https://www.washingtontimes.
Most Democrats are seldom happy unless something is going wrong. Then they have a cause. This allows them to parade, to form mobs and to become uncivil.
They are a somber crowd, mostly humorless except when they have the opportunity to engage in a confrontation. Then they almost become giddy. They are at war almost all the time. These days they are at war against our constitution and those who want to enjoy our free and open society.
They are also very self-righteous. If they say or think it, it become so. They also will stop at nothing when they are in pursuit of a goal and have money to back up virtually all their endeavors because they are aligned with and supported by the California Technology Billionaire Crowd and disparate billionaires, ie Soros, who have their own vision of what the world should look like.
As a party, Democrats will engage in just about anything to win. Character assassination is simply one method and we saw this in The Kavanaugh Hearings. No doubt Kavanaugh was a privileged jock who drank but that did not condone the behaviour of Democrats who set about destroying him and his family simply because he was the 5th Jurist who was conservative. They even were willing to rid American Jurisprudence of the sacred law regarding "innocent until proven guilty." If this does not demonstrate the length they will go to accomplish their goals nothing will.
The Democrat Party has gone off the rails because those who are behind the radicalism that has taken over the Party will not be deterred. They have been under-girding our Republic's institutions for decades in the areas of religion, family structure, education, mass media, school boards, curricular, secure borders, establishing sanctuary cities, welfare and entitlements and the list is endless.
They know how fragile our society is and if they spread discord they can bring an otherwise peaceful society to its knees using chaos as another weapon of choice. By using our very freedoms and openness they wish to end and/or alter America and replace our flourishing economic system with Socialism and other totalitarian controls.
Democrats used to call themselves liberals until that no longer won them elections so they changed their handle to progressives, implying that they are on the leading edge of change. Behind these tags are the same irrational emotional voters.
One might argue this is an over reaction. My response is that you are either naive, blind and/or part of the problem.
Bless your soul
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Another rant. (See 1 below.)
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Our relationship with China. (See 2 below.)
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Is our future already here and in some cases behind us? These predictions are coming, some have already appeared, while more are coming. Change is a constant. The question is can society adopt fast enough and incorporate them without severe dislocations. Will these and other changes reduce the prospect of conflicts among nations or have any effect in that regard? (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)So the market did not crash, and we had a little correction, which is not unusual in October. Consumer sentiment is still at 100.1 in September and 99 in October, only the third time in 15 years it has been that high. Factory orders were up 1.4%, The PMI dropped from 61.3 to 59.8, but that is still an excellent number. New orders were down from 65.3 to 61.8, also still a very good number, and new orders can fluctuate based on defense spend and aircraft orders. Demand is reported to remain very strong, and employment is 58.8 up .3. These indexes will move around a bit month to month, but they remain high by any standard. The rate of change from here will be less since the indexes are already at such high levels. Some companies report tariffs are impacting margins, but that seems a bit questionable in some cases since the tariffs on all but steel and aluminum have not been fully in place, and most of the China tariffs are just going into place. There is some belief among some economists that some managements are using tariffs as an excuse for less than stellar performance. Importantly for the election, consumers felt that Republicans would be better for the economy, with the usual divergence by Dems, although even they have materially more confidence now than before. Overall, the numbers remain very strong, and the economy should continue to be very good for at least another 3-5 quarters.
