.S. Attorney's office in D.C., openly threatening and intimidating political opponents, dismissing charges against his own clients, firing public servants for their roles in legitimate investigations and using his office as a cudgel to chill dissent and free speech." Overcoming a hold could take weeks and use up precious floor time that could otherwise be used to push Donald Trump's giant "everything bill" through. (V)

Judge in the Smallest State Makes a National Ruling

Republicans hate it when a district judge somewhere makes a ruling for the entire country—unless it is a Texas judge banning abortion pills nationwide. So, they will surely not like the ruling of Rhode Island U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Donald Trump appointee, that Trump's freeze on funds appropriated by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act and other Biden-era laws is illegal. This is impoundment, and there has been a law since 1974 saying that a president who doesn't want to spend money appropriated by Congress has to ask Congress for permission and Congress gets the final say. She also rejected Trump's claim to have broad powers to pause spending, citing a Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

The suit was brought by six groups, including the Childhood Lead Action Project, which got $500,000 to combat childhood lead poisoning in Rhode Island, and the Woonasquatucket River Watership Council, which got $1 million for urban forestry work. But the judge ruled that her order applied nationwide, to all grants made under the IRA and the infrastructure laws signed by Joe Biden. She wrote: "It would be anathema to reasonable jurisprudence that only the named Nonprofits should be protected from the irreparable harms of the likely unlawful agency actions." She noted that the plaintiffs' rights do not come from the contracts they signed with the government. They come from the laws passed by Congress.

Technically, McElroy's order states that five government agencies, the Agriculture, Energy, Interior, and Housing Departments, along with the EPA, must release billions of dollars as specified in the two laws. It is a temporary injunction banning the agencies from withholding funds until she can hold a hearing on the merits of the case. (V)

Democrats Hammer Republicans for (Insider) Stock Trading

The Democrats have a year or so to figure out their lines of attack for the midterms. Thus far, some of the more sausage-y stuff, like impoundment, doesn't seem to be landing. So Democrats are now trying a new angle: attacking Republicans for garden-variety corruption.

In particular, they are jumping on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for buying stock during the Trump-induced market crash following "Liberation Day," when Americans were liberated from trillions of dollars. Here is the list of 19 individual stocks she bought. It is heavy in tech stocks that could be affected by a trade war. Did Greene know in advance that the tariffs would soon be paused? Was this insider trading? Having congresscritters get special deals of one kind or another is something that ordinary people understand—and don't like. More reports on stock purchases and sales by members are expected in the next few weeks. Senators and representatives have 45 days to report stock transactions after they make them.

What Democrats want is a law that bans members of Congress from buying any individual stocks. If they want to invest in the stock market, the law would limit them to publicly traded ETFs or mutual funds that own a large number of stocks. That would prevent some possible abuses (although not abuses where the member knew in advance that the entire market would go up or down). If Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring the bill to the floor for a vote, Democrats are planning to hammer Republicans until the midterms for their willingness to tolerate insider trading.

The Democrats push on stock trading is part of an attempt to reuse their 2018 playbook, when they flipped 41 Republican seats. The pitch will be that the Republicans are corrupt and backed by equally corrupt billionaires. It is a simple argument that is easily understood by most voters. (V)

America Has a Massive Trade Surplus--in Education

Donald Trump issued his tariffs based on his idea of what trade is. He thinks of solid manufactured objects that come from China by ship or possibly by airplane. The U.S. runs a massive trade deficit in this space. What he forgets (or never knew) is that the U.S. runs a massive surplus on services, which don't show up on customs declarations. When a Hollywood movie studio licenses a foreign movie theater to show its films, that is a service export. When a foreign company buys an HP notebook that comes with Microsoft Office preinstalled, they are implicitly buying a software license from Microsoft that is included in the price. When a foreign company hires JPMorgan Chase to manage its IPO, they are buying a service from a U.S. bank. None of these show up when you add up all the customs forms, but they are definitely part of the balance of trade—which Trump simply does not understand.

One item that flies completely under the radar is sales of education. When a Chinese student enrolls at Stanford, he or she has to pay Stanford $62,484 for tuition, and likely another $19,922 for room and board. This amounts to a Chinese person buying $82,406 in educational services from a U.S. organization. From a trade perspective, this is no different from a Chinese person buying a Cadillac Escalade that goes for about that price. In both cases, a foreign person or company has purchased something of value from a U.S. organization and paid $82,406 for it.

The total amount that the U.S. earned from the sale of educational services is greater than the amount it received on the sale of natural gas and coal combined. In other words, from a trade perspective, education is a huge moneymaker for the U.S.

Now Trump and, especially, J.D. Vance are trying to force universities to limit the number of foreign students they admit. This is like telling Exxon it shouldn't sell so much Texas oil to other countries or telling Boeing it should sell fewer 787s to foreign airlines. Education is a popular "export" that brings in a lot of money.

