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Trump shows inability to get to yes

President Trump likes to tout his skills as a negotiator. He has said the U.S. would make great deals on trade and military hardware during his presidency.

But leaked transcripts of Trump’s calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull don’t exactly position the president as dealmaker-in-chief.

In their landmark book “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In,” Roger Fisher and William Ury outline six guidelines the authors, who founded the Harvard Negotiation Project, say can help both sides achieve more of what they want.

The guidelines appear below in italics, followed by ways that Trump failed to use them in his back-and-forth with Pena Nieto about paying for a wall along the border or his exchange with Turnbull about whether the U.S. will honor a promise by President Obama to accept 1,250 refugees who are currently detained in Australia.

Separate the people from the problem.

Negotiators should try to imagine the situation from the viewpoint of their counterpart.

Pena Nieto explains to Trump “the lack of margin” he has as president of Mexico to accept claims that his country will pay for the wall. But he also tells Trump that he understands the “small political margin” that Trump has “in terms of everything you said that you established throughout your campaign.

Seven times, Pena Nieto uses the phrase “I understand” to acknowledge Trump’s position.

Trump, by contrast, says “I understand” once, to tell Pena Nieto that he, Trump, understands Hispanic voters “and they understand me.”

The closest Trump comes to acknowledging Pena Nieto’s position comes when Trump tells him, “we are both in a little bit of a political bind because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall – I have to.”

Focus on interests, not positions.

Draw out the interests that underlie your counterpart’s positions, with the goal of creating opportunities to explore tradeoffs.

To Trump’s credit, he asks Turnbull why it’s so important that the White House honor Obama’s promise to take the refugees. But Trump tells his counterpart, incorrectly, that it’s 2,000 people. Rather than answer the question, Turnbull corrects Trump, telling him it’s “not 2,000” but 1,250.

To which Trump replies that he’s also “heard like 5,000 as well,” without returning to the question he asked earlier. The exchange deteriorates from there.

Learn to manage emotions.

Be sure that you and your counterpart have opportunities to express any strong emotions that tie to your negotiation.

In his call with Turnbull, Trump expresses frustration after Turnbull suggests Trump can say that the agreement by his predecessor to accept the refugees “is not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it.”

Trump agrees he will say that, adding, “I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made.”

Trump continues:

“As far as I am concerned that is enough Malcom [sic]. I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.”

Turnbull asks Trump if he would like to discuss Syria and North Korea.

“This is crazy,” Trump replies.

Turnbull thanks Trump for agreeing to honor the pledge. “It is very important to us,” Turnbull tells him.

Express appreciation.

Work to understand your counterpart’s perspective and communicate understanding of it through words and actions.

Trump does not convey to either of his counterparts that he understands their views. In contrast, Turnbull tells Trump that he understands Trump “is inclined to a different point of view” on the resettlement of refugees than Vice President Pence, who Turnbull said assured the Australians that the U.S. would honor the agreement to accept the refugees.

Put a positive spin on your message.

Communicate in a positive way, and speak only for yourself.

Pena Nieto stays positive. The call between Trump and Turnbull fills with acrimony and never recovers.

“Can you hear me out Mr. President” Turnbull asks Trump.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Trump replies.

Escape the cycle of action and reaction.

Rather than dig in, explore interests, invent options for mutual gain, and search for independent standards.

Besides trying to help Trump out of his bind by suggesting that Trump tell people he would not have agreed to resettle refugees if it were not for the promise by his predecessor. Turnbull adds that the exchange “requires, in return, for us to do a number of things for the United States.”

When Trump relents, Turnbull offers the prospect of returning the gesture in the future. “You can count on me,” he tells Trump. “I will be there again and again.”

“I hope so,” replies Trump, offering nothing.

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News

The CEO of the world’s second-largest energy company says he will drive a hybrid

The chief executive of the world’s second-largest energy company says his other car will soon be powered by a mix of gasoline and electricity in a sign that the world is going green.

