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Dem momentum to flip Congress but not guaranteed
Nate Silver 9/4, founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, 9-4-2018, "Election Update: Democrats
Are In Their Best Position Yet To Retake The House," https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-
update-democrats-are-in-their-best-position-yet-to-retake-the-house/
If Labor Day is the traditional inflection point in the midterm campaign — the point when the election becomes something that’s happening
right now — then Democrats should feel pretty good about where they stand in their quest to win the U.S.
House.

Although it can be a noisy indicator, the

generic congressional ballot is showing Democrats in their best position
since last winter, with a handful of high-quality polls (including one from our ABC News colleagues) giving them a
double-digit advantage over Republicans. Meanwhile, President Trump’s approval rating — as of late Tuesday
morning, an average of 40.1 percent of adults approved of his performance according to our calculation, while 54.1 percent disapproved of him
— is the worst that it’s been since February.1

Republicans are in their worst position to date in our U.S. House forecast : The Classic version
As a result,
of our model gives them only a 1 in 5 chance of holding onto the House. Other versions of our model are slightly
more optimistic for the GOP: The Deluxe version, which folds in expert ratings on a seat-by-seat basis, puts their chances at 1 in 4, while the Lite
version, which uses district-level and generic ballot polls alone to make its forecasts, has them at a 3 in 10 chance. Whichever flavor of the
forecast you prefer, the House is a long way from a foregone conclusion — but also a long way from being a “toss-up.”

There are three questions that we ought to ask about this data. First, why have the changes in presidential approval and the generic ballot
happened? Second, how likely are they to stick? And third, how much do they matter?

Question 1: Why has Republicans’ position apparently been worsening?

Well, I don’t know. The changes are modest enough that they could be statistical noise. (More on that point below.) But, the
fact that
both Trump’s approval rating and the generic ballot are moving in the same direction should make us
more confident that the trend is real and should suggest that both indicators have something to do
with the president.
One clue is that recent polls show an increase in support for special counsel Robert Mueller as well as an increase in the number of voters who
want to begin impeachment proceedings. The most obvious explanation, therefore, is that the changes have
something to do with the Russia probe and the other investigations surrounding Trump and his inner
circle, including the news late last month about Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen (who pleaded guilty to illegal campaign
contributions), and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort (who was convicted on eight counts in his tax fraud trial). Before you snicker
that none of this matters because the public doesn’t care about “the Russia stuff,” keep in mind that the largest change in Trump’s approval
numbers came after he fired former FBI Director James Comey last May, the event that touched off the Mueller probe in the first place.

Another plausible explanation is that voters are tuning into the campaign to a greater degree than
they had before — and not liking what they see once they give Trump and Republicans a longer look.
The stretch run of the midterms begins on Labor Day, and the generic ballot has historically been a more reliable indicator once you pass it.

There’s just one problem with that explanation. Although we’re past Labor Day now, the polls filtering into our averages were mostly
conducted in late August.2 Also, most of the generic ballot polls were conducted among registered voters rather than likely voters. (Pollsters
traditionally switch over to likely-voter models in polls conducted after Labor Day.) Republicans usually gain ground when you switch from
registered-voter to likely-voter polls, but with signs of higher Democratic enthusiasm this year, that may not be true in this election.3 So
although we’re very curious to see what post-Labor Day, likely-voter polls will show about the midterms, we don’t actually have those yet.

Question 2: How likely are these changes to stick?

I have a confession — although it’s one that I’ve made before. The method of calculating the generic ballot that we use on our generic ballot
interactive, which currently shows Democrats ahead by 10.8 percentage points, is too aggressive and will usually overestimate swings.4 Our
House forecast actually uses a different, slower-moving version of the generic ballot average. In that version, Democrats currently lead the
generic ballot by 8.7 percentage points. That’s still pretty good, but the House forecast will need to see Democrats sustain their most recent
numbers for a few weeks before it concedes that they’re really up double digits.

Your guess is as good as mine — and probably as good as the model’s — as to whether they’ll do that. Historically, it’s been rare for a party to
win the popular vote for the U.S. House by double digits.5 But it
wouldn’t be surprising if Democrats wound up with a
popular vote margin in the high single digits (i.e. 8 or 9 percentage points) rather than the mid-to-high single digits (i.e. 6 or 7
percentage points). In fact, our model calculates a historical prior based on long-term trends in midterms and
presidential approval ratings. That prior figures that Democrats “should” win the popular vote by 8 to 9 percentage points given
that midterms are usually rough on the president’s party and that Trump isn’t a popular president.

Put another way, a

slight Democratic uptick on the generic ballot to 8 or 9 percentage points6 is arguably
bringing the race for Congress more in line with historical norms. That’s one reason to think it could
hold . But we’ll need to see more evidence — not only from the generic ballot but also from other indicators — to conclude that Democrats
are really ahead by 10 or 12 or 14 points, which would produce a gargantuan wave.

Question 3: How much does all of this matter?

It might seem like we’re parsing awfully fine distinctions — e.g., between an 8-point popular vote margin and a 7-point
one. But they matter, because it doesn’t take that much for Democrats to go from House underdogs to
potentially taking 40 or more seats.
Here, for example, is the output from a Tuesday morning run of our Classic forecast, showing how a projected margin in the House popular vote
translates into potential seat gains for Democrats. If
Democrats win the popular vote by “only” 5 to 6 percentage
points — still a pretty comfortable margin, but not necessarily enough to make up Republicans’
advantages due to gerrymandering, incumbency and the clustering of Democratic voters in urban
districts — they’re only about even-money to win the House. If they win it by 9 to 10 points, by contrast, they’re all but
certain to win the House and in fact project to gain about 40 seats!

With that said, there are several reasons for caution. The House popular vote doesn’t actually count for anything, and it’s possible that
Democrats (or Republicans) could run up the score in noncompetitive districts. In 2006, for example, Democrats did extremely well in
noncompetitive seats, enough to win the popular vote for the House by 8 percentage points, but Republicans did well enough in swing seats to
hold their losses to “only” 30 seats — not good, but a lot better than what Democrats experienced in 1994 or 2010, for example.

From a technical standpoint, the popular vote is also challenging to model, as you need to not only project the margin of victory in every district
— including a lot of districts where there’s no polling data — but also forecast turnout. As compared with the Classic version of our forecast,
which has Democrats performing particularly well in swing seats, both the Lite and Deluxe versions think there’s more risk of Democrats
wasting votes in noncompetitive seats.7 So I’d approach our model’s forecasts of the popular vote with a few more grains of salt than its
forecasts of seat gains or losses.

Bonus question: Apart from these technical issues, why should Democrats still be worried about their ability to win the House?

You mean, aside from the fact that 1 in 5 chances still happen 1 in 5 times, which is kind of a lot?! Or that the Senate map is still very difficult for
Democrats, even if the House looks reasonably favorable to them?

One reason for Democrats to remain nervous — and for Republicans to keep their hopes up — is that we haven’t yet seen the sort of polling at
the district-by-district level that would imply a House landslide. In particular, someRepublican incumbents are holding their
own, such as in a series of three polls of GOP-held congressional districts published late last month by Siena College. Although
Democrats will pick up a fair number of open seats as the result of GOP retirements , and a couple
more as a result of Pennsylvania’s redistricting, they will need to knock off some GOP incumbents to
win the majority — and not just the low-hanging fruit, but Republicans like John Faso in New York’s 19th District, which has historically
proven resistant to high-profile Democratic challenges.
These district-level polls, taken in the aggregate, aren’t bad for Democrats, but they imply a popular
vote win of “only” 6 or 7 percentage points, with some GOP overperformance among incumbents in
swing districts. Those polls make the House look more like a toss-up than the generic ballot or other indicators do.

The caveat to the caveat is that, historically at this point in the election cycle, district polls have had a
slight statistical bias toward incumbent candidates. (Or at least they have in House races; we haven’t observed that for
other types of elections.) That perhaps reflects name-recognition deficits on the part of challengers, some of whom only recently won their
primaries or have not even held them yet. But
Democrats have recruited competent candidates in almost every
swing district, and they’ve also raised a lot of money, so they should be capable of running vigorous
campaigns and perhaps picking up the majority of undecided voters.

Democrats are well-positioned to win the House — but they still have a lot of work to
To put it another way,
do to turn good prospects into a reality on the ground.

Democratic wave’s key to symbolically delegitimize Trumpian populism globally and

shore up the liberal order
Francis Fukuyama 17, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies (FSI), and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and
the Rule of Law, Stanford University, 12/4/17, “The Future of Populism at Home and Abroad,”
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/04/future-populism-home-abroad/

Few populist nationalist parties have appeared across the developed world, and threaten to undermine the
liberal international order. What is the likelihood that they will succeed?

For better or worse, a lot depends on what will happen in the U nited S tates. American power was critical in
establishing both the economic and political pillars of the liberal order, and if the U nited S tates retreats from that
leadership role, the pendulum will swing quickly in favor of the nationalists. So we need to understand
how populism is likely to unfold in the worlds leading liberal democracy.
The American Constitution’s system of checks and balances was designed to deal with the problem of “Caesarism,” that is, a populist
demagogue who would accumulate power and misuse it. It is for this reason that vetocracy exists, and so far into the Trump Administration, it
appears to be working. Trump’s attacks on various independent institutions—the intelligence community, the mainstream
media, the courts, and his own Republican party—have only had modest success. In particular, he has not been able to get a
significant part of his legislative agenda, like Obamacare repeal or the border wall, passed. So at the moment he looks like a weak
and ineffective president.

However, things could change . The factor most in his favor is the economy: wages have been growing after stagnating for many
years, and growth has reached 3 percent for two quarters now. It may move even higher if the Republicans succeed in passing a stimulative tax
cut as they seem poised to do. All of this is bad policy in the long run: the United States is not overtaxed; the stimulus is coming at the exactly
wrong point in the business cycle (after eight years of expansion); it is likely to tremendously widen fiscal deficits; and it will lay the ground for
an eventual painful crash. Nonetheless, these consequences are not likely to play themselves out for several years, long enough to get the
Republicans through the 2018 midterm elections and even the 2020 presidential contest. What matters to voters the most is the state of the
economy, and that looks to be good despite the President’s undignified tweeting.

Foreign policy is another area where Trump’s critics could be surprised. It is entirely possible that he will take action on some of his threats—
indeed, it is hard to see how he can avoid action with regard to North Korea’s nuclear ballistic missile program. Any U.S. move would be highly
risky to its South Korean and Japanese allies, but it is also possible that the U.S. will call North Korea’s bluff and force a significant climbdown. If
this happens, Trump will have lanced a boil in a manner that has eluded the last three presidents.

Finally, it is not possible to beat something with nothing. The Democrats, under a constant barrage of outrageous behavior from the Administration, have been
moving steadily to the left. Opposition to Trump allows them to focus on the enemy and not to define long-term policies that will appeal to voters. As in Britain, the
party itself in increasingly dominated by activists who are to the left of the general voter base. Finally, the Democrats have lost so much ground in statehouses and
state legislatures that they do not have a strong cadre of appealing, experienced candidates available to replace the Clinton generation. Since American elections
are not won in the popular vote but in the Electoral College (as Bruce Cain has recently pointed out in these pages), it does not matter how many outraged people
vote in states like California, New York, or Illinois; unless the party can attract centrist voters in midwestern industrial states it will not win the Presidency.

All of this suggests that Trump

could not just serve out the remainder of his term, but be re-elected in 2020 and
last until 2024. Were the Republicans to experience a setback in the midterm elections in 2018 and then

lose the presidency in 2020, Trump might go down in history has a fluke and aberration, and the party
could return to the control of its elites. If this doesn’t happen , however, the country’s polarization will
deepen even beyond the point it has reached at present. More importantly, the institutional checks may well
experience much more significant damage, since their independence is, after all, simply a matter of politics in
the end.

Beyond this, there is the structural factor of technological change. Job losses among low skill workers is fundamentally not driven by trade or immigration, but by
technology. While the country can try to raise skill levels through better education, the U.S. has shown little ability or proclivity to do this. The Trump agenda is to
seek to employ 20th century workers in their old jobs with no recognition of how the technological environment has changed. But it is not as if the Democrats or the
progressive Left has much of an agenda in this regard either, beyond extending existing job training and social programs. How the U.S. will cope with this is not
clear. But then, technological change is the ultimate political challenge that all advanced societies, and not just the democratic ones, will have to face.

Outside the U nited S tates, the populist surge has yet to play itself out. Eastern Europe never experienced the kind of
cultural liberalization experienced by Germany and other Western European countries after World War II, and are now eagerly embracing

populist politicians. Hungary and Poland have recently been joined by Serbia and the Czech Republic, which have elected leaders
with many Trump-like characteristics. Germany’s consensus politics, which made the country a rock of EU stability over the
past decade, appears to be fraying after its recent election, and the continuing threat in France should not be underestimated—Le Pen and the far-

left candidate Melenchon between them received half the French vote in the last election. Outside Europe, Brazil’s continuing

crisis of elite legitimacy has given a boost to Jair Bolsonaro, a former military officer who talks tough and promises to clean up the
country’s politics. All of this suggests that the world will be in for interesting times for some time to come .

Discrediting Trumpian populism’s key to avoid extinction

Alex de Waal 16, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School at Tufts
University, 12/5/16, “Garrison America and the Threat of Global War,” http://bostonreview.net/war-
security-politics-global-justice/alex-de-waal-garrison-america-and-threat-global-war

Trump’s promises have been so vague that it will be hard for him to disappoint. Nonetheless, many of his supporters will wake up
to the fact that they have been duped, or realize the futility of voting for a wrecker out of a sense of
alienated desperation. The progressives’ silver lining to the 2016 election is that, had Clinton won, the
Trump constituency would have been back in four years’ time, probably with a more ruthless and
ideological candidate. Better for plutocratic populism to fail early . But the damage inflicted in the interim could be
terrible—even irredeemable if it were to include swinging a wrecking ball at the Paris Climate Agreement out of simple ignorant malice.

Polanyi recounts how economic and financial crisis led to global calamity. Something similar could happen
today. In fact we are already in a steady unpicking of the liberal peace that glowed at the turn of the millennium. Since
approximately 2008, the historic decline in the number and lethality of wars appears to have been reversed . Today’s
wars are not like World War I, with formal declarations of war, clear war zones, rules of engagement, and definite endings. But they are wars
nonetheless.

What does a world in global, generalized war look like? We have an unwinnable “war on terror” that is metastasizing
with every escalation, and which has blurred the boundaries between war and everything else. We have deep states—built on a new
oligarchy of generals, spies, and private-sector suppliers—that are strangling liberalism. We have emboldened middle

powers (such as Saudi Arabia) and revanchist powers (such as Russia) rearming and taking unilateral military
action across borders (Ukraine and Syria). We have massive profiteering from conflicts by the arms industry, as well as through the
corruption and organized crime that follow in their wake (Afghanistan). We have impoverishment and starvation through economic warfare,
the worst case being Yemen. We have “peacekeeping” forces fighting wars (Somalia). We have regional
rivals threatening one
another, some with nuclear weapons (India and Pakistan) and others with possibilities of acquiring them
(Saudi Arabia and Iran).

Above all, today’s generalized war is a conflict of destabilization, with big powers intervening in the domestic politics of
others, buying influence in their security establishments, bribing their way to big commercial contracts and thereby corroding respect for
government, and manipulating public opinion through the media. Washington, D.C., and Moscow each does this in its own way. Put the pieces
together and a global political market of rival plutocracies comes into view. Add virulent reactionary
populism to the mix and it resembles a war on democracy.
What more might we see? Economic liberalism is a creed of optimism and abundance; reactionary protectionism feeds on pessimistic scarcity.
If we see punitive trade wars and national leaders taking preemptive action to secure strategic resources within the walls of their
garrison states, then old-fashioned territorial disputes along with accelerated state-commercial grabbing of land and minerals are in
prospect. We could see mobilization against immigrants and minorities as a way of enflaming and rewarding a constituency that can police
borders, enforce the new political rightness, and even become electoral vigilantes.

Liberal multilateralism is a system of seeking common wins through peaceful negotiation ; case-by-case power
dealing is a zero-sum calculus. We may see regional arms races, nuclear proliferation , and opportunistic power coalitions
to exploit the weak. In such a global political marketplace, we would see middle-ranking and junior states rewarded for the toughness of their
bargaining, and foreign policy and security strategy delegated to the CEOs of oil companies, defense contractors, bankers, and real estate
magnates.

The United Nations system appeals to leaders to live up to the highest standards. The fact that they so often conceal their transgressions is the
tribute that vice pays to virtue. A
cabal of plutocratic populists would revel in the opposite: applauding one another’s
readiness to tear up cosmopolitan liberalism and pursue a latter-day mercantilist naked self-interest. Garrison
America could opportunistically collude with similarly constituted political-military business regimes in Russia, China,
Turkey, and elsewhere for a new realpolitik global concert, redolent of the early nineteenth-century era of the Congress of Vienna,
bringing a façade of stability for as long as they collude—and war when they fall out .
And there is a danger that, in response to a terrorist outrage or an international political crisis, President Trump will do something stupid, just
as Europe’s leaders so unthinkingly strolled into World War I. The multilateral security system is in poor health and may not be able to cope.

Underpinning this is a simple truth: the plutocratic populist order is a future that does not work . If illustration were
needed of the logic of hiding under the blanket rather than facing difficult realities, look no further than Trump’s readiness to deny climate
change.

We have been here before, more or less, and from history we can gather important lessons about what we must do now. The
importance
of defending civility with democratic deliberation, respecting human rights and values, and maintaining a commitment to public
goods and the global commons— including the future of the planet —remain evergreen. We need to
find our way to a new 1945—and the global political settlement for a tamed and humane capitalism—without having to
suffer the catastrophic traumas of trying everything else first.
 Negotiation CP---1NC
The United States executive branch should retain tariffs only against the People’s
Republic of China, and communicate that it will repeal tariffs if and only if the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party commits to:
-- phasing out technology-transfer requirements imposed on foreign entities doing
business in China
-- establishing a thorough, enforced domestic legal regime for the protection of
intellectual property rights
During negotiations, the executive branch should refrain from incendiary public
rhetoric against the People’s Republic of China, including ceasing to refer to China as a
“strategic competitor.”

The executive branch should submit the results of this negotiation to the United
States Congress for ratification upon completion.

The counterplan uses the promise of tariff reduction as leverage to secure Chinese
concessions on industrial policy which are key to uphold global economic norms. The
plan forfeits leverage and locks in the rise of China’s economic model
James Andrew Lewis 18, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
4/6/18, “There Is More to the Trade War than Trade,” https://www.csis.org/analysis/there-more-trade-
war-trade
The clamor of timorous voices that have greeted the president’s “Trade War” with China makes one fear for the republic. Let’s do a quick recap:

China has extracted billions of dollars of i ntellectual p roperty and confidential business information from U.S.
companies. This has cost thousands of jobs and billions in lost revenue for the United States.

China imposes unfair restrictions on foreign companies that want to do business there, requiring them to become
minority partners in joint ventures, transfer i ntellectual p roperty, or in some instances, China blocks them from entry altogether.

Chinese companies do not face similar constraints in the U nited S tates.

Contrary to its international commitments, China has used nontariff barriers and subsidies to build national champions and block foreign
competition.

U.S. companies that want to do business in China have no alternative but to accept these restrictions. For many years this trade-off—access in
exchange for intellectual property (IP)—seemed acceptable, and companies came up with various strategies to avoid loss. In the past few years,
as China’s economy has matured, the cost of trading IP for access to China’s market has become
unacceptable .

Since companies didn’t complain, the U.S. government did little or nothing in response to China’s policies. The 2015
Barack Obama–Xi Jinping agreement limiting commercial cyber espionage, while useful, does not address the main problem.
China is clear in what it wants , as it moves “closer than ever to the center of the global stage.” China is “more confident and able
than ever to realize this goal,” which is to displace the U nited S tates in economic and technological leadership.
China’s willingness to subsidize and restrict drives Western companies out of business .

IP theft is not the most important issue. The IP is gone and is not coming back. Nor is punishing China a useful goal. What the U nited S tates
needs from China is a commitment to observe s the rules and norms of international trade and to extend
reciprocal treatment to U.S. (and Western) companies in China. If the world’s second-largest economy feels
free to flout trade practices, we are all in trouble , and as others have pointed out, this trade war started long
ago with China’s decision not to play by the rules. The best metric for success is equitable treatment
of foreign companies in China.

Having essentially given China a free pass on trade since the opening of the Chinese economy in the early 1980s, the U nited S tates needs
to build leverage to get any concessions. The key to leverage is that China still needs access to Western,
primarily U.S., markets and technology. China (unlike most developed nations) cannot depend on domestic
consumption to sustain its economy. And while the Chinese economy has become truly innovative, the lead in research and innovation
remains in the United States for now—if China did not need U.S. innovation, it would not try so hard to buy its way into Silicon Valley.
Denying access to markets and technology creates leverage with China , and China’s massive national debt sits heavily on
Beijing’s mind as it contemplates a trade war.

There are, of course, many things one could object to in the current effort. It does not appear to be part of a
coordinated strategy for changing China’s behavior; the objectives have not been clearly specified in public; there
appears to be no negotiating process to engage with the Chinese; and many actions, such as annoying key allies like Germany,
are counterproductive. Lurching into action is good, but a steadier course could reduce costs and increase the

chances of success .
If China invaded Hawaii, announcing it had discovered some ancient map that showed that Hawaii was a Chinese possession centuries ago,
Americans would rally in response. China would never do this because it knows there would be penalties. The kind of great power competition
we are in will avoid this kind of anachronist action. Instead, the new contest is economic, over who sets the standards and
the rules for how the world will work. China has a “new vision of global governance” that would amend the impartial rule
of law to ensure it reflects Chinese “characteristics,” where China and its ruling party occupy a dominant place.

As in any negotiation, there will be

In diplomatic terms, the United States is the “demandeur,” asking something of China.
refusals, countermeasures, appeals to third parties, and charges that U.S. requests are unfair or contrary to international
norms. This is the normal practice and largely window dressing while each side assesses the other. If China

thinks the U nited S tates will fold, there will be no concessions. If it decides the U nited S tates will stay the
course, it will seek to find the minimum level of change it can make to assuage the Americans. The first offer will
be to begin talks, with the intent of having these talks never reach a conclusion.

The issue is bigger than trade deficits or technology leadership. The

issue is how China will fit into the world and what role it
will play. The status quo is unsustainable . The international order created after 1945 will inevitably change, but

the direction of that change has yet to be determined : a strengthening of the rules-based system promoted by
democracies (some Chinese sources call democracy “a tool for Western domination”), or moving backwards to a system based on
power and conflict. This is not a contest the U nited S tates and its allies can afford to lose.
Only the counterplan creates a trade model with credible penalties for actors that
violate the rules---that’s key to defuse populist opposition and make the overall trade
system more resilient and sustainable
Mohamed A. El-Erian 18, Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, was chairman of US president Barack
Obama’s Global Development Council, 4/6/18, “The Global Trade Game,” https://www.project-
syndicate.org/commentary/global-trade-trump-china-tariffs-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2018-
04?barrier=accesspaylog

The trade confrontation between the U nited S tates and China is heating up. After firing an opening salvo of steep
tariffs on steel and aluminum, the US administration has released a plan for a 25 per cent tariff on 1,333 Chinese imports, worth about $50
billion last year, to punish China for what it views as decades of intellectual property theft. China has fired back with a plan to slap 25 per cent
levies on a range of US goods, also worth about $50 billion. In response to what he labels “unfair retaliation”, US President Donald Trump is
now said to be considering yet another set of tariffs, covering another $100 billion worth of imports from China. Economists and market
analysts are scrambling to figure out what will come next.

