Foreign Affairs ran my take on the Abe-Trump summit at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2017-02-16/trump-and-japan?cid=soc-fb-rdr .

Excerpts:

One of the oft-repeated themes of Candidate (then President) Trump is that the world has been taking advantage of us at every turn, and that China is the main culprit.  The evidence presented is that China has been systematically manipulating its currency to boost its exports and discourage imports, thus contributing to the massive U.S trade deficit.  However, the evidence is a dollar short and a couple of years late.  If anything, China has been struggling in the past 18 months to prevent its currency from depreciating too rapidly.

So far, President Trump has demonstrated that he will try to make good on his campaign promises, though the process may be anything but pretty. We cannot recall a president who started out “fighting” on so many fronts: still confirming most of his cabinet, nominating a Supreme Court Justice and multiple sweeping executive orders on domestic and international matters. Until the rollout of corporate and other tax proposals, which at this rate may come sooner than expected, the economic focus should be on Trump’s trade policy.

I am sharing an article on the topic of Taiwan-PRC diplomatic competition in Central America.

The article examines the recent visit by Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen to Central America, in the context of the possible breakdown of the informal "diplomatic truce" which has prevailed between Taiwan and mainland China since 2008.

This work is available from the ejourunal "Global Taiwan Brief," and the full text can be found below as well.

You can check out the video of India's Turn to Transform and my brief comments are:

Investors will have to wait and see whether President-elect Donald Trump delivers on campaign promises that range from massive deregulation in the financial sector to trade protectionist actions to make America great again. However certain is that the new administration will emphasize fiscal tools that range from tax cuts to infrastructure spending to stimulate the US economy.

The United States is poised to enter a more typical economic cycle than we’ve seen since the 1990s.  The Trump administration’s outsized tax cuts and plans to increase defense spending, and the virtual certainty that the GOP Congress will eagerly go along, will swell the US budget deficit and jumpstart faster growth.