allies strive i.r.b.m. . china slaps new tariffs on u.s. goods as the trade war between the two nations escalates will it impact in the mid turns taking a look at that on this edition of. the politicking on larry king later in the program former republican governor of new jersey christine todd whitman joins me for a one on one conversation about harsh criticisms of donald trump and her calls for the president to step down stick around for that later but first on wednesday china announced a new round of tariffs in the intelli ation fight for terrorists that the troubled ministration has slapped on chinese goods entering the u.s. what's the impact of this latest escalation in the trade war between the united

states and china and will the president pay a political price for this negative impact of the terror battle has placed on some of his most ardent supporters we'll talk about that and more with bob livingston former republican member of congress from louisiana a state that will be heavily hit by china's tariffs he's in new orleans and in washington chris lew he served as white house cabinet secretary and deputy secretary of labor during the obama administration he's now a senior fellow at the vigil. miller center so we you bob on china announced plans twenty five. thinking agriculture or oil and gas is going to have a huge knevitt negative effect on your state what do you make of this. well i'm hoping it's going to be short term where we can't really tell it we won't know for

another couple of months but trump's goal has been ressa prosody he wants the chinese to treat us like we've been treating the chinese the problem is in the last many years we've been easy on their trade but they've been pretty tough on ours and they won't allow our stuff in and or at least they put high tariffs on it and so i think his concern is is absolutely on target. implementation of any trade. exchange or wars or otherwise is is tenuous i'd personally like most of the trump. accomplishments over these last two years and this is the one question mark i have but i have to tell you i think reciprocity is the right goal i think that the president is absolutely on target they've been stealing our information from people who are hacking our systems they've been. relying on

us to not be tough on their trade while they have been tough on ours and so the goal of having them treat us just like we treat them and vice versa is probably exactly right when you argue that is has the system been unfair. absolutely you know we have legitimate complaints with china not only in terms of intellectual property theft in terms of currency manipulation but this isn't the way to go and if you're going to engage in a trade battle with china you'd rather do it with your european allies with canada and mexico on your side we are fighting a trade war on all fronts right now and that's going to have ramifications not only for businesses but workers and farmers and consumers and let's not forget tariffs are a tax and they're going to make chinese goods more expensive and they're going to make chinese raw materials that go into u.s. manufactured products more expensive we saw this week for instance a company that makes t.v.'s in south carolina that relies on chinese parts saying

they're going to have to lay off about one hundred employees because the components are too expensive so yes we are right to get tough with china but i don't see an end game right now and i think if this continues to spiral out without a strategy that could be very troubling for the u.s. economy mom soybean which is louisiana's top next board to china need about five point six billion from done nearly one million acres in your states already hit with heavy towers early this year ten years data for this. well i'm no farmer and i can't be claimed ok claim to be an expert on soybeans other than the slick that i am told that there are other markets that we can sell to the brazilians we can sell the. others who consume soybeans in the their markets could be offset by any loss in the church in the chinese front but again i'd have to say that look if this is a short term deal it'll be

a blip on the screen people have counted trump out innumerable times in other areas and you can't argue with his goal of reciprocity so if he and secretary ross and lighthouses are in the other people who are experts in this arena are right this whole thing will be over the couple of months and we'll forget about it but in the meantime there's going to be some short term tightening of the belts clears is reciprocity a bad idea no reciprocity is a good idea but you need to have a strategy when you engage in these trade battles and unfortunately the innocent bystander in all of this is u.s. workers who are going to lose their jobs or u.s. farmers who are going to lose access to critical markets the problem is that the u.s. agriculture industry has tried for years to get more access into the china market it's a huge market for something like soybeans and so if this continues to drag on china will find other places to purchase their soybeans from for and as farmers are

beginning to harvest their crops later on this year they're going to be faced with problems as to where to sell their products and so yes i you know i agree with the congressman we don't know what the long term impact on this is and i would certainly feel better if i had a sense that there was a strategy here it feels like a game of one up spent ship right now and mind you this is a president who said that trade wars are easy to win and they're not easy to win and it's one of the reasons why there is so much bipartisan concern in congress about the direction that this is taking bob china doesn't have to worry about political fallout but trump has to seek reelection and he's got. so what's the incentive to acquiesce to america's demands that china's and china is a school you. well they could except for the fact that they've got to have billion people there who are consumers and who are going to pay more for american

