CRS discussion of Section 232 investigations. My discussion back in May 2019.
33 thoughts on “Section 232 Report on Automobiles Released (over 2 years after submission to Trump)”
Moses Herzog
Here’s the latest news. Toyota, Honda, Kia (not the best quality but a value play on low price), and Subaru (SUbaru is Toyota UNDER the hood) Good luck……. make your used car trade in negotiation SEPARATE from the price on your new car. From Uncle Moses, Who cares for your future
Twilight of combustion engine comes for Germany
By Elisabeth Behrmann – Bloomberg
An employee works on an electric motor at BMW’s e-drive center in Dingolfing. Electric motors need fewer parts and are light enough for a single person to lift.
The completed combustion engine fitted into a BMW M5 is a 1,200-piece puzzle that weighs more than 181 kg (400 pounds). There are about 150 moving parts whose interlocking precision can catapult a six-figure sports car to 97 kph (60 mph) in 3.3 seconds.
The engine under the bright lights of the vast BMW factory hall in Dingolfing, Germany, has come together from a web of hundreds of suppliers and many, many hands.
The electric-vehicle motor produced in the same factory is different in almost every respect: light enough for a single person to lift, with just two dozen parts in total, and lacking an exhaust, transmission, or fuel tank. The battery cells themselves are mostly an industrial commodity, products bought in bulk from someone else. No one brags about the unique power of BMW’s electric drivetrain.
Yet, this slight battery-driven motor can outgun the combustion engine in BMW’s fastest performance car from a standstill at a traffic light.
The fact that both combustion engines and electric motors find themselves inside the same 18,000-person complex in Dingolfing, BMW’s largest in Europe, makes it a microcosm of a shift overtaking automakers the world over.
A visitor can see that 625-hp engine–more than twice as powerful as the original from 1985, a luxury product relentlessly branded as “the ultimate driving machine” — then walk around the corner and see its small electric replacement. You start thinking the better slogan might be “the ultimate combustion engine.” As in: last of its kind.
Deep within Dingolfing you can find the human representations of the end of a 100-year technological era….
Trump Gave Automakers What They Wanted. Biden Shouldn’t.
By Daniel F. Becker and James Gerstenzang
As President Biden finalizes his road map to steer America toward a cleaner car fleet and safe climate, he should ignore the auto industry’s push for weak fuel efficiency and emissions rules and strengthen the tough standards imposed by the Obama administration that were shredded by Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden’s first step should be to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to reimpose emissions reductions as quickly as possible for new cars and S.U.V.s and other light trucks to 5 percent a year as called for under the Obama rules….
China sees over 1 million new-energy registered cars
BEIJING — More than 1.1 million new-energy cars have been registered in China in the first half of this year, a record high for the same period in any year, the Ministry of Public Security said Tuesday.
The number represents an over 200 percent rise from the same period last year and accounts for nearly eight percent of the total car registrations.
By the end of June, China had 6.03 million new-energy vehicles, which is 2.06 percent of the total number of cars in the country….
ltr
I have had the sense that “trade” policy through the years of President Trump, to the extent American companies were protected from international competition, limited the competitiveness of American companies. Sheltering GM and Ford, looks to me to have limited the companies relative to German and Japanese vehicle producers.
Ulenspiegel
“The electric-vehicle motor produced in the same factory is different in almost every respect: light enough for a single person to lift, with just two dozen parts in total, and lacking an exhaust, transmission, or fuel tank. The battery cells themselves are mostly an industrial commodity, products bought in bulk from someone else. No one brags about the unique power of BMW’s electric drivetrain.”
Yes, therefore car makers will focus on other aspects like cell chemistry, range, software, and other mechanical aspects like interior noise levels.
You can make the observation from a different POV (Tesla): If the engine of your product is not longer that different from other cars (BMW, DB, Audi, Porsche) you have to sell other aspects. Now the interesting question is where does your products shine and where does it suck…
IMHO the BEV field is a nice opportunity for German car makers to gain market shares.
