Those Stubborn Facts: The News Media’s Priorities

Tags

Amber Heard, celebrities, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Johnny Depp, journalism, media bias, Michael Sussmann, misinformation, news, priorities, Those Stubborn Facts, Trump-Russia

Number of Google News search results today for “Michael Sussmann trial” (regarding misinformation and the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign): 16,300

 

Number of Google News search results today for “Johnny Depp trial”: 1.92 million

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Louder Talk and Still Too Small a Stick

Tags

alliances, allies, Biden, China, Constitution, defense budget, Finland, Lippmann Gap, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Sweden, Taiwan, Ted Galen Carpenter, treaties, Ukraine, Walter Lippmann

The foreign policy headlines have been coming so fast-and-furiously these days that they’re obscuring a dramatic worsening of a big, underlying danger: The dramatic expansion spearheaded lately by President Biden in America’s defense commitments that’s been unaccompanied so far by a comparable increase in the U.S. military budget. The result: A further widening of an already worrisome “Lippmann Gap” – a discrepancy between America’s foreign policy goals and the means available to achieve them that was prominently identified by the twentieth century journalist, philosopher, and frequent advisor to Presidents Walter Lippmann.

The existence of such a gap of any substantial size is troubling to begin with because it could wind up ensnaring the nation in conflicts that it’s not equipped to win – or even achieve stalemate. As I wrote as early as March, 2021, a Gap seemed built in to Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy from the beginning, since he made clear that America’s goals would be much more ambitious than under the avowedly America First-type presidency of Donald Trump, but also signaled that no big increase in America’s defense budget was in the offing.

Since then, Biden aides have expressed a willingness to boost defense budgets to ensure that they keep up with inflation – and therefore ensure that price increases don’t actually erode real capabilities. But no indications have emerged that funding levels will be sought that increase real capabilities much. Congressional Republicans say they support this kind of spending growth to handle new contingencies, but the numbers they’ve put forward so far seem significantly inadequate to the task.

That’s largely because most of them have strongly supported Biden decisions greatly to broaden U.S. the foreign military challenges that America has promised to meet. As for the President, he’s specifically:

>not only supported the bids of Finland and Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but stated that the United States would “deter and confront any aggression while Finland and Sweden are in this accession process.” In other words, Mr. Biden both wants to (a) increase the number of countries that the United States is treaty-bound to defend to the point of exposing its territory to nuclear attack, and (b) extend that nuclear umbrella even before the two countries become legally eligible for such protection via Congress’ approval. It’ll be fascinating to see whether any lawmakers other than staunch non-interventionists like Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul question the Constitutionality of this position; and

>just this morning declared that he would use U.S. military force to defend Taiwan if it’s attacked by China even no defense treaty exists to cover this contingency, either, and even though, again, there’s been no Congressional approval of (or even debate on) this decision.

This Biden statement, moreover, lends credence to an argument just advanced by my good friend Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute – that although Ukraine has not yet joined NATO officially, ad therefore like Taiwan lacks an official security guarantee by the United States, it may have acquired de facto membership, and an equally informal promise of alliance military assistance whenever its security is threatened going forward.

As a result, Ted contends, “the Biden administration has erased the previous distinction between Alliance members and nonmembers” – and set a precedent that could help interventionist presidents intervene much more easily in a much greater number of foreign conflicts without Congressional authorization, let alone public support, than is presently the case.

To be sure, lots of legal and procedural issues have long muddied these waters. For example, the existence of a legally binding treaty commitment doesn’t automatically mean that U.S. leaders will or even must act on it. Even America’s leading security agreements (with the NATO members, Japan, and South Korea) stipulate that the signatories are simply required to meet attacks on each other in accordance with their (domestic) constitutional provisions for using their military forces.  (At the same time, breaking treaties like these, all else equal, isn’t exactly a formula for winning friends, influencing people, and foreign policy success generally. As a result, they shouldn’t be entered into lightly.)

