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Harris pragmatic approach and willingness to try new solutions applies to Michigan- to find ways to protect union jobs and make the transition to clean cars in a way that increases wages and jobs and creates a bright future for the auto industry. Letting other countries manufacture EV's would hand over the manufacturing technologies to say China and lead to a future collapse of the auto industry in Michigan. This is why there is a transition period which is flexible to 2030 or even 2034, and the curve is for more gains in EV sales in the latter years as prices come down and technology improves. At every step of the way business presents unique challenges, and FDR/Harris "persistent bold experimentation" is part of the answer as China's BYD has come up with a better cheaper in house battery that means it can export EV's at lower prices- the US can't as yet. Electric vehicles sales are plateauing in 2024 growing from 7.4% to 7.8%. The former president describes an EV mandate. No EV mandate for all cars to be electric exists. The action taken by president Biden is for all cars to meet greenhouse gas emission targets that would require 50 percent of cars to be electric vehicles by 2030. Michigan as the home of the auto industry is heavily influenced by the auto industry. Biden walked the picket line here last year to support a UAW strike for higher wages after decades of concessions by workers that reduced wages to near the poverty level for families.  Harris pragmatic approach and willingness to try new solutions applies to Michigan- to find ways to protect union jobs and make the transition to clean cars in a way that increases wages and jobs and creates a bright future for the auto industry. Letting other countries manufacture EV's would hand over the manufacturing technologies to say China and lead to a future collapse of the auto industry in Michigan. This is why there is a transition period which is flexible to 2030 or even 2034 an the curve is for more gains in EV sales in the latter years as prices come down and technology improves. At every step of the way business presents unique challenges and innovation is part of the answer as China's BYD has come up with a better in house battery that means it can export EV's- the US can't as yet. ...

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The US should push forward with its plans to compete with China and Taiwan in the chip business. That was the intent of the Chips and Science Act that both parties supported in Congress. The naysayers simply don't want to take up the difficult challenges and are wilting even before the struggle to regain advantage in chip US manufacturing technologies has begun. Gelsinger at Intel says the scale is necessary for gaining technologies, and making chips for other companies is key to doing this. The products business and business manufacturing for other companies complement each other and enables Intel to co-develop technologies and introduce them faster. Amazon cloud computing has given Intel its business order for AI fabric chips, other companies will also decide to go with a US supplier. Gelsinger's goal at Intel is to make it the second largest manufacturer of chips by 2030. This is not just the goal of Intel, it is the goal of the US to recover its chipmaking capacity and technologies as a major priority for the Nation. It takes ten years to make such a change, after the neglect of the US to add funding for US manufacturers as China and Taiwan have done. Intel is doing this faster  and losses will peak in 2024. Leadership at Intel must persevere with "bold, persistent innovation."   ...

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GM and Ford US International Trade Commission report in 2024 sees only about a 5% increase in prices for a 25% tariff in car imports into the US from EU, Japan, Canada, Mexico and China. With US production GM at 60% Ford at 80%, both companies are better positioned to shift production to the US following 25% tariff on cars imported into the US. GM also has the financial strength to invest in new auto plants in the US. Given a period of transition US companies are in a position to tap the added demand as more cars are made in the US.  Stellantis Stellantis formed from the merger of Chrysler, Fiat and Peugeot makes many of its cars overseas in Mexico and in the EU, and has considerable exposure. Toyota Toyota sales in 2024 were 2.3 million cars, with about 60% of the production in the US. Hyundai and Kia, Nissan Hyundai makes about 80% of the 840,000 cars it sells in the US in US plants. Hyundai plans to invest $21 billion in the US to make cars in the US including $5.8 billion for a steel plant in Louisiana. Other companies may follow Hyundai to Make in the USA. VW VW had plans for an expansion to make 590,000 cars. It has current  sales of about 400,000 cars in the US. Expansion at the Chattanooga plant or putting in another plant could help it make most of its cars in the US. ...

