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Supply chains are unraveling in many industries with the tariffs imposed by president Trump on imports from China, and renegotiated trade deals with South Korea and other countries. The growth in the value of foreign value added was possible with cuts in tariffs in the period after 1990 and the emergence of China as a low cost manufacturer with cheap labor. Foreign value added increased from 20% in 1990 to 30% in 2011. The impact on factory towns and communities in the U.S. of trade in which the U.S. manufacturing declined as it shifted to China resulted in the surge in support for president Trump. The tariffs war with China is an effort to correct this imbalance. The result is a shift in supply chains away from China in some industries and gradual shift in others. Rising wages in China had already resulted in early shifts and the the environmental costs adding to this trend. President Trump temporarily suspended a threatened imposition of duties of 25% on $325 billion of Chinese imports. A renegotiated Nafta agreement with Mexico for automobile production and determination of U.S. based content and wages was designed to reset the relationship with Mexico and the auto supply chain for production in Mexico. A threat of tariffs on European auto imports to the U.S. is set for a decision in November. The trade dispute between Japan and South Korea and threat of tariffs also shows the effect this is having in other countries. With the U.S. looking at its own interest in the global supply chain and its advantage or disadvantage, industries and companies are not free to make decisions based on which country offers the best arrangement and deal for manufacturing. Notions of competitive advantage in the tech race with China are affecting the way the U.S. and European nations are acting. ...

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Parliamentary group of the ruling LDP party elected Fumio Kishida, member of parliament from Hiroshima, as the new LDP leader and prime minister. He has called the abolition of nuclear weapons his life's work. His grandfather and father were both members of parliament. Kishida was elected in 1993 to the Japanese parliament, and was foreign minister under Shinzo Abe. He supports the Hiroshima baseball team and is said to be good when it comes to washing up and cleaning the bathroom. As a child he grew up in New York and pictures of that time show him at a school in Queens, New York as a child. This has given him a sense of social injustice. He shares this in his plans for Japan with Biden in the US and Scholz in Germany, a sense that there should be a reduction in the income gap, and support for low paid temporary workers, families with young children. He also shares with Biden and Scholz plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars for renewal of the country- for renewal of US, Germany and Japan in the manner of the postwar renewal in the nineteen fifties. ...

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Hysteresis is the term used for entrenched stubborn unemployment especially as workers stay on the job market for so long that they become dispirited and permanently unemployed. Britain's New Deal policies introduced by the Labor party do not work well in such situations because forcing people to find jobs has to be accompanied by jobs being available. The most successful so far are job subsidizing programs like Germany's Kurzarbeit. Kurzabeit encourages companies to adopt shorter working hours and reduce job losses and layoffs, because 60% of the lost income is paid to workers by the government. Since September 2008 the numbers taking advantage of this scheme went up from 80,000 to 1.4 million in June 2009. At present the OECD counts 22 governments that support a shorter working week to reduce job losses.

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Javier Fernandez describes the experiences that led to Bill De Blasio's decision to run for Mayor in 2013- his education in New York at NYU and Columbia, the family's background in liberal politics, involvement in Latin American politics, helping Bill Clinton's campaign organizing in New York and running Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in 2000, a run for City Council in 2009. Blasio was close to his Italian mother after the parents divorced, and he made it a point to develop a close family life after he married a co-worker at City Council in New York. The family life and his passion for fairness in the economic issues facing New York City, played a part in giving a sense of authenticity to his effort to convince voters to break from the past- to move in a progressive direction that creates better opportunities for all New Yorkers.

