“Iran is the most aggressive and dangerous totalitarian force of our time. Its leaders seek to weaken and destroy free society, democracy and human rights with Russian and Chinese support. In Iran, women are systematically oppressed and abused. Homosexuals are murdered. Those who think differently are imprisoned and tortured. In Tehran, the cynical abuse of the civilian population in Gaza as human shields is also cold-bloodedly conceived and financed.
According to official state doctrine, the primary goal of the mullahs in Tehran is the annihilation of the State of Israel. Ayatollah Khamenei has described Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” And clocks in the streets of Tehran celebrate countdowns to the “destruction of Israel.”
But Israel is only the first target. Once Israel falls, Europe and America will be the focus. Radical Sunni and Shiite Islamism has been preparing for this for decades. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie, 9/11, the attacks in Paris, the caliphate of ISIS — each event was a warning sign. Only those who did not want to see the signs are surprised today. The attacks are directed against our values, our way of life.”
“Just how mad is Beijing about President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke student visas for Chinese nationals? Not as mad as it says, and not as mad as one might expect. Publicly, China’s leadership will likely complain that Trump’s action is yet another attempt to thwart the country’s rise. But in reality, Beijing would probably just as soon keep its smartest kids at home.”
One aspect of the Israel-Iran war is supply of missiles and missile interceptors. The U.S. and Israel have limited interceptors and build them slowly. Iran has a variety of weapons, but only have two-thirds of their ballistic missiles left (most of the gone one-third being destroyed on the ground).
“When Israel launched its series of strikes against Iran last week, it also issued a number of dire warnings about the country’s nuclear program, suggesting Iran was fast approaching a point of no return in its quest to obtain nuclear weapons and that the strikes were necessary to preempt that outcome.
But US intelligence assessments had reached a different conclusion – not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing, according to four people familiar with the assessment.
Another senior US official told CNN that Iran is “about as close as you can get before building (a nuclear weapon). If Iran wanted one, they have all the things they need.”
Now, after days of Israeli airstrikes, US intelligence officials believe that so far, Israel may have set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a matter of months”
…
“Israel lacks the capability to damage Fordow without specific US weapons and aerial support, defense experts say.
“Israel can hover over those nuclear facilities, render them inoperable, but if you really want to dismantle them it’s either a US military strike or a deal,” said Brett McGurk, a former top diplomat to the Middle East under the Trump and Biden administrations and a CNN analyst.”
“By examining alternative studies and methodological adjustments, Winship contends that the negative effects of trade with China have been significantly exaggerated and that populist narratives blaming this trade for U.S. economic decline aren’t supported by rigorous evidence.
The originators of the China shock theory examined how Chinese imports affected certain U.S. locales compared with others—not with the entire country—based on initial industry composition and employment size. By these metrics, areas heavily exposed to Chinese imports showed disproportionately worse manufacturing job losses.
However, Winship points out that even if we accept these estimates, the findings suggest only relatively modest employment effects.
To put things in perspective, Winship gives the example of two hypothetical commuting zones with 200,000 working-age residents and 20,000 manufacturing workers. Data from the theory’s proponents indicate that moving from low (10th percentile) to high (90th percentile) exposure to Chinese imports would result in a loss of roughly 2,700 manufacturing jobs—just a 1.4-percentage-point drop in overall manufacturing employment.”
…
“In addition, Winship flags multiple methodological issues. Once other economists revised the proponents’ methods, the estimated negative impact shrank dramatically. Various followup studies found the China shock effect on manufacturing employment to be 50 percent smaller than initially claimed.
Further research revealed that job losses in exposed areas were often offset or even outweighed by employment gains in other sectors. One detailed Census Bureau study even found that firms with greater Chinese import exposure increased manufacturing employment, reallocating jobs to more efficient domestic production lines enabled by cheaper imports.
Moreover, the steady decline in U.S. manufacturing employment began decades before China’s WTO entry. Between the late 1970s and 2000, factory employment had already decreased substantially, mostly because of technological advances and shifting consumer demand.
