NAFTA no more as President Trump wins USMCA passage in Senate, keeps signature campaign promise to put America first on trade:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/nafta-no-more-as-president-trump-wins-usmca-passage-in-senate-keeps-signature-campaign-promise-to-put-america-first-on-trade/

A little more than a year after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from NAFTA if Congress did not adopt the USMCA — on Dec. 1, 2018, he said, “I’ll be terminating it within a relatively short period of time. We get rid of NAFTA. It’s been a disaster for the United States… And so Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well…” — on Jan. 16, the Senate has overwhelmingly adopted the USMCA 89 to 10. Senate passage came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally relented and allowed the trade deal to come up on the House floor, followed shortly thereafter by House passage 385 to 41 on Dec. 19, 2019. None of this is surprising. President Trump won in 2016 in the Rust Belt particularly on the political strength of his trade agenda, uniting conservative and union households and savaging Hillary Clinton as a pro-NAFTA pretender. Now, Trump’s success in reshaping American politics around trade has now been confirmed by the massive bipartisan support for the USMCA. Both Democratic Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters voted for it. That tells you everything you need to know right there. The blue-collar Democrats who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 and put him over the top ended up supporting the Trump trade agenda, making passage of the USMCA a political certainty even as Democrats in Congress were itching to impeach Trump and get the Senate trial underway. This tells you there was greater political risk in going against Trump on his signature issue than anything else. What do you think?

Art of the Deal: Trump secures historic trade deal with China, leaves tariffs up just in case, proving trade critics wrong yet again:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/art-of-the-deal-trump-secures-historic-trade-deal-with-china-leaves-tariffs-up-just-in-case-proving-trade-critics-wrong-yet-again/

President Donald Trump has once again done the impossible and secured a phase one trade agreement with China that leaves existing tariffs of 25 percent on $250 billion of goods and another 7.5 percent on the remaining $300 billion of goods. This is a breakthrough that had eluded Trump’s predecessors and that his critics said would be impossible. Tariffs would cause a trade war, they said. Instead they helped bring about a fair and reciprocal trade agreement. The deal includes new rules on intellectual property protections, forced technology transfer and enforceable currency provisions that prohibit competitive devaluations. China also agreed to more than $200 billion of purchases of U.S. manufacturing, financial services and agriculture, of which $50 billion will be agriculture, opening up China to U.S. exporters in a massive concession by Beijing. In exchange, tariffs were slightly lowered from 10 percent to 7.5 percent on the remaining $300 billion of goods, with the promise they’ll come down even more if and when a phase two agreement can be hammered out by U.S. and Chinese negotiators. Also, the U.S. Treasury dropped — for now and with the agreement in place — the designation of China as a currency manipulator. Such a deal was supposed to be impossible because China was never supposed to negotiate under duress and would certainly never agree to a deal that left the tariffs in place. Instead, even with the tariffs, China carried on the negotiation and ultimately followed through on phase one, even though 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of goods and 7.5 percent tariffs on the other $300 billion of goods remained in place, proving the critics wrong. What do you think? Did the pressure work?

President Trump is overseeing the best peacetime labor market and economy in modern history as 2020 election looms:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/president-trump-is-overseeing-the-best-peacetime-labor-market-and-economy-in-modern-history-as-2020-election-looms/

With 3.5 percent unemployment, the lowest since 1969 when U.S. involvement the Vietnam War was still at its height, and 6.7 million jobs created since Jan. 2017 — President Donald Trump is presently overseeing the best peacetime labor market conditions in modern history. And it could get even better, the reason being because working aged adults 16-to-64 continue to pour into the U.S. economy at levels nobody expected prior to 2016. In 2019, 1.1 million more 16-to-64-year-olds found jobs, even as the population of 16-to-64-year-olds decreased by 238,000, according to the latest average, annual, seasonally unadjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the good news economically is those developments will continue for the next several years, which, barring a recession, promise to drive unemployment even lower than its currently historically low numbers. This economy is great, making a strong case for Trump’s reelection in 2020, where he can point to his tax cuts, deregulation and new trade deals as being big difference makers, and where everyone who wants a job can find one. It’s tough to argue against success. What do you think?

