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Vindu Goel of the NYT gives this report on IBM's expansion in India including an interview with Vanitha Narayanan, chairman of IBM India. In 2017 IBM had 130,000 employees in India, at operations in Pune, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore and other cities, double that in 2007. The U.S. operations have about 100,000 employees. As IBM's revenues have declined with technology disruptions, it has concentrated on expansion in India with its vast base of knowledge workers and costs of about one half to one fifth of what it would cost in the U.S. IBM has 380,000 employees worldwide, with 26% in the U.S. and 34% in India, and 40% in other countries. Microsoft employs 8000 employees in India and 124,000 total worldwide, Google has 1800 in India and 72,000 worldwide.  IBM removed operations in India in 1978 after a dispute with the Indian government. In 1993 it started operations in India in a joint venture with Tata. By 2004 the operations had expanded and IBM took full control. A $750 million 10 year contract was signed in 2004 with an Indian phone company Bharti Airtel. As Goel points out the shift is happening towards expansion in India with the growing demand from industry and government in India. The Watson venture has expanded in healthcare in India with contracts including one with Maniphal Hospitals. In 2016 this had reached $38 billion in hardware and software, services, to Indian industry and the government agencies. IBM's work is not simply in offsourced work from American companies. High tech and cutting edge research is also taking place and expanding. IBM is now uniquely positioned to get an expanding share of the business as more tech services are provided to the hundreds of millions of people in India who did not have access to tech and tech services before. Research concentrates on doing this at a fraction of the cost and in new ways suited to the local region, so that services can be delivered with a wider reach. This report provides a new perspective on how the next decade could see American companies with a long term focus take advantage of the rapid growth in the fastest growing large economy in the world, with advantages for both the U.S. and India. ...

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As drops in price of steel could lead to imports into the US with paying lower tariff Trump increases tariffs on steel to 50% on May 30, 2025. Nippon Steel says it will increase its investments in US steel mills at US Steel including older mills, $7.7 billion in modernization of plants, and $2.2 billion at Mon Valley plant. Ownership of US Steel based in Pittsburgh with 14,000 workers will stay in American hands. DJT intervened to make these investments possible. Investments will keep furnaces open 10 years and give every worker a $5000 bonus. It is this type of action that has helped DJT win in Pennsylvania and win worker support.

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Nocera looks at the lack of efforts to help homeowners under water in the Obama administration. Sheila Bair comments on Geithner's role, as Geithner's book "Stress Test" provides little detail on how the Obama administration addressed the issue. A story by Dougherty in the WSJ on April 20, 2014, points out that about 10 million households in America are underwater in 2014, and another 10 million households have only 20% equity in their homes. Unemployment statistics in the same issue of the WSJ show 7 million people taking parttime jobs because they cannot find work. These households are critical for consumer spending to support growth. The weak economic recovery could very well be one of the results of poor policy decisions by the Obama administration including this one, when other alternatives proposed by Sheila Bair and Martin Feldstein were offered repeatedly in 2009-2010. Here Nocera documents the efforts by Senator Durbin to give homeowners rights to go to bankruptcy court to provide ways to negotiate ways out of foreclosure....

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India US relations are critical, and the human element with 4.4 million Indians living in the US is a critical part of this, Jaishankar and Blinken, foreign ministers of India and the US, told a gathering of students in Cambridge, Massachusetts today. This has completely transformed the relations between the 2 countries. "Students, researchers, academics and professionals who have contributed to America's progress even as they remain a bridge between our two societies," Jaishankar told the students. Yet this is not enough as a close understanding between the young Americans young Indians has to be built. "Your appreciation of a civilizational state and a democratic and fellow polity that is overcoming enormous odds is essential. After all we are natural partners when our people have a strong sense of connect," Jaishankar told the students. How many young people in America understand the enormous odds in a democratic country to vaccinate over 1 billion people or meet the basic needs for food and essential medicines for every person in the country of 1 billion. Yet this has been achieved in 2020 to 2022. America has a strong inward sense and insular attitude, and for this reason India needs to take the initiative to reach out to America. India's new education policy puts great emphasis on collaboration with America and European Union in education which has huge potential to build close understanding. To do this Jaishankar and Blinken together launched the Working Group for Education and Skill Development for the US and India. ...

