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Trump Family Business Demands Foreign Government Do Its Bidding

The Trump Organization’s lawyers threatened “consequences” if the president of Panama didn’t intervene on its behalf in a business dispute.

Back in February, Donald Trump Jr. flew to India where, in between shilling $1.5 million condos and holding intimate chats for a very reasonable $38,000 booking fee, he told the world how tough the presidency has been on the spawn of Donald Trump. During an interview with an Indian television station, POTUS’s eldest son explained that narratives about the Trump family taking advantage of their father’s new gig are totally off the mark, because they ignore the many sacrifices the family has had to make. When the haters and losers talk about the Trump Organization “profiteering from the presidency and all this nonsense,” Donny groused, they fail to mention “the opportunity cost of the deals that we were not able to do.” That, Junior said, is “sort of a shame. Because we put on all these impositions on ourselves and essentially got no credit for actually doing that . . . for doing the right thing.”

Take, for instance, the saga of the Trump International Hotel & Tower Panama. After The Apprentice host declared his candidacy for president, and embarked on one of the most hateful campaigns in modern U.S. history, many people with ties to the real-estate developer decided they wanted nothing to do with him. But for the unfortunate collection of condominiums and hotels whose buildings bore the dreaded t-word in enormous gold letters, which had basically become the equivalent of hanging a giant banner from an 18th-floor window proclaiming, We love racist blowhards of debatable mental stability and questionable moral conduct, severing relations was easier said than done. While a few condos were able to rid themselves of the Trump name, thanks to the fact that their licensing deal with the Trump Organization had expired, others, such as the Panama hotel, were not so lucky, despite arguing that the shiny lettering was costing them serious business. (“It’s a financial bloodbath,” one businessman who owns three units at the Panama hotel told the Washington Post in January. “There is definitely a stigma on the name,” added a realtor. “There [are] a lot of unhappy owners.”) Finally, after a heated back and forth between the hotel’s majority owner, Orestes Fintiklis, and the Trump Organization, which culminated in a standoff that involving the barricading of offices, the cutting of power, and a protest song, police stormed the lobby and evicted the Trump Organization staff. On March 27, an arbitrator ruled that while the org should not have been ousted while arbitration was ongoing, he would not reinstate management. And hey, that must have been really tough on Donny and Eric, who took over day-to-day operation of the company after daddy got a new job. But at least they didn’t do anything shady in the process, raising questions about the overlap between the company in which Trump retains a financial stake, and the presidency. Except, of course, that’s exactly what they did.

According to a new report from the Associated Press, days before the arbitrator made his decision, Britton & Iglesias, the law firm representing the Trump Organization in the matter, sent a letter to Panama President Juan Carlos Varela, “URGENTLY request[ing his] influence in relation to a commercial dispute involving Trump Hotel aired before Panama’s judiciary.” It also warned that there might be consequences for Panama if Varela failed to do so. What might those consequences be, and would they be along the lines of the U.S. coincidentally supporting a blockade of Qatar after the nation refused to cough up financing for Jared Kushner’s family’s doomed Midtown tower? Unclear! What is clear, however, is that the letter sure looks like the Trump Organization was trying to use the influence of the White House to get its way in a private, commercial matter. “President Trump and the family Trump Organization are using the presidency of the United States improperly for their personal business,” Roberto Eisenmann, the founder of Panama paper La Prensa, said Monday. “It is something somewhat embarrassing to see a president of the United States in that situation.” According to the A.P., the letter was copied to the presidents of the Panama Supreme Court, Panamanian Cabinet officials, and the National Assembly, among others. In a statement, Panama’s Foreign Secretary Isabel de Saint Malo said that the letter, which she also received, “urges Panama’s executive branch to interfere in an issue clearly of the judicial branch.”

All of which, of course, is business as usual for the people surrounding Donald J. Trump, whose Cabinet is involved in an ongoing battle to determine which of its members is the most corrupt, whose son-in-law’s family business is receiving loans worth more than half a billion dollars following key meetings in the White House that all parties maintain are totally legit, and whose favorite-daughter’s business is being conveniently spared from the trade war he says farmers may be hurt by, but will emerge from “stronger.” If everyone else is getting a piece, why shouldn’t sentient concussions Donny and Eric?

Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, did not respond to questions from the A.P. regarding whether or not Trump knew about the letter. Requests for comment from Britton & Iglesias were not immediately answered.

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Larry Summers can’t decide if Trump is a terrorist or a dictator

Commenting on the president’s ongoing attacks on Amazon, the former Treasury secretary told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, “What is not the job of the president of the United States is to go on a jihad against a company because he does not like the activities of a newspaper that is privately owned by its C.E.O.” That, Summers said, “is something that should be deeply concerning to businesspeople everywhere.” Summers added that the unhinged Twitter campaign against Amazon, reportedly stemming from an “obsession” with taking down Jeff Bezos, is similar to life in Italy under Benito Mussolini and that it shouldn’t be the case in a democracy that “one company can be singled out at one moment, and another company can be singled out at another moment.”

Trump’s tax cuts to thank for looming fiscal catastrophe: C.B.O.

