LyrArc Article Gist
This report in WSJ looks at the impact of the 2018 Trump tariffs retained by president Biden as the US seeks to reduce its overdependence on Chinese imports and bring back American manufacturing. This followed misguided policies of previous administrations since Clinton that weakened American manufacturing strengths. Have the US tariffs on Chinese goods worked? The WSJ graph with information from US Census Bureau shows that imports from China in 2022 going down to the levels in 2007 of about 16-17% as a share of US imports, down from a high of 21% before the Trump tariffs halted a rapidly rising curve. Imports from Germany, South Korea and Japan in 2022 were down slightly hovering around 4.5%. Imports increased from Canada and Mexico, the US's traditional partners in North America, around 13.5% as a share of US imports for each country. Also increasing were imports from Vietnam. Some of the imports from Vietnam are Chinese products shipped through Vietnam to evade tariffs, and it is not clear whether the figures from Vietnam have been adjusted for this. President Biden is looking at different scenarios in an effort to tackle inflation. One supported by Janet Yellen, an economist at US Treasury is for the US to relax some of the China tariffs. Most economists in previous administrations including Yellen failed to understand what surrendering American manufacturing to China on the scale and speed that happened would do to communities across America that depended on factory jobs. The devastation of these communities has led to increased divisions in America, weakened American manufacturing, and led to outflow of technologies vital for national security and national well being.  Republican senators, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are opposed to any relaxation of tariffs. Studies show the removal of the tariffs would have only a small impact on the consumer price inflation index reducing inflation by 0.26%. Lifting some tariffs on school supplies and summer bicycles as proposed by the US Chamber of Commerce would have little or no impact on the consumer price index for inflation. This is because the inflation is triggered by oil and gas price increases stemming from the Russian policies and invasion of Ukraine. This has also aggravated food and grocery costs  through blocking of agricultural imports from Ukraine. An additional factor was the increased demand after the pandemic easing in 2022, but that demand is already easing in July with glut in inventories at Walmart and Target, and excess warehouse capacity at Amazon. It would also send the wrong signal to China that the tariffs imposed by president Trump after a Section 301 trade investigation and based on improper loss of technologies to China are not being taken seriously by the US, says Republican Senator Hagerty of Tennessee. The Labor advisory committee to the US Trade Representative Katherine Tai also opposes any such move after the serious damage done to US workers and to US national well being and security. This happened under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations with failed trade policies that ceded manufacturing to China. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The chain is a southern theme restaurant built around interstate highway system starting with the first one in Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1969. It mainly serves Southern comfort food and has an open store layout built on nostalgia of the fifties period when Americans gathered around soda cracker barrels for conversation. It has become ubiquitous on US highways with 660 locations. 

Forty of these stores are being updated with clean white decor and some nostalgia from American homes in old South. The update transformation was badly needed and provides a new look that would add to the looks of the Interstate Highways and gas stations in the US.

LyrArc Article Gist
Bob Dylan is the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature since Toni Morrison in 1992.  This is the first time it is awarded to a musician. The award was given for "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." Born as Albert Zimmerman in Minnesota in 1941, Dylan took the name of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas for his musical career. In announcing the prize Sara Danius of the Nobel Prize Academy said Dylan wrote "poetry for the eyes," citing his album "Blonde on Blonde." Best known are his songs "Blowin' in the Wind" ans "The Times They Are A-Changin," songs that in the sixties reflected the mood of America towards civil rights for black people and against the war in Vietnam. This article by DW.com is exceptional in the way it gives an account of past Nobel Prize winners in literature and what they brought to readers in the way of resurrecting humanity in their own way and from their own experiences in different cultures and periods- 2015 Svetlana Calling of Belarus  and Herta Muller of German-Romanian background on the situation in their countries in the Soviet period, Clezio in 2008 of French Mauritius background on the cultures beneath "the reigning civilization or indigenous cultures of Africa and Latin America, and Orhan Pamuk on his native city in Turkey and the clash of cultures modern and old, in 2010, Vargas Llosa on cultures of Latin America of power and individual resistance, and 2012 Yan Moye of telling stories of today's China through folk tales. The common theme is the struggle between the individual trying to find hope, humanity, in the midst of political and cultural forces that he finds himself caught up in. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
After seeing the ups and downs of American attitudes over 50 years from overconfidence to despair Krugman reminds Americans that nobody is best at everything and it is always a good idea to learn from what other countries do.

