I know this happened a million years ago and was just meaningless idiocy, but just for the record, here is Canada’s trade balance with the United States in dairy products:

Yes, they protect their dairy market. So do we. In fact, we protect ours more, which is why Canada runs a persistent trade deficit with the US in dairy products.

As for the bigger picture, it’s true that the US runs a trade deficit in overall goods. But there’s one reason for that: oil. We could import our oil from anywhere, but we happen to import it from Canada. If you take that out of the picture, then once again it’s Canada that’s running a trade deficit with the US and the US that has the trade surplus:

And then, of course, there are services. Even if you include oil, our trade balance in goods and services with Canada was +$8.4 billion in 2017. So to summarize our trade relationship with Canada:

• We run a trade surplus in dairy products.
• We run a trade surplus in total goods and services.
• We run a trade surplus in goods excluding oil.

It doesn’t matter very much if we run a trade surplus or deficit with Canada. But in every way that anyone should care about, we run a surplus. The only trade deficit worth mentioning is due to our inexhaustible appetite for oil. But that’s our problem, not Canada’s.

Why is this man so happy?Yonhap News/Newscom via ZUMA

From the Washington Post on the outcome of the Singapore summit:

Kim, it seems, got at least one benefit up front. Trump announced that he will order an end to regular “war games” that the United States conducts with ally South Korea, a reference to annual joint military exercises that are an irritant to North Korea. Trump called the exercises “very provocative” and “inappropriate” in light of the optimistic opening he sees with North Korea. Ending the exercises would also save money, Trump said.

….South Korea’s presidential office seemed blindsided by the announcement on the joint exercises. “We need to try to understand what President Trump said,” a spokesman for South Korean President Moon Jae-in said.

But it wasn’t just the South Koreans who were taken by surprise:

Both the South Korean government and US forces in the region appear to have been taken by surprise by Trump’s declared suspension of joint military exercises. US forces in Korea said they had not received updated guidance on military exercises. “In coordination with our ROK [Republic of Korea] partners, we will continue with our current military posture until we receive updated guidance,” a spokesperson told Reuters.

So far, Kim Jong Un has gotten a summit that treated him as an equal on the world stage. He’s gotten an end to US-ROK military exercises. He’s gotten the United States to ignore his appalling human rights record. And he’s gotten lots of new leverage in his relationship with China.

Donald Trump has gotten—nothing. Actually, that’s not quite right. He’s gotten less than North Korea has promised other presidents in previous negotiations. There was only the vaguest gesture toward ending its nuclear program. There was no promise of a testing moratorium. There was no promise of a development moratorium. There was no mention of “tangible” or “irreversible” or “permanent,” all of which had been previous US demands.

This. Is. Fucking. Nuts.

If this eventually turns into long-term peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula, then fine. Everyone can tell me I was just a partisan hack who refused to give Donald Trump his due. But I’m not too worried about that right now. Right now this whole thing looks like the same kind of train wreck dealmaking that produced the Trump Plaza Hotel. God help us when Trump finally figures out what really happened.

Here are four headlines in four newspapers today:

LA Times: Trump-Kim Jong Un summit fails to produce disarmament plan

New York Times: Trump Sees Shared Path After Meeting Kim

Washington Post: Trump says U.S., North Korea are ‘ready to write a new chapter’

Wall Street Journal: Trump and Kim Begin New Phase of Diplomacy

This reminds me: more people should be reading the LA Times. After years of management depredations it’s not what it used to be, and I feel a little sad when I pick it up from my driveway every morning. It looks a bit like a cancer patient who’s lost a hundred pounds and is barely hanging on.

But—their day-to-day news judgment is the best in the business, something I first noticed during the 2016 presidential campaign. Time after time, they gave stories appropriate play, while the Post and the Journal and the NYT would ignore important stuff and sensationalize trivia. Today we see the same dynamic at work. The LAT straightforwardly describes the most important outcome of the Singapore summit while the other three insist on stenography, repeating nonsensical Trump blather even though he plainly accomplished nothing.

That might change. Maybe yesterday’s summit really will begin a new phase of diplomacy. But it hasn’t yet. So far it’s produced nothing that we haven’t seen half a dozen times before from North Korea. Why act as cheerleaders for Donald Trump’s hype machine instead of soberly telling readers what actually happened and how important it’s actually likely to be? Are they really that afraid of an angry tweet?

Kevin Lim/The Straits Times via ZUMA

I don’t think any of us were expecting a lot from the Trump-Kim summit, but is this really it? The joint statement just released says only that “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” That’s all. There are no concrete commitments or policy changes. This is followed by four empty bullet points:

Four points of the Trump-Kim Declaration:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) June 12, 2018

2. “The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) June 12, 2018

3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) June 12, 2018

4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) June 12, 2018

Donald Trump is a master of marketing puffery, but how does he manage to spin this into any kind of success? Aside from the fact that both sides have apparently decided not to declare immediate nuclear war on each other, there’s literally nothing here.