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This report in NYT shows the movement of Mexicans who migrated to the US in the 1970's in an earlier migration and the problems they faced seeking a better life in America on the east and west coastal cities. In 1971 Ruperto and Eustacia Enriquez migrate from Puebla, Mexico to New York. They make two migrations within the US after a mugging incident in Brooklyn in 1980. First to Santa Ana, California where they find life difficult with gang crime in neighborhoods, and move to an affluent suburb in the east side of Seattle. Their son Daniel gets a Bachelors degree in philosophy from the University of Washington. In 1996 he returns to New York to study for a Masters degree in Latin American Studies at New York University.  After 25 years in New York and taking up a jobs two financial firms he reflects a strivers mentality, always looking for self-improvement. He helps his younger sister with an application to win a Fullbright scholarship in Germany. Another sister works in Washington as a business analyst. He helped a brother who became a school teacher in New York public schools. Daniel found an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn and by 2013 joined another financial firm in its global investment research group coordinating publications.  The story reflects some of the growing pains of Mexican Americans who migrated to America in the 1970's in the earlier migrations. In 2022 Daniel Enriquez 48 years was shot on the subway while going for Sunday Brunch, 25 years after returning to New York City. Crime was once again up in the city after the pandemic. 950 crime offenses happened in the subway system for the year till May the same as in 2019. Subway ridership was 40% lower in May this year.   ...

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Bernanke's speech at the annual Fed Jackson Hole meeting put any future policy action off for the September meeting of the Fed's Open Market Committee, which will meet for 2 days to allow lengthy discussion of issues. He repeated his focus made in earlier statements that other actions are needed to reduce the headwinds facing the U.S., actions other than the Fed's monetary policy. He called for "good, proactive housing policy," which has been a major missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the American economy. Specifically, "families with mortgage debt bigger than the value of their homes facing unusual financial hardship which is also hurting the banks." Martin Feldstein and other experts have repeatedly called for action to help homeowners under water since the mortgage financial crisis hit in 2008. And the government's response has been tepid at best. Most evaluations of the Home Affordable Modification program and other programs to help prevent foreclosures consider them a serious failure of the Obama administration. Higher unemployment has only increased the urgency for government action in this area and good proposals were made by Feldstein and other experts. On the deficit and debt issues Bernanke would like to see debt to GDP ratios "at least stable, or preferably, declining over time." He also cautions that this be done bearing in mind "the fragility of the current economic recovery." He says his estimate for the U.S. economy's growth rate is 0.7% annual rate for the second half, and 'looks likely to improve." His prediction is for inflation to settle at around 2%. His main concern is that the there will be "an erosion of skills and loss of attachment to the labor force" for the long term unemployed....

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The public health emergency announced for the pandemic ends on May 12. Title 42 is a law that uses the public health emergency and pandemic to turn people back from Mexico who cross the border illegally. Democrats and Mr. Biden were critical of the way people were treated at the border under the Trump administration. Yet when faced with higher numbers crossing illegally as Title 42 ends on May 12, Biden and Democrats see the need to replace Title 42 with rules that will tighten controls at the border. It is essential in several ways. It blunts the Republican message to voters that Democrats are not handling the border issue and uncontrolled immigration well. Mr. Obama did this for 8 years by continuing a high rate of deportation of illegal migrants before Mr. Trump.  What makes it possible for migrants crossing the US Mexico border illegally to seek to stay in the US, are US asylum laws that were passed after the refugee crisis during and following World War II. The next step is that the US will now end these asylum privileges as they are being used for economic reasons by huge numbers of migrants crossing from regions in Central America because of economic problems. When a coffee growing region in Guatemala was affected by a bad harvest there was a surge in migrants, with similar patterns repeating themselves over decades.  Just as Mr. Biden closed the Afghanistan war because he could see that it was the right thing to do and essential for the US to build abetter future for its people, Biden now sees the need to end rules and policies from a previous era that led to illegal immigration. Biden is also doing this by increasing legal pathways for immigration to the US where it is done officially and in a proper way. ...

