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DJT arrives in Beijing China May 13 2026. Topics that will be discussed are - the Iran War and how to resolve it, trade with China, tariffs, and US Taiwan policy. China continues to run trillion dollar surplus in trade with the world with lower trade surplus with the US after DJT tariffs. From $295 billion in 2024 under Biden the new DJT administration with DJT, Bessent and Jamieson has lowered this to $202 billion by 2026. In that same period the world trade surplus of China has increased from $992 to $1.19 billion. It is not clear whether some of the drop in the US figures is from China sending product through channels to Mexico and Vietnam that is then shipped to the US. DJT showed results in his policies by lowering the trade imbalance by 32%, while trade imbalance with the rest of the world has worsened (increase in trade surplus of China) by 20%. What does this show? We can safely assume that excessive trade imbalances are not in either China, EU, or America's interest. China increases trade and political friction by doing so, and it leaves its own policy weak by overdependence on exports, too little effort to increase domestic consumption and living standards.  FOr the US and EU trade imbalances with China of over $1 trillion reflect misguided policy at the top by US and EU decision makers and governments. By exposing their manufacturing base they are losing valuable jobs by the millions and creating a situation where the few with good jobs in select industries live in large cities and the rest of the country in smaller towns and rural areas suffering from lack of amanufacturing base. This weakens the investment base for public services and leads to lack of investment ininfrastructure. This is called deindustrialization which the DJT and Biden administrations both fight hard to reverse for the last 10 years since the disastrous years of the Obama and Bush administrations 2000-2016. For this reason we can say a good Republican is as good as a good Democrat, a bad Republican is as bad as a bad Democrat, political labels are just that labels. The media in US and EU are on a wrong footing and still fail to cover this the way it should be covered to shake off the lethargy in public sentiment in the US so that a rapid drive to reindustrialize and build new new infrastructure on top of the old that was built after World War 1 can take place. In today's world India is stepping up with major infrastructure building just as the US and EU ramp up their rebuilding.  ...

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The US president tells the King it was special that all members of Congress stood up for a standing ovation many times- something that in recent years rarely happens. The King "has shown his class" in the last 24 hours says BBC, it is now up to Starmer and the British government, DJT and the Americans to make it count. Notable DJT sharing that the King agreed with him that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. The King also talked about the NATO alliance and its role in keeping the peace for 80 years in the world. In the King's words-  "the international rules that have allowed us to trade and have kept power in balance for 80 years." Adding that the US should not go it alone- "The challenges we face are too great for any one nation to bear alone." However the King is only doing what his is role as monarch to present British interests, and it is important to recall that Britain's interests were once colonial interests around the world, that opposition to these colonial interests led to the Declaration of Independence by Jefferson and Washington in 1776. And caution in Washington's advice to America in Annual messages when it comes to these Empires. Right after 1945 when NATO was created- as it was throughout its Empire in Asia  in 1750-1950- Britain opposed Russia and was the most vocal opponent of Soviet Russia in 1950's and saw NATO in this mission. Times have changed with the emergence of Russia after 1990, China in 1950 and again in 1990's, and America as a world power is best following Washington's advice not to get involved in or inherit the British anti-Russian attitude as it has interests in the Western hemisphere and around the world that require cooperation with other world powers such as Russia, China, India, and Germany to create a peaceful world  and not the kind we have today that puts Russia and China on the wrong side just for opposition, as no powers have any interest in drug and people trafficking in the western hemisphere form places like Mexico and Venezuela, or creating small wars in other parts of the world. A situation NATO as seen by Britain in 1950 as Anti-Russian creates for the US- Lord Hastings Ismay first Secretary General of NATO set British goal for NATO (not the US interests or consistent with George Washington's advice to distance from) in 1949 as "Keep the Russian Out, the US Involved, and the Germans Down." ...

