A new bipartisan proposal to ban members of Congress and their immediate family members from trading individual stocks looks to close a glaring conflict of interest between politicians who control massive government budgets, much of which go to private contractors.
The potential for serious conflicts of interest are quickly apparent when reviewing the stock trades of members of Congress's Senate and House Armed Services Committees, the panels responsible for the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that sets recommended funding levels for the Department of Defense.
The 2024 NDAA authorized $886 billion, approximately half of which will go to contractors.
Five of the six most traded individual stocks by members of the House Armed Services Committee in the past year — Baxter International, Alphabet, NetApp, General Motors and KKR — had contracts with the Department of Defense, meaning that members may stand to benefit from the NDAA via their investments in companies with Pentagon contracts.
Members of the committee’s Senate counterpart, the Senate Armed Services Committee, also traded heavily in stocks. Like the House committee, five of the six most traded stocks by members on the Senate Committee — Cleveland Cliffs, Texas Instruments, Applied Materials, Humacyte and Chevron — had contracts with the Department of Defense.
The new “ETHICS Act,” introduced by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) addresses this increasingly glaring ethics problem in members personal finances and would prohibit the sort of trades that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are currently conducting.
“[I]f you want to serve in Congress don't come here to serve your portfolio, come here to serve the people,” Merkley told NPR
Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative Journalist at Large at Responsible Statecraft. He reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he would be open to peace negotiations with Ukraine.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We never refused, but not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, rather on the basis of the documents which were agreed on and actually initialed in Istanbul,” said Putin during remarks at an economic forum with leaders from Malaysia and China.
Putin is referring to negotiations that took place in Istanbul just weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. At that time, Kyiv and Moscow were reportedly close to a deal in which Kyiv would have agreed to reduce the size of its military, refrain from joining NATO but be free to pursue membership of the European Union. Those talks ultimately failed, with continued debate about whether Western countries moved themin that direction.
The Russian president also suggested that Brazil, China, and India could mediate new talks to end the war. His comments come just weeks after Russian officials dismissed limited, indirect talks with Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region last month.
Some observers have questioned whether Putin’s apparent desire for talks to end the war is sincere, but there’s also no reason Western leaders shouldn’t try to find out.
“On a stage with Asian leaders, including from China, he knows it’s important to rhetorically embrace talks no matter his real intentions,” Samuel Charap, a Russia expert and senior political scientist at RAND, told the Wall Street Journal. He added: “Western capitals tend to tune in when he rejects talks and tune out when he embraces them. … But until someone actually tests the proposition we’ll never know what his real intentions are. If it’s a bluff, you only know when you call it.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced his resignation this week as part of a cabinet reshuffle President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted at last week. Reacting to the news, Zelensky said his country needs “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.”
It’s unclear whether Kuleba’s departure will result in Kyiv pushing for negotiations to end the war, nor whether Zelensky would now be open to any concessions, including accepting a partition of Ukrainian territory, as part of any wider agreement. He has previously been unwilling to entertain such concessions.
In other Ukraine war news this week:
— Poland scrambled fighter jets as Russia launched missile strikes on the Ukrainian city of Lviv this week, close to the Polish border, according to CBS News. "I'm personally of the view that, when hostile missiles are on course of entering our airspace, it would be legitimate self-defense (to shoot them down) because once they do cross into our airspace, the risk of debris injuring someone is significant," said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
— Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austion last weekend in an effort to lift restrictions on the use of American made weapons. “We have explained what kind of capabilities we need to protect the citizens against the Russian terror that Russians are causing us, so I hope we were heard,” told CNN.
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Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara, President of Paraguay speaking at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 18, 2017. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Boris Baldinger
In early August, the U.S. Treasury quietly sanctioned the tobacco company of Paraguay’s former president, Horacio Cartes.
Before entering office, Cartes had extensive links to organized crime and took authoritarian actions while in power. However, Cartes faced no public pressure from the American government until long after leaving office in 2018. America’s leadership looked the other way for so long because Cartes fulfilled its mutual interests.
Cartes served from 2013 to 2018 in the right-wing Colorado Party which, other than one term of opposition party leadership that ended in a “parliamentary coup,” has held the presidency since 1948. That includes the 34-year reign of terror led by the U.S.-supported dictator, Alfredo Stroessner. Cartes remains the head of the party today.
The Colorado Party’s foreign policy goals parallel the United States’s initiatives. For example, then-Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, praised Paraguay as one of the leaders of the Lima Group coalition that fell in line with the U.S. recognition of Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s unelected leader in 2019.
While in office, Cartes was a conservative counterbalance to some of the liberal leaders of the region. Paraguay has also been a staunch supporter of Taiwan for decades. It’s the only country in South America that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Cartes was so firm in his support of Israel that he made Paraguay the third country (after the United States and Guatemala) to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was a controversial decision that sparked protests because Palestinians view East Jerusalem as their future capital.
