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WSJ committed to orthodox economic theory thinks of tariffs as tariffs such as Smoot Hawley from the 30's. This is why it is not true- It is about fentanyl flows that have led to 490,000 deaths over 12 years in the US and few in the US like to talk about it. Smoot Hawley had nothing to do with fentanyl, drugs trafficking and migrant trafficking that every nation not only has a right but a No.1 responsibility to its citizens to keep its neighborhoods and its children in neighborhoods safe. Smoot and Hawley were US Senators and US Congress was isolationist in mood. Their grasp of the world trading system was meager and they stepped in at a time when the world had economically not recovered from World War I, and the French against US General Pershing's advice had set the most punitive arrangement in Germany that crushed Germany after an armistice Pershing opposed that left the Kaiser's political structures intact. Tariffs is not DJT's idea. It is the solid experience of Deputy US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer under Reagan who conducted negotiations with the Japanese who stalled and stalled Lighthizer says, let negotiations drag on into endless nights, and Lighthizer and his team stood firm. The relentless Japanese relented and Lighthizer secured the agreements that ended this phase of trade relations in the 1980's. Lighthizer was Trade Representative in the DJT first term 2016-2020 and launched the negotiations with China. This is now 8 years since 2016 and 2016 itself was 35 years after Lighthizer negotiated with the Japanese. Today's US Trade Representative is Jamieson who was Deputy Trade Representative under Lighthizer in 2016. Each detail is carefully thought through to bring it to a fair conclusion in the interests of the world and the US. Information traveled slowly GM could not tell at any time how many cars were in inventory on its lots in 1920's. US lacked basic infrastructure for government that FDR and Labor Secretary added firt in New York in the 1930's and which was transferred to 50 states by 1940's. Today information is quickly at fingertips and consultation processes are built in between industry and government at all levels. A lot of information is carefully evaluated. USTR as DJT showed, the major study of USTR Office in the Rose Garden on April 2, 2025, has all trade barriers carefully analyzed in minute details for every country. And is working on this for 40 years. There isn't even a slightest  comparison between this and the Smoot Hawley crowd in the 1920's.  The goal not to beat anybody. Just to set the goal of a level playing field for world trade. That is the foundation of trade that is fair and respected, and is a win-win for all. WTO's basic foundation No. 1 principle is a level playing field. It is just that this was a kind of Marshall Plan for Asia of the US to let poor countries such as Japan war wrecked in 1950, and China colonial power wrecked by first Britain then Japan struggling and poor in 1990's, giving them some time to rebuild by ignoring unfair barriers to trade for 10-15 years 2005 for China. Barriers that never got dismantled and technology that leaked from the US 2005-2016 under the Obama administration. Smoot Hawley was not about the US Navy building its own ships and US shipyards in the 1920's. In 2025 US shipbuilding industry is stolen, this is why the words used "pillaged" "looted" were used in the Rose Garden. Little by little American private enterprise capitalism was superseded by a new form of capitalism in Japan then in China that combined state capitalism with private enterprise capitalism. This then was the threat America faced, and needed to redouble its energies and seek fair play.   ...

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Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and its CEO, passed away on September 5, 2011. He helped create the Macintosh, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad, changing the way people work, listen to music, or work and communicate with portable handheld devices. He made significant contributions through the devices he helped create by making them easy to use, look and feel good. By making as he said "the whole widget," both the software, hardware and other design, and a relentless focus on how the products worked in the hands of consumers, Jobs was able to come up with unique products like the Mac, iPod, iphone, and the iPad. The pioneering work of Jobs began early, in 1977 with the first Macintosh computer, and continued through 2010 with the introduction of the iPad. Jobs first first period at Apple lasted from 1976 to 1985, closing when Jobs left the company after differences with then CEO John Sculley. He rejoined the company in 1996 when Apple acquired Next, the company founded by Jobs in the intervening period. The first period saw the emergence of Microsoft in the personal computer world. In 1997 Apple accepted an investment of $150 million from Microsoft and told Mac fans that "we want to let go off this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to loose." Microsofts Office software could be used on Mac computers by this arrangement and helped Apple survive this period. Later in a 2005 address at Stanford University, Jobs told students about the first period: "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." Jobs personal story is of being college dropout from Reed College, Oregon, where he dropped out after one semester in 1972, because of financial issues. He then worked parttime at Atari, and in 1975 associated with the Homebrew Computer Club where he met Apple co-founder Wozniak. He was the son of unwed parents, University of Wisoconsin grad student Joanne Carole Schieble and a Syrian exchange student Abdulfattah Jandali. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs shortly after birth. ...