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As auto sales decline in Spain, France, Italy and other parts of Europe auto companies are looking at improving efficiency and closing inefficient plants. Italy is tackling labor laws that prevented a revamping of the auto industry to improve productivity. New laws make it possible for companies like Fiat to hire or fire workers rather than having to place them on a state backed temporary layoff program that pays workers two thirds of their salaries while not working. Chrysler-Fiat CEO Marchionne sees sales dropping below 10 million units from the 13.1 million in 2011 if the euro were to disintegrate. With the higher efficiency of Fiat's plants in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, Marchionne is not willing to make any exceptions for the Italian system any longer. In 2009 Fiat's plant in Tychy, Poland, making the Fiat 500, made 600,000 cars with 6,100 workers, whereas the five largest Italian plants made 650,000 cars with 22,000 workers. Marchionne put forward his 5 year revamp of Italian operations in April 2010 with an investment of 16 billion euros. Unions were asked to agree to new work rules in exchange- shorter breaks, reduced absenteeism, doubling of overtime hours if needed, and pay tied to performance in addition to seniority. In the fall of 2010 Fiat shifted the production of the Fiat 500L to Serbia. Following this unions agreed to the new rules. One of the plants revamped was the Pomigliano plant which would turn out lower cost Pandas instead of the Alfa Romeos at a cost of 800 million euros to redesign the plant for efficient manufacturing. The new plant requires fewer workers and only 3000 of the 5000 workers at the plant have been hired. Priority was given to younger workers. Marchionne sees the revival of the manufacturing plants in Italy closely linked with his plan to import Italian cars to the American market because of the declining sales in Europe. The transformation of the auto industry and Chrysler was achieved by changing work rules and reducing labor costs. A similiar process is now underway in Italy....

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Nickel cadmium batteries - this year 2008 the European Union is banning the sale of all nickel cadmium batteries. Question is why is the US not banning them. And why are companies like Energizer, Duracell, P&G, Mattel, Toys R Us and Walmart still buying them? Why is Panasonic making them? A toy costs $1.50 less to make using nickel cadmium batteries. Are parents aware of what it does to workers making them? Are plants safe in developing countries especially in corruption prone coercive environments like the one in factories in China? Some of the owners of such factories are in Hong Kong, Hong Kong based companies, are they aware enough of the risks and the ethics of doing is? This story is of an engineer who was exposed to factory conditions in a company GP that was supposed to be a good company to work for, and few knew about the effects of cadmium in the year 1995 when she joined. The Panasonic factory is in Wuxi which is not in some remote part of China. And note this about 10% of China's arable land is contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium according to China's own State Environmental Protection Agency, and the metals are entering China's food supply. 12 studies have shown unsafe level of cadmium in fruits and vegetables. Is this a necessary price of industrialization or is it possible to find a way thats better- a challenge for countries like India. Can there be better protection of workers and still have industrialization? Wouldn't it make sense that a motivated well treated work force will perform better in better working conditions. Aren't there costs involved for workers and owners of such plants. Owners also bear costs, bad press, medical payments, workers leave and good workers are hard to find in the wave of bad publicity and health risks, customers in the west refuse to buy the product, the company's brand name is tarnished forever, as would happen for GP in this case. The coercive patterns of using police to suppress publicity for a Hong Kong Company shows owners in Hong Kong have the same disregard for worker rights, even when living in an area that one hears talk about democratic rights. See the link to chemical spills contaminating a river in China also by a Hong Kong based company. ...

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This WSJ editorial describes Hillary Clinton as being part of the problem of highly paid CEO's she described in Iowa making 200 times the average worker, because of the large amount charged for her speeches and expenses. This it says exceeds the ratio of highly paid CEO's pay to average worker pay.

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Questions of race, deserted towns in the eastern part of Germany as people leave for the western part, and worker's struggles, that are aspects of German life, taking shape in German cinema. The movie is Jerichow based on asmall almost deserted town in the east near the Baltic sea.

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About half of private equity investors have money tied up in zombie funds in 2024 according to JP Morgan Chase. US state and local governments manage about $5 trillion in pension money. Large public pension funds have 14% of their money in private equity. And large corporate pension funds have 13% in private equity. California's worker pension fund will have put more money into its private equity part of its investments than it gets out 8 years in a row. CALPERS and California Teachers Pension funds are funds which have take out loans of 5% to 10% of fund holdings to deal with problems of private equity investment. Pension funds are selling private equity funds takin a hit. At a time when retirees such as teachers and public sector employees are facing cost of living and high healthcare costs they can ill afford such losses showing how widespread capital misallocation is today. 