One might be tempted to rely on historical experience. But, given today’s economic, political, and social
conditions, history is likely to be a poor guide. More useful insights come from game theory, which can
help us to determine whether this exchange of tariffs will ultimately amount to strategic posturing that leads to a more
“cooperative game” (freer and fairer trade), or develop into a wider “non-cooperative game” (an outright trade
war). The answer will have significant consequences for the economic and policy outlook, and markets prospects.

The rapid expansion of trade in recent decades has given rise to a web of cross-border inter-dependencies in
production and consumption. Supply chains now can have as many significant international links as domestic ones, and a substantial share of
internal demand is being met by products partly or wholly produced abroad. As technological innovation further reduces entry barriers for both
producers and consumers, the proliferation of these linkages becomes even easier, amplifying what already is essentially a spaghetti bowl of
cross-border relationships and dependencies.

For the longer-term health of both individual participants and the overall system, these relationships must
function effectively, based on a cooperative approach that is deemed credible. If not, they risk resulting in
a lower level of growth and welfare. This is why the current confrontation between the US and China has raised
fears of serious damage, particularly if it leads to ever-greater protectionism and a wider “trade war”. But this outcome is not
guaranteed .

For international economic interactions to work well, they must also be viewed as fair. That is currently
not the case among many segments of the global population. As it turns out, two key assumptions on which the
virtually unfettered pursuit of economic, and financial, globalisation has been based in recent decades have turned out to be over-
simplifications.

The first assumption was that the benefits of trade would naturally be shared by most of the population, either
directly or because of appropriate redistribution policies implemented in the now-faster growing economies. Second, it was assumed
that the major participants in global trade — including the emerging economies that joined this process and, later, its anchoring
institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation, would eventually embrace the basic principles of reciprocity, continuing
gradually to reduce both tariff and non-tariff barriers.

As these assumptions have proved to be excessively optimistic, the standing and sustainability of pro-trade
policies have suffered . The result has been a marked rise in nationalist populism — a trend that has led to new
trade restrictions, the ongoing re-negotiation of existing arrangements, such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement, and a backlash against supranational institutions, such as the United Kingdom’s vote to exit the European
Union.

So whatabout the next steps? As currently set up, the international economic order needs to function as a
cooperative game, in which each participant commits to free and fair trade, the commitments are
credible and verifiable, mechanisms are in place to facilitate and monitor collaboration, and cheaters face effective
penalties .

Current trade tensions could conceivably destroy this cooperative game, triggering a shift to a non-cooperative
one, with elements of a “prisoner’s dilemma”, in which self-interested action turns out to be both individually and mutually destructive. But,
given that this would mean losses for virtually all countries, it may be possible to avoid it , with the help of a few
targeted policy responses.

For starters, systemically important but not sufficiently open countries, beginning with China, should
liberalise their economies more rapidly , particularly by reducing non-tariff barriers, and adhere to internationally
accepted norms on i ntellectual p roperty. Moreover, existing trade arrangements should be modernised as needed, so that they
better reflect current and future realities, while companies and others that benefit disproportionately from trade should intensify their pursuit
of socially responsible activities. Multilateral surveillance and reconciliation mechanisms, not just at the WTO, but also at the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, should be revamped, and the functioning of the G-20 should be improved, including through the
establishment of a small secretariat that facilitates greater policy continuity from year to year.

Given how many countries have an interest in maintaining a cooperative game, such policy actions are
not just desirable; they may be feasible . As they help to create a stronger cooperative foundation for
fairer trade, these measures would also constitute a necessary, though not sufficient, step towards
countering the alienation and marginalisation of certain segments of the population in both advanced and emerging
economies.
 x
Text: The executive branch should restrict their exercise of congressionally delegated
trade powers
Executive self-restraint solves the entire case---the signal is sufficient to prevent
escalating protectionism
Jonathan Hillman 18, fellow with the Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, former policy adviser to the U.S. trade representative, 3/20/18, “Trade Wars and
Real Wars,” https://www.csis.org/analysis/trade-wars-and-real-wars

The world is rudely awakening to the dangers of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Markets are correcting.
Countries and industries are scrambling for exemptions. Economists now see greater downside than upside to growth projections for the U.S.
economy this year. But the hazards could be even greater than anyone wants to admit. As protectionist sentiment
rises, so does the risk of war .
The link between international commerce and peace has been apparent for so long that it is sometimes taken for granted. As the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote in his 1795 essay, Perpetual Peace, “The spirit of trade cannot coexist with war, and sooner or
later this spirit dominates every people.”

That sounds like wide-eyed optimism, but the underlying logic

is narrow self-interest. Nations are reluctant to
jeopardize benefits from international commerce, especially when their leaders are bullish about future gains.
Greater trade and investment cannot guarantee peace, but it raises the cost of going to war .

World War I appeared to toss that idea out and set history’s dustbin ablaze. Prior to the war, globalization was racing along.
Between 1870 and 1914, trade rose to 8.2 percent of global gross domestic product. “The complexity of modern finance makes New York
dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history,” Norman Angell
wrote in The Great Illusion, his 1910 opus that declared war obsolete.

But Germany’s aggression proves the point. German leaders believed the economic environment was
turning against them, as the political scientist Dale Copeland has shown. With protectionist policies ascendant—in Britain and
its colonies and in the United States, France, and Russia—Germany feared being squeezed out of global markets. These
falling trade expectations made war a more attractive avenue for revising the status quo.

As Trump weighs additional protectionist measures, a similar gap is emerging between assumptions
about globalization and expectations about trade.
Norman Angell might feel at home today in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, where the prevailing assumption is that the world will only become
more connected. But historically, globalization has been a roller coaster rather than a smooth sail. After World War I, it
took more than six decades for global trade and investment flows to recover. Proponents of global connectivity would be
wise to speak up sooner rather than later.

Equally troubling is that trade and investment expectations are starting to sour . Thirty percent of fund managers say a
trade war poses the greatest risk to markets. A majority of American voters believe a trade war is likely. Sovereign investors are cutting their
exposure to U.S. assets. Competitors and partners alike warn against Trump’s tariffs. Gone are any illusions that
the president will not follow through on the spirit of his protectionist promises.

These are early and minor bumps in what could be a long and much more dramatic ride. Tit-for-tat
trade actions could spiral
out of the economic realm and into military confrontation . But the greater danger could be less direct and
more insidious: a general weakening of economic incentives for keeping the peace among major powers. That
raises the risk that miscalculation leads to escalation —in the S outh C hina S ea, the Korean peninsula, or
elsewhere.

It is impossible to say whether conflict will ignite, let alone when and how. But it is easy to see how rising
protectionism, actual and expected, can poison i nternational r elations. Any honest reckoning of Trump’s trade policies
must take these risks into account.

The president is unlikely to abandon his current course entirely, but he could still limit collateral
damage . Merely adding greater clarity to his policies , including their scope, duration, processes
for exemptions, and conditions for removal , would help calm global fears . A narrower, more
tailored approach would help limit backlash, particularly among U.S. allies and partners.

But to avoid the worst, the

Trump administration needs to exercise more than caution. It urgently needs to offer the world
a positive economic vision . Having withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and opened renegotiations of existing trade deals,
it is clear the administration stands against the status quo it inherited. What does it stand for?

A positive U.S. economic vision would help counter falling expectations. It would also push back against
China’s attempts to fashion itself as a champion of global openness in the absence of U.S. leadership. That
leadership is needed now more than ever. Before further darkening global sentiment, the U nited S tates needs to provide a
light at the end of the tunnel .

Only the counterplan alone causes Trump to lose reelection in 2020---the plan and
perm allow him to rally the base against Congress, but caving on trade himself dooms
him
Ross Douthat 18, New York Times columnist, 7/28/18, “Why Trump Can’t Quit Tariffs,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/trump-tariffs.html

Why Trump Can’t Quit Tariffs

Because his other populist promises are broken, he has to keep this one .

With the possible exception of his pas de deux with Vladimir Putin, nothing about the Trump presidency inspires so much
public resistance from his fellow Republicans as the president’s zest for tariffs and trade wars.

That resistance only goes so far, taking the form of nonbinding resolutions and verbal scoldings and sighs of
relief when, as he did this week with the European Union, Trump temporarily chooses jaw-jaw over war-war. But in a party so otherwise
beholden to its leader, anything that gets conservative senators accusing their president of running “a Soviet type of economy” (as Ron Johnson
of Wisconsin put it this week, attacking the president’s jury-rigged bailout for farmers hurt by his tariffs) counts as a dramatic fissure in the
facade of MAGA unity.

The critics’ argument is principled — their vision of conservatism has free trade as one of its pillars — but also practical. Trump’s
handling of the economy polls at 50 percent in the latest Wall Street Journal poll; his handling of trade in the same
survey is underwater. His otherwise-unpopular presidency is floated on jobs and economic growth, and

trade wars can be bad for both. So why not just drop the mercantilism and let the good times roll?
The answer gets at the dilemma of the Republican establishment in the age of Trump. The party’s senators
generally have a better grasp of facts than the occupant of the White House, but the president often has a better

grasp of politics . And the political truth is that Trump probably needs his tariffs , needs his trade war , to have
any chance of re-election — precisely because it’s the only remaining economic issue where he’s stuck to
his campaign promises and hasn’t just deferred to traditional Republican priorities .

Those campaign promises, as everyone is well aware, were generally more populist than the official G.O.P. agenda:
Trump promised middle-class tax cuts and a generous Obamacare alternative, he stiff-armed the entitlement reformers and talked up infrastructure spending, and

he railed against free trade deals with every other breath. And that populist branding was crucial to the
electoral trade he made, which ceded a share of business-friendly suburbanites to the Democrats but
reaped a crucial group of erstwhile Obama voters , mostly white and working class and concentrated in
the Rust Belt and upper Midwest states, who ultimately handed Trump the presidency.
That was the story of 2016; the story since, though, is one of reversion to the older political order . Because
Trump has mostly governed as a conventional Republican, a certain kind of conventional Republican has come home to him,
keeping his support stable in the states that the Romney-Ryan ticket won easily in 2012. But for the same reason —
because the infrastructure plan never materialized and the tax cut was a great whopping favor to corporate
interests and the health care repeal-and-replace effort was a misbegotten flop — the swing voters he
needs to hold the Midwest are now drifting away .

And becauseTrump naturally alienates women and can’t make a gesture of outreach to blacks or Hispanics
without stepping on it with bigotry the next day, he doesn’t really have another path back to the White
House if those Obama-Trump voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio go Democratic or stay
home. Certainly the Republicans criticizing him on trade aren’t offering him such a path: Their overall vision is
the same tired G.O.P. orthodoxy that went down to defeat in 2008 and 2012, and that Trump himself crushed in the
last primary campaign.

So the fact that Trump’s tariffs are generally unpopular , even in Midwestern states, doesn’t matter politically
nearly as much as their potential appeal to the narrow slice of blue-collar swing voters that he needs if he’s
going to be re-elected. And their potential cost, for now, can be swallowed up by general economic growth
or dealt with via cynical payoffs; if the general economic growth itself goes away, well, then Trump isn’t getting re-elected anyway.

If you expect this to lead to good policymaking, you haven’t been paying attention to how this White House operates. But the fact that Trump has this particular
incentive to focus on free trade’s Midwestern losers is not itself a bad thing. One of the strongest arguments for the countermajoritarian element in the Electoral
College is that it provides a point of leverage for regional populations that have suffered particularly at the hands of an overreaching bipartisan consensus. And the
bipartisan consensus on trade with China really is ripe for an updating, since the domestic costs have been higher and geopolitical benefits more meager than the
expert class predicted 20 years ago.

Free-trade Republicans have every right to reject the Trumpian alternative to that consensus. But their whingeing
would be easier to take if they hadn’t discouraged Trump from every other attempt to make good on his populist pledges. He knows better than

they do how he got elected; if protectionism is the only promise he can keep, it's no surprise he's
keeping it .
Second-term Trump collapses the global economy and causes fast unstable
retrenchment from U.S. international commitments
Patrick Porter 18, Chair in International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham, 8/6/18,
“CRISIS AND CONVICTION: U.S. GRAND STRATEGY IN TRUMP’S SECOND TERM,”
https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/crisis-and-conviction-u-s-grand-strategy-in-trumps-second-term/

Thus far, the bottom line about Trump’s presidency is that before he took office, he threatened to govern as an isolationist,
but he has not . Instead of addressing the failures of primacy, he is exacerbating them. When running for office, Trump promised
to extricate America from unnecessary wars. He toyed with the idea of tolerating others’ nuclear proliferation. He
pronounced NATO to be “obsolete.” He took up the slogan of interwar isolationism, “America First.” This worldview persists. He is
no convert to the traditional ethos of the Pax Americana. In his contractual view of international affairs, he would prefer to draw
down global military deployments. He would prefer not to be bound by alliance commitments. He would
rather accommodate other major powers and let them dominate their back yards. He would be content for regional powers to be
security providers. And he has no time for the traditional logic that the hegemon pays more than the lion’s share of the defense bill in order to
keep allies subordinate.

He has not governed this way. Look beyond the tweets to follow the money and the troops. Trump is
aggressively reasserting American primacy, not dismantling it. Rather than bringing the legions home, Trump is
reinforcing their central importance, emptying the treasury to strengthen them, and even asking for military parades. Thanks to his deficit-
financed military build-up plus his extravagant tax cuts, the annual budget deficit has ballooned by 12 percent since last year, and is projected
to rise by an additional $100 billion a year. In the Middle East, Trump has doubled down on America’s bid to remain
predominant for the foreseeable future, increasing civilian and military deployments by 33 percent (as of November 2017) along with
accelerated arms sales, while strengthening ties with the Saudi bloc and Israel to confront and coerce Iran, America’s
main rival in the region. In Asia, Trump has pursued the nuclear disarmament of North Korea while increasingly

confronting China about Taiwan, trade, and the S outh C hina S ea. We can debate what to call this, but it isn’t
isolationism.

The disjuncture between Trump’s anti-traditionalism and American deeds, indeed between Trump and the policy thrust of the executive
branch, is most apparent in U.S.-Russian relations. Trump’s notorious words are often contradicted by the details of actual policy. Trump stands
accused of treasonous collaboration with Vladimir Putin’s regime, due not only to allegations of electoral interference and private one-on-one
meetings, but deferential statements about Russia’s security interests, congratulating Putin on re-election, and suggesting that Russia be
invited back to the G-7. But amid the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s fascination for the extent of Trump’s collusion with Putin, its almost
Trumpian fixation with televisual optics, and its fondness for grandiose tracts about “world order,” it neglects the prosaic details of concrete
commitments.

Consider the totality of American policy towards Russia since January 2017, which is the product of multiple decision-making centers, and some
of which is forged despite Trump. Around the infamous Brussels and Helsinki reports, a significant act went under-reported. Before he went to
Brussels, Trump addressed the Three Seas Initiative at Warsaw, where he pitched the United States as an alternative energy supplier to Russia,
explicitly to break Russia’s gas monopoly, his Energy Secretary presented the United States as an alternative market provider to the Nord
Stream 2 pipeline. Moscow noticed with displeasure. Whether or not Trump threatened to quit NATO, its members are spending evermore on
defense, which is not a happy result for Russia. Despite
protestations, European states retain powerful incentives to
stick with Washington. There are no signs of their abandoning the alliance to rearm independently or
bandwagon with other powers.
Consider too other measures. He has appointed hawkish American primacists and Putin critics to Russia-related official posts. He has expanded
sanctions, including an expanded Magnitsky list of targets. The Justice Department has forced Russia Today to register as a foreign agent.
Trump has expelled Russian diplomats. Trump has armed Ukraine, Romania and Poland. The U.S. has reinforced NATO’s enhanced forward
presence in Poland and the Baltic states with increased troop numbers and more exercises, and presided over the expansion of NATO into
Montenegro and Macedonia, against Russian efforts to keep its clients in the Balkans and resist E.U.-NATO enlargement, while courting Ukraine
and Georgia as future alliance members. The United States also acquires low-yield nuclear weapons with the explicit rationale of competition
against Moscow, to remain “top of the pack” among nuclear powers. Trump twice authorized airstrikes against Syria, Russia’s Middle Eastern
client state, against Putin’s protests. He also loosened the rules of engagement in Syria, struck Russian troops and mercenaries there and
bragged about it. So far, the U.S. refuses to recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Is this Putin’s dream?

Some commentators, like Daniel Vajdich and James Carafano, maintain this confrontational stance is Trump’s own. Carafano attributes Trump’s
reassertion of American hegemony to a coherent Trumpian vision, a “large dose of peace through strength: showing strong face to his enemies
with military and economic pressure,” while offering them a “chance to stop competing.” This is an elegant explanation. But it overstates the
president’s command of the policy process. The picture that emerges is more fraught. A surer verdict must await future archives, but from
the pattern of what
we can know about the process behind these choices, a reluctant Trump is
constrained to maintain a hard-line policy mix . This is despite his public braggadocio and despite his instinctive belief that
Washington should delegate anti-Putin countermeasures to Europeans. Similarly, he
retains a personal preference for pulling
troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, and Syria. Yet advisors pressed him successfully to maintain
the traditional U.S. posture so far. “You guys want me to send troops everywhere,” Trump charged Secretary of Defense Mattis,
whose response (“You have no choice”) carried the day.

As well as being subject to constant advice to maintain a tough stance on Russian adventurism, domestic criticism of any conciliation of Russia
and the Mueller investigation that the foreign policy establishment has encouraged have led Trump to complain that he “can’t put on the
charm” or “be president.” Trump acknowledges that he is boxed in: “Anything you do, it’s always going to be… ‘He loves Russia.’” “I just want
peace,” he complained when aides pushed him (successfully) to supply lethal aid to the Ukraine. The White House initially invited Putin to visit
Washington, but subsequently postponed the occasion, citing the “Russia witch hunt.” If Trump had his way, as one former official put it, he
would purse a “much more open and friendly policy with Russia.” So far, he hasn’t had his way on most first order
questions. The environment is too resistant. The actor is not determined enough and doesn’t have
enough political capital to spend . True, in the field of economics, Trump’s stoking of trade wars and large leaps in protectionism
are a departure from post-Cold War policies, though he adheres to the impulse of creating markets open for American business and on
American terms. On security questions, though, if it is hard politically to arrange a Putin visit to the White House, the constraints against doing
what Moscow would like, negotiating a “Yalta-2” grand bargain to recognize a Russian sphere of influence — or withdraw from Europe — are
strong.

It is thus premature to argue that Trump is “ off the chain ,” as Hal Brands does. Brands notes that the
constraining influence of Secretary Jim Mattis has waned, now that he has fallen out of favor, and that Trump is increasingly being Trump. Yet
none of the concrete policies identified above have lapsed. And to focus on palace intrigue over which appointee is in the ascendancy is to miss
the larger pattern. While Trump periodically falls out with just about everyone, the
policy ecosystem is dominated by
primacists and the primacy consensus. Though Tillerson and McMaster fell from grace and departed, the pool of capable talent
from which the president selected appointees remains primacist. As Steve Bannon once observed, once you remove anti-Trump
neoconservatives and never-Trumpers, the group of viable conservative candidates for official positions is not a “deep bench.” Accordingly,
Trump has replaced estranged hawkish primacists with even more hawkish primacists as his new
consiglieres: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, alongside U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley who
endures as the unapologetic voice of superpower assertion.

The Precipice: Trump’s Second Term

We would be wise to entertain the possibility of a second term of Trump . Thus far, it has proven futile for
Trump’s critics to seek refuge in wishful expectations that he would go away, a wish found wanting every time it is updated. Recall that critics
have hoped Trump wouldn’t win the nomination; that he would lose the election; that he would be impeached; that he will not stand again for
office. The hope for a post-Trump return to political normality is similarly vain. After Trump there will likely be more Trumps, given the force of
populist revolt that he has stirred, and the general dissatisfaction with the alleged liberal world order, whose breakdown and failures made
Trumpism possible in the first place.

There are good reasons to expect Trump to be a strong contender for re-election. Since World War II,
incumbency has been a strong force in U.S. presidential politics. It has been rare for one of the two major parties to hold the presidency for
only one term. Consider too Trump’s standing. His disapproval ratings are at historic highs, yet he also strongly
mobilizes his base . Donations to Trump’s re-election campaign flood in. Trump enjoys near record approval from Republican voters,
with no sign of mass defections. As things stand, he can campaign for a second term with a contentious but
powerful story: a booming economy, low unemployment, a rising stock market, strictly enforced borders and tariff
walls , and making peace through tough confrontation of North Korea and Iran. Each of these claims can be unpicked. But rebutting them
takes explanation. In politics, if you’re explaining, you’re failing. Trump may be fortunate that his re-election timetable coincides with the right
side of an economic “boom bust” cycle. Were
he to win a second term, and especially if the margin was more decisive, the
conditions of his presidency would change. If he won big, he would have more political capital to
spend. He would feel vindicated by the authority of a second mandate. Term limits would mean that he would no
longer need fear election failure. It is possible that Trump “Mark 2” would be more willing to tolerate the costs of

introducing major change in American grand strategy .

Consider further the possibility of a major strategic shock, with an impact comparable to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the
Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. By definition, the shape and outline of the shock is unclear. And we
can’t know when it would happen. But if the literature on great power decline is sound, it
would likely have military and
economic dimensions, featuring some fatal interaction of war and debt. The source of the next financial crisis could
lie elsewhere, but Trump’s own policies also make more likely what was an implicit tendency, increasing the debt-deficit load and
repeating a familiar pattern, whereby a large deficit-financed military build-up, deficit-financed wars (alongside tax
cuts) stimulates demand, creates bubbles of irrational exuberance, overheats the economy, and eventually leads to a loss
of confidence in markets . This would be followed by a contraction , but this time without the financial reserves
that were available to mitigate the last financial crisis. This process could erupt sooner rather than later .

It would take the combination of a strategic shock great enough to discredit the status quo and a determined revisionist
president. If so, then these forces might come together, to take the president off the chain , and to
create a domestic environment more hospitable to major change. Earlier security shocks, such as the 2008 financial crisis, did not lead in this
direction because the Bush administration was averse to retrenching commitments. With Trump or a Trumpian figure in
the white
house, one response that was once taboo would be on the table: a fundamental retrenchment of overseas
commitments , along the lines of Trump’s instincts. It isn’t certain what this will involve, but it would be drastic and imply a different
assumption about how to pursue security. It could lead the United States to, for example, withdraw from the Gulf and let
Saudi Arabia acquire the bomb, or to acknowledge Russia’s view of its sphere of influence while withdrawing
from NATO or decisively repudiating Article 5, or to reduce military expenditure just to the level needed for the United States to deter
attacks and defend itself.

American “greatness” would still be Trump’s signature tune, but it would be redefined around liberating America from foreign entanglements,
investing in and walling off the country, and an industrial renaissance. To be sure, the American foreign policy class would
fight back furiously. But like in the era of Vietnam and the oil embargo, its power and confidence would be diminished. Already
scarred by the last global financial crisis, stagnating wages and general alienation, the populace would be more
receptive. An emboldened and more risk-prone president would be willing to hire outsiders as officials, less experienced and capable but
ideologically attuned to the narrower security vision of “America First.”