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The story of Eiji Toyoda is largely the story of the modern Toyota company. He guided the company as president from 1967 to 1982 and following that as chairman and senior advisor, a service that spans the entire period from the formation of Toyota during the 1930's by Sakichi Toyoda and his son Kiichiro Toyoda till today. Eiji was Sakichi Toyoda's nephew, and 18 years younger than Kiichiro. He worked in the company's textile loom business in the early days before the formation of the company to manufacture automobiles as an entrepreneurial venture by Sakichi and Kiichiro. An auobiography by Eiji Toyoda pubished by Kodansha in 1985 tells the story- Toyota- Fifty Years In Motion. Most of the prewar period was spent manufacturing buses and motorized vehicles for the military. It was after visits to Ford's Rouge automobile plant in Detroit in the fifties that Eiji first picked up the ideas for a suggestion system and getting workers to provide ideas and make improvements that later became kaizen. Eiji was born in 1913 before the beginning of the first world war and passed away at the age of 100 in 2013. He lived a remarkable life that witnessed most of the events of the twentieth century, the transition from a militaristic to a peace loving nation, and technological progress in many fields. The technological evolution continues with the development of electric cars. In the early days of the automobile Sakichi had imported a German electric car which was limited by the short battery charge, a limitation Toyota and other companies are still tackling to this day, showing the technological challenges still ahead. The story of Toyota shows pioneering efforts and progress is continuous, as Toyota picked up the ideas from Ford and added new ones of its own for better products. Family companies with dedicated service spanning a century are rare and Toyota is one of these companies. When the recall crisis of 2011 brought the young CEO, Akio Toyoda, Kiichiro's grandson, to the verge of tears at a public event, the memories of a generation of leaders and the need to live up to their ideals and the work that preceded him must have gone through his mind....

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Some of the roots of the Alawite role in Syria go back to the colonial period. Alawites are a Muslim sect living in the coastal mountainous region of Syria in towns such as Tartus, Latakia and in the mountains. The French setup a Alawite state in 1924-1936 before it was merged with the rest of Syria. The Russians have set up a small naval base in Tartus. As the Free Syrian Army reaches Damascus and suburbs the Assad regime is expected to move to Tartus and the coastal region and mountains. This account by NYT reporters from the area reveal the unreal nature of the conflict and the Assad regime. The seaside town of Tartus swells with people fleeing Damascus and other cities, with people from the Assad regime or allied to it, and the real estate market booms. During the same week other accounts in the NYT reported accounts of cluster bombs being used against civilians by the Assad regime. The civil war brought artillery attacks and air raids by the predominantly Alawite Assad military regime on mostly Sunni civilian populations thorough most of 2012. The Russians, the Assad military and public officials, living what may be the last weeks of this civil war as it takes on a sectarian nature, in some kind of bubble. From the international community only France, Turkey, Britain, and Egypt may retain credibility in Syria after the passive role of the U.S. under president Obama to the struggle for freedom in Syria. The U.S. Democratic administration's distaste for engagements overseas may have carried it to the point of standing by as artillery was turned against a civilian population. France and Britain's role in the Libyan people's struggle, and its lower profile assistance to the freedom struggle in Syria compared to the earlier effort under president Sarkozy, still creates a measure of respect. A no fly zone by the U.S. would have prevented the destruction to civilian population that occurred and salvaged U.S. respect, at very little cost relative to the one trillion dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan....

