LyrArc Article Gist
Okere city, Uganda is revived with a school, solar energy, health clinic, and economy built on shea tree products. All done by someone who left the area as a child during the war decades ago and lost his father, a civil servant in Uganda. The graduate of London School of Economics, Mr. Ojok Okello, says he wanted it to generate its own income and grow from the ground up with local people building a better future. He did not want it to depend on the goodwill of some white person without the locals involved. To do this he put in his own money- $39,000. This is a heart warming story of what is possible in parts of British East Africa that are being revived with the good sense, hard work and, and positive spirit that was part of its history. It shows that with the will, self confidence and implementation a lot can be done that was thought to be impossible. A story that is seen in Indian villages and other parts of the world after decades of stagnation- clean water, electricity, schools, health care.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Britain recorded the most deaths in Europe. Brazil and Russia have over 10,000 cases of coronavirus each, and the U.S. records cases close to that in the peak in April. Cases were up worldwide for May 6 to 92,000 with a quarter of these cases or about 24,000 in the U.S. The jump in cases takes the total to 3.77 million with a third of them in the U.S., according to John Hopkins database. Russia and Brazil had a slow start but are now registering large numbers of cases showing that India and other countries with limited testing could face the same situation. Russia has ramped up testing, and so have the U.S. and the UK. Moscow's mayor Sergei Sobyanin says for example that about 300,000 of the 12 million people in Moscow have the virus based on sampling surveys, more than 3 times the confirmed cases. Restrictions remain in place in Moscow beyond May 11.  Countries that were hit earlier by the virus such as Spain and France are reopening gradually after May 11. France will use red and green zones to handle restrictions so that the restrictions are customized to each place in the country. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Wholesale inflation calculated weekly is at 7% in India. And the country's Finance Minister Chidambaram says he is more concerned about inflation than a growth that slows a bit. Experts forecast growth slowing down from 9% to 7% in the next 2 years as the global slowdown affects India. For the US India has been a good export market with sales growing at the rate of 75% a year according to the USA Commerce Department. But a look at the charts shows that China also had periods of a couple of years when growth slowed to 7% in recent years before it gradually went back up to over 10%. And China's growth will also be affected by the global slowdown and fall weel below 10%. And this may be a health y thing for China as it decides what kind of growth it wants to see that is better than the haphazard growth of the last few years with its huge environmental costs and lax regulation and the imbalances in growth between urban and rural as well as wages and benefits without labor law protections to create domestic consumption by a middle class. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The German ambassador to India calls the Indian preparations for the G-20 meetings simply outstanding. Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister, is a very unpretentious person and when her plane arrived early, decided to spontaneously leave the plane without any formal arrival ceremony. The German ambassador says- "she laughed, she thought to herself it was quite funny, and we had a very nice welcome." Annalena Baerbock is simply one of the friendliest persons from Germany to land in India. It is clear about the way she relates to Africa and India- Baerbock was amazing the way she took the Benin Bronzes back to their home ground in Nigeria from Germany recently. For India she is one of those rare visitors the country is grateful to have from Germany, and welcome like no other, as one of its own. Baerbock and Habeck have given Germans something they can feel optimistic about the future.

