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The 2016 primaries with Sanders and Trump have brought to the forefront voter dissatisfaction with the agenda of both parties, especially so for Republicans with the lack of specifics and personality driven campaign of frontrunner Trump. On a whole host of issues from poverty, wages and inequality, regulatory reform, to trade, borders, security, ISIS, both parties are facing questions from voters. Particularly the Republicans who have lacked specifics during the two terms of the Democratic Obama administration with a divided Republican Congress, and the risks for Republicans running for Congress under frontrunners Trump or Cruz who have provided few details on their agenda. The Agenda project of Ryan will have about 25 meetings and prepared specific agenda, including white papers and legislation, that would give Republicans hope to run on positive proposals that are placed before the Republican Convention in Cleveland. Chairmen of House standing committees were assigned 6 areas- health care, taxes, national security, regulatory reform, poverty, and Congress reasserting constitutional authority. Ryan told the Ethics and Public Policy Center on April 19, 2016- "A lot of people don't like conservatism as they know it. For too many people Republicans seem to be caught in a time warp. They're thinking, 'We don't control our borders. Wages are going nowhere. College and healthcare keep getting expensive. ISIS continues to spread. And what are Republicans going to do about it?' So we need to adapt our policies to meet the challenges of the 21st century."...

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration failed to take action when asked by drivers to investigate incidents of unintended acceleration. It also failed to take up action with the company's quality staff in Japan- who were in charge of things related to quality- after what appeared to be years of inaction and stalling by Toyota. Where it did investigate, the agency did nothing about the complaints when Toyota failed to provide the necessary information. Internal agency documents show that since 2003 the agency opened inquiries into possible Toyota problems, and six times closed them without action of any sort. With agency managers joining Toyota after their work at the agency, there appears to have been a cozy relationship with Toyota. Add to that the lack of a steady hand at the agency- with about 6 changes in directors since 2005- and the current administrator David Strickland only confirmed in December 2009. Throughout its 6 investigations NHTSA regulators were told they have to talk not with Toyota USA but Toyota people in Japan who made the decisions and had the answers, yet no effort was made to break the logjam and get Toyota Japanese managers to provide answers. At one point State Farm Insurance brought the incidents of accidents and near accidents to the attention of NHTSA, something that happened a decade before this in the Ford Explorer roll over accidents. On both occasions NHTSA was slow to act....

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Galston says the Hillary Clinton campaign strategy may be flawed. Following a president from the same party who has served two terms is difficult for a presidential candidate because of an anti-incumbency mood that sets in after 8 years. Galston cites an expert from Emory University about this costing the incumbent party about 4 percentage points in votes. This would eliminate President Obama's 3.9 percentage point win in 2012, says Galston. Hillary Clinton's cautious campaign sticking to the themes set by the Obama campaign and appealing to the core base of young people, women, minorities, and upscale professionals, runs the risk of not appealing to other voters needed such as the working class white voters. Stanley Greenberg, a pollster with much experience is cited by Galston as showing that the women's vote also is not the same for Democrats. Among unmarried white women for instance it has dropped from a 20 point margin in 2008 for Mr. Obama to a 4 point margin in 2012. By 2014 this was down to 2 points, and in 2015 this is now down to zero margin, with both Republicans and Democrats even among unmarried white women. Unmarried and working class white women are described by Greenberg as looking for a candidate who can help the middle class, with Democrats perceived as the party of government and special interests, making the 2016 election different from the ones before it....

