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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 best US cities for jobs is changing rapidly in 2021 after the spread of coronavirus. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston lost jobs. Jobs shifted to hubs in the interior of the country as remote work changed the workplace. Salt Lake City in Utah, Austin in Texas, and Denver became new hubs with environments that included mountains, healthier living, quieter lifestyle, lower costs and efforts to attract employers. Tourist spots suffered with Orlando in Florida moving to 47th place in terms of jobs. The US lost 9 million jobs in 2020 changing how the jobs market in cities looks. The WSJ looks at the changes in this report. Tech hubs such as Raleigh in North Carolina, and San Francisco suffered decline as remote work created new opportunities for cities in the interior of the country. By contrast Salt Lake City was growing twice as fast from 2000 to 2017, and has increased in popularity with surrounding areas of Provo and Ogden in Utah. It is now known as Silicon Slopes as it becomes a new tech hub city. The WSJ looks at Salt Lake City in some detail.  ...

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EIA says half of the benefit of higher fuel efficiency standards for Automobiles 2010-2020 in US was lost because of SUV's and the incentivizing of SUV's in the 2006 CAFE standards have made things worse. The first SUV's came in the 1980's. By 2004 SUV's made up half of car sales and by 2025 outsold cars 2 to 1. What if we took all SUV's and large cars off the roads, or even some of these SUV's by deincentivizing of SUV's in the US CAFE corporate fuel efficiency standards? What would be the savings in crude oil and in carbon footprint? Would it be about the same as releasing an additional 400 million barrels of oil into the markets in addition to the 400 million barrels that are now released through EIA and member countries? This New Yorker essay touches on this idea. During the Iran war the volatile Middle East as a source of oil supplies is a major problem for countries. Some are rationing supplies and in one country 40 million children are not going to school for 2 weeks starting this week because of the sources of oil are so precarious, government offices will only have half of the employees, the rest working from home (almost like Covid pandemic). Many other countries face that situation. The International Energy Agency recently reported that, if “SUVs were an individual country, they would rank sixth in the world for absolute emissions in 2021, emitting over 900 million tonnes of CO2.” The agency says governments must redesign their CAFE standards and their policies so that it would reduce S.U.V. sales, tax gas guzzling vehicles. EIA cites governments in the EU doing this- “Some governments have already started introducing relevant measures, such as France and Germany, which have put a tax on large and high-emissions cars.” Within SUV's also there is an opportunity to reduce the size and make more efficient space utilization designs. Small savings also add up. One has to realize that the current freedom to use energy freely in places like the US with self sufficiency in oil comes with a sense of responsibility for using it wisely so that it can be exported to cut the trade deficit, precisely what the president is doing with India, to cut a trade deficit of $58 billion before it gets to $100 billion. Section 301 is already in place for investigations by the US of 18 countries for a new basis to use tariffs after the Supreme Court decision. A similar approach is taken with EU for hundreds of billions of reductions in trade deficit that will only strengthen the US dollar and the US economy in the long run , and be good for stock markets and jobs as it reduces oil prices and increases the manufacturing capacity/cost for the Nation. Europe, India and China can do the same. Remember that in 2010 SUV's made up 17% of total world sales, and by 2025 SUV's made up 46% of world vehicle sales. This would create another 400 million barrels for the oil markets, which would triple what was released through EIA  this week to 1.2 billion barrels and this would create 120 days of supply replacement for the 10 million b/d lost from Straits of Hormuz, and effectively end the Iran War as it would be clear that prices can be kept low even in the $50's. Essentially buying time till the SU can get more production in Venezuela and other parts of the world to replace much of the Middle Eastern oil that is ending up in a quagmire. This is the best way for the US and Europe, India, China to ensure jobs growth, economic growth with low cost crude oil in the $50 range and ensure much of the poorer countries like Egypt and Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, have access to oil at prices they can afford and eliminate poverty. ...

