The Korea Herald

[Robert J. Fouser] After the US midterm elections

The results of the recent midterm elections in the US were as predicted. Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives, and Republicans retained control over the Senate. Democrats did slightly better than expected in the House of Representatives, but Republicans did slightly better in the Senate. The election fit closely with the historical pattern of the party of the incumbent president losing seats but fell short of being a wave election that gave control of both houses of Congr

Nov. 20, 2018

[Robert J. Fouser] After the US midterm elections

[Andrew Polk] Why stimulus isn’t working in China

China’s vaunted economic managers aren’t infallible -- and they’re currently making a familiar mistake. They are trying to accomplish too many objectives simultaneously, many of which conflict with each other. Instead of engineering a recovery, the resulting confused policy mix is only feeding a growing feeling of uncertainty among Chinese markets, businesses and households. That will continue to depress growth in China -- and the global economy -- in 2019. To be sure, Chinese leaders deserve so

Nov. 20, 2018

[Mihir Sharma] India can’t keep dodging trade deals

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, is not a “competitor” to the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- or, as it’s now known after adding the adjectives “comprehensive” and “progressive,” the CPTPP. Yes, the CPTPP very obviously excludes the People’s Republic of China while the RCEP does not. But, unlike the former, the RCEP is a more traditional sort of trade deal, in which tariff cuts on tradeable goods -- rather than high standards for labor, environmental and intellectual-proper

Nov. 20, 2018

[Hal Brands] Environment and economy have become great-power pawns

In recent years, we have seen the renewal of a phenomenon that seemed to have passed into history with the end of the Cold War: fierce and potentially violent competition between the most powerful countries on the globe. Yet as dangerous as that competition is in its own right, it is also worsening prospects for solving many of the world’s other problems, from migration to economic crises to climate change.Relations between the great powers -- the US and its allies on the one hand, and revisioni

Nov. 20, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Two inscrutable things in Korea for foreigners

Famous American poet William Carlos Williams was a pediatrician, so he thought of poetry as spiritual medicine that healed wounded souls. Interestingly enough, his contemporary, poet Wallace Stevens, was a lawyer, so he thought of poetry as a quest for the order of the universe. Another American poet, T.S. Eliot, was a banker who regarded poetry as spiritual wealth and treasure. Recently, one of my Spanish friends asked me, “In Korea, how could musicians hold a picket, demanding severer punishme

Nov. 20, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Two inscrutable things in Korea for foreigners

[Adam Minter] China’s rules on genes are too tight

China caused consternation in the tech world by walling off its internet, blocking foreign cloud-computing firms and forcing companies to store data locally if they want to operate on the mainland: Many fear a full-fledged balkanization of the internet. The worry now is that something similar may be happening in cutting-edge gene research.Late last month, in a move that’s largely been overlooked outside the scientific community, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology announced it had sanctio

Nov. 19, 2018

[Adam Minter] China’s rules on genes are too tight

[Trudy Rubin] China’s future weapon vs. America: Its growing middle class

They shop in malls and high-end supermarkets, buy condos by the seaside, attend wine tastings, vacation abroad, and push their kids to apply to Harvard. But they aren’t American suburbanites; they are China’s huge and growing urban middle class, which Beijing hopes will eventually consume enough to lower the country’s dependence on exports.Whatever the outcome of the US-China trade war -- and any tete-a-tete between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping at the upcoming G-20 meeting in Argentina -- Chi

Nov. 19, 2018

[Trudy Rubin] China’s future weapon vs. America: Its growing middle class

[Pankaj Mishra] Can Malaysia save democracy?

Political revolts around the world have targeted what are widely seen as corrupt and unaccountable political and business elite -- the elite that pursue their own interests globally at the expense of ordinary citizens and regulatory regimes in nation-states. The result has often been the elevation of demagogues stoking xenophobic passions against not only the elite, but minorities and immigrants. Yet one case -- Malaysia -- shows that demagoguery doesn’t have to be the inevitable consequence of

Nov. 19, 2018

[Anne O. Krueger] Trump’s protectionist quagmire

After World War II, the United States led the world in reducing protectionist barriers and establishing an open, rules-based trade system. That effort resulted in a half-century of the most rapid economic growth in human history. But US President Donald Trump’s administration is now reversing that progress. The protectionism that Trump has unleashed is contagious and will likely spread well beyond the industries that he wants to insulate from foreign competition.Consider imported steel, which th

Nov. 19, 2018

[Martin Schram] Trump’s Mueller fixation may be reality based

Sooner or later, every president experiences fleeting feelings that he’s somehow accomplished the geometrically impossible feat of painting himself into a corner of his Oval Office.Along with the Marine band’s ceremonial “Hail to the Chief” and the military aide toting the nuclear-code “football,” feelings of entrapment come with the job.But these days, US President Donald Trump is looking, sounding and behaving as if he’s feeling like those white oval walls are closing in, a little more each da

