United States

Via GEFIRA,

US-centric media are reporting that Japan has become the biggest holder of the US treasuries, surpassing China last month. However, this is true only in regard to single countries. If we consider the European Union member states collectively, then they appear to be the biggest holder of the US treasuries. It has been so almost one year long. Unfortunately, the EU’s holdings are artificially overstated because of some financial havens and they are going in the opposite direction to the trend: up rather than down.

China is wasting no time to project power in a world in which it believes Donald Trump's "America First" doctrine has created a "superpower vacuum."

One day after a senior Chinese diplomat said on Monday that Beijing is prepared to "assume a role of world leadership if others step back from that position" after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged in his first speech to put “America first”, Beijing has reportedly deployed an advanced Dongfeng-41 ICBM system in Heilongjiang Province, which borders with Russia.

Three days in and Trump has already kept one pledge

Paul Craig Roberts

On Trump’s third day Trump is one up on the Establishment. Can this last?

I am not a Trump booster. I am a scorekeeper.

On the third day of his presidency Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacificic Partnership (TPP). Based on this we must assume he will also deep-six the Trans-Atlantic Partnership.

During his anticipated first meeting of the day with executives from GM, Ford and Chrysler, Trump pledged to cut regulations and taxes in a "very big push" to have more auto plants in the US, noting that environmentalism in the US is out of control, although he said that he is "to large extent" an environmentalist.

The latest diplomatic spat between the US and China erupted overnight, when China said on Tuesday it had "irrefutable" sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea after White House spokesman Sean Spicer vowed to defend "international territories" in the strategic waterway. Spicer's first official comments on Monday signaled a sharp departure from years of cautious U.S. handling of China's assertive pursuit of territorial claims in Asia.