About: William Holstein

A decade ago, I was a skeptic that China could escape its mid-level manufacturing strategy. It was the workshop for the world, and always would be. It was a top-down system dominated by the Communist Party. It would never be able to duplicate the innovation patterns seen in Silicon Valley and other American “hot spots,” […]…

From the beginning, those of us who worked in the traditional American media and understood its importance to our democracy, recognized that the rise of social media platforms (and “citizen journalism”) on Facebook, Google and other platforms was a threat. Not only did Facebook and Google siphon off a majority of advertising dollars that supported […]…

President Trump is beating up on General Motors CEO Mary Barra as well as the United Auto Workers for the company’s decision to close its Lordstown, Ohio plant, which makes the Chevrolet Cruze. But does he understand the reasoning behind the decision? Unlike the vagaries of the real estate game, Mary Barra has to make […]…

Having covered America’s trade deficits since the mid-1980s, it drives me wild to hear economists talk about how the root cause is that we don’t save enough money. That’s the argument trotted out today by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, here. The key sentence is: “The reason America runs persistent trade deficits isn’t […]…

The Times agreed with my post yesterday that President Trump has already lost the trade negotiations with the Chinese government by making it clear he wants a positive outcome, an achievement he can tweet about, and then use to stage a summit with President Xi at Mar-A-Lago. Trump has given up whatever leverage he had […]…