Monday, March 2, 2020

There are Trillions At Stake….


President Trump is disrupting decades of multinational financial interests who use the U.S. as a host for their ideological endeavors. President Trump is confronting multinational corporations and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to the detriment of the host (USA) ie. YOU. There are trillions at stake; it is all about the economics; all else is chaff and countermeasures.

credit: sundance at CTH

We are already familiar how China, Mexico and ASEAN nations export our raw materials (ore, coking coal, rare earth minerals etc.). The raw materials are used to manufacture goods overseas, the cheap durable goods are then shipped back into the U.S. for purchase.

It is within this decades-long process where we lost the manufacturing base, and the multinational economic planners (World Trade Organization) put us on a path to being a “service driven” economy.

The road to a “service-driven economy” is paved with a great disparity between financial classes. The wealth gap is directly related to the inability of the middle-class to thrive.

Elite financial interests, including those within Washington DC, gain wealth and power, the U.S. workforce is reduced to servitude, “service”, of their affluent needs.
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The destruction of the U.S. industrial and manufacturing base is EXACTLY WHY the wealth gap has exploded in the past 30 years.

The exact same exfiltration and exploitation has been happening, with increased speed, over the past 15-20 years with “CONSUMABLE GOODS“, ie food.  Raw material foodstuff is exported to China, ASEAN nations and Mexico, processed and shipped back into the U.S. as a finished product.

Recent example: Salmonella Ritz Bits (whey); Nabisco shuts New Jersey manufacturing plant, moves food production to Mexico… the result: Salmonella crackers.  This is the same design-flow with food as previously exploited by other economic sectors, including auto manufacturing.

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Monsanto, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Bunge, Potash Corp, Cargill or Wilmar, stay out of the public eye by design.  Most megafood conglomerates have roots going back a century or more, but ever-increasing consolidation means that their current corporate owners may have been established only a few years ago.  Welcome to the complex world of Big Ag:
Start with the so-called Big Six [PDF]. Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Bayer, and BASF produce roughly three-quarters of the pesticides used in the world. The first five also sell more than half the name-brand seeds that farmers plant, including varieties modified for resistance to the very pesticides they also sell. Meanwhile, if farmers want fertilizer, a list of 10 other companies, starting with PotashCorp, account for about two-thirds of the world market.
Once the plowing, planting, nurturing, and harvesting are done, around 80 percent of major crops pass through the hands of four traders: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus. These companies aren’t just financiers, of course—Cargill, for example, produces animal feed and many other products, and it supplies more than a fifth of all meat sold in the United States.
And if you ever had any ideas about going vegetarian to avoid the conglomerates, forget about it: ADM processes about a third of all soybeans in the United States and a sixth of those grown around the globe. It also brews more than 5.6 billion liters of ethanol for gasoline and pours more than 2 million metric tons of high-fructose corn syrup every year. And it produces a sixth of the world’s chocolate.  

Multinational corporations, BIG AG, are now invested in controlling the outputs of U.S. agricultural industry and farmers. This process is why food prices have risen exponentially in the past decade.

The free market is not determining price; there is no “supply and demand” influence within this modern agricultural dynamic. Food commodities are now a controlled market just like durable goods. The raw material (harvests writ large) are exploited by the financial interests of massive multinational corporations.  This is “contract farming”.

If U.S. supply and demand were the sole aspects of the domestic market price for food, we would see the prices of aggregate food products drop by half almost immediately. Some perishable food products would predictably drop so dramatically in price it is unfathomable how far the prices would fall.

Behind this dynamic we find the international corporate and financial interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s “America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not, President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.

When we understand how trade works in the modern era we understand why the agents within the system are so adamantly opposed to U.S. President Trump.

♦The biggest lie in modern economics, willingly spread and maintained by corporate media, is that a system of global markets still exists.

It doesn’t.


Every element of global economic trade is controlled and exploited by massive institutions, multinational banks and multinational corporations. Institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank control trillions of dollars in economic activity. Underneath that economic activity there are people who hold the reigns of power over the outcomes. These individuals and groups are the stakeholders in direct opposition to principles of America-First national economics.

