When Joe Biden took the oath of office in January 2021, many expected him to be the “placeholder president.” His mandate: heal the country’s wounds after four turbulent years of Donald Trump. Don’t try to be a transformative figure. Then hand the reins to a capable successor. Fast forward to 2024 and there’s room for […]

The post If Biden stands down before the election appeared first on Asia Times.

The United Auto Workers has endorsed President Joe Biden’s bid for reelection in 2024. “Joe Biden has earned it,” said union president Shawn Fain on January 24 as he announced the union’s decision to back the incumbent candidate. Marick Masters, a Detroit-based Wayne State University scholar of labor, politics and business issues, explains why the […]

The post What UAW backing means for Biden’s reelection chances appeared first on Asia Times.

As expected, Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday, and he did so convincingly, 54.2% to 43.7% for his only remaining opponent Nikki Haley – or 136,000 votes to 109,000, when 75% of the votes were counted. No surprise. No drama. It’s done.  The conclusion: The presidential election on November 5, 2024, […]

The post New Hampshire goes for Trump appeared first on Asia Times.

Former US president Donald Trump has been accused by his opponents of acting, during his time in office, as if he had “immunity” from certain laws and rules that would limit his actions if he did not have, at the relevant time, the unique status of POTUS. President Xi Jinping was criticized for his conjectured […]

The post The three layers of Natural Law appeared first on Asia Times.

Many Americans feel broken and people are split on immigration and very divisive issues like gender or abortion and go for former president Donald Trump. His victory in Iowa is proof of this. But the country is doing better than ever. A belief crisis blinds many. The US needs to restore its cultural unity, starting […]

The post Trump chaos vs Bidening time in a broken America appeared first on Asia Times.

Of course, on the day of the first nominating contest for the 2024 US presidential election, there was a storm. In Iowa over the weekend, blizzards described as “life-threatening” by the National Weather Service brought with them temperatures well below freezing, up to 25 centimeters of snow and ferocious winds. In these terrible conditions on […]

The post Trump’s victory in Iowa was a foregone conclusion appeared first on Asia Times.

The 19th-century German war strategist and field marshal Helmuth von Moltke famously coined the aphorism “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” His observation might well be applied to the tragedy in Gaza. Three months after the current conflict began, civilians have borne the brunt of the violence on both sides, with the […]

The post After 3 months of devastation in Gaza, is anyone ‘winning’? appeared first on Asia Times.

TOKYO — In the closing weeks of 2023, US Republicans ratcheted up demands that President Joe Biden keep a hard line on China. Biden, of course, is way ahead of the party that his predecessor Donald Trump hopes to lead to victory in November. Since January 2021, Biden has limited Beijing’s access to technology vital […]

The post China to play starring role in coming US election chaos appeared first on Asia Times.

Forces inherited from 2022 shaped the US economy in 2023 — high but falling inflation, rising interest rates, neo-protectionist industrial policy, conflict with China, empty trade initiatives and the resurgence of former US president Donald Trump.  From an Asian perspective, the macro impact of US economic policy was benign and the micro impact was adverse, […]

The post US feeling the pain of slow-motion decoupling appeared first on Asia Times.

The United States is less than a year away from its next presidential election. Although former president Donald Trump faces numerous civil and criminal indictments, he will most likely be the Republican Party’s nominee for the third election in a row. Incumbent President Joe Biden will run for re-election from the Democratic Party, hoping that […]

The post The return of US isolationism appeared first on Asia Times.

Japan recently announced that it will transfer some number – reportedly “dozens”– of license-built Patriot missiles to the United States. This is to bolster American missile stocks depleted by two years of supplying Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. It is the first time Japan will export military weaponry owing to longstanding – though informal – policy restrictions.  The announcement […]

The post Patriot missile exports don’t make Japan serious appeared first on Asia Times.

Nippon Steel’s plan to acquire US Steel has triggered an uproar among the US Congress, the United Steelworkers and economic nationalists alarmed by the buyout of an American icon and the US$14.9 billion deal’s potential implications for US employment and the economy. The reaction has been particularly strong in President Joe Biden’s birth state of […]

The post Nippon-US Steel deal sparks a knee-jerk backlash appeared first on Asia Times.

Argentina is poised to downgrade China ties and upgrade US relations in a geopolitical switch driven by the ballot box. But new Argentinian President Javier Milei’s stated plan to dollarize his China-dependent economy is likely a non-starter. Milei, 53, a right-wing politician often referred to as Argentina’s version of former US president Donald Trump, beat […]

The post Argentina’s Milei wants no more ‘secret’ deals with China appeared first on Asia Times.

Twenty-five companies and individuals in China have been newly sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, which accuses them of trafficking precursor chemicals of fentanyl, a super painkiller, into America.  The fentanyl crisis has been a major dispute in Sino-US relations since the Trump administration raised the issue to the Chinese government in 2019. According to […]

The post US sanctions more Chinese over fentanyl precursors appeared first on Asia Times.

AUKUS, the defense agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States designed to deter Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific region, both reflects and reinforces larger strategic shifts in the region and beyond. It’s a long game, something the world should keep in mind as the two-year-old pact faces multiple political complications in the […]

The post Even a Trump return likely wouldn’t dislodge AUKUS appeared first on Asia Times.

The perception abroad, and not only in Western countries, is that China is often a threat. Yet many have a hard time pinpointing why that is so and, thus, what kind of threat China is.  China has no vaunted goal of Hitlerian global conquest, nor does it have the old Soviet ambitions for universal communist […]

The post Basic hurdles for a Chinese world order appeared first on Asia Times.

When China’s vice-premier and top trade-war negotiator Liu He arrived in Washington in May 2018 to finalize a trade agreement with the US at the end of tortuous negotiations, neither he nor his hapless opposite number Robert Lighthizer realized he’d walked into an ambush sprung by the capricious president. Even as Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin […]

The post Zoo time at Operation Circe appeared first on Asia Times.

The New York Times described him as promising “to exert breathtaking power in ways that Donald Trump never did.” An article for Time magazine called him a “rockstar for those who think cancel culture is threatening every corner of American life.” Well-spoken, polemical and supremely self-assured, it’s no surprise that the Trump-loving Vivek Ramaswamy has […]

The post Ramaswamy: GOP candidate who’s more Trump than Trump appeared first on Asia Times.

Is war between the United States and China inevitable? This was the central question asked of panelists at the opening session of this year’s Asia-Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur. My answer was “No, it is not inevitable, but it is no longer unimaginable or as unlikely as it was a few short years ago, and the trends […]

The post US policy toward China: three do’s and a don’t appeared first on Asia Times.

The Chinese Communist Party rules and holds power based on three legs. The first leg is, of course, self-interest, the preservation of its own naked power.  The second leg is the ideal and ideological content of the period and of the party, that is, Marxism and its revision of Marxism. The third leg is critical […]

The post China in crisis waits for clarity from the US appeared first on Asia Times.