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What is not reported is that the US could accept a shift of some appliance production overseas, what it could not accept is the shift of its manufacturing base in industries it created in semiconductors and technology to Taiwan, China and Japan, South Korea. The economists of the previous administrations were clearly wrong, and the previous administrations did nothing but observe the slow destruction of America's industrial base. It will take 4 years of the DJT administration for the investments to be made in the US, the future administrations will continue this policy. Deng and Kellman in WSJ clearly understate the importance of the policy changes for America's Level Playing Field ALPF. It is easy to say Whirlpool and Harley Davidson won't be coming back strongly soon as the EU, Japan and South Korean makers of appliances and motorcycles will be able to absorb most or all of the 15% in tariffs. Yet it gives them a better  and level playing field to compete with foriegn makers. What is not shown here is that the tariffs will help increase investment in EU and Japanese , South Korean automakers in the US, and will increase with lighter regulation the opportunities for American automakers GM and Ford. ...

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Germany's biggest bank Deutsche Bank is described here in WSJ as one of the banking industry's biggest basket cases, having suffered legal investigations, management turnover and legal fines over many years. This time the German government is working on merging the bank with Commerzbank AG in a last effort to straighten out the huge mess and losses at the bank, says WSJ. A former JP Morgan manager, Mr. Zames, 48 years old, who joined the bank at the time of the London whale scandal is now working for Cerberus Capital which is acting in a multilayered relationship with Deutsche Bank  as adviser to management as well as having complex financial dealings with Deutsche Bank. In the process says WSJ he would be rescuing a soured bet on Deutsche Bank by Cerberus which owns 3% of Deutsche Bank as well as 5% fo Commerzbank. The investment made in 2017 was shown as $1.1 billion but is worth half that today. The arrangement is unusual for Deutsche Bank and shows how far the bank has changed from its early years as Germany's leading bank. It was founded in 1870 and in 1998 acquired Bankers Trust for a presence on Wall Street. This turned out to be a bad investment as $4 billion premium paid for Bankers Trust was later written off. Deutsche Bank never really recovered from these moves into Wall Street banking. The SDP in the German coalition government sees the merger with Commerzbank as one more move to get out of the mess, though no one really knows considering the complex dealings of the bank and its problems with legal authorites in Germany. ...

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CLT Classical Learning Test has a bright future. Its message is summed up in CLT Test 8 on the website- where Gustav Mahler is cited with the text- "Tradition is not about the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." 183,000 high school seniors have taken the CLT Classic Learning Test in the US in 2025 compared to 2 million for SAT and 1.4 million for ACT, yet the new test is considered to be more rigorous and includes the western intellectual tradition in ways that the ACT and SAT do not. A CLT Test 3 we looked at on the CLT site included for reading a poem by Amy Lovell 1916, Mark Twain writings, passages on Greek Zeno and Renaissance painter Raphael, EB White and others. CLT Test 4 has poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson 1885, and remarkably it has a passage on the Pack Horse Book Project of FDR's New Deal Initiative in 1935 on women librarians on horseback or with mules going into remote mountainous areas of the US including Kentucky, to teach rural people to read and write. This alone suggests it should appeal to Republican and Democratic states alike. It could include Charles Dickens and Shakespeare or Robert Frost's poetry. In that sense it is far more rigorous than short bland passages in SAT or ACT of little significance or educational value. It is designed to give students an exposure in classrooms to the western intellectual tradition that the elites in America have themselves grown up learning but who now have a haughty attitude to their own intellectual traditions. In CLT Test 6 we found a poem on Nature by Gerard Manley Hopkins 1877 and Dickens famous iconic passage that begins the Tale of Two Cities written about the French Revolutionary period which is clearly not what we find in SAT or ACT, and far better in conveying a feel of what America is about and where it came from. The founder of CLT Mr. Tate believes it will be the test most taken by high school seniors by 2040. Classic Learning Test now competes with SAT and ACT in North Carolina, Indiana and other American states. Arkansas passed legislation favoring CLT, and Ohio is doing it this year. Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming are accepting CLT. This Test is gaining popularity among conservatives in red and purple states  and is getting the support of the US government in 2026. The Maryland Company behind this test is Maryland Learning Initiatives. Indiana passed legislation in March requiring its state universities to accept CLT scores. And North Carolina university system now accepts the CLT. Both CLT and SAT, ACT have Math and Reading Verbal tests, the CLT adds foundational texts from Western science, government, history and literature in ways not found in SAT, ACT. Students can take the CLT at home or at a testing site. More than 350 universities and colleges accept CLT says this report in Washington Post. The SAT and ACT use shorter passages and the reading material is bland and does not have the value that it could have from the western intellectual tradition. The passages in the CLT are more rigorous and include western religious tradition and thinkers but also poets, writers, scientists from the whole gamut of the experience of Europe and the United States of America. And also explore other countries and continents including China and India, from Aristotle to Gandhiji. ...