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Mark Leibovich gives a detailed account of David Plouffe, one of President Obama's close political advisors, who has Obama's confidence on campaign and political issues. Leibovich says Mr. Obama has always been attracted to people who are loyal and act as fixers. He cites the film "The Godfather" as Obama's favorite movie, and Plouffe as the unyielding cop in a mob film "The Departed." Characteristics of Plouffe described by colleagues are extreme competitiveness, extremely unsentimental, extremely data driven. In a way the President's closest advisors offer clues to the nature of the President's style, approach to politics, and the conduct of the U.S. presidential office during this Presidency, as in others. Plouffe is described by colleagues as most in sync with Mr. Obama. And William Daley, the president's former chief of staff, says the Plouffe and Obama relationship is extremely private- using 6 very's to accent this. Issues relating to the shrinking middle class are coming to the fore in this election. A friend of Plouffe's, Steve Elmendorf, describes him by saying that he isn't sure whether Plouffe has any convictions about the middle class, its mostly a passion for winning and putting together the outfit to do this. For the bigger vision things Plouffe's colleague, David Axelrod, another campaign advisor has put together the themes and lofty phrases that President Obama has supported. The sense given by Mark Leibovich is of some wonderfully good packaging with a steely attitude. ...

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Wang Xiaofang is a former bureaucrat and writer who documents real life stories of corruption in China's bureaucracy by using fictional characters. A similiar approach by another Chinese writer Mo Yan in literary novels led to him being awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. Censorship in China has not affected writings using fictional characters and literary novels of this kind. It may be seen by the government as a way to let the public ventilate some of its frustrations with corrupt bureaucrats and communist party officials in China. It also shows how widespread the problem has become and is a serious matter for the future of the Communist Party. Wang tells the Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival after he entered the official bureaucracy he felt the desire "not to be spiritually crippled." Wang is the author of the Civil Servant's Notebook, which is described as a guide for the 1.4 million people taking the civil service exams in China each year. This suggests that China's new leadership sees this as one of the ways to give right direction to young people joining the civil service, and comes with a new focus on corruption. Wang is also part philosopher in his musings when he says China has lost its traditional culture and cannot adopt western culture, and so it remains confused at a crossroad. This leads to his idea of operators in China's official circles as people who have lost their faith and spiritual home. ...

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David Obey, head of the House Appropriations Committee who wants to see a war surtax so that the burden of the war does not just rest on military families. Says Obey, who came to the House in 1969, the first year Nixon engaged in the Vietnam war- "I am damn tired of a situation in which only military families are asked to pay any price whatsoever for this war." He asked Obama to listen to the archival audiotapes of President Johnson in Bill Moyers PBS documentary on the Vietnam War in which Johnson tells Dick Russell Senator from Goergia-" Well we know this is damn near a fool's errand but we don't have any choice." Obey has no faith in the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan so he does not see any chance for a strategy to succeed in Afghnistan and he says "I didn't come here to be Richard Nixon's congressman, Reagan's congressman, Obama's congressman, I'm here representing the Seventh District of Wisconsin." To know Obey is to know him through the decades standing in Congress, fighting for spending on health, education and social programs, part of the agenda rooted in his Catholic faith, which he says demands that he try "to make this an equal society for everybody." In his spare time Obey plays the harmonica, with his rendition of "Amazing Grace" at a friend's funeral putting "everybody in tears," according to Governor James Doyle of Wisconsin. ...

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The transformation of Fiat Auto. Marchionne relying on "my kids", getting good people throughout the Fiat global operations and outside of a younger generation, who were open to doing things in a new way. He had the courage to unassumingly go about the business of remaking Fiat, by removing middle and upper managers who produced a kind of paralysis or sclerosis in Fiat, making change impossible after years of a failed culture embedding itself. And in their place he brought in an energetic courageous bunch of younger managers and designers. It would be fair to say that he tore up the old plans, tore up the old organization charts, tore up the car plans and designs in the pipeline, tore up the failed models and put in place new ones- the Bravo for the Stilo, and tore up the old management, put in new people and tasks and wedded them in an informal way, with their own culture developing along the way. The were teams and their tasks, all wedded together in an informal arrangement, in close proximity, with informal communication. Marchionne saw his role as helping people reach decisions, setting stretch goals, and encouraging levels below him to take responsibility and make courageous decisions. He saw the Cinquicento as his version of the Apple iPod, and benchmarked Fiat against Apple, so he was looking outside the auto industry for people to emulate and for new ideas. He himself was from outside the auto industry. ...

