I don’t plan to watch the inauguration. Am I making a mistake?

At Reason.com Peter Suderman gives his assessment of the Biden presidency:

Over the last four years, President Biden supported the investment of billions of dollars of taxpayer money in infrastructure—and, in particular, high-tech green energy infrastructure such as high-speed rail, rural broadband, and electric vehicle charging stations.

And what happened was: He didn’t build that.

The money was authorized, but the projects didn’t come to completion. As Politico reported last month in an overview of Biden’s signature green energy infrastructure projects, “a $42 billion expansion of broadband internet service has yet to connect a single household. Bureaucratic haggling, equipment shortages and logistical challenges mean a $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast has so far yielded just 47 stations in 15 states.” According to Politico, Congress authorized more than $1 trillion in spending for Biden’s major climate, clean energy, and infrastructure programs, but more than half of it “has yet to be obligated or is not yet available for agencies to spend.” Many of the big projects that received either subsidies or tax breaks under Biden are still essentially imaginary, and some may not happen at all, depending on what President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress choose to pursue.

Even projects that Biden himself is personally invested in haven’t paid off: Biden has long subscribed to a romantic fantasy of passenger rail, and his administration sent more than $3 billion to further fund California’s long-delayed high-speed rail system. The rail project was supposed to connect Los Angeles with San Francisco, but it’s currently years behind schedule and $100 billion over budget—and is now struggling to complete a much shorter, much less useful line between Merced and Bakersville, which are not exactly global economic hubs. There is currently no completion date, or really any actionable plan at all, to actually connect L.A. and San Francisco. Biden threw billions at a worthless project, and America got nothing for it.

Mr. Suderman contrasts that performance with that of the private sector:

The contrast with the private sector is revealing. The most notable train project in the United States during Biden’s tenure wasn’t California’s doomed high-speed rail, or some Amtrak upgrade that justified the billions this administration sent their way, but the Brightline in Florida. For sheer wow factor, the biggest engineering project of the Biden tenure was almost certainly SpaceX’s reusable rocket catch. Yes, SpaceX has significant business with the government, but it’s fundamentally a private enterprise, operating with private goals and direction. America can still build big things. But Biden’s top-down, bureaucratic approach has failed to do so.

I’ve already provided my explanation of why the United States is realizing so little in the way of outputs from the inputs the federal government is providing: it’s the spending that’s important to those arguing for these expenditures and those administering them not the results.

The spending alone may be sufficient for the bureaucrats and advocates of these programs but the country actually needs material results. Once upon a time the United States was able to complete major projects like these on a timely basis. Have we lost that ability or is it just the desire that we have lost?

It is my opinion that China’s leadership is smarter than ours. That’s no accident. It is a factor of the differences in our respective political systems, cultures, and languages. The Chinese leadership is showing that intelligence in increasing their exports to the “Global South” as David Goldman points out in his piece at Asia Times:

China’s exports grew 10.7% year-on-year in December, outpacing November’s 6.7% gain and beating analyst forecast of 7.3% growth.

Restocking in anticipation of tariffs accounted for a small part of the gain, but the main driver of Chinese exports remains the Global South, especially to countries where China is building infrastructure. China’s exports to the Global South exceeded its shipments to all developed markets in 2023, and the shift toward the developing world continues.

Consider as example the balances of trade between China and Nigeria or China and Ghana. That’s certainly good for consumers in those countries but I suspect it will be disastrous for their economic development. Japan, South Korea, and China didn’t import their way escaping poverty.

There’s more than one way of winning a trade war.

Ruy Teixeira summarizes his assessment of the Biden presidency in three words: he blew it.

One wonders how things would have turned out for Biden and his party, if Biden had not taken his fateful turn to the progressive left and their priorities. Perhaps the Democrats—and the country—would be in much better shape. We’ll never know.

I do not believe that the Democratic leadership is using the same yardstick as Mr. Teixeira is. Based on their yardstick the Biden presidency was a great success and voters who did not vote for Harris simply did not know what was good for them.

That is further borne out by the U. S. track record on the things that government does. We spend more per individual covered on healthcare for the elderly, more per student educating the young, defense per capita, more per mile of road or foot of bridge than other OECD major economies. That suggests that as far as our government is concerned the accompolishing the putative objectives is less important than the spending.

I suspect that Will Marshall is barking up the wrong tree in his piece at The Hill urging Democrats to formulate their own plan for making government more effective and efficient:

But before Democrats dismiss the DOGE as just more MAGA trollery, it’s fair to ask — where’s their plan for making government more efficient and effective?

