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 President Trump says China is backing off in negotiations to address U.S. demands for a fair relationship on trade. He says the U.S. will increase tariffs from 10% imposed in September 2018 to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods starting May 10, 2019. China has put tariffs of 10% on $60 billion of American goods exported to China responding to the American tariffs in last September.  The U.S. says since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 with the approval of president Clinton it has unfairly benefited in trade with the U.S., leading to closure of factories and loss of jobs in the U.S. with state subsidized Chinese exports to the U.S. contrary to the spirit of the WTO and its rules. China has made promises to correct this and not kept them says the U.S. side in negotiations led by Robert Lighthizer. The tariffs moves are a tactic of president Trump to get China to relent and make fundamental changes in the way it exports to the U.S.  So far the Chinese response has been tit for tat. But this can change. As this report points out what is already known that China benefits far more and exports far more to the U.S. than the U.S. does to China. The $60 billion of American goods exports on which China placed tariffs represent two fifths of China's imports from U.S. With smaller exports from the U.S. to China, China has not much leverage in trade negotiations in this kind of tit for tat retaliation. It hurts China's exporters and economy much more than it does U.S. consumers. The increase in prices for U.S. consumers are also not expected to be significant, according to this report in the NYT, if China increase tariffs further. Aware of this and China's belief that past administrations have not responded is a guide to what the Trump administration can or will do, has convinced president Trump that there is no other way to get a fair trading relationship that respects U.S. interests, its jobs and workers. As Robert Lighthizer who leads the U.S. negotiating team faced this type of response from the Japanese when he negotiated with them (shoving off U.S. demands to reduce Japan's trade surplus in the eighties before accepting them), the U.S. thinks this strategy will work again. In any case it sees no alternatives to achieve its goal of a fair and balanced trading relationship. The U.S. international trade deficit in goods was up to $891 billion in February 2019 even after the tariffs on Chinese goods in September, showing that it will take a lot more to turn this as well as other trading relationships around.   ...

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Germany is trying not to choose sides in the trade and security disputes between China and the U.S. Yet it owes a lot to the U.S. from the days of the Marshall Plan and U.S. taking on the role of defending Germany after the Berlin Wall. China was then a partner with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.  Today China is Germany's top market for its car industry. Yet the U.S. export market is much larger than China at $119 billion with China's at $96 billion. In Germany 28% of jobs are linked to exports, and in manufacturing this goes up to 56%, according to Germany Ministry of Economic Affairs. Germany supplied much of the factory  equipment from its engineering companies and the infrastructure that powered up the China transformation. A transformation now underway in India.  There are signs of a shift as engineering companies in Germany grew faster in the U.S. than China, increasing by 6-10% a year. India remains a key growth market for Germany over the next 10-15 years as growth in China slows and India accelerates with its younger demographics and investment in infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure in China is built and it is approaching the saturation Japan reached in the 1990's with additional investments adding little in the way of productivity. Longer term Germany has more potential for growth in countries in South and South East Asia  that will need to make huge investments in infrastructure and technology for manufacturing to meet the aspirations of the people there. Other issues related to freedom going back to the Berlin Wall and the rebuilding of Germany after World War II will emerge. German companies are running out of patience says this report in the WSJ with the bureaucratic obstacles, forced technology transfers, subsidies by state model to extinguish competition, and protectionist approach to home markets, even as state funded companies in China put other companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S. at a disadvantage. Germany will need to transition to a shift in its global relations, a process that is only now taking place. Just as with austerity policies in which it has now made the shift from going with the northern European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland) to the Southern European (France, Italy, Spain) in favor of common solidarity even at the short term cost of common debt, Germany now is facing the shift for solidarity with the U.S. for its support of Germany from the period of the Berlin Wall in the 1950's, for the U.S. and European solidarity in the face of the post-coronavirus world. The U.S. showing its generosity and openness to Germany and war torn Europe even as it took on the added responsibilities for creating a new alliance with Europe.   ...

