From the right: Trump’s Art of the Steel Deal
“Nippon Steel is buying US Steel for $15 billion and has agreed to let the American company remain American-operated” in a Trump-approved deal that “addressed concerns about national security while securing economic gains for the nation,” cheers the Washington Examiner’s editorial board.
“Local unions have overwhelmingly backed the deal,” which lets Nippon Steel become “the world’s second-largest steel producer, allowing it to compete with China‘s Baowu Steel Group, and gaining access to the American market, one of the world’s largest.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) called the bargain a “ ‘BFD’ that he supports enthusiastically.”
Wow: “How often do the terms of a corporate merger unite Republicans, Democrats, and union leaders, while creating tens of thousands of jobs and reducing the market dominance of the nation’s greatest geopolitical foe?”
Libertarian: Don’s Sensible National-Park Cuts
“Why should the National Park Service be funding so many sites,” including some that aren’t national parks? “And what would happen if some of those properties were transferred to state or tribal management?” asks Reason’s Liz Wolfe.
“The Trump administration is asking those sensible questions, and is proposing to cut $1.2 billion from the agency’s budget” by turning over some niche sites to local management.
“It’s always been unclear to me why we expect taxpayers across the country to pay for the upkeep and management of” sites “they will never visit and have never heard of.”
Some may end up closing without federal funding, “but if there’s no political will within the state to fund these sites, maybe that’s a sign . . . that they shouldn’t continue to be publicly operated.”
Labor beat: Cali’s $30 Minimum-Wage Oops
Los Angeles is “on track” to miss out on hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, thanks to “a new $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers passed at the behest of the city’s hospitality unions,” laments Michael Saltsman at The Wall Street Journal.
LA’s Olympic bid promised “enough hotel rooms for athletes, spectators and officials” at given rates, but eight hotels have now pulled out, “citing the unworkable economics,” and a development that would create 395 rooms was canned.
All of which means less tax revenue for Los Angeles. Meanwhile, California wants $40 billion from Uncle Sam to help LA recover from the wildfires.
Congress should condition aid “on a moratorium on any mandates, including the $30 minimum wage, that would put recovery and taxpayer dollars at risk.”
From the left: Ignoring the Media’s ‘Original Sin’
The Jake Tapper-Alex Thompson book “Original Sin” details how President Biden’s team “concealed his cognitive and physical decline,” but “shifts blame to Democrats, ignoring how the media aided the cover-up,” grumbles Nolan Higdon at The Hill.
“Credibility in journalism — hard to earn, easy to lose — once demanded rigorous objectivity.” No doubt, the media’s “abandonment of objectivity accelerated with Donald Trump’s rise.”
Despite Tapper’s own efforts to portray “himself as deceived” and “positioning his book as a reckoning,” it “evades the real question: did this cover-up begin before the election?”
“The answer is yes — and Tapper was part of it.” The public won’t buy journalists’ supposed return to “objectivity” because the media’s lost credibility “isn’t easily reclaimed.”
Conservative: RIP, Monetary Hero Stanley Fischer
Commentary’s Seth Mandel celebrates the “great warrior of monetary policy,” Stanley Fischer, dead at 81, who “saved Israel’s economy twice.”
First his advice helped end the Jewish State’s mid-1980s inflationary spiral with a bipartisan plan that “cut government, negotiated limits with the uber-powerful Histadrut labor union, and reined in Israel’s money-printing habits.”
And, as “the governor of the Bank of Israel” when “the global financial crisis hit,” he deftly manipulated the value of the shekel “to stabilize investment” without putting “stress on Israel’s exports.”
He was so impressive “that several Arab states backed him in an unsuccessful bid to lead the IMF in 2011,” though “he was an Israeli citizen and Israel’s top financial figure at the time.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
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