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Krugman says the TPP is no big deal because most of the trade in that region is free, protectionism is way down. He cites a recent report on American import restraints by the International Trade Commission putting their total cost at 0.01% of GDP.

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Friedman compares the anti-corruption movements in India and the U.S., the world's two largest democracies. The Occupy Wall Street anti-corruption movement in the U.S. focusses on the excessive influence of banks on lawmakers, regulators, and the government, through the use of campaign money, revolving door for government officials and regulators to join banks, and intense lobbying. The anti-corruption movement focusses on corruption in government at higher levels, such as the handling of government licenses, and at the basic levels of needing to bribe officials for something as simple as getting a birth certificate or other government document. Both have pernicious effects, in the U.S. excesssive bank influence leads to taking excessive risk for higher bonuses, putting the entire financial system at risk and creating a crisis in housing that delays the economic recovery. And in India the corruption leads to retarded progress, as funds to invest in infrastructure and development are siphoned off, business and entrepreneurs are required to pay bribes at each step, and ordinary people face the need to pay bribes for the most routine interactions with government officials. In the process this creates more unequal societies by skewing the distribution of benefits from wealth created to groups that are better equipped to game the system. The economic system once distorted in these ways has tendencies to take talent away from productive activity and innovation which create wealth, and direct it towards speculative activities....

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U.S. commercial oil inventories cover about 164 days of net imports by Jan. 2015. Excluding net imports from Canada and Mexico this reaches 279 days of net imports from other countries. When strategic oil reserves are included this goes up to 450 days, which will put pressure on oil prices in 2015 as the price of oil drops below $50. The surge in oil production in the U.S. by 1.2 million barrels a day contributed to this buildup.

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Hillary Clinton attacks Trump's policies in an address in Warren, Michigan, saying this was another version of failed trickle down economics. She called Trump's idea of taxing pass through entities such as small business reporting business income on individual tax returns at 15%, as a "Trump loophole." On trade policy Hillary Clinton said she would oppose the TPP or Trans- Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement that president Obama has supported. She put it flatly- " I oppose it now. I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president." And pointed out that too many companies have moved jobs overseas and "moved operations overseas and sold back into the U.S." after pushing for trade deals. The answer she said 'is not to rant and rave- or to cut us off from the world," in reference to protectionist policies Trump has supported. 