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Lessons for startup Jive, social networking software for business financed by Sequoia Capital. It did well in the beginning with a number of high profile sales. Then things fell apart with inexperience and a series of mistakes. With $15 million of capital raised from Sequoia in August 2007 discipline started to fall away, bad hires were made in a hurry to speed things up, staff tripled to 150 by the beginning of 2008, and there were a lot of problems with the new software. In October Sequoia went in and fired 25, 3 managers, and cancelled a project. Sequoia Capital held a direct talk in October with executives of its 100 companies, and about 1000 layoffs were made. The presentation was direct, showing a pig with a butchers knife in its head and the slide reading R.I.P. Good Times, saying that for startups it would be the survival of the quickest, the companies quickest to cut costs and be profitable. The sales people just took on as customers anyone who was interested or called. And as the economy worsened and this software was not an essential purchase they cancelled. Now the new sales approach is to say no, and get customers who actually save money from using the product or see some vitally important benefit. The sales person actually tries to find out about a company's plans, its budgets, to see if there is a good fit. Jives at this point is a survivor....

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New figures on campaign financing show the that from Oct 15 onwards the Obama campaign spent $161.5 million, the McCain campaign spent $75 million. Obama outspending McCain 2 to 1. By the end of the campaign Obama had raised $750 million. To get a sense of these numbers. This was three times what President Bush had raised, the previous record. Obama would have received $84 million in public financing after the Democratic party's national convention, and had to stop raising money at that point. This is what McCain did. Starting in September Obama spent $380 million and McCain $195 million. By mid October 2008, the Obama campaign raised $300 million in contributions of $200 or less -at which point donor identity's need not be revealed- from 4 million donors, according to Campaign Finance Institute. It also raised $300 million in contributions of $1000 or more for the period before mid-October. What this means is the figures have far outstripped what was set aside by campaign finance laws and the party with the bigger fundraising machine has little incentive to work for updating the laws. It also means good candidates who do not want to do this much fund raising or who are not good fund raisers will not participate in elections that determint the direction of the country, depriving the country of such service. It also means government policy is likely to be distorted sometimes with serious consequences by donors, bundlers and lobbyists. ...

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Factors favoring Jeb Bush are his good grasp of policy and the issues, his ability to draw Hispanic voters, favorable opinion in the media, and resources including family network, financial strength. Problems Jeb Bush could face is with a candidate who could attract ordinary voters in the primaries and could better blend support from the right and centrist voters.

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Interview with German Greens party politician, Jurgen Trittin, who could be finance minister in a Greens supported government. Trittin says his views are similiar to that of the IMF which is calling for debt relief for Greece. If elected in a Greens-SDP coalition, Trittin says, he would end the policy of purely cutting state expenditures.

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Without a final Brexit agreement Britain has the advantage of being able to use Northern Ireland, which would remain in the EU, as a way to send British goods into the European market including goods from companies subsidized by Britain. This and related reasons on Britain being able to set its own rules on the borders between the two Irelands, and on its trade and movement of goods, is why Boris Johnson says Britain does not absolutely need an agreement on Brexit with the EU.

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Some of the key executives are leaving Airbus as the company faces turmoil in its executive ranks. CEO Tom Enders leaves in April 2019, Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bergier leaves Feb. 2018. John Leahy in sales left Airbus, and others who left the company include the head of engineering, and the chief technology officer. All this is happening as the company faces investigations in several countries including France and Austria for corruption, and according to this report for using middlemen and making illegal payments.

In France Airbus offices have been raided in an investigation. Enders is one of the executives being investigated in a combat jet deal. COO Bergier is leaving with a good record for managing the smooth development of the A350 wide body aircraft, and the production increase to 700 aircraft in 2017 for the first time in the company's history.