products or of their own products plus they have about twice as much debt that they're covering on their economy than we do relatively speaking and i'm told i will if you watch gordon chang who i think is one of the premier experts on the chinese economy and he indicates. that the chinese economy is very fragile and they can only take so much pain for so pure so much period of time we are thriving we got the lowest unemployment the best economy that we've had in fifteen years and i think that if we have to economically we can hold out what you said about the political situation is another story altogether and we'll only know what happens in november. chris in a piece in politico the economist meghan green suggests that donald trump has already hit his high water mark on the economy and will probably sees a significant slowdown next time please you do that i do agree with that and i

think it's simply where we are in this economic cycle right now this recovery is now gone on for eight or nine years going back to two thousand and ten during the obama administration it's just a simple matter of all of where we are as cycles go you also see for instance the g.d.p. numbers that came out last week that there were great numbers four point one percent but they were artificially juiced by the tax cuts as well as by a government spending bill earlier this year i think most economists think for overall for the year we're probably looking at around two and a half percent growth and i think we are starting to face these headwinds again if this trade workers on it could start to drag down consumer spending it could start to drag down manufacturing as well we don't know but simply based on the life cycle of recoveries we're probably heading towards the end of this one of the races in kansas and ohio so close in fact there's going to be another election in november

in ohio and do you think it was a victory for them is it from bone to zero is it too close to call. well i tell you what if those guys had lost they would certainly be trumpeting the great losses they didn't lose their stiff mais be some absentee ballots to be counted but right now it looks like trump got five for five that's a pretty good record i'll take it any way i could get it i have to say that our candidate in ohio has made mistakes and i'm hoping that he rectify them because i think he meant to cause some of his own problems but he was about twenty points behind before donald trump went in there for this last weekend and he won by about seven hundred votes that's a remarkable turnaround and if trump can keep doing that he said he's going to go on campaign for candidates i think the republicans are going to do ok this year trump said he's willing to shut down the gun because he got a spending bill that includes the wall is he serious oh i think he is serious i

don't think the senate or the house leaders are necessarily backing him on that and you start to see trump back away from that threat last week i think it would be sort of ironic to shut down the government when you control both houses and i think they you know i think you do that you're at your own peril if you do that going into a midterm election that is already facing significant headwinds just given the democratic enthusiasm right now bob mitchell landrieu the former mayor of new orleans is weighing weigh it says he's wearing a run for the twenty twenty democratic. what do you make of that idea. oh i know midge i've known him most of my life he's nice guys sr was a united states senators dad was both mayor and secretary of hud under jimmy carter landrieu families an old son line political family are in this city but i

don't think he could get elected statewide and i really don't like to get elected nationwide so i don't i wouldn't put a lot of money on his chances now but both of you what's going to happen in the midterms chris was you're thinking well i think what we saw yesterday was incredible democratic this yes and i would disagree with the congressman about how to read the high zero twelve results this was a district that donald trump won by eleven points that the incumbent who had resigned had won by thirty six points and what you've seen today is a lot of the political prognosticators moving a significant number of house seats into the toss up category i think barring something unusual democrats will to take back the house they'll probably hold their own in the senate plus or minus a seat or so bob how do you see it. well i think we're going to pick up seats in the senate and i don't put any money on this blue wave if anything it's a blue trickle and it's going to be close no matter how you cut it the republicans

if they help hold the house will do it by a very narrow majority and the democrats if they take that out will do it by a very narrow majority look there's no substitute for having an excellent candidate in my opinion and in the house race in ohio i don't i'm not so sure that that was the case our candidate needs to do a better job if he does he can still hold on in all of those other races frankly i think that it depends on the quality of the candidate but i wouldn't count too much on the big democrat wave look democrats are sorely divided all of bernie sanders candidates and that lady ocasio whatever name is from new york campaigned for all of them last with the exception of one and if you look at the rest of the races around the country if you if they have extreme leftist candidates they're not going to win they are flat out not going to win except in the most unusual districts if

they have strong mainstream candidates on the democrats' side yeah they will pose a significant threat but again the republicans need to have some top quality candidates as well and i've met a lot of them and i'm very very impressed with the quality that they're putting up bob and chris thanks so much for your time today great talking with both of you thank you thank you larry good to be with you well have a one on one with the former governor of new jersey christine todd whitman right after the break don't go away. aeroflot russian and lives. in

