Serial
deadbeat Donald Trump is getting a lot of attention by arguing
for a trade war with China, but his strategy sounds mighty
familiar. The Donald, whose ability to draw
credulous media coverage is matched only by his ability to
destroy the wealth of his investors, isn't opposed to the
Asiatic hordes; he's just aware of them, and has been for more than
two decades, since the heady days when Trump was on his first wife
and America was on its first Oriental trade nemesis.
Here's how the
short-fingered vulgarian described
the threat to Stuart Varney a few months back:
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan making that statement? Can you
imagine almost any president making that statement?China is succeeding. They are rebuilding their country off our
money. I mean, they're -- we are making so many products in China,
paying China so much money for those products, that you go to these
Chinese cities, they are rebuilding cities and they're building new
cities that are bigger than any of our cities.It's absolutely insane to have made that statement.
VARNEY: But -- so what are you going to do about this? Obviously
we have got a trade problem with China, but we have got news today
that GE is getting a $2 billion investment out of China, and news
also today that Saginaw, Michigan, is now -- China is the
number-one employer in Saginaw, Michigan.I mean, what...
TRUMP: Sure. That is a tiny, little place that is wonderful, but
they are using that just to show how nice they are, when, in fact,
they are not looking for our good.And they shouldn't be. They should be looking for their
good.VARNEY: What do we do about it?
TRUMP: And they have people that are very, very smart.
What I would do?
VARNEY: Yes.
TRUMP: You have such a huge deficit with -- trade deficit with
China. Their currency is artificially low. And, see, we have fallen
into the Chinese trap. We are now destroying the dollar in order to
try and compete with them. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be
keeping the dollar strong and stable and we should tax Chinese
products.And the people that talk about free trade, we don't have free --
I am a big free trade believer, by the way -- but we don't have
free trade with China.China is, literally, going to destroy this company -- this
country. If we don't get smart quickly, China will destroy our
country.VARNEY: Now...
TRUMP: And they will do it with a smile. And our people have no
idea what is happening.
Since then, Trump has
doubled down on the China warnings, recently
telling Larry Kudlow that the issue has become so serious he's
considering a presidential campaign: "For the first time, I’m
seriously thinking about doing it," Trump said. "If I did it, and
if I win, we will be respected again."
But if you've been asleep since the late 1980s (you didn't miss
much), you might be confused to hear The Donald attacking the wrong
country. In that less thought-tormented age -- when America was
staggering from a recession said to be the worst since the 1930s,
the Trump empire was a broken field of bad debts and bankruptcies,
and the mores of the inscrutable east were celebrated
in verse and song -- the threat to America's existence was not
China but Japan. Trump
wanted everybody to know it. The situation was so dire he
was even considering running for president.
From a
1990 Playboy interview:
We Americans are laughed at around the world for losing a
hundred and fifty billion dollars year after year, for defending
wealthy nations for nothing, nations that would be wiped off the
face of the earth in about fifteen minutes if it weren't for us.
Our "allies" are making billions screwing us.PLAYBOY: How do you feel about Japan's economic
pre-eminence?TRUMP: Japan gets almost seventy percent of its oil from the
Persian Gulf, relies on ships led back home by our destroyers,
battleships, helicopters, frog men. Then the Japanese sail home,
where they give the oil to fuel their factories so that they can
knock the hell out of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Their
openly screwing us is a disgrace. Why aren't they paying us? The
Japanese cajole us, they bow to us, they tell us how great we are
and then they pick our pockets. We're losing hundreds of billions
of dollars a year while they laugh at our stupidity.
The Japanese have their great scientists making cars and VCRs and
we have our great scientists making missiles so we can defend
Japan. Why aren't we being reimbursed for our costs? The Japanese
double-screw the U.S., a real trick: First they take all our money
with their consumer goods, then they put it back in buying all of
Manhattan. So either way, we lose.PLAYBOY: You're opposed to Japanese buying real estate in
U.S.?TRUMP: I have great respect for the Japanese people and list
many of them as great friends. But, hey, if you want to open up a
business in Japan, good luck. It's virtually impossible. But the
Japanese can buy our buildings, our Wall Street firms, and there's
virtually nothing to stop them. In fact, bidding on a building in
New York is an act of futility, because the Japanese will pay more
than it's worth just to screw us. They want to own Manhattan.
Of course, I shouldn't even be complaining about it, because I'm
one of the big beneficiaries of it. If I ever wanted to sell any of
my properties, I'd have a field day. But it's an embarrassment! I
give great credit to the Japanese and their leaders, because they
have made our leaders look totally second rate.PLAYBOY: A group of Japanese visitors to New York was recently
asked if there were anything in the U.S. they would like to buy.
The answer: towels.TRUMP: That's fair trade: They'll take the towels and we'll buy
their cars. It doesn't sound like a good deal to me. They have
totally outsmarted the American politician; they have no respect
for us, because they're getting a free ride. Of course, it's not
just the Japanese or the Europeans—the Saudis, the Kuwaitis walk
all over us.
Back then, Trump had reasons to
oppose the Japanese. A mysterious Mr. Ito had beaten him in an
auction of Sam’s piano and the legendary high roller
Akio Kashiwagi died owing him a boatload of yen.
But
what's his beef with China? Is it the ancient
Chinese secret of trying to depreciate the national currency?
Everybody does that; why unleash
Chang on China?
