The Economist
“Don’t mention the wall: US-Mexico talks”
Senior American and Mexican officials meet today in Washington, DC, for delicate talks on the future relationship of their two countries. Donald Trump has vowed to introduce tariffs to keep out Mexican imports, and his staff say he will announce executive orders on immigration today, including the construction of a wall on the Mexican border. Luis Videgaray and Ildefonso Guajardo, respectively foreign minister and economy minister of Mexico, will talk to Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, among others. Security, immigration and trade will top the agenda. The two-day gathering will set the stage for the meeting between the countries’ leaders on January 31st. Mr. Trump has said he wants to renegotiate the North Atlantic Free-Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994; Mr. Guajardo said Mexico could withdraw from the deal if terms turn sour. Today’s meeting should be peaceable enough; the fireworks will follow.
New York Times
“After Trump Rejects Pacific Trade Deal, Japan Fears Repeat of 1980s.”
President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal should have been good news for Hitoshi Kondo, a Japanese rice farmer. The sweeping 12-nation agreement, negotiated by the Obama administration and formally rejected by Mr. Trump on Monday, would have opened swaths of Japan’s highly protected agricultural sector, and was bitterly opposed by farmers. Now, without American involvement, the deal looks as good as dead. They fear a return to the trade wars of the 1980s and early ’90s, when many Americans saw Japan as an untrustworthy economic adversary. Officially, Japan has not given up on the TPP, or on keeping the United States involved.
Project Syndicate
“China’s Big Sticks”
US President Donald Trump’s administration is making a major miscalculation by going after China. It appears to be contemplating a wide range of economic and political sanctions – from imposing punitive tariffs and designating China as a “currency manipulator” to embracing Taiwan and casting aside some 40 years of diplomacy framed around the so-called One-China policy. This strategy will backfire. It is based on the mistaken belief that a newly muscular United States has all the leverage in dealing with its presumed adversary, and that any Chinese response is hardly worth considering. But the US has also become heavily dependent on China, which is now America’s third largest and fastest-growing export market. And, as the owner of over $1.25 trillion in Treasuries and other dollar-based assets, China has played a vital role in funding America’s chronic budget deficits – in effect, lending much of its surplus saving to a US that has been woefully derelict in saving enough to support its own economy.