The real issue for stocks is the Fed, and potentially the EU. Trump is not alone suggesting the Fed is moving too much now, and with inflation still at around 2%, there is less need to push rates as hard. There are others who suggest the Fed not raise much in 2019, if at all. As I have been pointing out, the economy is very different today than it was even 5-10 years ago before Amazon and Walmart were having such an impact, before tech and efficient logistics were as prevalent to keep costs down, and before it was so easy to compare prices online, thereby creating price transparency we never had before. With global logistics so efficient now, it is easy to source goods all across the world, and for US producers to shop prices for components, and seek out the best prices. This is a different economy than the Fed models have been created for in the past. If the Fed is looking ahead, they should be more concerned with how they are going to deal with what some good economists forecast will be a recession in early 2020 when the deficits will catch up to us, and the impact of the tax cuts and fiscal stimulus has already been ingrained in the economy. Do not be surprised is the Fed does one more in December, and maybe one in March, but then maybe pauses a bit. More likely they will keep raising, but we will see. The ten year should level out here around 3.1%-3.25% for a while. Although mortgage rates are now around 5%, they are still far below the norm of the past generation. The problem is, young people buying a house think 3.5%-4% is the norm, when it is really 8%. In my view the issue is more psychological due to the 3.5%-4.5% rates of the past 8 years being all that buyers know. In many cases it is the requirement now for 20% down which many do not have because they have student loans or just did not save. The other issue is that home prices have risen a lot, and in many places the prices are now possibly too high. Maybe the Fed will decide they have pushed up mortgage rates and slowed housing enough for now. We will just have to wait and see.
The real risk is the EU. Italy is pushing the envelope with its budget, and challenging the EU to a showdown. Italy is a far bigger issue than Greece was. Other EU nations like Hungary, Austria, Poland are more aligned with Italy as Euroskeptics, and anti Brussels. Merkel’s coalition is falling apart, and might not hold much longer. If that happens, then everything in the EU gets much more cloudy and potentially politically disruptive. Italian debt is held by many EU banks, and especially German banks, and there are no buyers for new debt other than the ECB right now. If the ECB tries to push Italy by holding back on buying Italian bonds, yields shoot up and bond values go down, creating the potential for a banking problem across the EU, and in Germany especially. As I have been warning for over a year, investing in the EU stock markets or assets is getting more and more risky. The populist wave is pushing across the EU, and challenging Brussels and German authority which has ruled the continent for decades. Brexit was just the first piece of this. While the EU has the ability to prevent a crash, this is getting ugly, and potentially could impact the US stock market. Add on, an emerging market debt crisis potential, and things could get nasty next year. That is why the US is the only haven remaining. Capital will flow here. Merkel’s coalition partner the CSU, just suffered its worst defeat in local elections in Bavaria in 70 years. That means the Merkel coalition may blow up very soon. There may need to be a new election for chancellor very soon and Merkel may be gone. That will create all sorts of instability in the EU as it scrambles for a replacement leader.
The Asian kids discrimination lawsuit against Harvard has started trial. It will be a major historic case that will, in the end, go to the Supreme Court for a ruling on how much race can be used to determine acceptance to college. It could completely change college admissions. The Supremes never intended that racial preference should go on forever. This is the Amy Wax issue writ large. She is the U of P law professor who had the audacity to say she has noted that most black law students at Penn, where she teaches, do not perform as well as others because they are admitted with lower LSAT scores, and are not prepared to do the high level of work required at Penn law. They tried to fire her for just saying the truth. And then demoted her. There are now several studies that were done by objective researchers, which show that many schools and companies are accepting blacks and Latinos because of the requirement by Obama to show diversity, and because there is a belief in academia that they must have a diverse student body as part of the education process. That premise has no objective truth. The results are clear from the data. Many blacks come from high schools where the work is lower level and they are not properly prepared to do the high level of study required for the elite schools. There is also a culture issue which has been an issue for many years. Black kids in many communities think the way to succeed is sports or entertainment, and not study and a have a professional or business career. Their role models are rappers and athletes. For many years there has been a negative culture against kids who studied hard. Then you get kids from violent areas like Chicago and Compton, and it is hard to succeed coming from some of these places. However, the answer is not to push these kids into elite schools where they are unable to succeed, and then to think you can coach and tutor them enough. They just do not have the basic schooling or home situation from a young age. So the kids get frustrated, and they live together in all black dorms (segregation), they form groups to complain they are not being treated well. They claim their struggles in class are due to racism. They get a receptive ear from the school that then panders to this, and instead of having race neutral admissions, we get courses on diversity and gender identity instead of American history, all sorts of rules that control what you are allowed to say, and black kids who are pushed along with grade inflation so they graduate with at least a C average and can then get hired at companies who have to check the box showing they hired x% of blacks and Latinos on staff. Thereby we are perpetuating this myth, and we are hiring minority kids to do jobs for which they are not prepared, so they fail again and racism becomes the excuse. It is bad for the kids who would likely have done very well had they gone to a school where they could do the work, and gotten a job for which they are prepared instead of being hired because of race. This is the reality today. There are all sorts of objective, independent, non-political, non- ideological, data now, to prove the point about admissions and graduation rates. I have been reading up on this, and I am not just ranting. Mostly these studies and data are buried because academia, the press, and others do not want to be accused as racists. Amy Wax was brave to stand up for truth. Now that she has been destroyed by Penn for that, nobody else will dare speak up except Paul Levy who was head of the board of trustees at Penn Law, who resigned over this, and wrote an op ed in the WSJ. Go read up on the Amy Wax/ Penn Law matter. It is illuminating and makes my point well.