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This report in WSJ shows that remote work is a lasting trend because companies can now hire talented individuals from anywhere in the country or the world, and pay less for the same talent. In the past talented individuals were attracted with high pay packages to cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Companies can now choose to avoid paying these high pay packages and have a broader talent pool to choose from. This is because these cities became costlier and less attractive with cramped apartments relative to the choices for remote work. In the example cited here a machine learning expert shifted from a small cramped apartment in San Francisco to work for Twitter from a small town named Katy in Texas where she has a 5 bedroom large apartment and a nicer community of 20,000 people to live in west of Houston. One in 8 jobs posted on Linked In as of August 2021 are for remote work, many times the percentage of remote work job postings in 2020, showing this trend is here to stay. There is a large shift of millions of workers in tech related fields exiting the cities of San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Boston for smaller cities in other parts of the country such as Utah, Texas and other states in the US. A similar trend is observed in Europe. America's professional classes are moving to hybrid or remote work in large numbers says this report in WSJ. At one point in 2020 about 35% of workers in the US or 50 million workers were doing remote work during the lockdowns. In August 2021 this figure is closer to about half of these workers even as workers return to work offices. It is believed that the BLS statistics understate the number of remote workers at 20 million and 14% of workers in August 2021. Large crowded and hugely expensive cities are no longer attractive for employers or for tech employees or professional workers. ...

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In this exceptional report of the housing market in Roanoke, Virgina, Neil Irwin talks to builders, home buyers, renters and young people. San Francisco and Washington D.C. are the exception in housing markets- hundreds of America's midsize cities like Roanoke are seeing smaller rates of household formation leading to a decline in demand for single family homes and fewer homes being built. This accounts for a large part of the smaller growth in U.S. GDP. There are he points out about 2.3 million missing households as a result of a significant change in home buying patterns that is reducing demand for new construction of single family homes. During the period 2001-2006, before the 2008 global financial crisis, the rate of new U.S. household formation was about 1.35 million annually. This dropped to 569,000 in 2007-2013, as the effects of the crisis were felt in a deep recession. One result is more young people are postponing buying a house and living with their parents. Faced with large student debt- the total U.S. student debt passed $1 trillion for the first time recently- purchases of homes are becoming more dfficult. Of 18-34 year olds 27% lived with their parents before 2006, according to Labor Department data. This went up to 31% following the recession. Lack of good jobs is another factor. In 2014 March only 63% of 18-24 year olds had jobs. Even young people older than 24 with jobs felt it necessary to save money by living with their parents. More retirees too are moving into apartments....

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Sperling shows how Biden's economic plan rescued America and set the stage for America becoming the leader in the G7 economies. Gene Sperling is adviser to president Biden, coordinator of the America Rescue Plan, and had 8 years as adviser in 2000 and 2011 after the financial crisis to previous presidents. Here he says the arguments made that the trillion dollars investment spending Biden and a bipartisan group of senators have supported with legislation in Congress were causing inflation have proved not to be true. Inflation caused by bottlenecks in the supply chain, the pandemic shifts, and the Ukraine war, has come down to 3.4% in Dec 2023. By investing in the US economy, in US manufacturing and US jobs, the US under Biden now has the best economy of the 7 advanced economies with higher growth and unemployment below 4% for 24 straight months, lower inflation apples to apples. Sperling says there were 4 lessons learned during his work with the White House. The first to avoid harm to workers whose lives get scarred by loss of jobs. This happened in 1982 and again in 2008 after the financial crisis. Unemployment took 6 years to recover after 2008. And he says the unemployment rate was 15% for younger workers. For the first time economists like Sperling and Treasury Secretary Yellen have grasped what workers feel and have gone through. Sperling cites the devastation to people's lives - the mental health, the divorce, the loss of earnings and depression. The new policy after 2020 resulted in the fastest drop in longterm unemployment ever with black and hispanic unemployment reaching record lows by 2023. A first ever national eviction prevention policy led to 20% less evictions than prepandemic. Second Sperling says 650,000 jobs were lost by state and local governments in the three years after 2008 financial crisis. State and local budget cuts and mass layoffs seriously hit the economy. This time in after 2020 1.2 million jobs were added with the money in the Rescue Plan and lost jobs recovered in one third the time it took in 2008. Third state and local governments need to deal with the harm coming from the downturn and after 2008 the cupboard was empty. Whereas after 2008 only 154 cities and counties got help to tackle commericial blight, effects on communities, foreclosure and long term joblessness in 2020 Biden was able to send direct funding to all 20,000 local governments and 15,000 school districts. This helped tackle learning loss, crime, and address mental health needs. What a difference it made. Lastly one needed to anticipate something unexpected to happen that flattened projections of recovery. In 2011 3.7% growth projected was flattened when Sperling was senior adviser, and this was flattened by Fukushima nuclear disaster, Arab Spring spike in oil prices, and debt default negotiations. This time there was cushion in the plan so that when covid variants and unexpected Ukraine war happened the rescue could withstand and deliver with resilience. Growth was 3.4% average for the first 3 years of Biden's term and unemployment went down from 8% to 4% for 24 months. Coming from someone who had seen mistakes happen and corrected them, who had served three presidents and the last Biden ,this is a story of how Sperling, Yellen, with the help of Powell at the Federal Reserve, and the bipartisan support put together by a US president in Congress , one who has served the country in the Senate more than any other recent Senator and led the nation with courage, patience and determination. ...