In any event, the similarities in his complaints are striking --
from the he-man obsession with our country's not appearing tough
enough to the Hawley-Smoot plan to restore prosperity through
tariffs to the "I'm a free trader, but..." phrasing.
Then as now the xenophobia of Trump and others had a mirror in
the Asiaphilic stylings of liberals. During the eighties,
well-thinking people were sure America needed to copy Japan's
vertical integration and workplace calisthenics. Today, old China
hands like Nicholas Kristof and Thomas L. Friedman covet China's
autocratic environmental policies and one-child civic sensibility.
In many ways Trump's straightforward Yellow
Peril demagoguery is less creepy than its enlightened liberal
counterpart. And don't forget that while the Obama Administration
may not be macho enough for Trump, it's done a pretty good job of
getting
the trade war started.
Yesterday's announcement that Google's Eric Schmidt will be handing the CEO reins back to co-founder Larry Page came as a shock, but with the company's aura of invincibility fading, and its core business showing signs of age, the time was right for a change. There was "an example every hour," of how triumvirate decision-making by Schmidt, Page, and co-founder Segrey Brin was hurting the company, Schmidt said. If Google wants to assure investors and consumers that rumors of its looming insignificance have been greatly exaggerated, there are a few key things that Larry has to do.
No. 1: Fix Search
Google's cash cow is its online-search advertising business, but the search results are starting to look awfully spammy. Between content farms that flood the Internet with meaningless search bait and black hat optimizers that use sleazy tricks to get top results, there are entire industries devoted to gaming Google's algorithms.
People who depend on Google for their livelihood have started to notice, and consumers are showing signs of getting antsy: There is a reason Microsoft's Bing quickly picked up 12 percent of the search market, and it's not because of its Gossip Girl product placements, or even vastly superior search results. Google has also drawn some ill will with an aggressive, some say illegal, tendency to push its own services to the top of the page.
It looks like Larry gets the seriousness of the problem. Friday, on day one of his regime, Google acknowledged the issue in a blog post, even as it downplayed its severity. "Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse," said principal engineer Matt Cutts. "The fact is that we’re not perfect, and combined with users’ skyrocketing expectations of Google, these imperfections get magnified in perception. However, we can and should do better."
It will take more than a wonky breakdown, but it's a start.
No. 2: Find Growth
The aforementioned cash cow is still so lucrative that it's easy to forget that Google has never really succeeded in any other business. Despite the ubiquity of Gmail and YouTube, they are not yet successful stand-alone businesses. YouTube only recently made it into the black after incurring hundreds of million of dollars in losses over the years.
It's not like Google isn't aware of the problem. Witness the frenzied diversification into anything that looks hot: cars that drives themselves, social networks, and yesterday's long-expected news of a Groupon clone. But trying everything hasn't produced much of anything.
Larry needs to ditch the side projects and focus on the most promising ones: the Android mobile-phone operating system, and the mobile ad network AdMob, which even makes money from iPhones as it serves up 2 billion ads a day.
No. 3: Stop the Brain Drain
Here's an enigma for Larry to unravel: Why does a company with five-star chefs, high-tech nap pods, and free massages have to throw millions of dollars in cash money at employees to get them to stay?
Part of the problem is Google's convoluted management structure, which Page is clearly trying to fix. If a team has been working on an amazing project for a year, only to hear that it overlaps with someone else's pet project, who wouldn't want to jump ship? But it also has to do with Google's size and a potentially fatal inability to face up to an unpleasant reality. From what we hear, there's reluctance from some of the old guard to accept that Google is a massive corporation now.
There is a major intangible at play as well, something that may not be easy for someone who is more Chief Engineer than Chief Executive to grapple with. If the ambitious go-getters that make it through Google's onerous interview process sense that the cool, sexy projects are happening at Facebook, Apple, or some stealth VC project with no name, then no amount of money is going to keep them on side, no matter how big a money truck Google backs up to their cubicle.
Which leads to....
No. 4: Consider a Personality Transplant
Tech bloggers were smitten with Eric Schmidt, but for all the wrong reasons. Sure, he grew Google into a $200 billion behemoth, but he also had a weakness for creepy Big Brother jokes delivered so dryly that no one could be sure he was joking. Contrast that with the controlling and charismatic Steve Jobs, surely one of the best salesmen in modern history, with a reality distortion field that may have made enemies but also bestowed an ineffable cool on his entire company.
Larry, by all accounts, makes Eric Schmidt look like Steve Jobs.
Ken Auletta explains:
He is a very private man, who often in meetings looks down at his hand-held Android device, who is not a comfortable public speaker, who hates to have a regimented schedule, who thinks it is an inefficient use of his time to invest too much of it in meetings with journalists or analysts or governments. As C.E.O., the private man will have to become more public.
Google's engineer-driven approach to new products has been a long-standing problem. (Google Wave, anybody?) Unlike Apple, it seems to build for engineers and developers, not consumers. That's great when you're making an open source mobile platform like Android, which is hot on the iPhone's tail due to its openness and potential ubiquity across multiple carriers and devices. It's not so great when you made everyone on Gmail opt into Google Buzz ’ or for creating fanboys and girls who want to use your products, even if they have to anyway.
Either way, Larry, you're going to need some charm to lend Google the same cool factor it had last time you were in charge. Maybe start by looking up from your Android phone every once in a while.
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