EDITORIAL
Trump Wants To Revive the ‘American System of Economy’: Do You Know What That Means?
March 22 (EIRNS)—In his speeches Monday at a Kentucky rally and Tuesday to Republican Party gatherings, President Donald Trump stressed that he intends to lead the country to return to “the American System” of economy. In the estimation of very qualified observers, the President “really meant it” both times—he wants to return to the actual economic policies of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, the “American System.”
Is Trump the President who can return us to the American System of economy? That remains to be determined, and depends on the country as well—on us, on you. Should we return to it? Absolutely.
With some exceptions, most Americans and citizens of other nations no longer know what the American System of economy was. It was defined by Abraham Lincoln’s economist Henry C. Carey, for example, as the American System directly opposed to the “British System” of free trade.
Those are the same British who for the past year, have been driving the McCarthyite campaign to discredit Donald Trump and drive him from the White House.
The “get Trump” McCarthyism is British, because Trump wants to return—after decades of disastrous “globalization” and deindustrialization”—to the American System of economy. And he appreciates the benefits of peace, of stopping Bush’s and Obama’s endless wars and collaborating with Russia and China to do so.
Thus a British intelligence “dossier” produced for Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump, was the start of turning the Democratic Party’s leadership into a McCarthyite mob looking for “Russians” lurking behind every White House column.
The pillars of the American System of economy were: 1) protecting and supporting American production so that the United States would become the great manufacturing nation it became; 2) constantly promoting and building the most modern national infrastructure, for the same reason—the transcontinental railroads, the national highway system, the Apollo Moon project; and 3) a credit system based on national banking invented by the great Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
Today it means taking down Wall Street’s mega-casinos by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act; establishing a Hamiltonian national bank for infrastructure and manufacturing; investing trillions in the highest technology new infrastructure; developing fusion power, returning to the Moon and to deep space with human colonization and development.
This is what EIR Founding Editor, American System economist Lyndon LaRouche, developed recently as “Four Laws” to save the U.S. economy.
The American System also meant the Monroe Doctrine—that the young United States would do everything possible to keep the British and French financial empires out of the Americas, so that all our nations could develop their economies and make reciprocal trade agreements to mutual benefit.
Today, the American System means linking up with China’s New Silk Road initiative, where 60 nations are making such agreements in a “win-win” paradigm.
The Schiller Institute and EIR are building a major international conference next month in New York City to bring Trump’s United States into that new paradigm, where the “American System” can flourish.
President Trump’s understanding of the American System today is rudimentary, but seriously meant. The more Americans who know what it should mean, and act on that, the better chance that the British System era of “globalization” will end during his Presidency.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
To GOP Activists, Trump Again Invokes American System Economics
March 22 (EIRNS)—Speaking to a dinner of the Republican National Congressional Committee March 21, President Donald Trump fervently spoke of the “American System of economy” for a second day, following his evocation of Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and the American System at a Kentucky mass rally March 20. The last President to preach the American System may have been William McKinley; Trump’s “whig” speeches have generated a freaked-out response from the Von Mises Society and similar British and “Austrian school” free traders and “libertarians.”
“I called it the American model,” said Trump, in a speech that had at first trod familiar ground of congratulations to fundraisers and Republicans present including himself. “And this is the system our Founders wanted. Our greatest American leaders—including George Washington, Hamilton, Jackson, Lincoln—they all agreed that for America to be a strong nation it must also be a great manufacturing nation.”
The President invoked McKinley: “The Republican platform of 1896—more than a century ago—stated that ‘Protection and reciprocity are twin measures of American policy and go hand in hand…. We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection, as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity.”
Then Trump progressed to the American System’s “internal improvements,” or infrastructure projects in today’s terms. “Our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, ran his first campaign for public office in 1832—when he was only 23 years old. He began by imagining the benefits a railroad could bring to his port [part] of Illinois—without ever having seen a steam-powered train. He had no idea, and yet he knew what it could be. Thirty years later, as President, Lincoln signed the law that built the first Transcontinental Railroad, uniting our country from ocean to ocean….