LyrArc Article Gist
A whole range of issues can be seen in the debt crises in developing countries. The margin for error shrinks with poor governance, lack of honest assessment and transparency for finances, wars and conflicts within or outside the countries, living beyond their means, lack of focus on development, infrastructure that is unproductive or unaffordable including some Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure at higher interest rates. Countries that are dependent on overseas remittances, tourism, that were hit hard by the pandemic have seen their finances further weakened reducing the margin for error even more to the point that the smallest tipping point can lead to huge crises. Once the finances are weak all it takes is an external tipping point that creates serious crisis. The war in Ukraine with shortages of wheat, fertilizer and skyrocketing oil prices acted as that tipping point. Because this was a major blow the crises have a level of magnitude that is more than a payments crisis. One sees this in South Asia in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and in the Middle East for countries such as Egypt and Tunisia shown in this WSJ report. It is now not simply a crisis but a crisis of great magnitude because in the case of Sri Lanka and Pakistan this WSJ report says that both countries foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to the point where they can pay for only one or two months of imports according to central bank data, analysts and IMF. This crisis has affected countries that were seeing steady foreign investment such as Turkey for decades, then a sharp falloff in foreign investment with a change in the climate for foreign investment. The crisis has taken the form of high inflation, significant depreciation of currency that makes imports costlier so that shrinking revenues from loss of remittances, tourism, or other sources will now have less value in supporting import needs. Lack of a credible path can delay setting a path out of the crisis. The $1.5 billion fuel and electricity subsidy made by the prime minister of Pakistan in late February was done without IMF approval leading to the IMF program having to be renegotiated. Lack of national political and cultural consensus on a solution simply makes it that much more difficult to find the way through it. In this regard South Korea was able to tackle the 1997 financial payments crisis effectively because of a national consensus. The situation in Egypt- Egypt has borrowed $20 billion from the IMF since 2016., placing it second to Argentina in aid from IMF since 1980's.  In 2020 and 2021 Egypt' government spent more than 40% of its revenue servicing its debt, and is forecast to do the same in 2022. The situation in Tunisia- A shortage of sugar, flour, and other critical supplies, and government delaying wage payments to civil servants. The government got $400 million in financing last month from the World Bank and hopes to secure a lifeline from the IMF. Compared to the period between the 2 World Wars the two bright spots are China and India where lessons of the past of civil wars, religious or political conflict, and poor governance, lack of knowledge of how the western countries industrialized and modernized, was replaced with the conviction that drives patient effort, courage in the face of adversity, honesty, and humility to learn including from western countries that have forged their own path through the same difficult road. The most difficult experiences have offered lessons which were learned- for South Korea the Korean War and invasion from the north, China the civil war and Japanese invasion, for India the partition of India and million of refugees. Stagnation from stumbled efforts also taught lessons, the Great Leap Forward in China, the License Raj with corruption in India.       ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Under a new program to increased spending on healthcare from 1.3% of GDP to 2.5% the Indian government plans to provide free pharmaceuticals at state run hospitals. This is expected to cost $5 billion over 5 years. Initially 350 drugs would be on a list of essential medicines and would be purchased from generics manufacturers in India. Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, heads the committee advising the Indian government on healthcare. He says this will help improve access to medicines for the vast majority of the people. Estimates show 70% of out of pocket medical costs for Indians come from spending on drugs. About 40 million people are pushed into poverty each year because of the high cost of medicines, says Dr. Reddy. He said that in 1984 31% of the medicines at government run hospitals were provided free to admitted patients, dropping to 9% in 2004. For outpatients this dropped from 18% to 5%. The free medicine program would be part of a larger universal health care program to be introduced over the next decade. India's large generics pharmaceutical industry makes the provision of free medicines on a large scale a feasible option in India because of the lower prices, with additional pricing advantages when purchased in larger volumes by the government. This would also have a major impact on the quality of healthcare in the country of 1.2 billion people for a relatively small investment. It also promotes a sense of fairness and equal access because the benefits of decades of modernization have been unevenly distributed and because of widespread poverty....

LyrArc Article Gist
Teva Pharmaceutical plans to acquire the generic drug business of Allergan in 2015. Teva's sales of generics were $9.1 billion in 2014, according to EvaluatePharma, over 50% of its total sales, and 12% of global market. Alergan had $6.6 billion in generic sales in 2014. Allergan's strategy is to move up the market to branded drugs because of price competition from India in generic drugs. Teva's strategy is to increase the size of its generic business to better tackle pricing issues.

