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In the 2 hour call Xi and Biden discussed issues that are creating serious differences between the 2 countries, the war in Ukraine, Taiwan, trade and tariffs, South China sea and Indo-Pacific issues, global supply chains, food and energy issues. Chinese statement says "those who play with fire will be perished by it. It is hope the US will be clear eyed about this." Xi Jinping takes on a third term in 2022. Biden has spoken with Xi five times since 2021 and the last call in March was to dissuade China from supporting Russia in the Ukraine war. China is opposed to Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. Biden has said it was a bad idea at this time.

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A study by Dr. McCormick of the Harvard Medical School and professors at the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College, shows that the anticipated savings from conversion to medical records may not materialize to the extent expected. This study of data from 1100 doctors of 28,000 patient visits shows that with access to digital records doctors actually increased the number of tests ordered- from 12.9% of visits without digital records to 18% of visits with digital records. For more advanced tests such as MRI and CT scan the rate was 70% higher. Dr. McCormick says this may be because the new digital technology may have made it easier to order tests.

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The WSJ's Jon Ostrower's intervew with Ray Conner, head of the commercial airplanes division of Boeing. Conner says the era of moon shot type projects is over at Boeing. The Dreamliner project cost $50 billion and ran into repeated delays, with a supply system not ready for the complexity of the project, manufacturing issues, cost overruns, labor issues, and battery failure leading to emergency landing of a ANA Dreamliner in Jan. 2013 leading to grounding of many ANA and JAL aircraft. Boeing's CEO McInerney and Conner see the experience as a lesson for Boeing on the risks of such large projects when airlines are not willing to spend more for revolutionary improvements. Conner cites the example of the incremental improvements in the iPhone since its introduction, with the cost to the consumer not changing much with each new model, as one Boeing would like to follow. Manufacturing improvements are critical to the new model with design needing to include manufacturing process at the outset, reducing complexity, increasing simplicity and improving reliability, as critical goals. As part of this effort Boeing has hired Toyota managers to bring better manufacturing practices, and the focus is now on incremental change and improvement throughout the Boeing organization....

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The coronavirus is making implementation of the U.S. China trade deal less likely as Chinese imports from the U.S. decrease and China's exports continue to grow. China's exports to U.S. decreased by $60 billion but increased to other countries by $70 billion in 2019.

As a result the Trump administration is shifting its focus to another approach. The new multilateral approach is to combine the effort with allies Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and France. This would take the shape of a Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to replace the old Obama period Trans Pacific Partnership which becomes defunct. The goal would be to build new supply chains with allies in Asia outside of China with the help of France and other countries that are wary of excessive dependence on China and have deep reservations of China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

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Full text of the Memorandum of Understanding  agreement reached between the US and Iran as presented by the NYT with NYT's comments on paragraphs. NYT takes a skeptical view of the Memorandum while at the same time opposing the war, not making exactly clear what it is standing for in a set of complex negotiations. Much of the media does not reflect the situation in the rest of the world especially in the poor countries, the fact that China, India, Russia, US, almost the entire Middle East, Africa and Latin America support denuclearization in the Middle East- the US simply taking on the burden of achieving this and having to take up a naval blockade for this purpose. As it affects China's vital interests and agreement was reached with China and Russia, it has the support of the EU and India, and the rest of the world, including the Arab world and Egypt, the elected government of Iran if not the military (the RGC). This is not mentioned in the Comments made by NYT. Pakistan was the mediator and it is clear that the countries that are bearing the brunt of this crisis are countries such as Egypt, Turkey, India and Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, the poorer countries and billions of people including also China's less developed regions, where oil prices and lack of supplies have hit the people hardest. In this sense there is a collective responsibility for ensuring it works for every major country in the world, that has never happened before, and will be the strongest reason for this agreement being the right step at the right time. For all of these countries the future of East Asia and of West Asia is at stake, of EU and the US, of North Africa and the Arab world, and these countries will push for a new direction for the entire West Asian region as well as its relations with East Asia. ...

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Arvind Subramanium, outgoing Chief Economic Adviser to the prime minister in an interview with the Hindu newspaper, shares some of the knowledge he gained from failures and successes. The key lesson he gained is that it is important to have independent advisers in government who can speak their mind. Finance minister Jaitley has embraced this point, that such an adviser is not just one more part in the technocratic machinery of government. The success in getting GST he says shows that cooperative federalism is needed going forward as a kind of technology for many changes, including agriculture, DBT.  Subramanium calls the Economic Survey a success with 350,000 unique visitors. He likes the independence and distance of the CEA job to propagate the big ideas combined with closeness to decisionmakers. He counts as a failure not being able to create an office of CEA to the states, a request from 7 chief ministers and state finance ministers. Subramanium sees the need for more people in government with specific expertise in different areas as opposed to generalists as the work of government is becoming much more sophisticated. There is much need for talent and the flow of lateral talent into government.  Responding to economic issues such as the impact of oil prices on the economy Subramanium sees CAD at 2%, inflation at 4.5% much better compared to 2013 levels of double digits and not in unhealthy territory and very manageable. He sees risks in the impact of a combination of oil prices, dollar appreciation, and currency trade wars that are happening. On Iranian oil imports and strict U.S. sanctions on importers Subramanium sees the cost of not complying as stiff once you are in the dollar trading system. On demonetisation he sees there are short term costs and potential long term gains that requires an assessment every 2-3 years provisionally, what happened to tax and formalization, and the costs. Including costs in inconvenience and hardship for informal cash intensive sectors noted in the Economic Survey. For GST he says the revenue growth rate is 16-17% in aggregate for next year, growing 12% in the first year after a difficult implementation. The poorer states have seen an expansion of tax base and revenue performance is unprecedented.    ...