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Upskilling the workforce has huge potential to add jobs in India, says this report in DW.com. It cites India Skills Report 2021. The federal government's new education policy is intended to tackle some of these issues, yet more needs to be done to focus on this issue for Skills India and improvement for the future.

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A Brookings Institution study of hiring trends and unemployment in the 100 largest metropolitan areas of the U.S. at the end of 2012, shows 78 metropolitan areas adding jobs in the 4th quarter 2012. 14 of these areas had more jobs at the end of 2012 compared to before the 2008-2009 recession. Six of these cities were in Texas. This included Knoxville, which gained from jobs added at a nearby VW plant. Other cities were Oklahoma City, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Charleston. Only three cities in the East and West are on the list- Pittsburgh, Washington and San Jose, and none in the midwest, showing the geographical divide in job gains. And Washington D.C. will lose government jobs after job cuts in the government. Charleston will lose jobs from cuts in military spending.

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Reflecting with gratitude for things that have gone right on Thanksgiving Day in the US in 2025. Peggy Noonan asks us to follow Charles Dickens advice- Charles Dickens in “Sketches by Boz”: “Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” Thinking of old friends, of science that heals things, of the world outside and the joy of work. Knowing readers across different towns and cities around the world, and being able through Lyrarc.com "to provide a product that helps millions build educated mindsets that affects and shapes their lives that gives me inspiration for the effort." And the joys of Nature for me that include hiking in the French Alps near Grenoble and in the Austrian Alps near Innsbruck, and visiting simple churches in the mountains and in Munich, watching children in exercise in the gardens of Innsbruck. Like Peggy Noonan thankful to watch the World Series baseball the LA Dodger's Ohtani, and the 2 day Ashes Cricket Test with Mitchell Starc. ...

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The US is on track to bring back 350,000 jobs in 2022 that were taken overseas during the two decades of hyper growth in China, according to the Reshoring Initiative. A false idea was created mostly by economists and business that shifted jobs to China during two Democratic and one Republican administration, the Clinton, Obama and the Bush administrations, that this would benefit the American workers and families through lower prices at the retail level. It ignored the severe damage this would do to jobs, incomes and whole communities when factories on which they depended for a living were shipped overseas. It damaged labor in ways that destroyed much of the American working class and the families built during the years of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. Business failed during this period to meet the challenge of higher American wages and productivity issues by using innovation and other steps to keep manufacturing at home.  This led to the hyper growth that did not benefit China, because a moderate pace of growth would have helped China control the rampant contamination of its air, water and soil. It also was leading China to a dead end reached during the 2016 election campaign with the election of president Trump with deep discontent from workers in midwestern states. The pandemic simply underscored the need for supply chains that were close to home and reliable in crises. By 2020 president  Biden was committing to a restructuring of the supply chains and pushing forward with it with legislation in the $369 billion Climate bill, and SCIENCE and Chips Act, to make solar panels, semiconductors and other products in the US. Reports from China showed that growth was slight or flat during 2022 and youth unemployment at 20%. The policy was to shift people back from the cities to the rural areas and support the informal economy, a sense of nationalist sentiment, and preparing for a future where the supply chain for the US and the European Union had moved away from China. In the long run the policies now look as ones that benefitted neither the US, the European Union, India or China.  ...

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With China's economy slowing, fewer jobs for college graduates in the cities, what is president Xi- who is visiting San Francisco this week- doing to tackle this problem? Even in Guangdong province with cities like Shenzen, it is very, very, very rural says Brian Spegele in this WSJ discussion. He talks about widespreard rural poverty. From his own experience spending time in the countryside in the impressionable years Xi has put this task to revitalize the rural areas to young people. In Guangdong alone about 300,000 youngsters will be given the opportunity to improve their credentials for future government work by going to the rural areas to bring talent that was drained from the 20 years of free market hypergrowth and urbanization. China is about 40% rural in 2023 and these regions have suffered badly, and Xi's efforts to revitalize come at a time after the pandemic when it makes little sense to continue urbanization as the only solution to problems. ...

