The Trump administration’s zero-sum approach to international relations is now spilling over from trade to currency wars.  After spending the best part of his 2016 campaign and the first three years of his presidency railing against foreign countries taking advantage of the United States on trade, Trump and his administration have started complaining in the past few months about currency manipulation.  In doing so, it is bringing us back to the 1990s, or even the 1930s. 

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You won't want to miss Prof. Yang's expert analysis of the US-China relationship, and what the future might hold for both sides of this persistent conflict.

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Our podcast this week features an interview with James Bianco , market-savvy macro-economic analyst and head ofBianco Research here in Chicago. He shares his thoughts about the Fed, markets, the long-lost world of stock picking, and the role of cryptocurrencies as a new monetary regime unfolds.

There are two reports I always look forward to reading each June: the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and analyst Mary Meeker’s annual report on Internet trends. For those interested in the art of investment prognostication, a stroll through the archives of Meeker’s reports since 1996 is fascinating. They chart the growth of the Internet and the disruption of global communications that have impacted nearly everything.

As some of my more patient friends know, I have been toiling away at a book on Chinese monetary history during the Interwar period off and on for some years.  Immersing myself in the public and private words of the historic figures of the 1930’s has perhaps sensitized me to the propensity of even well-intentioned leaders to glide into chaos.  That which is unthinkable inexorably becomes inevitable.
 

On May 15th-16th, the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations (CDAC) was held in Beijing, another important domestic diplomatic event in 2019, following the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) and the 2019 Beijing International Horticultural Exhibition.

The CDAC was initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 4th summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in 2014 and was formally proposed at the annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia in 2015.

By SUN Xi and Herta Monica Montesino Cucos

Today, five days after he tweeted this deadline and nine months since he first declared the intention to do so, President Trump raised the tariff on $200B of imports from China from the +10% first applied in March 2018 to +25%. The action follows China’s message to U.S. negotiators backtracking on a number of earlier promises to increase intellectual property protections.