LyrArc Article Gist
This WSJ editorial in August 2013- with the sharp depreciation of currencies in India and Indonesia, with Thailand and Malaysia expected to follow- says this will help improve the productivity of investments in emerging markets, but hurt revenue growth of American companies in emerging markets. Ben Bernake's QE monetary easing is proving difficult to unwind as experts fom Meltzer, Feldstein, and Taylor, and the Jounral's own editorials had warned. As the U.S. and the eurozone recover capital is moving back to developed countries.

LyrArc Article Gist
Key points in Putin annexation speech are shown in the Washington Post. Putin presented an anti-western view that went over European history of colonialism in Africa and Asia. It presented a Russian nationalist view oof European powers and the US as trying to diminish Russia throughout history, that refers more to the British than for the country that emerged from British colonies in America with the idea that "all men are created equal." This was similar to a speech made at the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine that stated some of the same points. Putin referred also to the use of total bombing on Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne, by the US and Britain, and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in 1945, the US action in the Vietnam war. Putin's view- "I emphasize that one of the reasons for the centuries old Russophobia, the undisguised malice of these western elites toward Russia is precisely that we did not allow ourselves to be robbed during the period of colonial conquests. We forced the Europeans to trade for mutual benefit." About this version of history of European colonial powers - it is not entirely true, because as Cambridge historian Brendan Simms points out in his  book-  Europe- the Struggle for Supremacy  from 1453 to the Present,  Russia is itself throughout this period one of these European powers. Russia was also one of the powers present in China before the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and in 1901 when the concessions were drawn from China in that period. Of the military force of 19,000 that entered Beijing in 1900 and crushed the Boxer rebellion of local Chinese calling for ouster of foreigners from China, Britannica.com shows that most of the them came from Russian and Japan, with lesser numbers from Britain, France, the US and Austria Hungary.  After suppressing the Boxers the foreign powers including Russia, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and also the US asked for reparations and concessions on Chinese ports. Tsingtao went to Germany, The British and Russians getting concessions in Tianjin. Only America stated under president Woodrow Wilson that the reparations were excessive. Wilson converted American reparations into funding for Beijing's first modern university Tsinghua University, where  many of China's leaders were educated. During the period 1901 to 1945 the US opposed British colonialism in India and China. The US opposition with its Pacific fleet was strong enough to prevent further division of China among the colonial powers. In the 1940's the US under Franklin Roosevelt and his representative in China General Jospeh Stilwell carried out the campaign against the Japanese invasion of China so that the national integrity of China could be preserved. Stilwell called for reforms of the corrupt Chiang Kai Shek Koumintang government which rejected Stilwell's advice. Leading to its gradual collapse to the Communists under Mao-tse-tung, as the popular support shifted. It is now known what exchanges took place between Franklin Roosevelt and British governments including Churchill and Clement Attlee, and it can be said that the US under FDR was always putting pressure on the British Empire to free India from colonial rule. In 1942 there is the letter from Gandhi at Wardha to Roosevelt asking for help just before the Quit India movement, and Roosevelt's response is clear in the way he told Churchill by 1943 that America would never go along with Britain's unfair and impoverishing rule of India after winning the war. Roosevelt did not need Churchill's "growling" response, he had already put the British as a junior and much diminished partner. American help was crucial in convincing the British to quit India, which is also why it happened so quickly after 1945.  During the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe after defeating Germany in 1945, much of Eastern Europe came under Soviet and Russian domination. Poland was partitioned between Germany then called  Prussia, Austria and Russia, as colonial powers in 1772, followed by further partitions. The roots of the Ukraine crisis in some ways involve Poland and Polish history, as Lviv is only 70 kilometres from Poland. As the view on the Ukrainian side reflects this colonial history of Russia and of Germany in western parts of Ukraine. America under Abraham Lincoln fought a great war of Emancipation to live up to the document of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 that "all men are created equal." The United States of America did not look to colonial possessions for its wealth because of the abundant land in a new continent and the early developments of the Industrial Revolution. Of rail, steamship, of mechanized agriculture and industrial production, in the period after 1850 that made America unrivaled in its industrial strength right upto the 1950's, and  which continues to the present day.  