Over 1.34 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.34 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in China as of Wednesday, the National Health Commission announced on Thursday.
macroduck
Yes, and Indonesia, which has relied mostly on vaccines from China, is suffering terribly from Covid. China continues to brag about a vaccine that is of limited value.
Climate Change Drove Western Heat Wave’s Extreme Records, Analysis Finds
A rapid analysis of last week’s record-breaking heat found that it would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change.
By Henry Fountain
The extraordinary heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest last week would almost certainly not have occurred without global warming, an international team of climate researchers said Wednesday.
Temperatures were so extreme — including readings of 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Ore., and a Canadian record of 121 in British Columbia — that the researchers had difficulty saying just how rare the heat wave was. But they estimated that in any given year there was only a 0.1 percent chance of such an intense heat wave occurring.
“Although it was a rare event, it would have been virtually impossible without climate change,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who conducted the study with 26 other scientists, part of a collaborative group called World Weather Attribution.
If the world warms another 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which could occur this century barring drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, similar events would not be so rare, the researchers found. The chances of such a severe heat wave occurring somewhere in the world would increase to as much as 20 percent in a given year.
“For heat waves, climate change is an absolute game changer,” said Friederike Otto, of Oxford University in England, one of the researchers….
pgl
I posted the silly Breitbart reply under another thread.
pgl
I’m about to get to this contribution from Menzie but permit to do a twofer on the climate change issue. The NYTimes has an interesting story on how climate change types are attributing the recent massive heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. But I do not know how to get around the NYTimes paywall so I tried a Google search and found this denial account from BREITBART:
To be fair to the dude who wrote this – he did note the key portions of the NYTimes article. But it seems he is no fan of rapid attribution stories. Now he is not going all CoRev/Sammy/Princeton Steve on his as he admits we may have global warming. But of course someone writing for BREITBART will claim this off the charts heat wave had nothing to do with climate change. Go figure!
JohnH
I think that the term “ American-owned auto company” is a misnomer. GM and Chrysler are owned by shareholders, who could be of any nationality. Only Ford has a substantial share still owned by the Ford family, who have presumably not moved their citizenship to Bermuda or some other tax haven.
Perhaps the Big 3 should be referred to as “companies with substantial US R&D,” although how long that will last is debatable, except for the portion of R&D that feeds off of military contracts. Maybe DOD should just take them over so they won’t to be forced to suffer the indignity of having to survive in a competitive world
pgl
And guess what – Americans own shares of Toyota. Of course a real progressive would be more interested in who are the workers and not who owns the shares.
JohnH
A real economist would have noticed that foreign auto manufacturers have hired a lot more Americans than domestic producers over the past fe decades…because they produce a lot of autos in theUS.
Personally, I have never owned an American made auto and saved myself a bundle in repair costs. My family now owns an 18 year old Japanese vehicle as its sole car…and it keeps humming like new.
pgl
Dude – I noted that back in my Angrybear days. OK – you did not read our posts so I guess it does not count.
Is your 18 year old car a Toyota – a company that has contributed to Trumpian Republicans. Well not any more now that the Lincoln Project shamed it.
pgl
Big 3? Dude – you are 23 years out of date. Chrysler merged with Daimler in 1998. It later became part of Fiat. Have you even purchased a car since 1998?
pgl
Two things jump off the pages early on. One is how many exemptions were granted to certain nations and groups exporting steel and aluminum to us. It is almost if someone lined the pockets of Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, no tariff was imposed. And then this:
The Department of Commerce determined imports of autos, uranium, and titanium sponge threaten to impair national security, but President Trump did not impose tariffs or quotas on these imports and did not release the Commerce reports. Commerce also completed and submitted its reports on transformers and vanadium; the findings have not been disclosed and no further trade enforcement action has been taken. The mobile crane investigation was withdrawn by the petitioner.”
That domestic auto producers paid extra for imported components but did not get tariff protection leads to a negative effective rate of production (something our host raised early on). But no tariffs on uranium imports even if the world price of this commodity is quite low but tariffs on steel and aluminum whose prices are currently soaring. Does this make any sense?