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With the passage of debt ceiling legislation the focus turns to the super-committee that will have to come up with $1.2 trillion in savings for deficit reduction. Six Republicans and six Democrats will be selected in the next 2 weeks and are required to come up with proposals by November 23, 2011.

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Shocking decline in reading in UK- NLT Surveys research of 80,000 young people  in UK shows  of 8-11 years old children girls 36% and boys 26% read actively, 14-16 years girls down to 17% and boys down to 10%. Is a similar pattern evident in the US? This is the root of many of our problems. Reading competes with other activities and screen time leads to a severe loss in reading. Teenage reading is especially fragile. Reading ability and wide knowledge helps build working skills and income generation so that it means more people in this generation are poor than previous generations, a general increase in poverty and lower incomes across neighborhoods and families in the UK and US. This also has correlation with health and mental health so that this means the children and growing young adults are in a fragile group in advanced countries of US and Europe, especially fragile when it comes to knowledge, learning skills, health and incomes. A reverse situation in some Asian advanced countries with a hunger for knowledge means the gap is opening up between the US and Europe and these Asian countries. ...

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Bryan Graham in The Guardian offers this more subdued reaction compared to Jason Gay in The WSJ on the performance of Mikaela Shiffrin of Colorado, at the Winter Olympics. She had the longest gap between a medal at the Olympics in skiing after problems at the Beijing Olympics not coming down half of the time. Shiffrin is shown with her thoughts about the loss of her father (aspects of PTSD following her fall and injury in Killington, Vermont, in 2024) who helped her train with no stress letting her be who she was. After several attempts she comes down to her favored event the slalom and after so many doubting her performance and skill focuses thoughts on the fact that she had all the skills, the tools, now it was just to focus on the period from start to finish and execute with precision. In the end after moving the goalposts forward with more than asecond to spare in her lead she simply cannot believe her eyes, a complete disbelief. It was about simply trying and focusing after building all the skills, and finally just turning up anyway after all the disappointments and  injuries and this does it all, says it all.  ...

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G7 Finance Ministers plan to release 300 million barrels of oil (2 weeks worth of Straits of Hormuz lost oil production ) to keep oil prices in check. Oil Prices reach $101 a barrel after 1 week of the US Israel war with Iran. Oil going through Straits of Hormuz are 20 million barrels a day, if 300 million barrels are released that would cover another 15 days of the war. By that time safety has to be reestablished, and additional production brought from Venezuela, from Russia for use by India, so that maybe 50% of the 20 million barrels can be produced from other locations in the world to make up for the loss. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency says-  "In addition to the challenges of transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a substantial amount of oil production has been curtailed. This is creating significant and growing risks for the market. "IEA member countries currently hold over 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, with a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks held under government obligation."       ...

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It is OK to haggle in this economy says this report in WSJ, and shows how to do it. Because retailers are increasing their profit margins significantly. Here is advice. From an expert at the University of Pennsylvania - try practicing with a script and always show respect.  An expert at Carnegie Mellon University says if you never hear no then you have not been assertive enough. Food prices are up  5-10% in the US, 15-20% in Europe. Car prices are up significantly in US, so are airline prices. Prices of all kinds of products are up out of line with anything that happened in the past.

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Rosie Millard takes up French at age 60 at London University. She lives just up the road from Birkbeck College. She comes back to the classroom in evening classes attended by people who work during the day. Here she describes her day at school learning French in a new environment of computers, the cloud, and a classroom of avid learners. Only 135,000 students in Britain took modern languages at GCSE A level with French doing the worst. Millard is bucking the trend. For seniors this is about resilience in aging as this as important as smoking cessation or cutting obesity habits say researchers to maintain a healthy vibrant brain well into the eighties and nineties.

