CHINA OKS 38 TRUMP TRADEMARKS:
MANY OF HIS supporters expect Mexico to pay for President Trump’s border wall, but they may be the ones who pay the price.
A draft of Trump’s budget obtained by The Washington Post lays out cuts to FEMA, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Agency to secure $2.9 billion for the wall.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday only that “the process is being worked through.”
But if the blueprint obtained by The Post is accurate, cuts to programs under the Department of Homeland Security could impact red states and the safety agenda that helped Trump secure the presidency.
Cutting funding for Federal Emergency Management Agency could be detrimental to areas of the South — some of the same ones that heavily turned out for Trump at the ballot booth.
The disaster relief agency could see an 11% budget cut, according to the draft. Southern states, especially coastal ones prone to floods and tornadoes, have relied on the agency to rebuild after increasingly chaotic storm seasons.
Louisiana — where Trump got 58% of the vote — has especially benefited from FEMA. Last October, the agency awarded the state $146 million to cover local expenses for debris removal and rebuilding following severe flooding in August.
Storms and tornadoes in late January killed about 20 people in three red states: Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.
The Coast Guard, for which the budget might be cut by 14%, has stopped drugs from coming into the U.S.
The TSA — an agency founded in response to 9/11 — has also busted people trying to get on airplanes with weapons. The agency, which employs more than 44,000 officers, is looking at an 11% cut. The Trump administration is also considering $6 billion in cuts for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. CHINA HAS rapidly approved 38 new trademarks for President Trump and his family in the past few weeks — just the latest Trump business deals that ethics experts see as a possible constitutional violation.
China’s Trademark Office published the preliminary approvals from Feb. 27 to Monday, after already registering one Trump construction trademark earlier in February, records show.
The office approved applications for hotels, golf clubs, shops, real estate companies, restaurants, bodyguards, massage parlors and even social escort services — paving the way for a potential Trump empire in China.
The trademarks will be formally approved after 90 days unless there are official objections.
One intellectual property expert in Hong Kong said he had never seen the office OK so many applications so swiftly.
“For all these marks to sail through so quickly and cleanly, with no similar marks, no identical marks, no issues with specifications — boy, it’s weird,” Dan Plane, director of Simone IP Services, told The Associated Press.
Trump’s lawyers in China applied for the trademarks in April 2016 — months before he won the presidency, but long after he started attacking China on the campaign trail, accusing it of stealing American jobs and cheating on trade deals.
Trump said at one rally in May that Americans were letting China “rape our country” and that it was guilty of “the greatest theft in the history of the world.”
There is no evidence that China expedited the applications as a favor to Trump, nor that any of the projects will happen. KEEP YOUR friends close, send your enemies to Siberia?
President Trump has selected Jon Huntsman as ambassador to Russia, despite a contentious relationship with the former Utah governor that included calling him a “weak” statesman.
A White House official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Huntsman (inset), who served as former President Barack Obama’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011 would soon be formally nominated.
Huntsman would replace America’s current man in Moscow, John Tefft, a career diplomat whose tenure came as Russian-American relations have hit their lowest point since the Cold War.
Trump previously tweeted criticism of Huntsman’s work in China.
“China did a major number on us during the reign of @JonHuntsman. He was easy pickens!” Trump said in early 2012. Business moguls regularly file for trademarks not necessarily to fulfill projects, but to prevent competitors from copying their ideas or brands. Some of Trump’s biggest competitors, such as Four Seasons and W Hotels, have locations in China.
If evidence of special treatment emerges, the new deals could be blatant violations of the Emoluments Clause, an antibribery provision in the Constitution. The clause says the President is not allowed to accept any gift or title from foreign leaders without congressional approval. A violation of the clause is a potentially impeachable offense.
Even if there is never an indication of wrongdoing, the trademarks once again raise questions about how Trump’s political and business interests will mix. Trump has not formally divested his worldwide web of assets, and claims he is letting his adult sons run his businesses without his guidance.
Ethics experts and Trump critics have already pointed out numerous dealings that might test the Constitution, such as Trump’s new Washington, D.C., hotel — which has catered to foreign leaders visiting the nation’s capital — and Trump having his children sit with him for meetings with foreign diplomats.
The White House did not comment on the trademarks.
A founding partner of the Beijing law firm representing the Trump Organization would not directly comment on them, but said she often advises clients to file for trademarks defensively.
“I don’t see any special treatment to the cases of my clients so far,” Spring Chang of Chang Tsi & Partners told the AP.