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US president DJT speaks at the Economic Club of Detroit, looking back at a year of rapid action on the US Border, Big Beautiful Bill, Tariffs action, Cutting Cost of Living action on several fronts, and action against drug/people trafficking by Venezuela, Mexico. Highlights of the speech which comes to a state that decided the 2016 election for DJT and which is the center of America's automobile industry started by Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. He had restored the automobile industry to the days when it was the leader in the world and when names such as Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan of General Motors, were the envy of the world, by bringing auto manufacturing back from places like Mexico, Japan and Germany. Back to America after years of reckless outshoring by American business under the Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, on the advice of equally reckless economists and advisors to these administrations. The president did not say this but this restoration continued in a different way for labor under the Biden administration that followed DJT policies but focused on the other side of the coin for the auto industry - protecting worker's wages by Biden standing on a picket line for the strike by unions for higher wages. After these wages were restored from years of outshoring and pressure on wages, the need to do the work of bringing companies back through tariffs on imports as leverage in tough negotiations with Japan, South Korea and Germany was left to DJT and his administration. The president stated clearly that the economists and predictions were proved wrong on tariffs as none of these predictions of tariffs passed on to American buyers have come true. As DJT made certain the companies not to lose their business in the US decided to avoid taking that road and acted to reduce their profit margins and costs. As Scott Bessent, a veteran of Wall Street and now Treasury Secretary who conducted these negotiations for DJT, has repeatedly pointed out the tariffs were a way to get these tough negotiators and their governments from Japan, S. Korea and Germany to cooperate. It is nowhere written in the code of fair conduct of nations that the US should helplessly after decades of letting these countries benefit put its workers out of work and its industries get destroyed, when the US was taking on the additional burden of protecting these nations from hostile neighbors. ...

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President Biden gives a rousing speech to the unions and the AFL-CIO, reminiscent of Lincoln's speeches as he debated Stephen Douglas in the struggle for the emancipation in the 1850's.

"Wall Street did'nt build this country, the middle class built this country. And the unions built the middle class. I'm not joking, without unions there would be no middle class. That's a fact."

Recalling the long lines for food during the pandemic-

"Ordinary people waiting in line for an hour for a box of food. And the policies in the past created more billionaires in the past than never before in our history." 

"Laying a strong foundation for the future of this country is more than having strong roads and bridges. It is about making sure, that here in America, folks who work hard can live their lives with dignity and respect."

 

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The competing choices offered between the Romney-Ryan ticket and the Obama-Biden ticket in the 2012 U.S. presidential election on how large the government should be. Romney-Ryan would keep U.S. government spending to around 19-20% of GDP, closer to its historical average, compared to around 22-23% for the Obama-Biden Democratic approach. The difference is in the approach with Republicans counting on reduced uncertainty for private sector investment to grow and generate jobs.

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Intel Board members disagreements on how to run the company 2025. Lip-Bu Tan replaced Pat Gelsinger as CEO only a few months back.  Pat Gelsinger had a close relationship with Biden and also had close relations with VP JD Vance. Lip Bu-Tan has no such relations and is seen by DJT and Senator Cotton as "conflicted" in his ties to China as an early investor in Chinese chipmakers. DJT calls for Tan's immediate resignation as CEO of Intel in 2025. Lip-Bu Tan left the Board a few months before the ouster of Gelsinger. It now appears that the ouster of Gelsinger as Intel's recovery proceeded but only gradually was a poor decision of the Board.  This report also shows an acting head of Intel Yeary recently considering selling of the manufacturing business to TSMC which is a staggering revelation considering that the US is trying to build its own dominant chip making business in the US, which it had ceded to TSMC in Taiwan after inventing the computer chip. ...

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The Times looks at local elections in Britain this week, and a swing to the Labor party of 700 seats given Labor's 15 point lead over the Conservatives. This is a dry run for the general elections that Keir Starmer is preparing for, as Britain ripped by crises like the rest of Europe and the US, faces another once in a generation period to decide what kind of a society to create for the future. The blue wall refers to former Labor party supporting constituencies that voted for Boris Johnson in the mistaken assumption that the  Conservatives could deliver for British workers and families. A similar situation exists in the US as president Biden seeks to gain traditional Democratic states such as Pennsylvania and the midwestern states such as Wisconsin, southern states such as Georgia, and western states such as Arizona.