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After Mohandas Gandhi one of the main leaders of modern India is one who came from the untouchable castes, the lowest caste in India's caste system which had declined over centuries. Babasaheb Ambedkar comes from Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra from a family that had gained its way out of the caste constraints by working for the British East India Company. He later studied at Elphinstone College in Bombay, and went to Columbia University on a scholarship. He finished Masters degrees at Columbia University and later at the London School of Economics, in economics and political science.  Returning to India he wrote "Annhilation of Caste" in 1936. Mohandas Gandhi was at this time working on his own movement to get rid of the untouchability that over centuries made its way into the original caste system and weakened the foundations of Indian society. To understand this one has to know that in many upper castes it was seen as becoming an outcaste even to travel overseas, which by itself may have led to the decline that India experienced in the period 1500-1950, and which Gandhi personally experienced and fought his way out of. By 1942 even the British recognized Ambedkar's efforts and he was Minister of Law and Justice in the war cabinet. In 1947 Ambedkar was chosen to lead the team that would write India's Constitution. In his latter years Ambedkar became a Buddhist and has written several books on Buddhism. By 2015 Ambedkar day was recognized as a public holiday by the new government and his memory is enshrined in the efforts now underway in India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh to bring modern ideas, and modernization through next generation infrastructure, and opportunity for Dalits of which caste Ambedkar was one, and the same for all of the 250 million people of Uttar Pradesh, almost the size of America. ...

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US president Biden authorizes $350 million in immediate military assistance to Ukraine. Western leaders now believe that NATO countries are at risk if they do not help stop the invasion, as it now appears that Russia seeks to restore a sphere of influence across Eastern Europe that existed under the Soviet Union. In 1956 Soviet tanks entered Budapest, Hungary. A situation reminiscent of that in Hungary is now taking place in Ukraine in 2022. Earlier the Russian view of Ukraine neutrality was accepted by western leaders- the situation has changed during the last week, as it is now perceived that Russia seeks to change the situation in Eastern Europe. This completely alters western Europe's and America's view of the situation in Ukraine. All this has happened in a matter of days, and in a few weeks. On the Russian side the invasion is not popular with street protests in Moscow and people on the street skeptical about the invasion and its objectives. The view is beginning to emerge that this invasion only breaks the fraternal ties between the Belarus, Ukrainian and Russian peoples that have existed for centuries. In this sense the politics and governments of the present are not relevant as much as the shared history. Ironically it is this shared history that Mr. Putin seemed to want to assert. Yet it ignored the fact that Ukraine also has a shared history with Poland and the Baltic countries and the desire for a different system of government is common to all the people's of the world. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India; UK and Scotland or Ireland; Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Canada, Britain and the US; Hungary, Austria and Germany; all have a shared history yet the people in each country at different periods of history have made their own choices and decided what they would do as independent countries.  ...

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How do you setup a vaccine business. Consider Mr. Adar Poonavalla in the city of Pune in India. His company Serum Institute of India, remains family owned. Founded in 1966 by Cyrus Poonavalla, it produces billions of doses of vaccines for measles, polio and other diseases. It is expected to be one of the key sources of vaccines because of its expertise and the stocks of vials and other supplies that it has in stock for the next 2 years of vaccine production. It is working on a separate facility for coronavirus production that could turn out 800 million doses of vaccine at a price of about $13 a dose over 2 years. Serum Institute is working with 3 companies that are doing the research on the vaccine for coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe, and will play a key role in the manufacturing of vaccines. To respond to the question how do you setup a company to produce vaccines for the people of the world. This is what Mr. Poonavalla says- he will only work with ethical long term funds and sovereign funds because he does not want to be in the situation where he has to charge high prices to give them returns. Unlike most countries in the world, India is unique in making certain that most of the basic pharmaceutical drugs are available to over a billion people at a low cost. Serum's goal is low cost quality vaccine production so that over a billion people in Asia can be "protected from the birth onwards." As the U.S. and Europe and large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, face the second vaccine phase of the coronavirus response following difficulties in PPE, Ventilators, and Masks in the first phase, they can have confidence because of companies such as Serum and the research centers in U.S. and Europe like the one at Oxford University. ...

