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Category: Foreign News

Trump stumbles with latest ‘enemy of the people’ line
President Trump is in full election mode. More than comfortable making the midterms a referendum on his own presidency, he is swinging away in public remarks against his now familiar foes.
Trump has often proven highly effective at defining his targets in unflattering ways, much to their consternation. But his continued reference to the news media as the “enemy of the people” is different. It’s not just wrong, it’s bad politics.
Election-year rhetoric is all about calculated risks. Americans are well aware of how it works. Long before Trump came along, candidates and pressure groups learned to push as far and as hard as they could in disparaging their rivals. But they also learned that the price of going too far could be steep. Trump has made going too far a modern-day art form. But if he has changed the standard of what’s unacceptable, he hasn’t changed the way the actual rules work.
So he’s been paying the price for his sloppy smear of the media. By calling them the enemy of the American people, he put himself on the hook for damaging political attacks if anyone seemed to take his criticism too seriously or literally. That’s just what happened when Cesar Sayoc mailed his homemade bomb kits to a laundry list of Trump opponents in and out of politics. Sayoc, an odd individual described as a “volatile nobody” by The New York Times, all too perfectly illuminated for nervous Americans the recklessness of Trump’s words. Suddenly Trump was on defense in the closing days of the campaign.
And there he stayed. Many national media figures have been yearning for a solid opening to land some counterpunches, and nursing frustrations that an effective opportunity has proven so elusive. In seeming to summon forth Sayoc with his clumsy bluster, Trump handed them just that. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was left to flail through a damage-control session in front of reporters who wanted to know just which outlets the president considered enemies of the people.
Sanders couldn’t say, raising the question of whether Trump was actually serious about his attack. For Trump, whose political brand is based on a reputation for meaning what he says, at least when he is slinging insults, the “enemy of the people” line is becoming a liability.
It’s instructive to contrast these problems with the success Trump has had with the “fake news” attack.
Americans of all political persuasions have developed a digital-age awareness that bogus reports, false objectivity and shameless hype run riot today, online and off. While Trump’s popularization of the “fake news” concept has led to some embarrassing excesses, such as foreign despots brushing off criticism as fake news, it caught on because it tapped into a real public concern, with clear examples everyone can point to.
The same can hardly be said of the notion that the news media is the people’s enemy. While an argument could be constructed that influential figures in the press have a strong desire to see Trump’s populist and nationalist agenda fail, everyone already knows that Trump sees himself in an adversarial relationship with those figures. Trump’s media smear is a leap into territory so bereft of evidence that even his own political instincts can’t help him. (DailyNews)
November 1, 2018
US manufacturing growth slows in October as tariff woes mount
Growth in the crucial US manufacturing sector slowed in October to its lowest level in six months as the US-China trade war bit deeper into business, a survey showed Thursday.
The ISM manufacturing index fell 2.1 percentage points to 57.7 percent, which still represents healthy growth but was also significantly below analyst forecasts.
The unexpected dip in the Institute for Supply Management’s monthly survey for the first time showed a contraction in business for makers of manufactured metal goods — a sector facing higher prices due to US import tariffs — while other businesses complained increasingly of disrupted supply chains and higher costs.
Any reading above 50 percent indicates growth, and US manufacturing has now grown without interruption for more than two years.
“Not bad but when you’ve had these levels month after month and then you have a two-point decline it says something’s happening,” Timothy Fiore, chairman of the ISM manufacturing survey committee, told reporters.
“I’m hoping that there’ll be a rebound.”
New orders dipped 4.4 points — falling below 60 percent for the first time in 18 months — production slipped by four, employment was two points lower but prices rose 4.7 points, accelerating their gains.
Fiore said that, for the fifth month in a row, more than 40 percent of businesses complained of tariff-related troubles.
Manufacturers are increasingly worried they will not be able to pass on rising costs to customers and as a result are making “manufacturing footprint changes” to sustain business in 2019, he added.
– Tariffs a ‘big problem’ –
The number of manufacturing industries reporting expansion fell by two to 13.
