Trump upsets some foreign policy applecarts, but as SLL has said repeatedly, the national security establishment’s real fear of Trump is that he’s got the goods on it and can expose and prosecute all sorts of corruption and criminality. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:
Why is the US national security Establishment – the CIA, the FBI, the Dr. Strangeloves – engaged in open warfare against the President? Why, ever since well before Trump’s stunning victory, has the political class done everything in its power to destroy him? We’ve never seen this kind of thing before – at least, not so out in the open. Certainly there have been internal power struggles and plenty of palace intrigue, but this kind of left-right near unanimity, coupled with the brazen activism of the “intelligence community,” is unprecedented. The full institutional power of the Deep State is being deployed to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive – not in some Latin American banana republic but right here in the good ol’ USA.
Why is this happening?
Here is why, and if you click on the link you’ll find the answer:
“President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to threaten to withdraw US troops from South Korea if he can’t get a better trade deal with Seoul.
“In a fundraising speech in Missouri, Trump told donors South Korea had become rich but that American politicians never negotiated better deals, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed to CNN by an attendee.
“‘We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them,’ Trump said. ‘We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens,’ Trump said.
“The President went on to argue, ‘Our allies care about themselves. They don’t care about us.’”
The South Korean Finance Minister, Kim Dong-yeon, found this upsetting:
“‘We don’t think it’s ideal to link an economic issue with such an issue [the withdrawal of US troops],’ said Kim, while speaking on South Korean TBS radio.”
This linkage is, indeed, the missing link that is always absent from ostensibly libertarian critiques of Trumpian trade protectionism. Well, yes, it’s quite true that tariffs are taxes, that they hurt consumers – i.e., everyone – and benefit only a few producers at the expense of the rest of us. Yet these libertarian critics never mention that we are also paying for the defense of our trading partners, a gigantic subsidy that is an essential part of the deal we make with our Asian and European protectorates. In exchange for giving, say, South Korea unobstructed access to our markets, Seoul essentially gives up its sovereignty by allowing US soldiers to occupy the country.
To continue reading: Trump Is The Great Disruptor
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
“…these libertarian critics never mention…”
I wonder how J.Raimondo is getting along with the libertarian crowd. At least what appears at SLL.
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I don’t know. I didn’t follow the links in his article referring back to some articles detailing how some libertarians are now supporting NATO and have “jumped on the new Cold War bandwagon.” I think that’s a minority of libertarians, though. I’m a libertarian and would do away with NATO in a heartbeat, and I think you can tell I haven’t jumped on any bandwagons lately. I post Raimondo’s stuff because he’s provocative and I agree with a fair amount of it, although by no means all of it. I don’t think I agree 100 percent with anyone I post.
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