countries have been unable to confront. and that, in part, was let loose again by the lack of action in syria. if there is still a united nations, and if that united nations has any teeth and any purpose for existing, would it not be to create a safe zone, a no-fly zone, in eastern syria to allow these refugees to return home? the u.n. i do not believe will green light that because countries like russia have vetoes. this is a little like bosnia. admiral stavridis knows this better than anybody. if there s some type of concerted international action, you have to do an end run around the united nations and nato and the united states and some like-minded countries in europe and in the region will have to work together because there isn t a united nations, joe. there isn t an international consensus about what should be done.
then the united states sitting back and doing little to nothing while 500, 600 people die and watching one red line after another be run through and now having another president wanting to abandon that region, how are historians going to look back on the united states involvement and lack thereof in syria and the international refugee crisis that it let loose and the chaos and the hell that we just absolutely refuse to step up and assist in bringing to resolution? joe, i think future historians will look back and unload a great deal of shame on all of us. they should. this is beginning to feel like
the new york times also writing a piece this weekend about democracy and retreat in central and eastern europe. also the theme of our new issue of our magazine. but the united states is no longer setting an example that others want to emulate. the united states is no longer making the promotion and respect for democracy and human rights part of its foreign policy. we now have an amoral foreign policy that in this context people like me would argue is immoral. and joe, there s a gray area between what we re doing now which is doing nothing and saying the only purpose of american foreign policy so to transform the world and get everybody reading the federalist papers in their local language. there is something in between. we walked away from it. the only problem with h.r. mcmaster s speech is he did it when he was leaving the white house. it would have been a hell of a lot better if he did it when he
on immigration. and that has caused political chaos in europe and it s caused some chaos here in the united states as well. not talking about closing the borders, but there is a middle ground that liberal democracies over the past 20 years have refused to take on immigration and this is the result. absolutely right, joe. and let s think of it this way. there s an idealistic let s do the right thing, let s take care of the world component to this and that s important, but i think there s a very pragmatic reason that the united states ought to be taking these kind of positions. and if we look back in history it s kind of instructive. if you go back about 100 years ago, world war i is ending. what does is united states do? we reject the league of nations, the predecessor to the united nations. we erect walls called tariff barriers, the holly smoot tariffs. and we withdraw.
uncomfortable so you think he s negotiating? i think it s a starting point. remember, when the tariffs first came out there was a big shock and now we ve pulled it back. we ve excluded canada, we ve excluded mexico. we re starting to pull things back but in the end we have a problem with china. steve, take us through your charts on the trade issue with china. what is the issue? i think we would all agree we have a trade problem with china. i think the lead in you read in terms of how this unfolded and i would say congressman i think the way this has been handled is about as bad a way as you can handle a serious problem. let s look at the problem and start with china. joe mentioned that trump doesn t always tell the truth about these things so we ll show you some facts. so first, if you go back to the 1980s we had no trade with china. it was a very closed economy and then in 2001 they were admitted to the world trade organization and got preferential tariff treatments on their