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The US Saudi Strategic Alliance is modeled on the US Japan Treaty and commits US to defend the Saudi kingdom. A draft of the treaty is being negotiated. It requires a two thirds majority in US Congress. A parallel US Saudi Cooperation Agreement is also put in place by Biden and can be done by Executive Order. What motivates this at this time and why after 9/11 when most of the attackers were Saudi, and after relations with Saudi deteriorated under Obama and president Biden's questioning some Saudi actions? The two main reasons are the change Salman of Saudi is bringing to the country modernizing its internal society and and freeing it up from the religion based restrictions of an earlier period, and his focus on investment in the economic development working with India and partners in the region, a relief from the incessant wars from the period of Reagan/Bush as the US makes domestic policy benefits determine foreign policy under Biden. Unknown in most of the world and media a change of demeanor happened at the G-20 meetings in India when prime minister Modi brought Biden and Salman together on economic development plans of a development corridor linking India through Saudi andest Asia to Europe. Biden supported the effort and it showed the Saudis under Salman as leading a development plan along with Modi and other partners for development in the Middle East after frequent wars dissipating the resources of the region and of the US. since Reagan/Bush policy failures and escalation. It is this intervening period of three decades of war that led to China's gains in relation to the US, with twin strikes to the US of China's domination of supply chains, deindustrialization, and loss of manufacturing jobs for working classes in US and Europe. Coupled with this is the opportunity for Biden and Blinken to give Israel an opportunity it never enjoyed for most of its life as a free nation since 1948 to have peace with its Arab neighbors. It is even possible that the prospect of this happening without a settlement for Palestinian statehood that would leave things in Gaza and Palestine at status quo that propelled the sudden attack on Israel. Biden and Blinken want to do the Saudi deal with a new element of getting Palestinian statehood on a basis of respect for dignity of people and of economic independent country which would put to rest decades of Arab neighbor disapproval of Israel. This is both a new vision of West Asia, what we call the Middle East, and an opportunity to focus and also cope with on Asia with the rise of China, India, as the two largest economies with EU and US in the world. ...

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The difficult situation in Spain as unemploymet reaches 23.5%. Descriptions of unemployed young people in the Vallecas neighborhood in Madrid.

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Why is Microsoft so concerned about Google's dominance in the search ad market? Microsoft could face a shrinking price of its Office suite of products which are installed not downloaded, as the whole industry shifts to downloaded software which is available either free or for a modest price with the software companies making money on advertising. Its entire model of extracting premium price on its software products which are installed on new computers or sold through stores is at risk as customers shift to the easily dowloadable software for things that Microsoft software now performs and as these software get better and more sophisticated. As it sees no way to penetrate search ad markets it is focussing on display ad markets. But experts do not see Microsoft having a good chance in the display market as both Yahoo and Google are also competing in this space vigorously. Meanwhile Microsoft stock which was about $54 in 2000 when Ballmer took charge is now stuck at $29 and has not done well throughout this period....

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Many people don't lose weight using semaglutide the drug in Ozempic. About a third lose less than 10% or less and those who lose weight its about 5%-20%. A lot more effective and sure to work as one gets older, safer is to change one's diet to a healthy diet that includes nuts, fruits and vegetables and healthier grains called ancient grains. There is so much potential in that because for two decades people have neglected it and gone inthe wrong direction. Say a simple exercize routine and healthy food intake each contribute 10%, and wellbeing/wellness with nature or meditation/ travel  another 10% you have 30% improvement that will stay forever as new habits get to replace the old. Its called NEFTY Nature, Exercise, Food, Travel, Youthfulness. And its synergistic meaning that one fits into the other more you do in one helps promote the others. Healthier food gets you in the in the right amounts gets you inclined to more exercise, travel adds to the sense of wellbeing, and Nature complements it all. Just taking a walk with bare feet in the grass, seeing the trees and the flowers and the birds in Spring outdoors gets you to feel better and great, nothing that artificial drugs can do. The next thing your blood tests will surely come out better, your next health exam will be better. NEFTY is the process and it is all about process, when the process is good the results for overall health are good one can be sure of that. And this converts into higher productivity and a better feeling at work creating a virtuous cycle. As a people one has neglected it for too long. A little effort for every kind of person reaps huge results. JUST DO IT. ...

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Foreign born population after a series of restrictive Immigration Acts dropped from 15% in 1890 to 12% in 1930, to 5% in 1970. The effort of 1924 Act was to make the southern and eastern European immigration that jumped by 1924 to 41% of total to much lower numbers. A look at the Immigration Act of 1924 under the Coolidge administration sponsored by senators from Washington state and Pennsylvania, Albert Johnson and David Reed, by Chishti and Gelatt in MPI. It shows the prejudices of the early Europeans from one country to Europeans from other countries that followed, after the British, the Germans, the Irish, the Italians and Polish, as the immigration waves shifted to Eastern and southern Europe in the period between 1880 and 1920. During this period Southern and Eastern European immigrants that made up 16% of the population reached 41%. In 1882 Chinese immigration to the US came under the Chinese Exclusion Act restricting it. The Dillingham Commission of 1911 stated the merits of different racial types with northern European and western European preferred to southern and eastern European. Still only 1% of the immigrants entering America were turned back between 1880 and 1924.  The 1917 Immigration Act set up an "Asian Barred Zone" that included Japan, a head tax of $8 on immigrants, requiring proof of read and writing of all immigrants, vetoed by president Woodrow Wilson. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set the first quotas at 358,000. Under the Immigration Act of 1924 it was revised to 165,000. President Hoover asked for strict consular restrictions so that between 1929 and 1945 immigrant numbers fell below 100,000 a year.  ...

