LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ asks the question how are companies run in America by CEO's during the 9 month old pandemic? To answer that question it looks at Emerson Electric, based in Ferguson, Missouri, with its 90,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. David Farr is CEO of American conglomerate Emerson Electric that makes products in a number of industries, for longer than most CEO's in America. At 65 years today, he has managed the company since he became CEO at the age of 45. It has 8000 employees in China and 10,000 in Mexico, and plants in the midwest, all hard hit by the pandemic. Add to this racial riots after killing of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and you have a challenging situation for any CEO.    As a son of a plant manager at a Corning plant in Corning, New York and growing up in a manufacturing environment in England, his instincts are that customers are what matter the most. That shrinking production could lead to some competitors making it and others shrinking if they did not act quickly to protect their supply chains. His goal is to keep factories running to have parts ready for their customers who made the finished product in the oil and gas industry and in factories where Emerson supplied the automated processes. As a first step he has 7 charter planes fly parts from a Nanjing factory to Shanghai when the trucks stopped moving. He campaigns with the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. to have the company listed as essential business to be kept open in a lockdown but fails. He gets up at 5.30 am and works till 8 pm and spends most nights reading, lounging with 2 spaniels, and going to bed early. He tells his son who works at Caterpillar company to get back to work as soon as he can as he believes being on the job is really really important. Yet he is worried up his daughter working as a pastry chef in New York and wants her to come back home to the midwest. He is a manager in the old style saying he wouldn't hire American workers because the Obama administration was out to destroy American manufacturing with its environmental rules forgetting that he was doing just that in the end-  and what had America and the concept of a free nation and a free people with opportunities for all have anything to do with like or dislike of any president or party. He also has his quirks, keeping 5 baseball bats and swinging a bat while he took walks and did some thinking. Passionate, hard working, and getting it done he keeps Emerson in the game as an industrial competitor from the U.S. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
WSJ's reporters Meichtry, L, Pokharel, and Soon look at the extraordinary rise of Gautam Adani through his efforts to develop reclaimed land at Mundra port in the state of Gujarat. Adani who started with a small family owned plastics maker in Ahmedabad developed Mundra port around 2001 with the help of the Modi administration. Modi saw the electricity shortages in Gujarat as an opportunity to tackle India's chronic electricity shortages. Adani's early development of a deep water port at Mundra offered both Modi and Adani the opportunity to tackle the electricity shortages by bringing coal in large ships to Mundra in the way that China was already doing by 2005 in its own efforts at industrialization. So deeply immersed was India under the Congress Raj of licenses and closed economy that India's established business failed to see what China was doing to break into the ranks of industrialized nations. India's first prime minister Nehru had build a command economy where not much happened without government licenses and approval often riddled unwittingly with corruption. Modi needed someone outside the established companies operating under the Congress Raj command economy and with a vision of an India with abundant electricity to take the risks Chinese companies were taking to build an entirely new economy. By 2005 Guangzhou was importing coal with large ships from Indonesia and Australia. State owned companies moved slowly and would take years to develop the port capacity. Using China's example Modi pushed ahead with Adani on a rapid time delivery making Mundra a Special economic Zone and helping to connect Indian Railways to the port of Mundra for coal deliveries. Adani Enterprises built the thermal power plants near Mundra and build electricity transmission lines on a rapid mission mode giving Gujarat abundant electricity supplies and giving Gujarat state in northwestern India a great leap forward in the way China was already doing right in front of everyone's eyes by 2005 with world class ports built at Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzen, Hong Kong and logistics connections set with the help of Maersk.  Maersk is now doing the same for modern logistics in India in collaboration with the Modi administration.  Modi and the younger generation of aspirational youth in India see a New India that can break into the ranks of the largest industrialized nations with world class infrastructure in the way China has done, and use new technologies with innovation that will speed up the process in a way that the world has never seen. A quick look at Mundra Port in Wikipedia shows the timeline, It starts in 1998 when Adani Port Ltd was setup and Mundra port work began, 2002 the port integrated with Indian Railways, 2003 when it was made a Special Economic Zone by the Modi government in Gujarat, 2007 when IPO of 40 million shares at price band of around Rs 400 was done.  The Biden administration and the Trump administration support India's efforts to build a new modern economy with a rapid shift to renewable energy. As India is building the ports and logistics with the help of Maersk and other companies in the European Union, president Biden is working with prime minister Modi to build a new supply chain that removes the overconcentration of manufacturing and supply chain logistics in China. This means new ports with the latest technologies in India to handle shipment to the US and the EU. Jake Sullivan set out the goals for president Biden to accomplish this task in meetings with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval this week on iCERT. President Biden and Republicans, Germany and the EU, see India as a critical part of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, and the new supply chain. For the Adani Group the IPO pause offers an opportunity to do what Nirmala Sitharman has done in the Indian Budget this week- build a stable growth path ahead for the long term in line with India's Amrit Kal the next 25 years to centenary of freedom in 2047. Nirmala Sitharaman set a goal of rapid capital spending and investment increasing capital spending in 2023 by 33% in 2023 over 2022, yet maintaining a stable fiscal path by keeping the deficit below 6%. