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Biden's last 100 days in office. His effort to make things better, a conviction that he would have won enough white working class voters to win the election. Turnout was way way higher when Biden ran in 2020. It dropped by about 10 million voters in 2024 compared to 2020. Many white working class voters of the 82 million who voted for Biden in 2020 simply simply did not turn up to vote while DJT clung on to the 75 million votes he had in 2016. Transgender, a sense that everything was changing too quickly culturally, the fentanyl crisis adding to migrant surge creating a backlash for Harris. Biden makes an effort to lock in the gains made in the last 4 years in a number of areas. A remarkable life and one that brings back the Democrats closer to their roots under FDR in 1932 and his uncle Teddy Roosevelt a Republican fighting for the working class since 1902, that FDR inherited. The nation under DJT simply inherits the role played by TR as Republican in 1902 fighting for the working class after two southerners Carter and Clinton let Democrat ties to working class wither and support for China entering WTO and taking over manufacturing leadership. Obama letting Silicon Valley distance Democrats from workers even further and dragging on wars that served no purpose for America. ...

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China believes Taiwan is part of one country with different systems, yet president Xi's words to former Taiwan president Ma in Beijing on March 9, 2024 suggest China is moderating its stance with Taiwan, reliant more on persuasion after the air and sea blockades during the pandemic. Xi met Ma in 2015 in Singapore when both affirmed the unity of both countries. Taiwan under the Progressives who now have won for a third time sees itself as a separate country and Xi sees Taiwan as a part of China.  Ma's colleague lost the recent election to  Lai Ching-Te of the Democratic Progressive Party. Issues in the election were cost of housing and the economy.  Xi said the 1992 Consensus still holds for Taiwan, a former Japanese colony just across the straits from mainland China under that consensus it was accepted as one country with different systems. Xi said: “Compatriots on both sides of the strait are Chinese... The difference in systems does not alter the objective fact that the two sides of the strait are of one country and one nation.” ...

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Walmart with 2000 H1-B visa offers for the first half odf 2025 halts the process in October 2025. Amazon had 10,000 H1-B offers highest number of H1-B visas offers by June 2025, Microsoft, Apple and Google had 4000 such job offers. India makes up 70% of the H1-B visa program and CHina 12%. It hurts the US workforce by bringing in lower paid IT workers to replace higher paid American workers. Bloomberg has adocumentary on the H1-B visa program that highlights abuse of the program that hurts American workers by the Tech companies. It also hurts India by diverting talented engineers needed for India's rapid modernization and creating a culture in which talented engineers in India look outside the country for jobs.

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Dow Chemical CEO Liveris says he sees signs of recovery in China in 2013. He says small and medium sized businesses in China have better access to financing in Dec. 2012 after a period of destocking and hard times accessing credit.

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Sales of automobiles in China in July 2012 declined 12.6% from the prior month according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. There are two parts of China's automobile sector, the foreign brands of GM, Toyota, VW, Ford and others, and the Chinese brands. There are 48 Chinese domestic carmakers for 30% of China's automobile market, with sales of 87,500 per brand on average, according to J.D. Powers. Many of these carmakers will not survive even with subsidies from local governments. China's car buyers prefer foreign brands because of the better quality and reliability. Foreign carmakers face an oversupply of cars as GM, Honda, Ford, VW have continued to add capacity. Total automobile manufacturing capacity is about 28.5 million cars and commercial vehicles. This is 9 million more than the expected sales in 2012, according to J.D. Powers. The most recent company adding large capacity is Ford Motor Company, which was relatively late in the Chinese market, and decided to boost capacity from 450,000 in 2011 to 1.2 million in 2015, to make it the largest manufacturing location outside of its home base of Michigan. This creates the prospect of foreign carmakers having to offer larger incentives and discounts to manage inventory and operating with higher levels of unused capacity, reducing profits in future years. Most of the plans to increase capacity were made when China's GDP growth was over 10%, it is now slowing to 7.5%....