Iranian terrorist general would still be dead under Senate resolution on use of force:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/iranian-terrorist-general-would-still-be-dead-under-senate-resolution-on-use-of-force/

Iranian general Qasem Soleimani would still have been a legitimate military target in Iraq under a resolution proposed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), that on the surface promises to limit the use of force but in reality simply accepts the status quo of U.S. forces in Iraq and the Middle East. The resolution “directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military… unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” So, except as otherwise authorized to use force by Congress, the President cannot engage in hostilities with Iran. Which means, given standing authorizations use force against Iraq and against terrorists globally, the drone strike in Iraq by U.S. forces against Soleimani would have been authorized as a legitimate military target, and he would still be dead even if this resolution had been in place. What do you think?

House Democrats are still afraid to submit impeachment articles to the Senate:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/house-democrats-are-still-afraid-to-submit-impeachment-articles-to-the-senate/

Under Senate rules governing impeachment trials — for now — the trial of President Donald Trump cannot begin in the Senate until the House formally submits the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. And so far, the House has delayed doing so. Perhaps it has suddenly dawned on House Democrats that they don’t possess and never have had the votes in the U.S. Senate to convict and remove President Donald Trump from office, as a Senate trial and likely acquittal looms, and so they want to delay the trial for as long as possible. That is certainly why impeaching Trump in a futile gesture doomed to failure in an election year was almost certainly a bad idea politically for Democrats. It makes the party look desperate to remove Trump from office because they don’t think they can win at the ballot box. What do you think?

Experts predicted Trump trade recession in 2016 if he won, instead the opposite happened:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/experts-predicted-trump-trade-recession-in-2016-if-he-won-instead-the-opposite-happened/

In 2016, experts warned that if elected, President Donald Trump would levy tariffs and the world would fall into recession, or maybe even another Great Depression. A Moody’s Analytics prediction by Mark Zandi in 2016, prepared for the Washington Post, predicted that as many as 4 million jobs would be lost and the U.S. economy would either flatline or go into recession if President Trump levied tariffs against China and Mexico. Zandi called tariffs a disaster, saying, “This is a pretty ugly scenario, one that I think any rational person would want to avoid.” It turns out that, quite rationally, Americans voted in their economic self-interests in favor of the Trump trade agenda in 2016, and Trump won the election. Trump never levied additional tariffs against Mexico — although he briefly threatened to do so — but he did levy them against China. But the outcomes were not as expected. Instead of losing 4 million jobs, in the establishment survey published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.6 million jobs have been created since Jan. 2017. Moody’s said we would only have 139 million jobs. Instead we have 152 million. They were only off by 13 million. Unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. As for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it has stayed very much in the positive, with mid-2 percent growth levels, with no recession in sight.And rather than provoking too much trade retaliation, Trump’s tariffs and tariff threats respectively have resulted in new trade agreements with China and Canada and Mexico. Who are the American people going to believe in 2020, the critics or their own lying eyes?

The Senate should just proceed to the impeachment trial whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ready or not:
http://dailytorch.com/2019/12/the-senate-should-just-proceed-to-the-impeachment-trial-whether-house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-is-ready-or-not/

Does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have a heretofore unnoticed, unconstitutional power to hold up an impeachment that has already been voted on? That appears to be what she wants the American people to believe. That, articles of impeachment passed by the House, including H. Res. 755 that impeached President Donald Trump, are not actually “passed” unless and until she transmits it to the Senate. This is a work of fiction. Nothing in either the Constitution or House or Senate rules grants such power to the Speaker to “sit” on impeachment, thereby would prevent Senate action on such. It exists in the imaginations of liberal law professors. The Clerk of the House did certify the passage of H. Res. 755 impeaching Trump when it was posted at clerk.house.gov in the form of roll calls 695 and 696 on Dec. 18. Which is all the Constitution requires. The Constitution, under Article I, Section 2 states: “The House of Representatives… shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” By that standard, President Trump is impeached. Article I, Section 3 states: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” So, very clearly, under the Constitution, the House has sole power to impeach, and the Senate has sole power to try all impeachments. There is nothing in there about transmitting anything to the Senate. All that is required for there to be a trial in the Senate is for the House to have acted to impeach an official, including the President, and, semantics aside, that threshold has clearly been met. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should just proceed to the trial, whether Pelosi is ready or not. The fact is, for better or for worse, the House has already voted to impeach President Trump. What’s done is done. If the case is that weak, then moving for a swift dismissal should be a short order. Let’s get this trial over with. What do you think?

