American Decline & Declining Life Expectancy

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 12/28/2017 03:10:00 PM
If "truth in advertising" held, this ditty should be the United States' national anthem.
If America is such a great place, then why do so many Americans want to end their lives faster? The numbers don't lie: for a second consecutive year in 2016, US life expectancy has decreased. All this is happening in the face of medical advances and is due primarily to two things. First are  "unintentional injuries," a euphemism for the aforementioned high-risk drug abuse. Second are increased numbers of suicides. Yes, deaths of despair are real Stateside and are occurring at an an increased rate just as other countries are still experiences rises in life expectancy.
The United States has not seen two years of declining life expectancy since 1962 and 1963, when influenza caused an inordinate number of deaths. In 1993, there was a one-year drop during the worst of the AIDS epidemic.

“I think we should take it very seriously,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the CDC. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up.” The development is a dismal sign for the United States, which boasts some of the world’s highest spending on medical care, and more evidence of the toll the nation’s opioid crisis is exacting on younger and middle-aged Americans, experts said.
The truth is that life in America is such an unattractive proposition for so many that they'd rather end it all by suicide or largely risk the same result by abusing drugs. My question for all the USA # 1 cheerleaders, Trumpists, and assorted American exceptionalists is, how do you explain away these facts? For the US population as a whole, life is getting worse. We have the numbers to prove it since so many would rather not live. Nowhere else in the developed world are you seeing such declines.
“We should take it very seriously,” Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, told my colleagues Lenny Bernstein and Christopher Ingraham. “If you look at the other developed countries in the world, they’re not seeing this kind of thing. Life expectancy is going up.”

In other words: In no other developed country are people taking and dying from opioids at the rates they are in the United States. We have about 4 percent of the world's population but about 27 percent of the world's drug-overdose deaths.

WaPo asks why other developed (OECD) countries are not suffering as high rates of drug-related fatalities and suicides or plunging life expectancies. The answer to me is very simple here as well: maybe the United States is not as wonderful a place as the USA#1 cheerleaders make it out to be. in fact, it's rather miserable for more than should be the case. 
It seems to me that the first requirement for having a "great" country is having people who are actually glad to live (in it). The United States circa year-end 2017 is obviously failing by this measure. With 2017 overdoses expected to rise even more, what reason do we have not to believe life expectancies will get even worse going forward?

America is in obvious decline. Its declining life expectancy is due to the misery borne of living there by far too many. If your own people give up on life, then you have no business claiming to be the shining city on the hill and all that jazz.
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Post-NAFTA Mexico Alludes to Plans B, C & D

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 12/19/2017 03:47:00 PM
Going back to plain vanilla trade, there is much afoot in Mexico as politicians there appear to be contemplating the end of NAFTA as we know it thanks to el loco del norte Donald Trump. There is now some weird shorthand emerging about the different strategies Mexico can pursue if NAFTA is scuttled. Sure, none of them are quite as attractive as trading with the world's largest economy right on its doorstep on tariff-free terms, but hey, you have to make a living for your people somehow if that convenience falls through.

Plan B is, simply put, sign as many trade deals as possible with whomever is willing to do so:
The government of Enrique Pena Nieto might already be implementing a Plan B of sorts as it tries to sign as many trade deals as possible to replace the country that buys 80 per cent of its exports.
Plan C is to (unilaterally) eliminate all tariffs in Mexico in hopes of turning it into the Latin American Singapore. It's far-fetched, yes, but you know what they say about desperate times:
An unlikely new right-left coalition has emerged to challenge the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and to stop left-wing firebrand Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Some of the coalition's members are pushing a Plan C that would lead to the elimination of all tariffs in an effort to turn Mexico into a Latin Singapore.
Plan D is more "strategic" in the sense that Mexico can cotton up to the United States' erstwhile geopolitical "rival" China:
Mexico sent its first shipment of blueberries to China last summer, as trade between the two countries continues to grow. But experts are skeptical the Chinese market can solve Mexico's trade issues should the NAFTA talks fail.

