There is intense interest in the present meeting in Singapore of President Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Some observers are hoping it fails, because it is Trump, of course.
Bill Maher, the “comedian” on late night TV hopes the economy collapses to “get rid of Trump” but is mildly optimistic about the meeting with Kim.
Bill Maher thinks President Donald Trump’s agreement to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is “so crazy, it just might work.” Faint praise indeed.
More important is this article from Asia Times.
Unlike his father, the 34-year-old Kim has been active in pursuing pro-market economic growth and may be aiming to emulate Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s reforms in the late 1970s. Kim’s recent sacking of three senior old-guard military officials may hint that he is ready to offer some important concessions to prepare a favorable diplomatic environment for concentrating on economic development.
Some interesting ideas there.
Meanwhile, the G7 trade talks went nowhere and that might be just as well.
In the past 25 years all manufacturing and investment into Mexico and Canada has been reliant on their position to exploit the NAFTA loophole; the backdoor access to the U.S. market. If Trump shuts down that loophole, and brings the manufacturing and assembly back to the U.S., investment North and South of the U.S. border will drop exponentially and the Canadian and Mexican economies will likely shrink rapidly.
We live in interesting times.
I have noticed that those who hate Trump do so with a visceral hatred. They have no logical reason. I read today that Trump blames Justin Trudeau for the collapse and Trudeau blames Trump.
They are interesting times, indeed.
As an aside I have noticed lately on this site I have to constantly reenter my name and email address. Cookie problem?
It seems clear to me that this summit never would have been announced, let alone be taking place, unless serious deals had already been agreed to several months ago, if not longer. The media and political establishments braying otherwise can be safely ignored.
You know the idiotic storyline that’s been put out there for decades, that China needs to step up and muzzle North Korea in order for there to be peace? Plenty of us always said that China had zero interest in doing so, because it was in their interest for NK to be what it is, both to occupy the time and energy of foreign diplomats, and also to serve as a distraction from China’s disgusting record–at least they’re not as bad as North Korea!
So, what would happen if North Korea had a leader who had actually lived in the West and wanted to turn them into a sane country? Would China let that happen? Highly doubtful. It would take some very careful maneuvering to get anything like that done, and the US would have to be willing to help in clever and covert ways to make sure anyone who wanted to do something like that was protected. China’s not going to want their client to be free, but the Koreans are a proud people.
Interesting times, indeed.
Remember Trump has not been a successful “negotiator” since he was a young man. His best efforts were fighting with his lenders, partners and suppliers. This looks extra familiar today. So we pick fights with Canada and the UK, cuddle up to Putin, go without a plan to meet Kim with no clear objective but to make the President feel in charge. To this time he could do well simply by backing out of all of President Obama’s “stroke of a pen” deals. Now he’s got to do his own and that will take effort.
I’m sorry but thinking of pardoning a really crooked Illinois governor because he was once on the “Apprentice” is not a great thinker at work.
I’m sorry but thinking of pardoning a really crooked Illinois governor because he was once on the “Apprentice” is not a great thinker at work.
Odd reasoning. How do you suppose he became a billionaire ? Fighting with partners ?
Blago got a much heavier sentence than Ryan who was selling commercial drivers’ licenses and a family was killed by one of his customers.
Also, Obama was hip deep in the selling of that Senate seat. “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chicago politics.”
Trump brings out deep silliness in his haters.
The death of NAFTA is way overdue, and that is strictly down to Canadian and Mexican cheating. The agreement was never meant to enable back-door export of dumped materials and products, but that’s what it’s become–A means for non-NAFTA states to sneak in products. Go look at the hundreds of acres of aluminum ingots stockpiled in Mexico, or the warehouses full of Chinese steel up in Canada, all of which they’ve basically allowed in as duty-free.
Canada and Mexico have nobody to blame but themselves, for not policing this crap. NAFTA was meant to benefit North American trade, not serve as a workaround for avoiding US trade regulation.