House Democrats impeach President Trump for pausing military assistance to Ukraine as the witch hunt continues:
http://dailytorch.com/2019/12/house-democrats-impeach-president-trump-for-pausing-military-assistance-to-ukraine-still-believe-delusion-of-trump-russia-plot-as-witch-hunt-continues/

House Democrats have voted to impeach President Donald Trump under the unproven premise that he leveraged $391 million of U.S. military and security assistance to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and the corrupt natural gas firm Burisma his son worked for after Biden said he had the prosecutor who says he was investigating Burisma fired. None of the witnesses the House called to testify were able to cite President Trump either ordering or communicating to Ukraine that the military assistance was tied to such investigations, although one witness said he “presumed” that was the case when he communicated to a Ukrainian presidential aide, but that when he spoke directly with Trump he was told there was no quid pro quo. But even if Trump had suspended the aid pending an evaluation of corruption in Ukraine or seeing if the newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be a reliable national security partner, those are not crimes. Impeachment is supposed to be for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. The allegations in the Articles of Impeachment the Democrats are relying on are none of the above, and cite no criminal violations of the U.S. Code and are in accords with the President’s Article II responsibilities to conduct foreign affairs. But leaving that aside, why are we even sending military assistance to Ukraine and getting involved in the civil war there? And why would pausing it — again, not a crime — be of such critical importance to become House Democrats’ centerpiece on impeachment?

It’s not up to the Senate to make the House’s case for impeaching President Trump on the House’s behalf:
http://dailytorch.com/2019/12/its-not-up-to-the-senate-to-make-the-houses-case-for-impeaching-president-trump-on-the-houses-behalf/

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rips Democrats’ impeachment of President Donald Trump and for rushing through the process, stating, “Chairman Adam Schiff and House Democrats actively decided not to go to court and pursue potentially useful witnesses because they didn’t want to wait for due process. Indeed, they threatened to impeach the President if they had to go to court at all. That intentional, political decision is the reason why the House is poised to send the Senate the thinnest, least thorough presidential impeachment in our nation’s history. By any ordinary legal standard, what House Democrats have assembled appears to be woefully inadequate to prove what they want to allege. So now the Senate Democratic Leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them. He wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it.” Here, McConnell has a point. The House has made a mess of its impeachment sham hearings and have utterly failed to build a bipartisan consensus for removing President Trump, and instead has united Republicans around their leader headed into the 2020 reelection cycle. In other words, the House has obstructed itself by not pursuing its own rights, in this case, in federal court where they might be expeditiously adjudicated. The Senate is under exactly zero obligation to make the case for impeachment on behalf of the House. Maybe House Democrats should impeach themselves for doing such a poor job. What do you think?

Comey would spy on the Trump campaign on fake Russia charges all over again knowing what he knows now:
http://dailytorch.com/2019/12/comey-would-spy-on-the-trump-campaign-on-fake-russia-charges-all-over-again-knowing-what-he-knows-now/

No attempt was made to corroborate allegations by former British spy Christopher Steele by interviewing his sources until after the allegations were published by Buzzfeed on Jan. 10, 2017 and subsequently discredited. According to the Horowitz report, “the FBI’s interview with Steele’s Primary Subsource in January 2017, shortly after the FBI filed the Carter Page FISA Renewal Application No. 1 and months prior to Renewal Application No. 2, raised doubts about the reliability of Steele’s descriptions of information in his election reports.” The FISA warrant against then-Trump campaign was approved on Oct.21, 2019, subject to renewal within 90 days. According to Horowitz, the renewal application was put in on Jan. 12, 2017 and was renewed on Jan. 13, 2017. Which is after Buzzfeed published the dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele on Jan. 10, 2017. But former disgraced FBI Director James Comey still thinks Steele could have been right, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace: “that doesn’t drive a conclusion that Steele’s reporting is bunk. I mean, there’s a number of tricky things to that. First, you’re interviewing the sub-source after all of the reporting has become public. And so, as a counterintelligence investigator, you have to think, ‘Is he walking away from it because it’s now public?’… This is when it blew up, when it was published by whatever the outfit is — BuzzFeed. It was all over the news and had become a big deal… [but] I didn’t know what they’d learned from the sub-source. I didn’t know the particulars of the investigation.” You can’t make this stuff up. They were spying on a presidential campaign and the FBI Directors says he wasn’t conducting oversight. How could this happen in America?