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It is too early to say it is a playbook. Trudeau's action may be more effective in the long run. The issue of fentanyl from Mexico is different in 2025 from the first term of DJT in 2016, 8 years later with 490,000 deaths from fentanyl in the US, a part of America's younger generation- unprecedented in American history and since the settling of the American continent since 1600. Fentanyl smuggling into the US from Mexico is the biggest issue facing the US along with closing the US Border. This report in the WSJ says Sheinbaum tried to deflect 25% tariffs by making the offer of sending 10,000 troops to the US Border. This was similar to her predecessor saying he would send 28,000 troops to the Guatemala Mexico border to stop migrants. DJT raised the issue. The week before the Feburary 3, 2025 call between Sheinbaum and DJT the White House said Mexican drug-trafficking organizations “have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico.” These are aspects of the problem that the White House needs addressed in effective ways to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US. Action from the first term of DJT has not solved the problem so that DJT will have to find real effective solutions. The Canadian government followed its own approach. It set $140 million for a new unit to gather intelligence on organized crime. And appointed a head for an organization on stopping fentanyl from entering the US. Canadian PM Trudeau followed the US and DJT in labelling the Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations. Issues the US faces with Mexico that remain unresolved are the $150 billion deficit and bringing home US manufacturing in the auto industry back to the US.   ...

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“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA." European perceptions of recent happenings in the Ukraine war and the war's progression from the beginnings over three years will matter in 2025 as Europe, as Germany, France and Britain take on the role of bringing a fair peace to Europe that closes the war and does the reconstituting of defense architecture of Europe under new institutions that needed to be taken up in the 1990's after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Republicans and DJT's perception of Europe as 27 states is likely to be false. Germany and France in the 21st century may just be stepping into a role that was prepared since the formation of the European community in the 1950's with Germany and France at the core of Europe. It may surprise many that Europe just steps into this role. And with it a reconstituting of the defense architecture of Europe that needed to be done after the fall of the Berlin Wall and not left to the vagaries of free market capitalism that have created the present situation. “It was not a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelenskyy, but obviously a manufactured escalation,” Merz of Germany has said recently of recent White House happenings.  “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Germany's Merz says and means it even if it confounds the US, China and other nations. ...

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Tesla with a tiny falling market share of 6% in China is being outmaneuverd in China even as it gains benefits for the company and for CEO Elon Musk. It fails to make Tesla competitive in world markets ceding leadership to China.  Tesla gets 68% of 2023 profits of $10 billion from China operations. China operations of Tesla produced 947,000 electric cars 53% of its total with China sales at 600,000. Tesla was able to complete the large factory near Shanghai, the largest of its 7 plants, in record time with assistance from China's government. Elon Musk knows premier Li Qiang of China a Shanghai Communist party official which facilitated the building the Chinese plant, lower 15% tax rate instead of 25% till 2023. This 2023 1 million car production is actually not giving Tesla a foothold in the Chinese market, as Tesla's market share is falling from 7.8% to 6% of the market. What it has given China's local companies such as BYD is a world level competitor for China's local companies to compete with, learn from as China develops its own world class electric manufacturing capabilities. BYD has its own unique battery technology and is making the batteries in house. Local companies dominate a very competitive landscape in which there is very little room for error, with companies consolidating. This suggests that Tesla may be an insignificant competitor in China in the future even as it has enhanced its profitability as a company in its domestic American market with its China operation.   ...