If there are impoverished Canadian or Mexican citizens, they have nobody to blame but their own greedy oligarchs who enabled all of this. It is far past the point where the US should have taken action.
So, what would happen if North Korea had a leader who had actually lived in the West and wanted to turn them into a sane country?
Most likely Jong-un lived in Switzerland for at least four years, going to school. He’s much more used to the West than his daddy, who was educated in the Chinese communist idiocracy, or his grandpa, who had no higher education but was promoted and installed by the the Soviet idiocracy.
That he agreed to travel to economically vibrant but authoritarian Singapore is a good sign. Maybe he’s thinking that he can have his cake and eat it too, like Emperor Xi.
CR: Yes, I know. One theory is that KJU wants to normalize NK, since he has seen the West first hand, but he (and perhaps other Kims) is basically a ChiCom hostage/puppet. Wresting him away from them would be quite the accomplishment.
We’ll probably never know, any more than we’ll know whether Rods from God imploded that mountain, or why that sub flew the Jolly Roger on its return to port…
[HTML is screwy; end tags not working? Or I just screwed up.]
I’m sorry but thinking of pardoning a really crooked Illinois governor because he was once on the “Apprentice” is not a great thinker at work.
Are you sorry that Obama commuted Bradley Manning’s sentance? Clinton, pardoned Marc Rich?
And isn’t Canada and their boy PM just ripe for pissing off, considering that they don’t spend even half of what they agreed to on defense? Although they’re not nearly as cheap as the fat, navel-gazing Germans in that respect. Angela looked like some STASI interrogator grilling Trump on tariffs. You can take the girl out of East Germany, but you can’t take the GDR out of the girl. Fortunately, PDT seemed to blow off her hysterics.
I spend most of my time laughing at the madness in progress. I’ll stop long enough to point out your largest trade partner, Canada is set to apply tit for tat tariffs, to match any US tariffs.
I’m not sure any winners will result from this, but much stupidity is bound to. We like our supply regulated milk, and kinda hate your factory farm surplus looking for a place to go. Hell many of us even understand what this means. ;)
The result unless this is pretty short term is that China will just take the oil you take and probably most of our wood too. They are into hoovering up resources and our largely resource based national economy has little to fear as our stuff can be shipped anywhere. Some caution is certainly appropriate when dealing with our future lords and masters, but we are used to you, don’t forget. ;)
It would be very cool for Trump and Kim to come up with a plan. I guess we’ll see.
I’ll stop long enough to point out your largest trade partner, Canada is set to apply tit for tat tariffs, to match any US tariffs.
I’m really frightened of Canada going its own way. You might check and note that it is half the size of California in population.
You are amusing and don’t even realize it.
“We like our supply regulated milk, and kinda hate your factory farm surplus looking for a place to go.”
we luvs your fake eyebrows dude!!11!!
The Dakota Access Pipeline that transports oil from North Dakota has been operational for a year. This has more to do with the urgency surrounding the Trans Mountain Pipeline than any jabbering over tariffs.
There are now 34 states that have some sort of oil fracking going on. If not for the transportation and refinery bottlenecks, the United States would never be importing oil. As the economics catch up with the technology, social acceptance increases, and operations become decentralized we can expect a future of energy independence.
Several years ago when the Dakota Access Pipeline was being held up Canada said they’d just start selling their oil straight to China.
We built it, and now they say they’ll start selling their stuff to China if we impose new tariffs on some of their stuff in response to other tariffs they put on some of our stuff (isn’t “free trade” grand?)
Go ahead, Canada. Do what you need to do. So will the USA. It will work out better this way.
Which is cheaper? Which has better long term economics for both buyer and seller?
Pipeline and ocean oil transport to China, or pipeline transport to Cushing?
I know the answer for the first, for sure. I think the answer to the second is the same.
Pen, your Security Intelligence Service put together a nice report in an effort to keep Canada from becoming vassal state of the PRC, as New Zealand has become:
Ӣ Whether a Chinese partner company is a state-owned enterprise or a private one, it will have close and increasingly explicit ties to the CCP.
”¢ Unless trade agreements are carefully vetted for national security implications, Beijing will use its commercial position to gain access to businesses, technologies and infrastructure that can be exploited for intelligence objectives, or to potentially compromise a partner’s security.
Ӣ China is prepared to use threats and enticements to bring business and political elites to its side, and motivate them to defend the Chinese perspective on disputes such as the status of Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Ӣ Beijing works actively to influence ethnic Chinese groups, Chinese students and ethnic Chinese businesses in other countries, often curtailing their freedom of expression to promote a narrative favourable to its views. It has also often purchased control of local Chinese-language news outlets.
Ӣ Academics and reporters who question Chinese activities are harassed by Chinese diplomats and Chinese-controlled media.
“Trump has not been a successful “negotiator” since he was a young man. His best efforts were fighting with his lenders, partners and suppliers”
See the Riverside South development. Ignore the pejorative, editorializing title:
http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/how-donald-trump-lucked-into-the-most-lucrative-deal-of-his-career/
It was an epic struggle lasting decades. Trump bargained, partnered, cajoled, negotiated, threatened, battled, reconciled, u-turned, bargained again, battled again, u-turned again, partnered again. He managed to turn it into a 20,000% return on his investment. If that’s what luck is then it’s no wonder luck is so rare.
The mistake the article pins on Trump was a 2005 lawsuit he filed that ended up driving up the price for the eventual sale in 2007. Some mistake. One of probably a hundred strategic lawsuits Trump was involved with during the lifetime of this project.
And in the end, thousands of jobs were created, millions of square feet were developed, and billions of dollars were earned. This odyssey was the template for everything you need to know about what Trump’s eight years as president will be like.
As the economics catch up with the technology, social acceptance increases
Funny how this keeps happening.
And Kim gets his way. ;) All he has asked for, to stop his nuclear efforts, is for you to stop the exercises. Done deal.
You will find, as many have, that fracking is not the same as an oil well. You have to wreck the area and its a gone pretty quick. We have just as horrible a solution in the oil sands but its sustainable.
As for dealing with someone other that America, not a few of our politicians have stated, that we have never got a decent deal on anything we have ever negotiated with the USA. We could hardly do worse.
“fracking is not the same as an oil well. You have to wreck the area and its a gone pretty quick”
Every part of this is of course completely divorced from reality.
This is a fracking pad near me.
CR, looks just like the fracking pads around Karnes County, only without mountains in the background. Just a small concrete pad, with some pipes and tanks sticking up. Hardly “wreck the area” and making it “gone pretty quick”.
And of course thanks to horizontal drilling it requires far fewer pads, hence a much smaller overall footprint. Fracking is an environmentalist’s dream.
I do understand fracking has taken on a religious patina, due to its miraculous, ‘we have more oil than we need’ properties and has become an article of faith among the flock.
It has destroyed more than a few water tables and videos of people lighting their water on fire abound. As with everything there are areas that are perfect for fracking and will produce for a long time. YMMV as always.
As a resident of British Columbia and opposed to the Kinder Morgan pipeline I have no wish to ship our climate crime anywhere. As its already a serious mess, why not just build refineries there and ship less, finished product, to market?
I would actually like to know what drives this need to ship crude, when it could be refined at the source. I have not found a useful answer so far.
After some investigation, my guess is that the ‘persistent login plugin’ you were using has died, probably an update to WP that made it incompatible in some way, or it may need an update itself.
There are newer ones that might do the job too, eh’.
“It has destroyed more than a few water tables and videos of people lighting their water on fire abound.”
Those very few examples are due to well drilling problems near the surface, not due to fracking. Fracking involves breaking up rock structures several miles below the surface, far, far below the water table.
The ‘gone pretty quick’ is probably referring to production decline rates. It had been observed in years past that fracked wells would produce at at good clip followed by a quick drop-off after the first few years. Then at year five or six, it leveled off to a gradual decline.
