The folly of Bannon's IP crusade

If the White House chief strategist is concerned about America's deficit with China, why is he promoting the weakest possible trade policy?

Stephen Bannon.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Remember when White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon self-immolated on Wednesday? After a week overflowing with the Trump administration's self-inflicted disasters, you would be forgiven for forgetting all about it. Still, it's worth teasing out because of what it reveals about the limits of Bannon's supposed economic nationalism.

Already supposedly in President Trump's doghouse, Bannon's latest headache came after he placed a surprise phone call to Robert Kuttner, one of the founders of The American Prospect. The interview, which Kuttner promptly published, was full of unforced errors. There's Bannon's weird assumption he had common ground with the progressive magazine just because Kuttner had criticized China on trade. There's Bannon's total failure to declare the chat off the record. And there's his off-the-cuff undercutting of Trump on North Korea.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.