What kind of posts?
muh joo, fedboi, cp, gore, vatican dude or just angry inch?
MARAD Announces $4.8 Million in Funding for Marine Highways
Mike Schuler May 24, 2024
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) has announced plans to allocate $4.8 million in Fiscal Year 2024 funds to the United States Marine Highway Program (USMHP).
The amount is significantly less than the $12 million awarded in FY 2023 and the $39 million granted in FY 2022, which included $25 million through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and an additional $14.8 million via the 2022 Appropriations Act.
The USMHP is committed to projects that encourage the movement of freight on America’s navigable waterways, which offer more efficient transport than rail and road.
Since the start of the Marine Highway Program, MARAD has granted more than $103 million to eligible public and private organizations for marine highway services.
Assessment criteria for USMHP funding include the impact on movement of goods, the level of non-federal funding investment, project readiness, and considerations for climate change and sustainability, equity, and workforce development.
https://gcaptain.com/marad-announces-4-8-million-in-funding-for-marine-highways/
Any anons seen any dredging? Replacement of channel buoys? Repainting of daymarks?
What bread is that supposed to be?
A New Trade War Offers No Easy Way Back for Old Global Order
Bloomberg May 24, 2024
The world’s three dominant economies are entering a new, combative phase as the US increasingly uses trade weapons borrowed from China’s playbook. That’s threatening to deepen international fractures and to challenge decades of free-market orthodoxy — and it leaves Europe with big decisions to make.
Then-President Donald Trump fired the first shots with tariffs on China seven years ago, and then Joe Biden ushered America into the new industrial policy age. Stage three, punctuated by Biden’s latest round of duties on Chinese imports, builds on the first two: using tariffs to defend US interests, with subsidies now at the core of policy and without fear of retaliation.
The $31 trillion arena of international commerce has withstood a series of shocks in recent years, including the US-China trade war. This time, the linchpin is the European Union — caught between preserving its self-styled role as defender of multilateral rules and fearing the loss of millions of jobs and tens of billions in investment while the US and China wield market-distorting subsidies and tariffs.
“Trump let the protectionist genie out of the bottle,” said Simon Evenett, founder of the St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade, a group based in Switzerland that tracks trade policies. “No one dared to put it back in.”
After the US tariff announcement last week, China signaled it’s ready to unleash duties as high as 25% on imported American and European autos — a retaliation threat aimed at both sides of the Atlantic.
That’s because Brussels is nearing the end of an electric-vehicle subsidy investigation that is likely to lead to defensive measures against China’s auto exports. The bloc’s levies are expected to be significantly lower than the US’s and based on a different approach within World Trade Organization rules and procedures.
Washington’s latest salvo against Chinese EVs, semiconductors, batteries, critical minerals and other products comes as US officials ask other nations to join its fight against Chinese industrial policy that they say is flooding the world with cheap goods — a charge China pushes back on.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated the pleas in a speech this week. “China’s industrial policy may seem remote as we sit here in this room, but if we do not respond strategically and in a united way, the viability of businesses in both our countries and around the world could be at risk,” she told an audience in Frankfurt.
The impact of the new US tariffs on China’s $18.5 trillion economy will likely be modest, according to Bloomberg Economics. But bigger risks lie in a wider battle targeting Chinese innovation and Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on all imports from the US’s third-biggest trading partner.
Such economic costs might be worth paying. At least that’s among the messages accompanying Biden’s tariffs — that domestic concerns about national security and China’s threats to it may override what conventional wisdom once considered to be in the interest of the international economic good.
“More significant is the signaling effect to the rest of the world that no matter who occupies the White House, the overall policy direction of America First and a partial decoupling with China will continue,” said Yeo Han-koo, a former South Korean trade minister.
Trade tensions are lurking as Group of Seven finance ministers, central bankers and top economic officials meet in the Italian lakeside resort of Stresa on Friday. OECD chief Mathias Cormann worried about the extent of any fallout.
