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Trump signs executive orders to crack down on trade abuses, increase enforcement

One week before he hosts a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump on Friday signed a pair of executive orders aimed at cracking down on trade abuses and identifying the causes of America’s massive trade deficit.
“We’re going to get these bad trade deals straightened out,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “The jobs and wealth have been stripped from our country, year after year, decade after decade, trade deficit upon trade deficit reaching more than $700 billion last year alone and lots of jobs.”
The first executive order concentrates on tougher enforcement of anti-dumping laws and increasing the collection of anti-dumping penalties and so-called countervailing duties -- a mechanism used against foreign governments that subsidize their producers and sell goods at below-market prices.
Anti-dumping penalties target exporters that sell goods below the cost of production.
Between 2001 and 2016, about $2.8 billion in import taxes went uncollected from companies in 40 countries, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Friday. He told reporters that by not using the enforcement mechanism properly, Americans lose out on funds that could be used for other purposes.
The second executive order calls on the Commerce Department and U.S. trade representative to produce a comprehensive report to identify “every possible cause of the U.S. trade deficit.”
Robert Lighthizer, Trump's nominee for post, has yet to be confirmed.
Once completed, the findings of the report will serve as the foundation that will guide the Trump administration’s future trade policy.
Officials will consider the impact on deficits of trade abuses, non-reciprocal trade practices, specific trade obligations, poor or inconsistent enforcement and World Trade Organization rules.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praised Friday's step.
"If anyone had any doubt about the president's resolve to fix the trade problems, these two executive orders should end that speculation now and for all time," he said standing next to Trump. "This marks the beginning of the totally new chapter in the American trade relationship with our partners overseas."
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Ross said the first-of-its-kind report demonstrates that the administration will “not to do anything abruptly, but to take a very measured and analytical approach, both to analyzing the problem and therefore to developing the solutions for it.”
The cautious approach is welcome news to some in the business community.
“They are not just jumping into something. They are going to carefully look at what it is we really want to accomplish and hopefully think about how it will affect us and the other country,” founder of Paul Mitchell and billionaire investor John Paul DeJori told Fox Business Network.
Administration officials have 90 days to finish a country-by-country and product-by-product analysis.
The report will also examine whether bilateral deficits are caused by free trade deals, like NAFTA, and actions taken by previous administrations.
White House Trade Council President Peter Navarro broke slightly from Trump, saying deficits are not always bad for the economy and that bad behavior is not always the cause.
For example, one of the reasons for the trade deficit with Canada is the U.S. is not energy independent and imports a lot of oil.
During the campaign, then-candidate Trump frequently singled out China as a trade abuser and promised to hold China to account for unfair trade practices, including currency manipulation.
Asked Friday why Trump has not fulfilled his pledge to label China a currency manipulator on "Day One," Spicer said a decision would occur after next Thursday's meeting with Xi Jinping.
Navarro argued the executive orders address far broader concerns than just China.
"Let's not make this a China story. This is a story about trade abuses, this is a story about an under-collection of duties," he said.
Trump, however, recognizes the potential for an uncomfortable meeting next week in Palm Beach, Fla.
"The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one in that we can no longer have massive trade deficits,” Trump said in a Thursday tweet.
He added that "American companies must be prepared to look at other alternatives."
On March 7, the Commerce Department released figures showing the U.S. had amassed its largest trade deficit since March 2012.
In January 2017, the trade deficit for goods and services was 11.8 percent higher as compared to January 2016, increasing from $43.4 billion to $48.5 billion.
“Today’s data shows there is much work to be done,” said Ross in a statement, adding that the administration would in the coming months “renegotiate bad trade deals and bring renewed energy to trade enforcement in defense of all hard-working Americans.”

