Kevin Duffy on the benefit to American consumers from trade with China

American consumers were standout winners in the pre-Trump 2.0 U.S.-China trade relationship.  Last year, the U.S. got 78% of its imported smartphones from China, 65% of its TVs and 76% of its toys.  As the chart below shows, these categories experienced massive deflation since 2000 at the same time the Consumer Price Index rose 81%. (Unfortunately, we can’t yet import pre-fab homes from China!)  More money in consumers’ pockets translates to more consumption, more investment and more jobs.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Caitlin Johnstone on the Israel lobby

It’s so gross that western society tolerates the existence of an Israel lobby.  Like “Oh so you’re here to convince my government to stomp out my free speech rights and use my tax dollars for wars and genocide to advance the interests of an apartheid state?  Yeah cool, I guess that’s fine.”

The existence of the Israel lobby should be treated the same as a Nazi lobby or a pedophilia lobby.  Taking donations from pro-Israel groups should be as stigmatized as taking donations from the KKK or NAMBLA.

It’s not okay that each western nation has its own high-powered lobby group whose whole entire job is to insert itself into key points of influence and persuade our governments to destroy our civil rights and commit genocide.  Nobody should tolerate the existence of these groups. 

~ Caitlin Johnstone, "Israel Admits It Bombed A Hospital To Kill A Journalist For Doing Journalism," Caitlin Johnstone, May 14, 2025

Kevin Duffy on fixing America's economic problems and maintaining an empire

While America’s economic problems are fixable, American hegemony is ephemeral.  The U.S. can have guns or butter, but not both. 

President Trump is writing checks he cannot cash.  He can’t maintain an empire and reduce the size of government.  He can’t limit cheap imports and keep a lid on inflation.  He can’t manage trade from the top down and cultivate a free market from the bottom up.  He can’t bully the world and enjoy the privilege of printing the world’s reserve currency.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Bill Ackman on the damage done by Trump's trade war

Unless it is clear that a company can continue to source from China on economically viable terms, it must leave the country.  There is not a board of directors or management team who will ever again feel comfortable relying on China for a major portion of their supply chain.  The damage has been done.

~ Bill Ackman

Gene Seroka on import volume drying up at Port of Los Angeles

About a third of the import volume, which means give or take about 50,000 20 foot equivalents gone off the arrivals next week...  The other thing is that retailers are saying "We've got about 5 to 7 weeks of normal inventory in the country right now, then we start to see spot shortages if it goes on much beyond this.

~ Gene Seroka, Port of Los Angeles executive director, tweet of interview, May 3, 2025

Paramore on the denial phase of an unwinding bubble

I don't mind lettin' you down easy, but just give it time

If it don't hurt now, a-just wait, just wait a while

You're not the big fish in the pond no more

You are what they're feedin' on

Where you're from, you might be the one who's running things

Well, you could ring anybody's bell and get what you want

See, it's easy to ignore trouble

When you're living in a bubble

So what are you gonna do

When the world don't orbit around you?

So what are you gonna do

When nobody wants to fool with you?

Ain't it fun

Livin' in the real world?

Ain't it good

Bein' all alone?

~ Paramore, "Ain't It Fun" (2014)

Jeffrey Sachs on the end of American exceptionalism and rise of Asia

Most of the world population lives in Asia, about 60%.  For most of history, that means that roughly 60% of the world economy, world output, was produced in Asia, as best as one can tell when historians look back and try to recreate economic estimates.  In recent centuries, that changed decisively with the rise of Europe and of the north Atlantic because in the 19th and 20th centuries, of course, the United States rose to become the largest economy in the world.  Asia was eclipsed in this.  Not only eclipsed, of course, it was dominated by European imperial powers.

If you look around 1820 or so, Asia was still more than half of the world economy, but by 1950, after 150 years of the industrial age, dominated by Europe and the United States, the whole Asian economy had declined to around 20% of world output from what had been roughly 60%.  This meant China completely being eclipsed and of course in fact attacked and losing many wars, first to the West in the first and second Opium Wars to chaos during the so-called Taiping Rebellion in the middle of the 19th century to the extraterritorial privileges or rights or dominance of European powers in China at the end of the 19th century and then to Japanese invasion in several episodes, starting with the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and then several Japanese invasions, in fact, in the 20th century and the massive invasions of the 1930s.  Civil war in China in the 1940s.  And this meant that by the time of the establishment of the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949, China had gone through about 110 years of devastating defeats of what China calls the "century of humiliation."  China's share of the world economy was estimated to be maybe 2% of world output and roughly 20% world population as of the 1950s.  In other words, China was completely eclipsed from its long historical role in the world for at least a millennium, by the way, from 500 to 1500 AD.  Before the beginning of the European ascendancy, China clearly dominated the world across many technologies: gunpowder, steam engine, paper currency, the compass, large scale ocean navigation, and one could go on and on, in fact.

So, the story that we see today, taken from a very, very long-term perspective in history is the return of China to the front ranks of power in the world and economic productivity and technology.  In a sense, China has returned to its more traditional role in the world, which one could see for much of the last 2,000 years, in fact.  The rise of China, in this sense, should be understood as a rebalancing of what was absolutely unbalanced, and that is a European-dominated world.

Of course, it's very hard for Europeans and Americans to understand that the idea of European dominance in the world had become an absolute natural standby, and that's been true for several hundred years actually where as Europe rose in power, as European empires dominated the other parts of the world, full ideologies, belief systems, rewriting of history, a lot of racism one can add, even by the leading thinkers of world history in the West, came to say, "Well, Europe's dominance is natural.  European cultural superiority, maybe racial superiority," but whatever the argument was, "European superiority is natural."

Of course, now we're at the end of that phase of history.  And one should understand, it's not only the return of China.  It's also the rapid development of India, it's the rapid development of southeast Asia, the so-called ASEAN countries, it's the rapid development of parts of west Asia in the Gulf countries, for example.  All of this is rather fundamentally ending the Euro-centric view of the world or what in the late 19th century to the early 21st century became the north Atlantic, NATO-centered vision of the world, and by the end of the 20th century became the American-centered vision of the world.

And when you have these temporary imbalances of economy and power...  The tendency is to put a bulwark under them in ideological or religious or some other philosophical sense to say, "That imbalance is natural."  In the United States, the idea of American exceptionalism is very deep.  The idea that, "Yes, of course, America rules the world" is a deep part of the belief system, not a superficial item.  

So the rise of China is viewed with alarm, it's viewed with disdain, it's viewed with fear.  It's not viewed with equanimity.  I don't know any American leaders that say, "Well, of course China's a big power that's had a long history of civilizational greatness so it's natural that China's doing well."  What you hear is, "China's the great threat to the world.  China's rise must be stopped.  We must contain China.  We must prepare for war.  China cheated and stole its way to economic recovery...  It's artificial; China will collapse."  In other words, many erroneous, superficial, biased, sometimes blatantly racist views to undergird this sense of superiority in the U.S. that built up over two centuries.

~ Jeffrey Sach, "Jeffrey Sachs: Chinese Statecraft and a New World Order," Glenn Diesen, 1:10 mark, May 2, 2025