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Amanda Lacaze of Australian rare earths maker Lynas- what can be learned from her experience in rare earths? Lynas is a Australian mining company with a mine in an eroded volcano Mount Weld that has a concentration of rare earths metals. In 2014 it was faced with China's near monopoly of rare earths and price subsidies, lack of awareness in financial markets and the government about the importance of rare earths in manufacturing. It was a period under the Obama administration that after the Bush administration had little grasp of the importance of manufacturing in America and how its decline would affect communities across the Nation, economists trumpeted the virtue of free markets without grasping how China would wrestle control of manufacturing with state subsidies and aggressive pricing and of strategic new technologies.  This included rare earths where the monopoly was close to 100%- if it is 90% today it is because of companies like Lynas. Production processes at Lynas's plant in Malaysia were not sufficiently developed in 2014. When Amanda Lacaze (now 66 years and head of Australia's Minerals Agency) joined Lynas in 2014 the first problem aside from getting Japanese creditors to restructure loans because of aggressive pricing by Chinese firms was to improve manufacturing processes to get 95% quality instead of 48% quality (measured in number of quality rejected product). This was achieved in the first year. To do this she thinned her management ranks and closed offices in Sydney (to cut costs) and moved management to Malaysia where the problems in manufacturing processes would make or break the company. She was able to get creditor Japanese government backed Japan Australia Rare Earths financial institution to renew and extend loans. Had this not happened the company may not exist today. It shows the sheer foolishness that pervaded most of the American industry at that time, the failed economic theory that said America could not support its industry when rivals were supporting theirs, the Bush and Obama administrations that had no understanding of how the industrial competition was takin place in world trade that could substitute other nations for America' s dominance in manufacturing and did little to push back and regain the position for America in world trade. This ignorance continues in some sections of business today that cannot see the plain facts and refuses to see the enormous damage to the Nation from the destruction of its manufacturing base and loss of good jobs in communities across the US. Lynas is now getting contracts from the US government for rare earths and is the only reason China's dominance in rare earths in 90% and not 100% along with MP Materials of the US. Planning was discredited in the crazy euphoria that turned the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist Soviet Union, as economists never understood that planning that was used by the Soviets and Chinese in their Five Yer Plans is just borrowed from centuries of basic ways of conducting business that had originated with the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Without planning the growth of the British Navy and the industry that supported it Britain could never have gained the dominance that it did in the 19th century Industrial Revolution. As the Industrial Revolution spread in the US in the 19th and twentieth century every major company had a 1 year Operating plan and a Long Range Plan for 5 Years and 10 Years. The government would have identified rare earths with foresight as one of the newer technologies and the manufacturing infrastructure needed to support its development if these plans were developed at the different levels of government and at the highest levels. This was done under market economy in China. Instead DJT was forced to step back from trade negotiations with China for unfair trade when China held out with a threat to stop export of rare earths materials in 2025, because a huge hole or gap in planning happened at the highest levels of the US government. That happened 11 years after 2014 when Australian rare earths maker Lynas survival was in doubt under a new CEO Amanda Lacaze. This is only one of many misses in American manufacturing and industry, in world trade, that came from misguided economic theory and failure to grasp the basic facts behind the success of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the US. ...

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WSJ Editorial talks about so called "spending blowouts" of the Democrats in 2024. Are Republicans saying let the roads, bridges, airports, built in the 1940-1960's heyday of American industrialization as China and India's is now, let them crumble? What do the educated minds of the WSJ Board say about coal in China and India and their effects on their massive use multiple times that of US and EU in history, is it not damaging to the environment? And why the Chinese realized the health in North China with coal winter use was worse than in South China cut their coal use. Are they saying lets burn fossil fuels and ignore, and if investment has to be made in solar who is going to do it? Is it OK for Republicans that we just import from China all our solar panels indefinitely into the future? "Green New Deal" is just a perjorative term, policy has to be made thoughtfully and without prejudice or bias of any sort for the best that we can do for the American people, ignoring so called "right" or "left." Doing what is right, what makes sense, is a lot harder.   ...

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Chinese president Xi's determination to make good on the slogan "Housing is for living, not for speculation," by imposing a property tax on homes in 30 cities, is facing resistance within the Communist party and from local governments. Mr Xi hopes to squeeze out the excesses of the adoption of capitalist market systems in China since 2000. China's government opted to get feedback on this idea and the feedback is largely negative forcing the government to scale it back and look at other alternatives such as affordable housing to make home purchases accessible.  Some reasons for the pushback are that it is becoming a social stability issue and risks alienating officials within the ruling party and homeowners. The fact is that 90% of urban Chinese families own their homes and housing related industry makes up about a third of China's output. Also significant is that 80% of China's wealth is tied up in real estate. What could happen is that if housing prices drop in China urban consumers might cut back on spending because they feel poorer. Party officlals advised against introducing property tax in 30 cities. Now it is scaled back to ten cities, and a new law could take till 2025 to introduce property taxes in the whole of China. Cities that are likely to be used for the property tax now are Shanghai, Chongqing, where an annual charge is levied on second homes since 2011. Cities added to the list would be Shenzen, Hangzhou, China has financed much of its industrialization through land sales by the Communist local governments in a country where land ownership was with the national Communist government after the revolution in 1949.  Mr. Xi wrote in Qiushi party journal that "we should actively and steadily promote the legislation and reform of real estate tax, and do a good job in the pilot work." Local communist governments get about one third of their revenues from selling land to property developers, and they are anxious that a tax on real estate would make demand and price for the land they sell to drop drastically. To get some idea of this- the local governments had $1 trillion in revenues last year. ...