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This interview with Donald Trump by the publisher, editors and columnists of The Washington Post, Ryan Jr., Hiatt, Lane, Marcus, Diehl, Armai, Attiah, provides an exceptional insight into the views of Donald Trump on domestic and foreign policy, on his campaign for president. It is the result of an effort to get Trump to state his policies on different issues without the fuzziness in which Trump has carried out his campaign, often taking different sides of the same issue. In some situations Trump is pressed hard on his positions or controversial statements, to clarify what he has not clarified in the burst of media attention Trump received in the past 6 months, especially on television media. First some myths and realities. A recent March 19, 2016, issue of the Economist cites the Pew Trust in showing that only about 17% of eligible Republican voters voted in the primaries. A person watching television news media coverage on Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC, would get the impression that the voter turnout was tremendous- this is not confirmed by the Pew Trust survey. The Economist points out that had the other eligible voters cast their ballots and even if Trump had a share of these votes, the results might look different. With a highly fragmented vote in the Republican primaries, and about half of the vote going to candidates other than Trump, Trump's voter support would add up to about 8-9% of eligible Republican voters based on the Pew Survey results. The question here would be is this a representative sample of the U.S. or of the Republican Party. And is one likely to make false generalizations about the nature of the Republican party from such a limited sample of voter opinion. Is voter sentiment inadequately reflected, and results hopelessly skewed because of the lack of good candidates in the Republican Party, and Trump's tactical rhetoric appealing to a group of working class Americans left out in the technological progress of the last decade. In the process is the hard work of the founders of the Republic, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and the framers of the Constitution being undone by a minority of disaffected voters with legitimate grievances on distribution of economic benefits of the technological progress, trade and global manufacturing networks- with a level of divisive rhetoric and decline in levels of public debate rarely seen. These are the clarifications sought from Trump and his response. Attiah raises the question of divisive rhetoric on minorities Hispanics and Black people- Trump says he is only talking about people here illegally, that he gets support from Hispanics here legally. He turns the question to Muslims and says there is a serious problem there that means being careful about how people are being admitted into the U.S. Questions about Trump's controversial statements about a wall with Mexico are not raised. Ryan pushes hard on the question of the libel laws standard that Trump says he is going to change, asking whether this would happen if Trump thinks the reporting "is wrong" but there is no malice. Trump wants the reporting to be fair for him, that reporters call him to check if he did this or that and why, before writing stuff about him, and he sees the reporting from the Post as very bad about him. He says his lawyers would have to tell the media, that he believes he should loosen up the standards so that this kind of coverage does not continue. On ISIS Trump pulls back when asked by Diehl about statements that suggested he would send the number of troops the generals wanted on the ground- estimated at 20,000 to 30,000- saying he would find it very, very, difficult to do that. On a nuclear option for ISIS Trump says he does not favor that. Suggesting that Trump like the other candidates in the election know there are no easy ways to tackle ISIS. Trump would rely on other countries in the region for help with troops on the ground, something that president Obama also favors, with limited results. Diehl also pushes hard on NATO- Trump says hundreds of billions of dollars are going to NATO and the whole burden for defending South Korea falls on the U.S. when it is not now a rich country that it once was. Diehl corrects him by saying for the public record that its not hundreds of billions, and South Korea, Japan pay 50% of the cost for defending their region. Trump wants to see 100% for the Korean peninsula defense borne by the South Koreans and Japan. Trump seees NATO as a good concept but needing more help from Germany, Poland, Baltics. At one point the Washington Post journalists tell Trump this is a position he shares with president Obama. Trump responds to questions from Hiatt about how he would handle the situations in black communities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland. Trump says he feels law enforcement is important and should play a big role in preventing the destruction of property from day one. He says jobs are what hurts inner cities but offers no solution about how to get the jobs lost in the steel industry for Baltimore, black neighborhoods sitting ironically next to the John Hopkins high technology university complex. Trump brings up the response that jobs could be created if the U.S. simply did not spend money on supporting nationbuilding overseas, a policy that president Obama has supported, and which the public has favored in the U.S. As Holman Jenkins brings up in a column on March 22, 2016 in the Wall Street Journal, these policies are being pursued today, and most of these jobs are not coming back so how would Trump bring them back or do anything about it, especially when Chinese workers in China's factories are being displaced by robotics in places such as Hon Hai factories. The more one thinks about it many of things Trump is saying are already being done, and there are no new solutions Mr. Trump has for today's problems of lack of upward mobility for the middle and working class- a priority for Sanders and Clinton also, not just for Trump. As a television personality and a candidate with a understanding of voter concerns, Trump artfully voices voter concerns of working class Americans for problems that defy easy solutions. Are there risks with Trump's approach that Trump has failed to think through or grasp? Does the unpredictable behaviour Trump suggests that would get allies thinking and trade partners responding lead to unpredictable consequences? Divisive rhetoric creates additional distractions in tackling the problems of the middle class and working class Americans. Divisive rhetoric within the NATO alliance would create additional distractions in tackling the problems of defending the European Union, such as using the very show of unpredictability. Diehl pushes Trump on this question. Would trade threats to China lead to a withdrawal from the Senkaku Islands by China? Trump says he thinks this would cause the Chinese to retreat . What if the Chinese see it differently, in their relations with Japan and South Korea, with a long difficult history, not necessarily in their relations with the U.S. Would a trade war hurt the global economy, and hurt confidence in U.S. fianncial markets just when the U.S. and European economies are staging a recovery, and when the economes of China, Japan and India are in a sensitive phase? These questions could not be raised because of time constraints, but must be on the minds of the editors of the Post and the WSJ, coming from different ends of the political spectrum. How would this help tackle the problem of upward mobility for working class Americans that all the candidates in the presidential election share? ...

