Politics
Trump Orders Cut to National Security Staff After Whistle-Blower
By Jennifer Jacobs and Justin SinkOctober 4, 2019, 10:30 PM CDT Updated on October 4, 2019, 10:41 PM CDT
- White House seeks to make council leaner under new leader
- Plan emerges after whistle-blower’s report on Ukraine call
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President Donald Trump has ordered a substantial reduction in the staff of the National Security Council, according to five people familiar with the plans, as the White House confronts an impeachment inquiry touched off by a whistle-blower complaint related to the agency’s work.
Some of the people described the staff cuts as part of a White House effort to make its foreign policy arm leaner under new National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
The request to limit the size of the NSC staff was conveyed to senior agency officials by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and O’Brien this week. The whistle-blower complaint, focused on Trump’s conduct in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been followed by damaging reports on the president’s private conversations with other world leaders.
The New York Times has reported that the whistle-blower was a CIA officer who was at one point detailed to the White House. The complaint has become the driving motivation behind House Democrats’ impeachment effort, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi began last week.
Two of the people familiar with the decision to shrink the NSC insisted it was largely rooted in both the transition to O’Brien’s leadership as well as Trump’s desire to increase efficiency at the agency, which grew under former President Barack Obama. About 310 people currently work at the NSC.
All of the people asked not to be identified because the plan to reduce the NSC’s size hasn’t been made public.
Late Friday, Trump re-tweeted an allegation that the whistle-blower was a CIA official who had been assigned to the NSC under President Barack Obama. Bloomberg News has not verified that assertion.
Earlier: Trump’s New Security Adviser Seen as Arbiter, Not Ideologue
The reductions will primarily be carried out through attrition, as staffers return from assignments at the NSC to their home agencies, the people said. Many people who work at the council are career government professionals detailed from the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence agencies.
Members of Congress have periodically sought to reduce the size of the NSC in recent years. Some lawmakers have threatened to make the national security adviser a Senate-confirmed position if the administration didn’t reduce the number of people working at the president’s foreign policy shop.
Created under President Harry Truman in 1947, the NSC is an interagency panel designed to provide the president with subject-matter experts who can offer advice on foreign policy.
Read More: Bolton’s Out. Here’s How It Could Affect Trump’s Foreign Policy
O’Brien took over the NSC last month after his predecessor, John Bolton, departed the administration after high-profile disputes with Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo over Afghanistan, North Korea and other matters. There was also frustration among some West Wing officials about perceptions the NSC was leaking information to benefit Bolton.
Earlier this week, O’Brien appointed Alex Gray, formerly the National Security Council’s Oceania and Indo-Pacific security director, to be a senior adviser, according to three people familiar with the plan.
Gray’s appointment follows that of Matt Pottinger, who is now deputy national security adviser after serving previously as the NSC’s senior director for Asia.
Pottinger, a former journalist and Marine who joined Trump’s National Security Council in 2017 and later became senior director for Asia, has been deeply involved in U.S. talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, and helped to plan Trump’s meetings with the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.(Updates with Trump retweet, in seventh paragraph.)Have a confidential tip for our reporters?
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Economics
China Narrows Scope for Trade Deal With U.S. Ahead of Talks
By Shawn Donnan and Jenny LeonardOctober 6, 2019, 3:04 PM CDT
- Chinese officials suggest a broad pact is off the table
- U.S. president still insists any deal has to be “100% for us”
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Chinese officials are signaling they’re increasingly reluctant to agree to a broad trade deal pursued by President Donald Trump, ahead of negotiations this week that have raised hopes of a potential truce.
In meetings with U.S. visitors to Beijing in recent weeks, senior Chinese officials have indicated the range of topics they’re willing to discuss has narrowed considerably, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Vice Premier Liu He, who will lead the Chinese contingent in high-level talks that begin Thursday, told visiting dignitaries he would bring an offer to Washington that won’t include commitments on reforming Chinese industrial policy or the government subsidies that have been the target of longstanding U.S. complaints, one of the people said.
That offer would take one of the Trump administration’s core demands off the table. It’s emblematic of what analysts see as China’s strengthening hand as the Trump administration faces an impeachment crisis — which has recently drawn in China — and a slowing economy blamed by businesses on the disruption caused by the president’s trade wars.
People close to the Trump administration say the impeachment inquiry isn’t affecting trade talks with China. Any attempt to portray anything different is an attempt to weaken the U.S. hand at the negotiating table and, they argue, would be a miscalculation by the Chinese.
