[Jon Healey] No, Mr. President, China is still not paying tariffs

President Donald Trump seems perpetually confused about who pays the tariffs of 10 percent to 25 percent that he’s imposed on imported goods. Either that, or he just won’t admit the truth: Trump’s tariffs are taxes on US purchasers, not foreign manufacturers. The issue came up again at the Oct. 22 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, after moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News teed up a question for the two candidates about China policy. Welker started with former Vice

Oct. 29, 2020

[David Fickling] Zero hour is coming for emissions, believe it

It’s only natural to be skeptical when a political leader stands up and makes a promise about a target that’s far off, hard to achieve, and lacks a clear pathway. So one reaction to a report that Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, will pledge next week to reduce the country’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 might be: Really? After all, public and private Japanese banks are still funding new coal-fired power stations in Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh, ex

Oct. 28, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Hurting people over political ideologies

So many of us these days cling to a particular political ideology to which we religiously subscribe. Then, almost as a matter of course, we build a faction of like-minded people and flock together, while excluding and discriminating against others. Once this occurs, it naturally follows that we begin to impose our ideology on others, forcing them to join our camp. Then, if they refuse, we wage war with them and lead witch hunts against them as if they are archenemies and heretics. Such is the sa

Oct. 28, 2020

[Andy Mukherjee] To retire rich, don’t leave too much to your kids

Like self-improvement books, the purpose of pension adequacy surveys is to make us feel lousy about ourselves.　 Lousy and scared: We haven’t saved enough because we’re myopic and lack self-control. We don’t have a retirement plan, and it’s getting late.　 And the nagging chases us right into our graves. At the back of our minds, there’s always the guilt that we should be leaving something -- actually, a lot -- to our children. So perhaps we shouldn’t bother h

Oct. 27, 2020

[Kevin Pham] What we’ve learned about COVID-19

As the pandemic wears on, month after month, it’s easy to assume nothing much has changed. But it has. We’re making more progress than many people may realize. Take Regeneron. President Donald Trump recently spoke of his efforts to usher this new therapeutic drug through the process for emergency use authorization and to make it available to the public, free of charge. This synthetic antibody medication was part of the president’s treatment plan when he was recently sickened w

Oct. 27, 2020

[Trudy Rubin] Biden would rescue foreign policy from ego and tweets

There has been little focus on foreign policy in the election campaign, and the debates didn’t much help. Maybe that’s because Donald Trump’s most intense foreign policy concern has been with Hunter Biden’s business interests abroad. But a look back at four years of Trump’s America First performance leads me to this conclusion: An imperfect Joe Biden is better suited to cope with a world in crisis than an erratic President Trump. Nothing better illustrates Trump&

Oct. 26, 2020

[Ana Palacio] A hope for Post-Trump world order

With the US presidential election nearing its apotheosis, predictions about what will come after are dominating discussions well beyond the United States. When it comes to international relations, forecasts range from apocalyptic to cautiously optimistic. But what is needed is an actual way forward, grounded in realism. By realism, I don’t mean the “realist” approach to international relations, which emphasizes the role of sovereign states as self-interested actors. By that st

Oct. 26, 2020

[Robert J. Fouser] It’s Biden’s election to lose

With a little more than a week to go in the US presidential election campaign, Joe Biden maintains a steady lead over President Donald Trump. For all the shocks and instability of 2020, Biden’s lead has been remarkably steady. Few races in recent history have been this stable. In late October 2019, the average of polls on the RealClearPolitics site, had Biden at 50 percent and Trump at 43 percent. A year later, the same average had Biden at 51 percent and Trump at 42.5 percent. During tha

Oct. 23, 2020

[Noah Smith] Time for some American optimism

Octavia Butler’s classic futurist novel “Parable of the Sower” recently made the New York Times bestseller list for the first time. It depicts an America falling apart at the seams due to violence, economic decline, and governmental dysfunction. But despite the chaos, the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, spends much of her time thinking about space exploration. Faced with a dystopian Earth, she motivates herself and her followers to survive by dreaming of the stars. Today, the US

Oct. 22, 2020

[Kim Myong-sik] Han Dong-hoon, symbol of sick prosecution system

An old Chinese saying goes: Cook the dog after catching the hare. This may be applied to the current turmoil in the state prosecution organization involving Prosecutor-General Yoon Suk-youl and Chief Prosecutor Han Dong-hoon who now face open pressure from Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae to leave the service. During the early days of the Moon Jae-in presidency, Yoon and Han were used as the warriors of law in the new administration’s purges on what were left over from the past conservative a