Ivan
Only makes sense when you realize that the interests of our country was subservient to the interest of Ross, Navarro and people who said nice things about Trump (and put some $ behind their words). The corruption of the Trump administration was breathtaking and we have only just begun lifting the curtain on it.
US Political Intervention in Haiti Has Caused Instability and Aid Efforts Have Largely Failed
By Mark Weisbrot
When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, killing more than 200,000 people, former President Bill Clinton said that the reconstruction would provide an opportunity to “build back better.” Some $9.6 billion was pledged by the international community, including the US government. But nearly six years later, although about $7.6 billion has been disbursed, there is not much to show for it.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians displaced by the earthquake remain without adequate shelter. USAID, the US State Department’s development agency, pledged to build 15,000 homes but has so far only delivered 900. Most US taxpayers’ money, it seems, didn’t get outside of the Beltway. Of USAID contracts, for example, more than 50 percent of payments went to contractors in the Washington, D.C. area, while only 1 percent went directly to Haitian companies or organizations. Everyone worries about money being potentially lost to corruption in the Haitian government, and so just a small fraction of the billions pledged went to desperately needed budget support. But the large-scale corruption, fed by lack of accountability, is much closer to home….
Why Haiti Still Despairs After $13 Billion in Foreign Aid
Since a powerful earthquake devastated the country in 2010, foreign aid seems only to have helped perpetuate some of the country’s biggest troubles.
By Maria Abi-Habib
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Dominican Republic and Haiti, 1980-2019
(Indexed to 1980)
macroduck
The “Issues for Congress” section, which ought to be the main purpose of such a report, is meant for another world. Simple, objectively outlined issues that well-intentioned legislators would wqnt to address cannot get a hearing in the Senate. Separation-of-powers questions outside of voters suppression? Who cares? Over-broae definitions of legal categories? Boring.
Remember when a Republican, Dick Lugar, and a Democrat, Lee Hamilton, both from the same midwestern state, regularly worked together to further the U.S. national interest abroad? Hoosier yokels responded to this egg-headed, namby-pamby behavior by electing them again and again. Disgusting. Thank heaven for better times and the Pence brothers.
macroduck
That is to say, the main purpose of a CRS report.
pgl
OMG! The NSA is allegedly spying on poor little Tucker Carlson. Of course this is another right wing fabrication which the Usual Idiots are running wild with. A threat on democracy it seems.
Oh wait – the NSA never spied on Tucker as they have better things to do with their time than spy on this pathetic little little weenie.
They were probably spying on Tucker’s Russian contacts while Tucker was attempting to interview Putin.
Barkley Rosser
Oh, Tucker is the first person ever to have the NSA reportedly ready to try shut down his TV show. NSA has pulled a lot of heavy duty bad stuff, but they have never lowered themselves to this sort of nonsense. But lots of people now believe Carlson’s fake news story (oh, he has a secret Whistlebower, woo ha!).
China’s factory-gate prices cool, inflation eases in June
China’s factory-gate prices saw a slightly slower growth in June from the near 13-year high in May, as prices for copper and steel fell after the limitation on metal prices, while inflation pressure also eased slightly in June, official data showed Friday.
The producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose by 8.8 percent in June from a year earlier, compared with a 9-percent growth in May that was the highest since September 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement.
This was in line with market expectations, as analysts polled by Bloomberg, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal all had predicted an increase of 8.8 percent.
“The domestic policy of ensuring supply and stabilizing prices in the commodity sector is showing initial effect, driving an improvement in the market supply and demand, and a slowdown in price gains of industrial products,” said Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS.
The surge in raw materials prices in the first half of the year has already triggered a slew of responses from China, including efforts to ensure supply of raw materials and the latest plan to cut the reserve requirement ratio, Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura said in a note seen by CGTN.
Another major index, the consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, went up by 1.1 percent year on year in June, down from May’s 1.3 percent, according to the NBS.
The CPI growth was just below the survey median of 1.2-percent rise polled by both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, and also under a 1.3-percent gain tipped by the Reuters poll.
“Low CPI inflation is mainly due to a decline in food price inflation,” Lu said.
