The Korea Herald

[Michael R. Strain] Protect the gains made by low-skilled workers

The US economy is less than one year away from breaking the record for the longest expansion in the country‘s history. Despite the length of the recovery from the Great Recession, data from the middle two quarters of 2018 suggest the economy is still growing with considerable strength. It is on track to grow around 3 percent for the year, about an entire percentage point above estimates of its maximum sustainable rate of growth.This strength is reflected in the job market, which continues to exp

Nov. 6, 2018

[Shang-Jin Wei] The reforms China needs

This year marks a decade since the global financial crisis erupted. For the United States, 2018 is very different from 2008. The economy has gone from the brink of collapse to the brink of overheating, thanks to a massive tax cut. The attitude toward China has also changed dramatically. Recognition that cooperation with China was necessary to manage global demand has given way to protectionism and hostility.Yet, for China, 2018 feels similar to 2008 in an important way: negative shocks originati

Nov. 5, 2018

[Mihir Sharma] Can central banks survive the age of populism?

Is central bank independence the next casualty of the age of populism? In the US, President Donald Trump has declared that the Federal Reserve is “going loco.” He blames Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for threatening “his” recovery and for market volatility caused in part by uncertainty over the trade war Trump himself started.In India, reports emerged this week that the government might invoke a never-before-used section of the law governing the Reserve Bank of India to force it to reverse course o

Nov. 5, 2018

[Park Sang-seek] Transformation of Korean culture from collectivism to egotism

The main pillar of traditional Korean culture was collectivism. Collectivism in the Korean context can be defined as a culture based on the hierarchical social structure which subjugates the individual rights to the collective goods of society. This cultural structure is diametrically opposite to the Western cultural structure based on the egalitarian social structure which emphasizes that the collective goods are to serve the individual’s rights, not vice versa.After Korea regained independence

Nov. 5, 2018

[Park Sang-seek] Transformation of Korean culture from collectivism to egotism

[Shannon O’Neil] Latin America’s coming family feud

Mexico and Brazil have a long-simmering rivalry, each aspiring to lead Latin America. Now, as two strong-willed outsiders take office as president in each country, tensions that have been more or less innocuous could escalate, with negative consequences for the entire region.Consider the passive-aggressive diplomatic game Mexico and Brazil have often played. In global forums, each rarely votes in favor of the other: Brazil endorsed France’s Christine Lagarde over Mexico’s Agustin Carstens for th

Nov. 5, 2018

[David Ignatius] Mattis walks the Trump tightrope over sending US troops to border

When President Trump issues an election-time order to send up to 15,000 troops to confront what many experts say is a non-existent threat on the US-Mexico border, what should Defense Secretary Jim Mattis do about it?Mattis’ answer, so far, has been to support the president and mostly keep his mouth shut. He gruffly batted back a reporter’s question Wednesday about whether Trump’s troop deployment order was a political stunt by saying, “We don’t do stunts in this department.” Unfortunately, some

Nov. 5, 2018

[June H.L. Wong] Silenced like lambs

Just as bosses hate dealing with difficult employees, governments hate difficult citizens.Employers as a last resort can sack their recalcitrant staff, but that’s not an option for governments, much as they may wish to strip away their detractors’ citizenship.Generally speaking, governments in states with working democracies -- meaning there are strong enough institutions like an independent judiciary and free press to check those in power -- have to suffer the inconvenience and irritation of f

Nov. 4, 2018

[Bloomberg] New direction for China’s Belt and Road

“To get rich, first build a road” is one of those Chinese proverbs that tends to impress foreigners -- evoking a combination of farsightedness and concern for practicalities. As China is discovering with its globe-spanning “Belt and Road” project, though, the world doesn’t always play along. The initiative has run into trouble, and its success now depends on revisiting both the vision and the details.Five years ago Chinese President Xi Jinping began promoting a network of Chinese-financed roads,

Nov. 4, 2018

[Eli Lake] Trump bank sanctions will hit Iran where it hurts

For the last month, it looked as though President Donald Trump’s campaign of maximum pressure against Iran would include a loophole.Sanctions on Iran’s banks, oil exports, ships and ports, lifted in 2015 as part of a nuclear weapons agreement that Trump exited in May, were set to be reimposed on Monday. But it was not clear until Friday whether those banks would be allowed to participate in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. That is the system that allows

Nov. 4, 2018

[Eli Lake] Trump bank sanctions will hit Iran where it hurts

[Noah Feldman] Google walkout a new kind of worker activism

The global walkout by Google workers, a response to parent company Alphabet’s reported protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct, may be a harbinger of something new in employer-employee relations: empowered workers’ moral-political protests directed as much against the general culture as against management.Although the walkout is connected in a broad sense to workplace conditions, this is not the trade union strike of old. Google’s workers are mainly professionals: engineers, not la