We are not doing good for the minority kids, nor for society, by pushing this false narrative of the need for diversity over merit. When they get into the business or professional world, and cannot perform up to required skill level, it just makes them stand out in a negative light, and look like they are just the token, which they often are. Nobody benefits from this. That is why merit is the best way to admit to schools and to hire. It is non-discriminatory. These kids would get hired into jobs where they can succeed, and get promoted, instead of into jobs based on race, that they are not qualified to do, where they will fail. There is now a full scale business in consulting to teach classes claiming we all have unconscious bias, and that needs to be trained out of us. There is a whole industry teaching companies, police departments and schools how not to be unconsciously racist. There is a lot of money in this, so, as usual, it is not going away anytime soon. There are a lot of financial vested interests. Unconscious bias is based on one very flawed research study in 1998 known as the IAT, done at some university, and then adopted as the holy grail, and now has become a huge, very lucrative consulting training practice.
The Harvard case is, therefore, a huge potential turning point. There is no question from the data already released in the case, that Harvard and other elite schools do have Asian quotas, and Asian kids with far higher SAT and grade scores are rejected to let in much less qualified blacks with SAT scores 200 points lower. Harvard and other schools now admit that to be true, but say they need more blacks in their classes to provide a “proper education” to the white kids. This was essentially the basic reason the Supreme Court allowed some limited racial preferences for admissions. CA gets around state law that prohibits race as a determinant by instead saying anyone in the top 10% of their class can be accepted, regardless of how bad the high school might be, or how unprepared the student might be. Odd how we all got a very good education regardless of how many or few black kids were in class. The professor mattered, not the racial count. Some schools now brag at how many black and Latino kids they have in the new classes, instead of how many kids who studied hard and got good grades and high SAT scores. It is a bunch of crap, and what we get is a lot of frustrated black and Latino kids who would succeed far more in schools and jobs they are prepared to cope with, instead of becoming frustrated kids who are doomed to remain that way because they are told, partly through grade inflation, they are better educated and prepared than they really are. For my liberal friends who think I am now a racist, go do the research and pay attention to the Harvard case details. Read Heather Mac Donald’s book, “The Diversity Delusion”, which lays out facts. It will be all laid out clearly in court. We are not doing any good for these black kids by pushing them into schools and jobs where they cannot succeed, and we are just creating a new group of angry Asian and white kids who were discriminated against, and denied entry and opportunity for which they busted their hump to get accepted. Unfortunately, we now have thousands of kids coming out of college indoctrinated to believe we white heterosexual males are all racists, among a long list of other bad things like being sexual predators, and they are the ones screaming in the halls of Congress, and the streets of Portland and other places like downtown Chicago, using violent tactics they learned on campus. Stopping this radical ideology is what this election and Kavanaugh are all about.
