An important point that isn’t mentioned in this article is that when the US targets third countries in their efforts to kneecap Chinese companies, it is hurting its own geostrategic interests. The US has been working hard to draw countries like Vietnam and Indonesia into its orbit as part of its containment strategy against China, but when it slaps tariffs on exports from these countries, years of diplomatic goodwill get instantly cancelled out. Especially since the US nowadays has no economic carrots to offer suitors, thanks to its bipartisan anti-trade turn. It’s all sticks.

Economic development isn’t so easy, or more countries would already be rich. Look at peer countries: in 1970, China had around the same GDP per capita as India and lower than Indonesia, now it’s about 50% higher than Indonesia and 170% higher than India. If you view this through the institutions lens (which is the whole point of Robinson’s work), it’s hard to avoid concluding that China’s institutions aren’t particularly extractive, compared to nominally democratic countries at the same stage of development.

Whether this will continue to be the case is an open question. The doomer case for China is pretty fashionable, but again it’s useful to do a comparison. Look at the middle income countries and ask which ones can make it out of the middle income trap, and transition into an advanced economy. China stands a much better chance than almost any other middle income country, just from the fact that it’s already at the technology frontier in many industries.

China’s population has seen some of the greatest improvements in human welfare in history during the past 50 years, including the near elimination of extreme poverty. Comparing this to slavery in the American South is frankly silly. It is like making light of slavery.

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Strangely enough, I think the CCP is a lot more of an inclusive institution than Robinson and his coauthors are happy to admit. A lot of the decisions the Chinese government makes are aimed at increasing national wealth and power. Narrow extractive behavior – siphoning wealth away to benefit the elites – definitely does happen in China, but not significantly more (and maybe less) than nominally democratic countries at a similar stage of development.

There’s plenty of scope to dunk on the CCP, e.g. human rights. But Acemoglu/Robinson political economy framework, based on inclusive/extractive institutions, isn’t the right argument for this.

US cares so much about the region that Biden didn’t even show up. Sent Blinken to lecture all the region’s heads of state. I’m sure that will go down well.

It would have been nice if the article actually described the plan, rather than just the locker room politics of who likes it and who does not.

Special military operation?

They also pinky-promise that they are not running current psy-ops on many other topics. (Tee hee.)

That’s like telling a starving person that long-term obesity concerns are the real issue.

Trump lost by around 50,000 votes in swing states, in the middle of a bungled pandemic response. In 2020, Biden was polling significantly higher than Trump; today he is polling significantly lower.

All this before that picture of Trump fist-pumping after being shot, which is going to be widely juxtaposed against Biden’s inability to walk down 2-3 steps.

I don’t know where this idea that Trump has “no chance” comes from.

Whelp… Biden was insistent on running, now the Monkey’s Paw has answered. All the other plausible Dems who could have stepped in to replace Biden will be running for the hills, and being the Democratic nominee is gonna be the worst job in politics for the next four months. And at the end of the campaign he gets to be remembered by history as the loser in the worst landslide election since Reagan-Carter.

Also:

• Sonia Sotomayor’s decision not to retire during Biden’s term is looking like yet another D own goal. Very real prospects for a 7-2 Supreme Court.

• We’re going to be seeing an orgy of foreign governments jockeying to cultivate relations with Trump. Official US foreign policy is going to be dead in the water, and NATO and G7 will be leaderless, until next year.

• Trump is going to have an iron grip on the Republican party now, to an even greater extent than before. On various issues where other Republicans held positions contrary to Trump’s, they’re going to be brushed aside.

• For the above two reasons, Ukraine is pretty well fucked.

Polls have significant predictive power, especially when you poll reportedly and/or aggregate them. Which is why all political campaigns, R or D, spend literally millions running their own polling. Moreover, it’s now July, the first convention is literally coming up within days, so the excuse of being “far out from the election” no longer holds.

Okay, this settles it: Biden is gonna be the nominee. Nobody else on the Dem side is gonna want to be the sacrificial lamb going up against Trump after today.

Are you being wilfully pedantic, or do you not know that it’s possible to tell someone is ahead in a contest?

Lots of people seem keen to jump to this being staged. That makes zero sense: Trump was already winning before this, especially with Biden (his preferred opponent) looking to hang on to the nomination.

Bernie isn’t a Democrat most of the time (not sure if he is one this year…), represents a state that will remain safely deep blue even in the event of a Trump landslide, and is far removed from the constituencies where voter support for Biden is cratering. So it’s not surprising for him to have this opinion.

Not to mention his vested interest in the idea that politicians should remain in power long into old age.

Neither, it’s the Fed.

Pick the old man as nominee, and you’ll get the Nazis in January.

If this passes, this would have the perverse effect of making China (and maybe to a lesser extent the Middle East) the leading suppliers of open source / open weight AI models…