Never has the old phrase, "grasping at straws" been so obvious to behold as democrats scramble to summon up any vestige of policy through denigration.

The Chinese had hand their hand in the cookie jar for a decade or more in addition to trade secrets stolen from US.STEEL they also may have hit German steel co. I bet they wanted Clinton to win like the rest of the looters!
ThyssenKrupp secrets stolen in 'massive' cyber attack
Thu, 8 Dec 12:22:00 GMT
By Eric Auchard and Tom Käckenhoff
FRANKFURT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Technical trade secrets were stolen from the steel production and manufacturing plant design divisions of ThyssenKrupp AG in cyber attacks earlier this year, the German company said on Thursday.
"ThyssenKrupp has become the target of a massive cyber attack," the industrial conglomerate said in a statement.
In breaches discovered by the company's internal security team in April and traced back to February, hackers stole project data from ThyssenKrupp's plant engineering division and from other areas yet to be determined, the company said.
ThyssenKrupp, one of the world's largest steel makers, attributed the breaches to unnamed attackers located in southeast Asia engaged in what it said were "organised, highly professional hacker activities".
Globally, cyber attacks on banks, retailers and other businesses have led to widespread consumer data breaches and mounting financial losses in recent years, but revelations of industrial espionage are rare.
ThyssenKrupp's belated disclosure came a week after an attack on nearly 1 million routers caused outages for Deutsche Telekom customers. [nL8N1DU5T6]
German business magazine Wirtschafts Woche reported the attacks hit sites in Europe, India, Argentina and the United States run by the Industrial Solutions division, which builds large production plants. The Hagen Hohenlimburg speciality steel mill in western Germany was also targeted, the report added.
The company declined to identify specific locations which were infected or why it had not previously disclosed the attack. It said it could not estimate the scale of the intellectual property losses.
A criminal complaint was filed with police in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and an investigation is ongoing, it said. State and federal cyber security and data protection authorities have been kept informed, as well as Thyssen's board.
Secured systems operating steel blast furnaces and power plants in Duisburg, in Germany's industrial heartland in the Ruhr Valley, were unaffected, the company said.
No breaches were found at its marine systems unit, which produces military submarines and warships. The infected computer systems have been cleansed and are now subject to constant monitoring against further cyber attacks.
A previous cyber attack caused physical damage to an unidentified German steel plant and prevented the mill's blast furnace from shutting down properly.
The country's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) revealed two years ago that the attack caused "massive damage", but gave no further technical details and the location of the plant has remained shrouded in mystery.
Subsequent media reports identified the target as a ThyssenKrupp facility, but the company has denied it was hit.
The company, a major supplier of steel to Germany's automotive sector and other manufacturers, is looking to merge its European steel operations with Indian-owned Tata Steel to combat over-capacity in the sector. [nL8N1DO5QN]

The leadership of the Dems are still totally clueless. Hard to believe that a single telephone call and a few tweets can cause them to become unhinged.

The idea of China' s hacking and stealing of American co.s intellectual being quantified and deducted from the USBonds they hold. Would be a good place to start leveling the (manufacturing) playing field.

The concept of tariffs is really not that difficult to understand. It boggles my mind that so many don't, unless they willfully choose to not understand. When we impose tariffs on imports, two things happen - the imported product becomes more expensive for the consumer, thus lowering an average person's buying power and standard of living and, secondly, "protecting" the local industry from an incentive to be better and more competitive, e.g., keeping the local industry back from its full potential (which leads to more cries for further protection...). If a foreign country chooses to artificially subsidize a certain product and "dump it" on our market, we should welcome their foolishness. In effect, they would be acting as if they were a voluntary colony of ours, producing and delivering us good at below their cost, without us being the "evil colonists" - after all, they're doing it voluntarily. Of course, the reality is that Chinese, for example, goods are not below market prices, nor below their cost of production. The reality is that our regulations (primarily) and tax policies are choking our industries. We have several useless people watching, overseeing, reporting and accounting for every one person actually producing. And the more mafia-style, eh, I meant, government protection we install, the further we fall.

Of course, the theft of intellectual property is a separate issue and needs to be dealt with as with any theft.

On trade, Trump's ideas are dangerous. Independent of his reasons to take the call, we can't threaten China or anyone because we have lost jobs - which is due to regulations and taxes, not China. Re Carrier, that looks like cronyism and strong-arming, but have to wait and see his general approach to jobs growth.

I too liked that President elect Trump called the president of Taiwan. China is an important trading partner, but China and US should haven't to treat each other like those episodes of Star Trek where the crew has to put up with every silly request some foreign species makes to avoid offending them. I actually think it might help him that his critics say Trump's a loose cannon and/or doesn't know what he's doing. They're saying for him that he doesn't know or care about this diplomatic rule, which I think is a good thing.

That's where my agreement with the article ends. The author seems to be hoping that Trump aggravates China and it leads to a trade war. He suggests defaulting on the national debt, something that the US has never done, going back to the American Revolution. Both ideas would be dangerous and enormously costly if carried out, and the author probably knows how absurd it sounds.