Another way to understand the Kavanaugh spectacle is to understand what has been happening on campus since the 2011, “Dear colleagues” letter from Obama to all colleges to enforce sex assault claims, or lose funds. Obvious what happened next. Many schools immediately set up Sex Assault Task Forces, hired Assault Advocates, and more admin staff, and encouraged as many claims as they could drum up--what a surprise, since funding would go away if they did not drum up claims. Result was, boys have no due process, cannot have a lawyer, and are guilty unless proven innocent under preponderance of evidence. There is no due process, and no innocent until proven guilty. Destroying a boy’s life, even if innocent, is considered OK now so long as the girl is found to be a “victim”, and the school can tell the Feds they successfully prosecuted another case, so send money. In short, you are guilty in a kangaroo court. Results have been, many girls who got drunk at a party still do not file a claim because they realize they were participants and not victims. 45% dated the same guy after the alleged “rape”, per a university sponsored study. There are a number of well documented cases, like mattress girl at Columbia who the press promoted as a victim, where they did not file a claim until the guy moved on to another relationship and the girl felt hurt or betrayed. There are emails from mattress girl showing she was chasing him. Schools have now been ordered by the feds to stop using preponderance, and to have due process, but many schools have refused to follow the new federal guidelines. Politics overrides legal process, just as in Kavanaugh. There is a lot of notice on campuses and freshman orientation about sex assault. It is pushed as a major issue on campus, driven by the desire to get more federal funding. We also had the phony Duke rape claim and the U VA / Rolling Stone hoax case, where in both cases, the allegations were initially accepted as true with zero evidence, and at Duke the boys lives upended. The national press and the rape bureaucracy on campus leaped all over these false claim cases as examples of the “epidemic of rape on campus” before any corroboration. So here comes the allegations against Kavanaugh in that setting, where the girls are trained to believe the boy is guilty, even without corroboration, since that is what happened on campus under the Obama, Dear Colleague letter guidelines. That is just one part of the reason for the protests and out bursts of screaming, and demands he was guilty and, could not serve, despite no corroborating evidence. The snowflakes have been trained to assume guilt, and no due process, and the Dems were happy to adopt this stance. There are over 74 cases where the school had to pay the boy for false punishment, plus over 50 cases in federal court today based on due process claims by boys who were similarly unfairly punished and had their lives ruined. The Dems had political and ideological reasons, but they had the Dear Colleague letter as the back drop, and lots of paid protesters to scream on command. Maybe this will help you understand why things are so screwed up on campus. Only 12 of the top 75 schools require history majors to take even one semester of actual American history. That explains a lot about why 27% of college kids now think freedom of speech can be restricted, and many others think innocent until proven guilty is not the standard. Note that Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the DNC, actually did abuse his girlfriend, and there is substantial contemporaneous proof. Now he is claiming he is being tarred based on a lack of due process and false allegations. Do we see the Dems or #Me Too out in the streets, or even much press coverage??? Hypocrites! Simply proves the Kavanaugh matter was all politics.
In the fall of 2016, I predicted Trump would win because it just felt like there was something happening that the pollsters and media did not understand. This fall I predicted the Republicans would barely hold the House. It feels similar to 2016 now to me. The Kavanaugh disruption created by the left and the Dems, really upset a lot of people, and will drive a Republican showing at the polls similar to what we saw in 2016. The Dems and left way over played their hand and scared a lot of people with the screaming protestors in the halls of Congress, and the outrageous actions by Schumer, Harris, Booker, Nadler, and Maxine Waters. Now add on Kanye West impact on black voters and Brunson getting released, plus the bad comments by Holder and Hilary, and the vote is shifting. Now suddenly we are hearing the media less sure of the outcome of the House. The blue wave has crashed into a red seawall. Now there is a good chance the Republicans pick up 4-5, or more, seats in the Senate, and possibly hold the House by one or two seats. Diane Feinstein may have changed the election unwittingly, and so the black swan landed. Next year, Trump and a Republican senate will change the federal court make up for a generation. That is the main reason this election is so critical to all sides. You have to hand to hand it to Hilary. She says Lewinsky was not sexual abuse, or abuse of power because Monica was 22, but Kavanaugh, with no corroboration of charges, should have been kept off the court for what she claims is his terrible behavior. And she says it with a straight face!
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2)
The Crisis in U.S.-China Relations
The Trump administration has staked out an aggressive position, but its critique of Chinese behavior is widely shared and points to the need for a new American strategy.
