| | | | Trump's Risky Flip-Flopping | | President Trump's decision to place North Korea back on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism is the latest example of the administration's flip-flopping on the issue, write the Cato Institute's Erik Goepner and A. Trevor Thrall. Unless the President starts sending a clear and consistent message to Pyongyang, the Kim regime "could miscalculate, and that's a nuclear mistake we cannot afford."
"[W]hat is the Trump administration's strategy towards North Korea? Does China play a critical role or not? Have diplomatic means and patience been abandoned? Is the U.S. prioritizing direct talks with the North Korean regime or will only threats and force resolve the situation? In the past year, the president has suggested the answer is 'yes' to each of those strategic options. At times, he has said both yes and no to the same option at the same time," they write in the Washington Examiner.
Meanwhile, there isn't "any reason to believe that re-designating North Korea a sponsor of terrorism or imposing additional sanctions will have much impact. Indeed, the very fact that North Korea was able to develop nuclear weapons while laboring under heavy sanctions over decades makes clear how unlikely it is that additional penalties will encourage Kim Jong Un to change course." - Don't get excited about the pause in missile tests. Don't mistake the absence of North Korean missile tests the past couple of months for a willingness to negotiate, writes Van Jackson for The Atlantic. There are three possible reasons for the lack of tests, "none of which has to do with diplomatic signaling."
"First, the fall is the harvest season in North Korea, and many parts of the North Korean military customarily perform mundane agricultural functions during this part of the year. Second, North Korea is pausing its missile tests according to a schedule of annual program assessment. For years North Korea has slowed missile testing in the prelude to an annual multi-month period of intense military training activity and joint maneuvers. During this calm before the storm, North Korea continues with missile program assessments of past tests; a pause in testing before the "winter training cycle" has never represented a pause in the missile program per se," Jackson says.
"A third, more discomfiting possibility, is that North Korea believes it has achieved the progress it seeks in its missile program and it doesn't see an immediate need for further provocation…If North Korea has achieved something approximating its desired level of success, North Korea might be ready to negotiate, but only on terms that the United States so far refuses to accept."
| | The Surprising Truth About Education in China? | | Chinese President Xi Jinping has laid out a "bold vision" for transforming his country's economy by 2050. But one of the biggest hurdles to realizing that vision could come from an unexpected source, writes Christopher Balding for Bloomberg View: the education system.
"A widely held view in the West is that China's schools are brimming with math and science whizzes, just the kind of students that companies of the future will need. But this is misleading: For years, headline-grabbing studies showing China's prowess on standardized tests evaluated only kids in rich and unrepresentative areas. When its broader population was included, China's ranking dropped across all subject areas," Balding writes.
"Official data bears out this dynamic. According to the 2010 census, less than 9 percent of Chinese had attended school beyond the secondary level. More than 65 percent had gone no further than junior high. From 2008 to 2016, China's total number of graduate students actually decreased by 1 percent. Outside the richest areas, much of China's population lacks even the basic skills required in a high-income economy."
| | How Congress Could Wreck Science in America | | | A proposal in the tax plan passed last week by the U.S. House of Representatives would dramatically increase the cost of getting a graduate education in America, writes Tanya Basu for the Daily Beast. That will be a big blow to science in the United States – one it might be tough to recover from. "The United States has been facing increasing competition from other countries in attracting top-tier candidates to its research facilities, and charging a tuition tax on students who are barely making ends meet certainly doesn't help the American science education PR campaign," Basu writes. "That not only affects the coffers of American universities that rely on research to earn grants and funding for its programming, it affects the field as a whole. If labs have reduced or even completely empty presences, scientific progress is impeded. Another lab in another country might get to a conclusion faster, or a discovery might not be made at all." "In an age where science has a more prominent role than ever before, it's hard to not see the role of the administration's push towards giving wealthier individuals tax credits while believing that graduate students can afford to pay for their tuition. It's ignorant at best, detrimental and short-sighted at worst to the investment of science in our lives." | | Think Trump Has Been Radical on Trade? Just Wait | | | President Trump has walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and opened negotiations on NAFTA. But that's just a taste of what's to come on trade, writes Bill Emmott for Project Syndicate. "Once tax legislation is off the table…Trump will want to show that he means what he has said on trade." "[N]ext year, Trump can be expected to turn rhetoric into action on two main fronts. The first is China, which Trump has singled out as the greatest trade exploiter of the U.S. Unless the North Korea standoff escalates critically, he will likely initiate anti-dumping actions against Chinese industries – notably in steel – deemed to be selling their goods below cost; and he will probably launch a broad assault on intellectual-property violations in China," Emmott argues. "The other main front for Trump is the World Trade Organization, which America helped establish in the early 1990s as a successor to the post-war General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer has gone on record to describe the WTO's dispute-settlement system as harmful to America. And already, the Trump administration is blocking the appointment of new judges to WTO arbitration panels. If it maintains that policy, the WTO's entire dispute-settlement system will be crippled within months." | | The Best Country at Attracting (and Keeping) Talent Is… | | | Switzerland is the best country at developing, attracting and retaining talent, according to a new report from the Institute for Management Development, thanks largely to the high quality of life and attractive remuneration it offers to highly-skilled staff. Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Finland round out the top five. The annual report ranks countries based on factors including education, workplace training, language skills, cost of living and tax rates. The top performing nations "share some common characteristics: they have an outstanding educational system from primary to tertiary levels in which they invest significantly, offer a superior quality of life, and provide substantial opportunities for career advancement throughout the entire professional life span," the report says. The United States is ranked 16th overall, scoring highly on overall appeal, but struggling in the "investment and development" category, which includes health infrastructure, employee training and apprenticeships. Venezuela scored worst of the 63 countries included in the report, followed by Mongolia and Romania. | | | | | | |
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