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hours ago 4 99
Donald Trump is damned to lose allies in the
US and beyond if he does not veto the sanctions bill and he is damned to that
which already plagues him if he uses his veto. A simply cost-benefit analysis
would indicate he would be better off using his veto.
On the evening of 25 July, 2017, the US House of Representitives which
is dominated by ‘Trump’s Republican party’, passed a bill which will cause
POTUS a great deal of headache irrespective of his final decision in respect of
signing or vetoing the legislation.
Passed with a majority of 419-3, the new law would tie the hands of not
only Trump but future Presidents. Beyond this, the bill’s content was
opposed by America’s most influential companies as well as the European Union.
Normally, such an ill-thought out bill which did not account for the views of
the business sector, America’s European partners and the US Constitution would
be an easy veto for a President trying to build bridges, but due to the
atmosphere which the mainstream media as well as Trump’s political opponents
have created, Trump now faces a difficult decision that will earn him criticism
no matter what he does.
That being said, it is still in Trump’s long term interests to veto the
legislation. Here are the key points.
1. The legislation interferes with
Constitutionally derived executive power
The current legislation seeks not only to impose sanctions that have
been proposed by Congress rather than the Executive, but the bill would force
Trump and ostensibly any successor in the White House to go through Congress in
order to repeal the sanctions.
As The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris wrote,
“Whilst the US constitution does not define the President’s power to
conduct foreign policy precisely (a good discussion of the issue can be
found here) I personally have no doubt this law crosses the line, and infringes on
the President’s constitutional right to conduct foreign policy in the best
interests as he judges it of the United States. Indeed, as I have said,
that is the actual intention of the law”.
In this sense, the legislation grants the Legislature powers which are
generally a prerogative of the Executive branch. Indeed, Barack Obama’s endless
stream of sanctions did not derive from Capitol Hill but from his Oval Office.
One thing that both Trump and Obama have in common is a penchant for
using executive orders to accomplish key elements of policy making. In this
sense, it would be entirely reasonable to surmise that on this basis, Obama
would have vetoed similar legislation on these technical grounds. Trump ought
to say this and say it publicly.
Because the bill involves Russian sanctions, of course any veto Trump
employs whether a full-veto or a line item veto, will result in the mainstream
media and political opponents in Washington criticising Trump as some sort of
‘Russian puppet’, but the msm and his opponents are largely doing this anyway.
By not vetoing the legislation, he will not win new friends but he will
make new enemies and important once at that.
2. Losing Europe
Under Barack Obama, the US lost a great deal of global influence in The
Middle East, Eurasia, Latin America and South East Asia. The one place where
America still has friends after the Obama years is in Europe. Unlike Obama who
always remained popular in major EU states and in Brussels itself, for mainly
stylistic reasons, Trump has often had a shaky relationship with key European
leaders like Angela Merkel.
But as his recent trip to Poland demonstrated, the Poles who are among
the most Russophobic nation in the world, welcomed Trump as one of their own.
Clearly, a country that is irrational enough to believe Russia might invade
Europe is still sensible enough to realise that Donald Trump isn’t a secret
Russian in any case.
Likewise, even though Merkel and Trump didn’t start off on the best
foot, it seems that French President Emmanuel Macron has become keen to
cultivate a good relationship with Trump. Trump attended Bastille Day
celebrations in Paris at Macron’s invitation during which both men agreed that
trying to remove the legitimate government of Syria should not be a political
or military goal of France or the US and by extrapolation, all of NATO.
Just about every EU nation, including France opposes the new sanctions.
Europe hasn’t suddenly become ‘pro-Russia’ but Europe does business with Russia
in spite of previous sanctions, this is particularly true in the energy sector.
The current crop of sanctions effectively disallow European companies
from doing the business they have done for years with Russian conglomerates.
Europe has voiced its opposition to the US moves in the strongest possible
manner, ranging from written condemnation deriving from individual nation
states, to a strongly worded pledge to retaliate against the US from the European Union should the sanctions become
US law.
Furthermore, many companies in Europe and indeed some European states,
do not harbour the same paranoia about Iran that the US does. The sanctions
which would target Russia as well as Iran and North Korea may prove harmful to
EU countries that do not share US zeal when it comes to Iran or North Korea.
The French energy giant Total just signed a $4.9 billion
deal with Iran for gas cultivation
in the Persian Gulf. Should the anti-Iran sanctions which are in the bill
interfere with this, many in France would be deeply angry.
If the US and Europe have this kind of unnecessary schism, America’s
close allies might be reduced to Japan, an increasingly anti-militant South
Korea, an increasingly dysfunctional Saudi Arabia and an increasingly
aggressive Israel. Can America really afford to lose Europe over a domestic
crusade against anything Russian? The clear answer is no.
3. Bad for US business
America’s leading companies have come out strongly
condemning the new legislation for many of
the same reasons European companies have. These companies include, BP,
ExxonMobil, General Electric, Boeing and Citigroup, MasterCard, Visa, Ford, Dow
Chemical, Procter & Gamble, International Paper, Caterpillar, and Cummins.
Donald Trump campaigned saying he would be the friend of both the
American worker and American businesses. With America’s biggest companies who
are also major employers coming out against the sanctions, many people from the
factory floor to the boardroom will feel deeply betrayed by a man whose own
career was in the private sector for most of his life. In this sense Trump owes
more to the wider business community than to the Republican party with whom he
hasn’t been long associated with.
If the Republican party which is ostensibly pro-business cannot listen
to the interests of major US companies, Donald Trump ought to do so.
4. The decision for Trump
If Donald Trump vetoes the bill, of course he will be accused of being
‘pro-Russia’, though he will hardly be accused of being pro-Iran or pro-North
Korea, even though the legislation targets all three countries.
The fact is that the Trump-Russia narrative is not going to be dropped
by the Democrats, neo-cons or MSM in any case. There is little else Trump can
do to fight the ‘Russia myth’ apart from surrounding himself with an apt legal
team to pick apart the ugly rumours as well as to continue to fight the MSM and
his opponents on Twitter in a manner that exposes their pomposity to the
general public.
The passage of this kind of bill so early into Trump’s Presidency is
proof positive that Trump does not have many allies in the Republican party.
The fact that on the same day, a Senate with a slim Republican majority needed
to reply on the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence, on top of the
vote of an ailing John McCain (who on foreign policy matters is no friend of
Trump in any case) in order to begin the debate to repeal and replace
Obamacare, is further proof that Donald Trump is in many respects an
independent President who is merely associated with the Republican party out of
what was thought to be a relationship of convenience. This is hardly the case
any more, the Republicans are publicly ungrateful for their Congressional
victories achieved largely because of their association with a popular and
charismatic Presidential candidate and Donald Trump is still Donald Trump, the
outsider who doesn’t seem to want to ‘join the club’, certainly not in terms of
style and in many ways, also in terms of substance.
The Republican party is no more Trump’s than the Democratic party is in
many ways. He ought to realise this and use his veto not to please Russia but
to please his own supporters. The fact that Russia has condemned the
move, at a time when the US and Russia
are at long last cooperating in south western Syria. ought to simply add one
more layer of motivation for Trump to do the only thing that makes sense in
terms of the wider world beyond the D.C. bubble: Trump should veto the
bill with the same tenacity with which he used to say “you’re fired” on The
Apprentice.
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