The modern financial constructs of these entities have been established over the course of the past three decades. When you understand how they manipulate the economic system of individual nations you begin to understand understand why they are so fundamentally opposed to President Trump.

In the Western World, separate from communist control perspectives (ie. China), “Global markets” are a modern myth; nothing more than a talking point meant to keep people satiated with sound bites they might find familiar. Global markets have been destroyed over the past three decades by multinational corporations who control the products formerly contained within global markets.

The same is true for “Commodities Markets”. The multinational trade and economic system, run by corporations and multinational banks, now controls the product outputs of independent nations. The free market economic system has been usurped by entities who create what is best described as ‘controlled markets’.

U.S. President Trump smartly understands what has taken place. Additionally he uses economic leverage as part of a broader national security policy; and to understand who opposes President Trump specifically because of the economic leverage he creates, it becomes important to understand the objectives of the global and financial elite who run and operate the institutions. The Big Club.

Understanding how trillions of trade dollars influence geopolitical policy we begin to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect.

That is, global financial exploitation of national markets. 

FOUR BASIC ELEMENTS:

♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national outputs (harvests an raw materials), and ancillary industries, of developed industrial western nations. {example}

♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks. (*note* in China it is the communist government underwriting the purchase)

♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).

♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

Against the backdrop of President Trump confronting China; and against the backdrop of NAFTA having been replaced by the USMCA; and against the necessary need to support the key U.S. steel industry; revisiting the economic influences within the modern import/export dynamic will help conceptualize the issues at the heart of the matter.

There are a myriad of interests within each trade sector that make specific explanation very challenging; however, here’s the basic outline.

For three decades economic “globalism” has advanced, quickly. Everyone accepts this statement, yet few actually stop to ask who and what are behind this – and why?


Influential people with vested financial interests in the process have sold a narrative that global manufacturing, global sourcing, and global production was the inherent way of the future. The same voices claimed the American economy was consigned to become a “service-driven economy.”

What was always missed in these discussions is that advocates selling this global-economy message have a vested financial and ideological interest in convincing the information consumer it is all just a natural outcome of economic progress.
It’s not.

It’s not natural at all. It is a process that is entirely controlled, promoted and utilized by large conglomerates, lobbyists, purchased politicians and massive financial corporations.

Again, I’ll try to retain the larger altitude perspective without falling into the traps of the esoteric weeds. I freely admit this is tough to explain and I may not be successful.

Bulletpoint #1: ♦ Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.

This is perhaps the most challenging to understand. In essence, thanks specifically to the way the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995, national companies expanded their influence into multiple nations, across a myriad of industries and economic sectors (energy, agriculture, raw earth minerals, etc.). This is the basic underpinning of national companies becoming multinational corporations.

Think of these multinational corporations as global entities now powerful enough to reach into multiple nations -simultaneously- and purchase controlling interests in a single economic commodity.

A historic reference point might be the original multinational enterprise, energy via oil production. (Exxon, Mobil, BP, etc.)

However, in the modern global world, it’s not just oil; the resource and product procurement extends to virtually every possible commodity and industry. From the very visible (wheat/corn) to the obscure (small minerals, and even flowers).

Bulletpoint #2 ♦ The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.

During the past several decades national companies merged. The largest lemon producer company in Brazil, merges with the largest lemon company in Mexico, merges with the largest lemon company in Argentina, merges with the largest lemon company in the U.S., etc. etc. National companies, formerly of one nation, become “continental” companies with control over an entire continent of nations.

…. or it could be over several continents or even the entire world market of Lemon/Widget production. These are now multinational corporations. They hold interests in specific segments (this example lemons) across a broad variety of individual nations.

National laws on Monopoly building are not the same in all nations. Most are not as structured as the U.S.A or other more developed nations (with more laws). During the acquisition phase, when encountering a highly developed nation with monopoly laws, the process of an umbrella corporation might be needed to purchase the targeted interests within a specific nation. The example of Monsanto applies here.