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mines sending trainloads of northern white sand are now sitting  idle in Wisconsin , hurting jobs and local revenues to finance budgets of local government. Mines have closed in Wisconsin for this sand that is blasted into silica and used for shale oil production. This has cost jobs in a rural area near the Mississippi river which borders Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Even though these areas do not produce any oil and gas. Companies supplying trucks, lubricants and drilling tools are also affected all the way into Youngstown, Ohio, which provides pipe to the oil fracking areas in West Texas. Frackers blast a mix of sand, water and chemicals into fossil fuel bearing rocky areas. Sand called northern white was considered very good for crush strength to prevent plugs and there is a lot of it beneath western Wisconsin topsoil. Once used by glassmakers and cranberry this became a useful source of supplies from 2015 onwards. Demand surged till 2018 when new supplies were found in West Texas which would reduce costs of transportation. Wages in these mining jobs were about $8 higher than other jobs for people with less education. After 2011 financial crisis and the loss of manufacturing jobs to China this provided a new source of higher paying jobs for less educated workers and paid for local government to provide services including in one town a new swimming pool for the recreation complex. This has proved to be temporary with many mines closing in 2019 and in 2020 after the pandemic. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Most people would not guess or recognize that this place where elderly people in society were treated shabbily is a country in northern Europe, and a country where citizens pay high taxes for precisely better healthcare across different age groups. Sweden is where about half of the 6000 people dead from coronavirus were elderly people.  Over the last two decades Sweden has cut hospital capacity and discouraged elderly people from entering hospitals during the early period of the pandemic, says this report in the NYT. The for profit nursing homes in the centre of Stockholm were unable to cope. Having turned the work in these homes to low wage workers, it put these workers and the elderly at risk with lack of staff, lack of adequate PPE oreven  basic masks, says this report in NYT.  One of the lessons of this pandemic is the failure not just in turning over manufacturing of health care equipment and pharmaceuticals to China, but also turning over the basic care of elderly to for profit institutions that were totally unprepared and could not give elderly the dignity and care they deserve. Year of cuts to public services and health services now showed in a glaring way what can happen when this is done. It has lessons for countries from Europe to North America, and to Latin America, India and other Asian countries as they redesign policy and allocate resources to public services in the next 10-20 years. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Britain's prime minister Johnson has gained approval for 16 billion military buildup for naval and other buildup for the next 4 years. It was apparent for some time during the administrations from Blair through the financial crisis driven by banks under Cameron, that Britain had lost its resolve to have a strong military capability. This was evident in its handling of Hong Kong, from the transfer to its weak response to the situation in Hong Kong as participatory democracy failed in Hong Kong. During the period after the second world war Britain failed to bring participatory democracy in Hong Kong under its rule. Labour and Conservative administrations made no effort even as participatory democracy was brought to large parts of Asia and Africa through independence, following democratic elected legislatures in the period between two wars in India and Ceylon. No such effort was made in Hong Kong leading to questions about its own commitment to the principles when China introduced its own government in Hong Kong by changing legal structures.  Britain lacked the military capability and its partnership with France and the U.S. was also weaker because of other distractions from middle east conflicts and internal problems. This is now changing with the military capability buildup for the next 4 years. This is happening as France under Macron takes a new posture in its battle to defend the ideals of its Republic, and rebuild its manufacturing capabilities. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Interview with Gerard Kleisterlee, retiring CEO of Philips Electronics. Kleisterlee led the effort to focus on emerging markets where sales of health care, lighting and consumer products are accelerating. Second quarter sales in emerging markets went up 29% for 2010 over the prior year, and now are 34% of total Philips sales. As part of this strategy Philips is increasing its staff and research divisions in China, to capture part of the $125 billion that China plans to spend on healthcare in the next 3 years. Kleisterlee talks about local competitors in emerging markets who are trying to get a regional or global presence. How Philips is increasing local responsibility, and how it is designing, engineering and manufacturing products specifically aimed at local markets in emerging market countries- as away to compete effectively in these markets. He also points out that it is no longer sufficient to be in the major cities, Philips has to move into smaller cities and into the rural areas to increase sales. He sees consolidation opportunities in Asia where the lighting manufacturing is still fragmented. Responding to a question about Philips still being too old, too male, and too Dutch, Kleisterlee agrees that it is too male and too Dutch for his comfort. Women are a bigger part of his health-care team, but not that much progress in other areas of the company. And he would like to see more local leaders in emerging markets. He sees consumer behaviour changing in one respect- there is an increasing consciousness among buyers for value, and not just for low price points, but at all price points....