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This report in the WSJ shows American households are acting prudently by building up savings of $1.6 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As much of these savings are not distributed evenly across the population, and coming back from a period after the 2009 financial crisis when savings in the lower classes had dropped to alarming levels, this saving is good for the future of the American people by building a path to sustained growth for the long term. Readers responses to this report show their dismay at calling savings hoarding, dismay at the idea that saving 3-6 months of expenses would be considered prudent when 1-2 years would be a minimum  and 2-3 years desirable would be considered decent protection in times like the last 2 decades of manmade disasters (shipping out American manufacturing, 2009 financial crisis) or nature driven disasters (the pandemic). For the Biden administration the saving also provides hope that the mistakes of the last two decades and the 2009 period can be avoided. By targeting the $1 trillion in infrastructure spending plan to projects that build synergy throughout the economy and generate more growth for every dollar spent in a long term Renewal America project. Recent WSJ reports show this is happening. The $2 trillion Families and Workers Plan works in a similar way to bring hope in improving the quality of life in America through children's education, childcare, paid leave, health care, affordable housing, climate change investments. The public in America is showing equal prudence by aligning the savings to this approach to set America on a path of long term renewal and development that could be sustained to 2030 or 2035. This will also enable the investments needed to build America's role in the world and help its partners in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa take the same approach for sustained and balanced growth into the next decade.  ...

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Operation Wetback in 1954 under Eisenhower and US immigration action in 2026 compared to Sweden and Denmark in Northern Europe. The mood has shifted and so has the political situation with new governments in Europe, the mood has shifted in Italy, Germany, France, UK, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, across all of Europe. Merkel's failure to grasp the true nature of the situation has led to a huge burden on social services, on literacy for national identity, and created dissension within democratic processes in many countries in Europe and North America.

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Researchers Rauh and Novy-Marx, estimate that states in the U.S. have pension shortfall of as much as $3.4 trillion, and the municipalities have pension shortfall of $574 billion. Seven states are expected to exhaust their pension assets by 2010, and half will run out of money by 2027. Several states have promised annual payments of 30% of tax revenues after their pension funds are exhausted.

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Accidental inventions cornflakes, popsicles to treated rubber (Goodyear), the pacemaker (Wilson Greatbach), the microwave (Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer), and others in the recent history of America. There is along list of inventions by accident in science and medicine including penicillin for Europe since 1700 without which modern society could not exist.

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Iran's (IRGC's not the people of Iran who are protesting) strategy in talks is to stall peace talks, to use the help of global media which is creating perception for Iran, and see if the strategy of no nuclear materials turned over to Russia or some other country, see if that strategy works. This is  what German Foreign Minister Wadephul is saying on Day 16 of the Naval Blockade. Earlier this week German chancellor Merz called it unfortunate that the Iran War is continuing in explaining to ordinary Germans why the German economy is slowing down, yet he understands the danger posed by nuclear weapons in Iran or for that matter anywhere inthe volatile and explosive Middle East. Almost like the volatile and explosive Balkans that ignited World War I in 1914. This strategy of IRGC Iran does much irreparable damage to the Iranian economy in weeks to come. Iranian protests were intended to put the economy on a new path in which not just students, the middle class in the bazaars, the younger generation of Iranians who had the most to lose participated. Why is this happening? It is happening because of the complicated politics of the Middle East and centuries old differences within the Islamic world between different sectarian beliefs and cultures. It is not happening because of the US. The US cannot be responsible for what colonial empires of the British and French did in this region in the 1920's by creating artificial states of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, out of the Arab portion of the collapsed Ottoman Empire defeated in World War I with Shia, Sunni populations in these states mixed up into unmanageable states. Five decades of wars in the Middle East are the result of these unmanageable artificial states of French and British Empires by 1921. The British Empire also controlled Iran in the 1900's and its oil resources. There was no involvement of America as the British and French did what they wanted to do even in the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI.  The fall of the pro-Soviet Mossadegh regime in 1956 was the only fragmentary situation which is an anti Soviet Cold War move by the US in 1952, and was done by a group that had British connections deep inside the Eisenhower administration led by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that took this unfortunate step for America (looking back over  5 decades of wars). A British oriented group was active inside the Republican party that continued to operate in the Reagan administration's involvement in support for Iraq in its war with Iran. And which no longer exists in the Republican party led by DJT which puts America First, grasps the fact of unmanageable states of British and French Empires and seeks to distance the US from the Middle East. Gandhi and Patel (and Jinnah) avoided the creation of such a state in British India's partition into India and Pakistan. Afghanistan is simply an extension of this Middle Eastern complicated setup, including 9/11. Why is all this important? Arab Middle East is a dangerous place for nuclear weapons- this is all the US is trying to accomplish, thankfully without the cooperation of the British and French whose Empires are responsible for the creation of a hodge podge mix of peoples in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq which (check this out) never existed before British and French Mandates of 1921. The global and American media that sees DJT Republicans as too conservative on cultural issues and the political establishment intending to return to power have completely obscured or not presented this side of the Middle East, yet is key to devising a policy that keeps America out of Middle East wars but keeps the goal of no nuclear weapons in this powderkeg of a region. ...