Food prices dropped by 1.7 percent on an annual basis in June, from a rise of 0.3 percent in May, the NBS data showed.
“Negative food inflation was due to the crashing of pork prices,” said Lu, adding that there was a sharper sequential decline in pork prices amid the gradual recovery of domestic hog stocks and increasing pork supply….
Over 1.35 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.35 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in China by Thursday, the National Health Commission said Friday.
ltr
What is important about the Chinese effort to limit both producer and consumer inflation is the sectoral rather than general approach taken. The focus on increasing pork supplies has already made a dramatic difference in limiting consumer prices, while metal price increases are being gradually limited and taking pressure from producers. The increase in pork supplies was accomplished by advanced technology applications from small producers and on. Technology applications in agriculture are advancing through the country.
pgl
Kevin Drum’s readers noted the rise in apparel prices and started a discussion blaming Trump’s tariffs. A few noted we increased sourcing from other nations which is confirmed by this story as well as Census data. We still import a lot of apparel and footwear but imports from China did fall in 2020. Making Vietnam Great Again?
Here’s the latest news. Toyota, Honda, Kia (not the best quality but a value play on low price), and Subaru (SUbaru is Toyota UNDER the hood) Good luck……. make your used car trade in negotiation SEPARATE from the price on your new car. From Uncle Moses, Who cares for your future
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/twilight-combustion-engine-comes-germany
April 11, 2019
Twilight of combustion engine comes for Germany
By Elisabeth Behrmann – Bloomberg
An employee works on an electric motor at BMW’s e-drive center in Dingolfing. Electric motors need fewer parts and are light enough for a single person to lift.
The completed combustion engine fitted into a BMW M5 is a 1,200-piece puzzle that weighs more than 181 kg (400 pounds). There are about 150 moving parts whose interlocking precision can catapult a six-figure sports car to 97 kph (60 mph) in 3.3 seconds.
The engine under the bright lights of the vast BMW factory hall in Dingolfing, Germany, has come together from a web of hundreds of suppliers and many, many hands.
The electric-vehicle motor produced in the same factory is different in almost every respect: light enough for a single person to lift, with just two dozen parts in total, and lacking an exhaust, transmission, or fuel tank. The battery cells themselves are mostly an industrial commodity, products bought in bulk from someone else. No one brags about the unique power of BMW’s electric drivetrain.
Yet, this slight battery-driven motor can outgun the combustion engine in BMW’s fastest performance car from a standstill at a traffic light.
The fact that both combustion engines and electric motors find themselves inside the same 18,000-person complex in Dingolfing, BMW’s largest in Europe, makes it a microcosm of a shift overtaking automakers the world over.
A visitor can see that 625-hp engine–more than twice as powerful as the original from 1985, a luxury product relentlessly branded as “the ultimate driving machine” — then walk around the corner and see its small electric replacement. You start thinking the better slogan might be “the ultimate combustion engine.” As in: last of its kind.
Deep within Dingolfing you can find the human representations of the end of a 100-year technological era….
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/opinion/climate-cars-biden.html
July 7, 2021
Trump Gave Automakers What They Wanted. Biden Shouldn’t.
By Daniel F. Becker and James Gerstenzang
As President Biden finalizes his road map to steer America toward a cleaner car fleet and safe climate, he should ignore the auto industry’s push for weak fuel efficiency and emissions rules and strengthen the tough standards imposed by the Obama administration that were shredded by Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden’s first step should be to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to reimpose emissions reductions as quickly as possible for new cars and S.U.V.s and other light trucks to 5 percent a year as called for under the Obama rules….
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-07/06/c_1310046204.htm
July 6, 2021
China sees over 1 million new-energy registered cars
BEIJING — More than 1.1 million new-energy cars have been registered in China in the first half of this year, a record high for the same period in any year, the Ministry of Public Security said Tuesday.
The number represents an over 200 percent rise from the same period last year and accounts for nearly eight percent of the total car registrations.
By the end of June, China had 6.03 million new-energy vehicles, which is 2.06 percent of the total number of cars in the country….