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US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will spend Tuesday night August 2 in Taipei, Taiwan. China has threatened severe consequences and Taiwanese forces are on alert. Yet with over $1 trillion in China's exports to US and EU in 2021 the response will have to take this into account as also the US and EU to redesign its supply chains. This is the first trip of a senior US official to Taiwan as Speaker Pelosi comes next to the Vice President to succeed the presidency. The US response to the Russian attack on Ukraine was made in Biden's word as a deterrent to China in its role in the Indo-Pacific region. The Pelosi trip may be a reflection of this policy that seeks to maintain the US position that Indo-Pacific is international waters, that US policy will continue as before undeterred by actions such as the Russian attack on Ukraine with the support of China. And that US will engage fully with allies in the Indo-Pacific- Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. And that is doing this with the cooperation of its allies in the region- Australia, Japan and India. US and EU imports from China are $541 and $522 billion over $1 trillion for 2022. Loss of even a significant portion of these exports from major tensions in the region would have a severe impact on Chinese economic growth. The US and EU are already engage in redesigning the supply chain and would also face problems in a transition similar to the gas rationing in Germany after cutoff of Russian supplies. The trade is too big a factor at this time. ...

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"Made in China 2025" is a plan by China to build competitive companies in new technology industries such as advanced microchips, driverless cars, robotics. This is one area in which there is a huge difference in trade matters more than the tariffs issue, because the U.S. sees this as an effort to dominate these industries with state subsidized loans at low interest rates. The Trump administration has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on imports from China in these industries to protect U.S. companies. The U.S. insists there should be a level playing field for U.S. companies.

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The US needs good manufacturing jobs for the jobs and income that it brings into communities, and also because of the tax revenues from the companies making products in America that provide the basis for local governments to provide good public services in healthcare, education, and transportation. To say comparitive advantage that helped first Japanese and now Chinese manufacturers is real and how society gains is to deny some basic facts that are self evident from observation that contradict textbook ideas in economics. Comparitive Advantage is a textbook economics concept that says countries are proficient in what they make best and should specialize in that product. But it is a static concept that exists only in textbooks. If Japan in 1960, China in 1980 and India in 2000 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making steel and remained makers of lower end products such as footwear and textiles. If Japan in 1980, China in 2000, and India in 2020 were each presented with this idea they would have turned down the idea of making semiconductors and remained makers of lower end products such as steel. A senior vice president of US Steel in the late 1960's even told this writer a graduate student at Northwestern in Chicago- as the US can make steel better than India or China let us keep making it for you. He and much of the business faculty at Northwestern also could not understand in 1970 why Airbus was being setup to compete with Boeing who by the concept of comparitive advantage should have had the whole market to itself for commercial aircraft . By this kind of thinking Airbus would not exist today because it did not have the lowest cost or the manufacturing technologies Boeing had through its vast manufacturing operation. America would be still the only one making aircraft in 2023 if textbook concepts ruled the day. By indirect methods such as hidden preferential arrangements, provision of inputs such as land, capital and labor, tax relief, the costs can be represented in a way that shows it is cheaper to manufacture overseas. The lack of a level playing field is what president Biden is correcting by doing what first Japan, then South Korea, then China and now India are doing since the 1960's. By 1974 in four years after its founding in 1970 Airbus came up with its first model the A-300 using advanced technologies. America will regain its leadership in the cost and manufacturing of many products through Biden policy and the efforts of American companies by 2030, and do this in a transformative way that will benefit the world as a whole.  It is an enormous error to say the US does not need good manufacturing jobs, that local governments do not need the tax revenues from manufacturing plants to build services for communities where manufacturing workers live, and the US does not need the manufacturing experience curve that leads to reduced costs. It is this loss of the manufacturing experience curve that is the most vital aspect for understanding the need for the US government to compete effectively with the governments of Asian countries to keep manufacturing healthy and strong at home. Economics experts ignorant of how important this science and engineering principle is fail to grasp this. Related to this is the idea of a virtuous cycle in manufacturing- whoever braves the hard years of moving up the learning and experience curve gets rewarded because once that country has mastered that skill it gets better an better as the technology advances- making it harder and harder to prevent a new monopoly in manufacturing by the country (Japan, China or Taiwan) that had the highest costs and the least advantage ten or 20 years earlier but just persevered through it all with the government's help to gain cost competitiveness. This part does not make it into the economics textbooks which are mostly theory and much of it outdated by the time they are written. Observation is the best teacher and guide as it is in science, to guide policy and action. Obsessive attachment to theory that ignores observation becomes the enemy of progress. Comparitive advantage is one concept that needs to be retired even from the textbooks. Overseas manufacturing then is a piece of the overall picture that fits into what is good for the US. Macroeconomic principles determine microeconomic outcomes as opposed to microeconomic principles with companies out on their own being forced to compete without a level playing field, or handing out technology for special status in a recipient country as some do putting the US at a macroeconomic disadvantage. This is also healthy for the recipient country overseas, as recrimination with loss of manufacturing jobs in the US inevitably leads to the kind of recrimination that does not serve either country well as in the case of China today, and worse still can lead to conflict, even war. After the egregious situation of loss of manufacturing communities across the US leading to destabilizing the social fabric, it is hard to see such thinking prevail about the US not needing manufacturing as a vital part of its social fabric and industrial strength. China, it can be said, would have developed, and developed well over the past two decades without overconcentration of US and EU manufacturing in China. Without aggravating the problems of climate change and contamination of air, land and water, and destabilizing the social fabric in the US hurting workers and communities across the US, if macroeconomic policy was made to manage this process in the US government without it being left entirely to individual companies to decide. Instead China faces today a difficult situation through events such as destabilizing the social fabric in the US (the Trump tariffs), advanced economies in G-7 resistance to sharing of technologies, the damage to its environment from microeconomic locally determined policy at individual companies, and the global effects of climate change from climate unsustainable levels of growth since 2000.  ...