Nov. 19, 2018

[Adam Minter] How to top the charts in China

American pop star Ariana Grande had every reason to expect that her new single, “Thank U, Next,” would race to the top of the US charts when it was released earlier this month. When she checked iTunes after its release, though, she met with a surprise. Kris Wu, a superstar in China, not only had the No. 1 spot on the iTunes’ singles chart but also seven of the top 10 songs. It was an extraordinary achievement for an artist with almost no North American profile, and Grande and her camp weren’t bu

Nov. 18, 2018

[Adam Minter] How to top the charts in China

[David Ignatius] America’s overt payback for China’s covert espionage

While the bombastic US-China “trade war” has been getting the headlines, US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have been waging a quieter battle to combat Chinese theft of trade secrets from American companies -- a practice so widespread that even China trade boosters regard it as egregious. The Trump administration’s much-ballyhooed campaign of tariffs will eventually produce some version of a truce -- economists say that any other result would amount to a mutual suicide pact. But the ba

Nov. 18, 2018

[David Ignatius] America’s overt payback for China’s covert espionage

[Michael Schuman] Xi Jinping, not Trump, is the true cold warrior

The US-China trade war is looking more and more like a cold war. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, crackdown on alleged Chinese theft of American technology, and rhetoric have overturned decades of US foreign policy that had prioritized cooperation. Meanwhile, his counterpart Xi Jinping hasn’t budged on any concessions. China experts worry that relations between the world’s two most important countries have reached a turning point.Trump usually gets the blame (or credit, depending on where you s

Nov. 18, 2018

[Justin Fox] Healing the nation’s wounds with parks and libraries

There’s this new park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it’s amazing. I went on a weekday afternoon last month expecting calm and quiet and instead encountered thousands of people, mostly families with kids. It was the first public-school break since the Gathering Place, as the park is called, had opened Sept. 8, and it seemed like everybody in and around Tulsa had decided to check it out.My fellow park visitors, while skewed toward youth, were of many different ages, races, ethnic backgrounds, sizes, hai

Nov. 18, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Europe’s losing credibility on Iran sanctions

European Union leaders have long called for the bloc to behave more independently and strengthen its international role. Their failure to build a way to bypass US sanctions on Iran has brutally exposed how far they are from that goal.In September, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s top foreign policy official, announced plans for a special-purpose vehicle to keep some trade with Iran flowing with Europe. The hope was to keep the 2015 Iran nuclear deal alive after it was abandoned by the Trump administ

Nov. 18, 2018

[David Ignatius] The world is adapting to the reality of Donald Trump as president

One of the assumptions that economists sometimes use to frame their models is to specify that some variables will be held constant, a concept that’s expressed with the Latin phrase “ceteris paribus.” We often make the same mistake in politics and foreign policy. We concentrate on our own domestic issues and assume that the rest of the world will remain fixed while we sort them out. We’ll get back to you later, in 2021, say. But the world moves on. It’s dynamic, not static: Erratic changes in one

Nov. 15, 2018

[David Ignatius] The world is adapting to the reality of Donald Trump as president

[Noah Smith] NIMBY backlash against Amazon’s HQ2

Splitting Amazon’s second headquarters between Queens and the Virginia suburbs of Washington was probably not the best decision from a social perspective. Added traffic will strain already crowded local infrastructure, and New York and Washington are already highly productive cities with thriving technology economies. For the country as a whole, Amazon’s decision represents a missed opportunity.That said, critics of HQ2 go too far when they paint the investment as a disaster for local residents.

Nov. 15, 2018

[Supalak Ganjanakhundee] Tussle with China in Mekong basin

Countries in the Mekong basin, notably those located in the lower part of the river -- Asia’s seventh longest -- are in need of a collective strategy to secure their future, given China’s control of the upstream part and ongoing changes in global geopolitics.The 4,909-kilometer river runs from Tibet in China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But only its lower portion is regulated by an international agreement and an organization.The lower part is popularly known as Mekong w

Nov. 14, 2018

[Supalak Ganjanakhundee] Tussle with China in Mekong basin

[Eli Lake] NK's missile work not surprising

Ever since he met with Kim Jong-un last June in Singapore, US President Donald Trump has spoken of his North Korean summitry with pride. The nuclear crisis, he has assured the world, is defused. Diplomacy continues. Sanctions remain.Experts have known for some time that these talking points were shaky. On Monday, analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies proved it. The center released a report using commercial satellite imagery to show that North Korea continues to work on i

Nov. 14, 2018

[Eli Lake] NK's missile work not surprising

[Peter Singer] Are you buying oil from Saudi Arabia?

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2 has focused attention on the Saudi regime, and especially on its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In large part, this is because Turkey’s government has kept the episode in the international spotlight.At first, Saudi officials said that Khashoggi had left the consulate. But with the Turkish government revealing lurid details of the murder, they finally acknowledged that he had died, claiming his death

Nov. 14, 2018