All this might be difficult to imagine. But rapid realignments of grand strategy can happen. As I argued, one example is Great
Britain’s postwar abandonment of empire. New conditions were inhospitable to the exhausted country maintaining its colonies. These included
the cumulative fiscal pressures of World War II, decolonization resistance, the United States’ dismantling of the economic order of imperial
preference and the sterling bloc; and the shock of the Suez crisis of 1956, which revealed Britain’s vulnerability to U.S. coercion. Successive
British governments were impelled to bow to these pressures once they became overwhelming. They then redefined Britain’s status around
alliances and nuclear weapons, presenting retreat from empire as a graceful management of change and casting the emergence of independent
countries as “the crowning achievement of British rule.”
If we see a different kind of President Trump unleashed by new conditions, less constrained and more
emboldened, in a context where major retrenchment becomes thinkable and attractive, only then will he or his heirs probably try to bring
down the priesthood’s temple. If so, as Steve Bannon suggested, the next episode of Trump’s prime-time show will be as

“ wild as shit .”

That causes global nuclear war

Thomas H. Henricksen 17, emeritus senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, 3/23/17, “Post-American
World Order,” http://www.hoover.org/research/post-american-world-order

The tensions stoked by the assertive regimes in the Kremlin or Tiananmen Square could spark a political or military
incident that might set off a chain reaction leading to a large-scale war . Historically, powerful rivalries nearly
always lead to at least skirmishes, if not a full-blown war. The anomalous Cold War era spared the United States and Soviet
Russia a direct conflict, largely from concerns that one would trigger a nuclear exchange destroying both states and much of the
world. Such a repetition might reoccur in the unfolding three-cornered geopolitical world. It seems safe to
acknowledge that an ascendant China and a resurgent Russia will persist in their geo-strategic ambitions.

What Is To Be Done?

The first marching order is to dodge any kind of perpetual war of the sort that George Orwell outlined in “1984,” which engulfed the three
super states of Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania, and made possible the totalitarian Big Brother regime. A long-running Cold War-type
confrontation would almost certainly take another form than the one that ran from 1945 until the downfall of the Soviet Union.

What prescriptions can be offered in the face of the escalating competition among the three global powers? First, by staying militarily
and economically strong, the United States will have the resources to deter its peers’ hawkish behavior
that might otherwise trigger a major conflict . Judging by the history of the Cold War, the coming strategic chess
match with Russia and China will prove tense and demanding—since all the countries boast nuclear
arms and long-range ballistic missiles. Next, the United States should widen and sustain willing coalitions of
partners, something at which America excels, and at which China and Russia fail conspicuously.

There can be little room for error in fraught crises among nuclear-weaponized and hostile powers . Short-
and long-term standoffs are likely, as they were during the Cold War. Thus, the
playbook, in part, involves a waiting game in
which each power looks to its rivals to suffer grievous internal problems which could entail a collapse, as happened to
the Soviet Union.
trade
 No Trade War---1NC
No broad trade war or escalating protectionism
Geoffrey Gertz 18, fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings
Institution and research associate at the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of
Oxford, 2/16/18, “Is Trump remaking American trade enforcement policy?,”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/02/16/is-trump-remaking-american-trade-
enforcement-policy/

Do these actions imply Trump is upending American trade enforcement? Not necessarily . Indeed, what is
notable about Trump’s trade enforcement record is that, while he continually reveals his personal instincts for dramatic,
aggressive action—such as calling last week for a “reciprocal tax” on trading partners—to date these instincts have been
tempered by the political and legal constraints of America’s trade bureaucracy. Last month brought further
evidence of how America’s trade enforcement procedures remain, for the most part, insulated from political
pressures. The U.S. I nternational T rade C ommission ruled against Boeing’s petition to impose duties on the
Canadian plane maker Bombardier, clearing the way for Bombardier’s sale of jets to Delta. This decision was a welcome surprise
for many advocates of free trade, in one of the most high profile anti-dumping cases of the Trump era. (Bombardier’s stock jumped
15 percent on the news.) The ITC demonstrated that, whatever Trump’s instincts on protectionism may be, the
professionals responsible for actually carrying out trade enforcement have not changed their ways .

It remains to be seen how both the Section 232 and Section 301 cases will play out. For now, however, Trump’s
trade enforcement record is more traditionalist than revolutionary. His administration is digging deep
into the existing U.S. trade enforcement playbook, dusting off enforcement tools that have not been used in years, but they are
not ripping up this playbook altogether. They are willing to push the limits of the existing system, but
are not fundamentally overturning it ; perhaps not a surprise given that Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade official, has spent
most of his career within this system.

The longer term impact of this enforcement streak will depend on how targeted countries respond. Here, so far,
signs are mostly encouraging —countries that have been targeted by U.S. trade actions have for the most part
been filing complaints at the WTO, rather than unilaterally hitting back at the U.S. Earlier this month, however,
China announced it was investigating the dumping of U.S. sorghum exports, signaling that it is willing and able to retaliate against American
trade policy if necessary. Even here, however, it appears that China is seeking to avoid further escalation by looking for
a discriminate, proportionate response to U.S. pressure.
 Tariffs Don’t Hurt Trade---Trends
It’s impossible for Trump’s protectionism to turn the tide of global trade---it’s locked
in and inevitable
Zachary Karabell 17, head of global strategy at Envestnet, 1/27/17, “Trade Is More Powerful Than
Donald Trump,” https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/trade-is-more-powerful-than-
donald-trump-214701

More than that, trade across borders and among nations is likely to continue and increase modestly
regardless of what the trade regime is as long as the global middle class continues to expand. The United
States is central to that, and will be for years to come even if its relative importance decreases somewhat. Governments can add or
reduce friction to trade, but demand and cost and meeting the needs of billions of middle class citizens
around the world drives where things are produced, bought and sold more than trade pacts and tariffs . For
instance, U.S. companies have been selling into China for the past 20 years even as the difficulty of doing so has
been significant and the costs have been considerable. China is simply too attractive a market for
companies to ignore, even with a government that hardly welcomes foreign competition. The United States
is an even larger market, which means that a U.S. that is less welcoming to foreign business is still too desirable a

market for foreign companies to forgo simply because Washington raises hurdles .

Sure, the Trump administration can certainly make

trade more complicated and costly for both domestic U.S. companies
and foreign companies. But trade is not an on-off switch that a presidential administration can toggle at will.

Separate from whether these initial trade moves are wise or foolish, they are not nearly as consequential as the Trump administration would
have us believe or as various critics would contend. They are mostly words codifying current trends, rather than actions that set America in a
new direction. We
live in an elaborate system of trade and tariffs that has many moving parts, tens of thousands
of permutations and regulations, trillions of dollars of goods and services. Executive actions are easy;
altering the global trajectory of trade , that is an order of magnitude harder .

Even aggressive U.S. tariff enforcement doesn’t undermine overall trends supporting
global trade
Tyler Cowen 18, professor of economics at George Mason University, 6/8/18, “Trump Tariffs Are Just a
Blip in the March of Free Trade,” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-08/trump-tariffs-
china-brexit-won-t-stop-free-trade

Is the age of free trade coming to an end? It sure feels that way, with the U.S. levying tariffs against its
allies, the Chinese not budging from their mercantilist system, Brexit on track, and authoritarian governments on the rise. The good
news, however, lies outside the realm of politics: The long-run trend is one of greater interconnectedness,
at least for traditional goods and services.

Here’s why I am still (mostly) an optimist about the future of trade.

First, the changing nature and greater complexity of international supply chains makes effective protectionism
hard to pull off . To cite a simple example, foreign steel is an input into many American products sold abroad, such as cars. If tariffs or
quotas restrict the importation of foreign steel, American automakers will face higher costs, and they will find it harder to export. Policy
makers might like to think that tariffs can target foreign interests with precision, but that has never been
less the case than now.
Second, we have been down this protectionist road before, in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, who
imposed limitations on Japanese auto imports and tariffs on Japanese computers and televisions. In 2002, President George
W. Bush imposed tariffs on steel imports. Whatever you think of those policies, they did not reverse the longer-

run trend toward more cross-border trade. Over time, the economics proved more potent than the politics,
and those restrictions were removed.

Third, and perhaps most important, human beings around the world are tied together more closely than ever
before. In particular, migrants from emerging economies now live in many different countries in unprecedented numbers.

Why does this matter? Well, the numbers on international trade suggest that distance is usually a greater barrier to trade
than are tariffs, a result from “the gravity model.” To put it concretely, the U.S. trades far more with Canada than with
Australia, even though those two countries have broadly the same economic profile. The reason isn’t mainly about
the costs of transportation (water transport is pretty cheap), but rather the U.S. has better networks with Canada than with
Australia. Canadians are more likely to have school experience, business contacts or friends in the U.S., and vice versa, because of proximity.
That encourages subsequent business ties and trade.

A lot of the recent

cross-border migration is planting a hugely positive, pro-trade legacy that will yield
dividends for decades to come. The Chinese, Indians, Nigerians and many other groups around the world will
continue to build economic connections, even when the countries involved aren’t always so geographically close. I expect the
positive trade gains from these connections and personal networks will outweigh the downside from some
higher tariffs in the meantime . Ultimately the opportunities are there, and the biggest problem is the lack of human talent to execute
on them.
econ
 Econ D---1NC
Economic crises don’t cause war
Christopher Clary 15, Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT, Postdoctoral Fellow, Watson Institute for
International Studies, Brown University, “Economic Stress and International Cooperation: Evidence from
International Rivalries,” April 22, 2015, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597712
Do economic downturns generate pressure for diversionary conflict? Or might downturns encourage austerity and economizing behavior in
foreign policy? This paper provides new evidence that economic stress is associated with conciliatory policies between
strategic rivals. For states that view each other as military threats, the biggest step possible toward bilateral cooperation is to terminate the
rivalry by taking political steps to manage the competition. Drawing on data from 109 distinct rival dyads since 1950, 67 of
which terminated , the evidence suggests rivalries were approximately twice as likely to terminate during economic
downturns than they were during periods of economic normalcy. This is true controlling for all of the main
alternative explanations for peaceful relations between foes (democratic status, nuclear weapons possession, capability imbalance,
common enemies, and international systemic changes), as well as many other possible confounding variables. This research
questions existing theories claiming that economic downturns are associated with diversionary war, and instead argues that in certain
circumstances peace may result from economic troubles .
Defining and Measuring Rivalry and Rivalry Termination

I define a rivalry as the perception by national elites of two states that the other state possesses conflicting interests and presents a military
threat of sufficient severity that future military conflict is likely. Rivalry termination is the transition from a state of rivalry to one where
conflicts of interest are not viewed as being so severe as to provoke interstate conflict and/or where a mutual recognition of the imbalance in
military capabilities makes conflict-causing bargaining failures unlikely. In other words, rivalries terminate when the elites assess that the risks
of military conflict between rivals has been reduced dramatically.

This definition draws on a growing quantitative literature most closely associated with the research programs of William Thompson, J. Joseph
Hewitt, and James P. Klein, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl.1 My definition conforms to that of William Thompson. In work with Karen Rasler,
they define rivalries as situations in which “[b]oth actors view each other as a significant political-military threat and, therefore, an enemy.”2 In
other work, Thompson writing with Michael Colaresi, explains further:

The presumption is that decisionmakers explicitly identify who they think are their foreign enemies. They orient their military preparations and
foreign policies toward meeting their threats. They assure their constituents that they will not let their adversaries take advantage. Usually,
these activities are done in public. Hence, we should be able to follow the explicit cues in decisionmaker utterances and writings, as well as in
the descriptive political histories written about the foreign policies of specific countries.3

Drawing from available records and histories, Thompson and David Dreyer have generated a universe of strategic rivalries from 1494 to 2010
that serves as the basis for this project’s empirical analysis.4 This project measures rivalry termination as occurring on the last year that
Thompson and Dreyer record the existence of a rivalry.5

Why Might Economic Crisis Cause Rivalry Termination?

Economic crises lead to conciliatory behavior through five primary channels. (1) Economic crises lead to austerity pressures ,
which in turn incent leaders to search for ways to cut defense expenditures. (2) Economic crises also
encourage strategic reassessment , so that leaders can argue to their peers and their publics that defense spending can be
arrested without endangering the state. This can lead to threat deflation, where elites attempt to downplay the
seriousness of the threat posed by a former rival. (3) If a state faces multiple threats, economic crises provoke elites to
consider threat prioritization , a process that is postponed during periods of economic normalcy. (4) Economic
crises increase the political and economic benefit from international economic cooperation . Leaders
seek foreign aid, enhanced trade, and increased investment from abroad during periods of economic trouble. This search is
made easier if tensions are reduced with historic rivals. (5) Finally, during crises, elites are more prone to select leaders who are perceived as
capable of resolving economic difficulties, permitting the emergence of leaders who hold heterodox foreign policy views. Collectively, these
mechanisms make it much more likely that a leader will prefer conciliatory policies compared to during periods of economic normalcy. This
section reviews this causal logic in greater detail, while also providing historical examples that these mechanisms recur in practice.
 No Cyber Impact---Top Level
Zero impact to cyber-attacks --- overwhelming consensus of qualified authors goes neg
- No motivation---can’t be used for coercive leverage

- Defenses solve---benefits of offense are overstated

- Too difficult to execute/mistakes in code are inevitable

- AT: Infrastructure attacks

- Military networks are air-gapped/difficult to access

- Overwhelming consensus goes neg

Colin S. Gray 13, Prof. of International Politics and Strategic Studies @ the University of Reading and
External Researcher @ the Strategic Studies Institute @ the U.S. Army War College, April, “Making
Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky Is Not Falling,” U.S. Army War College Press,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1147.pdf

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: THE SKY IS NOT FALLING ¶ This analysis has sought to explore, identify, and explain the strategic meaning
of cyber power. The organizing and thematic question that has shaped and driven the inquiry has been “So what?” Today we all do cyber, but this behavior usually
has not been much informed by an understanding that reaches beyond the tactical and technical. I have endeavored to analyze in strategic terms what is on offer
from the largely technical and tactical literature on cyber. What can or might be done and how to go about doing it are vitally important bodies of knowledge. But at
least as important is understanding what cyber, as a fifth domain of warfare, brings to national security when it is considered strategically. Military history is stocked
abundantly with examples of tactical behavior un - guided by any credible semblance of strategy. This inquiry has not been a campaign to reveal what cy ber can
and might do; a large literature already exists that claims fairly convincingly to explain “how to . . .” But what does cyber power mean, and how does it fit
strategically, if it does? These Conclusions and Rec ommendations offer some understanding of this fifth geography of war in terms that make sense to this
strategist, at least. ¶ 1. Cyber can only be an enabler of physical effort. Stand-alone (popularly misnamed as “strategic”) cyber action is
inherently grossly limited by its immateriality. The physicality of conflict with cyber’s human participants and mechanical artifacts has
not been a passing phase in our species’ strategic history. Cyber action, quite independent of action on land, at sea, in the air, and in orbital space, certainly is
possible. But the
strategic logic of such behavior, keyed to anticipated success in tactical achievement, is not promising. To date,
“What if . . .” speculation about strategic cyber attack usually is either contextually too light, or, more often, contextually
unpersuasive . 49 However, this is not a great strategic truth, though it is a judgment advanced with considerable confidence. Although societies could, of
course, be hurt by cyber action, it is important not to lose touch with the fact, in Libicki’s apposite words, that “[i]n the absence of physical

combat, cyber war cannot lead to the occupation of territory. It is almost inconceivable that a
sufficiently vigorous cyber war can overthrow the adversary’s government and replace it with a more
pliable one.” 50 In the same way that the concepts of sea war, air war, and space war are fundamentally unsound, so also the idea of cyber war is
unpersuasive. ¶ It is not impossible, but then, neither is war conducted only at sea, or in the air, or in space. On the one hand, cyber war may seem more probable

than like environmentally independent action at sea or in the air. After all, cyber warfare would be very unlikely to harm human
beings directly, let alone damage physically the machines on which they depend. These near-facts (cyber attack
might cause socially critical machines to behave in a rogue manner with damaging physical consequences) might seem to ren - der cyber a safer zone of belligerent
engagement than would physically violent action in other domains. But most likely there
would be serious uncertainties pertaining to
the consequences of cyber action, which must include the possibility of escalation into other domains
of conflict. Despite popular assertions to the contrary, cyber is not likely to prove a precision weapon anytime soon. 51
In addition, assuming that the political and strategic contexts for cyber war were as serious as surely they would need to be to trigger events warranting plausible
labeling as cyber war, the
distinctly limited harm likely to follow from cyber assault would hardly appeal as
prospectively effective coercive moves. On balance, it is most probable that cyber’s strategic future in war will be as a contribut - ing
enabler of effectiveness of physical efforts in the other four geographies of conflict. Speculation about cyber war, defined strictly as hostile action by net - worked

computers against networked computers, is hugely unconvincing. ¶ 2. Cyber defense is difficult, but should be sufficiently effective. The
structural advantages of the offense in cyber conflict are as obvious as they are easy to overstate. Penetration
and exploitation, or even attack, would need to be by surprise. It can be swift almost beyond the imagination of those encultured by the
traditional demands of physical combat. Cyber attack may be so stealthy that it escapes notice for a long while, or it might wreak digital havoc by com - plete
surprise. And need one emphasize, that at least for a while, hostile cyber action is likely to be hard (though not quite impossible) to attribute with a cy - berized
equivalent to a “smoking gun.” Once one is in the realm of the catastrophic “What if . . . ,” the world is indeed a frightening place. On a personal note, this defense
analyst was for some years exposed to highly speculative briefings that hypothesized how unques - tionably cunning plans for nuclear attack could so promptly
disable the United States as a functioning state that our nuclear retaliation would likely be still - born. I should hardly need to add that the briefers of these Scary
Scenarios were obliged to make a series of Heroic Assumptions. ¶ The
literature of cyber scare is more than mildly reminiscent
of the nuclear attack stories with which I was assailed in the 1970s and 1980s. As one may observe regarding what
Winston Churchill wrote of the disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, “[t]he terrible ‘Ifs’ accumulate.” 52 Of course, there are dangers in the cyber
domain. Not only are there cyber-competent competitors and enemies abroad; there are also Americans who make mistakes in cyber operation. Furthermore, there
are the manufacturers and constructors of the physical artifacts behind (or in, depending upon the preferred definition) cyber - space who assuredly err in this and

that detail. The

more sophisticated—usually meaning complex—the code for cyber, the more certain must
it be that mistakes both lurk in the program and will be made in digital communication.¶ What I have just
outlined minimally is not a reluc - tant admission of the fallibility of cyber, but rather a statement of what is obvious and should be anticipat - ed about people and
material in a domain of war. All human activities are more or less harassed by friction and carry with them some risk of failure, great or small. A strategist who has
read Clausewitz, especially Book One of On War , 53 will know this. Alternatively, anyone who skims my summary version of the general theory of strategy will note
that Dictum 14 states explicitly that “Strategy is more difficult to devise and execute than are policy, operations, and tactics: friction of all kinds comprise
phenomena inseparable from the mak - ing and execution of strategies.” 54 Because of its often widely distributed character, the physical infrastruc - ture of an
enemy’s cyber power is typically, though not invariably, an impracticable target set for physical assault. Happily, this probable fact should have only annoying
consequences. The discretionary nature and therefore the variable possible characters feasible for friendly cyberspace(s), mean that the more danger - ous
potential vulnerabilities that in theory could be the condition of our cyber-dependency ought to be avoidable at best, or bearable and survivable at worst. Libicki
offers forthright advice on this aspect of the subject that deserves to be taken at face value: ¶ [T]here is no inherent reason that improving informa - tion
technologies should lead to a rise in the amount of critical information in existence (for example, the names of every secret agent). Really critical information should
never see a computer; if it sees a computer, it should not be one that is networked; and if the computer is networked, it should be air-gapped.¶ Cyber

defense admittedly is difficult to do, but so is cyber offense. To quote Libicki yet again, “[i]n this medium [cyberspace] the best
defense is not necessarily a good offense; it is usually a good defense.” 56 Unlike the geostrategic context for nuclear-framed competition in U.S.–Soviet/Russian
rivalry, the geographical domain of cyberspace definitely is defensible. Even when the enemy is both clever and lucky, it will
be our own design and operating fault if he is able to do more than disrupt and irritate us temporarily. ¶ When cyber is contextually regarded properly— which
means first, in particular, when it is viewed as but the latest military domain for defense planning—it should be plain to see that cyber performance needs to be
good enough rather than perfect. 57 Our Landpower,
sea power, air power, and prospectively our space systems also will have to
be capable of accepting combat damage and loss, then recovering and carrying on. There is no
fundamental reason that less should be demanded of our cyber power. Second, given that cyber is not of a nature or
potential character at all likely to parallel nuclear dangers in the menace it could con - tain, we should anticipate international cyber rivalry to follow the competitive
dynamic path already fol - lowed in the other domains in the past. Because the digital age is so young, the pace of technical change and tactical invention can be
startling. However, the mechanization RMA of the 1920s and 1930s recorded reaction to the new science and technology of the time that is reminiscent of the

cyber alarmism that has flour - ished of recent years. 58 We

can be confident that cyber defense should be able to function
well enough, given the strength of political, military, and commercial motivation for it to do so.

