In any “trade war,” the most important thing to remember is the limit of the martial metaphor. When a foreign company sells Americans something they choose to buy, it is not an act of aggression. Trade negotiations aren’t a zero-sum game in which one country wins and the other has to lose.　 The point is being forgotten right now, and not just by protectionists. Practically everyone is saying that President Donald Trump is losing, surrendering, caving or capitulating to China. But “losing” may be

When is $227 billion greater than $606 billion? When comparing Chinese defense spending to that of the US -- and if Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley is the one doing the math.　At a hearing last week, the ranking Democrat of the Senate’s defense appropriations subcommittee, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said to Milley: “You tell us that one of our biggest threats, greatest enemies, is Russia; turns out we read recently that Russia spends about $80 billion a year on its military. So let me get this stra

President Donald Trump finally did it. On Thursday he pulled the plug on next month’s big summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. In sadness, but not anger, Trump said Kim’s insults were too much for now. That said, he left the door open for a future meeting. Why did Kim get cold feet and resume that anti-US rhetoric?North Korean apparatus tell us that their dear leader is skittish about negotiations after Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, suggested the “Libya model” for ridd

The new government finally taking shape in Italy is one of the weirdest coalitions you could imagine -- and a pretty effective combination if your aim was to sabotage the European Union. Although predictions about where this Italian misadventure is heading are difficult, it could easily be worse than Brexit for the EU.　 The coalition partners -- the left-populist Five Star Movement led by Luigi Di Maio and the right-populist League led by Matteo Salvini -- are poles apart in most respects, but c

Questions remain about just how many more US exports China’s promised to buy to avert a trade war: US officials have floated the figure of $200 billion annually, which would cut the bilateral trade deficit in half. Even if that were true, however -- and Chinese officials have denied it -- that massive buying spree wouldn’t bring down the overall US trade deficit one whit.　China should be able to rebalance its trade relationship with the US relatively quickly by reorienting its purchases of indus

In the forthcoming movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” an American woman discovers that her boyfriend belongs to Singapore’s secretive, obnoxious jet set. It’s fun to laugh at the ultrarich when they’re just a caricature on a screen. But it’s possible that the increasing visibility of crazy rich Americans is fueling rising anger about inequality.　In the past few decades, the US has greatly improved its social safety net. And the country’s middle class has seen real income gains. But a 2015 New York Times

The determination of European nations, Russia and China to keep the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran alive isn’t necessarily futile. Europe has more influence than the US on SWIFT, the Brussels-based global payments network.　The system was founded in the 1970s by a group of global banks that wanted to standardize the way they shared transaction information, instead of letting each country, or even big banks, impose their own standards. SWIFT is owned by its members and provides the backbone of m