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This NYT report says there is scandal fatigue among Republicans and a sense about Mr. Trump that his time has passed. Much of the political gains made by Mr. Trump in 2017 were a result of the failures of president Bush within the Republican party wasting national resources on 2 remote wars while infrastructure was neglected, and the neglect of manufacturing communities in the US with jobs outsourced to China that presidents Bush and Obama failed to stop. With president Biden ending these wars period. And with Mr. Biden getting the legislation passed to put workers and families, American manufacturing, American infrastructure to the top of the agenda, the focus has shifted to China and Russia two countries that gained during the largely failed Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies. The Ukraine war and China's belligerence over Taiwan remain an ever present risk. President Biden has articulated American resolve in this situation in a way that matches another president Harry Truman when he addressed the Soviet expansion in Berlin, then Greece, then across Eastern Europe, not seeking conflict yet not shirking responsibility for the free world. It is this new context in which the sordid affairs of a political outsider are presented to the ordinary American struggling to make a living during a cost of living crisis in 2023. ...

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China's tariffs on US products could be called self-respect tariffs as US exports to China are small compared to China's $1 trillion surplus a year. $143 billion mainly oilseeds and grains! US business not willing to rely on US labor created the outshoring that built Chinese industrial growth, shipping out technology in the process, that created this situation. Consultants to Apple at the time such as myself bringing Total Quality of Management from Japan to the US, could see the failure of production quality at the Colorado Springs plant just before Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. About 20-25% of PC product was defective on the production lines seen with my own eyes. Looking back I believe it was not just the workers but the managers and engineering that needed to guide and motivate the workers with new ways to build in quality control. These were the days when Apple's Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to revamp production and ship it to China. American workers got blamed. Yet as Jim Carlton shows in "Apple the Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders," by 1996 a new German CEO Michael Spindler 1993-1996 had driven the company to the ground. The struggle with Microsoft gave Jobs an idea- by shifting production to a low cost location he could make the high margins to outinvest all competitors with new products-ipods, iphones, ipads. There is nothing wrong with American workers and their craftsmanship. Timeline- Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997-1998 Tim Cook is hired from Compaq to revamp manufacturing in 1998 1999-2000 - the strategy is made to shift all of the production to China. Jobs could generate the margins and quality to challenge Microsoft, and profits to invest in new products 2020 -   the weakness of the strategy is apparent with supply side shock for chips and computers with the pandemic stopping shipping 2024 - after taking small steps to shift production to India does little to shift back to America 2025- Apple facing serious tariffs and the country's mood shifting to Make in the USA tells the new US president DJT it will invest $500 billion to shift production back to America. ...

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The knowledge that the virus  caused human to human transmission and that it spreads to wide parts of the population very quickly were critical pieces of information that remained with Chinese epidemiologists, doctors and medical researchers, and were suppressed by local authorites in Wuhan.  Yet China's version of the U.S. CDC, China's Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, modeled on the U.S. control efforts worked effectively to identify the problem. Virologist Gao Fu, heads China's CDC. This report in Germany's Der Spiegel says Mr. Fu made it a habit to scan China's internet before bedtime for any signs of possible disease outbreaks. On the night of December 30 he came across rumors of an internal memo from the Wuhan Health Commission of an outbreak of a vaguely worded lung disease. When he called the Wuhan health authority he found their answers to be evasive which alarmed him. The next morning December 31 Mr. Fu sent the first of three teams to Wuhan which is how China was able to identify the problem, in the sense that Chinese authorites in Beijing were to rely on Dr Gao Fu to overcome the problem of Wuhan provincial authorites. He informed the World Health Organization Beijing office on that day. The Der Spiegel report says "shortly afterward," the Seattle Times in its report says this was about New Years Day 2020- Mr Fu made a call to Dr. Redfield, head of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control, who was on vacation. Redfield is deeply disturbed on hearing this from Fu and they have conversations over the next few days to the point that Dr. Gao Fu is in tears about what has happened. On January 1 Taiwanese public health authorites shared the information with WHO that the cornonavirus was a human to human transmission, would the Taiwanese authorites not have shared it with the U.S. the same week during calls from the U.S. CDC or other public health authorites alarmed about the situation. (The WHO was proving useless by Jan 14 when it contradicted Taiwan's more reliable assessment  on Jan 14 going by the letter from president Trump to WHO). On January 6 a few days later Dr Redfield and Dr. Azar head of Health and Human Services ask China for permission to send a team of CDC U.S. experts to China. This is cited in the U.S. letter to the World Health organization- the lack of human to human transmission information being given to the U.S. officially early by China. A risk that could have been a topic of conversation between the U.S. and China heads of CDC. That letter from president Trump also points out that the team of experts the U.S. planned to send was not accepted by China till Feb 16, one and half months after that series of conversations between Dr. Gao Fu of China CDC and Dr. Redfield of U.S. CDC in an alert message.  In effect removing one of the key defences for the U.S. and Europe in making their own defensive actions and plans, laying the basis of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic affecting millions of people. Dr Redfield is a AIDS researcher at the University of Maryland who spent most of his life trying to control spread of HIV and was appointed by president Trump to head CDC agency in 2018. He set a goal of eliminating AIDS by 2030 and is more comfortable with aids patients and research than the bureaucratic nature of agencies- CDC has about 11,000 employees. Once it was clear that a team of U.S. experts was not given permission to make its own assessment in Wuhan in the few days after January 6 offer to sent the team to China by Redfield of U.S. CDC and Dr. Azar, would it have alerted the U.S. that something was seriously heading the wrong way for a epidemic risk. That letter of president Trump cites how the head of WHO during the first SARS crisis in 2003, Dr. Harlem Brundtland acted when she faced China's lack of cooperation during that crisis by saying openly that this was a danger to world public health and millions. Could CDC in the U.S. and the other connected health authorites have taken the responsibility and filled Dr Brundtland's role in this crisis, that the WHO failed to perform?    ...

