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Amazon makes an offer to buy the whole of TikTok on April 1, 2025 before a April 1, 2025 deadline. A law passed in Congress in 2024 was upheld by the US Supreme Court requiring the sale of China based TikTok to American buyers for national security reasons or be closed to US users altogether. Amazon has connections to TikTok where TikTok users refer other users to products which can be bought on Amazon with revenue being passed on to influencers who get a cut on the transactions.

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This is a companion short article to the longer article of Gordon fairclough's trip in a Chinese company made Cherry A1 compact with friends through the 1700 mile Silk Road in Xingiang Province of China. This is a very important piece of writing as its the first time someone has taken a Chinese small car in for a difficult 3 day test drive through mountainous and desert regions for 3 day in a remote region nearly 1700 miles. The Cherry A1 is advertised by China as a worldclass vehicle for about $7000. Is it really is the question. And Gordon says it passes his test admirably. Note that its built with help from Italian auto design firm Bertone, powered by a 1.3 litre enginedeveloped with help from Austrian engineering firm AVL, and made with parts from Honeywell International and Visteon. And finally assembled in Anhui province, a poor province of China, with workers who earn $1 an hour. The Cherry is a government owned company started in 1997. This Cherry will be marketed under the Dodge brand in Latin America and other developing markets by end of 2008. It will be modified for safety and environmental rules and marketed in USA and Western Europe in 2009. SAys Gordon Fairclough that for a small car the car ride was realyy smooth and quiet and even at 100 miles an hour there was only a slight vibration on the steering column. The airconditioning worked well in the desert. The car had a CD player and a USB port for MP3 players. The acceleration was a bit sluggish considering the small size of the 1.3 litre engine and with 4 passengers on this journey through Xingiang province. ...

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Jenkins points out that Trump has no solutions for generating jobs, and most of the jobs lost in the last decade are not coming back when even China's Hon Hai factories are resorting to robot manufacturing to reduce costs. Trump's comments on China and proposals for high tariffs could also hurt jobs instead of creating jobs, says Jenkins, as it would create problems for the interlinked global economy hurting growth worldwide.

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The Markit surveys for manufacturing orders measures manufacturers response to whether business is getting better or worse in eight countries, the U.S., China, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The figure 50 means that the same number of companies are saying orders are improving as ones that are saying it is not improving. For May 2012, the number is 50.5 for the U.S., 43.0 in Germany, and Italy 47.4.

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Wages in U.S. manufacturing are declining as the U.S. regains competitivness with Mexico, China and other emerging market countries in manufacturing, through a combination of productivity from new machinery and lower wages. At the same time as this revives U.S. manufacturing this is lowering wages in manufacturing based economies in the midwest and other parts of the country. This can be seen in cities like Dayton, Ohio, where in the past good paying jobs could be found in manufacturing without a college diploma. Many of these jobs paying $15-$20 an hour are being replaced by lower paying jobs paying $10 an hour. With the cost of college education already spiralling beyond the reach of ordinary incomes, and college debt reaching $1 trillion and harder to payoff, the move to lower wages increases the probabilities that college will remain elusive to children in these families. The automated plants and lower number of workers needed to operate machinery in new and modernized plants means unemployment in manufacturing will see slow growth. This is likely to lead to continued high unemployment in cities that lag behind in college education for opportunties outside of manufacturing and in manufacturing jobs. This is also why more experts are calling for government, college and private sector support for vocational training to improve job and income opportunties....

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Jurio Osawa talks to Toshiba Corp.'s CEO, Norio Sasaki about Toshiba's plans to increase investments in infrastructure businesses, including nuclear energy. Sasaki sees continuing need to use nuclear energy because of limited supplies of oil and gas to meet needs in emerging markets. He sees demand growing for nuclear energy in China, Brazil, India, Turkey and Vietnam. Toshiba owns Westinghouse Electric, a maker of nuclear power equipment, and acquired Landis+Gyr, a Swiss company which makes advanced power meters. Demand for Westinghouses' AP1000 reactors with safety equipment in China is expected to grow from the 4 being built today to 20 in 2020, and 70 in 2030. He says the consumer electronics businesses have suffered because of the strong yen, and for the failure of Japanese companies to taking strong action to improve their competitive position and staying ahead of market trends. At the same time the consumer electronics business generates cash because investment requirements are low compared to infrastructure businesses, which is why Toshiba will continue to operate in profitable parts of the consumer electronics business....