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The Oxford vaccine is shown to be effective for older adults over 70 years in age. One of the key features of the Oxford vaccine is that it is designed to be accessible in cost for not just high income countries but across all parts of the world including the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where some of the poorest people live. The cost will be a fraction of the cost of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine. Results for regulatory approval are expected by Christmas. This vaccine is expected to cost about $4 a dose compared to $25 for the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Oxford also uses a technology for the vaccine that has already been proved effective with least side effects fr other virus such as Ebola virus. Oxford researchers took the existing vaccine technology and modified it to tackle coronavirus in a way that proves effective for this virus also. Countries such as South Korea say they will not rush into the first vaccine that is available and have not responded to requests for sale from Moderna or Pfizer. India's Serum Institute is the leading manufacturer of vaccines in the world. It is preparing for production of the Oxford vaccine. India's vaccine effort includes other vaccines developed by its research institutes. The focus of India is for a vaccine that is effective as well as meet cost so that it can be used to vaccinate over 1.3 billion people. Because India has strong already established manufacturing capabilities for vaccines and is collaborating with Oxford and Astra Zeneca for a low cost vaccine it is in a position to drive the campaign for an effective plus low cost 100% accessible vaccine for people around the world. Another aspect of the Astra Zeneca partnership with Oxford is that it has committed not to make a profit from the vaccine. This is important for Oxford researchers and its organizational goals. ...

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From now on the vaccination program in India will be run nationally by the federal government. This will ensure fair access to vaccines to all parts of the Indian population. Earlier vaccine costs were bid up as states and private hospitals bid up prices. Under the new national program 75% of vaccines will be given out by the federal government and 25%  by private hospitals and other private health institutions. The government in New Delhi under prime minister Modi will offer adults free vaccinations. Modi said "We will increase the speed of procuring vaccines and also increase the pace of the vaccination program." Even in private hospitals the cost of vaccine will be kept at Rupees 150 or $2.06. Experts say this is the right policy and the government has learned from errors in letting states and other private institutions run vaccine policy, which made it too fragmented and subject to too many variables, resulting in inequity, and slowing vaccination drives. The Supreme Court stepped in asking for clarity, leading to the clear policy from the federal government announced today.  Advantage of the new policy is that the responsibility lies in one place, and the federal government also has the clout to make things happen, to negotiate with companies and other parties involved effectively. India has vaccinated 222 million people but because of the population being so large at 1.2 billion this comes out to be a small fraction of the population. This puts the task of getting vaccine supplies and getting the vaccination drives to work in the only place that has the determination and the resources to deliver results by vaccinating 1.2 billion people by December 2021. It has never been done before in history says Mr. Modi, and it is a challenge that India is now taking up for itself and for the global community. It also lays the ground for India to help its neighbors in Asia and in Africa, Latin America in 2022.   ...