The technical context here is a medium that is a constructed one, which provides air-gapping options for choice regarding the extent of networking. Naturally, a
price is paid in convenience for some closing off of possible cyberspace(s), but all important defense decisions involve choice, so what is novel about that? There is
nothing new about accepting some limitations on utility as a price worth paying for security. ¶ 3. Intelligence is critically important, but informa - tion should not be
overvalued. The strategic history of cyber over the past decade confirms what we could know already from the science and technology of this new domain for
conflict. Specifically,
cyber power is not technically forgiving of user error. Cyber warriors seeking criminal or
military benefit require precise information if their intended exploits are to succeed. Lucky guesses should not
stumble upon passwords, while efforts to disrupt electronic Supervisory Con - trol and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems ought to be

unable to achieve widespread harmful effects. But obviously there are practical limits to the air-gap op - tion, given that control (and
command) systems need to be networks for communication. However, Internet connection needs to be treated as a potential source of serious danger.¶ It is

one thing to be able to be an electronic nuisance, to annoy, disrupt, and perhaps delay. But it is quite another to be
capable of inflicting real persisting harm on the fighting power of an enemy. Critically important
military computer networks are, of course, accessible neither to the inspired amateur outsider, nor to
the malignant political enemy. Easy passing reference to a hypothetical “cyber Pearl Harbor” reflects
both poor history and ignorance of contemporary military common sense. Critical potential military
(and other) targets for cyber attack are extremely hard to access and influence (I believe and certainly hope), and the
technical knowledge, skills, and effort required to do serious harm to national security is forbiddingly
high. This is not to claim, foolishly, that cyber means absolutely could not secure near-catastrophic results. However, it is to say that such a
scenario is extremely improbable . Cyber defense is advancing all the time, as is cyber offense, of course. But so discretionary in vital detail can
one be in the making of cyberspace, that confidence—real confidence—in cyber attack could not plausibly be high. It should be noted that I am confining this
particular discussion to what rather idly tends to be called cyber war. In political and strategic practice, it is unlikely that war would or, more importantly, ever could
be restricted to the EMS. Somewhat rhetorically, one should pose the question: Is it likely (almost anything, strictly, is possible) that cyber war with the potential to
inflict catastrophic damage would be allowed to stand unsupported in and by action in the other four geographical domains of war? I believe not. ¶ Because we have
told ourselves that ours uniquely is the Information Age, we have become unduly respectful of the potency of this rather slippery catch-all term. As usual, it is
helpful to contextualize the al - legedly magical ingredient, information, by locating it properly in strategic history as just one important element contributing to net
strategic effectiveness. This mild caveat is supported usefully by recognizing the general contemporary rule that information per se harms nothing and nobody. The
electrons in cyber - ized conflict have to be interpreted and acted upon by physical forces (including agency by physical human beings). As one might say,
intelligence (alone) sinks no ship; only men and machines can sink ships! That said, there is no doubt that if friendly cyber action can infiltrate and misinform the
electronic informa - tion on which advisory weaponry and other machines depend, considerable warfighting advantage could be gained. I do not intend to join
Clausewitz in his dis - dain for intelligence, but I will argue that in strategic affairs, intelligence usually is somewhat uncertain. 59 Detailed up-to-date intelligence
literally is essential for successful cyber offense, but it can be healthily sobering to appreciate that the strategic rewards of intelligence often are considerably
exaggerated. The basic reason is not hard to recognize. Strategic success is a complex endeavor that requires adequate perfor - mances by many necessary
contributors at every level of conflict (from the political to the tactical). ¶ When thoroughly reliable intelligence on the en - emy is in short supply, which usually is
the case, the strategist finds ways to compensate as best he or she can. The IT-led RMA of the past 2 decades was fueled in part by the prospect of a quality of
military effec - tiveness that was believed to flow from “dominant battle space knowledge,” to deploy a familiar con - cept. 60 While there is much to be said in
praise of this idea, it is not unreasonable to ask why it has been that our ever-improving battle space knowledge has been compatible with so troubled a course of
events in the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. What we might have misunderstood is not the value of knowledge, or of the information from which knowledge is
quarried, or even the merit in the IT that passed information and knowledge around. Instead, we may well have failed to grasp and grip understanding of the whole
context of war and strategy for which battle space knowledge unquestionably is vital. One must say “vital” rather than strictly essential, because relatively ignorant
armies can and have fought and won despite their ig - norance. History requires only that one’s net strategic performance is superior to that of the enemy. One is
not required to be deeply well informed about the en - emy. It is historically quite commonplace for armies to fight in a condition of more-than-marginal reciprocal
and strategic cultural ignorance. Intelligence is king in electronic warfare, but such warfare is unlikely to be solely, or even close to solely, sovereign in war and its
warfare, considered overall as they should be. ¶ 4. Why the sky will not fall. More accurately, one should say that the
sky will not fall because of
hostile action against us in cyberspace unless we are improb - ably careless and foolish. David J. Betz and Tim Ste vens strike the right note
when they conclude that “[i]f cyberspace is not quite the hoped-for Garden of Eden, it is also not quite the pestilential swamp of the imagination of the cyber-
alarmists.” 61 Our understanding of cyber is high at the technical and tactical level, but re - mains distinctly rudimentary as one ascends through operations to the

more rarified altitudes of strategy and policy. Nonetheless, our scientific, technological, and tactical knowledge and
understanding clearly indicates that the sky is not falling and is unlikely to fall in the future as a
result of hostile cyber action. This analysis has weighed the more technical and tactical literature on
cyber and concludes, not simply on balance, that cyber alarmism has little basis save in the imagination of the
alarmists. There is military and civil peril in the hostile use of cyber, which is why we must take cyber security seriously, even to the point of buying redundant
capabilities for a range of command and control systems. 62 So seriously should we regard cyber danger that it is only prudent to as - sume that we will be the
target for hostile cyber action in future conflicts, and that some of that action will promote disruption and uncertainty in the damage it will cause. ¶ That granted,
this analysis recommends strongly that the U.S. Army, and indeed the whole of the U.S. Government, should strive to comprehend cyber in context. Approached in
isolation as a new technol - ogy, it is not unduly hard to be over impressed with its potential both for good and harm. But if we see networked computing as just the
latest RMA in an episodic succession of revolutionary changes in the way information is packaged and communicated, the computer-led IT revolution is set where it
belongs, in historical context. In modern strategic history, there has been only one truly game-changing basket of tech - nologies, those pertaining to the creation
and deliv - ery of nuclear weapons. Everything else has altered the tools with which conflict has been supported and waged, but has not changed the game. The
nuclear revolution alone raised still-unanswered questions about the viability of interstate armed conflict. How - ever, it would be accurate to claim that since 1945,
methods have been found to pursue fairly traditional political ends in ways that accommodate nonuse of nuclear means, notwithstanding the permanent pres -
ence of those means.¶ The light cast by general strategic theory reveals what requires revealing strategically about networked computers. Once one sheds some of
the sheer wonder at the seeming miracle of cyber’s ubiquity, instanta - neity, and (near) anonymity, one realizes that cyber is just another operational domain,
though certainly one very different from the others in its nonphysi - cality in direct agency. Having placed cyber where it belongs, as a domain of war, next it is
essential to recognize that its nonphysicality compels that cyber should be treated as an enabler of joint action, rather than as an agent of military action capable of
behav - ing independently for useful coercive strategic effect. There
are stand-alone possibilities for cyber action, but they
are not convincing as attractive options either for or in opposition to a great power, let alone a
superpower. No matter how intriguing the scenario design for cyber war strictly or for cyber warfare,
the logic of grand and military strategy and a common sense fueled by understanding of the course of
strategic history, require one so to contextualize cyber war that its independence is seen as too close
to absurd to merit much concern.
No threat of large-scale cyber-attacks---alarmist predictions are empirically denied
Sean Lawson 11, Ph.D. Department of Communication University of Utah "BEYOND CYBER-DOOM:
Cyberattack Scenarios and the Evidence of History" Jan 11
mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/beyond-cyber-doom-cyber-attack-scenarios-evidence-
history_1.pdf

Despite persistent ambiguity in cyber-threat perceptions, cyber-doom scenarios have remained an important tactic
used by cybersecurity proponents. Cyber-doom scenarios are hypothetical stories about prospective impacts of a
cyberattack and are meant to serve as cautionary tales that focus the attention of policy makers, media, and the public on the issue of cybersecurity.

These stories typically follow a set pattern involving a cyberattack disrupting or destroying critical
infrastructure. Examples include attacks against the electrical grid leading to mass blackouts, attacks against the
financial system leading to economic losses or complete economic collapse, attacks against the transportation
system leading to planes and trains crashing, attacks against dams leading floodgates to open, or attacks against nuclear power plants
leading to meltdowns (Cavelty, 2007: 2).¶ Recognizing that modern infrastructures are closely interlinked and interdependent, such scenarios often involve a
combination of multiple critical infrastructure systems failing simultaneously, what is sometimes referred to as a “cascading failure.” This was the case in the
“Cyber Shockwave” war game televised by CNN in February 2010, in which a computer worm spreading among cell phones eventually led to serious
disruptions of critical infrastructures (Gaylord, 2010). Even more ominously, in their recent book, Richard Clarke and Robert Knake (2010: 64–68) present a
scenario in which a cyberattack variously destroys or seriously disrupts all U.S. infrastructure in only fifteen minutes, killing thousands and wreaking
unprecedented destruction on U.S. cities.¶ Surprisingly, someargue that we have already had attacks at this level, but
that we just have not recognized that they were occurring. For example, Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of
Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division, claims that a “cyber- 9/11” has already occurred, “but it’s

happened slowly so we don’t see it.” As evidence, he points to the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia, as well as other incidents in which the
computer systems of government agencies or contractors have been infiltrated and sensitive information stolen (Singel, 2009). Yoran is not alone in seeing the
2007 Estonia attacks as an example of the cyberdoom that awaits if we do not take cyber threats seriously. The speaker of the Estonian parliament, Ene Ergma,

Cyber-
has said that “When I look at a nuclear explosion, and the explosion that happened in our country in May, I see the same thing” (Poulsen, 2007).¶

doom scenarios are not new. As far back as 1994, futurist and best-selling author Alvin Toffler claimed that
cyberattacks on the World Trade Center could be used to collapse the entire U.S. economy. He predicted that “They
[terrorists or rogue states] won’t need to blow up the World Trade Center. Instead, they’ll feed signals into computers from Libya or Tehran or Pyongyang and
shut down the whole banking system if they want to. We know a former senior intelligence official who says, ‘Give me $1 million and 20 people and I will shut
down America. I could close down all the automated teller machines, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and most hospital and business computer systems’”

(Elias, 1994).¶ But we have not seen anything close to the kinds of scenarios outlined by Yoran, Ergma,
Toffler, and others. Terrorists did not use cyberattack against the World Trade Center; they used hijacked aircraft. And
the attack of 9/11 did not lead to the long-term collapse of the U.S. economy; we would have to wait for the
impacts of years of bad mortgages for a financial meltdown. Nor did the cyberattacks on Estonia approximate what

happened on 9/11 as Yoran has claimed, and certainly not nuclear warfare as Ergma has claimed. In fact, a scientist at the
NATO Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, which was established in Tallinn, Estonia in response to the 2007 cyberattacks, has written that the

immediate impacts of those attacks were “minimal” or “nonexistent,” and that the “no critical
services were permanently affected ” (Ottis, 2010: 72).¶ Nonetheless, many cybersecurity proponents continue to offer up cyber-doom
scenarios that not only make analogies to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but also hold out economic, social, and even
civilizational collapse as possible impacts of cyberattacks. A report from the Hoover Institution has warned of so-called “eWMDs” (Kelly & Almann, 2008); the
FBI has warned that a cyberattack could have the same impact as a “wellplaced bomb” (FOXNews.com, 2010b); and official DoD documents refer to “weapons
of mass disruption,” implying that cyberattacks might have impacts comparable to the use of WMD (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 2004, 2006). John
Arquilla, one of the first to theorize cyberwar in the 1990s (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1997), has spoken of “a grave and growing capacity for crippling our tech-
dependent society” and has said that a “cyber 9/11” is a matter of if, not when (Arquilla, 2009). Mike McConnell, who has claimed that we are already in an
ongoing cyberwar (McConnell, 2010), has even predicted that a cyberattack could surpass the impacts of 9/11 “by an order of magnitude” (The Atlantic, 2010).
Finally, some have even compared the impacts of prospective cyberattacks to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed roughly a quarter million people and
caused widespread physical destruction in five countries (Meyer, 2010); suggested that cyberattack could pose an “existential threat” to the United States
(FOXNews.com 2010b); and offered the possibility that cyberattack threatens not only the continued existence of the United States, but all of “global
civilization” (Adhikari, 2009).¶ In response, critics have noted that not
only has the story about who threatens what, how,
and with what potential impact shifted over time, but it has done so with very little evidence
provided to support the claims being made (Bendrath, 2001, 2003; Walt, 2010). Others have noted that the cyber-doom
scenarios offered for years by cybersecurity proponents have yet to come to pass and question
whether they are possible at all (Stohl, 2007). Some have also questioned the motives of cybersecurity proponents. Various
think tanks, security firms, defense contractors, and business leaders who trumpet the problem of cyber attacks are portrayed as selfinterested

ideologues who promote unrealistic portrayals of cyber-threats (Greenwald, 2010).

No impact to cyberattacks --- they’ll either be weak or contained to specific systems

Thomas Rid 12, PhD, reader in war studies @ King’s College London, former visiting scholar @ Hebrew
University, has previously worked at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins, and
RAND, “Think Again: Cyberwar,” March/April, Foreign Affairs,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/cyberwar?page=0,1

"Cyberweapons Can Create Massive Collateral Damage." Very unlikely. When news of Stuxnet broke, the New York
Times reported that the most striking aspect of the new weapon was the "collateral damage" it created. The malicious program was "splattered on

thousands of computer systems around the world, and much of its impact has been on those systems, rather than on what appears to
have been its intended target, Iranian equipment," the Times reported. Such descriptions encouraged the view that computer viruses are akin to highly

contagious biological viruses that, once unleashed from the lab, will turn against all vulnerable systems, not just their intended targets. But this metaphor

is deeply flawed. As the destructive potential of a cyberweapon grows, the likelihood that it could do
far-reaching damage across many systems shrinks. Stuxnet did infect more than 100,000 computers -- mainly in Iran, Indonesia,
and India, though also in Europe and the United States. But it was so specifically programmed that it didn't actually damage

those machines, afflicting only Iran's centrifuges at Natanz. The worm's aggressive infection strategy was designed to maximize the
likelihood that it would reach its intended target. Because that final target was not networked, "all the functionality required to sabotage a system was embedded
directly in the Stuxnet executable," the security software company Symantec observed in its analysis of the worm's code. So yes,
Stuxnet was
"splattered" far and wide, but it only executed its damaging payload where it was supposed to. Collateral
infection, in short, is not necessarily collateral damage. A sophisticated piece of malware may aggressively infect many systems, but if there is an intended

target, the infection will likely have a distinct payload that will be harmless to most computers. Especially in the
context of more sophisticated cyberweapons, the image of inadvertent collateral damage doesn't hold up. They're more like a flu virus that only makes one family
sick.

Cyber has no impact on coercion, the economy, or anything else

Martin C. Libicki 9, Senior Management Scientist @ RAND and adjunct fellow @ Georgetown’s Center
for Security Studies, “Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar,” RAND,
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG877.html

There are reasons to doubt that cyberwar has what it takes to coerce a state. Casualties are the chief
source of the kind of war-weariness that causes nations to sue for peace when still capable of defending themselves—but no one has yet
died in a cyberattack.¶ The coercive effect of cyberwar has to be calculated on the basis of what one side is demanding and how badly the defender
wants to avoid being known as capable of being coerced. If the stakes are high enough, a society, even a Western one, can take a great deal of punishment and still
not yield. One can hardly compare what even a vigorous cyberwar might do to what the inhabitants of Sarajevo had to endure in 1992 through 1995 or to what the
denizens of Jerusalem endured in 1947 and 1948. In both cases, solidarity held. Few nations have yielded to trade embargoes alone, even to universal trade
embargoes. It is unclear that a cyberwar campaign would have any more effect than even a universal trade embargo, which can affect all areas of the economy and

Even a complete shutdown of all computer networks would not prevent the
whose effects can be quite persistent.¶

emergence of an economy as modern as the U.S. economy was circa 1960—and such a reversion could
only be temporary, since cyberattacks rarely break things. Replace “computer networks” in the prior sentence with “publicly
accessible networks” (on the thinking that computer networks under attack can isolate themselves from the outside world) and “circa 1960” becomes “circa 1995.”
Life in 1995 provided a fair measure of comfort to citizens of developed nations. Finally, low-tech states are inherently more immune than high-tech states and are
therefore less susceptible to damage.¶ The notion that states
can limit the damage from cyberwar through the simple (but hardly
costless) expedient of air-gapping their networks suggests that the damage from cyberwar attacks may be self-
limiting in ways that do not apply to other forms of coercion. Since cyberattacks require vulnerabilities
to exploit, the faster and harder the attacks, the fewer good vulnerabilities remain left to exploit and
the faster the potential for further loss dwindles. There may well be an effective upper limit to the
cumulative damage that even the most intensive cyberwar on core subsystems can cause. In contrast,
recurrence is more likely for attacks on peripheral subsystems (user machines) because the ability to take advantage of human vulnerabilities (e.g., allowing a bot to
take over your computer, yielding a password to a phishing attack) appears endless. Conversely, even a full-court press against such vulnerabilities may not permit
great damage. Despite the constant rise in the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks over the last 15 years, there is little evidence that they have even slowed
down, much less stopped, the expansion of networks.
sop
 Congress Fails---General
Congress is incapable of rationally managing trade policy---zero improvement over the
status quo
Jay Cost 18, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, 3/5/18, “Congress Handed to the
President the Power to Level Tariffs,” https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/tariffs-congress-
handed-president-power-to-levy/

Instead, I want to draw out from Trump’s decision an answer to a question that is not immediately obvious: Why in the world does the
president have the power to levy tariffs in the first place?
Do not look to the plain text of the Constitution for an answer. Article I, Section 8 says:

The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence
and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

That is, Congress, not the president, was vested with the power to levy tariffs. At the time of ratification, everybody expected that the first
taxes from Congress would be “imposts” — tariffs on imported goods. That is exactly what happened, with the Tariff of 1789.

Yet thepower to levy imposts has been inevitably wrapped up with matters of foreign policy, and foreign
policy falls more clearly within the presidential domain. Consider the Jay Treaty of 1795. Prior to that compact, James
Madison and Thomas Jefferson had urged Congress to slap tariffs on Great Britain for its refusal to deal liberally with American trade. The pro-
British Federalists — above all, Alexander Hamilton — were aghast at this prospect and prevailed on President Washington to dispatch John Jay
to London, to hammer out a treaty.

The finished product was highly controversial, and it passed the Senate by the minimum number of necessary votes. One of its provisions was
the effective granting of most-favored-nation status to Great Britain — meaning a promise not to use tariffs as the sharp end of the diplomatic
stick. Madison argued that the House had the right to refuse to implement portions of the Jay Treaty, but his endeavor failed.

After World War II, the U nited S tates became one of the world’s superpowers, and trade has been a staple of
our foreign policy ever since. This has, naturally, increased the power of the executive branch. It is one of the big
reasons that Trump has such vast authority on tariffs. But there is another reason, which illustrates the deep, long-running

dysfunction inherent in the legislative branch

— a malady so grave that it undermines the republican principles on which the country was built.

The sad truth is that Congress has long been terrible at national economic planning . This was not immediately
evident when the Constitution was implemented because, apart from a brief burst of Hamiltonian policymaking in 1790–91, Congress did little
to facilitate or regulate the economy. It was only after the debacle of the War of 1812, a conflict that could very easily have resulted in a
massive loss of American territory, that Congress decided it had to strengthen the economic foundations of the nation.

The resulting Tariff of 1816 reflected that grand purpose. And it functioned well enough. But subsequent tariffs, in 1824 and especially in 1828,
revealed the true scope of the legislature’s problem. The tariff was, in theory, a tool for Congress to promote responsible, balanced economic
development that benefited the country as a whole. In practice, it devolved into a regional logroll — protecting goods from the Mid-Atlantic
and Midwest while doing virtually nothing for the South, which was becoming increasingly dependent on cotton exports — that especially
benefited industrial manufacturers who could influence the course of politics.

Over the course of the 19th century, the tariff became a form of regional hegemony for the North and Midwest over the South and Great
Plains. It was also a ready source of funds to bankroll the oligarchic clique that took control over northern politics. The tariff was why the
country ran huge budgetary surpluses during the so-called Gilded Age. It was not a sign of frugality in government. It was a sign of rampant
corruption.
The Progressives of the early 20th century were reacting in large part against this congressional irresponsibility. That is one reason they called
for the direct election of senators, a professional bureaucratic class, and a strong president — these were all ways to diminish the authority of a
corrupted Congress that seemed to make the serious problems of industrialization worse.

Conservative Republicans recaptured control of the government in the 1920s, and when the Depression hit, they naturally looked to industrial
protection (which had been a staple of GOP politics up to that point). But, as with the experiments with protectionism in the 1820s, this
endeavor spiraled out of control, creating a massive logroll that jacked up tariff rates with no rhyme or reason. Herbert Hoover signed the so-
called Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 despite grave misgivings. He was right to doubt its merits: Smoot-Hawley worsened the Depression and
helped Franklin Roosevelt win a smashing victory.

FDR brought with him to office the old Democratic favoritism toward free trade, but also decidedly Wilsonian views on the relations between
president and Congress. He encouraged Congress to transfer authority on trade matters (as well as most regulatory
matters!) to him. This time, the legislature agreed. It was as if Congress threw up its hands in exasperation and said to the
president, “ We cannot handle our authority responsibly. Please take it off our hands, for we will screw

things up and lose reelection.”

So more and more over the past 80 years, authority over tariffs, as well as over all manner of properly legislative functions, has migrated to the
executive branch, away from the legislative — even in instances (such as this aluminum-and-steel case) where there is no compelling or
immediate foreign-policy mandate. Trump’smove is purely a play for aggrieved industrial workers, who should, in
the constitutional schema, look to Congress and not the president for redress of their grievances .

And this is exactly the problem with our government in 2018. Nobody looks to Congress for redress of
grievances anymore, for it would be foolish to do so! Nobody respects Congress. Nobody likes Congress. Congress, at least to
judge from its members’ constant campaigning against it, does not even much like itself. Congress has systematically shrugged

power off its shoulders over the past 80 years, and it inevitably screws up the handful of authorities it
retains , such as income taxes and “discretionary” spending. The legislature is manifestly incapable of managing the
burdens of a modern economy.
In a republic, this is a major problem, because the people are supposed to be sovereign — and it is the legislature that is supposed to represent
their interests. But because the legislature cannot represent those interests responsibly, it hands power off to unelected courts or an executive
with just two offices out of millions that are popularly elected.

To be clear, the tariff is not the cause of this dysfunction . Rather, it was the first real indication that congressional
irresponsibility was a systemic weakness of our government, and it has come to undermine the republican notion that the people should rule.

This, to me, is more worrisome for republican government than whatever effects, great or small, Trump’s decision
on steel and aluminum ultimately generate. It is not just that the president has the power to level tariffs unilaterally. It is not
just that Congress handed it over. It is that Congress, the branch of the people, handed it over because it screwed it up,

again and again . A republic requires a legislature that can handle such tasks, and we simply do not have one.
2NC
Negotiation
ESR
 Solves the Case---2NC
Executive lead role on repealing tariffs solves global trade leadership
Wayne Winegarden 18, Senior Fellow in Business and Economics at the Pacific Research Institute and
the Principal of Capitol Economic Advisors, 6/12/18, “Tariffs Are A Clear and Present Danger To The U.S.
Economy,” https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynewinegarden/2018/06/12/tariffs-are-a-clear-and-
present-danger-to-the-u-s-economy/#12c618014472

This is particularly true for the tariffs that the Administration has imposed, which are on our closest trading
partners who are playing by the rules. These countries, despite the rhetoric, impose tariff rates on U.S. exports that are similar to the tariffs
that the U.S. imposes on their exports. Therefore, overall, there is already parity in tariff rates across these countries.

Of course, tariff parity should not be the goal because when the U.S. levies tariffs, the government is raising taxes on U.S. consumers and
businesses. As with any tax increase, it is domestic citizens that bear these costs.

Businesses bear the costs of tariffs through higher production costs. These higher costs dis-incent businesses from hiring more workers or
expanding production in the U.S. Instead of creating jobs, tariffs drive them offshore, along with the capital and investment that goes with
them.

Tariffs harm families by raising the costs for all types of goods and services. As a result, families will have to spend more of their hard-earned
money on the now higher priced goods, such as automobiles and food, and will have less disposable income to spend on other priorities.

Therefore, the tariffs that the Trump Administration is implementing are counter-productive – they attempt to
punish countries for actions they have not taken by imposing higher costs on Americans.

Instead of pursing this economically destructive policy, the Administration should lead by example and
reduce (or eliminate ) all currently imposed tariffs. Such an approach would help families’ budgets, improve
business productivity, strengthen the job market, and exhibit global leadership that would help
expand the benefits from global trade .