Ben Van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, says he will switch this September to a plug-in Mercedes-Benz S550e hybrid from a diesel car, at least in part to reflect the reality of climate change and efforts such as the Paris climate agreement to combat it.

“The whole move to electrify the economy, electrify mobility in places like northwest Europe, in the U.S., even in China, is a good thing,” Van Beurden told Bloomberg TV. “We need to be at a much higher degree of electric vehicle penetration — or hydrogen vehicles or gas vehicles — if we want to stay within the 2-degrees Celsius outcome.”

Though symbolic, the announcement further cements a shift underway at Shell under Van Beurden’s leadership. In February 2016, the company acquired BG Group for $53 billion to create the world’s largest provider of liquefied natural gas. Two years earlier, Shell paid $5.4 billion for the LNG business of Repsol outside of North America.

Shell has estimated that worldwide demand for oil could peak as soon as a decade from now.

The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for oil will continue to grow worldwide until 2040, primarily because of a scarcity of substitutes that make economic sense in aviation, petrochemicals and trucking.

Still, demand for oil from passenger cars is expected to decline over the next quarter century despite a doubling in the number of vehicles, “thanks mainly to improvements in efficiency, but also biofuels and rising ownership of electric cars,” the IEA said in November.

Both the United Kingdom and France recently announced plans to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2040.

Volvo in June became the first major automaker to say it will end reliance on internal-combustion engines. All the models Volvo brings to market starting in 2019 will either be hybrids or powered by batteries.

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Politics

John McCain offers a lesson on legislating

Like many people, I reacted with cynicism to the news Tuesday that John McCain would return to Washington to vote on whether a push by Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could proceed.

I presumed that McCain, who is being treated for an insidious form of brain cancer, would sound off about the need for his party to work with Democrats to shore up the health law only to vote in the end to repeal it anyway.

After voting in favor of taking up the bill, McCain admonished his party to end their habit of “trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle.”

Exactly what I expected from the Arizona Republican.

The thought that McCain, who is being treated by doctors at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, might vote for a measure that would could leave 16 million people uninsured, offended me.

But in the end, I was wrong. Around 1:30 a.m. Friday, after a full-court press that included a last-minute plea from the vice president, McCain voted against the repeal. He was joined by two other Republicans: Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska; and Susan Collins, of Maine. The White House threatened Murkowski with payback that included blocking nominees from Alaska to jobs at the Interior Department and halting expansion of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In exchange for his vote to keep the repeal going, McCain reportedly sought assurances from Speaker Paul Ryan that the House would use a measure passed by the Senate as the basis to negotiate between the chambers, rather than simply pass the Senate bill and send it to the president for signature. Whatever Ryan conveyed failed to assure McCain that a compromise measure would ensue.

McCain said later he’d like to see the ACA replaced “with a solution that increases competition, lowers costs, and improves care for the American people,” but that the so-called skinny repeal that he killed did none of those things.

He called on lawmakers to “return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people.”

Writing in The New Yorker, Mark Singer said McCain “chose to vote with his soul – in defiance of the bottomless soullessness that, when the ultimate moment arrived, he rejected.”

John McCain long ago earned the status of war hero. But Friday on the floor of the Senate may have marked his finest moment.

Categories
Film Movies New York City

Steven Spielberg conjures the Nixon era at Columbia

The Nixon era came to Columbia University on Wednesday. Or more precisely, Steven Spielberg recreated 1971 on the steps of Low Library.

The director brought with him cast and crew of “The Papers,” a movie about the Pentagon Papers that he is filming around the city this summer.

The film tells the story of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that rejected an effort by the Nixon administration to prevent the Times and Washington Post from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War.

We passed the set around 8:45 a.m., in time to hear Spielberg arranging his actors. They include Meryl Streep as Kay Graham, publisher of the Post, and Tom Hanks, who plays former editor Ben Bradlee.

Dozens of protestors, actors all, massed on the steps of the library, where they held signs that called for press freedom. Spielberg was audible through the din though we could not discern his instructions. And then, “Action!” he called. He sounded like he meant it, which we trust he did.