Bulletpoint #3 ♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).

With control of the majority of actual lemons the multinational corporation now holds a different set of financial values than a local farmer or national market. This is why commodities exchanges are essentially dead. In the aggregate the mercantile exchange is no longer a free or supply-based market; it is now a controlled market exploited by mega-sized multinational corporations.

Instead of the traditional ‘supply/demand’ equation determining prices, the corporations look to see what nations can afford what prices. The supply of the controlled product is then distributed to the country according to their ability to afford the price. This is essentially the bastardized and politicized function of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is also how the corporations controlling WTO policy maximize profits.

Back to the lemons. A corporation might hold the rights to the majority of the lemon production in Brazil, Argentina and California/Florida. The price the U.S. consumer pays for the lemons is directed by the amount of inventory (distribution) the controlling corporation allows in the U.S.

If the U.S. lemon harvest is abundant, the controlling interests will export the product to keep the U.S. consumer spending at peak or optimal price. A U.S. customer might pay $2 for a lemon, a Mexican customer might pay .50¢, and a Canadian $1.25.

The bottom line issue is the national supply (in this example ‘harvest/yield’) is not driving the national price because the supply is now controlled by massive multinational corporations.

The mistake people often make is calling this a “global commodity” process. In the modern era this “global commodity” phrase is particularly nonsense.

A true global commodity is a process of individual nations harvesting/creating a similar product and bringing that product to a global market. Individual nations each independently engaged in creating a similar product.

Under modern globalism this process no longer takes place. It’s a complete fraud. Massive multinational corporations control the majority of production inside each nation and therefore control the global product market and price. It is a controlled system.

EXAMPLE: Part of the lobbying in the food industry is to advocate for the expansion of U.S. taxpayer benefits to underwrite the costs of the domestic food products they control. By lobbying DC these multinational corporations get congress and policy-makers to expand the basis of who can use EBT and SNAP benefits (state reimbursement rates).

Expanding the federal subsidy for food purchases is part of the corporate profit dynamic.

With increased taxpayer subsidies, the food price controllers can charge more domestically and export more of the product internationally. Taxes, via subsidies, go into their profit margins. The corporations then use a portion of those enhanced profits in contributions to the politicians. It’s a circle of money.

In highly developed nations this multinational corporate process requires the corporation to purchase the domestic political process (as above) with individual nations allowing the exploitation in varying degrees. As such, the corporate lobbyists pay hundreds of millions to politicians for changes in policies and regulations; one sector, one product, or one industry at a time. These are specialized lobbyists.

In Mexico and underdeveloped countries when government officials take payments from companies, cartels and corporations, we call that system “corrupt”.  However, in the U.S. when politicians take the same payments we call it “lobbying”; the process is identical.

EXAMPLE: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
CFIUS is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.
CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800.
The CFIUS process has been the subject of significant reforms over the past several years. These include numerous improvements in internal CFIUS procedures, enactment of FINSA in July 2007, amendment of Executive Order 11858 in January 2008, revision of the CFIUS regulations in November 2008, and publication of guidance on CFIUS’s national security considerations in December 2008 (more)

Bulletpoint #4 ♦ With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

The process of charging the U.S. consumer more for a product, that under normal national market conditions would cost less, is a process called exfiltration of wealth. This is the basic premise, the cornerstone, behind the catch-phrase ‘globalism’.

It is never discussed.

To control the market price some contracted product may even be secured and shipped with the intent to allow it to sit idle (or rot). It’s all about controlling the price and maximizing the profit equation. To gain the same $1 profit a widget multinational might have to sell 20 widgets in El-Salvador (.25¢ each), or two widgets in the U.S. ($2.50/each).

Think of the process like the historic reference of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). Only in the modern era massive corporations are playing the role of OPEC and it’s not oil being controlled, thanks to the WTO it’s almost everything.

Again, this is highlighted in the example of taxpayers subsidizing the food sector (EBT, SNAP etc.), the corporations can charge U.S. consumers more. Ex. more beef is exported, red meat prices remain high at the grocery store, but subsidized U.S. consumers can better afford the high prices.