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A reminder from a veteran of investing about the enthusiasm and euphoria of Mr. Market, the term Benjamin Graham, author of the Intelligent Investor, used to describe the collective emotions of the people in the market during times of overoptimism when prices of shares have overextended and are overpriced. Graham warned of Mr Market in 1945, 1959, and in 1971, each time the market swooned and faltered. Zweig of the WSJ, points out data from Robert Shiller of Yale, the price/earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index jumping from 13.1 to 15.5 since March 2009, in 3 months. Ofcourse, this required aspecial disposition. Being well read and immersed in literature, mathematics and philosophy, helps to view things "from the standpoint of eternity, rather than day to day." And having a sense of detachment, a "certain aloofness," and "unruffled serenity." Graham mentions his internal equipment, his "embracing stoicism as a gospel sent to him from heaven." So Zweig again reminds investors on behalf of Graham as it were, and cautions about the mood swings ocurring lately from despair to a sudden optimism, which he describes as an insecure and desperate need to believe that things have taken a new turn when on closer examination things have only been papered over. Actually when one looks closely the credit tightening has eased by resolute action from the Fed and the Treasury and the Obama administration. But the underlying problem behind toxic mortgage securities remains at large. Private equity is being relied on to fix this problem in agovernment private partnership but no sigificant dent has been made in the toxic securities. Banks have made profits for one quarter, the outlook has improved and bank stock prices got a boost, but underlying problems remain. The loss in GDP this first quarter of 2009 compared to the prior year is 6% which is much better than the the 15-16 % drop in Germany and Japan, and 21% in Mexico. And the steep drops in unemployment are moderating. But large numbers of foreclosures continue with no dent in this in sight. And stimulus expenditures are only slowly trickling through, see the link to this. And the situation can only be described as improving but fragile....

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Jan Corzine, Governor of New Jersey has talked to governors from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, and Massachusetts about how best to execute an effective economic recovery stimulus program with the federal government. Here are the ideas they have come up with. The stimulus should cover five areas, infrastructure, countercyclical programs, housing, education, and middle class tax cuts. The principle to keep in mind is to take advantage of the strengths of the federal government and of the state and local governments. Infrastructure investment should be intelligent ones to modernize the capabilities of the country for the next phase of development and competition in the global economy and in making far reaching changes in transportation and energy for sustainable development in a global economy. A key point of Corzine's here is that safety net social programs will need to be shored up or the stimulus effects will be lost. Over the 2 years 2009 and 2010 he suugests the federal government boost its countercyclical spending by at least $250 billion. And it should do this by increasing the federal medical assistance percentages, federal share of Medicaid costs and other health care related programs such as reimbursement to hospitals for treating the uninsured, Temporary Asistance for Needy families, and child care grants. He proposes doubling the federal funding of unemployment trust funds under the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, with incentives to cover vulnerable low-wage and part-time workers who are often denied unemployment benefits. Corzine emphasizes this. That even if the Obama administration puts large sums into infrastructure spending, cutbacks in state and local safety net programs would cancel out much of the effect of the stimulus. The reason is simple while the federal government is adding to jobs on one hand, the states without the money would be cutting back jobs and services. This point will be critical in making the stimulus work. The other point Corzine appears to emphasize by quoting Roosevelt at Oglethorpe University in 1932, is that bold experimientation not clinging to rooftops in the flood, will be needed....