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welcome back to politicking for several decades christine todd whitman has been a stalwart republican an insider in the administration of george w. bush where she served as administrator of the environmental protection agency for as he was the republican governor of new jersey the first female governor of that state but recently she has taken her party to task and has also gone public with her call for republicans to put the g.o.p. label aside and join her in calling for president donald trump to step down let's find out why it's. good seeing you again you recently with a larry you recently wrote an article in which you said i am a lifelong republican i have campaigned in one as a member of the party i have served more than one republican president we must put

aside the g.o.p. label as hard as that may be and demonstrate the leadership of our country needs by calling on the president to step down what led you to do that. well the final straw was the behavior in europe when he was there for the e.u. and nato and seem to reject our allies actually embarrassed several of them and then embraced putin and refused to take him on over the fact that russia was meddling in our elections and still is at that point he was saying it was a still saying it wasn't happening and that just isn't behavior that's good for the country that doesn't keep us safe putin will never be our ally we need to engage with them i absolutely believe that but he's never going to be our ally and we shouldn't undermine those who have stood by us with whom we've stood to protect the world against the encroachment of communism and people like putin your party though

seems to left you on this the is doesn't have a great deal of support inside the g.o.p. well he doesn't side the leadership but you know larry if you look at the statistics a will tell you that today but tween twenty six and twenty nine percent of eligible voters a den of five as republicans the highest i've seen is twenty nine someone else told me it was twenty six thirty percent as democrats and forty percent as independents so that's the vast majority of the voting public the majority of the voting public is not republican hard republican right nor are they frankly hard hard democrat left and that troubles me as much as what i'm seeing with the republican party is the way the democrats seem to be securing themselves to the left that's not healthy for the country but anyway if you look at it yes his base is rock solid but it's a minority and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that at least those in elective office that are so afraid of losing their seats. calling for him to step down knowing his personal. what's the likelihood frankly of that government that's

there's not a likelihood he won't do it but it really was to put it there put the extreme out there to say come on republicans at least push back on some of these things you know we've been calling him for sanctions we've had sanctions against russia everybody says look isn't this crazy sanction russia all over the place they're not enforcing the sanctions congress needs to step up and say it's great to say we're sanctioning but let's enforce the sanctions in fact they've been rolling back some of them as they apply to some of the oligarchs and those are the people you want to hit because they're the ones who support putin you want to get the economics of russia because that's where putin is the most vulnerable so you know it's time to stand up and say this back and forth thing of whether you believe it whether you don't believe it it's the instability that we are projecting to the world has people scratching their heads and i'm sure larry you hear the way i do it well don't worry about it it's what he says and watch what he does not what he says what

he says makes a difference he's president of the united states what he says matters it has an impact overseas and here domestically what do you make of this true. friendship fills in a better mood the. i find it very puzzling i understand the desire to want to deal with russia we have to deal with russia it is a major power it's a nuclear power but the way he seems to kowtow to him the way he refuses to take him on meddling he will put out a statement every now and again saying well yeah they are and then he almost the next day said but it's not not really and other things are more important he seems to have a predilection for strongman i mean kim jong un is as a fine guy he said he was great he was really impressed with the fact that he was able to take the reins of control of his country at such a young age i mean i guess if you like people who in visser ate their relatives with. with machine guns from an airplane if they don't like them or poison them

somewhere else that's good but not what we want and i tell you larry you know you i'm sure have spoken out i know you have spoken out on this idea that the president said don't listen to the news don't believe what you see don't believe what you hear only believe me i mean this fake news the independence of our news of our media is sacrosanct it's important in a democracy you have to have an independent press i worry if some would say that if you do if you would step down. how can you is a social liberal you are socially liberal how do you deal with mike pence. well frankly for two years i can handle it over trump's erratic behavior i don't think pence would get us into a war because he'd tweet something at two am i mean i disagree with him on chest about everything he would want to do particularly on the social side of things on