Of course, if you are not receiving food payment assistance (middle-class) you can’t eat the steaks because you can’t afford them. (Not accidentally, it’s the same scheme in the ObamaCare healthcare system)


Agriculturally, multinational corporate Monsanto says: ‘all your harvests are belong to us‘. Contract with us, or you lose because we can control the market price of your end product. Downside is that once you sign that contract, you agree to terms that are entirely created by the financial interests of the larger corporation; not your farm.

The multinational agriculture lobby is massive. We willingly feed the world as part of the system; but you as a grocery customer pay more per unit at the grocery store because domestic supply no longer determines domestic price.

Within the agriculture community the (feed-the-world) production export factor also drives the need for labor. Labor is a cost. The multinational corps have a vested interest in low labor costs. Ergo, open border policies. (ie. willingly purchased republicans not supporting border wall etc).

This corrupt economic manipulation/exploitation applies over multiple sectors, and even in the sub-sector of an industry like steel. China/India purchases the raw material, coking coal, then sells the finished good (rolled steel) back to the global market at a discount. Or it could be rubber, or concrete, or plastic, or frozen chicken parts etc.

The ‘America First’ Trump-Trade Doctrine upsets the entire construct of this multinational export/control dynamic. Team Trump focus exclusively on bilateral trade deals, with specific trade agreements targeted toward individual nations (not national corporations).

‘America-First’ is also specific policy at a granular product level looking out for the national interests of the United States, U.S. workers, U.S. companies and U.S. consumers.

Under President Trump’s Trade positions, balanced and fair trade with strong regulatory control over national assets, exfiltration of U.S. national wealth is essentially stopped.

This puts many current multinational corporations, globalists who previously took a stake-hold in the U.S. economy with intention to export the wealth, in a position of holding contracted interest of an asset they can no longer exploit.

Perhaps now we understand better how massive multi-billion multinational corporations and institutions are aligned against President Trump.


RELATED:
♦The Modern Third Dimension in American Economics – HERE
♦The “Fed” Can’t Figure out the New Economics – HERE 
♦Proof “America-First” has disconnected Main Street from Wall Street – HERE
♦Treasury Secretary Mnuchin begins creating a Parallel Banking System – HERE
♦How Trump Economic Policy is Interacting With The Stock Market – HERE
♦How Multinationals have Exported U.S. Wealth – HERE


Bernie Remains...


Bernie Remains the Democratic Front-runner

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at his South Carolina primary-night rally in Virginia Beach, Va., February 29, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)

Establishment Democrats, worried he’ll drag down the entire party in the fall, will pull out all the stops to sandbag him.

Joe Biden captured 61 percent of the African-American vote in South Carolina on Saturday, allowing him to beat Bernie Sanders easily statewide. Biden now has a chance to do well on Super Tuesday and could soon consolidate the anti-Sanders vote. But make no mistake, Bernie Sanders remains the clear front-runner.


The latest forecast by the political forecaster FiveThirtyEight finds that there’s now a 59 percent chance of a contested Democratic convention. Bernie Sanders has a 28 percent chance to win the majority of delegates on the first ballot, while Joe Biden has a 13 percent chance. No one else still running has anything above a 1 percent chance.

The reason Sanders still has the inside track is that Biden has yet to score a convincing win in a state where he doesn’t have the overwhelming advantage. South Carolina is Biden’s neighborhood, home to African-American voters who were fond of his loyal service as Barack Obama’s vice president and to older moderate whites. It’s also the home base of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who threw his political machine behind Biden in the crucial days right before the primary. Indeed, Biden was so strong in South Carolina that, as of now, it is the only state primary he has won in any of the presidential races he’s run since 1988.

The 14 states that will vote on Super Tuesday will answer the question about whether Biden can create the kind of coalition that Hillary Clinton assembled to hold back Sanders’s insurgent candidacy in 2016. So far, Biden has had little success attracting Hispanics, feminists, or highly educated white voters.