Honduras, under the leadership of former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, became the fourth country to move its embassy to Jerusalem. Hernandez, who is now serving a 45-year sentence in U.S. prison for drug trafficking, has a political career with remarkable similarity to Horacio Cartes. Both men had well-publicized criminal connections, and neither faced the bully pulpit of the U.S. until after leaving office.
For most Americans, Horacio Cartes is an obscure foreign leader. However, Central and South American governments have singled out his tobacco company, Tabesa, for decades as the biggest proprietor of black-market cigarettes in their countries. For example, a governor in Colombia sued Tabesa alleging a loss of $67 million in annual tax revenue.
The scheme is simple. His company produces roughly seven times Paraguay’s entire domestic demand for cigarettes with brands that aren’t licensed in the neighboring countries in a factory ten miles from the porous tri-border region with Argentina and Brazil. This area is notorious for all sorts of illicit trafficking.
Cartes’s company claims to have legally exported over a billion cigarettes over 16 years to Bulgaria, Curaćao, the Netherlands Antilles, and the Netherlands. However, those countries didn’t report a single cigarette imported from Paraguay during that period. It’s an obvious red flag for illegal smuggling.
This contraband is a significant source of income for drug cartels, organized crime syndicates, and narco-terrorists, such as the Sinaloa Cartel, Brazil’s PCC, the FARC in Colombia, and Hezbollah. It's the kind of conduct that would elicit criminal charges, like what Nicholas Maduro has faced if Cartes roamed in those same socialist circles.
Cartes has never shown contrition for his part in this racket. In 2012, he publicly deflected responsibility by stating that smuggling is a “customs issue.” A few years earlier, his CEO was more brazen asserting that “(w)e don’t know where our cigarettes are consumed, and it’s not our problem.”
Cartes has also been suspected of drug offenses for over two decades. Cartes’s uncle, a lifelong trafficker, was arrested in Uruguay with 478 kilos of marijuana a few months before being elected. It’s part of a trend. Paraguayan authorities seized 20 kilos of cocaine and 343 kilos of marijuana on Cartes’s ranch in 2000. He wasn’t arrested. Afterward, Cartes claimed it was a coincidence the plane’s pilot chose his property through an emergency landing.
WikiLeaks published a document from 2007 that disclosed a conversation between Paraguay’s top counternarcotics official and the U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission. That U.S. official was told that “80 percent of money laundering in Paraguay moves through (Cartes’s bank).” WikiLeaks released another document from 2010 revealing that Cartes was the top suspect in a DEA money laundering investigation.
A man with this background had a predictably horrible human rights record as president. Paraguay’s history is marred with violent illegal evictions of peasants which, in part, caused the country to have one of the worst distributions of land ownership in the world. Ninety percent is owned by less than 1% of the population.
Cartes’s administration continued a long-term trend of Paraguay using state-sponsored violence against people protesting for their land rights. Thousands of these activists have been imprisoned and 128 assassinated since the Stroessner dictatorship ended in 1989, according to Global Witness.
The prime benefactors of this repression are the Paraguayan economic elite, along with multinational corporations, including U.S.-based Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which receive Paraguay’s massive soy and beef exports.
Cartes took the beginning steps towards reestablishing a dictatorship, including using police resources to shut down small opposition radio stations. His sister’s company also purchased a large media conglomerate, Grupo Nación.
His most brazen act was arranging a special session of Congress in March 2017 to allow him to run for another term, which was banned by the constitution in 1992. Protestors reacted by setting the congressional building on fire. Within hours, police raided the leading opposition party headquarters and one of their activists was killed with a shot in the head.
The U.S. government took no official action against Cartes until four years after leaving office. The U.S. State Department slapped him with a corruption designation in July 2022. The press release declared that “Cartes obstructed a major international investigation into transnational crime in order to protect himself and his criminal associate from potential prosecution and political damage.” His vice president and legal counsel were also designated for corruption a month later.
With that said, a designation by the State Department is mostly symbolic. The penalty is a U.S. visa restriction.
In December 2022 Cartes was elected the chairman of the Colorado Party. His protégé, Santiago Peña, won the Colorado Party presidential nomination that same month. Peña, who served as the finance minister under Cartes, had his campaign financed by Cartes.
With interesting timing, the U.S. Department of Treasury first sanctioned Cartes the following month. That tactic is much more punitive. It blocks anyone in the U.S. from doing business with that individual. The Treasury alleged that Cartes offered a $1 million bribe to the legislators who attempted to allow him a second term. “Cartes continued to influence legislative activities after leaving office, targeting political opponents, and bribing legislators to direct votes in his interest, with top supporters receiving as much as $50,000 monthly,” according to the Treasury.
Cartes is certainly deserving of such penalties, but the timing reeks of a politicized use of sanctions. After all, America currently has designated 26 nations and roughly 15,000 individuals/corporations under sanctions. Therefore, it’s not a tool that it is reluctant to use.