"It's become very sexy to talk about replacing trade with the U.S. with trade with China," said Enrique Dussel Peters, an economist at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and co-ordinator of its Centre for Mexico-China Studies. "It's as if one could simply start sending to China, automatically and massively, the same cars we now send to North America.
With Mexican politics in a similar state of flux with populist firebrand Obrador leading the polls, these are more suggestions than actual courses of action at present.  Moreover, you do have to wonder if any combination of other assorted trade partners Mexico can legitimately "replace" the United States with as a key trade partner.
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El Gordo: How NAFTA Made Mexico Ameri-Fat

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in , at 12/18/2017 01:23:00 PM
The Trumpian Buddha-esque physique is now achievable in Mexico thanks to NAFTA.
While Donald Trump likes to recycle easily refutable arguments about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) being "the worst trade deal ever," he doesn't seem to mention one that should be of concern to his Mexican counterparts. While such self-interested reasoning is what you'd expect from an "America First"-championing US president, a woe that the Mexicans are now suffering from is actually one Americans are profiting from:
Mexico began lifting tariffs and allowing more foreign investment in the 1980s, a transition to free trade given an exclamation point in 1994, when Mexico, the United States and Canada enacted the North American Free Trade Agreement. Opponents in Mexico warned that the country would lose its cultural and economic independence.

But few critics predicted it would transform the Mexican diet and food ecosystem to increasingly mirror those of the United States. In 1980, 7 percent of Mexicans were obese, a figure that tripled to 20.3 percent by 2016, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Diabetes is now Mexico’s top killer, claiming 80,000 lives a year, the World Health Organization has reported.

For many Mexicans, Nafta promised to make real “the fever dreams of joining the modern economy,” said Timothy A. Wise, a trade expert at the Small Planet Institute and Tufts University. “All former rural workers would be in new jobs in the burgeoning manufacturing industries of the post-Nafta world. That just hasn’t happened.”

“The only way that Mexico became a ‘first world’ country was in terms of diet.”
And that's the real story here. While American agricultural and food production interests have succeeded in making Americans the fattest among developed nations, Mexico now trails by a minuscule margin among OECD nations as they've consolidated markets south of the border post-NAFTA. So, if Mexicaons haven't exactly achieved an American standard of living, they've at least achieved American super-sized waistlines:
Among its chief champions are American farm and food-retailing interests whose fortunes have benefited tremendously from the open market. Mexican exports to the United States have surged, and a more stable economic structure has evolved in Mexico. The country’s unemployment rate has stayed mostly constant, but average wages have fallen to $15,311 in 2016 from $16,008 in 1994, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Critics of Nafta acknowledge the complex causes of obesity, but argue free trade intensified the problem by opening Mexico’s largely isolated economy. In addition to dramatically lowering cross-border tariffs, Nafta let billions of dollars in direct foreign investment into Mexico, fueled the growth of American fast food restaurants and convenience stores, and opened the floodgates to cheap corn, meat, high-fructose corn syrup and processed foods.
You take the good with the bad, I guess.
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Deport-o-Rama: N Koreans in Canada

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 12/12/2017 07:43:00 AM
On the face of it, this news item is rather dispiriting: what kind of heartless people would deport North Korean refugees? Somewhat more promisingly, it's not as bad as it sounds. Rather, authorities in Canada are looking into those who gained entrance into Canada based on dubious stories. Since North Koreans are granted automatic asylum in South Korea,  it is their belief that they would be "safe" there anyway if Canada refuses their applications:
Hyekyung Jo, a North Korean defector living in Toronto with her husband and sons for seven years, had hoped to remain in Canada as a permanent resident.

Instead, she and as many as 50 other North Korean families residing across the GTA [greater Toronto area] recently received letters from the federal Immigration Department informing them that their requests for permanent residency are poised to be revoked. They face deportation to South Korea — a place that Jo said is hostile to North Korean nationals.

Part of the issue identified in the Oct. 30 letter that Jo and her husband, Myungchul Kang, received is this: the South Korean government automatically grants North Koreans citizenship. Canada recognizes South Korea as a safe haven for refugees.