Further complicating matters: America’s constitutional processes for war and peace decisions have long been something of a mess. The Constitution, after all, reserves to Congress the power to “declare war: and authorizes the legislature to “provide for the common Defense” and to “raise and support Armies.” Yet it also designates the President as the “Commander in Chief” of the armed forces.

There’s been a strong consensus since Founding Father James Madison made the argument that limiting the authority to declare war to Congress couldn’t and didn’t mean that the President couldn’t act to repel sudden attacks on the United States – that interpretation could be disastrous in a fast-moving world. But other than that, like most questions stemming from the document’s “separation of powers” approach to governing, the Constitution’s treatment of “war powers” is best (and IMO diplomatically) described as what the scholar Edward S. Corwin called a continuing “invitation to struggle.”

Undoubtedly, this struggle has resulted over time in a tremendous net increase in the Executive Branch’s real-world war powers. But the legal issues still exist and tend to wax in importance when presidential assertiveness leads to conflicts that turn unpopular.

I should specify that personally, I’m far from opposed yet to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden. Indeed, their militaries are so strong that their membership seems likely to strengthen the alliance on net, which would be a welcome change from NATO’s (and Washington’s) habit of welcoming countries whose main qualification seems to be their military vulnerability (like the Baltic states) and tolerating long-time members that have been inexcusable deadbeats (like Germany).

Similarly, as I’ve written, because American policymakers recklessly allowed the country’s semiconductor manufacturers to fall behind a Taiwanese company technologically, I now believe that Taiwan needs to be seen as a vital U.S. national security interest and deserves a full U.S. defense guarantee.

Yet I remain worried that the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy risks plunging the United States into a conflict with Russia that could escalate to the nuclear level on behalf of a country that (rightly) was never seen as a vital U.S. interest during the Cold War.

So my main concern today doesn’t concern the specifics of these latest Biden security commitment decisions. Instead, it concerns the overall pattern that’s emerging of talking loudly and carrying too small a stick – and ignoring the resulting Lippmann Gap widening. However Americans and their leaders come out on handling these individual crises, they need to agree that the responses  urgently need to close the Gap overall. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine satisfactorily dealing with any of them on their own.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Exponentially Up — & Then Down

Tags

Biden, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Glad I Didn't Say That!, investing, NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500, stock market, stocks, Wall Street

“[T]he stock market has gone up exponentially

since I’ve been President.”

President Biden, September 8, 2021

 

Dow Jones Industrial Average Since Biden

Inauguration: +0.85 percent

 

S&P 500 Since Biden Inauguration: +1.56 percent

 

NASDAQ Composite Since Biden Inauguration: -18.16 percent

 

(Sources: “Remarks by President Biden in Honor of Labor Unions,” Speeches and Remarks, Briefing Room, The White House, September 8, 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/08/remarks-by-president-biden-in-honor-of-labor-unions/) President Biden, September 8, 2021

 

 

Im-Politic: Will the Pandemic’s Real Lessons Ever Be Learned?

Tags

CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, facemasks, Great Barrington Declaration, Im-Politic, lockdowns, Mainstream Media, mandates, natural immunity, The New York Times, vaccines

Give The New York Times some credit here. On the one hand, its big, graphics-rich feature marking the grim news that about a million Americans have been killed by the CCP Virus has pinpointed a highly specific group of culprits for this towering toll, and an equally specific group of measures that could have held it way down (although it’s never indicated by how much).

Among the worst: “elected officials who played down the threat posed by the coronavirus and resisted safety measures” and “lower vaccination and booster rates than other rich countries, partly the result of widespread mistrust and resistance fanned by right-wing media and politicians.”

So clearly, the authors insist, mask-wearing and lockdowns and social distancing should have been imposed much faster and more widely (without stating for how long), and more vaccinations required.

On the other hand, the reader is presented with abundant evidence that the benefits of such measures might have been limited – which is especially striking since not even a hint is provided that such steps might have inflicted considerable damage in their own right – including from other threats to public health that have been neglected.

Most strikingly, consistent with its observation that “The virus did not claim lives evenly, or randomly.” the piece reminds that in fact, the worst damage was remarkably concentrated in a single group. Specifically, “Three quarters of those who have died of Covid have been 65 or older.” Moreover, of that cohort, a third were 85 and over.