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Economist Wu Jinglian, was adviser to Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. He sees risks ahead for China in the crony capitalism that has developed there. Business tycoons and corrupt officials he believes have hijacked CHina's economy and manipulated it for their own ends, which he calls crony capitalism. Its asystem in which the bureaucrats and their allies benefit from bribes and payoffs, and by steering business to their allies in industry. With increasing corruption as theses bureaucrats want to get richer Wu is not optimistic about the future. He sees three dangers, awidening income gap, inefficient monopolies, and crony capitalism. WHile there is corruption and amarket economy in India, the big difference is the free press and strong media in India which keeps corruption out in the open whereas in China there is more scope for this and crony capitalism because of the tight control on the media. Younger economists like the head of its soverieign wealth fund and its central bank have been influenced by Wu....

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Toyota forecast is for sales to drop by 6% worldwide to 7.9 million vehicles in 2011. Forecasts for 2012 however show a strong rebound to 8.48 million vehicles. Toyota faces serious difficulties from the stronger yen. Its plans for 2012 are based on increasing production significantly to 8.65 million vehicles worldwide, a significant production increase over 2011. Toyota's plans are for 45% of sales to be in China and emerging markets in 2012.

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The US may just move on to other priorities if both Russia and Ukraine cannot come to terms on a ceasefire, says Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State. The crux of the problem from the beginning were eastern regions of Ukraine that are more Russian in culture than western Ukraine. On the Russian side it was a loss of respect from the capitalist states US, UK and Western Europe compared to its historical importance in Europe, as everything was measured in GDP terms. The last straw was NATO and Ukraine with its Russian connected history joining it. By drawing eastern Ukraine into its orbit Russia was responding to actions by US and the EU support for Kiev, ignoring Russian perspectives. On the Ukrainian side the issue came down to Ukraine being able to decide its own future. Because of corruption and mismanagement, poor governance what could have happened with a clean governance and efficient growth oriented leadership working with Russia and the EU never happened. The result was veering from a pro-Russian to a anti-Russian government following the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2013. Enter China by 2019 with support of US companies shifting almost the entire US industrial base to China. Putin was handed a rare opportunity to act with China's tacit support to push back the US and EU and their defense arm NATO. He decided to take it thinking this would end quickly with Ukraine capitulating. The loss of hundreds of thousands of young Russian youth in the land war led to Russia getting entrenched into this war. As has happened before Russia with it's greater population and resources has prevailed in Eastern Europe over centuries of warfare. This is the situation in 2025 when DJT seeks to end the war and bring peace to Ukraine. ...

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This editorial in WSJ says the WHO report on the most likely source of the pathogen for the coronavirus lacks credibility. It says the statement by former CDC head Mr. Redfield is more credible when he said last week, that the "I still think the most likely etiology of the pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory." Redfield added that virus transfer to a lab worker is not unusual in such research. Even WHO says it needs more research into the source. This editorial says the Biden administration knows the underlying intelligence and should release it to the public, that it should not accept a whitewash of the whole thing, leaving it as an unknowable. The need to take preventive steps in the future would help the world's population including China and India, the most populous nations in the world with most of the world's population, as well as the  countries in Latin America, North America, Africa, and Europe. Because the brunt of the coronavirus impact was borne by the people of the world preventive action is needed to restore hope for the future. One of the lessons of the crisis is that public and governmental involvement from many countries particularly the leading democracies is essential to restore hope, health cannot be delegated to any organization alone much less the WHO, ...

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Cornavirus has hurt workers in the wage categories of less than $16 an hour to a much greater degree than workers who earn more than $16 or $28 as shown in this chart from the WSJ. Workers earning more than $28 are more likely to be working from home particularly workers offering professional services such as in software, legal, accounting. These are people who are well educated and well off, compared to people earning less than $16 an hour who are less educated and less well off. The worst hit are workers in restaurants, in the tourism industry, airline workers, who face uncertain prospects 6 months into the pandemic for the next 6 months. Government help to these workers is also uncertain and diminished because of budget constraints after the trillion dollars already injected into the economy in the U.S, and separately in Europe, and the significant help provided in other countries including India. This applies to the informal economy workers in India and Latin America who are the hardest hit outside U.S. and Europe, including street vendors. The informal economy is a large part of the economies of the countries in Asia and Latin America. China has reintroduced the informal economy in some cities as a way to take the pressure off the formal economy after the drop in demand for manufactured products from the U.S. and Europe. ...