LyrArc Article Gist
Sober travel is surging among young people in America. This report shows sober travel meaning no alcohol in wineyard trips to Sonoma, California, or in the foothills of the Andes mountains in Mendoza wine countryside. For them it makes good sense, wellness, beautiful landscapes and fine dining. This NYT report shows a growing trend of travel of this kind.

LyrArc Article Gist
Ted Koppel, managing editor of ABC's "Nightline" news program from 1980 to 2005, says it brings sadness to see the television networks drowning viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their entrenched biases. Its good financially for the networks, he says, but not good for the American republic. He acknowledges the realities of today's journalism- scores of media options, a million or more clusters of consumers, who are harvesting as he puts it, information and news from like-minded providers. That is the way news and information is served up nowadays. And as he points out the shift of news from a public service to a profitable commodity is irreversible. At the same time talk is cheap, and the tendency for strongly held but unsubstantiated views is very prevalent. And yet the need for clear unobjective reporting is greater today than ever before. Covering news in other countries is now more needed than before, but foreign bureaus are expensive and such news harder to collect. As a result many foreign bureaus have seen severe cuts or were closed. Koppel cites Daniel Patrick Moynihan's observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."...

LyrArc Article Gist
Kamala Harris describes her vision of The Opportunity Economy in an address at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina. Like president Biden she wants to build America's Middle Class. When the Middle Class does well everyone does well, Biden says this many times. By contrast she said Trump's plan would cost Americans $3900 a year raising cost of living. Kamala Harris said- "And key — key to creating this opportunity economy is building up our middle class.  It is essential.  (Applause.) The middle class is one of America’s greatest strengths, and to protect it, then, we must defend basic principles — such as, your salary should be enough to provide you and your family with a good quality of life. (Applause.) Such as, no child should have to grow up in poverty.  (Applause.) Such as, after years of hard work, you should be able to retire with dignity.  (Applause.) And you should be able to join a union if you choose. Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency, because I strongly believe when the middle class is strong, America is strong. " (Applause.) Harris described the vision of president Trump, as a complete contrast- "Now compare what Donald Trump plans to do.  He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries.       That will devastate Americans.  It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs: a Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medication.       And, you know, economists have done the math.  Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This essay in WSJ is from Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida, and now Secretary of State in the second term DJT administration. Here Rubio points to his first visit as a return to focus on the American continent, on Central America and South America, which was neglected since the Kennedy administration in 1961 when JFK launched the Alliance for Progress (Allianza para Progreso). Like JFK Rubio visited Central American countries the source in the last decade in addition to Venezuela of much of the illegal migration north to the US. After support for failed dictatorships under the Eisenhower administration, JFK made Latin America a priority. This can be seen in the JFK Nixon debates. 64 Years after the conference in Uruguay's Punta del Este in 1961, America is back to square one with the failed Central American countries from gangs plus crime and from Venezuela's economy collapsing from inflation plus mismanagement with a socialist experiment. Kennedy said-"To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge – to convert our good words into good deeds – in a new alliance for progress – to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty." -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 Kennedy said of the Alliance for Progress "a vast cooperative effort, unparalleled in magnitude and nobility of purpose to satisfy the basic needs of the [Latin] American people for homes, work and land, health and schools – techo, trabajo y tierra, salud y escuela." Speaking in the White House on March 13, 1961, JFK said to more than two hundred Latin American diplomats,  "Let me be the first to admit that we North Americans have not always grasped the significance of this common mission." Yet at the same time, "many in your own countries have not fully understood the urgency of the need to lift people from poverty and ignorance and despair." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
During the Battle of Britain Winston Churchill said on August 20, 1940, about the pilots in British skies from the Royal Air Force- "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Today as US, Europe, India and the nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America face the challenges of the coronavirus, climate change, and social divisions one could say this about the Cistercians in these abbeys in Europe about their message of self sufficiency, letting in sunlight into our lives, about their embrace of science and technology, about simplicity and concentration as ways to good mental health and opening the way to a better future. The Abbey at Fontenay near Dijon, a short train ride from the French capital, is the oldest and most complete of the Cistercian Abbeys. Their voices speak to us across the centuries. As Fesson points out the idea of self sufficiency is about returning industrial production home, about food sourced in the local region. The idea of sunlight in Cistercian architecture is about letting in Christ's- or the Buddha's or Brahman's- -light into our lives. The idea of simplicity and concentration is about lives that restore the spirit, bring peace into our lives. "For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." (Ephesians, 2, 13). And in the Bhagavad Gita- "The Yogi, freed from taint of good and evil, constantly engaging the mind thus with passions quieted, with ease attains the infinite bliss of contact with Brahman."     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