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Mr. Lindner of the FDP withdraws from negotiations leading to a stalling in the talks for a Jamaica coalition in Germany. FDP won 11% of the vote, the CDU about 32%, and the Greens 9% in the recent election. The CDU needs the FDP to form a coalition government as the Social Democrats have turned down requests to join the CDU in a future government. The SPD party sees no advantages in joining a coalition because it lost more of its worker base support by working with the CDU. If no coalition is formed a new election could be called by September 2018.

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The wind energy industry in the USA is seeking government mandates for renewable wind energy to prevent aslodown. Its argument is that wind turbines are large and have many parts which require many of the workers laid off in the auto and related industries. 35,000 new jobs were created in wind energy business in 2008.

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An exceptional look at burnout and stress at work in the Guardian newspaper. In the UK 526,000 workers were affected by the burnout epidemic, suffering from stress, depression or anxiety, in 2016-2017, according to Health and Safety Executive. More women are affected than men, and more in professions in healthcare, social care and education. Longer work hours are part of it till pressures at work became intolerable for people shown in this report. Problems remain masked at the beginning and act in a kind of mission creep. Experts say it is important to see this as the result not of sick individuals unable to cope but of ailing organizations that have created workplaces where burnout can occur, where blame takes the place of collaboration, and support is limited or non existent.

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In a blow to public employee unions the U.S. Supreme court rules that unions cannot collect dues from non members. Doing so would violate worker's free speech rights said the court in 5-4 decision. The addition of Justice Gorsuch has created a Supreme court voting 5-4 on party lines. Justices Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Gorsuch give Republicans a five vote majority on many issues. 

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Pravin ordhan who won confidence as head of the tax authority takes over Trevor Manuel's post of Finance Ministera, and Trevor is kept in an important position in strategic planning. THe communist party and unions get the Education and Economic Development ministries, but otherwise Zuma indicates a preference for continuity in South African financial and economic affairs. With one third of potential workers are without jobs according to the government so there is considerable pressure for improving these measures of development.

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Mr. Rodrigo Maia, the 49 year old son of the former Mayor of Rio De Janeiro, Cesar Maia, is uniting Congressmen from all parties in Brazil's parliament to get things done and restore lost confidence, such as the recently passed pension reform. Brazil's pension system sucks up most of the money in the budget with overly generous benefits, leaving little to pay for essential public services such as sanitation and transportation. Shockingly sanitation has suffered as only 50% of the sewage is treated in Brazil.  Polls show confidence in parliament after corruption scandals and lack of work to help the people of Brazil with essential public services has fallen to an abysmal low of 7%. Only 50% of Brazil's sanitation is treated and the rest flows as untreated sewage and rubbish into the rivers. To bring some sanity to pensions the Brazilian parliament, with the organizing skills of Mr. Maia to bring parties together around the reform, has cut $240 billion over 10 years from pensions and introduced 65 years for men and 62 years for women as minimum retirement age.  Brazil has 33 parties and Mr. Maia's is with the centre right DEM party. How did this happen. This WSJ story says Rodrigo Maia, 49 years, was born in Santiago, Chile in 1970 during the days of Brazilian military dictatorship. His father was in exile in Chile. The election of a  far right figure Jair Bolsonaro who supported the military dictatorships record as president in the recent election was a warning sign for the different parties in Brazil on the centre right and the centre left that corruption scandals and a do-little spirit was wiping out their influence and destoroying their credibility with ordinary Brazilians. The pension cut reform was their response to gain some of the lost goodwill from the Brazilian people. In the past Brazil's members of the Chambers of Deputies were people of power and influence who held positions for long periods and passed on these positions to people in their families or in their close circle. The elections and democratic governments following years of dictatorship brought in a new class from centre right and centre left that mismanaged public finances and excluded new ideas. The Car Wash scandal and scandals at the state petroleum company under Da Silva's Workers Party led to loss of confidence not only in the centre left party government of Da Silva and the Workers Party, but also in a do-little parliament. The large state spending from the government was possible during the commodities boom from China with Brazilian iron ore and other products getting high prices. WIth the collapse of the commodities boom and lower prices the entire system of state spending has unraveled revealing how much generous pension system is damaging the financing of  basic public services.  Corruption is prevalent in many countries in Asia including India but nowhere has the spending on essential public services such as sanitation suffered as in Brazil. And nowhere was parliament and the government able to get away with staging Olympics, World Cup and building many stadiums, handing out generous benefits to gain public support as in Brazil when basic sanitation and health services were neglected in a shocking way. The health system was weakened to a great extent when it lacked the resources to tackle an outbreak of yellow fever in 2018 as it moved south from the Amazon region towards Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Protests against the lack of investment in public services such as transportation and bus systems resulted in the public protests in big cities that led to the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in an effort to bring new administration to tackle the problem of financing for infrastructure, public services, health and education.    ...

