Steel tariffs: Our generals are fighting the last war
The week’s resignation of Gary Cohn, the Trump administration’s senior economic advisor, should concern Minnesotans. A respected voice for free trade, Cohn’s departure cedes ground to the Administration’s protectionist, nationalist trade warriors: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and China- bashing economist…
China and the United States: Who will slay its dragon first?
- 15 Apr 2018
- Duncan McCampbell
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Much of the talk surrounding China and the U.S. is couched in terms of inevitable confrontation– a zero sum equation. One wins; the other loses. I don’t believe that the contest between our countries will be decided by who defeats…
Target’s Canada Pull-Out: The Lessons of Assumption and Adaptation
- 16 Jan 2015
- Duncan McCampbell
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The apparent causes of Target’s failure in Canada are well documented. They went in too big, too fast. Unresolved supply chain issues led to empty shelves. Add poor site selection, some poor store designs and questionable merchandising and, well, you…
Trans Flats and Other Oddities: China’s Evolving Property and Banking Systems
- 12 Jan 2015
- Duncan McCampbell
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China is making a slow, cautious move from a state-managed production economy to a more consumer-driven economy, fueled by the as-yet restrained purchasing power of the world’s largest and fastest growing middle class. While China is often able to do…
The Real Story Behind Falling Oil Prices–The Saudis Whack Iran and Russia
- 17 Dec 2014
- Duncan McCampbell
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Recent analysis about the rapid drop in crude oil prices depicts the Saudis in a market share battle with the frackers of North Dakota and Texas. Underlying it all is a false assumption—that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter…
Time for Judicial Reform in China, Part II: Moving Beyond Greater Transparency
- 08 Dec 2013
- Duncan McCampbell
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“You know, publishing judicial cases in China won’t work because no one cares what the courts say,” declared my best Chinese friend Mike, seemingly out of nowhere, as we entered the crowded Beijing subway on a slate-grey afternoon in the…
Time for Judicial Reform in China: Part One
In the week leading up to the recently concluded Third Plenum meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, the Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest court, issued a white paper recommending that the government “implement the courts’ independent exercise of judicial authority…
My Big Six For 2014
I normally wait until the December solstice to issue my annual Big Six predictions. I do this because December 21, or thereabouts, is the shortest day of the year. Every day afterwards is longer, and thus more hopeful, which is…
Bring back the good jobs … from Switzerland
That’s right. Not China. Switzerland. So you’re not talking about the much-lamented loss to China of union scale, blue-collar jobs from the fetid factories of America’s Rust Belt? No. So perhaps you won’t bore me with another rendition of that tiresome…
“You’ve got to get your corruption right.”
It was a typically nasty Beijing afternoon in August. Millions of Chinese people were hard at it, chasing the next Yuan through the oppressive summer heat and choking pollution of Beijing’s Chaoyang District. As I drove to a meeting with…