LyrArc Article Gist
Even though immigration makes the headlines for the average German and daily German life polls and surveys show says the NYT that the main concerns center around a failing economy. For 5 years Germany has experienced little growth. According to Eurostat, Germany's GDP growth rate is 2023 -0.2% 2022: 1.37% 2021: 3.67% 2020 -4.1% Tankersley and Eddy report from Lutherstadt Wittenberg Eastern Germany. As Germany's economy slows companies may move jobs and manufacturing to Austria and France says one CEO of a company that makes fertilizer and additives for diesel motors. This could lead to loss of 10,000 jobs in an already depressed region. The problems faced buy German industry are increasing with higher costs of energy- even after prices have come down energy is 20% costlier than the European average according to Eurostat. Industry leaders say this is the result partly of efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Increasing competition from China means Germany cannot compete as before. Investment in public infrastructure has not kept up with crumbling roads and bridges and a rail system with underinvestment and plagued with delays. Investment in digital technology has lagged behind China, India and France.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Car insurance and tariffs on Mexico made auto parts would take a 2 year lag in inflationary impact, says this report in WSJ. Insurance companies will wait to see the impact and how long the tariffs are in place. Tariffs are put in place to stop fentanyl flows through Canada, Mexico and China to the US, which have cost 490,000 deaths in the US over the last 12 years. Canada now fully supports the US for action to be taken and cites similar loss of lives in Canada from fentanyl comparable to the US for its smaller population. Much of the focus on tariffs is seen as economic action in the media, when as Commerce Secretary Luttnick pointed out it is being used as an instrument to get immediate action from countries that have not acted to stop the flow of fentanyl -action they should have done taken many years back. DJT's action is to protect average Americans, communities across the US that have lost their manufacturing base to Mexico and China, and are being hit by the flows of fentanyl across borders for over a decade now. Never in American history has this kind of flow across borders happened since the first settlers came to America in 1600. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
While much of the focus is on the brief air war in the Punjab region in the media. In China, India and the US the real and major challenges are economic. As US tariffs is really about getting back its industrial base from the EU and China, China faces the challenge of adapting to this situation and loss of access to EU and US technologies for the next generation, and India with a smaller industrial base faces challenge of building a large enough industrial base for modernization with full access to US and EU technologies. This is then the study of change starting right here in Uttar Pradesh and in the city of Kanpur. New Metro in Kanpur, new power plants, and new manufacturing plants and infrastructure. PM Modi says- "There are two most essential conditions for the industrial progress of a state: first, self-reliance in the energy sector — that is, uninterrupted electricity supply; and second, infrastructure and connectivity. Today we have inaugurated several power plants: the 660 MW Panki Power Plant, 660 MW Neyveli Power Plant, 1320 MW Jawaharpur Power Plant, 660 MW Obra C Power Plant, and 660 MW Khurja Power Plant. This is a major step toward fulfilling Uttar Pradesh’s energy needs. With these power plants, electricity availability in UP will increase significantly, giving a boost to industries here. Today, development projects worth over $6.7 billion (Rs 47,000 crore) have also been inaugurated or had their foundation stones laid.” ...