“Another great Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, had a vision of a national infrastructure plan. As an officer in the Army after World War I, he joined a military convoy that trekked across the nation to the Pacific Coast. It traveled along the Lincoln Highway—called then the Lincoln Highway. Its journey began by the South Lawn of the White House, at a monument known today as Zero Milestone. Anybody know where that is? The journey made a great impression on then young Eisenhower. More than three decades later, as President, he signed the bill that created our great Interstate Highway System—once again uniting us as a nation.
“Now is time for a new Republican administration, working with our Republican Congress, to pass the next great infrastructure bill. Our party must dream as big and as bold as Lincoln and Eisenhower.”
Trump continued to the American System subjects of invention, and foreign policy. “Imagine the breakthroughs that will breathe fresh life into forgotten places. Picture the new roads that will carve pathways all across our land—and we need them. And think of the new inventions that will lift up the sights of our nation.
“Finally, as we imagine this new prosperity at home, let us also work to achieve real and enduring peace abroad…. The best Republican Presidents have not only been warfighters, but also peacemakers. We will never hesitate to do what we must to keep us safe today, but we will always seek a more peaceful tomorrow. We will, and we will succeed…. If we stand for these things—safety, prosperity and peace—then there is no limit to what we can achieve.”
Nunes: Evidence Is In Hand that Trump and Team Were Monitored under Obama
March 22 (EIRNS)—House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes called a press conference midday today to announce that sources had stepped forward to provide him with proof of extensive intelligence community collection and dissemination of surveillance information on President-elect Trump and his transition team, carried out in the months of November, December, and January. That is, under Obama—just as President Donald Trump had charged.
The House Intelligence Committee will thoroughly investigate this surveillance and its subsequent dissemination, to determine (1) who was aware of this activity; (2) who requested and authorized the unmasking of Trump team names; (3) if anyone directed the intelligence community to focus on Trump and his associations; and (4) if any laws, regulations, and rules had been broken in the process, Nunes specified.
The British-Obama establishment is going wild that their “Trumpgate” so-called narrative has just been trumped.
Nunes reported that he had read through “dozens” of official intelligence community reports “legally” provided to him by sources responding to his call during the March 20 Intelligence Committee hearings for anyone who had information on surveillance of President-elect Trump to bring it to his committee’s attention.
The reports confirm that information was collected by the U.S. intelligence community on Trump and his associates, in what appeared to be from “incidental collection” (i.e., ostensibly picked up in the course of surveillance of non-U.S. citizens) which was legal, Nunes said. However, “details about U.S. persons involved in the incoming administration with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reports,” and the names of Trump transition members monitored in such “incidental” collection had been “unmasked.” This is a crime.
None of the monitoring was related to Russia or any investigation of Russian activities, nor were they part of any criminal investigation, from what he has been provided, Nunes noted. He added that he is “alarmed” by this pattern of intelligence community monitoring, as it looks a lot like what was revealed a year and a half ago as being run against members of Congress, also.
Nunes reported that he had spoken to the heads of the CIA and NSA this morning, informing them of this new material, and requesting that they comply with his March 15 request for all records of just such activity by this March 24. He expected to speak to FBI chief James Comey today, and didn’t know yet if the FBI would comply, but he was on his way over to the White House to brief officials on this evidence.
‘A Breach in the Anti-Putin Group-Think’
March 22 (EIRNS)—Under that headline, Russian expert and Committee for East-West Accord member Gilbert Doctorow highlighted for ConsortiumNews, yesterday the significance of Foreign Affairs’ recent publishing an article suggesting President Trump understands more about U.S.-Russian relations than the Washington policy elite. Robert English’s article, “Russia, Trump, and A New Détente,” trashes decades of U.S. Russia-is-the-enemy and Putin-is-the-devil policy.
