If Bolton says Trump ‘wanted’ to freeze $391 million of military aid to Ukraine until investigations were announced, why was it never communicated to Ukraine?
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/if-bolton-says-trump-wanted-to-freeze-391-million-of-military-aid-to-ukraine-until-investigations-were-announced-why-was-it-never-communicated-to-ukraine/

The New York Times has previewed potential testimony by former National Security Advisor John Bolton at the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, where the President allegedly told Bolton in August “he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.” And yet, neither the White House nor the State Department never conveyed any such conditions to Ukraine, despite the aid being frozen in July, until after Politico broke the story of the aid being frozen on Aug. 28. Even then, the only official who conveyed such conditions, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, said in House testimony he was simply presuming the aid was being conditioned: “No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything. I was presuming it was.” According to both former ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and former Senior Director for European Affairs at the White House and the National Security Council Tim Morrison’s testimony, Ukrainian officials were unaware of any pause in the funding until the Politico story was published a month after President Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. Zelensky later said in September there was “no pressure.” But even if there had been, these are all things Presidents have the power to do under Article II and this boils down to a policy disagreement between Bolton and Trump, not a high crime or misdemeanor, and certainly not bribery or treason. If this is all the House has, the President’s acquittal is all but certain. What do you think?

Impeachment trial day two!

New HUD rule guts Obama program to rezone neighborhoods along income and racial guidelines, proves Article I defunds by Congress work:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/new-hud-rule-guts-obama-program-to-rezone-neighborhoods-along-income-and-racial-guidelines-proves-article-i-defunds-by-congress-work/

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under Secretary Ben Carson has completed its review of the 2015 Obama era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, and removed requirements for more than 1,200 cities and counties to make changes to local zoning in order to qualify for $3 billion of annual community development block grants. Under the new rule, just finalized on Jan. 14, “Jurisdictions are free to choose to undertake changes to zoning or land-use policies as one method of complying with the AFFH obligation; however, no jurisdiction may have their certification questioned because they do not choose to undertake zoning changes.” This could have gone much differently. Without Congress’ action in the months following the 2015 Obama regulation to defund federal intrusion into local zoning decisions, and then it being renewed repeatedly, sending a strong message to two administrations and asserting constitutional Article I powers of the purse, I cannot say that this rule would have ever been reformed. This is now one of those rare case examples limited government advocates can point to a direct Congressional action that was instrumental in helping to overturn a bad regulation. The power of the purse works to rein in government excesses, and we should let Congress know because they should use it more often. What do you think?

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?