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A very relevant comment about the media coverage on Putin's negotiations in Beijing for supplying natural gas to China, by a reader of the WSJ, Frank Peel. He points out China and Russia do not share the same goals and Putin talked about the Chinese as tough negotiators after signing the deal. The price as a "commercial secret" is because its years, could be 5, before gas actually flows to China from Siberian fields. Russia, is a smaller oil based economy- having failed to make the transition to a diversified economy- and very susceptible to the economic conditions in Europe and the U.S., as the 2008 crisis showed with very steep drops in output. President Obama has also pointed to this. Russia also shares with Argentina the tendency for elites- in the case of Russia a newly created oligarchy of business interests under Putin and his predecessor- to shift capital out of the country, making it even more susceptible to loss of value of the currency, the ruble. Devaluation of the ruble experienced under Yeltsin was severely traumatic for Russia, and the head of Russia's central bank went on state television recently to reassure ordinary Russians that this would not happen. The rainy day sovereign fund of over $400 billion acts as a cushion for shocks in short periods, but sustained loss of foreign investment would damage prospects for future improvements in standards of living or economic growth....

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A local government vehicle in China, Sixth Division of XPCC fails to make a bond payment in August 2018. This is the first such instance of failure to make a bond payment for a local government vehicle in 2018. Economists estimate China's total debt at 242% of GDP in 2017, and government efforts to tighten liquidity and reduce support for overextended local government investment vehicles.

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President Obama proposes changes in taxes to fund programs to aid students such as free 2 years of community college, aid for student loans, and financial help for middle class families. Senate Majority Leader McConnell says the proposals to raise income taxes for high income Americans with $320 billion in new revenues over 10 years, reduced prospects for changes in the tax system. He said the Obama proposals were designed " to excite the base but not designed to pass." Obama says "the shadow of crisis has passed," and calls for "middle class economics," and improving incomes for anyone making the effort. The call comes as inequality widened during the long recession and some of the Obama administration's policies such as on homeowner foreclosure, and lack of focus on unemployment during the first term, may have actually worsened inequality. The call also comes late in the second term in Jan 2015- with presidential elections in 2016- after the Republicans gain control of both Houses of Congress, which is why Republicans dismiss this as mere political talking points for the base....

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Krugman points out that the Obama administration has not been forthright in addressing critics of the Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP). He says the administration has simply talked about the benefits of free trade which finds general support, but not addressed specific issues about the pact, worker protections, the issue of access to drugs in developing countries of Latin America and Asia if intellectual property rights are strictly enforced, keeping U.S. financial industry regulations in place, and other issues raised by previous pacts.

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Letters to the editor of the NYT cover issues with the Trans Pacific Trade Pact including worker protections, the right of corporations to sue the U.S. and other governments on actions that protect the public interest, and issues raised by past trade pacts.

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Amar Bhide touches on the unpredictable consequences of devaluations while commenting on the supposed benefit of a country having its own currency vs a currency such as the euro. The euro takes away the advatantage of devaluing the national currency as a way to regain competitiveness. Bhide points out that devaluations hurt the elderly on fixed incomes and low wage workers. Protections have to be put in place for the sections of the population that are badly affected. Large union negotiated wage increases can also reduce the benefits of devaluation in terms of regaining competitiveness.

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The International Energy Agency lowers its global oil demand forecasts on Dec. 11, 2014, leading to further drop in the price of oil with oil futures in electronic trading for WTI at $58.89 on New York Mercantile Exchange, and Brent crude at $62.83 on ICE in London, for January 2015. The price of WTI U.S. oil dropped to $59.95 on Dec. 11, 2014.

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Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post describes U.S. president Obama's mishandling of Syria during his second term as president leading to the situation today.