Trading partners are looking at the President for signals---the CP’s the most direct way
to resolve global perceptions
Guillermo Felices 18, Head of Research and Strategy, Multi-Asset Quantitative and Solutions division,
BNP Paribas Asset Management, et al., 3/29/18, “A ROAD MAP FOR NAVIGATING PROTECTIONISM: THE
ELEVATOR AND THE STAIRCASE,” https://docfinder.is.bnpparibas-ip.com/api/files/E38BCAFA-8CDE-
4163-9791-7171E1DA0E0E

The key policymaker to understand remains President Trump. He may be the instigator-in-chief of the
trade war and he may be the policymaker most inclined to escalation. However, it is also true that, up to this point, President
Trump has not followed through on his long-standing views on world trade, which suggests that up until
now he believed, or had been persuaded, that the private (President Trump’s assessment) costs of a trade war

would exceed the private benefits (or perhaps that it just takes time to implement this pivot to protectionism). We need to
understand this private cost/benefit analysis and how it might change through time if we want to predict
the actions of the players involved. In other words, we need to understand his motivations but also the
constraints that he is likely to face, as these determine the costs he would face were he to provoke a trade war.
The costs to Trump might come in the form of lack of progress on other aspects of his domestic policy agenda, which would be much harder to
implement if he starts a trade war, thanks to a loss of support on Capitol Hill or among the business community (similar points could be made
about his international policy agenda – for example, resolving tensions with North Korea – and loss of support from leading world figures). It
follows that the more of that policy agenda that is delivered, or becomes unachievable for other reasons, the smaller the perceived costs of
launching a trade war. If, for example, the Republicans lose control of Congress in the mid-terms and if President Trump’s approval ratings fall
such that he perceives his chances of re-election are remote, then Trump may conclude he has little left to lose by acting on his long-standing
beliefs on trade.

Trump could change his mind about the benefits of a trade war as events unfold. We are sceptical that
domestic politicians will have much influence on the president. Indeed, once the retaliation from other countries
begins, it may become increasingly difficult for politicians to attack the president for fear of being accused of being unpatriotic. This concern is
likely to be uppermost in the minds of all of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, given that they are up for election later this
year. Business leaders may be circumspect in their criticism for similar reasons. The opinion of the general public may have more traction, as
rising prices squeeze disposable incomes. However, that increase in prices is an inevitable by-product of Trump’s Make America Great Again
agenda: if you want to wean the American consumer off cheap imports and encourage domestic production then the price of those imports has
to go up. In any case, it is perfectly possible that a significant fraction of Trump’s base may approve of the trade war. Trump
is probably
most sensitive to the financial markets themselves – that is, he is probably most likely to be persuaded to
de-escalate if his actions precipitate a sharp downturn in the stock market, although even here he may choose to
blame other countries rather than reverse course. Finally, evidence that other countries are responding in kind to his policies by escalating
tensions rather than capitulating might lead Trump to revise his belief that (threatening) a trade war is the best way to negotiate a better trade
deal.

The behaviour of policymakers in the rest of the world is probably easier to explain. The objective of the
key decision makers in Europe and Japan will be to discourage the US Administration from
pursuing this path . That will require a carefully calibrated response which inflicts sufficient economic pain on the United
States to prompt influential figures in there to put pressure on the president to change course without legitimising a
retaliatory escalation by Trump.

Specifically true of the targets of tariffs

Lorena Ruano 17, Senior Associate Analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, March
2017, “World trade and Trump,”
https://www.iss.europa.eu/sites/default/files/EUISSFiles/Brief_7_Trump_trade.pdf
This shift is problematic because a large proportion of merchandise trade today consists of semi-finished goods and takes place intra-firm and
intra-industry, or within internationalised chains of production, such as the automobile industry in NAFTA. Imposing tariffs on Mexico or China
will affect the competitiveness of US companies that import parts from these countries, which are then re-exported as finished goods. It would
also hurt American consumers, as they will have to pay higher prices for imported goods or for goods made out of imported parts. Moreover, a
hike in tariffs and quotas is likely to trigger legal and policy responses from those affected. These could
range from complaints at WTO panels – which the US will probably ignore – to a retaliatory rise in tariffs against goods
coming from the US. In short, spark a trade war.

Although the US is better suited to deal with such a scenario since the share of trade in its GDP is much lower (14% on average) than for its
partners (36% for Mexico, 20% for China), it will hurt its highly internationalised industries like the high-tech and automobile sectors. China
and Mexico still seem to be waiting to see if Trump will really be able and/ or willing to do what he says; they
are counting on US companies and local authorities, whose welfare depends on trade with them, to moderate the federal
government’s actions. Interestingly, the debate seems to be spreading also within the new administration.
Theoretical arguments support an executive lead role---Trump’s just an anomalous
President who doesn’t support trade---the CP locks in the most sensible trade system
by reversing his policy choices
Jonathan Bernstein 18, Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy, taught political
science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, 6/8/18, “POTUS Rules the
Trade Wars. Thank You, Congress.,” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-08/trade-why-
congress-abdicated-its-role-to-the-presidency

Once upon a time, Congress had the lead role in trade policy. Think back to the “tariff of abominations ” of
the 19th century or Smoot-Hawley of the 20th in your high school history class. So how did the presidency come to take charge of trade
to the extent that it’s news when a bipartisan group in the Senate and some House Republicans move to reclaim that power? And why is that
objective probably unachievable, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggests?

Jennifer Delton, at Made by History, describes how trade-supporting

liberals, beginning in 1934, increasingly delegated
authority over trade from Congress to the president. The assumption was that the executive would be
more inclined to favor “free” trade than Congress and more capable of achieving national trade goals.
There are several reasons for that.

The president is the only politician elected to care about the whole nation . Most economists would agree that
foreign trade is good for the nation but can be bad for some sectors of the economy. Free trade works because
specialization is beneficial to all trading partners, as Adam Smith demonstrated long ago. For example, if the U.S. is relatively better at building
planes than making shoes then it should make more planes and buy shoes. 1 But specialization can also mean that some jobs disappear, even
as the overall number of jobs increases, benefiting all of us as consumers. Unfortunately, that creates a situation in which most
people
are indifferent to or mildly supportive of trade, and they (or their representatives) face off against
impassioned minorities that are harmed by it. That kind of situation produces gridlock in Congress. The solution
is to let the president handle the policy, because he or she is the only politician who truly cares about overall majorities.

Even aff authors agree that executive action obviates the need for the plan
Clive Crook 18, Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editorial writer, was chief Washington commentator
for the Financial Times, correspondent and editor for the Economist and senior editor at the Atlantic,
6/5/18, “Congress Must Blunt Trump’s Assault on Trade,”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-05/congress-must-blunt-trump-s-assault-on-trade

President Donald Trump's endless provocations have driven his critics to a state of constant outrage, and for some time the Resistance has
found it difficult to distinguish between what does and doesn't matter. What Trump did last week matters. His decision
to fire the first
shot in what could become a trade war against U.S. allies demands a whole new level of alarm about the damage
this president might do.

This is a major new policy, not some theatrical maneuver, empty threat, vulgar insult or norm-shaking tweet. And this
policy departure,
over which Trump has improperly asserted unilateral political control, runs counter to decades of U.S. thinking on
international economic relations. Congress has the responsibility and the power to keep it from happening.
Decades from now, historians might be amazed that Trump chose to disdain U.S. alliances just as China's ambitions as an ideological rival and
emerging military superpower had come more sharply into focus. They might be puzzled, too, that Washington at the time was preoccupied
with questions such as whether it's correct to call a covert informant a spy.
Of course, Trump might not persist . He's nothing if not erratic. But then, few had expected him to carry out his earlier threat
to put tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and Europe, and he has. All three have said they'll retaliate with tariffs,
doubtless chosen to maximize Trump's embarrassment. U.S. businesses, facing higher costs, are already complaining. But what if
Trump then doesn't back off? A cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation looks possible.
The harm to a highly integrated global economic system could be immense, especially if businesses see these measures as the start of a
protracted unraveling of the liberal economic order (which in fact appears to be Trump's goal). And with broader alliances at stake, the
economic harm is only part of the cost. As European Council President Donald Tusk asked last month, "With friends like that, who needs
enemies?"

You'd surely expect to see more local resistance -- actual resistance, I mean, as opposed to the Resistance that Trump finds
so empowering. Congress should be pressing to take back control of trade policy. This could and should be a
bipartisan endeavor.

The plan and CP have the same functional result---Trump should just withdraw tariffs
Heather Timmons 18, QZ White House correspondent, 6/6/18, “Trump finally did the one thing that
will drive powerful Republicans away,” https://qz.com/1297547/trumps-trade-tariffs-finally-drove-
republicans-and-the-kochs-to-curb-his-power/

On May 31, in the name of national security, the president passed steel and aluminum tariffs that threaten trade
with the US’s closest allies. The announcement drew furious criticism from members of his party, because it goes against their pro-business
agenda. Now some of the biggest Republican donors have launched a war against Trump’s tariffs, and once-loyal senators are trying to curb
Trump’s powers as the country’s 45th president.

A bill that kills Trump’s trade tariffs

This afternoon, a bipartisan group of senators

introduced a new bill that takes away Trump’s right to pass tariffs
on products that the Department of Commerce deem important to national security. The bill would require
any intended tariffs to be approved by Congress. It would also be retroactive for the past two years —
meaning it could rescind last month’s controversial steel and aluminum tariffs.

The bill is sponsored by Republicans and frequent Trump critics Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee. It also includes four other
GOP senators (and four Democrats). The tariffs will be bad for US business, and US jobs, they say, echoing recent analysis by economists.

Imposing tariffs “under the false pretense of ‘national security’ weakens our economy, our credibility with other nations, and invites
retaliation,” said Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican who voted with Trump 91.4% of the time.

“These kinds of tariffs are a big mistake, and using national security as an excuse is a bigger mistake,” said Lamar Alexander, the Republican
from Tennessee, who has voted in support of Trump more than 94% of the time in the past.” Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has
voted with Trump nearly 92% of the time, said Congress should assert “its constitutional authorities on tariffs to ensure we don’t undermine
the significant economic progress we have made over the last 18 months.”

If senate majority leader Mitch McConnell calls a vote on the bill in coming days, it will be a sign that he, too, has
decided it is time to curb Trump.
The Kochs take away their checkbook

Meanwhile, the deep-pocketed Koch brothers, Republican kingmakers, went on the offensive against Trump earlier this week, rolling out a new,
and radical list of trade-friendly demands on June 4. They plan to push it through their think-tank, grassroots political network, and Hispanic
libertarian group.

The demands are aimed specifically at easing Trump’s protectionism, as well as dismantling a host of long-standing US policies, some of which
have been popular with industries and voters for decades:
The president should lift steel and aluminum tariffs, drop proposed tariffs on China, and “avoid any
new tariffs .”
 Solves Credibility---2NC
The CP is sufficient to maintain U.S. credibility---Trump can’t single-handedly
undermine it enough to cause an impact, and the CP certainly prevents further
damage
Steven Feldstein 18, the Frank and Bethine Church chair of public affairs at Boise State University,
nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Democracy and Rule of Law
Program, 6/12/18, “Despite Trump's shameful G-7 showing, US credibility still intact,”
http://thehill.com/opinion/international/391914-despite-trumps-shameful-g-7-showing-us-credibility-
still-intact
The disastrous Group of Seven (G-7) meeting in Quebec, where President Trump lashed out as his fellow leaders and singled out Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “dishonest and weak,” raises an important question: Just how much is Trump’s erratic behavior
damaging U.S. standing and credibility in the world?
Nearly 17 months into Trump’s presidency, he is upending the western alliance and fundamentally calling into question the reliability of the U.S.
as an economic, political and security partner. He has inflamed tensions by slapping punitive steel and aluminum tariffs
on America’s closest allies.
He has repeatedly ignored the entreaties of France, the U.K. and Germany to reconsider leaving the Paris climate change agreement or to stay
in the Iran nuclear deal. Even while Trump lacks basic rapport with his fellow western democratic leaders, he has taken undeniable delight in
sharing company with autocrats and strongmen.

Consequently, many are asking whether Trump’s latest behavior is finally leading to a “major reorientation
of allies and partnerships worldwide .” How much is Trump damaging U.S. credibility and reputation?

I believe that in the short-term, the U.S. can weather the Trump storm for two reasons. First, the U.S. has built up a
sufficient reservoir of international good will so that other countries will continue to give us a pass,
notwithstanding the latest histrionics from Trump.

Second, the
U.S. retains a disproportionate level of influence — economically and militarily — that compels
other countries to deal with us. But over time, Trump’s leadership will steadily erode U.S. credibility. The longer Trump stays in
power, the higher the likelihood that U.S. leadership and authority will dramatically diminish.

Why does credibility matter? A country with a high amount of credibility is able to build important alliances because potential allies are not
worried about betrayal or potential abandonment. Credibility allows a country to deter adversaries and prevent costly wars through strength of
reputation rather than through fighting.

Conventional wisdom says that a country is only as trustworthy as its last words or actions, and that
credibility can dissipate swiftly (Will Rogers’ quip comes to mind: “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it
in a minute”).

But that conventional view of credibility is not accurate .

A country’s reputation does not ebb and flow based on the week-to-week actions of its leader. While
current leadership is a critical aspect of credibility, it is just one of many ingredients that countries use to
evaluate reputation. In other words, a number of factors come into play when it comes to shaping a country’s reputation.
For example, what actions has the country undertaken in the past? What present interests does the country have? What capabilities and
resolve does the country possess in order to defend those interests?
The good news is that most of these elements remain positive for the U.S. Despite the recent rashness of the Trump
administration, the U.S. enjoys a solid reputation for steadfastness and resolve going back decades .

It retains enormous capabilities to defend its interests. As ongoing wars against the Islamic State and the Taliban
demonstrate, the U.S. also maintains sufficient resolve to deploy and wield force when necessary.

At the same time, past actions and capabilities are not permanent conditions. The longer Trump lurches the U.S. along an unpredictable path,
the more the world will begin to forget the United States' extended history as a guarantor of the international system.

The more Trump pursues a narrow definition of U.S. interests that calls treaty commitments and longstanding partnerships into question, the
greater the risk to U.S. credibility, particularly when the next major crisis erupts.

Trump’s behavior has not wholly damaged U.S. credibility — yet. But over time, his unilateral volatility threatens to
become the dominant narrative about the U.S., eclipsing past values and leadership.

Trump’s performance at the G-7 summit was embarrassing and cringe worthy; but it was not fatally damaging to U.S. credibility. However,
if the Trump administration announces more unilateral tariffs and additional departures from
international treaties, it will be harder and harder for the U.S. to maintain its good reputation.
 ESR Durable---2NC

Durability of legislation is just as implausible as durability of executive action

Omri Ben-Shahar 17, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, 10/28/17, “The Repeal Of
Obama's Legacy: A Different Perspective,”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2017/10/28/the-repeal-of-obamas-legacy-a-different-
perspective/#d5d45d349202

America is now The Land of Pop-Up Laws .

A striking pattern emerged recently: Federal laws have lost their durability . Through executive orders,
budgetary legislation, and obscure Congressional procedures, older laws are
regulatory action (or inaction),
either repealed or gutted in area after area. Democrats that worked hard to pass older liberal-leaning laws are kvetching,
Republicans that opposed those laws are rejoicing, but both sides are strikingly myopic, blind to the underlying pattern. What they are failing to
see is that not
only the old laws have become temporary; also their repeals. If winning a legislative
battle—over a reform or its repeal—used to be a home run, it is now only a single.

The traditional view is that federal laws are difficult to pass and durable if passed. They have to clear
both chambers of Congress, a potential presidential veto, and take years to be implemented by the agencies in
charge. Once they kick into action, however, they live long because it is thought that they would be equally
difficult to reform. But the political volatility of our times is changing this.
Less than eight years ago, Democrats had supermajority in the Senate and passed New Deal type laws like the Affordable Care Act and the
Dodd-Frank consumer protection act, creating federal powers and budgets to promote progressive goals. Under one of the most liberal
presidents in history, reforms were also enacted in immigration, environmental protection, telecommunications, labor relations, and major
areas of the economy.

Within a few years this Democratic domination evaporated. Now, with a President deeply hostile to the policies of his predecessor and with
Republicans controlling the three branches of government, the Obama-era laws are being peeled off one by
one. Congress just this week erased the heavily fought-over consumer arbitration rule, enacted by the Obama's financial
regulator to strengthen consumer class actions. Earlier, Congress and the FCC wiped out Obama’s internet privacy and
net neutrality rules. The Trump FDA pulled the plug on its predecessor’s initiatives to regulate food labeling more strictly. More
prominently, President Trump ended Obama’s protections to “Dreamer” immigrants. And the Trump’s EPA repealed the Clean Power Plan—the
ambitious Obama-era carbon emissions standards. After Congress’ failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump is using executive powers to
neutralize key components of this law.

The reactions to these repeals naïvely assume that they will stay in effect for eternity. News analysts asked, for example, how Trump’s repeal of
the carbon rule would increase emissions over the next 30 years! But if it only takes a new President to reverse course, why look at the next 30
years? With the same ease that Trump is deleting Obama’s legacy, Trump's current deletion can be undone.

What we are witnessing, then, is the emergence of temporary law . The polarization of American politics is
blamed for stalemate and gridlock, but in reality intense lawmaking is taking place, producing a new
species of Pop-Up Law. Much of this is happening through a de-facto increase in Presidential powers—a strategy that President Obama
engineered and perfected—and thus there is every reason to expect that the fury of lawmaking will continue in future administrations.
 ESR Theory---2NC

Literature supports the CP---their arg requires them to win that no solvency evidence
contemplates Trump restricting himself. That’s clearly wrong.
Tom Campbell 18, Professor of Law, Dale E. Fowler School of Law; Professor of Economics, George L.
Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University, Winter 2018, “SYMPOSIUM:
CONSTRAINING THE EXECUTIVE: Introduction to Constraining the Executive,” Chapman Law Review, 21
Chap. L. Rev. 1

In his article in this symposium, Professor Lawson suggests that an effort to constrain the executive
might be launched from an entirely different source: the executive itself, and, especially, President
Trump himself. Structurally, of course, Professor Lawson is right. A president devoted to limiting
executive power can go far to effectuating that result. Lawson identifies several ways: vetoing laws
that grant more power from Congress to the executive branch, proposing the repeal of existing laws
that grant such delegations, failing to use the authority that has already been delegated , and
appointing federal judges who will revive the nondelegation doctrine and otherwise return the
executive branch to the limits Lawson believes the Framers intended.

“Unrealistic” cuts both ways---applies equally to Congress and the courts---and the aff
gets built in advantages about the rule of law---the CP’s certainly germane
Erwin Chemerinsky 18, the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, University of
California, Berkeley School of Law, 6/8/18, “How Do We Check the President?,”
https://takecareblog.com/blog/how-do-we-check-the-president
But with no such mechanism in the Constitution and with impeachment a virtual impossibility, what can be done when the president violates
In theory , Congress might check the president, perhaps as Tribe and Matz suggest by censure or
the Constitution?

maybe using other tools such as the spending power. That, though, seems quite unlikely when Congress

is controlled by the same political party as the president .

Near the end of the book, Tribe and Matz say, “As polarization, partisanship, and tribalism have weakened external checks
on the executive branch, Americans have come to rely increasingly on the president’s good faith and
self-restraint .” But what happens when there is a president who is not acting in good faith and shows no
proclivity for self-restraint? As Tribe and Matz say, “[t]hat’s a precarious position for any democracy – especially
since our nation’s warped politics also make it more likely that voters will favor populist demagogues who pander to their darkest instincts.”

The question of how to check a president who is blatantly violating the Constitution is particularly salient
with Donald Trump in office. Tribe and Matz refer several times to President Trump’s simply ignoring the emoluments clauses of the
Constitution. (Like them, I am involved in a lawsuit to stop these constitutional violations).

President Trump is violating the Constitution literally every day in receiving benefits in violation of the “emoluments” clauses. Article I, section
9 of the Constitution prohibits any person holding a position of trust in the federal government from receiving any present or emolument from
a foreign state. The Constitution broadly prohibits receiving any benefit from a foreign government. Yet, President Trump constantly is
receiving economic benefits from foreign countries, including through hotels owned in his name.
For example, China granted the President valuable trademarks after denying them to him for years. Within days after receiving these, President
Trump reversed course on a key issue affecting China, shifting from entertaining a pro-Taiwan policy to supporting a “one China” policy.

Article II, section 1 of the Constitution says that while in office, the President shall receive compensation for serving, but shall not receive “any
other emolument from the United States.” This provision was meant to keep a president from using his position to receive other benefits from
the federal government. Yet, President Trump is constantly doing just that, as buildings he owns are renting space to the federal government
and he is personally profiting.

Congress is not going to do a thing about it , let alone pursue the dramatic remedy of impeachment. Long ago, in Marbury v.
Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall explained that the Constitution exists to limit the government and its limits are meaningless if they are not
enforced. He also reminded us that under the Constitution, no one, not even the president can be above the law.

The answer that emerges from this for me is the essential nature of the judiciary to stop the president from violating the Constitution. If we
can’t rely on Congress to check the president, it must be the role of the courts to do so. It is imperative that the doctrines governing
judicial review, such as the justiciability doctrines, not preclude the courts from performing this essential task.
Too often in the past, and now, courts have used doctrines like standing and the p olitical q uestion d octrine to
effectively immunize unconstitutional presidential actions from judicial review .

The alternative is to leave compliance with the Constitution to the “good faith” of the president. That
can’t be right in a society committed to constitutional governance and the rule of law.
 Link/AT: Perm Do Both---2NC
a) He’s consistently proved he’s willing to destroy Republicans that cross him---that’s
the reason Congress hasn’t restricted trade power
Mark Hay 18, Vice contributor, 8/20/18, “Congress Hates Trump's Trade Wars, but It Won't Do
Anything About Them,” https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ejbq/why-congress-wont-do-anything-
about-trump-tariffs
Though it barely made a dent in the news cycle, last month Congress actually stood up to Donald Trump. Well, sort of. In response to Trump’s
percolating trade war with China, disgruntled free trade–supporting Republicans
advanced a nonbinding resolution in
favor of constraining the president’s power to tax imports on national security grounds. The measure passed
the Senate 88-11 (all the no votes were Republicans). That vote, said Tori Whiting, a trade policy expert at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, proved that a veto-proof majority of senators “agreed that the president should not have this unilateral authority. It is not what
the Constitution intended.”

But that resolution, of course, had no impact on Trump’s escalating tariffs. And Congress hasn’t taken the next,
more drastic step of passing a law (presumably over Trump’s veto) to limit the president’s tariff powers,
or claim more oversight over them. Nor has Congress taken serious action on other issues of bipartisan malaise over which the
legislature could reasonably assert control, like the president’s overly broad powers to authorize the use of military force across the world
under the auspices of the war on terror. This raises the natural question for casual observers, eternally frustrated with the body’s seeming
spinelessness, as to why Congress is so reticent to check the presidency—especially under a president as capricious as our current commander-
in-chief.

In fairness to Congress, influential bipartisan groups of legislators in both chambers are still flogging a number of bills that would constrain
Trump’s powers. A coalition of longtime Republican Trump critics in the Senate, like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, as well as more Trump-friendly
politicians like Pat Toomey, are pushing hard for a vote on a bill that would require congressional approval for certain types of presidentially-
imposed tariffs. Even Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a nominal Trump ally, is using his position to slowly craft similar
shackling legislation. Given all the legislative ideas and energy floating around on trade, Whiting is hopeful that Congress will be able to pass
some sort of law reasserting its powers over trade policy, ideally within the next few months.

