Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission is scheduled to meet at 4:30 PM, and Whitewater’s School Board will meet at 7 PM at Central Office (after a prior offsite tour).
On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins.
Recommended for reading in full —
Rick Barrett reports In response to tariffs, Harley-Davidson moving more motorcycle production overseas:
Harley Davidson Inc. said Monday it plans to move production of motorcycles destined for the European Union to its international factories, in response to tariffs the EU has imposed on its bikes.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Harley said the impact of the 31 percent tariffs, up from 6 percent previously, could be $100 million per year or roughly $2,200 per motorcycle.
“Harley-Davidson believes the tremendous cost increase, if passed onto its dealers and retail customers, would have an immediate and lasting detrimental impact to its business in the region, reducing customer access to Harley-Davidson products and negatively impacting the sustainability of its dealers’ businesses,” the company said.
Robert J. Samuelson writes We’re going to lose this trade war:
If we are to have a “trade war” with China, it would be best to win it. We should be better off after the fighting. Unfortunately, the chances of this happening seem slim to none, because President Trump’s plan of attack suggests that everyone — us and them — will lose.
….
The trouble is that Trump’s bombastic assaults against our traditional trading partners — and military allies — virtually guarantee that the essential cooperation will be difficult, if not impossible, to attain. “Trump’s focus on the trade deficit is causing specific harms to American national security, including the distortion of U.S. [foreign] alliance relationships and loss of leverage against China,” wrote Derek Scissors of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Consider how. Trump has suggested imposing a 25 percent tariff on imported cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles and parts. This might reduce the trade deficit (in 2017, these U.S. imports totaled $324 billion from all countries, Scissors reported), but only because higher-priced vehicles would reduce consumer demand and vehicle production. Other countries would retaliate, finds a study from the Peterson Institute. The estimated U.S. job loss would total 624,000 over one to three years.
Michael Birnbaum reports If they needed to fend off war with Russia, U.S. military leaders worry they might not get there in time:
SUWALKI, Poland — U.S. commanders are worried that if they had to head off a conflict with Russia, the most powerful military in the world could get stuck in a traffic jam.
Humvees could snarl behind plodding semis on narrow roads as they made their way east across Europe. U.S. tanks could crush rusting bridges too weak to hold their weight. Troops could be held up by officious passport-checkers and stubborn railway companies.
Although many barriers would drop away if there were a declaration of war, the hazy period before a military engagement would present a major problem. NATO has just a skeleton force deployed to its member countries that share a border with Russia. Backup forces would need to traverse hundreds of miles. And the delays — a mixture of bureaucracy, bad planning and decaying infrastructure — could enable Russia to seize NATO territory in the Baltics while U.S. Army planners were still filling out the 17 forms needed to cross Germany and into Poland.
During at least one White House exercise that gamed out a European war with Russia, the logistical stumbles contributed to a NATO loss.
The Committee to Investigate Russia offers the Russia-NRA-Trump Connection Explained Again:
Vanity Fair‘s latest article about the possibility that Russia funneled money to the Trump campaign through the National Rifle Association does not contain much new information, but it does an excellent job of piecing together what we already know about the connections Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating and members of Congress continue to probe.
An excerpt:
The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.
The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene, who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.
It’s possible that the men were merely bonding over a shared love of firearms. Mike Carpenter, a Russian specialist who worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, laughs at the notion. “The Russian state is run by a K.G.B. elite that wants nothing less than to have an armed citizenry,” Carpenter says. “Rogozin is a heavyweight in Russian politics. . . . Torshin has a direct line to Putin . . . and also has possible ties to organized crime. Rudov is the right-hand man of Konstantin Malofeev, who is sort of a paleo-conservative, ultra-nationalist figure who bankrolls a lot of projects involving mercenaries in Ukraine.” Carpenter sees how a dark money trail could connect the Kremlin to the gun lobby. “Those three would only meet with N.R.A. officials if there were some concerted effort by senior members of the Russian government to try and co-opt the N.R.A. politically,” he continues. “And they are all money men. They can throw tens of millions around.”
Full story: “COINCIDENCE NUMBER 395”: THE N.R.A. SPENT $30 MILLION TO ELECT TRUMP. WAS IT RUSSIAN MONEY? (Vanity Fair)
Great Big Story looks Inside World Cup’s Sticker Collecting Craze: