America’s political class emitted more than its usual quota of hot air in response to a spy balloon that the administration allowed to float leisurely across the United States allowing Peeping Toms in Beijing to have a good look at military installations. It cost an already stretched U.S. military $500,000 to shoot down the balloon, […]
Trade wars have usually been contests for markets. Today’s is a contest for more than that. It is a battle to determine which nation, and which ideology will dominate the world order in the coming decades. On one side we have the present champion, by any meaningful measure the dominant economic and military power. America’s […]
Cognitive dissonance, the ability of have inconsistent beliefs, seems to go with the job of running a major US financial institution. As you read this, the CEOs of most major American banks[1], will gather in Hong Kong to attend a conference entitled “Navigating Beyond Uncertainty”, a meeting Xi Jinping need not attend since he eliminated […]
This is not your grandfathers’ trade war. Trade wars of old broke out when one nation, say America, was importing too many shoes from China at prices so low that domestic manufacturers and their union demanded tariff protection. That was then, this is now. A trade war is in progress because the administration believes American […]
It is just possible that we are in the midst of a major shift in the location of cash, industries and jobs. A shift equal in magnitude and significance to the one that saw China suck industries out of America using a combination of $1-per-day labor, massive subsidies, intellectual theft and currency manipulation while America’s […]
One hundred twenty-one years ago almost to this day, President Teddy Roosevelt used the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick” to define America’s foreign policy. One year ago, almost to the day, President Joe Biden withdrew the last American troops from Afghanistan. TR followed his policy statement by sending a four-mile long armada […]
In 1946, congress, imbued with the success of wartime planning, decided that within ten days of submitting his budget, the President must submit an Economic Report of the President. President Truman complied with a document of some 54 pages. It told of an America that has “never been so strong or so prosperous”, yet fearful […]
Dollar Diplomacy, President William Howard Taft announced in 1912, was a form of American foreign policy designed to substitute economic power for the use or threat of military force. It substitutes “dollars for bullets …” proudly announced the President. Less than five years later America was sending both dollars and bullets to Europe to join […]
Harry Truman spoke in unvarnished, crystal-clear sentences when saying what he was thinking and would do. Dwight Eisenhower’ famously garbled syntax was designed to make his thinking and plans unclear to friends and foes alike. Ronald Reagan used the sugar of soft language to make the hard, consistent foreign policy messages go down more easily. […]
If you think the 2022 Winter Olympics, due to open in Beijing on February 4, are about men and women of great strength, or great speed, or great specialised skill competing on a level playing field for medals, think again. The Olympics are a massive money machine combined with an extension into sport of the […]