Cutting down on foreign students has a couple of other side effects. First, from the universities' point of view, foreign students almost always pay full freight. They rarely get scholarships from the endowment or other discounts. They also don't get Pell grants from the U.S. government. Some foreign students may have grants from their own government, but Stanford doesn't care who is footing the bill as long as the student pays the $82,406 on time. And the marginal cost to Stanford of one more Chinese student isn't anywhere near $82,406. In fact, it uses the excess payment to allow it to offer scholarships and loans to poor students. Without the foreign students, fewer poor students could attend many colleges in the U.S.

A second benefit of foreign students is they get to live in America for 1-4 years, depending on the degree program. They see how things work here. They see that a vast amount of information is available, some of it very critical of the government. They see that students can say whatever they want and not get arrested. (Oops, that used to be the case. Scratch that one.) They used to see how democracy worked. Many of the students who come to the U.S. will later go back home and become leaders in many fields, often thinking kindly about their time in the States. Trying to ban foreign students is throwing away not only money, but soft power. But Trump doesn't understand or care. (V)

Entire Defense Tech Unit Is Wiped Out

Elon Musk thinks that the government should be more digital. If done right, there is probably some value in that, provided that people who are not computer savvy don't get left behind. In 2015, the Pentagon realized that it needed a unit to make tech fixes fast during a crisis and generally push digitalization in the military, so it created the Defense Digital Service. It is locally known as the "SWAT team of nerds."

The DDS has completed many projects since then, including building tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, drone detection technologies, counter-drone technologies, and much more.

Elon Musk has decided that the DDS falls under fraud and waste so he has killed it off. Nearly all the workers quit or will be fired at the end of April. The staffers left, if any, will be transferred to the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.

This is just another example of how Elon and the Muskrats are killing off government programs willy-nilly, without regard to what they do or how well they are doing it. Like any piece of the large Pentagon bureaucracy, there was politics and some infighting going on, but no one was complaining that the products it was producing were useless. None of that matters to Musk. A former senior DoD official described Musk's meddling into the DoD as damaging and unproductive. The official said: "They're not really using AI, they're not really driving efficiency. What they're doing is smashing everything." (V)

Biden Finally Speaks Out

Democrats are leaderless, but they don't have to be. They have a couple of ex-presidents laying around who could lead the troops. This week, one of them finally spoke out, albeit gingerly. On Tuesday, Joe Biden gave a speech in Chicago. He was focused on Social Security. He said: "In fewer than 100 days, this administration has caused so much damage and destruction. It's breathtaking, They've taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration." He didn't mention who "they" are. Donald Trump? Elon Musk? The deep state? Elves?

Biden sees the Social Security program as a sacred promise. People pay the FICA tax their whole working lives and the government promises to give them a pension in their old age. He said the current administration is a threat to that sacred promise. He also used a remark from former SSA Commissioner Martin O'Malley: "They want to wreck it so they can rob it." That was an allusion to the oft-stated Republican hope of privatizing Social Security, requiring all workers to open a special kind of investment account to which they and their employers contribute and which the employees could not touch until retirement. This would generate billions of dollars in revenue for the banks for managing the accounts and it would probably drive stock prices up to unheard-of levels.

The SSA is already rushing cuts to phone service. Also, some things that previously could be done by phone will now have to be done online or in person, despite many SSA offices being eliminated. This may make it nearly impossible for people with disabilities or people who are not computer savvy and live far from an SSA office from signing up, changing how they receive their benefits, and other things. Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said that changes that normally take 2 years are being done in 2 weeks. This will certainly lead to bugs. Furthermore, many people will not understand the new rules, opening up great business opportunities for scammers who will offer naive people "help."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) backed Biden up. He said: "The unprecedented assault on Social Security is an all-hands-on-deck moment that requires all of us to show up, stand up and speak up, which is why President Biden's voice in this fight is going to be so incredibly important." Other Democrats echoed similar things. Social Security is a good topic for Biden to speak about since: (1) it is simple to understand, (2) it is popular, and (3) it is relevant to people Biden's age. The speech was old-fashioned Biden folksy, including stories about his growing up in Scranton. He also talked about how his "folks" (parents) had it rough and struggled to make ends meet.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Biden's speech: "I'm shocked that he is speaking at nighttime. I thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight." It is not clear if she thought she was being asked about the last president, or the current one.

Biden is elderly and well past his prime. But the Democrats have another ex-president, Barack Obama, who is not past his prime and is still very popular. Obama could go around the country holding rallies and attacking Trump on a wide variety of topics. He is still a very powerful speaker and could galvanize the opposition. But so far he hasn't been doing this. He has the potential of being the face of the Democratic Party in a way that minority leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Hakeem Jeffries are not. (V)

Trade May Dominate the 2028 Republican Presidential Primaries

Trade sounds very abstract, but it hugely affects many industries and many jobs. With Trump all over the map on it, it could well become a political issue in the 2026 and 2028 elections. The tariffs are paused, but the battles for the 2028 presidential nominations are just getting going.