Like all such meetings with senior Chinese officials, mine last week took place in a cloistered government compound, the overstuffed chairs placed side by side with only a small table between them, an arrangement that requires turning your entire body or twisting your neck to make eye contact. Just behind the table dividing us was the interpreter; my host was flanked by a phalanx of aides, all of whom took notes but said nothing throughout the hourlong session.
Just minutes into our meeting, his voice rose. “The Chinese people are upset and angry. From beginning to end he was just bashing China. In 40 years, we have never seen a speech like this. Many believe it is a symbol of a new cold war. We find this speech unacceptable, as it turns a blind eye to our joint efforts of the last 40 years and what China has achieved.”
The “he” is Vice President Mike Pence, and the speech is the much-publicized one that he delivered on Oct. 4 at the Hudson Institute in Washington. Another of my Chinese interlocutors compared the speech to the talk delivered in March 1946 by Winston Churchill in Fulton, Mo. The only difference, this person said, was that the “Iron Curtain” has been replaced by a “Bamboo Curtain.” “Winter is coming,” predicted a Chinese scholar over dinner.
The vice president’s speech heralds a new era in modern Sino-American relations. Many in China believe that the trade war being waged by the United States has evolved into a comprehensive effort to block China’s rise. U.S. sanctions introduced in response to a Chinese purchase of weapons from Russia, new U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, U.S. freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea—all reinforce the view that the Trump administration’s aims are strategic and not just economic.
To be sure, the speech by the vice president was broader and deeper in its criticism of China than any other U.S. government statement of the past several decades. A number of its accusations are debatable if not unfounded. That said, the remarks, which build on the December 2017 National Security Strategy describing China (along with Russia) as a “revisionist power,” are consistent with a critique of China that many in the foreign policy establishment, Democrats and Republicans alike, have voiced in recent years.
The critique has three parts. First, there is the view that China has violated the spirit and letter of the World Trade Organization, which it joined in 2001. The U.S. list of complaints includes higher-than-warranted tariff and nontariff barriers, forced transfers of technology, theft of intellectual property, government subsidies and currency manipulation designed to make exports cheaper and to reduce demand for imports.
Second, China’s integration into the world economy has not brought about hoped-for reforms. Large state-owned enterprises, once expected to be wound up, remain. President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign seems to be motivated in part by a desire to root out his opponents, and he has managed to abolish term limits for his own office. As many as one million Muslims in western China are in re-education camps. Civil society has been further circumscribed. China appears to be more authoritarian today than at any time since Mao Zedong was in charge.
Third, China’s foreign policy has become more assertive. China has acted unilaterally to militarize the South China Sea despite an international legal ruling rejecting its claims and a personal pledge from President Xi that China would not do so. It unilaterally declared an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea and regularly challenges Japan on disputed islands. China is also pursuing its global “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative, which looks less like a project to promote development than a geoeconomic ploy to increase its access and influence around the world.
This is hardly the first time that the U.S. and China have been at loggerheads. Their difficult modern history goes back to World War II. The Chinese, divided between Communist guerrillas led by Mao and authoritarian, pro-capitalist Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, were fighting the Japanese occupation as well as one another. The U.S. provided extensive military assistance to the Nationalists. Even so, by 1949 the Communists controlled the mainland and the Nationalists were forced to flee to Taiwan. The U.S. retained diplomatic ties with the nationalist-led Republic of China and refused to recognize the newly declared People’s Republic of China.
Soon after, American and Chinese soldiers fought in Korea, and there were several crises over the status of islands in waters separating China and Taiwan. At one point in 1954, the U.S. seriously considered using nuclear weapons against China only to hold off when allies weighed in on behalf of restraint. The U.S. did, however, sign a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan.
There matters stood until the late 1960s, when American analysts realized that China and the Soviet Union increasingly saw one another as rivals. Acting on the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet split to forge ties with the mainland in the hope it would give the U.S. leverage in its struggle with the far more dangerous U.S.S.R. Within a decade, the U.S. moved to recognize the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and relations with Taiwan were formally downgraded.