After the surge in illegal migration, concerns about crime, concerns about integrating newcomers, cost and strain on social and public services, homelessness in cities, there is a sense that the pause will be a good thing to give the US an opportunity to reevaluate how it manages entry and integration of newcomers. Theodore Roosevelt's remarks in 1904 Message to Congress come to mind when he said about citizenship in the US- "The citizenship of this country should not be debased. It is vital that we kep high the standard of living of our wage workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living, customs and habits are such that they tend to lower the level of the American wage worker. Above all we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man of whom we can say that he will be a bad citizen, or that his children will detract from instead of adding to the sum of the good citizenship of this country." This is not something new. Operation Wetback was conducted by no less than president Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 after the surge in illegal migration during the Truman administration during WW II. There was a similar sense then that the administration had taken up removal of migrants seriously and there were situations where illegal  migrants were loaded onto trucks, yet there was also a sense that there were problems with illegal migration surge that needed to be fixed including homelessness, strain on services, safety on the streets, lack of integration in culture and language. A pause means less population growth with declining population growth in the US. The natural population growth from births/deaths was 1.9 million in 2000, down to 1.1 million in 2017 and in 2025 was 519,000. At some point it will be declining, yet a pause is needed to get the citizenship education, the integration, the economic participation, the cultural side, strain on public services, to get this right. Another facet of this is its political context but all sides should think about the Nation and not politicize the issue. Outmigration to southern states and mountain states from California was 230,00, from New York 137,000, from 3 states, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts about 30,000-40,000 in 2025. As a result the southern and mountain states mostly Republican may add 6-8 Congressional seats by 2028 or 2030.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
RFK Jr's views on reducing the overuse of pesticides and agricuture that harms human health are positives. Will the RFK noimnation for Secretary of Health and Human Services make America's health and well being worse? WSJ and business thinks it will if it makes people skeptical of all vaccines. Covid vaccine being made compulsory brought RFK Jr. to public attention as some states closed too soon for too long prolonging the economic effects and not leaving an option for some groups to not get vaccinated. WSJ points out that RFK skepticism for all vaccinations is dangerous. It points to polio vaccine, and to the local areas where measles has increased where vaccination was turned down. Other risks are in betting so much on organic food that the benefits of the green revolution of adequate food supplies from the use of fertilizer for output increases per acre are lost. Sri Lanka is an example of a nation unable to feed itself as it bet everything on organic overnight. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Americans in retirement are able to rebuild their savings with interest on money market funds of over 5%. This is the result of 5% percentage points of consecutive rate increases by Jay Powell's Fed. In addition about $121 billion went to savers as they faced $151 billion in higher interest rate costs on mortgages and loans. The result with a strong labor market and lower inflation of about 3% is an economy that is resilient and can provide the 5 or 7 plus  years of growth needed for America to meet the challenges it faces with its allies in the EU, Asia and Latin America, Africa- to tackle climate change, to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure, to invest in education and healthcare, to improve worker incomes, and build its manufacturing at home into a strong thriving sector for good paying worker incomes.

LyrArc Article Gist
Oxfam reports that about half of the people showing up at soup kitchens in the U.S. are people with one person in the family working at a minimum or low wage job. About 3.3 million American are affected at the $7 federal minimum wage. The White House proposes a $10 minimum wage that it say would affect 28 million Americans. For most of these people working mostly in low wage retail jobs this can mean having more food and often having the money to take a bus instead of having to walk to work.

LyrArc Article Gist
Countries in South Asia such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, as well as other countries in Africa and Asia, Latin America face debt repayment problems. These countries need debt restructuring and restructuring of payments by the International Monetary Fund in the current environment of surging inflation, depreciating currencies, and need to first support essential food imports and essential supplies including medical supplies. This report in The Guardian says IMF's Kistalina Georgieva is sensitive to the needs of these countries as they face surging inflation. Georgieva talks about the need for central banks to raise interest rates till other solutions are found.