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This NYT report looks at the 20 counties within 5 battleground states in the midwestern states of Wisconsin, Michigan, eastern state of Pennsylvania, southern state of North Carolina and western state of Arizona. It shows the percentage of votes gained by the Republican and Democratic parties in the last 3 presidential elections. A look at the trend and direction of vote percentages gained by each party in each of the 20 counties in different states may be a better indication of the final result than polls alone as both parties are pushing hard in the 2020 election down to the last day. The Republicans strong in the ground game and organized effort, and Democrats in television advertising outspending the Republicans. Because of the clearly delineated positions the Democrats and Republicans stand in sharp contrast to each other both in image and substance.  Because of the Electoral College and states assigned electoral votes based on size the U.S. system is not based on the total vote count in the country. Who wins each state by vote count and gets the assigned electoral college votes assigned to that state, an builds up more than 270 Electoral College votes wins the election for president of the USA.  In Michigan there is the impact of the resurgence of the auto industry, with president Trump pulling out of TPP agreement and renegotiating NAFTA in favor of the U.S. auto industry bringing back jobs from Mexico. This puts the union vote in the auto industry- with Ford, GM and Chrysler located in Michigan- favoring these auto friendly policies from the current administration. The resilience of the auto industry sales during coronavirus is part of the economic story in Michigan. The renegotiated NAFTA treaty also helped dairy farmers of Wisconsin increase sales to Canada. In Pennsylvania the coronavirus and economic impact has hit harder than in Michigan with the decline in oil prices and effect on fracking industry. Closure of coal plants is also having a negative impact on the state. Tariffs on Chinese steel by the administration are helping the steel industry. Offsetting these economic stories is perception of how the coronavirus pandemic has been tackled by the administration. Added to this is the suburban women's vote and the shift of out of state liberal voters to suburbs in North Carolina (Wake county), and in Arizona (Maricopa county and Tucson area). States not covered here but also relevant are Minnesota which could be a battleground state in the midwest and Iowa. Racial protests in Minneapolis add another dimension with controversies about the policing in cities such as Minneapolis and recently Philadelphia. The sharp contrasts in image as well as policy, the coronavirus pandemic and the handling of the pandemic as well as the way rallies are being conducted differently by both candidates, and the economic stories, present an election like no other since the 1960's. The contrast is as sharp as between Gen. Dwight Eisenhower of the wartime allied effort and Adlai Stevenson a liberal and humanist in the 1952 election. That election saw some of the highest turnouts since the second world war, and this is now happening today. That election also determined the direction of postwar growth and dominance of American industry, the setting up of the National Highway system and important changes that were later continued under the Kennedy administration. It also marked the beginning of the Cold War following the Korean War under the Truman administration, a situation that is emerging in a different way today with the free world and the tension from relations with China. ...

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The lack of jobs is a major problem for Tieling New City in Liaoning province in China. Liaoning provincial leaders started the plan to build a new city in 2005 to help revive the local rust-belt economy. The new city was planned for 60,000 residents in 2010 and 180,000 by 2015. Today because of few job opportunities most of the new city is empty. The business park is also empty. The original plan was to create growth in the province by creating 7 such urban centers and building highways and high-speed rail lines to connect them to Shenyang, a 90 minute drive south of Tieling. Rural residents would take up homes in the new urban areas with affordable homes, and businesses would be attracted to these smaller cities because of lower labor and land costs, but this has not happened. Credit Suisse property analyst Du Jinsong, says there are better job opportunities in higher tier cities, so that lower tier cities are seeing a net outflow of population. He found that in two thirds of 287 mostly small urban centers there were fewer residents than people registered to live there. ...

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Ireland's prime minister Enda Kenny says following the Brexit vote that is seen as a disaster for Northern Ireland-"My first interest is Ireland's interests, the protection of the common travel area, the peace process, the open border." Other issues facing Ireland are economic- British people will find Ireland's exports costlier by 10 percent, and make Ireland costlier for British tourists who make up 41% of all Ireland's tourists. Ireland's effort to build an all island health system is also at risk. As Ireland tackles this economic problem it is also moving to attract new business to relocate in Dublin. Among ordinary people the fears are more basic- no one wants to go back to the old days and the sectarian strife and conflicts. For most people the open borders mean a great deal- an achievement that took a long, long time, and no one can see this being reversed overnight, which is why Northern Ireland voted 58% to remain in the EU. ...

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Shows how the whole landsape of Iraq is changing in a kind of ethnic cleansing like that in the former Yugoslavia, and in Bosnia. And before that in India and Pakistan as British Empire in South Asia changed with ethnic cleansing in 1947. See the War of the World by Niall Ferguson and his talk at the National Press Club organized by the World Affairs Council shown on CSPAN on Dec31, 2006. Some of his E's refer to Ethnic factors, Eastern ascendency and the E for Empire referring to the descent of the western empires( European and the benevolen kind of American power if not empire). The numbers involved in the ethnic cleansing are huge, the UN report figure is 420,000. This approaches the kind of scale that make it part of redrawing of the map in a large part of the Middle East.