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The problem of lack of vaccine supplies in African, Latin American and South East Asian countries needs immediate attention. With vaccine supplies going unused in America and Europe because of vaccine hesitancy, all of Africa and much of Latin America, parts of Asia lack vaccine supplies.

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Claudia Sheinbaum and Lopez Obrador- Mexico's government elected 2018 (after DJT election in 2016) and major failures for the American people. This has been an unmitigated failure, a complete disaster for the American people, when one sees the loss of 3 times more young Americans than in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined from illegal trafficking of fentanyl. A Memorial to these deaths next to these 2 Memorials and the Lincoln Memorial would remember the deaths that happened as American politicians looked away from the Monroe Doctrine that kept colonial powers out of this hemisphere, and that provided the history and traditions of good government since 1600 on the continent of the Americas.

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In a complete reversal of Chavez socialist Venezuela oil policy that led to underinvestment in oil industry and its gradual collapse with mismanagement corruption- the new oil law sets 15% tax and 30% royalty fees . This encourages US investment other than Chevron which is already in the country. Rodriguez, the interim president says "We're talking about the future. We are talking about the country that we are going to give to our children."  US Secretary of State Rubio cited this achievement in the interests of the Venezuelan people in the Senate hearing yesterday. Rubio is from Latin America, has a deep knowledge of the region and is interested in its future for the next generation, he knows what went wrong and what can be corrected for a better future for the region. For this reason the Monroe Doctrine is not about US alone, but the US helping the region prosper and improve the lives of people in the region. A very important point when there is misrepresentation of US policy in the region and the world, something Rubio never tired of pointing out in the Senate hearing yesterday. Once again in a country that was one of the best in Latin America Venezuelan oil can help Venezuela get back on its feet as a reliable and successful partner for America in the western hemisphere, a model for the rest of the region after so much suffering and mismanagement acting as a lesson for future generations in the western hemisphere. ...

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Flat payment rates for Medicare Advantage to Insurers by the DJT administration which is questioning how health care needs of the country remain unmet and US healthcare comparing very unfavorably with other advanced countries in Europe and Japan and also in India. Some of this is because of the behaviour and practices of the health and pharmaceutical industries in the US. The 2027 payment by government for Medicare Advantage is 0.09 percent. In 2026 it was about 5%. In 2025 it was -0.16 percent and in 2024 it was -1.12% under the Biden administration showing a great deal of dissatisfaction with funding Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage was set up by the Bush Republicans in 2003 who set it up with the nice sounding name Medicare Modernization Act. It was an effort to help the insurance companies with government money. Today in the second term of DJT in 2026 affordability is what American people care about most and the DJT administration is unhappy with the insurance companies. Dr. Mehmet Oz is in charge of Medicare and Medicaid Services Agency of the federal government and he says about Medicare Advantage and new policy to save “taxpayers from unnecessary spending (on Medicare Advantage) that is not oriented towards addressing real health needs.” The DJT Kennedy-Oz approach is for comprehensive digital information linking all medical providers, making America healthy again, cutting through the dense fog created over the last 2 decades, making pharmaceutical costs as affordable as the best in European nations, and refusing to subisidize if delivery is poor and health results are poor.   ...

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Watching Joanna Stern of WSJ interview Sam Altman and Murali Murthi gives the impression that Altman was  moving too quickly and Murthi was saying the right things but lacked the experience and capacity to tackle AI's vast responsibilities. This also stems from the fact that what young Stanford and other tech graduates in their early thirties have done in the last 2 decades ends a chapter in America's tech history. AI is an entirely different technology which requires the involvement of major parts of America's whole technological and scientific community and its society, not just a few individuals. This is also the lesson from the pandemic for virus research where not just the Cambridge, Massachusetts community needed to be involved, but vast parts of America'a health and medicine scientific community and the American public. A million lives were lost in the pandemic in the US alone, and millions all over the world. It is a lesson that should never be forgotten- that technology can get out of control. ...

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Thomas Sargent of New York University, the 2012 Nobel prize winner in economics, says the EU leaders can learn from the way the federal government in the U.S. handled the issue of state's debt when it came up in the 1790's and in 1840. In 1790 the federal government- under the leadership of Washington and Hamilton- saw the need to honor state's debt because of the contribution made by states in the war of independence and the U.S. assumed state's debt. In 1840 the U.S. refused to assume state's debt and states went into default. The result was beneficial because state's passed balanced budget rules and restrained reckless spending. Another benefit was that this preserved state rights to manage their finances and the federal structure setup under the constitution.

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The first Japanese American to reside permanently in America Kanaye Nagasawa was a samurai from 1864 Edo era isolationist Japan. He left Japan in secrecy at 19 as part of a group on a secret mission to learn science and technology from the West. He eventually settled in Sonoma county, California, and set up the wine industry in the region. BBC series Rediscovered America tell his story and the story of the Japanese Americans in the US.

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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. ...