PRC‘s Trump Appeasement: Import Expo 2018

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/29/2017 04:42:00 PM
He likes military pomp, but does Trump also like "import expos"? I almost forgot about this post: In the run-up to Trump's recent swing through Asia, Chinese apparatchiks devised something that they hoped would appease the orange-colored menace. Since he keeps complaining about China's massive trade surplus with the United States, why not host an "import expo" designed for foreigners to show their wares in the mainland?  In response to questions from Bloomberg News, China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan laid out a list of measures being undertaken that could help narrow the $327 billion gap, America’s largest with...
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Trump's Bigotry & Disappearing US Int’l Students

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/22/2017 05:25:00 PM
Make America White Again, university without diversity edition.  Commentators often use "nativism" as a euphemism to describe Trump's apparent self-superiority over non-white people. Often couched by fellow bigots in terms of "preserving cultural identity" or "protecting national security," this irrational fear of others who do not look like you is dragging an entire country into the mud in more ways than one. The United States' global reputation is taking a hit worldwide as only 22% of the rest of the world has confidence in the America Firster. At least Trump knows what his base looks like. Perhaps unsurprisingly,...
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Norway's $1T SWF & 'Divesting' From Oil

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/17/2017 05:23:00 PM
Make no mistake: Norway's gonna cover you in oil for the foreseeable future. Financial markets are currently in a tizz over Norway's sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investigating the possibility of divesting entirely of its oil and gas stocks. We aren't talking small beer here since it is a $1 trillion fund amassed over the years largely from Norway's oil and gas royalties. Believed to hold an incredible 1.5% of the world's floating stock valuation, it is a relative giant in the business world. With the continuing drive among progressive (read: non-American) countries to move toward renewable energy sources, this announcement...
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TPP - USA = CPTPP

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 11/15/2017 02:50:00 PM
If you can't spot the sucker at the trade negotiating table, then it's probably Trump. Whoa, that's some weird math we've got to deal with in today's international political economy: the fewer countries that are negotiating an FTA, the longer its name becomes. Due to Trump's intransigence on trade, the United States seems set to be left farther and farther behind in terms of economic integration. At the recently-concluded Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Vietnam, the remaining eleven countries decided to continue with efforts to seal a deal. With the United States out of the picture, though, it looks like...
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Brexit, Outmigration & Rotting Cornwall Crops

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/12/2017 06:54:00 PM
"Erm, we didn't really mean it, mate." Surely, this must be the dumbest Brexit headline yet. Cornwall in the United Kingdom is a rural community which has felt left out by the rest of her majesty's realms. Throw in a less-educated populace and you can pretty much guess how it voted during the Brexit referendum: they wanted out. British jobs for British workers and so on and so forth. They must've been in seventh heaven when the Brexiteers won and the UK won back its "independence," whatever that means. Or maybe not. Recently, Cornwall has been petitioning the government to--get this--bring back the accursed furriners since...
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Globalization According to Xi & Trump

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/10/2017 04:26:00 PM
China's already done the failed Great Wall schtick, but others are certainly welcome to try. The purpose of rhetoric has been studied extensively in the social sciences. By saying certain things, what do people intend to achieve? Of course, what people say does not always correspond to what they do. Indeed, people say things they do not mean. That said, the weight of what some people say matters more than others. Today's case in point are the USA's orange-hued leader Donald Trump and China's newly-reinstalled "maximum leader" Xi Jinping. The commentariat has noted how, since the beginning of the year, Xi seems to have...
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Can Trump Increase Japanese Car Plants Stateside?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/08/2017 03:36:00 PM
Actually, Japanese-branded cars "Made in America" are already plentiful. The point is making even more. Here's a welcome dose of reality--even if just a little--from a person mostly devoid of it: Donald Trump lives a considerable amount of the time in cloud cuckoo land where he hatches his most harebrained ideas--global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a backdoor to the PRC conquering the United States, we're going to build a wall along the US-Mexican border and get the Mexicans to pay for it, and so on and so forth. To be fair, the idea of getting the Japanese and Koreans to...
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Nike Automation: Threat to the Asian 'Sweatshop'?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/05/2017 06:58:00 PM
Will automation cause labor's share of production costs to diminish ever further? I have a whole @#$%load of books I've been trying to find time to read concerning the threat of automation to the future of human work. All the same, I must point out that many of the concerns cited in this literature may be of lesser importance to those of us from developing countries since the perspective most of these authors are coming from is white collar work in the developed world. So, their relevance may be limited. Still, that's not to say more relevant stuff is unavailable. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has a fairly...
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Can Trump Make Koreans Buy US Crapmobiles?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 11/01/2017 06:10:00 PM
Hmm...why don't Asians like these pimped-out American rides? The obvious answer is no, but that's never stopped any US president from trying. From Obama to Trump and beyond, the Asians should but American refrain never stops. For the longest time, the United States has been trying to cajole countries it runs large trade deficits with--especially those it imports a lot of vehicles from--to buy more automobiles "Made in America." The problem has always been that while non-American automakers have built vehicles designed for the US market to be sold Stateside [want a biggie-sized Toyota pickup?], the opposite does not hold...
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