If actions speak louder than words, the U.S. government signaled that it was willing to allow Cartes to ride off into the sunset unscathed. However, when he re-emerged in the political sphere, it suddenly became a bridge too far and all the punitive tools at Washington’s disposal are bring brought to bear against him.
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Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the news media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2024. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Congress is set to return to session next week and with the November elections and the holidays right around the corner, it is possible that some controversial or significant pieces of foreign policy-related legislation won’t get touched until the new year.
With that said, lawmakers are expected to push legislation related to China and Ukraine spending, with the massive annual defense appropriations coming, as well as its yearly authorization, otherwise known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, political games in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have stalled the introduction of any new legislation in the Senate.
Currently in contention is a Republican bill set to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to the court issuing arrest warrants against members of the Israeli government. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) is refusing to sign off on any other legislation or nominations until this bill is moved forward, with the necessary agreement from Democrats. The House passed the bill with bipartisan support, but the White House reportedly opposes the measure.
The ICC sanctions bill may see movement later in the year, but Senate Democrats say they would rather support a “bipartisan” version.
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration has not engaged in a full-throated opposition to this maneuver, suggesting that perhaps there are ‘other ways’ to punish the ICC short of what Republicans are proposing,” noted Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.
Hartung added that “we need prominent leaders in Washington to truly stand for the ‘rules-based international order’ they reference ad nauseum by standing back and letting the ICC do its job on this urgent issue."
Various anti-China measures could see some action in September. “The House will be voting on a series of bills to empower the next administration to hit our enemies’ economies on day one,” said GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson at a recent Hudson Institute event. “We’ll build our sanctions package, punish the Chinese military firms that provide material support to Russia and Iran, and we’ll consider options to restrict outbound investments.”
Speaker Johnson said that House Republicans were motivated to present this China-focused legislation before the end of the year, with Hill staffers indicating that bills could get a vote sometime in September.
On the budget side, the House passed a $833 billion FY2025 defense appropriations bill in June. It is $8.5 billion above the FY 2024 level of $825 billion, a 1% increase, but below the president's 2025 request of $849 billion. The Senate is currently considering a $851 billion package.
The House package allocates $200 million for Taiwan’s international security cooperation programs and defense services, as well as $500 million for Israeli Cooperative Programs (missile systems), and prohibits funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
It is likely that appropriations, along with other spending bills, won’t be addressed until after the election, with a stopgap measure put in place through mid-December.
This year’s NDAA passed the House in June, and through Senate committees, but is unlikely to hit the Senate floor until December.
A House amendment that prohibits funds for any NATO related activities until each member country has spent 2 percent of its respective GDP on defense expenditures failed, 81-346. A measure that would have barred funds from being used for assistance to Ukraine also failed, 74-343, but the House approved an amendment to require the president to submit a strategy for the Ukraine war to the body before further funding is allocated (note: the White House missed a deadline for a similar mandate in June).
Many mostly symbolic amendments were also added to ensure support for Israel.
Meanwhile, Congress may consider a measure to keep funding flowing to Ukraine as it is possible current funding could run out as early as January (Ukraine received $61 billion in emergency funding in April). According to Punchbowl News, this could entail "tweaking" current Pentagon authorities, which would give the Biden administration the ability to continue sending weapons to Ukraine, possibly by expanding the drawdown authority of the president, or by taking from other funding streams. These changes could find their way into the upcoming NDAA.
Pro-Ukraine Republicans, according to the reporting, are trying to ensure that Ukraine doesn't lapse in its funding, perhaps setting up a skirmish with fellow GOP lawmakers who have been opposed to more aid without a defined strategy for ending the war.
"It appears that the GOP's traditionalist wing is attempting to constrain the ability of the New Right under Trump — should he win the election — to reorient American policy toward Ukraine and Russia," said George Beebe, Director of Grand Strategy for the Quincy Institute.
Some indicated they will put up a fight against unconditional funding, particularly after the election. “The next administration needs to make it a Day-One priority to establish a strategy for Ukraine, driven only by U.S. interests and with full awareness of the strategic trade-offs involved in supporting Ukraine at the expense of higher priority theaters,” charged Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in an interview with the Daily Signal.
“Parallel to a coherent strategy, the next administration needs to be immediately candid with Zelenskyy that the days of appeasement are over, that U.S. weapons may not be used inside Russia, and that any future U.S. aid will be contingent upon peace negotiations,” he said.
With Congress in campaign mode, and only weeks left in the 2023-2024 session, we shouldn't expect a ton of signed legislation by December. But we can expect that the upcoming House “China Week” will feature the introduction of anti-China related legislation. The NDAA will have to be approved before the end of the year, and the defense appropriations bill may be approved, but will likely be replaced with a temporary funding stopgap bill for now.
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