Another issue: Jo admitted at a Saturday news conference with other affected families that she and her husband weren’t truthful when they arrived in Toronto as asylum seekers in 2010. They told refugee board officials they’d travelled directly from China when, in fact, they’d lived for several years in South Korea.
What's so bad about living in South Korea? Many folks around the world would jump at the chance of living there...but the story is more complicated for North Koreans. Indeed, the North Korean refugees in Canada cite safety concerns as well as discrimination:
Progressive Conservative MPP [member of provincial parliament] Raymond Cho, who is originally from South Korea, attended the news conference. The PC immigration critic and representative for Scarborough—Rouge River said his native country can be a difficult place for North Korean defectors, who often experience discrimination at school and while seeking work.

That occurs partly because North Korean dialects are distinct and set them apart from southern speakers, Cho said. In addition, South Korean documentation, such as social insurance numbers, identifies North Korean nationals on paperwork that employers can see.

“It’s almost impossible to get a good job,” Cho said. “That’s the reality.” Cho told the crowd of about 200 people that North Koreans who don’t thrive in the South look elsewhere, to places like Canada.
Elsewhere in the article, the problem identified is that immigration brokers had told many defectors to lie about their situations to gain Canadian asylum, and those that did so are now facing deportation. It's a hard choice to make, I think: does possibly being led to lie about one's circumstances outweigh the purported discrimination North Koreans encounter in South Korea?
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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 any nation. China will host its first-ever import fair in November next year, and will roll out tax, fiscal and administrative initiatives aimed at helping foreign firms sell more into what is becoming a big and sophisticated consumer market, Zhong wrote.

Slated for Shanghai in November 2018, the China International Import Expo (CIIE) reflects China’s “sincere wish to open its market to the world and its sense of responsibility as a big country to push for an open world economy,” he said. The “In the coming five years, (China) is expected to import over $10 trillion of goods and services,” Zhong wrote.

The import fair “with its potential to increase exports for countries around the world and enable the trade and economic cooperation between China and the rest of the world, will offer broad prospects for development.” In the past half decade, China’s imports from the rest of the world have totaled about $8.9 trillion worth of goods and services, according to IMF data.
This expo is designed to appease other PRC critics as well. Lest we forget, they are legion aside from the Americans:
U.S. and European trade officials have complained for years that despite China’s promises to open up, tariffs, intellectual property theft, forced transfers of technology and other rules that target foreign companies make doing business there difficult. The access afforded Chinese companies into their own markets provides a further rub.

The deficit “has to come down,” Trump said Monday. “And that has to do really with free trade, fair trade, or reciprocal trade. And frankly I like reciprocal the best of the group.” Still, the countries remain at odds over the causes and impact of the trade imbalance. China blames a “surplus transfer,” which Zhong says is the result of how global trade is organized. China frequently acts as the final link in a manufacturing chain where parts are made in multiple countries before being finally assembled -- and exported -- from there.
Is this trade expo ploy working? Earlier today, the US Commerce Department hit the PRC with a trade investigation concerning aluminum not originating from industry complaints. This is an infrequent occurrence:
The Trump administration, invoking powers the U.S. hasn’t used in more than a quarter century, began a probe into Chinese aluminum imports that could lead to tariffs. The Commerce Department is taking the unusual step of initiating the case itself, rather than going through the regular route of starting an investigation based on petitions filed by U.S. companies. Shares in Alcoa Corp. and Century Aluminum Co. jumped on Tuesday.