VA retaliation against whistleblower: doctor kept in empty room

Dr. Dale Klein

Dr. Dale Klein may be the highest-paid U.S. government employee who literally does nothing while he’s on the clock. A highly rated pain management specialist at the Southeast Missouri John J. Pershing V.A., Klein is paid $250,000 a year to work with veterans, but instead of helping those who served their country, he sits in a small office and does nothing. All day. Every day.
“I sit in a chair and I look at the walls,” the doctor said of his typical workday. “It feels like solitary confinement.”
A double board certified physician and Yale University fellow, Klein said the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) took away his patients and privileges almost a year ago after, he alleges, he blew the whistle on secret wait-lists and wait-time manipulation at the V.A. in Poplar Bluff, Mo., as well as his suspicion that some veterans were reselling their prescriptions on the black market.
When his superiors did nothing, Klein went to the inspector general.
“Immediately after the V.A. found out I made these disclosures, I started to get retaliated against,” Klein said.
Klein was initially placed on administrative leave. The Missouri-V.A. closed his pain management clinic and tried to terminate him. According to court documents, the V.A. tried to fire Klein “not based on substandard care or lack of clinical competence” but instead for “consistent acceleration of trivial matters through his chain of command.”
“I do not consider secret wait-lists and manipulations of wait times to be trivial matters,” Klein said.
The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency in Washington, D.C., made it clear that since the doctor was a whistleblower, he could not be fired. But Klein said the retaliation continued and believes his superiors stripped him of his duties to silence him.
“It could set a bad precedent for other whistleblowers because they're going to say, ‘I don't want to risk my livelihood, my career, my security because I see what happened to Dr. Klein and I don't want that to happen to me or my family’,” said Natalie Khawam, president and founder of the Whistleblower Law Firm, which represents Klein.
The situation grew so dire that Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chair Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., chose to step in, writing a letter in January to the acting V.A. secretary requesting the V.A. “cease all retaliatory actions” against Klein.
“I'm concerned about a doctor who could be utilizing his skills to help veterans, but who is not able to utilize those skills,” Johnson said.
Remarkably, Klein isn’t the only V.A. employee who allegedly has been retaliated against. In fact, his story sounds eerily similar to that of Brian Smothers, who worked at the Denver V.A. from 2015 until last November when he says conditions grew so hostile he quit.
Smothers served in the Colorado Army National Guard and Reserves from 1999 to 2007, and later joined the Denver V.A. to help veterans engage with their own healthcare and assisted the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder clinical team.
“I come from a family of veterans who really highly values service to others and helping veterans and that's what I wanted to dedicate my life to doing… helping veterans who may be struggling,” he said.
Smothers was working as a peer support specialist when he alleges he found more than 3,500 veterans on what he believes were “secret” wait-lists at V.A. facilities in Denver, Golden and Colorado Springs.
"It looked like some kind of game they were playing with veteran’s mental healthcare, and I was very upset," Smothers said. “It became clear to me very quickly that many of the veterans that were on the PTSD clinical team’s wait-list had been waiting for care for three, four, five, six months,” Smothers said.
The reason, Smothers alleges, is profit: “People who run the V.A. and the mental health division hid these wait-lists so they could meet performance goals, and as a consequence of meeting these goals, got bonuses. They defrauded the federal government because it benefited them."
Smothers is haunted by one veteran’s death in particular, an Army Ranger in Colorado Springs who told the V.A. that he had been waiting for care and was suicidal. Instead of helping him, the V.A. allegedly placed him on a wait-list and he committed suicide a short time later, Smothers said.
"I wish I could have done more to change the system from within because as far as I understand nothing is being done to change any of this," Smothers said.
After Smothers reported the allegations to the inspector general, he said his superiors retaliated by forcing him to sit in his office, without any work assignments or authority to see patients. Human Resources also tried to get him to destroy the wait-lists, he alleges, and sign a piece of paper saying he had “compromised the integrity of the healthcare system," Smothers said.
The V.A. declined to address the allegations on camera and instead referred us to the inspector general, who confirmed it "identified wait-time and other issues in recent published reports and testimony before Congress regarding Colorado V.A. facilities."
Sen. Johnson intervened on Smothers’ behalf and got the inspector general to launch an investigation.
“It has quite honestly been shocking to somebody like me who comes from the private sector, the pervasiveness of retaliation even though we have 100 years of laws against retaliating against whistleblowers in government,” Johnson said.
Johnson is now trying to pass a whistleblower protection bill to help V.A. employees like Smothers and Klein.
A spokesperson from the V.A. said due to on-going investigations, the V.A. cannot comment on specific cases but added the department recognizes the importance of all employees, to include whistleblowers, who identify problems that impede the optimal delivery of care and services to Veterans.
Klein said he hopes the V.A., under the Trump administration, will make substantial changes so veterans can get quality care they need and so those who uncover problems or wrongdoing – and report it – are protected.
“This is a heart-stopping moment for the V.A. and the transformation can start in Poplar Bluff, Mo.”