The industrial development of of Japan and South Korea, then of China, and now in India would not be possible without the  hand extended out by America to nations in Asia,  a benevolent hand in creating a tide that lifts all boats. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Seen in a larger context, the Biden tax pledge seen from the southern and midwestern and less well off states is not about taxes, it is about federal revenues that build the infrastructure and services in these states that increase the standard of living. This happened in the 1930's and 1940's under FDR and Truman, in the 1950's under Eisenhower, in the 1960's under Kennedy/LBJ. And is happening again under Biden today. Lets not forget that president John F. Kennedy says in his speeches that these regions in America in the 1860's under Lincoln were in development close to what prevailed in the 1960's in India, Ceylon, Chile, Turkey or China. The Biden pledge not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 is significant because it grasps the situation in America where extraordinary gains in wealth since 1980 have gone only some of it to the top 1-2% in midwestern states and southern states, and most of it to the top 3-5% in coastal states population in the east and west, New York and California, where the finance and tech industry are based. In Michigan and Wisconsin only 2% of households make more than $400,000, in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Florida 3%. WSJ shows a map of the US showing this for individual states. The core southern states have 2% of households with incomes over $400,000- including Arkansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, with Mississippi less than 1%. It is only segregation in the late 1960's and culture issues such as abortion that have turned them from Democratic states to Republican states as they were the largest beneficiaries of taxes diverted into investment in these places since FDR/Truman and John Kennedy/LBJ. It was JFK who came up with the phrase "a rising tide lifts all boats" when he opened federally funded projects in Arkansas. Seen objectively the large investments made under Lincoln, FDR/Truman, Kennedy/LBJ from tax revenues are what changed this region from conditions that prevailed in less developed countries that John Kennedy points out in his speeches, true for the midwest, parts of the west, and the southern states alike.  President Kennedy said on Feb. 25, 1963 to the American Bankers Association Symposium on Economic Growth: "Today, many Americans tend to think of developing underdeveloped countries in terms only of faraway nations. But in 1863, even measured by 1963 dollars, our own per capita income--and this should be a source of encouragement to many who are laboring with the problem of underdevelopment in far-off countries--our own per capita income was less than $1 a day, approximately the same as Chile's. Nearly 60 percent of our labor force was engaged in agriculture, the same percentage as is today engaged in the Philippines. An estimated 20 percent of our population was illiterate, the same percentage of the population of Ceylon. Only one-fifth of our 34 million people lived in towns or cities of over 5,000 in population, as is roughly true now of Turkey. In 1863, this Nation had fewer railroad tracks laid than India has today, and its children had a shorter life expectancy than a child born this year in Thailand or Zanzibar."   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Claudia Sheinbaum's father was a biology professor at UNAM, her mother a chemical engineer. She studied physics at UNAM (Universidad Autonomo de Mexico) and did her dissertation for doctoral work comparing energy use of the US and Mexico at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Berkeley, California. She returned to the faculty of engineering at UNAM in 1995. In 2000 she was appointed energy minister in the Mexico City government by the city's Mayor Lopez Obrador.  From 2018 to 2023 she was Mayor of Mexico City and a close associate of Lopez Obrador who supported her for president in 2024. Mexico limits presidents to one six year term. This period was overshadowed by the migration crisis with the US, building of the Border Wall by Trump, the negotiation of the new trade agreement with the US and Canada, the pandemic and its impact on the poorer classes in Mexico. Obrador attacked corruption in Mexico that had become entrenched under previous parties to bring good governance. Under Obrador Mexico brought millions out of poverty. Sheinbaum's sweeping election win shows that Obrador is one of the most popular presidents in the world. Mexico has an opportunity to bring tens of millions more into the mainstream economy under Sheinbaum. As a neighbor of the US Mexico stands to benefit from a diversifying supply chain for the US that includes Mexico and India that will boost Mexico's manufacturing, create jobs and increase economic growth. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In a country with 70% inflation and debt of $83 billion, the NPP party leader Anura Dissanayake  who had only 3% of votes in the 2019 election wins by a landslide. Sri Lanka's economy is stabilizing with IMF assistance and negotiation, yet the economy has left the people in great difficulty to meet basic needs. Dissanayake led the JVP party in 1989-1997 period with considerable disturbances for which he has apologized. The Rajapaksa government also won with a landslide but failed during covid and the debt buildup crippled the economy and left the central bank without funds for essential imports. Ranil Wickremasinghe of a centre right party the UNP led a government after the economic collapse and negotiated a deal with the IMF, which included raising taxes to stabilize finances. Corruption and depletion of funds that are allocated for infrastructure and essential economic improvement, is a perennial problem in Sri Lanka since independence, making it impossible to build a modern economy from what the British left- rubber and tea plantations, an educated citizenry, good administration without the investment it deserved.  This problem also exists in India, Malaysia and many parts of Asia. The Modi government in Gujarat and the federal level was the first to break away from this by making every infrastructure dollar count and well spent with delivery in 3-4 years of highways, hospitals, airports, bridges, and logistics infrastructure for exports. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Bide meets British prime minister Starmer in Wasnhington as Britain is ready to approve use of its long range missile systems inside Russia. This comes as Russia is about to gain control of the Donetsk region. Republicans other than Mr. Trump and his supporters are for stronger support to Ukraine following US policy of opposing invasion to achieve military goals since 1900 against the Japanese in China and the Vietnam War was fought on the same basis in the 1960's considering the South Vietnamese state as an independent republic, just  invaded by the north, by North Vietnam, just as the US had done in the Korean War between North and South Korea. In the Vietnam War nationalism played apart with the Vietnamese nationalism prevailing by 1970. Russians see Kiev as the origin of the Russian State in the 9th century, and eastern region of Donetsk as Russian if western Ukraine seeks to join NATO and EU. Britain has opposed Russia since 1750 as it saw Russia as the threat to an Empire it was building in South Asia, in India that financially supported its Empire worldwide for 200 years till about 1950. Britain engaged in the Crimean War against Russia so that along with the French it could control Turkey and its Ottoman states in the Arab Middle East under the guise of trade. This effort was pushed back by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920's when he founded the modern state of Turkey in Ankara. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The heavy monsoon rains this year and the lack of adequate storage facilities may result in the loss of 10-15% of the wheat and rice harvest this year, according to Indian government sources. This means food prices are rising because of this loss of grain. India badly needs more and better warehouses to store grain and control food prices.

LyrArc Article Gist
How quickly the wind's direction has changed. For decades since 2000 American companies moved operations to China for manufacturing upto a point where there was over concentration and risks in the supply chain seen during the pandemic and as US- China relations diverged on issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ukraine. This report looks at the US companies shift to looking for ways to shift operations to India, Vietnam and other locations.

In an annual survey 30% of American Chamber of Commerce in China companies out of 360 respondents are shifting their operations for manufacturing to other countries from China. About 25% of tech and R&D companies said they had already begun moving their supply chains out of China.

LyrArc Article Gist
Saying that these countries had significantly cut imports from Iran, the U.S. government gave exemptions from the sanctions on Iran to 10 European countries and Japan. Exemptions were given to Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. This leaves 11 countries facing possible sanctions including China, India and S. Korea, with negotiations underway with these three major importers. The sanctions law passed by the U.S. Congress gives the government room to avoid damage to global oil markets and U.S. allies.

LyrArc Article Gist
The focus is shifting from the oil majors to the companies in the oil field services sector, companies that supply the oil companies with oil field services. Deepwater oil field drilling rigs some of the most modern computer controlled ones run $650 million are in great demand and one Norwegian supplier of drilling rigs has anticipated the demand for advanced deepwater drilling rigs which the major oil companies had not invested in and is now in a position to charge $600,000 a day for the advanced rigs he has ordered 3 years ago as the deepwater drilling took off in places like offshore Angola. Earlier this Norwegian had anticipated the shift to long haul shipping of oil to places like India and China from Iran and offshore Africa.

