LyrArc Article Gist
Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, India, UK, European Union elections are taking place by June 2024 and US in November 2024. Yet it is misleading to lump them together. Much discontent is there to see as in the UK with cost of living, governance, time wasted on Brexit, India with lingering effects of the pandemic on rural voters, caste based voting. In India protest vote of lower caste Dalit voters in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, even with government support in forms of universal healthcare, food for poor households during pandemic extended, cooking gas, housing support, clean tap water, direct bank account deposit to accounts of poor and farmers. Yet in the states in the south and east in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and generally in the south the BJP vote count increased so that losses in the north were made up leaving the percentage of vote for India for Modi's BJP party at 37 percent in 2024 instead of 38% in 2019, losing the absolute majority 240 seats of 543 yet having campaigned heavily for partners who added seats 294 of 543. In the UK Keir Starmer may see some vote preference for Labor erode yet the Conservative record is in shambles even conservative experts will say, as in India where the opposition parties offer no prospects for the future and little track record for making India the second or third largest economy in the world which the BJP has set and shown to have achieved over 10 years by taking India to No. 5 in the world economies. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The demand for seasonal labor in agriculture is growing. As a result the agricultural visa program in the U.S. has issued 20% more visas in fiscal 2017 compared to 2016. Most of the labor for farms comes from Mexico,

LyrArc Article Gist
DJT plans for 25% tariff on all imported cars goes into effect April 2, 2025. It is intended to promote additional investment in the US auto industry, boosting jobs and wages in the US. These countries have now wrapped their behavior around national sentiment even though they very well know how the US has looked out for Europe, and especially China throughout cataclysmic events in the 20th century and the 21st century such as foreign occupation and failures in modernization. By 2015 the US which had given Europe the Marshall Plan and helped Japan rebuild from the ashes of World War II, South Korea rebuild from the devastation of the Korean war, and China rebuild after the failed industrialization experiments of the 1960's and 1970's, was now facing nations that only saw this as a One Way Street, making the US look stupid and showing a degree of irresponsible behaviour on fentanyl, drug and migrant trafficking  by Canada Mexico and China that has few parallels in history. The narrative from the US is that the US allowed Europe, Japan and South Korea, and Mexico as a manufacturing base for these countries 25 years since the 1970's when Japanese Toyota vehicles made inroads into the US market to help these countries recover, a post Marshall Plan benefit given to Europe and Asia. During 1995-2015 a series of weak administrations Clinton-Bush-Obama allowed the US manufacturing base to decline under a falsely premised globalization that served US financial interests but hurt US manufacturing towns and communities across the country.  This means BMW, VW cars imported from Germany, Subaru, Toyota, Nissan, Honda cars from Japan, Hyundai and Kia cars from South Korea, Chinese EV vehicles, and cars made in Mexico for Asian and European makers, all will face this tariff. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Both the Tories in Britain and the Democrats in the US were caught by surprise by the sudden surge after the pandemic of illegal migrations flows in 2023-2024 which dropped to all time lows in 2019-2021 with the covid lockdowns. Tories with factional infighting and Democrats falsely believing they were virtuous humane could not take effective decisive immediate action costing them the defeats in 2024. The size of the illegal migration problem to the UK was underestimated in 2023. Tory rhetoric alone failed to convince the British public. In the US Biden not confronting it head on also failed to reassure the American people as the US Border also meant destructive Mexico/China fentanyl flows. Even today the action proposed falls short and new US bipartisan legislation is needed to make it the law of the land, closing three decades of stealth in immigration policies. ONS now estimates that it missed 166,000 people. The real figure for the year ending June 2023 for net migration was 906,000 not 748,000 as previously estimated. In the year ending June 2024 this figure for net migration was 728,000. Labour party under Keir Starmer made setting up the new structures for tackling alarming rise in migration the top priority in 2024. That lesson was not learned in the US and the issue not confronted head on to win public confidence- the Biden support for Republican Senator Lankford's legislation on illegal migrants and the border came late in 2023 and the issue was left to fester for 2 years eroding public confidence. In the US the issue of illegal fentanyl flows at the US Border and from China makes the Border and China relations issues that required effective and immediate action overriding everything else. In the end Tories confusion and internal factions, other controversies, led to lack of vigilance and lack of effective action as net migration deceptively hit lows of 254,000, 111,000, and 254,000 in the pandemic years 2019, 2020, and 2021, only to surge tremendously to 634,000 and 906,00 in the years 2022 and 2023.  Labour's Starmer took action to make it No. 1 priority in the platform going into the 2024 election winning public confidence. A similar surge in migration happened in the US after a deceptive slowdown in the pandemic, compunded by Venezuela and central American states collapsing. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Honda is now exporting the small compact Fit made at its Chinese plant to Canada. A Honda plant in Mexico will assemble the Fit and export the car to the U.S. and Canada in 2014.

