Connecting Trump’s Dots - unconnected campaign promises based on incoherent world view
Every day, the president’s behavior becomes more worrying. One day he demeans a federal judge who challenges him; the next day, without evidence, he accuses the media of hiding illegal voting or acts of terrorism. His lack of respect for institutions and truth pours out so fast, you start to forget how crazy this behavior is for any adult, let alone a president, and just how ugly things will get when we have a real crisis. And crises are baked into this story because of the incoherence of President Trump’s worldview.
How so? The world today is more interdependent than ever. The globalization of markets, the spread of cellphones, the accelerations in technology and biology, the new mass movements of migrants and the disruptions in the climate are all intertwined and impacting one another. As a result, we need a president who can connect all of these dots and navigate a path that gets the most out of them and cushions the worst.
But Trump is a dot exploiter, not connector. He made a series of reckless, unconnected promises, not much longer than tweets, to get elected, and now he’s just checking off each one, without thinking through the linkages among them or anticipating second-order effects.
It is a great way to make America weak — and overstretched — again.
Where do I start? Trump wants to get tougher with China on trade and security. That’s not crazy. But how would I do that? I’d organize an alliance of Pacific trading nations that surround China and enlist them in a trade pact that supports U.S.-style rule of law, greater market access for U.S. intellectual property and products and promotes U.S. values — as opposed to China’s. I’d call it the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP for short.
Oh wait, President Barack Obama did that, but Trump scrapped TPP on Day 1, without, I am sure, having read it. Now there is every reason to believe our Asian-Pacific allies will fall even more under China’s economic sway and trade “rules.” How smart is that?
And by the way, why is labor in Mexico cheaper than in America? One reason is that Mexico has weaker labor rights and environmental standards. Let’s see … what would TPP require of Mexico and other signatories? That they bring their labor rights and environmental standards closer to ours.
Instead, Trump is building a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants and force companies to move to the U.S. Let’s see … what happened after 9/11, when the border crossings with Mexico and Canada were severely constricted for security? It forced some assembly line shutdowns at U.S. auto companies, like Ford, because their supply chains stretched to Mexico and Canada. The lower-cost work is done in Mexico and then integrated with higher-value-added work in America, which enables our car companies to compete on price in Europe, Japan and China.
So what did the U.S., Canada and Mexico do after 9/11? They created a North American security envelope, explained Seth Stodder, Obama’s assistant secretary of homeland security, so if you fly into Mexico or Toronto from the Middle East, our Homeland Security Department now probably knows about it.
“Since 9/11, we and our Mexican and Canadian partners have worked to secure the North American perimeter by sharing information on people and goods coming to our countries, cross-referencing that information against terrorism databases and working collaboratively to identify potential bad actors trying to come to North America,” Stodder said. If we build a wall and demand that Mexico pay for it, how long will it go on cooperating with us?
And if Trump forces all these U.S.-based multinationals to move operations from Mexico back to the U.S., what will that do? Help tank the Mexican economy so more Mexicans will try to come north, and raise the costs for U.S. manufacturers. What will they do? Move their factories to the U.S. but replace as many humans as possible with robots to contain costs.
The U.N. says there’s a record 65 million displaced migrants and refugees, mostly from the developing world, trying to get into secure places like the U.S. or Europe. Why? A mix of civil wars, state failures, climate stresses and population explosions. What did Trump do his first week? Appoint climate deniers to key posts and ban U.S. aid to health groups that provide abortion as a family-planning option in developing nations.
Trump wants to partner with Vladimir Putin to defeat ISIS in Syria — a worthy goal. But Putin hasn’t been trying to defeat ISIS. He’s been trying to defeat democracy in Syria to keep the genocidal pro-Russian dictator there in power.
Will that be our goal, too? And who are Putin’s allies in Syria? Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite mercenaries from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Will they be our allies, too? No. We will enlist Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis to help us, says Trump. Really? But he just barred them from entering the U.S. How cooperative will they be?
And whom else might this ban keep out? Remember Steve Jobs? His biological father was Abdulfattah “John” Jandali. He came to America as a student in the 1950s and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He was from … Homs, Syria.
It’s amazing what a mess you can make when you only check boxes and don’t link them.