The publisher, the editor and their lawyers descended the stairs in a cluster, surrounded by a gaggle of reporters (again, actors), the way litigants do when they emerge from a courthouse. We can’t say whether the library served as stand-in for the Supreme Court.

The columns that front the library’s facade are Ionic; the ones in front of the court are Corinthian. But Cass Gilbert, who designed the Supreme Court building, began his career at McKim, Mead and White, which designed the library.

Around 1 p.m., the action broke. Protestors and reporters from 1971 emptied onto Broadway and turned left toward food trucks from 2017.

The film is slated for release later this year. The timing seems impeccable. While the filmmakers filmed, the president of the United States tweeted. This time to announce that transgender people will no longer be allowed to serve in the military.

The filming continued as we headed home later. Spielberg, it seemed, aimed to wring all he could from the light. The president offered only darkness.

Categories
Politics

Trump unloads via Twitter, aka Saturday

On the day after Labor Day in 1973, Elizabeth Drew, a reporter for The New Yorker, told her editor she had “an intuition” that within a year the U.S. would change president and vice president.

“At the time, this was a seemingly outlandish thought, but I go a lot on instinct and I just sensed it,” Drew writes in the introduction to “Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall," her book about that time.

The Watergate scandal had not yet snared Nixon, but “there was already plenty of evidence that serious wrongdoing had taken place” in the administration, Drew writes.

Saturday also felt like a day when the country might have a new president within a year.

The morning began with Donald Trump unleashing a fusillade of tweets in which he said that presidents have “complete power” to pardon aides (and, perhaps, themselves) and complained about an “intelligence leak” that allowed the Washington Post to report that Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the presidential campaign with Russia’s ambassador last year.

He also blasted the “fake news,” despite sitting for an hour-long interview on Wednesday with The New York Times. “Look, I think he loves the press,” said Maggie Haberman, one the reporters who interviewed Trump.

The frenzy of social media followed a week in which Trump lashed out at Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and hinted that White House aides are looking for ways to discredit prosecutors working for Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is leading the investigation.

Mueller is reportedly examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses.

According to a Gallup poll published Friday, Trump held a job approval of 38.8% in the three months that ended June 19. That’s 23 points below the historical norm and the lowest such rating in a comparable period in the 72 years that Gallup has assessed job approval. (Trump’s rating in the first three months of his presidency also set a new low.)

The discovery on Saturday afternoon of old tweets by Anthony Scaramucci show there was a time when the new White House communications director thought two of his boss' rivals might make better presidents than would Trump.

“Odd guy, so smart, no judgment,” Scaramucci tweeted in February 2012 about Newt Gingrich after Trump said he would endorse the former House speaker for president.

Two months earlier, Scaramucci praised Mitt Romney via Twitter for a decision to “stay out of the Trump spectacle.”

Scaramucci deleted both tweets.

About an hour later, he deleted a tweet from April 2012 in which he called Hillary Clinton “incredibly competent” and expressed hope she might run for president in 2016. Scaramucci also erased tweets of support for “strong gun control laws.”

Scaramucci owned his decision to delete the tweets. “Past views evolved & shouldn’t be a distraction,” he wrote. “I serve [the president’s] agenda & that’s all that matters.”

So much for principles.

Still, in 118 characters, the communications director showed more openness than Trump has since announcing his run for the presidency.

Categories
Finance

Jamie Dimon can help fix the ‘stupid s*#t’ he says ails the US

The chief executive of the nation’s biggest bank is sounding off about what he says is holding back the U.S. economy, but he may want to redirect his fire.

Political gridlock, a tax code that sends investment overseas, a lack of investment in infrastructure and stupidity are all to blame, says Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

“The United States of America has to start to focus on policy which is good for all Americans, and that is infrastructure, regulation, taxation, education,” Dimon told reporters on a conference call Friday to discuss the bank’s earnings. “Why you guys don’t write about it every day is completely beyond me. And, like, who cares about fixed-income trading in the last two weeks of June? I mean, seriously.”