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Once a pioneer in X ray machines and jet engines General Electric fell into disrepute under Jack Welch when the company hid low earnings in industrial businesses by setting up its financial business. The 2009 financial crisis hit GE hard. Years of deleveraging followed after exit of the financial business. In 2018 it exited the Dow Jones Industrial Averages. Larry Culp of Danaher joined GE as new CEO of GE in 2018. He sold the healthcare business to Danaher for $21 billion. After about $100 billion in deleveraging the remaining company was split into two companies GE Aerospace led by Culp and GE Energy called GE Vernova a purpose built company led by Scott Strazik headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. GE Vernova is focused on wind turbines and renewable energy, its purpose to accelerate the energy transition and advance sustainability. The new GE is itself a return to the old days when GE was a pioneer and powered America's industrial base, not the company of deindustrialization of Jack Welch of the 1980's Reagan and post Reagan period when investing in financial and speculative business made GE to lose its purpose and go astray. For Culp and others the realization of the failure of policies that deindustrialized America and shifted factories to China after Thatcher and Reagan was a lesson learned. It is now the story of an America on the move under president Biden. ...

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The 2018 state elections leave an inconclusive result says Soutik Biswas of the BBC.On one side an arrogant government and on the other side a older party from the Independence struggle that has not developed younger leaders and lacks a compelling narrative. Rajasthan has tended to give only 1 term to an incumbent government, and in Madhya Pradesh Congress party had 113 to BJP's 111, a very close vote, with the BJP facing anti-incumbency sentiment in an effort to win a fourth time in succession.  A lot depends on regional allies for the Congress says Biswas, and here it is not clear how well this will work. The Modi government faces discontent of farmers, and the loan waiver for farmers promise by Congress helped it with voters. In the general election much also depends on how well prime minister Narendra Modi keeps the narrative focused on development and retains the support of younger voters, and his personal popularity. This only leaves an embattled Republic between a government that has struggled to create jobs and modernize the country even with good intentions, and a older centrist party that has not cultivated new leaders from within its ranks and lacks a compelling narrative to take the country into the ranks of close to developed nations the way its neighbors South Korea, and China have rapidly developed. ...

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President Trump says he will reconsider his decision not to join the Trans Pacific Partnership. Trump says he will look for a "substantially better" deal that the one negotiated by president Obama. Trump added that the U.S. already has bilateral trade deals with six of the eleven nations in the TPP and negotiations are taking place with Japan a country with which the U.S. had difficulties in trade. This change of mind comes as Republicans in Congress and other groups including farm exporters are calling for using TPP as a way to pressure China. Wheat exporters in the U.S. say joining TPP would give them a level playing field with Australia and Canada for exports. This means reopening the negotiations with Japan conducted by the Obama administration and seeking more concessions from Japan. Japan's chief cabinet secretary says Japan has made all the concessions it could.  U.S. president Trump would have to come up with a better deal to justify joining TPP.

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Infrastructure development in Indonesia neglected by previous administrations gets a boost under President Jokowi. Since 2014 Jokowi has taken advantage of a fall in oil prices to cap the fuel subsidy given by the government.  This has allowed more money to go into infrastructure projects. In 2014 $15 billion was allocated to infrastructure, increasing by 2017 to $30 billion.  Jokowi has plans for 222 national strategic projects , including roads, railways, bridges, power stations. Of this 127 are under construction, 20 completed. Under president Suharto from 1968 to 1998 for 3 decades infrastructure was neglected. One example is the situation in Jakarta where only 4% of the residents are connected to the sewer system. Most of the investment is being made (80%) by the government. Much remains to be done in this densely populated country with many islands and poor roads. A China supported plan to connect Jakarta with Bandung by high speed rail remains held up for 2 years with difficulties in moving people in Java's densely populated areas. ...

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Claire Gatinois and Soleyn de Royer's interesting essay on the life and times of Emmanuel Macron who started as one who would bring new life to the Fifth Republic but over 7 years sees that he has made poor choices and comes across as brash and inexperienced. His Movement was formed very quickly during the waning days of the Hollande administration of the Socialist Party. By bringing in Macron Hollande did what Blair and Clinton had done for Labour and Democrats thinking they were somehow moving to the centre in tackling the budget, deficit and the economy. Clinton hired as Treasury Secretary Goldman Sach's Robert Rubin and Harvard's Lawrence Summers, Obama hired Timothy Geithner, who like Macron in the Hollande cabinet lacked all conviction for improving the life of workers and the middle class in the US. Clinton setup China's entry into the World Trading Organization without grasping or understanding the economic framework of American manufacturing and thinking of industry leaders who were in that time in the  mood for outshoring everything made in the US with the inflexibility of American labor. Geithner like Cameron's Osborne had little affinity with the working or middle class, and did little to correct the abuses of banking professionals behind the 2009 financial crisis, which in some ways is still with us today, the pandemic being the second hit to workers and the middle class, the migrant surge an addition of mental unease. ...

