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Brazil suffers from a severe shortage of engineers as it expects to grow at 5% through 2010 and at 3-4% after that. Because Brazilian Universities do not turn out enough engineers Brazilan companies in oil, mining and aviation and other sectors are having their own training programs. Brazil's education system is not doing the job. The average Brazilian worker has 6 years of schooling compared to 10 years in S. Korea, 11 in Japan and 12 in the USA, according to the National Confederation of Industry study. Of the few that make it to the university only one in five take up engineering, science math or computing according to a recent World Bank study of links between education and economic growth. Most of the growth in university education is at private universities and these universities find it easier to provide programs in the social sciences and not enough engineering programs exist at these universities. Mexico has a large supply of engineering graduates that have helped it build its automotive and other industry, see the link to this. ...

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Next to Uttar Pradesh 242 million population adjacent Bihar with 128 million is decisive in Indian parliament elections since 1947- 2025 state elections show BJP NDA (Modi) sweeping win with over 203 of 243. Assembly seats. Unknown to most of the world is that this region is the birthplace of Buddhist civilization and culture, that later was part of Asian culture and civilization as it spread to China and Japan. Modi plans to add to Nalanda and other seats of Buddhist ancient universities on the world map with UNESCO listings.  The Indian economy needs 15-20 years of stable government dedicated to rapid accelerated growth with full access to US and EU technologies and capital to catch up with China, the US and EU. The road to this starts with 5 regions- northcentral  region Gujarat/Rajasthan/Madhya Pradesh  (99 seats), west central region Maharashtra (48 seats), northern region Uttar Pradesh (80 seats), Haryana and Delhi region (17 seats) and Eastern region Bihar (40 seats) which together provide  seats in Indian parliament  284 seats out of total of 543 seats in the Indian parliament. For the first time with the win in Bihar the Modi government is now within reach of this goal of being able to govern in a democracy for next 15 years by delivering on infrastructure, cost of living and rapid industrialization and growth of the economy similar to Japan's and China's growth since 1950. The LDP delivered this in Japan, the CCP in China and the NDA under Modi is in the same position today. ...

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  John Foster Dulles view of Asia as stated in Foreign Affairs was very different from the decolonization happening in Asia and may ultimately brought the US into expansion of the Vietnam War without the necessary caution and the overthrow of elected governments in Iran. Donald Rumsfeld's view of the Middle East brought the US into the Sunni-Shia conflicts of the twentieth century. Two faculty members at South Korean Universities make a case for South Korea going nuclear in Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs reaches a small group of people who follow foreign affairs who carry on debates on issues that can lead to foreign wars. A wider debate than this is needed on vital issues that affect the 400 million people in the US and Canada and the 500 million in European Union and Britain. Articles in Foreign Affairs can tilt the direction of American policy leading to involvement in conflicts overseas which are not in the US interest instead of educating the population on international affairs which is something very different. George Washington and the founding fathers cautioned against such tendencies.     ...

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Germany stands out as an outlier in the percentage of cars imported into the US and not made in the USA- for VW this is 80% and for Mercedes 63%. Only Hyundai falls into this category with 65 percent and it announced a $21 billion plan for investment in the US including a $6.5 billion steel plant in Louisiana. All other foreign companies import about half or less of their sales into the US. VW and Mercedes could follow Hyundai in making the shift to making in the US. Honda makes 65% of its cars and Ford 80% in the USA. Peter Navarro, senior Trade adviser to DJT says-"foreign trade cheaters" countries  such as Germany and Japan, South Korea have turned America's manufacturing sector into a "lower wage assembly operation for foreign parts." Not said is that the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, the "smart" economists at Ivy League universities, and America's finance sector looked the other way as this destroyed industry after industry and American manufacturing, destroying America's foundations, its broad middle class.     ...

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A reading crisis in Sweden spreads from secondary school students to college students. 

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD showed that in 2022, 25% of 15-year-olds lacked basic reading and writing skills. In 2000, the figure was 13%. This has spread to college students. Scores in the US for NAEP and in the UK are much worse than Sweden yet there is nowhere near the same level of alarm about it.

 In December 2024, the Minister of Education and leader of the Liberal Party, Johan Pehrson, met with representatives from universities, student organizations and the national education agency to go over steps needed to tackle the "reading crisis."

