Chinese Vice Premier and Communist Party Politburo member Liu He is in Washington this week to sign a trade agreement with the Trump Administration. In making the so-called phase-one trade deal, China agreed to increase purchases of U.S. agriculture, energy services, and manufactured goods by $200 billion; open its markets to U.S. banks, credit card
The debate over trade largely has been framed in economic terms. We’re told consumers will pay more for—well, you name it—because of President Trump’s tariffs (even though the data show inflation is nonexistent). But a new study shows that trade policies do exact a steep price on Americans. We are paying for it with American
President Trump’s populist economic program continues to stump the band of economists who pass themselves off as experts. Remember Harry Truman’s definition of an expert: “a fella who was afraid to learn anything new because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore.” President Trump’s booming economy in 2019 proved Truman’s dictum in spades. Like Pharaoh’s priests,
From Spaghetti Westerns to Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood has carved out an image as the righter of wrongs, settling scores and protecting the innocent. In Eastwood’s latest outing as a director, “Richard Jewell,” he’s protecting us from our protectors. Twenty years before Carter Page there was Richard Jewell. Jewell’s all-too-true story serves as a cautionary
Progressivism is bad enough. Add globalism to progressivism and it’s 100 times worse. Thanks to that toxic cocktail, we are now saddled with a bureaucratic administrative state that can’t even do the job it was advertised to do. Consider the historical record and our current predicament. The reformers of the Progressive era championed safety standards
Another tranche of tariffs on Chinese imports is set to go into effect on December 15. That has the usual suspects gnashing their teeth. The nattering nabobs of negativism continue to repeat the falsehood that American consumers are bearing the cost of the tariffs. They aren’t, as the Consumer Price Index shows and as numerous
Forget about the NBA. If you want to find a bought-and-paid-for willing accomplice to the Chinese Communist Party, just look at our universities. Take Columbia University, for example (please). The university canceled a panel discussion with pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong, China, Tibet, and Xinjiang after a Beijing-backed student group announced it would protest. Following
Beware of the blob. That’s either a kitschy Burt Bachrach tune from the 1950s, a warning about Washington’s permanent foreign policy establishment, or the takeaway from watching witnesses in the impeachment hearings. At one time, the State Department was accused of harboring secret Soviet spies, à la Alger Hiss. Today, the harbor is filled with
Washington’s obsession with foreign interference in U.S. elections drove the three-year fixation on Russia and morphed into a compulsive fascination with the darker corners of the Ukraine (are there any bright corners in that benighted land?). Once again the Pharisees strain at gnats but swallow a camel. If they are concerned about a foreign power
What if someone you trusted said you were sick? What if someone you trusted made you sick so you relied on them for support? That’s known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy. It’s considered a form of abuse. Now, what if someone did all of the above to an entire nation? That would be known as what