Inexplicably, that plank is missing from the platform of the party that believes in active government.

It’s not exactly breaking news that Americans have very low confidence in the government’s problem-solving abilities. Such low esteem grows out of a myriad of frustrating citizen interactions with public institutions of all kinds — schools, social service providers, public health systems; police and courts; local licensing and permitting boards as well as distant federal bureaucracies.

Especially skeptical are non-college voters. They believe Washington serves the interests and ideological passions of highly educated elites, not ordinary working people like them.

This helps to explain why Bidenomics failed to land with working Americans. In fact, White House bragging about “delivering” big spending bills likely intensified their skepticism, since tangible benefits were slow to materialize while soaring prices cut deeply into family budgets.

Democrats would be wise to resurrect one of Bill Clinton’s best ideas — reinventing government — and make it a centerpiece of a new strategy for winning back working Americans.

I doubt that the Democratic leadership will rise to Mr. Marshall’s challenge for a simple reason: they don’t see government in the same way as he does.

There are lots of different ways of viewing the role of government. You can see it through a Keynesian prism—the spender of last resort or you can see it as a device for accomplishing things that the private sector can’t or won’t do—my preferred outlook.

I think the Democratic leadership sees government as an employer. Consider the Government Accounting Office’s (GAO) assessment of grant recipients under Biden:

The numbers of federal contractors and federal employees have similarly soared. Further evidence is the way the average federal wage has outstripped the average private sector wage.

Judged by that yardstick the Biden presidency has been a roaring success.

You might be interested in Thomas P. M. Barnett’s new piece at Politico. In the piece Dr. Barnett finds a connecting thread in President-Elect Trump’s remarks on Greenland, Canada, and Panama. Here’s a snippet:

Three key trends animate the globe right now: (a) an East-West decoupling dynamic, (b) a re-regionalization imperative along North-South lines that brings “near-shoring” production close to home markets, and (c) a growing superpower clash animating all these “races” — namely, adapting to climate change, winning the energy transition, achieving AI supremacy, etc.

Trump, love him or loath him, sees just enough of this world and the fear it generates to know the right plan of attack.

Trump’s approach to international affairs reflects Americans’ judgment that we are done building a world order — which we’ve overseen from 1954 to 2008 —and now must vigorously embrace an aggressively competitive approach to this multipolar world; in other words, be less the generous market-maker and more the selfish market-player.

I haven’t followed Dr. Barnett much since reading his book, The Pentagon’s New Map. My remarks on it are in this twenty year old post. I think that my observations have aged better than his.

Quite a bit has changed over that twenty years. Russia, clearly, is no longer “New Core” to use Dr. Barnett’s terminology. Or is there a Core 2? Is China still “New Core”? I think the slug provided by Politico is notable:

Do you want a future in which Canada defects to the EU, Russia rules the Arctic and China runs Latin America? That’s the default outcome of non-action.

I listened to President Biden’s farewell address last night. I think he should be allowed his moment in the sun so I won’t fisk it.

I did want to remark on his warning about the growing power of an oligarchy in the U. S. It isn’t a new phenomenon. The Founding Fathers were a bunch of rich guys. There were exceptions, of course. Sam Adams was not rich but by and large they were rich.

What is different about the new oligarchy is how dependent they are on the federal government. In effect, most are creatures of the government in one way or another. Some depend on expansive intellectual property law. For some it is within Congress’s power to wipe out the business model on which their wealth depends overnight. Some became wealthy as a consequence of the tax reforms of the early Clinton presidency. For some a financial transaction tax (FTT) would greatly curtail their incomes. Some depend on direct government subsidies of the products made by their companies.

The irony, of course, is that although he may not realize it Joe Biden’s fingerprints are all over this growth in wealth. As senator he voted for many of the laws that resulted in the growth in wealth of the ultra-wealthy. As president some of his

In the 18th century the wealthy largely derived their wealth from physical assets. Today much of the wealth of the ultra-wealthy is derived from financial assets.

Consider the graph at the top of the page. As should be clear over the last nearly 20 years any relationship between stock prices and corporate earnings has become a thing of the past. Stock prices are now in a world completely distinct from the real economy. Over the last five years a major contributing factor to skyrocketing stock prices has been inflation and inflation has been the foreseeable outcome of extending credit to ourselves to pay for additional spending rather than paying for the additional spending via taxation and one of the side effects of that process has been causing the prices of financial assets and, consequently, the wealth of those whose wealth depends on financial asset to rise.

