LyrArc Article Gist
Boeing's manufacturing plant in S. Carolina is critical to the compay's future. That facility incorporates state of the art technology and everything Boeing has learned about making planes.

LyrArc Article Gist
Automobile advertising in the European Union. The European Parliament with a measure sponsored by Chris Davies a british member proposes to require car ads in European Union countries carry tobacco-style label warning of the environmental damage they can lead to. Under this plan 20% of the space or time of an ad has to be devoted to information on a car's fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. as a contributor to global climate change. The European Parliament cannot legislate but it can put pressure on the EU Commission which has lawmaking power. Europeans are taking the global warming issue and climate change as well as the environmental impact much more seriously than Asians and Americans. This has implications in how the gas guzzling vehicles are perceived by the European public. Will Europe be the trend setter in this area, for the Americans, as Americans are shying away from the bigger SUV's in showrooms? It remains to be seen.

LyrArc Article Gist
Chrysler will contribute about $10 billion into a VEBA type trust. By this Chrysler can pass on $16 billion in healthcare obligations to the trust to be run by the UAW. New hires will be paid less in a two tier wage system. Chrysler will not sell Mopar part division thus keepig 2600 union jobs.

LyrArc Article Gist
Significant labor concessions approved by labor union vote with wages going to $14 for new hires and the range to be $14.50 to $16.23 per hour which is down from about $27 per hour. This will have ripple through effects for the rest of the auto industry in wage negotiations between UAW and the Big Three.

LyrArc Article Gist
How the final legislation language and fuel efficiency manadated standards were worked out . At 35 mpg for the combined fleet the standard for 2020 is well behind what is seen in European Union countries and in Asian countries. The final language gives the EPA and the states like California the right to set their own standards for tailpipe emissions.

LyrArc Article Gist
Fellow eurozone countries account for 38% of Germany's exports and other EU members not yet in the currency union take up another 20%. Since October 2006 the exports to fellow EU members increased by 11%. Germany's exports are less sensitive to price because they include specialized capital goods. German companies have also cut cost and improved productivity.

LyrArc Article Gist
British Airways to start flights from New York to Paris with a new carrier its launching called OpenSkies. Flights will be added to Amsterdam, Milan and Brussels. This is part of the new Open Skies aviation treaty between the USA and the European Union which lets airlines of both the EU and the USA fly on all transatlantic routes.

