A pivotal moment for Japan’s national defense
This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original and become a Noahopinion subscriber here.
Noah Smith in asian news
Weighing why China is juicing exports
The big economic news this week was Biden’s very large tariffs on a number of Chinese-made goods. Those tariffs appear to have acted as a catalyst for a bunch of other countries — India, Brazil, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, the EU, etc. — to consider their own tariffs on China.
The Big Tariff era is here
Joe Biden is about to slap 100% tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles. A 100% tariff is an absolutely huge tariff. It means that Chinese EV makers would have to sell their EVs in the US at half the price of EVs manufactured elsewhere in order to be competitive. That just isn’t going to happen.
No, Japan’s actually not a xenophobic country
The other day at a fundraiser, Joe Biden made a casual comment that I consider to be the worst gaffe of his entire term as president. He declared that two of America’s most important allies, India and Japan, are “xenophobic”, and placed them in the same category as Russia and China:
Who’s afraid of TSMC’s management culture?
Viola Zhou has written an excellent investigative report into the culture clashes and growing pains at the TSMC factory in Phoenix, Arizona.
What US should do next on national security
The US Congress just passed — and Biden signed — a major national security bill. The bill has four main provisions:
America ain’t all bad: five good reasons to be optimistic
Recently I’ve been writing some fairly gloomy stuff, mostly related to war and international affairs. But even though I’ve been focusing on scary happenings overseas, I’m still very optimistic about the domestic situation here in the United States. So I thought I’d make a little list of trends that we should be happy about.
Sizing up the China-Russia ‘New Axis’
In a recent post, I tried to warn people about the substantial and growing chance of World War 3. My post was focused on the risk that a war will occur, but it didn’t really focus on the risk that the US and its allies will be defeated in that war.