Vox: Jared Kushner is getting an award from Mexico, and Mexicans aren’t happy about it

The Order of the Aztec Eagle — or La Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca, in Spanish — is the highest honor Mexico’s government bestows on foreigners. It is awarded to individuals who’ve done a great service for Mexico or for humanity. Previous recipients include and Roberta Jacobson, the former US ambassador to Mexico, Bill Gates, and Queen Elizabeth II. [...]

Enrique Peña Nieto is deeply unpopular in Mexico, and this award for Kushner isn’t likely to win over detractors who already felt Peña Nieto let himself — and by extension, Mexico — get bullied by Trump. Incoming leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), who is taking office on December 1, has promised to take a much tougher stance against the US president, but bitterness persists about Peña Nieto’s stance toward Trump. [...]

But Duncan Wood, the director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, said Kushner might have helped stop Trump from tearing up NAFTA altogether — and helped salvage parts of the bilateral relationship that became extremely testy during Trump’s tenure. [...]

Kushner, along with other advisers, helped convince Trump to renegotiate a trade deal, rather than totally scrap NAFTA. In an April interview with the Washington Post, Kushner hinted as much, claiming that he explained to the president the “plusses and minuses” of unilaterally pulling out of NAFTA.  [...]

Which means there’s another reason Peña Nieto chose to honor Jared: to possibly secure future investment in his commitment to Mexico. “By giving this award,” Wood said, “you’re hoping to stay involved in the bilateral relationship.”

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Financial Times: Why Donald Trump will likely have the last laugh

FT chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman explains why the US president may go down as a leader who changed the course of history and embodied the spirit of an age.

WorldAffairs: Trade Wars: US, China, and Europe, Who Has the Most to Lose?

In recent weeks, searing rhetoric from President Trump has pushed our trading relations with both Europe and with China onto center stage. In the case of China, an escalating trade war has begun, and with Europe, President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker first clashed before agreeing in principle to work toward lowering barriers to commerce. Is Trump simply solving problems of his own making or is this part of a smart negotiating strategy that will ultimately benefit American consumers, producers and farmers? Can trade wars actually be won? Tyler Cowen, Holbert L. Harris chair of economics at George Mason University, and Gillian Tett, US managing editor for the Financial Times, discuss the ramifications of Trump's trade policy with Ray Suarez, former chief national correspondent for PBS NewsHour.

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BBC4 Analysis: The Invisible Hand of Donald Trump

Donald Trump's surprise elevation to the office of president last November stunned the world and electrified the financial markets. Promises to cut red tape, bring huge infrastructure projects to life, and sort out the byzantine American tax system propelled Wall Street to record highs. It's called the Trump Bump. Yet Trump's protectionist rhetoric simultaneously created fears of a global trade war.

Martin Wolf, Chief Economic Commentator of the Financial Times, reflects on what Trump has accomplished in economic terms in the year since the election heard round the world. Financial systems are recovering from the calamities of the last decade, but that improvement was well under way before Trump took the helm of the world's largest economy. New proposals from the administration are stalled for lack of clarity, infirmity of purpose and political disarray. This doesn't mean that President Trump's decisions on everything from trade tariffs to the Federal Reserve will not send ripples around the globe in the years ahead. He's vowed to deliver tax reform, build a wall, bring jobs home and tear up trade treaties. Will these promises still be delivered? If they are, what might follow?

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Vox: Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement is great news … for China

With the US stepping away from its role as a leader of the global fight against climate change, Beijing is already moving to fill the void, giving it a chance to benefit both diplomatically and economically. [...]

After Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, China inserted itself into trade talks among other nations disappointed by America’s reversal. As Canada and Mexico have felt spurned by Trump during the runup to renegotiating NAFTA, China has emerged as a more reliable trading prospect. [...]

In a statement to the press, Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union commissioner on climate action and energy, made the point even more forcefully: "No one should be left behind, but the EU and China have decided to move forward. Our successful cooperation on issues like emissions trading and clean technologies are bearing fruit. Now is the time to further strengthen these ties to keep the wheels turning for ambitious global climate action.” [...]

To make that a little more concrete, let’s take something like China’s jaw-droppingly ambitious One Belt, One Road initiative. It’s a Chinese-funded infrastructure project designed to connect China to 64 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa that make up around 60 percent of the world’s population.

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AP: NAFTA a sore spot for some Democrats on Clinton in Michigan

Bernie Sanders beat her in the state's Democratic primary by railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Republican Donald Trump is more popular with Michigan's working-class white voters than past GOP candidates, and has pledged to back out of the treaty that some blame for the loss of countless Rust Belt jobs.

While Clinton's history of supporting free trade may not cost her the state, it is costing campaign staff and money to defend its 16 electoral votes. [...]

Hillary Clinton supports renegotiating NAFTA, signed in 1992 and in effect since 1994, with Canada and Mexico. She also has said she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious agreement with Asian nations. [...]

A solid third of union members typically vote Republican in presidential elections. But Clinton's advantage among union members in surveys over Trump is the same as Obama's was over Arizona Sen. John McCain at the same point in the 2008 campaign, said Michael Podhorzer, political director with the American Federation of Labor.

He acknowledges Trump is stronger than past GOP nominees, at least with nonunion, working-class whites.

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Salon: Noam Chomksy: There’s nothing free about free trade agreements

Chomsky points out that “the so-called free-trade agreements are not free-trade agreements. To a larger extent they’re not even trade agreements. These are investor rights agreements.” He continued:

There’s a reason why they’re kept secret from the public and as soon as you look at them you see why. They’re not secret to the corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the detailed regulation – of course in the interest of their constituents. The investors are given the right to sue governments for their potentially future profits They go to private trade adjudiction groups made of largely corporate representatives. They’re already going on with NAFTA and we can expect more of them. The major trading partners already have agreements that have reduced tariffs substantially with few exceptions—not many.

Chomsky also noted that the phrase “climate change” does not appear once in these 280 pages.

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