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The other title of this article in the NYT was "California's fading Political Machines and volatile race for Governor." Gone are the days when Pat Brown was able to put his son Jerry Brown in the race for governor, there are 9 persons running for governor of California in 2026. The current governor Gavin Newsom is said to be promoting his book in Nashville, Tennessee, where many Californians are moving with the inflated cost of housing in the state. Gavin Newsom's grand father gave a $5000 check to Pat Brown in 1943 to run for District Attorney, this report says citing the book. From that time Pat Brown became Attorney General and then governor of California in 1958, defeating Richard Nixon in 1962. In 1962 Pat Brown seemed vulnerable as his signature accomplishment setting up the UC system of college campuses and the water reservoir, tax increases to pay for this, were in their beginning stages and their lasting value not recognized at the time. Nixon from Whittier, California, was a former Vice President and was seen as likely winner. This toughly fought election created the Pat Brown myth and so called machine that helped his son Jerry Brown to two terms as governor 1975 to 1983, and again after serving as Mayor of Oakland and Attorney General to come back to governors race again in 2011 (because term limits came after 2011) and be governor again 2011-2018. Another way of looking at it is that in his last two terms it was also Jerry Brown's careful balancing of the budget and finances of the state, his environmental support, that made him a reliable figure for the public interest not just the political machine backing him.  California to be sure has had popular governors on both sides Reagan won in 1966 as governor of California to succeed Pat Brown. The Kennedys and Pat Brown are matched by the Reagan supporters in the state. In today's situation where China's dominance in industry and manufacturing has affected all parts of deindustrialized America, California is no exception, where much of the middle class has seen their savings eroded, the issues are different and the challenges are different. ...

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In a very real sense US and NATO Europe has failed by blanket applying the principle of national sovereignty without recognizing that there are general rules that have to make room for some exceptions or nuances in cultural and historic linkages as in the case of Ukraine's most eastern regions along Russia's borders. Only about 30% of American public in Pew Research poll sees Russian war in Ukraine as a threat to the US, among Republicans it is only 19%. Remember this is during the third year of the war with staggering losses on both sides when prolonging the war makes no sense.  If the American public were properly informed by the media that Zelensky's popularity has dropped to 16%.  That the eastern regions of Ukraine near the border speak Russian and share a common culture, and had voted for Russia oriented parties before the war began -not in 2021 but in 2013 with the Maidan movement in Lviv near Poland leading to the whole of Ukraine except parts of the east nearest to Russia moving towards the west- it might look at the larger picture and seek a settlement which accepts Russian commitments to peace with these regions as part of Russian Federation. The staggering losses on both sides cannot justify the conflict and it is not in the America's, India's, China's, or Europe's interest to damage the Russian economy or further damage Ukrainian infrastructure in a war that changes little in the winter of 2024-2025.  ...