The investigation covers imports in common alloy sheet, which totaled more than $600 million last year, and was initiated using authority granted by the Tariff Act of 1930, the Commerce Department said Tuesday in a statement. China responded Wednesday by saying the move was “rare in the history of international trade.”
Go figure. If trade relations worsen further, I'd doubt whether the Chinese would be as enthusiastic about this bit of trade appeasement After all, it's still scheduled to be held in November 2018--a long, long time from now in the ever-changing global political economy.
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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, would-be international students studying in the United States are now keeping away in droves--and this is only his first year in office. I can only imagine how up to (heaven forbid) four more years of Trump's homophobic, racist and xenophobic discourse and policy will affect those previously intending to study Stateside. The cheek of these uppity coloreds aspiring to a tertiary degree, Trump likely thinks...
The number of newly arriving international students declined an average 7 percent in fall 2017, with 45 percent of campuses reporting drops in new international enrollment, according to a survey of nearly 500 campuses across the country by the Institute of International Education. Experts cited an uncertain social and political climate in the United States as part of the reason for the decline in enrollment.

“It’s a mix of factors,” said Rajika Bhandari, head of research for the institute, which collects data on international students in cooperation with the State Department. “Concerns around the travel ban had a lot to do with concerns around personal safety based on a few incidents involving international students, and a generalized concern about whether they’re safe.”
Whether justified or not, safety perceptions are on the wane. For instance, Indian students who've been plentiful in recent years are now thinking twice, especially after the murder of a US-educated compatriot working Stateside:
Dr. Godard said fewer students came from India partly because of a currency crisis in the country, but also because of concerns about the Trump administration’s travel ban affecting Muslim countries. India was not on that list, but Dr. Godard said many of the university’s Indian students were from Muslim areas of the country and were concerned about the ban.

“Although India wasn’t listed as one of the countries, certainly feeling welcome and safe and all those things is important,” he said. “It would be naïve to say that wasn’t a contributing factor.” Prospective students from India — interviewed shortly after last year’s presidential election — have expressed fears about the racial climate in the United States, concerns that might have been heightened after the shooting death in February of an Indian engineer in a suburban Kansas City bar.
With so many other options at the present time--Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the "discounted" UK with its weak currency post-Brexit referendum, why go to Trump's America for the privilege of paying top dollar for racial abuse? Sure, there are white supremacists in all those other countries as well, but the difference is that the government isn't actively trying to make you uncomfortable.

Make no mistake: international students paying full fees help keep any number of US educational institutions afloat. Couple the loss of such students from Trump's hardly-concealed white supremacy with reduced funding for universities due to his ongoing "war on science" and I'd bet their global standing will take a hit over the next few godforsaken years.

But hey, there's a bright side to the story: the Canadians seem to be doing rather better as sensible international students go there instead to avoid TrumpLand:
Some of Canada's biggest universities are beginning the new school year with a record number of international students on campus. The steady upswing in foreign applicants began several years ago, then started to spike after the U.S. presidential election in 2016. The challenge for the Canadian government now is to maintain that trend amid competing countries, and to encourage more from the talented pool to stay on as permanent residents.

The University of Toronto, Canada's top draw for international students, enrolled 17,452 international students in undergraduate and graduate programs last year, making up about 20 per cent of the overall student body. That compares to 7,380 international students comprising about 10 per cent of the total student population a decade ago, in 2007.
There's no missing the Trump factor here:
The university's steady increase became a spike after U.S. President Donald Trump was elected." Clearly there are things about the international situation — worries about stability, Brexit and the U.S. political environment — that have changed or increased international students' interest in looking beyond their own countries and beyond the U.S.," said Richard Levin, executive director of enrolment services and university registrar.

"Now in places like that, students are looking for alternatives and Canada is presenting as a good one in terms of stability, safety and inclusiveness." According to data provided by Universities Canada there has been a sharp increase in both applications and website traffic from the U.S. and abroad since the 2016 U.S. election, with many seeing a 20 per cent jump or more in applications.
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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 is being made out to be the death knell of fossil fuel production--at least in civilized parts of the world not run by reality TV stars and similar riffraff:
Norway, which relies on oil and gas for about a fifth of economic output, would be less vulnerable to declining crude prices without its fund investing in the industry, the central bank said Thursday. The divestment would mark the second major step in scrubbing the world’s biggest wealth fund of climate risk, after it sold most of its coal stocks.