LyrArc Article Gist
Jimmy Carter dies peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, at age 100 in Christmas week 2024. He was president following Nixon-Gerald Ford and a crisis of confidence in the US after Watergate scandal and as a southern peanut farmer from Georgia brought a period of renewal to political life in the country. He became a one term president with the election of Ronald Reagan during a period of high inflation and a challenge from Edward Kennedy during the primaries. His greatest success was after leaving office when he tackled health epidemics in Africa and helped stabilize democratic governments by acting as observer in elections around the world. His legacy is a lasting one and shows the power of good works as shown in the spiritual heritage of the Nation. Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr, Obama either started the wars or failed to end the wars that dragged on after Jimmy Carter left office sapping the vital energies of the Nation. Only now under Biden and Trump are these wars coming to an end. And new effort is going into reviving America as an economic powerhouse improving the lives of its people. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Inflation infighting is the new term for couples pointing fingers at unauthorized purchases as families struggle to cope with the cost of living. The basket of food and services now costs $460 more this month compared to last year for an average American household, according to Moody's. Experts suggest that couples take some time each month to go over household expenses and items on their grocery bills to make better decisions. This could also led to better decisions on nutrition like that extra box of blueberries, that comes from eating out less and taking in fewer packaged food items that have extra salt and sugar embedded into them.

LyrArc Article Gist
Liz Whitehurst is one of many young people who are giving up jobs in offices to take to farming. They are not from farm families and bring a new way and exciting way of looking at farming free of the pesticides and other practices common today. Only 2% of U.S. land is being used for growing fruits and vegetables, according to the Union of American Scientists cited in the Guardian newspaper, and this needs to at least double in acreage if American needs are to be met. Only 15% of Americans get the daily requirement for fruits and vegetables- so desperately needed is this  to lower the BMI of the 70% of overweight Americans with BMI over 50. In the light of this crisis the shift of young people to farming is an encouraging sign.  In 2015 Liz, 32 years, decided to buy a 3 acre farm in Upper Marboro, Md, giving up benefits and better pay at nonprofit jobs in Washington state.  Here she is shown picking up Aragula leaves in the November chill. She is not alone. She is joining a movement that is bringing highly educated, former urban first time farmers as the demand for better food, for local and sustainable food, especially fruits and vegetables grows in the U.S. Year on Year there is a 20% increase of farmers in states like California, Nebraska, South Dakota in the 25-34 age group. In the 2014 USDA Census this group is growing at 2-3% just when other groups are shrinking by double digits. These farmers are more likely to connect with the community supported agriculture (CSA) prorams and markets, to grow organically and limit pesticide and fertilizer use. They tend to have farms less than 50 acres. Liz leases the house and the fields from a neighboring couple in the 70's, growing organically certified peppers, cabbages, tomatoes and salad greens kale to aragula, rotating fields. On Tues, Thurs. and Fri. she and two friends are to be seen waking up in the early hours of darkness to kneel in mud and cut the greens. What motivates them is having a positive impact, to do that so it is immediate and you can see it making a difference, says Liz. Still young farmers face many hurdles, including student loan debt, and finding ways to meet the larger needs for online grocery service or the grocery chains. Yet a trend is taking shape for small and middle farms that provides some optimism as the number of farmers shrink significantly overall. Most alarmingly it is the lack of national and local policies to meet the health crisis of rising BMI's right at this level of local farms and community farms for local produce. Lack of any consciousness about this, even though good health in the U.S. as in other countries has always rested on what you are eating, long before processed foods became the norm this is the way the world met nutrition needs.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
RFK Jr. is confirmed as Health Secretary by Senate vote 52 to 48. RFK Jr. now takes up the fight against obesity and poor health in America to Make America Healthy Again. He called for the banning of drug ads on television and said the health agencies were broken with FDA and other agencies too cosy with the drug industry and the food industry. He has also called for the banning of chemical additives including dyes in food.  There is nationwide support from Moms and parents who are concerned about the deterioration in health in America. Many see him as fighting entrenched interests in the food and drug industry on behalf of parents and children. During the Senate hearings it became apparent that only someone like RFK Jr. with decades of experience as environmental lawyer and fight with entrenched lobbies and industries could tackle the fight needed to get America Healthy Again. RFK reminded viewers about his father Robert Kennedy telling him as a boy of 13 years to keep a fierce skepticism. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The 1.5 million people in the six boroughs of New York city where they do not always know when their next meal comes from. This was before th pandemic hit. Today after the coronavirus this has grown to 2 million says the president of Food Banks for New York city. This FR24 report looks at the deep problems in the social fabric of America that have developed over decades of misallocation of capital away from health, education, infrastructure, and manufacturing.