Potential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who represents a state that exports oil, gas, beef, and many agricultural products, doesn't like tariffs. He recently said: "I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue forever and ever." Cruz wants to get all tariffs down to zero, to help his state's exports. This puts him against the current tariff hardliners, including potential presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Steve Bannon, who love tariffs, the bigger the better. By mid-2027, we should have a better idea of whether the current tariffs are working, and for whom. This issue could be a real policy difference between the candidates. Absent any policy differences, the GOP primaries could devolve into a contest of who is the Trumpiest of them all.

Nikki Haley, who missed the memo that there isn't much appetite among Republican voters for what she is selling, is apparently also planning a 2028 run. Like Cruz, she is anti-tariff. She sees a tariff as a tax (which it is) and she is anti-tax, and thus also anti-tariff.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is another likely 2028 contender. He is silent on tariffs, waiting to see which way the wind is blowing. In 2024, his sponsor was Elon Musk, who doesn't like tariffs because his companies import a lot of parts from China. If DeSantis wants Musk (or more specifically, his money), he will probably join the anti-tariff side. That will have Cruz, DeSantis, and Haley on one side and Bannon and Vance on the other. It could be interesting to watch. Imagine! A primary campaign about policy. (V)

Tom Friedman Is Very Worried about America

The widely respected New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has been observing and writing about foreign affairs for decades. He was recently interviewed by Ezra Klein about China, a country Friedman has visited many times, including twice in the past 4 months. He knows many well-plugged-in people there. It is well worth the hour it takes to watch it, either on YouTube or below:

If you don't have the time to watch, well, that's what we're here for. In short, if someone had designed a Manchurian candidate to do the worst possible things for the U.S. and the best for China, it would be precisely Trump. Trump is stuck in the 1970s. He thinks China is a poor backward country that makes cheap T-shirts and can only make other stuff (like iPhones) when some other company (like Apple) sets it up and all they have to do is turn the crank. He is totally off base. In terms of technology, China is not quite at the U.S. level, but surprisingly close. And its level of digitizing is way above that of the U.S. Chinese beggars on the streets have QR codes in their begging bowls so they can accept the Chinese equivalent of PayPal or credit cards.

Friedman thinks the next few decades will be dominated by AI, climate change, and disorder, and Trump is not preparing for any of them.

One example of Chinese dominance in technology is that there are hundreds of dark factories in China. Literally dark, as in no electric lights on. That is because there are no people there. The entire production process is totally automated, with intelligent robots doing all the work, without any people present. Stuff is coming off the assembly line all by itself. At 2 a.m. engineers show up to do routine maintenance on the machines (and switch the lights on temporarily). Plenty of U.S. companies would love to produce stuff with no workers, but they simply don't have the technology. And we are not talking about one experimental prototype in the mechanical engineering department at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Hundreds of them are in full production right now.

What could the U.S. do to catch up? Use tariffs wisely, not stupidly. For example, put a permanent 1000% tariff on Chinese (electric) cars, but invite Chinese car manufacturers to build state-of-the-art factories in the U.S. as a 50-50 partnership with some U.S. company. The deal would have to include technology transfer from the Chinese company to the U.S. company, the exact reverse of what happens when a U.S. company builds a factory in China.

Tariffs work for only a little while before China builds a factory somewhere else to evade the tariffs. This gives the U.S. a few years of breathing space. What Trump totally lacks is a vision or a plan for using that breathing space. For example, if business bigshots can convince him that solar panels are hugely important, then he could use that breathing space to directly subsidize U.S. solar panel plants for a few years to get them to the point where they are competitive. Since the U.S. can't compete on low wages, maybe it can compete on quality (e.g., more watts per square foot). Going along with this is that if the tariff wall is to protect key industries for a few years to get them going, Trump can't change them every few days. They have to be selectively targeted for the long run.

China does a huge amount of research to advance its technology. Huawei has a research campus for 35,000 researchers. It has its own monorail system and 100 cafes. Is Huawei a bad actor that has stolen a lot of stuff from the West? Absolutely, but Trump needs to deal with what it is now, not how it got there. And the U.S. does have a secret weapon: Absolutely world-class research at NIH, NASA, and a few dozen top universities. So is he shoveling money at them so they can produce more breakthroughs that can be transferred to industry (something the U.S. is very good at)? No, he is defunding the government researchers and trying to destroy the private universities because they are trying to hire the best people they can find, even Black women, of all things. Chinese experts can't believe their eyes when they see the U.S. actively trying to destroy a precious resource that is the envy of China and the world. The future of transportation is clearly going to be mass transit in cities and self-driving electric cars outside them. Who is going to do the research needed for this? What about all the infrastructure for them? Trump says: "We don't do EVs. EVs are for girly men. We do manly industries." Yup. He is forcing coal mines to reopen and making existing coal-fired electric power plants keep running. Also, drill, baby, drill. His calendar is set to the wrong century.