I have had the sense that “trade” policy through the years of President Trump, to the extent American companies were protected from international competition, limited the competitiveness of American companies. Sheltering GM and Ford, looks to me to have limited the companies relative to German and Japanese vehicle producers.
“The electric-vehicle motor produced in the same factory is different in almost every respect: light enough for a single person to lift, with just two dozen parts in total, and lacking an exhaust, transmission, or fuel tank. The battery cells themselves are mostly an industrial commodity, products bought in bulk from someone else. No one brags about the unique power of BMW’s electric drivetrain.”
Yes, therefore car makers will focus on other aspects like cell chemistry, range, software, and other mechanical aspects like interior noise levels.
You can make the observation from a different POV (Tesla): If the engine of your product is not longer that different from other cars (BMW, DB, Audi, Porsche) you have to sell other aspects. Now the interesting question is where does your products shine and where does it suck…
IMHO the BEV field is a nice opportunity for German car makers to gain market shares.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-07/08/c_1310049686.htm
July 8, 2021
Over 1.34 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.34 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in China as of Wednesday, the National Health Commission announced on Thursday.
Yes, and Indonesia, which has relied mostly on vaccines from China, is suffering terribly from Covid. China continues to brag about a vaccine that is of limited value.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-heat-wave.html
July 7, 2021
Climate Change Drove Western Heat Wave’s Extreme Records, Analysis Finds
A rapid analysis of last week’s record-breaking heat found that it would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change.
By Henry Fountain
The extraordinary heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest last week would almost certainly not have occurred without global warming, an international team of climate researchers said Wednesday.
Temperatures were so extreme — including readings of 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Ore., and a Canadian record of 121 in British Columbia — that the researchers had difficulty saying just how rare the heat wave was. But they estimated that in any given year there was only a 0.1 percent chance of such an intense heat wave occurring.
“Although it was a rare event, it would have been virtually impossible without climate change,” said Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, who conducted the study with 26 other scientists, part of a collaborative group called World Weather Attribution.
If the world warms another 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which could occur this century barring drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, similar events would not be so rare, the researchers found. The chances of such a severe heat wave occurring somewhere in the world would increase to as much as 20 percent in a given year.
“For heat waves, climate change is an absolute game changer,” said Friederike Otto, of Oxford University in England, one of the researchers….
I posted the silly Breitbart reply under another thread.
I’m about to get to this contribution from Menzie but permit to do a twofer on the climate change issue. The NYTimes has an interesting story on how climate change types are attributing the recent massive heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. But I do not know how to get around the NYTimes paywall so I tried a Google search and found this denial account from BREITBART:
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2021/07/08/nytimes-claims-western-heat-wave-caused-by-climate-change-based-on-rapid-attribution-study/
To be fair to the dude who wrote this – he did note the key portions of the NYTimes article. But it seems he is no fan of rapid attribution stories. Now he is not going all CoRev/Sammy/Princeton Steve on his as he admits we may have global warming. But of course someone writing for BREITBART will claim this off the charts heat wave had nothing to do with climate change. Go figure!
I think that the term “ American-owned auto company” is a misnomer. GM and Chrysler are owned by shareholders, who could be of any nationality. Only Ford has a substantial share still owned by the Ford family, who have presumably not moved their citizenship to Bermuda or some other tax haven.
Perhaps the Big 3 should be referred to as “companies with substantial US R&D,” although how long that will last is debatable, except for the portion of R&D that feeds off of military contracts. Maybe DOD should just take them over so they won’t to be forced to suffer the indignity of having to survive in a competitive world
And guess what – Americans own shares of Toyota. Of course a real progressive would be more interested in who are the workers and not who owns the shares.
A real economist would have noticed that foreign auto manufacturers have hired a lot more Americans than domestic producers over the past fe decades…because they produce a lot of autos in theUS.
Personally, I have never owned an American made auto and saved myself a bundle in repair costs. My family now owns an 18 year old Japanese vehicle as its sole car…and it keeps humming like new.