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The global impact of the credit and housing crisis as it extends from USA to the rest of the world. Heavy machinery makers such as Japan and Germany are doing better than consumer goods exporters like China, and Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia. And countries that borrowed heavily like Hungary are being watched by lending institutions. Commodities producers like Australia and Russia and Brazil are continuing to do well. For Middle Eastern countries the bigger danger is overheating in their economies as inflation soars. But while the crisis spreads the forecasts have only been taken down a notch displaying the conservative wait and see instincts of forecasters so that China and India still continue to grown near double digits which is not likely to hold up as one goes into 2008 and 2009 and actually might slip considerably from the high growth rates of the past as a number of factors converge especially in the case of China but also for India.

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To keep prices from taking a nosedive if there is a slowdown, as for example in the Chinese economy, a concentration of resources within 3 or 4 mining companies enable them to slow down development of new deposits to adjust supply with demand. In this case even if China slows, India, Russia and Brazil may still pick up, as they may be less sensitve to the U.S. consumer than China. China is a manufacturing export based economy compared to India and Russia, which are more dependent on internal demand. Iron ore prices have increased by three times since 2003, and China's imports of iron ore have gone up from 29% to half of the world's imports. Prices of all commodities copper, alumina, uranium have shot up. BHP and Rio both based in Melbourne, Australia have absorbed all the medium size companies in the Melbourne mining scene. Australia has traditionally been a leader in this field because of its huge mining resources. Other reasons for consolidation are the more complex technologies needed to develop the remaining deposit finds, which are fewer and fewer and of lesser quality. Another factor is that the resource nationalism in India, Bolivia, Indonesia, Mongolia and other places requires more sophisticated investors. Combining Rio and BHP also means BHP can use the better infrastructure of Rio and invest more productively in future infrastructure rail lines and port development to speed exports to other countries. See the Barta article in the WSJ Link on this on Dec 18, 2007. ...

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No less than the Editorial Board of the NYT says  Democrats have their heads in the sand when it comes to reflecting honestly about transgender -with the Cass Commission of Britain's NHS advising serious caution- and social issues. Lack of acceptance about the need for strong action on issues of trade that have hurt ordinary Americans with the destruction of manufacturing and the middle class. Some of this was done with Biden taking a stand on trade by keeping the DJT tariffs on China, and supporting US manufacturing. But this was not enough- stronger action was needed especially with strong tariffs action as the last resort needed to get Canada, Mexico and China to stop fentanyl flows to the US in 2025 and protect the middle and working class in the US in their neighborhoods.  Yet on immigration the NYT does not come flat out and say that opening up the border was the single biggest error of the Biden administration. And a failure to talk openly to the American people in a fireside chat reminiscent of FDR about Venezuela and Mexico. Part of the reason was a misconception about American power when it could be used to good purposes and has been in history. The Monroe doctrine of the 1820's asserted American right to prevent colonial powers returning to the American continent north and south. This was a good idea and helped this continent develop freely and independently. The US has a right to prevent migrant trafficking and fentanyl flows in its backyard in the American continent, including taking economic action, when it causes serious disruption leading to 7 million refugees and millions of migrants crossing borders. It also has a right to create an even playing field for trade, that not DJT alone but advisers with great experience, Robert Lighthizer, Deputy Trade Representative under Reagan- who negotiated with 1980's Japan on the same grounds as we do with China today- strongly advise the president to do.   ...

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Xi Jinping, president of China says at the Davos Forum that world leaders should "join hands and rise to the challenge" from protectionism coming from the new U.S. administration. He called on world leaders to support the Paris climate accords- "to stick to it instead of walking away from it."

