Trump and Xi: A High Stakes Meeting for Global Trade

 

The two leaders are meeting at the APEC summit in South Korea. Financial Times: President Donald Trump had a clear message for business leaders the day before a high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping that will determine if the US and China extend a trade war truce or plunge back into economic hostility. “The world is watching,” Trump told executives at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea on Wednesday. “I think we’ll have something that’s very exciting.” When Trump and Xi last met in 2019, their countries were also battling over trade, but this time, the stakes are much higher. If their truce in the US-China trade war that Trump started in January expires in November, the world’s two biggest economic powers could reimpose tariffs of more than 100 per cent on each other, levels US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent previously likened to a trade embargo (FT). Matt Pottinger: In a matter of hours, President Donald Trump will sit down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time in six years to determine whether America will remain a technological superpower or, if Xi gets his way, becomes an agrarian commune beholden to Beijing. The stakes really are that high (FP).

On Trade: The Dynamics of the US-China Relationship Have Shifted

Financial Times: One thing is clear, experts say — Beijing is now prepared to use its leverage in ways it has not before. “For decades China talked about trade as a ‘ballast’ in the relationship. Now it sees trade as both a sword and a shield in a strategic competition,” said Sara Schuman, who was until recently a top US trade negotiator on China. The shift has altered the balance of power between the countries, said a Chinese government-affiliated scholar. He said they had reached a “dynamic equilibrium” that would continue until one side was able to break the other’s chokehold on critical technologies such as rare earths or chips (FT).

Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rate by Quarter Point

Tuesday’s meeting of Federal Reserve resulted in a quarter-point interest rate cut and an end quantitative tightening. Barron’s: The Federal Reserve’s policy committee on Wednesday voted to stop shrinking its balance sheet, a strategy known as quantitative tightening, or QT. “The Committee decided to conclude the reduction of its aggregate securities holdings on December 1,” the statement said. “The Committee is strongly committed to supporting maximum employment and returning inflation to its 2 percent objective” (Barrons). Financial Times: The Federal Reserve has said it will halt its effort to shrink its balance sheet in December as it cut interest rates by a quarter point, in a bid to ease borrowing conditions amid concerns about the US labour market. The central bank’s decision to call time on its three-year quantitative tightening programme comes after concerns that QT [quantitative tightening] has disrupted short-term lending markets and threatened to push up banks’ funding costs…. The move to cut the benchmark rate to between 3.75 and 4 per cent, which was widely expected, leaves it at its lowest level since late 2022 (FT).

GOP Lawmakers on Operation Arctic Frost: ‘Worse Than Watergate’

Sen. Chuck Grassley at Wednesday’s press conference: “This was clearly a fishing expedition.” Arctic Frost is the Biden-era FBI’s investigation into Republican leaders in the wake of the 2020 election. It was considerably broader than we knew: Catherine Salgado: Biden-era Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith didn’t only go after Donald Trump. Newly released files expose how he targeted the entire Republican leadership — over 430 individuals and organizations. Smith was running a vast political surveillance/harassment campaign with the FBI against Republicans, stemming from the GOP Senate investigation into the Arctic Frost scandal. Hundreds of key figures and entities within the Republican Party and the MAGA movement were in Smith’s sights. Judge Aileen Cannon later ruled that the DOJ unconstitutionally appointed Smith. Among Smith’s targets were the Republican Attorneys General Association, Trump White House advisers, and Turning Point USA (PJ Media). Katie Jerkovich at Red State: Republican senators blasted President Joe Biden’s administration’s massive spying efforts against his political opponents, and revealed that 197 subpoenas were issued against Conservative leaders and citizens…. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) didn’t beat around the bush, calling Arctic Frost a Biden administration “enemies list.” “The fact that 38 Wisconsinites are on that enemies list,” Johnson said. “I know most of those individuals. They are God-fearing, country-loving, law-enforcement supporting people who want to see America succeed. The fact that…they were targeted is outrageous (Red State).

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears Forced Off Campaign Trail to Address Dems’ Redistricting Surprise

Washington Examiner reports: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’s campaign is having to carry on without her, with less than one week before Election Day, after Democrats’ surprise redistricting move called her back to Richmond. The move from Democrats, the latest in a string of redistricting efforts from both parties, set off a wave of Republican outrage and confusion among voters gathered to see her at a campaign stop in the central part of the state. At a coffee shop in Charlottesville, where Earle-Sears had been scheduled to campaign Tuesday afternoon, her husband Terence Sears took the stage in her place, joined by Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) and Republican lieutenant governor candidate John Reid…. McGuire told the crowd that Democrats “knew exactly what they were doing” by calling the General Assembly back into session. “They called that special session this week right now so that she can’t be on the campaign trail,” he said, drawing shouts of agreement from the audience. “It’s election interference, plain and simple” (Washington Examiner).