LyrArc Article Gist
One foreign policy expert says president Trump tried to reverse everything in Obama's foreign policy almost to the point of an obsession. He visits Saudi Arabia before visiting Mexico and Canada, close neighbors, as other presidents have done. The relationships with Mexico and Canada deteriorated. Yet Mr. Trump has a good personal connection with Trudeau of Canada and Macron of France.  Taking the advice of advisers including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, president Trump despite tough talk on the North American Free Trade Agreement, takes a moderate approach on NAFTA renegotiation. Trump also softens some of the rhetoric on China as he seeks Chinese help to restrain North Korea. An international coalition of states supported by the U.S. reverses gains by Islamic State, with Iraq and Iran gaining over Islamic State. President Obama's policy of not taking decisive action, reversed towards the end of the second term, had led to the rise of Islamic State and the refugee crisis in Europe as refugees left Syria and Iraq. NATO or the South Korean defense was not significantly weakened as feared at the beginning of the first year. Missile defense proceeded in South Korea with U.S. missile systems. The appointment of a senior senator from Texas, Kay Hutchinson, signaled that the NATO policy had not changed significantly. As a result it could be said that the year 2018 began with a bang about the risks internationally with president Trump's unconventional approach, and ended without some of the worst fears being realized. Relations between North and South Korea improved as Koreans decided to work together for peace in the peninsula- with North Korea agreeing to participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The issues raised by the storage of residue from Canadian oil sands production processed into coke at midwestern oil refineries. The Marathon refinery in Detroit processes this residue for export companies such as Oxbow owned by the Koch Brothers, which then export this to China, India, Mexico and other S. American countries. A huge open pile of this dirty coke is seen along the Detroit river in May 2013. Residents in Detroit and Windsor ask if Detroit is considered a dumping ground?

LyrArc Article Gist
The NYT covers the GAESA tourism enterprise of Cuba (that operates independent of the government of Cuba) that overinvested in Tourism at the expense of agriculture industry and infrastructure during the Obama administration, leading to collapse with Trump's 2014 embargo on Cuba. GAESA controls about 50% of Cuba's economy, run by military and people from Castro's family.  That left 121 hotels built in the boom years of tourism at 30 percent occupancy. The Iberostar high rise hotel is one of these hotels that rises over dilapidated housing in Havana, the Cuban capital. The investment in tourism by the GAESA enterprise that runs about 50% of the Cuban economy is 13 times what is spent on healthcare and education, says the NYT. The Castro family, Raul Castro family, runs this business venture that was started when the Soviet Union as sponsor of Cuba had collapsed by 1991. The NYT says this 'devolved' the ideas and promise of the revolution. "Devolved?" What kind of word to describe a complete loss of faith, and enormous failure with severe hardship for the Cuban people? It means the whole idea of communism or Marxist revolution has been proven false, even as it survives in Mexico and parts of Latin America. One can be against the Batista regime- similarly against corrupt regimes in Latin America or Asia- that ruled Cuba before the Castro Cuban revolution and still look for better choices and alternatives than what Castro came up with as an answer to Cuba's needs. Much of Latin America is suffering from the same problems of dictatorships and turning to Marxist alternatives - particularly the alternative put forward by Castro in Cuba- that has also destroyed the Venezuelan economy with Chavez's turn to Castro's Cuban revolutionary slogans and ideology. That came up with temporary solutions for the poorer sections of society, yet failed badly for all sections of society in the long term. How else can one explain one fourth of Venezuela's population and about the same of Cuba's leaving the country, some of those who left the critical human capital that would form the core of the human input to combine with capital and technology for advancing the economy. If Cuba were like the Dominican Republic or other parts of the Caribbean to depend on tourism for its national income then would it not be better to have friendly relations with the US, the main source of tourism revenue. The Obama administration was only holding up a failed idea by holding out a helping hand to tourism in Cuba knowing full well that a change to a Republican administration would simply lead to heavy investments in tourism at the neglect of infrastructure, public services and the economy, of health and education, to become large economic losses. This is what has happened.  As China and India have proven and are proving there are no magical ways to economic development- the same route that was traveled by the nations of Northern and Western Europe with scientific advances, technological advances, have to be taken, the same route that was traveled by the US in its industrial revolution and building of infrastructure, that same route has to be taken by all nations. It does not have to take a time period of centuries as in Europe. The US accomplished it faster with new technologies and vast human and natural resources over 100 years, Japan in 50 years, China in 30 years. India in 25 years ongoing.There is room for intelligent solutions to problems, for speed and tapping into new technologies, yet the same inputs of land, labour, capital and technology have to be put together for development. For states or regions, cities, within China and India, the same inputs, the same access to foreign investment and new technologies is the only route to rapid development. Long range plans are set in motion, decades of stable efficient, clean governance is put in place, and alliances are built with the nations of Europe and with the US. This road is traversed though hard work as Japan and China have done, and India today is thoroughly engaged in. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The economic relationship between Texas and Mexico and the presidential elections in Mexico. The effects on immigration of policies pursued by the presidential candidates.