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Surprising as it may sound, India's independence in 1947, did not get the attention one would expect to see for a country with the second largest population in the world. Europe was still recovering from the Second World War and the cancellation of the debt of Italy made the biggest headline in papers such as the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its title was - Mountbatten named new Governor of Hindu India, Punjab riots rage 250 dead. A misperception as Nehru and Sardar Patel were the leaders of independent India, as prime minister and deputy prime minister. In fact the biggest headline in bold was that -Population was up by 9 million with California surpassing Illinois. A Kipling type picture complete with tigers and cobra was put alongside a departing British ship, adding to the ignorance about India.  The Washington Post title was much better- India achieves sovereignty amid wild rejoicing. But it competed with a Soviet threat on the Balkans, Mercury heat wave hitting 96 degrees, and Truman predicted victory in 1948. The New York Times headline was- Two Indian nations emerge on world scene before a map of India. And another headline India and Pakistan become nations, Clashes continue. Alongside were headlines about a price gouging inquiry from president Truman. To this day the coverage has not changed much with the NYT not truly recognizing the aspirations of the Indian people for a standard of living comparable to the western nations, the papers like the Tribune not having any conception of India except in a vague misguided way. And papers such as the Washington Post only somewhat better. None of the western media, much less the BBC, have any conception of the aspirations of the Indian people for a quality of life and the industrial infrastructure that would be comparable or exceed other countries in Europe or that of America.     ...

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At this rate China and India will through the time young people are being encouraged to pursue reading and education- and through strictly regulated social media and videogames in China and TikTok banned in India- move in the direction of developed nations and the US with 150 million users of TikTok be moving in the other direction where Brazil 126 million users and Indonesia 99 million users are. This report in MIT Technology Review says in 2022 the children and teenagers in America spent 103 minutes on TikTok. Tiktok and Facebook split the social media market with about 5 billion minutes each. If users are on both this could give an average of 206 minutes or over 3 hours a day. Consider that there is a Chinese version Douyin. In China its version of TikToK is strictly regulated for a long time now and nowhere poses the kind of threat to education, reading and building a better educated population in China than in the US. Is that a conspiracy. No, says MIT Technology Review, it is because how quickly and forcefully the Chinese governments regulates digital platforms.  It a clear failure of the US Congress and the federal government that has led to this situation where this may be the first generation of young people that are less prepared for civic responsibilities and are from the amount of time dedicated to social media spending less time on reading to to be knowledgeable, and reading in general for education.  In China action is swift. Take for example video games and addiction. In 2021 the rule was put in that children under 18 could only play video games between 8.00 pm and 9.00 pm on weekends and holidays. They are blocked from using outside of these hours. China is looking for new measures that require creators to obtain a license, and for ways for the government to regulate the social media algorithms themselves.  ...

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President Xi's struggle to bring 43 million people out of extreme poverty in China in 3 years as shown in this BBC video. Xi Jinping's focus is on the people left out in the boom years in which the wealth gap expanded to astounding levels and many were left behind. Communist era society under Mao went for leveling up after the 20's and 30' capitalism under the Nationalists. Then came the Japanese invasion in 1931 and chaos out of which Mao built Communist China by 1947. The years with the Nixon opening in 1971 led to another experiment with capitalism to modernize China under Deng and Jiang Zemin in the 80's and 90's to this day after the experiment under Mao had collapsed by 1976. This led to a fading away of the Communist Party's ethos and reason for existence till its revival under Xi Jinping. For Jinping the efforts to guide China's progress started by Deng appeared to derail with the widening wealth and inequality gaps in China, the sense of corruption and misuse of power at local levels that people could see, and the gradual sense in America that the experiment of outsourcing manufacturing and jobs to China was failing for Americans. From 2013 to 2017 a complete rethinking was underway which shaped Jinping's ideas for the future for China. Some of it may be still underway after the realization that Russia and China had diverging views of the world also, following China's sense that the prolonged war in Ukraine affecting its relations with the European Union does not help a country such as China as a middle income country with large pockets of poverty. Russia was seen as a non colonial power in the Soviet era yet it was a major part of the western colonial powers that suppressed the first revolution for an independent China in 1901.   ...

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Judge Engoron of the New York State Supreme Court is the rarest of judges in his style, demeanor and use of everyday expressions. He was a cabdriver and a music teacher and more like everyday people in America.  NYT shows the 92 page legal decision in which Judge Engoron sets a fine of $355 million in the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump. Engoron cites a poet and uses rare language in his everyman style, saying: "The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” posture that the evidence belies." And calling it "this is not the defendent's first rodeo"- "In considering the need for ongoing injunctive relief, this court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corporate malfeasance. Of course, the more evidence there is of defendants’ ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the court to impose stricter injunctive relief. This is not defendants’ first rodeo."     ...

