Don’t say we didn’t warn you (thanks to Sen. Chris Murphy) that Trump tariffs are a tool for autocracy and corruption that have nothing to do with the economy.
Now The Washington Post has the receipts:
The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.
The decision drew a mention in an internal State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post, which states: “As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.”
Lesotho is far from the only country that has decided to assist Musk’s firm while trying to fend off U.S. tariffs. The company reached distribution deals with two providers in India in March and has won at least partial accommodations with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam, although this is probably not a comprehensive count.
A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.
In India, government officials have sped through approvals of Starlink with the understanding that doing so could help them cement trade deals with the administration, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.
It’s kind of like Trump’s extortion of Ukraine, doncha think?
In a column last month calling out how Musk and Starlink are big winners of the trade war, WaPo’s Matt Bai wrote that after a special envoy from Bangladesh thought he had hammered out a White House trade deal regarding cotton imports, he was led to an office where Musk “wanted to discuss ongoing negotiations between Starlink and Bangladeshi regulators, who were under pressure from local telecom companies to keep Starlink out.”
Bai pointed out that it is illegal for an official in the executive branch to “take part ‘personally and substantially in an official capacity’ in any discussion where he or she has a personal financial interest.”
Just as disturbing is how this corruption is being shrugged off. Bai wrote, “As I talked about this with dozens of insiders in Washington and abroad over the past few months, what struck me most was the lack of evident outrage. I mean, this is a city that once found itself, in the Clinton years, paralyzed for weeks over possible conflicts of interest in the White House travel office.” He went on to note, “The conflicts between Musk’s government work and his private businesses are too myriad to track. … [Starlink] has also now been installed across the federal government — including at the White House campus — and may soon be included in a federal grant program to low-income areas.
Hey, Dems, maybe you could muster up some of that missing outrage?