A Closer Look at CNN’s Qatari Expansion and Exercise in Sycophancy

Qatar has provided “facilities and technical support” for the division that opened in February. Earlier this month they launched a new, original program on the Doha-based channel, “CNN Creators” (CNN). Collin Anderson and Eliana Johnson: While CNN has not released ratings for the inaugural Creators episode, commenters are weighing in. “This is so cringe it hurt…” the top comment on a YouTube cut of the show reads. “My algorithm has failed me,” another user wrote. “Cringe. Infantilising,” said a third. “I’m sure this show will have hundreds of viewers,” a fourth predicted. The show is raising eyebrows inside CNN, where some staffers “have questioned whether this was a quid pro quo with Qatar,” Dylan Byers of Puck reported on Friday. CNN says that’s nonsense. The network told Byers and the Free Beacon that editorial content “is fully controlled and funded by CNN.” The oxymoronic claim that editorial content is “funded” by CNN while “facilities and technical support” are funded by the Qataris would make little sense to anyone with an understanding of television news production. Even allowing CNN’s euphemistic use of the phrase “facilities and technical support,” Qatar’s subsidization of the production costs would, according to any established American news organization’s editorial standards and practices, be “sponsored content”—that is, an advertorial about Qatar—and would need to be identified as such (Free Beacon).

Obama Presses for Government Regulation of Speech

The former president has always done this sort of thing in a very soft-spoken way—i.e., his most radical ideas have been articulated in smooth, mellifluous tones matched with his genteel body language. Speaking at the Connecticut Forum: “Part of what we’re going to have to do is to start experimenting with new forms of journalism and how we use social media in ways that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion. We want diversity of opinion. We don’t want diversity of facts. That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints…” (Vigilant Fox). Ed Morrissey: Ahem. The First Amendment, which Obama claims to support in this same clip, makes perfectly clear that the federal government cannot constrain speech. “Congress shall make no law,” it reads, emphases mine, “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;  or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Obama wants Congress to give the executive branch authority to “abridge” the speech of American citizens and of the “press,” in the social-media sense. Americans have a First Amendment right to speak their mind and make their arguments in public free of government constraint or censorship. It does not matter whether that argument is wrong, or gets facts wrong…. They have learned nothing from the last few years; they still want to control the speech and the thoughts of Americans. They see 1984 as a roadmap. The rest of us better read it again as a prophecy (Hot Air).

A Tale of Two Buildings: Trump’s East Wing Ballroom and Obama’s Presidential Center

There’s an interesting juxtaposition of these two building projects: President Trump champions a neo-Classical ballroom and Obama is delayed on his presidential center “Death Star.” Ross Douthat, in a column titled: “Better Trump’s Ballroom than Obama’s Tower”: The controversial public building is ugly and intimidating, architectural vainglory battening on presidential ego, inappropriate to its setting, unmoored from memory and tradition. I’m talking, naturally, about Barack Obama’s unfinished presidential center, currently looming like a Star Wars barracks over the residents of Chicago’s South Side. And then, on the new ballroom: The general design of the Trump ballroom — if you look at the actual sketches, not the social-media caricatures — is perfectly in keeping with the character of the White House complex, and if there’s any place where a cautious classicalism is appropriate, it’s at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So in the end Trump’s architectural legacy will probably be a useful building, built expeditiously, that looks, if not dazzling, at least appropriate, pleasing, fine (New York Times). Albert Mohler finds the neo-Classical design very fitting: I think George Washington and his colleagues in the Revolutionary and in the Founding era got it right. The United States only exists in continuity with the achievements of classical civilization. And what the American Founding Fathers wanted to say is that, “we are the result of the logic of that Western civilizational commitment.” The last thing we need to do is to build federal buildings that try to take things in a very different direction (Mohler).

Conservative Political Scientist Rethinks the God Question

Charles Murray has—for some four decades—been a leading political scientist on the right. The author of “Losing Ground” and “Coming Apart” has never been hostile to religion and Christian truth claims. But he has never embraced them. That has changed. His new book is “Taking Religion Seriously” (Amazon). He sums up what changed in a recent conversation with Mark Bauerlein of First Things: I actually borrowed from an analogy that a Canadian philosopher made. He said: “suppose that you were sentenced to death by a firing squad of a hundred expert marksmen—and they all missed.” Now you have a choice. You can say, “Oh, well they all missed by accident.” Or, actually: probably somebody ordered that they all miss. And to me, it’s not a close call. To me, the only plausible explanation I had is that the universe was created to remit life. And to say that to myself was a huge departure because once you say that, you are no longer talking about Richard Dawkins’ universe—pitiless and indifferent and hostile. You’re talking about a universe that has some way deeper meaning. And it forces you to think hard, literally think hard and try to check out your beliefs using your traditional methods of evaluating evidence. And it pushed me toward: I think God is real (FT).

Erika Kirk Encourages TPUSA Rally at Ole Miss: “Reclaim that territory”

The wife of Charlie Kirk was joined by the Vice President as they spoke to a packed house of some 13,000. The Ole Miss event is reportedly the only campus event she’s currently scheduled for. “Being on campus for me today is a spiritual reclaiming of territory” she said. “The more that I’m coming to grips with the permanency of this nightmare, the more that I’m starting to realize and witness that the enemy, he doesn’t want you. He wants your territory, your influence. When our team asked our dear friend Vice J.D. Vance to speak today, I really prayed on it. Because, obviously, it’s just a very emotional day. But I could just hear Charlie in my heart …. I could hear him say, “Go reclaim that territory, babe. The battle’s already won” (Rumble). The Vice President—in Charlie Kirk style—engaged in a Q and A with attendees.