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The inventor of the white LED bulb is the son of a Japanese father and an American mother. He invented the LED bulb by doing research in a small company which required courage to get the research funded for IGaN. Only a few researchers were following this route less than 1%, Nakamura had the confidence in himself, believed in himself to take this route that led to the white LED bulb. The more he was turned down the angrier he became and had it approved by the founder of the company. In 1992 he made the first white LED bulb. Why is this important. It shows what we can do when we pursue what our mind tells us and what comes from inside. Nakamura had to work very hard to do this. In a small company he says he had to do everything himself. So thats it the LED bulb. Amazing and what an achievement for climate change action. California uses 35% of its electricity for lighting alone. White LED cuts this in half. ...

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Dilip Hiro's new book on the emergence of two states India and Pakistan in 1947 presents the story in terms of the two founding leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The division of the region into conflicting states is shown as a result of the divergent views and politics of the two leaders. Jinnah who was skeptical of the mass civil disobedience movement of Gandhi and preferred a legislative approach, and Gandhi who appealed to the masses and oppressed millions in British India. Jinnah and Gandhi's style and approach were fundamentally different. Seven decades later Pakistan has failed to build a genuine participatory democracy for most of this period with military actively involved in government, and India in the manner of Gandhi built institutions of participatory democracy under different political parties. Jinnah was an assistant to Dadabhai Naoroji, India's first nationalist leader at the turn of the century, when the two were in London. Naoroji passionately argued against the British policies that entrenched the poverty of millions of Indians in the countryside. Ironically it was Gandhi, not Jinnah, who took up Naoroji's call for bringing hope to the hundreds of millions of people on the subcontinent in "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India," first published in 1901, and showing how the draining of the country by the British was leaving India weak and oppressed. In 2015 that struggle of Naoroji for bringing hope and economic opportunity to millions of people is the task taken up by India's new government and the new government in Pakistan. Naoroji, the first Asian to be elected as a member of the British parliament, established the East India Association in 1867, the predecessor organization to the Indian National Congress which he founded with Hume, and is the leader Gandhi and Jinnah most respected in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Naoroji was elected to the British parliament for the Liberal party from Finsbury Central in 1892, and was assisted in his campaign and duties as a member of parliament by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the light of this common upbringing for Gandhi and Jinnah, the nineteen forties and their aftermath could be seen as a detour, not the substance of political life on the subcontinent- just as Mao and Chiang Kai Shek are a sort of detour for today's China. Particularly in a globalized world where technology continues to open up unbelievable economic opportunity, interchange and communication. ...

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Couple of things stand out. First an aging workforce at the oil companies. At ConocoPhillips half of the workers are eligible for retirement in 5 years. According to the Society of Petroleum Engineers about 40% of petroleum engineers are over 50 today. This also means that they are higher paid employees and takes up more of Conoco's budget for exploration of $11 billion as a compared to a younger workforce. What the industry needs is lots of people to do the explortation and drilling jobs from construction labor to project managers, to geologists and petroleum engineers to geoscientists. About half a million petroleum related jobs were lost between 1982 and 2000 when the oil industry had low prices and plenty of supply leading to large layoffs. During 1982 to 2003 petroleum related undergraduate programs saw enrolment drop dramitically by 85%. Now the industry is paying the price with severe people constraints when demand has picked up. Cambridge Energy Associates estimate is that there would be about a 10-15% deficit of people even a few years from now in 2010 because it takes time to turno out new engineers and geologists. Today there is big interest on campuses in petroleum engineering and petroleum related fields. Its the highest paid field for college grauates at $68,000 average and at schools like Texas Tech its $100,000 average. Still only 3700 petroleum engineering students are enrolled on campuses compared to the peak of 11,000 in 1983 so there is some hesitation about this field because of the cycles of ups and downs. The novel approach that oil companies are adopting of turning to the auto industry and to academia to fill the people needs is worth watching because here are 2 industries going in opposite directions and whereas one has a shortage the other has qualified people who have no opportunity, a shift makes sense and training to make that shift makes a lot of sense. The Association of Drilling Contractors has teamed up with Ford Motor Company to hold a career fair to attract auto employees who are subject to buyouts....

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Krugman sees Japanese style deflation as a plausible threat in 2011. He says that there is a very real possibility that the US would be seeing deflation in 2011.