 

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Funding for US colleges decreases, fewer high school students graduate in 2025. Fewer foreign students. All this is affecting American colleges. For two decades American colleges allowed tution to get out of control making it unaffordable for a middle class that was already hit by the American leaders who allowed America's industrial base to be shipped out to China. As factory towns dwindled in importance and worker jobs and incomes declined across the length and breadth of America, universities and colleges took little responsibility even as young men opted to not go to college. Tution fees kept rising requiring loans that could not be paid off. Today the rust belt is coming to these colleges as the DJT administration has decided to give low priority to funding these colleges and universities and new career paths are being created through apprenticeships and other vocational education.

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The restructuring underway at Pfizer. Experts view the cut in R&D budgets, when more new drugs are needed, with skepticism. Pfizer and other drug manufacturers believe they can make up for this by working closer with universities. Pfizer is reducing the size of its Groton, Connecticut R&D facility and is moving research operations closer to universities in Boston and Cambridge, England. R&D budgets will be cut 30%, from $9.4 billon to $6.5- $7 billion. The emphasis now is to develop a new model for drug development by focussing on a few promising areas, collaborate closely with universities, and fill gaps with acquisitions, as a more efficient way to develop new drugs. In this new approach the infant nutrition business, even with its high growth rates, did not fit in. Cash from the operations sold to Nestle will be used to make share buybacks and be returned to shareholders. Other drug companies from Novartis to Bristol Myers are trying this approach.

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The Stimson Center looks at the closing of an era of Conservative politics in Japan which ended in 2025 after the death of Shinzo Abe and the 2 year premiership of Kishida. Interview is conducted by the Stimson Center of a senior Japanese political figure with 30 years of experience in the Foreign Service, and the author of the only English language book on Shinzo Abe, reflecting the paucity of research on Japan. Shinzo Abe was premier for a short time in 2005-2006 and for a full term in 2012. He made changes to Japan's SDF, its partnership with India, Australia in the Quad, and his economic policy which increased women's participation in the economy. For the first time in post war Japan there was a new sensde of confidence under Abe and he is missed sorely in Japan today. Yet as this senior Japanese politician says, Japan has changed the way the US and Europe have changed, and nationalist politics are replacing old Conservative politics of the LDP. In a way also how the deindustrialization of US, Europe and Japan has also taken place discrediting that era. Takaichi Sanae is itself a representative of the new era, as she did not hesitate to say Japan would get involved if China attacked Taiwan. Her popularity is at 62% and she has called a snap election, as she came in to replace Shigeru Ishiba in October 2025 and was not directly elected PM. Yet in the long view this is also a misconception because neither the Stimson Center or the interview participants had a keen sense of who Abe really was and Abe's grasp of the history of the Kamakura period of Buddhist Japan and China, India, of the 12th century before the foreign invasions from the north. One of Shinzo Abe's biggest legacies is the relationship that was close to his heart, the relationship with India and prime minister Modi. This week chancellor Merz of the Federal Republic of Germany was at the kite festival with PM Modi in Ahmedabad and at the Sabarmati Ashram of Gandhiji. The same degree of warmth shown by the German leader and Modi reflecting Vivekananda's time in Germany, was seen long time back between Modi and Abe. The bullet train project Mumbai to Ahmedabad and the ones that follow across India are a testimony to the warmth shown by Abe for India, and his knowledge of history from the Buddhist period in India when by the 12th century in Japan in Dogen's time Tenjiku (India) was the sacred homeland of Buddhism. Today India has revived the Buddhist traditions and centers of Buddhism, the universities and research centers for Buddhism from that period in Indian history. Buddhism started in India near Nepal in what is now Bihar state at Sarnath and Kushinagar, and spread through China to Japan and Korea. The whole continent of Asia would reflect Buddhist ideals and ideas without the intervening period of Vedic culture in India and China's Mongolian and Manchurian northern invasions, and the periods of European colonialism. Today Buddhism and The Bhagavad Gita are itself strung like pearls on a string as the Gita itself says, part of the long spiritual traditions of three nations- India, China and Japan, and of the many others Vietnam and Korea. ("All these worlds have their rest in me as many pearls on a string." -Mascaro tr. of Bhagavad Gita, Penguin). As Asian nations and peoples come to their own inner selves, find their inmost self, this is the culture that really pervades all of Asia. ...

