It’s not just asylum seekers’ children suffering from Trump policy; it’s kids in other hemispheres
Given everything we hear and see from the Trump administration, it’s evident that children’s well-being is low on their list of priorities.
Still, two headline-grabbing episodes have given extra dimensions to Trump anti-child bias.
The first, the separation of children from parents seeking asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border, made still more vile by failing to track which children belonged to which parents, vileness compounded yet again by the prospect of toddlers being ordered to appear in court alone for their own deportation proceedings.
Ugly— yet, there is still the flimsy rationale of “border security” used to justify such inhumane treatment. The border security narrative goes, who knows what Hispanic children, allowed to stay in the U.S., will go on to join an MS-13 gang and hack to death hapless white U.S. citizens on the street? Better to send them back to an early death in El Salvador, ensuring we need never fear them again. So it might be cruel, but at least it is not arbitrary.
The second instance of anti-child policy is less sensational, but represents a similar disregard for children’s rights. It has a similarly flimsy rationale—in this case, all the flimsier because it has nothing to do with immigrant invaders, but rather the health of millions of children in distant countries, many of them in the Third World.
Ecuador feels Team Trump muscle
To the dismay of world health officials last May, a resolution proposed by Ecuador at the World Health Assembly to promote breast feeding met with stiff opposition from one country and only one country—the United States. The proposal called, in part, for limitations on the marketing of food products, such as infant formula, that are nutritionally inferior to breast milk. The reaction by the U.S. was swift and harsh—threatening tiny Ecuador with trade sanctions and withdrawal of military aid. What the U.S. objected to was language asking governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding.”
A report on CNBC (based on a longer New York Times article) describes world health officials as being “stunned” by the U.S. opposition.* They shouldn’t have been all that stunned if they had coupled the intense business-friendliness of the Trump government with what the Nestlé Corporation has been doing for decades to get third world families hooked on infant formula, .
For a quick rundown of the never-ending Nestlé infant formula scandal, see this piece by Jill Krasny in Business Insider in 2012: Krasny on infant formula
Nestlé is the world’s largest food company (world HQ in Switzerland), and is now relocating its U.S. headquarters to Alexandria, Virginia, facilitating its lobbying efforts across the Potomac in Washington. Nestlé USA spent $16 million lobbying Congress between 2012 and 2016, according to the Washington Post.**
So it’s not a long stretch to connect three dots: the tons-of-Nestlé-baby-formula- in-the-third-world dot with the Nestle-lobbying-the-U.S.-Congress dot with the U.S.-opposes-promotion-of breast-feeding dot.
(Actually, I’m sure there’s more to the Nestlé lobbying effort than publicly declared dollar amounts—there are personal connections, the less visible who-knows-whom dot, the who-listens-to-whom dot, and the who-plays-golf-with-whom dots as well. It’s not just Nestlé, but other formula-makers as well. These are the kind of behind the curtain interactions where the Ruling Class drops heavy hints to the Political Class as to which side their bread is buttered on.)
As for the nutritional deficiencies and dangers of infant formula compared with breast milk, the science has been loud and clear for a long time. A recent report confirms how milk formula companies have put profits before science. For a short version see this in the Huffington Post, and the much longer version on which that’s based can be found in a .pdf at Changing Markets Foundation study on infant formula
So a perfect storm of nutrition science suppression, corporate greed, and Trump administration bullying landed on little, well-meaning Ecuador. The pro-breastfeeding resolution seemed doomed, until . . .
Breast feeding advocates get a champion from an unexpected quarter
The resolution was saved, however by the gallant intervention of the one country guaranteed immunity from any reprisals by the Trump administration—Russia. Russia proposed the resolution with the same wording, which silenced U.S. opposition. Thereby Russia got to look like the Good Guy, while demonstrating just how easily it can force the U.S. to back down. You can bet that the Iranian and Syrian leaderships were looking upon this with admiration, and appreciation of the benefits of having Russia in your corner.
Team Trump had an all-too-familiar spin on its initial rejection of the breast milk promotion language, which boiled down to the charge that promoting breastfeeding over infant formula deprives mothers of choice. The Trump statement was: “The U.S. strongly supports breast feeding but we don’t believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty.”
The resolution, of course, said nothing about denying access to formula. The resolution was about promoting health benefits of breast feeding versus allowing the unfettered corporate marketing of formula that has been the rule. There’s no denying that some women need the option “because of malnutrition and poverty.” But at this point, thanks to the historical efforts of Nestlé et al, there’s no dearth of information about what it is and how to get it.
Example of Depth of Talent at HHS: Caitlin Brooke Oakley
Capping the administration’s defense was a bit of hyperbole by Caitlin Brooke Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. She said it was “patently false” to portray the U.S. position as “anti-breastfeeding.” (Found in Account of breast feeding kerfuffle in PBS Newshour)
Warning: There follows in the next six paragraphs a Rachel Maddow-like excursion into Trump administration inexperience and incompetence:
And just who is HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley to make sweeping pronouncements on human health and nutrition? Caitlin holds a B.A. at the College of William and Mary, awarded in 2012. Her experience in government began in 2013 as an assistant to Freedom Caucus member Congressman H. Morgan Griffith, and lasted until she landed a gig as press secretary for Congressman Tom Price in 2016—that’s the guy who was confirmed as HHS Secretary in 2017, then a few months later resigned on account of his use of private jets on the government’s tab to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oakley had followed Price to HHS, rode out his resignation, and nailed her position as National Spokesperson for the department after a whopping four years in government, and six years after receiving a bachelor’s degree.
OK, so Caitlin doesn’t have great depth of government experience, but surely she had private sector experience in media relations that bolstered her qualifications as a top level spokesperson. And she did! But it’s up for debate how much that experience bolstered her qualifications for a position in a health services organization.
Caitlin’s private sector experience, for August 2014 to April 2016, was as an executive assistant, and then “communications and executive assistant,” at the Beer Institute. Yes, the Beer Institute! Where she “provided communications support, planned Beer Institute events and briefings,” etc.
Yes, beer is technically a food, but not quite what first comes to mind when thinking about child nutrition.
(See this entry in ProPublica’s “Trump Town” for a bit more detail on Caitlin’s beer bio: Caitlin Oakley, mouthpiece of the Beer Institute )
I may have overly harsh toward Caitlin Brooke Oakley, in that, after all, she is just a spokesperson delivering messages from superiors. Still, I think a spokesperson for a major government department should have some knowledge of what the department is actually supposed to be doing, and it’s not making beer.
Also, I believe spokespersons should be a little more savvy about making statements to the media. A little more subtlety in the “patently false” remark might have cooled off critics who were instead further aggravated by stonewalling. Caitlin may be taking a few too many cues from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose relationship with the media is most generously described as strained.
Trump administration isn’t against ALL kids
Foisting off inferior nutrition on third world kids in the service of profits for big corporations, and separating asylum-seeking parents from their children, are of a piece with one blindingly bright thread in the Trump administration: to hell with non-white children—on our borders, in our cities’ poorest neighborhoods, and far from our shores. If you have any questions about how this plays out, just ask Ecuador.
============ footnotes ===========
*For CNBC report: U.S. fights promotion of breastfeeding
** Washington Post on Nestle moves USA HQ to Alexandria