Dude – I noted that back in my Angrybear days. OK – you did not read our posts so I guess it does not count.
https://deadline.com/2021/07/toyota-stops-donating-to-congress-members-who-opposed-electoral-vote-1234788914/#!
Is your 18 year old car a Toyota – a company that has contributed to Trumpian Republicans. Well not any more now that the Lincoln Project shamed it.
Big 3? Dude – you are 23 years out of date. Chrysler merged with Daimler in 1998. It later became part of Fiat. Have you even purchased a car since 1998?
Two things jump off the pages early on. One is how many exemptions were granted to certain nations and groups exporting steel and aluminum to us. It is almost if someone lined the pockets of Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, no tariff was imposed. And then this:
The Department of Commerce determined imports of autos, uranium, and titanium sponge threaten to impair national security, but President Trump did not impose tariffs or quotas on these imports and did not release the Commerce reports. Commerce also completed and submitted its reports on transformers and vanadium; the findings have not been disclosed and no further trade enforcement action has been taken. The mobile crane investigation was withdrawn by the petitioner.”
That domestic auto producers paid extra for imported components but did not get tariff protection leads to a negative effective rate of production (something our host raised early on). But no tariffs on uranium imports even if the world price of this commodity is quite low but tariffs on steel and aluminum whose prices are currently soaring. Does this make any sense?
Only makes sense when you realize that the interests of our country was subservient to the interest of Ross, Navarro and people who said nice things about Trump (and put some $ behind their words). The corruption of the Trump administration was breathtaking and we have only just begun lifting the curtain on it.
https://www.cepr.net/us-political-intervention-in-haiti-has-caused-instability-and-aid-efforts-have-largely-failed/
November 6, 2015
US Political Intervention in Haiti Has Caused Instability and Aid Efforts Have Largely Failed
By Mark Weisbrot
When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, killing more than 200,000 people, former President Bill Clinton said that the reconstruction would provide an opportunity to “build back better.” Some $9.6 billion was pledged by the international community, including the US government. But nearly six years later, although about $7.6 billion has been disbursed, there is not much to show for it.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians displaced by the earthquake remain without adequate shelter. USAID, the US State Department’s development agency, pledged to build 15,000 homes but has so far only delivered 900. Most US taxpayers’ money, it seems, didn’t get outside of the Beltway. Of USAID contracts, for example, more than 50 percent of payments went to contractors in the Washington, D.C. area, while only 1 percent went directly to Haitian companies or organizations. Everyone worries about money being potentially lost to corruption in the Haitian government, and so just a small fraction of the billions pledged went to desperately needed budget support. But the large-scale corruption, fed by lack of accountability, is much closer to home….
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/world/haiti-foreign-aid.html
July 8, 2021
Why Haiti Still Despairs After $13 Billion in Foreign Aid
Since a powerful earthquake devastated the country in 2010, foreign aid seems only to have helped perpetuate some of the country’s biggest troubles.
By Maria Abi-Habib
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Bicz
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Dominican Republic and Haiti, 1980-2019
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=BicG
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Dominican Republic and Haiti, 1980-2019
(Indexed to 1980)
The “Issues for Congress” section, which ought to be the main purpose of such a report, is meant for another world. Simple, objectively outlined issues that well-intentioned legislators would wqnt to address cannot get a hearing in the Senate. Separation-of-powers questions outside of voters suppression? Who cares? Over-broae definitions of legal categories? Boring.
Remember when a Republican, Dick Lugar, and a Democrat, Lee Hamilton, both from the same midwestern state, regularly worked together to further the U.S. national interest abroad? Hoosier yokels responded to this egg-headed, namby-pamby behavior by electing them again and again. Disgusting. Thank heaven for better times and the Pence brothers.
That is to say, the main purpose of a CRS report.
OMG! The NSA is allegedly spying on poor little Tucker Carlson. Of course this is another right wing fabrication which the Usual Idiots are running wild with. A threat on democracy it seems.
Oh wait – the NSA never spied on Tucker as they have better things to do with their time than spy on this pathetic little little weenie.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/nsa-we-have-better-things-to-do-than-spy-on-tucker-carlson
They were probably spying on Tucker’s Russian contacts while Tucker was attempting to interview Putin.