LyrArc Article Gist
The election win of Sebastian Pinera in Chile marks a shift in Latin America away from left parties. Economic conditions improved initially with the left parties in Brazil, Chile and Argentina, following currency crises and debt problems. The commodities boom helped the left party governments finance social programs which increased their popularity. The middle class also benefited with increased consumer spending and a growing economy. All this changed as the commodities boom collapsed and state finances were stretched thin in Brazil and Argentina. Corruption scandals, and decline in economic growth exposed serious problems in delivery of services, infrastructure and other areas which had been neglected. Voters decided to turn to alternatives and parties from centre right with Macri in Argentina and Pinera in Chile as a consequence.   The striking fact is that instead of shifting to the right leaders of the centre right, Macri in Argentina and Pinera in Chile have decided it is best to keep some of the best initiatives and achievements of the previous governments that have created a broader middle class in Chile and Argentina. Pinera says he will preserve some of Bachelet's initiatives in bringing broader access to education and health care. In this sense Latin America has matured so that the sharp conflicts have been set aside to set a more conciliatory tone and work together. Compared to Chile and Argentina Brazil is different in that corruption scandals affect most parties and there is a general loss of confidence in Congress and politicians across the spectrum. Brazil is looking at a situation in which a whole generation of politicians would have to give way to a new generation for the public to gain a renewal of confidence- so deep is the loss of confidence.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
19 percent of China's exports went to the US in 2017, in 2024 this is 15%, but wait, the difference of 4 percent it is simply coming back to the US but through Southeast Asia. As a result some of the same issues that puzzled Trump negotiators exist today. China's exports surged 12.7% in October 2024 over the prior year. Biden was facing this situation and had yet to respond to the surge in exports to US. These exports were sent to Mexico and to Southeast Asia to circumvent the tariffs. It is the same situation revisited in 2024 with two other aspects of the Chinese economy-economic stimulus gets smaller and the housing and construction industry has imploded, the economy has slower growth. The overall price level in the US with a 60% tariff plus 10% for all countries would be 0.72 addition to the price level of 1.10 percent today- that is when including the depreciation of China's yuan by 10%. as it did last time. The result would be price level in the US at 1.82%, according to J.P. Morgan. Drag on China's GDP of the Trump tariffs in first term was 0.65% according to one investment bank GS, with 60% tariffs it would be 2%. Trump secured a return of $116 billion or 58% of the $200 billion China said it would buy of US exports. The other 42%- the deal was not completed in the end. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
UAW's Shawn Fain's support of US 25% auto tariffs April 2, 2025. Fain says-“We applaud the Trump administration for stepping up to end the free trade disaster that has devastated working class communities for decades.” US president Biden supported the UAW, even standing in a picket line to support UAW negotiate a contract for fair wages for workers with the three US automakers, Ford, GM and Stellantis. For decades workers in the US faced the threat of outshoring to Mexico to reduce wages. This action on tariffs will increase depressed wages for American workers in the same way that president Biden's action helped negotiate better wages. In this sense both Biden and DJT are on the same track. In fact president Biden 2020-2024 decided to keep most of the tariffs put up by president Trump in 2016-2020. It is likely that a future Democratic administration will continue DJT tariff policies to achieve domestic goals such as fair wages for American workers, and for rebuilding American manufacturing in the way president Biden has done. This is in fact one of the singular achievements of the Biden administration for building the working class and middle class neglected by Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. On this issue both Biden, Trump and any future US president will be on the same page, because it is about fair trade, to even the playing field, and is right by American workers and American values. History will show that this required courage and persistence on the part of Biden and DJT, and was done not on whim as is falsely portrayed but on the advice of people who had the experience, wisdom and sought the best for America such as Robert Lighthizer ,the US Trade Representative in 2016-2020 and his deputy Jamieson who is the USTR in 2025. Lighthizer is notable because he handled the unfair trade with the Japanese in the 1980's as Deputy USTR under Reagan, and knows fair trade and how to get it to build a strong American economy. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) CEO Emilio Lozoya is fired and replaced by Gonzalez Anaya, a close friend of finance minister Videgaray, as the company experiences a liquidity crisis by Jan. 2016. Anaya is known for cost cutting as head of Mexico's government healthcare institute. This report in the WSJ cites a Pemex official who says at one point in Jan 2016 Pemex was down to $8 million in cash. Under Lozoya Pemex failed to introduce financial discipline ahead of collapsing oil prices. Anaya is expected to cut spending by 19% or $5.8 billion. Mexico's governemt made a capital injection into Pemex of $4.2 billion to pay debts to suppliers, and offered tax relief of $2.8 billion. Pemex output is down to 2.2 million barrels a day in March 2016, decline of 4.5%. Pemex cuts will come in putting off exploraion spending of $800 million in one field in the Gulf of Mexico and paying less to rent oil platforms.