LyrArc Article Gist
China's slowdown may be much worse than is generally thought. Germany went through this thinking that it was relatively safe as it had no housing bubble and no consumer debt like the US and the UK. But the drop in demand from China and other countries has led already to a contraction in the German economy by 0.5% in the third quarter of 2008, expected to worsen to 0.8% in 2009. China's National Statistics Bureau announced a 4% decline in electricity output inOctober from a year earlier. This is a result partly of factories manufacturing for export cutting back as their orders decline. There was a 17 drop in production of pig iron and crude steel in October and a 0.7% fall in output in the output sector. From all this it appears that even without the beggar thy neigbor policies of the 1930's, even without the protectionism of that period and even with the global coordination of the G20 and the G7 countries, its hard not to see the impact in one place flowing through to other places. The loss of export markets in the USA for Chinese export factories leads to this slowdown in China which in turn now needs much fewer machinery imports from Germany leading to a contraction in Germany. See the link to German economy in WSJ November 14, 2008. These effects show up in an exaggerated manner with economic contraction because of the heavy dependence on exports in Germany to China, and heavy dependence on exports in China to the USA, and the heavy consumption of Chinese exports in the USA, all ocurring in an exaggerated unsustainable way considering the American spending binge and the zero savings rate in the USA, the pressures on the environment with runaway growth in China, and the lack of any domestic led consumption in Germany. China's infrastructure spending can provide some growth along with the stimulus spending but much of the export led growth may disappear. The stimulus spending could help prevent a contraction in the Chinese economy but may deliver only a few points of growth, way off from the runaway over 10% growth of two decades which was heavily dependent on manufacturing exports. How badly Chinese exports are affected depends on how badly the US market is affected for Chinese imports. Higher unemployment in the US if the auto industry sees a collapse in its market in 2009, would lead to lower consumption in the US as laid off workers cut their purchases at Walmarts and Targets and at other retailers, and this would drive imports from China to even lower levels, wiping off a couple of percentage points of China's GDP growth rate. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The new Ford Focus being unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in 2009, is a new kind of car for Ford. This is a new kind of effort, a new discipline that Ford CEO Mullaly has advocated from the beginning. Making one car for all markets worldwide. Early on Mullaly told Ford's chairman Bill Ford that Boeing did not have a 737 for Europe and a 737 for the US and a 737 for Asia, why was Ford building a Focus for Europe and a Focus for the USA. In fact before Mullaly the Focus for the USA was a stripped down version of the European Focus and did not make much of an impression. The new Focus will have 80% common parts and 75% of parts from the same suppliers worldwide, so that a Focus made in Germany and the USA will share the same parts as a Focus made in Russia and a Focus made in China. And all of these plants will go into production at about the same time with the new Focus. To accomplish this transformation of Ford for "One Ford" worldwide, which is also on every business card carried by Ford managers, Mullaly appointed Derrick Kuzak as head of global manufacturing. See link for Derrick Kuzak. And the strategy was announced in mid-2008 with the start of retooling of truck factories in Mexico, Kentucky and Michigan, to make small cars designed in Europe for global markets. The task of coming up with one design for a global car was given to Martin Smith, a British designer based in Cologne, Germany. Smith says tastes are converging worldwide with the internet use, and customers are more unified than one would think, and whats emerging is a new kind of global cool if one looks for it. This is what happened when Focus protypes were shown to consumer panels in Europe, the USA and Asia, with a good impression created in all 3 markets. Aligning the US and European tastes was easier, China was a bit harder and the yellow leather interior popular in Shanghai had to be crossed out. Another challenge that had to be met in adisciplined manner was the varying safety rules and emissions around the world. For example European designers liked to have the windshield further forward, and Ford's global small car chief had to tell his engineers to move it back to meet US crumple zone standards. Similiar challenges had to be met in purchasing by global purchasing chief, Tony Brown, with a massive coordination effort needed to be done globally. And plastic trim from Michigan has to fit perfectly with sheet metal stamped in Michigan, and Ford used a virtual manufacturing system that allows the car to be built in cyberspace, and the bugs taken out at that early virtual build stage. The entire change is part of a metamorphosis at Ford, a change of culture and mastering a new discipline in coordinated effort worldwide for "One Ford." One year ago the Wayne Truck plant here in Detroit made the Navigator and the Expedition large vehicles.. With a $550 million investment this plant will make the Ford Focus a year from now. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