the domestic side but he says he's more say he's sane i think he is i don't agree with them and some people may decide that his extremism is not is a form of of issue but i don't think he would tweet us into a war i think he would respect the military he would respect our allies i'm sure of that and that's that's good as far as i'm concerned you know when the environmental protection agency. you then i knew from louisville has been run in the truth machine what do you make of some statement the other day about the california fires . i thought it was an embarrassment for him stop and barrus in yourself it is a drought that is causing these fires a drought which oh by the way is exacerbated by something called climate change i mean you can deny climate change all you want it's still going to happen and it is happening where you can have an argument over how much is human caused because we're not the sole components on this ok but you can't deny it and you can't deny

that humans have an impact on it and a very significant one and the thing that's so interesting to me larry is that better than fifty percent of even republicans say yes the climate is changing yes humans have an impact and obama the way we should do something about it and yet for some reason it's become this tool that one side can use against the other and you're either a full believer or you're not and it's one of those things if they look at everything today and you've seen as everything is looked at through the pop partisan political prism rather than the policy prism it's not about how do i solve a problem it's how do we get another vote in my caucus or on my reelect hoe do you personally react to it steve van. and recently told vanity fair he said the republican college educated woman is done they are gone trump has triggered them that's your reaction to that. just have to laugh over steve bannon i

think that's wishful thinking on his part no we're not done we're still here oh by the way a lot of us may have moved and i haven't yet i'm still a republican because i believe firmly and trying to change things from inside and i wish fewer people would adopt would keep opting out in this being independent or nonaffiliated the thing to do is pick the party that at least offends you these days and try to get it back to where you want it to be but working on the outside has never been terribly successful in this country so i hope people will stay with it and try to work through it but a lot of those women have moved out of the republican party to independent they're not democrats but they're haven't given up the fight not by a long shot what do you make of it as we call them a formal moderate someone you know very well i would guess ruby giuliani. i think maybe part of this is he loves being the go to guy and he's on the press

a lot he's the spokesperson i have to believe that he truly likes donald trump and truly believes donald trump and all of this but how he can you know he keeps changing the the rhetoric keeps changing and the goalposts keep changing well maybe it was collusion but now collusion isn't a crime in oh larry i don't know about you but to me it may not be listed separately as a crime in the law books but if a representative of this country is a kowloon ng with a representative of another country to find dirt to undermine our democracy that's a crime in my book that is something i just can't tolerate and how you can stand up and try to defend that i just don't know by saying oh well it's not important because it really isn't a crime that's hairsplitting that i don't think does anyone any justice you want from tourism but you agree that it's unlikely so therefore do you want the democrats to take the house in november where they might impeach. well i'm not sure

the they're going in for impeachment is going to be terribly helpful but i think to get a better balance it would serve us better as a country if we didn't have all three i mean the two branches both houses and the executive branch in the hands of one party i've never believed that all one party government is a good thing i had a democrat legislature when i was governor for part of it and did a little i mean i had all republicans for most of it i should back off that and say i had most republicans for most of it and there were times when i really wished i had strong democrats to to fight against to to work with to bump bounce things back and forth within in fact some of the most controversial things or difficult things to accomplish the. reform insurance reform i did with the democrats you need to have that counterpoint point counterpoint it's healthy so you'd like the democrats to take the house. i think we'd be better off frankly. christine i

love talking with you i hope you'll come back again soon i left is always good seeing you thank you so much governor my pleasure and thank you viewers for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page and tweet me of kings things and don't forget use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. tariff long russian headline it's. you know world

a big part of the law and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the past shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks.

of russian headlights. they gave us national camera. roughly once they showed some loose leaf for them. uncool videos and so on with the broken string. down more on string i don't really don't t.v. this is my love hate relationship with the united kingdom. and the love it because it's shambolic and fraudulent. but he got it because thousands tens of thousands of people had their lives destroyed by r.b.s. .

a french opposition leader reacts furiously to finding his name on a list of suspicious twitter accounts forcing him to declare he is an officer russian. feels from the shock suicide of an immigration party politicians who claimed she was raped by a muslim guy last year also coming up on the program. sunday but. two palestinians are killed down more than two hundred injured in the latest flare up on the israel gaza border soldiers opened fire after rioters hurled explosives and broke through the fences.