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Toutiao and the growing mobile segment for news aggregated from thousands of sources for tech, politics, and other local news. Toutiao and Tencent QQ are taking advantage of the growing need for news in China. Toutiao's algorithm targets new internet users in rural areas and small towns who are looking for news and do not need the use of global news sites as is done by Google and Apple. The deep learning of computers is used to study user habits such as learning about the main soccer teams, watching funny videos,as habits of users. Beijing Bytedance Technology has come up with the new site. The highest growth rate is now for news on mobile, growth is 73% year over year far surpassing travel and mobile video, according to QuestMobile.

China restricts use of Google and Facebook News and other sites and favors local content and news sites to give international news, and news about China.

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Though the smoking rate has dropped in the U.S. to 15% of adults smoking, the figures conceal a socioeconomic fact. Many of the smokers are now concentrated in rural areas and among less educated people. The rate for people with only a high school diploma is about 40%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The result is that people in rural areas are diagnosed of lung cancer at rates 18-20 % higher than city residents. These are two worlds says one rural resident who has grandchildren in D.C. suburbs. She is fighting the battle against smoking yet sees this is less of an issue for city residents. Her experience is that the family, health, work and other problems drive people to smoke more in rural areas of Virginia, including her small town of Martinsville, Virgina. An added problem is the marketing by tobacco companies to these areas.

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U.S. president Trump's executive order reversing parts of the Clean Power Plan of president Obama may extend the life of older coal powered plants, but overall it is unlikely to change the shift away from coal for the U.S. utility industry. It will do little to reverse the market forces that are leading to a shift to natural gas for the utility industry with the increasing availability of natural gas. In this WSJ report Cassandra Sweet cites Duke Energy Corp. CEO Lynn Good, who says natural gas for Duke will be the leading fuel followed by coal by 2026, and natural gas now makes up 28% of its mix with coal at 34%. He says a $11 billion ten year investment in natural gas and renewable energy will go through regardless of what the Trump administration does because of the economics- the declining price of renewables, the competitive price of natural gas. Companies are loath to base their long term plans on changes in administration as they see the economics dictated by advances in technology, and the general sense that cleaner energy is here to stay for the long run. Already in the U.S. 34% of total power supplies are from natural gas and 30% from coal for 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Department. This may change slightly as coal is used where it is economical and makes sense without the carbon rules, yet the long term trend is clearly towards natural gas. ...

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Peter Baker talks to experts on American presidents about Trump's 100 days in office. One expert says the presidency has changed Trump more than Trump has changed the presidency. Trump has told reporters recently that the job was harder than he thought, the decisions requiring much more thought and much harder. Described during the campaign as following instincts, impetuous and brushing off briefings, the Trump that has emerged in the early period is a president who surprisingly has been willing to listen to advice from Republican leaders in business and government. He has also changed course where appropriate on trade with Mexico, China, Germany and other countries, and shown decision making ability where appropriate such as over use of chemical weapons in Syria. He has listened to Muilenburg of Boeing on the Export-Import Bank, his Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on NAFTA and Mexico, to Gary Cohn his economic adviser for a careful studied approach on taxes and the economy, as covered here in Lyrarc.  And Trump has built a relationship based on discussions with president Jinping of China, which has helped create a stable climate for world trade and the economy after the ruffled period of the campaign. On NATO and South Korea he has given the lead to his advisers, Gen. Mattis, Tillerson and his vice president Pence. For this to happen president Trump with his exuberant and sometimes volatile personality has shown a capacity for learning and growth over this short period, surprising many. ...