What Handan Iron and Steel in Hebei Province 300 miles south of Beijing and ThyssenKrupp in Dortmund, Germany, have in common. The transplanting of Germany's aging defunct iron and steel furnaces and plant to Handan, boxed and crated away- its unreal that in 1998 Handan Iron and Steel bought and transferred an aging polluting plant to a city where the steel works are located in China which has 8.5 million residents. When years later the steel works were debated to be moved to a distance away from the city with Baoshan Steel, the decision was made to instead put a new plant there instead. The solution was to make pollution payments to residents of Handan. It was Mao's dream to build a steel industry in Hebei province ,which has large deposits of iron ore and coal and a rail line. Couple of questions come up to mind- one why did the first steel works go up right in Handan, and same is true of Dortmund, labor supply perhaps but couldn't homes be built nearby instead and these plants located away from cities. Second the deal for bringing the ThyssenKrupp plants was as recent as 1998, by this time China was already a big steel producer (producing more than the US by one estimate) and in a few years Chinese steel production was to exceed the US, Europe and Japan combined. With steel production already on the rise why didn't China move more carefully. Some of the Thyssen Krupp assets were built only a few years before 2000 and met stringent environmental control. China bought these.. Why didn't China pick out the best assets instead of old aging blast furnaces. The possible answers are that they were available at cut rate prices, but were they worth it. The second is that Hebei must be competing with other parts of China, and there wasn't a rational allocation of capital as would happen if a sophiticated company like a Mittal or a Tata Steel is involved. Is China operating on a outmoded concept- nationalism, competition between provinces with local government officials running the show? The other question is that in the case of the automobile industry a different pattern is seen, the most modern technology was selected , and in the case of Cherry, the most recent technology was selected for manufacturing cars, then why was this same pattern not adopted in the case of steel. In the end China has a surplus of steel mills, which makes this rush into steel production without carefully thinking through this appear to have been a mistake. The visual picture if one flies into Dortmund of manmade lakes, green park areas and residential housing and shopping from the $22 billion the EU and Germany are investing to turn the Ruhr valley region of Dortmund into a centre of education, technology and tourism now contrasts sharply with Handan in Hebei province. Can emerging countries do better, build manufacturing for jobs but keep living conditions in mind, be patient and work to achieve the best overall results, and build education, technology, appropriate for their own situation. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In the past market forces pushed the US out of the chip business to highly subsidized chip companies TMC and SMIC in Taiwan and China. US cannot have it both ways. It cannot compete with China in chips and allow temporary market forces do the job of decimating its chip industry.    Market forces are rags to riches and mostly short term ignoring long term. Nvidia now valued at $1 trillion under market forces would not exist today. WSJ showed recently that only with the help of a loan from a Japanese Sega videogame executive Iramijiri to Nvidia founder Jensen Huang was Nvidia able to survive market forces in 1998. Qualcomm a maker of phone chips has made a takeover offer of Intel in 2024. Intel shares dropped 60% this year and is valued on share basis at $90 billion- yet was recently at $290 billion closer to its true value as America's chip pioneer and leader. Qualcomm is at $185 billion. Yet share values can be rags to riches as Nvidia story of going up to $1 trillion in 2021 and $3 trillion in 2024 shows. Such a deal draws anti trust concerns with too much control under one company. A deal for takeover of British owned ARM by Nvidia was stopped by regulatory authorites in UK and the EU in 2022. The US government is giving $8.5 billion to Intel to build up its chip making technology in competition with China. The Gelsinger plan is for manufacturing to be boosted up, so is the effort of the Biden administration. It may take time yet it is the right approach for the US. Pat Gelsinger is leading this effort at Intel. In the past market forces pushed the US out of the chip business to highly subsidized chip companies TMC and SMIC in Taiwan and China.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Sharp showed a loss of $3.1 billion for the third quarter of 2012, far larger than expected. Sharp's new forecast is for losses of $5.6 billion for 2012. Sharp CEO, Takashi Okuda, even said the company has "material doubts" about its survival because of "serious negative operating cash flow." Sharp made large bets on LCD panel manufacturing with large investments in added capacity as the television market turned into a commodity business with declining prices and with new competition from China. Just one factory in Sakai, Japan, could manufacture 6 million LCD panels a year- the total global market size at the time. Two other events hurt Sharp- missing the smartphone shift with the introduction of the iPhone in Japan in 2008 leading to a sharp drop in sales, and the collapse of the solar business with cheap products from China. The global economic crisis and overstretched consumers in the U.S. and Europe led to declining sales. Sharp's new factories for LCD panels at Kaneyama now make panels for iPads and iPhones. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
A number of factors hitting at the same time Chinese factories in the south, in Guangdong province and the Pearl River delta. Currency exchange rates, stricter labor laws, eliminated government tax benefits and incentives, stricter pollution laws, high oilprices, and higher wages, all have combined to make the apparel and footwear factories in the south less profitable and harder to run. In recent years about 10% of the footwear makers in the province have closed operations. Manuy are smaller operations. About 10% of the 60,000 to 70,000 HongKong owned factories in the delta region will close in 2008. Not just apparel companies making products for HP and Apple have longer term plans to shift production to othcountries. Hon Hai Precision Manufacturing Company has said it will quintuple its planned investment in Vietnam to $5 billion. Apparel makers VF corporation which owns labels like North Face and Nautica says it takes 30 days from Cambodia compared to 20-25 days from China to get product on retail shlves so the advantage of China in this respect is also diminishing...