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By ending liberal asylum rules the Biden administration can end the issue of surges in illegal migrants crossing the border with Mexico that has roiled politics in America for the last decade. Much of the surge in migrants is a result of economic dislocation in Central American countries that only be tackled in other ways not at the border. This is a lesson that was learned in Europe, and is being learned in the US. 

For the US and EU this detracts from other major issues that the countries face in the way that wars in remote regions dissipated resources of the US and EU. By creating issues that have no real relevance to America's future development and ways in which that development benefits other countries in the world, these wars and border issues are now errors from the past.

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For the country with the largest population in the world of over 1.2 billion people who had just gone through a once in a century pandemic would it have been right to import oil at prices that made it harder to invest what was needed in infrastructure and rapid growth? This is why president Biden and NSA adviser Jake Sullivan believe India has taken the right step to import at the lowest price possible to not divert funds that are so desperately needed for infrastructure to build the metros, fast railways, roads, bridges and airports the people of the country need. India's stand on invasions with millions of women and children turned into refugees is for an end to this war - Gandhi's position on a war such as this or Vivekananda's is not hard to read.

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Economy Minister Habeck says- "Our energy system will be structured differently: we will have 80% renewable energies by 2030."  Germany will close its last 3 nuclear plants this week. Germany is shutting down all nuclear energy when other countries are increasing reliance on nuclear energy. Westinghouse is building Poland's first nuclear plant. Britain, France and Finland are increasing nuclear energy with its very low carbon emissions. Biden administration in the US is backing the building of a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors. Mr. Habeck the Economy minister says for the short term Germany has its natural gas storage tanks half full with the winter heating season over. New LNG terminals and imports help replace Russian supplies. In the long term Germany is way ahead in renewable energy than other countries and will craft its own solution in its own way.

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This inflation is different from anything that happened before as it is driven by both demand and supply side situation. Seeing it as only demand side and acting on that would only damage the economy, says Greg Ip in the WSJ. On supply chain shortages there is little the government or the central bank can do to fix this in the short term. This is also why the Families and Workers Plan and Infrastructure plan of president Biden with about $2 trillion dollars in spending is not expected to cause much impact on inflation. The Fed is carefully looking at the situation because of the unique nature of the problem in 2021 to avoid any missteps that hurt the US economy and US growth for the coming decade, on which so much of the hope of America and the world rests.

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Greens and SPD Social Democrat parties in Germany favor social spending, infrastructure spending, and climate change investments. Free Democrats party holding the Finance ministry supports  a brake on spending. There is no agreement on the budget in this coalition, says DW.com. SPD and FDP are not increasing in popularity and SPD could lose the chancellorship if there is a new election. The Greens and the CDU are increasing in popularity. For this reason the coalition is likely to continue even with this disagreement on spending.  SPD and Greens say higher taxes and elimination of some subsidies is one solution. The common platform has not resolved these differences. In the US president Biden has retained the support of voters in the midterm elections and has gained bipartisan support for building infrastructure and investing in renewable energy, cutting health care costs.

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Apoorva Mandavilli of the NYT looks at the huge task of renovating the aging infrastructure of America's schools, like this one East High in Denver. The average school building in America is over 50 years old. Having clean air in the schools would have reduced the incidence of Covid by 50%, say studies. The General Accountability Office GAO says 41% of school districts in the US have at least half of their buildings, a total of 36,000 buildings, that need to completely replace their heating cooling and air ventilation systems. The money is there, secured by president Biden with $200 billion from programs like the American Rescue Plan, but much of it remains unspent because of a lack of clear administration guidance on clean air and an official to oversee this effort, and expert guidance, securing equipment in the supply chain.