“Our perspective here is to spread the risks for the state’s wealth,” Egil Matsen, the deputy central bank governor overseeing the fund, said in an interview in Oslo. “We can do that better by not adding oil-price risk.”

The plan would entail the fund, which controls about 1.5 percent of global stocks, dumping as much as $40 billion of shares in international giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The Finance Ministry said it will study the proposal and decide what to do in “fall of 2018” at the earliest.
It's being portrayed as the canary in the coal mine...or the turtle in the offshore, if you prefer as environmentalists laud the move:
While the fund says the plan isn’t based on any particular view about the future of oil prices or the industry as a whole, it will likely add to pressure on producers already struggling with the growth of renewable energy supplies...

Built on the income that western Europe’s largest energy supplier has generated for more than 20 years, the fund’s investment decisions are guided by ethical rules encompassing human rights, some weapons production, the environment and tobacco. Norway’s fossil-fuel investments are coming under increasing scrutiny from a public that aims to be a climate leader without jeopardizing one of the world’s highest standards of living...

But environmental groups praised the plan. “The world is changing fast, and it’s very risky to put too many eggs in the same basket,” said Marius Holm, the leader of the Zero Emission Resource Organisation. Sony Kapoor, a former adviser to Norway’s government, said the plan is “a belated victory for common sense over the powerful oil and gas lobby in Norway,” calling on the fund to now boosts its “green” investments at least tenfold.  
The rub, though, is that Norway has little interest in shutting down the oil fields its government draws substantial revenues from. As mentioned, a fifth of all state revenues still come from oil and gas. As such, the explanation government officials provide for making this move is actually an honest one. Since the national purse is already exposed to oil prices in a big way, why should it not diversify away from the same industry with its SWF? A true rainy-day fund should not rain on your parade at the same time that economic downturns occur. While the SWF does claim to use ethical criteria in making investments, it would be hypocritical of the SWF to mention environmental reasons for its divestment when the government receives 20% of its revenues from oil and gas.

As such, I would be wary of those portending a Norwegian SWF portfolio readjustment as the "End of Big Oil" or the start of such stocks gradual demise a la Big Tobacco. While there are ethical and environmental reasons bringing us closer to such a point, this move by the Norwegians is probably just another milestone rather than the final nail in the coffin. 
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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 it's not going to have the same exact terms. Rather, the parts of TPP that were put in largely at the behest of the United States are going to be put in abeyance for now should a "Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership" deal be finalized:
The 11 remaining members of the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Saturday reached an agreement to proceed with the trade pact under a new name and without the United States, as China, which is not involved, said the revised arrangement would not affect initiatives backed by Beijing.

Vietnam’s Industry and Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang that following three days of negotiations, ministers from the countries involved had decided to call the new regional free-trade arrangement the “Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have reached agreement on a number of fundamentals,” he said.

Tran said the spirit of the former TPP agreement would endure, maintaining its high standards regarding trade practices, but the members would suspend certain clauses in light of the new situation. The countries have yet to reach consensus in four areas so a date for signing the new deal has yet to be finalised.

Tran said: “The ministers will have negotiations to discuss the remaining technical issues that have not been agreed yet as well as the legislative matters needed to put the agreement into implementation.” Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi hailed the Da Nang talks as a “success”, saying they had managed to limit the number of suspended items to 20.
Obviously, CPTPP is a misnomer since it would leave a lot of the bits from the original out. An important point is that the Southeast Asian countries participating in the original TPP negotiations, Malaysia and Vietnam, were most eager to participate to improve their access to the US consumer market--still the world's largest. Without that "carrot" on offer, those two and likely the other developing countries were less willing to take the "stick" of accommodating US preferences that were largely of benefit to the United States. 