LyrArc Article Gist
Voices of ordinary Pakistanis from Lahore and Karachi to New York city on the issues facing Pakistan and the elections of 2013. A sense that Pakistan is about to change and hope that efforts will be made by the new government to tackle the issues of security, electricity shortages, the economy and corruption, putting all children in schools, and creating a large middle class similar to Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia. About 40% of Pakistani children do not attend schools according to some estimates, in a country where two thirds of the population is young.

LyrArc Article Gist
China's BYD started in electric batteries and expanded into electric cars. It has emerged as the dominant electric car company in the world as China now has half of the electric cars on the road in the world. 35% of exports of electric cars are from China. Keith Bradsher of NYT reports from Shenzen that its first car was made in 2007 of poor quality, similar to Toyota in the 1930's as it tried car manufacturing for the first time. It has surpassed Tesla in making electric cars. In each of the last 2 years it has increased electric car sales by one million to reach electric car sales on 3 million. EV sales in China were up in 2023 to 9.49 million cars giving BYD the largest share of 31%., by comparison US electric car sales were 1.2 million. New assembly lines are being built in Brazil, Hungary and Thailand. And new lines are planned for Mexico and Indonesia. This kind of growth was seen only by General Motors in 1946 after the end of the war. It also shows the progress China is making. In solar panels something like the addition of 900 million solar panels meeting the entire increase in electricity demand for each year, so that emissions targets can be met earlier than planned to tackle climate change.  The same changes are happening in electric cars. China now has 40% of electric cars or gasoline/electric plug in cars going up to 50%. For export China is building large carrier ships, the first that will take 5000 cars for export to the Netherlands. The lowest priced electric car model the Seagull was priced at $11,000. BYD's lowering of manufacturing costs have given it the ability to price the cars to attract new car buyers.  Wang Chuanfu who studied at Central Southern University in Changsha known for its battery research, was an engineer who started the company in the 1990's to make batteris for Motorola. Between 2003-2006 he experimented with making cars in the hope of making electric cars. Stalled efforts in 2009 and 2011 were met with arenewed effort in 2016 trying a new approach to cut costs by developing a battery where supplies of lithium or cobalt would not be a constraint. He developed a new battery using iron and phospate to replace lithium cobalt batteries. A big break came in 2020 with the Blade battery that increased range to the level of cobalt lithium batteries at a much smaller cost. BYD hired German Audi designers for new model design. This time BYD was in the right position to build a car company matching all others with costs lower by about 35% than VW for some models. This comes from- lower costs to make in China, making its own parts inside the company for 75% of parts compared to VW only about 35%, and by the savings from its battery research.  BYD has shown ability to shift with market needs and opportunities. In 2022 assisted driving was facing hurdles, BYD had second thoughts about the new technology, by 2023 as it was increasing in use BYD committed $14 billion in autonomous driving technology. Driving range is a problem for people in urban areas going back to their villages in China. BYD has an advantage here compared to Tesla- it makes hybrid plug ins that account for half its sales. Toyota has also had emphasis on hybrid plug ins where it missed the opportunity was that it moved very slowly on all electric cars not realizing how fast things were moving outside it's world. This is the situation America also faces in 2024 and beyond who can deliver on the infrastructure capabilities, new research ,and tap American potential to compete in this new world where one innovation will follow another. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Issues raised by the Citigroup problems at Banamex in Mexico for performance. This follows the Fed's stress tests rejecting Citi's request for payout to shareholders.