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This report in NYT suggests that coronavirus in New York is becoming endemic. Endemic means chronic instead of the acute crisis situation in 2020. This is because hospitalizations are not filling up ICU's the way they did in 2020. The burden of the coronavirus pandemic is now on people who are unvaccinated and people under 45 years.  New York has a higher rate of vaccination than the rest of the country. About 76% of people ages 12 and over in New York are vaccinated. Yet the 24% of younger people who remain unvaccinated is a part of the population that has fears about getting vaccinated which are harder to overcome. As many of these younger people also spend more time outdoors, and are part of the community, more likely to be in contact with families, relatives and friends indoors in winter, and less likely to wear masks and follow social distancing the pandemic, one could see another surge in the winter of 2021.  Another problem could be that some portion of the population of vaccinated has not taken booster shots by the middle of winter which would create a population of a third of the people even in cities such as New York that remain unprotected. The emergence of another difficult variant could also be a complicating factor. In this way chronic or endemic may still be elusive where masking, social distancing and other preventive actions are not taken. For the community as a whole there will be the risk to upward mobility from the people who risk losing jobs because of fears of the vaccine.     ...

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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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Photos of industrial decline in the US with text by Helen Epstein, professor of human rights and public health in The Guardian. This was a period in the early 1980s when America's major industries in steel and other parts of the economy went into decline. Cities and towns across this vast land were left to decline with loss of jobs and with it decline in quality of life, decline in health, education, says Prof. Epstein, as the Democratic Party jettisoned its foundational principles. The term "Reagan Democrats" emerged in the late years of the Carter administration, and again after Clinton, Obama took the shape of the Trump vote. By 2021 the situation has reversed with the Democratic Biden administration putting forward a program for revival with his $1.8 trillion Families Plan for infrastructure and for the benefit of America's workers, students and families. What was a protest vote during 2016 is now taking new shape in the form of this plan for the renewal of America. ...

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With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...

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Trump rally for 100 Days in Warren, Michigan, at a community college gymnasium, April 29, 2025. DJT also visits Selfridge Air Force Base and says it will get 15 new F-16 jets to replace old jets.  DJT says we're "getting woke lunacy and transgender ideology the hell out of our government." Border crossings of 8400 in February 2025 and 7200 in March 2025 are the lowest since the 1960's, one of the lowest ever, compared to 140,000 in March 2024 under Biden. DJT says he is protecting the middle class and Main Street. The millions of jobs lost to China, DJT says he is bringing them back. He talks about creating manufacturing jobs and restoring the industrial base of America that was lost in the last 30 years.  Trump lists the cost of everything from eggs to gasoline at the pump. He says there are three states where gas at the pump is below $2.00 a gallon. He cites the 345,000 jobs created in 100 days and the lowering of inflation.   ...

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This amazing story about Bend Oregon is a reminder of the mental health crisis that lurks behind the homelessness crisis in America's cities. It is also most unusual because it is about the Mayor of Bend, Oregon, grandson of the mayor of Bend, Oregon then a timber capital in the 1900's, who is a public defender attorney, and finds himself at at a homeless shelter in 2023 in the city he built, the result of mental health issues. He reconciles with two daughters before his death after periods of isolation from his family and ending up in a homeless tent on city streets. At one point he had helped turn Bend into a tourist destination pushing up average home prices to $800,000 to protect residents when timber demand dropped. He finds himself unable to afford a home in this very same town after his mental illness and losing his job.

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The growth in U.S. GDP was 1.7 % in 2011, yet unemployment dropped by 0.7% in the last 12 months to 8.3% by Feb. 2012. A pickup in hiring is seen in job figures. Christina Romer gives as an explanation to the rise in unemployment in 2009 to 10%, more than expected, and the drop since then, to the overreaction of companies to the financial crisis by laying off workers and freezing hiring- with hiring picking up as conditions return to normal levels. The unemployment rate as defined is also not an accurate measure of the jobs situation, as it reflects only workers who are looking for work, and many workers drop out of the jobs market when they are discouraged especially the long term unemployed. Taking into account people who have dropped out of the labor markets the unemployment rate was 11% in Nov. 2009, according to Luce in the Financial Times- in Ezra Klein, Washington Post 12/12/2011, Wonkbook: Real unemployment rate 11%. Lawrence Katz, Harvard Labor economist also cites this as one of three jobs crises in unemployment today that need to be addressed, the other two being: foreclosures and debt, and the low number of jobs added because of automated manufacturing- in Friedman, NYT, 12/10/11, The Next First 100 Days. Explanations for the low GDP growth as unemployment declines is a likely productivity slowdown. Prof. Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, sees a slowdown in productivity. Worker output for every hour worked, how productivity is measured, increased only 0.4% in 2011 and 0.9% in the last 7 quarters, and is trending downward in the longer term. A more likely explanation is that unemployment is still at higher levels but is understated in unemployment figures....