Notably, there was no sudden acceleration of this decline after China joined the WTO. The rate of manufacturing job losses remained consistent with earlier trends, undermining claims that Chinese trade uniquely devastated American manufacturing.
Furthermore, former manufacturing workers generally did not face permanent unemployment. In fact, unemployment rates among this group were lower in recent years compared to the late 1990s, before the peak of Chinese imports. Many workers transitioned successfully into other sectors, belying the notion of an enduring displacement crisis. It’s also worth noting that there are around half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs today.”
…
” evidence from Trump’s first term showed that his tariffs often hurt American firms more than their foreign competitors. With broader and higher tariffs, we can only fear the worst.”
The insanity, cuelity, and incompetence of Trump on the global stage is pushing forward a global transition that needed to happen. Europe needs to pay its fair share to defend itself and the world can’t continue to let China take advantage of the system. The U.S. led world order is undemocratic and deeply flawed, but what is the alternative?
The Biden administration went to Europe and asked if war breaks out in the Pacific, are you with us? Europe said no. Yet, they expect the U.S. to protect them from Russia.
U.S. and global economic growth predicted to slow due to really dumb economic policy out of Washington. Tariffs and unpredictability are bad for the economy.
Big tech companies are getting around antitrust by “investing” in startups, making their founder their employee, and pretending that this is an investment rather than an acquisition. This stifles competition.
“Burns noted it’s important to counter Beijing’s increasingly aggressive economic, diplomatic and military global footprint — but warned that Trump is going about it all wrong, particularly by using tariffs as a cudgel against longtime partners who otherwise might have allied with the U.S. against China.”
…
“The fact that we’ve had trouble convincing the Chinese it’s in our interest to have our senior military leaders talking. My nightmare scenario as ambassador was not an intentional conflict, but an accident.”
…
” I think the fundamental mistake that was made was that when we imposed tariffs on China, we also imposed high tariffs on South Korea, Japan, the European Union, Canada and Mexico. All those countries are on our side in the big issues that separate us from China. All of them have the same economic issues and trade problems with China. If we had highlighted China as the major disruptor of global trade, which China has been for the last couple of decades, and formed a coalition with the EU and Japan and the U.S. — that’s 60 percent of global GDP — we would have had leverage for these negotiations.”
…
“The Chinese have been saying every day for the last several weeks that the United States is being unfair, that we’re a bully, that we’re disrupting global trade. In fact, they’re the biggest problem in global trade. Intellectual property theft against American and other nations’ companies; forced technology transfer; dumping of EVs, lithium batteries, solar panels on the rest of the world below the cost of production; disrupting global markets; trying to kill the manufacturing industries in places like the United States and Europe.”
…
“I think what the American people need to understand — our government and both parties — is that China is a worthy competitor. Their science and technology talent is prodigious. The level of scholarship, of patents, of research in some areas exceeds us, or is equal to us. In some critical areas of technology transformation, they are putting massive amounts of state-directed money into their national champions like Huawei, with companies that they want to succeed in the world. They’re doing it on a consistent basis, and they plan over decades, so they have that advantage.
When I was leaving in January, the Chinese announced $15 billion of state money going into quantum computing alone. They want to beat us to the punch there. That’s something that’s not as well understood in American society and even in our press — people have older, conventional views of China that are outdated.”
…
“The destruction of USAID was a catastrophic mistake for the United States. That was our agency that said to the rest of the world, “We’ll help you on vaccines. We’ll help you with HIV. Will help you with polio.” Elon Musk and company destroyed USAID in one week and laid off 8,500 people. That helped China.
The Chinese then went out with a massive propaganda blitz the next day all over the world saying, “The United States is not interested in you any longer.” I watched the Chinese do this in February and March. The way the cuts were done, the fact that it was done with so little thought, so little information, and so little respect for our career civil servants was disgraceful.”
U.S. debt is becoming more expensive because interest rates on U.S. debt are going up. The U.S. has to pay more to maintain the debt. Trump’s trade wars, and his continuation and growing of U.S. deficits, are causing this. Trump’s erratic tariff behavior causes uncertainty and discourages investment.