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Germany's EVG transport workers union reached an agreement with Deutsche Bahn on wage increases. EVG asked for 650 euros a month. After months of 1 day strikes both sides agreed to arbitration in June. The new agreement gives workers wage increases of 410 euros ($443) a month in 2 stages over 25 months, 200 euros in December and 210 euros in August 2024. And a tax free one off payment of 2850 euros in October. Negotiations of DB with the train drivers union GDL lie ahead with GDL asking for increase of 550 euros a month and one time payment of 3000 euros. For the first time as in the US with president Biden the German government of SDP and Greens of Scholz supports agreements that provide workers with wages adequate to meet the cost of living and dignity of living.

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Social and economic changes in American society have come down to an alarming statistic. There are three young women for every two young men in American colleges. At Tulane the freshman class has two thirds women students. At liberal arts colleges the class is usually 60% women. As noted in this report by Susan Dominus in NYT there is a devaluing of college education because men have choices that are higher paying, conservatives have not emphasized college education, and "male drift" is a serious problem leading to male enrolment declining. And once in college men are dropping out at afaster rate. All this adds up to a serious problem in America, one that the Biden administration has to take seriously as it looks at rebuilding not just the economy, but also the education system that supports the US economy in the world.

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The Berman Amendments are what is seen by the Biden administration as well as the previous Trump administration as preventing the US government from regulating or restricting foreign apps, including TikTok. What are these Berman Amendments? They were introduced as legislation by Mr. Berman who represented the Los Angeles District in 1988, that includes the entertainment industry, who now works for a law firm that is representing TikTok, according to this WSJ report. The Berman amendments took away the powers of the president of the US to ban the import of "informational materials" from adversarial nations, later in 1994 it was added to include "digital media." It is now seen in the US Congress as coming from another era the end of the Cold War and needing to be completely rewritten. 

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Pipelines to Corpus Christi have reached capacity as US energy production reaches record levels says this report in WSJ. In the first half of 2023 2 million barrels a day passed through this pipeline. About half of the 4.1 million barrels a day the US shipped abroad were loaded onto tankers on this part of the Texas coastline. This oil helped Europe during the shortages after the closing of access to Russian oil supplies. Because Corpus Christi has terminals that make it cheaper to ship oil out it has become a dominant hub in the US for shipments overseas. It is the closest deepwater port to the Permian basin in West Texas and New Mexico. Corpus Christ is also transitioning to a future where hydrogen is produced for energy by applying for $8 billion from president Biden's renewable energy infrastructure package.

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The large Iranian missile attack on Israel on April 13th 2024 was expelled with American, UK and Jordan's help. It cost about $1 billion in antimissile systems. The US does not seek an expansion of the war. The events show how without a clear policy on non escalation with the US taking leadership- how without this events could spin out of control in unanticipated ways. And the need for priority to be given to rebuilding after the pandemic, not conflict that is driven in a random manner when most of the largest countries on every continent are committed to peaceful development to improve standard of living of their people- US and EU, China and India, Brazil and Mexico, African nations, and most other nations in Asia and Latin America. It is for Biden and Scholz/Macron, Xi and Modi, to make this happen.

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In 12 years in the US Congress, six terms, Tim Walsh was a leading proponent on veterans issues having passed legislation to help Vets. He was the ranking Demcorat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and served multiple times on the Armed Services Committee. His strong point is in working in a bipartisan manner on many issues. He continued this bipartisan style as Governor of Minnesota for 2 terms, and after heading the Council of Governors. It will bring some of the strengths president Biden brought to his presidency in getting things done in Congress on a bipartisan basis. In many ways he can bring his head and his heart to the issues that face the Nation and pass the legislation in Congress that will tackle these issues that affect workers and families, and rural America, the vast majority of the Nation.

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Like Jill Biden Gwen Walz is a teacher. Jill teaching community college and Gwen high school students. Minnesota governor Tim Walz is also a high school teacher. They met in Nebraska where Gwen taught English, and Tim taught social studies. Gwen told Minnesota Public Radio that they shared a classroom  with a divider right down the middle.In Minnesota they taught at the same school in Mankato. 