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Fed's Powell sees only a temporary slight effect of DJT tariffs on inflation to 2.7% in 2025 that he says can be "looked through without action by us." Fed will wait for clarity in coming days and weeks. Powell says in March 2025 “It can be the case that it’s appropriate sometimes to look through inflation if it’s going to go away quickly without action by us. And that can be the case in the case of tariff inflation.” Tariffs are intended as they were in the first term of DJT and retained by Democrats led by Biden to create a level playing field after hidden subsidies by China, and to rebuild American manufacturing. New investments in manufacturing and in infrastructure supported by both DJT and Biden have brought new hope and vigor to comunnities and towns across America. For far too long as Powell understands textbook economic theory at Ivy League universities that had no connection to reality was used by American business to turn its back on communities and towns across the 51 states and the Nation. ...

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It is shocking to see the virtual lack of cultural or other people to people contacts between the two largest regions in Asia, and most populous regions in the world, India and China. There appears to be a near total lack of understanding on both sides at the university and government level of the importance of setting up these contacts, so that misperceptions do not exist on either side and better relations can be built using such contacts. Rana Mitter, a expert on Modern China at Oxford University, says in an interview in the Times of India, that India and the 1962 conflict occupy less attention in the Chinese mind because other issues such as the relations with the U.S., ASEAN and Japan, take up more space. Mitter says India should emphasize its pluralism, democracy, and peaceful engagement in its external relations.  Mitter puts less emphasis on the 50 day standoff between India and China on the border at Doklam, Bhutan region, when he responds to a question about the risks of a conflict. He points to a bigger problem that affects relations between the two countries- the lack of exchanges that bring Chinese students, faculty, and government personnel to India, the difficulty of obtaining visas. This lack of cultural exchanges between the two countries is a major issue, considering also that trade and business exchanges are taking place and growing during this lack of cultural exchanges.  As a result it appears that business and economic relations guide the China-India relationship today, with people in China's key ministries and government, in universities and local government, lacking an understanding of India. Mitter makes this clear that cultural exchanges need to be established. Even a search for China- India dialogue brings up little information with a location in Beijing but none in India. It is mind boggling that the relations between the two most populous regions in the world are based on a huge lack of contacts and exchanges that would improve perceptions and understanding.  Britain's effort offers a model to follow as Tsinghua University in Beijing, as part of China's C9, has set up cultural exchanges with British universities in the ongoing cultural exchanges between Britain and China. ...

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Increasing college enrollment for women in the US shows no sign of changing. Women now make up 60% of college students for the 2020-21 college year, men 40%., according to National Student Clearinghouse. Another alarming piece of information is that there are 1.5 million fewer students at colleges and universities in the US, and men make up 71% of the decline. 3.8 million women filled college applications compared to 2.8 million men for 2021-2022 college year in the US, according to Common Application. The enrollment rates of poor and working class whites show alarming decline with rates of enrollment less than people from Black, Latino or Asian income backgrounds. Decline in male enrollment is highest for community colleges with family finances the main cause. The pandemic has accelerated this negative trend that is bad for America. 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in college in 2021 spring than 2019 spring, according to a WSJ analysis.  During the pandemic millions of women left jobs to stay at home with children. Many turned to sons for help, with some young men quitting school to work. Some examples shown in this report show parents having gone to college and sons deciding the skyrocketing costs of education make it too risky to take out loans that cannot be repaid. Many just feel lost, doing work landscaping for $500 a week or packing boxes at Amazon warehouses at $15.50 an hour. With so much going wrong in the way America is investing in its future generation, issues like wars in distant lands fade into insignificance, and president Biden's decision is surely "a wise decision." As is his effort to make community college at no cost given to young Americans. The $3.5 trillion investment in workers and families that Biden plans could not have been developed at a time of greater need than today. ...

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Over 100 women scientists are part of the Chandrayan moon missions of Indian space agency ISRO. Many are leader of project teams and head key parts of the scientific efforts of ISRO. Prime minister Modi says the moon mission shows the strength of women or 'nari shakti' and the potential of the younger generation of women for careers in science and technology. About 25% of the 16,000 employees of ISRO space agency are women, and Modi says "they will inspire women for generations to come." Women make up 43% of graduates in STEM scientific fields, yet when it comes to being part of scientific institutes or universities this drops to 14%, an imbalance that prime minister Modi and ISRO women seek to address. DW.com looks at the work of women in the moon, mars and solar missions including Ritu Karidhal, Nidhi Porwal, Reema Ghosh, Kalpana Kalahasti. Kalahasti is deputy project director and has overseen the satellite imaging that will be done from Chandrayan 3. Reema Ghosh worked on the "Pragyan" rover that is now exploring the moon's surface. ...

