Considering Rhee’s very controversial background running the Washington, DC school system that included allegations of a widespread cheating scandal, she seems an odd choice to run the Department of Education:
President-elect Donald Trump looks on as Michelle Rhee, a former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools, and her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, leave Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster, N.J., Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. [Sacramento Bee]President-elect Donald Trump will meet Saturday with Michelle Rhee, a Democrat and former District of Columbia public schools leader who is considered in the running for secretary of education.
Rhee will meet with Trump, a Republican, at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where he is also meeting with former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, purportedly being considered for secretary of state.
Jason Miller, Trump communications director, confirmed the Rhee meeting Saturday morning with FoxNews.com.
Like Trump, Rhee has been a supporter of school choice, backing some public money for charter schools while the D.C. schools chancellor from 2007 to 2010.
Trump’s School Choice Policy released in September calls for his incoming administration to “immediately” redirect $20 billion in federal funds to school choice — in the form of block grants for an estimate 11 million school-age children living in poverty. [Fox News]
I don’t see how South Korea can be considered a low cost manufacturing country especially considering the KORUS FTA has made it cheaper for them to manufacture in the US compared to South Korea:
Trump hasn’t spelled out how he wants to rearrange NAFTA, but the basic idea is to encourage or compel more production in the United States, which would mean less production in places like Mexico. But that would be highly disruptive and would penalize American automakers more than their foreign rivals. Trump could probably rewrite the rules in a way that limits Mexican imports to the United States, for instance. But that doesn’t mean automakers would simply move Mexican factories north of the border. They might look for other low-cost countries instead, such as South Korea, India or China. The Trump administration could pursue trade restrictions on those countries as well, but that becomes a game of free-trade whack-a-mole in which the government is trying to tell multinational companies where to invest their money—hardly the lightly regulated pro-growth environment Trump says he wants to create.
If Trump tries to stop US automakers from producing in Mexico, that doesn’t mean he can stop foreign automakers from operating there. So the government would essentially be raising costs for American firms by forcing them out of Mexico, but not for their global competitors. [Yahoo Finance]
So Se Pyong, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, gestures during an interview with Reuters at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva, Switzerland, November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
If a U.S. administration of Donald Trump withdraws troops and equipment from South Korea and secures a peace treaty ending war on the peninsula, it could lead to normalizing relations with North Korea, a Pyongyang envoy told Reuters on Thursday.
But for now North Korea will pursue its policy of “simultaneous development” of both its nuclear program and the economy, So Se Pyong, North Korea’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva said. “It will be continued.” [Reuters]
It appears that the North Koreans are taking a wait and see approach in regards to how they will respond to the election of Donald Trump:
North Korea has made its first indirect comment on the result of the US presidential election, one week after American voters went to the polls.
The first mention of Donald Trump’s victory appeared in a news report on a different matter entirely – and then only as a means to attack Pyongyang’s sworn enemy, South Korea.
Hidden deep down in a commentary calling for the resignation of embattled South Korean President Park Geun-hye, state news agency KCNA refers to her ruling Saenuri Party making use of a “Trump emergency system” to divert the public’s attention away from the current cronyism scandal threatening Ms Park’s leadership.
In the same report, headlined “South Korea leader ‘bound to get buried’ over scandal”, KCNA goes on to make its first mention of last week’s election, saying Ms Park and her followers were making a “bid to use even the US presidential election as an emergency measure” to escape impeachment.
Mr Trump is mentioned entirely without context, with no explanation to readers who or what “Trump” might be, and Korea-watchers will have to go back to June this year to find his last meaningful mention by Pyongyang. [BBC]
Trump has done pretty well for himself by not listening to the experts. I guess we will see if he wants to the listen to the so called experts about North Korea and decide to cut a deal with the Kim regime:
“Engagement” will be the most viable option for the new U.S. government to make North Korea give up its nuclear and missile programs, three experts said Friday.
A forum in Seoul called on the Donald Trump administration that begins in January to seek dialogue-based engagement policies toward a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Ken E. Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, outlined possible policy options for the incoming Trump administration — pre-emption, intensified sanctions and engagement — as President Obama’s “strategic patience” approach is widely received as a failure.
He proposed the new government give priority to engagement involving both dialogue and pressure, citing the potentially catastrophic downsides of pre-emptive attacks and the ineffectiveness of stronger sanctions heavily reliant on China.
“It is an option, however, that will require many years, if not decades, to achieve,” Gause said.
“The (engagement) option is the least appealing to the U.S. and South Korean policymakers. It is tainted by the history of past policies of appeasement. It smacks of rewarding bad behavior and giving Pyongyang de facto recognition as a nuclear state, something the United States and South Korea have said they will never do,” Gause said. [Yonhap]
Even the Korea Times is jumping on the bandwagon that Trump won the US Presidential election because America is filled with white racists:
In disbelief and denial, people fear how their lives may or may not be impacted under a leader who has constantly been labeled a racist and sexist throughout a divisive and ugly campaign.
But for many Korean-Americans, the uncertainty runs even deeper.
”We’re talking about a man who has been hating on immigrants, not to mention criticizing South Korea as ‘free-riders,”’ says Michael Kim, 26, one of many younger generation Korean-Americans who have teamed up to campaign for Trump’s defeated Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in California, a liberal stronghold. ”These two factors alone can’t be good for all of us Koreans who live in the U.S.”
Korean-American political observers say never in recent history have so many Koreans been unified against one single candidate.
According to a recent poll, 63 percent of eligible Korean-American voters said they would vote for Clinton, while only 10 percent backed Trump.
”The reason is simple,” says Lisa Kim, 42, a member of the Korean American Coalition in New York, a non-partisan community advocacy organization. ”People are feeling threatened by this new and emerging political force who has awaken a movement of white nationalists.”
Life in America under Trump’s leadership, Kim says, is likely to be tougher for Asians and other minorities.
”Racism is one of the biggest concerns we’re facing,” she said, stressing that this election has exposed a surprising depth of underlying racism deeply planted in the American society. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I fully expect more articles like this from the media as well as complaints about the Electoral College system in an attempt to delegitimize Trump before he even takes over the Presidency.
According to Victor Cha, under a Trump Presidency expect the OPCON issue to come back again:
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could try to complete the postponed transfer of the wartime operational control of South Korean forces from Washington to Seoul in an effort to reduce American security burdens, a top expert on Korea said Wednesday.
South Korea handed over control of its forces to the U.S. during the 1950-53 Korean War to defend against invading troops from North Korea. Peacetime control of its forces was returned in 1994, but the wartime control, known as OPCON, still rests with the U.S.
The two countries agreed in 2007 to transfer OPCON to Seoul by 2012. But the planned transfer was postponed twice amid growing threats from North Korea, first until 2015 and then indefinitely until the South becomes more capable of coping with the North’s threats.
“Trump’s guiding principle has been to put American interests first. In this regard, it is entirely plausible that a Trump presidency may seek to complete OPCON transfer and put these responsibilities in the hands of Koreans,” said Victor Cha, Korea chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if Trump uses the OPCON issue as a negotiating chip to get South Korea to pay more for the upkeep of USFK.