He also hasn’t convinced party leaders or campaign strategists that he can go the distance all the way to beating President Trump in November. In just the past week, Biden committed several rhetorical flubs that call into question his ability to avoid obvious mistakes in an even more heated fall campaign.

At the statewide dinner hosted by the South Carolina Democratic Party last Monday, Biden bizarrely introduced himself as follows: “My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a Democratic candidate for the United State Senate. Look me over. If you like what you see, help out. If not, vote for the other Biden.” Give me a look though, okay?”

Biden followed that head scratcher a couple of days later by telling a crowd he was “looking forward to appointing the first African-American woman to the United States Senate.” The problem is that there have been two black women already elected to the Senate, and it is governors, not presidents, who can appoint a senator if there is a vacancy. Then, during the Democratic debate three days before the primary, he said, speaking of gun deaths, “150 million people have been killed since 2007.” He was off by about 149.9 million.

Every politician makes gaffes, and at the presidential level, many battle exhaustion. But party insiders with whom I spoke say that Biden’s constant flubs are part of a pattern that is worrisome if he is to be the Democratic nominee. “Trump says bizarre things all the time, but you get the sense it’s on purpose,” one Democratic pollster told me. “With Biden, it’s a constant series of train wrecks and low-energy debate performances. If he debates Trump, I fear he would lose, even though Trump is famously undisciplined.”

But despite all the complaints about Biden from establishment Democrats, they will pull out all the stops to nominate him and block Sanders.

The radical Vermont senator would be viewed as a millstone around the neck of every moderate Democrat running in a swing state or district this fall. With Sanders at the top of the ticket, the party could fail to take back the Senate. Even more alarming to Democrats, it could lose the House and a slew of state legislatures in key states that, next year, will begin the once-in-a-decade process of redrawing most of the nation’s political maps.

Democrats are paying a high price for their successful kneecapping of Sanders when he ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. They stopped him from getting the nomination, but Hillary’s surprising loss allowed Sanders to create the myth that he would have won because his left-wing populism would have proved more popular than Trump’s right-wing brand of populism.

Now Sanders is back, with an even higher name ID than he had in 2016, an army of loyal small-dollar donors, and the enthusiastic support of the increasingly vocal radical wing of the Democratic Party. For now, he is the front-runner for the nomination. But what party leaders fear is that he is also a doomed underdog if he is their candidate in the fall.


‘Inside the Actors Studio’ creator James Lipton dies at 93

March 2, 2020
(Reuters) – James Lipton, the creator and host of the long-running U.S. television show “Inside the Actors Studio” has died at the age of 93, his wife told The Hollywood Reporter and celebrity website TMZ on Monday.
Lipton, who hosted in depth interviews with hundreds of Hollywood stars for more than 20 years, died on Monday at his home in New York of bladder cancer, his wife Kedakai Turner told the two entertainment outlets.
Lipton created the show in 1994 and retired as host in 2018, but it continues with other hosts.
Ovation television, which has broadcast the show since 2019 after a long run on Bravo, said on Twitter: “We’ll miss him dearly, but we wish him peace as he arrives at those pearly gates.”
Lipton’s guests included Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, Robin Williams, Paul Newman, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Lauren Bacall, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise and many more.
His interviews ended with a list of rapid fire questions, including “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?” and “What is your favorite curse word?”
“I’m sure he would like to be remembered as someone who loved what he did and had tremendous respect for all the people he worked with,” Turner told TMZ on Monday.
https://www.oann.com/inside-the-actors-studio-creator-james-lipton-dies-at-93/

The Virus and the Supply Chain

The Virus and the Supply Chain

Coronavirus may or may not prove to be a health crisis in the U.S., but its impact on the production of pharmaceuticals could be serious.

