Notes from the front of 12-03-2018
*** Trump’s protectionism: Aiming at China, killing jobs
*** Trump’s concedes to talk directly with North Korea
United States
New turbulence on US financial markets shows the limits on US growth under Trump
On Friday 2 February sharp turmoil, which had been building for some time, shook US financial markets.
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The rehabilitation of Trump – stepping up the economic offensive
Donald Trump used his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on 26 January to set the agenda for a new offensive against the working class and oppressed globally, by rallying the bourgeoisie to a virulent neo-liberal framework.
The significance of the Tet Offensive
On 31 January 1968 news broke of a huge wave of attacks across South Vietnam on US and South Vietnamese positions by the Vietnamese national liberation forces, including an assault on the US embassy compound in the south’s capital Saigon.
Trump’s tax cut – short term gain, long term pain for the US economy
To assess the impact of the Trump tax cut on the US economy it is necessary to analyse the interrelation of two processes:
The determinants of US economic growth in the medium/long term,
The short-term position of the US economy in the current business cycle
Trump’s tour of Asia: an emperor with no clothes
By Jude Woodward
Despite the razzamatazz of Trump’s visit to Asia, the verdict of the international news media was unanimous: the trip had simply served to underline the US’s declining influence in Asia; a decline that Trump is blamed for accelerating by ceding leadership to China on the crucial issues of contemporary geopolitics: trade, climate change, development and multilateral agreements.