Whiting’s hopes notwithstanding, most analysts agree that these measures will not gain any traction. In large part, that’s
because Republicans know that Trump’s tariffs have not had a material impact on their base, aside from
farmers. They know that the president remains fairly popular within the GOP, even in states that have been hit harder
than others by his trade policies. And they know, stressed congressional analyst Mark Harkins, that Trump is unique among recent

presidents in his willingness to “ destroy” his political opponents , even those within his own
party . “Most Republicans who have tried challenging him have not fared well politically,” said Simon Lester, a
trade policy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

This fear makes it hard for Republicans to muster party unity on even symbolic votes to slap Trump on the wrist. It is also hard
for them to form veto-proof coalitions with Democrats, who Congress watcher John Johannes noted “are in a hunker-down
mood, waiting for the November elections.” A fair number of Democrats also quietly support Trump’s protectionism
to a degree, pointed out Peterson Institute for International Economics fellow Jacob Kirkegaard; Democrat Sherrod Brown recently blocked an
attempt to advance the Senate’s GOP-backed trade powers bill. These
constraints have led GOP leaders to avoid
advancing bills in favor of trying to talk Trump down on trade unofficially , although that has not been successful.
b) Those attacks would be successful in mobilizing the base behind Trump, against
Congress
Amber Phillips 17, Washington Post reporter, 10/10/17, “Trump blames Republicans in Congress for
his woes. Does he have a point?,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2017/10/10/trump-blames-republicans-in-congress-for-his-woes-does-he-have-a-
point/?utm_term=.aa36905b8434

3. Trump is good at channeling his base: And his base is frustrated at Congress . In a September Washington
Post-ABC News poll, 64 percent of conservatives disapprove of the job Republicans are doing in Congress.
That group feels the exact opposite when it comes to Trump: 65 percent of conservatives approve of
the job he's doing.

So why wouldn't Trump cast blame on Congress? Its popularity is already in the mud and The Post's White House team
reports there are signs Trump
is worried about his base: “The president has groused to numerous White
House aides about his concerns over his popularity with 'my people.' ”

“ Voter anger at Washington is the warm water that fed Hurricane Trump ,” said Doug Heye, a GOP
consultant. “He has shown that he can use that to his advantage .”

Why GOP leaders in Congress say that's not a fair criticism: Trump's not winning any popularity contests either. Here's Kevin Williamson, a
correspondent with the conservative National Review magazine, writing in the wake of Ayers's comment:

“What, exactly, is the case for a 'purge' of Republicans who fail a Trump loyalty test? He’s unpopular, he has no substantive agenda, he has
been on every conceivable side of issues ranging from abortion to health care to gun control, and his main interest is the service of his vanity.”

4. Prominent Republicans keep dissing Trump: Trump's war with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) only reinforces an inherent mistrust the president
has of the GOP establishment. They can't repeal Obamacare, they're slow to the starting line on tax reform and they have the gall to call him
unstable?

Why GOP leaders in Congress say that's not a fair criticism: Because a sizable number of them share Corker's concerns that
the president, by himself, isn't fit to govern. They just don't say it publicly .

2) Congress will distance themselves from the CP---they don’t want to cross Trump on
trade because they the backlash will target them if they do
Marianne Schneider-Petsinger 18, Geoeconomics Fellow, US and the Americas Programme, Chatham
House, 6/14/18, “Trump Has Cornered Congressional Republicans on Free Trade,”
https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/trump-has-cornered-congressional-republicans-free-
trade#
So far this has not been enough to rally free-trade Republicans to any meaningful action – but it’s not for a lack of options. There are several
ways in which Republicans could curb the president’s trade power via legislative action and check his
protectionist impulses.
The US constitution gives Congress the authority ‘to regulate commerce with foreign nations’ and ‘to lay and collect taxes [and] duties’. But
over the past few decades, Congress has delegated much of its trade power to the president. The legislative branch could wrest it back now.

First, Congress could use an upcoming deadline on renewal of trade promotion authority (TPA) (opens in new window) to prod the Trump
administration. TPA allows the executive to negotiate trade agreements without congressional interference, as long as certain conditions are
met, and Congress ultimately gets to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a trade deal. The president has recently requested to extend TPA, but if either
chamber of Congress adopts a disapproval resolution before 1 July, it could potentially restrain Trump.

Though revoking TPA would not directly stop Trump’s imposition of tariffs, it is a point of leverage because of the ongoing renegotiation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement and the president’s desire to strike bilateral deals with other countries down the road.

A second, and more effective, option would be to pass legislation that would impede the president’s ability
to impose tariffs . Some Republicans are pursuing this path. Most recently, on 6 June, Republican Senator Bob Corker (together with
seven other Republicans and five Democrats) introduced legislation that would require congressional approval of tariffs that are invoked on the
grounds of national security.

But to
have any traction, both the will of the GOP leadership and the necessary votes in Congress are
required. Neither is there at the moment. A two-thirds supermajority in both the House and the Senate are
needed to override an inevitable veto by the president. For any chance of success, a majority of Republicans
would have to get Democrats on board. But instead of drumming up support, GOP leadership is derailing efforts for legislation
that would check President Trump’s tariff authority by blocking a vote.

Why aren’t Republicans reining Trump in on trade? It comes down to political reasons . With just five months to go
before the midterm elections, leaders of the Republican Party want to avoid a direct confrontation with
Trump over his signature issue .

The president’s trade policies enjoy strong backing from Republican voters . A recent poll found that 56% of
Republican voters support Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium (compared to only 31% of American voters on average).
Moreover, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters (78%) approve of the way Donald Trump is
handling trade. Thus, the average Republican voter is closer to President Trump than to the GOP’s traditional
free-trade orthodoxy.
Indeed, Paul Ryan’s inability to square this circle between voter preferences and those of the GOP leadership may have been a contributing
factor to his decision to retire. This week’s primary
results have shown that those Republican candidates that are
critical of Donald Trump and his policies are tossed out . This reinforces the president’s hold over his party.

In light of this, Republicans calculate that it is not worth to push back on trade – even if the issue has provoked
more outcries from Republicans toward Trump than any of his other policies. Republicans have the power to rein in the
president, they are simply choosing not to exercise it because they know most of their voters support
Trump’s actions .
 UQ---AT: Too Soon---2NC
Trump’s a favorite to win now---obviously it’s far out and uncertain but good
modeling demonstrates he’s on-balance likely to win
Kyle Kondik 18, Managing Editor, Sabato's Crystal Ball, 4/19/18, “Underestimate Trump’s Reelection
Odds at Your Own Peril,” http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/underestimate-trumps-
reelection-odds-at-your-own-peril/

One might have done better in predicting the 2016 presidential election, or at least in anticipating the very close eventual
outcome, by basing a projection of the national popular vote on the findings of several political science models
released prior to the election. These models, which were compiled by James Campbell of the University at Buffalo, SUNY and
printed in both PS: Political Science and Politics and here at the Crystal Ball, generally pointed to a close election. These models
mostly made their predictions several months in advance of the election and were based on the incumbent’s approval rating, the economy, and
other “fundamental” factors.

Most of the models, accurately as it turned out, showed Hillary Clinton winning the national two-party popular vote. But the average of the 11
models showed Clinton winning just 50.8% of the two-party vote, with the median projection showing her winning 51.0%. Both the average and
the median were basically spot-on, given that Clinton ended up getting 51.1% of the two-party vote. Donald Trump’s strength among white
voters who do not hold a four-year college degree allowed him to win the Electoral College because of the overconcentration of these voters in
several electorally important swing states in the Rust Belt. National polls showed a similarly small lead for Clinton on Election Day, although
Clinton’s leads in these polls were generally larger than her eventual margin for much of the 2016 calendar year.

I bring this up just to note that, as

we begin to assess Donald Trump’s reelection odds, it seems possible that the polls
and the election models will again be at odds in 2020.
One of the models included in Campbell’s 2016 survey was the Time for Change model, created by Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan
Abramowitz of Emory University. Abramowitz’s model was one of just two to project Trump winning the national popular vote in 2016
(by three points), in part because it emphasizes the electoral advantage that an incumbent running for
reelection enjoys, and 2016 lacked an incumbent. Trump underperformed the model’s prediction by five points in terms of margin, as
Abramowitz himself suggested Trump would prior to the election.

The model gives a bonus to an incumbent who is seeking his party’s second straight term in the White House,
meaning it very well could smile on Trump in 2020 while being more bearish on someone like George H.W. Bush in
1992. That year, Bush was running for his second-consecutive term, but his party’s fourth-straight term (Bush lost to Bill
Clinton). The Abramowitz model also incorporates the incumbent president’s approval rating in the Gallup national poll and the state of the
economy, as measured by quarterly GDP growth.

The Abramowitz model will make its 2020 projection officially using 2020’s second quarter GDP growth and whatever Trump’s approval is at
that time. Still, we
can plug in current numbers to give a sense of what the model might project. Right now,
Trump’s net approval rating is -16 points according to Gallup (39% approve/55% disapprove), and 2017’s fourth
quarter GDP growth (the most recent quarter available) was 2.9%, according to the most recent revision from the Bureau of
Economic Analysis. Using those figures in Abramowitz’s model projects Trump with 51.6% of the national
two-party vote. Even if Trump were to underperform the model again, like he did in 2016, it would still make

the election a Toss-up , especially because Trump could win again without winning the national popular
vote given the demographic patterns of his support.

So the U nited S tates could reelect an incumbent president with an average approval in low 40s? Yes.
And , actually, that’s perhaps what we should even expect given the performance of similarly-situated incumbents across
many different countries.
In October 2015, Clifford Young and Julia Clark of the international polling firm Ipsos — with whom the University of Virginia Center for Politics
has partnered on some recent polling — wrote a column for Reuters arguing that Democrats were unlikely to retain the White House in 2016.
That’s in large part because the Democrats were trying to hold the presidency without having an incumbent on the ballot. They created a model
using the results of more than 450 elections across 35 different countries since 1938 that suggested a president with relatively middling
approval, as President Obama’s was at the time of their writing, had relatively low odds of being able to hand off power to a successor of the
same party. Even with Obama at slightly over 50% approval on Election Day, according to the RealClearPolitics average, the Ipsos model
suggested the Democrats would only have about a one in three chance to hold on to power. They didn’t, despite Trump’s problems.

Incumbents get a boost in the Ipsos model, though, just like in Abramowitz’s model. Young and Clark suggest that as long as an incumbent is at
40% approval or better, that person is probably at least a little likelier to win than lose. So Trump,
at 41.9% approval in the
RealClearPolitics average, would be capable of winning reelection, if not outright favored , if that’s where his approval
rating is in fall 2020.

There’s obviously a long way to go before the 2020 election. We have a national election this fall in which Democrats
are very likely to register at least some gains in the U.S. House and at the gubernatorial and state legislative level (though perhaps not in the
Senate, for reasons we have previously outlined in detail). Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2020 election could have
a bad outcome for Trump and could even hypothetically force him from office, although there’s really no telling where the investigation could
ultimately lead, and Trump may very well survive it. There are tons of other uncertainties , including the eventual identity of the
2020 Democratic nominee, the possibility of a prominent third-party candidate, and, perhaps most importantly, the state of the economy two
and a half years from now. We think the
decent economy is helping Trump maintain a weak but passable
approval rating despite all of the swirling controversies of his presidency. If the economy weakens, Trump may dip back into
the 30s in approval and further complicate his reelection path.

But assuming Trump is on the ballot, and assuming his approval rating stays around the 40% mark, it would probably be wrong to
assume he’s an underdog for reelection . That’s not to say he would be a sure winner, but he wouldn’t be a sure loser, either.

The biggest mistake analysts made in 2016 was believing that Trump was such a weak candidate that he
would prove to be unelectable even though a close reading of historical results, both in the United States and
elsewhere, suggested that any Republican would be a formidable contender for the White House in a year like
2016, when the Democrats were attempting the difficult task of winning the presidency a third consecutive time (and they had nominated a
weak candidate to face Trump). That same history, a history that is built into models like the Ipsos and Abramowitz models, suggests an
incumbent in Trump’s position will not be a pushover unless his approval and/or the economy significantly
decline from their present levels.
Trade
 No Trade War---2NC
Risk of broad trade war escalation is below 10%
Guillermo Felices 18, Head of Research and Strategy, Multi-Asset Quantitative and Solutions division,
BNP Paribas Asset Management, et al., 3/29/18, “A ROAD MAP FOR NAVIGATING PROTECTIONISM: THE
ELEVATOR AND THE STAIRCASE,” https://docfinder.is.bnpparibas-ip.com/api/files/E38BCAFA-8CDE-
4163-9791-7171E1DA0E0E

A significant reversal in the globalisation pendulum would be very damaging for global growth and for financial
markets. But it is still unclear how far back the pendulum will swing as there are institutional hurdles –

such as the US Congress, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and financial markets themselves – that may slow
down, limit or even stop the current initiatives by the Trump Administration.
We envisage two possible escalation scenarios. The first is a multilateral trade war, between the United States and the rest of the world. The
second is a bilateral trade conflict, between the United States and China. In both cases we envisage a prolonged period of tension. Crucially,
we still see the risks of full-blown trade wars as low probability -high impact scenarios .
What is important for investors is how to navigate an escalation or de-escalation of those risk scenarios. For instance, these situations could
escalate rapidly leading to sudden market moves as investors quickly reassess the probability of a trade war. Alternatively, the risks could
escalate in steps, for example, if markets perceive that trade tensions may lead to tit-for-tat retaliation. We therefore provide certain signposts
that should help investors assess potential shifts in markets as protectionism evolves.

We also delineate the likely economic impact of trade wars. The combination of tariffs and quotas and the reversal of the globalisation of
production and supply chains would likely lead to higher prices, lower productivity, and ultimately lower output. We also examine the likely
response of central banks including how they view possible second-round- effects such as workers pushing for higher wages and higher
inflation expectations.

We also gauge the asset price implications of trade wars. We look at financial markets’ responses to oil shocks (used as proxies for supply
shocks) as well as recent episodes of protectionist escalation. We conclude that equities are the asset class at most risk. The performance of
other asset classes is usually mixed, suggesting that the macroeconomic and policy backdrops matter in terms of shaping markets’ responses.

As for strategy, we are not altering our base case scenario of strong growth and contained inflation . But
while we may believe that the probability of full-blown trade wars is still low (below 10%), we do expect
further outbreaks of protectionist tension as the globalisation pendulum continues to oscillate back and forth, and that makes
the trading environment riskier. With higher uncertainty or ‘fatter tails’, market volatility and risk premia should move higher. If the trade war
scenarios remain at a low probability, it makes sense to hedge portfolios against them with assets that do well in risk-off situations but that do
not underperform if these risks fail to materialise.
 SOP
Finishin 1NC Cost

No empirical example that says congress actually has the cpactiy ti effectively manage the trade regime

Congressional control over trade policies makes protectionism inevitable proves that
the signal doesn’t matter

Kimberly Ann Elliott 18, visiting scholar at the George Washington University Institute for International
Economic Policy, and a visiting fellow with the Center for Global Development, 7/3/18, “Be Careful What
You Wish For in a Trade Fight Between Trump and Congress,”
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/24953/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-in-a-trade-fight-
between-trump-and-congress
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate trade, and for more than a century it did so with gusto. Then, grasping for ways to
escape the Great Depression and reverse the downward economic spiral that followed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which passed
in 1930, Congress delegated some of its trade power to the executive branch. In subsequent decades, Congress provided additional authorities
allowing the president to control trade policy. Now, however, with concerns about President Donald Trump’s aggressive
trade policy moves—imposing a range of tariffs on close allies and rivals alike, and threatening more—there are calls to shift some
of that authority back to Congress.

As the United States celebrates the anniversary of its founding this week, it seems like a good time to review history and see how and why the
governance of trade evolved the way it has in Washington. This history suggests strongly that, while some rebalancing is desirable,
Congress should exercise great caution in reclaiming its power to regulate trade.
Until the 1930s, Congress set import tariffs through periodic legislation. As described in the fascinating—for trade wonks anyway—new book by
Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth, the process often involved legislators going line by line through the tariff schedule to
ensure that enough legislators got something for their constituents that the bill would pass. This “logrolling” process, whereby representatives
traded their votes for tariffs based on what it meant for their constituents, reached its nadir with the Smoot-Hawley legislation of 1930. While
economic historians have revised earlier conclusions that the global outbreak of protectionism and plummeting trade that followed the law
caused the Great Depression, there is little doubt that it contributed to making the economic disaster deeper and longer than it would
otherwise have been.

As my former Peterson Institute colleague I. M. Destler explained in another brilliant book, “American Trade Politics,” the
decentralization of power in the legislative branch, especially the House of Representatives, made it almost
inevitable that constituent pressures would result in relatively high tariffs as long as Congress had free
rein to set them. Recognizing this inherent weakness, and wanting to prevent a repeat of Smoot-Hawley, Congress delegated tariff-
setting authority to the president in the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This legislation, known as the RTAA, allowed the
president to negotiate tariff reductions that would then take effect automatically , as long as certain
conditions were met.

That approach, embodied after World War II in the multilateral General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade
Organization, successfully lowered average tariffs among industrialized member states to the low single digits by the 1980s. And Congress
generally eschewed specific trade-restricting acts after the RTAA passed. But any trade policy changes
negotiated by the president other than tariff cuts still needed congressional approval before they could take
effect.

With the successful lowering of tariffs through the 1950s and beyond, new nontariff issues rose to the fore. When Congress refused to pass
legislation implementing certain nontariff provisions negotiated during the so-called Kennedy Round of global trade talks held in Geneva in the
mid-1960s, the need for a new approach to trade became apparent. Without that, Congress could pick apart trade agreements, undermining
the president’s credibility in trade negotiations and making it difficult or impossible to conclude them successfully. Congress responded in the
1974 Trade Act by creating the
“fast-track” process for consideration of trade agreements, now known as “trade promotion
authority.” Under this process, Congress sets
out its priorities for trade negotiations and, as long as the president
consults with legislators along the way, Congress commits itself to vote on implementing legislation for
trade agreements within certain deadlines and without amendments.
Congress approved the RTAA and later the fast-track procedure to ensure the president had adequate authority to pursue trade-liberalizing
agreements. But as Europe and Japan recovered from the devastation of World War II, and key developing countries became larger players in
global markets, America’s
economic dominance faded and protectionist pressures began to grow.
Congress responded with new authorities and institutional innovations aimed at pushing the
executive branch to be more aggressive on trade so Congress wouldn’t have to be . By the early 1960s, for
example, Congress had become concerned that the State Department, then in charge of trade negotiations, prioritized broader foreign policy
concerns over American trade interests. In the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Congress created what became the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative to conduct trade negotiations and required it to report to Congress, as well as the president. That legislation also included the
provisions, known as Section 232, which give the president broad authority to restrict imports for national security reasons. In the 1974 Trade
Act, alongside the fast-track provisions to facilitate trade negotiations, Congress created Section 301, authorizing the president to take action
against trade practices that unfairly impede U.S. exports.

Since then, Congress has mostly followed a pattern of supporting continued trade liberalization through bilateral and multilateral trade
negotiations, while also pushing the executive branch to be more aggressive in confronting alleged unfair trade practices. In the 1980s, when
the current U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, was the agency’s deputy, Congress pushed the Reagan administration for more help in
resisting the protectionist pressures that were coming from an ever wider swath of American manufacturing. Among other actions, Congress
added provisions to Section 301 that were “super”—aimed at whole countries deemed unfair traders, rather than particular practices—and
“special”—targeting alleged violations of U.S. intellectual property rights.

In response, the Reagan administration undertook far more Section 301 and national security investigations than its predecessors, and the
1980s became known as a period of aggressive unilateralism in U.S. trade policy. But President Ronald Reagan still maintained a vocal
commitment to open markets and launched new trade-liberalizing negotiations through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Like
those in the White House before him, Reagan was generally restrained in how he used his congressionally authorized powers to restrict trade.
And his successors generally did the same, until now.

Trump’s willingness to employ all the tools at his disposal, with little or no regard for trade agreements and international rules, make this a
whole new ballgame. So far, concerned legislators have been subdued in their efforts to rein in the president’s delegated authorities.
Republican Senators Bob Corker and Pat Toomey, along with several of their colleagues, are proposing that congressional approval be required
for actions to restrict trade for national security purposes under Section 232. This is a modest proposal and worth serious consideration.