Nothing to see here, just the threat of a massive fiscal crisis thanks to the bill formerly known as the “Cut, Cut, Cut Act”:

The federal government’s annual budget deficit is set to widen significantly in the next few years, topping $1 trillion in 2020 despite healthy economic growth, according to new projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Monday.

The national debt, which has topped $21 trillion, is expected to soar to more than $33 trillion in 2028. By then, debt held by the public will almost match the size of the nation’s economy, reaching 96 percent of gross domestic product, a higher level than any point since just after World War II and well past the level that economists say could court a crisis. The fear is that rising deficits will drive up interest rates, raise borrowing costs for the private sector, tank stock prices and slow the economy, which would only drive the deficit higher.

Sure, the report notes that the tax overhaul will grow the economy by an average of 0.7 percent over the next 10 years. But that growth “does not come close” to paying for the tax bill, which will add more than $1.8 trillion to deficits for the same time period. “The C.B.O.’s report exposes the staggering costs of the G.O.P. tax scam and Republicans’ contempt for fiscal responsibility,” Representative Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “In their craven haste to give corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent massive tax breaks, Republicans saddled our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt.”

And while Republicans will likely blame this news on things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, or what people like Paul Ryan like to call “entitlements,” a group of economists that includes former Fed chair Janet Yellen would appreciate a little perspective, writing in The Washington Post Sunday:

Entitlement programs support older Americans and those with low incomes or disabilities. Program costs are growing largely because of the aging of the population. This demographic problem is faced by almost all advanced economies and cannot be solved by a vague call to cut “entitlements”—terminology that dehumanizes the value of these programs to millions of Americans. The deficit, of course, reflects the gap between spending and revenue. It is dishonest to single out entitlements for blame. The federal budget was in surplus from 1998 through 2001, but large tax cuts and unfunded wars have been huge contributors to our current deficit problem. The primary reason the deficit in coming years will now be higher than had been expected is the reduction in tax revenue from last year’s tax cuts, not an increase in spending. This year, revenue is expected to fall below 17 percent of gross domestic product—the lowest it has been in the past 50 years with the exception of the aftermath of the past two recessions.

[Meanwhile], the tax cuts passed last year actually added an amount to America’s long-run fiscal challenge that is roughly the same size as the pre-existing shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare. The tax cuts are reducing revenue by an average of 1.1 percent of G.D.P. over the next four years. The Hoover authors minimized the cost of the tax cuts by noting that if major provisions are allowed to expire on schedule—certainly an open question, given political realities—they would amount to “only” 0.4 percent of G.D.P. Even this magnitude exceeds the Medicare Trustees’ projections of a 0.3 percent of G.D.P. shortfall in Medicare hospital insurance over the next 75 years.

That argument, of course, is unlikely to sway the Ryans of the world, who have been fantasizing about taking away health insurance from the poor and sick since they were small children.

Ray Dalio: the chance of every kind of war you can think of has increased

Trade, economic, shooting—they’re all on the table:

What happened? Most recently, Donald Trump threatening to raise the stakes by $100 billion and the Chinese promptly indicating that they will match the moves dollar for dollar and step-by-step took me and people closer than me to the negotiations by surprise. These developments broke my scenario that trade tensions would subside and increased the odds that a different and scarier agenda might be in play that raises the odds of trade, capital, cyber, and/or shooting wars on the horizon.

Sleep tight, everyone!

Goldman’s C.E.O. won’t let new job title eat into D.J.’ing gig

While some people might get all I’m going to be the next C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs, I don’t have time to spin E.D.M. in the D.J. booth anymore, David Solomon, a.k.a. D.J. D-Sol, is thankfully not one of them:

On Saturday night, a Reuters journalist watched Solomon perform a set of house-style electronic music at a lounge in Lower Manhattan hosted by graduates from Solomon’s alma mater, Hamilton College. The charity event, held in support of families of people with drug addiction, intended to “shatter the stigma of addiction and to aid in the fight against the opioid epidemic,” according to a description on its Facebook page.

A student reached out to Solomon, a member of Hamilton’s board of trustees, to participate in the event, according to one of the attendees. Asked by Reuters if added responsibilities at Goldman would conflict with his D.J. time, Solomon declined to comment.

Elsewhere!

F.B.I. agents raid Michael Cohen’s New York Hotel (The Hive)

Trump Calls Michael Cohen Raid ‘Disgraceful’ (New York)

U.S. watchdog seeks record fine against Wells Fargo for abuses (Reuters)

Citigroup wants pot dispensary to stop using its logo (NYP)

Vornado Says It Has ‘Handshake’ for Kushners to Buy It Out of 666 Fifth Ave. (Bloomberg)

Deustche Bank hired it’s new C.E.O. not because he was the top candidate but because “he was there” (Bloomberg)

Slammed by Trump, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Chooses Silence (Washington Post)

Another Goldman exec dumps Wall Street for crypto world (CNBC)

Ethics watchdog says E.P.A. chief Scott Pruitt’s rent deal, expenses, travel raise troubling red flags (CNBC)

London Bar Has a Drink Menu for Dogs (The Daily Meal)