North Korea's 'reckless' actions must be stopped, Mattis says

North Korea’s “reckless” actions in regards to its nuclear weapons and missile programs “has got to be stopped,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday.
Speaking at a news conference in London, Mattis raised the North Korea issue in response to a reporter’s question about Iran. He suggested that North Korea is a more urgent problem.
“This is a threat of both rhetoric and growing capability, and we will be working with the international community to address this,” he said. "We are working diplomatically, including with those that we might be able to enlist in this effort to get North Korea under control. But right now it appears to be going in a very reckless manner."
"That's got to be stopped," he concluded.
The reporter noted that Mattis, as head of U.S. Central Command in 2012, had said Iran was the main threat facing the United States. In responding, Mattis quickly pivoted to North Korea, which has rattled Washington with threats to attack the U.S. with nuclear missiles.
North Korea is reportedly preparing for a new nuclear test.
When asked about a U.S. general’s comment on Russia reportedly giving weapons to the Taliban, Mattis said they have seen activities between the two, but would not confirm if weapons exchange was involved.
“What they are up to there, in light of their other activities, gives us concern,” he added. “We look to (engage) with Russia on a political or diplomatic level, but right now Russia is choosing to be a strategic competitor, and we are finding that we can only have very modest expectations in areas that we can cooperate with Russia contrary to how we were just 10 years ago, five years ago.”
During the press conference, Mattis largely sidestepped the issue of Assad’s future in Syria and said no decision has been made on deploying more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
“I have not made (a) recommendation to (the) president,” he said.
Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Border wall bidder getting death threats, deemed traitor because he is Hispanic

A U.S. worker builds a section of the border wall opposite the city of Ciudad Juarez, Nov. 9, 2016.

The owner of a Texas construction company interested in the massive border wall project along the U.S.-Mexico border said he is receiving death threats and being called a traitor in part because he is of Mexican descent.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘You’re Latino. How can you build a wall to keep other Latinos out?’” said Penna Group’s CEO Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga to The Washington Post.
The Fort-Worth businessman said it was not an easy decision to bid on the controversial project — not least because 80 percent of his workforce is Latino.
TRUMP'S BORDER WALL FUNDING WILL LIKELY HAVE TO WAIT
“We need to be a productive part of the solution, rather than sit on the sidelines,” Evangelista-Ysasaga said when Penna’s bid was first announced. He explained that one of the reasons he jumped in was that he had heard rumors that other firms might propose inhumane methods like electrified barriers.

Approximately 200 companies have responded to the federal government’s requests for proposals for a solid concrete border wall and, according to the Post, 32 companies are Hispanic-owned.
FOR BIDDERS, TRUMP’S WALL IS PRO-BUSINESS, NOT
ANTI-IMMIGRATION
“The American people have been asking our politicians for 35 years to do something about immigration, and nothing has been done,” he told the Dallas Morning News earlier this month.
“Our hope is that with a secure border ... they will finally have an appetite to pass some real comprehensive immigration reform."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expected to start awarding contracts by late-April after the deadline for proposals was extended to April 4.

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Hillary Clinton aides had access to State Dept. after she left, says key lawmaker

When Hillary Clinton resigned as Secretary of State in 2013, she negotiated continuing access to classified and top-secret documents for herself and six staffers under the designation "research assistants," according to a powerful senator who notes that Clinton was later deemed "extremely careless" with such information.
The staff apparently retained access even after Clinton announced her run for president in April 2015, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The access was ostensibly granted to facilitate work on Clinton's memoir, but Grassley said he was only able to verify it after the Obama administration left the White House.