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Finnish president Niinisto provides a new understanding of Mr. Putin and the thinking that led to the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Niinisto has an advantage having spoken with Mr. Putin countless times says this report in WSJ, and spoke again to Mr. Putin on May 14 to tell him that Finland was planning to join NATO. Putin simply responded that Russia does not pose a threat and "you made a mistake." He says it was not the Finnish way to not call Putin and tell him directly, and that not doing so would be like sneaking away around the corner. Mr. Niinisto says WSJ, has a rare insight into the thinking that led to the behavior of Mr. Putin in launching the war. Here are some insights from this report by Adam O'Neal of WSJ. On the situation in Ukraine Niinisto says " I would be a lot more worried about Ukrainians than about how Russians feel." Mr. Putin's willingness to see Ukraine's industrial centers, its infrastructure and cities destroyed, turning them into moon craters in the east compares with the relative ease of life in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities, cushioned by Russian oil and gas exports and financial reserves. As a student of Finland's long and violent history with Russia Mr. Niinisto has some unique insights into Russian thinking. He tells WSJ's Adam O'Neal  that if a Russian is angry, yes, be careful, but if he's calm, be even more careful. The Russian invasion of Finland led to loss of 200,000 lives in 1939-40, and another 250,000 Russian lives in fighting between 1941-1944. Finland has 300,000 men or women in military reserves and men between 18 years and 60 years are called up for military service with the Finnish Constitution requiring every citizen to contribute to national defense. Recently Finland ordered 64 F-35 fighter jets from the US. What led to the invasion of Ukraine by Mr. Putin? Niinisto says that "somehow Mr. Putin has a feeling that Russia was betrayed in the 90's by the West. Over time this thinking continued feeding the negativity says Niinisto and led to the thinking that Russia could be betrayed once more.  Another aspect of Mr. Putin which was covered during the last decade of relations with Ukraine in Lyrarc, was his perception that Ukraine under various leaders before Zelensky was basically led by corrupt leaders including one president he supported but lost power in the last decade. Mr. Putin saw protests in Kviv and Lviv that ousted a president he supported recently as orchestrated from outside. This led to thinking that Ukrainian nationalism did not exist and he believed that Kviv would not be defended and would fall easily within a week or weeks. As his nationalist perceptions and that of a small group that included his partner in office Mr. Medvedev became stronger in the last ten years Mr. Putin made the decision to take the option for invasion in the thinking that the response of the US and Germany would not be to support Ukraine with arms and other aid. The CDU and SPD was perceived as weak in Germany and Scholz not seen as able to cut down oil and gas imports to the EU. Biden was seen as not willing to stop Russia by taking on a difficult conflict because of China allying itself with Russia, considering China's interconnections with the American economy. The timing was seen as good considering that this level of dependence on oil and gas imports of Europe on Russia would never be the case after planned shifts to renewable energy. The Russian economy was cushioned by its $620 billion in reserves and by the world's need for energy even as the shift to renewable was taking place. This window my have induced Mr. Putin to take what appeared to be a rational decision that ignored the common feelings of humanity of risking the destruction of a brotherly people that spoke Russian, prayed in Orthodox churches, and where Russia as a state started in the year 1000. Cambridge historian Brendan Simms in his new book "Europe : The Struggle for Supremacy 1453 to the present," has shown all European powers susceptible of reasoning and calculation of this type in their wars since 1453 in the struggle for supremacy in Europe up to the present- the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Danes, the Swedes. This also led to British and French empires in Asia and Africa with subjugation of Asian and African people. The Second World War had created the perception that somehow this had changed after the loss of millions of lives- that was the perception of Merkel a pastor's daughter who had grown up in the former communist state of GDR in East Germany, and of SPD leader Steinmeier who felt strongly about the loss of lives from the Nazi invasion. Merkel and Steinmeier built the relationship of Germany with Russia that has collapsed under Germany's new leader Scholz and Habeck-Baerbock of the Greens party. Merkel and Steinmeier also built the trade relationship with China that also faces collapse with China's support of Russia under Mr. Jinping, and the unexpected shifts in Chinese leadership and policies from that pursued by premier Deng and his successors in 1990-2010 of interconnected economic links with US and EU. Mr. Scholz, the new chancellor of Germany has Brendan Simms book on Europe on his reading list for 2022 as he ponders over the lessons of 2022 and the pandemic. Mr. Biden with long experience in the Senate of the US has a memory and understanding of what happened since World War II, how America got to this point, and what it will have to do to bring back the American spirit to the Free World that America has led for most of the last two hundred years. ...

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Khalid al-Falih, chairman of Saudi Aramco, says at the World Economic Forum in Davos, on Jan. 26, 2016- "If prices continue to be low, we will be able to withstand it for a long, long time." With $630 billion in foreign currency reserves the Saudis are following a long term policy of full production. Gasoline subsidies are being reduced, IPO of Saudi Aramco being discussed to raise additional capital, and other steps being taken to plan for long term oil prices. Flexibility for a change in policy is diminished with the addition of Iranian oil production to supplies following the lifting of sanctions. The events in 2015-2016 of Russian bombing campaign in Syria, and the cutoff of diplomatic relations with Iran, have worsened the standoff with Iran and Russia in the Middle East conflict. As a result it appears that the Saudis are settling down for a long term policy of full production which would keep oil prices low for the long term. India, Japan, China, the U.S. and the European Union, Turkey and other countries benefit from low oil prices when their economies need a boost in 2016-2017....