LyrArc Article Gist
Who is this boy born in 1971 growing up in Dutch Apartheid South Africa who studied at Pretoria Boys School in 1988? The head teacher at Pretoria Boys was Armstrong who reflected the English values that came from the British settlement of South Africa in the 19th century till the Boer War period- the English fighting what they see as the less cultured Dutch settlers in Natal state around 1900.  The answer -Elon Musk, who went back to Canada, his mother's country. His father Errol Musk still lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Till 2016 Elon and his brother were alienated from their father over Apartheid and the relations between blacks and whites of that period.  The illegal immigration since 2016, fentanyl crisis causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US from illegal flows of drugs from Mexico and Canada with sourcing from China, the collapse of Venezuela and gang crime in central American states has changed the thinking of the Musk family since 2020, says this story in The Guardian. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Emma Tucker describes the elation in the News Desk and for reporters of the WSJ on August 1, 2024  following the release of a young reporter Evan Gershkovich held by Russia for coverage in sensitive Russian regions. Emma Tucker said-    "We are grateful to President Biden and his administration for working with persistence and determination to bring Evan home rather than see him shipped off to a Russian work camp for a crime he didn’t commit. We are also grateful to the other governments that helped bring an end to Evan’s nightmare, in particular the German government that played such a critical role." Who is Emma Tucker and why does it matter?-   It matters because of monopolistic/oligopolistic hold over communication of news in the public space that belongs to public service since Lincoln, TR, FDR, Kennedy in the US, and it's shaping of public perceptions such as no action needed on climate change fires/floods, or on infrastructure investment in a dilapidated US. Emma Tucker studied in Sussex and in New Mexico before studying philosophy, economics and politics at Oxford. She becomes a graduate trainee at the Financial Times  in 1990 continuing for 30 years right into Covid years (FT now owned by employee owned Nikkei since 2015 acquired from Pearson for $1.32 billion). In 2022 she was selected to run Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal acquired by him for $5 billion- including $2.25 billion premium- from the Bancroft family that owned it and Dow Jones since 1928.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Mr. Trump was offered a deal for his border wall with Mexico that provided a fourth of the founding and covered a 55 mile fence on the border. $1.375 billion in funding was offered by Congress to cover building a 55 mile fence in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It includes money for better screening at border entry points and more customs officers.

President Trump has asked Congress for $5.7 billion to build a 215 mile fence along the border with Mexico. Building the border wall was a key campaign promise of Mr. Trump in the 2016 campaign. A similar deal was rejected by Mr. Trump in December 2018 leading to a 35 day partial government shutdown.

The fence proposed by Congress would be made of steel posts and built along the levees on the Rio Grande RIver that separates the U.S. and Mexico.