Maxwell School News

"It does look like it was not a terribly sophisticated campaign or attack," says Professor Emeritus William Banks about high profile democrats, public figures, and the CNN newsroom in New York receiving apparent explosive devices. "On the other hand, the packages did manage to get through the postal system without getting detected, so it is certainly a worrisome case."

William C. Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, says "There are no Justice Department rules that limit the investigation in the pendency of an election. Mr. Mueller is simply going about his day and lugging the law and facts to where they need to go."

Professor Emeritus William Banks discussed Christopher Wray's Senate Testimony on a Bloomberg Law podcast. In his testimony, Wray named China as the number one threat to the U.S, and discussed FBI mishandlings of background checks and drone regulations.

William Banks, on Bloomberg Radio, discusses President Trump’s Monday comments, where he supported a "very comprehensive" investigation into sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

"They are trying to threaten the Canadians into signing a deal that at this point the Canadians don’t want to sign and there is a gigantic bogeyman in the room which is the 25 percent tariff on Canadian auto imports," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

According to Ryan Griffiths, associate professor of political science, separatist aspirations are "alive and kicking" elsewhere in the world. That includes Catalonia and Scotland in Europe, and also French territory New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville.

"Trade policy has very little direct impact on the overall trade deficit in the longer run," said Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"What this deal really is signaling is that this administration is going to go forward with a 25% tariff on autos," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics. "That's going to greatly upset our partners in the EU, in Japan."

"The tweet that he [President Trump] released on Monday morning where he admitted the purpose of the 2016 meeting was to get more information on an opponent...if that was the purpose of the meeting, that was clearly unlawful." He added, "now, Mr. Mueller and his team have all the more reason to want to talk to the President."

"If President Trump really wants to cut taxes on capital gains, he should go to Congress with a plan to do so directly, and not through a poorly designed back-door regulatory scheme," writes Leonard Burman, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs.

William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, says that FBI agent Peter Strzok's testimony across multiple reports has consistently maintained that the FBI's Russia investigation was impartial and without bias.

"We’ve never seen anything like this," Mary Lovely told the Associated Press. Lovely recently spoke with multiple news outlets about the trade war between the U.S. and China.  

"Yes, we are now in a trade war," says Professor of Economics Mary Lovely. "The two sides are no longer engaged in productive talks to defuse tensions," she adds.

These new tariffs will “almost surely not” cause a recession, says Mary Lovely, professor of economics. “This industry is important but it’s not that important. Costs will rise. We’ll see some job dislocation…but we will not see a recession,” she adds.

"We've come to expect this type of ebb and flow in terms of the threat of levying trade protections against our trading partners from this administration," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks says that the recently released meeting transcripts between the Trump campaign and Russian lawyers corroborated what was already known, that "the Russians did attempt to influence the election, and they attempted to do so in favor of the candidate Donald Trump, who they hoped would win."

"The proposed tariffs will hit bilateral trade in fast-growing, knowledge-based sectors the hardest," say Mary Lovely, professor of economics, and Yang Liang, a Ph.D. candidate in economics. "Rather than hitting the administration’s intended target—Chinese firms that may have unfairly obtained American technology—the proposed tariffs would actually inflict damage on U.S. high-technology sectors."

"There's a Justice Department regulation that says that the independent council special prosecutor can only be dismissed for cause for misfeasance in office. Certainly, Mueller can't be reasonably accused of that," says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.