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Labour's executive director of Policy from 2020 to 2022, says steps easy to understand and grasp, and which can be effectively implemented to deliver are needed for Labour party to win confidence of the British people. Claire Ainsley says Australia is doing this under Mr. Albanese. Mr. Scholz is doing this in Germany. "Keir Starmer's embrace of a mission driven approach to government provides opportunity to tackle the root causes of stagnating wages and volatile costs." "Whether this tentative revival can be turned into durable majorities will rest on whether we can deliver on the change that people are crying out for. If voters give the centre left a chance to be in government again, then the changes Labour instigates must make a difference in people's lives." She says centre left governments in the US, Germany, Australia offer a role model of how action can be taken to improve the lives of workers and families. Other centre left governments in Canada, Spain, are striving to do this also. To make simple to understand and quantify pledges to the people and deliver on them step by concrete step. A similar approach is taken in India and in states in India. Germany is an example. Ainsley says Germany made 4 simple pledges to back its bigger visions. Solid delivery on wages, pensions cost of living support, energy, and public services. ...

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The huge failure to tackle insulation of British homes in several schemes launched for energy security by first Cameron and then Johnson, are shown here in The Guardian. Many businesses in the insulation industry closed in 2013 with the neglect from the Cameron government. In a recent energy security plan the administration of Boris Johnson failed to show a plan for insulation of British homes. As a result of this neglect over a decade the British homes are among the leakiest in Europe when it comes to insulation. Labor party has announced a plan to insulate 2 million homes in the first year alone in response, and to do this over 10 years at the cost of 60 billion pounds. Italy has a plan where it pays 110% for the cost of insulation, replacing boilers, installing heat pumps, installing solar panels, for Italian homes. It has cost 17.5 billion pounds so far. One or two year programmes are insufficient and likely to fail. The flipflopping of Mr. Cameron on green energy the worst kind of solution. This is because something like a ten year programme is needed to get serious results in energy efficiency for homes in Britain. To retrofit new building 30,000 skilled workers are needed, to install efficient new heating systems 60,000 new technicians. There is a stagnating level of technical skills of this kind in the UK as a result of neglect and lack of a well executed strategy. ...

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Changing governments and loss of the vision of the labor movement in the early decades after independence has led Israel to this impasse. Benny Gantz of the wartime Unity government calls for new elections in September as demonstrations for a new government take place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. US president Biden tells Netanyahu on Thursday that US support hinges on treatment of civilians in Gaza. Biden says he "outraged and heart broken" at the airstrikes on aid workers vehicles in Gaza. Gantz, a former general and prime minister of Israel, said- “This agreed-upon date for elections will leave us time to continue the security effort, and it will allow Israeli citizens to know that we will soon need to renew the trust between us,” he told a news conference. “It will prevent the rupture among the people.”  One of the problems Israel faces is the political fragmentation, many parties and frequent elections leading to changes in government unlike the early decades after independence when the Labor party offered effective leadership. The social Labor and agriculture farms movement is how Israel started and prime ministers till 1980's were from this Labor and farms movement including David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. As Israel evolved into a more technology oriented state this aspect was lost leading to a great measure of inequality, and changing governments without a clear vision for the future.   ...