LyrArc Article Gist
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is pushing for a large pandemic stimulus package to ensure the recovery of ordinary Americans after suffering through this pandemic. Yellensays: "We need to make sure that people aren't going hungry in America, that they can put food on the table, that they're not losing their homes and ending up out on the street because of evictions. We really need to address those forms of suffering, and I think we should'nt compromise on it." Mr. Biden has a $1.9 trillion stimulus package for the pandemic related recovery to relieve suffering people and businesses. Yellen and Biden feel it is really important to do this immediately. A recent picture in the NYT shows Stephen Schwarzmann of American finance with Mr. Trump showing him as one who stuck with Mr. Trump to the end. Much of this play as Shakespeare calls it, is the result of Democrats of the old tradition like Yellen trained by economists from the New Deal and Johnson era, who have not walked the talk and forgotten the suffering of American workers. Yellen held a Conference on Equality at a branch of the Federal Reserve during her time at the Fed, used strong language about the neglect of American workers but did little under the Clinton or Obama administration about the underlying structures of tech and shift of American jobs overseas that led to the destruction of America's manufacturing. Today they are faced with the picture of food insecurity in American homes once a situation that afflicted China and India. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Apple faces large hurdles in China with models made locally by Huawei and other Chinese companies that offer similar features at a price about one third less. Chinese buyers are also looking for products that are made locally by Chinese companies. As a result Apple's market share in China has declined from 9% in 2015 to 7% in 2016. The future for Apple does not look bright apart from a core group of Apple fans that look for new product launches every year. Social media comments cited here show the comments about the iPhone 7 that say buyers should not pay $159 for Air Pods, the cordless earbuds. With the economic situation changing buyers are careful to pay so much for the iPhone 7, when it looks so much like the iPhone 6. In India Apple iPhone price are much higher and remain a significant hurdle for price conscious buyers.

LyrArc Article Gist
The India Pakistan issues have already evolved into India China issues. And the competition between the US and China has consequences for India, the European Union and the rest of the world. As the US seeks to regain its industrial base and reduce overconcentration of manufacturing in China, India is at the stage of a manufacturing effort that is similar to Japan's in the 1920's and 1970's and China's in the 1990's. It will take place over the next two decades. This is the crucial event for Asia that will see the emergence of not two but three nations in Asia- Japan, China and India as modern manufacturing nations.  The talk about military action popular in the media misrepresents the real issues which are economic and ignore the turning point in 2025 with the Ukraine war putting the European Union and Germany's position of concentration of production in China as untenable. For the US DJT represents a second effort to bring serious manufacturing back to the US and allies such as India. This will be the deciding change in Asia and the world by 2030, 2035 and 2040, as India will make the decisive change to a modern nation similar to the US and Europe. This will open up opportunities for 1.4 billion people in India and a related 300 million people in Indonesia. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The French view of the DJT administration is that it is a rupture, an "historic rupture with immigration repression, aggressive trade policy, and undermining of federal and state institutions." This is far from the reality. In fact it is not a rupture, and far from that policy that DJT brought in the waning days of a tired cautious Obama administration that extended the war in Afghanistan long after it was clearly a failure from the Bush years. DJT called it common sense during his Inauguration speech waving his hands- so obvious, stay out of wars we have no purpose pursuing. Regain America's manufacturing base shipped out to China in the Clinton-Bush-Obama years 2000-2016 that helped the rise of China in phases of supply chain partner, competitor, adversary. French view Le Monde is that this is "aggressive trade policy," when in fact small towns across the US and France, and other industrialized EU nations, by losing their factory and industrial base to China have gone downhill losing jobs and standard of living. Tariffs and DJT policy was continued by Biden- there is no rupture. What French in Le Monde call "Immigration repression," is a policy of protecting border security including illegal drug and fentanyl flows and gang activity that was accepted by Biden and Biden-Republican Lankford legislation was agreed in 2024 to close the Border. There is no rupture from Biden on closing the Border.  With millions having crossed the Border illegally Republicans now have the support of Democratic Senators Gallego of Arizona and Fetterman of Pennsylvania in passing the Laken Riley Act in Congress to protect Americans and safeguard life in America.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Contrast the slow US vaccine export response with that of India, Russia, EU and China. Only in May 2021 after India's daily Covid cases were close to 400,000 a day did the US make a serious offer of vaccines to other countries in need of assistance. U.S. president Biden says that 80 million vaccine doses would be exported by the end of June 2021. The WSJ says citing Airfinity, a London research firm, as of May 10 more than 333 million doses of vaccine were produced by the US and only 3 million vaccine doses were exported. Contrast that with the European Union which has shipped 111 million doses overseas one third of its total production, Russia which has exported 27 million doses.  