I'll take the opportunity to also point out that the United States doesn't exactly "stand still" by sitting out TPP negotiations. Insofar as countries in it will gain improved market access to each other while the United States does not, America stands to lose out. I'm thinking here of the likes of  Australia and New Zealand which may gain market share in burgeoning Asian markets for agricultural products at the United States' expense:
Once the new deal is implemented, American farmers could be left at a disadvantage: The agreement seeks lower tariffs for goods traded among members, the bulk of which are Asia-Pacific nations. That means non-member countries, such as the U.S., will still face high rates when shipping to Asia-Pacific. "It's going to really benefit farmers and agricultural producers here in Asia-Pacific and not the U.S.," [trade specialist Arthur] Okun told CNBC.
Ditto for American SMEs:
American small businesses will also feel the pain, Okun explained. Many U.S. small and medium-sized enterprises depend on the exports of goods and services to Asia. They will likely become less competitive as a result of exclusion from the new TPP, which seeks to facilitate easier access to regional supply chains for SMEs.
So, above all the ways the United States is screwed with Trump, this is probably going to be the cherry on top in the medium- to long-term. Then again, you don't expect the buffoon to be there forever. In fact, he may soon be removed from office due to his dalliances with Russians. If so, Vice-President Mike Pence is an avid free trader by contrast who'd probably complete TPP quickly. The reason why TPP's America-friendly provisions aren't being replaced altogether is partly based on the expectation that there's a good chance that a trade-friendly American leader will assume the presidency and make the TPP whole again. Perhaps during the 2020 elections, but right now, the rest of the world has literally left America behind. 
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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 there's nobody left to do the agricultural work. Having been told to leave the natives behind, it seems the locals aren't keen on, well, rural people engaging in rural livelihoods. In border American states, the saying is that there aren't enough gringos willing to do the backbreaking work. What do we have here? Not enough Anglo-Saxons to do the harvest?
Crops in Cornwall are said to be "rotting in the fields" due to a lack of migrant workers to harvest them in the wake of Britain's decision to leave the European Union. The county council has approached the Government to request it implement area-specific migration laws after Brexit, will help to deliver skills to the area.

Cornwall voted to leave the European Union in last year's referendum by more than 56 per cent, considerably above the national average. The area is home to 17,000 EU nationals, making up 3 per cent of the county's population. But research commissioned by the council found that, since the Brexit vote, staffing levels for farms had dropped to 65 per cent of what would normally be required.
What, now they want the accursed furriners back in? I don't want to say these Brexiteer ingrates had it coming, but this is the thanks the EU gets for trying to improve living conditions in one of Europe's (but for how much longer?) less well-off regions:
Let’s not forget that MPs assured Cornish voters that the levels of EU funding would remain the same if it voted for Brexit – which, just like the numbers on that infamous big red bus, is now known to be another lie. EU money has been crucial to the development of the region, assisting the introduction of renewable energy and new trains. EU funding also benefited our lifeblood, the tourism industry, with money helping build the Eden Project and cleaning up the sea on our beautiful beaches.

The £53m received that was spent on installing super-fast fibre broadband was not only important for business growth but also for connecting communities and individuals in very rural areas who were incredibly isolated (one of the reasons behind the county’s notoriously bad mental health figures.)
My view remains essentially the same: those who voted for Brexit were misled into believing that their interests--economic and otherwise--were better served by leaving the European Union. It appears that they're finding the opposite is true when the UK is still not even outside the EU tent. Although I remain convinced that it's more likely that the UK will not leave once the true costs become even more apparent, think of how much worse things will become outside. 

Fortunately, this whole Brexit idiocy becomes less likely with each passing day that the government does its comedy improvisation shtick with its EU counterparts.
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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 taken up the mantle of the globalizer in the place of an ever-more inward-looking America in the age of Trump. The ongoing APEC meeting in Vietnam was a chance to hear both leaders on this topic back-to-back, and the contrast in rhetoric was fascinating. Xi expanded on his vision of economic integration as one of other countries--especially those in the Asia-Pacific--getting on board the China train. To no one's surprise, Xi did not mention heavy-handed PRC actions to assert dubious territorial sovereignty:
Xi painted a picture of a global order that would bring collective benefits, saying, "let more countries ride the fast train of Chinese development." [...] Xi’s speech glossed over regional unease over China’s rising clout while pledging free trade and stability [...]