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The Opinion given by the US Supreme Court shows the thinking behind its decision to call Affirmative Action or race based admissions by colleges unconstitutional, as violating the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause. Because the respondents (Harvard College) use of race involves stereotyping and negative criteria the Court declared it invalidated. "It unduly harms non-minority interests," not permissible when all citizens are equal regardless of race or color. Proposed by Congress and ratified by the States the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no State shall "deny to any person.... the equal protection of the laws." Proponents of that law describing as the "foundational principle" as "not permitting any distinctions of law based on race or color." As WSJ shows today there are three times as many White as Black or Hispanic families in California making below $50,000 a year.  "That the law shall be the same for the black as well as the white, that all persons shall stand equal before the laws of the States." It was a blot on the face of America that this allowed racially segregated schools till this was changed, says the Supreme Court. It calls the Bakke decision to allow race based admissions as a deeply splintered decision and Judge Powell writing for himself allowed it only to allow the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. The decisions in Grutter stated that in 25 years this race based admissions should end and in no way can it be used for stereotyping or as a negative- to discriminate against those racial groups that were not the beneficiaries of the preference. A university's use of race could not be used to "unduly harm non-minority interests." It also means engaging in stereotyping- "a demeaning assumption that students of a particular race think alike."  ...

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Much of the inflation reduction actions were taken by the US Federal Reserve as the central bank of the Nation and by president Biden in passing the Inflation Reduction Act and investing in growing the economy. All this may be jeopardized by the action of a Trump administration limiting the independence of the central bank. The support for crypto currency by Trump creates more risks to the economy. Additional risks are posed by the views expressed in Project 2025 on the US central bank. It is stated that the financial stability mandate be removed, that employment stability be removed and its regulatory role be effectively taken out. A commission to be appointed to look at alternatives to the central banking role of the US Fed. There are inflationary episodes and banking crises yet they stem from poor behaviour of banks as private players (2009 financial crisis) and price gouging by companies and firms and are not because of the central bank. There are also episodes of poor management  which reflected the culture of that period such as Libertarian culture under Greenspan. As in management in private industry firms good or poor managers make adifference. The institution created of the central bank around 1910 comes from the crises that happened in the period before that  and how it evolved into its postwar role. This includes the Great Depression when it did not have its regulatory, financial stability and employment role. Tampering with the basic structure that has evolved over 100 years of experience would cause lasting damage to the US economy and expose it to hidden risks. This would put a severe burden on the Nation after the loss of one million lives in the pandemic that just happened, the cost of living crisis, and the severe impact that decades of loss of local manufacturing have placed on communities across America- which both the US Federal Reserve under Jerome Powell and president Biden have fought so hard to tackle. ...

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US Business has considerable apprehension about the former president in 2024 compared to its willingness to consider Trump in 2016. At the time executives from investment bank Goldman Sachs and heads of oil companies joined the Trump administration. This time US business and corporate interests are apprehensive about becoming the target of a tweet they might find the next morning under a Trump administration. They are not supportive of student loan forgiveness, but when it comes to the CHIPS and Science Act they see president Biden as effective and helping industry. Business leaders have a negative view on the Trump effort through appointment of 3 Supreme Court Justices of overturning decades old rights of women on abortion, and on this issue alone many will support Harris-Walz, overriding other concerns they might have. The visions of Harris and Trump are so vastly different with one calling climate change a hoax and hyping up social issues and infrastructure needs without any record of delivery when in office, and the other a strong position on climate change, wages and income, delivering on infrastructure and CHIPS that US Business. The result is that it leaves US Business with no better option in 2024 than to support the vision  that takes America forward. There are different sections of the business community which have different priorities.  Silicon Valley, and oil, pharmaceuticals because it profits most from light regulation which brings with it social costs is a special issue not addressed here. Other business, banking, automobiles, and a range of other industries have other priorities yet also see the need for the economy and the US to move forward with a different vision than one that simply ignores climate change, and fails to address child care, child poverty, wide disparities in wealth, and other issues facing of wages, cost of living facing most Americans.  ...