LyrArc Article Gist
The US sees no contradiction to India looking for bargain priced oil from Russia to meet the growing needs of its economy and is actually furthering the goals of the G-7 by lowering the price Russia gets for its oil. It helps the economy of 1.2 billion people that like the rest of the world has struggled to fight the pandemic and has incurred the kind of heath costs that even China is now struggling to pay for. President Biden clearly understands and supports this. Democracies an only succeed if they fulfill the aspirations of their people. On this point Biden made clear in his State of the Union that he will generate what it takes from large corporations that paid no tax, to invest in America. Rather than fuel the profits of large oil companies India has increasingly chosen to use Russian discounted oil to invest in India. The Biden and Modi policies are identical generate savings and invest big time in trillions of dollars over the next few years to put democracies ahead in meeting rising aspirations that have been unfulfilled for far too long, which is where the real battles are being fought and will be won, and rightly so. US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, Geoffrey Pyatt,  said during a visit to New Delhi on Feb. 16-17- "Our experts now assess that India right now is enjoying a discount of about USD 15 a barrel in the price that it is paying for its imports of Russian crude. So by acting in its own interest, by driving a hard bargain to get the lowest price possible, India is furthering the policy of our G7 coalition, our G7 plus partners in seeking to reduce Russian revenues."  Looking at the bigger picture the problem was created by Germany under Merkel who built Germany's over dependency on Russian oil to power a cheap fuel economy it thought was in Germany's interest. This is now being reversed by the hard work of Mr. Habeck of the Green party in the coalition government of Scholz in securing alternative supplies in record time for the EU to avoid a recession. In this sense the perception created early of India which has suffered itself from invasions in 1962 and incursions in the Himalayas more recently, it is not a problem India can solve by becoming energy short at a time when it has invested so much in fighting the pandemic. A similar problem was created by Republican and Democratic administrations of the past that concentrated the supply chain in one country. India lost much investment in the last 8 years as a result of the policies of Merkel's Germany and past Republican Democratic administrations in concentrating the supply chain in one country. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The key purpose of learning a language is to communicate with people in other parts of the country, says Venkaiah Naidu, vice president of India 2017-2022. He himself from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh speaks both Telugu his mother tongue, and over the years learned Hindi so that he could talk to people all over India. Even in Europe there are countries with several languages. Switzerland is a land composed of cantons with areas that speak German around Zurich, French Geneva, and Italian around Lugano. Children learn a second language and in German speaking areas children also learn German in both High German and standard German because dialects of German are common.  English is often the chosen language in German speaking areas as the second language after the mother tongue which happens in India. It is a good idea to learn as many languages even if one is not as proficient in all so that one can communciate and travel freely. In India the north has extensive use of Hindi- in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh Hindi is the language used, and even in Gujarat, and north east one can communicate in Hindi, so that a southerner can do well just by learning Hindi to communicate and travel freely in all parts of the country. For a Northerner the challenge remains on which language to learn between Tamil for the Madras region, Telegu for the Hyderabad and Vizag region, Karnataki for the Bangalore region, and Malayalam for the Thiruvanathapuram region. At some point in India's future a common script should be adopted for all Indian languages so that only the language pronunciation and vocabulary not the script itself has to be studied . This would make reading and writing easier once one knows the meaning of words. This is the situation in European Union where the languages can be learned without having to learn a different script and is written in the same script as English is using Latin alphabet. Turkey introduced the Latin alphabet to modernize the country and increase literacy in 1928. In India this would make it possible for northerners to learn a southern language and southerners to be able to learn Hindi without difficulty with the script in reading and writing, and in travel across the country. Venkaiah Naidu says about learning more than 2 languages mother tongue and English- learning another tongue such as Hindi makes it possible to do a lot more. "If you want to grow, if you want to communicate your ideas to a larger section of the people, you must know their language." One does not always get it right the first time, but the effort over the years can lead to so much wider exposure to different ideas in a multilingual world. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Boris Johnson leads a new British government that is composed mostly of ministers who want to see Brexit happen, and giving the positions of Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary to persons who do not care what happens as long as Britain leaves the European Union. Johnson's date is October 31st for leaving the EU. Sajid Javid, a former Deutsche Bank AG executive is the new chancellor of the exchequer. Priti Patel is new Home Secretary. Dominic Raab a former lawyer who has called for parliament to be suspended if need be so that Brexit can be pushed through is the new Foreign Secretary. Dominic Cummings who headed the Leave campaign for the Brexit referendum in 2016 is the new adviser at 10 Downing Street. Johnson's strategy is to pack the cabinet with people loyal to his vision of leaving the EU October 31st regardless of what the EU does.  The EU has not changed its position and is even less likely to consider any new Irish border proposals. Three top ministers are opposed to Mr. Johnson's views and resigned. Treasury chief Philip Hammond, Deputy primeminister David Lidington, Justice Secretary David Gauke, all resigned in opposition to Mr. Johnson simply pulling Britain out of the EU. Johnson once said all he feared from Britain abruptly leaving the EU was a shortage of Mars bars. During the election in the Conservative party Mr. Johnson was mostly quiet and avoided any gaffes to sound statesman like, yet as the process unfolds Mr. Johnson is likely to face the same problems faced by his predecessor Mrs. May. Added to this is the new opposition of moderates like Mr. Hammond and Gauke in the Conservative party that could topple the government and lead to a general election with just three vote swing in the other direction doing this. Mr. Johnson has prepared for this by having Mr. Cummings as a top adviser in the event he faces a general election. Meantime the Labour party initially not favoring a second referendum with Mr. Corbyn's ambiguous views on Brexit, as shifted gradually to the leadership and the rank and file all favoring a second referendum and for Remain. As Greg Ip has pointed out in the WSJ this week the conditions have changed with protectionism, nationalism and hostility to globalization, and president Trump not planning concessions of any sort even for the UK in trade negotiations. This means to low productivity of less than 1% to support stifled wages, one would have to add a 3.5% hit to GDP from a no deal Brexit such as Mr. Johnson approves according to the IMF. With the migration issue not what it was three years ago and reduced to a trickle this new situation must be on the minds of Mr. Corbyn, Labour and Conservative moderates. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany is trying not to choose sides in the trade and security disputes between China and the U.S. Yet it owes a lot to the U.S. from the days of the Marshall Plan and U.S. taking on the role of defending Germany after the Berlin Wall. China was then a partner with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.  Today China is Germany's top market for its car industry. Yet the U.S. export market is much larger than China at $119 billion with China's at $96 billion. In Germany 28% of jobs are linked to exports, and in manufacturing this goes up to 56%, according to Germany Ministry of Economic Affairs. Germany supplied much of the factory  equipment from its engineering companies and the infrastructure that powered up the China transformation. A transformation now underway in India.  There are signs of a shift as engineering companies in Germany grew faster in the U.S. than China, increasing by 6-10% a year. India remains a key growth market for Germany over the next 10-15 years as growth in China slows and India accelerates with its younger demographics and investment in infrastructure. Much of the infrastructure in China is built and it is approaching the saturation Japan reached in the 1990's with additional investments adding little in the way of productivity. Longer term Germany has more potential for growth in countries in South and South East Asia  that will need to make huge investments in infrastructure and technology for manufacturing to meet the aspirations of the people there. Other issues related to freedom going back to the Berlin Wall and the rebuilding of Germany after World War II will emerge. German companies are running out of patience says this report in the WSJ with the bureaucratic obstacles, forced technology transfers, subsidies by state model to extinguish competition, and protectionist approach to home markets, even as state funded companies in China put other companies in Europe, Asia and the U.S. at a disadvantage. Germany will need to transition to a shift in its global relations, a process that is only now taking place. Just as with austerity policies in which it has now made the shift from going with the northern European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland) to the Southern European (France, Italy, Spain) in favor of common solidarity even at the short term cost of common debt, Germany now is facing the shift for solidarity with the U.S. for its support of Germany from the period of the Berlin Wall in the 1950's, for the U.S. and European solidarity in the face of the post-coronavirus world. The U.S. showing its generosity and openness to Germany and war torn Europe even as it took on the added responsibilities for creating a new alliance with Europe.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
America has its own conversation points. Ischinger says we would love to vote in the US election as it affects us greatly. Americans would love to vote in the German and French elections as it affects us. As America fights to give workers and families their rights and invests trillions of dollars in infrastructure when will Germany and France do this? When will Germany and France fight to give all workers and families opportunity to get ahead and make a decent living? Are Germany and France aware that the Biden-Harris, Biden-Walz fight is for domestic policy to determine foreign policy and this is the domestic policy of America. Wolfgang Ischinger ,who heads the Munich Security Conference Foundation, writes in NYT about the importance of keeping the conversation with European allies going. He says US and European Union do not have a common policy towards China and this needs to be discussed and clarified. US and EU need to come closer for NATO to carry out it's mission now that the EU countries are shouldering a fair share of the defense burden in percentage of GDP devoted to defense. Ischinger says the Europeans are not investing defense dollars efficiently and developing European arms suppliers. His third point is that there should be consistent application of rule of law, democracy and western values in policy to build the alliance. He remains blissfully unaware that the same divisions that are fostered in America exist in Europe and some of them started in Europe- for Europe to be strong it must invest in its People, in workers and families and in infrastructure, domestic policy will become foreign policy.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Soviet threat actually receded after 1964 when Brezhnev became head of Soviet Union till 1982. During that period in the 1960's till today the face of NATO as today was from a series of heads of governments of Dutch Stikker in mid 1960's or other small European states such as Norway Stoltenberg and Rutte Netherlands again in 2025. It could be said that none of these leaders  of small EU countries represented US interests- or even European interests- a point the DJT administration is trying to make. First NATO head UK's Hastings Ismay's NATO for "keeping the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down" is more British Imperial policy of 1904 -1940's as the Indian Viceroy's Assistant, not US policy or in America's or even Europe's interest in 2025. It hurt the US in Venezuela as Russia propped up a regime which led to millions of refugees entering the US illegally. And it hurt Europe as Russia propped up the Syrian regime with millions of refugees entering Germany and destabilizing its political structure. Going back if a new defense institution was set up to replace NATO by the Europeans in 1970's this would have been the right step which would have not led to Russia propping up regimes in the Americas or the Middle East. A goal that is being discussed with Russia by the DJT administration to refocus American efforts in a new direction and pause not just the Ukraine war but also put the US  and Russia in a new direction with the new competition from 3 billion people in China and India changing everything we know about the world. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Peter Navarro's thinking is genuinely felt and genuinely thought out after 20 years  at Harvard, UC Irvine and other universities, as an economist who abhors sitting in the office with textbook theory that has no relevance to life of working families in the heartland of America. He says of these textbook theory economists and the American companies that have recklessly shifted America's industrial base to China year after year and decade after decade- “The same damn fools who supported NAFTA, China’s entry into the W.T.O., and every other trade deal that was supposed to benefit America but only benefited Wall Street and the foreign nations screwing us. Those mainstream economists need to get out more often — maybe to Ohio or North Carolina or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Michigan.”  He says the 70 nations including the big ones Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Britain and the European Union are already neogtiating with the Trump administration. What more proof does one want. The Nation will get a better deal as it is about fairness in world trade, and an even playing field. Navarro calls it "a beautiful thing." The three dimensional unique approach taken by Navarro, Bessent and Lutnick and by Trump is working, says Navarro. Fifteen decades ago A. Lincoln stated- "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion.As our case is new we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and we shall save our country."   ...