The Trump administration’s willingness to push the Chinese harder on trade has struck a bilateral chord. Beijing is listening. So far, so good. Now the question is what the US wants to achieve. Answer: the total destruction of China as a competitor.That isn’t a trade goal, and the demands being made contradict one another. This aim also unnecessarily awakens Beijing’s deepest nationalist fears.Unsure what to offer next -- and convinced that the US effectively persuaded Canada to take an executiv

President Donald Trump doesn’t read or study history, so he’s probably unfamiliar with the Alien and Sedition Acts. He’d love them. They were the infamous series of discredited measures promulgated by President John Adams in 1798 and designed, in part, to silence unfriendly journalists.Trump poses the greatest challenge to a free press at least since President Richard Nixon. Any story that doesn’t celebrate him he derides as “fake news.” He’s repeatedly called journalists the “enemy of the peopl

In the first weeks of each year, political parties are busy mapping out plans and schedules for the New Year. This year, one of their major concerns will be preparing for the general elections in April 2020, the first parliamentary elections since President Moon Jae-in took power. In relation to this, the parties’ most urgent job should be reaching an agreement on electoral reform. Also important is to work out a bipartisan bill to revise the Constitution. It was fortunate that the five parties

As an alumnus of Newsweek and Time in their glory days, I sometimes can’t resist thinking like a news-magazine editor. Any news event -- the government shutdown, the withdrawal from Syria, the Brexit mess -- can be summarized by that all-purpose cover line, “NOW FOR THE HARD PART.”Similarly, the obvious cover for next Monday would be a racetrack starting gate with more than a dozen familiar Democrats (“There’s Bernie, there’s Beto, there’s Biden, there’s Booker ... ”) leaning forward in their sa

The nation ushers in 2019 amid deepening concerns over the sagging economy and the stalled process of North Korea’s denuclearization.The economy is suffering from a simultaneous decline in output and investment, with unemployment and income inequality worsening continuously.The North appears to be upgrading its nuclear capabilities, while balking at denuclearization talks with the US and pressing the South to be more active in going ahead with inter-Korean projects.By adhering to policies critic

The Ministry of Environment admitted Thursday that it had prepared a document disclosed by the main opposition Liberty Korea Party with notes on which executives of public institutions under its supervision had resigned and which ones had refused.When the document was disclosed a day earlier, the ministry denied preparing it or reporting it to the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae. But around midnight the ministry admitted that it had prepared the document at the request of Kim Tae-woo, a for