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Oracle AI data centers spending 44% higher than estimates hurt its stock- AI alert. Oracle stock down 15%. The trade deficit of US lowest in 5 years at $53 billion in September 2025. It dropped during the pandemic 2020-2022 then went up, in anticipation of the Trump tairffs up to $136 billion in March 2025 then dropped to $50 billion in April 2025 and around that figure since. American exports of goods and services $289 billion and imports $342 billion in September 2025. It would still mean a trade deficit of $600 billion annualized figure for which tariffs  and bringing jobs factories home are strategies to bring it down.

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India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar visits the local subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation in Colombo to get some idea of the fuel supply situation in Sri Lanka. Facing a shortage of foreign exchange reserves and payment due for its debt in 2022 Sri Lanka has cut imports, including oil imports. India has offered a $1 billion line of credit and other assistance to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is also getting financial help from the IMF.

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India begins preparations for the Women's Under 17 FIFA Women's World Cup soccer games. A new effort will be laid on developing soccer in India with focus on infrastructure, grassroots, and women's soccer. The games will kick off on October 11 to go to Oct. 30. The All India Football federation and the Government of India have identified 40 cities, and areas where games can take place.

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Anthony Hopkins is Pope Benedict XVI in November's Netflix Movie The Two Popes. Hopkins, a Welsh actor, is now famous for the way he talks about not taking himself so seriously. His view of life, just be glad you are alive and have fun doing things while you can, all this talk about getting to the top, once you get up there you find there is nothing there, just nonsense, all lies. For Hopkins it has freed up a lot of energy and makes him come alive at 81 years. Another thing he says keep working thats the only way to live, and not go into decline. So what better way to take on the role of Benedict, a German pope who becomes the first to resign his office, and have his chosen successor follow him, cardinal Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, (actor Jonathan Pryce) succeed him. Just be laid back and fill the role without thinking too much about it. So no intensity, he does not do research, actually a bit clueless, he says. Life is too short to be overconscious about oneself, he was intense once, now since about ten years he just wants to relax. Benedict he sees as an easy role especially with Pryce as cardinal Bergoglio. Fernando Meirelles directs and he is good with that. In the movie a day long conversation takes place, and two people who are from opposite ends of the world and ideologically too, have a sense of lightness about them, talking the World cup and soccer, and Hopkins playing the piano for Bergoglio. Hopkins just intent on having a lot of fun and doing it that way on the set. He sees the to popes as not walking on water, just human beings, and that make it easy for him. The human touches like going along with Bergoglio to watch football, though he nows nothing about it, and having a beer together. When playing Benedict Hopkins tells himself he is just pretending, just kidding, that makes it easy for him. His wife has encouraged Hopkins to relax by taking on painting and playing music. ...

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Arvind Panagriya, Prof. of Economics at Columbia University, points out the key initiatives of the Modi government in its first four years which will show results in future years for development of the country.  He mentions the Swachh Bharat Mission and cites results that show rural households with toilets are now 84% up from 38%.  By 2019 the whole country will be defecation zone free on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. The Dhan Jan Yojana DJY accounts opened for rural households are up to 316 million. Aadhar cards for identification are up from 650 million to 1.2 billion. The Aadhar and DJY work together to enable direct transfer of benefits to poor households, eliminating the leaks in benefits transfer and ghost accounts of the period since independence in 1947. Not mentioned by Panagriya is the Health Insurance scheme for lower income households that enable families to survive a sudden medical expense that could put them in dire straits.  These efforts work in a way to change India from the ground up from its villages and rural areas as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence. The land acquisition law amendments were put on hold till farmers concerns could be better accomodated, an area of concern for industrial development cited in an editorial in the Hindu newspaper. Fiscal consolidation and inflation targeting have resulted in an average inflation rate of 4.3% for the 4 years of the Modi government. Inflation was over 9% in the last 2 years of the previous Congress UPA government with GDP growth dropping to 5.9% for the last two years. Average GDP growth for four years for the Modi government is 7.3%, even after the changes to implement GST taxation for one national tax eliminating state barriers in interstate commerce and demonetization to fight corruption and black money. Rate of GDP growth should be higher after the gains from the initiatives and the new GST integration of the country are felt, with increase in investment and FDI, after infrastructure improvements and land acquisition arrangements are made. Transportation infrastructure modernization initiative pushes ahead with the first bullet train in the pilot project for Ahmedabad- Mumbai set to start in 2022. This is a $17 billion project financed for $13 billion by the Japanese government at 0.1% loan for 50 years, moratorium on repayments for 20 years, using E5 Shinkansen series technology. Implementation of this project on a sound financial basis should lead to transformation of the Indian rail network, raising the level of technology implementation across the entire Indian rail system. Such an achievement would rival the first introduction of railways into India in the nineteenth century under the British. A new bankruptcy law is intended to free up capital for investment by putting behind the large number of non performing loans in the Indian banking system. Changes made by the central bank RBI are designed to speed up this process so that loss making enterprises are absorbed, consolidated or shut down, a legacy from the earlier period.     ...

