Kudlow in odd role as cooler head
WASHINGTON — Somehow you never thought of pugnacious Larry Kudlow as a “come, let us reason together” kind of guy. Quiet diplomacy wasn’t exactly what got the Redding resident from Wall Street to CNBC and (notwithstanding disagreement over tariffs) into the White House as President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council.
Yet there he was last week, tut-tutting his White House peers for doing something straight out of Larry’s secret-sauce recipe on TV: arguing.
At Detroit’s airport on the same day as the John Bolton/John Kelly contretemps, according to Politico, Kudlow was overheard saying into his cellphone: “... can’t be yelling at each other in the hallway outside the Oval ...”
Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general long hailed as one of the few adults in Trump’s White House, is said to have an angermanagement problem. Last year, he had the Secret Service step between him and Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s one-time Rasputin, during a physical confrontation.
(Full disclosure: I got to know Kelly a bit when he wore three stars. I found him to be dignified, thoughtful, and not full of himself. But, again, you don’t get to four stars in the Marine Corps by being total Mr. Nice Guy.)
Kelly’s departure has been long rumored, and may take place after the election. Reassuring to know that in addition to bespoke suits, Kudlow’s evident sense of decorum may qualify him Trump’s next adult in the room.
Trade-deficit blues
For some reason, Connecticut is kind of obsessed with its standing on various state-by-state lists. High marks for quality of schools, workforce skills. Taxes and cost-of-living? Not so much.
So it was interesting to see where Connecticut ranked in a recent report by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute that paints a dim picture of the impact of the U.S. trade deficit with China on American jobs.
The trade deficit, now more than $260 billion, cost the U.S. 3.4 million jobs between 2001, when China entered the World Trade Organization, and 2017. Three-quarters of the job losses were in manufacturing, the report concluded.
Connecticut ranks in the upper half of states — No. 22 — in terms jobs lost as a percentage of total jobs. (For those interested in the math, it works out to be 38,400 out of 1.6 million, or 2.28 percent.)
Among congressional districts in western Connecticut, District 5, represented by Rep. Elizabeth Esty, ranks the highest in job loss at 145 out of 435 nationwide. And Esty has long referred to parts of the Naugatuck Valley as a “mini-rust-belt.”
District 3, made up of New Haven and environs and represented by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, is 173rd out of 435. The 4th District, mainline Fairfield County, represented by Rep. Jim Himes, is one notch ahead, at 172nd. That’s still in the upper half of all congressional districts.
Himes in particular has tempered tear-shedding over factory shutdowns with optimism that Connecticut is well-positioned to embrace the 21st century’s knowledge economy (whatever that means).
Maybe so, and clearly the state’s industrial economy was on the downhill before China entered the WTO. But the empty factory buildings in Bridgeport and along the Naugatuck River and elsewhere in the state are mute testimony to the ravages wrought by the transition.