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After the surge in illegal migration, concerns about crime, concerns about integrating newcomers, cost and strain on social and public services, homelessness in cities, there is a sense that the pause will be a good thing to give the US an opportunity to reevaluate how it manages entry and integration of newcomers. Theodore Roosevelt's remarks in 1904 Message to Congress come to mind when he said about citizenship in the US- "The citizenship of this country should not be debased. It is vital that we kep high the standard of living of our wage workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living, customs and habits are such that they tend to lower the level of the American wage worker. Above all we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man of whom we can say that he will be a bad citizen, or that his children will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of this country." This is not something new. Operation Wetback was conducted by no less than president Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 after the surge in illegal migration during the Truman administration during WW II. There was a similar sense then that the administration had taken up removal of migrants seriously and there were situations where illegal  migrants were loaded onto trucks, yet there was also a sense that there were problems with illegal migration surge that needed to be fixed including homelessness, strain on services, safety on the streets, lack of integration in culture and language. A pause means less population growth with declining population growth in the US. The natural population growth from births/deaths was 1.9 million in 2000, down to 1.1 million in 2017 and in 2025 was 519,000. At some point it will be declining, yet a pause is needed to get the citizenship education, the integration, the economic participation, the cultural side, strain on public services, to get this right. Another facet of this is its political context but all sides should think about the Nation and not politicize the issue. Outmigration to southern states and mountain states from California was 230,00, from New York 137,000, from 3 states, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts about 30,000-40,000 in 2025. As a result the southern and mountain states mostly Republican may add 6-8 Congressional seats by 2028 or 2030.   ...

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Why did Kraft Heinz wait so long (2027) to ban artificial dyes in food. Why was pressure from Robert Kennedy Jr and HHS needed for this to happen? This is a sad commentary on the people running American business, just as outsourcing hurt American workers and American communities across the landscape and continued as a practice from the largest US corporations well into the second DJT administration.

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What is the difference between South Korea and the U.S., Europe in the handling of coronavirus? It is tracking and testing.  President Trump and health adviser Dr. Fauci, see South Korea as the successful model to be followed in controlling the coronavirus. What has happened till now it is accepted with shortage of basic medical supplies and equipment, stress on hospital systems, are merely mitigation actions. South Korea was prepared for the coronavirus crisis because of the MERS and other epidemics, and failures resulting in corrective actions. Labs were centralized and better equipped for testing and tracking the infected. One of the key tools is testing. President Trump says the goal is for the U.S. to exceed and far surpass tests per capita in South Korea. Five million tests are planned by the end of April in the U.S. Where the U.S. falls short is in use of multipronged digital tracking using data from people's use of mobile phones, credit card usage, and use of apps designed to separate infected people from others. South Korea is a democracy with a population of 52 million people, about the size of France. People who were student activists in the democratization era in South Korea say the use of digital technology is a need today. We have to adapt in emergency situation they say. Ki Mo-ran, epidemiologist, and adviser to South Korean government says this is a key part lacking in the European and U.S. efforts to control coronavirus. She says in South Korea we know the patient's contacts, where he goes and stays, so we don't have to lock down everybody. Without digital tracking one cannot know which place is contaminated, which place is clean, so that there can be a lockdown of just that area and not the whole country, says Ki Mo-ran. She asks the question- is one person's privacy more important than the lives of a family or other people who are affected. Is it OK to lockdown every child in the country in a home as in Spain for over a month so that particular people's privacy is respected? These are serious questions for western society, are they exceptions or is democracy not just a western idea but equally cherished in Asian societies, people talk about Confucianism in China and the Asian culture forgetting that the biggest democracies are quite large and functioning well in India in addition to South Korea, Taiwan Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Japan, far larger in area and population than China. The French government has chosen the app TraceTogether as the least intrusive one adaptable to France for use there. The U.S. is having Google and Apple develop one of its own. India will be developing one of its own. The NYT raises the question will it be watered down so much in France or in the U.S. and UK to be less effective than the  dire need for an alternative to lockdowns? ...