But as worrying as Trump’s actions are, and while some rebalancing of the authority over trade is justified, Congress
ignores the lessons of history at its own peril . As Irwin’s book reminds us, the founders gave Congress the power to set tariffs
because they were a key source of revenue at the time. The trouble started when tariffs instead became primarily a tool
for protecting American producers. While much has changed with global trade, the political dynamics
in Congress are essentially the same. As bad as things look right now, restoring too much congressional
control over trade is not the way to go .
1NR
 econ
Colin S. Gray 13, Prof. of International Politics and Strategic Studies @ the University of Reading and
External Researcher @ the Strategic Studies Institute @ the U.S. Army War College, April, “Making
Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky Is Not Falling,” U.S. Army War College Press,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1147.pdf

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: THE SKY IS NOT FALLING ¶ This analysis has sought to explore, identify, and explain the strategic meaning
of cyber power. The organizing and thematic question that has shaped and driven the inquiry has been “So what?” Today we all do cyber, but this behavior usually
has not been much informed by an understanding that reaches beyond the tactical and technical. I have endeavored to analyze in strategic terms what is on offer
from the largely technical and tactical literature on cyber. What can or might be done and how to go about doing it are vitally important bodies of knowledge. But at
least as important is understanding what cyber, as a fifth domain of warfare, brings to national security when it is considered strategically. Military history is stocked
abundantly with examples of tactical behavior un - guided by any credible semblance of strategy. This inquiry has not been a campaign to reveal what cy ber can
and might do; a large literature already exists that claims fairly convincingly to explain “how to . . .” But what does cyber power mean, and how does it fit
strategically, if it does? These Conclusions and Rec ommendations offer some understanding of this fifth geography of war in terms that make sense to this
strategist, at least. ¶ 1. Cyber can only be an enabler of physical effort. Stand-alone (popularly misnamed as “strategic”) cyber action is
inherently grossly limited by its immateriality. The physicality of conflict with cyber’s human participants and mechanical artifacts has
not been a passing phase in our species’ strategic history. Cyber action, quite independent of action on land, at sea, in the air, and in orbital space, certainly is
possible. But the
strategic logic of such behavior, keyed to anticipated success in tactical achievement, is not promising. To date,
“What if . . .” speculation about strategic cyber attack usually is either contextually too light, or, more often, contextually
unpersuasive . 49 However, this is not a great strategic truth, though it is a judgment advanced with considerable confidence. Although societies could, of
course, be hurt by cyber action, it is important not to lose touch with the fact, in Libicki’s apposite words, that “[ i]n the absence of physical

combat, cyber war cannot lead to the occupation of territory. It is almost inconceivable that a
sufficiently vigorous cyber war can overthrow the adversary’s government and replace it with a more
pliable one.” 50 In the same way that the concepts of sea war, air war, and space war are fundamentally unsound, so also the idea of cyber war is
unpersuasive. ¶ It is not impossible, but then, neither is war conducted only at sea, or in the air, or in space. On the one hand, cyber war may seem more probable

than like environmentally independent action at sea or in the air. After all, cyber warfare would be very unlikely to harm human
beings directly, let alone damage physically the machines on which they depend. These near-facts (cyber attack
might cause socially critical machines to behave in a rogue manner with damaging physical consequences) might seem to ren - der cyber a safer zone of belligerent
engagement than would physically violent action in other domains. But most likely there
would be serious uncertainties pertaining to
the consequences of cyber action, which must include the possibility of escalation into other domains
of conflict. Despite popular assertions to the contrary, cyber is not likely to prove a precision weapon anytime soon. 51
In addition, assuming that the political and strategic contexts for cyber war were as serious as surely they would need to be to trigger events warranting plausible
labeling as cyber war, the
distinctly limited harm likely to follow from cyber assault would hardly appeal as
prospectively effective coercive moves. On balance, it is most probable that cyber’s strategic future in war will be as a contribut - ing
enabler of effectiveness of physical efforts in the other four geographies of conflict. Speculation about cyber war, defined strictly as hostile action by net - worked

computers against networked computers, is hugely unconvincing.¶ 2. Cyber defense is difficult, but should be sufficiently effective. The
structural advantages of the offense in cyber conflict are as obvious as they are easy to overstate. Penetration
and exploitation, or even attack, would need to be by surprise. It can be swift almost beyond the imagination of those encultured by the
traditional demands of physical combat. Cyber attack may be so stealthy that it escapes notice for a long while, or it might wreak digital havoc by com - plete
surprise. And need one emphasize, that at least for a while, hostile cyber action is likely to be hard (though not quite impossible) to attribute with a cy - berized
equivalent to a “smoking gun.” Once one is in the realm of the catastrophic “What if . . . ,” the world is indeed a frightening place. On a personal note, this defense
analyst was for some years exposed to highly speculative briefings that hypothesized how unques - tionably cunning plans for nuclear attack could so promptly
disable the United States as a functioning state that our nuclear retaliation would likely be still - born. I should hardly need to add that the briefers of these Scary
Scenarios were obliged to make a series of Heroic Assumptions. ¶ The
literature of cyber scare is more than mildly reminiscent
of the nuclear attack stories with which I was assailed in the 1970s and 1980s. As one may observe regarding what
Winston Churchill wrote of the disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, “[t]he terrible ‘Ifs’ accumulate.” 52 Of course, there are dangers in the cyber
domain. Not only are there cyber-competent competitors and enemies abroad; there are also Americans who make mistakes in cyber operation. Furthermore, there
are the manufacturers and constructors of the physical artifacts behind (or in, depending upon the preferred definition) cyber - space who assuredly err in this and

that detail. The more sophisticated—usually meaning complex—the code for cyber, the more certain must
it be that mistakes both lurk in the program and will be made in digital communication.¶ What I have just
outlined minimally is not a reluc - tant admission of the fallibility of cyber, but rather a statement of what is obvious and should be anticipat - ed about people and
material in a domain of war. All human activities are more or less harassed by friction and carry with them some risk of failure, great or small. A strategist who has
read Clausewitz, especially Book One of On War , 53 will know this. Alternatively, anyone who skims my summary version of the general theory of strategy will note
that Dictum 14 states explicitly that “Strategy is more difficult to devise and execute than are policy, operations, and tactics: friction of all kinds comprise
phenomena inseparable from the mak - ing and execution of strategies.” 54 Because of its often widely distributed character, the physical infrastruc - ture of an
enemy’s cyber power is typically, though not invariably, an impracticable target set for physical assault. Happily, this probable fact should have only annoying
consequences. The discretionary nature and therefore the variable possible characters feasible for friendly cyberspace(s), mean that the more danger - ous
potential vulnerabilities that in theory could be the condition of our cyber-dependency ought to be avoidable at best, or bearable and survivable at worst. Libicki
offers forthright advice on this aspect of the subject that deserves to be taken at face value: ¶ [T]here is no inherent reason that improving informa - tion
technologies should lead to a rise in the amount of critical information in existence (for example, the names of every secret agent). Really critical information should
never see a computer; if it sees a computer, it should not be one that is networked; and if the computer is networked, it should be air-gapped.¶ Cyber

defense admittedly is difficult to do, but so is cyber offense. To quote Libicki yet again, “[i]n this medium [cyberspace] the best
defense is not necessarily a good offense; it is usually a good defense.” 56 Unlike the geostrategic context for nuclear-framed competition in U.S.–Soviet/Russian
rivalry, the geographical domain of cyberspace definitely is defensible. Even when the enemy is both clever and lucky, it will
be our own design and operating fault if he is able to do more than disrupt and irritate us temporarily. ¶ When cyber is contextually regarded properly— which
means first, in particular, when it is viewed as but the latest military domain for defense planning—it should be plain to see that cyber performance needs to be
good enough rather than perfect. 57 Our Landpower,
sea power, air power, and prospectively our space systems also will have to
be capable of accepting combat damage and loss, then recovering and carrying on. There is no
fundamental reason that less should be demanded of our cyber power. Second, given that cyber is not of a nature or
potential character at all likely to parallel nuclear dangers in the menace it could con - tain, we should anticipate international cyber rivalry to follow the competitive
dynamic path already fol - lowed in the other domains in the past. Because the digital age is so young, the pace of technical change and tactical invention can be
startling. However, the mechanization RMA of the 1920s and 1930s recorded reaction to the new science and technology of the time that is reminiscent of the

cyber alarmism that has flour - ished of recent years. 58 We can be confident that cyber defense should be able to function
well enough, given the strength of political, military, and commercial motivation for it to do so. The
technical context here is a medium that is a constructed one, which provides air-gapping options for choice regarding the extent of networking. Naturally, a price is
paid in convenience for some closing off of possible cyberspace(s), but all important defense decisions involve choice, so what is novel about that? There is nothing
new about accepting some limitations on utility as a price worth paying for security. ¶ 3. Intelligence is critically important, but informa - tion should not be
overvalued. The strategic history of cyber over the past decade confirms what we could know already from the science and technology of this new domain for
conflict. Specifically,
cyber power is not technically forgiving of user error. Cyber warriors seeking criminal or
military benefit require precise information if their intended exploits are to succeed. Lucky guesses should not
stumble upon passwords, while efforts to disrupt electronic Supervisory Con - trol and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems ought to be

unable to achieve widespread harmful effects. But obviously there are practical limits to the air-gap op - tion, given that control (and
command) systems need to be networks for communication. However, Internet connection needs to be treated as a potential source of serious danger. ¶ It is

one thing to be able to be an electronic nuisance, to annoy, disrupt, and perhaps delay. But it is quite another to be
capable of inflicting real persisting harm on the fighting power of an enemy. Critically important
military computer networks are, of course, accessible neither to the inspired amateur outsider, nor to
the malignant political enemy. Easy passing reference to a hypothetical “cyber Pearl Harbor” reflects
both poor history and ignorance of contemporary military common sense. Critical potential military
(and other) targets for cyber attack are extremely hard to access and influence (I believe and certainly hope), and the
technical knowledge, skills, and effort required to do serious harm to national security is forbiddingly
high. This is not to claim, foolishly, that cyber means absolutely could not secure near-catastrophic results. However, it is to say that such a
scenario is extremely improbable . Cyber defense is advancing all the time, as is cyber offense, of course. But so discretionary in vital detail can
one be in the making of cyberspace, that confidence—real confidence—in cyber attack could not plausibly be high. It should be noted that I am confining this
particular discussion to what rather idly tends to be called cyber war. In political and strategic practice, it is unlikely that war would or, more importantly, ever could
be restricted to the EMS. Somewhat rhetorically, one should pose the question: Is it likely (almost anything, strictly, is possible) that cyber war with the potential to
inflict catastrophic damage would be allowed to stand unsupported in and by action in the other four geographical domains of war? I believe not.¶ Because we have
told ourselves that ours uniquely is the Information Age, we have become unduly respectful of the potency of this rather slippery catch-all term. As usual, it is
helpful to contextualize the al - legedly magical ingredient, information, by locating it properly in strategic history as just one important element contributing to net
strategic effectiveness. This mild caveat is supported usefully by recognizing the general contemporary rule that information per se harms nothing and nobody. The
electrons in cyber - ized conflict have to be interpreted and acted upon by physical forces (including agency by physical human beings). As one might say,
intelligence (alone) sinks no ship; only men and machines can sink ships! That said, there is no doubt that if friendly cyber action can infiltrate and misinform the
electronic informa - tion on which advisory weaponry and other machines depend, considerable warfighting advantage could be gained. I do not intend to join
Clausewitz in his dis - dain for intelligence, but I will argue that in strategic affairs, intelligence usually is somewhat uncertain. 59 Detailed up-to-date intelligence
literally is essential for successful cyber offense, but it can be healthily sobering to appreciate that the strategic rewards of intelligence often are considerably
exaggerated. The basic reason is not hard to recognize. Strategic success is a complex endeavor that requires adequate perfor - mances by many necessary
contributors at every level of conflict (from the political to the tactical). ¶ When thoroughly reliable intelligence on the en - emy is in short supply, which usually is
the case, the strategist finds ways to compensate as best he or she can. The IT-led RMA of the past 2 decades was fueled in part by the prospect of a quality of
military effec - tiveness that was believed to flow from “dominant battle space knowledge,” to deploy a familiar con - cept. 60 While there is much to be said in
praise of this idea, it is not unreasonable to ask why it has been that our ever-improving battle space knowledge has been compatible with so troubled a course of
events in the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. What we might have misunderstood is not the value of knowledge, or of the information from which knowledge is
quarried, or even the merit in the IT that passed information and knowledge around. Instead, we may well have failed to grasp and grip understanding of the whole
context of war and strategy for which battle space knowledge unquestionably is vital. One must say “vital” rather than strictly essential, because relatively ignorant
armies can and have fought and won despite their ig - norance. History requires only that one’s net strategic performance is superior to that of the enemy. One is
not required to be deeply well informed about the en - emy. It is historically quite commonplace for armies to fight in a condition of more-than-marginal reciprocal
and strategic cultural ignorance. Intelligence is king in electronic warfare, but such warfare is unlikely to be solely, or even close to solely, sovereign in war and its
warfare, considered overall as they should be. ¶ 4. Why the sky will not fall. More accurately, one should say that the sky will not fall because of
hostile action against us in cyberspace unless we are improb - ably careless and foolish. David J. Betz and Tim Ste vens strike the right note
when they conclude that “[i]f cyberspace is not quite the hoped-for Garden of Eden, it is also not quite the pestilential swamp of the imagination of the cyber-
alarmists.” 61 Our understanding of cyber is high at the technical and tactical level, but re - mains distinctly rudimentary as one ascends through operations to the

more rarified altitudes of strategy and policy. Nonetheless, our scientific, technological, and tactical knowledge and
understanding clearly indicates that the sky is not falling and is unlikely to fall in the future as a
result of hostile cyber action. This analysis has weighed the more technical and tactical literature on
cyber and concludes, not simply on balance, that cyber alarmism has little basis save in the imagination of the
alarmists. There is military and civil peril in the hostile use of cyber, which is why we must take cyber security seriously, even to the point of buying redundant
capabilities for a range of command and control systems. 62 So seriously should we regard cyber danger that it is only prudent to as - sume that we will be the
target for hostile cyber action in future conflicts, and that some of that action will promote disruption and uncertainty in the damage it will cause. ¶ That granted,
this analysis recommends strongly that the U.S. Army, and indeed the whole of the U.S. Government, should strive to comprehend cyber in context. Approached in
isolation as a new technol - ogy, it is not unduly hard to be over impressed with its potential both for good and harm. But if we see networked computing as just the
latest RMA in an episodic succession of revolutionary changes in the way information is packaged and communicated, the computer-led IT revolution is set where it
belongs, in historical context. In modern strategic history, there has been only one truly game-changing basket of tech - nologies, those pertaining to the creation
and deliv - ery of nuclear weapons. Everything else has altered the tools with which conflict has been supported and waged, but has not changed the game. The
nuclear revolution alone raised still-unanswered questions about the viability of interstate armed conflict. How - ever, it would be accurate to claim that since 1945,
methods have been found to pursue fairly traditional political ends in ways that accommodate nonuse of nuclear means, notwithstanding the permanent pres -
ence of those means.¶ The light cast by general strategic theory reveals what requires revealing strategically about networked computers. Once one sheds some of
the sheer wonder at the seeming miracle of cyber’s ubiquity, instanta - neity, and (near) anonymity, one realizes that cyber is just another operational domain,
though certainly one very different from the others in its nonphysi - cality in direct agency. Having placed cyber where it belongs, as a domain of war, next it is
essential to recognize that its nonphysicality compels that cyber should be treated as an enabler of joint action, rather than as an agent of military action capable of
behav - ing independently for useful coercive strategic effect. There
are stand-alone possibilities for cyber action, but they
are not convincing as attractive options either for or in opposition to a great power, let alone a
superpower. No matter how intriguing the scenario design for cyber war strictly or for cyber warfare,
the logic of grand and military strategy and a common sense fueled by understanding of the course of
strategic history, require one so to contextualize cyber war that its independence is seen as too close
to absurd to merit much concern.

No threat of large-scale cyber-attacks---alarmist predictions are empirically denied

Sean Lawson 11, Ph.D. Department of Communication University of Utah "BEYOND CYBER-DOOM:
Cyberattack Scenarios and the Evidence of History" Jan 11
mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/beyond-cyber-doom-cyber-attack-scenarios-evidence-
history_1.pdf

Despite persistent ambiguity in cyber-threat perceptions, cyber-doom scenarios have remained an important tactic
used by cybersecurity proponents. Cyber-doom scenarios are hypothetical stories about prospective impacts of a
cyberattack and are meant to serve as cautionary tales that focus the attention of policy makers, media, and the public on the issue of cybersecurity.

These stories typically follow a set pattern involving a cyberattack disrupting or destroying critical
infrastructure. Examples include attacks against the electrical grid leading to mass blackouts, attacks against the
financial system leading to economic losses or complete economic collapse, attacks against the transportation
system leading to planes and trains crashing, attacks against dams leading floodgates to open , or attacks against nuclear power plants
leading to meltdowns (Cavelty, 2007: 2).¶ Recognizing that modern infrastructures are closely interlinked and interdependent, such scenarios often involve a
combination of multiple critical infrastructure systems failing simultaneously, what is sometimes referred to as a “cascading failure.” This was the case in the
“Cyber Shockwave” war game televised by CNN in February 2010, in which a computer worm spreading among cell phones eventually led to serious
disruptions of critical infrastructures (Gaylord, 2010). Even more ominously, in their recent book, Richard Clarke and Robert Knake (2010: 64–68) present a
scenario in which a cyberattack variously destroys or seriously disrupts all U.S. infrastructure in only fifteen minutes, killing thousands and wreaking
unprecedented destruction on U.S. cities.¶ Surprisingly, someargue that we have already had attacks at this level, but
that we just have not recognized that they were occurring. For example, Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of
Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division, claims that a “cyber- 9/11” has already occurred, “but it’s

happened slowly so we don’t see it.” As evidence, he points to the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia, as well as other incidents in which the
computer systems of government agencies or contractors have been infiltrated and sensitive information stolen (Singel, 2009). Yoran is not alone in seeing the
2007 Estonia attacks as an example of the cyberdoom that awaits if we do not take cyber threats seriously. The speaker of the Estonian parliament, Ene Ergma,

has said that “When I look at a nuclear explosion, and the explosion that happened in our country in May, I see the same thing” (Poulsen, 2007).¶ Cyber-
doom scenarios are not new. As far back as 1994, futurist and best-selling author Alvin Toffler claimed that
cyberattacks on the World Trade Center could be used to collapse the entire U.S. economy. He predicted that “They
[terrorists or rogue states] won’t need to blow up the World Trade Center. Instead, they’ll feed signals into computers from Libya or Tehran or Pyongyang and
shut down the whole banking system if they want to. We know a former senior intelligence official who says, ‘Give me $1 million and 20 people and I will shut
down America. I could close down all the automated teller machines, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, and most hospital and business computer systems’”

(Elias, 1994).¶ But we have not seen anything close to the kinds of scenarios outlined by Yoran, Ergma,
Toffler, and others. Terrorists did not use cyberattack against the World Trade Center; they used hijacked aircraft. And
the attack of 9/11 did not lead to the long-term collapse of the U.S. economy; we would have to wait for the
impacts of years of bad mortgages for a financial meltdown. Nor did the cyberattacks on Estonia approximate what

happened on 9/11 as Yoran has claimed, and certainly not nuclear warfare as Ergma has claimed. In fact, a scientist at the
NATO Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, which was established in Tallinn, Estonia in response to the 2007 cyberattacks, has written that the

immediate impacts of those attacks were “minimal” or “nonexistent,” and that the “no critical
services were permanently affected ” (Ottis, 2010: 72).¶ Nonetheless, many cybersecurity proponents continue to offer up cyber-doom
scenarios that not only make analogies to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but also hold out economic, social, and even
civilizational collapse as possible impacts of cyberattacks. A report from the Hoover Institution has warned of so-called “eWMDs” (Kelly & Almann, 2008); the
FBI has warned that a cyberattack could have the same impact as a “wellplaced bomb” (FOXNews.com, 2010b); and official DoD documents refer to “weapons
of mass disruption,” implying that cyberattacks might have impacts comparable to the use of WMD (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 2004, 2006). John
Arquilla, one of the first to theorize cyberwar in the 1990s (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1997), has spoken of “a grave and growing capacity for crippling our tech-
dependent society” and has said that a “cyber 9/11” is a matter of if, not when (Arquilla, 2009). Mike McConnell, who has claimed that we are already in an
ongoing cyberwar (McConnell, 2010), has even predicted that a cyberattack could surpass the impacts of 9/11 “by an order of magnitude” (The Atlantic, 2010).
Finally, some have even compared the impacts of prospective cyberattacks to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed roughly a quarter million people and
caused widespread physical destruction in five countries (Meyer, 2010); suggested that cyberattack could pose an “existential threat” to the United States
(FOXNews.com 2010b); and offered the possibility that cyberattack threatens not only the continued existence of the United States, but all of “global
civilization” (Adhikari, 2009).¶ In response, critics have noted that not
only has the story about who threatens what, how,
and with what potential impact shifted over time, but it has done so with very little evidence
provided to support the claims being made (Bendrath, 2001, 2003; Walt, 2010). Others have noted that the cyber-doom
scenarios offered for years by cybersecurity proponents have yet to come to pass and question
whether they are possible at all (Stohl, 2007). Some have also questioned the motives of cybersecurity proponents. Various
think tanks, security firms, defense contractors, and business leaders who trumpet the problem of cyber attacks are portrayed as selfinterested

ideologues who promote unrealistic portrayals of cyber-threats (Greenwald, 2010).

 AT: Economy
Cyberattacks won’t collapse the economy
Robert Knake 10, cybersecurity expert @ the Council on Foreign relations, Principal at Good Harbor
Consulting (2005 to present); Member, Department of Homeland Security Agency Review Team,
Presidential Transition Team (Nov. 2008 to Jan. 2009); Project Director, Task Force on Homeland
Security, The Century Foundation (2006); DNC Coordinator, Boston Emergency Medical Services (2004),
“Cyberterrorism Hype v. Fact,” Feb 16, CFR, http://www.cfr.org/terrorism-and-
technology/cyberterrorism-hype-v-fact/p21434
For less than $500,000 and using box cutters as the primary weapon, al-Qaeda was able to create a military response that to date has cost between $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion. What kind of results could al-Qaeda get from hacking?

If al-Qaeda were able to cause a power blackout by hacking SCADA systems, they couldn't do much
better than the tree limbs that caused the 2003 Northeast Blackout. That event put 50 million people
in the United States and Canada in the dark for up to four days. Economists place the cost of that event between $4.5
and $10 billion, a blip in the $14.2 trillion economy.¶One thing the United States has learned about the cost of disruption to the economy is that
disruption causes pain that is short lived and minimal. A two-day snow storm doesn't eliminate two
days of economic activity, it only delays it. The same holds true for port closures and other disruptive activities.

Doesn’t non-uq midterms- access to a different internal link

midterms
 o/v
Not too early---generic ballot leads at this point are predictors of ultimate results, and
uncertainty typically breaks in favor of the opposition party
Harry Enten 17, senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight, 12/22/17, “The Democrats’
Wave Could Turn Into A Flood,” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-democrats-wave-could-turn-
into-a-flood/

We’re still nearly a year away from the midterm elections, however. And voter preferences at this point can
change dramatically by election day; the average difference between the congressional ballot at this point and the final result is
about 9 percentage points. But most large shifts on the generic ballot from this point onward have occurred
against the party that holds the White House .4 Once you take into account who holds the White
House, the generic ballot at this point is usually predictive of the midterm House result .

Indeed, so far this year, Democrats have more than doubled their April generic ballot lead of 5 percentage
points. The Democrats led by just 6.9 points when they lost the Georgia 6 special election. That indicates that the normal midterm
trends are holding even in the age of President Trump.

GOP supporters will be hit the hardest by Trump’s tariffs---the longer the trade
conflict, the greater the defections
Joshua Green 18, Bloomberg Businessweek Columnist, 7-13-2018, "Can the GOP Survive a Trade War?"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/can-the-gop-survive-a-trade-war

On July 6,
Donald Trump carried out his vow to slap tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China
immediately reciprocated by penalizing U.S. imports, from soybeans to Teslas. The European Union, Canada,
and Mexico also imposed retaliatory levies in response to Trump’s provocations. Four days later, he escalated
the feud, threatening tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese products, including auto parts, refrigerators, and electronics, as well as
baseball gloves and handbags. The global trade war is on.

Trump says trade wars are “easy to win.” Economists think differently, although most expect the U.S. to
emerge without serious damage. A bigger question is: Will Republicans? That will depend on the scale
of the conflict and the damage it causes U.S. companies and workers. Early signs are ominous . Trump
alarmed GOP lawmakers on July 5 by threatening to impose tariffs on all $500 billion of Chinese goods imported to the U.S. “Members hate
what the president is doing,” says a former Republican leadership aide. “None of them thinks this is a good idea.”

Maximalist threats are the foundation of Trump’s approach to governing. He’s betting that when he
menaces trade partners around the globe, they’ll be forced to capitulate to his will—and the greater
the threat, the larger the eventual foreign concessions will be. “No president before Trump would dare threaten China
with half a trillion dollars in tariffs,” says Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and an early architect of Trump’s “America
First” trade policies. “He’s laid his six-guns on the table, and there’s bullets in every chamber.”

Trump’s decision to start a trade war four months before the midterm elections carries a heavy risk
for his party because many of his most loyal followers will bear the brunt of the fallout. This wasn’t
the case with his major actions before now. The crackdown on refugees and immigrants didn’t hurt the white, blue-collar
voters who make up the core of his support. And although they got little benefit from his tax cut, aimed primarily
at corporations and the wealthy, neither were they directly penalized.
The Front Lines of the Trade War

Trade is different. The bulk of punitive tariffs from around the globe falls heavily on Farm Belt and
Rust Belt states that went for Trump. Many of the new measures are designed, with almost surgical
precision, to harm his supporters . Of the 30 congressional districts hit hardest by Chinese tariffs on
U.S. soybeans, 25 are represented by Republicans, five by Democrats—but all 30 voted for Trump.

Canada, Mexico, and the EU have targeted specific Republican politicians, including House Speaker Paul Ryan of
Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, by pinpointing items such as cheese, Harley-
Davidson motorcycles, and whiskey that are produced in their states and districts. Rank-and-file
members and their constituents won’t be spared economic pain either. U.S. Census Bureau data show that the
states whose economies are more dependent on exports—and thus most exposed to foreign
retaliation—skewed Republican in 2016.

Trump and his party may already be experiencing early tremors. While it doesn’t get much attention, the
president’s net approval rating in Morning Consult’s monthly surveys has fallen almost as much in
deep-red, agriculture-heavy states such as Kentucky (down 21 percent), Montana (21 percent), and Oklahoma
(25 percent), as it has in the bright-blue coastal states of California (15 percent), Rhode Island (21 percent), and Massachusetts (22 percent).
“Trump is underperforming in ag states,” says Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate and governor races for the nonpartisan Cook
Political Report. “In places like North Dakota and Nebraska, which he won by double-digit margin, he’s now
barely above 50 percent approval, and in Iowa, which he won by 9 points, he’s well below that, at 44
percent.”
Where Tariffs Will Hit Hardest

Economists warn that Trump’s trade war will cause prices to rise for U.S. consumers and hurt U.S.
companies that import intermediate goods such as semiconductors. But while the macro effect of the new foreign
tariffs so far looks to be limited, their impact will be keenly felt by specific industries and businesses
around the country, many of them large employers critical to state economies, and as a result will be
certain to cause political disruption .

That spells trouble in the Farm Belt, where agricultural staples have been hit by tariffs. U.S. farmers
are already dealing with lower prices for corn and wheat. Total farm profits are at their lowest level since 2006, falling
from $123 billion in 2013 to less than $60 billion this year as forecast by the government by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Making U.S.
agricultural exports less competitive in some of their largest foreign markets will only worsen matters.

Coastal states will also suffer. In Alaska, the world’s top supplier of wild-caught salmon, new Chinese seafood tariffs could cut
income for the state’s 16,000 commercial fishermen and harm its largest manufacturing sector, seafood processing. In Maine, those tariffs are
costing lobstermen business that’s moving to Canada, while steel tariffs have made their lobster traps more expensive. Florida’s boating
industry will be slowed by taxes on motorboats imposed by Canada, the EU, and Mexico.

States with large automotive industries are also in the crosshairs, including a swath of the country
from Michigan to Mississippi where foreign carmakers have built some of the biggest plants in the
U.S. Many of the vehicles those plants produce are shipped overseas. In Alabama, Daimler AG’s Tuscaloosa plant exports more than 70
percent of the Mercedes-Benz SUVs it produces. Automakers are also major regional employers. South Carolina’s BMW AG plant in
Spartanburg, with 10,000 workers, sits atop a sprawling network of 235 American suppliers and is responsible for most of the U.S.-produced
cars sent to China.

Kentucky and Tennessee, home to the U.S. whiskey industry, are targeted by the four largest U.S.
trading partners: Canada, China, the EU, and Mexico. And along the Gulf Coast, which accounts for 80
percent of U.S. crude exports, tariffs will hit local economies from Gulfport, Miss., to Houston. Since
Congress lifted the ban on U.S. oil exports in 2015, foreign demand has helped the domestic oil industry recover from recent low prices. New
tariffs could make U.S. crude less competitive and slow the double-digit growth in exports.
The impact of this global retaliation is spread wide enough that even Republicans in safe seats have cause for concern. Not only do Trump’s
actions offend GOP lawmakers’ free-market principles, their political costs are also difficult to gauge, because he hasn’t explained when or on
what terms he’s willing to bring hostilities to a close.

In the meantime, GOP strategists

say they’ll have a harder time beating back Democratic challengers in
Senate races in Tennessee, Arizona, and Nevada, where a business-friendly message has long been the
basis of Republicans’ appeal. They’ll also have a tougher time knocking off vulnerable Democratic
senators in North Dakota, Montana, and Missouri. “The places where members are most concerned
are states where it’s effectively a one-industry economy,” says a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to
share internal party fears. Trump and some of his top trade advisers are willing to bear these costs, because they believe the showdown will
eventually create domestic manufacturing jobs that will benefit the president’s working-class base. But most
other Republicans
recognize that many of those same workers will be among the first to suffer now that tariffs have
started to bite. “It’s stupid policy,” Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse complained publicly in March, “but he has the authority.”
Even Trump’s staunchest defenders don’t pretend that U.S. workers won’t get caught in the crossfire .
“This is not going to be without some perturbations,” Bannon concedes. “Trump never promised otherwise.”
With threats escalating and Trump showing no sign he’ll back down , events could get out of hand. In
early July, China’s Ministry of Commerce accused the U.S. of igniting “the largest trade war in economic history.” A March report from
Bloomberg Economics estimated that a full-blown trade war, in which the U.S. raises import costs by
10 percent and is met with similar retaliation, would hurt global gross domestic product by $470
billion—roughly the size of Thailand’s economy.
Trouble in Trump Country

The political fallout would be commensurate . A Peterson Institute for International Economics study
found that such a scenario would cause a 2- to 3-percentage-point rise in the U.S. jobless rate, a
plunge in asset prices, and disruption of supply chains and productivity. Even actions short of an all-
out trade war would create huge disruptions. In a July 2 interview with Fox News, Trump, previewing what he
planned to tell foreign leaders at the NATO summit, threatened what he called “the big one”—a
global tariff on imported cars and trucks. Last year the U.S. imported $192 billion in vehicles and an additional $143 billion in
auto parts. “The imposition of high tariffs on U.S. auto imports would represent an existential threat to Nafta,” Brian Coulton, chief economist
at Fitch Ratings Inc., warned in a research note.

Caught between their fear of challenging the president and their desire to protect constituents, Trump supporters in Congress are playing for
time. “What I’m saying to constituents is, give President Trump some room,” Republican Representative Steve King, whose Iowa district
contains 18,000 soybean farms, told the Washington Post on July 9. “Give him some room to freely negotiate here, and let’s see how it comes
out. Don’t undercut the president and take the leverage away.”

But as
the impact of retaliatory tariffs grinds its way through local economies in states across the
country, it won’t be Trump who has to show up at town hall meetings and answer questions from
angry voters. The longer the trade war goes on, the larger the backlash is likely to be. The question
that will preoccupy Republican politicians is how long they’ll have to endure it.

BOTTOM LINE - Trump’s

trade war threatens to upend local economies across the U.S. and cause
headaches for Republican candidates up and down the ballot this fall.
 Solves Case---Dems Solve Tariffs

Dem victory solves the case---they’ll restrict trade presidential authority to levy tariffs
Greg Ip 18, chief economics commentator for The Wall Street Journal, 7/18/18, “Democrats Could
Become a Free-Trade Counterweight to Trump,” https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-could-
become-a-free-trade-counterweight-to-trump-1531911601

In Tennessee's critical Senate race, it's the Democrat running as a free trader . Phil Bredesen, a former governor,
poses in a whiskey distillery in a recent ad and slams President Donald Trump's tariffs: "They hurt our auto industry, our farmers, and Tennessee exports like Jack
Daniel's."

Since the 1940s, Republicans have branded themselves the party free trade, while Democrats—especially rank and file
officials and congressmen—have
more often been the party of protection. Those labels need updating . Mr.
Trump's imposition of tariffs on allies and adversaries alike is accelerating a migration of Democratic voters toward
free trade and Republicans away from it. Among elected legislators, the median Republican is still pro-free trade and the median Democrat a skeptic, but
those lines, too, are shifting.

That has potentially significant consequences if Democrats retake one or both chambers of Congress in
this fall's midterm elections. They could become a counterweight to Mr. Trump's protectionist agenda .

The shift was on display last week, when the

Senate voted on a proposal by Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker to require Mr. Trump to
consult Congress when invoking national security to impose tariffs, as he did with steel and aluminum. All
Democrats voted in favor ; only 78% of Republicans did.
In an interview, Mr. Corker said Republicans who voted no were worried about contradicting the president; theirs, he said, is still the party of free trade. But, he
added, a lot of Republicans noticed that Mr. Bredesen, who is campaigning to replace the retiring Mr. Corker, is so forcefully backing trade. "They're saying, 'Hey,
this fellow is a pretty smart, he's supporting free trade, he must know something politically.' This is an issue that cuts across political factions."

Democrats historically opposed free trade because they relied heavily on union votes and power. But in the 2000s blue-collar industrial-region workers began
shifting to the Republican party while college-educated urban and suburban voters increasingly voted Democratic. Today, 67% of voters who identify as Democrats
or lean Democratic consider free trade a good thing, according to the Pew Research Center; just 43% of Republicans do.

Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution has found that coastal urban centers that provide the bulk of Democratic votes have benefited most from globalization,
whether free trade, foreign investment, or immigration.

The divide is also cultural: Democrats increasingly identify with cosmopolitan values like openness to
trade, immigration and culture. For some, Mr. Trump's dislike of free trade only makes it more appealing.
Free trade has yet to convert the bulk of elected Democrats, especially those in traditional rust-belt regions. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), a longtime skeptic of
free trade, has allied himself with Mr. Trump on tariffs and stopped a tougher version of Mr. Corker's proposal from getting a vote. Conor Lamb wrested a
Pittsburgh-area district away from Republicans in a special election in part by endorsing Mr. Trump's steel tariffs.

And the party's rising progressive left instinctively equates trade deals with giveaways to corporations and the rich. In 2016 Hillary Clinton recanted her support for
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious 12-nation trade pact, under pressure from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), a self-described democratic socialist.

So Democrats aren't going to make trade the centerpiece of their efforts to retake the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate this fall. Global trade ranks
last among voters' priorities.

But Ed Gerwin, a trade expert at the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank aligned with Democrats, says trade
is local and the fallout
from Mr. Trump's tariffs has given Democrats opportunities they didn't have five years ago: "If you are
running in a farm district in California's central valley, Kansas or Nebraska or a suburban district like Houston or

Dallas, this is a message that really resonates ."

The president's disdain for longstanding trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization and his
willingness to treat adversaries like China and allies like Canada alike has alarmed even protectionist
members of the Democratic caucus , like Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett. "Terminating or repealing [Nafta] will have far-reaching consequences in
Texas," he warned last fall.

All this
means that a Democratic-controlled Congress, traditionally hostile territory for free-trade legislation,
may be friendlier now. Democrats may see countering tariffs and protecting trade pacts as politically
useful not for its own sake but as a way of constraining Mr. Trump .
 Midterms Key to 2020
The 2020 election will be determined by the results of 2018---GOP congress after the
midterms protects Trump and guarantees reelection---crushes U.S. democracy
Francis Wilkinson 17, politics and U.S. domestic policy writer for Bloomberg View, 12/5/17, “The Do-
or-Die Election of 2018,” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-05/the-do-or-die-
election-of-2018

Every presidential election is routinely called “the most important election” in history, producing sighs and eye rolls
from political science types. But
if you’re fond of democracy in America , the 2018 midterm election makes a stronger
case for a superlative label than most presidential elections.

It appears increasingly clear that the Republican majorities in Congress would pose no serious obstacle to presidential
lawlessness . True, committees in the House and Senate are looking into Russian sabotage, in the form of support for candidate Donald
Trump, during the 2016 campaign. But it's unclear if Republicans on those committees are willing to blame Russia for wrongdoing, let alone
Trump.

As political scientist Jacob T. Levy pointed out at the Niskanen Center blog, in his brief presidential tenure Trump has already “defied, ignored,
or shredded the whole previous system of norms about avoiding financial conflicts of interest and the use of public office for private
enrichment.”

Trump has openly signaled that his Washington hotel and Palm Beach club, where he doubled the fee to $200,000 after his election, thereby
putting an explicit dollar value on presidential access, are political souks. “He has, in short, drawn a very clear map to foreign interests about
how to enrich him and his family and how to gain direct access to him in the process,” Levy wrote.

Issuing the equivalent of equity shares in a presidency has historically been frowned upon. But Republicans in Congress have taken no action.
As Levy said, “Executive authoritarianism and lawlessness can be hemmed in and checked but not fully
constrained by courts, the criminal law, or the written Constitution.” In other words, Trump will see your Madisonian
mumbo-jumbo and raise you an Electoral College.

This has obvious implications for the criminal investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. In the wake of the indictment
of Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and a plea deal signed by former Trump White House national security adviser Michael Flynn,
along with the exposure of a series of lies (which keep coming) by senior White House aides and Trump himself about Flynn’s discussions with a
Russian diplomat, the evidence of a conspiracy looks to be mounting.

Republicans in Congress, however, appear mostly determined to see and hear no evil. Senate Judiciary Committee
chairman Orrin Hatch last week called Trump one of the best of the seven presidents he has served under. Likewise, conservative media
organizations, from Fox News to Breitbart, have thrown a protective cordon around Trump. This only increases the pressure on Republican
office holders to do likewise. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, which employs Mueller and his team, continues to be run by Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, whose commitment to uncovering the truth, let alone acting on it, appears sketchy at best.

The law may simply not be strong enough to bring down a president who defies it with the aid of a
complicit Congress. Politics , backed by law, is the fulcrum required to expel a crooked, yet determined,
executive. Without it, impeachment or resignation are a distant reach. Even a majority of public opinion agreeing about
the nature of wrongdoing, and penalizing Trump in 2020 , may depend on the composition of
Congress after the midterm elections .
In the Washington Post, Dan Drezner
says 2020 will be the bell that tolls for American democracy, either
sending it spiraling with Trump’s re-election or announcing its resurgence. But it’s taken less than a
year for lies to become standardized and bogus counter-narratives operationalized. Imagine if criminal charges were
tohang over Trump's head for the next two years, while the political system grows even more
tattered and the legal system is jammed.

If Mueller targets Trump, there is dwindling reason to believe that the Republican coalition will
accommodate his evidence. Mueller would be subjected to daily character assassination, his evidence viciously distorted, and his
entire investigation dismissed as the product of a nefarious “deep state” too shadowy to identify.

Will the Business Roundtable rise up against a president who supports corporate tax cuts? American CEOs, few of whom would tolerate Trump
as a business partner, have shown no interest in defending rule of law.

And what new moral affront could persuade Christian conservatives to abandon a man they already know to be an incurable liar, shameless
adulterer and flouter of most everything ever claimed as Christian values? A sizable segment of Republican voters will deny even the most
incontrovertible evidence of Trump wrongdoing, and they will demand that Republicans not only inhabit their alternative universe, but defend
it to the death. Conservative jurists – John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, above all -- will be similarly pressured.

Holding Trump accountable legally, even politically, may not be possible even with Democratic control
of the House or Senate and the influence a Congressional majority provides. But it's even more unlikely without it. And four

years is a long time to live above the law .

 Midterm Key---2NC

The midterms determine the future political salience of Trumpism---the GOP has to
get wiped out---there’s an invisible threshold for the collapse of democratic norms
Jonathan Rauch 18, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Benjamin Wittes, the editor in chief
of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, March 2018, “Boycott the Republican Party,”
The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/boycott-the-gop/550907/

The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of
our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a
conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic
actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of
defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as
Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity , until the party either rights
itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

Of course, lots of people vote a straight ticket. Some do so because they are partisan. Others do so because of a particular policy position: Many
pro-lifers, for example, will not vote for Democrats, even pro-life Democrats, because they see the Democratic Party as institutionally
committed to the slaughter of babies.

We’re proposing something different. We’re suggesting that in today’s situation, people should vote a straight Democratic ticket even if they
are not partisan, and despite their policy views. They should vote against Republicans in a spirit that is, if you will, prepartisan and prepolitical.
Their attitude should be: The
rule of law is a threshold value in American politics, and a party that endangers
this value disqualifies itself, period. In other words, under certain peculiar and deeply regrettable circumstances, sophisticated,
independent-minded voters need to act as if they were dumb-ass partisans.

For us, this represents a counsel of desperation. So allow us to step back and explain what drove us to what we call oppositional partisanship.

To avoid misunderstanding, here are some things we are not saying. First, although we worry about extremism in the GOP, that is not a reason
to boycott the party. We agree with political analysts who say that the Republicans veered off-center earlier and more sharply than the
Democrats—but recently the Democrats have made up for lost time by moving rapidly leftward. In any case, under normal circumstances our
response to radicalization within a party would be to support sane people within that party.

Nor is our oppositional partisanship motivated by the belief that Republican policies are wrongheaded. Republicans are a variegated bunch, and
we agree with many traditional GOP positions. One of us has spent the past several years arguing that counterterrorism authorities should be
granted robust powers, defending detentions at Guantánamo Bay, and supporting the confirmations of any number of conservative judges and
justices whose nominations enraged liberals. The other is a Burkean conservative with libertarian tendencies and a long history of activism
against left-wing intolerance. And even if we did consistently reject Republican policy positions, that would not be sufficient basis to boycott
the entire party—just to oppose the bad ideas advanced by it.

One more nonreason for our stance: that we are horrified by the president. To be sure, we are horrified by much that Trump has said and done.
But many members of his party are likewise horrified. Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Bob Corker and Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse,
as well as former Governors Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, have spoken out and conducted themselves with integrity. Abandoning an entire party
means abandoning many brave and honorable people. We would not do that based simply on rot at the top.

So why have we come to regard the GOP as an institutional danger? In a nutshell, it has proved unable or
unwilling (mostly unwilling) to block assaults by Trump and his base on the rule of law. Those assaults,
were they to be normalized, would pose existential, not incidental, threats to American
democracy .
Future generations of scholars will scrutinize the many weird ways that Trump has twisted the GOP. For present purposes, however, let’s focus
on the party’s failure to restrain the president from two unforgivable sins. The first is his attempt to erode the independence
of the justice system. This includes Trump’s sinister interactions with his law-enforcement apparatus: his demands for criminal
investigations of his political opponents, his pressuring of law-enforcement leaders on investigative matters, his frank efforts to interfere with
investigations that implicate his personal interests, and his threats against the individuals who run the Justice Department. It also includes his
attacks on federal judges, his pardon of a sheriff convicted of defying a court’s order to enforce constitutional rights, his belief that he gets to
decide on Twitter who is guilty of what crimes, and his view that the justice system exists to effectuate his will. Some Republicans have clucked
disapprovingly at various of Trump’s acts. But in each case, many other Republicans have
cheered, and the party, as a party, has
quickly moved on. A party that behaves this way is not functioning as a democratic actor.

The second unforgivable sin is Trump’s encouragement of a foreign adversary’s interference in U.S. electoral
processes. Leave aside the question of whether Trump’s cooperation with the Russians violated the law. He at least tacitly collaborated
with a foreign-intelligence operation against his country—sometimes in full public view. This started during the campaign, when he called upon
the Russians to steal and release his opponent’s emails, and has continued during his presidency, as he equivocates on whether foreign
intervention occurred and smears intelligence professionals who stand by the facts. Meanwhile,
the Republican Party has
confirmed his nominees, doggedly pursued its agenda on tax reform and health care, and attacked—of course—
Hillary Clinton.

We don’t mean to deny credit where it is due: Some congressional Republicans pushed back. Last year, pressure from individual Republicans
seemed to discourage Trump from firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and probably prevented action against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Moreover, Republicans as a group have constrained Trump on occasion. Congress imposed tough sanctions on Russia over the president’s
objections. The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a serious Russia investigation under the leadership of Richard Burr. But the broader
response to Trump’s behavior has been tolerant and, often, enabling.

The reason is that Trump and his forces have taken command of the party. Anti-Trump Republicans can
muster only
rearguard actions, which we doubt can hold the line against a multiyear, multifront assault from
Trump and his allies .

It is tempting to assume that this assault will fail. After all, Trump is unpopular, the Republican Party’s prospects in this year’s
midterm elections are dim, and the president is under aggressive investigation. What’s more, democratic institutions held up
pretty well in the first year of the Trump administration. Won’t they get us through the rest?

Perhaps . But we should not count on the past year to provide the template for the next three. Under the pressure of
persistent attacks, many of them seemingly minor, democratic institutions can erode gradually until
they suddenly fail. That the structures hold up for a while does not mean they will hold up
indefinitely—and if they do, they may not hold up well.

Even now, erosion is visible. Republican partisans and policy makers routinely accept insults to constitutional norms that, under
Barack Obama, they would have condemned as outrageous. When Trump tweeted about taking “NBC and the Networks” off the air (“Network
news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked”), congressional Republicans
were quick to repudiate … left-wing media bias. In a poll by the Cato Institute, almost two-thirds of Republican respondents agreed with the
president that journalists are “an enemy of the American people.” How
much damage can Trump do in the next three
years? We don’t know, but we see no grounds to be complacent.

The optimistic outcome depends to some degree on precisely the sort of oppositional partisanship we are
prescribing. For Trump to be restrained going forward, key congressional enablers will need to lose
their seats in the midterm elections to people who will use legislation and oversight to push back
against the administration. Without such electoral losses, the picture looks decidedly grimmer .
Finally, we might not be talking about just three more years. Trump could get reelected; incumbent presidents usually do. In any event, he is
likely, at a minimum, to be renominated for the presidency.
That’s because Trump has won the heart of the Republican base. He may be unpopular with the public at large, but among Republicans,
nothing he and his supporters said or did during his first year in office drove his Gallup approval ratings significantly below 80 percent. Forced
to choose between their support for Trump and their suspicion of Russia, conservatives went with Trump. Forced to choose between their
support for Trump and their insistence that character matters, evangelicals went with Trump.

It’s Trump’s party now; or, perhaps more to the point, it’s Trumpism’s party, because a portion of the base seems eager to out-Trump Trump. In
last year’s special election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, Republican primary voters defied the president himself by nominating a
candidate who was openly contemptuous of the rule of law—and many stuck with him when he was credibly alleged to have been a child
molester. After initially balking, the Republican Party threw its institutional support behind him too. In Virginia, pressure from the base drove a
previously sensible Republican gubernatorial candidate into the fever swamps. Faced with the choice between soul-killing accommodation and
futile resistance, many Republican politicians who renounce Trumpism are fleeing the party or exiting politics altogether. Of those who remain,
many are fighting for their political lives against a nihilistic insurgency.

So we arrive at a syllogism

(1) The GOP has become the party of Trumpism.

(2) Trumpism is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law.

(3) The Republican Party is a threat to democratic values and the rule of law.

If the syllogism holds, then the most-important tasks in U.S. politics right now are to change the Republicans’
trajectory and to deprive them of power in the meantime. In our two-party system, the surest way to accomplish these
things is to support the other party, in every race from president to dogcatcher. The goal is to make the Republican Party
answerable at every level, exacting a political price so stinging as to force the party back into the
democratic fold.

The off-year elections in November showed that this is possible. Democrats flooded polling places, desperate to
“resist.” Independents added their voice. Even some Republicans abandoned their party. One Virginia Republican, explaining why he had just
voted for Democrats in every race, told The Washington Post, “I’ve been with the Republicans my whole life, but what the party has been doing

is appalling.” Trump’s base stayed loyal but was overwhelmed by other voters. A few more spankings
like that will give anti-Trump Republicans a fighting chance to regain influence within their party.
We understand why Republicans, even moderate ones, are reluctant to cross party lines. Party, today, is identity. But in the through-the-
looking-glass era of Donald Trump, the best thing Republicans can do for their party is vote against it.

We understand, too, the many imperfections of the Democratic Party. Its left is extreme, its center is confused, and it has its share of bad
apples. But the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order. That is why we are rising above our independent predilections and
behaving like dumb-ass partisans. It’s why we hope many smart people will do the same.