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This report in ProPublica on October 13, 2020, by Lydia DePillis was written near the end of Robert Lighhizer's term as US Trade Representative.  Bottom Line: It is human behaviour that no country, no kingdom or group will give up its money advantages secured when the opposition was weak or disorganized till the last fight is fought. The British were not giving up India, a source of financing the war against Napoleon in 1800's and then the Industrial Revolution in 1850's, the Dutch were not giving up the financial advantages of their Spices Empire in Batavia (Indonesia). History has shown this. Once gained under a state capitalism Japan was not going to give up its financial advantages gained by the 1980's when the US was weak or disorganized, till the last battle was fought.  Lighthizer who for the relentless Japanese was equally relentless till the goal of fair and level playing field for America was secured. This is true for China today on Liberation Day. This entire report by De Pillis in 2020 shows the Chinese would be relentless in 2020 like the Japanese in the 1980's, the Dutch in Indonesia  in the 18th and 19th century and the British in India in the 19th century and 20th century. China turned Mexico and Vietnam into supply routes into the US market. It continued its efforts to gain US technology in other ways. USTR older officials from the Bush Obama years of failed negotiations with China and endless hours putting together minute details of agreements including the TransPacific Agreement of Obama were not going to like the new approach of Lighthizer so stuck were they with the old approach of no clear goal and not getting an even playing field from China. ...

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David Malpass is the choice of the Trump administration to head the World Bank. He has worked with Latin American countries at the State Department, was the Treasury official responsible for the World Bank in the Reagan administration, and worked on Argentine currency, China trade matters in the Trump administration.

Malpass negotiated a $13 billion replenishment for the World Bank in 2017, with U.S. share of $1.2 billion. This capped the bank's lending at $25 billion.

Last year the World Bank provided China with $60.5 billion in loans for 400 projects, which this WSJ editorial says is loans China does not need with its $3.07 trillion in foreign reserves. This editorial is critical of the current World Bank head Dr. Kim for taking a job with a World Bank partner the private equity fund GIP.

The World Bank has played a significant role in development for South Asia and China in the early years after World War II.

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Automakers will have to ensure that 40 to 45% of a car's content is made by workers in the U.S. earning at least $16 per hour. If this is not met automakers pay a 2.5% tariff for cars brought in from Mexico. Mexico makes 2.3 million cars and Canada 1.8 million. Automakers invested tens of billions of dollars in Mexico turning it into a lower cost export hub. This has led to job loss in the U.S. Mr. Trump's efforts in the new trade deal with Mexico are designed to increase investment in the U.S. auto industry.

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Raising the minimum wage makes sense because it is low and has not caught up with inflation. In real terms it is lower today than in the 1960's, even though productivity has doubled, which is why it makes sense. Economic sudies show that it is not likely to reduce jobs.

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Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State meets with Tory group of MP's that want to see other issues relating to China tackled following exclusion of Huawei from UK 5G networks, and suspension of the extradition treaty with Hong Kong. This includes 120,000 Chinese students attending British universities and many students involved in advanced scientific research. Both Labour party leaders and Conservative party leaders support taking action to protect British interests relating to sharing sensitive technology, and national security. The U.S. is moving forward with a decoupling of economic relations with China on issues of sensitive technology, transfer of technology,  ownership of American tech companies, manufacturing jobs and regaining industrial strength, and on trade that transfers wealth from America to China. Britain is having to restructure its relations with China based on the general trend in U.S. China relations. China is the UK's 6th destination for exports of goods and services, only 3.6%. U.S. is far larger about 14%. The UK also has one third of its investments overseas going to the U.S. The U.S. has total investments in the UK of 758 billion dollars in 2018, showing that Britain's relationship with the U.S. is very close. ...