Putting aside Dimon’s pique – he seems to have become irritated by the temerity of a reporter who asked about revenue from bond trading, which fell 19 percent from a year earlier despite the bank’s record profitability in the quarter – the problem seems to lie less with the press (which writes all the time about policy) than it does with politicians.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to rebuild the nation’s crumbling highways and bridges and change the tax code, among other things. He and his party control all three branches of government.

Which is why it’s strange that Trump began his punch list on infrastructure improvements with a push to privatize the nation’s system of directing air traffic.

Speaker Paul Ryan is scrambling to find the votes, which, not surprisingly, fall a few dozen short of a majority, Politico reported on Saturday. Even GOP lawmakers say privatizing the air system gets them nothing in their districts.

Lawmakers from rural states fear that privatization would lead to cutbacks in service to smaller airports. They thought that when the president said rebuilding infrastructure, he meant fixing crumbling roads, decaying bridges and other public works that create jobs.

There may be a need to update air traffic control as well, but it mostly involves installing a system that guides planes via satellite.

“I think fighting over this part of the infrastructure program [air traffic control] slows down progress we can make in getting a larger infrastructure plan in place,” Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas who serves on the committee that oversees the Federal Aviation Administration, told the Washington Examiner.

Meanwhile, a rewrite of the tax code appears to be going nowhere.

Dimon also cited education. The administration is discouraging states from including student performance in science as a priority, despite such coursework counting toward federal standards for student achievement, science teachers say.

To be fair, that comes from science teachers. And Trump is continuing a stance adopted by the Obama administration. But the Obama administration didn’t also abandon a global agreement on climate.

Dimon said it’s “an embarrassment being an American traveling around the world” and listening to the “stupid s*&t” Americans have to deal in connection with the country’s struggle to pass anything in Washington that might expand the economy greater than the one to two percent the US economy is growing at currently.

Dimon may not be alone in his frustration. Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But compared with most Americans, Dimon’s job makes him uniquely able to do something about it. JPMorgan Chase spent nearly $3 million on lobbying last year. (Financial firms overall contributed more than $1.2 billion to congressional campaigns in the most recent elections, more than twice the amount given by any other sector.)

He also serves on the White House Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of 17 top executives who advise the president on business.

Sounding off to reporters generates headlines. But rallying business leaders to back an economic policy that benefits all Americans might be a better place to begin.

Categories
Economy Environment

The US is yielding its leadership in the world

On Saturday, the world’s economic powers, with the exception of the U.S., affirmed their commitment to the Paris climate agreement and pledged to work together to tackle challenges in areas ranging from trade and terrorism to migration.

President Trump left the annual meeting of the G-20 without committing the U.S. to those shared goals. “We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris agreement,” the G-20 leaders wrote in a statement issued on Saturday. “The leaders of the other G-20 members state that the Paris agreement is irreversible.”

America may still have its military might and economic might, but influence comes from leadership. “Most presidents understand this intuitively,” Derek Chollet and Julie Smith noted on Friday in Foreign Policy. Most presidents includes presidents of both parties.

Of course, we are told the whole point of Trump is to deride the establishment, at home and abroad. By that measure, he has succeeded. But by any measure, we live in a many-sided world. And that’s not fake news.

Categories
U.S.

Bravery and beauty this Fourth of July

Last Sunday, feeling down about the debasement of the presidency and with July Fourth looming, I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in search of the American Wing.

Though I have visited the Met on at least six occasions over the past year, I tend to return each time to the modern and contemporary art, especially paintings by Picasso that I never tire of seeing. Thus, even with a map of the galleries, I asked twice for directions to the American Wing, a journey that took me across the building.

Once there, I entered the galleries and passed a series of portraits from the 18th century that led me to “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” the painting by Emanuel Leutze that anchors the wing. The massive panorama, which was restored several years ago, practically shimmers.

My gaze went to the armada of wooden boats filled with men, horses and guns that stretched a mile long like some 18th century D-Day, pushing through a river choked with ice on Christmas Day to dislodge Hessians camped on the other side. Being resolute under duress seems like something worth remembering nowadays.