Foreign Affairs is “the preeminent professional journal of American diplomacy … [which] has been carrying water for the State Department since the days of the Cold War,” Doctorow points out; it has published one known article which bucked the line of the neoconservative and liberal intervenists that “Russian aggression” is responsible for everything.
Author English’s arguments, while thorough and uncompromising, are not extraordinary, Doctorow writes. What is “stunning,” is that Foreign Affairs would choose to publish a piece whose premise is that stated in the opening paragraph:
“For 25 years, Republicans and Democrats have acted in ways that look much the same to Moscow. Washington has pursued policies that have ignored Russian interests (and sometimes international law as well) in order to encircle Moscow with military alliances and trade blocs conducive to U.S. interests. It is no wonder that Russia pushes back. The wonder is that the U.S. policy elite doesn’t get this, even as foreign-affairs neophyte Trump apparently does.”
Doctorow suggests that Foreign Affairs broke its policy line, because, despite the Washington, D.C. frenzy against Russia, “the underlying reality is that the neocons are descending into a fury over their sudden loss of power…. Foreign Affairs magazine may be bending to the recognition that it is risking its credibility if it continues to put all its eggs in the we-hate-Russia basket.”
Summit between Xi and Trump Generally Assumed, but Not Confirmed
March 22 (EIRNS)—Media in the United States, China, and Asia continue to report that Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will meet in the United States April 6-7. But there is still no confirmation of this from either government, under concerted attacks by the British and their allies who fear “major power agreements” among America, China, and Russia.
The closest thing to substantiation from China came from the Foreign Ministry March 19: “On this visit to China by Secretary of State Tillerson, both sides had a deep discussion on arranging a meeting soon between the two heads of state and began relevant preparatory work,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. “Both sides agreed to remain in close touch about this, to ensure the smooth success and fruitfulness of exchanges between the heads of state.”
In the United States only Secretary of State Tillerson’s decision not to attend the April 5-6 NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels has led to reports that Tillerson will be taking part in Xi-Trump meetings. After angry British reactions, the State Department said March 21 that Tillerson was open to having the NATO meeting date be changed so that he would attend.
Meanwhile, the White House confirmed President Trump will go to the NATO heads of state and government summit May 25. China has invited him to the Belt and Road Initiative Forum in Beijing May 14-15, at which at least a score of national leaders have confirmed plans to attend.
Reports that Tillerson would go to Moscow April 12 also remain unconfirmed by either the United States or Russian officials as of today.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Trump Signs FY2017 NASA Authorization Bill, First in Seven Years
March 22 (EIRNS)—Affirming the bipartisan Congressional consensus that NASA should continue on its missions to develop the capabilities to take man beyond Earth orbit, President Trump signed the FY17 NASA Authorization bill in the White House yesterday. The signing was very high profile, with a dozen Congressmen, the Vice President, the Acting NASA Administrator, and two astronauts present. The bill outlines the priorities of the Congress for NASA for FY2017, which began October 2016, and is intended as a policy document of input for the new Administration.
The President noted that this is the first Congressional authorization legislation for NASA in seven years. “It’s been a long time since a bill like this has been signed reaffirming our national commitment to the core mission of NASA, human space exploration, space science and technology,” he said.
In the authorization bill, and the also-passed Transition Act, Congress stresses support for the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, support for commercial space companies, continued scientific missions to the planets, with the ultimate aim of a manned missions to Mars. As there is not agreement on manned lunar missions, this is not proposed in either bill.
At the signing ceremony, President Trump said, “With this legislation, we support NASA’s scientists, engineers, astronauts, and their pursuit of discovery. America’s space program has been a blessing to our people and to the entire world. Almost half a century ago, our brave astronauts first planted the American flag on the Moon. That was a big moment in our history. Now this nation is ready to be the first in space once again.”
