Commentary Berlin has revised its approach to Beijing, replacing its once accommodating and sympathetic posture with something more wary and hostile. Washington, no doubt, will claim that Germany has followed America’s lead in making a similar change. But given Berlin’s comprehensive approach, the product of considerable compromise, the Germans seem to have taken the lead, much…

Commentary With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) now allowing countries to pay dollar-denominated debt in the Chinese yuan, what does that mean for the U.S. dollar? It’s no secret that both the Chinese and the Russians and many other countries want to downgrade the dollar’s influence and even de-dollarize global trade. That’s certainly happening, and…

Commentary Businesses have already been struggling with inflation for more than a year. But this summer, the biggest wave of labor strikes in more than 50 years will further complicate their inflation fight. Almost 700,000 workers, across several companies in different industries, are threatening to go on strike this summer in an effort to secure…

Commentary High expectations and disastrous monetary policy have put Americans into a vicious debt spiral. In the first quarter of 2023, American household debt hit a record high of $17.05 trillion, about 73 percent of the nation’s GDP. One of the many issues with the high debt rates that Americans carry is that with rising…

Commentary Economic data these days is so convoluted and confusing, and the interpretations so filtered through political blather, it becomes difficult to know what the truth is. Another way to put this, it’s hard to square one’s personal experience with the broader claims from the top that all is well. To hear the Biden administration…

Commentary The U.S.-China chip war is heating up. The world’s two largest superpowers are clashing over semiconductors that determine increasingly more of our lives, from when the smart toaster pops in the morning to what we write to our friends, family, and colleagues using ChatGPT in the afternoon. The latest silicon wafers, with transistors as…

Since the turn of the century, U.S. constitutional guarantees of economic freedom have been eroding. A combination of government, businesses, and social media firms have recently placed serious limits on individual freedom of speech and actions. The result has hastened the denigration of U.S. economic freedom. The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation publishes measures of economic freedom…

//Commentary// China released its latest GDP figure showing strong 6.3 percent year-on-year growth in the second quarter. There is, of course, a low base effect in play, given the 0.4 percent year-over-year growth in 2022Q2. A simple way to adjust such an effect is to sum the two numbers that differ by four quarters. The…

Commentary In 1796, the first U.S. President George Washington gave an impassioned farewell address. It summed up what he hoped would be U.S. foreign policy as regards both economics and wars. “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations,” he said, “is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them…

Commentary China’s economy is in desperate straits. So desperate that officials in one county in Guangdong Province offered an illegal bribe to U.S. investors. Any U.S. corporate “decision maker” who brings investment, according to The Wall Street Journal, would get 10 percent of the deal’s total value. A $100 million investment by a U.S. company,…