Takahiro Mori, the vice chairman of Nippon Steel, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining why they are taking President Biden to court to get the court to block the president’s ban on Nippon Steel’s purchase of U. S. Steel. Here’s the conclusion:

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel will do whatever it takes to close this transaction. It is the only viable deal that will keep U.S. Steel intact, keep unionized blast furnaces running, and protect jobs. We remain interested in exploring possible partnerships with the new administration to invest in and grow U.S. Steel to benefit American workers, customers, and national security.

We still have confidence in the justice and fairness of the U.S. and its legal system. We believe our case is strong, and we look forward to our day in court.

I don’t have any inside information on this matter but my meager understanding is that

1. U. S. Steel is for sale
2. A number of bids have been received including at least one U. S.-based company
3. Nippon Steel has made the highest bid
4. Nippon Steel has pledged to make substantial investments in U. S. Steel mills to bring them up-to-date
5. No U. S.-based company is likely to be able to come up with the money to a) buy U. S. Steel and b) modernize the facilities

Mr. Mori thinks the president’s motivation for blocking the sale is not security but domestic politics:

During Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the leadership of the United Steelworkers union announced in February that the president had personally assured them that he had their backs as they opposed our deal. He publicly announced his opposition to our partnership in March—before Cfius began its formal review—and received the USW’s endorsement days later.

Cfius, meanwhile, barely engaged with us. After receiving a letter from the committee last September—filled with USW leadership’s talking points—our companies submitted four draft National Security Agreements throughout the fall and winter to address purported concerns.

We don’t believe there was any national-security concern to begin with; Japan is one of America’s staunchest allies. Cfius didn’t send us a single written comment on or serious question about our proposals before referring the transaction to the president.

We doubt the feedback from the committee contributed to Mr. Biden’s decision. His mind seemed made up early last year, judging from his campaigning. The political pressure from his public statements, we think, also tainted the Cfius review, resulting in a no-consensus decision from the committee that allowed the president to deliver on his promise to USW leadership.

My offhand guess it that the USW believes, incorrectly, that a U. S. buyer will maximize the number of union jobs retained. I strongly suspect that if U. S. Steel is bought by a U. S. buyer the Gary facility will be closed or, at the very least, substantially downsized. That would be a disaster for Gary to say the least.

My question is what’s the objective? Since President-Elect Trump has expressed opposition to Nippon Steel’s acquisition, that question is all the more important. If it’s to ensure that more steel is produced in the U. S., letting Nippon Steel buy U. S. Steel is probably the best way to achieve that.

In his Wall Street Journal column William Galston warns the the United States is about to “leave Europe on its own”:

Europe is beset by troubles, and the policies of the incoming Trump administration will deepen them.

During his first term, Donald Trump insisted that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European members pay more for their own defense. While 23 NATO nations are now in compliance with the target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, they remain far short of what it would take to defend themselves without America’s security guarantee.

This is very interesting:

Europe wasn’t always this weak. In 1988, West Germany’s army had nearly half a million soldiers; today, Germany’s active-duty army numbers only about 180,000. The army in the 1980s was equipped with more than 2,000 battle-ready tanks; today, only a few hundred are operational. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, reunified Germany largely disarmed. So did countries throughout Western Europe. Governments gave priority to social programs over defense.

Consider the graph at the top of the page. In 2024 Germany’s defense spending rose to 2% of GDP for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But just barely. The Germans have been freeriding on the United States for a long time; they consider it a law of nature.

This, too, is an intersting observation:

In recent decades, Western European nations have made a series of bets that haven’t paid off. They assumed that they could remain economically competitive while government spending and regulatory burdens increased. They assumed that relations with Russia would remain manageable and that the flow of cheap Russian energy would continue. They assumed that they could absorb a record flow of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa without disrupting social stability. Above all, they assumed that the trans-Atlantic alliance would endure indefinitely and that the U.S. would never tire of bearing a disproportionate burden for Europe’s defense.

As these bets failed, Europe’s citizens became dissatisfied with the dominant parties of the center left and center right and turned to right-wing populist-nationalists. For different reasons, voters in the U.K. and U.S. did as well.

As I’ve said any number of times before, I have no insight in what Trump will or will not do. I suspect that despite threats he’ll continue to backstop Europe. Whether that’s the right thing to do or not I’ll leave to your judgment. I think that our interests in Asia are greater than our interests in Europe.