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The University of Wisconsin increased tution by 5.5% for a number of years. University officials say a reserve fund of $650 million of the University of Wisconsin was built up with most of the funds coming from the tution increases. The reason university officials give for this is the $5 billion university budget, with only 20% provided by the state of Wisconsin. Shrinking support from the state led to the effort to build a reserve fund. The size of the fund and the lack of disclosure by university officials that tution increases were being used to build up the fund has led to strong criticism. Reports about the spending at the University of Minnesota and other universities show the lack of spending restraint at large universities in the U.S. Bureaucratic layers and debt servicing for new buildings take up large portions of the universiy budgets.

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The US gets the lowest score among the large industrialized nations- way behind Europe- in its record on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution policies, agricultural policies, smog, and other environment criteria in a survey done jointly by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities. On regional smog the US has a very poor score.

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"The NHS is on its knees," says Starmer, one more reaon to ban outdoor smoking. Labor in 2007 put the ban on indoor smoking. Sunak had a plan for the Tories to ban smoking. Starmer is now following this to reduce the burden on the NHS and improve public health in the UK. The bill would gradually ban smoking for people born after 2009, an idea proposed by Sunak and the Conservatives. The bill would place new restrictions on outdoor smoking, including outdoor spaces at, and pavements outside, clubs and restaurants, as well as at universities, children’s play areas and small parks. Asked about this during a visit to Paris, Starmer said: “My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking,” he said. “That is a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it is a burden on the taxpayer. So, yes, we are going to take decisions in this space, more details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we’ve got to take action to reduce the burden on the NHS and the taxpayer.”  The prime minister said-“It is important to get the balance right, but everybody … who uses the NHS will know that it’s on its knees.” Dr Layla McCay, the director of policy at the NHS Confederation, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It is absolutely the health challenge of our time. It’s the leading cause of preventable illness in the UK, so we are heartened to see that progress is being made and that the intention is moving forward to really address one of Britain’s main drivers of health inequalities.” ...

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Trade economists from Ivy League universities, are still peddling the old theories on trade from textbooks that make no sense and have got America in this huge mess that it is in where other countries are ripping America off with unfair trade practices. These economists have turned a blind eye, turned their backs to the great damage done to industrial towns and communities across America for two decades with the loss of manufacturing. Take Irwin's point that the US would have to monitor rates on 13000 tariff line items. This is ridiculous because the US simply needs to monitor the key products such as semiconductors, oil and gas, LNG. In just one negotiation with India the US having a trade deficit DJT states of $100 billion with India- terrible trade. By opening up supply of LNG and oil US can fill India's needs for Oil and LNG and cut the deficit to zero. Who came up with this idea. Indian PM Modi and his trade team. Once it was known that the status quo was unacceptable India came up with its own ideas lets import what we get from Russia from the US. Yes we had discounts from Russia but that was when oil prices were high. DJT's effort to get oil prices down by increasing US production will make it possible for India to get this oil at similar prices. India is a much bigger economy now than during Covid 5 years back India can do this. US and India win-win by doing joint aviation production deals and US gains with sale of F-35 stealth fighters. It is just common sense. Sadly, much of this is common sense that is beyond Ivy League Economics departments at American universities.  Reciprocal Tariffs make a lot of sense because this is how fairness is done- for China, for India. In the case of Mexico, Canada, China, on stopping flow of fentanyl- this reciprocal tariff is not a tariff it is as Commerce Secretarty Luttnick pointed out domestic policy of the United States. Which country would tolerate 490,000 deaths from fentanyl over 12 years and not take domesti policy action. It is not that the policy actions are taken it is that these action should have been taken a long time back. ...

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Wilbur Ross talks about the need for an industrial policy in energy and other sectors to keep the US from falling behind other countries like China. He sees the need for tax cuts for the middle class for incomes below 250,000. He would like to see more spending on universities and on research and development to rebuild America.