Nov. 4, 2018

[Christopher Balding] China’s fighting the wrong battle for the yuan

As the US dollar hits highs for the year, the People’s Bank of China seems determined to hold the value of the yuan at 7-to-1, or stronger. This barrier holds little technical significance, but its psychological value and the central bank’s interest in holding the line are enormous.While it’s difficult to confirm, there’s strong evidence that the PBOC is managing prices in the foreign-exchange market. Renminbi forward rates are essentially unchanged from spot rates extending out as far as three

Nov. 4, 2018

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Italy’s economic horror show starts now

Italy’s horror show has just started -- and it’s bound to get worse.The country’s economy stagnated in the third quarter, according to figures released on Tuesday. The slowdown may be part of a wider trend: The eurozone economy expanded by a meager 0.2 percent in same three months. But it’s clear that the uncertainty which has accompanied the rise to power of Italy’s populist government has started to take its toll.The deceleration will throw a spanner in the plans of Finance Minister Giovanni T

Nov. 1, 2018

[Noah Feldman] Birthright citizenship puts Trump judges in a bind

Whatever he’s being told by his lawyers, President Donald Trump can’t use an executive order to deny birthright citizenship to US-born children of undocumented parents. The Constitution puts Congress, not the president, in charge of citizenship.Federal law says that “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” counts as a citizen. That language on its face covers all kids born in the US.What’s more, the statute intentionally echoes the 14th Amendment, which says,

Nov. 1, 2018

[Noah Feldman] Birthright citizenship puts Trump judges in a bind

[David Ignatius] In Pittsburgh, ‘Hate has no home here’

From a distance, the Tree of Life Synagogue now looks like another American crime scene. Police tape blocks off the Wilkins Avenue entrance of the temple, and patrol cars guard the perimeter with flashing lights.But just at the yellow-tape barrier, the closest spot to the horror of what happened here Saturday, people have left hundreds of bouquets of flowers, cards and posters with a repeated message: We come in grief and solidarity; we speak for a community that will resist the hatred that kill

Oct. 31, 2018

[David Ignatius] In Pittsburgh, ‘Hate has no home here’

[Trudy Rubin] Will China eclipse US in high-tech innovation by 2025?

One reason for the fashionable fear that Beijing is out to overtake America is the worry that China will soon outstrip the United States in key areas of technology.Chinese President Xi Jinping fanned this fear with his Made in China 2025 pledge to catch up with the US in 10 critical areas of tech by the middle of the next decade, including automation and artificial intelligence. Add to that the incidents of Chinese theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer from multinational

Oct. 31, 2018

[Trudy Rubin] Will China eclipse US in high-tech innovation by 2025?

[Filipe Campante] Brazil’s new president faces few constraints

Now that voters have elected former army captain Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s new president, the country’s democracy will face a stern test. The most important question is: Can Brazilian institutions withstand the threat posed by the man’s well-documented authoritarian and illiberal streaks?Brazil transitioned to democracy more than 30 years ago, an evolution that seemed largely to have been consolidated -- witness Operation Carwash’s successful anti-corruption investigations of powerful politicia

Oct. 31, 2018

[Mihir Sharma] Sri Lanka’s not for sale

Most people in the island nation of Sri Lanka and its Asian neighbors were stunned last week when President Maithripala Sirisena dismissed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe -- and replaced him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the populist strongman who had ruled Sri Lanka for a decade before the scrappy alliance between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe forced him out of power in 2015. It was a shock not just because the move was almost certainly unconstitutional -- in Sri Lanka, a prime minister can only be

Oct. 31, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Don’t write off Merkel just yet

I have warned repeatedly against writing off Chancellor Angela Merkel as she faced challenge after challenge in recent years. I’m going to issue another such warning now, even though it might seem counterintuitive given her announcement Monday that she’d give up the leadership of her Christian Democratic Union in December and not run for a parliament seat in 2021.Those decisions make Merkel a lame duck. They also make it more obvious than ever that she risks ending her final term as chancellor b

Oct. 31, 2018

[Lee Jae-min] Long overdue: Refugee review system overhaul

Hypothetically, visualize yourself fleeing your home country for fear of life. To make it out of the country, you would diligently throw away and destroy documents and materials relating to your identification or association. If successful, you would arrive in a foreign country, almost empty-handed and paperless. Then comes the dilemmatic part – how do you prove the circumstances that forced you to flee? The last thing you would do is contact agencies back home or consulates general abroad for i

Oct. 30, 2018

[Lee Jae-min] Long overdue: Refugee review system overhaul

[Kim Seong-kon] What we can learn from other countries

When I was 12, I left home for a broader world. Thus I came to know early on that there were other peoples and other lands in this world and that there were many things I could learn from them. Ever since, that realization has made me open-minded and global, far from being jingoistic or parochial. For that reason, I am ever grateful to my parents for having sent me to a boarding school in a foreign place where I learned to survive alone in an unfamiliar environment when I was young. Thanks to th

Oct. 30, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] What we can learn from other countries