As part of prison reform she advocated educational opportunities to permanently alter lives. She has also been strong advocate for background checks and a red flag law to limit gun use. To get senators in Minnesota legislature to act she told them at a 2019 rally- “If they do not put it up for a vote, there are seven senators sitting in seats where Tim Walz won — and we are coming,”

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The doubts among the unvaccinated and America's pandemic of the unvaccinated in the south and west of the country, difficulty reaching a consensus on things as basic as spending $45 billion or 2% of the $2 trillion Biden plan for workers and families on 2 years of community college, or finding a way to stem what is an alarming decline in enrollment in college of young men in America, all go back to a standoff between Republicans and Democrats. Tennessee in the South is Republican yet passed a bill supporting state paid community college with a supermajority, yet at the national level it is lacks support of Republicans and centrist Democrats. To see how this happens this NYT report presents the picture from the Democrats side of how Montana residents blocked a National Heritage area in the state. Other stories relate to distortions from the other side from the Republican point of view. One man, one vote is not entirely the way Democracy was designed by Jefferson, Madison and other founders. The Senate of the US is based on one state one vote, giving Montana an equal vote as California or New York. At one time Mike Mansfield, Democrat of Montana was the Senate majority leader. The intent was to design a system that looks not just for democracy but checks on majorities of the moment.  This means unity is the way to renewal of America, for building its infrastructure, education and health care. If Tennessee feels that way about community college it should express it, so should other states in supporting president Biden's plan to Build Back Better. ...

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About 60% of Americans think the testing for coronavirus and getting medical supplies to health care workers is too slow, in a poll by Wall Street Journal/NBC News. About 6 in 10 Americans in a new survey say they are concerned that the U.S. would move too fast to loosen coronavirus restrictions to slow the spread, and only 3 in 10 say they are concerned that it is not moving fast enough. About twice as many Americans thinking the risks were higher that public authorites and governors would reopen states too soon. About 75% of respondents in the survey say they are very or somewhat worried about themselves or a family member getting the virus. Mr. Trump's approval rating  remains unchanged from March with 46% approving. Most people place their faith in the governor of their state- 66%, and Mr. Fauci, Director National Institute of Infectious Diseases- 60%, than anyone else. On the economy president Trump is seen as being better at handling the economy 47% to 36% than Democratic nominee Biden, even though Biden has a nine point lead. This confirms the widespread dissatisfaction at the way medical supplies shortages are felt at hospitals, and the way testing for coronavirus is happening with not enough testing. President Trump perceived by business and the public as better at handling the economy is also confirmed in this survey. The dissatisfaction with the president for supplies shortages and testing lagging behind may also be tempered by a sense that the public has not taken aggressive action in supporting an early lockdown with many governors and people not supporting or following strict distancing rules till late March. By contrast the president acted quickly to stop all flights from China. ...

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Marco Rubio has shown an exceptional grasp of Latin America from his days representing Florida in the Senate, about a decade in the Senate when he has closely followed events and acquired a deep knowledge of Latin America. His answers at Congressional hearing were exceptionally good, and showed an ability and earnest desire to get good results for the Venezuelan people, sharing aninterest in the good for Latin America being a person of latin American origin who speaks fluent Spanish as a native language. Points made by Venezuela in answering questions from senators in the US Senate hearings- All of Latin America welcomed the US action to remove Maduro from Venezuela.  It affects Colombia and neighboring countries. Colombian rebel groups control parts of Venezuelan territory and operate from there.  Multiple administrations had deals with Maduro. Maduro kept none of the deals including the one with Biden for free and fair elections.  To be realistic in situations such as Spain, Paraguay, there were transitions before safe and fair return to normalcy and democratic government returned after decades of dictatorship. RUbio showed an exceptional grasp of the Latin Ameican situation and reminded senator Murphy that he had been in the Senate for decade and worked with the senators now on the other side to remove Maduro amd nothing had worked. Venezuela is a rich country , the most affluent in Latin America. It does not need money from the US. Before the Chavez dictatorship it was a country with democratic forms of government, and a country friendly to the US.  The action taken was a quarantine not a blockade. By controlling oil going out of Venezuela the lifeline for the country the US has control over its finances and the economy, budgets, the government finances. The immediate task was getting the oil out of the country as there was no place to put it and US had it sold at market prices not sent to China at a 20% discount for which Venezuela got nothing except paying off debt to China. The current authorites are cooperating with the US on the budget, they have to submit budget requests and the US approves it item by item and an audit agency is being set up including Ex-Im. Bank an other options to make sure the money is being spent on salaries and for the Venezuelan people. The money goes to an account for Venezuela at the US Treasury Department. In 4 weeks a lot has been accomplished. What happens in 6 months - for that actions are more important than words, it should be a marked improvement over today. Including setting up the US diplomatic presence in Caracas which means talking to the government on the ground, talking to civil society, talking to the Opposition.  ...

