| | | | Warning Signs and 'Trump's Fingerprints' | | With markets showing rare signs of alarm, some analysts are placing blame on President Trump's trade war with China and his tariff whiplash. The market drop (along with more signs of a global slowdown, with Chinese and German GDP lagging), has Trump's "fingerprints all over it," Tom Buerkle writes for Reuters Breakingviews, while Bloomberg's Michael R. Strain argues Trump's unpredictability has caused a dilemma for US firms and is holding up investment.
Businesses "seem increasingly convinced that he doesn't understand the basics of international economics," Strain writes, asking with exasperation, "[H]ow can he make predictable policy? How can businesses anticipate what he'll do?"
Trump's latest tariff reprieve spared US retailers and consumers from added costs during the holiday buying season, but The Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial that Trump's reversal (and the mini celebration that followed) amounts to a "tacit admission" that Trump's claims about tariffs—that they won't cost Americans and will pay for themselves—aren't true. | | | Amid President Trump's trade war and China's expanding world ambitions, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans' views on China are souring, as unfavorable opinions have hit 60%, a jump of 13 percentage points since 2018. Concerns seem to center on China's "growing military power" (81% say it's a bad thing) and to be concentrated among Republicans, 70% of whom view China unfavorably, compared with 59% of Democrats. | | Why the US Should Bet on India | | | India turned heads with its move to roll back the relative autonomy of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir, but President Trump prompted that action, Suhasini Haidar writes at The Hindu: By suggesting he might mediate between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, Trump spooked India into consolidating its position there, Haidar surmises.
That's because the US seems to be getting closer to Pakistan, as Washington needs Islamabad to help negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan—a tradeoff Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass warns against in a Project Syndicate op-ed. India, already the world's fifth largest economy, is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2027, according to UN projections, and Haass writes that a closer relationship with India might be America's best chance to secure an important friend in global trade and in the Indo-Pacific region. | | When Will the Arctic Circle Melt? | | | Julienne C. Stroeve explores that question in a short article for Scientific American, writing that it's tough to predict: "[W]e see a large spread in climate model simulations, with ice-free September [the month with the least Arctic ice] conditions already happening in 2020 in some simulations but not until well beyond 2100 in others." Judging by one study, and taking rates of carbon emissions into account, Arctic Septembers could be completely ice free "in the next 20 to 25 years," Stroeve writes. Of course, it all depends on whether the world can limit emissions and thus global warming; the work of some researchers indicates that if warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, ice-free summers in the Arctic will be assured. | | Tibet: The Next Flash Point of Unrest? | | | In an American Interest essay, James Flynn asks what will happen to Tibet when the Dalai Lama, now 84, passes away. His answer: It could become a hotbed of unrest. The Dalai Lama has sought a centrist path in dealing with China, but some younger Tibetan Buddhists take a more confrontational line, while the Chinese government has shown little interest in granting Tibetan autonomy. Unless the next Dalai Lama is chosen smoothly, Tibet could see a crisis unfold, Flynn writes—though China has already sought to co-opt the succession process, casting further doubt on Tibet's future. | | | | | | |