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Africa's Harrison Mwillima looks at Geman reunification from an African perspective of regional integration, and says unity should be an everpresent endeavour. Visiting cities in East and West Germany organized by DW's Africa department he is struck by how much East Germans feel left behind. Merkel herself grew up in East Germany but like many young people in 1990 left for the west and seemed to forget the east where they came from. He remembers the time when people from Angola , Mozambique and other African countries studied at universities in the German Democratic Republic, former east Germany,  and the sense of socialist solidarity that aroused much enthusiasm.  Mwillima says a sense of unity can only go so far if there is a lingering sense of inequality  between the two parts. He sees a distinct hunger to achieve unity among regions and peoples or countries. Yet 31 years later in Germany its not only worth pursuing this ideal but remembering that it has to be done as a natural and ever growing endeavor that is not just an event. ...

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Stephen Miller, as both intellectual and organizer, is shaping policy on immigration at the White House as adviser to Kristi Noem, head of Homeland Security. He is a dedicated follower of DJT and White House deputy chief of staff. He also brought Prof. Navarro to the attention of DJT on trade policies.  He was a key figure in the first DJT administration at the age of 31 having served as communications secretary for Senator Jeff Sessions and developed his ideas during the period with Sessions. As director of speech writing and senior adviser to DJT,  he wrote some of president DJT's policy speeches in the first term, the speech to the Republican National Convention 2016 , and the Inaugural Address of 2017,  including the speech on Jan. 6th 2020 following the storming of the Capitol building.  Who is Stephen Miller? He comes from a Jewish family that immigrated in his grandfather's generation in 1903 to Ellis Island from Belarus, during a period of discrimination in Russian regions. During the period on campus at Duke University where he graduated in Political Science, Miller was a follower of a prolific author, David Horowitz. Horowitz was part of the Jewish leftist intellectual movement in New York in the post war period, but after the 1980's joined the Reagan movement and questioned the ideas he had believed in, questioned what he saw as the antisemitism on US campuses. At Santa Monica public school in California in 2000-2003 Stephen Miller questioned the multiculturalism that replaced the America of the founding fathers, that he saw at the school. It is this perspective that also underlies Stephen Miller's ideas about universities, about immigration, about the economy and China under Bush, Obama and Biden. Miller is also an organizer as he set up the America First Legal in 2020 with funding from donors on the right which has filed many lawsuits during Biden's term in office.  ...

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The amazing story of Katalin Kariko who came to the US from Budapest, Hungary, in 1989 taking a position as research assistant professor at the UPenn Medical School.The work of Katalin Kariko in mRNA vaccine research that led to the discovery of mRNA vaccines was derided at first at Penn leading her work to be shunted to a lab on the outskirts of town and having her pay cut in a demotion, says this WSJ report. It won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2023. Universities are not places where new ideas can get a boost when there is much skepticism and constant pressure for research funding on more conventional lines. Less opportunity for experimentation that can lead to new discoveries that revolutionize science and medicine.  Kariko and others working as research assistant professors were shunned at Penn and referred to as "aliens" because inthe interests of research they took lower paid positions. As it turns out Kariko felt liberated during the period of her being demoted, to work even more patiently on the mRNA molecule, one that was more difficult than the DNA molecule most researchers had focused on. This report in WSJ shows a picture of a Budapest street with a large mural of Kariko. Unfortunately few people in her adopted country know about the work of this remarkable scientist to whom is owed so many millions of people's protection with mRNA vaccines. ...

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The Editorial Board of the WSJ questions the lack of debate on the frequent lockdowns and the quashing by public health officials Fauci and Collins of an alternative point of view on lockdowns. That point of view by epidemiologists at three universities Oxford, Harvard and Stanford favored a policy of "focused protection" of high risk populations instead of snap response of blanket lockdowns. It cites statement by Dr. Fauci that people who criticize him are "really criticizing science, because I represent science. That's dangerous." And questions the idea that one man can by himself represent science, saying scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest. In some ways the Biden administration has adopted some of these ideas on a new pandemic policy that does respond with focused and selective lockdowns. Today shuttered businesses, lost livelihoods, untreated illnesses, mental illness, isolation effects are all taken into account in decisions throughout the US, and other countries in Europe, in Asia and the rest of the world. Some of the emails mentioned in this WSJ editorial were in October 2020 at the height of the first wave and second waves before the vaccination drive in 2021, when the fear of the coronavirus was the dominant response. Yet a spirited public scientific debate could have prevented some of the rancor and division that has led to high vaccine resistance in the US with fully vaccinated stalling at about 62% of the American population at the beginning of 2022. It did'nt have to be that way. America could have done a lot better with sincere scientific and public debate. ...

