Amid seemingly unstoppable urges to use enormous means to confront America’s strategic adversaries everywhere around the globe, the U.S.monetary authorities worry about a deflationary economy, crashing bond yields, ominous economic growth signals from a flattening yield curve and fiscal policy’s inability to control soaring public debt and intractable budget deficits. [Dr. Michael Ivanovitch| September 11, 2017…
WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon has held court in the Capitol Hill townhouse of Breitbart Media since he packed up his West Wing office last month, meeting with conservative lawmakers, advocating hard-line policies on undocumented immigrants and waging gleeful war on those he considers traitors to the Trump cause. [MARK LANDLER| September 8, 2017 | The New…
TIANJIN, China — Volkswagen, the German auto giant, is preparing for a swift expansion in its output of electric cars next year — and the biggest jump in production will be in China. General Motors is making China the hub of its electric car research and development. Renault-Nissan, the French and Japanese carmaker, and Ford Motor have hustled…
RICHMOND, Va.—Pressed for workers, a New Jersey-based software company went hunting for a U.S. city with a surplus of talented employees stuck in dead-end jobs. [Jennifer Levitz| September 5, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal] Brian Brown, chief operating officer at AvePoint, Inc., struck gold in Richmond. Despite the city’s low unemployment rate, the company had…
Deep-pocketed U.S. investors trying to expose fraud they allege among companies in mainland China have found a new way to promote their cause: a feature film. [ Steven Russolillo and Vipal Monga| September 10, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal] A documentary called “The China Hustle” premiered Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival. The 84-minute film features prominent…
For retailers, the robot apocalypse isn’t a science-fiction movie. As digital giants swallow a growing share of shoppers’ spending, thousands of stores have closed and tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs. [Greg Ip| September 5, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal] Belinda Duperre, who sold jewelry at Sam’s Club in Fall River,…
The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday unanimously voted to approve the nomination of Gilbert Kaplan for under secretary of Commerce for international trade. [September 7, 2017 | Inside US Trade] Kaplan is a partner at the law firm King & Spalding, in its International Trade Group. “While at the firm, he filed and won the first ever…
In 2012, you could be forgiven for believing the U.S. titanium industry would benefit from the South Korea-U.S. (KORUS) free-trade agreement that was implemented that year. Korea had virtually no titanium industry. Tariff rates for both countries would drop to zero. You easily could have concluded that the U.S. titanium industry would increase exports to…
Subsidized Imports Have Devastated the U.S. Industry Washington~ The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) submitted a letter to the International Trade Commission in support of the Section 201 petitions filed by SolarWorld and Suniva. This trade enforcement case is pending before the US International Trade Commission which must decide whether a massive solar cell…
odern life runs on rare earths. The bright and sharp LED displays on your smartphone and TV, the energy-efficient light bulbs in your kitchen, the disc drive in your laptop, and the power steering in your car all rely on the unique chemical and physical properties of 17 hard-to-pronounce elements on the periodic chart known…