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A Vermont musician could not practice her livelihood after her arm was amputated because of gangrene. The gangrene developed as a result of a physician's assistant at a clinic using a a wrong technique for adminstering Phergan for nausea. The PA used IV Push instead of an IV drip or intravenous which is the right method. He missed the vein and and hit an artery causing the gangrene to develop. A Vermont state court awarded Ms Levine $6 million from Wyeth Pharmaceutical. Now the Supreme Court upheld the Vermont Court, with Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer joining Justice Stevens. Justice Thomas concurred. Scalia, Roberts and Alito were in dissent. Wyeth had a FDA approved label that warned against "inadvertent intra-arterial injection," but it did not say do not use IV Push. Justice Stevens writing the majority opinion said Wyeth's reading of the regulation was "cramped" and based on a "fundamental misundrstanding." He said "the manufacturer bears responsibility for the label at all times," and affirmed the Vermont Court's opinion that Federal law provides afloor not a ceiling for state regulation." ...

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Scientific American says 8-11% impact larger emissions under the One Big Beautiful Act than the 61%-66% emissions cut under Biden IRA in 2035 over 2005. What is the reasoning behind DJT Republicans approach? 

Remember that the wealthiest House districts are now in the Democratic party and the working class, rural and poorer districts are now in the Republican party as shown in the recent WSJ analysis.  In this situation after  30-40 increase in the price of groceries, new and used cars, and housing costs 2019-2024 the argument is that American working families need relief. Another factor was the grasp of the fact that for climate change action to work China could not be allowed to build one coal plant a week (95GW of coal electricity capacity in 2024). In 2024 US represented only 12% of global emissions and EU only 6%, China, Russia, India, Brazil etc emitting the rest of 82%. 

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Shinichi Sasaki, Toyota Executive Vice President in charge of Quality, the chief Quality officer at Toyota, explained at a press conference that Toyota has a good handle on individual components quality but not enough on the quality of components as they interact in environmental conditions inside the car. Moisture could collect on gas pedals inside the car in certain environmental conditions and cause the car pedal to get depressed and stick. There is a lack of research he said on how how accelerator pedal systems were affected by certain climate conditions and how moisture could collect inside the pedals and cause overacceleration. This caused one of the 2 recalls made by Toyota recently. Total recalls worldwide for faulty pedals and floor mats is now around 8.1 millon units. Mr Sasaki said that Toyota's research has shown that the gas pedal's electronics were not at fault. The fix Toyota has come up with is to ship a part , a shim, a small piece of metal which when inserted into the gas pedal assembly will prevent it from being stuck in a depressed position. Sasaki fears a global hit to Toyota sales especially in the U.S. market....

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Analysts point out that there is not much room for austerity cuts in Italy and Spain without cutting into muscle. This is because these countries have moved to make austerity cuts much earlier. Their budget deficits are actually less than what they were when they joined the euro currency zone. In the case of Italy the budget is actually in surplus, to the amount of 2% of GDP, when the financial position excludes interest on debt. And Italy has now moved to reduce the deficit to 3.9% of GDP in 2011. Under pressure from the ECB Italy has announced its aim of balancing the budget by 2013. Because both Italy and Spain have growth rates estimated at below 1% for 2011, analysts believe it is important to emphasize growth.

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Van Dam says its not that great being a worker in the U.S. because it is hard for the unemployed resulting from competing with workers in other countries with lower wages, and for those who are unemployed harder because worker collective bargaining is weakened over 3 decades. He cites a 296 page OECD report showing very little government support for unemployed and at risk American workers. It says this has contributed to higher income inequality and larger share of lower income people than almost any other advanced a nation. Only Spain and Greece are shown as having more households earning less than half the median income- showing large numbers of people are poor or close to being poor. In the U.S. an average of 1 in 5 lose their jobs each year, and 23% of workers 15 to 64 are in their job less than a year in 2016. The job churn hurts workers because of firing and layoffs being frequent, more than is healthy for a economy. The U.S. and Mexico are the only two countries not requiring advance notice before firings. And fewer than half of workers find a job within a year in the U.S. Two in three families with a displaced worker fall in poverty for some time. Unemployed workers with typically 26 weeks support get less support than any other country in the study. Only 12% of workers in U.S. are covered by collective bargaining. ...