monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

If you're referring to Trump as a sociopath, I agree. The scary thing is I think Trump is proud of being a sociopath, and he thinks that's normal.

LONDON — As President Trump intermittently escalates and moderates his trade war with China, his conflicting signals reflect a reality that limits his actions: He can try to sever the deeply intertwined American commercial relationship with China, or he can prod economic growth to assuage the fears of investors around the planet.

But he cannot do both at the same time.

Mr. Trump need not rely on the testimonials of economists to deduce this. He can disregard the admonitions of news outlets he derides as fake news. He can simply consult the one source whose verdicts he tends to celebrate: the stock market.

Among those who control money, portents of further trade hostilities between the United States and China, the two largest economies on earth, have proved an impetus to sell with abandon while amplifying talk of recession. Intimations of a deal avoiding further animosity reverberate as a clarion call to buy, sending share prices higher while easing worries about a potential global economic downturn.

Mr. Trump often appears caught between competing impulses that pull markets — and his China policy — in opposite directions.

Talk of a trade deal with China makes for happy stock markets and retirement account statements that Americans open up to learn that they are, also happily, richer. For a president seeking re-election next year, this option holds appeal.

Thunderous threats of fresh tariffs on Chinese goods and the forging of a new order in which American industry forsakes China may damage share prices and shrink economic growth prospects. But it brings plaudits from Mr. Trump’s most ardent political base — nationalists who portray the trade war as a tough but necessary piece of business, the sort of action evaded by the cowards who resided at the White House before.

The latest evidence for this state of affairs came in recent days, as Mr. Trump angrily reacted to China’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs of 10 percent on some $75 billion worth of American exports.

On Friday, the president unleashed furious tweets threatening China with pain. He vowed to raise tariffs on $550 billion of Chinese goods. He declared that China’s president, Xi Jinping, whom he had previously called a “good man,” was an “enemy.” And he commanded American companies to abandon China and start making their products in the United States.

That last bit was especially striking given that successive American administrations have criticized Chinese counterparts for using state-owned companies as tools of policy in contravention of market forces. Now, here was the president of the United States, traditional champion of swashbuckling capitalism, ordering American companies to heed his dictates.

In markets around the globe, investors reacted to these developments as powerful signals to yank their money to safety. They sold stocks and bought bonds. They dumped a vast assortment of currencies and purchased the American dollar, the ultimate haven in moments of worry.

They reacted, in short, as if much of the globe suddenly appeared riskier.
Signs of trouble had already been mounting. For better or worse, the United States and China have been fused for two decades, with their fortunes influencing economic conditions everywhere.

China has invested aggressively in manufacturing plants, ports and power systems to become the factory to the world. American consumers are the most significant drivers of economic growth on earth. Together, the United States and China are responsible for about 40 percent of the world’s economic output.

Any sign of a breakdown in this arrangement — the threat that China will be impeded in selling its goods, or that the American appetite is waning — spreads worry far and wide.

The trade war that has escalated over the last year has already produced distress. Germany, the largest economy in Europe, is teetering toward recession in large part because of weakening exports. As China’s economy slows in the face of American tariffs, Chinese factories have less need for goods made in Germany, from machinery to petrochemicals.

German weakness has contributed to a general sense of malaise in Europe, just as the Continent grapples with the prospect that Britain — also contracting — might crash out of the European Union without a deal governing future commercial relations.

Across Asia, the drop in trade has sown trouble, with Singapore and Hong Kong now declining and South Korea slowing. Even Vietnam — a country that has received fresh investment as multinational companies seek alternatives to making their wares in China — looks vulnerable if global trade over all continues to diminish.

“For the rest of the world, there are many other countries that are innocent bystanders that will actually suffer even more than the United States and China,” said Louis Kuijs, the Hong Kong-based head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics. “There is not going to be any de-escalation any time soon.”

The United States is still growing, with the unemployment rate lower than it had been in half a century. But companies are deferring investments as they puzzle over the impact of trade hostilities. How can executives proceed with expanding operations in Ohio or Michigan when they have no certainty over the tariffs that will apply to parts and electronics brought in from China? A slowdown in investment could eventually prompt households to curb their spending, bringing a recession.

If a continued trade war footing tanks stock markets, share prices could themselves become an affliction. As millions of Americans absorb the reality that their investments are worth less, they may question whether to buy that new home, take that trip or open that new business.

Long before Mr. Trump took office, American governments complained about China and its failed promises to open its market. China has lavished subsidies on state-owned companies. It turned itself into an export juggernaut while ignoring labor and environmental standards.

Beijing and Washington have argued over this state of affairs for decades, while American labor interests and industry groups have demanded redress.

President Donald Trump’s wild and woolly press conference at the end of the G-7 summit shows, once again, that the putative author of The Art of the Deal is a lousy negotiator.

It’s one thing, and fairly risky, to go all-out “maximum pressure” on China and Iran, but at least that’s a strategy. It’s another thing, and simply bumbling, to do so, then to admit having “second thoughts” about escalating tariffs against China (then to have a spokesman backpedal on that) and to welcome a dialogue with Tehran (only to have President Hassan Rouhani blow him off).

Similarly, it’s one thing, though unconstitutional (and, therefore, a mindless bluff), to order U.S. companies to stop doing business with China, as Trump did just before the summit. But another then to say, at the press conference afterward, that President Xi Jinping is a “great leader” who will make a deal soon, and once he does, the companies should stay put and “do a great job.”

If you’re a corporate executive doing business in China, or an investor trading currencies, or even engaged in commerce almost anywhere in the world, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to plan even months, much less years, ahead? As Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, protectionism, though bad enough, can be accommodated, but “erratic protectionism” is the stuff of chaos and downfalls.

If they can do this in that location, they can do similar surveillance on all of us.

To me, it's a huge story. If they can do this in that location, they can do similar surveillance on all of us.

I have not been digging into that aspect enough to know

half the regulars here are on the payroll.