LyrArc Article Gist
After making headlines the issue of TikTok is no longer making news. Here is what has happened since- TikTok took the case to the Supreme Court after the Biden Administration's effort to bring it under US security with American ownership. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government. Social media helped Republicans and DJT in the election. DJT wanted TiTok to be an American company if it was to operate in US. China was opposed to this and would not allow ByteDance the owner of TikTok negotiate this-leading to an impasse. The DJT administration worked out a relationship  with China by September 2025 following tit for tat tariffs in May 2025. Xi's strategy was to put rare earths on the table after it had gained a 90% monopoly on rare earths processing technologies and supplies. Some supplies include a site in Greenland, so that the Greenland issue as opponents of US acquisition have made appear is not fiction. DJT Administration pulled back and negotiated a deal with China but realized how the US had left key gaps in its security which is why the Greenland issue came up in 2025. Similar to how Democrat president Harry Truman had done as the Soviets expanded influence in Greece and Turkey by 1948. Little of this making it to almost the entire US press and the entire European press, including Democrat Harry Truman's 1947 offer of $100 million ($1.5 billion in 2026) for Greenland, rights, title and ownership similar to Alaska purchase by Seward, and US Virgin Islands purchase in 1916 from Denmark.   The deal makes TikTok an American/ China investor run company with Byte Dance ownership of 20%, Oracle 15%, Silverlake US equity firm 15%, Abu Dhabhi (UK type) MGX 15%, and prior investors 30%. Prior investors are General Atlantic, SIG, Steve Case's Revolution with JD Vance having equity, Dragoneer, NJJ Capital. The company now valued at $20 billion based on 200 million US users. Yet this does not address the dangers and damage done by social media hours for youth in the US, endless hours from education shifted to phones and social media videos. Australia has banned it for under 16 year olds, UK parliament has voted to ban, French parliament has also voted for a ban, China has strict rules that protect its youth for use specifying hours and restrictions, leaving the US and India, Brazil vulnerable to dangers of social media. Strictly speaking You Tube is considered as social media even though it serves an information function, Facebook and TikTok are where a lot of the damage to education takes place in social media. US is entirely leaving its young people especially women unprotected. Once the fentanyl issue is tackled attention will again focus on these dangers to creating good citizens in the US  with civic education if democracy is to be preserved, something endless numbers of lobbyists- which even in Teddy Roosevelt's and FDR's, JFK's days have opposed- will again oppose.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This opinion by Andres Oppenheimer in Miami Herald Jan 30, 2025, welcomes Rubio's visit to Latin America starting with central American countries in the coming weeks, but says it should have a message to help these countries cope with economic crises. This would be also a way to discourage migration by reducing both the mismanagement of the economy, and gang crime with economic assistance and help in managing the economy.  The Miami Herald says the last time the US paid attention to the southern part of the American continent was in 1912. Yet it was in 1960 during the debates with Nixon that JFK asserted the importance of Latin American relations. In 1961 JFK launched the Allianza de Progreso.  Sixty four years later the page on the, Alliance for Progress in the JFK Library site says it was a failure. LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Obama Biden lost interest in Latin America. It blames the elites in Latin America and American business that showed little interest. Yet compared to 1960 a lot of progress has been made. Brazil the largest is now a more stable and growing economy, Mexico has grown and struggles with the drug trade, Argentina is still struggling with inflation. Only in Central America and Venezuela is the situation dire. Much of it from gangs and drug trade that has destabilized small countries. Venezuela was torn up because of a lack of national consciousness to bring all parties together for the common good using tested approaches to development- instead embarking on a novel socialist experiment with disastrous results for both Venezuela and the entire American continent.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Perceptions of Turkey in Germany are shown here in DW.com. Turkey has 1.5 million people in Germany who vote in this election. About 70% of people in Germany see the opposition providing an alternative as good for the future of Turkey. The general perception is that Turkey is facing a severe crisis after the cost of living crisis and the earthquake, the Ukraine war cutting off food imports, that it needs foreign investment in the economy as a part of the US and European nations. The Republican party in the Opposition led now by a modest civil servant named Kilicdaroglu, was founded in 1921 by Kemal Ataturk when the colonial powers decided to breakup the Ottoman Empire and the Anatolian heartland. It was in Ankara that Ataturk formed the resistance to that plan and setup the modern state of Turkey by doing what Japan did- taking on western institutions, dress, education, and changing from Arabic to an alphabet that would increase literacy. A transformation that was a sort of miracle that was accomplished between 1921 and 1938 under Ataturk's leadership. Ataturk's vision at that time was that Turkey would be close partner to America and Europe. John F. Kennedy taped an audio broadcast on the 25th anniversary of Ataturk's death in 1963 at the White House pointing out Ataturk's achievement and vision. It is to this vision that the Republican party now moves after an effort over 2 decades to move the country back to its Ottoman period. That period happened around 1500. The Ottoman period lasted for only 150 years before it was pushed back in the 18th and 19th century by European powers. Before that Turkey and Constantinople was an integral part of European civilization. In fact modern Turkey under Ataturk and Greece maintained close relations and worked together in a shared responsibility to maintain peace in the Balkans, something almost forgotten today. Greece joined the western nations when US president Truman responded with American assistance during the 1950's, so did Turkey.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Ford post its first profit in 2 years. Second quarter net profit was $750 million. operating profit was $258 million on sales of $40.1 billion. Profits overseas and progress in cutting labor costs helped the bottom line.

