Sitting at the controls of a Boeing space-flight simulator, “docking” the company’s planned “Starliner” craft with an imaginary space station, you begin to understand why the Pentagon is so focused on such advanced systems. Space is the new frontier of warfare. That was the theme of a “Space Symposium” here this week that gathered thousands of military and corporate experts from around the globe. A version of the Boeing simulator may someday be training the 21st-century version of fighter pilots

Since 1993, the year before the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, per capita gross domestic product in Mexico is up about 26 percent in real terms. That’s a lot better than the outright decline in per capita GDP that the country had experienced over the course of the 1980s. But it’s nowhere close to the 41 percent gains in real GDP per capita experienced by Canada and the US, the other signatories of Nafta, not to mention China, where GDP per capita is up more than 600 percen

Last month, US President Donald Trump enacted steel and aluminum tariffs aimed squarely at China. On April 2, China retaliated with tariffs on 128 American products. Trump then announced 25 percent tariffs on another 1,300 Chinese products, representing some $50 billion of exports. In response, China threatened 25 percent tariffs on 106 US exports (including soybeans, cars, and airplanes), to go into effect whenever the US tariffs do.Yes, if these measures go into effect, it will amount to a tra

It’s been confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo held direct talks with Kim Jong-un in North Korea, and negotiations between Kim and President Donald Trump really do seem in the offing, so we need to ask how such negotiations might actually succeed.　There are indeed reasons to be optimistic, but not because I see high odds of striking a workable deal with the North Korean totalitarian regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Instead, the best realistic scenarios would have the North Korean lead

No one seems to see much of a future for GM Korea these days. The pessimistic mood seems to be reaching its bottom now, as we see the union workers storming into offices of top executives demanding their bonuses and the company announcing it would soon run out of cash to pay its parts suppliers.Critics say the unionized workers are determined to get as much money in their hands as possible before the company folds up. Observers have long sensed that GM’s leadership was preparing for a complete p

Threatening tariffs on imports from China, President Donald Trump has provoked swift vows of retaliation from Beijing, shaken financial markets and generated great uncertainty and confusion. Long before China started to run huge trade surpluses against the US, he ranted against American trade partners. Other countries, he claimed in 1999, “can’t believe how easy it is to deal with the US. We are known as a bunch of saps.” Elevated to the White House, Trump has turned into a reckless trade warrio