New technology is now causing the decline rates to decline, by as much as half in some places
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shale-declinerates-idUSKCN0ZH3RQ
It’s a trend occurring all over the world actually. Old wells previously thought to be spent are being revisited as more efficient methods become available.
It has helped revive some old theories about abundant inorganic sources of petroleum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
Those very few examples are due to well drilling problems near the surface, not due to fracking. Fracking involves breaking up rock structures several miles below the surface, far, far below the water table.
Don’t tell Penny. He was promised no math.
His story of his various enterprises, from garbage truck driver, to programmer, are all in doubt due to his weaknesses in understanding technology.
I vote for garbage truck driver as the most probable.
I would actually like to know what drives this need to ship crude, when it could be refined at the source. I have not found a useful answer so far.
According to a six-year-old HuffPo article:
Since the 1970s, the number of refineries in Canada has plummeted from 40 to 19, taking a big bite out of the direct refinery labour force, which dropped from 27,400 to 17,500 between 1989 and 2009. There hasn’t been a new refinery built in Canada since 1984, or in the U.S. since 1976…
According to most analysts, the financials have been ”” and continue to be ”” the most significant barrier to significantly expanding Canada’s refining capacity. Though the precise cost of a new facility is difficult to pinpoint, some put the initial capital outlay at more than $10 billion.
The refining business is also considered to be more risky than upstream oil production, because profitability is directly impacted by swings in global oil prices and demand for refined products such as gasoline. In recent years, toughening environmental standards and the increasing availability of oil sands bitumen (as opposed to sweet crude, which is no longer as easy to come by), has presented an added challenge, as processing heavier oil is more expensive.
But that hasn’t stopped companies south of the border, where facilities in several dedicated refining areas have undergone major infrastructure upgrades, a process that is still underway, with multi-billion-dollar projects currently in the works in Michigan and Illinois.
According to Michal Moore, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy, these upgrades have armed U.S. facilities with the necessary processing and pipeline infrastructure to essentially corner the market in North America.
“The time to make the decision [to build up Canada’s refining industry] was probably 20 years ago, maybe a little before that,” he said. “When you didn’t make that decision, you lost your ability to compete in that market. You couldn’t catch up.”
Why Aren’t We Building Refineries In Canada? Because It’s Too Late, Experts Say, May 2012
Thanks Mike. Your encouragement is always welcome.
I understand refineries are expensive. My question is: Why is oil shipped to refineries rather than having it refined at the source and shipping less total stuff to market? It would seem that would be more efficient and cheaper.
As one who does not want Canada’s rather awful diluted bitumen, shipped through an area that is both narrow and right in the middle of where many of us live, I would like to know. Any discharge will be extremely hard to deal with as it will be solid tar at water temperatures.
We could ship from Alberta, gasoline and fuel oil, to all the markets served by Alberta now and sell it abroad. Why does this not make sense?
“We could ship from Alberta, gasoline and fuel oil, to all the markets served by Alberta now and sell it abroad. Why does this not make sense?”
Ask your gov’t why it so difficult to build a refinery? and about the PM’s fake eyebrows?
Penny, ask your politicians in BC why Canada is missing out on the energy boom.
There was a time when Canada was a sensible country with a sensible economy. I can even remember when the Canadian dollar was worth about $1.14.
This days are gone and you helped send them away.
Pen Gun has bought into the Josh Fox nonsense hook, line, and sinker. Alex Epstein, Phelim McAleer, and Ann McElhinney tore Fox’s diatribe apart.
Phelim McAleer. What a great name. Right up there with Halldor Laxness and Elmer Kelton.
“My question is: Why is oil shipped to refineries rather than having it refined at the source and shipping less total stuff to market? It would seem that would be more efficient and cheaper.”
One barrel of crude yields more than one barrel of refined products. The term used to describe this is ‘swell’. When I worked in some of the refineries around Port Arthur, the number bandied about was 7%. As most crude is ‘heavier’ than the bulk of the products produced from it,
the heavier streams from the crude distillation tower is cracked and hydrotreated, to ‘lighten’ it.