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Street protests in Brazilian cities with economic growth slowing to about 1% in 2012 and inflation at about 6%. Street protests in Brazil reflect public disconten over corruption, overspending on the World Cup and Olympics, and lack of good education, health and other public services. Increase in bus fare and police response against small protests using tear gas set off the large scale protests of tens of thousands in Brazilian cities. President Rousseff's sees her popularity ratings drop 8% percentage points from the March level to 57% in June 2013, according to polling firm Datafolha. Ths includes high popularity in poor northern states. Rousseff's popularity in more industrialized southern states declined by 13%, and by 16% among college educated youth.

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48% of British voters see immigration as the most important issue says Ipsos. And 31% say their local area is housing more than its fair share of asylum seekers growing to 61% of Reform UK voters. Reform UK is now leading party with 34% of the vote to Labour's 25% and Liberals 11%. The report in the WSJ on Augu 28 shows how the Labour government did not live up to it's talk on immigration. It also shows how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson failed by opening up non EU immigration from Asia on the grounds that it would bring in the brightest and yet dropped the basic colege degree requirement paradoxically. Lobbying from health care home care increased migration for this field under Conservatives and is only now being reversed by Labour. Labour has been too slow and the culture of Britain and Labour has not changed enough to grasp the problem. Their are vested interests in Britain such as universities and home care health care that have influenced the conduct of policy so that migration on non-eu has replaced eu migration after Brexit but not attracted the most qualified immigrants. The 4% of the British population that entered Britain after Brexit as immigrants, millions arrived and now when Labour is trying to bring this down faces a large number of dependent applications.University students are now bringing in their dependents at rates that have skyrocketed. ...

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The aggressive effort of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to increase interest rates to dampen inflation will have an effect on Asian currencies and trade. The Japanese yen lost 14% of its value and the Korean won 8%, Chinese yuan 5% since the beginning of 2022. This is a result of the widening gap between interest rates in the US and Japan where the interest rates have not been increased due to mild inflation.  Asian trade is done in US dollars and exports to the US are invoiced in dollars. Citigroup says about three quarters of trade in Asia-Pacific is invoiced in dollars. Weaker currencies would translate into higher effective prices for imported commodities - energy and food. This pushes up domestic inflation and hurts manufacturing.   Add to this a shift in the US demand from goods into services in 2022 and there is weaker external demand for the economies of Asia. This will exacerbate the slowdown in Asian economies. Many countries such as South Korea and Thailand have increased their external borrowing in dollars. Debt service ratio was 21% in South Korea and 14.5% in Thailand, according to Bank for International Settlements. Years of low rates allowed governments in Asia to borrow more without incurring high interest bills. Now that situation is changing quickly and will result in difficulties for South Korea and Thailand says this report in WSJ. In the last 10 years Asian economies excluding China increased debt to GDP ratios by 15 percentage points, according to Gavekal. The result might not be debt crises as in Sri Lanka but painful slowdowns in economy with combination of loss in external demand from the US and higher inflation, higher interest bills. ...