The Real American Economic Debate

The media debate regarding the American economy continues to be dominated by the flatulence of whether the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates or not and should maintain “quantitative easing” or not. The real action is thus occurring at the state and local level, which has been one of my themes for many years. Because […]…

Read full article

A Smart Take on Japan From the WS Journal

Every time there is a negative headline about Japan, the American media–particularly The New York Times–writes the entire Japanese economy off. This has been happening for decades and we’ve consistently been wrong, leading to a dramatically reduced understanding of how competitive Japanese companies really are. In the most recent case, Japan has tilted into a […]…

Read full article

Anxiety Rising Over Relations Between Japan and China

I’d like to congratulate Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times for breaking this story only 24 hours after I did. Unfortunately, he had to travel to Davos to figure it out, but I was able to do it from the comfort of my North American regional headquarters: January 27, 2014 Anxiety Rising Over […]…

Read full article

Earth to Apple: You Have a Problem in China

For several decades now, Apple and many other major manufacturers have assumed that a basic model of manufacturing in China would endure forever: the Chinese would allow virtually unlimited import of Japanese parts for assembly into products destined for both the Chinese market and the world. The Apple iPhone, according to one study, consists of […]…

Read full article

China-U.S. Relations, 35 Years Later

It was 35 years ago this month that the United States and China normalized relations. It was also 35 years ago this month that I arrived in Hong Kong as a correspondent for United Press International. I didn’t realize how impeccable my timing was. China has exploded economically, as many of us thought it would. […]…

Read full article