Read more: Trump Starts Impeachment Battle With Self-Inflicted Wounds
But China, beset by its own escalating political crisis in Hong Kong, was drawn into the Washington furor after Trump last week called for a Chinese investigation into his Democratic rival Joe Biden and the former vice president’s son, moments after threatening another escalation in the trade spat.
Trump insisted on Friday that there’s no linkage. Yet the president’s latest comments suggest why Chinese leaders, already frustrated with what they see as the president’s impetuous conduct in the trade talks, may see room to take advantage.
China’s leadership “are interpreting the impeachment discussion as a weakening of Trump’s position, or certainly a distraction,” said Jude Blanchette, an expert on China’s elite politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Their calculation is that Trump needs a win” and is willing to make compromises on substance as a result, he said.
‘Very Tough Deal’
Trump has said repeatedly he would entertain only an all-encompassing deal with China. People close to him say he remains firm in that view.
“We’ve had good moments with China. We’ve had bad moments with China. Right now, we’re in a very important stage in terms of possibly making a deal,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “But what we’re doing is we’re negotiating a very tough deal. If the deal is not going to be 100% for us, then we’re not going to make it.”
People familiar with the state of play say contacts that resumed over the summer after a breakdown in May have focused on how to resume negotiations and avoid further escalating the tariff wars that have unnerved financial markets.
Yet those talks have centered more on a timeline for implementing a limited deal rather than the substance of provisions where the two sides are at odds.
Discussions have focused on what U.S. administration officials view as a three-phase process, people familiar with the talks said. The sequence would involve large-scale purchases of U.S. agricultural and energy exports by China, implementing intellectual-property commitments China made in a draft agreement this year and, finally, a partial rollback of U.S. tariffs.
Bloomberg News reported in September that Trump’s team was discussing a potential limited agreement that includes those elements. That could clear the way for broader negotiations next year. Yet if China insists it will not engage in any discussions on industrial policy, those plans could be scuttled.
Fundamental Conflict
Hopes have always been limited that China would agree to give up its economic model in a trade deal with the U.S. A draft agreement reached in April before talks broke down included few substantive commitments from China to abandon the sort of industrial policies the Trump administration and others before it have complained about, according to people familiar with the talks.
That draft focused on securing more transparency from China on the extent of its subsidies. It included a commitment essentially to disavow Made in China 2025, Xi Jinping’s plan for Chinese domination of key 21st century industry such as artificial intelligence, robotics and electric vehicles, though it lacked a schedule for removing Chinese government subsidies that fuel the plan.
One reason for that is U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s focus on what he views as pragmatic demands for Chinese change, rather than shriller calls for a wholesale abandonment of Beijing’s industrial policy some hawks believe should be required of Beijing.
Lighthizer declined to comment on the state of negotiations through an aide. While he’s unlikely to accept any Chinese offer that doesn’t address industrial subsidies or policy, people close to him say he may be willing to embrace “sequencing” a deal and an “early-harvest” agreement as long as broader talks continue.
Still, people close to the administration say Trump’s trade chief probably would need some kind of commitment resembling a concession on subsidies and industrial policy to sell the agreement at home.
Japan-U.S. Deal
A possible model is last month’s U.S. deal with Japan on agriculture, digital trade and a limited number of industrial tariffs, which was presented as the first phase of a longer negotiation.
Any such deal would leave the fate of a major Trump administration demand hanging in the wind, putting the president on the defensive at home ahead of the 2020 election.
Addressing issues such as industrial subsidies “were the whole reason this case started in the first place,” said Rufus Yerxa, a former U.S. trade official who heads the National Foreign Trade Council, a lobby group that’s critical of Trump’s trade wars. “At a minimum the administration will have a lot of explaining to do if those drop off the table.”
David Dollar, a former U.S. Treasury representative in China now at the Brookings Institution, says China’s push to narrow the discussions is more evidence that both sides are hardening their positions on a broader deal.
The U.S. and China increasingly have reasons to strike a “mini deal” and avoid an escalation, he said. China needs agricultural products such as pork that Trump wants it to buy so he can placate American farmers. And even people in the White House concede there’s a U.S. incentive to hold off on further tariffs to avoid a worsening economic slowdown going into 2020.
“It’s a funny kind of negotiation where both sides’ so-called concession is something that they need,” Dollar said.Have a confidential tip for our reporters?
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