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How to build a global port network with less cash- China's state owned Cosco and it's European ports network is an example of savy buying during financial crises, and when companies in Europe and the US were keen to make sales of ports. China simply integrated it into a vast exports network, using containerized terminal expansion modernization to build its manufacturing for export model. This was an extension of its domestic network where it added new port infrastructure to newly built rail and road connections.  India today is learning from this example. By 2000 the Chinese global export model was entrenched. It was also the year when the junior Bush president extended the wars of Reagan/Bush in Iraq of the 1980's to Afghanistan. China had a clear road ahead to build state of the art infrastructure of ports, logistics and exports over the next 10-15 years without any defense costs.  Piraeus in Greece south of Athens, a port concession acquired in 2004 Antwerp in Belgium (Austrian Netherlands), a minority stake in a container port acquired in 2008. In 2013 with sale of Terminal Link ports in a 49% stake deal by CMA of France holding 51%, China has stakes in Zeerbrugge and Antwerp, Busan South Korea, and Le Havre, Montoir and Fos in France, Xiamen in China, Miami and Houston in US. Rotterdam, Netherlands- Cosco acquired in 20126 a 35% stake in Euromax Terminal in Rotterdam from Hong Kong's Hutchison's Holdings for $125 million. Valencia and Bilbao majority  51% stake for $270 million, when JP Morgan paid as much as $950 million to ACS of Spain for these ports after the 2009 crisis led to Spanish divestments. Today in TEU's shipping containers China sends goods to Europe 10 times what it takes in through Spanish ports. Hamburg-In May 2023 Germany's Scholz overruled Habeck to let sale of 24.9% of Hamburg port to COSCO go through ...

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The failures of the two Bush presidents and Obama that are still with us in 2025 in the Middle East, in dragging out foreign wars, at the Border, and in letting outsourcing get out of hand with China, as the US struggles to rebuild the Nation and its communities, and a peaceful world.

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US naval blockade of Iran in Arabian Sea starts April 13 2026. US destroyed Iran's larger ships 158 of them, yet Iran also has a fleet of smaller attack boats which it plans to use in Hormuz. These are harder to detect and can be hidden in coves along the Iranian coast and used against ships. The US with its naval blockade is now prepared to do what it has done also in Venezuela, stop and interdict fast drug boats on the Venezuelan side in the Atlantic ocean. By blockading Venezuela in the ocean US is using its strengths, and stopping drug boats its ability to pinpoint traffic on the ocean. Similar capabilities are well suited to Arabian Sea and Red Sea on the open oceans and away from narrow Hormuz playing to US strengths and capabilities. Aircraft carriers and destroyers and the US Air Force is in a position to do what it does best control open seas like the British did in their heyday of the Royal Navy for most of 1750-1920. This avoids options of Hormuz itself with its narrow 15 mile gap of water between Oman and Iran too close to mountainous terrain on either side, and of the Kharg Island option which would require special forces to be backed up with more ground forces. This is the most viable option and the interlude of couple of weeks has given the president an opportunity to make a better choice for positioning the US forces where the US has its strongest points. What is lacking is the individual powers of Britain and France whose leaders Starmer and Macron have popularity below 20%. Yet the US is better off making good choices and not having these nations alongside. The posturing by European nations is limited to France and UK, as Germany and Italy are in sync with the US position. Much of the media operates as if the goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to the Middle East is not important for long term peace for nations such as China and India with about 3 billion people and the billions of people of Asia, Latin America and Africa. For the first time in 400 years since 1600 as Asian civilizations began a long decline China and India have emerged in 2000-2030 into the kind of modern economies and societies that exist in Europe and the US. The last thing they need is the risk of destroying the Modern World with nuclear proliferation when it took centuries to get to the right opportunity after 1950 to modernize China and India. Xi's and Modi's generation are the first to experience modernization in Asia after Japan's experience. ...