LyrArc Article Gist
A World Food Program report says India is home to over a fourth of the hungry people in the world, about 230 million people. Purnima Menon of the Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C., says India ranks below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on a Global Hunger Index. It ranks Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India, as somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia. And serious hunger and malnutrion persists in states that have done better in economic growth, like Gujarat and Maharashtra. The number of children suffering from malnutrition in 2009 is in the range of 42.5% in India compared to about 7% in China, according to figures cited by Rieff.

LyrArc Article Gist
Canadian steel and lumber industries get government aid, as talks to end US tariffs are halted over an ad on Reagan misrepresenting him on tariffs by Ontario state.  Canada's steel and lumber industries will get the aid in the form of railway costs cut in half with rail subsidies, and tariffs on US steel imports into Canada to reduce domestic steel costs for other industries. Stellantis shifts car production for a new Jeep from suburban Toronto to Illinois, GM cut a shift at a pickup plant and closed a electric van plant in Ontario. Not all imports to the US from Canada face tariffs. Other products enter the US from Canada under a free trade agreement USMCA that went into effect July 1 2020. Canada is also shifting policy under Carney's Liberals on climate change, as it seeks to reorient its economy to export oil to China and India- a new pipeline is now approved for oil and gas to be shipped across the country from Alberta. Since it's independence with Dominion status in 1867 Canada's economy has struggled with the idea of building a economy separate from the US so that trade between the northeastern Canada and Northeastern US which is next to each other is foregone for trade with distant provinces in the western states such as Alberta and British Columbia. In Brazil Lula's Worker's Party is also slowing efforts on climate change for the economy as it approves oil and gas projects in the Amazon, at the same time as it holds COP30 at Belem port in the Amazon. Even Biden had shown flexibility on the economy to support cost of living measures that are in conflict with climate change action. In DJT's second term climate change action has taken a back seat to cost of living concerns when a large majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mark Landler's interview with Hussain Haqqani in Oct. 2013 provides insights into the misperceptions on both sides of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship since 1947. Particularly the way Pakistan cannot shake free from seeing everything through the prism of India. He points out that Ambassador Holbrooke had a forward looking approach to the South Asian region, but failed to get the support of president Obama and the weak leadership of president Zardari, resulting in a squandered opportunity for the region to look beyond the twentieth century's conflicts towards a brighter future.

LyrArc Article Gist
The vast expansion of the Indian middle class takes on a different dimension a few weeks before the election say experts, as India heads into a general election after the India Pakistan conflict in February 2019. This is because national security now has a wider constituency. It could help the incumbent party the BJP with urban voters and swing voters as the issue of security remained prominent in the northern states. In other states where caste and regional politics, farmer agricultural related issues are prominent, this could be less of a factor. Overlooked in this is the manner in which new investments in infrastructure have been pushed forward for rail, road and bridges, and in other infrastructure such as hospitals and universities. The government slogan is that what was once considered impossible is now possible. New metro lines are being inaugurated in many cities including Ahmedabad, Mumbai. The speed with which the Metro in Mumbai is being built, with the head of the project saying it should have been built yesterday, is an example of the urgency given to infrastructure. The government is pushing hard to convey the image that the next 5 years would lead to an infrastructure building boom that it has shown can be done. A recent report in the Guardian shows that China is pouring every 2 years more concrete than the U.S. did in the entire 20th century. This fact drives India under Modi as it heads into the 2019 election, the sense that previous governments had never pushed India's potential for modernization similar to its East Asian neighbors, Japan, South Korea and China.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
India's largest oil refiner, state owned Indian Oil, had a loss of $4 billion in the June 2012 quarter. Analysts say prices have to go up by 26% for sales to be profitable. The government mandates fuel prices at below market rates. Below market prices for diesel are estimated to cause 60% of the loss at refiners.