This second phase of Sino-American ties—in which, among other things, the two countries cooperated against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan—lasted some two decades, until the end of the Cold War. What provided the impetus for a third era in Sino-American relations was growing economic interaction, initiated by Deng Xiaoping, who took power after Mao and in 1978 declared a policy of “reform and opening.” Each side sought access to the market of the other, and the Chinese economy began its long and spectacular rise.
Many Americans hoped that engaging with China would open the country politically and economically and moderate any temptation on its part to challenge U.S. primacy. Nor was American policy just based on hope. The U.S. also hedged against the possibility that China would become a strategic rival by maintaining its alliances in the region along with air and naval forces to signal U.S. resolve.
This third, optimistic era has now drawn to a close, as Vice President Pence’s speech emphatically showed. The economic ties meant to buttress the relationship have now become a major source of friction. Limited strategic cooperation on North Korea or issues such as climate change cannot offset this trend, which has been made worse by political shifts in China itself. It is a non-starter to think that China—whose economy is 30 times larger than it was three decades ago and is now the world’s first or second largest—will be content as a mere “responsible stakeholder” (to use then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s 2005 phrase) in a U.S.-designed and dominated international system.
Not surprisingly, this liberal-democratic order holds little appeal for a Communist Party leadership that sees liberalism and democracy as a threat to its rule. Just as important, this order is fast fading. It has been rejected by Russia, North Korea, Iran and others, and new issues have emerged (climate change, cyberwar) that the order was not designed to handle. The Trump administration, for its part, has made clear that, unlike its predecessors, it sees the post-World War II order as inconsistent with U.S. interests.
The question now is what a new, fourth era of Sino-American relations will look like. There is a good deal of speculation that it will be a new cold war, but a cold war is a possible (and undesirable) outcome, not a strategy. The containment strategy that shaped U.S. policy against the Soviets doesn’t apply to a new challenge that is more economic than military. Indeed, some disagreements between the U.S. and China can be narrowed or even resolved, including those over tariff and nontariff barriers, requirements for joint ventures and the size of the trade imbalance. But these are exceptions.
The possibility of a U.S.-China armed confrontation over the South China Sea, Taiwan or even North Korea cannot be ruled out. But even if such a dramatic scenario does not materialize, it is easy to see how the relationship could deteriorate. As we know from the earlier Cold War, such competitions are risky and costly, and all but preclude cooperation even when it would be in the interests of both sides.
The most realistic option for the future is to focus on managing the two countries’ major disagreements. This approach has worked for four decades when it comes to Taiwan. The U.S. acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China. The task now is for China, Taiwan and the U.S. to avoid unilateral steps that would jeopardize an arrangement that has kept the peace and allowed Taiwan to flourish economically and politically.
Management is also likely to be the best approach for the South China Sea. As with Taiwan, “final status” issues are best left vague. The emphasis ought to be on avoiding unilateral actions that could trigger a crisis.
In other domains, the U.S. will simply have to accept China for what it is. China will continue to maintain a large (if somewhat reduced) state role in the economy and a closed political structure. “As China enters middle income, we need a strong anchor for our society,” one senior Chinese official told me. “We need to strengthen the Party. You equate authority with authoritarianism, and think China is a dictatorship. This is wrong.” The U.S. should call out human-rights abuses in China, but the focus of our foreign policy should be China’s foreign policy, where we are more likely to have influence.
Attempting to hold China back is simply not a realistic policy for the U.S. Worse, it would stimulate nationalist impulses there that will set the countries on a collision course.
To avoid outright conflict, the U.S. needs to persuade Chinese officials that taking on the U.S. militarily is a fool’s errand—a calculation that depends in some measure on our international support. The Trump administration has adopted a tough line toward China, but it has undermined its own policy by weakening our alliances and rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have pressured China to further reform its economy. Such strategic inconsistency doesn’t serve U.S. interests.
The U.S. also needs to adopt new policies on several fronts. The just-signed-into-law “Build Act” to encourage private American investment in the developing world is a useful, if limited, response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Strengthening controls on Chinese investment in the U.S. is also a step in the right direction. Some supply chains may need to be rerouted away from China, although such interdependence is one bulwark against conflict. Universities and think tanks should refuse to accept Chinese government funding. And if the U.S. isn’t to be left behind by Beijing’s major technology push, “Made in China 2025,” the public and private sectors will need to cooperate much more in developing critical fields such as artificial intelligence.
