Tag Archives: political economy

Taliban and CPC—Peas in a Pod

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That similarity facilitates the People’s Republic of China’s government and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers hooking up. With President Joe Biden’s (D) decision to cut and run from Afghanistan 17 months ago, the Communist Party of China and the rest of the government of the PRC have been moving into Afghanistan with enthusiasm, and the Taliban has been opening up to them with increasing enthusiasm.

The PRC is committing genocide against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, having already locked away in concentration camps more than a million of them and “reeducating” a million more in the CPC’s effort to erase Uighur Muslim culture.

The Taliban, on the other hand, are moving with zeal to punish Afghan-domiciled Muslims, locking away Muslim women in their own homes, keeping them carefully ignorant, and allowing them out in public only if they’re fully covered and accompanied by family male supervisors. This assault is accompanied by Taliban efforts to limit the ability of Muslim groups to cross the border into Xinjiang and work to liberate the Uighurs—albeit many of those groups being al Qaeda terrorists or supporters.

This alignment has facilitated the PRC-Taliban agreement for the PRC to drill for oil in Afghanistan’s north, an arrangement worth $540 million. The PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative has routes that pass through Afghanistan, directly connecting the PRC with Iran.

PRC exploitation of Afghanistan’s vast rare earth resources, for lucrative fees to the Taliban, won’t be far behind.

It’s almost like they’re friends with benefits.

Subsidies

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President Joe Biden (D) is arranging subsidies for American companies in a misguided effort to support development and production of electric vehicles and their batteries in the US. The EU objects, saying the subsidies disfavor EU nation-domiciled companies, and is proposing some options to counter the American subsidies.

One provision suggested by the commission could allow governments to directly match certain green subsidies offered by the US. European competition chief Margrethe Vestager said that means that if a company was offered $1 billion to build a new battery factory outside of Europe, “a member state could offer the same.”
The matching subsidies program would have several conditions, Ms Vestager said. A business would have to show how it could benefit from a subsidy from the US or another country, and any matching funds would have to benefit more than one European country.

The EU can’t make any economic move at all without layering on yet more bureaucracy and regulation. These conditions seem also to be offered because the EU doesn’t trust, rightly or wrongly, its own constituent nations to play nice among themselves even against a common external competitor. This is another example of the central planners demanding one-size-fits all regulation, and demanding them preemptively, denying the constituents any opportunity to perform on their own recognizance.

An Easy Solution

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LanzaTech is a “carbon-capture” company with a number of joint ventures with People’s Republic of China-controlled companies around the world. The company also has on its Board of Directors a Managing Director of Sinopec Capital, itself a PRC-domiciled (and so under the control of the PRC’s intelligence community via the PRC’s 2017 National Security Law) company.

LanzaTech even acknowledged in its Form S-4 announcing its decision to become a public, exchange-listed company, filed last March with the SEC, that [section head emphasis in the original]

We may be subject to risks that the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time.
Because we have employees located in China and conduct some operations in China, including through our China-based joint venture and at the facilities in China operated by our partners using our process technology, we are subject to the risk that the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time.

Despite that admitted (potential) subordination and Senate Republican objections centered on LanzaTech’s ties to the PRC government, the Biden administration’s Energy Department awarded LanzaTech a $1.6 billion dollar contract to research biofuel production. And with that tie, to pass any discoveries and developments and concepts along to the PRC.

Congress as a whole controls the Federal government’s pocketbook, and spending bills must originate in the House. It’s time to reduce or eliminate altogether funding for the Department of Energy until its unelected and subject to Senate confirmation managers become responsive to Congressional requirements. Start with reducing the Department’s funding by those $1.6 billion and applying the Holman Rule to reduce Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s salary to $1.00 per month. To the extent her intransigence continues, continue reducing Department funding and reduce the salaries of her Deputies to $1.00 per month.

This is straightforward to do, even if it might be politically difficult without the Senate and the White House. But that’s a matter to keep in mind in the fall of 2024.

Mistaken?

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In a Fox News article centered on Congressman Chip Roy’s (D, TX) proposed legislation that would bar Federal funds from going to schools that teach critical race theory (the foolishness doesn’t deserve capitalization), Cato Institute’s Colleen Hroncich had this in objecting to Roy’s proposal:

For starters, the federal government has no constitutional role in education[.]

Plainly, the Federal government does have a role, Constitutional or otherwise, in education—hence the existence of those federal funds to schools that Roy’s proposal would block.

Alternatively, Hroncich is correct, and all Federal funds transfers to schools should stop.

Free Market or Pro-Working Class?

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That’s the question posed regarding the future of the Republican Party in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay.

The headline and subheadline combine to posit a false dichotomy, though.

Can the GOP Become a Real Working-Class Party?
Some Republicans want the party to break from its longtime free-market agenda and focus instead on the needs and frustrations of workers. Others see danger in moving away from the legacy of Reagan.

It isn’t possible to be pro-working class without being also being pro-free market. It’s the free market that generates the prosperity, flexibility of business decision-making, and breadth of worker and potential worker choice that produce the most benefit for workers.