White House Globalists Using National Economic Council to Undermine President’s Agenda

The National Economic Council has become a globalist juggernaut inside the White House that is working to undermine the economic nationalist agenda for which President Donald Trump was elected.

Headed up by former Goldman Sachs trader Gary Cohn, the once sleepy NEC has been transformed into a powerful force inside the Trump administration, according to an explosive exposé in Politico. At every turn, Cohn and his NEC cohorts have pushed back against those inside the White House who have labored to keep the administration on track with its campaign promises on trade.

Politico’s Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia provide a concrete example of the globalist gang’s work:

In the run-up to this week’s G-20 summit in Germany, Cohn has been among the White House aides trying to prevent Trump from imposing broad and strict trade restrictions on steel imports. Trump is warming to a more targeted approach, administration officials say — an outcome that would be a win for Cohn and a setback for the nationalist wing of the White House, including top White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Navarro had been advocating behind the scenes for across-the-board tariffs on steel imports as high as 25 percent, a White House official said.

“I think the president is pretty clear on what he wants. It’s the staff that is on different pages,” said one senior administration aide.

One of the reasons for the gang’s effectiveness: they are swamp creatures. In the more polite words of Cook and Restuccia, the 30 some NEC staffers are “advisers with deep policy experience and Washington connections…many of whom worked in prior administrations or have experience on Capitol Hill.”

A person familiar with the matter put it more bluntly to Breitbart News: “When one of these guys walks into the room, you can smell the swamp on them.”

One the of biggest accomplishments so far of the Globalist Swampsters: helping pull the president away from exiting NAFTA. When word began to spread that Trump was coming close to announcing that the U.S. would pull out of NAFTA, NEC staffers held a series of emergency meetings to push the president toward a less forthright position. Those that lobbied the president personally against a Nafta exit included Cohn, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, according to Politico.

Fortunately, the Globalist Swampsters have suffered setbacks. Here’s Cook and Restuccia again:

Cohn’s staff worked for months to find a middle ground proposal that would prevent Trump from withdrawing from the Paris climate deal, which had won the support of nearly 200 countries in 2015. Cohn and others in the administration feared that a withdrawal could cause widespread international ill will against the United States.

Cohn’s staff held a series of private meetings with fossil fuel companies to build support for their plan to remain in the agreement, while weakening former President Barack Obama’s domestic commitment to cut emissions.

In the end, of course, Trump stuck to his guns and announced that the U.S. would exit the Paris agreement. On the side of the good guys: Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.