The Korea Herald

[Anne O. Krueger] Trump’s anti-service economy

In the 19th century, more than 70 percent of American workers were farmers. By 2017, that figure was under 2 percent. In 1970, about 32 percent of private employment was in goods-producing industries. By 2018, that figure was 13.5 percent. The dynamic sectors of the American economy are in services, though US President Donald Trump, with his fixation on old manufacturing industries, does not seem to have grasped that.Just as manufacturing companies comprised the most rapidly growing industries i

Dec. 17, 2018

[Anne O. Krueger] Trump’s anti-service economy

[Christopher Balding] China faces dilemma as pressure for stimulus rises

China’s top leaders meet this week in Beijing to set economic policy objectives for the coming year. The central question is whether they will do what they want or what the country needs. Clear evidence has emerged in the past couple of months that the Chinese economy is slowing to an uncomfortable degree. That’s raised expectations that the leadership will opt for significant stimulus at the Central Economic Work Conference, which Bloomberg News has reported will be held Wednesday to Friday.Pre

Dec. 17, 2018

[Nicole Brodeur] Wins for women in reproductive health care

Christmas is days away, but women got a couple of early presents -- one from local medical researchers and the other from the highest court in the US.I would say, “You shouldn’t have,” but here’s my truth: “What took you so long?”The first gift is a contraceptive gel for men being tested by the University of Washington. When applied daily on the upper arms or shoulders, it can effectively reduce sperm production within eight to 16 weeks -- taking some of the birth-control burden off women’s shou

Dec. 17, 2018

[Hal Brands] Chinese money has American universities in a bind

The arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada at the request of the US has further ramped up the tension and rancor between Washington and Beijing. It is also forcing a reckoning about the role of Chinese money in America.Members of the Twitterverse have begun to point out that certain US think tanks have accepted money from Huawei, which the US government considers to be linked to China’s intelligence apparatus. Yet they are not the only academic and research instituti

Dec. 16, 2018

[Hal Brands] Chinese money has American universities in a bind

[Noah Smith] Why Japan needs criminal-justice reform

Japan’s police recently threw the chairman of Nissan Motor Co. into a jail cell. Carlos Ghosn, a Brazilian-born executive with French and Lebanese citizenship, has been accused of falsifying financial reports and hiding $44 million of personal income.Ghosn is unlikely to receive anything resembling justice. Officially, under Japanese law, a suspect can be held and questioned for 23 days without being charged. During this time he can be interrogated for as long as eight hours a day with no lawyer

Dec. 16, 2018

[David Fickling] Trade war’s too broad to turn on quick fixes

Count the straws in the wind, and it looks like the trade tensions between the US and China could be moving closer to a resolution. Don’t relax just yet, though.　Beijing will delay by a decade some of the targets in its Made in China 2025 program to move into high-technology industries, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News last week. The news comes on the heels of a Reuters report that PetroChina Ltd.’s parent, China National Petroleum Corp., has suspended investment in Iran’s Sou

Dec. 16, 2018

[David Fickling] Trade war’s too broad to turn on quick fixes

[Kevin Rudd] Prospects for US-China relations in 2019

Throughout 2018, much of Asia has been shaken by the new and increasingly unpredictable dynamics in Sino-American relations. One year ago, US President Donald Trump returned from Beijing after his “state-plus” visit, which China hoped had finally laid his anti-Chinese campaign rhetoric to rest. Twelve months later, China and the United States are caught in an unresolved trade war, and Trump’s administration has replaced US “strategic engagement” with China with “strategic competition.”So what ar

Dec. 16, 2018

[David Ignatius] Republicans failed to govern, but Democrats have a chance to succeed

Last week was a vivid demonstration of the inability of conservatives to deliver results after the great populist revolts in 2016 in Britain and America. And it showed that there is a golden opportunity for liberals in both countries to tackle the public concerns that motivated the mistaken decisions to vote for Brexit and Donald Trump. To put it bluntly, the Tories under Prime Minister Theresa May and the Republicans under President Trump have failed as governing parties. That’s because they ca

Dec. 16, 2018

[David Ignatius] For Taiwan, ‘status quo’ an increasingly delicate balancing act

If you like betting on embattled underdogs, President Tsai Ing-wen is worth a look. She’s tempting the wrath of her powerful neighbor in mainland China by arguing that Taiwan must maintain its own open culture, democratic values and, yes, its sovereignty. Tsai is a petite woman, dressed in a plain black suit, who speaks the careful language of a Cornell-educated lawyer. But her low-key message of self-determination makes her something of a rebel in an Asia where China’s autocratic President Xi J