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 Americans in the southern states forget that president Kennedy made the famous statement about "a rising tide lifts all boats" in Arkansas, a poor southern state, saying that America must invest in all regions in people in all parts not just in well off northeastern states. In a handful of southern states expanding Medicaid to about $43,000 or 138% of the federal poverty level for a family of four is now being taken up by Republican leaders who show new openness- in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Noah Weiland -of NYT looks at one particular battle -between Democrat Governor Laura Kelly in Kansas and Republican Speaker Hawkins- in Topeka, Kansas, where the fight goes on. Hawkins calling it the greatest Ponzi scheme devised and Kelly telling this reporter that she has included a work requirement so there is no excuse for not doing this. Republicans are coming around and so are states in other places. Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, states that lie next to Kansas have approved this through ballot initiatives. The point here is that in the years as America comes out of the pandemic there is and should rightly be a realization that this is different, that the children of low income families deserve as equal a chance as their higher income fellow Americans, that depriving them of good medical care makes America a weaker country. As Jerome Powell of the US Fed said in Stanford today about Kennedy's expression of "lifting all boats," it is just this that is needed today. It will be the No.1 election issue in Kansas in 2024, says Governor Kelly. The Republicans are also having second thoughts and are now just face saving. Consider that the Kansas Health Institute a research group, says 70% of the people becoming eligible for Medicaid expansion are working. Many are restaurant business workers who cannot provide proper medical care to children who form the next generation of America. And hiring in rural hospitals would expand for health workers instead of layoffs in southern states lifting financial strain on rural healthcare with additional Medicaid funds. This helps rural America when it needs it most. ...

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Stephanie Nolan's reports from Africa provide the few glimpses one can get today of the situation in Africa where variants are growing as a result of lack of vaccines (vaccine inequality) and the faltering vaccination drive, shortage of medicine and food supplies. Her report from South Africa showed how healthworkers and scientists in South Africa are working hard on the frontlines. This one from Zambia looks at the vaccination centers and vaccination workers as vaccination drives falter. The African continent with 1.4 billion people received 404 million doses. Today only 7% of the population is vaccinated in Zambia and the rest of Africa. People in Zambia do not have car transport so they have to walk 3-6 kilometres to get to a vaccination center, when they turn up at a center and it is out of vaccines they stop coming. Other problems are the social media accounts that show the vaccination drives as harmful to people, or CNN and other news that talk about blood clots that when carefully understood affect a tiny fraction of people. There are other issues also. Ida Musonda, a nurse in a clinic near Lusaka says after not many people turned up that she should go to markets and churches, but says there is no fuel for the vehicle to get clinic workers there. Bernadette Kawango is shown with her children. She works at an auto parts store and lives in a low income neighborhood in the edge of Lusaka. She ignores all the social media accounts that scare people from vaccines, yet she says she worries more about cholera, TB and malaria, and also HIV, AIDS. And she does not know anybody diagnosed with coronavirus.  The result is that there is vaccine shortage resulting in a kind of vaccine indifference (why walk miles to a center if it may not have vaccines), compounded by other problems such as the other diseases that also pose a threat in Africa, and the low incomes in a shrinking economy. And with about 8% vaccinated in Africa, the problem of variants can only be tackled by consistent and not erratic supply of vaccines. ...

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Dudley Althaus looks at Mexico's 2018 election from a working class suburb of Mexico City called Valle de Chalco. Once a squatter settlement outside Mexico City this area was courted by the ruling PRI Institutional Revolutionary party for 3 decades with a social investing program building sewers, water and power lines. Today this area like others in the state of Mexico have turned to a new party Morena led by Manuel Lopez Obrador, to find a way out of the corruption, violence and failure of the rule of law under the PRI. Obrador left the socialist PRD party to form Morena in 2014 after running for president on the PRD ticket twice. The thirst for change is widespread inside Mexico giving Obrador a higher vote margin in state of Mexico than the 53% he won overall in Mexico. The PRI won just 16% of the vote. The old politics of piggy bank and patronage of the PRI is now discredited in Mexico.  The reason the old politics does not work anymore is the change in places like this from a shanty town of tin shacks to a bustling city of 400,000. This place has a technical school, a state university branch, rows of well kept cinder  block homes along with malls and wealthier homes. With basic necessities being met Mexican workers are turning to larger issues of national identity and how the next chapter can be written in the social contract. Obrador's nationalist message and criticism of the globalized economy struck workers and middle class as the right direction for Mexico. This came just as president Trump brought new views on immigration and NAFTA on the other side of the border challenging Mexico to find its own direction and independent position in the world economy, even building new links to other countries in Europe and Asia. ...