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Greece's minister for migration tells the Times that seven charities including one in London form part of a chain stretching from Somalia to Britain in which smugglers move migrants illegally.  One of the seven charities is in London and is seen as colluding with human traffickers who are putting lives of migrants at risk. Greece has 70,000 migrants living in squalid refugee centres. Of these 17,000 are on islands in the Aegean sea. Europe cannot cope with all these migrants illegally making the crossing, much less during this pandemic. It has also unsettled the countries where migrants are settled on a humanitarian basis as there is at the same time serious neglect of poverty stricken communities inside Europe who are not getting the assistance they deserve. The result is even less focus on the development needs, on infrastructure, education and healthcare of the countries in Europe where migrants are headed, with the attention diverted to the migrants issue. Economic progress in Europe and rapid development could not only improve the condition of people in all communities, it could also help finance more foreign aid development project assistance to Africa and other countries. This would if vigorously done keep people in their home countries and help fulfill their development aspirations there, which is the better way.  Chancellor Merkel of Germany should have opted for a better way by setting up a program for aspiring migrants in the countries of Africa with a generous visa program offering training and technological skills, which could then be brought back to the country in Africa where it could generate jobs and opportunities with the necessary capital from European and other financial institutions and governments. This effort made in alliance with Britain and France could be powerful in its impact. Instead a haphazard three years of migration led to internal divisions, loss of confidence in the CDU and the SDP, FDP parties in coalitions, ending up where it should have started in the first place- reducing the migration to a trickle, returning some migrants back to their countries, and focussing on bringing economic assistance and development assistance to African countries for opportunities in these countries and a brighter future so that no one would want to leave and drift on oceans in tiny boats in the first place. The condition of the people in Africa is not so hopeless that the best they can do is to send their young people to drift on boats on the high seas in the hope of refugee status. China has shown that the there is a path from famine during the years following the Great Leap Forward to the development of today. India is doing that now and can repeat that story. Japan and South Korea, Taiwan have done this after devastating wars and out of nothing. Imagine what the world would be like if all these people in Asia set out on small boats for Europe.       ...

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This WSJ report sees Angela Merkel as leaving an international legacy of cooling relations with America. It says Angela Merkel turned down US president Biden's first call after his election as president because she was going to her cottage in the country that weekend. This report says after 4 terms Merkel is to be seen as dramatically increasing her country's economic dependence on China, pushing through a energy deal with Russia, joining France in challenging US political influence in Europe, rejecting American requests on economic policy and setting Berlin's openness to Chinese technology.  What happened with her youthful fascination with America during the years growing up in East Germany asks the WSJ? It also says of the Bush years of unregulated banking leading to the 2009 US banking crisis- that left her with a distaste for Anglo-Saxon banks and Wall Street lobbying. Of the Obama years it says Merkel found Obama unsteady, verbose, and sometimes meddling, with the spying on Merkel's phone also giving her a sense of disrespect to Germany. The result was that Merkel increasingly was fascinated by the Chinese experiment in development, visiting China 13 times while in office, studying Chinese history, politics and economics.  Merkel over this period met with the Dalai Lama and had questions about one party rule by CCP. Yet she became more and more resigned to Germany as a country of 80 million, not the EU and Europe as one group united in vision with a population of about 500 million, larger than America that could be a force for good in its own right. She said "we can be as hardworking, awesome,  as super as we like, but as a country of 80 million we won't be able to prevail if China ever decided that it no longer wants to have good relations with Germany." She ignored the experience of Sweden and Scandinavian countries in their relations with China. In saying this she ignored the potential of India and its neighbors in south-east Asia that make up about 2 billion people or about twice the population of China. She also seemed unaware of the role Woodrow Wilson, FDR, have played in realizing the democratic vision of the German revolutionaries of 1948 who failed to bring democratic government to Germany. And she had forgotten of the role Harry Truman, the commoner president of the US, who played a major role in establishing German democracy and its dignity during the Berlin Crisis after the blockade of Berlin by the Soviets in 1948. The mediocrity of presidents from Bush to Trump has bothered Merkel. Yet it may very well be that there is nothing mediocre about Mr. Biden and America's vision about its future as it grapples with the social and economic problems of the last three decades, as it has done before in its history and come through. ...