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Not Kentucky as the title suggests but Denmark's Mette Frederiksen. Lara Spirit in The Times of London looks at Starmer and Labour in the month of Feb 2025 with the challenge it faces from Reform UK. Mette Frederiksen PM from the Socialist party in Denmark and her policy to tightly restrict immigration and oppose illegal migrants are of great interest to No. 10 Downing Street. This report says No 10 is interested in how Mette Frederiksen has for years pointed out that the only people hurt from socialist parties supporting migrants are the workers and families across Denmark.  There is a disconnect with history. In the US history shows that since the 1850's to 1960 the US vigorously opposed migration from Asia, and migration from Mexico was only supported during the war years 1940-45 because of the demand for labor and quickly  reversed under president Eisenhower's 1954 Operation Wetback. Today's situation of migrant and fentanyl flows following 490,000 deaths from fentanyl over 12 years is totally unprecedented in American history, and would be unimaginable to every president from Washington and Adams to Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR and Kennedy. How did this happen? Why are parties including Harris Democrats, Mayorkas Democrats, in contrast to Fetterman and  Ruben Gallegos Democrats who are asking serious questions about migrants finding themselves caught with Merkel and Scholz in Germany in this situation where the wellbeing of people in each country is obscured by lofty ideas that have no connection to the history of each country and to the situation of unease on the ground? ...

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How did it come to this the 125% US tariff on China? China thinks it is it's success. American companies have deindustrialized the US taking out it's manufacturing by shipping it overseas destroying the American middle class and working class.  An insult to the American worker whose pride and dignity and efforts rebuilt the world after the Second World War helping Europe and Japan, China, rebuild. Pouille and Thibault of Le Monde of France look at how China advanced in the years 2004 to 2024 and surged from 9% of industrial production in the world to 29% more than US, Japan, Germany and India combined.   This is also the period of three wars Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and two presidents Bush and Obama 16 years in which the US took its eyes of the ball and let this situation take hold, which would inevitably lead to a response from the US which started with US president DJT in 2016 and is now in its 10th year. Having failed to limit the China 2025 Plan so that there is no overconcentration of manufacturing in the world disproportionately affecting the rest of the world. The consequences for the rest of the world are clear to see with the 1.7 billion people in India and Indonesia who were late in industrialization by 10-15 years compared to China, the deindustrialization of Europe and the US as this enters its final stages leading to the fissures in the societies of Europe and the US, the destruction of the middle class. ...

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Peter Navarro's thinking is genuinely felt and genuinely thought out after 20 years  at Harvard, UC Irvine and other universities, as an economist who abhors sitting in the office with textbook theory that has no relevance to life of working families in the heartland of America. He says of these textbook theory economists and the American companies that have recklessly shifted America's industrial base to China year after year and decade after decade- “The same damn fools who supported NAFTA, China’s entry into the W.T.O., and every other trade deal that was supposed to benefit America but only benefited Wall Street and the foreign nations screwing us. Those mainstream economists need to get out more often — maybe to Ohio or North Carolina or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Michigan.”  He says the 70 nations including the big ones Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Britain and the European Union are already neogtiating with the Trump administration. What more proof does one want. The Nation will get a better deal as it is about fairness in world trade, and an even playing field. Navarro calls it "a beautiful thing." The three dimensional unique approach taken by Navarro, Bessent and Lutnick and by Trump is working, says Navarro. Fifteen decades ago A. Lincoln stated- "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion.As our case is new we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and we shall save our country."   ...

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Department of Education invites controversy because of diversity programs and "transgender" as culture ignoring health risks. Established by president Jimmy Carter in 1979. Education in the US is run at the state level by each American state administration compared to UK where it is done at the national government level. It has one of the smallest budgets of any agency at 4%, Transportation is 1.7%, Agriculture 3.0%. Most of its work is overseeing $120 billion of federal grants and programs for public education through high school. It supports districts with low income students with $18 billion aid. Head Start program supporting 883,000 low income pre school children in 2022 gets federal aid from Department of Health and Human Services. National School Lunch Act of 1946 by Harry Truman is not affected as it is run by states,  federal aid comes from Department of Agriculture to 20+ million children. Republicans oppose spending about $1 billion to support Diversity program DEI initiatives and support for "cirtical race theory." There is opposition to "transgender." Britain's NHS had a commission look into transgender and says it poses health risks to children and young people. It also adds to anxiety of parents. Republicans are 53 -47 in majority in Senate- to scrap the agency Republicans need 60 votes in the Senate. The likely option is that they will pass a bill putting many of the functions in other agencies reducing its impact- between HHS, Treasury and Interior agencies. ...