Though the new virus is more transmissible than the related viruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, which, respectively, caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2002–2003 and 2012, the disease it causes is less dangerous. SARS had a case-fatality rate of 10 percent and MERS a case-fatality rate of 36 percent. The most recently reported case-fatality rate for laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, for hospitalized inpatients in China, was 1.4 percent; and since many more unreported, mild, or asymptomatic cases exist than the number of reported cases involving more severely ill or hospitalized patients, the fatality rate is likely much lower—perhaps as low as the 0.1–0.2 percent fatality rate of seasonal influenza. And unlike influenza, which has killed more than 125 children in the U.S. so far this season, COVID-19 appears to spare the pediatric population.

COVID-19 is more likely to harm Americans indirectly because the U.S. is increasingly reliant on drugs either directly sourced from China or made from intermediate chemicals called Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), or their chemical precursors, manufactured in China. U.S. imports of Chinese pharmaceuticals increased 76 percent between 2010 and 2018. Similarly, imports of Chinese medical equipment increased 78 percent over the same period. U.S. producers source 80 percent of their APIs overseas, primarily from China; China is also the chief supplier of APIs for producers in other countries. This dominance is neither accidental nor the result of free markets—it is the consequence of Chinese government policies. The U.S.–China Economic & Security Review Commission recently concluded that “Government subsidies, a robust chemical industry, IP theft, lax environmental protections, and regulations favoring domestic companies contributed to China’s emergence as the world’s largest producer of APIs.”

While 90 percent of the finished drugs Americans take are generics, most are manufactured overseas, primarily in India and China. Even India, the world’s largest generics producer, relies on China for 80 percent of the APIs it uses in drug production. Nearly all the antibiotics used in the U.S. come from China. Some older antibiotics, like penicillin, are no longer made here; China controls worldwide penicillin production. In addition, a large amount of the personal protective equipment (PPE)—surgical gowns, gloves, masks and respirator protective devices—used to stop the spread of coronavirus and other infectious diseases are manufactured in China.

COVID-19 has resulted in massive disruption of Chinese manufacturing. It’s only a matter of time until this translates into supply disruptions for China-dependent customers. The FDA has just reported the shortage of a certain drug due to coronavirus-related disruption at a manufacturing plant that produces the API used to make the drug. The FDA is also monitoring 20 other drugs where the API or finished drug product is solely sourced from China. Unfortunately, unlike drug makers, medical-device or PPE makers are not required by law to notify the FDA of impending shortages or even respond to FDA inquiries.

Coronavirus has created concerns about not only the quantity of Chinese medical products available but also about the virus’s effect on quality. China does not effectively regulate Chinese drug manufacturers. Multiple episodes have cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of their products: In 2018, a Chinese vaccine-maker sold more than 250,000 substandard doses of the childhood DPT vaccine; Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals shipped the active ingredient for blood-pressure medicines, including Valsartan, that was contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical (NDMA) found in rocket fuel. In 2008, a contaminated Chinese API used to make the blood-thinner Heparin led to 81 deaths in the U.S. Now, due to limitations on travel to China because of the coronavirus, the FDA has suspended inspections of Chinese drug and device factories.

U.S. dependence on Chinese manufacturing in general, and medical products in particular, could, in emergency situations or periods of international strife, prove detrimental. It’s possible that Americans with diseases other than COVID-19 will face shortages and higher prices for the medicines they need to treat their illnesses due to manufacturing disruptions in China. The time has come for the U.S. to compile a list of brand-name and generic drugs (with their constituent APIs) exclusively produced in China but critical to the health and safety of Americans—and take action to ensure that these products get produced in the U.S. once again.

Joel Zinberg, M.D., J.D., is an associate clinical professor of surgery at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and was, until recently, general counsel and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, where he specialized in health policy. The views expressed here are his own.

City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).



China and Coronavirus as an Economic Contagion – The Prescience of The Trump Doctrine


Coronavirus As An Economic Contagion

Steve Bannon discusses the Chinese Coronavirus as an economic contagion and how the Trump economic security doctrine applies to the current downstream impacts.  Even before the Coronavirus surfaced in China there was lower manufacturing factory activity within the Chinese economy.  The necessary response within China to control the spread of the Coronavirus was to shut down most commerce.  Factories, schools &  businesses throughout China were impacted as various containment measures took hold.

