Asia

Update: A Commerce spokesman told Fox News that Ross was not involved with Navigator’s decision to engage in business with Sibur, a publicly traded company, which was not under sanction at the time and is not currently. The spokesman also said Ross, the Trump administration’s point man on trade and manufacturing policy, “never met” Shamalov, and generally has supported the Trump administration’s sanctions against Russia, while recusing himself from matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels.

The simple chart below from the United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime beautifully illustrates the next leg up in America’s opioid crisis. 

If you thought today’s situation was bad - think again. Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium just logged a record crop harvest this year doubling last year’s production. Some how - some way, Afghanistan’s opium will find its way into a neighborhood near you.

According to VOANEWS,

President Donald Trump is leaving his administration’s push to pass comprehensive tax reform before year’s end in the hands of his trusted deputies while he embarks this morning on a 10-day tour to Asia, where he’s expected to discuss, among other topics, the security threat that North Korea poses to both the region and to the world more broadly.

One day after the dollar slumped sharply on initial disappointment with the GOP tax plan, the greenback has rebounded ahead of a nonfarm payrolls report that is expected to show the US economy gained over 300,000 jobs in the post-hurricane rebound, and as investors reassessed the latest news on U.S. tax-cut plans. Stocks in Europe and Asia advanced, US equity futures were as usual in the green, while oil headed for an eight-month high on signs OPEC will agree to extend supply cuts.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

The 19th Party Congress has made it very clear that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – as codified by President Xi Jinping – is China’s road map ahead. Not only does the strategy graphically eschew those much-lauded “Western values”; it will, in Xi’s own words, offer “a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.”