Dec. 13, 2018

[David Ignatius] For Taiwan, ‘status quo’ an increasingly delicate balancing act

[Jeffrey D. Sachs] The war on Huawei

The arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is a dangerous move by US President Donald Trump’s administration in its intensifying conflict with China. If, as Mark Twain said, history often rhymes, our era increasingly recalls the period preceding 1914. As with Europe’s great powers back then, the United States, led by an administration intent on asserting America’s dominance over China, is pushing the world toward disaster.The context of the arrest matters enormously. The US requested that Canada arre

Dec. 13, 2018

[Rachel Marsden] Saudi influence on US foreign policy may be coming to an end

One of the US military-industrial complex’s longest-running foreign-war charades may soon come to an end despite objections from the White House. What’s puzzling is why President Donald Trump isn’t standing up for the values on which he campaigned: withdrawal from useless foreign conflicts, and “America First.”The country at issue is Yemen. Why on earth would American taxpayers want their country to be involved in war there? Spoiler alert: There are no American interests in Yemen beyond the mili

Dec. 13, 2018

[Cass R Sunstein] When impeachment is mandatory

Suppose that within the next few months, it becomes clear that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Does the House of Representatives have discretion to decide whether to impeach him? Or does the constitution require it to do so?The simplest answer, and the best, is that the constitution requires the House to do so.To avoid political bias, let’s bracket all questions associated with President Trump, put current events to one side, and assume that some future president commi

Dec. 13, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] EU is playing Trump just like it played Brexiters

The Trump administration has pulled out all the stops to attack the European Union. Realizing its relative weakness, the EU hasn’t tried a muscular response. Instead, it has used the same tactic as it did with Britain’s Brexiters.On Tuesday, the US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, accused Europe of disregarding all the goodwill built up since the Marshall Plan and of frustrating US efforts to redress the trade imbalance.“What we have done for Europe since the end of World War II speaks for

Dec. 13, 2018

[Eli Lake] Google’s China problem is America’s China problem

When employees first learned of the Google project known as Dragonfly, there was an internal uprising.It is easy to see why. The project, a search engine for China, would not only help a totalitarian regime censor the web, it could also track internet users. Thousands of Googlers eventually went public with their opposition, signing an open letter in protest of the project. Is it any surprise that a company that canceled a contract with the Pentagon to sort through drone video images would be qu

Dec. 12, 2018

[Eli Lake] Google’s China problem is America’s China problem

[Tyler Cowen] How Meng Wanzhou’s arrest might backfire

I am concerned by Canada’s recent arrest and possible extradition of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. Meng was traveling in Canada, switching planes using a Chinese passport, when she was taken into custody. If sent to the US, she would face charges of trying to defraud US financial institutions, each carrying a maximum sentence of 30 years. And because of potential flight risk, she is not an obvious candidate for bail. It is quite possible that her life as she knew it simply has end

Dec. 12, 2018

[Tyler Cowen] How Meng Wanzhou’s arrest might backfire

[Kim Young-suck] Song of peace for 200th anniversary of ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’

On the Dec. 24, 1818, the Christmas carol “Silent Night, Holy Night” was created by two friends, Franz Xaver Gruber, an organist, and Rev. Joseph Mohr, a priest at the St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. The song was first performed by the church choir with the accompaniment of a guitar at the Christmas Eve mass at the St. Nicholas Church.In December 1914, not long after the outbreak of World War I, the allied forces of the French and English armies fought against German armies day after

Dec. 12, 2018

[Letter to the Editor] Feminism debate a step forward

I disagree with San E’s priorities in regards to feminism, but it seems like a good amount of his opposition is based on misinterpretation. His initial release of “Feminist” is him playing a character, and much of his criticism is constructed as if those lyrics are a literal expression of his ideals. Instead, the track is a satire of men who pretend to be feminists and internally resent the movement. To me, it didn’t reveal much about his direct views on feminism. His subsequent releases “6.9 cm

Dec. 12, 2018

[Robert B. Reich] Tip for Tariff Man

“I am a Tariff Man,” Trump tweeted last week. “When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. ... We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”　I’m sorry, Mr. President, but you got this wrong. Tariffs are paid by American consumers. About half the $200 billion worth of Chinese goods you’ve already put tariffs on come almost exclusively from China, which means American consumers are taking a

Dec. 12, 2018

[Jayati Ghosh] Political roots of falling wage growth

It’s now official: Workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1 percent in 2017, down from 1.8 percent in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.In the advanced G20 economies, average real wages grew by a mere 0.4 percent in 2017, compared with 1.7 percent growth in 2015. While real wages were up by 0.7 percent in the United States (v

Dec. 12, 2018

[Noah Smith] Huawei reveals real trade war with China

If you only scan the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US-China trade war is mainly about tariffs. After all, the president and trade-warrior-in-chief has called himself “Tariff Man.” And the tentative trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was mainly about tariffs, especially on items like automobiles.　But the startling arrest in Canada of a Chinese telecom company executive should wake people up to the fact that there’s a second US-Ch

Dec. 11, 2018