World

Trump’s decision to lift the ban on US companies doing business with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, is a stunning defeat for him. It’s also a major reversal for the US intelligence community, which has been concerned for years about what it considers to be Huawei’s wholesale theft of American technology.Lifting of the ban reinstates Huawei at the leading edge of China’s global spying. It undercuts months of private attempts to encourage America's allies to join in what the US hoped would be something close to a worldwide ban. And, over the long term, it also threatens America’s strategic advantage as a leader in new technologies.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is touted by Beijing as an attempt at multinational economic cooperation and development, comprising everything from foreign direct investment to the development of infrastructure. However, the purpose of the BRI is not economic or cultural but strategic, and is an effort to mask the expansion of Chinese power. In its strategic intent, the BRI should be considered an imperial project alongside the likes of the British East India Company (EIC) or the Dutch East Indian Company, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).  With the BRI, China is exercising the 'imperial excuse', just as the EIC and VOC did centuries ago.

As US-Iran tensions rise, America’s sway over its allies is falling. Last week, Major General Christopher Ghika, the British officer second in command of anti ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, publicly contradicted the rationale behind American troop build-ups in the region. US Central Command was quick to rebuff Ghika, but Britain’s Ministry of Defence supported him. Other NATO allies, too, are balking at confrontation with Iran. Spain has withdrawn a frigate from the American-led, Gulf-bound carrier group. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, has called for ‘maximum restraint’. If there is to be a third Gulf War, the US might find itself with fewer friends than in the last.

Alarmist news reports and panicky stock sell-offs. A threat to impose tariffs on US goods in retaliation for President Trump’s threatened levies. You’d think that Beijing had just ruthlessly shut down a major engine of American growth. But the truth is that tariff fear-mongering reveals the gulf between America’s financial markets and its real economy that provides everyday goods and services. The Chinese economy has grown spectacularly since Beijing turned away from Maoism in the 1980s. It’s true that major American industries from aircraft to agriculture have profited handsomely from supplying Chinese demand. The offshoring model supercharged by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002 has been especially lucrative.

At the last minute the Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping vetoed the trade deal with the United States, after his representatives had negotiated and agreed to it. Xi claimed that he will take the responsibility for ‘all possible consequences.’ This left President Trump no choice but to impose higher tariffs on some Chinese imports. This battle over trade marks only the early rounds of the US struggle with China. China’s economic success was achieved in large measure by taking advantage of the working people of both China and the US. It was made possible because the US allowed it to enter the world’s free trade system. Because China entered the West’s economic ecosystem a generation ago, it has flourished.

Ongoing trade talks between American and Chinese officials took an unexpected turn on Sunday: President Trump took to Twitter and announced a plan to impose tariffs on all Chinese imports by Friday. The tariff threat adds urgency to negotiations that will continue on Wednesday, when a Chinese delegation is due to arrive in Washington, DC. The move is a departure from last week when US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer arrived in Beijing to initiate a fresh round of trade talks with China. Despite chronic trade tensions, both sides had sounded optimistic ahead of the meeting. State Councilor Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, expressed hopes the two sides could ‘reach a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement’.

Will he stay or will he go? Speculation about President Trump’s future began with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment this past weekend that she worried in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections that Trump wouldn’t accept a close result and deem it a Democratic hoax. Now she’s indicating that she’s not convinced that he will abide by the results of the 2020 election if they are close and he’s the loser. As it happens, Trump amplified those concerns with a tweet riffing on Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s contention that he deserves an extra two years added to his first term because an attempted deep state putsch, led by Robert Mueller and his minions in the FBI, deprived him of the ability to govern effectively over the past two.

The Reuters photo could be mistaken for a shot of one of America’s ‘supermax’ prisons, the ones where the most dangerous criminals are held. An endless green security fence, topped with coils of barbed wire, punctuated by soaring octagonal guard towers with 360-degree views, all fronting what looks like a massive concrete wall or side of a building. Yet the Chinese workers walking outside the fence give away the truth. The picture is not of a US prison, but rather a Chinese ‘re-education’ center in vast Xinjiang, in the country’s far west. According to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, there are 28 such massive detention camps in Xinjiang, most built within just the last several years.