Wood producers, primary metal makers, fabricated metal manufacturers which produce goods like tractors and machinery, as well as non-metallic minerals producers, all said they shrank.
Survey respondents in the chemical goods, food and beverage, plastics and rubbers, oil and coal as well as miscellaneous manufacturing all said tariffs were hurting business.
A respondent in plastics and rubbers said a recently concluded deal to rewrite the North American free trade pact “does nothing to help our company” because it left tariffs in place on aluminum and steel.
President Donald Trump this year has imposed tariffs on about $250 billion in Chinese imports — with duties on a $200 billion tranche due to rise to 25 percent by January 1.
Trump said Thursday he had had a “very good” call with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of an expected meeting at this month’s Group of 20 summit in Argentina.
Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics, which was not involved in producing the survey, said the ISM report was likely to soften further in the coming months but would still be supported by recent fiscal stimulus and strong consumer demand.
Slower growth outside the United States and a stronger dollar could also weigh on US exports, he added.
“For the consumer, the tariffs are for the most part still an abstract idea, but for manufacturers they are real, and a big problem,” he said in a note to clients.
“This might just be noise, but wouldn’t bet on it.” (AFP)
November 1, 2018
Pittsburgh synagogue suspect pleads not guilty as more funerals planned
With two more funerals set for Thursday, the anti-Semitic truck driver accused of gunning down 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue pleaded not guilty to federal charges that could put him on death row.
Robert Bowers, 46, was arraigned one day after a grand jury issued a 44-count indictment that charges him with murder, hate crimes, obstructing the practice of religion and other crimes. It was his second brief appearance in a federal courtroom since the weekend massacre at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
“Yes!” Bowers said in a loud voice when asked if he understood the charges.
Authorities say Bowers raged against Jews during and after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. He remains jailed without bail
Bowers, who was shot and wounded during a gun battle that injured four police officers, walked into court under his own power, his left arm heavily bandaged. He was in a wheelchair at his first court appearance on Monday.
Bowers, who is stocky and square-faced with salt-and-pepper, closely cropped hair, frowned as the charges were read but did not appear to have a reaction as a federal prosecutor announced he could face a death sentence. He told a prosecutor he had read the indictment.
One of his federal public defenders, Michael Novara, said Bowers pleaded not guilty, “as is typical at this stage of the proceedings.”
Bowers had been set for a preliminary hearing on the evidence, but federal prosecutors instead took the case to a grand jury.
The panel issued the indictment as funerals continued for the victims.
Jared Younger of Los Angeles told mourners that he waited for hours Saturday for his father to pick up his phone or let them know he was all right. The dread built all day until his sister learned their father, Irving Younger, had indeed been shot and killed.
“That waiting stage was just unbearable,” Jared Younger said at his father’s funeral Wednesday. “Saturday was the most lonely day of my life.”
Funerals were being held Thursday for Bernice and Sylvan Simon, husband and wife, and Dr. Richard Gottfried, a dentist who worked part-time at a clinic treating refugees and immigrants. The oldest victim, 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, will be honored at the last service Friday. Her daughter was injured in the attack.
Friends recalled Irving Younger, 69, as a “kibbitzing, people-loving” man. He was one of the first people Rabbi Jeffrey Myers met when he came to town last year from New Jersey to lead Tree of Life.
Myers, who survived the massacre, is presiding over five funerals for seven congregants this week. He ran a few minutes late to Younger’s service because he was still at the burial for another victim, Joyce Fienberg.
“I can’t imagine the stress he’s under,” said his predecessor, Rabbi Charles “Chuck” Diamond.
As Younger’s service was wrapping up, Myers momentarily forgot to read a letter to the family that another rabbi had sent.
“After preparing for five funerals, you get a little verklempt,” Myers said.
Tree of Life remains a crime scene. Rabbis and other volunteers have been cleaning the temple to remove all bodily traces from the 11 victims, following Jewish law regarding death and burial. (MARYCLAIRE DALE)
November 1, 2018