India has exported 66 million doses according to the Ministry of External Affairs website as of May 17, 2021. This includes 4 million doses to Brazil, 4 million to Nigeria. Within its own region Bangladesh received 10 million and Sri Lanka 1.2 million doses, Afghanistan 1 million. Mexico received about 1 million doses. In Africa the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has suffered from many epidemics including Ebola virus received 1.7 million doses, Nigeria 4 million doses, Kenya 1 million, Uganda 1 million. Of the 66 million about half of it is a direct grant assistance and Brazil, Mexico, Morocco received all vaccine as grant assistance, 70% of Bangladesh's is grant assistance. The list on the Ministry of External Affairs site of the Government of India shows 95 countries including many of the most struggling nations of Latin America and Africa, bringing hope to countries which are struggling to hold onto hope for a better life beyond the pandemic. Sending help overseas through vaccine supplies is suspended for the moment but will resume in July after India has pulled in all of its pharmaceutical manufacturing industry under a government guided effort to go all out. Never has so much help bringing much needed hope gone to so many countries of the world in the twentieth or twenty first century from a nation that is struggling to meet its own needs. The US in pursuing a US first policy of vaccinating all its citizens has not taken into account the need to bring this evolving vaccine technology into the hands of as many qualified pharmaceutical manufacturers as possible. This in a rapid response to expand manufacturing capabilities to meet world wide demand. The risks of not doing so were not taken on early- the very same way the virus spread in January to March of 2020 can be repeated as people travel around the world particularly for tourism, business family reasons. This risk takes on anew dimension of contagious mutations of the virus which are 50% more- the Indian variant being 50% more contagious by some estimates than the UK variant, which itself was estimated to be 50% more contagious than the original one.  The result a pandemic that stretches out indefinitely unless billions of doses are made in a short timetable to beat the timetable of Nature through the coronavirus. India is doing this for the first time with plans to produce billions of doses by engaging the whole of the Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in the effort in a rapid response so that July to December would see 1.2 billion people vaccinated. The US effort, the European effort is left to the individual effort of pharmaceutical makers in the US and Europe, not a government guided effort to engage the entire pharmaceutical industry of the US and Europe in a rapid response timetable of 2-6 months.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
It is not a story that most people grasp or understand- the long term effects of the US immigration surge of 2023 and its source mostly from Venezuela. The  US Congressional Budget Office says labor force in 2033 ten years from now will be larger by 5.2 million people and younger as a result of the immigration surge in 2023 from about 1 million immigrants each year in the 2010's to 3.3 million. About 2.5 million crossed the southwestern border in 2023. Much of it the result of the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and its middle and upper classes leaving the country. This was worsened by the US sanctions on the Maduro government including under president Trump, say experts in an adjoining NYT article on the 7 million people who left Venezuela to go to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile since 2012, then making their way up the Darien Gap to the US. Something that could have happened under a Republican president if the US Congress could not reach bipartisan agreement on correcting asylum and parole policy. As a result of this surge US Gross Domestic Product  in 2033 will be 3% larger. When the large Asian economies are seeing a aging workforce, Japan for the last decade and China now following Japan, the US labor force will be younger than it would be without this unusual surge in immigration of the last 2 years. The federal deficit will be smaller at 6.4% instead of 7.3% in 2033 as immigrants will pay taxes on income. Another aspect of this larger infusion of immigrants is that after the pandemic shut down immigration entirely there were severe shortages in the hospitality and restaurant, construction, healthcare industries. And with the trillions of dollars in investment that the Biden administration is making with more factories - this will absorb most of the immigrant surge by 2033. With some positive effects in the competition with rising Asian economies China and India. Particularly consider with the younger demographic India of 1.4 billion people. It will mean more factories can be built in the US and there will be workers for these factories in the US at wages that keep the US economy competitive years from now in 2033. This is a sobering aspect of the current situation viewed from what will be seen by America's younger generation. And under the bipartisan compromise in Congress correcting asylum and parole policy that was shut down by the former president, Republican senators understood very well that the immigration surge of 2023 would have some constructive effects for the long term, while its effects on the short term would be mitigated by Biden's commitment to close the border in 2024. This did not happen, yet the future for America's younger generation is bright under the Biden plan for massive investment in manufacturing and jobs in the US, and with the millions of immigrants needed to fill the jobs that investment will create by 2033. It will make America with a younger work force than Europe or China, only India having a younger workforce in 2033. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mr. Trump has decisively changed the Republican party. Most Republicans support Mr. Trump personally, less the Republican party. Mr. