Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff

Last week’s political winners and losers include new tariffs placed upon steel and aluminum imports, North Korea tyrant Kim Jong Un, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former porn-queen Stormy Daniels.

The big winner this week is the American steel and aluminum workers who in years past saw their industries decimated by unfair trade practices allowing the import of cheaper steel for skyscrapers and aluminum for beverage cans and so on. These new tariffs of 25-percent on steel imports and 10-percent on aluminum will have a huge impact upon the American worker with positive – not negative — ripple effects upon the U.S. economy. News reports say Mexico and Canada are temporarily exempt pending renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement better known as NAFTA.

President Donald Trump is fixing this inequality – that was allowed to take place over time — that ruined the steel industry in Pittsburg and Detroit leaving huge manufacturing plants ghost towns and thousands unemployed. Along with the new tariffs Trump and his economic team are reviewing all of America’s trade deals and partnerships and reshuffling the cards in favor of the American worker.

Then late last Thursday, President Trump announced he would be meeting face-to-face with none other than North Korean dictator Un sometime in May at a yet-to-be announced location. No sitting U.S. president has ever met with any North Korean leader in the past seven-decades since the Korean War of the early 1950s that left Korea split in half. So far there’s no winner or loser here, it’s a wait-and-see thing, but the propaganda is thick.

Apparently, South Korea has been involved with negotiations for a Trump-Un meeting.

“Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean representatives, not just a freeze,” President Trump said in a statement.

Recent defectors from North Korea say the country as a whole is in terrible condition mostly from unending international trade and monetary sanctions, and the North Korean government spending its money on national defense and nuclear expansion but not on its people.

Any meeting between President Trump and Un must be viewed with extreme skepticism without any hopes of progress. The best thing that could happen for North and South Korea would be the complete removal of the Un regime in the North leading to reunification of the Korean peninsula with free Democratic elections.

More than likely President Trump will come down hard on Un insisting on nationwide unhindered inspections of all North Korean nuclear and missile launching sites plus the verified dismantling of their entire nuclear program. Nothing short of that will do. The president can threaten Un with more sanctions such as a U.S. Naval blockade of all North Korean ports – no ships in and no ships out.

Un can always walk out of the meeting and go shoot off a few more missiles in defiance of President Trump. Then Trump orders the bombing of all North Korea’s missile launching facilities and then the North with their million-man army invades South Korea. So there’s not a lot of optimism that anything of substance will happen and the stalemate will continue. There is no winner as long as Un stays in power.

Attorney General Sessions is a loser. First he says he wants to turn over the — alleged illegal FISA surveillance investigation into spying on the 2016 Trump Campaign for President – to U.S. Inspector General Michael Horowitz, then due to whiplash he relents and now says he’s “thinking” of appointing a special counsel to investigate suspected FBI and U.S. Department of Justice involvement. For an attorney general to be so swishy washy, Sessions is not worthy of this office to defend the U.S. Constitution and the concept of equal treatment under law. It appears that no decision has been made – Horowitz or special counsel? – not yet anyway.

Attorney General Sessions is a winner for going after the mayor of Oakland, Ca., for alerting illegals, many who are convicted criminals, of an impending raid by U.S. Immigration, Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers that allowed hundreds of them to avoid arrest and deportation. President Trump declared the mayor’s actions of support for her sanctuary city a “disgrace.” The DOJ is suing the state of California over their sanctuary city policies. This case will surely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now there’s little Miss Daniels running at the mouth, lawyers too, about an alleged affair she had with then private citizen Donald Trump in late 2006 and into 2007, just about the time Melania Trump gave birth to son Barron Trump. This entire matter is straight out of the playbook written by high-profile liberal-feminist attorney Gloria Allred and daughter Lisa Bloom.

Let there be no doubt that blonde ex-porn star Stormy Daniels is a gold-digging-loser looking to make another payoff. She’s making all the rounds on TV talk shows, TV news programs, late night comedy hours and making public appearances at night clubs complete with photographers and CNN trailing her every move. According to news reports, Daniels was paid $130,000 to keep quiet and she signed a confidentiality agreement, which is now in dispute. Yes, this stinks for President Trump. Who knows what’s true or what’s not? But what does it matter? First Lady Melania Trump is still with the president and this Daniels thing is their private business getting smeared all over mainstream media in a feeding frenzy.

In short, nobody cares. Remember Bill and Hillary. Bill got impeached by the U.S. Congress back in 1998-99 for lying (perjury) about an affair (Paula Jones) back when he was governor of Arkansas and with a young intern (Monica Lewinski) inside the White House (obstruction of justice), but he did not resign the presidency because nobody really cared not even Hillary. He was not convicted criminally for anything but there were not enough votes to remove President Clinton from office.

But the voters did care and proceeded in 2000 to elect Republican George W. Bush president in a cliff hanger over Democrat Al Gore. Those looking to impeach President Trump over this Daniels woman are grabbing at some mighty thin air.

About the Author Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.