And then there was the related nursing homes disaster. According to the Times piece, a fifth of the roughly million CCP Virus-induced deaths in America occurred among residents and staff of these facilities.

Why longer and more sweeping lockdowns and the like would have reduced the virus’ damage to the nation as a whole, considering all the economic, educational, and health harm they produced for the vast majority of Americans who were far less vulnerable, is never explained.

The article’s case for vaccine mandates is similarly muddled. It repeats the widespread claims that most of those who died from the virus after vaccines became widely available were unvaxxed, and that “vaccinated people have had a much lower death rate — unvaccinated people have been at least nine times as likely to die since April 2021 [when the eligibility for the doses became universally available].”

At the same time, readers learn that:

>“at least 50,000 vaccinated people, many of them older or without booster shots, were among the deaths reported since late April 2021….”; and that

>”People 80 and older who had gotten shots were almost twice as likely to die at the height of the Omicron wave as those in their 50s or early 60s who had not, according to C.D.C. [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] data.”

Further, the article makes clear that, even forgetting about the decisive role played by age, claims about vaccine effectiveness are substantially exaggerated. Despite presenting the common contention that “unvaccinated people have been at least nine times as likely to die since April 2021,” the chart presented to support this point shows that this ratio has held for only part of the period duing which vaccines have become widely available. The chart also that the gap has almost disappeared today.

In addition, the piece reports that “The C.D.C. has received data on deaths by vaccination status from only about half of the states….” As the authors explain, this data shortage makes it “impossible to know exactly how many vaccinated people are among the million who have died.”

Conversely, this data shortage – along with thoroughgoing ignorance about how many Americans have enjoyed natural immunity from the virus and therefore passed up the jabs, and how many who caught Covid asymptomatically and made similar decisions – also prevents figuring out what share of unvaccinated Americans died of the virus.

But because both numbers are doubtless both enormous, this percentage is doubtless much smaller than commonly supposed.  The Times authors (and their editors, who it should always be remembered greenlight every article’s journalistic methodology) might have adjusted their judgements, and recognized that alternative pandemic mitigation approaches — including those that took into account the difficult tradeoffs that needed to be made — have long been recommended, had they bothered to consult any of the impressively credentialed specialists who have been making these points. 

Yet they seemed as determined to ignore or marginalize their views as the official U.S. medical establishment has been.  As long as both America’s healthcare leaders and its Mainstream Media so doggedly oppose full debate on the real lessons taught by the pandemic, it’s hard to imagine that the nation will be prepared for the (inevitable) arrival of the next deadly pathogen. 

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Glimmers of Hope on Ukraine?

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Biden, Blob, chemical weapons, cyber-war, David Ignatius, Donbas, EU, European Union, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky

As known by long-time readers of RealityChek (see, e.g., here and here), I’m no fan of David Ignatius. Literally for decades, the Washington Post pundit has veritably personified the Blob – that mainly New York City- and really mainly Washington, D.C.-based mutually reenforcing network of current political leaders and senior bureaucrats, Congressional staff, former officials, other hangers-on of various kinds, consultants, think tankers, academics, and journalists who have long championed globalist U.S. foreign policies despite the needless national security and economic damage they’ve caused.

Not so incidentally, they keep moving in an out of public service so continuously that they’ve not only blurred the crucial lines between these spheres, but they’ve more than earned the term “permanent (and of course unelected) government.”

So imagine my surprise when I opened my Washington Post Thursday morning and discovered that Ignatius had written what may be the most important American commentary yet on the Ukraine War. His main argument is that President Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin have each decided on a set of goals that could reduce the chances of the conflict spilling across Ukraine’s borders, and especially into the territory of neighbors that enjoy a strong U.S. defense guarantee. This chain of events could all-too-easily lead to direct U.S.-Russia military conflict that could just as easily escalate to the all-out nuclear war level.

