Jack knew that he was far too thin-skinned to hold this job. Professional politicians typically had hides that made a rhinoceros’s look like rose petals, because they expected to have things hurled at them, some true, some not. By cultivating that thick covering, they attenuated the pain somehow, until eventually people stopped hurling things at them, or such was the theory. Maybe it actually worked for some. Or maybe the bastards just didn’t have consciences. You paid your money and you took your choice.
But Ryan did have a conscience. That was a choice he’d made long before. You still had to look in the mirror once a day, usually at shaving time, and there was no easy fix for not being able to like the face you saw there.
“Okay, back to the PRC’s problems, George,” the President commanded.
“They’re going to juice up their trade— one way, that is. They’re discouraging their own citizens from buying American, but all they can sell, they sell. Including some of Mao’s young virgins, probably.”
“What do we have to prove that?”
“Jack, I pay close attention to results, and I have friends in various businesses who shake the bushes and talk to people over drinks. What they learn frequently gets back to me. You know, a lot of ethnic Chinese have some weird medical condition. You get one drink into them, it’s like four or five for us— and the second drink is like chugging a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but some of the dummies try to keep up anyway, some hospitality thing, maybe. Anyway, when that happens, well, the talk becomes freer, y’know? It’s been going on quite a while, but lately Mark Gant set up a little program. Senior executives who go to certain special places, well, I do own the Secret Service now, and the Secret Service does specialize in economic crimes, right? And a lot of my old friends know who I am and what I do now, and they cooperate pretty nice, and so I get a lot of good stuff to write up. It mainly goes to my senior people across the street.”
“I’m impressed, George. You cross-deck it to CIA?”
“I suppose I could, but I was afraid they’d get all pissy over turf rights and stuff.”
Ryan rolled his eyes at that bit of information. “Not Ed Foley. He’s a real pro from way back, and the bureaucracy over at Langley hasn’t captured him yet. Have him over to your office for lunch. He won’t mind what you’re doing. Same thing with Mary Pat. She runs the Directorate of Operations. MP’s a real cowgirl, and she wants results, too.”
“Duly noted. You know, Jack, it’s amazing how much people talk, and the things they talk about under the proper circumstances.”
“How’d you make all that money on The Street, George?” Ryan asked.
“Mainly by knowing a little more than the guy across the street,” Winston replied.
“Works the same way for me here. Okay, if our little friends go forward with this, what should we do?”
“Jack— no, now it’s Mr. President— we’ve been financing Chinese industrial expansion for quite a few years now. They sell things to us, we pay cash for them, and then they either keep the money for their own purposes on the international money markets, or they purchase things they want from other countries, often things they could as easily buy from us, but maybe half a percent more expensive from an American manufacturer. The reason it’s called ‘trade’ is that you theoretically exchange something of yours for something of the other guy’s— just like kids with baseball cards, okay?— but they’re not playing the game that way. They’re also dumping some products just to get dollars, selling items here for less than what they sell them to their own citizens. Now, that is technically in violation of a couple federal statues. Okay,” Winston shrugged, “it’s a statute we enforce somewhat selectively, but it is on the books, and it is the law. Toss in the Trade Reform Act that we passed a few years ago because of the games the Japs were playing—”
“I remember, George. It kinda started a little shooting war in which some people got killed,” POTUS observed dryly. Worst of all, perhaps, it had begun the process that had ended up with Ryan in this very room.
SecTreas nodded. “True, but it’s still the law, and it was not a bill of attainder meant only to apply to Japan. Jack, if we apply the same trade laws to China that the Chinese apply to us, well, it’ll put a major crimp in their foreign exchange accounts. Is that a bad thing? No, not with the trade imbalance we have with them now. You know, Jack, if they start building automobiles and play the same game they’re playing on everything else, our trade deficit could get real ugly real fast, and frankly I’m tired of having us finance their economic development, which they then execute with heavy equipment bought in Japan and Europe. If they want trade with the United States of America, fine, but let it be trade. We can hold our own in any truly fair trade war with any country, because American workers can produce as well as anybody in the world and better than most. But if we let them cheat us, we’re being cheated, Jack, and I don’t like that here any more than I do around a card table. And here, buddy, the stakes are a hell of a lot higher.”
“I hear you, George. But we don’t want to put a gun to their head, do we? You don’t do that to a nation-state, especially a big nation-state, unless you have a solid reason for doing so. Our economy is chugging along rather nicely now, isn’t it? We can afford to be a little magnanimous.
“Maybe, Jack. What I was thinking was a little friendly encouragement on our part, not a pointed gun exactly. The gun is always there in the holster— the big gun is most-favored-nation status, and they know it, and we know they know it. TRA is something we can apply to any country, and I happen to think the idea behind the law is fundamentally sound. It’s been fairly useful as a club to show to a lot of countries, but we’ve never tried it on the PRC. How come?”
POTUS shrugged, with no small degree of embarrassment. “Because I haven’t had the chance to yet, and before me too many people in this town just wanted to kiss their collective ass.”
“Leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you do that, Mr. President, doesn’t it?”
“It can,” Jack agreed. “Okay, you want to talk this over with Scott Adler. The ambassadors all work for him.”
“Who do we have in Beijing?”
“Carl Hitch. Career FSO, late fifties, supposed to be very good, and this is his sunset assignment.”
“Payoff for all those years of holding coats?”
Ryan nodded. “Something like that, I suppose. I’m not entirely sure. State wasn’t my bureaucracy.” CIA, he didn’t add, was bad enough.
It was a much nicer office, Bart Mancuso thought. And the shoulder boards on his undress whites were a little heavier now, with the four stars instead of the two he’d worn as COMSUBPAC. But no more. His former boss, Admiral Dave Seaton, had fleeted up to Chief of Naval Operations, and then the President (or someone close to him) had decided that Mancuso was the guy to be the next Commander in Chief, Pacific. And so he now worked in the same office once occupied by Chester Nimitz, and other fine— and some brilliant— naval officers since. It was quite a stretch since Plebe Summer at Annapolis, lo those many years before, especially since he’d had only a single command at sea, USS Dallas, though that command tour had been a noteworthy one, complete with two missions he could still tell no one about. And having been shipmates once and briefly with the sitting President probably hadn’t hurt his career very much.
The new job came with a plush official house, a sizable team of sailors and chiefs to look after him and his wife— the boys were all away at college now— the usual drivers, official cars, and, now, armed bodyguards, because, remarkably enough, there were people about who didn’t much care for admirals. As a theater commander Mancuso now reported directly to the Secretary of Defense, Anthony Bretano, who in turn reported directly to President Ryan. In return, Mancuso got a lot of new perks. Now he had direct access to all manner of intelligence information, including the holy of holies, sources and methods— where the information came from, and how we’d gotten it out— because as America’s principal executor for a quarter of the globe’s surface, he had to know it all, so that he’d know what to advise the SecDef, who would, in turn, advise the President of CINCPAC’s views, intentions, and desires.