CHINA'S ECONOMY IS FALTERING

I'm no economist, but a story in the New York Times portends hard times ahead for Chinese economists, if not the small clique at the top of what is really not "The People's Republic," when it comes to decision-making in Beijing.

The lead article in the Times defines the problem with this succinct observation: "Too many factories, making too much goods."

Last week, China reported its least amount of growth in decades and if the truth was known, things are far worse than its leadership is willing to admit.

China hopes to do what Trump is hoping to undo in this hemisphere: A free-trade zone across the Asia-Pacific region. My thinking is, China has given every offshore manufacturer, particularly India, such a hard time, the Chinese are not going to get a lot of sympathy from lesser lights such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, even Japan.

I do not think all of them equals what the U.S. market spends with China. The U.S. trade imbalance may be more than $1-trillion annually in China's favor.

Worse for them, China is unilaterally reducing its own tariffs on a broad range of goods all over the world at the same time it puts higher retaliatory tariffs on American imports.

There is one thing that 91 years of experience has taught me: We are in a global economy, more so now than ever before. If there is one thing that markets cannot abide is uncertainty. If China's economy goes down the drain, we must not get caught in the whirlpool.

-– Phil Richardson, Editor