But the goals identified by Ignatius are encouraging because they indicate that both Mr. Biden and Putin have retreated from dangerously ambitious objectives they’ve referred to throughout the war and its prelude. For the U.S. President, this means a climb-down from his administation’s declarations that Russia can’t be allowed to establish anything close to a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine, and that would prevent it and potentially any country in Eastern Europe from setting its own defense and foreign economic policies.

For Putin, this means confining his aims to controlling the eastern Ukraine provinces with large Russian-speaking populations, not the entire country

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the American position is Mr. Biden’s statement on Thursday that with its growing military support for Ukraine, the entire western alliance was  “sending an unmistakable message to Putin: He will never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine. He will not — that will not happen.” As Ignatius pointed out, this statement, “though resolute in tone, left open the possibility that Putin might occupy some of Ukraine, in the southeastern region where Russian attacks are now concentrated.”

Moreover, this Ignatius observation matters considerably in large measure precisely because the author is so well plugged in to the staunchly globalist Biden administration. If he’s putting points like this in print, the odds are good that it’s because he’s heard them from genuinely reliable sources, and even because those sources are using him as a vehicle for trial balloon floating.

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the Kremlin’s position is Putin’s statement the same day that the Russian forces that have virtually destroyed the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol have “sacrificed their lives so that our people in Donbas [the aforementioned eastern Ukraine region] live in peace and to enable Russia, our country, to live in peace.”

Those last words in particular suggest that Putin now believes a Russia-dominated Donbas can serve as an acceptable buffer between Russian territory and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that expanded its membership in the 1990s and early 2000s to countries directly bordering Russia.

On this issue, though, big questions remain: Would Putin permit what’s left of Ukraine join NATO (in which President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he no longer interested) or the European Union (which Ukraine still wants)? Or would Moscow let a rump Ukraine do what it wished on these defense and economic fronts? At the same time, the very uncertainty created by these Russian and Ukrainian (and now U.S.) statements makes clear there’s a deal that can be struck before Ukraine experiences much more suffering.

But as Ignatius himself notes, this week’s Biden and Putin positions are anything but guarantees against disastrous escalation. The reason? As I’ve written, the longer the fighting lasts and especially the more intense it becomes, the likelier spillover gets – whether from air raids to artillery strikes to the spread of toxic clouds from exploded chemical or even nuclear weapons, to cyber attacks (e.g., by Russia against U.S. or other western computer systems intended to interfere with the Ukraine weapons supply effort or with the West’s intelligence sharing with Kyiv).

So the Biden and Putin statements may be necessary developments for securing a non-disastrous end to the Ukraine war, but they’re hardly sufficient. Some serious form of outside pressure looks to be essential — either President Biden on Zelensky, or (seemingly less likely) China on Putin. Without it, Americans — and Ukrainians — arguably are left with hoping for the best, a strategy with an historically unimpressive record of success.        

Making News: Back on NYC Radio Tonight on Ukraine, Inflation…& More!

Tags

Frank Morano, inflation, Making News, North Korea, The Other Side of Midnight, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, WABC AM

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to Frank Morano’s “The Other Side of Night” radio show on New York City’s WABC-AM. The segment is scheduled to start at 1:30 AM EST (so yes, it’s technically Tuesday morning), and the agenda will be wide-ranging: Ukraine, inflation, North Korea (which has been posing new national security threats lately) – and maybe a little on the (not so hot) New York City pro sports scene thrown in!

You can listen live at this link.  But if your bedtime comes too early, as usual, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: An Epic Wall Street Journal Fail on Trump Tariffs

Tags

aluminum, beverages, Donald Trump, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Wall Street Journal‘s recent editorial on how U.S. tariffs on aluminum imports are decimating the American American beverage industry serves at least one useful purpose: It makes clear that the newspaper’s editorial writers either don’t understand the importance of presenting data in context, or don’t care because they know the big picture would kneecap their argument.

According to this piece, these Trump-era levies show the dangers of trade barriers that “are a form of industrial policy that is really about favoring some producers at the expense of consumers,” and are fueling current inflation to boot. Their main evidence? First, that Since the tariffs were imposed in March, 2018, U.S. beverage manufacturers have “paid an equivalent of $1.4 billion in Section 232 aluminum tariffs through February 2022 [for the aluminum they use in cans”; and second, that this industry paid $463 million in tariff costs in 2021 alone.