Economic Nationalism -vs- Economic Globalism

Despite the intense doomsayer predictions surrounding the ‘Coronavirus as an economic contagion’ narrative, the U.S. economy remains strong. When evaluating economic impacts for the USA it is important to remember 80 percent of all activity within the U.S. is internal. We create and consume eighty percent of our own production.


The Coronavirus issue hits on three main points of policy outlined by President Trump since his initial announcement of candidacy in 2015: (1) The need for secure borders and strong immigration controls. (2) The need to stop reliance on Chinese manufacturing; and (3) The need for the U.S. to have independent control over key sectors of manufacturing; including healthcare products and pharmaceuticals, as a matter of national security.

The U.S. economy is unique in the amount of balance within it as compared to other industrial economies. We are not dependent on exports to sustain our economy; and we are not dependent on any imports at the macro level. Unlike China, Asia and Europe, and despite decades of efforts by globalists and multinationals, the U.S. generates and sustains a tremendous amount of our own economic prosperity. The January data:

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revealed data last week showing January wage growth .5%, personal income increases .6%, consumer spending at .2%; overall U.S. savings at $1.33 trillion, and low inflation at 1.7 percent year-over-year. Solid and stable.

Both consumer spending (+.2 Jan) and inflation (1.6% Jan) were impacted by lower energy prices (-.7%) & mild weather in January. Reuters spins the lower rate of spending growth to imply a contracting U.S. consumer; there is no data to support that narrative.

The Commerce Department said the goods trade deficit contracted 4.6% to $65.5 billion in January. Goods imports tumbled 2.2% last month and exports dropped 1.0%. This is not necessarily surprising as manufacturing companies have started more long-term supply chain changes in the latter part of last year. 

Coronavirus As An Economic Contagion


Obviously economic activity in China is severely impacted by the Coronavirus issues. The level of their impact is not yet quantified; however, any economic contraction within China can have impacts on downstream economies based on their level of dependency.

As an example the European economy is heavily dependent on China for delivery of products and for Beijing to purchase industrial goods from the EU.

The EU focus on climate change (to the exclusion of their own economic interests) created a scenario where they strongly curtailed manufacturing of some dirty industrial goods (ex. steel) and instead started to purchase more of their needs from China.

As a result of these EU political decisions; and within this EU process; the pollution was shifted away from Europe along with the production. However, the outcome is their dependency on China increased. The result: when Beijing sneezes the EU economy catches a cold.

Conversely, the EU is also an export driven economy. Over the past decade EU leaders gave China preferential treatment due to their ‘dirty product’ import needs. China is now a big purchaser of EU products… and when China slows purchasing, again the EU feels the impact more severely.

The U.S. economy is more balanced. As a consumer economy we consume our own production and we have the resources to produce just about everything we need. The America First policy of President Trump is specifically focused to keep this advantage in place; and actually grow the advantage of our natural economic disposition by returning production of major goods prior administrations watch go overseas.

The impact to the overall U.S. economy, from Coronavirus as an economic contagion, is far less than all other industrial economies. However, the impact to U.S. multinationals (Wall St) who are dependent on global transactions, trade & manufacturing, is disproportionate.

Under America-First it was always U.S. manufacturers, those who do business inside our nations’ economy, who saw the greatest benefit. U.S. owned companies doing majority business overseas (ie. Wall Street multinationals) do not gain as much advantage under the America-First programs. The same is true now with a global economic contagion.

Within a global economic contagion the U.S. companies who rely on the internal American economic cycle to produce, sell and receive income are safe.  Our internal economy is strong. However, the U.S. multinational companies are again at risk…. hence the stock market.






Devin Nunes Discusses His Lawsuit Against the Washington Post, Ratcliffe as DNI and The Taliban Opportunity


HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss his upcoming lawsuit against the Washington Post, the nomination of John Ratcliffe as DNI, and the opportunity for a peaceful resolution provided to the Taliban.