America's allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization

[babylonsister]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/5/17422492/sanction-trump-organization

America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization
Forget retaliating against America; retaliate against something Trump cares about: his money.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Jun 5, 2018, 8:20am EDT


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When China wanted to get Trump to let the Chinese tech conglomerate ZTE off the hook for repeatedly violating sanctions against North Korea, it didn’t try to make concessions to the American people. It had a Chinese state-owned enterprise approve a huge loan to an Indonesian real estate project that will feature Trump-branded hotels, condos, and a golf course.

America’s democratic allies probably can’t (and certainly shouldn’t) bribe Trump and his family in this way, but they both can and should do the opposite: work together on a package of targeted sanctions narrowly designed to inflict pain specifically on the Trump Organization.

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Sanctioning the Trump Organization

The Canadian writer Scott Gilmore is also thinking along these lines, and makes the case for sanctioning the Trump Organization in Maclean’s.

“Canada could add a tax to Trump properties equal to any tariff unilaterally imposed by Washington,” he writes. “The European Union could revoke any travel visas for senior staff in the Trump organization. And the United Kingdom could temporarily close his golf course.”

The potential points of leverage here are quite real. Trump has two golf courses in Scotland and one in Ireland. The wine list at BLT Prime in Trump’s DC hotel is full of European vintages. Travel sanctions could also be painful. Donald Trump Jr. was vacationing in Spain as recently as April.

Hitting Trump personally might work on its own terms. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is chaired by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who has committed to working to halt Trump’s tariffs. So has Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who also sits on the committee. Both Corker and Flake have also, from time to time, offered commentary on Trump’s basic unfitness for office. What they’ve never done is exerted their power as US senators to engage in meaningful oversight over his corruption and conflicts of interest. Directly injecting Trump’s business interests into an international conflict might spur them to actually do their jobs.

[CentralMass]

1. Shame on the GOP for letting this theiving treasonous bastard get away with this.