Oh, Tucker is the first person ever to have the NSA reportedly ready to try shut down his TV show. NSA has pulled a lot of heavy duty bad stuff, but they have never lowered themselves to this sort of nonsense. But lots of people now believe Carlson’s fake news story (oh, he has a secret Whistlebower, woo ha!).
https://jabberwocking.com/if-you-take-a-closer-look-inflation-is-pretty-well-under-control/
Kevin Drum takes a “closer look” at inflation by noting that the prices of good and medical care have risen by less than 1% over the last year.
Fox and Friends plans to have their chief economist Princeton Steve issue a stinging rebuttal by noting his famous bagel index!
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-07-09/China-s-CPI-up-1-1-in-June-11Kvhy4mc8g/index.html
July 9, 2021
China’s factory-gate prices cool, inflation eases in June
China’s factory-gate prices saw a slightly slower growth in June from the near 13-year high in May, as prices for copper and steel fell after the limitation on metal prices, while inflation pressure also eased slightly in June, official data showed Friday.
The producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, rose by 8.8 percent in June from a year earlier, compared with a 9-percent growth in May that was the highest since September 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-07-09/China-s-CPI-up-1-1-in-June-11Kvhy4mc8g/img/ec1b37b2a1cd43f7a87f9686738955b5/ec1b37b2a1cd43f7a87f9686738955b5.jpeg
This was in line with market expectations, as analysts polled by Bloomberg, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal all had predicted an increase of 8.8 percent.
“The domestic policy of ensuring supply and stabilizing prices in the commodity sector is showing initial effect, driving an improvement in the market supply and demand, and a slowdown in price gains of industrial products,” said Dong Lijuan, a senior statistician with the NBS.
The surge in raw materials prices in the first half of the year has already triggered a slew of responses from China, including efforts to ensure supply of raw materials and the latest plan to cut the reserve requirement ratio, Lu Ting, chief China economist at Nomura said in a note seen by CGTN.
Another major index, the consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, went up by 1.1 percent year on year in June, down from May’s 1.3 percent, according to the NBS.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-07-09/China-s-CPI-up-1-1-in-June-11Kvhy4mc8g/img/ed680ae5b71944e5a04ef76d68e5f811/ed680ae5b71944e5a04ef76d68e5f811.jpeg
The CPI growth was just below the survey median of 1.2-percent rise polled by both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, and also under a 1.3-percent gain tipped by the Reuters poll.
“Low CPI inflation is mainly due to a decline in food price inflation,” Lu said.
Food prices dropped by 1.7 percent on an annual basis in June, from a rise of 0.3 percent in May, the NBS data showed.
“Negative food inflation was due to the crashing of pork prices,” said Lu, adding that there was a sharper sequential decline in pork prices amid the gradual recovery of domestic hog stocks and increasing pork supply….
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-07/09/c_1310051944.htm
July 9, 2021
Over 1.35 bln doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in China
BEIJING — More than 1.35 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in China by Thursday, the National Health Commission said Friday.
What is important about the Chinese effort to limit both producer and consumer inflation is the sectoral rather than general approach taken. The focus on increasing pork supplies has already made a dramatic difference in limiting consumer prices, while metal price increases are being gradually limited and taking pressure from producers. The increase in pork supplies was accomplished by advanced technology applications from small producers and on. Technology applications in agriculture are advancing through the country.
Kevin Drum’s readers noted the rise in apparel prices and started a discussion blaming Trump’s tariffs. A few noted we increased sourcing from other nations which is confirmed by this story as well as Census data. We still import a lot of apparel and footwear but imports from China did fall in 2020. Making Vietnam Great Again?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/92percent-of-apparel-from-china-will-be-hit-with-tariffs-sundayhow-retailers-are-coping.html
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=FiJR
January 30, 2020
United States Imports of Goods from China and Vietnam, 2020-2021
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=FiJR
January 30, 2020
United States Imports of Goods from China and Vietnam, 2020-2021
(Indexed to 2020)