China has an interesting approach to new technology. Friedman calls it the "fitness gym." When the government's experts have picked some new technology they think is important, be it solar panels or hydrogen cells, all the big cities in China build a factory to make them, often with subsidies from the national government. They compete like hell for the domestic market. 95% of them go bankrupt, but 5% survive, are strong, and have built supply chains. This "fitness gym" is very wasteful, but it is accepted as a good idea. The survivors continue competing with each other for a bit to hone their skills. This is raw capitalism in its finest form. Then the survivors go for the global market. They are so fine-tuned at this point and have such well-oiled supply chains, that no one can compete with them. The BYD Seagull electric car costs $7,800. The cheapest Tesla is $42,500. The difference is not the wage differential, since BYD production is heavily automated. BYD is a fitness gym survivor. What is also interesting is that Chinese companies are very flexible. Huawei and Xiaomi started as phone companies. Now they make electric cars. Suppose the U.S. government threw money at Apple and Google to make self-driving electric cars. That would definitely get General Motors' attention. But Trump hates the idea of self-driving electric cars. Real men drive big trucks. For now.

Another advantage China has is government. For 5,000 years, being a civil servant in China has been a good job. To get that gig, you have to pass difficult tests. The Chinese "deep state" is very competent. Even the political leadership under Xi Jinping is quite competent. It is more corrupt than in the U.S., but if the officials are doing their jobs well, a modest amount of stealing is tolerated. Compare that with Trump's cabinet, where maybe one or two members are sort of somewhat marginally qualified for their jobs. And recently Trump fired the head of the NSA, Gen. Timothy Haugh, regarded throughout the intelligence community as the best in the business. Why? Because nitwit Laura Loomer told Trump that Haugh was woke. Xi is laughing his head off. If some nitwit gives Xi stupid advice, Xi doesn't follow it. He ships the nitwit off to Outer Mongolia. Friedman: "If you hire clowns, you get a circus."

China also understands that it can learn from other countries. There are 270,000 Chinese students studying in America. See above, on education exports, then multiply 270,000 by the average out-of-state tuition and presto, you get a big number. The Chinese students learn a lot and many go back to China with that knowledge. Very few American students study abroad and those that do a "junior year abroad" do it for their personal cultural enrichment, not to learn how German engineers build very good cars.

In the modern world, no country can do everything well. Joe Biden had a policy that wasn't exactly reshoring all the time, but sometimes getting critical industries moved to friendly countries that the U.S. can depend on as suppliers. Under Trump, the U.S. has no friends in the world anymore. In fact, when European diplomats visit the U.S. on business, they are now issued empty burner phones and laptops because their governments assume they will be spied on. They don't trust the U.S. anymore.

In China, Friedman was often asked about Elon Musk. They wanted to know if he was running a cultural revolution, like Mao Zedong did from 1966-1976. Mao let bands of young Red Guards loose on the countryside, smashing local governments, judicial systems, and public security. Tens of millions of people fell victim to their rampages. Universities were closed and professors were sent out to the countryside to clean pigsties. It nearly destroyed the country. Friedman understood why they were asking.

One of us, (V), was an invited keynote speaker at a conference in China in 2009. He was astonished at many things. Here is a little bit of the Shanghai skyline 16 years ago. China was not a backward country then and certainly isn't now:

The National Defense University (think: West Point), where the conference was held, was absolutely top-rate. (V) was careful not to say anything in his talk that was not already published and most of the talk was historical anyway. Still, he was enormously impressed by their level of expertise.

All the airports (V) saw were at least as good as the new LaGuardia. China has 25,000 miles of high-speed trains. When in the U.S., (V) sometimes takes the Metro North Railroad from Manhattan northward to Westchester County. Grand Central Terminal retains its 1913 glory, but the trains also appear to be from 1913. And their 80 MPH top speed is about 1/3 of what China's fast trains do. Unlike the NYC subways, the Shanghai subways were clean, fast, safe, frequent, and efficient. Even back in 2009, the ads on the station walls weren't paper posters, but giant monitors showing video ads. And much more.

Trump's lack of understanding of how advanced China already is and how determined and competent it is to become the strongest industrial power in the world in a decade works to America's peril. And if China becomes the world's top industrial power, becoming the world's top military power is the next step. Friedman said that he has never been so worried in his entire life. (V)

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