Pelosi’s handling this impeachment thing better than Trump

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Today's Agenda

Pelosi is handling impeachment better than Trump — for now.
The factory sector is the dark cloud in a sunny jobs report.
A trade truce won't be enough to fix what ails the global economy.
The '50s weren't that great, actually.

Impeachment Analyst Ratings: Hold Pelosi, Sell Trump

Neither Nancy Pelosi nor Donald Trump really wanted an impeachment battle. But now that it's here, one of them is handling it better than the other.

Pelosi, the House Speaker, was reluctant to impeach Trump and risk political backlash that could hurt vulnerable Democrats and cost her the House majority. She didn't budge until the Ukraine affair's evidence suggested such obviously impeachable behavior that it became unavoidable. Many Dems had accused her of moving too slowly, but when she did move, she very quickly got wavering members and much of the country on board. This cautious approach culminated in yesterday's House vote formalizing the process. The roll call wasn't necessary, but it was smart, Bloomberg's editorial board writes: It nullified Republicans' process objections and ensured fair hearings designed to inform rather than subject the country to the tiresome political grandstanding that typically dominates such affairs.

It gets a lot trickier for Pelosi and the Dems from here on out, though, writes Jonathan Bernstein. They've dominated the news cycle since the Ukraine mess broke, but that may just mean their luck's about to run out. They've also got to decide how quickly to move and how much stuff they can toss onto the Big Old Cart O' Impeachment before its wheels fall off and the public loses patience and interest.

Still, they start out in a much better place than their target. As Tim O'Brien writes, the president still has not mounted an effective defense and appears to have no strategy, aside from taking Jared Kushner's advice to just ride things out. Trump's go-to style of "chaos, mismanagement and serial buffoonery," as Tim calls it, has saved him before, but this is the most serious thing he's ever faced.

Bonus Impeachment Reading: In trashing Alexander Vindman's background, Trump's defenders ignore the tradition of Jewish émigrés fleeing mistreatment in their home countries. — Andrew Rosenthal

You Want Fries With That Job?

Seldom are monthly payroll gains of 128,000 called "blowout" jobs numbers, but you can excuse Trump for describing October's report that way. It topped expectations, and September's number got a big upgrade. Still, beneath the hood, several trends are not Trump's friends, warns Robert Burgess. Manufacturing hiring stubbornly continues to not be great, echoing another grim factory-sector readout from the Institute for Supply Management today. Most worrisome for Trump's 2020 election chances, factory hiring is slowing down in big states he won in 2016:

Meanwhile, hiring in restaurants and bars is going like gangbusters, and food-service employment may soon eclipse that of manufacturing, writes Justin Fox. For why this is maybe not such a great trend, you might want to compare the typical paychecks in each industry.

End, the Trade Wars Must

Still, the short-term economic news was good for Trump today, between the jobs headlines and happy talk from China about trade, all of which boosted stocks to new all-time highs. China matters because trade tensions are still the biggest problem for U.S. manufacturing and the rest of the global economy, as WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo writes. But a (still-iffy) short-term U.S.-China truce won't offset the damage already done. Even rolling the clock back two years to the time before Trump started this fight will still leave a badly fractured, uncertain world.

That uncertainty shows up in all kinds of unexpected ways. Online home-goods retailer Wayfair Inc. is a perfect micro-example of this, writes Sarah Halzack. Trade-war tariffs raised prices on much of Wayfair's stuff, which made consumers think twice about buying said stuff. Such effects pop up throughout the economy, raising questions about just how much consumer spending can really offset a factory slowdown.

Telltale Charts

A lot of Americans feel hazy nostalgia for the 1950s, which should baffle the many, many Americans for whom the 1950s were actually pretty terrible, writes Noah Smith.

Big Oil's latest quarterly results should make it tempting for Saudi Aramco to come to market, writes Liam Denning. It's got a more compelling story for today's oil investors.