If a refinery were locally sited to process the Athabasca oil sands, rather than one pipeline out for crude, you would be looking at multiple
pipelines for the majority of the pumpable products, plus truck haulage for the smaller volume products like lube oil stock, tar & what not.
Given the total reserves around Fort McMurry, local refining might well pay, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Alberta.
Given the total reserves around Fort McMurry, local refining might well pay, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Alberta.
Given the recent politics of Canada, there is no chance any sensible solution would be found.
The NDP in BC is as “Green” as any gets in the world. They are opposed to the fossil fuels being produced in Alberta.
You can hear the distaste in Penny’s comments.
The neoneocon blog is having the same problems with commenter ID being deleted.
An interesting piece today in the WaPo about why Trudeau might not have support for his trade arguments with Trump.
Though Canada enjoys broadly free trade with the United States through the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has never been absolute, and the deal makes several concessions to Canadian protectionism and politics. Chief among them are Canada’s extraordinarily high tariffs on American dairy products, which at last week’s Group of Seven summit in Quebec, Trump correctly identified as a “270% tariff.” As the CBC reminded, “Canada levies a tariff of 270 percent on milk, 245 percent on cheese and 298 percent on butter in an effort to keep U.S. and other foreign dairy imports out.” These tariffs exist almost exclusively for the benefit of the agriculture sector of Quebec, a province with a unique stranglehold on Canadian politics.
Especially with the Trudeau family.
America agriculture is among the most heavily subsidized on the planet. Its $20 billion these days. As well a recent study found that:
“Support, in its various forms, equaled 73 percent of U.S. dairy farmers’ market returns in 2015, according to a report published by a Canadian trade consulting firm on Thursday.
https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-subsidies-equal-73-percent-of-producer-returns-says-new-report/
So we see no need to allow your Factory Milk producers who produce far more milk than the US can consume to destroy our milk industry.
Our milk is peanuts, oh wait …
Thanks for the explanation @raymondshaw. That does make sense and I understand why the refineries need to be near their service area rather than the other way round.
All of which demonstrates clearly yet again that what we have right now is nothing at all like “free trade”.
Trump proposed free trade last week, i.e., no tariffs at all, and it was ignored / laughed out of the room.
OK, fine, then if we have to have a system with lots of tariffs, then we in the US should have tariffs that are in our own interests. Canada can and should do the same.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks that any of this will do the slightest bit of harm to Trump.
}}} It has destroyed more than a few water tables and videos of people lighting their water on fire abound.
Aaaand now we know we’re talking to a clueless parrot reading from the script of Gasland.
Except the director of Gasland is ON FILM acking that the “message” is mote important than the facts, the areas he filmed “ignitable water faucets” in were all KNOWN a decade and more before fracking commenced to have this issue, and, as people above have noted, fracking consistently takes place a mile or two UNDER the water tables — separated, usually, by multiple strata of impermeable rock…
Other than THAT, nothing he says is correct, either, mind you. But he scores a ‘A’ grade as an idiot parrot.
“Other than THAT, nothing he says is correct, either, mind you. But he scores a ‘A’ grade as an idiot parrot.”
Hey, I’ll take any As I can get.
A few facts:
Fracking releases about as much methane as 22 coal fired plants, some 5.3 billion lbs a year.
About 14 billion gallons of waste water a year has been produced and dumped. its nasty stuff.
Some 2 billion pounds of toxic chemicals a year are used in this endeavor.
I could go on.
Are you still quoting Gasland, the discredited film?
Wasted water isn’t dumped. The verb, dump, implies that the waste is just tossed on the ground. Currently, waste water is injected deep below the ground under approval and regulation of the EPA since 1974.
https://www.epa.gov/uic/general-information-about-injection-wells
They are currently investigating strategies for waste water treatment.
Methane leakage has been falling increasingly since the 90s.
https://www.energyindepth.org/new-epa-data-show-continued-decline-methane-emissions/
Why? Volunarty efforts by producers. Methane is a valuable product to be captured, processed and sold.