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Sofiya Qureshi and Vyomika Singh along with Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri provide the first public briefing on the Operation Sindoor. They are women officers of the Indian Army and Air Force. The briefing was the first of its kind where details were provided by the Army, Air Force and the Foreign Ministry of India. It was a precisely done briefing showing the terrorist camps in Pakistan, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the ones targeted, and the link of each camp with a terrorist attack going back to 25 years. In this way it send the message that it is targeted at preventing this kind of terrorism at the source and as a preventive action to eliminate the chances of future terrorism, especially where it is targeting peaceful economic development and advancement of the whole of India.  Twenty three million tourists have visited Kashmir in 2024 and this has created a surge in the economy of Kashmir and increased the jobs and opportunities, the investment in Kashmir. The attacks at Phalgam are presented then as a direct attempt to turn back the tide of modernization of India. It is what the Japanese Kwantung Army did to suppress democratic forces in Japan and begin a war of imperialism in China. It was rooted before the Kwantung Army in the efforts to suppress the efforts of modernizers such as Sun Yat Sen by the Japanese. Gen. Joe Stilwell of the US led the struggle against the Imperial Japanese Army in China which is too easily forgotten in China as the first step towards the subsequent American effort in the 1990's to engage with China and help it modernize its economy. ...

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The trade deficit with China has led to loss of 3.8 million jobs, 75% of them or 2.9 million in manufacturing. Go back to 1990 and Beijing was a city of bicycles not cars. If Beijing shifted to a open economy and simply imported products from the US and Europe as it had done since 1700 it would have remained a backward agricultural economy. It took 20 years of focused effort after 2000 for China with US technological assistance to excel in manufacturing, as the US had done after 1920. Can or cannot the US excel in Manufacturing with its own focused effort and restore jobs and decent wages to the American people, that is the question. That a $1 trillion deficit that has already destroyed the US manufacturing and its capacity to defend itself by rapidly building up the US Navy, is that not an emergency, then what is, is also the question, and the role, the duty, of the president of the US in such a situation. The federal appeals court has allowed the DJT Tariffs to remain in place till it goes to the US Supreme Court. Today May 30 the WSJ in a front page article shown here says the one California shipyard could assemble a supply ship in 5 days in 1942. China's independence in the fight against Imperial Japan and the Kwantung Army's adventures, and the independence of Europe in the 1940's depended on this vital US capacity. Is this forgotten? FDR acted step by step by 1938 to restore the US lost capacity at that time, what is the role of the president today? ...

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Europe responds with platitudes and vague references to "benefits for everyone" and "detrimental" without facing up to the facts. How many American cars do you see on the streets of Germany? in Berlin or Frankfurt?- or Japan? in Tokyo or Osaka?-or South Korea? in Seoul? And how long has this been going on - since the 1980's. Europe's answer to the Marshall Plan and Japan's and China's to post war American help for recovery, was to exclude American cars and other products. GM and Ford have pulled out of China and so has VW. China's plan is to flood the world with electric cars, and Japan's to flood the world with hybrids. For far too long America has relied on capitalism that has no state involvement. In this kind of competition with hidden subsidies and national planning at the core of industrial growth in Asia. The US government has to have state involvement in it's auto, steel, aluminium, and chip industries, not to create trade disturbances but to create an even playing field for all, and rebuild a middle class destroyed by unfair trading practices of Asian nations and the EU, including Canada and Mexico which are simply used as bases to ship to the US. Ford makes 80% of its cars in the USA and GM can make the investments in new plants to raise its production from 60% in the USA to 80%. South Korea's Hyundai and Kia are investing $21 billion to make in the USA. Toyota and Nissan, VW, BMW and Mercedes can do the same.   ...

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As one group of B-2's headed west pver the Pacific, another group quietly headed east to bomb the Iranian nuclear weapons development sites. The intent was to carry out the decision made by the US and the EU and tacitly supported by Russia, China, India, and the world, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is now evident that since the beginning of 2025 the number on priority of the DJT administration in foreign policy was to end Iran's effort to get a nuclear weapon. This is why the US DJT administration brought together Gulf regimes Qatar and UAE, Saudis for $2 trillion in business and economic deals in a DJT visit in May 2025. It is also evident that when India launched air strikes on Pakistan terrorist bases in June the US president DJT ended the war quickly in 72 hours. The Pakistan military head met with DJT in the White House a week back. This was preparation for the plan to take out the nuclear sites with minimal regional instability, a goal of the American people after Reagan/Bush miscalculations in supporting Hussein in Iraq and creating the Middle East wars Americans have had enough of. It may close a chapter of violent conflicts in the Middle East to be replaced with US support for India, UAE/Qatar/Saudi, Pakistan economic deals economic agreements. Much of the Indian media fails to understand this. The job of a US president if done right has responsibilities to the Nation and the World, after all the missteps of his predecessors DJT is stepping into this role. ...