“What we should be doing is improving the way globalization is working and delivering,” he told Bloomberg Television. “But we have to be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
In Europe, there are concerns that economically driven actions that go beyond restrictions for military purposes could hurt the continent’s competitiveness.
While bilateral trade disputes among the US, China and Europe have been simmering for years, Biden’s decision to maintain some Trump-era steel tariffs on the EU and his more recent $18 billion tariff volley at China shattered any lingering hope for a return to consensus and fairness.
Export Exposure
The resulting trade fragmentation will be more damaging for nations such as China, South Korea or Japan, whose economies depend more on international trade than the US or many countries in the EU.
While it fueled protectionist sentiment, the pandemic actually made China more dependent on exports as a driver of growth. When Hong Kong is included, China is the source of about 20% of all global exports, double the US’s share, according to WTO figures.
Such reliance helps explain why China plays an active role in the WTO-centered system and claims to play by the rules. It’s also why Beijing has been trying to build out a series of trade deals with both its neighbors and countries further afield, such as Serbia and Hungary.
But the imbalance between China’s GDP and its manufacturing output lies at the heart of US and European concerns about the consequences that Beijing’s current path could have for the global economy.
The growing protectionist fervor faces few voices of restraint now that US politicians of both parties have convinced much of the electorate that higher tariffs and government aid are tools to save American jobs.
“Key priorities for trade policy in this administration have been to enhance supply chain resiliency, to shift the emphasis onto benefits for workers, and protect and rebuild the manufacturing base at home,” said Mark Wu, a trade law professor at Harvard who was senior adviser to the US Trade Representative in 2021.
Without American leadership at the WTO or other forums aimed at trade liberalization, it’s hard for some economists to see where the race to the bottom stops.
Awash in Subsidies
Almost 70% of global exports worth $14.1 trillion compete with subsidized rivals, up from about 50% a decade ago, according to Evenett’s research group at the Global Trade Alert, which tracks market-distorting policies.
With tariffs and subsidies flying, much will depend on how severe any retaliation gets.
American farmers are among the most vulnerable if Chinese importers send their orders elsewhere, according to Christine McDaniel, an expert on international trade at the Mercatus Center and a former trade economist at the White House.
She sees the rules of the road for world trade changing in ways that rewind the clock.
“We are stepping away from a WTO world and essentially going back to a GATT world where tariffs and subsidies were rampant, but countries tried to make international trade easier, at least with some of their partners,” she said, referring to the system of rules before the WTO was established in the mid-1990s.
The risks of a breakdown of multilateralism may be the highest for the EU. The bloc’s postwar economic model was built for a rules-based system that encouraged open markets and competition. For decades, the US was a natural ally leading developing nations along the same path.
Now officials in Brussels still espousing adherence to WTO rules are starting to feel isolated.
Two European officials said it’s their view that the US has abandoned the principles of trade rules and procedures in favor of an approach based mostly on economic security — protecting newly emerging technology at home and reinforcing domestic supply chains. That approach essentially tries to cut China out, the officials said.
More:
https://gcaptain.com/a-new-trade-war-offers-no-easy-way-back-for-old-global-order/
>They planned for nearly two decades to blame all the world woes on the white man by casting them as supremacists. They planned to genocide by way of vaccinations using a false narrative of a pandemic. These are all proven facts.
A bit more from your post.
Now, where's the proof of this planning?
Between you (3503b2) and your partner b51c2c can you post a straight answer, or just more tangents?
China Conducts Mock Missile Strikes on Taiwan
By Bernard Orr and Yimou Lee Reuters May 24, 2024
BEIJING/TAIPEI, May 24 (Reuters) – China staged mock missile strikes and dispatched fighter jets carrying live missiles along with bombers on Friday, state broadcaster CCTV said, as part of exercises Beijing has said were launched to punish Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te.
The bombers set up several attack formations in waters east of Taiwan, carrying out mock attacks in co-ordination with naval vessels, it added, as China tested its ability to “seize power” and control key areas of Taiwan.