The fueling inflatio argument can be dispensed with easily. In 2021, the U.S. economy produced just under $23 trillion worth of goods and services before factoring in inflation. (I’m using pre-inflation data throughout this post because that’s the gauge used by the Journal for tariff costs.) The non-durable goods sector (in which beverages are found) generated $3.455 trillion. As anyone can see at a glance, $463 million as a percentage of these totals is miniscule – to put it charitably. Its percentage of the non-durable goods sector alone is just 0.013. And these added costs are moving the needle on overall U.S. inflation exactly how?

But even when you look at the beverage industry by itself, the inflation and cost burdens fade into insignificance. Although official data are hard to find, this source pegs the sector’s total U.S. sales at $253.42 billion. The $463 million in tariff costs represents a grand total of 0.18 percent of that total. If the industry finds that amount crippling, or even noteworthy, it desperately needs new management.

More detailed data are available from individual corporate reports, and point to the same conclusion. This Yahoo Finance item presents the top ten beverage companies operating in the United States by revenue. Add up the figures and you get a $174.09 billion total for last year. The tariff costs as a share of that sum? A thoroughly unimpressive 0.27 percent.

But what about the all-important bottom line? The individual corporate reports of these publicly trade companies reveal this figure to have been $36.74 billion in 2021. The aluminum tariff costs come to 1.26 percent of that total. No one can blame companies for wanting to make every single dollar of profit they can (lawfully), but do the Wall Street Journal editorial writers really believe that the executives of these firms can’t compensate by increasing efficiency? If so, can them all. (Pun intended.)

Finally, the corporate reports also show the total costs incurred by these ten companies in order to produce their products. Last year, they amounted to $76.77 billion. So the tariff costs increased this amount by 0.60 percent. Again, this is worth a pity party? 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board — like everyone else — has a perfect right not to like any and all tariffs, on aluminum or anything else. It also has a perfect right (unless you don’t believe in freedom of the press) to cherry pick the facts to make its case. But readers and others also have rights — including the right to know when a publication is using Fake Commentary tactics like this to make its case, and to wonder whether, if this is the best this staff can do to discredit tariffs, any solid grounds to oppose them exist at all.

Housekeeping: (Jury) Duty Calls!

Tags

civic duty, civil law, courts, Housekeeping, jury duty, justice, law enforcement

Just a short note to say that I’ll be taking a (sort of forced) leave of absence through Friday and possibly Monday because I’ve been selected to serve on a jury here in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

The trial will be a civil (as opposed to criminal) proceeding; I probably shouldn’t say anything specific about the substance, but it’s surely OK to note that it deals with issues I’ve written about more than once on RealityChek. In fact, to the extent I can, I’m hoping to blog about this experience – a first ever for me.

The timing’s a little unfortunate, since tomorrow the federal government will be releasing its latest report on the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation, and on Friday we’ll get the latest jobs numbers. In fact, today I was going to post on the trade highlights of the new (and final, for now) data on fourth quarter, 2021 and full-year 2021 U.S. economic growth. But I unexpectedly spent 11 hours (you read that right) participating in the Zoom-ed selection process, and even more surprisingly was chosen to serve.

I aim to start catching up on these developments over the weekend, since they’ll mark important milestones in the economy’s journey through the CCP Virus pandemic and (possible) aftermath. Today’s trade results alone contained some pretty startling record and multi-decade worsts. But that goal will surely take a few days to achieve itself.

So I hope everyone has a great rest of the week and I’ll look forward to resuming normal RealityChek operations ASAP. Till then, though – (jury) duty calls!

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Has Intel Been Cutting its Own Throat in China?