The eye of London never rests. Even though the hour may be late, there's still time to put an end to the Kremlin's dream of splitting the EU, crippling NATO, and undermining the transatlantic relationship.

As we wait for Donald to size up Kim, there’s something that’s been rattling around in the back of my head for while: is there any chance of Britain deciding to pull the plug on Brexit?

Speaking generally, the reasons for wondering this are (a) it was a really close vote, (b) it was a nonbinding vote, (c) Theresa May was initially anti-Brexit, (d) Scotland, (e) Northern Ireland, and (f) EU negotiations have gone badly and it’s pretty obvious that Britain isn’t going to get the deal its supporters so giddily promised during the campaign.

None of that by itself would be enough to derail Brexit, but it does provide a background suggesting that if something big cropped up, it might result in everyone deciding to let bygones be bygones. And guess what? Over the past week, a couple of big things cropped up.

The first was the recent G7 meeting, which put a very definitive cherry on top of Donald Trump’s campaign to wreck Europe. This has been building for months, of course, but after Trump’s performance this weekend there could be a real belief on both sides that this is a time for a united front against the US, not for squabbling over EU rules on the size of bananas.

The much bigger big thing, however, is this: there is now considerable evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit vote, and in particular a Russian alliance with a billionaire Brexit backer named Arron Banks. Here is Charlie Stross:

The Murdoch press [has begun] an extraordinary about-face on Brexit. For about a year now Carol Cadwalladr of The Guardian has been digging into Cambridge Analytica, the Leave.EU campaign, and possible links to Russian state agencies and oligarchs. These links were known to some pro-leave journalists as much as two years ago, but they’re only now coming to public view.

Arron Banks is one of the main bankers of the Brexit campaign and appears to have very cordial relations with the Russian government, not to mention half a dozen Russian gold mines….Indeed, The Observer reports that Arron Banks ‘met Russian embassy officials multiple times before Brexit vote’….Oh, and the Fair Vote Project is going after him in court in the US, following allegations that two companies owned by Banks may have illegally exported information on British voters to the USA….Banks had extensive meetings with the Russian ambassador to the UK, who is also named on the indictment of ex-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos; Banks also passed contact information for Trump’s transition team to the Russians. So he’s a critical link in the Brexit/Trump/Russia connection.

Vice adds a bit of detail: “Banks met with Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to the U.K., at least three times in the months leading up to the vote to exit the European Union, and even invited him to a Brexit results party in Westminster. Banks also exchanged emails with the embassy and other Russian officials, including Alexander Udod, a diplomat who was subsequently expelled from the U.K. over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter….Banks, along with close friend and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, was among the very first overseas political figures to meet Trump after his surprise victory in November 2016.”

And a bit more from Josh Marshall:

Turbulence in or breakdown of the EU is a key Russian strategic goal. Russian diplomats courted key Brexit leaders (Banks, Farage, et al.) and apparently offered opportunities to get huge sums of money….In other words, the relationship between Russia and the Brexit campaign now looks very much like what President Trump’s accusers believe happened simultaneously in the United States.

….Once the Leave forces won the referendum, Banks, Wigmore and Farage turned attention to campaigning for Trump. They traveled as a group to Mississippi in August 2016 where Farage, fresh off his Brexit triumph, campaigned with Trump in Jackson, Mississippi on August 24th. This was just six days after one of Banks’ meetings with Yakovenko. The trio was were also at the GOP convention a month earlier. They also shared digital media firm Cambridge Analytica. Later it emerged that Farage had an on-going back-channel to Julian Assange.

This is all making a big splash in the British press right now, and it’s happening during a week of key Brexit negotiations with the EU—which aren’t going especially well. I can’t pretend to be deeply versed in the politics of Brexit or to know if pulling back is even possible right now, but it sure seems like a lot of things are converging that might encourage all sides to take a deep breath and reconsider the wisdom of being pawns in Vladimir Putin’s anti-West chess game right now.

Sunrise over the foothills near Escondido.

Richard Ellis/ZUMAPRESS

Federal prosecutors are generally barred from speaking with people who have already hired lawyers. This restriction, as the Washington Post notes today, “is to prevent ordinary people from being taken advantage of by prosecutors and their superior knowledge of the law.”