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David Autor at MIT authored some of the first detailed studies about the severe disruption in U.S. communities from the trade with China following China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The sheer size of the impact now appears to have been underestimated by economists and other experts. It was believed says Hilsenrath and Davis, that the U.S. having absorbed the impact of trade with Japan in the seventies and eighties, and with Mexico following NAFTA, could do the same with China. That turns out to be false. Much of 2016 election season has been spent seeing the rise of anti-trade movements led by Trump and Sanders, and reveals a deep discontent with job shifting overseas, and disruption of communities across America by trade patterns. What happened? In 2015 China's exports to the U.S. reached 2.7% of U.S. GDP. Hilsenrath and Davis say it was about 1% less with Japan and Mexico when their exports surged. The rapidity of the impact is another problem. It took 12 years following Japan's emergence as a major supplier, to reach the same level of impact that China had only 4 years after China's entry into the WTO in 2001. A similiar situation of 12 years happened with Mexico after NAFTA. Another problem is that Japan's exports impacted mostly steel and autos, China's exports impacted a whole range of industries. The speed with which China's planners sought to change and modernize their manufacturing  base is unprecedented in history, and has an impact not only on the U.S. as a recipient of low cost exports, but also on China as it struggles with bad debts and job losses today, that are a legacy of that too rapid move. This was part of the drive to urbanize China rapidly by shifting agricultural workers to factories in the cities, at a pace unprecedented in history. Another factor not mentioned is the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 that hurt U.S. manufacturing in the auto and other industries, and the wide impact this had in loss of jobs and decline in wages. By 2010 the tide of public opinion had shifted. The WSJ/NBC poll of September 2010, cited in detail in WSJ 10/2/2010 under "Americans Sour on Foreign Trade" shows over 80% consistently for all levels of income, over $75,000 and under $75,000, Republicans and Democrats, working class Americans or well educated Americans, saying that Americans were struggling and there was less hiring, because of how trade had impacted their communities. Lyrarc covered this in considerable detail since 2006. All political parties, business leaders, ignored the implications of this huge change, the media covered it but assumed it would take care of itself as trade with Japan had done previously, and it was left to Trump and Sanders as outsiders to call it like they saw it 5 years later.  Economic inequality has widened in China to the point of it becoming unrecognizable as a former socialist economy. Now both countries are faced with the job of picking up, chastened by the experience, and hoping to limit the political fallout to achieve economic recovery. The very open trading system that had generated prosperity since World War II was being put at risk by a lack of awareness that trade brings with it changes, winners and losers, and manufacturing jobs moving overseas on a scale and speed unprecedented in history, was something that no one could cope with. ...

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What is not thought possible, water poverty in America in 2020, in this Guardian report, as millions of ordinary Americans face increasing bills for running water in their homes. More than 4% of household income for water bills annually is considered unaffordable and more than 6% for energy. This is more important today as coronavirus makes running water essential for fighting the pandemic. The source of the problem is aging infrastructure, environmental cleanups, changing demographics, climate emergency. Cities include New Orleans, Santa Fe, Cleveland, Fresno, Tucson and Austin where low income residents face rising costs and water shutoff or even lead to homelessness from unpaid bills. It also is a problem in places such as San Diego and Seattle, with 13% of low income people in Seattle struggling to afford water. Federal funding peaked in 1977 and has fallen since leaving local utilities to raise the money for infrastructure and upgrades for chemical contaminants, and other climate issues. About 90% of these local utilities are really municipally owned at the city level and a few large companies. At least $35 billion is needed for water upgrades for infrastructure and quality each year for 20 years- $700 billion. WIth these kinds of needs America has no room for foreign wars in remote places, and no room for offshoring its vital industries that removes the tax base for cities and states and the federal government affecting not just jobs and livelihoods but the very basic infrastructure itself.  ...