Xi [...] said “the concept of globalization should pay more attention to openness and tolerance, while the direction should focus on balance.” China will “continue to build an open economy and work hard to achieve mutual benefits,” he added. “Opening up will bring progress and those who close down will inevitably lag behind.”
So, it was essentially more Xi the Globalist (With Chinese Characteristics). That is, there are hard to reconcile elements of maintaining party authority while fostering greater openness. Certainly, would-be investors in China would beg to differ with Xi's characterization of China becoming more open to unhindered operations by foreign concerns:
The comments signal a continuation of Xi’s drive to cast himself as a champion of global free trade as the Trump administration challenges China’s barriers to access for foreign companies. Earlier this year, Xi launched his push-back against protectionism in a speech to billionaires and government officials gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Still, while Xi has spoken strongly in support of the global trading order this year there’s been little tangible evidence of Beijing following through. In a January survey of 462 U.S. companies by the American Chamber of Commerce in China, more than 60 percent expressed little or no confidence that China would open its markets in the next three years. China still ranks 59th out of 62 countries evaluated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of openness to foreign direct investment.

In a major speech aimed at domestic audiences at China’s 19th Party Congress in October, Xi’s language on reform stuck closely to previous pledges while promising to make sure that China’s Communist Party "leads everything."
Now, let's get to Trump the Globophobe. Unsurprisingly for a third-rate businessman whose companies have gone bankrupt four times at last count, he's all in favor of protecting America from foreign competition. Let the WTO bashing begin! Trump is at least honest in making no pretensions about seeking to put America first relative to all potential trade partners:

Trump dwelled on regional flash points while criticizing the World Trade Organization and offering trade on America’s terms. Trump’s speech cataloged the ills of globalization, saying too many countries had flouted the rules for years with impunity, harming American workers and U.S. companies. “We are not going to let the United States be taken advantage of anymore,” Trump said [...]

Trump too laid out a path for how other countries could boost their economy: He offered economic partnerships with the U.S. but only through bilateral trade pacts, and he pledged never to again join a multilateral deal like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have bound the U.S. to 11 countries as a bulwark against China.

"I will make bilateral trade agreements with any Indo-Pacific country that wants to be our partner and will abide by the principle of fair and reciprocal trade," Trump said. Nations already have doubts about the U.S. commitment under Trump. After Asian countries tied up with America on TPP, Trump tore up the deal -- leaving them wondering if Trump was turning his back on the region as he pursued an "America First" agenda. When the U.S. enters into a trade relationship, Trump said, “we will from now on expect that our partners will faithfully follow the rules, just as we do. We expect that markets will be open to an equal degree on both sides and that private industry, and not government planners, will direct investment. For too long and in too many places, the opposite has happened.”
Insofar as Trump & Co. want to pull a fast one on you straight to your face, is it any wonder that countries in the Asia-Pacific are not exactly lining up to be one of Trump's patsi...I mean, valued trade partners?
“I doubt Trump will have many takers for bilateral deals, particularly given that he defines fair trade as the absence of a deficit,” said David Skilling, director of Singapore-based advisory firm Landfall Strategy Group. “Apart from Singapore, most Asian economies run sizable trade surpluses with the U.S.,” he said.

“It is not a very well thought-out strategy. A transactional, zero-sum ‘America First’ approach won’t do much to advance U.S. interests in the region,” he said.
In some ways Trump is actually more honest than Xi. Trump says the only trade deal the US can abide by is a bilateral one in which the US runs a surplus (that's easier for the US to end if it's displeased by running a trade deficit). That these terms are so incredulous is counterbalanced by the lack of pretensions about fairness. On the other hand, Xi premises economic cooperation based on mutual benefit when, in reality, it mainly seeks to further entrench Chinese interests in the region. Once accomplished, it will be harder to escape the PRC's gravitational pull.

Ultimately, then, both are self-interested: Trump's USA explicitly so, Xi's China surreptitiously so by cloaking outreach in terms of altruism the US itself once used. In many ways, the world has indeed been turned upside down.
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