Oct. 22, 2020

[Francis Wilkinson] Paradoxical potential of Biden presidency

If Joe Biden enters the White House on the afternoon of Jan. 20, there is reason to expect that intraparty conflicts will come racing to the fore: between the Democratic left and Democratic moderates; between multicultural, debt-laden youth and Whiter, more affluent, suburbanites; between the alternate Sanders/AOC ticket and the actual Biden/Harris ticket. It’s also possible that Biden might succeed in having an awful lot of his political cake and eating it, too. US politics has changed

Oct. 21, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Seven baffling things in Korea

There are a myriad of enigmatic things happening in Korea these days, whether in the North or the South. For example, North Korea confuses us by showing us a friendly gesture recently, while displaying deadly weapons that can strike the South in a military parade. In South Korea, too, we are witnessing a plethora of sphinxlike things of late One of the inscrutable things in South Korea is the recent tendency of political parties to change their names continually. In fact, this phenomenon of pol

Oct. 21, 2020

[Andreas Kluth] International law can’t solve Greco-Turkish island problem

Kastellorizo is one of those places that might become a cause for war even though most people couldn’t find it on a map. The combatants would be Greece and Turkey, formally NATO “allies” but in reality perennial foes since the sloppy unraveling of the Ottoman Empire. And their war would be less about the island as such than about the Mediterranean waters said to belong to it. That’s because underneath the sea bed, there may be lots of oil and gas. Kastellorizo derives

Oct. 20, 2020

[David Fickling] Lesson in Ardern landslide victory

  For governments facing a growing wave of coronavirus cases as fall turns to winter, there’s a stark lesson in Saturday’s stunning election victory for New Zealand’s incumbent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: Voters really want their governments to suppress the pandemic. A landslide victory means Ardern could govern with the first outright majority since her country adopted proportional representation in the 1990s, with her Labour party on track to win the largest share of

Oct. 20, 2020

[H.R. McMaster] US foreign policy took a narcissistic turn after the Cold War. Here’s how to set things right

In 1989 I was a captain in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in West Germany. Our regiment patrolled a stretch of the Iron Curtain that divided democracies and dictatorships. That November, the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain parted. The United States and the free world had triumphed over communist totalitarianism without firing a shot. The Soviet Union soon broke apart. Just over a year later, those same cavalry troopers helped kick Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait. In

Oct. 19, 2020

[Andy Mukherjee] The next China? India must first beat Bangladesh

India’s COVID-19 economic gloom turned into despair last week, on news that its per capita gross domestic product may be lower for 2020 than in neighboring Bangladesh. “Any emerging economy doing well is good news,” Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist, tweeted after the International Monetary Fund updated its World Economic Outlook. “But it’s shocking that India, which had a lead of 25 percent five years ago, is now trailing.” Ever since it beg

Oct. 19, 2020

[Serendipity] Magical evening at the palace

An unseasonal cold snap did little to deter hundreds of people, young and old, from taking in the enchanting view of Gyeongbokgung at night on Wednesday. The colorful dancheong that decorate the palace buildings seemed to shimmer in the warm glow of the lights and the trees that have weathered numerous changes of seasons, illuminated from below, seemed to come to life. “This is the first time in my life that I am here at night,” I overheard a woman tell her friend as they kept thei

Oct. 16, 2020

[David Fickling] China’s coal import ban has more bark than bite

Remember in June when China called a halt to purchases of US soybeans and then stopped buying US soybeans? Or last year, when China blocked imports of Australian coal and then stopped buying Australian coal? Yeah, me neither. That’s the way to think about Beijing’s latest “ban” on Australian coal. China has suspended purchases and told power stations and steel mills to stop using product sourced from its trading partner, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg New

Oct. 16, 2020

[Lee Kyong-hee] Legacy of a pioneer feminist thinker and activist

The news of the death of famed feminist scholar and activist Lee Hyo-jae last week brought back a memory from the early 1980s. I met her briefly at the house of a friend of mine, where she was hiding, in the wake of the civil uprising in Gwangju. She was among the pro-democracy intellectuals wanted by the Chun Doo-hwan regime, which had concocted a case against them for supporting the then opposition politician Kim Dae-jung’s “sedition and conspiracy.” It was a precarious tim

Oct. 15, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] South Korea through the eyes of a doctor and an AI prophet

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a summary of Dr. In Yohan’s speech on the current situation of South Korea. Dr. In, also known as John Linton, is the son of an American missionary who built churches, schools and hospitals here before South Korea began its modernization. Dr. In is a renowned medical doctor and professor who loves South Korea so much that he has lived here all his life. According to the summary, Dr. In visited North Korea some time ago. In the car headed for Pyongyang, h

Oct. 14, 2020