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Compensation at Ivy league schools and other private schools for presidents of these schools exceeded 500,000 for 89 presidents. 59 public school presidents made over 500,000. And for 2007-08 the presidents pay at public universities went up by 7.6% for amedian pay of $427,400. Pay at Ohio State 1,346,000. And pay for presidents of University of Washington, University of Virginia, University of Texas system, University of Colorado-Denver, University of Minnesota- Twin cities, University of Michigan system, University of Florida, Georgia State, Arizona State, all exceed 700,000 according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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This report shows the level of coronavirus testing as of March 27, 2020 in different states in the U.S. The U.S. testing program and supplies of tests are being ramped up quickly. About 65,000 tests are being done on Americans each day. The need is for 150,000 tests a day say public health officials. Testing is slow in California compared to aggressive testing in New York which has 60% of all coronavirus cases. California with twice the population of New York has done 77,000 tests compared to 122,000 in New York. Texas has done only 21,000 states by comparison. Every week new testing technology is being developed in different labs, medical companies, and universities. Including tests that can be conducted quickly and not requiring health workers or health workers with protective gear. Speed of processing test, least point of testing contact, and the protocol for quarantine, are all part of the testing and isolating of clusters mechanism to tackle the virus. This is critical in the coronavirus action plan being developed by Dr Brx of the U.S. White House team. ...

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This shows that the US and the EU are today more affluent than 100 years back but with it has come a dangerous neglect of healthy living that is destroying happiness for people as they reach the age of 70 yers. A lack of education about healthy living in schools and society is showing up.  Only 10% of people in US and EU have good cognitive, physical and mental health in a major study from 3 Universities. The study tracked 100,000 people over 3 decades their eating habits and exercise and other variables and was done by University of Montreal, University of Copenhagen and Harvard. It shows how the quality of life has deteriorated in the US and the EU as diseases become more chronic for the heart, diabetes, and higher prevalence in population of obesity and substance use disorders. So that older people have more conditions and few can live healthy lives- less than 10% if this study is an indicator of the state of the Nation's health. One of the findings is that a plant based diet with moderate animal protein such as diary and fish is the best for reaching 70 years of age with the best quality of overall physical and mental health. ...

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(Article on TSM from NYT, February 22, 2023.) When Morris Chang setup his factories for chip production in Taiwan in the 1980's America was the leader in chip production. He tapped into American technology at MIT and other American research universities. Over decades of support from government subsidies and easy transfers of American technology Morris Chang built up what is TSMC today. Chang now sees the building of a plant in Arizona as a challenging task. Originally from Ninbo, Zhejiang province, China, and having survived the Sino Japanese war and civil war in China he went to Hong Kong in 1949. Without the bachelors and masters degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1953-54 and the first jobs at Sylvania Semiconductor in 1955, Texas Instruments in 1958-83, both pioneers in semiconductor production, Chang would not have been able to found TSMC. Mistaken laissez faire economic theory destroyed America's own semiconductor industry. Texas Instruments invested in Chang for him to get his PhD. degree from Stanford in electrical engineering in 1964 and enabled him to run its worldwide semiconductor business. Without this start enabled by companies at the cutting edge of US technological innovation and institutions such as MIT and Stanford, TSMC would not exist today.  Chang's approach was to price ahead of the cost curve which essentially means taking smaller profits in the short term to gain advantage over the long term. In this way he built TSMC with the help of support from Taiwan's government. About the Arizona plant Chang says it was similar to putting up a plant in Washington State, which he postponed after people, cost and cultural problems. A dream fulfilled became a nightmare fulfilled, he says and postponed that plant. This lack of enthusiasm shows a lack of memory an awareness of the difficulties that Chang himself must have experienced in 25 years of work at Texas Instruments- with cultural, cost and people problems, and the efforts at American pioneer manufacturing companies to assist Chang. Chang is reported to have said on a Brrokings Institution podcast that building a wafer plant in America will be "a very expensive exercize in futility," forgetting that he got his own start in America, with American engineers, American science and technology, and American manufacturing, and American workers. ...