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China has made an astonishing turn away from covid restrictions. Yet this comes after three years that hurt growth which will affect the recovery says this column in WSJ. China is looking for 5% growth in 2023. Problems in the way are a public affected by the lockdowns, a covid surge, housing that will take time to recover, and diversification by Foxconn and other companies away from China to India, Vietnam.

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Invest in China and visits to China promoted by PM Li Qiang with easier to get China visas is not getting the response China would have liked to get. Zero covid efforts and anti-espionage campaign has created some distrust. South Korea with 300,000 people in China has seen registration numbers drop to 200,000. Britain by half from 40,000 to 20,000, Japan by 10% from 100,000 to 90,000, and France by about 20% from 40,000. China gave out 711,000 residence permits to foreigners in 2023, a 15% decline over 2019, yet for short distance permits that include business travelers the drop was by about two thirds. 

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Ford's plans for expansion at its manufacturing location in Chongqing, China, in 2012, will make this its largest manufacturing base outside of Michigan. An investment of $600 million for plant expansion will increase production capacity in Chongqing to 770,000 in 2014, from 350,000 today. The project has received government approval. Ford plans to introduce 15 new models in China by 2015, including a redesigned Ford Focus, which the Chongqing plant began producing in 2012. Ford plans to double the number of dealers by 2015 from 400 today. Ford sold 519,000 vehicles in China for 2011, a 7% growth from 2010. The market saw astounding growth of 46% and 32% in 2009 and 2010, but is rapidly decelerating with only 2% growth in 2012. Total sales in China were 18 million vehicles in 2011, making it the largest automobile market in the world.

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The global economic map is rapidly redrawing bringing US and Europe closer. The US has imported more goods from Europe this year than from China. In September alone says WSJ Germany exported 50% more goods to the US year over year with the weaker euro increasing the momentum. European FDI foreign direct investment in the US increased by 13.5% in 2021 to $3.2 trillion. US FDI to Europe increased by 10% to $4 trillion. There is a push on both sides of the Atlantic to increase local manufacturing, and to increase trade, and shift supply chains away from the overdependence on China.  

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China has banned coal imports from Australia in response to Australian request for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus and criticism of China's handling of Hong Kong protests. 

China imports about a quarter of its coal imports from Australia. Yet this has impacted China because of a rebound in the economy and a very cold winter in 2020. This means there is a shortage of electricity in some parts of China. 

China imports 80% of its iron ore, with 60% coming from Australia and prices of iron ore have almost doubled in the past year. Last year China imported over 1 billion tons of iron ore.

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China's Defense Minister Gen. Wei and Mr. Austin, US Defense Secretary are to meet on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore in 2022. Mr. Wei last met Defense Secretary Mark Esper in 2019 in Bagkok. No meetings have taken place since then. Gen. Wei is seen as an outspoken leader who told a conference in 2019 that the use of the military to stop the Tiananmen protests in Beijing in 1989 was the right step as this gave Chine three decades of peaceful development.

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Where did the numbers in the US president DJT's charts come from wjen shown in the Rose Garden on Liberation Day April 2 2025? The number for example 68% for China comes from a ratio- deficit by country divided by total imports to US.  The numerator reflects the US concern about trade deficits. It is exports minus imports for China in this instance. In 2024 China's exports were $438 billion to the US. It's imports were $143 billion. The difference is the surplus or deficit China has with the US. China's surplus is $295 billion. China's surplus is also America's deficit with China when turned around and seen from the viewpoint of America. The denominator reflects the US concern about how much it is importing from each country- this is how much it is not making inside America and which it has to get from another country. The more that it imports from another country the less it makes at home. If labor in the US gets too costly and is not cooperative to make well designed reliable products more factories close and are build outside in another country. This has consequences- serious consequences over time as it spreads to different industries. FOr the first time in history. A foreign nation makes practically everything and US acts only as a consuming nation- this means the workers jobs and incomes in the US are destroyed. It is often a sign of serious decline in the Nation. $295 billion/$438 billion is 67%. This is the China number shown on DJT's chart in the Rose Garden. The tariff and non tariff barriers and currency manipulation that China conducts in trade with US is measured in this way as an estimate, much higher than actual tariffs which is why US products don't get the treatment they deserve in China's market.   ...