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President Biden addressed the Nation from the Rose garden today November 7, 2024. His remarks were conciliatory. "You can't love your neighbor only when you agree."  "Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature." It is a remarkable end to a remarkable presidency which history will judge as perhaps a single term in which more was done than in any other 4 year term of a presidency, except for FDR in 1932 and Lincoln in 1861, tackling a once in a century pandemic, and rebuilding the economy, manufacturing, and infrastructure. And even correcting missteps on immigration by getting the legislation to fix it. It is a tall order for anyone who succeeds Biden though in the current post election situation there will be the typical euphoria on one side and losing on the other.  During the Republican sweep by Herbert Hoover in 1928 Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor of New York and he used the intervening years to 1932 to prepare for the monumental task ahead by testing his plan for economic recovery using New York and a couple of states from Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, setting up the first unemployment insurance, shorter week, annual employment and other ideas to stabilize employment for one third of the US economy. Biden says he has asked his administration to work with Trump's team for the peaceful transition to a newly elected president. None of the fears about the transition came true with the new president getting a clear mandate to tackle the cost of living crisis for Americans. ...

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How China is reviving memories of its struggles with Japan since 1900 and its efforts to modernize since 1950 under the leadership of the Communist Party led by Mao and Chou-en-Lai. Who were followed by 1990-2010 by a technocratic class of engineers and professionals, and now reverts back under XI Jinping -a son of one of the founders of the revolutionary armies that fought the Japanese- reverts back to its revolutionary ideologies that defined its emergence as a modern nation. Only American business interests fail to understand the China of president Xi Jinping because they like Tim Cook have not read or understood the modern history of China. In the book "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" by Tuchman, a lot of this can be experienced first hand as we see West point colonel Joe Stilwell experience China first hand since 1920's through the phase of nationalist sentiments, outright Japanese invasion, and the setbacks as North China and the Yangste Valley fall to Japan's Kwantung Army elements who run the government by 1939. Then comes the Second World War, Marshall is appointed chief of the Army by FDR in 1939 and he makes Stilwell brigadier general and responsible for China for the next 8 years. This is a China Stilwell loved and understood from daily contacts with the ordinary people of China that are on every page of this book. Jinping's father grew up in this way leading the revolutionary armies that fought the Japanese, and some of this passed on to his son even though he suffered from the Great Proleterian Cultural Revolution of the 1960's, but understood the significance of what his parent's generation had accomplished in creating modern China free of centuries of unimaginable poverty, indifference of the ruling classes, and oppression made worse by foreign powers. ...

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After all the media talk about tariffs inflation- inflation is at 2.4% in May 2025. Tariffs was part of the toolbox of strategies under Lighthizer and Jamieson on getting fair world trade, and not like Congressman Hawley in the 1920's who understood little about the workings of the US economy. This fact the official media such as the WSJ and NYT, Wash Post, BBC need to get it right about the Hawley Tariffs. Hawley was born in rural Oregon in 1864 went to country schools, and was president of Willamette University in Salem, when it's population was 4258. As House Ways and Means Committee chairman he wrote the failed tariffs bill Hoover signed in 1930. DJT's US Trade Representative Lighthizer in 2016 led the successful negotiations with Japan under Reagan, Scott Bessent who leads negotiations on tariffs with China with USTR Jamieson, has a deep understanding and grasp of today's financial markets. Tariffs is one of the tools in the US toolbox to get Japan, China, South Korea to even the playing field for US companies and bring back manufacturing to the US. Without it China would not budge from its unfair advantage and would not negotiate in fairness. This is proven in the way Japan in the 1980s and China today are responding to the US position preparing their economies for not relying on sudden surges in exports putting whole industries and workers in America and Europe out of work and out of jobs. DJT says- "No we are not going to accept that," the EU is catching on and adopting a similar position, China knows that.  The media is irresponsible in presenting tariffs in a negative way, irresponsible to American workers the 10 million put out of work since 2000, and to American families and the Nation.   ...