Nearly 100 days after US President Donald Trump took office, he and his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, continue to commit an economic fallacy that first-year economics students learn to avoid. They claim that America’s current-account deficit (or trade deficit), which is in fact the result of America’s low and falling saving rate, is an indicator of unfair trade practices by Germany and China, two current-account surplus countries. Their embrace of economic ignorance could lead to disaster.The

The US Department of Defense’s decision to drop an 11-ton Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb over a remote Islamic State redoubt in Afghanistan does not reflect a coherent counterterrorism policy. As many commentators have pointed out, it was yet another case of tactics swallowing strategy -- a mode of policymaking that was auditioned a week earlier in Syria and that could lead to catastrophe if tried on, say, the Korean Peninsula.More specifically, the Afghan attack was an example of letting milit

It wasn’t particularly graceful. It wasn’t easy on the nerves. But it’s just possible that the Trump administration has executed an important diplomatic pivot on North Korea -- from chest-beating belligerence to an opening for negotiations.　Even before President Trump came into office, Barack Obama warned him that his first international crisis might come from North Korea, the paranoid communist kingdom that has been steadily building nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them. By 2020, experts

The growing divide between urbanites and rural residents is shaping politics everywhere, from Brexit to the rise of Donald Trump. On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received a mandate for more personalized rule from most of his country, but not from its big cities.　Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are responsible for about 46 percent of Turkey’s economic output and just 23 percent of its population. All three cities voted against the perpetuation of Erdogan’s emergency powers, which mad

The only modern president who rivaled Donald Trump in his lack of preparation for global leadership was Harry Truman. Both men took office with little knowledge of the international problems they were about to face, and with worries at home and abroad that they weren‘t up to the job.　“I pray god I can measure up to the task,” said Truman right after Franklin Roosevelt’s death and the shock of taking the oath of office. Trump wouldn‘t be human if he hadn’t had a similar prayer in a corner of his

Sensitive folks are good at sniffing out what’s going on beneath the surface. They know, for instance, that “fine” is never really “fine,” and that “forget it” actually means “I will never forget this. Ever.” But even the dullest people know that there are some lines you just don’t cross and these lines are usually clear from the beginning. In this regard, Beijing seems quite clueless. Or perhaps if you are called the “world’s factory,” you get to call the shots on anything and breach all kinds

In a few weeks, France will elect its next president. Given the French executive’s considerable powers, including the authority to dissolve the National Assembly, the presidential election held every five years is France’s most important. But the stakes are higher than ever this time.　The two front-runners are the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, who served as economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande but is running as an independent. If, as expect