Back in 1998, Monica Lewinsky had a lawyer: Frank Carter, who was representing her in the Paula Jones case. Nevertheless, Ken Starr’s prosecutors ambushed her in the Pentagon food court anyway:

More than 100 pages long, the “Report of the Special Counsel Concerning Allegations of Professional Misconduct By the Office of Independent Counsel in Connection with the Encounter With Monica Lewinsky” provides a highly detailed account of Lewinsky’s first encounter with Starr’s lawyers, based on documents and interviews with those involved.

….When first approached at the food court and told that she was the subject of a criminal investigation, Lewinsky immediately told an FBI agent to “go f— yourself” and then told him to speak to her attorney, according to the report.

She agreed to go with the agents to a room at the adjoining Ritz-Carlton only after she was told that she would learn more about the situation without an attorney present. For hours, according to the report, Lewinsky tried “in various ways” to consult with, speak to or visit Frank Carter, a lawyer she had hired to assist her when she was deposed in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case against Clinton. The report says Lewinsky spent those hours “crying, sobbing, regaining her composure, screaming.” One prosecutor told investigators that Lewinsky’s demeanor had an “unsettling effect on his own state of mind.”

Lewinsky was told repeatedly that she could speak with whomever she wished but was then warned that her cooperation would become less valuable if she consulted with anyone, including Carter, before agreeing to assist prosecutors, the report says.

This is old news, and the only reason to bring it up is that this is not Lewinsky’s version, or Linda Tripp’s version, or Bill Clinton’s version. It’s the special prosecutor’s own version. It was written by lawyers working for Robert Ray, who took over the case after Ken Starr quit.

I have a question for any practicing defense lawyers in the audience: does it ever hurt to refuse to talk to police or prosecutors until you have a lawyer present? Is it ever the case that you lose, say, a chance at immunity if you demand to have your lawyer present before you say anything? And is it considered prosecutorial misconduct to repeatedly try to talk someone out of speaking to their lawyer, even after they’ve said they want to?

Mark Barabak of the LA Times reports today that Democrats have finally decided to stop running away from Obamacare:

For years Democrats ran from the healthcare issue as though it were a heap of flaming rubble….But polls show support for the law increasing as it becomes more imperiled, and the result has been a political sea change.

….Democrats have gotten the message, campaigning on healthcare not just in blue states like California, or swing states like Nevada and Florida, but red states like Kentucky, home of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell….Democrats “don’t have to defend how the ACA works” as they did when President Obama was in the White House, said Robert Blendon, a Harvard expert on healthcare politics. “They just have to say, ‘The other party wants to take coverage away from millions of people,’” he said.

In a sense, this is what everyone—both liberal and conservative—predicted from the start: it’s hard to put a big new social program in place, but once people get used to it it’s nearly impossible to take away. Republicans understood this well, which is why they fought like demons to get rid of it as soon as they possibly could. Now it’s too late:

In 2015, with Obamacare favorability languishing around 35-40 percent, repealing it wouldn’t have been too hard if President Obama himself hadn’t stood in the way. Today, Obama is gone but ACA’s favorability is 50-55 percent and rising. Even the rich favor keeping it around. There’s just not much appetite for destroying Obamacare anymore except among the tea party-ish base of the Republican Party.

I don’t know how far Donald Trump can go toward sabotaging Obamacare out of existence. Polls mean nothing to him in the face of getting revenge of Obama, and there’s obviously a lot of damage he can do. But can he do enough damage to wreck it for good before Democrats take over Congress or toss him out of the White House? It looks unlikely to me, and even red states seem to agree. After the failure of last year’s repeal effort, they’re finally giving in and accepting Medicaid expansion. After all, why not take the free money now that holding out doesn’t seem to have much point to it?

The fight over Obamacare isn’t over. But I suspect it’s now faced its final hurdle and is basically a permanent part of the American landscape.

Bryan Woolston via ZUMA

Earlier this year I was pondering whether Ohio’s voter removal law was legal. Referring to section (d) of the 1993 motor voter law, I said:

The Ohio program follows this to the letter.

Today the Supreme Court ruled that:

Ohio’s removal process follows subsection (d) to the letter.

And thus Ohio’s program for maintaining voter rolls is legal. Apparently I’m getting better at this Supreme Court prediction stuff! In any case, I’m sticking with my original view: the Ohio law pushes right to the edge of what’s legal under federal law, but it doesn’t go beyond. It’s legal and, what’s more, probably not that big a deal. Today’s court opinion does not appear to be an expansive new grant of power to purge unwanted voters, nor does it suggest that the motor voter law itself is problematic. The ruling simply says that if you follow the law precisely, then you can purge voters from the rolls.

Aside from the fact that I’d like to do away with voter registration entirely, none of this strikes me as either unreasonable or likely to change things significantly.

These people are completely bugfuck nuts. The fact that they’re able to put on a business suit every morning doesn’t change that.