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It is not a story that most people grasp or understand- the long term effects of the US immigration surge of 2023 and its source mostly from Venezuela. The  US Congressional Budget Office says labor force in 2033 ten years from now will be larger by 5.2 million people and younger as a result of the immigration surge in 2023 from about 1 million immigrants each year in the 2010's to 3.3 million. About 2.5 million crossed the southwestern border in 2023. Much of it the result of the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and its middle and upper classes leaving the country. This was worsened by the US sanctions on the Maduro government including under president Trump, say experts in an adjoining NYT article on the 7 million people who left Venezuela to go to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile since 2012, then making their way up the Darien Gap to the US. Something that could have happened under a Republican president if the US Congress could not reach bipartisan agreement on correcting asylum and parole policy. As a result of this surge US Gross Domestic Product  in 2033 will be 3% larger. When the large Asian economies are seeing a aging workforce, Japan for the last decade and China now following Japan, the US labor force will be younger than it would be without this unusual surge in immigration of the last 2 years. The federal deficit will be smaller at 6.4% instead of 7.3% in 2033 as immigrants will pay taxes on income. Another aspect of this larger infusion of immigrants is that after the pandemic shut down immigration entirely there were severe shortages in the hospitality and restaurant, construction, healthcare industries. And with the trillions of dollars in investment that the Biden administration is making with more factories - this will absorb most of the immigrant surge by 2033. With some positive effects in the competition with rising Asian economies China and India. Particularly consider with the younger demographic India of 1.4 billion people. It will mean more factories can be built in the US and there will be workers for these factories in the US at wages that keep the US economy competitive years from now in 2033. This is a sobering aspect of the current situation viewed from what will be seen by America's younger generation. And under the bipartisan compromise in Congress correcting asylum and parole policy that was shut down by the former president, Republican senators understood very well that the immigration surge of 2023 would have some constructive effects for the long term, while its effects on the short term would be mitigated by Biden's commitment to close the border in 2024. This did not happen, yet the future for America's younger generation is bright under the Biden plan for massive investment in manufacturing and jobs in the US, and with the millions of immigrants needed to fill the jobs that investment will create by 2033. It will make America with a younger work force than Europe or China, only India having a younger workforce in 2033. ...

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Questions about the every 5 years 20th Party Congress of the CCP or Chinese Communist Party, and the 2300 representatives attending from all parts of China are answered in this report in The Guardian.  Xi Jinping is expected to get a third term. To outsiders in US and Europe it is all about power in China, to insiders in China it is about China making it through the 100 years since the 1901 revolution and the tumult, the chaos of the first 100 years, and now a period of modernization and growing incomes,  the need to create jobs, tackle climate change, ensure a good future for the Chinese people. 2300 party members representing millions of party members in China attend the gathering. New appointments and retirements take place at this Congress. Of this there are 200 elite members of the Central Committee with voting rights. This central committee is responsible for electing a 25 member Politburo, of which the seven most senior persons are appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee. Xi Jinping is the General Secretary, the most senior position in this hierarchy. Age related retirements are at 68 years and a new Politburo standing committee is announced at each Congress. After the Bo Xilai effort to take power and take China in a new and unknown direction, and the gradual loss of the party's respect from corruption and abuses of power by local officials, Xi Jinping sensed problems in the future and conducted a anti-corruption campaign. Most of the system of government set up during the Deng and Jiang Zemin years after 1980 remains in place with Jinping calling for a revival of China, the next stage of modernization, under the banner of the CCP. The result of the anti-corruption campaign and a third term assumed by Xi including lifting of a term limit for heading the CCP, gives Xi Jinping an opportunity to shape the future for China as Deng did after 1980. Jinping in the manner of Deng sees the CCP as the organization that can continue the modernization and growth of China. The model set by Deng and Zemin of local autonomy for economy and centralized overall direction continues under Jinping who is General Secretary since 2012. China has made rapid growth during the period 2000-2022, but faces challenges of reorienting its economy away from dependence on a tight economic export oriented relationship with the US and EU, as supply chains are being shifted after the pandemic. This means more unemployment and need for careful economic planning and investment to create jobs in other sectors, and to meet the challenges of unequal distribution of wealth in China after hypergrowth that hurt China in some ways, and in the climate change effects of use of coal other fossil fuels. As focus of interest is on Jinping externally, within China it is these three challenges that must be uppermost in the minds of the 20th Congress members. Much of this stems from the tumult of the century that began with the 1901 revolution through Japanese invasion and upheavals in the 60's and 70's, leading to the rare period of stability and growth in the last 20 years. Jinping like Deng and Zemin has personal memories of the anguish of this period and the tumult, the chaos of the 20th century for China, and the yearning for stability with modernization.   ...

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The 30 by 30 target agreed to by countries at COP15 in Montreal, the Montreal Kunming conference, commits to protecting and restoring 30% of the Earth's surface by 2030. China was an active participant and made the decision to put this target into the final document. Biodiversity is an essential and important part of the plan for climate change action. COP15 Montreal complements the work done at COP26 in Egypt. Countries will report on their progress to 30 by 30 targets every year. Also part of biodiversity targets is the reform of $500 billion in environmentally damaging subsidies.