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, says of the Republican party before Trump that it had become a bit staid, that we looked like the banker next door who may foreclose on your house. Mr. Romney epitomized that in his view. Gone are the views on deficits, on wars, and on imports and transfer of technology to China as being acceptable.  Five years from 2015 when Mr. Trump came into prominence with his new style taking on the establishments of both parties with a fierce disdain for convention, both the Bushes and the Obamas and Clintons, the Republican party is completely transformed. Registered Republicans are now 60% non college educated in 2020 compared to 50% non college educated in 2016. The Trump policies on trade putting American workers first and America first have a resounding popularity with this audience- this should be no surprise after decades of job losses and factories shipped overseas under the previous administrations for 2 decades. Most of these workers are not college educated and are white and had enjoyed a good standard of living with a high school education in American factories till the shift of American manufacturing to China destroyed good paying jobs and impoverished the American working class.  Only 30% of college educated people are registered Republicans in 2020 compared to 40% in 2016. Overwhelmingly about 90% of registered Republicans are white.  They are majority male and older but there is a significant about 40% female and 40% young population under 40 years of age. This might resemble the party put together by Missouri Congressman Harry Truman as he led the Democratic Party in 1948 with a majority of non college educated Democrats, fighting for American workers and America first in the cold war with Russia. Truman also had a rough Missouri farm language and accent comparable to Mr. Trump's rough style and language disdainful of the old establishment and new tech establishment. Both were heavily disliked by the media and both did not let this bother them in any way. Both liked facing large crowds as Truman showed in campaigning by train across the country and Trump has shown in campaign rallies run in his own way. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The first farmer in recent history to become president of the US, 1977-1981, Jimmy Carter ran a peanut farm in the southern state of Georgia. He also served in the US Navy under Admiral Rickover. Rickover hired Jimmy Carter for the US early submarine program in 1949. It was Jimmy Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan that made the Democrat a rare one term president. The Iran hostage crisis happened during the election year 1980 which may have shifted the election in the Republican Reagan's favor. The economy also suffered from high inflation and lower growth during this period leading to the loss of the presidency for Carter. The incidents leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall happened during the Reagan presidency. This led to the period of three decades when the free market, less regulation period led to the 2009 economic crisis and the earlier breakup of the Soviet Union leading to the economic crisis in the early period in Russia. It was during this period that 2 Democrats president Clinton and Obama tacitly accepted the Reagan era policies of free markets and less regulation. This period is now coming to a close with the pandemic and a reassessment of what has happened. During that period Clinton paved the way for China's admission into the World Trade Organization. The lack of regulation has led to Section 230 leading to a proliferation of undesirable content on the internet, with support for regulation in the Us Congress. US policy is also moving to support its own industries something the Reagan policies saw negatively, particularly chip manufacturing where the US has lost its leadership role. The period that ended the Carter presidency is thus an inflection point that is now reversing itself decades later with the sense that government staying away from the economy is not a desirable thing. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With some aspects of Marie Le Pen's programme possibly violating the French Constitution and some parts of the programme leading to France being forced to leave the European Union, what was not looked at carefully in the first round vote is now happening for the second round. The Le Pen draft law on "immigration, identity and citizenship," is seen by multiple analyses cited by The Guradian, as violating the principles of equality enshrined in the French Constitution. Constitutional experts say this would also violate European law and lead to a progressive or indirect exit from the European Union. Le Pen's proposal to lower the retirement age to 60 was coming under scathing scrutiny, with Jean Tirole, the 2014 Nobel prize winner in Economics saying it would cost 68 billion euros and "permanently impoverish the country." Countries such as Brazil that lowered the retirement age in this manner have found that it seriously affects public finances, leading to the deep economic crisis in Brazil following the commodity price collapse a few years ago. Macron has moved in the opposite direction to raise the retirement age gradually and now with a proposed national consensus, at the cost of losing some support, simply to shore up public finances. So that needed investments in infrastructure and climate change can be made. For this reason it may become evident to undecided voters that Le Pen's proposals have some serious flaws if implemented, weakening the French economy and yet not tackling the deeper problems of younger people. These problems The Guardian says in a separate report are the precarious and low pay jobs, asset based inequality, and rural urban regional differences developing as a result of the offshoring of manufacturing to China, and are common to Britain, France, Germany, and the US. These problems are beginning to be addressed after the lessons learned from the pandemic by western nations.   ...