LyrArc Article Gist
This Canadian opinion in the WSJ by Philip Cross of Statistics Canada, says Canada's opportunity to diversify its exports to places other than the US, especially for auto exports is essentially nil, and for oil exports because of a lack of pipelines will lead to losses of tens of billions of dollars.  He then goes on to say that Canada should wait for American buyers to suffer as car prices increase by $12,000. No such increase is likely. As pointed out by the UAW's Fain Shawn and others capacity utilization at US auto plants is low with only 60 to 65% capacity utlilization. Ford with 60% capacity utilization, has 568,000 cars in inventory 8% higher than 2024, and make 80% of its cars entirely in the US. Ford is actually cutting prices of its cars as of April 2025 under it's "From America For America Program." Ford and GM could replace German and other cars as Americans shift to buying American. Hyundai and Kia are already shifting production to the US. South Korean and Japanese leaders will support the US as it is the right thing to do. This Canadian opinion does not acknowledge that the US is simply creating a level playing field, a point USTR Jamieson and DJT repeatedly make, and the Japanese, South Koreans, and even the Chinese understand. These countries were given the benefit they received for three decades through the absolute generous attitude of the American people.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Anton Troianovski presents how things are seen by Russians and in Russia of  the Biden Putin meeting. Mr. Putin says in an NBC interview that he sees president Biden "as a professional who has spent all his life in politics." Putin compared this with Mr. Trump who he thought was relatively unprepared, new to politics by comparison who was unable to deliver on the friendlier policy he had promised, and instead delivered too many impulsive moments in the relationship. This has helped set the relationship of the US with Russia on a "stable and predictable basis." Russian experts say the Russian president was seen badly by the American political class, and not just badly, "insultingly badly" creating a rift at another level. Biden is seen as a member of  the old school in a good sense, one expert says, who as senator visited the US for talks on limiting nuclear weapons in 1979 and in the 1980's, who knows Russia and who has genuine respect for Russia as a country, and sees it possible for adversaries to work together for some overriding interests. Some Russians are are nostalgic for that time when Russia was treated with respect and as an equal. For Biden and America the priorities are for America to achieve the economic rebuilding that is needed, to bring back hope at the time of the losses from the pandemic, the positive message is genuine. One Russian expert says this summit has huge meaning for Russians. It tell them the US has a desire to set a kind of positive agenda. At the time of the worldwide pandemic, and with so much rebuilding to be done, it comes as a fresh breeze for both nations and for Europe, and the rest of the world. Biden has done the right thing for America and for the world. ...