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Where did the numbers in the US president DJT's charts come from wjen shown in the Rose Garden on Liberation Day April 2 2025? The number for example 68% for China comes from a ratio- deficit by country divided by total imports to US.  The numerator reflects the US concern about trade deficits. It is exports minus imports for China in this instance. In 2024 China's exports were $438 billion to the US. It's imports were $143 billion. The difference is the surplus or deficit China has with the US. China's surplus is $295 billion. China's surplus is also America's deficit with China when turned around and seen from the viewpoint of America. The denominator reflects the US concern about how much it is importing from each country- this is how much it is not making inside America and which it has to get from another country. The more that it imports from another country the less it makes at home. If labor in the US gets too costly and is not cooperative to make well designed reliable products more factories close and are build outside in another country. This has consequences- serious consequences over time as it spreads to different industries. FOr the first time in history. A foreign nation makes practically everything and US acts only as a consuming nation- this means the workers jobs and incomes in the US are destroyed. It is often a sign of serious decline in the Nation. $295 billion/$438 billion is 67%. This is the China number shown on DJT's chart in the Rose Garden. The tariff and non tariff barriers and currency manipulation that China conducts in trade with US is measured in this way as an estimate, much higher than actual tariffs which is why US products don't get the treatment they deserve in China's market.   ...

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GST is to India what land sales were for China in its phase of rapid development and accelerated growth. It consolidated capital that could be then invested at the national and state levels on infrastructure, logistics for exports growth, creating a virtuous cycle of capital growth that could finance ever widening scale of development projects from metros, subways, rail, roads, bridges, airports, ports, logistics, tech related improvements. This was done in 2017 through a midnight session of parliament that passed the legislation needed. Years of endless discussion were turned into one session of implementing a single major tax system for India, transparent, digitized with new IT  Infosys playing a key role, and providing the pool of capital that has financed 5 years of development to take India past Britain as the fifth largest economy. Its pace of growth over 11% and accelerating with Maharashtra's GST growing at 24% in 2022-2023 over the prior year suggest that this will play a critical role in giving India a large pool of capital for growth. To be supplemented with foreign investment to make New India as a modernized nation. With an economy that will be exceeded only by the US and should catch up to China over the next 10 years. ...

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China's rapid construction in the Doklam plateau of Bhutan is covered in this report in WSJ. This is a small corridor of territory that connects parts of India to its northeast. PM Modi recently visited Bhutan and India has a security treaty with Bhutan which adjoins populated regions of India in the northern Ganges region. History is being repeated with China intervening in the northernmost regions of Indian Himalayas in 1950- 2024 at great distance from China's population centers in mainland China in the way Japan intervened in the far northern regions of China in the 1870-1945 period. Modern road and aircraft connections have made this possible for China- yet today India is building its own road and aircraft capabilities rapidly so that in the long run not much is to be gained for China in the Himalayan region where it has not had a presence since the early Buddhist period of Bodhidharma that brought Buddhism to China from India in the 5th century. It is a reminder that both suffered from colonialism and are struggling to find a path that benefits their peoples, that eventually rejects the path Japan had found to lead nowhere. ...

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EV sales worldwide in March 2024 went up by 30%. New battery technologies are making EV cost competitive with combustion engine cars. This transition is nearer than we thought. Kurt Kelty of GM who worked on Tesla battery technology for 11 years says “When we reach cost parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, I think that’s one big milestone. When you get there, then you’re really going to see the transition happen very quickly—and we’re not that far away from it.” The EV industry continues to make progress even as the industry has slowed with the new government not behind it with incentives. GM is setting its sight on 2028 and is investing in bringing costs down with new battery technology. It is new battery technology that enabled BYD in China to increase production and sales. In 2024 GM hired a Tesla engineer Kurt Kelty with 11 years experience to lead the effort to reduce cost and increase the power and duration of batteries. Kelty really believes in the EV revolution.“I’m a firm believer. Switching to an electric powertrain means better performance, less maintenance, more space inside the vehicle, a lower center of gravity and a higher crash rating. Evolution away from fossil fuels is unstoppable.”   ...

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WIth China reluctant to make concessions on agricultural imports at a recent Shanghai meeting of Mr. Lighthizer with Chinese trade representatives, the trade dispute with China has escalated. Mr. Lighthizer had little to show Mr. Trump at a meeting in the WHite House. After a 2 hour meeting Mr. Trump told his advisers that his patience was wearing thin. His response on what the U.S. should do- "tariffs." A tweet was prepared saying U.S. would place import duties of 10% on imports of additional $300 billion in Chinese goods. China responded by lowering its currency value to 7 to the dollar to offset the import duties. China also said it was suspending all agricultural imports of U.S. farm products. The U.S. designating China as a currency manipulator.  The situation today is that there is a level of mistrust between president Xi and his advisers and Mr. Trump and his team. The situation has taken a new turn with China saying the U.S. is supporting protests in Hong Kong. President Trump has stated China is waiting it out to deal with a new administration in Washington. Both sides do not see any solutions till after the U.S. elections in 2020. For China there is also the upcoming 70th anniversary of the People's Republic. ...

