Some early implications of the Trump impeachment

Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:20:14 +0000

BEN KRITZ

LAST week, the US House of Representatives began “formal” impeachment inquiry proceedings against President Donald Trump, which came as a surprise to precisely no one with an IQ above 14, as he has been flirting with being the subject of serious criminal charges ever since he announced his candidacy for the presidency, and probably since he was born.

As a student of history, and American history in particular, this relatively rare development will occupy much of my attention over the coming weeks and months, and it should occupy everyone else’s, too, because it potentially has serious economic and political implications for this country and much of the rest of the world.

In the provisions for impeachment in the US Constitution, there are no real guidelines for how the House of Representatives should carry out the preparation of Articles of Impeachment, which will then be forwarded to the
Senate for trial, and Cheeto Mussolini’s possible (one can only hope) removal from office. Thus, each impeachment inquiry – it has only happened four times in US history – is a unique event.

In the current case, what “formal impeachment inquiry” apparently means is that the ongoing investigations of six different House committees into various misdeeds by the Great Pumpkin and his attendants will now be conducted with the objective of developing impeachable charges. At some point, the committee reports will be gathered together in one document – the Articles of Impeachment – which serves the same purpose as an indictment; the Senate will then conduct a trial of the president on those charges, and he can be removed by a two-thirds vote (67 of the 100 senators).

The historical odds are that Trump will not actually be removed from office; none of the other three presidents (Andrew Johnson in 1867, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998) against whom impeachment proceedings were initiated were convicted and removed. Nixon resigned just before the final House vote on the Articles of Impeachment against him (which would have been a near-unanimous vote), so he might have been the exception, but given the political nature of an impeachment, the odds of his surviving a trial were actually pretty good.
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In Trump’s case, the impeachment process may be largely irrelevant; the mere fact that it has begun will be enough to derail him, and likely prevent his reelection in November of next year. The direct effect of the process is that between now and January 2021, when the new president is inaugurated, US policy will be thrown into complete turmoil.

Most of us think this is a good thing, because US policy now is Trump’s policy, and it’s evil and stupid and needs to change, but for those who support this numbnuts, things could get more than a little uncomfortable. That includes an inexplicably large segment of the Philippine political and business class, as well as the public, who are apparently unaware that as an open racist, Trump actually hates you and would throw all your countrymen out of the US if he could figure out how. Don’t take it personally, though; he hates everyone who is not white North American trailer trash.

The first implication of the impeachment for the Philippines is that it will likely cause a drop in foreign investment. The US stock markets wobbled significantly when the impeachment inquiry was announced, and are going to see further shocks as more scandalous things are revealed in the coming weeks. Political uncertainty drives investors to the bond market, which is safer; as those yields go up, they will encourage investors to pull hot money out of overseas markets.

That in itself is not a big problem, as the Philippine financial markets are reasonably sound, but unfortunately, hot money investment does correlate to some extent with hard investment in things like new businesses and infrastructure. This will decline somewhat as well, most inconveniently at a time when President Duterte’s tantrum over other countries’ chiding him on his human rights record has left the government and major developers here scrambling for other sources of investment.

The second implication of the impeachment affects trade, and Duterte’s attachment to Trump may yet prove to be a bad choice in this respect as well. The US-China trade war that Trump started is hurting both countries, but the prevailing wisdom has been that the US, as the larger economy, probably had the upper hand. That has now changed; all China needs to do is wait it out, and in a relatively short period of time they will have some other than this man-sized carbuncle to deal with. The mutual markets for China and the US will open up again, and that could leave the Philippines, which up to now has been an attractive, albeit much smaller, alternative market for both on the back foot.

This is where Duterte’s political orientation might be a problem. From the Chinese point of view, a situation where its external trade is no longer as constrained means it will not have to tolerate some things it does not like, in particular, the explosive growth of the offshore gaming industry. The Philippine government may very well find itself in the position of having to assist China in dismantling what has become a very lucrative economic segment for this country.

From the US point of view, the growing power of the anti-Trump forces means that there is almost no chance that “meddlesome US lawmakers” are going to back off on their criticism of Duterte’s authoritarianism. This will also put a crimp in US investment and trade; it may only be a minor annoyance, but in a not-impossible extreme case, could result in some sanctions against the Philippines.
There is no reason at the moment why anyone in this country should act on what’s happening in Washington, but it is a unique situation with few precedents. Things could change very quickly, and it would be in everyone’s best interests here to pay close attention to the news.

ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Twitter: @benkritz

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