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Anne Lowrey looks at the situation facing the 7.4 million Americans working parttime in March 2014 because they cannot find full time jobs. She cites Alan Krueger, former chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, for research that shows only 1 of 10 workers who were counted as long-term jobless betwen 2008 and 2012 had a full time job a year later. In Nov 2013 7.2 million worked parttime because they could not find full time work showing an increase of 0.2 million by March 2014.

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The record shows that like other industrial states such as Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, Massachusetts lost many manufacturing jobs during the period 2003-2007, when Romney was Governor of Massachusetts. At the end of 2002 there were 338,000 manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts, by 2007 this had declined by 12% to 298,000, according to Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University. Romney cites a drop in the unemployment rate from 5.6% to 4.7%. Prof. Sum who heads the University's Centre for Labor Market Studies, says this was people left the workforce during this period in large numbers. He says only Louisiana of all U.S. states had a bigger decline in the labor force when it was hit by Hurricane Katrina. The dot com bubble burst during the period before Romney took office. Massachusetts had already lost 158,000 jobs in 2001-2002 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Romney was unable to do much to reverse the job losses that continued during his term in office.

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Research from Australian National University shows steadily improving conditions for migrant workers in China. Migrant workers were able to spend more time in cities- an average of 8.9 years. The hukou sysem ensures migrants return to rural areas when they have to raise a family. About 252 million migrant workers work in factories and construction jobs in urban areas. Migrants with children leave them with grandparents back home. Improving the conditions of these workers is important to reduce the wage and income disparities in China and to reduce inequality. About a fifth of the migrant population now has pension and health benefits. Creating a balanced economy with domestic consumer spending making a larger share of GDP also requires improving wages and benefits of migrant workers. Incoming prime minister Li Keqiang says in a statement on a government website: China "must take migrant rural workers and gradually change them into urban residents. This requires that we push forward household registration reform." If done seriously this will create a new kind of China as these migrant workers are integrated into urban society after years of being shunned and ignored by China's educated middle class. Professor Meng's research at Australian National University of migrant workers shows the proportion of migrant workers with unemployment insurance increased from 11% in 2008 to 21% in 2012. The research shows similiar figures for health and pensions. Improving their living standards also make it attractive for more young people from rural areas to migrate to cities increasing urbanization....

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About two thirds of China is urban people but only 48% have residency rights, meaning about 250 million people are not getting the benefits of schools, pensions and healthcare in cities. Ministry of Human Resources shows only 22% of migrant workers have these benefits.  There are about 67 million Chinese children left behind by their parents in rural areas as they search for jobs in cities. These children do not see their parents often, sometimes not at all in a particular year. They have suffered lack of parental attention and have poorer schooling. In 2024 as some of these children grew up and became migrants themselves they did not want want happened to them happen to their children, and delay having children.  China's government considered rural couples as a good way to makeup for low birthrates. This has been proved not to be the case. China's household registration system is call hukou- it restricts access to healthcare and schools for migrants and discourages migrans who live in factory dorms or other restricted housing arrangements from taking children with them. Rural incomes are less than half of urban $3000 vs $7000 a year. ...

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Andhra Pradesh on India's southeast coastline with 25 parliament seats and Bihar in India's north and east with 40 parliament seats and long history of being part of the BJP led National Democratic Alliance are now key to a five year term for prime minister Modi in India. Modi's BJP party won 240 seats out of 543 in parliament.  Chandrababu Naidu of Telegu Desam Party won 135 seats in the state Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh (NDA), all but 18 seats. It wins 22 of 25 seats in India's parliament (NDA). It also shows the wide swings in Indian elections that no party is safe. Telgu Desam Party (NDA)  won on the platform of a double engine government at state and federal levels to create jobs and modernize its rural agricultural economy. In the last 2019 election the Opposition YSRCP party won almost all the seats in the state assembly and in 2024 lost almost all the seats. In 1995 Telegu Desam Party joined Atal Bihari Vajpayee's BJP to form a government and during elections that followed for Vajpayee's 5 year term (1999-2004) he was part of the NDA. He has served three terms as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, two terms before Telengana was formed and one term after Telengana split off from Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh is centered around the Vizag region on India's south eastern coastline and the cities of Vijayawada and Guntur with a 1000 kilometer coastline on Bay of Bengal. ...