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Asked about it yesterday January 16 DJT tells the press outside the White House after a meeting announcing his Great Healthcare Plan, it is a good thing that Canada has signed a trade deal with China. It reflects the new view not clearly understood or told in the press what US trade policy is about. US trade policy in 2026 is about bringing investment and jobs back to the US to rebuild communities and towns across 51 states- once destroyed by the foolish trade policies of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama 3 destructive policy decades. Supplementing this with the investment favorable policy of instant depreciation for investments in plant and equipment in the Big Beautiful Bill of 2025. Using tariffs to level the playing field and ensure fairness in business practices by industries and nations towards America after over 3 decades all else has failed. All the time protecting Rural America, and communities and towns across the US devastated by outshoring. Using Tariffs to make certain that drug and migrant trafficking, and hostile unelected governments in the western Hemisphere cannot take place with direct and  indirect intervention in the western hemisphere by foreign powers. To do this with the Monroe Doctrine Corollary set by Teddy Rooosevelt in his Annual Message to Congress of 1905- "A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil." Under such a policy Canada can pursue trade deals with China as the US has done. The clear rationale for the US policy is nowhere evident in the press today, how trade and domestic policy and foreign policy converge to protect all Americans, even though this was something that was pursued under the Biden administration with mistakes made in handing the Border management to Mayorkas and Harris incompetence. In the use of Tariffs doing this in such a way that US economic interest, investments, capital and stock markets are protected by carving out areas of exemptions in the policy. This has given the US an highly advantageous use of Tariff policy in ways not reflected in the press version of Tariffs. As TR pointed out, as Lincoln pointed out over a century ago, the interests of both Labor and of Capital are both legitimate and vital for the Nation. It is time to see this as one whole and not separate to rebuild America.   ...

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The Adani Group's public offering of $2.5 billion was slightly oversubscribed says the WSJ after a short seller in New York City Nathan Anderson issued a report critical of the company. Adani Group is a set of companies in India that have taken  up the ambitious goals of electrifying India with its population of 1.3 billion so that no home lacks an electric bulb light for children to read. It is under criticism because this means coal mines in Australia provide the coal that provides this electricity when coal is used in China and India to provide much needed electricity. Adani Group is unique in that it is making the rapid transition into renewable energy in line with PM Modi's goal of generating 50% of electricity from renewable energy by 2030.  Adani Total Gas Limited fell by 10%, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission made low percentage gains.   Thirty anchor investors provided $734 million including American banks.  This includes Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Life Insurance Corporation of India. Abu Dhabi based International Holding Company said it would buy $400 million in shares in a public show of support for the Adani Group. Adani Group will use the proceeds to fund capital expenditures on green energy projects, expressway construction and airport improvements and repay some debt. The building of India's Uttar Pradesh Expressway is being done by Adani Group which is similar to what happened under US president Eisenhower in the 1950's in building the first Interstate Highway system in the US. In 1953 after Dwight Eisenhower became president he developed the plan for a national Interstate Highway system that led to the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This is happening today in India. Airport and port improvements taken up by Adani Group help build India's woefully inadequate freight logistics to make it a part of the US new supply chain after the errors of overconcentration in one country China. Green energy projects help fight climate change where investments are badly needed and governments in the US and India are giving much needed direction and support. It is in this context that the huge growth of the Adani Group can be seen. It is not similar to the Tech company valuations simply because it is like China's effort under state owned companies to match the growing demand for electricity for industrialization. During the British Empire after 1800 capital from India financed the Napoleonic wars, industrialization of Britain, and indirectly industrialization of the United States through British capital invested in the US in the period before 1860. Capital that was diverted from India, and through British trade that impoverished China. As a result the growth in China after 1990, Korea after 1980 and India after 2014 comes in a catchup mode to meet the growing aspirations of hundreds of millions of young people with some companies state or private owned picking up the pace in an unprecedented way. This is the raison d'etre of the Adani Group. China's total installed capacity of electricity has increased from about 500 GW in 2005 to 2500 GW in 2021. This is the story repeating itself in India with Adani Group and other companies such as NTPC, State Grid and Tata Power setting over five fold increase. ...

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In this exhibit in the Library of Congress Herblock in the Washington Post lampoons the efforts in 1952 of Senators Joseph McCarthy and Jenner to place unfounded criticism on Adlai Stevenson the Democratic candidate for president. The 1952 campaign for president in the US is reminiscent of the campaigns since 2016, 2020, 2024. In 1952 the US was engaged in the Korean War and there was increasing fatigue with that war as Communist China pushed back Gen. MacArthur's forces and the armies moved back and forth across the Korean peninsula. Eisenhower offered to go to Korea to find an end to the war. The Korean War comes only a few years after China became a People's Republic in 1949 under the Communist party led by Mao-tse-tung and the Berlin Crisis. This led to an effort by Senator Joseph McCarthy and Senator Jenner in the 1952 campaign to make all sorts of criticism much of it unfounded about Adlai Stevenson who had just been elected Governor of Illinois. Eisenhower was a much respected figure and had planned not to run or run as an Independent and only agreed under much persuasion from Dewey and the Eastern Establishment (New York and Boston). Eisenhower had led American forces in the Western Command under George Marshall and president Harry Truman and had not sought the presidency only to have his name placed on the ballot in New Hampshire. In the middle of a campaign Eisenhower (Ike) did not openly refute McCarthy and Jenner but had showed considerable discomfort with their unfounded rhetoric and tactics. ...