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WSJ's reporters Meichtry, L, Pokharel, and Soon look at the extraordinary rise of Gautam Adani through his efforts to develop reclaimed land at Mundra port in the state of Gujarat. Adani who started with a small family owned plastics maker in Ahmedabad developed Mundra port around 2001 with the help of the Modi administration. Modi saw the electricity shortages in Gujarat as an opportunity to tackle India's chronic electricity shortages. Adani's early development of a deep water port at Mundra offered both Modi and Adani the opportunity to tackle the electricity shortages by bringing coal in large ships to Mundra in the way that China was already doing by 2005 in its own efforts at industrialization. So deeply immersed was India under the Congress Raj of licenses and closed economy that India's established business failed to see what China was doing to break into the ranks of industrialized nations. India's first prime minister Nehru had build a command economy where not much happened without government licenses and approval often riddled unwittingly with corruption. Modi needed someone outside the established companies operating under the Congress Raj command economy and with a vision of an India with abundant electricity to take the risks Chinese companies were taking to build an entirely new economy. By 2005 Guangzhou was importing coal with large ships from Indonesia and Australia. State owned companies moved slowly and would take years to develop the port capacity. Using China's example Modi pushed ahead with Adani on a rapid time delivery making Mundra a Special economic Zone and helping to connect Indian Railways to the port of Mundra for coal deliveries. Adani Enterprises built the thermal power plants near Mundra and build electricity transmission lines on a rapid mission mode giving Gujarat abundant electricity supplies and giving Gujarat state in northwestern India a great leap forward in the way China was already doing right in front of everyone's eyes by 2005 with world class ports built at Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzen, Hong Kong and logistics connections set with the help of Maersk.  Maersk is now doing the same for modern logistics in India in collaboration with the Modi administration.  Modi and the younger generation of aspirational youth in India see a New India that can break into the ranks of the largest industrialized nations with world class infrastructure in the way China has done, and use new technologies with innovation that will speed up the process in a way that the world has never seen. A quick look at Mundra Port in Wikipedia shows the timeline, It starts in 1998 when Adani Port Ltd was setup and Mundra port work began, 2002 the port integrated with Indian Railways, 2003 when it was made a Special Economic Zone by the Modi government in Gujarat, 2007 when IPO of 40 million shares at price band of around Rs 400 was done.  The Biden administration and the Trump administration support India's efforts to build a new modern economy with a rapid shift to renewable energy. As India is building the ports and logistics with the help of Maersk and other companies in the European Union, president Biden is working with prime minister Modi to build a new supply chain that removes the overconcentration of manufacturing and supply chain logistics in China. This means new ports with the latest technologies in India to handle shipment to the US and the EU. Jake Sullivan set out the goals for president Biden to accomplish this task in meetings with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval this week on iCERT. President Biden and Republicans, Germany and the EU, see India as a critical part of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, and the new supply chain. For the Adani Group the IPO pause offers an opportunity to do what Nirmala Sitharman has done in the Indian Budget this week- build a stable growth path ahead for the long term in line with India's Amrit Kal the next 25 years to centenary of freedom in 2047. Nirmala Sitharaman set a goal of rapid capital spending and investment increasing capital spending in 2023 by 33% in 2023 over 2022, yet maintaining a stable fiscal path by keeping the deficit below 6%. ...