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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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World Bank forecasts show China's GDP growth rate in 2015 to be 7.9%, exceeding investment growth of 7%. In 2009, the situation was the opposite, with the investment growth of 18% driving an 8.9% growth rate. The World Bank expects China's growth rate to drop to about 7% between 2016 and 2020. It was 9.6% from 1995-2009. What this implies is China is shifting away from commodity intensity and wasteful use of energy, capital, and other resources. This means many of the existing forecasts based on continued commodity intensity will have to be revised drastically downward. Growth could be down to 6% annually by 2020, says Peaple, and half of the expected commodity demand would disappear in some forecasts. John Makin in an interview with Wessel of the WSJ, Dec. 30, 2010, says there is a 40% probability China will not make a soft landing in 2011-2012 from the excessive bank lending and inflation that is underway in China. This would mean slower growth much earlier than the World Bank forecasts....

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To get a right grasp of the situation as a whole from the bigger picture than the headlines, is to know that even in the current chaotic immigration handling of both parties, the US comes out a winner in long term by 2034. That it gives for the younger generation a better future. Congress's Budget Office economic report shows GDP higher by 2% from the higher immigration of 5.2 million added to the US workforce by 2034. US productivity higher by 0.2% and residential investment including construction up by a whopping 10%. The younger profile of immigrants will help the US compete with India's younger population, and as China ages to have what it and Europe is aspiring to have- a younger population. The best way to look at the immigration issue is for the short term- manage it better by organized method of immigration without chaotic border crossings by allowing potential immigrants to apply from their home country, a step taken by the Biden administration. What it or any Republican administration could not control is the immigration that happens from countries the US is at war with or in conflict with. It is important to recognize that this is what happened with Venezuela the largest component of the immigration border crossings in 2023. It was made worse by actions of both parties Democrats and Republicans and made worse in 2017 by more severe sanctions on Venezuela under the Trump administration.  Also part of the problem is Venezuelan mismanagement- providing oil at pennies a gallon, hurting imports and spiralling inflation that only worsened under US sanctions after 2017. Long term- To reflect that US sanctions on top of mismanagement by Venezuela is a warning for all developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and for the US. It meant 7 million refugees a staggering quarter of Venezuela's population fleeing the country, that burdened neighbors Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile. By 2022-2023 many of these refugees were making their way up the Darien Gap to the US. Yet within this tragic situation for Venezuelan people how could the US best respond is to close the border as president Biden has proposed with McConnell and the Lankford effort in the Senate, which was blocked by the House under Mike Johnson. This gives time to assess the situation, correct US laws on asylum and parole that allowed this chaotic way to proceed under actions of both parties.And not let this destabilize the US by understanding that while Venezuela has suffered for its role in the crisis the US will ultimately have come out a winner, as pointed out by the Congressional Budget Office projections. CBO projections of this immigration impact by 2034 of increasing the workforce population by 5.2 million will provide higher GDP, more tax revenues, and higher productivity than without this group of Venezuelan and other immigrants in this special situation of 2022-2023. For the Immigration projections discussion given by Phillip Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office see page 51 of the Budget and Economic Outlook 2024 to 2034. For this search for term Congressional Budget Office or CBO which brings up the report on PDF and turn to page 51 or just click on Original Article on Lyrarc.   ...

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Two way trade India EU to expand rapidly from $140 billion in 2025.  EU head Von der Leyen will visit India in early 2025 to increase economic cooperation and trade as the EU moves to reduce concentration of trade with China, and adapt to worsening trade relations with DJT administration in the US tariff policies. India is seen as a natural partner in 2025 with strong relationships with Nordic countries including Denmark and with strong economic ties to the US and France.

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Xiongan, China, 60 miles from Bieijing, a new city being built from scratch at a cost of $93 billion in this report in the WSJ in Feb. 2025. 