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The U.S. Senate voted 51 to 49 on a Democratic party measure for further reductions in 2012 Social Security payroll taxes for workers and employers, including a surtax on incomes over $1 million. A measure supported by the Republican party to pay for the payroll tax cut by reducing the Federal payrolls was defeated, with half the Republicans voting against it. Democrats hope to use this issue to show Republicans favor the rich over the middle class, as the payroll tax cut benefits most Americans. Polls show Americans by a large majority see Republican policies favoring the rich. A New York Times/CBS poll in October showed 7 of 10 Americans feel this way. Pollster Geoff Garin says the income inequality issue is beginning to override other issues including antigovernment feeling. This is one way in which the Occupy Wall Street Movement's slogan of "the 99 percent" has resonated with U.S. public opinion. The Democratic party sees this as an opportunity to define the campaign issues for 2012, with Republicans running for reelection cautious about being seen this way....

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As this report in WSJ shows underreporting of coronavirus cases is a serious problem for Africa, and the figures from Africa's CDC, part of the African Union, do not show the magnitude of the problem. It shows that health workers in places from Yaounde in Cameroon to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, to cities in Somalia, are reporting a situation quite different from what the CDC shows, with hotspots emerging in some places with little in the way of resources.

Only 1 million tests have been done and half are in SOuth Africa and Ghana. WIthout the testing it is hard to know how many cases there are. Capetown area in South Africa is emerging as a hotspot and hospitals are expected to be overwhelmed within weeks. Officially Tanzania a country with 56 million has 509 cases and 21 deaths, yet this contrasts with reports from health experts. Cameroon and South Sudan are also possible emerging hotspots in addition to Tanzania says this report in WSJ.

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During the first days of vaccination drive in India the uptake is lower than expected, below 48% in many states of India. Healthcare workers are coming forward in smaller numbers. The glitches in the app that was used to transmit information is one reason, the other being that not enough information was disclosed about the two vaccines.  On the first day Jan. 16 India vaccinated 200,000 healthcare workers. The target was 300,000. The uptake is lowest in states such as Tamilnadu and Punjab.  One of the reasons for the low uptake is also that India has a lower number of cases, and cases are in decline in India for coronavirus. The first wave peaked on September 13 at over 90,000 and has declined ever since to 13,000 on January 19, 2021. The Indian diet includes vegetables and a large part of the country is vegetarian. Indian diet also includes herbs such as turmeric, ginger and cinnamon, and many others that help build immunity. The lack of cars for large numbers of the population means a lot more exercize walking long distances is essential in daily living. Another factor is that the mandate for masks is strictly followed everywhere. Also helpful is that after independence in 1947 the pharmaceutical industry was built up to serve the large population with prices regulated carefully by the government, enabling steady supply of medicine during the pandemic. ...

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A detailed analysis of 95,228 electoral precincts by the Wall Street Journal- using informaton from the Central Election Commission and a computer program designed for this purpose- shows statistical irregularities. This could be a result of widespread vote rigging in favor of ruling party United Russia. Consistently United Russia received a higher share of the vote- higher than its national average of 49.3%- in precincts reporting voter turnout larger than the national average, according to the analysis. Experts in vote monitoring at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan say that when observer and statistical evidence point in the same direction, there is a strong case for this to be the result of vote rigging. Foreign and Russian observers have reported violations ranging from stuffing of ballot boxes by poll workers, to voters voting repeatedly, and vote totals being rewritten by election workers after the counts were completed.