China
March 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Auslin, an Asia expert at the Hoover Institution, examines what I consider the most important foreign policy issue of our time — U.S. relations with China. Auslin believes this may be “crunch time” for these relations. Auslin is happy with President Trump’s China policy so far: The Trump administration’s full-court press against China is going strong, buttressed by a dramatic shift in opinion among the foreign-policy community, now increasingly
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February 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times reports that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, abruptly summoned hundreds of officials to Beijing recently. He did so, says the Times, in order to convey a sense of “anxious urgency.” The Communist Party, Xi told the officials, faces major risks on all fronts and must batten down the hatches. “Globally, sources of turmoil and points of risk are multiplying,” [Xi] told the gathering in January at the
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January 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Auslin of the Hoover Institution commends President Trump for his pivot to Asia. He says it’s “shaping up to be more substantive and potentially transformative than the one the Obama Administration regularly touted.” That’s a low bar. However, there is, indeed, much to like about Trump’s pivot. As Auslin says: Trump. . .has begun by blowing up past practice, specifically in no longer pretending China is a fair trading
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December 15, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
There’s good news and bad news from China. It’s the same news: China’s economy is slowing. China’s retail sales are growing at the slowest rate in 15 years. Industrial production reportedly is slumping too. Forecasts are for reduced economic growth. This year, reported growth will be around 6.6 percent. The forecast for next year is 6 percent, and many are now wondering whether it will reach that mark. The case
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November 5, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Late last month, Japanese Prime Minister Abe visited Beijing. His visit nailed down multibillion-dollar trade deals and promises further to strengthen relations between the two Asian giants. “From competition to coexistence, Japanese and Chinese bilateral relations have entered a new phase,” Abe declared. “With President Xi Jinping, I would like to carve out a new era for China and Japan.” This was a marked contrast to Abe’s 2014 trip to
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October 25, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It gets tiresome to note the limitations and lamosity of niche wind power, but who’d have thought that wind power might also make global warming worse. But that’s just what a new Harvard study reported recently the MIT Technology Review concludes. Wide-scale US wind power could cause significant warming Wind power is booming in the United States. It’s expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation’s electricity. The US
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October 24, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I don’t know why the stock market is suddenly having a case of the vapors. It could be the conventional explanations of the Fed slowly tightening, and/or the market is undergoing an entirely ordinary correction from rising too far too fast. The global economy is showing signs of slowing. Or it could be partially the ongoing uncertainty about Trump’s trade policy. I confess to remaining very nervous about Trump’s tariff
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August 18, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Back in June Paul and I both noted the view of economist Irwin Stelzer, who is no fan of Trump, that Trump might in fact win a trade war with China, because Trump has the better poker hand. And I concluded, “File this one away for further reference.” Well lookie here, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today: U.S., China Plot Road Map to Resolve Trade Dispute
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August 17, 2018 — John Hinderaker
I have viewed it more as a trade skirmish, perhaps because I am looking at it from an American perspective. Don Surber says that it looks quite different from a Chinese point of view: To find the news, I read the South China Morning Post, which is worried spitless that the Red Chinese economy will tank like its stock market has. (Its stocks overall have declined in value by 40%
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August 6, 2018 — Scott Johnson
In the Politico Magazine article “How Silicon Valley became a den of spies,” Zach Dorfman reported in passing: ” Former intelligence officials told me that Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics.” He added parenthetically: “A spokesperson for Feinstein said the office doesn’t comment on personnel matters or investigations, but noted
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May 21, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. and China have reached a deal on trade. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said this about the deal: Right now, we have agreed to put tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework. We are immediately going to follow this up with . . . hard commitments in agriculture, where we expect to see a very big increase — 35-40 percent increases — in agriculture this year alone.
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April 13, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton didn’t agree on much during the 2016 campaign, but they did agree that the U.S. should not participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I read this as a sign that the U.S. should stay in the TPP. That’s not why I favored staying in, though. Nor was my opinion based on the virtues of free trade. It’s possible to be a free trader and still
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April 11, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday the financial markets soared in response to a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi’s speech was conciliatory, and suggested that, far from igniting a trade war, President Trump’s proposed punitive tariffs have brought about important and positive changes in our economic relationship with China, including, among other things, lower tariffs on American automobiles and better protection for American intellectual property. Time will tell how this plays out, but
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April 6, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
According to President Trump, trade wars are easy to win. This may be true in some cases, but a trade war with China would be anything but easy. Steve says, based on sources close to Trump, that the president believes we can win a trade war with China because China needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs China. Thus, the theory goes, the Chinese will blink first. Trump’s premise
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April 5, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here and here about Confucius Institutes, the vehicle through which China wages ideological warfare on America’s campuses and even at our high schools. I explained: Since 2004, the Chinese government has planted “Institutes” that offer Chinese language and culture courses at colleges and universities around the world, including more than 100 in the United States. As the National Association of Scholars (NAS) documented in this report, the Confucius
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March 23, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, there were two developments on the trade front. First, the Trump administration said it will impose tariffs on $60 billion in Chinese goods and limit China’s ability to invest in the U.S. technology sector. Second, the administration issued a reprieve on steel and aluminum tariffs for some of our closest trading partners. As a supporter of free trade, I welcome the second development. But I also welcome the first.
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March 23, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A trade war with China? As it happens, I spent some time early in the week with Steve Moore of the Heritage Foundation, who has been close to Trump and who, along with Trump’s new senior economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, helped fashion the tax reform bill recently enacted. He has shared with me a couple of times in recent months his private conversations with Trump on economic issues. Steve said
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