The U.S. must also get its own house in order. China is not responsible for America’s health-care crisis, aging infrastructure, poor public schools, exploding debt or inadequate immigration policy. Foreign policy must truly begin at home for the U.S. to compete successfully. Progress across these areas would also disabuse the Chinese of the idea that the U.S. is in decline and lacks the will and ability to stand up to a dynamic new power.
Finally, it would be foolish to give up on the prospect of selective cooperation. North Korea is a case in point. Afghanistan could be another, given China’s influence in Pakistan. Sino-American cooperation is also essential if the world is to weather the next financial crisis, make progress on climate change, reform the WTO and set forth rules for cyberspace. The U.S. will want to avoid holding areas of potential cooperation hostage to areas of competition.
China will have to do its part as well. China’s economy is too large for it to hide behind the argument that it remains a developing economy that should not be expected to live up to global norms. President Xi has called for a new type of great power relationship between the two countries, but he has not explained what he means in such a way as to clarify or resolve current tensions. Doing so would be one mark of a great power.
Competition between the U.S. and China need not be “a four-letter word,” as Matthew Pottinger, the senior staff member on the National Security Council responsible for Asia, has said. A reasonable goal would be managed competition that allows for limited cooperation. For now, however, the Trump administration has adopted a confrontational approach without making clear what it seeks to achieve. It has thus ignored Clausewitz’s prudent advice—that battle should be joined only “as the means towards the attainment of the object of the War.”
Mr. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book is “A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.”
Appeared in the October 20, 2018, print edition as 'The Crisis in U.S.-China Relations The Challenge of a Newly Assertive China.'
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3)
Auto repair shops will go away.
A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical motor has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric motor.
Faulty electric motors are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with robots.
Your electric motor malfunction light goes on, so you drive up to what looks like a Jiffy-auto wash, and your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out comes your car with a new electric motor!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Gas stations will go away. Parking meters will be replaced by meters that dispense electricity. Companies will install electrical recharging stations; in fact, they’ve already started. You can find them at select Dunkin Donuts locations.Most (the smart) major auto manufacturers have already designated money to start building new plants that only build electric cars.Coal industries will go away. Gasoline/oil companies will go away. Drilling for oil will stop. So say goodbye to OPEC!Homes will produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users. Has anybody seen the Tesla roof?A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.The FUTURE is approaching faster than most of us can handle.In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went
bankrupt. Who would have thought of that ever happening?What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 5-10
years and, most people don't see it coming.Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later, you would never take pictures on film again? With today’s smart phones, who even has a camera these
days?Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way
superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and
electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and
jobs.Forget the book, “Future Shock”, welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.Software has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.UBER is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world!Ask any taxi driver if they saw that coming.Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties. Ask Hilton Hotels if they saw that coming.Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.In the USA, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for right now, the basic stuff) within
seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, (what a thought!) only omniscient specialists will remain.Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than
humans.Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars are already here. In the next 2 years, the entire industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car anymore as you will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it and you
will only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. The very young children of today will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.This will change our cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide including distracted or drunk driving. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles; with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles. That will save a million lives plus worldwide each year.Most traditional car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car companies will try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car,
while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.Look at what Volvo is doing right now; no more internal combustion engines in their vehicles starting this year with the 2019 models, using all electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models.Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla and so they should be. Look at all the companies offering all electric vehicles. That was unheard of, only a few years ago.Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the costs will become cheaper. Their car insurance business model will
disappear.Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move farther away to live in a more beautiful or affordable neighborhood.Electric cars will become mainstream about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Cities will have much cleaner air as well. (Can we start in Los Angeles, please?)Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean.Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.And it’s just getting ramped up.Fossil energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue -
technology will take care of that strategy.Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breathe into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any Disease. There are dozens of phone apps out there right now for health purposes.WELCOME TO TOMORROW – it actually arrived a few years ago.
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