“It is so unimaginatively offensive that Hillary Clinton or her staff would have any access to classified or top secret information."
- Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch

“I have repeatedly asked the State Department whether Secretary Clinton and her associates had their clearances suspended or revoked to which the Obama Administration refused to respond,” Grassley wrote in a March 30 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“Recently, the State Department informed the Committee that six additional Secretary Clinton staff at State were designated as her research assistants which allowed them to retain their clearances after leaving the Department,” Grassley added.
The State Department has not yet responded it an inquiry from Fox News as to whether Clinton, or her staff, including then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, her traveling chief of staff and former assistant, who went on to become the vice chair of her presidential campaign, and Jake Sullivan, her senior policy advisor, still have access to the classified and top-secret archives and systems.
Clinton could not immediately be reached for comment.
Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Thursday launched an inquiry into the matter, citing among his concerns FBI director James Comey’s July 5 announcement where he said the FBI found Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Grassley also contended there is “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information...”
During the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server and her handling of top secret and classified information, Comey acknowledged there were seven email chains on Clinton’s server that were classified at the “Top Secret/Special Access Program level.” Another 2,000 emails on her private server were also found to have contained information deemed classified now, though not marked classified when sent. The server also contained 22 top-secret emails deemed too damaging to national security to be released.
Grassley wants more answers from the State Department now that Tillerson is in charge, including whether it ever investigated or sanctioned Clinton and her staff for mishandling information.
“It is unclear what steps the State Department has taken to impose administrative sanctions,” Grassley said. “Any other government workers who engaged in such serious offenses would, at a minimum, have their clearances suspended pending an investigation. The failure to do so has given the public the impression that Secretary Clinton and her associates received special treatment.”
Grassley said former Secretary of State John Kerry ignored his queries in 2015 and 2016.
In 2015, Cheryl Mills’ attorney said her client had access as late as Oct. 30 of that year, according to documents reviewed by Fox News. After leaving the State Department, Mills was an advisor to Clinton’s presidential bid. Heather Samuelson, a lawyer who worked under Mills and also was a staffer for Clinton in 2008 during her presidential run, also apparently retained an active Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance, according to records reviewed by Fox News.
Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, a conservative Washington-based government watchdog group that has filed a number of lawsuits related to the Clinton email scandal, said it is “outrageous” that Clinton and her staff would have access after they left the state department, and may still have access, after such egregious behavior.
“It is so unimaginatively offensive that Hillary Clinton or her staff would have any access to classified or top secret information," Farrell said. "It is a mindblower.
“Any other government employee, I don’t care what department or agency they are from, would have had their access to classified and top secret information revoked and their clearance suspended, pending the outcome of an investigation into the mishandling of such information,” Farrell added.

Trump travel ban: Administration appeals Hawaii judge's new ruling blocking ban

President Trump’s administration on Thursday appealed the latest court ruling against his revised travel ban to the same court that refused to reinstate the original version.
A day earlier, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii handed the government its latest defeat by issuing a longer-lasting hold on Trump’s executive order.
The Department of Justice filed the appeal with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the appeals court had rejected Trump’s previous order. The court upheld the decision in a 3-0 ruling on Feb. 9. The main argument from the Trump administration was that judges do not have the authority to second-guess executive decisions on items like immigration and national security, the report said.
Watson’s decision came after the DOJ argued for a narrower ruling covering only the ban on new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries. The department urged the judge to allow a freeze on the U.S. refugee program to go forward.
Government attorney Chad Readler said halting the flow of refugees had no effect on Hawaii and the state has not shown how it is harmed by the ban. Watson disagreed.
The administration says the executive order falls within the president’s power to protect national security and will ultimately succeed, while Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin likened the revised ban to a neon sign flashing “Muslim ban” that the government hasn’t turned off.
The White House believes Trump’s executive order is legal, necessary for national security and will ultimately be allowed to move forward, spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday.
Watson’s indefinite hold is “just the latest step that will allow the administration to appeal,” Spicer said.