Nearby hangs “Camp Fire” by Winslow Homer. The painting depicts two men camped in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. The scene captures the woodsmen seemingly lost in thought in the comfort of their camp.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11112

I also liked gazing at “The Teton Range” by Thomas Moran. The jagged peaks of the mountains remind me of the natural beauty of the West and, for that matter, so much of America.

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11600
Categories
Law

Trump’s travel ban is moot

The White House needs a travel ban why?

On March 6, the president issued an executive order that banned travelers to the United States from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government reviewed procedures for vetting visitors from those countries.

Though at least 13 federal courts have blocked the order on constitutional and statutory grounds, the Ninth Circuit ruled in June that the president can proceed with a review to determine what additional procedures, if any, might be needed from the countries subject to the ban that would address security concerns.

Still, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the ban and to review decisions by both the Ninth and Fourth Circuits that nullify “a national-security directive of the president,” as Jeffrey Wall, the acting solicitor general, wrote in a brief filed last Wednesday.

Even if the court reviews the executive order, the justices won’t hear arguments in the case until October at the earliest. Which means the administration has at least four months to carry out its review. So review away.

The travel ban will remain blocked, but the White House has cited no reason not to assess the threat. If security is at stake, there’s seemingly no reason to delay. Of course, the White House has cited no evidence that would suggest a threat that Congress didn’t address when it tightened visa procedures 18 months ago.

The State of Hawaii, which challenged the travel ban in the Ninth Circuit, contends as much. “Indeed, there is no need for the court to grant review at all,” the state wrote in its latest brief, noting that by October, “the government will have had almost nine months to complete the review and upgrade of immigration procedures that the order was allegedly designed to accomplish.”

The administration’s actions suggest the travel ban may be motivated less by keeping the nation safe than by keeping the president’s supporters stirring. If so, that’s a political calculation, which the justices don’t review anyway.

Categories
Law

Ninth Circuit misread the law governing the Trump travel ban, government tells Supreme Court

The Ninth Circuit misread the law that underpins the president’s exclusion of visitors to the United States from six majority-Muslim countries, the government argues in a new round of papers that ask the Supreme Court to reinstate the travel ban.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires only that the president find entry of a group of visitors to the U.S. would be detrimental to the nation’s interests, regardless of whether Congress comes to the same conclusion, says the government in a brief filed on Thursday. Thus, the appeals court erred when it ruled on June 12 that the travel ban has no basis in the record and therefore exceeds the president’s authority, the government says.

“The court of appeals read into that provision a requirement that, before suspending entry, the president must articulate a factual finding — satisfactory to courts — that support[s] the conclusion that entry of all nationals whose entry he suspends would be harmful to the national interest,” writes the government. “That requirement turns the statute’s text on its head.” [internal quotes omitted]

In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit noted that the executive order containing the ban does not discuss any instances of terrorism in the U.S. by citizens of Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria or Yemen — an omission the State of Hawaii and others challenging the ban raised before the appeals court and are likely to assert in their brief, which is due this Tuesday. The executive order cites one example of domestic terrorism by a native of Somalia who came to the U.S. at the age of 2.

Uncertainty alone justifies a ban, White House says

Besides relying on a series of State Department reports from 2016, the administration cited no evidence to support its assertion of a threat to national security posed by residents of the six countries. The omission explains in part why the challengers say the reasons for the ban offered by the White House are a pretext to disfavor Islam in violation of the Establishment Clause.

In its brief to the court, the government says the president imposed the travel ban “in the face of uncertainty over whether these foreign governments that sponsor or shelter terrorism are able and willing to provide” information that would allow the Departments of State and Homeland Security to determine whether entry of visitors from those countries constitutes a threat.

The uncertainty alone justifies a halt for three months on visitors while the administration ascertains whether each of the countries can screen travelers sufficiently, says the government.

The administration also urges the justices to overrule a finding by the Ninth Circuit that the travel bank violate the INA’s prohibition on discrimination based on nationality in the issuance of visas. That bar does not apply to the president’s ability to restrict entry of visitors, the government contends.