The two days of drills in the Taiwan Strait and around groups of Taiwan-controlled islands near the Chinese coast, which a Taiwanese official said also included the mock bombing of foreign vessels, started just three days after Lai took office on Monday. Taiwan has condemned China’s actions.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and denounces Lai as a “separatist.” It strongly criticized his inauguration speech, in which he urged Beijing to stop its threats and said the two sides of the strait were “not subordinate to each other.”
The Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army said the exercises, dubbed “Joint Sword – 2024A,” were to “test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas.”
“This action is completely reasonable, legal, and necessary to combat the arrogance of ‘Taiwan independence’ and deter the interference and intervention of external forces,” said Wu Qian, a spokesperson of China’s defense ministry.
‘SACRED WEAPONS’
The Chinese theater command showed an animated video on Friday on its WeChat social media account of missiles being launched at Taiwan from the ground, air and sea, which then slam into the cities of Taipei, Kaohsiung and Hualien in balls of flame. CCTV later said China staged mock missile attacks on Taiwan using dozens of missiles.
“Sacred weapons to kill independence,” read words in red, written in the traditional Chinese characters Taiwan uses, at the end of animation.
Taiwan’s armed forces have mobilized to monitor and shadow Chinese forces.
Taiwan’s defense ministry on Friday published pictures of F-16s, armed with live missiles, patrolling the skies.
It also showed pictures of Chinese coastguard vessels and Chinese Jiangdao-class corvettes, though it did not say exactly where the images were taken.
The ministry said that as of 6 a.m. (2200 GMT) on Friday, it had detected 49 Chinese military aircraft, 19 navy and seven coastguard ships. Of the aircraft, 28 crossed the strait’s median line, which once served as an unofficial barrier though China says it does not recognize it.
The closest Chinese aircraft got to Taiwan’s coast was 40 nautical miles (74 km) from the northern city, and navy base, of Keelung, according to a map the ministry provided.
Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China but has been rebuffed. He says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims.
Taiwan is well-used to China’s military threats, and the latest drills have caused no undue alarm on the island, with life carrying on as normal.
Taiwanese media have covered the drills, but also given a lot of time to ongoing drama about contested parliament reforms that have brought thousands of people onto the streets to protest.
On China’s highly regulated Weibo social media site, “Eastern Theatre” was the top searched item, with most of the comments supporting the drills. Another hot topic was “the return of Taiwan.”
Analysts, regional diplomats and senior Taiwan officials noted the scale of the drills so far were smaller than the similar exercises in 2022 and were widely anticipated by Taiwanese and foreign officials, but they still raised the risk of accidents or miscalculations.
FIRST ISLAND CHAIN
A senior Taiwan security official told Reuters that several Chinese bombers conducted mock attacks on foreign vessels near the eastern end of the Bashi Channel, which separates Taiwan from the Philippines, practicing how to seize “total control” of areas west of the so-called first island chain.
The first island chain refers to the area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.
The official, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the situation, said several Chinese coastguard boats also conduced “harassment” drills off Taiwan’s east coast, including mock inspections of civilian ships.
China’s coastguard said it had conducted “law enforcement drills” in waters east of Taiwan on Friday, focused on training on verification and identification, warning and repulsion.
Chinese vessel Nantong carried out combat readiness patrol and practical drill missions in the Taiwan Strait, with Taiwanese ship Zheng He following 0.6 nautical miles behind, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said.
A public relations officer of the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet said it was paying attention to “all of the activities” in the Indo-Pacific and takes “very seriously” the responsibility to deter aggression in the region.
Taiwan and the United States have no official diplomatic relationship, as Washington formally recognizes Beijing, but is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself and is the island’s most important international backer.
Speaking in Taipei, Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said the island would not succumb to pressure.
“We will not make any concessions because of this Chinese military exercise, because it concerns the development of democracy in Taiwan,” he said.
https://gcaptain.com/china-conducts-mock-missile-strikes-on-taiwan/
AOC as Miss Lube Rack 2024?
Here
https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a34576867/queen-elizabeth-hidden-cousins-nerissa-katherine-bowes-lyon/