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The speed with which GST revenues grow in India will determine the pace of industrial development, infrastructure building, and exports growth in India. It is the main source of government revenues and plays a role similar to what land sales played in China's rapid development over two decades.  States that generate the maximum GST reflect the industrial and commercial activity of the state in the overall context of India's growth. This is why Maharashtra with the commercial capital Mumbai plays an important role with Gujarat and its commercial capital Ahmedabad. Both states formed the industrial core of the country under the British Empire as one state called Bombay state. Maharashtra today makes up 15% of the country's GST revenue with Gujarat coming in close to Karnataka at third. Maharashtra at 2.7 lakh crores for 2022-2023, Gujarat at 1.1 lakh crores and Karnataka at 1.2 lakh crores. Karnataka has the IT capital of India in Bangalore now called Bengaluru. The compound annual growth rate of Maharashtra is 12.3% for the five years to 2022-2023 and for Gujarat 11.8%, Karnataka 11.7%. During the last year Maharashtra GST grew at 24%. National compound annual growth rate for GST tax collections is 11.3%. These states all have state and federal governments aligned for maximum effort in infrastructure and logistics development through allocation of capital, land, human resources, and other inputs. Tamilnadu comes next with 11% growth with the state capital of Madras or Chennai. These were the main commercial centres under the British. Bangalore emerged after independence in 1947 as the center for IT industries. To repeat the kind of development acceleration seen one after another in Japan, South Korea and China, and learning from their experience particularly the climate change and pollution negative aspects of the Chinese experience, India needs the accelerated growth at these rates for GST to finance growth in investments. It also needs to increase the quality of these investments by paying attention to negatives such as pollution and climate change through government regulation of activities that create these negative aspects.  ...

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Typhoon winds that exacerbated the floods in Beijing, China, are shown here in a BBC report. Recent floods in China and fires in Maui, Hawaii, show effects of climate change on opposite sides of the planet in August 2023. This is one more reason for the US and China to work with other countries in limiting the effects of climate change and focus on the important issues that require cooperation and mutual effort.

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US tariff on India of 25% penalty for buying Russian oil and 25% baseline going into effect 21 days later in DJT executive order of August 6, 2025. A 30% baseline on China but no penalty for buying Russian oil. The 21 days will give time for India to come up with an agreement with the US. 

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China reduces US share of exports to 15% from 18% -yet with Vietnam made Chinese goods added in it is 21%. 15.8 million job loss for China from US fentanyl tariffs 2025 from one estimate. Chinese businesses are already feeling this, says WSJ. Exports represent 13% of China's GDP and China had redoubled its export effort after the property bubble burst. There are 2 drags on growth property crash and exports tariffs. China has less room for stimulus in 2025 and the government is focusing on bottom line thinking to prepare for hard times. Already companies are cutting shifts and laying off 10-30% of workers in garment, toys and other basic industries. President Xi is preparing for a long struggle reminiscent of how Mao led China to fight the US forces under Gen. McArthur in the 1950's Korean War, says the WSJ. In the past the state subsidy system worked to take huge share of new industries such as semiconductors, smartphones, solar, electric cars. This will be harder now with less money available to invest and drive out competition, and with the US and EU making their own products boosting their industrial and manufacturing base. ...

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US economic growth was 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023. Even though the Fed increased rates at 10 consecutive meetings by 5% since March 2022 to tackle inflation the US economy appears strong. Large investments in the trillions of dollars in US manufacturing and infrastructure, tackling climate change is what is different this time compared to the past 2 decades when bad decisions were made with twin wars in the Arab and Muslim world, and the supply chain was transferred to China, investments were neglected in infrastructure, education and health in public goods, and capital markets allocated money with decreasing advantage to the economy. President Biden was in a unique position after the pandemic to take stock of all these mistakes and move the nation forward in positive directions in a decisive way in scale as well as in spirit and determination. That he has done so is more proof of the resilience of America.