ChinaFile, an online platform of the Asia Society, is dedicated to informed conversations about China.  Recently, they asked me, along with  a few other China watchers to address the question of whether US President Donald Trump has recently changed his position on...

Summit diplomacy does not have a great history in Anchorage.  A March 2021 encounter between senior officials of the US and China didn’t go well.  It put down a marker that tainted the relationship between the two superpowers for all four years of the Biden...

Watching US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on MSNBC this morning, I was immediately struck by the ancient Chinese tale of Zhao Gao, perhaps the most famous eunuch of the early Qin Dynasty (200 BC).  Bessent was spewing forth one fabrication after another — alluding...

The revised schedule of  “reciprocal” tariffs contained in President Trump‘s modified Executive Order of July 31 confirms the details of a painfully obvious shock. It takes the average effective tariff rate back to Smoot-Hawley-like levels last seen in 1933 when the...

Each day of Trump 2.0 seems worse than the day before. Today, August 1, was too much for me to take. It started with a monthly labor market report that was on the weak side. But then, in yet another fit of predictable rage, Trump shot the messenger — firing Erika...

For most of us, deadlines come and go. That’s especially the case in Trump 2.0.  Whether you dub the outcome as TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) or as a manifestation of the time-honored tendency of Washington to kick the proverbial can down the road, the implications...