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's DW.com says in this report- "However, economists have pointed out that the US benefits from having large trade imbalances with the rest of the world, as the dollar is used in most trade, and offers major tailwind effects to the US economy." Which economists one must ask? Most of these economists had turned their back on the working people in factories in America, on their wages turned into a downward spiral, on their jobs, their factories lost for three decades. Today the American people have a sense of the true cost of this colossal failure to protect American workers and small towns across America depending on manufacturing. The pandemic exposed the risks of supply chain shocks and inflation by overly concentrating manufacturing in China.  The US has 1 trillion in trade deficits each year and it is completing the destruction of manufacturing in the US. Half of this is with China as China exports through Vietnam and Mexico, third countries, in addition to 295 billion dollars of trade imbalance the US has with China. China, Mexico, Canada and Vietnam are the largest offenders. No country can long endure with such a loss of its manufacturing base. The US Navy itself is in danger without the manufacturing to compete with China that has taken up over 50% of shipbuilding, and soon will not be able to protect the free world if these types of economists and self serving German or other foreign interests drive a false narrative. Without the US Navy in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans no one is safe, not Germany, not the EU, not India or the rest of the world. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Nikki Haley is doing what has happened before, fighting for principles in her party and showing that a fully significant 40 percentage points of her party believe in the old conservative ideas, of the Republican party. That of the country club type, the everyman who happens to be conservative the core of the party, small and large business owners. The situation is analogous to the intraparty struggles that beset the Democratic party after the abrupt end after 1000 days of the John F. Kennedy presidency and administration. Since the 1920's and two periods of rising inequality accompanied by technological change from the 1870's that ended with the Great Depression, the US had experienced a great revival under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Eisenhower. In 1960 a new future was articulated by Kennedy of the new world that lay ahead, one he had seen upfront in Asia before, during and after the war. How would we bring the post colonial world of billions of people into the modern world. Since then both a modern China and now modern India are part of this change. "Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do." Acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, July 15, 1960. It was interrupted after the intraparty disputes that began in 1968, Robert Kennedy challenging LBJ, leading to Richard Nixon, and Edward Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter leading to Ronald Reagan. John F. Kennedy had articulated a vision that still is alive today based on an understanding of how America's needs fit into all humanity's needs.  In some ways the situation after 2024 or 2028 still goes back to the vision of a new order of the world with emerging nations in Asia with 3 billion people, and additional billions of people in Africa, Latin America. The Arms buildup promised by Reagan in 1980 has yielded little about 50 years later, not even the fall of the Berlin Wall which today has been replaced by another struggle in Eastern Europe in 2024. Truman tackled the Berlin Blockade,  Eisenhower had faced upto Soviet tanks in Budapest, Kennedy had faced the Berlin crisis in 1963 his ich bin ein Berliner (I am Berliner). What purpose would an orbital weapons program serve- and could the US ever be or even want to be  "only one superpower in a safe world," with an orbital weapons program as Reagan and Weinberger went out to do and failed completely. America faces a situation analogous to 1920's with increasing inequality and weakness in the social fabric, as a result of four decades of rising inequality accompanied by technological changes, and misguided Reagan programs that diverted from John Kennedy's vision that the "old era is ending, the old ways will not do."  The vision put forward by John F. Kennedy has more relevance today for the future. That vision he articulated in the First Inaugural Address in which he also said that this work may not be accomplished "in our lifetime on the planet." It is important to remember that John F. Kennedy connected his vision to FDR when he said in his State of the Union Address to Congress in Jan. 1961- In the name of a great President whose birthday we honor today, closing his final State of the Union Message sixteen years ago. "We pray that we may be worthy of the unlimited opportunities that God has given us." This is the vision that stands before America even today in 2024.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...