New York Times
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Tim Cook Just Bought Himself More Time to Prove Apple Doubters Wrong - TIME Business
Posted: 01 Feb 2017 06:39 AM PST
Steve Jobs is a tough act to follow. How tough? Six years after Tim Cook took control of operations at Apple from Jobs, he’s still trying to escape the long shadow of his predecessor.
Cook has led Apple since January 2011, when Jobs went on medical leave to battle pancreatic cancer. The following August, Cook formally assumed the title of CEO. Under his leadership, Apple’s market cap has risen 144%, besting the 104% gain in the Nasdaq Composite Index. During the previous six years – the last six of Jobs’ tenure – Apple’s stock rose 329%.
Those numbers underscore the dilemma Cook faces. On the one hand, he’s steered Apple into a success that surpasses that of most of its Silicon Valley peers. On the other, he’s not Steve Jobs. And that has left Cook in a position where, no matter how well Apple is doing, it never quite seems to be good enough.
In the last year alone, Apple’s stock has risen more than 25% – again outperforming the Nasdaq by a good margin. And yet in recent weeks, many observers have been questioning Cook’s leadership, prompted in good part by the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone’s now legendary introduction by Jobs.
Some observers feel Apple has been losing its focus. One entrepreneur compared Cook to Steve Ballmer, who while CEO of Microsoft missed opportunities in search and mobile. A Wall Street analyst complained that Apple “lacks the courage to lead the next generation of innovation.” A former Apple employee tweeted, “The very first thing Tim did as CEO was convert Apple from a dynamic change-maker into a boring operations company.”
Of course, Cook has his defenders. But 2016 presented Apple with its share of challenges. In its fiscal year through September, Apple saw its revenue decline for the first time in 15 years. Upgrades to the iPad, the Apple Watch and the MacBook Pro were steady improvements enough, but lacked the panache of years past. The company was seen as lagging behind Google and Microsoft in artificial intelligence. Bold new products, long promised by Cook, didn’t arrive soon enough to placate Apple skeptics.
All of these developments tugged at a core concern: Apple is losing its innovative edge. It had become The iPhone Company – the device makes up 70% of company revenue – and smartphones are becoming a saturated market. Even if that wasn’t Cook’s fault, it remained a big problem for him. When The New York Times asked Peter Thiel if the age of Apple were over, he said yes. “It’s not the fault of Tim Cook, but it’s not an area where there will be any more innovation.”
On Tuesday, Cook had his chance to disagree with all these naysayers. Apple said it returned to year-over-year growth last quarter for the first time in four quarters. Cook was careful to enumerate all the financial records it set last quarter: iPhone revenue. Watch revenue. Mac revenue. Revenue from the App Store and other services. Overall, revenue rose 3% last quarter, while earnings per share rose to $3.36. (Not everything was a record: Net income fell 3% to $17.9 billion).
One bright spot was services like the App Store and Apple Music. Revenue there grew by 18% last quarter as the number of paid subscribers grew to 150 million and as the average spend per customer also increased. Cook said he expects services revenue to double to around $50 billion in four years.
But the better news concerned Apple’s core iPhone business. Apple sold 78.3 million iPhones last quarter, above the 77 million estimate analysts had been looking for. iPhone revenue was strong in all regions except China, and many sales were coming from both upgrades and people switching from other manufacturers – two important developments as the global market for smartphones grows saturated.
That’s crucial for Cook, because it gives him time to prepare for the next iPhone, Apple’s most anticipated release in years. Not only is the next iPhone arriving on the 10th anniversary of the first model, it’s rumored to have features like an OLED screen, a glass casing, a battery that charges wirelessly, and possibly augmented reality features that Cook has hinted at in recent months.
If the “iPhone 8,” or whatever it ends up being officially named, revives Apple’s sales the way the iPhone 6 did a few years ago, Cook will have more time to deliver on the longer-term products he keeps insisting are in the pipeline. Unlike many previous earnings calls, no analyst asked for an update on that pipeline. The focus right now is squarely on the next iPhone, the next version of the game-changer Jobs unveiled a decade ago. And for Cook, that’s enough. Unlike skeptics like Thiel, he sees plenty of life left in the smartphone.
“I think the smartphone is still in the early innings of the game. I think there’s lots more to do,” Cook said during Apple’s earnings call Tuesday. “We think different about a bunch of things,” he added, invoking an old Apple slogan. “This is just one more thing.”
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