Details of the FY2018 budget proposal the White House will send to Capitol Hill have not been released. But the top-line funding level and description so far provided, does not indicate any new initiatives leading to a manned lunar landing, or support for accelerating the current timetable for manned circumlunar missions on the SLS. At the ceremony, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the President will be reactivating the National Space Council, which he will lead. This involves representatives from a half-dozen government departments, in addition to NASA, with different and often conflicting priorities; if the White House were to depend upon it for space policy, it could delay making substantial changes to the current policy. The sooner a new NASA Administrator is appointed, and this Administration’s policy is articulated, the better.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Infrastructure: The Need Is National Investments, Great Projects
March 22 (EIRNS)—A new study of infrastructure investment in the United States by Moody’s Investors’ Service compares the recent “infrastructure report card 2017” of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to actual investments in public construction and infrastructure over the past four decades. The report finds a complete erosion of the role of the national government in investing in infrastructure since at least 1980. It follows that U.S. Presidents and Congresses have not been setting forth any important infrastructure missions, either.
Moody’s shows that the Federal, formerly leading component of infrastructure investment, going back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s indelible projects, has collapsed over time. Federal infrastructure investment had grown only from $50 billion/annually to $95 billion annually over a full 40-year span, as charted in the report. It has actually been falling since 2010 under the Obama Administration despite the ARRA, or so-called “Stimulus Act” of 2009.
This has made states and cities the primary investors in public construction, to such an extent that they more than triple Federal investment with about $300 billion in 2016, for example. This means that what investment there is, is going into local repair, maintenance, and local new projects which can range from pocket parks to—at best—light rail systems.
Moody’s also compares the investment to the necessary level, outlined in detail by ASCE in its report, simply to maintain and replace existing infrastructure. It finds that taking all levels of government together, there is a $1.1 trillion shortfall in just the next three years, against ASCE’s estimated needed investment of $2.67 trillion. And this $1.1 trillion shortfall, again, is merely for maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure; not for the creation of any national mission such as high-speed rail networks, water management systems, nuclear desalination systems—let alone the great “intergalactic highway system” of the U.S. space exploration future.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
New York Times and Time Magazine Turn Their Fire on Duterte
March 22 (EIRNS)—Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, who is part of the effort to oust Duterte (which would turn the country back to Wall Street with her as the puppet president), granted a March 14 interview with Time magazine. She lied about the war on drugs and calling on the British and Soros-funded NGOs to continue their role in the color revolution against Duterte. In the interview she stated: “We are grateful that the international NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have taken a closer look at the situation and are actively engaging the government to help solve and curb human rights problems in this country.”
Also, the New York Times took a moment off from their coup attempt against Trump, to slander and threaten President Duterte, in a long piece on March 21, sub-titled “He has turned his violent vision into national policy.” Times political hitman Richard Paddock repeated all of the tired slanders, concluding that Duterte is a “mass murderer.”
Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a statement today that the Times article “sounds like a well-paid hack job for well-heeled clients with shady motives. One gets the feeling NYT is not interested in presenting the whole truth, only that with which they can bully those who attempt an independent foreign policy.”
Precisely—in the U.S. as in the Philippines.
Italian, Turkish Foreign Ministers on Importance of Relations with Russia
March 22 (EIRNS)—Both the Italian and Turkish Foreign Ministers are in Washington, where they commented on the importance of relations with Russia. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, on Tuesday, called for overcoming problems in relations between Russia and the West, and a return to the G8 format.
“We need to overcome our problems, we need warm relations with Russia,” the foreign minister said in reply to a TASS query at an Atlantic Council meeting in Washington. “We need to overcome sanctions, and we need to implement the Minsk agreements. We need to make any efforts to implement these agreements,” he said. “I think it’s in the mind of any responsible man that it’s useful for the world to have a warm relationship with Russia.”
Commenting on the need to get back to the G8 format, he said: “And I hope that the G7 in Taormina will be the last G7, and the next one will be G8”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who is in Washington for talks ahead of the meeting of the anti-ISIS coalition, told TASS that Turkey and Russia have restored their relations and are now working together to solve regional problems.
“We have overcome our differences with Russia. At the moment our ties have been restored and we cooperate in solving a number of regional problems,” Cavusoglu said.