Tags

America Competes Act, China, Digitimes, Intel, microchips, national secuity, semiconductors, subsidies, tech, tech transfer, Vladimir Lenin, {What's Left of) Our Economy

There’s one crucial fact missing from this crucial news item – which features an Intel executive’s prediction that, within five years, strong Chinese rivals will emerge to the giant U.S.-owned semiconductor manufacturer. This development, which has massive implications for America’s national security and economy, will stem in no small measure from Intel’s own major transfers of technology to the Chinese economy.

Just as important: Intel’s tech transfers are continuing even though the company has been lobbying hard to secure huge U.S. government subsidies it claims it needs to build more advanced microchip production in the United States – in order to improve its competitiveness versus China. But since money is fungible, these taxpayer dollars could indirectly find their way into China’s tech sector if – as likely – a big legislative package of support for American technology development is approved by Congress.

Like many big U.S. tech companies, Intel has been helping strengthen China’s technology prowess for literally decades. In 1998, the company announced plans to build a $50 million research center in Beijing, and by 2007, had opened another in Shanghai. According to the above linked account, Intel was focusing on developing software, not semiconductors. But the same piece reported that this work aimed at helping Chinese programmers “get ready for processors wih multiple cores,” and that “Some of the work surrounding Intel’s so-called terascale research–most recently showcased through its 80-core chip prototype–is also being done” in Beijing.

More broadly, an Intel China executive said that “The company is spending a lot of time and money working with the local university education system on science and technology education” – including electrical engineering programs.

Since then, as RealityChek has reported, Intel’s research and development operations in China have expanded significantly. A 2014 post contained the news that the company was working with a state-owned Chinese partner to produce microchips “for the cheapo but technologically advanced phones selling so well in low-income countries like China.” Its involvement in this venture, moreover, built on its “establishment earlier this year of a Smart Device Innovation Center and $100 million venture fund in the same field, and tie-up with a Chinese fabless chip-maker.” Although the semiconductors in question were not cutting-edge, who can doubt that teaching Chinese engineers how to build so-called legacy semiconductors was bound to increase their ability to build more advanced devices down the road?

The following year, I summarized a post from the Taiwanese tech website Digitimes.com (also the source for the Intel prediction leading off this piece) that detailed how Intel had committed a total of nearly $1.8 billion to help Chinese entities develop advanced new products and services. They included unmanned aerial vehicles, smart devices, robotics, cloud computing services, artificial intelligence, machine vision, three-dimensional modeling, virtual reality technologies, and advanced optics.” None of these could ever be relevant to semiconductor production – or advanced weapons systems – could they?

And just last November, I mentioned a Wall Street Journal piece finding that Intel is ntel “is among the active investors, backing a Chinese company now called Primarius Technologies Co., which specializes in chip-design tools that U.S. companies currently lead in making.”

As I’ve written repeatedly, such activities amount to U.S. companies – and U.S. administrations that ignored or approved them – selling China the rope with which to hang America (paraphrasing the famous prediction of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution that created the Soviet Union). In Intel’s case (and it’s not alone here), the companies keep undercutting their own fortunes. And unless Washington conditions handouts for Intel and other tech companies on halting these giveaways, American taxpayers will finance much of it.

Full disclosure:  Investment-wise, I’m neither long nor short Intel, though I am long TSMC – the Taiwanese chip manufacturer that’s Intel’s top competitor, and that recently replaced it as the world leader in semiconductor production technology. 

Making News: Back on National Radio on the U.S.-China Rivalry…& More!

Tags

CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor, China, de-globalization, globalization, Gordon G. Chang, John Batchelor, Making News, Newsweek, supply chains, Voice of America

I’m pleased to announce that tonight I’m scheduled to be back on the nationally syndicated “CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor.” Air time for the segment is yet to be determined, but the show is on nightly between 9 PM and 1 AM EST. You can listen live on-line here as John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and I examine whether the United States or China will have the greatest advantages in in which fragile worldwide supply chains keep getting de-globalized.

As usual, if you can’t tune in, the podcast will be posted as soon as it’s on-line.

In addition, it was great to see Gordon quote me in this new Newsweek column on China and the Ukraine war.

On March 5, the U.S. government-run Voice of America included my views in this post on the economic outlook for China this year.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments