All countries need and have national security laws that put bounds on the conduct of its citizens and visitors so why if China’s so different? There is an excellent book titled “The Dictators Handbook” which explains in the decades and centuries past, dictators would simply round up and kill the Read more…
The Wuhan coronavirus, now officially named COVID-19, has near constant media coverage and it is now difficult to see the forest for the trees. There is so much information it is easy to loose the big picture. We are now at 50 days with the coronavirus and it is safe Read more…
The nuclear energy industry has a bad rap. Accidents at Fukushima Japan and Chernobyl Russia, using 1950’s technology, scared citizens and politicians into thinking that nuclear energy is both dangerous and dead. Even with these massive events, the fact is that nuclear was always RELATIVELY safe. We say relatively because Read more…
For most of the last 50 years the United Front (aka the Central United Front Work Department, UF, UFW, UFWD and CUFWD) had five broad “bureau’s” each with large budgets and direct connections to the Chinese Government, Politburo and Communist Party. However, by 2019 President for life Xi Jinping had Read more…
To get directly to the point the United Front is the official Chinese governments propaganda arm. The United Front is very powerful, in nearly all countries and intentionally opaque to non-Chinese government officials. The term ‘United Front’ can be confusing when it relates to China. 100+ years ago United Front Read more…
‘One China’ is a policy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that requires other nations to accept that the CCP is rightfully in total control of both the Chinese mainland and the nearby island ‘nation’ of Taiwan. The history of how One China came to be is a fascinating one. Read more…
When China began the ‘free-marketization’ of its economy in the 1980’s it was clear that China was going to be an economic powerhouse. They had an excellent blue print to follow in capitalist British Hong Kong and a singular drive to raise its citizens from the poverty of its communist Read more…
The goal of a trade war is to increase access to some other countries markets. However, we can simplify the logic by reducing down from a country scale to an individual business scale. At the single company scale, Company A withholds a key product or increases price on that product Read more…
From an American perspective, China has a strange confidence the belies and critical weakness that is just below the surface. US President Donald Trump is fond of pointing out that China sells much more to the US than the US sells to China. He believes that this trade imbalance gives Read more…
The China vs United States Trade war is a constant discussion in “The West” and is highly visible because it causes companies like Apple to talk about raising consumer prices. China is very different from the United States and here is why the Chinese consumer has very little concern about Read more…
In our article BoycottUSA and BoycottTrump Does Not Mean Not Buying American, we explain that China is applying there retaliatory tariffs to Donald Trump supporters and no the US as a whole. That brings up the question of why China would target Boeing.
Boeing is based in Chicago and Chicago did not support Trump in the 2016 and they certainly don’t support him now:
The map to the right shows how Chicago voted; neighborhood by neighborhood voted against Donald Trump
While it is common sense and standard operating procedure for companies to quietly support their political leaders Boeing seems particularly aggressive in this area. When it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 Presidential Election, Boeing was there to help
Boeing, like many companies, woke up on November 9 to an unexpected political landscape. The company had been preparing for a Clinton presidency. Timothy Keating, its long-time senior VP of government operations, served under President Bill Clinton. There was even internal discussion at Boeing that Keating might join a new Clinton administration. Source: money.cnn.com/2017/02/17/news/companies/boeing-trump-dennis-muilenburg/index.html
Now the Donald J Trump has won the White House, Boeing has not unexpectedly flip flopped but they have taken it further than most, making some believe that they have a genuine support for Trump. From Presidential visits to photo opportunities to political conversation, Boeing is now tied to President Trump.